Latrelle: "Anyhow, the play was going along all nice like, and all of the sudden my son walks out on the stage naked, buck naked Sissy."

Sissy: "Oh sweet Jesus! Nekid?"

Latrelle: "I mean you could see everything."

Sissy: "His tallywacker?"

Latrelle: "Everything."

Del explains his balls to the wind style of writing, "After I came out, I was working on a show called Mr. and Mrs Smith. Scott Bakula, the show’s producer came up to me and said, ‘Del, I don’t think this is your best work.’ I said, "You know, I don’t think that this is yours either.’Scott looked at me and said, ‘I just don’t think that you are scared of anything.’ You know when you’re in your thirties and when you come out to your Southern Baptist preacher dad, you sort of lose all kinds of fear. That comes into play when it comes to my work. I’m not scared of what I want to write and what stories I want to tell anymore. I think that early on in my career, I wrote by censoring myself.

"It’s certainly a wonderful thing to be on a show like Queer As Folk because there’s not a lot of censorship at all and I was able to continue my journey. It’s very freeing not to worry about offending anybody, because you know, you’ve literally offended them all at some point." Del works as a producer and occasional writer on QAF. This season, he has written the forth and ninth episodes. "It’s a fun show to write. It’s great to work out of the network system and not have to be censored. I really enjoy writing for Emmet and Ted. You can’t go wrong putting nasty words in Sharon Gless’ mouth. Everyone who knows me knows that I wrote this past episode. Brian says, ‘F*** the Lord, and f*** you.’ I had to get my two cents in being the son of a Southern Baptist preacher. Religion has really messed us gay boys up."

Amidst all the daft antics that Sordid Lives offers, the gorgeous Bonnie Bedelia (Latrelle) and hunky Kirk Geiger (Ty) have a mother/son tete-a-tete that cuts to the heart of the movie.

Ty: "When I was a little boy, I just loved church. I stopped going because how can you embrace something that doesn’t embrace you? I’ve been missin’ God."

Latrelle: "You’ve always been my special boy. I never felt closer to anyone. Noone. We always had that special bond."

Ty: "Yeah."

Latrelle: "And you know, I’m not sure we would have had that if you weren’t gay. So, I don’t regret taking that drug after I lost those other babies because I can’t imagine life without you, Ty."

Ty: "I’m happy with who I am now, Momma...I love you, Momma, so much."

Latrelle: "I love you too, Baby...So, are you the woman or the man?"

"My mom died almost two years ago, and she and my dad both saw Sordid Lives at the USA Film Festival. It was tough for her at first. I took her a video tape of the play. She burst into tears when she watched it. I think part of it was that she didn’t realize the internal pain that I had and how much she didn’t help me with that. She always said that she always knew but she didn’t do anything about it. She did love me. She just burst into tears and said, "Why do you have to continue to expose this family to everybody. Wasn’t Daddy’s Dyin’...Who’s Got The Will? enough?’ Because that was based on her family. When she did go to the USA Film Festival, she wasn’t doing very well at that point, but I did see that she was very proud and she got to sit by Olivia Newton-John."

Del had quite a stellar cast working for him: Olivia, Bonnie Bedelia, Delta Burke, Beau Bridges, Kirk Geiger, Beth Grant, Ann Walker, and Leslie Jordan (who most fans know as Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace) as Brother Boy. "I had the most fun writing Brother Boy. How could you not have fun writing this crazed Tammy Wynette fan? I didn’t have to research anything. I knew all that shit. Knowing Leslie Jordan was going to do that role and be in drag made it easy for me to write. My favorite part looking at the movie is the three women (Sissy, Latrelle, and LaVonda) in that house. I look at it and think how the fuck did I do this. This is the best writing that I have done." Some other writers that have influenced Del include Tennessee Williams, Preston Jones (who wrote the Texas Trilogy), Horton Foote, and Robert Benton. "Places in The Heart is one of my favorite movies! And Tootsie by Murray Schisgal and Larry Gelbart is the perfect movie."

Right now, Del is working on a novel based on the characters in Sordid Lives. You can get monthly installments of these sordid tales by going to http://www.shoresstore.com/index.html. The movie is now finding a cult following. An eager fan sent Del an e-mail inviting him to a Sordid Lives party. He also asked for a list of the food that was on Sissy’s table so that he could re-create the spread (I can’t say that I’m as eager to have a helping of potato chip casserole, but Latrelle did seem to enjoy that pie.) "I’m causing people nation wide to have high cholesterol!"