VAL KILLPACK

Independent Study Fall 2011

2011-05-19T15:40:00.004-06:00

GAY FICTION AFTER STONEWALL

Golden Age: The 1970s

This Three-Credit Independent Study course is Part Two (Gay Fiction after Stonewall) of a socio-historical study of the gay-male canon of literary fiction in the twenty and twenty-first centuries. Part One (Gay Fiction before Stonewall) was completed in a three-credit Independent Study course in the Fall 2011 semester.

Literature from this canon of gay-male fiction will be the focus of this student’s Critical Thesis component of the MFA Final Manuscript due at the end of the Fall 2012 semester. This study will also be read in the context of the writing of a novella which will be used for the Creative Prose Manuscript component of the MFA Final Manuscript also due at the end of the Fall 2012 semester.

The canon of queer literature has not been conclusively established and at this time suppressed literature is still being published, coded works are being reclaimed, and current authors are looking back and writing socio-historically about the queer experience. The scope of this study has been narrowed to focus on works of prose fiction (especially the novel); I have left out lesbian and transgender texts in an attempt to narrow the focus of this study. This segment spans a time period of ten years: from 1970, just after the Stonewall Riots in June of 1969 (which symbolize the onset of the Gay Rights Movement in the US), and ending with the onset of the AIDS Crisis in 1980. Each book selected had large influence at the time of publication or has importance in our current understanding of this particular time period of gay history in the United States. This particular time period represents moving out of a closeted time of homosexuality into a time of expression, identity, and representation—a cultural explosion of sorts—and these texts respond to that in different ways.


Learning Goals: Describe the overall purpose and scope of the course and, in general terms, what knowledge and skills the I.S. is meant to provide. Use such action verbs as identify, describe, analyze, compare, define, etc.
This course will examine the lives of gay characters in fictional works set in the immediate post-Stonewall time period of history (1970-1979). This historical setting brings with it certain responses. Homosexuality exploded out of the closet; expression, identity, representation, and politics will all be analyzed in the light of an emerging gay culture. This course will identify that experience, comparing the various stories with each other, and viewing them through the lens of critical theory in terms of class, identity, representation, sexuality, gender, and interpersonal relationships among characters as well as socio-political implications of texts themselves. The marginalized Other—gay men in this case—will be defined in the context of the hegemonic social constraints and the breaking through and disavowal of the closet and anti-gay oppression. This study will identify the powers and forces at work, the dynamics that bring the protagonists through their journeys, and thus elucidate upon possible antecedent factors and impact of behavioral decisions made by characters throughout the texts, especially in regards to identity and representation.
Research Plan: List research materials and sources. E.g. books, videotapes, lectures, films, interviews, articles, etc. Include page numbers and chapters. Keep in mind that research plans cannot entirely depend on an event such as a workshop or lecture. If the workshop or lecture is cancelled, the I.S. must still be completed.
Novels 1. Daniel Curzon – Something You Do in the Dark (1971) 2. Melvin Dixon – Vanishing Rooms (1991) 3. Patricia Nell Warren – The Front Runner (1974) 4. Andrew Holleran – Dancer from the Dance (1978) 5. Larry Kramer – Faggots (1978) 6. Armistead Maupin – More Tales of the City (1980) 7. Terry Andrews – The Story of Harold (1974) 8. John Rechy – Rushes (1979) 9. Samuel R. Delany – The Tides of Lust (1973) [AKA Equinox, 1994] Documentary Film Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, dirs. – Word Is Out (1977) Joseph F. Lovett, dir. – Gay Sex in the 70s (2005) Pierre Gang, dir. – More Tales of the City (1998) Theory Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) David M. Halperin – How to Do the History of Homosexuality (2002) Christopher Bram – Mapping the Territory (2009)

Description of the Assignments: Form of final project, paper, or presentation topics; length, style, or other specifications of final work. Include specifics such as length of papers, journal entries, or video; number of art pieces; length of music composition; etc.

The course will have three critical essays each comparing three novels.

The first essay will compare the three novels Something You Do in the Dark, Vanishing Rooms, and The Front Runner. It will focus on the following topic:

How does gay culture respond to homophobia, discrimination, and anti-gay violence during the 1970s? What role does hegemonic power and privilege play? Where else is power found and how is this represented in culture and in literature? What is the role of a protest novel?

◦ This paper should be 8-12 pages in length.

The second essay will compare the three novels Dancer from the Dance, Faggots, and More Tales of the City. This essay will focus on the following topic:

At this time of gay cultural explosion, how does social identity and representation form? How does this function in the gay ghetto and in larger society?

◦ This paper should be 8-12 pages in length.

The third essay will compare the three novels The Story of Harold, Rushes, and Tides of Lust. This essay will focus on the following topic:

How does leather/BDSM culture operate in the 1970s gay scene? What role does personal power play in relationships and how is that reflected elsewhere? How are sexuality and desire represented in these texts?

◦ This paper should be 8-12 pages in length.

Grieving and Meditation

2011-03-13T19:25:00.000-06:00

Grieving and Meditation

for Becky Lynn Killpack

Dislocated, disoriented. Presence, patience, time, waiting, holding space. Acceptance → holding → releasing. Like riding an elevator. Not knowing. Dizziness, shock. Unable to do anything, unable to express emotion. Allowing. Small talk, everything meaningless in comparison, conversation inane. Frantic, frenzied, panicky. Two dimensional. Echoes, bouncing sounds, tilting visuals. Voices, whispering, somewhere inside. Somewhere.

On the descent days before the forest fire of my mind, when my sister was still alive, I sank down and opened the darkness to inhale my destiny. They were days beyond. In earlier seasons, I wouldn't have broken down in such recompense. A blanket of the bleakest neutral indispensabilities, but beautiful, like fodder for later harvest.

Grieving at Practice Period—is a Zen Buddhist retreat the right place to mourn the loss of a loved one? Sitting still in meditation and fully feeling the pain, the physicality of the trauma of loss coupled with emotions and mental cognitions. Confronting suffering, I yearn for space, for the pressure to release. Sometimes I feel I might suffocate, if not for tears, if not for the cracks to fall apart in. To figure out how to resolve suffering, that is the question, isn't it? To accept impermanence?

Now that I have returned to the Zen Practice Period in Crestone, Colorado, I have no choice but to explore the combination, relationship, or experiential dialectic, if you will, between the grieving process and zazen meditation. As I sit still, a cacophony of pains pulse throughout my body, of various qualities, sometimes unbearable, and yet I still don't move. Each of these pains seems to be connected to feelings and emotions, thoughts, and often tears. Moving like waves, unexpected.

Mixed up with all of this, a depressive episode of bipolar disorder emerges, along with a touch of the flu. Phone consultations with my psychotherapist, yoga on the break, taking, still, my medication, my herbs and supplements, drinking lots of water, breathing, and yes, patience.

This is a dream, an illusion. None of this really happened. No.

This is not okay! This can't be! I will not accept this!

As though a web that was woven throughout by body was ripped free and now I'm bleeding all over.

What could I have done and why didn't I do it? I should have I could have why didn't I go there and.... Spend time with her, more time, why didn't I spend more time with her. More time, I need more time. Please don't be gone.

In the mornings I am dizzy all over again. I feel I might suffocate, might have a panic attack. I need more air. Yet I wheeze through it all, a little tingly, one breath at a time.

Help me turn this around: Thank you for the time we shared together. But I want to go dancing. Thank you for the time we shared together. But I want to tell you this story. Thank you for the time we shared together. But... Thank you for the time....

COMPLETE MFA READING LIST

2010-11-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

COMPLETE MFA READING LIST:

SELECTED WORKS FROM THE CANON OF GAY MALE FICTION

by
Val Killpack

I compiled this list of books for purposes of upcoming Independent Study courses and Final Manuscript components I will be working on at Naropa University and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where I am completing the MFA in Writing and Poetics – Prose Concentration.

PART ONE will be a semester-long course in Fall 2010. I will be writing critical essays based on a selection of those readings, looking at these questions:

· What is the role of class status in gay relationships and how does that affect personal identity within the community?

· How does the coming-out process in the protagonist influence the formation and concept of family within society?

PART TWO will be a semester-long course in Spring 2011 with similar essay topics.

PART THREE will be used for the Critical Thesis component of the MFA Final Manuscript, which is due at the end of the Fall 2011 semester. I hope to publish this essay, and I intend to use it as a writing sample if I apply to a doctoral program.

PARTS ONE, TWO, and THREE will be read in the context of the writing of a novel or novella, which will be used as the Creative Prose Manuscript component of the MFA Final Manuscript due at the end of the Fall 2011 semester. This manuscript will also serve as a creative writing sample if I apply to a doctoral program in creative writing.

The list has been separated into socio-historical periods as relates to LGBTIQ/Queer community. I have left out lesbian and transgender texts in an attempt to narrow the focus of this study. I have attempted to select the primary works that form the gay male canon, mainly looking at prose works of fiction, some memoir, and a little poetry and drama, with applicable theoretical works to read these through. I am now about half-way through first readings of the listed texts. The list is certainly not complete; any suggestions or comments are welcomed. Email me at val.killpack@gmail.com

PART ONE: GAY FICTION BEFORE STONEWALL

OSCAR WILDE TO STONEWALL RIOTS

NOVELS

Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; ed. Norman Page, Broadview Press 1998)

· Oscar Wilde Trials (UK) – 1895

Herman Melville – Billy Budd (written 1886-1891; pub. 1924)

[Oscar Wilde?] – Teleny, or, The Reverse of the Medal (1893)

André Gide – The Immoralist (1902; trans. Dorothy Bussy 1930; trans. Richard Howard 1970)

Thomas Mann – Death in Venice (1912)

E.M. Forster – Maurice (written 1913; pub. 1971)

Marcel Proust – Sodom and Gomorrah (1921, 1922; ed. Christopher Prendergast, trans. John Sturrock, Allen Lane 2002)

André Gide – The Counterfeiters (1925; trans. Dorothy Bussy 1927)

Jean Genet – Our Lady of the Flowers (written 1942, pub. 1943; trans. Bernard Frechtman 1963)

Jean Genet – Querelle (written 1947, pub. 1953; trans. Gregory Streatham 1966; trans. Anselm Hollo 1974)

· Kinsey Report (US) – 1948

Truman Capote – Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)

Yukio Mishima – Confessions of a Mask (1948; trans. Meredith Weatherby 1958)

Gore Vidal – The City and the Pillar (1948; revised 1965)

Jean Genet – The Thief’s Journal (1949; trans. Bernard Frechtman 1964)

William S. Burroughs – Queer (written 1951; pub. 1985)

Yukio Mishima – Forbidden Colors (1953; trans. Alfred H. Marks 1968)

Christopher Isherwood – The World in the Evening (1954)

James Baldwin – Giovanni’s Room (1956)

· Wolfenden Report (UK) – 1957

William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch (1959)

James Baldwin – Another Country (1962)

Christopher Isherwood – Down There on a Visit (1962)

John Rechy – City of Night (1963)

Christopher Isherwood – A Single Man (1964)

Hubert Selby, Jr. – Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964)

· Sexual Offences Act (UK) - 1967

Christopher Isherwood – A Meeting by the River (1967)

James Purdy – Eustace Chisolm and the Works (1967)

Quentin Crisp – The Naked Civil Servant (1968)

Gore Vidal – Myra Breckinridge (1968)

· Stonewall Riots (US) – 1969

Reinaldo Arenas – Farewell to the Sea (written 1969, 1971, 1974; pub. 1982; trans. Andrew Hurley 1986)

Manuel Puig – Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976; trans. Thomas Colchie 1979)

Christopher Bram – Hold Tight (1988)

Samuel R. Delany – The Motion of Light in Water (1988)

Edmund White – The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

Reinaldo Arenas – Before Night Falls (1992; trans. Dolores M. Koch 1993)

Christopher Bram – The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes (2000)

FILM VERSIONS

Albert Lewin, dir. – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)

Peter Ustinov, dir. – Billy Budd (1962)

Michael Sarne, dir. – Myra Breckinridge (1970)

Luchino Visconti, dir. – Death in Venice (1971)

Jack Gold, dir. – The Naked Civil Servant (1975)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, dir. – Querelle (1982)

Hector Babenco, dir. – Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

James Ivory, dir. – Maurice (1987)

Uli Edel, dir. – Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

David Cronenberg, dir. – Naked Lunch (1991)

David Rocksavage, dir. – Other Voices, Other Rooms (1995)

Julian Schnabel, dir. – Before Night Falls (2000)

Tom Ford, dir. – A Single Man (2009)

Steve Buscemi, dir. – Queer (2011)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Greta Schiller, dir. – Before Stonewall (1984)

THEORY

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (1976; trans. Robert Hurley 1978)

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984; trans. Robert Hurley 1985)

Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self (1984; trans. Robert Hurley 1986)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985; revised 1993)

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick – Epistemology of the Closet (1990)

Judith Butler – Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

Judith Butler – Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993)

PART TWO: GAY FICTION AFTER STONEWALL

GOLDEN AGE

NOVELS

Daniel Curzon – Something You Do in the Dark (1971)

Samuel R. Delany – The Tides of Lust (1973)

Terry Andrews – The Story of Harold (1974)

Patricia Nell Warren – The Front Runner (1974)

Christopher Isherwood – Christopher and His Kind (1976)

Andrew Holleran – Dancer from the Dance (1978)

Larry Kramer – Faggots (1978)

Armistead Maupin – Tales of the City (1978)

James Purdy – Narrow Rooms (1978)

Edmund White – Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978)

Samuel R. Delany – Heavenly Breakfast (1979)

John Rechy – Rushes (1979)

Armistead Maupin – More Tales of the City (1980)

Armistead Maupin – Further Tales of the City (1982)

Melvin Dixon – Vanishing Rooms (1991)

Edmund White – City Boy (2009)

FILM VERSIONS

Alastair Reid, dir. – Tales of the City (1993)

Pierre Gang, dir. – More Tales of the City (1998)

Pierre Gang, dir. – Further Tales of the City (2001)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Nancy Adair, Andrew Brown, Rob Epstein, dirs. – Word Is Out (1977)

Joseph F. Lovett, dir. – Gay Sex in the 70s (2005)

THEORY

Christopher Bram – Mapping the Territory (2009)

AIDS CRISIS

NOVELS

James Purdy – Mourners Below (1981)

Robert Chesley – Night Sweat [play] (1984, in Hard Plays, Stiff Parts 1990)

Armistead Maupin – Babycakes (1984)

Paul Reed – Facing It (1984)

