lgbtq

If This is Freedom, Enslave Me (a preface)

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BY BRIAN ALESSANDRO

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If we can’t write with complexity and a jaundiced eye about ourselves, what good is representation? If we can’t discomfit our readers and compel contemplation, why endeavor any artistic or intellectual pursuit? These questions began to weigh on me after reading a 2017 New York Times interview with the literary luminary Edmund White about the state of homosexuality in literature and popular culture. In fact, I was so moved by White’s thoughts that I wrote a short story inspired by them called “Please,” which has just been published in PANK print issue #14.

White, author of the 1982 classic A Boy’s Own Story, the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and most recently, The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading, is also a good friend. In the NYT article, he contemplated a question the journalist had put to him about what he’d like to see more of in queer fiction. His answer: bad gay guys! White’s concern centered on the newfound preciousness of homosexuals, that they have come to be treated with such PC delicacy that they are rarely written about as real people. We are permitted either hero status or victimhood, in effect reducing us to saints or sufferers.

The reductive tendency smacks of apologist condescension. For too long media, and in particular, cinema—the 20th century’s most popular and influential art form—has portrayed gay people as perverse, self-loathing, or flat out evil. The infractions range from Rodrigo Santoro’s swarthy queen Xerxes in Zak Snyder’s 2006 release 300 to Peter Hanly’s promiscuous ruler Prince Edward in Mel Gibson’s 1995 Braveheart to Ted Levine’s transgender-homosexual (a conflation?) fetishistic serial killer Jame Gumb in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 The Silence of The Lambs. There were also Matt Damon’s meek, brutal Tom Ripley in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 Patricia Highsmith adaptation The Talented Mr. Ripley and Sharon Stone’s sociopathic, calculating Catherine Tramell in Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 Basic Instinct. Hitchcock was perhaps guiltiest of the malevolent misrepresentation, his  Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951) both featured mincing, effeminate, cunning gay men executing sadistic agendas, while his sissy momma’s boy Norman Bates in 1960’s Psycho created dangerous fear and loathing of transgender people, confusing cross-dressing with gender identity and psychopathology. While these depictions were certainly bruising, we homo folk are now the sacred darlings of dishonest, frightened writers. I’m not entirely sure which is worse.

Farley Granger and John Dall in Hitchcock’s Rope
(1948)

I’m not suggesting we make a full return to the queer-as-subversive-revolutionary themes extolled by Genet or Pasolini (Genet’s 1943 novel Our Lady of The Flowers and Pasolini’s 1975 film Salo were unapologetic in their celebratory sordidness), but a realistic and objective treatment, absenting social context and history, could be a productive change of pace. For the sake of challenging art that doesn’t feel neutered, if nothing else. But there is something else: developing homosexual characters, and by extension, homosexuals, themselves, into flesh-and-blood humans capable of flaws and cruelty and selfishness. We homos didn’t come all this way just to demand free morality passes. We are as capable of bad behavior as any nuanced, gray-zoned hetero.

“Please” is about a nameless gay man—young (early twenties), cynical, and troubled—from Chicago who finds on Craig’s List an affluent older (fifties) gay couple working as physicians in Tucson. Upon invitation and the promise of full-time rock climbing (his great Transcendentalist passion), the young man moves into the doctors’ outsized home in the desert. The couple soon take advantage of the young man in myriad ways, including shaming him into sexual favors, restricting allowance, curtailing career opportunities, impeding social outings, and what eventually amounts to indentured servitude. The young man doesn’t mind being kept as the lifestyle they afford him satisfies his pompous entitlement. But he turns the tables on them by the end anyway through blackmail. To the manner born, the student becomes the teacher—all idioms apply.

Owing to White’s admonishment of identity politics running amuck, “Please” is an attempt to refuse absolution to the marginalized. The historically oppressed get no free passes for their transgressions, no matter how disillusioned they may be. We have earned our rightful place in the bittersweet spectacle that is our gruesome, gorgeous humanity.

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Brian Alessandro is the co-owner and editor-in-chief of The New Engagement (TNE), an online and print literary journal that has published original work by Edmund White (his first poem in sixteen years), Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning poet, Richard Howard, Murzban F Shroff, MG Stephens, Seamus Scanlon, Nadia Ibrashi, and Sue Kaufman Award-winner, Michael Carroll, whose memoir explores his marriage to White. His debut novel, The Unmentionable Mann, was published by Cairn Press in September 2015, and received favorable reviews from the Huffington Post, Examiner.com, The Leaf, and was excerpted in Bloom, the Edmund White-advised LGBTQ literary journal. It was also featured at the 2016 Tucson Festival of Books and nominated for an Independent Book Publisher Association (IBPA) award for Best New Voice. Alessandro is also the writer and director of the feature film, Afghan Hound, which co-stars Matt McGorry, and has been screened at the Left Forum and The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy as part of its trauma training series. Additionally, HiConcept Magazine recently nominated his short stories, Mandarin Slang and The Commands of Class and Carnage for Pushcart Prizes in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Alessandro holds a Master of Arts in clinical psychology from Columbia University, and has taught psychology, film, and literature classes at high schools in New York and at Pima Community College (affiliated with the University of Arizona) in Tucson. He is currently adapting White’s 1982 classic, A Boy’s Own Story, into a graphic novel for Top Shelf Productions with Carroll and teaching American Literature at a charter high school in the South Bronx.

