Dirty Amber by Lips

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Academic Book, Art, Dirty Pictures, Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland Masculinity and Homosexuality, Gay, Gay Men, Gay Sex, glasses, Homosexuality, Joshua Jammer Smith, lips, Masculinity Studies, Micha Ramakers, Penis, Pornography, Sexual Exploration, Sexual identity, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, still life, Swiss Army Knife, tea, Tom of Finland

Dirty Amber Lips

13 September 2018

 

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Feeding Turtles Tumors While We Were Waiting to be Okay – Calypso and Suicide

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"Butt-Piracy", "Elder Gay", A House Divided, A Modest Proposal, Anthony Bourdain, Calypso, Chester Benington, David Sedaris, Deadlands, Elder, Essay, Essay Collection, Get your credit score and work on gathering reliable assets, Happiness, Homosexuality, Humor, Joshua Jammer Smith, Kate Spade, Literature, Longview Pride 2018, Masculinity Studies, Philosophy, Pride, Satire, Self-Effacement, Sexual identity, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, suicide, Surviving, The Myth of Sisyphus, The One(s) Who Got Away, Writing

I mean the dude was just killing it.  He didn’t have spectacular abs, I thank whatever fortune I possess in this life for that, but his body was clearly one that he worked on.  He had short blond hair and a great ass and he just twerked it wearing by now just a pair of khaki shorts, knee high socks and some kind of sport-tennis shoes.  I was wearing my Mad Hatter socks, my fingerless lace gloves, glitter nail polish, my little red “pimp-hat,”and of course my ultikilt.  Some artist came on, someone who’s five years younger than me probably could have identified, and I watched this young guy twerk and just kill it on the dance floor while the rest of the young people around him cheered him on.  I was sitting with some friends on the edge of the venue just watching him wondering if I had any real desire for him, or if I was just impressed by his dance moves.  He was just so free and gay in the ways that I wasn’t and I realized, at that moment, that I was something the kids are referring to as an “elder-gay.”

An “elder gay” as far as I can tell, is a someone from previous generations  who identifies as some variety of Queer.  The way my friend Alia uses the term one would suspect that an Elder Gay is something out of Dungeons and Dragons, some mystical being who possess knowledge of the organisms and energies that exist in the spaces between dimensions. Likewise the sage would almost certainly possess the knowledge of what is the best way to score a bank loan for that B&B you’re dreaming of starting up in Dallas. 

An “Elder Gay” is someone who has survived and managed to stay “cute” and queer and not let the straight superstructure complex of heterosexuality break you down and force you back into the closet.  The term implies a level of strength, wisdom, and integrity and so I’m a little fretful to use that term on myself because, looking at the path my sexuality has taken, I’m not really sure I can use that term for myself.

Then again I looked up the word “Elder” on Urban Dictionary and aside from the smutty implications it has for Mormons there was a definition that read: “Gay men who prefere[sic] to take cock from behind.”  This definition was followed by the various refining elements that read: #fudge packer, #rump roaster, #fag, #gay, #butt pirate.  I’ve never honestly considered “butt piracy” because I’ve no idea whether that job comes with any sort of real benefits, and at this stage of my life and career working without health insurance just isn’t an option.  I do like the idea of taking cock from behind though so perhaps I will allow myself the title of “Elder Gay.” It sounds like something I could put on my resume.

Watching that kid dance, and sitting next to my friend Alia Q and her boyfriend however, I felt a wonderful sense of place.  Even if I didn’t want to dance, and I found myself fine and dandy just sitting on the bench blowing bubbles and watching the younger queerkids have fun, the moment had a real sense of purpose and joy.  It was my first official Pride Event.  There had been one or two such events in my hometown of Tyler, but they were small affairs that didn’t have the same level of teeth to them.  Attending this event, even if it was during the last two hours of the official day, was a chance to be out, to really be out, and be happy.  And if nothing else, realize that I really was an “elder gay.”

Suicide has been haunting me more and more lately.  Not that I’m seriously considering taking my own life, I’ve promised three of my friends that I wouldn’t, and while I know that sounds like a soft promise these three women are the sort of people who would hold a severe grudge against me and I’m almost positive all of them would immediately consult necromancy just to bring me back and kick my ass.  Though I’m sure in fact my punishment would be something far more benign like being forced to watch insurance seminar power-point presentations and therefore all the more cruel. 