Samuel R. Delany – Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

William M. Hoffman – As Is [play] (1985)

Larry Kramer – The Normal Heart [play] (1985)

Barbara Peabody – The Screaming Room [biography] (1986)

Emmanuel Dreuilhe – Mortal Embrace [memoir] (1987, trans. Linda Coverdale 1988)

Armistead Maupin – Significant Others (1987)

Randy Shilts – And the Band Played On [nonfiction] (1987)

*Christopher Davis – Valley of the Shadow (1988)

*Robert Ferro – Second Son (1988)

Andrew Holleran – Ground Zero [essays] (1988)

Adam Mars-Jones & Edmund White – The Darker Proof [stories] (1988)

*Paul Monette – Borrowed Time [memoir] (1988)

Paul Monette – Love Alone [poems] (1988)

George Whitmore – Someone Was Here [biography] (1988)

David B. Feinberg – Eighty-Sixed (1989)

Michael Klein, ed. – Poets for Life [poems] (1989)

Larry Kramer – Reports from the Holocaust [nonfiction] (1989)

Armistead Maupin – Sure of You (1989)

*Pier Vittorio Tondelli – Separate Rooms (1989, trans. Simon Pleasance 1992)

John Weir – The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket (1989)

Allen Barnett – The Body and Its Dangers [stories] (1990)

*Michael Cunningham – A Home at the End of the World (1990)

William Finn & James Lapine – Falsettoland [musical play] (1990)

*Hervé Guibert – To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990, trans. Linda Cloverdale 1991)

Terrence McNally – André’s Mother [teleplay] (1990)

David B. Feinberg – Spontaneous Combustion (1991)

Paul Gervais – Extraordinary People (1991)

*Rachel Hadas, ed. – Unending Dialogue [poems] (1991)

Essex Hemphill, ed. – Brother to Brother [essays, poems, stories] (1991)

Oscar Moore – A Matter of Life and Sex (1991)

David Wojnarowics – Close to the Knives [essays] (1991)

William Finn & James Lapine – Falsettos [musical play] (1992)

Thomas Gunn – The Man with Night Sweats (1992)

Larry Kramer – The Destiny of Me [play] (1992)

Adam Mars-Jones – Monopolies of Loss [stories] (1992)

*Jeff Ryman – Was (1992)

James Robert Baker – Tim and Pete (1993)

Christopher Coe – Such Times (1993)

*Jameson Currier – Dancing on the Moon [stories] (1993)

B. Michael Hunter, ed. – Sojourner [essays, poems, stories] (1993)

*Derek Jarman – Blue [film as literature] (1993), Derek Jarman – Blue: Text of a Film [script] (1994)

Fenton Johnson – Scissors, Paper, Rock (1993)

*Tony Kushner – Angels in America [play] (1993)

*Dale Peck – Martin and John (1993)

Paul Rudnick – Jeffrey [play] (1993)

*David Schneider – Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey [biography] (1993)

Samuel R. Delany – The Mad Man (1994)

Paul Monette – Last Watch of the Night [essays] (1994)

*Clifford Chase – The Hurry-Up Song [memoir] (1995)

*Mark Doty – Heaven’s Coast [memoir] (1996)

Fenton Johnson – Geography of the Heart [memoir] (1996)

Rafael Campo – The Poetry of Healing [memoir] (1997)

Amy Hoffman – Hospital Time [memoir] (1997)

*Edmund White – The Farewell Symphony (1997)

Jim Grimsley – Comfort and Joy (1999)

Kate Scannell – Death of the Good Doctor [memoir] (1999)

*Colm Tóibín – The Blackwater Lightship (1999)

Edmund White – The Married Man (2000)

FILM VERSIONS

Mike Nichols, dir. – Angels in America (2003)

Michael Mayer, dir. – A Home at the End of the World (2004)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Jeffrey Dupre, dir. – Out of the Past (1998)

John Scagliotti, dir. – After Stonewall (1999)

THEORY

Susan Sontag – Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989)

Edmund White – Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (2001)

PART THREE: GAY FICTION NEAR THE MILLENNIUM

MILLENNIUM APPROACHES

NOVELS

David Rees – In the Tent (1979)

Charles Nelson – The Boy Who Picked the Bullets Up (1981)

Robert Glück – Jack the Modernist (1985)

David Leavitt – The Lost Language of Cranes (1986)

David Plante – The Catholic (1986)

Patrick Gale – Kansas in August (1988)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

Melvin Dixon – Trouble the Waters (1989)

Randall Kenan – A Visitation of Spirits (1989)

Neil Bartlett – Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall (1990)

Tom Spanbauer – The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991)

Jaime Manrique – Latin Moon in Manhattan (1992)

Bernard Cooper – A Year of Rhymes (1993)

Stephen Macauley – The Easy Way Out (1993)

Louis Begley – As Max Saw It (1994)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Folding Star (1994)

Adam Mars-Jones – The Waters of Thirst (1994)

Jim Grimsley – Dream Boy (1995)

Scott Heim – Mysterious Skin (1995)

Dennis Cooper – Guide (1997)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Spell (1998)

Paul Lisicky – Lawnboy (1998)

Michael Lowenthal – The Same Embrace (1998)

Jaime Manrique – Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me [memoir] (1999)

FILM VERSIONS

Nigel Finch, dir. – The Lost Language of Cranes (1992)

Gregg Araki, dir. – Mysterious Skin (2004)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

THEORY

Leo Bersani – Homos (1995)

David M. Halperin – Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (1995)

Jonathan Ned Katz – The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995)

Samuel R. Delany – Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

Michael Warner – The Trouble with Normal (1999)

MATTHEW SHEPARD

NOVELS

Scott Gibson, ed. – Blood & Tears [poems] (1999)

Beth Loffreda – Losing Matthew Shepard [memoir] (2000)

Moisés Kaufman – The Laramie Project [play] (2001)

Romaine Patterson & Patrick Hinds – The Whole World Was Watching [memoir] (2005)

Judy Shepard – The Meaning of Matthew [memoir] (2009)

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

NOVELS

K.M. Soehnlein – The World of Normal Boys (2000)

Jamie O’Neill – At Swim, Two Boys (2001)

Kirk Read – How I Learned to Snap (2001)

Robert Glück – Denny Smith [stories] (2004)

Alan Hollinghurst – The Line of Beauty (2006)

Christopher Bram – Exiles in America (2006)

Patrick Ryan – Send Me (2006)

Edmund White – My Lives [memoir] (2006)

Abdellah Taïa – Salvation Army (2006; trans. Frank Stock 2009)

André Aciman – Call Me by Your Name (2007)

Samuel R. Delany – Dark Reflections (2007)

Brian Malloy – Brendan Wolf (2007)

Shawn Stewart Ruff – Finlater (2008)

Daniel Allen Cox – Shuck (2009)

G. Winston James – Shaming the Devil [stories] (2009)

Vestal McIntyre – Lake Overturn (2009)

David Plante – The Pure Lover [memoir] (2009)

Rakesh Satyal – Blue Boy (2009)

John Stahle – I Was Like [stories, essays, poems] (2009)

Sebastian Stuart – The Hour Between (2009)

Lee Houck – Yield (2010)

FILM VERSIONS

Saul Dibb, dir. – The Line of Beauty (2006)

DOCUMENTARY FILM

Paule Zadjermann, dir. – Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind (2006)

THEORY

Anne Fausto-Sterling – Sexing the Body (2000)

David M. Halperin – How to Do the History of Homosexuality (2002)

Lee Edelman – No Future (2004)

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, ed. – That’s Revolting! (2004, revised 2008)

David M. Halperin – Gay Shame (2009)

FILM-MAKER MEMOIR

John Waters – Shock Value (1981)

John Waters – Crackpot (1986)

John Waters – Role Models (2010)

Derek Jarman – Dancing Ledge (1984)

Derek Jarman – The Last of England [AKA Kicking the Pricks] (1987)

Derek Jarman – Modern Nature (1991)

Derek Jarman – At Your Own Risk (1992)

Derek Jarman – Chroma (1994)

Derek Jarman – Smiling in Slow Motion (2000)

Bruce LaBruce – The Reluctant Pornographer (1997)

Bruce LaBruce – Ride, Queer, Ride! (1997)

REFERENCES FOR THE MAKING OF THIS LIST

BOOKS

Stephen D. Adams – The Homosexual as Hero in Contemporary Fiction (1980)

Stuart Kellogg – Literary Visions of Homosexuality (1983) [AKA Essays on Gay Literature (1985)]

David Bergman – Gaiety Transformed: Gay Self-Representation in American Literature (1991)

Mark Lilly – Gay Men's Literature in the Twentieth Century (1993)

Edmund White – The Burning Library: Essays (1995)

Robert Drake – The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read (1998)

Reed Woodhouse – Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945-1995 (1998)

Colm Tóibín – Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature (2002)

Anthony Slide – Lost Gay Novels: A Reference Guide to Fifty Works of Fiction from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (2003)

David Bergman – The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture (2004)

Edmund White – Arts and Letters (2004)

Richard Canning, ed. – 50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read (2009)

Tom Cardamone, ed. – The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (2010)

WEBSITES

GLBT Literature:

http://jclarkmedia.com/gaybooks/index.html

glbtq: an encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, & queer culture:

http://www.glbtq.com/

The Publishing Triangle’s 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels:

http://www.publishingtriangle.org/100best.asp

The Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books;

http://publishingtriangle.org/100nonficbest.asp

The Publishing Triangle Awards:

http://publishingtriangle.org/awards.asp

http://publishingtriangle.org/2010award-winners.asp

The Lambda Literary Awards:

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/category/winners-finalists/

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/awards/awards-finalists/

The Stonewall Book Awards:

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/rts/glbtrt/stonewall/honored/index.cfm

http://www.ala.org/ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2010/january2010/stonewall_pio.cfm

TOP 62 HOMO-HORROR HALLOWEEN FILMS

2010-11-18T13:38:00.011-07:00

TOP 62 HOMO-HORROR HALLOWEEN FILMS
by
Val Killpack

I haven't yet seen all of these! Many of them, though, I can personally recommend.

This list compiled from various sources on the internet and elsewhere.

1. American Psycho

2. Andy Warhol's Frankenstein

3. The Baby

4. Bride of Chucky

5. Bride of Frankenstein

6. The Brotherhood I-VI

7. Carrie

8. Cemetery Man (Dellamorte, Dellamorte)

9. Clownhouse

10. Cthulhu

11. Cursed

12. Dahmer

13. Dead Boys Don't Scream

14. Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher

15. Evil Dead 2

16. Eyes of Laura Mars

17. The Fan

18. Frankenstein

19. Fright Night

20. Frisk

21. The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror

22. Gay Zombie

23. Gods and Monsters

24. The Haunting

25. Hell Night

26. Hellbent

27. Hellraiser

28. The Hole

29. The Hunger

30. In the Blood

31. LA Zombie

32. Lost Boys

33. Night of the Creeps

34. Night Warning

35. Nightbreed

36. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge

37. 9 Dead Gay Guys

38. The Old Dark House

39. Otto; or, Up with Dead People

40. The Phantom of the Paradise

41. Playing with Fire

42. Poison

43. Pornography: A Thriller

44. Possession

45. Psycho

46. Psycho Beach Party

47. The Rocky Horror Picture Show

48. Rosemary's Baby

49. Serial Mom

50. Silence of the Lambs

51. Sleepaway Camp

52. Slumber Party Massacre

53. Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama

54. Straight Jacket

55. The Talented Mr. Ripley

56. The Tenant

57. Tenebra (Unsane)

58. Theatre of Blood

59. Thundercrack!

60. Voodoo Academy

61. Weak Species

62. Zombies of Mass Destruction

LAIRD HUNT’S THE EXQUISITE AND STEVE ERICKSON’S ZEROVILLE

2010-11-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

LAIRD HUNT’S THE EXQUISITE AND STEVE ERICKSON’S ZEROVILLE:

ANTI-NARRATIVE, ABSURD MACHINES, AND SCHIZOPHRENIC FRAGMENTATION IN POST-9/11 POSTMODERNITY

Val Killpack

Steve Erickson’s novel Zeroville branches into territory which eschews the traditional narrative. Laird Hunt’s novel The Exquisite also leaves the linear plot and story framework behind. Both of these novels, though with different techniques, explore a postmodern, fragmented reality. Zeroville exposes a consciousness based on media exposure, and mimics that formulation, telling its story through the lens of hyperreality—where the image creates the reality, and the concepts and ideas then follow. The Exquisite follows a parallel or removed reality, surrealist in nature, a consciousness based upon a certain schizophrenia symptomatic of late-capitalist society (such as America stands in the age of post-9/11). Just as in post-1968 France, post-9/11 America yearns for new epistemological avenues, and in a time of ontological confusion—why did 9/11 happen?—disparity becomes an ally, and these novels embrace the fracturing of not only society, but of subjectivity itself. In the time of late-capitalism, a time where norms exist within and are defined by rigid consumer/marketing structural systems, one reflects his/her subjectivity in a non-existent mirror, or more precisely, millions of tiny pieces of mirror, and schizophrenic identity results, at least in cases of true health, i.e. when the subject does not conform to tired tropes. Both of these novels, then, reflect a narrative sensibility based not on linearity, but painted spatially instead—a montage, a collage.

In Zeroville, the chapters count up to 227—“Vikar doesn’t know it, but everything now has been reset to zero”—then count back down (Erickson 2007, P 179). This form, itself, suggests a restructuring of temporal functioning within the text. The short chapters mimic scenes in a film, and these characters—virtually all of them in the book—seem to have based their identity on film, with all of it’s flashing from one scene to the next. Dotty and Vikar, then, as editors, can exercise power over the identity formation of society. They seem to be the wizards behind the curtain—ephemeral or not…

…Vikar can lay bare either credibility or mendacity in the character, irrespective of the actor’s intention or the writer’s or director’s. […] In a movie, every shot is a profile of something. […] Vikar reinforces or sabotages the audience’s perceptions, not to mention the film’s. He sets free from within the false film the true film (Erickson 2007, P 156).

