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AUTHOR BIO
Matt Bays is a writer, speaker, and life coach with a passion for calling people out of their hiding places. He joins the ranks of writers such as Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, and Glennon Doyle in offering readers honest, raw, funny, and insightful compassion for the journey of life. He and his husband, Chris, live in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Watch the Leather & Lace music video.
BACK COVER COPY
“I needed to find the gay boy, teenager, college student, and man I had always been, but didn’t know how to be.”
On the day of his sister’s funeral, while standing alone at her grave, Matt Bays tells the truth for the very first time; that he is gay. At forty-six years old, and with a highly religious worldview, Matt sets out on a powerful journey to grapple with this new reality and find the part of himself that was buried in his youth.
Together, Bays and his dead sister take to the open road, listening to ‘80s music and lying under the stars at the Grand Canyon. Her prevailing love had once given him the courage to come out. And now, after the heartbreaking end of a relationship he thought would go the distance, he is searching for her guidance once again.
In Leather & Lace, you’ll be taken into the harrowing past of a young gay boy, ride shotgun to his hilarious first attempts at hookup apps, meet The Ambassador of Scruff, fall in love with the undeniably beautiful Oh Henry, and rediscover the hope of finding an authentic and meaningful love connection.
Much more than just another road trip memoir, this heartwarming story of love, loss, and redemption will strike at the part of you that longs to be loved exactly as you are…if only by yourself.
ENDORSEMENTS
“There are writers who are deep, writers who are brutally gritty, and writers who can have you rolling on the floor laughing, but rarely do you find all those qualities in one writer and in one book. Matt Bays’ Leather and Lace: A Gay Man, Lost Love, and a Road Trip with His Dead Sister is his story of coming out and pursuing a life of love and integrity. It is a story of grief and loss, but also a story of the power of love and truth. Those who know Matt from his first book, Finding God in the Ruins, will find the same brilliant and profound storyteller, but with a deeper, truer story. And the glimpses of God that you find in these pages are deeper and truer because of it. In Leather and Lace, we see Matt Bays at his most hilarious, most vulnerable, most brave, and most real, and it was worth the wait.”
“Believe me, I know how cliche it is to say that a book made me laugh and cry. But the simple truth is, it did. And if Matt Bays has anything to teach us in his gorgeous new memoir, Leather and Lace: A Gay Man, Lost Love, and a Road Trip with His Dead Sister, it’s that the truth sets us free. While I realize that the ‘formerly- married-to-women-evangelical-pastor-types-named-Matt-who- end-up-coming-out-of-the-closet-later-in-life-and-learning-to- navigate-this-strange-and-wonderful-new-gay-life-while-healing- from-religious-trauma-finding-true-love-and-exploring-a-better- understanding-of-God’ genre is a relatively niche market, the good news is that everyone—even our cis/het siblings—needs to learn how to face our fears, how to live authentically, and how to surrender to the goodness of God. Matt Bays is a reliable guide on this hilarious, poignant travelogue through grief, joy and redemption.”
“There is a particular beauty in watching someone step fully into who they were born to be. Throughout our lives, we transform – old selves die to new ones, as the mantles placed on us by our families and communities no longer serve us, or are too small to allow for growth and freedom. Matt Bays was born into a community that told him he was wrong. Not what he believed or even what he did, but who he was. Is.
“This book is a coming-of-age story. A journey – both literal and metaphorical. Like all road trips, there are adventures and mishaps, wrong turns and detours. This emotional travel journal is equal parts heart wrenching and hilarious. Matt approaches everything with curiosity – even pain. He is an inordinately good companion, funny, wise, and wide open to healing and growth. Like all good road trips, ultimately the route this story takes leads Matt back home. In this case, home to himself.”
“A full-throated song of life and love, pain, and self-discovery. Matt Bays invites readers to understand trauma profoundly with his exquisitely written narrative. His characters are deeply drawn, such that the reader comes to know some of the LGBTQ+ community in a way that is real, human, and compels compassion and respect. Helluva road trip, Matt. Attagirl, Trina.”
“We’re trained to deal with pain by becoming tough as leather, and God help us if we succeed. Matt Bays lives by an entirely different mantra, one marked by a tender softness that has rendered him slightly ragged but utterly whole. In Leather and Lace, you’ll meet Matt’s dead sister, Trina, you’ll meet Straight Matt and his Straight Life, and then, because some stories take the right twists and turns, you’ll meet Matt, the gay man who learned how to give the world the priceless gift of honesty. Read this book and find out how to be who you are.”
“Matt writes with a crispness, an edge, to his pain and his joy that’s very hard to find in male writers in particular. Leather and Lace is not necessarily a tribute to loss and pain as much as it is finding hope and truth amongst the ruins. This is a love story to so many who have forgotten how to be human, and how to experience every little bit of those lessons you learn on the way there.”
EXCERPT
Shortly after my sister died, my marriage came to an end. Through a long and complicated process of self-discovery, I came to accept that I was a gay man. Owning this truth was a process—it took time.
While sorting out my life, I moved into a small apartment. I wanted to protect my family, so for the next three months, I isolated. I cut myself off from most of my relationships and leaned into a therapist, a handful of trusted friends, and God.
Each day, I wandered the streets of Indianapolis. Praying. Asking God to show me the truth about myself. This is the message I received:
Show you what, exactly? What else am I supposed to show you? You already know. You’ve always known.
I got quiet in those moments. I listened to what had been echoing inside my chest for decades, the clear message that had been chasing me down since junior high; that I would never be straight. I cried my eyes out for nearly three months. Some days I would sit in the shower of my little apartment and pray. Only this time, I wasn’t praying to be straight. I had already prayed that prayer…for years. Instead, I asked God to show me more.
That shower was a sanctuary for me—a different kind of sanctuary than I’d known as a child. It was forgiving. It was safe. It welcomed me. I wept in my little shower-sanctuary. I looked at my gay hands there, and let my eyes pore over my gay body. It was a gay man’s body, after all. These arms. These legs. I allowed my hands to glide over them as if to console them…or absolve them. As if to tell them they’d done nothing wrong. That they were exactly as they should be.
I thought I was making peace with God in that shower. But in time, I would realize that I was making peace with myself. I was being baptized.
On lonely nights, I lay in my bed, ate pizza, and prayed for my wife and kids. And then I’d fall asleep to Queer as Folk, which was like auditing a class in gay studies. When I woke in the morning, I got on my knees next to my bed and prayed the same prayer every day.
God, help me today—to be honest. And to be of service to others. Amen.
I never considered myself a dishonest person. But all these years I spent avoiding the truth kept me living incongruently with myself. My fear was that if I acknowledged that I was gay, everything would have to change. So I amended the truth. I softened it. I put Groucho glasses on it, forcing it to be something it could never actually be.
During the process of my coming out, my AA sponsor dug into this glaring inconsistency in my life.
“Consequences do not impact the truth, Matt. Does that make sense? What happens as a result of the truth—what your church thinks, what others think, even what you think—none of that changes the truth. What’s real doesn’t change based on an outcome. The truth is neutral. It’s just the truth. That’s it. The truth simply is.”
I had always heard that the truth could set you free. What I had forgotten was that it could also be painful.
Since coming out, I’ve lost friends and family members I love.
I have disappointed many people. But this one thing remains; I didn’t disappoint myself. What was happening inside me—the lie I was living—needed to come to an end. Or it is likely I wouldn’t be here.
I chose me. I don’t regret it.