But as my regular reader might remember, just a few months ago I lost my friend Savannah Blair to suicide.  Not long before this Chester Bennington had decided to take his own life by hanging himself.  Having recently begun reading all of William Shakespeare’s plays I began a book entitled The Medical Mind of Shakespeare and discovered there was an entire chapter dedicated to Suicide.  And just in the last week of writing this essay Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade have both killed themselves.  This series of losses all seemed to be one long endless reminder of the disease of depression, and so on the morning before the actual Longview Pride festival I decided to sit down and finish reading David Sedaris’s latest book Calypso.  Sedaris is one of my favorite authors and is consistently funny and so I thought it might be a great way to have a laugh and prepare myself for the days festivities.  I opened the book, started reading, and discovered several passages of the book dealt with the recent suicide of his sister Tiffany.

I heaved a heavy sigh, muttered the sentiment “fucking really?” and read the book in one long burst.  I can’t say that by the end I’d come to a better place, but I had become sadder because I realized that I would probably never have the gumption to feed one of my eventual tumors to a snapping turtle.

Calypso is a book that, like the rest of Sedaris’s oeuvre, is about observing the absurdity of everyday existence, while also managing to find some human statement in our faults.  Sedaris doesn’t just acknowledge that he has selfish or cruel thoughts about other people, he simply writes them down turning them into the narrative of everyday life.  And this honesty over time just becomes part of the sarcasm, satire, and the general method.  His prose is always self-effacing while also managing to be self-promoting, and by the end of just one of his essays the reader has almost always come to some kind of conclusion that Sedaris is doing his best to stay one step ahead of the joke he’s turning himself into.

But Calypso felt different from his other books because it possessed a sharper bite that I suspect comes with growing older, and also perhaps from losing a sibling to suicide.

In one of the essays, A House Divided, Sedaris describes walking down a beach near a house his family was renting out, and talking about their sister when others sister Lisa mentions the mode of death.  She’s interrupted briefly by a woman walking a dog and then casually mention that Tiffany took her own life with a plastic bag.  Asphixiation is supposed to be one of the miserable ways to go, I know this because my wife tells me things like that all the time.  She reads essays and Reddit posts by doctors and scientists and supposedly strangling is unbearably painful.  Sedaris doesn’t mention this but he notes something about the tool used to take hissister’s life:

It’s hard to find a bag without writing on it—the name of a store, most often.  Lowe’s it might read.  SAFEWAY.  TRUE VALUE.  Does a person go through a number of them before making a selection, or, as I suspect, will any bag do, regardless of the Ironic statement it might make?  This is what was going through my mind when Lisa stopped walking and turned to me asking, “Will you do me a favor?”

“Anything,” I said, so grateful to have her alive and beside me.

She held out her foot, “Will you tie my shoe?”

“Well…sure,” I said, “But can you tell me why?”

She sighed, “My pants are tight and I don’t feel like bending over.”  (62-3).

This gave me something to think about because my pants are often tight at work and I own almost no laceless shoes, yet I always stoop down to tie them if they become unlaced.  This terrifies me as there is a set of stairs at the library that I’m sure is going to kill me.  But after this I think about what kind of plastic bag I would use if I decided to asphyxiate myself and this becomes a problem.  Almost all of the plastic bags in my possession are ones my wife has brought home after one of her endless shopping trips and these tend to usually be from Hobby Lobby.  Its may sound vain on my part but there would be nothing so gosche as to kill myself and then be found with a Hobby Lobby bag wrapped around my head.  The people who find me may suspect I support the corporation’s philosophy of denying birth control coverage in employee health insurance, or else that my sex-life was so awful and/or nonexistent that I had to take up a hobby to fill the time.  I think if I had to use any sort of bag I would want it to be from someplace like Half Price Books or Barnes & Noble, that way the medical examiner would think I was cultured, or at least a reader, or at least someone who spent their time around books which is something I suspect at least most people would like to appear to be.

I know it’s morbid, but suicide is still to me one last means of controlling my fate in this universe.  Since I have no use for religion, and because my wife refuses to take up ballroom dancing with me, the only real means I have of staving off the inevitable realization that my life has no meaning is to dwell on death, and this in part tends to push me to thoughts, or considerations of suicide.  Before Louis C.K. was rightfully skewered by the #MeToo movement I did watch him pretty regularly and he had a sentiment that was best expressed, “You don’t have to do anything, because you can always kill yourself.”  This sentiment was one that made me laugh, but I realized that it was one that had alsoappeared before in Albert Camus’s book The Myth of Sisyphus. 

He begins his book by noting:

There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.  Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.  All the rest—whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories—comes afterwards.  These are games; one must first answer.  And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that the philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act.  These are facts thee heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.  (3).

