Ian Roberts: The Gentleman As Gentle Man, or Why I Occasionally Love My Job Even More Than Usual, Which Is Saying Something

This past week, shortly after this profile of rugby league superstar turned Hollywood actor, Ian Roberts, hit the stands (my seventh cover story for The Advocate) my dear friend, the illustrious Palm Spring-based writer, director, blogger, and bon vivant extraordinaire Ron Oliver pointed out in an email (a little smugly, in my considered opinion but never without the affection of many years of friendship) that clearly "nothing much has happened at the Farmhouse since 2006."

Ron has a point, though not the one most people would assume he has. He's not referring to an uneventful year, just that I haven't been writing about it on this blog. It isn't that nothing much has happened here; God knows, lots has. Last fall my novella "In October" was published in Triptych of Terror (Alyson Books, 2006) and we finally completed all the edits on my new essay collection, Other Men's Sons, which is due out in late August from Cormorant Books, my new publisher here in Toronto, whose literary taste and reputation is matched only by their generosity in enduring deadlines being stretched by me almost to the breaking point.

I just haven't written about it.

At this point, I'll just claim authorial privilege, and lay it out that writing "In October," the story of a teenager in a small town in southwestern Ontario who turns to the dark arts to even some scores at his highschool was like being trapped inside the head of a 17 year old boy I didn't particularly like, and finishing some of the autobiographical essays in Other Men's Sons was like scooping out the marrow of my own life while keeping up a running editorial commentary in my own voice. Neither of these two endeavours, however creatively satisfying, made me feel much like adding even more of the sound of my own voice to the world. Living life in an upstairs cave, surrounded by empty tins of Red Bull and plastic bottles of Diet Coke isn't conducive to blogging, trust me.

Besides, it's my goddamn blog. Onwards and upwards.

This past June, I flew to Palm Springs enroute to Los Angeles to meet an interview Ian Roberts, who had just co-starred in Ron's new film, Kiss Me Deadly: A Jacob Keane Assignment. I had been in Texas the previous month interviewing Eric Alva, the first serviceman wounded in the Iraq war, another exceptionally powerful story that would make its appearance as a cover story for The Advocate later on that month.

Ian and I met in Los Angeles at his apartment and did our interview. He'd just stepped off a 17 hour flight and gave a remarkably lucid interview, considering.

Ian Roberts has long been a figure of both athletic and social renown as Australia's premier rugby league player even before he came out in the 1990's, shattering some fairly dyed-in-the-wool Australian stereotypes about who gets to be a "real man" along the way. My profile of him in The Advocate was slated to be his big U.S. debut. And what a debut. Aside from having been one of the kindest and most genuine people I've ever interviewed (much like Eric Alva in that sense---this has been my summer for profiling real heroes, it seems) his story was a powerful one. And Eric Schwabel's photographs are incendiary.

When the article was published, I was astonished and delighted to see it being blogged about all over the world, as well as being written about it many mainstream media outlets in countries I'd never been to. All very thrilling, though I'm delighted to say that I am totally OK with the fact that it wasn't my deathless prose that was causing all the ruckus, it was Schwabel's photographs and Ian himself, or rather his story. Granted, his story as told be me, but you always know you've absolutely hit the mark as a journalist when your story affects readers to such an extraordinary degree that they only see your subject, and then feel they know him (or wish they did.)

It also received a few strikingly malevolent (and baseless) swipes from some very bitter queens who likely aren't aware that the sour bitchcraft they practice whenever they're presented with an extraordinarily handsome man they suspect (usually rightly) would never sleep with them sends out a coded "I'm a loser" message to anyone with the insight God gave a wood chip. Rejecting a man before he can reject you is pathetic enough when it happens with people you know. Rejecting a celebrity before, etc, is just beyond embarrassing, but the Internet has provided wondrous cover for an entire subculture of cowards, breeding like toadstools in the darkness of cyber-anonymity, who feel comfortable (as cowards do) lashing out anonymously on public blogs at people they'd normally hide from.


That having been said, the response to the article was overwhelmingly positive, and I consider it a privilege to have been able to tell Ian's very unique and moving story for the first time in its journalistic entirety. I've interviewed a lot of "celebrities" in my day, including athletic celebrities, but Ian Roberts was, and is, a special one.

The word "gentleman" is one of the most abused in the English language, especially these days when it seems to mean less than ever.

Ian Roberts is a gentleman in every sense of the word. I urge you to locate a copy of this issue of The Advocate (it even made its Ebay debut this week) and read about him for yourselves.