[REVIEW] Nails by Emma Alice Johnson

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Lazy Fascist Press, 2017

REVIEWED BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Imagine you have a life. You work, spend time with friends, and love your family. Now imagine there is someone else inside you, someone who you are too afraid to show everyone else. However, the person inside you is a huge part of who you truly are, so you have to run away to another state in order to let this person out once in a while. This horrible scenario is the backdrop for Nails, a rough-yet-hilarious novella about a trans person learning to navigate a world of inside/outside dichotomies, fear, pain, beautiful nails, and acceptance.

Nails has a deceptively simple plot: Johnson goes out to Los Angeles to enjoy a weekend of long nails, dresses, music, and being in the company of other trans folks. However, not everything goes according to plan, and between too-long nails, folks screaming at her, and one trans person who keeps leaving her hanging after they make plans time and again, the narrative becomes a vehicle to explore the inner life of someone forced to hide and the possibilities of a future out in the open.

Nails, which comes it at just 80 pages, is a quick read, but it lingers for a while after the last page has been turned. Johnson is brutally honest. There is nothing she won’t discuss in this novella, and that makes for a very interesting read, as well as one in which cringing is as common as laughing out loud. This balance is strange given the subject at hand, which constantly reminds the reader of how awful people can be when confronted with someone’s who is different, but Johnson’s straightforward storytelling and raw honesty help readers who understand her sympathize and, hopefully, helps those unfamiliar with trans folks understand a bit more about their frame of mind:

“I try not to get too caught up in pronouns though. I don’t hate being a “he.” I just hate that my masculinity is such a hindrance to my femininity. I wish I could wake up each morning and decide whether I wanted to be a girl or a boy, depending on what part of me wanted to be in control. Sometimes I wish I did hate my masculinity. I wish I could say that I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body. Then I’d have an easier time – well, definitely not easier. But if I felt like a woman all the time, instead of some of the time, at least I’d know I wanted to start popping hormones and growing boobs. Sometimes I feel like I should just assert toward female, but I couldn’t do that, because then I’d be subverting my masculine side, and I don’t want to. I like him. He’s just a bit of a bully. Arg. Men, right?”

Plenty has been written about the trans experience, but Nails offers something new and unique. This isn’t a serious essay about discrimination. This isn’t about the physical realities of a very tall man stepping into high heels and getting long nails done. This isn’t about the way we are sometimes forced to hide our true self from others. This isn’t an academic deconstruction of masculinity as it relates to the trans experiences. This isn’t a funny story about a trans person escaping reality and having the world constantly collapse around her. No, this is all of that and more. This is all of that and a very personal look at a life in secret. This is all of that and a window into someone’s life a bit before they decided to stop living this way and announced to the world who they really were. This is all of that and an emotional, hilarious, incredibly sad, sometimes angering narrative of a real double life and the conflicting emotions constantly swirling at its center:

“Oh shit, now I’m crying. Big fat tears are bouncing down my cheeks. Snot is crawling from my nostrils. This is a full-on balling session. All I can do is go with it. Here I am, by myself, in this rental car that smells empty, in a city where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me, in a fucking world where nobody knows me, the real me, because this is the real me, a big fucking makeup-covered ball of emotions, and I hate it. I hate that this is what I have to do. But it is what I have to do. It’s what I’ve always had to do since I was a kid, so I can either fight against it – and I’ve tried that, I’ve tried so hard – or I can deal with it the best I can. And it’s going to continue to be awkward. And it’s going to continue to hurt. But I have no choice. I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live like this.”

This is a frightening novella; a real slice of life filtered through a unique experience but full of humanity and humor that acts as a shield against the world. More than that, this is precisely the kind of narrative that should be read and shared as it can help everyone understand a bit more about a specific type of Otherness, and how the person inhabiting it deals with what the world throws their way.

IDENTITY

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BY JAMIE LOWENSTEIN

 

Artist’s Statement: 

Changing the format of a poem from visual (reading) to visual (video) and auditory (spoken word) stretched my imagination and forced me to rely on intuition, friends, and my theatre training. My poetry writing tends to start with a small idea or phrase, and then goes onwards with no clear direction in mind, mixing metaphors, and ending eventually when there is not much steam left to go on. In my everyday life, I tend to have more direction with the same result- stopping when I run out of steam. In this case, I had already completed this step because the poem, which acted as the foundation, was already written. The small idea, identity and identifiers/labels, had coal thrown on its fire, and the steam powered it on for 5 pages. I finished the poem, reflected on its exploration of how one identity for an entire person is minimizing because people are inherently intersectional–“i am at the intersection of all my identities”–and set the poem to rest. So, how did I find a way to further explore a piece that I felt was finished?