As a face is embedded into the film, which may be the baseline, the “zero,” then this image functions as the “father” of identity, the other schizophrenic half. In Delueze and Guattari’s landmark text A Thousand Plateaus, there also exists a chapter that is the reset to zero, “Year Zero: Faciality.” In this section, about the middle of their text, the facial image is discussed:

Faces are not basically individual; they define zones of frequency or probability, delimit a field that neutralizes in advance any expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations. Similarly, the form of subjectivity, whether consciousness or passion, would remain absolutely empty if faces did not form loci of resonance that select the sensed or mental reality and make it conform in advance to a dominant reality. The face itself is redundancy. It is itself in redundancy with the redundancies of significance or frequency, and those of resonance or subjectivity. The face constructs the wall that the signifier needs in order to bounce off of; it constitutes the wall of the signifier, the frame or screen. The face digs the hole that subjectification needs in order to break through; it constitutes the black hole of subjectivity as consciousness or passion, the camera, the third eye (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, P 168).

Vikar, then, needs the face transposed into film in order to define himself. The film The Passion of Joan of Arc, found in a mental institution, and manifested in various forms, comes from a history of schizophrenia, literally. The split of two faces tattooed on the two lobes of Vikar’s head—this image signifies his schizophrenic nature. Even the film A Place in the Sun alludes to a man split apart (by two women). Vikar—named after Angela Vickers of A Place in the Sun?—formulates his own schizophrenic identity based upon his reflection in film. Is this pathology, then, symptomatic of Hollywood consumerism? Is it a pathology, at all, or is Vikar reaching beyond a system that is pathological in itself? The face, being the images in film, especially ones subliminally inserted/viewed by Vikar, forms the original signified, from which human consciousness forms a signifier to attach to, namely in identity and formation of the self, and from this is born the complex system of consciousness, the sign, the lived idea. When this all is based in a fragmented, split, flashing montage of images in film and media, though, the resultant human consciousness manifests schizophrenically in some cases, as demonstrated by Vikar in Zeroville and Henry in The Exquisite.

Both of these novels operate outside of linear time. Zeroville reflects a filmic sensibility, which elevates plot over story, and plot can be in medias res with flashbacks, flash-forwards, flashes of all sorts, as a matter of fact—a montage of faces and scenes. Vikar plays with this notion of time through his “editing, or montage or mise-en-scène or whatever fancy word they’re using” (Erickson 2007, P 211). This editing brings the many faces into a spatial field, negating temporality, in a sense:

“The scenes of a movie,” Vikar says, “can be shot out of sequence not because it’s more convenient, but because all the scenes of a movie are really happening at the same time. No scene really leads to the next, all scenes lead to each other. No scene is really shot out of order. It’s a false concern that a scene must anticipate another scene that follows, even if it’s not been shot yet, or that a scene must reflect a scene that precedes it, even if it’s not been shot yet, because all scenes anticipate and reflect each other. Scenes reflect what has not yet happened.” […] “Scenes that have not yet happened,” he explains to those around the table, “have” (Erickson 2007, P 237).

Time becomes less the issue here, and the story, the film, the novel—e.g. Zeroville and The Exquisite—move into a spatial dimension, where all times are part of a larger picture, and the temporal hierarchy dissipates into spatial memory. Past, present, and future become merely directions, not unlike east or west. This narrative—or anti-narrative—forms what Baudrillard calls a pseudo-reality…

…in other words, a world of events, history, culture and ideas produced not form the fluctuating and contradictory nature of reality, but produced as artifacts from the technical manipulation of the medium and its coded elements (Redhead 2008, P 29).

Vikar, Zazi, Soledad, Viking Man, as well as Henry, Mr. Kindt, Tulip, etc. all exist as those produced artefacts of media and its technical presentation, which is out of time, which is fragmented, which is schizophrenic in nature.

In Zeroville, this representation of Vikar’s history, and of yet a deeper history, that of postmodernity, cannot be shown through the traditional story—no—not so easily. Thus—how to portray it?—how…

…to present the fact that the unpresentable exists. To make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible: […] how to make visible that there is something which cannot be seen? […] This abstraction itself is like a presentation of the infinite, its “negative presentation.” […] It will please only by causing pain (Lyotard 1984, P 78).

And Vikar then sees, toward his end, flashes of pain, fragments of the infinite. Is he Moses? Is he Biblical? The enigmatic end of the novel brings Vikar further into a realm that is not only infinite, but seemingly, unrepresentable. This plain of reality, above and outside of the text, and undoubtedly, outside of linear narrative, shows a character, an identity, a subjectivity that fragments beyond traditional notions of temporality. The fiction and the “real” combine, exchange, and intermingle into a collage/montage of narrative:

Here, the purely fictional intent is underscored and reaffirmed in the production of imaginary people and events among whom from time to time real-life ones unexpectedly appear and disappear (Jameson 1991, P369).

This confusion of what exists in the imaginary realm and what is “real-life” becomes, in the reader’s pragmatic sense, irrelevant. Suspension of disbelief extends from the first sitting with the text, and the form of the novel envelopes into that suspension, along with the content—for these are inseparable. The form, then moves beyond linear temporality, and must, in order to represent the multiple identities and aspects of the story, branch into an atemporal subjectivity:

The crisis in historicity now dictates a return, in a new way, to the question of temporal organization in general in the postmodern force field, and indeed, to the problem of the form that time, temporality, and the syntagmatic will be able to take in a culture increasingly dominated by space and spatial logic. If, indeed, the subject has lost its capacity actively to extend its pro-tensions and re-tensions across the temporal manifold and to organize its past and future into coherent experience, it becomes difficult enough to see how the cultural productions of such a subject could result in anything but “heaps of fragments” and in a practice of the randomly heterogeneous and fragmentary and the aleatory (Jameson 1991, P 25).

Jameson’s logic here demonstrates what the writers and artists already understand as they create texts such as Zeroville and The Exquisite. The multiple, short chapters of Zeroville bring this sensibility into form through the form, and mirroring that, through content. Story lines intermingle in staccato throughout the book, flashing the text into being all at once.

On deeper examination, The Exquisite seems to refer to a doubling of itself—as a schizophrenic mirror. What business actually enacts what? “It’s all fake” the texts states (Hunt 2006, P 195). Is the text a simulacrum of itself? “It’s a closed system. No outside perspective” (Hunt 2006, P 234). Which narrative is “real”? The mystery resides therein. Pseudo-murders or hospital ward? Are these lines of narrative parallel, or are they consecutive in some way? “My present bleeds all over my past” (Hunt 2006, P 113). This bleeding of lines also happens spatially, “people and objects tended to lose their definition and bleed into each other, an erosion of border and contour” (Hunt 2006, P 211), “Like mist. Drifting out over everything. Blurring all the borders” (Hunt 2006, P 220). This New York, a city in turmoil in the post-9/11 wake, leaves the inhabitants in a reverberating chaos that shatters identity, fractures the subjects as well as the city itself, bringing a split schizo-consciousness with it, an ephemera where signified and signifier become confused, it is “a city of subtle simulacra, of deceptive surfaces, of glib and phantom shimmerings” (Hunt 2006, P 2). Consciousness, when shattered, brings multiple, simultaneous identities which defamiliarise the subjects, leaving the narrative ambiguous at best. This consciousness—as portrayed in The Exquisite, as well as Zeroville—is referred to by Deleuze and Guattari as schizoanalysis, and is clearly visible in many post-9/11 texts:

This approach articulated a new mode of postmodern self organised around concepts of plural and multiple identities and decentred or displaced consciousnesses (Woods 1999, P 30).

Where, then, does consciousness reside? This question, as posed in The Exquisite, cannot be easily answered. The difference in the metaphor between the illusion and the “real” may not be so important, after all:

The metaphoric act constitutively involves the forgetting or repression of itself: concepts generated by metaphor at once conceal their origins and stage themselves as true or referential; they emit a claim to being literal language. The metaphoric and the literal are thus at one, at least insofar as they are the twin inevitable moments of the same process. That process, then, generates a variety of illusions (Jameson 1991, P 242).

The question, then, as must be present in the noir/detective novel, points not to what has happened and what will happen, as tradition might have it, but it aims at ‘what is happening now?’ And the answer?—all of it, everything is happening now. The psychological process of dealing with trauma, of sorting through the remains of post-terror in New York, this process works on many levels at once. The question is not what has taken place and what will, which may not even be relevant in the noir text:

The detective novel is a particularly hybrid genre in this respect, since most often the something = X that has happened is on the order of a murder or theft, but exactly what it is that has happened remains to be discovered, and in the present determined by the model detective. Yet it would be an error to reduce these different aspects to the three dimensions of time. Something happened, something is going to happen, can designate a past so immediate, a future so near, that they are one (as Husserl would say) with retentions and protensions of the present itself (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, PP 192-193).

The question is not ‘what has happened’ and/or ‘what will happen,’ since time is collapsed, and this temporal notion has broken down. The novel works spatially, instead. But, also, the question is not even ‘what is happening now,’ because ultimately the process does not need that clarity. The collage of images presents a reality that should be understood aesthetically, and therein is the meaning. Abstract expressionist art does not ask the viewer to create metaphors for the images on the canvas. To stand before a [Rothko, Gottlieb, Olitski, Pollock] is not to interpret the images as objects that exist in the day-to-day world, but it is to hold oneself in the field of the creation, to allow the art to affect the viewer without working into the cognitive space of sign, signifier, and signified. The work of art presents only itself. To read these texts, also, works in a similar vein. To ask the question of what and who—which may inevitably happen—but the answer may be the question itself. To resolve in a certain ‘not knowing,’ at least in a literal sense, that is to understand the text more fully. In The Exquiste, Henry asks:

What are your names? Who is everyone? What the fuck is going on?

[…]

Is that real? I asked Cornelius.

Of course not, none of this is real, Henry.

None of it?

(Hunt 2006, PP 234, 236)

In these last few pages of the novel, Henry asks these questions, and none of them are answered—not really. It all seems a little absurd, and perhaps that is the point. The struggle and futility of sorting it all out, the experience, the process—this activity presents absurdly and nonsensically, yet it rings true, appears valid. The imagination of the subject portrays the ephemera of reality, and reality portrays itself ephemerally, and both notions collapse into a magnificent anti-narrative, an abstract expression:

The artistic and literary imagination conceives a great number of absurd machines: whether through the indeterminate character of the motor or energy source, through the physical impossibility of the organization of the working parts, or through the logical impossibility of the mechanism of transmission (Guattari 2009a, P 91).

The splattering of paint—as written through the nonlinear hyperreality of these texts—brings with it the absurd machine. Chaos of fragmentation ensues if the human experience of post-9/11 is to be brought into an accurate field of representation. While The Exquisite refers to a disfigured depiction in a Rembrandt painting, Zeroville directs itself from a filmic sensibility, more of a montage than a collage, though both forms work in a space of linear collapse—a delirious, chaotic presentation. And…

How does a delirium begin? Perhaps the cinema is able to capture the movement of madness, precisely because it is not analytical and regressive, but explores a global field of coexistence (Deleuze & Guattari 1977, P 274).

These texts break new ground in working cinematically, in this sense, to bring forward the experience of media overstimulation, of the postmodern speeding train, speeding aeroplanes, crashing into chaos, into annihilation, into pieces of image and movement so scattered and disparate that only the imagination can capture it all.

Marking new space with an unformatted anti-narrative appears as the only acceptable means of conveying the spirit of an age steeped in exploitation of media, consumerism, and images, speeding faster and faster, and then ‘playing’ among the chards of debris as the machines contort and splinter. Absurdly, fantastically, and deliriously, a schizoanalytic approach to understanding of the post-9/11 world unveils itself as the only sane method of creating story, or maybe, one could say, anti-story. Laird Hunt’s The Exquisite and Steve Erickson’s Zeroville exemplify this sensibility, and in so doing, pave the way for a freer, more imaginative, and truer novel of these late postmodern times.

REFERENCES

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1977). Anti-Œdipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York, NY: The Viking Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Erickson, Steve. (2007). Zeroville. New York, NY: Europa Editions.

Guattari, Félix. (2009a). Chaosophy, revised edition. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).

Guattari, Félix. (2009b). Soft Subversions, revised edition. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e).

Hunt, Laird. (2006). The Exquisite. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press.

Jameson, Fredric. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, UK: Duke University Press.

Lyotard, Jean-François. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Redhead, Steve. (2008). The Jean Baudrillard Reader. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Woods, Tim. (1999). Beginning Postmodernism. New York, NY: Manchester University Press.

NIGHT FOREST AND THE SEA

2010-11-18T13:07:00.003-07:00

NIGHT FOREST AND THE SEA

Val Killpack

simon says

His protests: “What? Are you a sissy? A little faggot?” Each time, every word. Father rang bells in my head. I shrank from his icy jibes, huddling under trees. I cowered in the adjacent forest, sharpened spruce needles probed my face. I bantered in my mind, to myself; taunting echoes meddled my thoughts: “Stop crying! Be a man!” I loathed the prodding, the expectation I would follow in father’s footsteps. I was an army brat, but confused, with soft skin. Schoolmates pushed me away, like my family. Striking-out at kickball brought the unabated wrath of innocence and youth. Cheeks flushed red from my misdirected foot, I sprinted from the game, but not fast enough to escape their words, which rushed faster than lightening into my ears, twisting inside my head. I was shamed. Running from playgrounds, I turned to fantasy, to sci-fi, seeking escape. Until or unless I was found, squatting behind the lower bow of an old spruce tree: “Queerbait! Bookworm!” I ran from them, my broken wings never used, tucked into my throat, clogging me to silence. I wanted to fly.

A mother’s love breaks like nothing else. Her tender breast was not so far away. A few years, a dream, a nightmare. I knew she loved me. Even after all this.

Simon came later. My first car and my first boyfriend arrived the same week. A beat-up Honda Civic and a nineteen-year-old skinhead. Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice, he said. SHARP. Whatever, I said, let me kiss you. I was not tough like him; I was a Nelly, a shy little fairy of a boy, barely able to speak in public. Steel-toed boots and tight Levis stole my heart. We whispered under the covers. “Don’t tell anyone,” he would say. He had an image. But, at my house, he could let go, there was no one to see, no crowd for which to perform. We laughed a lot. We listened to music. He played aggressive hardcore: Minor Threat, Agnostic Front. I slipped in some R.E.M., some Erasure. “Don’t tell anyone,” he would say. I just smiled.

Mother loved Simon. More than the skate punks, the goth betties. “He’s just so sweet.” He was more than sweet. She had never seen him mosh at the 930 Club, seen him walk the streets of Georgetown. Our home was a refuge. Uncoiled.

Simon listened. He wrenched the feathers from my throat, sucking out the debris, swallowing old insults like Jell-O shots. His ears became velvet grass. We lay in a bed of turquoise and shine. Touching skin we glowed. “Let me see that sweaty shirt,” I mocked, “I’ll get you something fresh.” He loved it. Slowly he began to peel it off, eying me with a wry smile. Calmly, with a comfortable grin, he dropped his shirt and walked to face me. He carefully pulled my shirt upwards, removing my inhibition with it. “Lay on your back,” he said. “Relax.” I let him take over. With a delicate caress, I let him in, right at that moment. That was the moment I lost myself. The sky opened and I went through.

