PW talks to Rob Kirby

Kirby reflects on middle-aged love and gay marriage in his graphic memoir, Marry me a little (Graphic Mundi, February).

People are less likely to tell stories about falling in love—and keeping it—in middle age. What does this book do to open up love later in life?

They say the more personal you make something, the more universal it is. I wrote what I was going through while I was going through it and put in a good word for relationships starting and deepening with age, but I didn’t really have an agenda.

Mostly you bypass the fear of coming out that is centered in so much queer media. Why?

I’m officially old now and I’ve been out since I was 18-19. I have the profound privilege of taking my sexual identity relatively for granted. When I tell my stories, like my comic Curbside Boys, I love coming from a place where queerness is just normalized. It connects being radical and assimilationist—in some ways, I’m assimilationist because I’m just not a big radical, nasty queer. I was in a bit of a bubble, a gay white male bubble. In 2016, with the election of Trump, I had this rude awakening to all the unpleasant things I had been blinding myself to, both for people like me and for people like me.

Would you have the same wedding today?

I think we will still be able to have close friends with us and a celebratory dinner at a great restaurant afterwards. We are foodies. Dressing up a little and eating out made it feel special, but still manageable. I couldn’t handle a huge event, no way. We are reserved people.

Your style in this book includes splashes of color in most panels. Can you talk a little bit about that choice?

Colors convey emotion and bring atmosphere. People respond to color. The two dominant colors are blue and red. It gives a political edge to everything. Rubbings also have something like dreams – memoirs are memories, right? And memory can be hazy.

You worked on this book for a long time, and now LGBTQ marriage rights are under new attack. What does it mean to publish it today?

I started drawing the book in mid-2017, but got sidetracked. I think the story I had to tell wasn’t ready yet—I had to let it simmer. With personal stories, you need time to get better context. And it’s obviously even more relevant today. I had an abstract idea that these setbacks would come, but I thought they would be further down the road. Antiqueer people are relentless, they never stop trying to undermine us. I’m still ambivalent about the institution of marriage, but I think everyone should have the right to marry. It’s simple justice.