I have a request: If we’re meeting for the first time and you bring up my book, it’s perfectly fine for you to disclose you haven’t read it.

It would be unrealistic — not to mention incredibly vain — for me to expect that everyone I meet has read it. Go ahead and say so. No apology necessary. Just please don’t lie.

I know the people who lie don’t mean any harm by it, but it’s more irritating than it is flattering. It creates extra work for me while I gauge how to respond to your questions or comments in a way that meets you where you’re “at”– neither too advanced nor too remedial. (And no, simply being queer does not automatically mean you know what my book says. The myth that all LGBT people are culturally competent to understand the queerspawn experience continues to be self-perpetuated in LGBT communities to the detriment of real queerspawn’s needs.)

Knowing how familiar someone is with any topic is key to successful communication.

Here’s a non-book example: If I’m telling you about my dad’s knee replacement surgery, I will talk about it differently depending on how much you know about the procedure….do you have basic knowledge of human joints, or are you are a licensed physical therapist? If you tell me you have a Ph.D in anatomy, I begin to doubt your degree as well as your integrity at the point that you interrupt me to ask what “cartilage” is.

Now let’s move on to a book-related example. These are not direct quotes, but a composite of the umpteen conversations I’ve had like this.

Person meets me and says, “Abigail, I loved your book. It is so important for everyone to hear your inspiring story.”

At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful bitch, I already suspect he’s bluffing. There’s really not that much of “my story” in Families Like Mine, which would be obvious to even the casual skimmer. The book’s precedent is not, “I was born in 1972. When I was five and my father declared he was gay, my life was changed forever. This is my story.” Hardly. There are a few vignettes from my own life, then lots of vignettes from 50 other people with queer parents, and then my analysis of all of those opinions and vignettes in the context of queer theory.

But when people refer to Families Like Mine as my “story,” I still give them the benefit of the doubt. It could just be unexact word choice. So I say something general like, “Thank you. I’m glad you found it valuable.”

~~ Check back tomorrow for Busted (Part Two) ~~

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