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No Harm To Lovers: A Marriage Trilogy Vol. I

[link to purchase book on Amazon--KDP, print-on-demand, and kindle]

Back in the early 2000s, as a young person becoming more engaged in LGBTQ+ activism, the world felt like a very different place. First, we were still very immediately in the still long shadow casts by the murder of Matthew Shepherd, by the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, and by the new wars we were fighting while also implementing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Conversely, Lawrence v. Texas had very recently granted new rights to the community, but the backlash to that ruling was that, in 2004, 13 states took measures to ban gay marriage. All succeeded, including my native Tennessee.

 Meanwhile, despite Lawrence v. Texas, several states maintained their anti-sodomy laws, ostensibly unenforceable, in case the courts were to overturn Lawrence the way Lawrence had overturned Bowers v. Hardwick. Antonin Scalia actually predicted that without anti-sodomy laws, there would be no legal justification to outlaw same-sex marriage--thus, he predicted that it would eventually come to be. His warnings were heard by like-minded fascists.

 Also, meanwhile, as a young gay 20something in West Tennessee, soon to move to Mississippi, I believed some equality would eventually be gained, but late in my lifetime--certainly not by 2013 and 2015. I used to joke that global warming and gay marriage would come together in the narrative of my life. I'd defect to Canada to escape the oppression of the United States right around the time Canada became a warm, cozy place to live and  most of the mid-south turned into an expanded Gulf of Mexico. I was only partially vindictive, and mostly joking--and had no idea I'd be working in Wisconsin when I finally finished this book and got the courage up to self-publish it.

 It is probably the fate of most writers of fiction that their first book is autobiographical, but if I'm decent at this writing thing, then I'd also say that a *good* writer (generally--not necessarily *great*) knows how to--wait for it--turn the actual into apocryphal and so create a fictional cosmos all our own.

 Many of the details in these stories start with a loose connection to actual events from my life, but they turn deeply fictional very quickly. It is not so  much about making things up but starting at one point in time, imagining its implications and possibilities, looping outward and outward, until you spiral back down to the one point from which you began. The first point was a night at the gay club in Jackson, my hometown--I came home and wrote out my impressions of this stunning drag show I had just witnessed. It became to anchor to a story about the club, about the lingering fear of AIDS, and about coming of age in my hometown. Josh is not me, and many of his stories are stories I heard from others, fictionalized through the process of taking random bits of different stories, combining them, and trying to create a sense of how they'd shape a person's life.

 Then, in 2006, some friends of mine in grad school wanted a day out of Oxford right in early December. They were both women, both cis, both straight, so it wasn't exactly two boys on a date together. But the detail about Pontotoc is accurate--or was at the time. For a short period in the early days of what are now our longest wars, Pontotoc lost the most lives per capita of any town/city in the United States. I wrote most of the story--the first coherent draft that became this book--after that afternoon in December. To finish the story, I went back to Pontotoc a few months later. Four pictures were in that shop window. Those wars are still active engagements. Soldiers still die.

 Finally, the shock of the 2008 election--its elation for the country, its shattering outcome for same-sex marriage because of the vote in California. I experienced election night with a group of friends, every one of whom wept when the election was called for Obama. We all felt like we were seeing the advent of hope. Most of that group were straight folks, all of whom were allies who understood the pain experienced by the gay community a day later when the final vote on Prop. 8 was tallied. I had to remind myself of what I had experienced all those years earlier in a club in West Tennessee. I reminded myself that we would not see progress until late in my life time.

 This moment became the impetus to go back to those old notes about that drag show and revise them into a story about time, space, and sorrow. And then I went back to a work of non-fiction I submitted for a workshop when I was an undergraduate, also around 2004. In Martin, Tennessee, on a random day in April, the power went out for several hours. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and after finding myself unable to focus on anything useful, I called some friends from our campus gay-straight alliance to join me for Mexican food at a little restaurant next to campus where we often went to hang out.

 The day was perfect, gorgeous, tender like spring, warm like coming summer. The power being out gave me an excuse to tune out schoolwork and focus on the joy of the moment. I drove in to town from my apartment a bit out in the boonies. Some of the other members of the group arrived at the same time. None of us presented outwardly as queer--at least not flamboyantly. At least not as far as we knew. Nonetheless, as we laughed and walked to the front door of the restaurant, resplendent in the glow of the early evening sun, a car drove by and yelled out at us "Faggots!"

