Meeting of Gay Minds : Two authors want to start a workshop to ‘bring about a sense of connection and security’ for gay and lesbian writers. Robert Peters, a UCI professor, is also looking for feedback on his work on the sex life of J. Edgar Hoover.

The sudden death of Robert Peters’ 4-year-old son from meningitis in 1960 spurred him to begin writing what would become his first published book of poetry, “Songs for a Son.”

“I’ve mined my life since the very early poems,” said Peters, who retired from UC Irvine last year after 26 years in the English Department but still teaches a course there.

But it wasn’t until the father of three other children split from his wife of 17 years in the late ‘60s that he began writing about something he had kept hidden: He’s gay.

Writing about the death of his son, Peters said, “Unlocked all the poetry and the frustration (about) where the marriage had gone sour and deciding I was not going to live lies any more. That’s when I decided that my nature, from age 3, was homosexual and that’s what it’s going to be, despite all the kids I had.”

Over the years, Peters, 69, has continued to mine his life for many of his 30 books, writing “What Dillinger Meant to Me,” a collection of poems about farm life in Wisconsin and the boyhood “sexual reverberations” he felt for gangster John Dillinger, who escaped an FBI ambush nearby; “The Drowned Man to the Fish,” a collection of poems about the “harrowing” difficulties of leaving his wife and children; “Crunching Gravel: A Wisconsin Boyhood,” a memoir, and an upcoming World War II memoir, “For You, Lili Marlene.”

“I don’t think of myself essentially as a gay writer, although much of my work has gay themes,” said Peters, who is working on a book-length monologue based on the controversial sex life of J. Edgar Hoover.

Peters, who is interested in getting feedback on his work-in-progress, is hoping to start a writing workshop along with fellow writer Paul Trachtenberg for Orange County gay and lesbian writers.

Peters initially wanted to form an advanced workshop, but he doesn’t know of any writing groups for gays and lesbians in the county, “so maybe this is the time to try to get something established for people who do want to write and have this commitment to their sexuality and not worry about how useful it will be to me.”

Peters said prospective members should submit samples of their work, so he and Trachtenberg can “see who’s out there--if anybody’s out there--and is it poetry or prose they are interested in, and how much experience they have. Then we can just play it by ear whether or not we want to proceed.”

Plans call for limiting the workshop, which will be held in the Huntington Beach home Peters and Trachtenberg share, to about 10. Writers should send their material to Peters in care of the Department of English, UC Irvine, Irvine, CA 92717.

Peters and Trachtenberg, who have been together 24 years, plan to co-lead the workshop.

Trachtenberg, 45, has published three books of poems, including “Short Changes for Loretta,” and recently a novel, “Ben’s Exit.” The Orange County-set novel (Cherry Valley Editions; $7) features a central gay relationship.

Peters achieved local notoriety two years ago for performing his “Snapshots for a Serial Killer: A Fiction and Play,” a disturbing look into serial killer Randy Kraft’s mind. He also has written and performed--both locally and nationally--in “Ludwig of Bavaria” and “The Blood Countess,” which is about a real 17th-Century Hungarian countess who believed servant girl blood made her skin whiter. (Peters played the countess.)

After he completes his monologue on Hoover, Peters plans to write a book about what it’s like being a father who is gay.

“I want to really make that an honest book if I can,” he said. “It may be one of the most important of all the books I have done.”

The revelation that he is gay took a heavy toll on his family. His daughter and two sons, he said, suffered emotionally. But Peters, who said he loves being a father, is still close to them. He also has remained on good terms with his ex-wife and is grateful “she never turned them them against me, and she could have.”

Peters said he is a more disciplined writer than Trachtenberg, writing several hours every day. In addition to fiction, poetry and drama, he also does criticism and book reviews for American Book Review and other publications. He even writes more than 100 letters a month to fellow poets and writers.

“That’s mostly my social life, apart from playing Scrabble,” he said.

Peters, who has taught courses on Victorian writers and contemporary poetry at UCI, is teaching “Gay-Lesbian Writers,” an undergraduate English class at the university.

In conducting the course, he said he is “making a contribution to helping elevate the gay consciousness, to making young lesbians and gays on campus feel not as inadequate--or guilty--as they otherwise might feel as outsiders and so on by presenting a whole range of visiting writers and texts of published writers that they are reading.”

The course, Peters said, is also important for “cross-fertilization.”

“My guess is half of the class of 60-plus students is straight, and that means that people are sitting there listening and talking to one another, and that should make for understanding.”

Among the visiting gay or lesbian writers who have--or will--speak and read to the class are Los Angeles poet Eloise Klein Healy, New York poet and biographer Edward Field, Trachtenberg and fiction writer Sandra Christiansen of Venice.

Peters said he emphasizes poetry in the course and, in fact, gay and lesbian poets typically have an easier road to publication than do writers of gay-themed novels, thanks to a multitude of alternative presses that are more willing to publish poetry.

