Review: “William S. Burroughs: Commissioner of Sewers” (1 of 2)

I recently watched the documentary William A. Burroughs, Commissioner of Sewers.  I suppose I can call it a documentary, although it contained no commentary; I suppose that is one form of documentary.

It wasn’t particularly unified either.  Instead, it was a collection of short clips, about thirteen as I recall, that ran a total of about fifty-one minutes.  Some of the clips were of Burroughs reading from his writings.  Others were interviews conducted by Jurgen Ploog.  Still others were clips of experimental films featuring Burroughs or his texts.

I find Burroughs more and more interesting, although I expect this phenomenon to flip without warning into boredom.  Although Burroughs interests, he also gently repulses.  I can’t imagine being his friend.  My ultimate reaction is that he was a very odd man.

I first learned of him while reading Jack Kerouac.  Burroughs was the model for the character Old Bull Lee in On The Road.  His persona there was certainly strange.  Kerouac in fact refers to the relationship between Burroughs and his wife “one of the strangest.”  During Kerouac’s visit to Burroughs' house near New Orleans, he observes him and his wife Joan drinking and pretty much taking every drug in the book.  Burroughs gets up in the morning, takes a fix, is lively for awhile, takes another fix, is lively for awhile…..etc.  A few years after the events recounted in On The Road, Burroughs would accidentally kill Joan while trying to shoot a glass off the top of her head a la William Tell.  He later was forced to the “appalling conclusion” that this event drove him to become a writer.  Over the following decades, he became known for novels like Junkie, Queer, and Naked Lunch.  Some of these were written using the “cut-up” method of writing something and then slicing pages in half and rearranging the sequence of half-pages.  

Given the variety and amount of substances that Burroughs took into his system, it is perhaps a miracle that he produced any writing at all.  I haven’t read much of it—I certainly haven’t read Naked Lunch (although I read a few pages from time to time).  Consequently, I can’t judge the coherence of the work.  I know that some people regard Naked Lunch as one of the great novels of the twentieth century.  About all I really know of Burroughs' work is the poem “A Thanksgiving Prayer, November 28, 1986,” which is, if nothing else, memorable.  It is by no means clear that Burroughs is expressing thanks; disgust seems closer to the truth.

And yet, in the mythic Beat trio of Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg/William S. Burroughs, Burroughs seems the ultra-conservative.  Kerouac said that Burroughs harbored a nostalgia for the country as it was around 1910.  He nearly always appeared in a suit and tie.  There is just this little problem of his drug habits and some nasty things he said about his country—he was a cantankerous curmudgeon.  And he outlived both Kerouac and Ginsberg, though older than both.

Review: "The Most Golden Bulgari" (2 of 2)

The story does entertain.  You have the interaction of Djanko and Picano.  You have the comic relief of the expatriate actresses and Mr. Muscle.  You have, as well, the escapades of Djanko’s various friends and hangers on.

And yet…this story also disquiets.  Are these the people one really wants to spend one’s life—or even a year—with?  The expatriates are not stupid—but they do seem superficial.  Picano himself…seems confused, uncertain.  Of course, people are often confused in their early twenties.  But if Picano is looking for love, it’s not clear how well he’s doing.  He seems happy enough with Djanko—at least until he realizes he isn’t.  And when he leaves Rome for a weekend motorcycle trip to France, he realizes how unhappy he actually is and decides never to return; writing a brief letter to inform Djanko of his decision.

And, despite a sexual escapade earlier that causes him to reflect on his betrayal of his “fidelity,” it’s not clear exactly what “fidelity” means to him.  He’d already gone to bed with a variety of men during this year in Rome.  Did any of this sex bring him any closer to love?  Did the sex have any significance at all for him?

Indeed, in common with Edmund White, Picano finds casual sex liberating.  Heading across southern France at the end of this section, Picano has sex with a stranger in Marseille.  “[T]his nameless French sailor taught me that neither love nor even attraction was needed for sex, and that indeed, somehow it became sharper, more encompassing, when it was free of all that.”