 The day was shattered. We ate quickly. We all left in silence. No one commented on the beauty of that sunny April day.

 These stories all came together. Twist a little here, add there, create some new characters. Actual to the apocryphal, some writer one said.

 Et voila!

 This volume ends in 2008. Volume II moves forward to the days just before the big Supreme Court cases on gay marriage.

 But as a final note--I worked on revisions for this novella over the summer after releasing the whole trilogy together last year. That version had a lot of typos and other errors. By releasing it, I found some friends who helped offer constructive criticism of it. The giant edition that had all three volumes also got too bulky and it's binding wasn't what I'd hoped. So I decided to publish each of these separately and lower the cost. This is not a money-making venture. It's just self-publishing, which is not always a highbrow endeavor. Just a way to stay engaged in writing, I guess.

 I did not realize this book would finally arrive on my doorstep during a debate in the US Senate over installing a new Supreme Court justice who has been called "the female Antonin Scalia." Nor did I ever actually think that other justices would start the  month of October signalling that a new, conservative court was ready to take aim at marriage equality.

 And here I am in Wisconsin, looking north and wondering what the future holds.    

 

 

How to Write a Book: Advice for Our Moment

 How to write a book:

 1–don’t use too many words

2–don’t use too many big words

3–don’t write about something new or original

4–don’t write about something that requires your audience to read other books

5–don’t write about something that presumes your audience has read other books

6–try to say something people already know

7–try to say it in such a way that pleasantly gratifies your readers’ preconceived notions

8–lower your expectations

9–remember that marketability is not the same as creativity

10–be aware that marketability is, by it’s nature, anti-creative

11–be aware that marketability is also anti-intellectual

12–consider that high-end marketability even to self-conceived sophisticated people is basically the low end of middlebrow

13–try not to get too down about it all

14–during revisions, remember that 13 is an unlucky number and consider revising it out

15–act grateful and assured when friends tell you to ignore reviews

16–act optimistic when friends tell you it’s common not to be reviewed at all

17–be aware that judges for awards probably don’t read the full text of anything

18–be aware that full-text reading is rare

19–be aware that even judges of literary contests, however hip their black and white publicity photos, are actually just normal readers who have succeeded in the market

20–recognize that even judges for literary contests are on the low end of middlebrow

21–expect to be called entitled, petulant, privileged, or whiny for being honest about these kinds of things

22–do not pick a subject you care about

23–consider that success depends on topics that seem important

24–remember that “seeming important” is just a layperson’s way of saying “topical”

25–do not forget #2 above

26–definitely avoid writing about a gay topic in a field deeply entrenched in white patriarchy and heteronormativity from a perspective meant also to challenge the banal but deeply popular opinion that same-sex desire is irrelevant unless the subject is contemporary marriage or opaquely queer

27–do not give away your author copies

28–lower expectations more than you already have

29–practice smiling and speaking with natural warmth when your friends drone on about their children and show pictures or give you updates on their home improvement projects or extoll their plans for marvelous vacations and fancy dinners at chic restaurants highlighting fusion menus under the trendy and fashionable auspices of a highly marketable name

30–every month or so take one of your author copies down and read a paragraph or two at random wherever the page falls open

31–read some insincere self-help quotes in your Facebook timeline

32–fewer words, fewer words

33–never respond in any way to anyone who ever says, “I’d like to write a book one day”

34–avoid detail-oriented conversation with anyone who generally responds, “wow, it’s so cool you wrote a book”

35–plan ahead to de-friend the kind of people who respond to the book only by pointing out the one typo you never corrected in the 140,000 words you spent more than a decade trying to perfect

36–in job interviews remember to talk mostly about your “next project”

37–don’t bring up your book around colleagues

38–generally avoid talking about it with friends

39–for your upcoming birthday, find a bar somewhere where no one knows you and craft a fake identity that does not involve writing books

40–read a sonnet by Milton; the first few cantos of Dante

41–don’t assume anyone understands allusions that require reading other books

42–regret joining social media to “market” the book you’ve written

43–the next time an idea crosses your mind that you’d like to write about, resist.

