Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Last Tuesday, went to the Morgan Library to see the show of Peter Hujar's photographs: "Speed of Life." The creator of the iconic image of the Gay Liberation Front, showing 2 lines of young people walking down the street, arms linked, fists punching the air, Hujar was really a portraitist. The most compelling photos are headshots, followed by those of the body in half-recline. Since I was there, I also looked into the Tennessee Williams show, "No Refuge but in Writing." The final plays are really the results of lots of earlier stories, aborted versions, and messy revisions, suggested by Eliza Kazan and others, as much as by Williams's own muse. He exploited his life for his materials, as all writers do, and his life included other people's lives. * Wrote "Returning from the Women's March in DC" on Friday, tinkled with "Judy" on Saturday, and "Cyborg Vs The Grim Reaper" this morning. Cyborg sex: the wave of the futu...

Wrote "The Morning After Trump's Election (Watusi)" from Connor's perspective yesterday. Today added a small section to "Handheld Devices" and refitted the sequence to reflect the aging of both men. Watched The Square (2017) with MH yesterday, after lunch with LF and JT. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund, it stars Claes Bang as the chief curator of a prestigious Stockholm museum who is trying to promote a controversial new exhibit. As MH confirmed, the film is spot-on in its satire of art institutions and their patrons. What was less expected was how moving it was in illuminating the seemingly obvious, but infinitely complex business of creating a public square of mutual trust and equal rights.

Another retro-fit today, with some small revisions to fit it into the overarching narrative. Connor: Later, at the Same Dance Party Finally he withdraws his sweet body from the kiss, and the veil descends. I’m completely involved with someone,  he says, he’s coming back tomorrow.  Thrust together by his words, we taste each other’s mouth through the silk. Then all the names of the world— body, kiss, tomorrow, his name Seal— swaddle in a wet underwear the things they designate. When he backs off again, a cry I cannot recognize passes my lips, T ake me home with you.  It does not pass the cloth of gold. He presses through the crushed bodies,  pulling his tee-shirt down as he goes.

Today's offering retrofits an old poem (from "The Book of the Body" sequence") with a new title. Meeting Seal at an 80’s Dance Party on Throwback Thursday It is time to bring your face into focus before this lens moves below the chin to other features harder to identify as yours. The best image is that of the cheeks. The right cheek and the left cheek do not meet. Like the back of the hand and the palm, like the head of a silver coin and its tail, the cheeks do not see each other except in a mirror or a photograph. This is true of my cheeks until my right brushes your left when we dance and, in that flash of flesh, the coin turns up both head and tail, the back of the hand shakes hands with the palm.

Connor: Identity House (New York) Shirtless bartenders popping the cork. Drag queens hosting What-the-Fuck. Connor, Tom, Alberto, Jee, can such places be? Flirtations flit. Beauty meets. Grown men deep kissing on the streets. Connor, Tom, Alberto, Jee, can such places be? Talk we must about coming out in the calmness of Identity House. Connor, Tom, Alberto, Jee, can such places be? No more need for metaphors unless we are figures of speech, yes, us, Connor, Tom, Alberto, Jee. Can such places be?

Connor: A Tale of Two Cities, Three Maybe She’s a baby from Vietnam, from Saigon, if the truth be told. She’s a girl from Nebraska City and she’s sixteen years old.  She’s unusual, that’s for sure. She asks him out for ice cream at Nancy’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor by Dick’s Movie Palace of Dreams. She’s in love with the boy She’s in love with the boy but after a whole year of eating pussy he knows he’s not in love with Katie. First, an ice cream, and then, a movie. One thing leads to another. She’s smart, a looker, but he has eyes only for her quarterback brother. In the lab, she makes up excuses to peek at his dissection. He sneaks his looks in the locker room at Tommy’s pink ass and Joe’s erection. She’s in love with the boy She’s in love with the boy but after a whole year of eating pussy he knows he’s not in love with Katie. He tells her at the Farm Aid show he’s applyin’ to New York University. This town’s too small for big dreams, he e...

Connor: Art Show at the Center On a black dummy, a shawl—not cashmere, cigarette butts. Apple seeds arranged like tea cozies around the roots of trees next door. So this is what art is! You are one thing and you are used for another. Slightly built, curly haired, the Artist-in-Residence smiles from New Jersey.  Close enough to New York, if you ask me. The star of the show: 3 blocks of yellow soap, the height of my chest, carved voluptuously to look like—urinals. Oh, the urge to use them! To spray them and be clean.

Connor: Nebraska From the bluff we turned our backs on the river and opened a trail, as Lewis and Clark. We spotted the grizzly, Tom did, glummer than Meriwether, and gave him wide berth slowly on our stomachs. When I hit some raccoon shit, Tom changed my name to Pvt. John Collins and tied my paws to a tree and whipped me with the whip of a branch, rubbing himself until he let go gum from the orange. We hurried home, it was getting dark, and watched dad slam the boot on boxes of his stuff and drive off. I was the one to break the silence, kept during the whipping— Tom, let’s go back and tie me up.

Given to me by Elda Rotor in a bag full of literary goodies, The Book of Emma Reyes is a revelation. Godmother to Latin American writers and artists in Paris, Emma Reyes was illiterate until her late teens, escaped from grinding poverty and the convent in Columbia, to Buenos Aires and then Paris, to re-invent herself as painter. The memoir, written as a series of letters to Colombian historian and critic Germán Arciniegas, won praise from Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As translated by Daniel Alarcón, the style is artfully simple and wholly faithful to the world. No literary flourishes, no imaginative metaphors. Just a sustaining belief that the material itself holds its own interest.

Last night, watched The Toilers and the Wayfarers (1995), written and directed by Keith Froelich, set in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Matt Klemp, who played the beautiful young Dieter, showed real talents as an actor. But he seemed to have acted in one more movie before calling it quits. This afternoon, watched Ghost in the Shell (2017), directed by Rupert Sanders, and starring Scarlett Johannson as Major, a crime-fighting robot with a human brain. It was more exciting and pleasurable than I thought it would be. I've never seen the anime original, so have nothing to compare the move to. The plot is predictable but the pacing is good. Also finished this afternoon Kei Miller's third novel Augustown . It is well written but the stock characters, including a flying preacher, a racist teacher, a well-meaning white school principal, a blind old woman who could smell the forthcoming autoclaps (disaster), preclude real emotional engagement. About two weeks ago, I finished Gershom Scho...