Suicide is, ultimately, about survival.  The people that one sees moving about, shopping for groceries, urinating on public busses, picking their nose when they think no one is looking, and giving their boyfriends hand jobs in the far back corners of a public library, are ultimately people who survived past the impulse to kill themselves.  It’s absurd, and ridiculous, but each person has found some conclusion that amounted to, “No, I need to keep living today.”

My reason tends to be coffee, books, movies, Deadlands, and orgasms.  Each of these brings me a tremendous amount of pleasure, and if I’m being honest I’d like to have more experiences with them before I finally shuffle off this mortal coil.

Calypso is a book that, while reading it, I kept thinking about because, ultimately, it seems to be defined by a recurring theme of being a survivor.  Sedaris writes about the frailties of his body, the problematic dynamic he has with his father,  suffering a gastro-intestinal virus during a book tour, having a tumor removed, losing his sister to suicide, and finally just surviving to the age he has lived to.

Looking at a later passage in The One(s) Who Got Away Sedaris asks his partner Hugh how many men he slept with before they settled down together.  As Hugh counts men up well past the number fifty Sedaris observes his jealousy, the difference in their physical attractiveness, but then also the fact that both of them are still there.  He writes,

By what miracle had neither of us attracted AIDS?  How had we gotten away?  I don’t just mean later, when people knew to be safe, but back in the days when it didn’t have a name and no one understood how it spread.  One of the men Hugh had lived with—a professor he had his first year of college—had died of it in the late eighties, and surely there were others, on both my side and his.  Yet for some reason we’d escaped, had prospered, even.  Now here we were, the shadows lengthened, our spaghetti growing old, as he hit the half-hundred mark, then blithely sailed beyond it.

Whore.  (159).

It is nothing compared to living with a man for several decades and scoring up an impressively sluttish roster of former lovers, but as I sat at the Pride Event next to my friend Q who was clapping and regularly saying, “Yes queers you DO IT!” I was struck by the fact that we were both survivors, Q more so than I.  She had been far closer to Savannah that I was.  I couldn’t tell you her favorite film while she was alive, nor her favorite book, nor could I even tell you her fucking birthday, and yet over the last few months I’ve had the audacity to label her as a friend.  What I suppose connected us wasour mutual associations and our working together, and I suppose Gay Movie Night.  But what I find, what I return to over and over again is that both Sav and I were, until her end, mutually suicidal.  The only difference is Sav stopped finding a reason to go on, whereas Q and I had.

Reading this short passage again I realized David Sedaris very much qualifies for my previous definition of “Elder Gay,” because along with the previous work another of his essays in Calypso titled A Modest Proposal he tackles the development of Gay Marriage in the United States.  Sedaris is honest about the fact that he’d never considered marriage.  He writes:

The Supreme Court ruling tells every gay fifteen-year-old living out in the middle of nowhere that he or she is as good as any other dope who wants to get married.  To me it was a slightly mixed-message, like saying we’re all equally entitled to wear Dockers to the Olive Garden.  Then I spoke to my accountant, who’s as straight asthey come, and he couldn’t have been more excited.  “Fox tax purposes, you and Hugh really need to act on this,” he told me.

“But I don’t want to,” I said.  “I don’t believe in marriage.”

He launched into a little speech, and here’s the thing about about legally defined couples: they save boatloads of money, especially when it comes to inherited property.  My accountant told me how much we had to gain, and I was like, “Is there a waiting period?  What documents do I need?”  (125).

Words like equity, inheritance, benefits, insurance, and escrow are words that are steadily becoming more and more relevant to my day to day existence.  They suggest, I suppose, a worldliness or at least that you have a head on your shoulders and that you know where you’re “going” in life.  I need to know that I’m going to have at least few bucks in my bank account before I can apply for a loan, I need to have a credit score, and I need to have something for collateral.  These realizations are not epiphanies, they’re just day to day realities that come with surviving. 

Watching that young man while I adjusted my silk gloves and straightening the hem of my kilt, I saw someone who wasn’t wondering about whether or not his dad “accepted” his lifestyle, I didn’t see a young man who was wondering how he was going to “survive” a miserable biological assault on the homosexual community, and I didn’t see a young man struggling to make sense about whether his gender identity and sexuality meant there was something morally wrong with his very existence.  I just saw a young man possessed by music and having a fucking blast.  And while I blew my bubbles and watched his butt wiggle about I was happy for him.  I wanted him to be happy, happy in the ways I hadn’t been but wanted to be when I was younger.  Happy in the ways I wish my friend Sav could have been during her life.  His body and mind hadn’t yet been afflicted with the realities of things like the development of tumors, low bank funds, or the suicide of a friend.