_________

**I tend to recycle models, and of late I've been using Michael Lassell's "How to Watch Your Brother Die," a deeply moving AIDS poem, because the idea of a second-person "instructional" has been a useful rhetorical tool to explore some ideas. 

Queer Voices of the South: Morris Ardoin, Stone Motel

Queer Voices of the South Podcast

 Check out this first podcast for New Books Network. John Marszalek interviews Morris Ardoin for the first installment in our new series: Voices of the Queer South.

 Link above. Stay tuned for more.

There Was a Dull Man Who Attracted a Fly: A Poem for the Vice Presidential Debate

 "I head a fly buzz / when I died"

                --Emily Dickinson

There was a dull man who attracted a fly--
I don't know why he attracted a fly, perhaps he died?

There was a dull man who looked like a spider
While a real person talked and he looked dumb beside her--
He looked like a spider but attracted a fly?
I don't know why he attracted that fly--maybe he died?

There was a dull man whom I'd flip the bird--
How ABSURD to flip THAT man the bird!
I'd flip him the bird, that venomless spider
Who stood there quite dumb, who stood there beside her,
He's such a dull person and attracted a fly--
but I won't say why he attracted that fly--perhaps he died?

There was a dull man afraid of a cat!
Afraid of the cat?! Let’s knit him a hat!
About that dull man, I'd flip him the bird--
It's not really absurd, he deserves a good bird--
I'd flip him the bird, that feckless spider
With no venom or words while he stands there beside her--
He's such a dull person and attracted a fly,
He's made of shit, that must be why--maybe he died?

There was a dull man who swallowed a dog--
Dumb as a log, his boss won't own a dog--
That same dull man was afraid of a cat--
Just think of that, afraid of a cat--
The same dull man whom I'd flip the bird,
Because he's absurd--let's give him the bird!
He's also quite feckless, that venomless spider
Who looks so outmatched standing beside her--
He's painfully dull, but attracted a fly--
Like a man made of shit, now I know why--maybe he died?

There was a dull man who swallow a cow--
Holy Shit! HOW? He swallowed a cow!
He swallowed a cow like he swallowed the dog--
A better use of his mouth, less of a slog,
While he stands there, so dull, afraid of a cat,
And I mean really, what do you make of that?
It's really almost nothing to flip him the bird--
He deserves nothing less; he's simply absurd.
More granddaddy long-legs than fearful spider,
While his spouts all his lies as he stands there beside her--
He's dull and useless except to that fly--
We all know why he attracted that fly--maybe he died?

There was a dull man who swallowed a horse--
But Kamala had already slayed him of course.

Now go vote for a better future.

October 7, 1998: The First Time I Came Out

 

 On the night on October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard went to a bar in Laramie, Wyoming. He was 21, a college student, and gay. Just before midnight, he left the bar with two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They took him out of town, and in the very first hours of October 7, they beat him, tied him to a fence post, and left him for dead. During the beating, they pistol-whipped him across the face, an act of violence so severe that it fractured Shepard’s skull.

 That night, the temperatures on the high plains outside of Laramie dipped below freezing, as is common at that elevation in early October. It would be several hours before a cyclist, out for a ride, spotted Shepard. He originally thought Shepard was a scarecrow. Shepard was air-lifted to a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he would die on October 12. The fracture to his skull would be listed as the primary cause of death; doctors were unable to relieve the swelling in his brain. However, the hours of exposure on that fence post almost certainly contributed to his death. He never regained consciousness in the hospital. His last conscious moments were cold visions of a dark plain below him. If he died surrounded by his parents, in a way he had already passed on to whatever it is that comes next. He left this world out there on that fence post; he left this world alone.

 The sheriff who first responded to the 911 call from the cyclist noted that, though his face was smeared with blood, she saw tracks of tears on Shepard’s cheeks. He had been conscious after they left him. He had wept.

 I had a cross country meet at the University School of Jackson on the evening of October 7. I was a junior, and while I would not be the top placer on my high school team for every meet that year, it was the year during which I was, overall, our top runner.

