When I received my galley of Steven Pfau’s Say Nephew: On Boyhood, Unclehood and Queer Mentorship. I was really excited to read it. Book covers are my love language, so when I saw the cover of Steven’s book, I thought, This is going to be a good read. I chatted with Steven over Zoom about being under the tutelage of his loud, humorous, and swagger-filled Uncle Bruce. We chatted about nephews, guncles, and cowboy boots.
Jorge Estupinan: I just wanted to start by saying, I love the cover. I love the boots, your Uncle with the socks on, the drink on the table, and his hand on your arm. It feels real to me. Was this the original idea for the cover? Or was it something else?
Steven Pfau: We talked through a few different ideas, but at a certain point, my editor suggested using this photograph that I describe at the beginning of the book, and that comes up a couple of times later on in the book. When I first saw the photograph several years ago in one of my dad’s photo albums, I thought- Oh, this image kind of tells the whole story.
And there’s a lot of visual information here that I think would be interesting to people who don’t know Bruce or me. So I thought this seemed fitting.
JE: In your recent unboxing video you wrote, “22 years ago, I wrote a couple of my uncle Bruce’s catchphrases on a yellow legal pad and thought maybe someday I’ll put these in a book. About ten years ago, I started writing that book. Now Say Nephew is a real thing.” How does it feel to finally have the book in your hands?
SP: It’s very surreal. I thought it might be kind of anticlimactic to open the box and be like, “here it is, here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about”. I got kind of emotional just holding this book like, here’s the physical result of all this thinking.
JE: In the book you wrote, “Bruce was such a strong, consistent presence in my life that I never anticipated how much I would miss it and never considered seeking other kinds of gay companionships in his absence.” Do you still agree with this statement?
SP: Bruce was always there and I was very lucky to have him in my family, as a strong role model. I didn’t feel a need for a long time to seek out other kinds of gay companionship. It hadn’t really occurred to me until he died, just how unprepared I was to seek out other kinds of gay companionships, which of course I need and want and have, an effort to seek out.
But I think at that particular moment in the book when I’m starting to befriend Thor and encounter the complexities of befriending an older man who’s close to Bruce’s age, realizing, I’m not well-practiced in this. I wish I had made more of an effort earlier to do this kind of thing. I’m grateful that I had the experience of having Bruce right there, but also feel like I didn’t flex the muscle of going out to be like, “let me befriend you, let me get to know you”. That’s something I’m still working on.
JE: A favorite line of mine in the book is “If a gay boy yearns in a forest, and no one is around to fall into his thirst traps, does his body still mean anything?” You might not have Uncle Bruce’s swagger and confidence, but it sounds like you have inherited Bruce’s language and humor. Do you agree?
SP: I hope so! I think my storytelling and my ability to engage an audience just come from watching and listening to him talk and tell stories. He was a great role model in terms of how to read a room and engage people. If I’ve inherited his language and humor, that would thrill me.
JE: I recently went to a book event and they were talking about “memory”. With Bruce, was it difficult for you to go to the past and remember certain details of this life?
SP: Throughout the writing of the book, I was directly drawing on notes and memories and observations, but also there was more or less sort of like involuntary, spontaneous recollections that would happen when I would go to a leather bar. And I was like, wait, this reminds me of some big thing that was lodged in the back of my brain that I hadn’t thought about in years.
JE: Does he visit you? Or have you dreamt about him?
SP: Yeah, I do dream about him. I haven’t had an encounter, like a ghost of him. I do feel like I commune with him somehow. I read tarot cards and I sometimes will try to have a conversation with them. I’m always imagining him when I’m writing- what would Bruce think when he reads this? How would he react? What would he say? He was such a great letter writer and listener and just such a supportive audience whenever I had something to say, even though I’m not as good a talker as he is. He’s always on my mind.
JE: You write, “I lamented that I’ll never know, since I have no siblings, how it feels to have a blood-related nephew of my own.” Is this something you still think about?
SP: It’s definitely something I still think about, how I will never get to be somebody, who’s Bruce in the way that he was for me. Maybe I will get to experience being somebody’s figurative uncle or maybe in my relationship with my dog. I’m sort of becoming an uncle figure for him.
