Written by 
Contact: Andy Reynolds at andy@popularpublicity.com
10 Reasons All Queers Are Creeps
(and why that’s a good thing)
“We’re all creeps!” says prolific queer author Jonathan Alexander, who recently launched, “Creep,” an eight-part podcast inspired by his Lambda Literary Award-nominated memoir, “Creep: A Life, A Theory, An Apology.”
In each “Creep” episode, Alexander takes an often-humorous dive into owning one’s otherness, one’s queerness, and making friends with one’s inner creep. “We are curious about each other, but our culture has withdrawn the tools to approach each other openly and with interest,” he says. “People are so unused to engaging strangers face-to-face, that what was once an innocent glance, hello or compliment is now questioned as creepy. The pandemic may have only made such feelings of creepiness more common.”
For Alexander, embracing our inner creep is a good thing. Through observing other “others,” we observe and contemplate and better understand ourselves. Ultimately, the closer we look, the more we realize that inside all of us lives a weird little cat, curious, quietly judging and yes, a little creepy. Below Jonathan Alexander gives us …
10 Reasons Why All Queers Are Creeps:
1. We creep each other on social media.
2. We creep our friends’ friends on social media.
3. We creep on our exes.
4. We creep on our exes’ love interests.
5. We check each other out in the locker room.
6. We sometimes snap pictures of strangers.
7. We eavesdrop whenever we can.
8. We watch each other sleeping.
9. We wonder what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes, and then we actually try them on when they aren’t looking.
10. We think about saying hello to strangers, commenting on a piece of clothing, offering a comment—and then we don’t, thinking that doing so is creepy. And that really makes us creeps: refusing our innate interest in others.
This fall Alexander will publish two new books. The first is “Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot” (October 26, Fordham University Press) in which, following an unexpected medical crisis, he considers how a lifetime in a society still toxic to queer people impacts our health and perception of queer time.
The following month he’ll publish “Bullied: The Story of an Abuse” (November 4, Punctum Books), the follow-up to “Creep” (2017) and the second book in The Creep Trilogy in which he looks at how the pressure of being queer shapes our lives, and reflects on a host of other oddly but intimately related topics from drug abuse, sadomasochism, Catholic priests, and cruising to MAGA-capped boys and Jussie Smollett’s faked homophobic attack (“I don’t condone it. But I get it.”).
“Creep” the podcast is accessible on “The Creep Trilogy” website, on Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon Music. “Creep: A Life, A Theory, An Apology” (Punctum Books) is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and to order at independent stores everywhere.
Jonathan Alexander is a writer living in Southern California where he is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books. His cultural journalism has been widely published, especially in the Los Angeles Review of Books for which he is the Young Adult editor, where founding editor Tom Lutz called him one of “our finest essayists.” He lives with his husband and cat, and when not writing, dabbles in watercolors and plays piano in a music ensemble with friends. For more about Jonathan Alexander and his books please visit the Jonathan Alexander page at www.popularpublicity.com, www.thecreeptrilogy.com and his website, www.the-blank-page.com.
Editors/Writers/Book Reviewers: Tap links for more details about Jonathan Alexander’s Fall 2021 books “Stroke Book” and “Bullied.” Email andy@popularpublicity.com to request review copies.
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