 To understand this story, it is important that I stress a point that is too easily forgotten now, twenty-two years later. We didn’t have smart phones in our pockets in 1998. My family had a computer with immensely slow dial-up internet, and I certainly never used it to check the news. My news sources were the local newspaper, the Jackson Sun, and because I was always a bit too curious about the world, even when I was much younger, I made a point to watch the nightly news, both the local news and national news every day if I could. The hour of news from 5:00-6:00 and the morning paper were my only regular media for news consumption. But most news was local, and the mid-sized city where I grew up in West Tennessee is a long way from the high plains outside of Laramie, at least geographically speaking.

 On the morning of October 7, I did not know what had happened in Wyoming. Matthew had not yet even been found.  

 I always wore my warm-ups on meet days, especially for local meets. We ran the JC-M Invitational early in the season, and since I was a student at JC-M (Jackson Central-Merry), obviously that local meet was a big deal for me. And then, in early October, we had the USJ meet, our other local event before districts and regions. On this particular day, some of my friends from JC-M, Northside, and USJ all decided to come over to the meet (USJ had moved up to McClellan road the previous year) to cheer me on. Very high school; very Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

 That reference fits here, sort of. I had long since figured out that I was gay. It was an unnecessarily anxious process of moving away from being convinced that  homosexuality was sinful or something and worrying about what it would mean to say I was gay because that kind of thing wasn’t kosher in my high school or my hometown. I mean, folks knew about Muse Park and the gay cruising that went on there; when my cross country team went there to run on the trails for workouts, the endless homophobias of the white guys on the team were enough to chase anyone, however confident, into the closet. Folks also knew about the gay club on the north side of town called “The Other Side.” And more than a few folks had determined I must be gay—the short running shorts didn’t help my attempts at denial. I’d been teased and picked on for as long as I can remember, partially the normal bullying of anyone singled out for contempt, partially maybe because I was showing but didn’t realize it yet, even as early as when I was 5 and 6 and through my days in high school. Being a top local athlete didn’t spare me.

 One guy on my team had managed to tell a whopper of a joke one day at practice when we were loading up in cars to drive to Muse Park to run: Why did Phillip cross the road? To get to The Other Side. It was a killer. Everyone laughed, including me. Best defense mechanism—join the laughter, even when it’s scary as hell.

 And because the gods have a sense of humor, the guy who told that joke was also the first person on whom I had a fuck-my-life head-over-heels crush. My crush was so enormously overwhelming that I couldn’t deny it. It wasn’t just a curiosity, nor a “phase.” Nor something I could shut off nor ignore. Mind you, later, once I came out, I went all emo before emo was cool over this guy—who had absolutely no interest in me at all. Basically, I was a moron about my first “love.” But sweet God in heaven, it was still everything!—he was a friend and we hung out sometimes, and when we did I was just like, “%^&*#@*&%#$@!” (Translation: stupidly smitten).

 For this story, it doesn’t matter that he was straight and wasn’t interested (this post isn't exactly the telephone scene in The Boys in the Band). It matters that I finally realized what it meant to have a crush on someone and admit it to myself. That got me. That made me think, okay, this is real; this is the truth. In fact, it was a truth so big that all I wanted to do was tell my friends about it. And that meant coming out.

 So back to that meet on that night in early October. I had gone home after school for a minute, but I’d also given rides to some friends on the team. We pilfered the pantry for bagels and fruit. Then we all went over to the meet up on the suburb side of town. I didn’t check the news. There were no iPhones nor constantly updating timelines on the not-yet-invented Facebook. I had just finished a day at school and was headed off to an afternoon and early evening cross country race, back when we weren’t plugged into the happenings of the world all the time.

 I ran well. My running journal (yes, I kept a running journal) is filled with embarrassing comments to myself about how awesome I had done (“Don't you know it” with an arrow pointing at my time *embarrassed eyeroll*). The weather was beautiful—early Fall in West Tennessee, cool but not cold, dry with the leaves just teasing you that they will change pretty soon and fields of corn and cotton in their first days of harvest. My “crew” of friends—none of them athletes, much less runners—came to cheer me on and hang out. As the sun set and we waited on awards, we were all cutting up and carrying on (and thanks to John Howard for claiming that second phrase for queer identity). Included in this group was this guy I was just smitten for. And I just kept thinking, “Damnit, I hate not telling my friends. I just want to tell them. Just so they know. I have this crush. He’s so dreamy. Damn Damn Damn I just want to talk to someone about it!”

