INSPIRATION: alto

In response to the prompt from Kathy Jacobs at Chalkboard

I should say upfront that I am someone who reads voraciously though writes on this platform far less. But when I read the call for submissions from Kathy Jacobs at Chalkboard asking for pieces about writers that inspire us, I knew this was a post I had to write.

“Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

That one line, one sentence encouragement was the first thing I ever read from alto. It was over ten years ago, in the hay days of live journal. He was responding to a post I had written where in a moment of rare and uncharacteristic openness, I had discussed my recovery from a crystal meth addiction that nearly ruined my life, and had also been the major factor in my recent HIV positive diagnosis.

In 2005 on LJ, that was probably not the smartest of disclosures, as the response was swift and brutal, and I was overwhelmed with self righteous negativity and hate that couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was recently sober, was the loneliest and most isolated I had ever been, and still filled with shame over having a acquired a disease that was 100% preventable. I should, and did know better. Trust me, trolls can pick up on those things like a bloodhound on a scent. Needless to say, alto’s short pat on the back was a welcome and refreshing comment to see. Which made it all the more surprising to see another response from him several hours later. This time it read like a well crafted essay; a contingent, intelligent, authoritative response to the abuse I was having lobbed at me. He spoke professionally, but also personally, cutting to the heart of how the hateful responses said more about the writer than their target. He not only invalidated their less than rigorous arguments, he effectively challenged their moral authority to make them. Besides putting a welcome stop to the harassment, he offered something far greater; he ‘got’ what I was saying, and why I needed to say it.

Since that day Allan (his offline name) has been someone who’s writing I have admired and faithfully followed. His writings stemming from his research in HIV are consistently on the mark. Speaking as someone who is HIV +, I am used to researchers often missing the mark, but alto gets it right every time. As he also does in other social justice writings.

Alto has also served as my occasional editor here on Medium on those rare occasions I do write something worth publishing. His hard work on CROSSIN(G)ENRES and keen editorial eye has made it grow from an unknown publication with a handful of followers to one of the most coveted places to publish on Medium. But he has also become an important inspiration and mentor to me in numerous other ways. His experience in and love for the field of EMS is a large part of the reason that come this June, I will be writing my national registry paramedic exams after completing my BS in EMS Studies this spring. For a few years now, alto has also become someone I am proud to call a good friend, one that I have even met and shared time with in person. What he is here on these pages, is exactly what you get in person. And just because it will make him blush, I also pleasantly discovered that he is just as hot in person as he is in his pictures (sorry Allan I couldn't resist).

As for his writing, that speaks for itself. Not for the faint of heart, his words are visceral, intense, compassionate, vulnerable, fiercely intelligent, and most of all genuine. Alto is the real deal. Oh yeah, and occasionally he can be bitingly funny in a dry, sarcastic sort of way. But since I am in no way a writing critic, here are a few examples of what I mean.

From the memoir piece, Those Defining Moments: an introspective musical journey:

“There’s no way to know it now, but in less than a year Darren and I will skip second period study hall, and in the locker room of this same gym awkwardly explore each others mouths with fast, eager tongues. Our hard, impatient maleness, clumsy with pent up frustrations of teenage angst, while The Outfields hit, Your Love plays in the gym above us. But in that moment we are passion, lust, and desire, plus so many other things and more.”

In the humorous take down of a poet troll, One Wikipedia Definition Does Not A Poet Make: or, 10, 000 unemployed literary critics and we get you:

So it should not surprise you that I, too, find your actual, functional knowledge of poetics to be uncompromisingly rigid. And amusingly surface. Perhaps you should expand your terms of reference beyond the pages of Wikipedia, and increase your depth of exposure to works beyond the roses are red, violets are blue variety. Personally, I enjoy the breadth of poetic possibility allowed through the use of incongruous juxtapositions. Which is to say, strictly defined, I enjoy hybrid poetry. A form that by your definition, cannot exist.

This brilliant deconstruction of rape apologist arguments, in Double Standards, Justifications, Excuses: reflecting on the crimes of Roman Polanski and the existence of a rape culture:

Overly effusive as they may be, those examples could pass as fairly persuasive and substantive points in a subjectively abstract discussion of how consent is negotiated and arrived at in a 2016 cultural reality. In the safe confines of an insular lecture hall, discussing the process of how critical theories around individual agency have been historically constructed. However, as wonderful as dry, overly verbose, self referenced theory can sometimes be, I must take issue with the use of the arguments presented. One, because lazy, disjointed, contextually lacking theory isn’t theory, it’s bullshit. Which in this case, is another way of saying that theory of any kind that serves to mitigate and normalize what was a vicious sexual assault on a child has no place in this discussion. Period.

Oh yeah, did I mention funny? From the hilarious essay, Stop The Freak Show, I Want To Get Off:

So please, cut me a bit of slack when I tell you that what came next, more than a few times, was a slightly too loud demonstration highlighting Zeke’s substantive knowledge of that classic Night Ranger hit, Sister Christian. It might have even been awkwardly funny, if he didn’t feel the need to include the closed eyes, followed shortly after by several in-time-with-the-beat-chin bobs. Reacting as I sometimes do when my goal is a futile attempt at refocusing others attention, the rest of my evening was a bad combination of throat clears, spastic body shifts, and poorly forced laughs.

There are literally hundreds of other examples of his brilliant and always personally resonant writing. But please don’t take my word for it, find out for yourself by following alto. In my opinion, one of the best damn writers on the platform.