The New York journalist charts a path to self-awareness for the contemporary gay man with his new book, The Way Out.

By Christopher Cappiello

“I realized I had been preparing to write this book for years, I just didn't know it,” Christopher Lee Nutter says when asked how he came to write The Way Out: The Gay Man's Guide to Freedom No Matter if You're in Denial, Closeted, Half In, Half Out, Just Out, or Been Around the Block. “I had another book proposal out that was entirely different. The editor at HCI had an idea for a self-help book for gay men and she was looking for a writer. She found me via my other proposal. She had no idea how profoundly fortuitous this was.”

There is some irony to a writer being unaware that he has been preparing for years to write a book about self-awareness, but that is a fitting starting point for a discussion of Nutter's honest, clearly written, and inspiring reflection on his own long journey to self realization.

Born in Alabama, Nutter's childhood was spent fighting a sense of inferiority on many levels. “I wasn't beautiful. I wasn't rich. I wasn't masculine. I wasn't confident. I wasn't athletic,” he explains in the book's introduction. His teens and early adulthood were spent chasing images of himself taken from others. First, heading to college in Mississippi, he consciously reinvented himself as a popular party boy, all the while keeping his sexuality safely boxed away in the closet. After coming out with a bang in a now-famous 1994 Details magazine essay about life in the closet, the young writer headed to New York City and lived out yet another borrowed image of himself, this time as an orthodox gay party machine. He snagged a prime bartending job, hit the gym, and lived out what contemporary culture tells us is the gay American dream.

“By the time I was 29, after four jam-packed years mastering gay life, I was spent,” the author recalls in his book. “And what it would take to get the high back—harder drugs, riskier sex, getting super-sized by steroids—I wasn't willing to do.” His subsequent search for new meaning began with a book by the Dalai Lama and the realization that he had the power to change his life.

“I voraciously consumed philosophy, theology, and self-help books,” he explains. “It never occurred to me that everything I read assumed I was straight. I was filling journal after journal after journal about how ancient wisdom applies to my experience as a gay man,” but never noticed that he had to reinterpret everything he read to make it apply. “Gays are so used to reinterpreting that we don't even realize we are doing it.” Then the call came from HCI to write a self-help book for gay men, “and the stadium lights went on,” he says with a laugh, recalling the realization that there was a tremendous need for a self-help book speaking specifically to the gay male experience.

While The Way Out draws on Nutter's deep and extensive examination of myriad spiritual paths and philosophies, the book reads very much like a friend talking to a friend, avoiding the sometimes off-putting terminology that characterizes much of the self-help field. “I just tried to not use terms with a lot of baggage. It doesn't take long for a term to take on a lot of baggage,” he explains, adding, “'Self-help' was trounced by Stuart Smalley!”

One of the most powerful points Nutter makes in The Way Out is how easy it is for a gay man to burst free from the closet, only to find himself once again living according to someone else's rules, with the prescribed dress, behavior and activities of contemporary gay life. “It's our natural instinct to go passive when it comes to the question, 'Who am I?'” he explains. “It's our instinct to believe we are exactly what we're told we are. That's thrown on you. Early in life you develop the habit of believing it. By the time you come out, you are already habitually embodying somebody else's concept of who you are.” For Nutter, it's all about becoming and remaining aware of why you're doing what you're doing. He doesn't condemn gay culture, but wants gay men to see it for what it is. “Everything is a step,” he says. “Gay culture as a visible culture is a step out of the darkness. Queer Eye is progress. Chelsea and West Hollywood are progress. But that is not the end of the road.”

A substantial portion of The Way Out addresses Nutter's acknowledged sex addiction, and how he used sex as a means of feeling powerful when really his numerous and anonymous encounters were more accurately a symptom of his increasing powerlessness. “Addiction is this attachment to unconscious thought patterns,” Nutter explains, emphasizing again that awareness of what you're doing and why is the key to peace, and that addiction can take many forms. “I'm addicted to the mirror,” he offers, “I'm addicted to the gym. I'm addicted to judgement. I'm addicted to conflict.” Conspicuously absent from The Way Out is any discussion of drug or alcohol addiction. Was this conscious? “I think it was probably because drugs and alcohol have never been a problem for me. I stuck to, 'How am I fucked up?'” he answers, with an easy laugh.

The New York-based writer is coming to Los Angeles in late August for several events, including a book signing at A Different Light and a one-day workshop presented by the Learning Annex. “It will be a brief course on increasing your own self-awareness,” he explains. “The first thing I'm going to do is strip away terms and ideas and concepts—spirituality, God, self-help. It's not about any of those things.” The class will address some of his “techniques to end unconscious mental habits,” including his own experience with daily meditation.

After his own long journey to self-awareness, Nutter is eager to share his discoveries with others. “You are so much more powerful than you have any idea,” he enthuses. “You already are the author of your own existence. You are never not in charge. Once you become aware of that, you can use that power.”

Nutter will teach a class based on his techniques for increased self-awareness on Tuesday, Aug. 29, from 6:45-9:30 p.m. The class is held at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center at the Village at Ed Gould Plaza, 1125 N. McCadden Place, W. Hlywd. For registration information, contact the Learning Annex at (310) 854-6601, or visit www.learningannex.com (course #290LLA, sec. A). On Thursday, Aug. 31, Nutter will read and sign books at A Different Light, 8853 Santa Monica Blvd., W. Hlywd., from 7:30-9 p.m., followed by a 9 p.m. reception at East West Lounge next door.