 The meet ended; I drove home. I was 16, a few weeks shy of 17 (hums along “You are sixteen, going on seventeen . . .”). Once I got home, I called my friend Celia—we did have a cordless phone even if we only had one landline. I retreated to my room. I took a deep breath. I told her, “So yeah, you know that guy tonight on the team. I just . . ..”

 And I came out to my friend. It was the first time I had ever told somebody.

 (for a moment of levity, please consider checking out this Broadway Backwards performance. It’ll make you smile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQE2ycuoyM0&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=BroadwayCares%2FEquityFightsAIDS).

 Oddly, I do distinctly remember following the developments about Matthew Shepard during the weeks after the attack against him and his death. I read about the gay kid in Wyoming who was beaten and left for dead. I heard the word “hate crime” used to describe what happens to gay people for the first time. I heard the early debates and conspiracies spouted by so many people who will go to any length to deny humanity to LGBTQ+ lives. I have a loving family who is very accepting, but at the time I wasn’t out to them, and I was mortified by the thought of talking to them about it, convinced it would be a problem (I was wrong). So, I snuck in chances to read the local paper and its 100-word AP stories on the “Nation” page past “local news.” I was glued to the national nightly news to hear updates, but I tried not to be caught paying attention. I definitely didn’t ask if anyone else was keeping up with what was going on.

 This was also around the time I started to notice the high number of opinion columns and letters to the editor in the local paper arguing that homosexuality was a sin, gay people not worthy of protections, hate crimes not relevant to the violence directed at gay lives. Jackson, Tennessee is not a town known for its liberal thinking. In fact, when tornadoes pummeled the city in January 1999, more than a few people blamed the death and destruction on the city being too far from God, especially in its embrace of homosexuality—which was news to a local gay kid, no doubt. Like, this is too much tolerance? Then what on earth does intolerance look like?

 Well, the fate of Matthew Shepard, for one thing. Or what happened in the aftermath, especially as Westboro Baptist Church used Shepard’s death and the national media attention it received to raise their own national profile. At one point, church leaders proposed putting a monument up at the site where Shepard was tied to the fence post saying “On October 6, 1998, at this spot, Matthew Shepard entered hell.” Good country people, these folks, eh?

 I remember all of that. I feel it in my bones as part of the composition of my very being. This is the gay world I inherited and these its terms. But—and I can’t stress this enough—I never associated any of this with my actual coming out experience. I came out. I have memories of the following days—telling Celia, telling Natalie—my two best friends—then telling a few other folks, trying it on a bit, seeing how it felt. I told Natalie a couple weeks after the USJ meet, right around my birthday, while we were—and I’m not making this up—driving together to the local Judgment House as part of our church group. That immediate coterie of friends who came to the meet, who were my crew! I told them on so many cool October evenings, and it felt marvelous and new and true and amazing.

 And every one of them. Every one. They told me it was totally cool. It was great. Most of them sort of knew already. Celia and Nat even told me I was loved. My coming out experience to my friends in October 1998, beginning on October 7 after that USJ cross country meet, was magical. I was—I am—blessed. And so thankful.

 And so, I guess that I just couldn’t hold it in my head that my experience was so magical while, simultaneously, something so terrible could have happened at the same time.

 I did not come out of the closet because I was thinking of Matthew Shepard. He was found on that fence post in Wyoming on October 7, 1998. I came out that evening in Jackson, Tennessee, completely unaware of what had happened in that distant college town. In the following days, I led two gay lives, which I managed to separate: the scared gay kid confronting tragedy; the scared gay kid finding acceptance and love.

 I would be in college at UT-Martin before I really began to face the legacy of Shepard’s death. When my campus gay-straight alliance decided to honor Day of Silence by writing coming out stories that we planned o read at our Break the Silence rally, I started to put the two events together. I was writing about coming out; I realized I had come out for the first time in early October 1998. Then I remembered, hey, that is when Matthew died.