Among major mainstream publishers, Peters said, St. Martin’s Press “is the only really big one that will take the risk” of publishing a novel with a strong sexual theme unless it’s the work of Gore Vidal or some other major author.

“Mainstream publishers think, I suppose, that the religious right will raise hell and they won’t sell all the copies they want to,” he said. “That’s still an issue, but things are getting better. I think (the film) ‘Philadelphia’ is evidence of that. But it’s still walking on eggshells with that subject matter, I think.”

Peters believes that “any visible gay or lesbian still runs a risk (of becoming a victim). I’ve been very lucky. I’ve seen very little of it in my life personally, but the hate people are out there--the bashers.”

For writers, Peters said, there’s also political correctness to deal with within the gay community--the idea that “if you present gays in any negative light you’re betraying your kind. Which, of course, is absurd.

“I got a lot of flak on the ‘Serial Killer,’ who was ostensibly gay, because I suppose it’s like most minorities with long histories of persecution. The activist people want positive takes, and this guy is a monster, and my point is whether he’s gay or straight is utterly beside the point.”

Despite the dearth of mainstream publishers producing gay- and lesbian-themed books, Peters said, a handful of small straight presses are receptive.

Black Sparrow Press of Santa Barbara is one. Another is Asylum Arts, a small press in Santa Maria that will publish his collection of essays on major contemporary American poets, “Where the Bee Sucks: Workers, Drones and Queens of Contemporary American Poetry.”

“That publisher is thoroughly open-minded,” said Peters. “He’s a straight guy, but (for him) it doesn’t matter what the subject matter is. I’ve been lucky to find enlightened editors like this.”

Among the few gay-oriented publishers is GLB (Gay Lesbian and Bi) Publishers in San Francisco, which published Peters’ “Snapshots for a Serial Killer,” “Zapped: Two Pop Novels” and “Goodnight, Paul,” a book of poems “celebrating” Peters’ life with Trachtenberg.

“He (Paul) got on my case because most of what I write has a a bleak side to it,” Peters said. “He said, ‘Why don’t you write a happy book?’ So I tried to get away from the dark imagination. They’re short lyrics on different things--how I see him in life, things he does, what his interests are, the things we do together. So it’s the writing life we share very much.”

Naiad Press of Tallahassee, Fla., is one of the small presses that exclusively publish lesbian writing.

“It’s interesting to me how the lesbians do much better in this than the men do,” said Peters. “I think they find their own audience, and I think it’s true in the whole society that women read more than men and I think that carries over in that a press can devote itself to lesbian writing.”

Unless a gay book is “super erotic” or pornographic, Peters said, that is not about to happen for gay fiction.

“It seems to me the majority of males who read gay lit read it to be turned on, and the serious literary things like Christopher Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ and John Rechy’s ‘A City of Night’ or William Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’ reach over into a hetero readership as well,” he said. “But my feeling is it’s the porn and the soft-core stuff that generally sells” in gay bookstores.

Trachtenberg’s publisher, Cherry Valley Editions in Cherry Valley, N.Y., is another small straight press that publishes both gay and lesbian writers.

As a gay writer, Trachtenberg views the prospect of an Orange County gay and lesbian writing workshop as an opportunity to “bring about a sense of connection and security knowing there are other people looking for this same kind of outlet. It’s kind of a fellowship and shows that we’re not isolated.”

Being a writer is struggle enough, Trachtenberg said, and being a gay writer is even more of a struggle--”unless you go to the right places and you feel safe like in the (gay) ghettos in San Francisco and Greenwich Village where there is more hobnobbing and collective consciousness and support.”

As an archivist who collects contemporary American poetry to sell to university libraries, Trachtenberg said he is “only beginning to emerge as a full-time writer.”

“Ben’s Exit,” his first novel, reflects his life growing up and living in Orange County. In writing the slim 123-page book, he said he intended to portray “kind of an elite idealistic world” in which gays and straights get along with one another.

The novel reflects Trachtenberg’s view of himself as a “gay assimilationist,” which he defines as “showing the world that there is no difference between a gay life and a straight life, that they can get along equally. On the opposite end of the spectrum would be the gay militant.”

Trachtenberg said one publisher rejected the book “because he thought it was homophobic. He’s from San Francisco and he’s in a (gay) ghetto and he doesn’t see that world like I do in Orange County.

“My argument is, sure I support the gay militants too, but they should see the good and benefits of the gay assimilationists because they’re showing that gays can assimilate in society.” In so doing, he said, straights will learn to say of gays, “Hey, they’re all-right people.”

Trachtenberg said he’s open about being gay among his friends. But living in Orange County, “I guess what comes to mind is having to soft-shoe, not be open and say who I am in order to have a more comfortable life, a less stressful life.”

When he goes to the gym, for example, “nobody knows who I am. A gay person in Orange County becomes an expert in traveling incognito for survival.”

But through his writing, Trachtenberg has found he can be himself.

“That has been my freest way of expression,” he said. And a gay and lesbian writing workshop, he said, would extend that sense of freedom:

“I’d say profoundly.”