The QLP Questionnaire: Dale Corvino

"I’ve heard it said that love is a verb, and I agree. Love is action, active. No pronouncement of love is more profound than everyday acts of nurturing, empathizing, sheltering."

Feb 21, 2025

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I found my confessional voice at the East Village queer underground literary salon “Dean Johnson’s Reading for Filth,” telling stories about my youth as an object of longing and later interactions with sex work. In 2018, I won the Gertrude Press Fiction contest, judged by Whiting Award recipient Brontez Purnell. Published essays include a profile of Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel for the Gay & Lesbian Review and a meditation on queer longing in the digital era for Matt Keegan’s 1996. Other essays are live on the Rumpus, Salon, and Fruitslice.

I also contributed a chapter on sex worker representation for the 2021 Routledge Handbook of Male Sex Work, Culture, and Society. Bonds & Boundaries, my short story collection, was published in 2023 by Rebel Satori. My memoir of sex work, Afterlife of a Kept Boy, won the 2023 C&R Press Nonfiction Prize and is scheduled for publication in March. More at DaleCorvino.com.

What is your age, where in the world do you primarily live, where did you grow up?
60. I was born in Brooklyn, grew up on Long Island, and returned to the city as soon as I could. Currently in Hell’s Kitchen.

How do you define yourself on the LGBTQ+ spectrum?
I dated girls into my twenties and have since had some intermittent encounters with women and M/F couples, but now count myself among gay men. Just no gold star.

What is your relationship status?
My husband and I enjoy a loving, intimate bond. Early on, knowing he would be away for nights at a time due to his profession, I proposed we allow each other to be open when not together. He resisted at first but eventually agreed. With that said, although he’s younger and has all those opportunities (lone overnights in hotel rooms), I’m definitely the slut in the family.

Do you have an “ideal” relationship status?
Couples (or throuples or what have you) have to negotiate the terms that will work for both/all. I learned how to negotiate intimacy and boundaries as a sex worker, and have carried that skill forward into my personal life. Set your own terms, define your own relationship.

What is the biggest misconception about being single or in a relationship?
While the notion of fidelity is grounded in some real concepts of safety and security (all sex comes with risks), it is too often conflated with moral goodness. I like to think there is goodness in promiscuity, too. Love thy neighbor? I’m on it.

When was your first intimate moment (holding hands, kiss, etc.)? Was it with someone you liked? Did you feel pressured into it?
First kiss, cuddle, naked trip on hallucinogens were with my high school girlfriend. I adored her and her sultry body, although I did feel an increasing pull toward men during that relationship.

How would you define love? Is it the thing you work at for a long period of time? Or is it the strong feeling you feel for someone right from the beginning for no reason
I’ve heard it said that love is a verb, and I agree. Love is action, active. No pronouncement of love is more profound than everyday acts of nurturing, empathizing, sheltering.

Does the relationship fill your deepest needs for closeness with a person? Or do you prefer not to share every part of yourself?
We both like closeness and distance in equal measure. And I mean physical closeness/distance in that we are apart much of the time but also we each like to have our respective interior emotional lives while sharing a bond.

When did you come out to family, friends and others for the first time?
I honestly never came out to family in words. It was a slow roll of half-signals until the day that I came home with a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend.

Did you have any LGBTQ+ role models as a child or teenager? What do you remember about images of same-sex or queer relationships or messages you gleaned?
I didn’t really see anyone. I later learned that I had gay uncles, but they’d been all but banished. I saw nothing in culture that I could hold onto until I came upon the works of Oscar Wilde in my hometown’s public library. I was reading Wilde at 13 with no knowledge of his personal life or that his works would be considered queer-coded. I was especially fascinated by the male characters in The Importance of Being Earnest: their sharp wit, their finesse at duplicity.

Are there any pivotal pop culture moments that you credit for teaching about love and/or relationships?
I was 16, riding in the back seat of mom’s ‘78 Mercury Marquis, when I first heard Debbie Harry’s siren vocals on the genre-breaking “Call Me,” and I was gagged. Its driving beat, polyglot seduction, and enigmatic lyrics have played in my head in all sorts of erotically charged situations. I’ve even published a personal essay about the song.

Do you have a Chosen Family?
It is currently a circle of flight attendants. I adore them, and I’m fascinated by their lives half on the ground and half in the air. I’m working on a trio of short stories about flight crews.

What is your relationship with your biological family (if any)?
I’m very close to my mother. I was very close to her Italian-born parents, my grandmother, from Amalfi, and my grandfather, from Sicily. I have written about both of them: my grandmother’s brief friendship with Marilyn Monroe; my grandfather’s “swarthiness” and how he faced colorist discrimination in his day.