A few months later, I graduated from high school and moved out west. My parents had found Simon on top of me, glistening in the candlelight, and I had not left their sight again. Not until the day after graduation. I boarded a Greyhound fated for San Francisco. The Castro quickly suffocated me. First, I hung around the alleys and teahouses, turning to frantic anonymous sex. Later, I escaped into dimly-lit gay bars. I searched for Simon with every fuck, and over time, desperation and loneliness consumed me completely. I avoided friendships, preferring emotional distance. The rush of sex kept me high, at least for a few brief moments. The seasons spun past, but the fog was persistent. I loathed it all, deeper and deeper. I gave notice to my landlord and hitched a ride north to the Lost Coast. I rented an old shanty and worked in Shelter Cove. I went to a rocky ocean cliff and watched the sun fall every evening. Nighttime found me in that salty air, alone, but landing again, touching my feet to earth, soaking my bruises in the cold Pacific water.

Bannock – noun: a usually unleavened flat bread or biscuit made with oatmeal

Sunlight bleaches his face from view, his radiance blends into overwhelming brightness of day, and before even a cloud can reveal him, he disappears into blue sky. Light, on principle, turns to night, unless kept alive by fire or electricity. Inaction fails to define him, anticipation of unrequited desire barely keeps him alive. Flowing blonde hair trails behind him, like sparks of a flame, and a light-hearted smile guides him. He glistens. Bannock catches but a glimpse as he walks along the ocean cliff. The apparition does not phase Bannock, who likes to daydream, though usually somewhat darker. A reflection of the sun, some kelp on the shore. Perhaps the wind.

Bannock walked, and walked only. Automobiles removed him from direct experience, whereas walking established paced interactions with the “real” world. Buildings whizzed past on a bicycle or bus, blocks spun by. He abstained from such inanities, and walked. One step at a time the world arose before him, inside him, and Bannock missed not a breath of it. “Life is short,” he would say, “I’m in no race.” One time he said, “I don’t want to get discombobulated.”

In pre-industrial times, Bannock would have been at one with culture. Currently, the California coast wrought disparity. Society challenged his mind—his truth constantly at odds—he was fraught with angst. Walking promised hope, temporary relief. When he stopped, even to contemplate under a tree, or to have tea at a café, nibbling croissants by the window, he lost his footing. Gray clouds loomed, the air seemed to thin, and his head pounded, like spikes being driven into hard earth, like sharp screams echoing on the horizon. He must get up and walk.

He cloaked himself in brown—he sported a weathered Mexican poncho, a tattered leather cowboy hat, a pair of well-worn wide-corduroy pants, and dirty-tan work boots. At six feet and one inch, or a meter eighty-five, and muscular, he pushed himself out of his outfit, bulging flesh threatening to protrude, with long, brown, stringy hair attempting to hide his angular face. Bannock walked with a cane. The cane came from a craft bizarre, and had an aura of authenticity, being hand carved from local American Beech (Fagus grandifolia), the wood used to make baseball bats, the tree that housed passenger pigeons before they went extinct. He slouched and tried to lean on his staff, but upon closer examination, it was apparent that he was feigning. His hunch looked awkward, and the cane, itself, appeared to cause the limp, being drug behind him like a beloved hindrance he could not part with. His gait was small and slow, with self-imposed restraint, and a lethargy, not of body, but of mind. He squeezed the bones of his skull together tightly, as if trying to suffocate his brain. His breath was shallow and from the chest. He walked with locked hips and head hung forward. A chiropractic nightmare. With a little yoga and massage, or some Feldencrest manipulation and postural alignment, he could easily gain two inches in height—five centimeters—and maybe some respect.

forest

Simon taught me more than love and sex. One morning in spring of senior year, while skipping another day of high school, we chose the reservoir for repose.

“I scored a quarter ounce.”

“You’re the man, Simon.”

“Want to smoke it?”

“All of it?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible in one session, Simon.”

“You’re going to learn a lesson today.”

“I guess so.”

I didn’t know marijuana could bring on the vomits, but I couldn’t refuse. This was a rite, entry into the land Simon walked, the landscape of hardcore truth.

“It gets better. Like being fucked up the ass the first time. Painful but delicious. Soon you build a tolerance and you want it all the time.”

Marijuana merely broke the surface of an ocean of debauchery. Simon showed me how to party like I meant it. He taught me how to blaze head-on into the flames, full throttle, without flinching a nerve. Drugs and alcohol were meant to be taken to the edge of death, quickly and unrepentantly. This lesson applied to life, not just mind-altering substances. I stood taller, firmer, and began to push my guilt aside. I was a faggot and a heathen. I stood reckless and proud. A fresh bag of green could not be approached tentatively or casually—it should be devoured and celebrated. We made love the same way. Passion above all else. Our delicate caress—a precocious sexual exploration—fell into the recess of memory. Our love hardened, turned primal, yearned full expression. We took cocaine and whiskey, or anything and everything we had. We went to the forest and screamed, punched each other, fucked like thunderclouds seeking release, lightening striking orgasm. Climax. We fell, treetops spinning above us, dirt against our backs. This is how we knew we were alive. How we validated our breath. It was the only path we could reconcile. Every other road was false, shameful, and sinful to walk. There was no other choice for us, we had to ride through the night with a gallop.

clasher

Bannock: insatiable thirst smothered his sexual desire. Running—no, not exactly running. Perambulating. Anything but running, really. He imagined well-dressed men packing weapons. Hot in August and blue sky. Bannock Parkinson fled from his oppressor. Bannock Parkinson: not a name that existed alone. Bannock the Banished: part of a series of identities. He detested the name, all the names, in fact signifiers of any kind caused an itch. He chose irritating names for himself as incentive to quit the habit. Bannock had stuck, though. His nom de plume. But, why had he written a book? Such a fantastical idea, yet forces fell upon him and the book wrote him.

Insolent youth full of rage. Vehement middle-aged men—angry religious elders. The book provided a scapegoat. Actions preceded the words. And images before that. He had always known. Becoming an insurgent occupied every functioning fucking cell of his gaunt and wafty mind-body. Television must end. He sighted that intention and never flailed. Incited.

First it was an aluminum baseball bat. Then wood—solid elm. He walked back roads to neighboring, middle-class communities. But he never stole from the burbs. A crowbar to the side door and a smashed TV. Families returned to splintered-glass living rooms. He set the bat aside for the flat screens; a buck knife slashed through the plasma and LCD. He turned them on and slashed the flat faces that appeared before him. Daytime soaps, the late-morning news, and incessant talk shows all succumbed to his sharpened blade.

Bannock signed his executions with a zine. He created a graphic novel, staying up late-night to make copies and staple them. He left zines at the scene of the crime, and at local coffeehouses and independent bookstores.

Then he went into exile. It was a self-imposed exile, one that he imagined. The agents that followed him existed only as delusions. He pushed them away and clung to solitary confinement. The Lost Coast would serve as refuge, and he could finally let go. Let go.

nun

Nighttime sky and broken headlights, screeching tires and death. The wisp of consciousness lost in the breeze, ending with an out-breath. Blushing with fire, wailing.

“I want more!”

She always screamed with the wind. She howled spunk and shook like a banshee. She predicted death, felt it, and actually existed for it. Life pushed her out. Forgotten.

“Yeeeowww!”

She ripped off her robes and ran circles nude, her glittering whitish-yellow-pink skin under moonlight and streetlight. Trees shuddered from the storm. She soared above the ground and celebrated the coming of the end. With the extinguishing of momentary, spontaneous arising, nothing would be born into mind. She woke from her slumber and tried to warn the living.

“Death is foretold!”

She knew it could not be avoided, and the cessation would end her millennia of running circles around and around, cause and effect, over and over again.

“I’m extinguished!”

Lightening pounded her mind/body into oblivion.

(Extinction.)

sailor

She smiles to herself again, then stops in embarrassment. Embarrassment is form itself. Her mind composes itself, holds it for a beat, then lets go and skips away into the sun.

She runs, sprinting ahead, then slows to a jog. She wears psychological blinders. She walks through downtown Portland, heading toward Burnside Avenue. A parking attendant watches her.

“Can I use the phone?” she says.

“We don’t have a phone, miss. This is just a parking lot.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“You mean a personal one. Of course. Is this an emergency?”

“Of course it’s a fucking emergency! Do you think I usually look like this? No! I don’t! I’m an enlightened woman—I’m realized. But, look at me now!”

“Okay, lady, relax. Go ahead. Make a call.”

She holds the phone by her side and catches her breath. Her composure returns and she smiles to herself for being so dramatic. It worked of course—the phone is in her hand. She dials her contact.

“Sailor?” she says. She listens. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

She hands the phone back to the man. “Thank you, sir.”

He looks at her quizzically, “Uh … yeah. Of course. No problem….”

She is already back on the street, leaving the man in his confusion. No time to waste. She boards a public bus and gets off at Laurelhurst Park. Under the trees toward Burnside, she will find her man. She walks. She hopes he will be good—brilliant even. She isn’t exactly a queen, but it will have to do.

“Sailor?” she asks a man dressed in leather pants and a sailor’s jacket and cap.

“Yeah. Sequined Nun?”

She smiles coyly.

“You ain’t no queen.”

“Well….”

“I want a Queen. You know. A fucking drag queen. Not a real woman. What the fuck? Jesus! What a waste of time,” and he turns to go.

“Wait,” she says coolly, “I’m not just any woman. You’ll see. Collapse the binary.”

Sailor is a tall, dark man. He stands many feet tall, thirty at least. He is a dream. She licks his thighs in her mind. A leather-daddy sailor and a false drag queen combine in ecstatic convulsions. She shakes her head to awaken. Her sequin-covered robes glitter in the summer breeze.

“Let’s walk to my apartment. It’s on northwest twenty-third,” says Sailor.

“That’s all the way across town!”

“Walking is my practice.”

“Okay, I can respect that.”

unknown

San Francisco had eaten me—devoured by the Castro. I was a victim of culture, my identity a result of media images. It all drove me to extinguish the media-viewing machine: television. But agents began to follow me around, tracking my every move, and I escaped northward, walking all the way to the Lost Coast of Northern California. There, with blistered feet and a cluttered/clear mind, I changed my name to Bannock and avoided technology completely.

Eventually, the solitude began to sour me, and I walked north again, a pilgrimage to find my home. To find my self. Though, everything seemed so empty. Like a wave rolling out to sea. I stood alone on the beach and felt the tide flow outward, away from me, toward the horizon.

I walked slowly, sleeping in the forest at night, following Highway One to Seaside. Then I turned inward, leaving the glittering wave crests behind, and headed for the city. Portland became my home, and culture began to infiltrate. I became a Sailor. It seemed the only costume that fit.

The Sequined Nun pushed me to the edge. She began to whip my mind. I knew she was merely compassion, and had been for many lives. She told me she had been a male in her last life, before her journey through roads made of silk, into this new world, a land of sequins and television, where compassion needed her the most. She handcuffed me to the truth, and I saw my incarceration.

“Please!” I pleaded, “let go of me!”

But everything held on, and Sequin would not let me escape. This sparkling Sequin would not let me escape—she dragged me down into my own mind. She refused my sexual release, and made me hold my seed, my thoughts, my quest. I yearned for the primal scream I had found with Simon. I yearned and suffered, until one night I finally gave up, and we sat alone together, watching the gentle drizzle of the Pacific Northwest. Watching the streets shine in the filtered grey light. Watching ourselves.

tea and coffee

A car whizzed past with a hum. The flat grey sky lit everything without shadow. Late morning on a weekday, and a woman walked briskly down the sidewalk, holding her black umbrella close to her head. The air was thick with moisture, somewhere between a drizzle and a fog. Hot coffee sat on a small wooden table, sheltered from the elements by a large glass window. Behind the cup sat a smiling human; she motioned me inward. I opened the door and stepped through the threshold into the warmth.

The smiling human wore sequins and a robe. I had dressed as a sailor.

“I found you.”

“That was my plan.”

“I’ll be right back—going to get some tea.”

The barista smiled. “Can I help you?”

“I don’t think so. But I’ll have some Earl Grey.”

As I relaxed into my seat, the sounds and smells overcame me.

“This is the perfect day.”

“Sailor, they’re all the perfect day.”

“You speak the truth, Sequin. Everything is alive.”

“How about that tea?”

“I am this tea.”

Sequin smiled. Orange bergamot filled the air.

simon does

Before I left the east coast, before San Francisco, there was Fugazi in the park. Nothing like live hardcore-punk to wake up the spirit. We soared through the crowd, and Simon entered the pit. I didn’t dare mosh, but Simon tore it up. Fourteen-hole oxbloods—Simon’s boot of choice—with yellow laces and matching braces—those narrow suspenders holding up his life. I tried to hold back my passions. I aimed. But my grotesque homosexuality piled out, and I embraced Simon at the show. Slam dancing had soaked his shirt, heated him up. He looked so alive, awake, so bounding with presence.

“I love you, Simon.” I approached and went for a kiss.

“What? You faggot!” He shoved me and walked away.

I knew it was a show for his friends. I knew he had to do it—but a heavy, black door slammed shut in that moment. I would escape out the back, I would find another world, another way. I would board a bus destined for my next life. I ran out of the park to fend off my leaking eyes. In less than a week I would graduate, and then I would be free. I would be. I would. I knew there was another path—and I vowed to enter, to pass through the gateless gate. To drop away the nagging parents, the yellow, suburban town laced with wannabe-gangsters and domestic-thugs. To lose my high school so-called friends, my parents, my family—to release the past in its entirety. I released a shark into the sea. Flushed some goldfish down the toilet. To set myself free, that was all I could do. I stopped off on my way home. I was on my way home. I stopped and bought a ticket.

I told no-one about the future, and quickly it came—my graduation ceremony in the waning sun, my dusty folks forcing congratulation—then packing my bags in the night.

“I’ll show you!” I screamed toward the blackened streets. I boarded the bus. I collapsed into my seat then peered through the murky-grey windows. Black diesel smoke poured into the sky; I bid farewell. With a growl, we moved slowly ahead. I’ll show you, I thought. I will. I would.