The liberation of pure sex—not love, not even attraction; just the experience of sex—what some of us may have experienced in our first solitary childhood masturbations.  Of course, Picano is describing the mid-1960s, well before the era of AIDS—even before Stonewall!  Later, when AIDS surfaced and people were urged to “know your partners,” Edmund White remarked on how strange this phrase seemed.  Wasn’t the whole point to simply have as much sex as you could?  Wasn’t sex supposed to free you?  Why on earth would you bother with “knowing your partners?”  Picano certainly chronicles a bye gone age.

So this is a disquieting book.  Picano has sex, and it seems to satisfy.  Presumably he succeeded in “becoming a homosexual” (but doesn’t that phrasing sound a bit quaint in retrospect?).  At least in this first section of the book, he doesn’t succeed in finding love.  What he does gain is a beautiful gold Bulgari watch—which years later will come in handy when Picano finds himself in dire circumstances back in New York.

An interesting read, certainly—but prone to provoking mild indigestion.

Review: "The Most Golden Bulgari" (1 of 2)

“The Most Golden Bulgari” is the first section of Felice Picano’s “memoir in the form of a novel” Men Who Loved me (1989).  The book is itself the second installment of an autobiographical trilogy.

Felice Picano was a member of the Violet Quill, a group of writers who met to discuss gay writing, back in the 1980-1.  Members included Edmund White and Andrew Holleran.

I’m currently reading Men Who Loved Me for the second time.  I find the writing entertaining but a bit on the “light” side.  I’m more naturally drawn to the style of White and Holleran, who seem more introspective and thoughtful.  Their writing seems more sensuous somehow—although Picano can certainly turn a clever phrase.

Picano had earned a literary college degree, then found himself employed in New York City as a social worker.  This was the 1960s.  He saw plenty of “life” in a certain sense—the life of the troubled and the poor in the area around the Spanish Harlem in Manhattan.  Faced with the prospect of a promotion and a successful “career” in social work, he decides instead to go to Europe and actually live—and look for love.  And to “become homosexual.”  What he actually means by this phrase is not clear.  He had dated women, but the relationships had gone nowhere; they weren’t even relationships, really; just casual dating.  He’d then tried men—but that hadn’t gone anywhere either.

Arriving in Rome, he almost immediately encounters a group of expatriate American actors and actresses; through them he meets…his first long-term lover, a Yugoslavian film director named Djanko.  “The Most Golden Bulgari” follows the semi-comic exploits of these people.  It’s a bit confusing keeping the three women straight in my mind—which one is from Boston, which from the Mid-West, etc.  The young actor is more memorable, since more unique:  He speaks a rural slang and comes across as rather inane; but he possesses marvelous musculature and is therefore ideal to play characters like Hercules in sand-and-sandal epics. 

Picano and Djanko fall in love “at first sight.”  Whether it is love or lust is difficult to tell.  It’s clear Picano cares about him; he remains with him a year, after all.  How Djanko feels in return is less certain—he’s always working or worrying about his current and future film projects.  What Djanko does do, though, is shower Picano with presents, including a golden Bulgari watch.  Even though he is filming what seem to be second- or third-rate movies, he’s presented as being fabulously rich; Picano never lacks for adornment.  Perhaps because he’s grown up in Communist Yugoslavia, Djanko is obsessed with gold and insists on presenting Picano with gold watches, gold cigarette cases, gold cuff links…  When Picano can’t decide which color shirt he prefers, Djanko simply buys him one of each color so that he’ll have the color his prefers whenever he finally gets around to choosing.

(To be continued)

“Poly Cultures”

I’m currently reading Andrew Holleran’s novel Grief, published in 2006.  It’s a novel about a gay man who spends a semester teaching in Washington, DC after caring for his dying mother.  It’s about his own grief, the grief of Mary Todd Lincoln after the assassination of her husband, the grief of Henry Adams after his wife committed suicide…and the grief of an entire generation of gay people decimated by HIV/AIDS.

But it’s about life at least as much as death.  It’s about the different ways that people live and cope.  It’s about the excitement of being young, and the challenge of becoming old.  It’s about how people of different ages and backgrounds interact.

