Happy Birthday, C&S!
C&S is born today, but Seal was born in 1983, in Kingston, Jamaica, and Connor in 1990, in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The first Seal poem was written on April 1, 2013, and its first line goes "the cancer sun of the computer screen." The very first Connor poem was written even earlier, on April 10, 2007, as part of a sequence riffing on Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric." So can I say that C&S was 13 years in the making?
This is to say that these poems were first part of something else and then they migrated, like Connor and Seal, to another place. Connor and Seal found a new life in New York City, as I did in 2003, and then they found one another and before too long they moved together to Harlem in 2016, as GH and I did in 2017. Fact following fiction. They live in an increasingly unequal and violent New York that I hope we will never see but I wish to imagine as if to anticipate the worst. "And yet," as Jericho Brown writes of C&S, "it is still a future where two men—despite every obstacle—still can fall in love."
1983 - Seal is born in Kingston, Jamaica, on Love Street.
1990 - Connor is born in Nebraska City, Nebraska. His brother Tom was born four years earlier in 1986.
1999 - Connor’s father moves out and the parents divorce subsequently.
2003 - Seal moves to New York City to study business at Columbia University. He rents a room in Harlem.
2006 - Connor moves to New York City and studies English and Art History. He attends a coming-out support group at Identity House.
2007 - Seal is hired at Houlihan Lokey Investment Bank as a financial analyst. He finds an apartment in Chelsea.
2010 - Connor and Seal meet at an 80’s Dance Party. Connor has just been hired as a grant writer by Orpheus Dance Theater.
2011 - Seal leaves boyfriend Brad for Connor.
2012 - Connor tours China with Orpheus Dance Theater.
2016 - Connor is hired by the Studio Museum in Harlem. Connor and Seal move to Harlem, to 122nd Street, beside Marcus Garvey Park. In November, Donald Trump is elected as the 45th President of the United States.
2017 - Connor participates in the Women’s March on Washington, a day after Trump’s inauguration.
2019 - Connor and Seal visit Seal’s family in Kingston for the first and only time.
2020 - Connor and Seal marry at City Hall.
2025 - Tom dies at the age of 39. He is savagely beaten to death by a stranger he had sex with.
2029 - Connor brings boy bot Newton home.
2036 - First mass protest against social inequities at Central Park (Fourth of July). Police fires into the protest, killing 12 people. Seal provides information to the Feds in the subsequent security operation to detain and question undesirable social elements.
2040 - A pipe bomb goes off at the Masque Ball in Apollo Theater. A domestic terrorist group called Demos claims responsibility.
2041 - The United States invades Syria.
2046 - Second mass protest at Central Park on the tenth anniversary of Bloody Fourth.
2051 - Newton is decommissioned.
2053 - The United States withdraws its troops from Syria, finally beaten by the local guerillas aided by the Russians and the Chinese. Seal retires and begins teaching at the Barron Trump School for the Gifted.
2054 - Connor sees the First Emperor of China show at the Met Museum.
2056 - Third mass protest at Central Park on the twentieth anniversary of Bloody Fourth.
2064 - Seal dies of chronic ischaemic heart disease at the age of 81.
2066 - Connor dies at the age of 76 of a mysterious new virus.
This is to say that these poems were first part of something else and then they migrated, like Connor and Seal, to another place. Connor and Seal found a new life in New York City, as I did in 2003, and then they found one another and before too long they moved together to Harlem in 2016, as GH and I did in 2017. Fact following fiction. They live in an increasingly unequal and violent New York that I hope we will never see but I wish to imagine as if to anticipate the worst. "And yet," as Jericho Brown writes of C&S, "it is still a future where two men—despite every obstacle—still can fall in love."
1983 - Seal is born in Kingston, Jamaica, on Love Street.
1990 - Connor is born in Nebraska City, Nebraska. His brother Tom was born four years earlier in 1986.
1999 - Connor’s father moves out and the parents divorce subsequently.
2003 - Seal moves to New York City to study business at Columbia University. He rents a room in Harlem.
2006 - Connor moves to New York City and studies English and Art History. He attends a coming-out support group at Identity House.
2007 - Seal is hired at Houlihan Lokey Investment Bank as a financial analyst. He finds an apartment in Chelsea.
2010 - Connor and Seal meet at an 80’s Dance Party. Connor has just been hired as a grant writer by Orpheus Dance Theater.
2011 - Seal leaves boyfriend Brad for Connor.
2012 - Connor tours China with Orpheus Dance Theater.
2016 - Connor is hired by the Studio Museum in Harlem. Connor and Seal move to Harlem, to 122nd Street, beside Marcus Garvey Park. In November, Donald Trump is elected as the 45th President of the United States.
2017 - Connor participates in the Women’s March on Washington, a day after Trump’s inauguration.
2019 - Connor and Seal visit Seal’s family in Kingston for the first and only time.
2020 - Connor and Seal marry at City Hall.
2025 - Tom dies at the age of 39. He is savagely beaten to death by a stranger he had sex with.
2029 - Connor brings boy bot Newton home.
2036 - First mass protest against social inequities at Central Park (Fourth of July). Police fires into the protest, killing 12 people. Seal provides information to the Feds in the subsequent security operation to detain and question undesirable social elements.
2040 - A pipe bomb goes off at the Masque Ball in Apollo Theater. A domestic terrorist group called Demos claims responsibility.
2041 - The United States invades Syria.
2046 - Second mass protest at Central Park on the tenth anniversary of Bloody Fourth.
2051 - Newton is decommissioned.
2053 - The United States withdraws its troops from Syria, finally beaten by the local guerillas aided by the Russians and the Chinese. Seal retires and begins teaching at the Barron Trump School for the Gifted.
2054 - Connor sees the First Emperor of China show at the Met Museum.
2056 - Third mass protest at Central Park on the twentieth anniversary of Bloody Fourth.
2064 - Seal dies of chronic ischaemic heart disease at the age of 81.
2066 - Connor dies at the age of 76 of a mysterious new virus.
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