LONG FADING ECHO

2010-11-18T13:02:00.003-07:00

LONG FADING ECHO

Val Killpack

Touches the Earth

Digs in the garden, slowly, with dirty hands, finds the root. Angelica archangelica sings in a whisper. Only fertile women can hear the words, and others, all they hear is a long, silent hum. Unless ears are put to the ground, nestled among leaves and bugs, and there in the earth a lone whine continues and continues, screams, and breaks down barriers between everything as it is.

Puts hand into the soil and pulls the plant, gently, rocking back and forth, side to side, while following the taproot down with the other hand. Pulls the plant upward, carefully, leaving the aerial segment connected to the milk-coloured portion that never before, not once, has ever felt wind or sunlight. Holds the plant with both hands and rises to bring it to clean water. Fills a bucket, scrubs roots until unsoiled. Snips at the border-space and places root portion on screen to dry in the amber light. Removes leaves from stem, tosses stems to compost. Spreads leaves on screen beside root. Removes tobacco pouch and offers some to the garden, the earth, to nature. Refills hole. Listens.

Stirs the Potatoes

Sings in a shrill voice. Sound echoes from the kitchen walls and bounces down the front steps. Trees listen. Stops singing and turns the tap on, and then, while holding hand in the water, the temperature rises, hot water rushes free. Potatoes fall into the sink. Scrubs them. Peels thin exteriors off—in a whisk of motion, slices and dices, before dropping the cubes into a pan. Turns on the gas and watches the flame spread across the iron. Sound of a bird continues, faintly heard through screened-off windows. In this pale air, potatoes roast, flavoured with rosemary, garlic, olive oil, salt.

Smells the air and smiles. Potatoes want company. Runs to the chicken coop. Bursts through the door into the country breeze (flowers and manure), across the land, dives into the feathered domain. Hens squawk. Steps in chicken shit. Two eggs wait, takes one with each hand. Squawks at the chickens. Skips back to the kitchen, potatoes still stewing.

Makes an omelette to go with country potatoes. Sits for breakfast. Drinks coffee, orange juice. Flowered wallpaper in the kitchen, yellow background, cupboards painted white; stacks of dishes in the sink patiently waiting. A lone fly circles, buzzes, and lands on the counter. Shards of sunlight pattern the floor. Dust floats in the air, sound settles all around. Echoes of silence, stillness, slate-grey vibrations. Resolves an empty mind. Ungraspable feelings float free, barely touching the space, being, time. A second. Ten-thousandth of a second. Time evaporates. Thus.

Does the Laundry

Washing Machine waits with lid open, gapes toward the room, moaning dark lamentations to whomever or whatever will listen. Dryer soothingly sighs to comfort Washer, but to no effect. Reaches into the hamper and retracts a dirty shirt. Rank odours permeate the small room. Sorts laundry by colours, by weight of fabric, and constructs small heaps of clothing. Turns certain items inside out. Reads labels and shuffles clothing around appropriately. Washing Machine swallows a load, churns it vigorously, salivates, but cannot chew, cannot swallow. Washing Machine is a hungry ghost—a famished creature with a large belly and a neck too small to swallow even a grain of rice—wandering the earth in craving, desire, always wanting but never getting. Occasionally the Hungry Machine gets a sock. Nothing more.

Dryer purrs softly, tumbling the cotton load, smiles to no one in particular. Chooses More Dry, and Dryer feels proud to be given such responsibility. Dryer decides to stop later than usual, for Dryer knows that well-done clothes taste better. Drying Machine toasts a shirt beyond repair, in anger. Hang dry for best results, Dryer murmurs, how absurd.

Removes clothes from Dryer and folds them. Closes Dryer and leaves room. Dryer beeps. Enters room and opens Dryer, then puts head into Drying Machine to feel the heat. Dryer beeps and whirs, tries to spin. Falls backward and runs from room. Dryer shuts down, in desperation, and goes to sleep. To dream the dreamless dream. To stew.

Plays a Record

Flips through the cardboard sleeves, until—Coltrane for a rainy day? Johnny Hartman? Removes record from sleeve and places on turntable. Places needle on first track. Red lights ignite and vinyl rotates. Vibrations penetrate the small eardrums, causing the brain to find something of sound, musical noise—baritone vocals and tenor saxophone which shudder and shake and generate visceral response. Sweat on the brow with a reluctant smile, standing, slow shuffle, shaking jumble, then falling, falling to the armchair. Closing the eyes with some drink. Ice and tumbler with whiskey…

If there's a moon up above, it's wonderful

It's wonderful, wonderful

In every way, so they say

You'll leave your house one morning

And without any warning

You'll find yourself shouting…

Falls into a dream, a long corridor, opening, widening, then tumbling in high heat. Body shrinking small, eyes itch, teardrops dry away. Cannot scream, shout, or yell. Saliva evaporates, organs begin to stew, steam, then fried liver and overeasy, overmedium, overhard, an omelette, deep inside the body.

Wakes and the record spins with no sound. The needle resting on an endless track, rotating around and around for all time and time-being. Vacant eyes travel across the room, begging the body to stand, to end the spinning, to begin again. Fly lands on the wall. Dust floats in the air. Messages leave the brain with great effort, with strong and pure intention: rising to feet, stepping forward. Fly wisps away, out the door, into the fresh country air (flowers and manure). The tone-arm returns, platter stops rotating, and. (Silence)

Digs a Latrine

Flies swarm the outhouse and red stench lingers beside the white chickens. Walks away, in lurid perambulation, then handles a shovel. Ducks into the forest, dodging a birch tree, steps solidly on the earth, steps again, at least a few times, stops in a clearing. An old oak tree, witnessing the event, sways happily in the breeze, waiting for something more. Muscles careen shovel deep into the soil. Removes the earth, forms a pile akin to hole—a growing hole, deeper and deeper, rooting toward the core. Lowers jeans and shits into the earth. Fly circles the odour and buzzes and whines. Wings rapidly flapping, quick as an electric fan. Screaming like a saxophone. With both hands, takes a mound of damp soil, sifts it between fingers, scattering it into the hole. Removes jeans completely, removes top, shoes and socks. Stands naked, speckled sunlight broadcasts though foliage to the earthen floor below. They say it’s wonderful… Whispers only a line of the song, then freezes. Chills across the skin. The oak tree rustles and shudders, a solitary acorn falls. A clank to the head, eyes close, then open, slowly look toward sky. Perfect blue and leather oak leaves, gnarled bark.

Drops clothing into hole and fills the dirt back in. Saunters toward forest/ home (for the time-being). Wanders, seeks, looks for the root. Dreams of more than a home—a buzzing, bright hole filled with blue, white—every colour—spinning in a whir of pure heat, until the human body evaporates, again, and only the voice remains, the song, a long fading echo, stirring itself in a cast-iron pan.

DECONSTRUCTION OF BINARY IN REINALDO ARENAS’S BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

2010-11-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

DECONSTRUCTION OF BINARY IN REINALDO ARENAS’S BEFORE NIGHT FALLS

Val Killpack

In Cuba, or Latin America in general, homosexuality designates, “less a libidinal relationship between individuals of the same gender than a particular role, position, or style of behavior” (Epps 232). This is to say that living publicly as a male gay in Cuba, in the time of Reinaldo Arenas, more so, but still, exorcises a place of power (or lack thereof) and delineates one into a hierarchical place in society, culture, or political establishment. The definition of homosexuality in Cuba, until the last decade perhaps, revolves around being a maricón, or receptive partner. Reinaldo Arenas writes of a “real man” being the active/penetrating partner (top), and the receptive partner (bottom) being deemed the homosexual. This definition of homosexuality, “points to a difference between a homosexuality of identity, regardless of the positions therein assumed, and a homosexuality of performance and appearance, in which positionality is the dominant, or most visible, mark” (Epps 233). European and American culture concerns itself less with the particular sex role, and stigmatises both partners more equally. In a sense, Euro-American society essentialises homosexuality, placing personal identity upon the notion of an intrinsic “gayness”, whereas Latino culture leans toward constructivism, in that homosexuality applies to those who act a certain role (performance) and display that (bottom) role publicly (appearance), and the underlying (essential) same-sex desire, a concept that does exist in Cuba, does not mean one is a homosexual.

The performance and expression of homosexuality became polarized under socialist rule, whereas before, the category did not exist, and (homo)sexuality existed in its fluid, three-dimensional expression, a scale of sexuality, more complex than Alfred Kinsey even acknowledges. Lourdes Arguelles and B. Ruby Rich explain: “In this prerevolutionary setting, discreet lesbian or gay male identities in the modern sense—identities that are based on self-definition and involve emotional as well as physical aspects of same-sex relations—were rare” (445). Pre-revolution, same-sex expression did not associate one with an identity at all, never mind a political stance. Sexuality before the revolution existed only on a behavioural level, and in certain ways was not problematic because of that (though, Western influence had begun to commodify (homo)sexuality). Sexuality perhaps resembled, behaviourally, the modern practice of pansexual polyamory (as expressed in John Cameron Mitchell’s film, Short Bus). The revolution instituted a polemical hierarchy which categorised, polarised, and segregated (homo)sexuality. Arenas, resembling a modernist lamenting a former continuity, speaks of the development of this disparity:

In Cuba gays were not confined to a specific area of a club or beach. Everybody mingled and there was no division that would place the homosexual on the defensive. This has been lost in more advanced societies, where the homosexual has had to become a sort of recluse and separate himself from the supposedly nonhomosexual society, which undoubtedly also excludes him. Since such divisions did not exist in Cuba, the interesting aspect of homosexuality there was that you did not have to be a homosexual to have a relationship with a man; a man could have intercourse with another man as an ordinary act. In the same way, a real gay who liked another gay could easily go out and live with him. But the gay who liked real macho men could also find one who wanted to live or be friends with him, without in any way interfering with the heterosexual life of that man (Arenas, BNF 107-08).

In a sense, Arenas’ resisting of this paradigm shift, this binary of sexuality, also manifested as a protest of the socialist ideal. Castro, following the doctrine of Marx and Lenin—as well as other socialist and communist theorists and leaders—created a dualistic community. Castro’s infamous words, “Within the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing” (Epps 249), exist in a context of proletariat/bourgeois struggle. This (theoretic) polarity manifested socio-pragmatically, if you will, as revolutionary/counter-revolutionary. Arenas finds himself caught in the same dynamic, though expressed through sexual (and gender) identity. The former, uncategorised scale of sexuality transforms into a duality with the Cuban revolution. Heterosexuality (which includes the gay dominant partner), with the help of Castro and Guevara’s “real man” campaign, shows up ‘within the revolution’, whereas homosexuality falls ‘against the revolution’. This separation and labelling of sexuality links closely with gender performance—as Judith Butler would phrase it—and to perform outside of behaviours allocated as that of the “real man” (or machismo) categorises an individual as homosexual or gay, whether this desire or behaviour exists or not. Epps describes this gender performance: “Eminently controlled in conduct and appearance, the new man is the old man, man as he has long been promised to be: the eternal masculine” (259). As Arenas alludes to, appearance trumps performance and identity for Castro. (This is still the case for Cuba, even in the early twenty-first century, which is apparent when looking at the efforts made to show Cuba in a positive light to the world for purposes of international relations. The CENESEX website and the film Strawberry and Chocolate both exude portrayal/appearance of equality before actual acceptance—though institutional changes have and are being made.) Rather than basing homosexual identity on an essential or intrinsic quality or identity as expressed by the individual, the homosexual identity is assigned by the establishment based on appearance and sometimes performance, or appearance of performance. This brings up another point, which is paramount to Arenas’ position: personal identity versus group identity.

Socialism and communism imply giving up one’s personal identity (ego) for the benefit of the whole. This implies, in this case, that one gives up his/her artistic vocation and sexual identity and surrender to the revolution, or as Arenas sees it, to Castro. It seems paradoxical that citizens must let go of their identity, whereas their leader continues to elevate his status by creating a more prominent personal identity. Arenas sees this not only as fascism, but as dictatorship. As Brad Epps points out, Arenas could not exist without Castro. Arenas falls into the same binary pattern—dominant and Other—and he defines himself in opposition to Castro, as the oppressed Other. Arenas homosexual identity falls into category of Other, with heterosexuality being dominant, and his position as writer/artist is Other in contrast to proletariat worker (revolution supporter) as dominant. In a certain sense, rather than breaking down these barriers (social constructions), Arenas reinforces them by placing himself so firmly within them. Arenas defines his personal identity as Other in all cases, even in America, where is Othered by Miami and then New York. A tantalising short story written by Arenas reinforces this position: The Glass Tower speaks of his treatment in (his) post-Cuban life. In the story, the main character’s supporters persecute him by placing him on a pedestal, thus separating (Othering) him, and at the end, when he reveals he has nothing to offer, he is abandoned by everyone except a dog (a symbol of sexual narcissism in the story). Abilio Estévez voices the impact this point of view has for the us, the reader, and through the text we see, “the Other as the center of our lives, the torturer/observer who brings us unfailingly to self-torture and self-observation. The pitiless Other who makes us pitiless toward ourselves” (863-64). This antagonism drives him, and Oberg reports, “Arenas writes a revelatory phrase: ‘The world and I are at war.’ Here’s the key, not only to Before Night Falls but to his entire literary production. […] Enmity is one of the fundamental motives for anyone to sit down and try to mend the world” (865). This animosity and isolation as Other drive Arenas to confront the ultimate problem: “knowing whether or not life is worth being lived. […] Arenas gave legitimacy to suicide. We know his answer” (Oberg 864).

Arenas, in confronting the dominant power, his ultimate adversary, ultimately declares Castro to impersonate that demon. Castro represents the darkness of Arenas’ childhood, the oppression he faced as a gay man, the difficulty he experienced living as a writer, and inadvertently the dark side of himself, the man that desires to end his own life, which he eventually decides to do. Arenas’ suicide note takes no personal responsibility, however, and credits Castro as the source of the decision—Castro who signifies so much for him. He writes: “I end my life voluntarily […] There is only one person I hold accountable: Fidel Castro” (Arenas, BNF 317). Arenas expresses his perpetual conflict in his poem As Long as the Sky Whirls (Arenas, “As Long…” 112), which is written for Lázaro Gómez, but in subtext, and perhaps Arenas’ subconscious, could be read as being written for and to Fidel Castro:

As Long as the Sky Whirls

As long as the sky whirls

You will be my redemption and my doom,

magnetic vision,

lily in underwear,

salvation and madness

every night waiting.

