Coming Out, Coming Clean : Author E. Lynn Harris Finds That Openness and Honesty Is the Best Policy

A meek smile animating an otherwise earnest face, E. Lynn Harris admits that when it comes to his life, he’s been dabbling in a bit of expert revisionist history.

No more, Harris says, palms upturned, testifying: “It’s time to set a couple things straight.” He pauses, but there is no smile. The pun is unintentional. Language, he knows, is a veritable minefield.

Harris, 39, is in the last hard stretch of a two-month tour promoting his new book, “And This Too Shall Pass” (Doubleday).

His two previous novels, “Just As I Am” (Anchor, 1994) and “Invisible Life” (Consortium Press, 1991; reissued by Anchor, 1994), explore the issues of sexual duality. The vehicles: black gay men and the men and women who love them. The central focus of those odysseys--coming to terms with sexual identity--have garnered a loyal, though cult, following, primarily among African Americans.

Harris fills a wine goblet with San Pellegrino at a West Hollywood cafe, a Southern lilt at play in his voice: “When the question came up, I would dodge it. ‘This is fiction. What does my life have to do with it?’ ” he would tell audiences inquisitive about his sexual orientation. “Now the only thing I keep quiet is what the E stands for and my fraternity.”

Coming out, rather coming clean, has been an essential component in his quest to engender a more vital dialogue around relationships between black women and men, where dreary statistics, prognoses and wee-hour worry seem omnipresent.

“I just realized that it was important for me to be open and honest,” he explains. “Because I thought maybe if [others] saw how the public has accepted me, that it might give them some courage.”

Harris left his job as a computer salesman in 1990 and faced the page--cold turkey. “It was just a real low point in my life,” he recalls, “but I decided it was now or never.”

Writing became therapy as Harris watched his fabricated straight life threaten to collapse around him, shuddering like a precariously pitched tent in wild gusts before a hurricane. “I wanted to try and convey the pain and loneliness involved in being black and being gay,” he says.

Harris was indeed caught in an emotional storm, trying to grasp at an identity, working to raise his voice above a whisper as everything thundered forward. “I was losing friends [to AIDS],” he says. “And family doesn’t really understand when all of your friends start to die.”

His phone bill paid by his aunt and mother, a roof provided by a friend, Harris made his first attempts in third person and passed some pages of “Invisible Life” to a friend who advised a more radical approach. “I think you have something,” she said, “but I think you have to become him.”

He found the notion horrifying, too revealing, since the book’s premise was two men meeting years after an affair, one on the eve of a marriage. “But,” Harris concedes, “it started to flow immediately.”

Shopping the completed manuscript around, he collected myriad rejections. Mainstream publishers told him that it didn’t fit into their marketing plan, while one of the largest gay houses, Alyson, told him that the book was “too slick.”

Undeterred, Harris set about to self-publish. And who needed a distributor when one has a deep enough trunk? The Flint, Mich., native dutifully carted copies around the Atlanta area from book group to beauty shop--preferably those in close proximity to bookstores. Between the pages he slipped a note--”If you like this book, please go to your local bookstore and ask them to order it”--to start his own little buzz.

Word of this unorthodox man and his marketing technique reached New York. “Our Atlanta rep had been hearing a lot about this self-published book,” recalls Martha Levin, vice president and publisher of Anchor Books. “And when I finally got it, it was the most unappealing book I’d ever seen--visually. The cover, the typeface. I thought: ‘Ugh. I’m not sure I’m going to read it.’ But I did. And then I talked to Lynn, and the thing about Lynn is that he believed. He has a commitment to the book and a commitment to the readers.”

Levin was so impressed that upon publication she wrote different letters to black, gay, women’s and independent bookstores explaining the uniqueness and importance of Harris’ voice. “He is at his strongest when he writes about people that he knows and loves. . . . He is able to tell wonderful passionate stories about important issues--self-obsession, alcoholism, racism--that affect not just African Americans and not just gays, but everyone.”

Looking back, Harris says, not coming out while promoting his first two books had more to do with societal mores and codes: “I knew my family loved me. I had never had fears of them rejecting me. I just didn’t want to disappoint them. In high school and college, I was the guy always winning awards for being popular and friendly--but I had no friends.”

The secret left Harris isolated and circumspect until his senior year in college when a fraternity brother posed an oblique inquiry: “If homosexuality is so wrong, why did God make so many?”

For the first time, Harris says, he understood that there were other men like him: “We talked that night but the next day we acted like it didn’t happen. We went on dating girls, but there was a bond between us. We had a true friendship . . . it was our little secret. Our silent fraternity.”

Pacts and silence swirl around the center of “And This Too Shall Pass.” The novel is Harris’ most mainstream endeavor to date, addressing stereotypes about masculinity, American sports and the elevation of the athlete.

In an accessible, dish-the-dirt tone, Harris spins current events, from Mike Tyson to O.J. Simpson, charging across the minefield of race without losing sight of the knots men and women tie themselves in over sexual identity, power and roles.

“I just thought what if this goody-two-shoes guy came along and didn’t know what his sexuality was,” Harris says of his protagonist, quarterback Zurich Robinson, who is slapped with allegations of sexual assault by a spurned female sportscaster. “A lot of time I find that guys who may have questions just ban sex all together.”

Harris says the idea came in an anonymous correspondence from a professional athlete who identified with one of his closeted characters. When they ultimately spoke on the phone, Harris recalls, “There was so much pain in that one call. He said women came on to him all the time and he had to go along with it. I asked him if it was something that was prevalent in sports. He says, ‘There are other people like me, but no one ever talks about it.’ ”

That permeates most of society, Harris knows. A microcosm of sorts plays out at his readings as men who attend often arrive late and cling to the corners and shadows. “We don’t know if women are casing us out trying to figure out . . . you know,” explained one man who happened to linger at a book signing.

At several stores, Harris has wondered and asked, “What’s happened to all the men?” The paranoia, it seems, still exists.

Harris believes his new book might help alter a little of that. It’s topical content and nine weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list also has worked its magic.

“He was charming, clever, sexy and full of innuendo,” says Blanche Richardson, manager of Oakland’s Marcus Bookstore, who hosted a crowd of 250--gay and straight--to hear Harris. “The men and women wanted him at the end of the evening--passing numbers under the table.”

Some harbor hope that Harris can provide answers or, at least, a checklist of clues.

“The question I get asked the most is, ‘How do you tell?’ There’s really no way of telling” if one is gay, Harris stresses. “A lot of women are surprised that a lot of men meet each other at straight bars. Most black gay / bisexual men don’t identify with the stereotype. They are not a part of any organization, they are not in any way identifiable except for the people they choose to become intimate with.”

For Harris, finding the courage to be honest was a bruising journey and had much to do with not looking for approval from without, but finally finding a safe center.

“Being honest about everything has helped to make my relationships with people better,” he reflects. “I lied to people I loved. I think I always felt that this secret I had prevented me to love. I didn’t think I deserved it. But I don’t think people love you because you are a best-selling novelist or a successful businessman.

“I think they see what children see--the essence.”