 Day of Silence was the pinnacle event for my campus gay-straight alliance, our most visible day of the year. It is a day meant to honor those whose voices (whose lives) have been lost to hate directed against the LGBTQ+ community. One year—again, different time, different internet—I wrote a letter explaining the meaning of Day of Silence, printed hundreds of copies, and walked to each campus office, with another member of the alliance, to hand-deliver them to the administrative assistants to ask that they put one in each faculty mailbox under their care. Some folks literally chunked the letter in the trash before we even left their offices. One woman read the letter, listened to our spiel, and chortled—actually fucking chortled—because of course protesting violence against LGBTQ+ people is funny, especially when two students would so brazen walk around campus basically telling the world they are gay themselves so please would you consider helping us distribute our letter? *chortle chortle* We did all we could do; we stood there in silence and politely asked how many copies she’d like.

 One October, just before another election, in a year when 13 states took active steps to outlaw same-sex marriage, I went with the other members of the alliance to the big intersection in town by the McDonald’s and the Walmart—Martin is a delightfully Southern town, so these landmarks will have to suffice for location. Someone had put up a giant Kerry/Edwards sign. Their slogan that year, boilerplate campaign language: “A Stronger America.” Except the sign had been defaced to read “A Gayer America.” Right out in the open. We took pictures with it—joining the laughter, even when it’s scary as hell.

 And one time, we all got together to watch The Laramie Project released on HBO. Later, for an event sponsored by the campus chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, I got to be part of a public reading of scenes from Angels in America. I met openly gay professors. I met other gay students (and bi and trans and allies) both in the group and out of the group. One day in an English class, I explained how William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! is obviously a gay story because Faulkner, like all the great Modernists, was gay so of course he’d write homosexual desire into the story, even if it seems mildly closeted, plausible deniability and all. The professor gave me a look and rebutted, “But Faulkner wasn’t gay.” And we all know how that conversation eventually turned out.

 And then one night, I got to thinking about it—No, not about Faulkner. About that night in October when I first came out. I didn’t talk much about it when I started to realize the timing. It’s a little intense to realize how close ships pass in a night, and would that the captains turn there, in the dark, from the high lonely view of the pilot house, and see, there, alongside them, the single light of another vessel. If you don’t look around, maybe the other ship passes undetected, and you wake up in the morning and think, “My, my, what I would give to know that my ship is not alone in this big, big sea.”

 But I kept those old running journals, complete with their embarrassing commentaries. So, one night, I dug them out and started looking—and I had the internet available at this point, so I Wikipedia’d the timeline of Matthew’s death. My running journal for 1998 was from Runner’s World, part of a package deal that came with the subscription my parents had gotten me the previous Christmas. And there it was. The race. The date. The proximities sit with me still, perhaps will sit with me always. I don’t want to forget it or disguise it. It is what it is; and, when I think about what it means to be alive and out of the closet; when I think of the endless times we must come out, over and over, in so many settings both banal and, also, scary; when I think about what it means to be brave and feel like I am just not up to it; when I think about saying no to requests to speak at queer events on campus or in the community; and when I think about what I can do to do the most good—well, I think of Matthew Shepard.

 I wonder, in the vast stretch of land between the two ranges of American Mountains, in the enormous drainage basin of fly-over states and middle-America, if a tear were shed above the plains of Laramie, how many eons of geological time would it take that tear to travel down the Laramie River to the North Platte, the Platte, the Missouri, the Mississippi, and pass by Jackson, set on the banks of its own little tributary for that old father of waters measuring the profundities of time. I don’t know. I just know it’s all one earth, we are all just human. That will have to be enough.   

 On the night on October 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard went to a bar in Laramie, Wyoming. He was 21, a college student, and gay. Just before midnight, he left the bar with two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. They took him out of town, and in the very first hours of October 7, they beat him, tied him to a fence post, and left him for dead. During the beating, they pistol-whipped him across the face, an act of violence so severe that it fractured Shepard’s skull.

 The next morning, I got up and went about my day like your average 16-year-old high school student, only I had a secret, and I was just so desperate to tell it to someone. I had reached a point where I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore.

 During the day on October 7, a cyclist found Shepard and called 911. The sheriff who responded found him unresponsive, but in the blood smeared on his face, she saw the tracks of his tears.