In a class I’m currently taking, we spend a lot of time discussing media as a form of performance, and how this type of performance, in a Warholian way, either is or is not a reflection of our truth. So, my first idea was to film myself looking in the mirror in order to turn a private moment of performance public. Publicizing intimacy normalizes it, and allows an audience to feel personally understood. Next I thought of writing my identity labels on my body. Originally I wanted them to circle my neck like a noose, and then up onto my face like a tool of asphyxiation. However, I ultimately decided against that idea because of simple practicality and the worry of breaking out even more–maybe “vain” should have been a title in that list. In any case, I now had a new idea to further my work: the inability to change how others perceive you visually i.e. based on skin color, acne, etc.

With this idea in mind, I mapped out what the camera would be showing the audience for each beat of the poem, bringing out images in the poem more clearly and concretely. Once I had planned each beat, I knew I could not do this project myself. I am not a drawing artist, and I couldn’t pan around my own body. I reached out to 2 friends of mine who do have these talents, and they were extremely helpful, doing their best to help me achieve my vision. The process mirrored my theatre work, meaning that it was collaborative. I gave Ray a lot of liberty to draw the pictures however she wanted, which ended up with a beautiful result going down my spine. The filming went a similar way. Jen apologized for her shaky hands and not getting the timing exactly right, but I assured her that all small flaws could be embraced because the poem is not about being perfect, but rather about falling apart at the seams. The video both adds to this idea, but also contrasts it: showing me free of labels in the end, no longer dictated by the text of the poem. The last shot is very similar to the first because the text mirrors itself, but at the end the “i” words do not make me blink because I am controlling my own identity and what you see of me when.

The audio experience of the poem–my harsh assonance and stabbing pronunciations, contrasted with the Chopin piece–are used to further the contrast of the visual with the text. My voice reflects the uncontrollable spiral of self-doubt and the overwhelming power of others’ impressions. However, self-doubt is often internal. The most seemingly stable, happy person can be torn apart internally. And that is the function of the song- to reflect the external performance of someone struggling to come to terms with their identities’ intersections.

 

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Jamie Lowenstein is a poet and actor based in New York City currently at Pace University in its International Performance Ensemble. He’s interested in diverse stories, especially within the queer community.

[REVIEW] Trouble the Water by Derrick Austin

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BOA Editions
April 2016
REVIEW BY JORDYN SCHWERSKY
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Derrick Austin’s stunning debut, Trouble the Water, gives readers unique insight on what it means to be a queer, black man in today’s world. He navigates the complicated worlds of race, sexuality, and religion with such fearlessness that we as readers can’t turn away even if we wanted to. Mary Szybist, in her forword, writes that that fearlessness begins with the book’s title, and she’s right. Before we even see the first page, Austin lets us know that this is not a book to be read passively. Rather, Trouble the Water is both a title and a command, a command for us to trouble both society’s waters and our own.
One of the most striking aspects of Trouble the Water is the graceful way Austin weaves sexuality and religion together, so much so that at times they are one and the same thing. Sex and God are both equal and opposite, drawing Austin’s speakers in and also forcing them to turn away. Heaven is another’s lips. One poem, called “Devotions,” is an ode to a lover. Often poetry about sex or religion takes an obvious standpoint, either on one side of the line or the other, but Austin’s poetry makes the reader think, hard, about what it is we believe in, particularly on the subject of LGBTQ issues. Sexuality and religion are separate issues that have been so convolutedly twisted together in today’s society that it’s hard to see them coexisting, but Austin attempts to show us that they can.
The other prominent theme in Trouble the Water is race. In the poem “Blaxploitation,” every line ends with the word “black,” forcing the reader to confront that, for a person of color, blackness is something that is ever-present rather than something which exists only when it’s convenient. Then there are times when Austin writes about race as if it’s an afterthought, balancing the ideas that race is both a massive part of people of colors’ lives and at the same time is merely a descriptive factor.
An interesting tool that Austin utilizes throughout all his poems, whether they focus on race, sexuality, or religion, is to use art as a descriptor and comparative factor. Many of his poems are set in museums, others inspect God and Christ through paintings. The poem “Breakwater” is theimagined story behind a photograph. Paintings and photos and music are not separate from our humanity; they are our humanity.
Austin tackles the difficult task of being both hauntingly amusing and utterly serious, making the reader feel hope and joy and sorrow all at once. He makes us rethink old assumptions and reminds us that we have the power to change what we think we know. Religion can evolve to fit today’s society. Love is complicated. Race is too. In the end, though, we’re all essentially the same, just people trying to live our lives free from fear. In “Torch Song,” the speaker says, “when I open my arms to the crowd and mouth / the night’s first note, I don’t sing; you singe,” and I think that line embodies Trouble the Water. Austin sings to us in a way that makes the reader feel uncomfortable, on fire.
Austin is an important voice in poetry. His book comes at a time when it is becoming more and more difficult to ignore the social injustices these communities face. Trouble the Water is not justthe title of Austin’s book; it is a command. The only question now is whether or not we will listen.