The Admiral Duncan is empty when Jeremy Atherton Lin arrives to meet me, save for a few meandering flies. In the final pages of his bestselling book, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out, Lin visits the old Soho boozer in London with his husband, where they encounter a “despondent” scene: spilled beer, backed-up toilets and a wasted drag queen. Even so, they are charmed by an older couple across the bar and wonder if they’ll be lucky enough to end up like them. The site of a homophobic nail-bomb attack in 1999, the Admiral Duncan is another kind of survivor, and Lin admires it in spite of the mess. Such ambivalence is typical of his memoiristic writing, which spirals outward into digressive analyses of social and political events.
This time, the place is quiet and clean, and Lin has come alone – all of which is probably for the best, since we’re here to discuss his latest book, Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told. At once more personal and more political than anything he has ever written, it follows him and his partner as they navigate a precarious legal landscape for immigrants and LGBTQ+ people in their effort to build a home and life together.