As long as the sky whirls

no infernal could be a stranger

because I have to take care that that would not harm you,

No joy would go by inadvertent

Because in some way I have to reveal it to you,

As long as

the sky

whirls

you will be the truth of myself,

the song and the venom,

the danger and the ecstasies,

the vigil and the sleep,

the dread and the miracle.

As long as the sky whirls… but perhaps the sky whirls?

Well: as long as the sky exists.

As long as

the sky

exists

you will be my pain most noticeable,

my loneliness most tragic

my bewilderment unanimous

my perpetuous silence

and my absolute consolation.

As long as the sky exists… but perhaps the sky exists?

Well: as long as you yourself exist.

As long as

you yourself

exist

you will be the mirror and the time,

the infinity and the imminent,

the memory and the unusual

the defeat and the verse,

my enemy and my image.

Because there would be no more suns than the ones you yourself radiate

like there would be no other penance than to know that you exist.

But perhaps you do exist?

New York (May 1985)

(Arenas, “As Long…” 112)

Arenas creates not only his politico-sexual identity in opposition to Castro (his reflection?), but also his art, his politico-writer identity. (Though he may realise his construction: “But perhaps you do exist?” (Arenas, “As Long…” 112)) Arenas sees himself and Castro as two sides to one coin: “my enemy and my image” (Arenas, “As Long…” 112). Abilio Estévez states, “all the demons lived in the heart of Reinaldo Arenas. And all the angels, I would add” (861); his stance is in opposing Castro, the other side of the coin, “there would be no other penance than to know that you exist” (Arenas, “As Long…” 112). Art, for Arenas, is beauty, and beauty (for Arenas) can also exist only in contrast to Castro. He speaks of this in Before Night Falls:

A sense of beauty is always dangerous and antagonistic to any dictatorship because it implies a realm extending beyond the limits that a dictatorship can impose on human beings. Beauty is a territory that escapes the control of the political police. Being independent and outside of their domain, beauty is so irritating to dictators that they attempt to destroy it whichever way they can. Under a dictatorship, beauty is always a dissident force, because a dictatorship is itself unaesthetic, grotesque; to a dictator and his agents, the attempt to create beauty is an escapist or reactionary act (Arenas, BNF 87).

Arenas clearly defines himself here, in his identity as an artist (writer), as the Other, where Castro is the dominant, opposing force. Arenas defines homosexuality (and the underlying gender expression) and then art, writing, and music as forms of political resistance. The film Strawberry and Chocolate attempts to break this binary by associating the homosexual-artist protagonist with a pro-Cuban stance, and by associating a government employee with anti-Cuban ideals, such as wanting to leave and live in European decadence. The film, in dialogue with Arenas, tries to counter the notion that Castro-communism exists in opposition to homosexuality and art. The protagonist of the film still has to leave, but only as a result of residual, cultural misunderstanding. Though the film may have been made partially as propaganda—for the sake of appearance—it does unfold an ideal that yearns for greater continuity, solidarity, and inclusion. The film shows a Cuban regime that desires to define itself not in opposition to homosexuality and art, but in opposition to anti-Cuban sentiment.

Accompanying the film Strawberry and Chocolate, Cuba repealed the, “Public Ostentation Law, which was used to effectively harass gay people who refused to remain closeted. Aimed at those who ‘flaunted’ their homosexuality” (Oberg 10), thus supporting their new image with governmental/ structural change, in hopes of international détente. The underlying problem of discrimination then remained largely socio-cultural: “Most, however, reported incidents of private discrimination by individuals, and all resented the residual machista attitudes that remain stubbornly embedded in some levels of Cuban society” (Oberg 10). The exact reasoning for these changes remains elusive, though largely they were spurred by international dialogue following publication of Arenas’ book, Before Night Falls, which speaks to the importance of public opinion for Cuba (Castro), and implicitly the effects this has on international policy regarding economic sanctioning and trade. Castro realised that to survive economically (especially with the booming tourist business), changes loomed imminent.

In questioning the validity and truth of Arenas’ “memoir,” Before Night Falls, one mustn’t forget his extensive, literary self-education. Arenas creates himself as a character, and Castro as a character, in his book. He strives for literary success, id est for creating a masterpiece, just as his predecessors have done. Jean Genet’s first text, Our Lady of the Flowers, and countless other works of autobiography, memoir, and auto-fiction all convey a sense of one’s existence, while never portraying complete truth, for as Arenas surely knew, once anything is put to words on paper, it automatically becomes fiction, de facto. Abilio Estévez so eloquently states: “I suspect that sincerity is one thing, and truth something else. From this point of view, I do not doubt Arenas’s sincerity—even though his pages at times fall short of the truth” (863). Arenas bends details to convey the overall sense of situation, to bring the reader into the text. Arenas uses artistic liberty with success and, though he does not live to see it, the international community listens and Cuba responds accordingly. This underlying sincerity and intention to create change, or just to scream protest, drives Arenas’ writing, and in that respect he has lived, worked, and written with complete integrity, and in fact motivated political and social change on a grand scale. “I don’t know if he suspected his capacity for saving us,” writes Estévez (865). More than anything, Before Night Falls is a wake-up call, “a shout in the middle of the night” (Estévaz 866), a testimony that refuses to let the world sleep in ignorant bliss.

REFERENCES

Arenas, Reinaldo. “As Long as the Sky Whirls.” Trans. Lázaro Gómez Carriles. Bomb no. 82 (Winter 2002/2003). 112.

Arenas, Reinaldo. Before Night Falls. Trans. Dolores M. Koch. New York, NY: Viking Penguin, 1993.

Arenas, Reinaldo. “The Glass Tower.” Trans. Dolores M. Koch. Grand Street vol. 61 (“All-American,” Summer 1997). 7-17.

Arguelles, Lourdes and B. Ruby Rich. “Homosexuality, Homophobia, and Revolution: Notes Toward an Understanding of the Cuban Lesbian and Gay Male Experience.” Hidden From History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past. Ed. Martin Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus, and George Chauncey, Jr. New York, NY: NAL Books, 1989. 441-55.

Epps, Brad. “Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel Castro, and the Politics of Homosexuality.” Journal of the History of Sexuality vol. 6, no. 2 (Oct. 1995). 231-83.

Estévez, Abilio. “Between Nightfall and Vengeance: Remembering Reinaldo Arenas.” Michigan Quarterly Review vol. 33 (Fall 1994). 859-67.

Oberg, Larry R. “How Criminal Was Castro?” The Gay & Lesbian Review vol. 8, no. 6 (Nov.-Dec. 2001). 9-11.

COLD AND GOLDEN STONES

2010-11-18T12:59:00.001-07:00

COLD AND GOLDEN STONES

Val Killpack

Autumn leaves. Red wind blows and Jordan exhales one step forward. The cry of a bird (cuckoo); shade of a conifer hides the dark soil. He inhales and lifts his right foot. Stone steps of granite, light dusting of dirt, pine needles under his soles. Jordan exhales and places his right foot onto the lowest step. His weight shifts into that foot, and he lifts his body with it. A dog barks somewhere behind him, trying to bring him back. Tight chirp of a bark, like a giant cockatoo chasing a Frisbee. Jordan inhales and lifts his left foot to meet his right. Standing with feet together, he tilts his head back and casts his gaze upwards. One-hundred-and-eight steps. He counts them, one at a time. The stone presses upward into his body. Slow breathing quickens. He squats down. Right hand reaches forward, and the palm presses downward onto the second step. Cold and green—his mind stops. Emptiness surrounds him. Each step crumbles into the earth, and a grassy hill rises upward. He blinks. He blinks. Then stands again. One step forward and his breath raises the right foot into the air, then places it gently, but firmly, onto the next slab of granite. One step at a time, he will ascend, until he reaches the ancient hut above.

Jordan turns about-face. Flushed red, in the darkness, he glimpses through the fog into the night. Step number two holds him just above the earth. The grass rises, grows all around. Moonlight reflects. A dewdrop shows all. He sees himself in the mist. Sees himself in the overgrown field. Each droplet of water mirrors his mind, body-mind, heart-mind. Settled precipitation. He pushes his vision through. A clear moon waits just beyond the cloud. A shining pond holds the moon in its mouth. He will dive from the cliff he now stands on. He will break the black water before him. He will scream. And he will scream. But he only exhales and closes his eyes. He stands like that all night. He enters deep, dreamless sleep, holding it, tasting. First ray of the sun, eyes opening, dreamlessly awake, he rotates right and tilts his head upward. Inhaling, he raises his hands toward the sun.

Golden stones. Plumes of wealth abound. Saffron robes flap in the wind, and a woman faces the sunrise. She looks down at him for a moment, then rings the morning bell. He smiles and hops onto the next step.

He repeats his secret mantra with each breath. He inhales on it and exhales hot. He climbs halfway up, then forgets, in his bliss, to keep his balance. A sort-of sprawling scramble-tumble, and back down to step fourteen. He must focus. Don’t lose the mantra. Hold onto the thread, he tells himself.

It is dark. He sleeps, dreaming freely, stretched languidly across stair twenty-eight. The Rice Krispies Treats he packed have begun to wane, but he could care less. He talks to an audience packed all around him. He tells his life story in minute detail. Each face looks up with eager anticipation, eyes opened wide, mouths agape. He hinges the words of each sentence. And then! When I was twenty-eight! I really did win the contest! They cannot get enough. It is all true! he tells them. Every word!

It is hot when he awakes with a sore back. He twists and turns and wrings out his spine. Ahhh, he thinks. Life is good. Then he looks up and sees so many steps before him. I cannot eat another Rice Krispies Treat, he says aloud. I just cannot.

He creeps in slow motion, on hands and knees. His stealth-mission enemy training has done him well. He ascends several steps without anyone noticing—his eyes are peeled. He has eyes on the back of his head. He has got his own back. Glancing left and right and left and right, then checking over his shoulder. Something moved! Something moved! he thinks. No, just a vision. Only the desert heat. Mirages are normal in this territory, he tells himself. Delusions are part of the game. I will drink some water.

************************************************

Ten summers ago, Jordan wandered. He went this way and that, eating berries and chasing game. He worked various jobs. First, landscaping, then fast food.

“Hi, Jordan!” said his boss.

“Hi, boss!”

“Where’s your name tag? And tuck in your shirt! Gotta look good in this business! Step it up, Jordan! Get with the game!”

On break, halfway through his shift, he snuck out the side door and jogged down the sidewalk, glancing nervously over his shoulder, hoping no-one would see him escaping. He stopped in an alley, peeled off the polyester polo shirt, and tossed it into the wind.

Tracing footsteps through the forest, he could smell the ox. He could sense the other side.

He got a job canvassing for an environmental activist group. This is it, he thought, now I’ve found something real.

“Let me hear your rap! Pretend you’re knocking on my door and I’m a bored housewife! Sell me a membership! Make me want to save the environment! Step it up, Jordan!”

“Uh. Okay. So, uh. … Hey. So, I’m Jordan. Do you want your kids to burn ‘cause global warming’s all ragin’ up and then like they try to cool down but the water’s all polluted and so they get mercury poisoning anyway before they burn but like they were totally malnourished anyway ‘cause like the food supply is laced with pesticides and genetically-mutated food but maybe they’d drown anyway ‘cause the icecaps are melting and the whole continent might sink into the ocean… So like join our group and we can fix all that and then your kids are gonna be real happy. Only thirty-five bucks a month for basic membership. But you can make a real difference by becoming a supporting member for a hundred bucks a month. Like it’s totally up to you.”

“No, Jordan! No! No no no! That’s not what I taught you!”

“But I just give it to ‘em real. You know. No-bullshit style.”

“No, Jordan! Tell me the rap the way we taught you. Look in your binder if you can’t remember it.”

“Uh. Okay. Let me go get it. Be right back.”

But Jordan slipped out the back door and sprinted down the block. He stopped on the corner and stripped off his environmental activist “official tee-shirt” and tossed it at the woman holding the “will work for change” sign. Will work for change, he thought, sure.

Then Jordan wandered the Earth. He slid from the suburb into the global highway. He sold poems on the corner in Denver, then Santa Fe. He went to San Francisco, San Diego. Took a bus to New York. No-one wanted poetry, though. So he worked in a factory. Day labour. He never stayed in one place for long. He saved enough to buy a plane ticket to Europe. But it wasn’t until he got to Southern China, on a supposed deal to teach English for serious big bucks, that he escaped into the forest. Finally left it all behind.

************************************************

It was damn hot, and the sweat dripped from Jordan’s face. The steamy jungle just did not stop. Tiny flies buzzed wearily past his cheeks. His tussled hair matted all around his head. Separating it into locks would have made more sense, but he liked the tangled ‘fro look. Totally Einstein, he said to himself. Dark facial scruff almost grew into a beard but never quite succeeded. Penetrating brown eyes scanned the tree line for backup. There would be none, of course. He was on his own.

Footprints shone in the stone. Each step presented itself before him. His feet were too big for the little steps; he balanced on his toes, heels in the air. The steps narrowed the further he ascended. Steeper and steeper, like a ladder, climbing a cliff. He held on to the rock that faced him. The moss-covered stairs perspired and dripped. He did not dare look down. He knew that one slip meant falling through space. Meant diving from the mountain, which was no longer a mountain. It was the kingdom. He now climbed the side of a fortress.

He neared the top. He saw a tree branch protruding from the cliff, just above him. If he could reach it, he could pull himself over the ledge. He found a toe-hold for his left foot. His right hand reached for a crevice. He gripped it. He grasped and clung, pulling himself upward. In a final breath of exasperation, he lunged for the tree branch, grabbing it with his left hand, then his right. He lost his footing and held on for life. Depleted, he just hung there, unsure what to do next. He lacked the strength to pull himself over the edge to safety. Day rotated into night. It is dark, he thought, it is really dark.

Unable to sleep, he waited for sunrise. As the first golden rays pierced his eyes, he decided to let go. The fall would be a welcome relief. Finally it would all be over. Finally he would go home.

With a lung-filling inhale, Jordan closed his eyes. But he could not do it. He could not. He let out his breath all at once. Another long inhale and he closed his eyes again. He let go.

************************************************

When Jordan awoke, he found himself sprawled on the ground. He lay on a stone pathway, and just above his head, a small tree pointed toward the sky. Just past the tree, the pathway stepped down a bit, then continued. He lay on his side, arms pointed past his head. He reached and grabbed the trunk of the small tree, then let go. He tried it again. The ground was level. The tree pointed toward the sun. It hadn’t been a cliff, after all.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Shook his head to wake up. Then smiled, and stood to greet the day.