 Later that evening, I ran a cross country race, hung out with friends, and finally decided I was going to say it to someone—I’m gay. Here’s this part of me that matters, and I want to share it. I want to speak it. I’m always scared of how people will react to it—all this time later, how much have we changed? But I said it that night to a friend who told me it was okay and even awesome and that she was glad I’d finally come out.

 Over the next five days, Matthew Shepard would lie in a coma until, on October 12, he died.

 Over the next couple of weeks, I’d tell more of my friends, turn 17, and be a total moron about my first crush, like everyone should have a right to be.

 I have, today, now been out of the closet longer than Matthew Shepard was alive. As Faulkner might say it: More people have lived to 20 than 21. At 38 I’ve had 22 years out of the closet to the 21 he had on earth. Far too may queer people have lost lives and lifetimes to silence. To hate. To fear. To closets. It would be nice if that could change.

 ______

 If there is a moral to this post, if you’ve made it this far through it, maybe here’s what to take away—

 We celebrate National Coming Out Day on October 11. For National Coming Out Day, seek out a queer person in your life. You don’t have to ask them to tell you their coming out story or any story. Or anything. Just maybe consider sending them a little low-key message: Hey, it’s National Coming Out Day. In case you need to hear it: you are loved.

When Bad Men Die, an Occasional Poem

 

When Bad Men Die, an Occasional Poem

 

They are nothing

if not contempt—

able to look in the eyes

of the children

when they lock the cages;

 

able to breathe calm air

when they brace their boot

on a man who begs for mercy;

 

able to count their stocks

and call their broker

when the world is breaking;

 

able to scorn wearing masks

when vans abduct

innocent people protesting—

 

they do not wear the mask—

they care not why the caged bird sings—

 

they offer praise to rapists, traitors, petty thieves.

 

They follow orders; they

believe in lone wolf disorders; they

ignore when bounty is placed on troops; they

praise the good in Nazi groups; they

breathe the same air as I breathe; they

die the same deaths that I grieve.

 

If tomorrow the orange menace were to die,

I'd shed no tear, not one, not I—

 

I don't believe in God—

Nor heaven, nor hell.

 

Yet, I'll wish no man to die—

even if I do not wish him well.

 

They can't care less if their enemies die;

But that is them, the opposite of I.

 

I will not wish that he rest in peace—

for there is nothing now; life is all.

 

There is no special, later grace—

there never was a time before the fall.

 

When I count the dead—I'll count him, too,

because that is what good people do.

 

If I do not praise nor will I dance

on graves of evil men; the chance

to cry, righteously, I told you so!

does nothing useful, as far as I know.

 

It is not mourning that I feel—

it's that each death, each one, is real,

 

so I acknowledge each one, my enemies, too,

because that is what good people do.

________

I wrote this poem the day that Herman Cain died. Admittedly, at the time I was thinking about the Kaddish scene from Angels in America. Last week, I had cause to return to that scene to meditate on the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg--you can also find that post on this blog. For Ginsburg, I was sad; for Cain I was troubled. Cain had been a marginal figure in American life with no real influence, but when he ran for president and in his public appearances since, he stood for beliefs I found repellant. And he was an ardent supporter of Trump--which likely led to his death as most observers believe he contracted the coronavirus while attending Trump's ill-conceived Tulsa Rally. 

Though in truth my thoughts in this poem stem from the death of Muammar Gaddafi, of all people, back in 2011. He was, no doubt, an evil man who caused enormous suffering. He was, finally, deposed, at which point he was killed in the streets by a gunshot. Footage of his death, and the moments preceding it, circulated online and on some news shows, and even though I recognize the righteousness of the anger directed at him and, possibly, the necessity to execute him lest he rally supporters and prolong deadly civil strife--death is death. It is brutal and final. It is never to be celebrated nor praised. 

A reminder to every John Wayne loving American who thinks it's cool to carry a gun so they can shoot the bad guy who tries to rob the gas station--or whatever Owen Wister-esque fantasy that kind of person has in mind--death is not easy. The bad guys don't just fall over dead at the first shot nor immediately disappear from the screen, faceless, nameless henchmen adding to a body count a la every Marvel film. They are people. They lived full lives; they had consciousness. Their lives are over. They are not just props in films about the heroism of competing jingoisms. Our propensity to believe such narratives and, even worse, watch them without thinking about their implications is not something I would call a virtue of American life.