Digging into gay male literature, I become more aware of the variety of gay male culture.  Men who knew they were gay or realized they were gay didn’t all approach their gayness in the same way.  Different men, different social backgrounds, approached the challenges and hardships differently.

And so, I think now, with polys.  There are many different ways that people can be poly, to begin with.  Then there are different strategies for dealing with family, friends, and mainstream society.  Someday we’ll look back and compare notes.  Meanwhile, I wish everyone good relationships and not too much loneliness and not too much trouble or drama.  Polyness can be a challenge—but a very rewarding one too!

Poem: "To the Religious of a Certain Stripe"

I’ve thought this over; now I say to you:
I don’t believe that men who love men are evil;
I don’t believe that men who love men are abominable;
Women who love women are my family.
Women who love women are my lovers,
My children,
My parents.

Men who love men,
Women who love women—
Are my sisters and brothers.
You may think they will burn in Hell—
That’s your religious right in this free land.
You have chosen to label these people who love despicable;
I think they bless the universe with their love;
And I, x-fold Pariah,
Condemned by the rigid creed you choose to practice—
I hold you in my heart and thoughts disquieted,   
Not grasping what you gain, when all is done,
From your condemnations. 

Personal Preference and Common Ground

So much in this world simply comes down to personal preference—maybe religious preference?—and how much society can allow for personal preference, and how much we can all tolerate from one another.

Yesterday I got in a discussion with a friend of mine who told me that the Bible is very clear on homosexuality.  How dare Bishop Tutu compare homophobia with racism or sexism?  And she quoted Leviticus and Paul.  I pointed out that Jesus said nothing about homosexuals.  That didn’t change her viewpoint.

Meanwhile, I continue going over my writing project, trying to understand how it would come across to someone like this friend of mine.  How do you write a story that treats LGBT or poly people with dignity and respect, in a way that this friend could understand?  Is it possible?

Maybe it isn’t.  Then a story about someone who is a minority within a minority within a minority…could never be understood by my friend.  If I speak of Queers, or Polys, or Pagans—or someone who is all three!—is there really no way to bridge the cultural/religious/personal gap between “us” and “them?”

Today, online, I exchanged comments with an Obama-hater.  Same thing.  Vanishingly little common ground.

But our common ground should be our humanity.  How can we “make it so?”

Blessings and Mitzvah/Karma-Points to those who try!

Book Review: The End of the Affair (Warning: Spoilers!)

(From the July South Bay Poly newsletter).

Book “review?”  Or merely a “light once-over?”

I began with enthusiasm.  Graham Greene gets the atmosphere rolling nicely.  World War II.  A man living on one side of the London “commons” has been having an affair with the wife of a “friend” who lives on the other side of the “commons.”  The narrator now thinks the woman is cheating on him, so he convinces the husband to let him hire a private investigator.  The woman often coughs terribly.  I immediately knew she would die of TB or something—and she does.

But in the meantime, she finds God.  She was baptized a Catholic when she was two.  She doesn’t remember, of course.  During an air raid, when the narrator is pinned under a door and appears to be dead, she promises God to reform if God lets him live.  He survives, of course (otherwise he couldn’t be narrating, right?).  Now the woman drops him and considers becoming a Catholic.  The narrator suggests that she has been sleeping around right and left (misogyny, I wondered?).

Now the woman has given up the narrator, and continues to have a “non-marriage” with her husband.  In many years of married life, she has never experienced an orgasm with her husband—though she did, apparently, and often, with the narrator.  But now she can get on with dying (aggravated by the narrator’s tendency to drag her out into freezing rain for gut-wrenching conversations) and becoming a saint.  By the end, she’s probably achieved three bona fide miracles—but not the one she really wanted:  Rather than bringing peace to the narrator, he still feels miserable.  Now if this had been a poly movie (a woman, two men, and God)…

Some people feel that spirituality and sexuality are like East and West—“Never the twain shall meet."  I disagree…  Anyway…I’m off to watch one or both of the film versions next.