Why Aren't You Smiling?

Alvin Orloff began writing in 1977, while still a teenager, by penning lyrics for The Blowdryers, an early San Francisco punk band. He spent the 1980s working as a telemarketer and exotic dancer while concurrently attending U.C. Berkeley and performing with The Popstitutes, a somewhat absurd performance art/homocore band. In 1990 he and his bandmates founded Klubstitute, a floating queer cabaret devoted to the ideal of cultural democracy that featured spoken word, theater, drag, and musical acts. In 1995 the club, whose staff and patrons had been ravaged by AIDS epidemic, closed its doors and Orloff suddenly remembered that all he'd ever wanted to be was a writer. He subsequently published three novels, I Married an Earthling, Gutter Boys, and Why Aren't You Smiling? before producing his memoir of life amongst San Francisco's queer underground during the height of the AIDS crisis, Disasterama! Orloff currently works as the manager of Dog Eared Books, a literary hot-spot in the heart of San Francisco's Castro District. He lives in San Francisco.