In the last chapter, I was really questioning my own desire to be an uncle because I think it’s something I’ve always craved. I mourn the fact that I will never be somebody who’s like a blood-related uncle in that way. But then I do sort of have to wonder about the potentially narcissistic impulses underlying my desire to be an uncle. Is this really about my potential nephew? Or is this more about me wanting to feel like I’m important to somebody? Is this about wanting to feel like somebody will look up to me the way that I looked up to Bruce?
I want to reframe it in terms of how I can be of service to a younger person in a way that they will actually need and find useful. If I meet a younger person who decides that they want me to be an uncle figure, then I would want that to be a conversation about, what we offer to each other. What do we need from each other? How can we support each other in a two-directional way?
JE: In your essay, “Of Uncles” in the Offing, you write, “there’s a trendy portmanteau Guncle in which I hear only gunk, but perhaps that’s the point” The idea of the gay uncle oozes across the popular imagination. How do you feel about the word “guncle”?
SP: I tell people what I write about, they say, “Oh, like guncles” There’s even a great novel called The Guncle by Steven Rowley. I think aesthetically, it sounds icky to me, like really, all I hear is gunk. And I also worry about how cutesy it is. There are so many complicated layers to this relationship. Things that are both really lovely, but also really challenging. Reducing it to the word guncle feels like it takes this very complex, nuanced relationship and turns it into something gross, a sticky thing that people don’t want to go near, or sort of like sweet Mr. Rogers type, and is very sanitized and family-friendly in ways that most gay uncles aren’t.
They’re real people with sexualities. So I feel like on the one hand it can either sort of defang and desexualize the uncle.
JE: If Bruce were not your uncle, would you be the writer you are today?
SP: No, I definitely wouldn’t be. He really encouraged me to read and write in ways that no one else really had. My mom is also a great reader and writer, and of course, she has been a really important figure in my writing and my teachers. But I think Bruce really helped me recognize how personal it can be in a different way, and just all the different ways that reading and writing can shape a life, and a relationship with other people. He introduced me to a lot of great writing when I was a teenager. He joked that I needed to watch All About Eve, because it was on my final exam. He jokingly made me a syllabus of all the things I needed to know.
I really wanted to emulate Bruce. I thought the way for me to learn how to be a gay adult, was to do it just like he did and to become a carbon copy of him. Confident and strong and interesting as he is if I grow the same mustache and I wear the same cowboy boots and wear the same Levi’s jeans and use all the same catchphrases. It took me a long time, and trial and error, to realize that it doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit me. That’s not my vibe. There are things I can draw from him and his personae and the way he moved through the world. I’ve sort of figured out how to do that in my own way.
JE: Do you still have the boots he gifted you?
SP: Yes, I still have them. They’re in my little altar in my room as a sort of tribute or heirloom or talisman. I feel like the cowboy boot as an image, feels very loaded to me and something I really associate with Bruce. I remember the night he died, I came home from the hospital and saw his cowboy boots lined up on the stairs and just that image of those empty boots was so haunting to me.
JE: You mention your dog, Laszlo, in the book and on your IG Posts. How has Laszlo shaped you into the person you are today?
SP: In every way. My whole life, I’ve wanted to live with a dog so bad. There’s just something so transcendent about a dog’s love. I can’t speak for Laszlo and say how he feels about me. Just the affection that he’s showing me and the loyalty. There’s nothing like it. Dogs are just the best. I’ve learned so much about devotion and care and paying attention and being present by just living with Laszlo.
JE: If Uncle Bruce were still here today and read and witnessed your book, what would he say?
SP: I don’t know. I mean for one, I would want to say to him, thank you for just being in my life and teaching me everything and telling me all the stories that ended up in this book. I can’t speak for him. I would hope that he would like it.
One of his favorite exclamations was, Oh, how fabulous! In my dreams and my fantasies, the thought of hearing him say that would please me greatly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steven Pfau is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. He graduated from the University of Idaho’s MFA program, and his work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The Offing, Passages North, and other publications.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Jorge Estupinan is a kindergarten teacher by day, writer at night. He has been an educator for 17 years with an Associate’s and a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education. He is also a two-time published essayist with Huffington Post. A prior student of the Writing Pad. Currently, he is part of the cohort of “The Loft Year-long Writing Project” under the mentorship of Memoirist Kelly Sundberg.