What do you (did you) like about dating as a LGBTQ person? What do/did you dislike?
I’m actually allergic to dating, and whenever I’ve tried I was terrible at it. My paradigm is converting hook-ups into regulars into relationships.

Has race, ethnicity or cultural differences been a factor in who you seek out?
Lots of people have commented about my dating history: “So, you have a thing for Latinos…” and my go-to reply is “Or maybe they have a thing for me?” Being Italian-American, there’s a fair bit of cross-identification.

Have you had any difficulties dating or finding/keeping a relationship?
In the past I’ve run into stigma—“I could never date a sex worker”—but with my current relationship I was completely open and honest about my history. My now-husband took a day or so to think about it and came back to me having found acceptance.

What’s the most surprising thing you have learned about relationships from your perspective?
My husband, who is Peruvian, took me home to Lima to meet his parents, who are very traditional and very Catholic. I was the surprise, to say the least, but they have really evolved since then and I now think of them as mis suegros, my in-laws, without irony or conditions. We’re having impacts just by living our lives.

How would you term your sexual relationship with your primary partner? Has that changed over time?
Our sex life is currently centered on pretty well-matched wrestling. He’s younger than me, faster and more agile, but I’m bigger.

Do you have any moments of joy, happiness or pleasure that you can share about being in a same-sex or queer relationship?
When we see each other over the chaos, or through the quiet. We were raised in different countries, we have different native tongues, he’s a Millennial to my Gen-X, we have very different personalities; our bond is our queerness.

Are there any things that standard heterosexual relationships have that you feel are out of reach or that you wish you had or could achieve?
I honestly look down upon heteronormativity so much. It’s still so tied up in patriarchy and oppression. I’m glad to be free of that mess.

Have you ever been in a polyamorous relationship or would you like to be in a situation that doesn’t involve just two people?
I’ve been the special guest star in some three-ways and that’s enough.

Are you married? Have you ever wanted to be? Whatever the response, explain why and what your hopes, dreams and journey has been like.
We skipped down to Manhattan’s Marriage Bureau one afternoon with a friend as our witness, and had dumplings at Wo Hop afterwards. We had real-world considerations: He needed a stable home, and I needed health insurance. We’re going on five years, and I believe that our relationship being rooted in pragmatism rather than romantic fantasy is part of why.

Have you had a difficult time navigating the “roles” you should play in a relationship?
Our nicknames suggest the roles we play for each other. He is my “sour patch kid,” “Chucky” (pronounced as a Spanish word, chew-kee) and/or “malcriado” (brat). I am “cochino” (pig), “dirty,” and/or “chismoso” (I adore gossip).

Any good/bad advice you received from a friend or queer elder?
Honestly, as a Gen-Xer, I raised myself in the wilds as a queer person. I longed for mentors, but never had any until recently. I was a Lambda Lit fellow in 2021 (the lockdown edition, via Zoom, sadly), and I adore our nonfiction mentor Saeed Jones. He advised me to embrace the chaos in my pages.

Any advice you’d give to someone younger than you who thinks it’s impossible to find love?
Every relationship is a little transactional.

Presale for Dale's latest book, Afterlife of a Kept Boy, is available now.
The book will ship on or around March 1, 2025!

BONUS:

We all need more inspiration. Recommend something that influenced or helped shape you significantly that you’d recommend to someone else.

Book: Bruce Benderson’s memoir The Romanian was formative as a representation of a sex worker character in nonfiction. Romulus has emotional gravity; he’s not a caricature or a plot device. I also love the way it enfolds multiple timelines into the text.

TV Show: Sense8, for Wolfie, Nomi the hacktivist (I want her in my life), and the relationship of Lito & Hernando.

Movie: Many of the young men in my circle (including my husband) grew up overseas and had never seen or even heard of Jenny Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning. I was shook when I found this out and immediately scheduled a screening. I came up in NYC adjacent to the Ballroom scene, so for me it was familiar ground. It was a queer revelation for those young men–and for me too, seeing it through their eyes.

Song: “Call Me” by Blondie (see above). It was the theme from American Gigolo, a movie I was too young to see when it came out. I have since watched it, and I’m glad I didn’t see it as a susceptible teen. It’s a wretched example of straight-washing a queer narrative.

Other Cultural artifact: Gossip—in Spanish chisme—has a delightful currency in Latino culture, and Peruvians are especially chismosos. It may well be their national pastime, like beauty pageants for Venezuela. I am so blessed.