CLUTCH

2010-11-18T12:55:00.003-07:00

CLUTCH

Val Killpack

I confronted Johnny in the kitchen and it felt like the end. Insistent upon purifying my mind, I broke up with him—my boyfriend and lover of several years.

“Do you have to wear those woman’s shoes?” I asked.

“I wake up at four in the morning and turn to empty space.”

“I don’t mind the makeup or nail polish…”

“Why do you do it—just to spite me?”

“…or your silk scarves, but the heels are too much.”

“We make passionate love and fall asleep exhausted…”

“You’re such a queen.”

“…then I wake up and you’re gone.”

“Tasteless queen…”

Then we just stared at each other. A tear slithered from the fringes of Johnny’s eye. I huffed an exasperated sigh, turned, and walked. Our loft apartment skirted the Pearl District, situated above some galleries. The flat belonged to me, and eventually I would have to go back and kick Johnny out.

Later that evening, Gio (an old flame) met me at the local queer bar. I melted into the barstool and told him I walked out on Johnny.

“Why did you do it?”

I slowly looked up, meeting Gio’s eyes.

“You’re making me nervous.”

“What was your motivation?”

I turned my head left, blanked at the floor, then looked back to Gio.

“Honesty.”

Gio looked at me with a curious smile. Amused.

“Do you feel like a womyn trapped in a man’s body?” I asked.

“That’s you, honey.”

“It’s not true, I’m outside of gender.”

“Girl…”

“Okay, maybe my genders are a trifle mixed.”

Gio smiled. “Do you want to go check out the new line of clutches at Louis Vuitton?”

“What? Okay. Yeah!”

“I hear they’re fabulous.”

“No... Wait… You hate shopping… I’m not a womyn—stop poking me!”

Gio rolled with laughter. “Start poking you? I thought you’d never ask.”

He confidently flashed his smile of charming indifference. “Let’s hit dinner.”

“Well…”

“That Thai place you like.”

“Thai Orchid…”

“Yeah, Thai Orchid. Come on.” Gio donned his jacket and led the way. Spring rolls and coconut curry with a little conversation on the side. And by the time we’d finished our mango and sweet-rice dessert, I was thoroughly confused. I’d walked out on one lover and opened an old can of femme fatale with another. I thought back to a conversation I’d had with Johnny a week before, sitting at the dining-room table.

“Johnny, you’re choking my heart,” I had said.

“Stop it.”

“No, I mean really. You’re clutching your fist around it.”

Johnny looked at the floor a full five beats, then timidly met my eyes. I held the gaze for a second, then continued:

“Sometimes I can’t inhale or exhale. Why do you think I insist on polyamory? I sit in the park on lunch hour. I go to Yoga Shala every morning before work. It all helps, but I still suffocate.”

“What should I do?”

I leaned back into the armchair and listened to the combination of birds and traffic. I closed my eyes. I want you to be Gio, I thought. Of course, Gio had his own set of problems. Post-relationship idealization had rounded them, shaved them down. How often I had chased dreams, vainly conspiring fulfillment. Now I realized that dreams are delusions and all that’s left is suffering. If life is just a series of disappointments and empty fantasies, then all I can do is surf the pain.

“Nothing, Johnny,” I said, knowing I had justified our emotionally-abusive relationship through a half-baked theory based on a partial understanding of Zen, existentialism, or some self-help book I must have read. “Nothing. There is nothing to do.”

Johnny insisted on crying: so attached. I wished he would get off his ass and find something to give his life meaning; I had tired of doing it long ago. I had begun to look inward for the answer which did not exist, but Johnny had yet to make the shift. I deflected his clinging like a Judo master or a good babysitter redirecting needy, urban children. Did he need to be set free, or would he turn and grasp onto the next hot boy to look his way?

We sat in silence as he wept, which slowly turned into a sob—putting some vocals into it. I knew his moaning meant I was supposed to go over to him and put my hand on his shoulder, then slowly embrace him from behind, reaching into a big, warm hug, after which he would turn slowly, curling sideways into me. Then he would rotate further and embrace me back. He would work his head next to mine, then back off enough so that I could see his pathetic face, like a bantling begging for love. He would mope in and kiss me, after which I would respond slowly, my lips partially frozen. Eventually I would soften and the passion would begin to rise, my other brain taking over. We would fuck on the couch, me topping, and it would be good. We would work things out with sexual aggression. It would be tender but violent, a strange mix of anger, sadness, and love. The next morning we would pretend we never had a fight. I would hold my frustration inside and hope that some circumstance in my life would provide catharsis. I would yell at someone at work, or throw a tantrum at the bank. I would complain about the weather to a grocery store clerk. No! reverberated through my mind.

I said nothing at all, carefully picked up my purse and jacket, and crept toward the front door. I stepped with care, moving quickly, aware that if he looked up from his fetal position and saw me leaving, he would utter protest. I would end up responding, we would talk more, then possibly enact the previous thought sequence leading up to sex and post-sex trauma.

I slipped down the stairs and slid out of sight.

I woke from my discursion and saw that Gio had paid for the Thai food and put on his coat. He looked distant and serene, like an oil painting—the color of his skin radiated with fullness, unlike the pallid skin cloaking me.

“You go ahead, I need to be alone.”

“Yeah, honey, I can see that.”

“I’ll stay and finish my tea.”

“Do you need to talk more?”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind…”

“Confusion…”

“I just need to think more.”

“Think more … or think less?”

“Get my head straight.”

“That ain’t never gonna happen.”

I cracked a smile for the first time in a while.

“I’ll be alright.”

“Okay, babe, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

He walked over, orchestrated a tender touch of the lips, then left me to my thoughts. Gio always seemed to know when to pester me and when to leave me alone. I sipped my jasmine tea for a while, then headed for the door. I fell to the street, into the brisk air, walking alone. I was out of step with the night crowd, couples skirting my slow meander, chatting nervously, hopping about the town. Another block and my pace slowed to a stop. There was nowhere to go. All the usual things were out: going to the baths and fucking an anonymous guy; getting shit-faced at Embers (or even a breeder bar where I could be left alone); calling another lover I’d been having on the side; going to a movie and sucking the Hollywood pacifier. Being that my clothes were undersized couture, I had to be careful which part of town I went to. Last thing I needed was weird looks or muffled laughs. I thought about lounging in an all-night café—I even knew of one with European coffee and ambient lighting—but caffeine would race my thoughts. I wanted a hash bar. Wrong country. Maybe meditation would be the best thing. I wanted to come out of my mind and into my senses, my body, the world. The present moment. I decided to head toward Forest Park, where I could find some oversized Douglas Firs to ease my mind.

I’d been sitting under a grove of trees, my back against the gnarled bark of a conifer. After twenty or thirty minutes, much of my frustration had dissipated. I felt my energy dissolve into the grandmother tree, and I began to relax. I was aware of a man skulking around, and assuming him another vagrant calling this park home, I let him be. Eventually, he began to approach me, as if circling his prey. My muscles began to tighten; my breath filled with tension. I stood up to confront him.

“Hey man. I need some money … I’m hungry … help me out?”

“Money is not the answer. Just breathe and come to acceptance of your present moment.”

“Money.”

My (pseudo)spiritual dialogue bounced off. I wished to be a shaman, a master, a powerful, enlightened Being. I woke into the moment just in time to see him rush into my space and grab my body in a bear hug.

“What the fuck!”

He managed to get both my wrists from the front side. I kicked toward his balls, but he blocked it with a shin and pushed me against the tree. I cowered in fear. Help me, Goddess! I thought. Suddenly I felt my face hit the dirt, dried leaves in my mouth. He held my arms behind me, pushing my body into the earth. He sat on top of me, his heaviness pinning me down, his ass on top of mine. I started to get turned on, then remembered I was being attacked.

“Answer me! Where’s your fucking wallet!”

I couldn’t believe I was getting mugged. How completely worthless. At least he could sexually assault me and give me a good story for the boys.

My wallet was in my purse—back pockets of designer jeans are not meant for such things. What, does he think I’m straight?

“Fuck me! I know you want to! You’re getting me hard, want to feel? Go ahead! Fuck me! Rip my pants off and stick it in!” I screamed.

“You fucking faggot!”

He loosened his hold and I took my chance to wrestle free. He jumped back into action, though, pushing my head into the dirt with one hand and holding my wrists with the other. I freed one hand and pushed into the ground, turning my body to face him. I grabbed hold of his ear and tried to rip it off. It was well attached and would not come. Eventually, my hand broke fee. He screamed hellish torment, though, and I slipped out from under him. Sprinting, I grabbed my clutch by the strap, but he latched onto the body. I tugged for a moment, then let go and ran through the trees toward the city.

Ten blocks later, out of breath and panting, I lapsed into a slow walk. I would have to cancel my credit cards, call my bank, and get a new driver’s license. And my mobile phone. Shit. I had no money and would have to go home or call someone from a pay phone. I could call my cell to see if the mugger would answer. Then I could work a Jedi mind trick and get him to give back my bag. I knew it would never work. I had no choice but to go back to Johnny. It only took a few minutes to reach my loft; I let myself in and found him in the front room.

“Hey. You’ve come home.”

“I do live here.”

“I didn’t think you’d be back.”

“I got robbed.”

“You went to the baths. I knew it.”

“I was in the park.”

“That’s not much better.”

“Not that park.”

“You mean you actually got mugged?”

“Yes, damnit!”

“That’s fucking hilarious!”

“Shut up.”

“You deserve it for being such an asshole.”

“You’re the asshole!”

“I don’t believe you, anyway.”

“Fuck off.”

“Why don’t you just admit you want to apologize?”

“I hate you.”

“I hate you, too.”

He walked across the room, took a tumbler from the cupboard, and brought it to the couch. He poured some scotch from the bottle already on the coffee table and held it out to me. “Here.”

I walked over and took it, sitting in the arm chair. He picked up his own glass and filled it. When I’d finished, about sixty seconds later, he poured me another, then looked gently toward me. “The Oregon senate finally passed the sexual-orientation anti-discrimination bill.”

“I know. I heard.”

He went on with politics for a while, and I gave short answers between his commentaries. “Figures,” I would say, or, “those fuckheads,” or, “about time,” but I let him do most of the talking.

By the time the second bottle was gone, we debated whether Audrey Hepburn or Judy Garland should win the Ultimate-Diva Goddess Award (which we had just created). At some point in our bantering, I stood and walked over to the couch, and started wrestling with him. After making out, a minute later, Johnny grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me to the bedroom.

We drank a lot the next few weeks—and fucked before going to bed each night. It wasn’t like the beginning, though, ripping each other’s clothes off every chance we got. It was always after a few drinks, in the dark, and under the covers. One afternoon, I was standing in the kitchen drinking coffee, and Johnny started in.

“You need to open up to me, we never talk.”

“Doesn’t bother me.”

“I have no idea what’s going on inside your head.”

“Probably a good thing,” I said.

“I want to know what you’re thinking.”

“Do we have any sugar? This coffee tastes like hell…”

“You hate me, don’t you?”

“I’ll have to use honey, I guess...”

“You really do. I can’t do anything right for you.”

“I wish you would remember to buy sweetener. We’re always out…”

“You’re not even listening!”

“I’ve heard it all before. Leave me alone.”

“Fine.”

He stomped out the front door—I knew it was finally over. I finished my coffee and went to pack his things. Damned if I was leaving, this was my loft, not his. I filled the suitcases with his drag and lugged them to the front room. I’d leave and let him come back to find his bags packed. He would get the hint, and further arguing would be avoided.

Glued to a barstool, several glasses sat before me. Gio sauntered in. He saw me—and the glassy eyes—and instinctively knew what had happened. He sat next to me, ordered a drink, then turned toward me.

“Is it over?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He held up his glass. “To the future!”

“This reminds me of another time,” and we clinked glasses, “a time in the park.”

“Which park is that?” he asked with a devious grin.

“Not that park.”

“Damn.”

“I was sitting against a tree, and this poor homeless man approached me. He was hungry, lonely, too, so I gave him my clutch, with some money in it, so that he could eat. And feel loved.”

“How honorable of you.”

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“Why not?”

“I mean, it’s absurd.”

“What isn’t?”

I paused and thought for a second. “I want to give you something.”

Gio rolled his eyes, then grinned at my crotch. I raised my hand and slapped him hard across the face. His eyes glazed over and he looked like he was about to stutter, but did not could not begin.

Gio had once gone by a woman’s name. I respected his decision to transition to a man, and had seen him go through it from a distance, having left him for Johnny. We had dated for a short time when he was a woman, but it had not worked out. I remembered one of those early conversations. We had engaged one another half-heartedly, joking wryly about our genital organs, and cringing at our own descriptions of giving oral sex to each other.

Usually people look at their genitals, disregarding their chromosomes and hormones, and determine their sex. From this they create a gender identity, with its associated behavioral patterns, and form a relationship with society. Gio chose a gender identity first, then altered his sex to match it. He had come in the back door.

He had become a stunning man. He went through top surgery—a double mastectomy—and bottom surgery after that. He paid a surgeon in cash, holing up with his nephew afterward, taking many months to heal. His surgeon referred to himself as an artist, and to see Gio’s gorgeous little cock, it was easy to see why. Gio guarded it like a treasure. His innards had, in a sense, been folded out—physically and metaphorically. Sex with him was passionate but delicate. We never had the breaking-furniture, wrestling-match sex I experienced with some guys. I remember lying beside him, caressing his skin, kissing his scars like birthmarks. I was always gentle.

Why I slapped him, I did not know. Gio rose from his bar stool and stood back from me, still not speaking. In my mind there was poetry to speak, and I wanted him to hear. I looked down and slowly sputtered.

“Doubly folded inward I miss … broken … touch fingertips and scars. Reborn. Skin, lips, teardrops, hair. Smell and taste. Rain and coffee, grey clouds.”

“Baby…”

I raised my hand.

Gio had slowed his drinking when he began hormones. He rubbed testosterone gel on his shoulders every night. His voice lowered to a beautiful amber—not froggy, which was his fear. His mid-section filled in, his hips rearranged themselves, and his head changed shape, widening a little. He started working out, and became perfectly built, ripping hot. He could have squished me like a bug if he wanted. Slapping him had been a courageous move.

“Gio… I… Well...” I stopped and watched him.

He looked down for a beat, then back up, and began to smile. He seemed to float toward me. The room sounded dark and chestnut red. Gio spoke loud and clear.

“Crazy fool!”

I shook my head. “Insane lad…”

“Jump off your Goddess box and love me, right here!”

“Listen to the poetry…”

“I can see you now!”

