By Stephanie Monahan

Leominster native Michael Graves, 33, always knew he wanted to be a writer. The first story he wrote, at age eight, starred the Easter Bunny. He’s been writing ever since.

Growing up in Leominster inspired his first book of short stories, Dirty One. In the collection, Graves explores what it’s like to grow up gay in 1980s suburbia, where the Smurfs reign and people believe AIDS is contracted by kissing. The characters in his stories contend with navigating childhood and adolescence in a world where adults don’t always know best, all the while attempting to come to terms with what it means to be gay.

“Suburban life as always intrigued me,” he says. “It’s quiet. And dark.” It’s the very darkness inside ourselves that Graves shines a light on in his partially funny, partially devastating, wholly honest collection. There’s Noah, in love with his best friend Ben, who mercilessly bullies a female classmate in “Dirty One.” In “Seahorse,” eighteen-year-old George deals with watching his mother ~ a mother he hated ~ die  while desperately wanting a child of his own. Lonely Phil struggles to adjust to a new, motherless life in Massachusetts (where the neighbor’s cat just may be evil) with a father he can’t quite connect with in “Comb City.”

The realization that adults don’t have all the answers is frightening for a child and is explored in depth here. “I think all parents should educate themselves about child rearing…it only makes sense,” says Graves. “I wouldn’t try to fix a car without a manual.” Most of the parents in these stories are as lost as their children, and some are downright terrifying. Sonny is determined to save his younger brother, Levi, from their mother in “This Whole Galaxy.” In “A Snow Day,” wannabe pop-star Cassidy is the ultimate collateral damage of her parents’ dysfunction. And in perhaps the most disturbing selection, “From Kissing,” a scared boy looks to his doctor for comfort, but finds something sinister instead.

Graves, who has his MFA from Lesley University, achieved his childhood dream, but not without some struggle along the way. He “felt like a failure” when his grandmother died before he’d gotten anything published. “I became ruthless,” he says. “I told myself, ‘I’m doing this.’” Subsequently, he sent his stories to Chelsea Stations Editions. “Now I have my very own pink book!”

For aspiring writers, his message is simple: “Keep it up!  Surround yourself with other supportive, hard-working writers.  Get yourself into workshops, seminars, anything.”

Dirty One is available at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, or at www.queerbooks.com. Graves is currently working on his next book, a novel about two cousins who accidentally burn down a church. You can read his poetry on his blog, www.michaelgraves.blogspot.com, and follow him on Twitter at @boyblunder1 or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MichaelGravesAuthor.