Sam Delany Is Eighty-one Today

Samuel R. “Chip” Delany was born on this day in 1942. An American writer and literary critic, his work includes fiction (especially science fiction), memoir, criticism, and essays on science fiction, literature, sexuality, and society.

After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo Awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted in 2002 into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

He has identified as gay since adolescence, but an earlier experience helped him to accept this identity and relate to it in a healthy way. In an interview (http://shetterly.blogspot.nl/2014/07/a-conversation-with-samuel-r-delany.html), he recalls a sexual experience he had as a young boy in 1948:

“In his cellar, a twenty-five to thirty year old super was masturbating. Me and another friend snuck in to watch. He realized we were there, called to us to ask if we wanted to come out and see what he was doing. (Did we ever!) We all sat together on his army-style cot. And at his invitation, we touched him – both me and Johnny at six were definitely gay.

“(Johnny used to beg his mother to let him wear lipstick in the street [there was no father] and to keep the peace she consented.)

“In the cellar with the super, both of us had erections. (That came as a surprise to me! I knew I had one, but I saw once pants were opened, Johnny had one too.) We took out our genitals and showed them to him. He touched us, and told us we would probably grow up to be big men. (More or less, I did.)

“Finally, without any orgasm from either him or us (we couldn’t have, at that age), he laughed and told us we better go, and not to tell, because we’d all get in trouble.

“I went looking for him once more, but he had moved from his cellar ‘apartment’. I was disappointed, but also somewhat relieved.

“Will, I have heard fifty or sixty such tales from gay men of this nature. It had none of the affect of abuse. If anything, it had more the feel of an impromptu educational session. We weren’t embraced or held against our will or made to do anything we didn’t want to. I’m glad it happened. I learned stuff. 

“And I don’t believe I was at all harmed.

“(If the man got off on it, it was after we left and he finished up – if, indeed, he did.)

“Johnny and I were the ‘aggressors’, not him. I believe his attitude was as ‘healthy’ about the whole thing as it could possibly have been in 1948.

“(Later, when I was seventeen or so, I met some people whose attitudes were not! What I’d been through as a younger child with the super was a big help.)

“Had we been seen or caught at this, I believe it would have been gross injustice to prosecute him – or remove us from our families, which is likely to have happened. I don’t even think he was particularly interested in children. It just happened to fall out that way. The whole incident lasted maybe six or seven minutes – certainly no more than ten. If you want to say I was very lucky, I won’t argue.”

Delany is also an atheist.

He is now retired from academe. His last teaching position was at Temple University. I saw him in 2006 when he introduced a talk there by Neil Gaiman. 

He also dropped in once a few years later on a Psychology and Social Change meetup I was holding at Robin’s Book Store.

A link to Positive Memories by T. Rivas, including the account quoted above, is here: https://uryourstory.org/images/Downloads/PM.pdf