“I can hear you…”

“Wind rips through me, against me. Breathing!”

“I can see you…”

“No one could before.”

“I know, babe. I know.”

“I was invisible, someone else.”

“I see you now. I hear you. Everything.”

Our hands met, our lips, our salty tears. And more. That moment and we were alive, together. That moment and then the next. Inhaling and exhaling forward. There was nothing else. We clutched hands and left the bar, moving ahead, folding inward, and folding out. We became the entire universe, and the entire universe became ourselves.

“But, if you ever slap me again…”

THE WHOLEHEARTED WAY

2010-11-18T12:52:00.001-07:00

THE WHOLEHEARTED WAY:
DOGEN’S BENDOWA AND ITS RELEVANCE IN OUR TIME

Val Killpack

Eihei Dogen Zenji’s written teaching, Bendowa, translated as On the Endeavor of the Way by Lew Richmond and Kazuaki Tanahashi (Moon in a Dewdrop 143-60), sows the seed of much of what follows in the writings and teachings of Dogen. Bendowa followed Dogen’s Fukanzazengi, and as his second work it opened the field for Soto Zen Buddhism in Japan at that time. Dogen had shortly returned from his time in China, and had not yet formed a group of students or founded a monastery, but was “wandering about like a cloud or a water-weed, studying the wind of the ancient sages” (Moon in a Dewdrop 144). In this context, Dogen wrote Bendowa as an introductory work for Soto Zen in Japan. Following an introduction containing the essence of the practice, as Dogen understood it, he asks and answers eighteen questions concerning the practice of the Soto way of Zen Buddhism. These questions comprise what Dogen saw as probable inquiries of the Japanese people at that time. The questions still have relevance, especially as Soto Zen spreads west to the Americas and to Europe. They resemble concerns proposed by modern practitioners not familiar with Dogen-oriented Buddhist practice, yet endeavoring to practice this way of Soto Zen.

Dogen often lays out the essence of a writing in the first paragraph. In this work, jijuyu zanmai forms the foundation, the gateway into practice: “self-fulfilling samadhi is its standard” (Moon 143). Jijuyu zanmai cannot be easily explained, yet Dogen stresses its importance repeatedly in Bendowa. Kazuaki Tanahashi translates this as “self-fulfilling samadhi: The buddha’s realizing and utilizing the joy of samadhi, sometimes contrasted with the aspect of tajuyu zanmai, the joyful samadhi shared with other beings” (Moon 328). Taizan Maezumi Roshi explains further: “In Japanese, the word for self-fulfilling samadhi is Jijuyu Zanmai. Ji means ‘self,’ ju means ‘to receive,’ and yu means ‘to use.’ So, receive yourself and use yourself freely. […] Self-fulfilling samadhi is to realize the supreme wisdom that has been directly transmitted from Buddha to buddhas and ancestors” (Appreciate Your Life 21). Uchiyama Roshi explains Jijuyu as ‘accepting the function of the self’ or ‘fulfillment of the self.’ Zanmai is ‘samadhi’ or ‘concentration.’ Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Leighton elaborate further:

So we can understand this samadhi of self-fulfillment and enjoyment as the samadhi or concentration on the self when it simply receives and accepts its function, or its spiritual position in the world. The important point is that this is not the self that has an object. There is nothing other than or outside of this self. The enjoyment, fulfillment, or satisfaction is the samadhi of the self, of which there is no other. This is not an experience that is somewhere other than here and now, it is not something to be acquired or gained. […] Jijuyu samadhi is buddha’s practice. In Shobogenzo Genjokoan, Dogen Zenji says, “To study the buddha way is to study the Self; to study the Self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be enlightened by myriad dharmas; to be enlightened by myriad dharmas is to drop off the body and mind of self and others.” This is jijuyu zanmai. This actually occurs in zazen (The Wholehearted Way 43).

Over and over, Uchiyama refers to jijuyu zanmai as the self that that is nothing but the self, the self that is only the self, the self that is nothing other than the self. “In other words, the reality of life settles down into the reality of life itself. The reality of life becomes straightforward and carries out the reality of life in accordance with the reality of life. […] We actualize the reality of life simply because actualization of the reality of life is the reality of life. Since we are living out the reality of life, we actualize the reality of life in accordance with the reality of life. […] Actualization of reality is only reality. As a matter of course, the practice of zazen itself is the reality of life” (Wholehearted 164). To repeat this until it becomes the bones of practice, to sit with it as a koan, to then let it go and practice only reality, only the true self, this points toward the practice of jijuyu zanmai. The questions and answers in Bendowa, the long introduction, the stories and koans cited, they all come back to this point.

Jijuyu zanmai is the practice of enlightenment. Everything else is included. To do this practice is to actualize realization, to experience enlightenment. This is called practice-enlightenment or pratice-realization, and it is all-inclusive. Dogen first studied Tendai Buddhism in Japan, then moved on to practice Rinzai Buddhism. He had a burning question, though. ‘If we are already inherently enlightened, already all Buddhas, if we all contain, or actually are Buddha Nature, then why must we practice?’ Dogen could not find an answer to this in Japan, and so made a great voyage to China to find an answer. The second paragraph of Bendowa addresses this: “Although this inconceivable dharma is abundant in each person, it is not actualized without practice, and it is not experienced without realization” (Moon 143). This second point, that practice and enlightenment are the same, that they do not differ, is of utmost importance. Dogen is very clear about this, and speaks frankly: “To suppose that practice and realization are not one is nothing but a heretical view; in buddha-dharma they are inseparable. Because practice of the present moment is practice-realization, the practice of beginner’s mind is itself the entire original realization” (Moon 151). If jijuyu zanmai, or self-fulfilling samadhi, is the gateway to the path, then what is that path? It is not a path toward realization, but a path that actually is realization. This is the first realization—that there should be no expectation of realization outside of practice. This must be fully embodied: “If you become free from the original realization, the inconceivable practice is upheld with your whole body” (Moon 152). Where, then, does the motivation to practice come from? If trying to achieve realization is not true practice, then why does anyone practice? In fact, “how can zazen, just sitting uselessly and doing nothing, be depended upon for attaining [practicing] enlightenment?” (Moon 147) These questions continue to be asked in the modern world. ‘Why do we practice? Why do we sit still doing nothing?’ The first aspect of this has been answered: practice and realization are one. But then where is the motivation? Dogen’s answer is multifaceted. First, practice must be embodied. “The realm of buddhas is inconceivable. It cannot be reached by consciousness” (Moon 148). Secondly, the necessary condition of practice is right trust. “Only those who have right trust and great capacity can enter this realm. Those who have no trust will not accept it however much they are taught. […] When right trust arises, you can practice and study” (Moon 148). Shakyamuni Buddha, himself, illustrated this point. In an exercise of ‘skillful means,’ he spoke to an assembly at Vulture Peak. People grumbled that he had no new teachings, and only continued to teach the same dharmas. Shakyamuni said to the crowd, “You may leave if you wish,” and five-thousand arrogant people left. These people did not have right trust, and thus could not hear the Dharma. This fundamental of trust hints at the practice of vow. To vow to practice the way can start as a concept, but must move into the realm of intention. Intention resides in the body, in the hara, the tanden, in every cell. Intention is related to intuition, and it is what is acknowledged in dowsing or muscle testing. To do 108 prostrations in the morning, or three or nine, or even one. This moves our intention, our vow, into the body. To face the Buddha and exhale the small-self and lower the body toward the earth and touch the head once, or even three times—invoking the three treasures, then to raise Buddha Nature above the ego, to lift the Buddha above the small-self. This, especially when repeated as a practice, embodies the sense of vow, invokes a bodily trust and a great capacity. It empties the cup, and true practice begins. This is but one of ten-thousand gateways into practice. Only then, with this beginner’s mind, will the practitioner find realization. This is being a true student. The phrase, ‘when the student is ready, the teacher will appear,’ is not something esoteric, metaphysical, or mystical, but is direct and pragmatic. Marcel Proust once said, “The real art of discovery consists not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.” The teacher may be standing before us, but will not be established until the student opens, or empties the cup. This is echoed in Dogen’s Genjokoan: “Conveying the self to the myriad things to authenticate them is delusion; the myriad things advancing to authenticate the self is enlightenment” (Sounds of Valley Streams 66).

Uchiyama’s commentary on Bendowa is titled The Wholehearted Way. This short phrase tells much of the essence of Bendowa. The feeling of the work as an entirety is that of wholehearted practice. Dogen acknowledges the merit of other practices, “in spite of their different styles, each of the Five Houses holds the single seal of the buddha mind” (Moon 145). Yet, if Soto Zen is to be practiced, then zazen, shikantaza, or jijuyu zanmai must be practiced wholeheartedly, since it is the foundation of Soto practice. Uchiyama acknowledges the merit of Pure Land practice, and states that if that practice is done wholeheartedly, it can also actualize Buddha mind. In Soto practice, the sutras, the chants, the prostrations, the teishos and dharma teaching, these all function as instructions for the practice of zazen. Zazen could be called a yogic activity. To make an analogy, the practice of asana yoga, hatha yoga, raja yoga, or ashtanga yoga is also an activity. One could read about the primary series, study the alignment of the various postures and the form of each series, the practice of the breath (ujjayi) and the locks (bandhas), but to become a yogi or yogini, one must actually practice those postures (asanas). It seems absurd that one could become a yogi-adept through reading about them alone. The same could be said for Soto Zen. One must practice zazen to become a Zen adept, to actualize and experience realization. Reading, chanting, or studying are merely tools that point toward that practice. The classic picture of Dogen looking at the moon—the original hanging at Eiheiji—shows Dogen facing forward, sitting squarely and solidly. Upon a closer look, i.e. looking into his eyes, he shows the viewer which direction to look to see the moon. The moon could be said to represent realization, enlightenment, or the way. The moon, however, is not shown in the picture, for the practitioner must see it him or herself. Dogen does not stand and obviously point, but shows only subtly, by looking himself. This is much like the writings of Dogen. The teachings are straight-forward and direct, like Dogen’s posture, yet subtle and layered like Dogen’s gaze, and require a certain effort, an actual looking into Dogen’s eyes, and in the end they do not show the moon at all, but only in which direction to look.

This brings up another point, closely related, which is that of right effort. To know conceptually that mind or self is Buddha, that sentient beings are already true reality and buddha nature is not enough. It could be said that to project concepts onto reality is delusion. This is the idea of inside and outside. The conception that we are inside a room and we walk out the door and we are outside the room. The entire journey was done while asleep. To engage fully, being aware of each breath, of the sound of a creaking board, a bird in the distance, a sore ankle, the wind on our face, the secretions of the brain (Uchiyama’s word for discursive thoughts), and to allow the world to arise, born into mind in every miniscule mind moment, to engage life as activity, the ongoing process of impermanence, no-self, to be fully awake, this has no inside and outside and is outside of concepts. This allows the myriad things to actualize and authenticate the self. The self that is nothing but the self. Free of concepts. Being awake and living in activity, rather than entity, is the world of non-duality rather than subject and object, it is the magnanimous mind, the self that includes everything, that includes the creaking board, the wind, the chirping bird, the sore ankle, and even the secretions of the brain. To experience this is to practice zazen or jijuyu zanmai. Right effort is not just to know, but to engage wholeheartedly in the practice of zazen in every moment. It is truly the space of not-knowing. Seung Sahn often said, “Only don’t know!” Indeed, he spoke clearly: “Only don’t know!”

In Bendowa, Dogen cites a koan to illustrate right effort. It is a matter of orientation toward practice, of being situated in vow, of a positionality of trust. This is the koan:

Once a monk called director Xuanze was in the assembly of Zen master Fayan. Fayan asked him, “Director Xuanze, how long have you been in my community?”

Xuanze said, “I have been studying with you for three years.”

The master said, “You are a latecomer. Why don’t you ask me about buddha-dharma?”

Xuanze said, “I cannot deceive you, sir. When I was studying with Zen master Qingfeng [Baizhao Zhiyuan], I mastered the place of ease and joy in buddha-dharma.”

The master said, “With what words did you enter this understanding?”

Xuanze said, “When I asked Qingfeng, ‘What is the self of a Zen student?’, he said, ‘The fire god is here to look for fire.’”

Fayan said, “That is a good statement. But I’m afraid you did not understand it.”

Xuanze said, “The fire god belongs to fire. So I understood that fire looks for fire and self looks for self.”

The master said, “Indeed, you did not understand. If buddha-dharma were like that, it would not have been transmitted until now.”

Then Xuanze was distressed and went away. But on his way he said to himself, “The master is a renowned teacher in this country, a great leader of five hundred monks. His criticism of my fault ought to have some point.” He went back to Fayan, apologized, and said, “What is the self of a Zen student?”

Fayan said, “The fire god is here to look for fire.”

Upon hearing this statement, Xuanze had a great realization of buddha-dharma.

(Moon in a Dewdrop 157)

This koan illustrates many of the points so far discussed. Xuanze finds right trust, right effort, and engages in wholehearted practice. He opens into beginner’s mind, with an empty cup, and actualizes not only his teacher, but realization itself. In engaging in genuine practice, he engages in practice-realization. This true practice becomes true realization, and this true realization becomes true practice. What is the difference between the first time he hears the statement and the second time? The first is conceptual, an outward projection, whereas the second time it is a matter of practice, it advances forward.

Dogen ends Bendowa with an emphasis on right trust. In the eighteenth and final question, he says, “If you practice with right trust, you will attain the way, regardless of being sharp or dull. Do not think that buddha-dharma cannot be understood in this country because this is not a country of wisdom and the people are foolish. In fact, everyone has in abundance the correct seed of prajna [wisdom]” (Moon 159). As much as this was meant to reach the people in thirteenth-century Japan, it can apply to people in the West in the twenty-first century. All that is necessary is right trust, right effort, and wholehearted practice.

REFERENCES

Dogen Zenji, Eihei. “On the Endeavor of the Way.” Trans. Lew Richmond & Kazuaki Tanahashi. Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen. Ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1985. PP 143-160, Notes 251-252, Glossary 257-356.

Dogen Zenji, Eihei & Francis H. Cook. Sounds of Valley Streams: Enlightenment in Dogen’s Zen : Translation of Nine Essays from Shobogenzo. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.

Dogen Zenji, Eihei & Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen’s Bendowa with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. Trans. Shohaku Okumura & Taigen Daniel Leighton. Boston, MA: Tuttle Publishing, 1997.

Maezumi Roshi, Taizan. Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice. Ed. Wendy Egyoku Nakao & Eve Myonen Marko. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2001.