But this poem, today, on October 3, 2020 is not about Herman Cain, much less Gaddafi or deluded American gun-lovers who think killing people is neither messy nor much less simple than as seen on TV. 

I am posting this poem today because "the orange menace" is in the hospital with coronavirus. He has tweeted just this morning that he is fine, but some of the circumstances of his hospitalization have alarmed medical experts (and national security experts). The press is not adding clarity to the possible disinformation coming from White House officials. And anyone who has believed this virus is real and deadly knows that it doesn't just go away and things can turn bad quickly. It is, right now, one hell of a moment in our political life (Political: from Greek, pertaining to the city . . . though not an any hill).

The day of Trump's diagnosis, the state of Mississippi decided NOT to renew its mask mandate. Yesterday, the Republican-leaning Michigan Supreme Court overturned the governor's emergency declaration to combat COVID-19. In Wisconsin, Republicans make a lot of grumbling noises about challenging the current mask mandate executive order, which is already a watered down mandate since the governor's original order was also overturned in court by Republican-appointed judges. 

Today, after months of the president's own mongering of conspiracy theories, including saying the virus affects "virtually nobody," and months of Republican indifference to the shocking pain and suffering and death happening in America--which is poised to eclipse 210,000 deaths this weekend and 7.5 million reported infections--Twitter determined that it would remove posts that wish the president dead. 

On Facebook and other social media, as well as in opinion pieces and editorials from credible media sources, much discussion is ensuing about karma, the requirements (or lack thereof) for empathy or "thoughts and prayers" (notably, former president Obama, presidential candidate Biden, and speaker Pelosi all issued statements within hours of news of Trump's diagnosis wishing him well and hoping for his speeding recovery).

I have several friends who are less inclined to offer well wishes. I do not judge that response. In fact, I want to second it. And I don't know if that is, in the moral arc of the universe, wrong. Assuming there is a moral arc and not just people, many of whom have suffered very long as a direct result of the horrors of these last four year not including this virus and its effects. Even today, there are still children in cages; women are being forced to have hysterectomies against their will; politicians are rooting on murderers who attack unarmed protesters in the street--you know, just a smattering of daily life right now. And then there is the virus. 

What are we supposed to feel when bad things happen to bad people? I don't know.

_______

*Shout out to Gwendolyn Brooks--savvy readers might recognize the nod to her poem "We Real Cool" in the poem above.  

Getting TRANS-gressive with William Faulkner: Upcoming Colloquium Presentation

 

Not a post this week--just an announcement. I will be the keynote at the 4th annual Faulkner Studies in the UK Colloquium. I am planning to discuss how the queer desire in As I Lay Dying that I've already explored in my book might be bigger than just "Gay Darl." I'll look at the legacy of Dewey Dell's character--and I will read her as possibly "Faulkner in Drag," to borrow from Carolyn Dinshaw's similar construct of the Wife of Bath as "Chaucer in Drag" in The Canterbury Tales. Her voice (and her fate) may seem to align with the patriarchal order of the novel, epitomized by her brothers--excluding Darl--but actually she is closer to Darl than she realizes, which explains the violence with which she rejects him at the end of the novel. Yet, somehow, her voice has influenced decidedly anti-patriarchal stories in our contemporary world: Deliver Us from Evie, by M. E. Kerr; If I Was Your Girl, by Meredith Russo; and most explicitly in Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward. 

Still working on the paper--I'm in early draft stages. The goal is to imagine "Faulkner in Drag" not as a model for flamboyant imitation but as a step towards "realness" in creating a feminine voice that finds agency and self despite the enormous burdens placed on her as the actual life-giver to the re-establishment of a heteronormative order secured by the renunciation of Darl. Is it possible that Faulkner's "unflinching gaze" let him see "across" gender? 

If Darl's fate is tragic, so, too, is Dewey Dell's--but both have the capacity to be understood for more than just their (self) sacrifice to the re-establishment of a flawed social order. 

I have the pleasure of sharing the Zoom stage with Julie Beth Napolin. The colloquium is January 29 and 30, 2021. Info in the image above; also linked here:

https://faulknerstudiesintheuk.wordpress.com/