And so maybe as I think about it, perhaps I need to adjust the working definition of what an “elder gay” actually is.  Getting older, surviving to become older, is in someways a mix of resentment and fondness for youth.  It’s the desire for the ones that come after you to have fun without fear of personal or societal retribution, while at the same time hating them for having so much liberty.  Being a queer man who stayed in the closet until he was 26 I envy this next generation of young queer people who hopefully, if I make my life something that matters, won’t be afraid to come out and live their sexuality as they so chose.  I envy that their survival won’t be as afflicted with the struggle to justify or explain their desire to a warring camp of people who would rather they just didn’t exist in the first place.  I hope for a generation of young queer people who treat marriage the same way straight people do, just something you do when you stop dancing at parties and instead sit off to the sides blowing bubbles wondering if you’re supposed to go to work on Monday and whether or not you should have really spent $50 on rainbow buttons and flags instead of a savings bond.

Surviving can be a drag, but at least there’s the chance to have a few more orgasms, and maybe feed one of your tumors to a snapping turtle.

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes cited from Calypso were taken from the First Edition Hardback edition published by Little, Brown & Company.  All quotes cited from The Myth of Sisyphus were provided care of the paperback Vintage International edition.

 

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve provided a link to the definition of “Elder” provided to me care of Urban Dictionary.  I had no idea that Mormons were such a kind bunch, I guess you learn something new everyday.  Yet another reason to prolong my life if only to understand further the intricacies of mormon sexuality.  Anyway, enjoy:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Elder

 

***Writer’s Note***

I really wanted to start this essay out with the following statement: “I attended my first “real” Pride Parade with a Llama, a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in my backpack, and wearing a kilt.”  It was a lovely sentence that was completely true, but technically, like I said before, I had been to an actual parade in my home town already.  Still, I at least got some great photographs.

#43-Boobs

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#43, A History of the Breast, Amanda Palmer, Boobs, Breast Milk, Breast Milk as Menstrual Blood, Breasts, Breasts and Fruit, Breasts Vs Boobs, Brian K. Vaughn, Cunnilingus, Desert Hearts, Diana Cage, Essay, Fiona Staples, Free the Breast, Fun Home, graphic novel, Holt/Cold, Humor, Hypersexualization of Female Breasts, Jean Fouquet, Katy Perry, Katy Perry Elmo, Katy Perry's Boobs, Knockers, Marilyn Yalom, May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj's Boobs, Pound the Alarm, Prime Numbers, Saga, sex, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, The Art of Asking, The Lesbian Sex Bible, The Travels of Marco Polo, Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels, Women Can Breastfeed WHEREVER THE FUCK THEY WANT, Writing, Yes I wrote an entire essay about boobs I know I write a lot about sex between men but I like women too you know

Thought experiment, file #43: consideration of the prominences located on the upper ventral region of the torso of homo sapiens sapiens, specifically of the female sex.  Thought Experiment shall concern itself with the following: What’s the deal with breasts and boobs yo?

 

[000.0001__initial concerns]

Boobs are not the same thing as breasts.  Breasts are parts of women’s bodies responsible for feeding babies, and babies are pure, and innocent, and sexless.  When was the last time you saw a sexy baby?  Case and point.  Boobs are different from breasts then because when I think of boobs I think of pornography.  I think of beer commercials.  I think of skinny women with their boobs packed into bras which are designed to press the flesh and blood of their bodies up close to the base of their chin so that we can see that flesh flex and ripple and flex while the women smile and entice.

Boobs to me is sex, but is this an empty observation?

Plenty of writers, commentators, academics, and cultural theorists who need tenure and so they write about something sexy to sell a book and help the review board forget about that incident last spring with the tennis star that left him divorced and looking for cash, have all written about the sexualization, and in many cases over-sexualization, of human breasts.  It’s important to note that these theorists have almost entirely centered their attention on the female breast because that tends to be where this sexualization takes place.

Meditating on or observing the rhetoric of noticing sexy-boobs is really just an empty gesture.  Unless one can add something to the argument a writer is really just masturbating on the page.  I have tried at least twenty times to write about breasts on the internet.  Doing my best to scrape together boob-puns and picture after picture of clever and terrible innuendos that rely on breasts for the joke to work.  In the end all I’ve done is observe a lot of boobs, and I’m not sure whether I’ve really learned anything from the experience.

 

[004.7884t____first observation]

Buzzfeed has dedicated an entire “article,” if you can call the collection of photo series they do articles at all, over what Katy Perry has used to cover her breasts during performances and music videos.  This includes, but is not limited to the following: whipped cream dispensers, candy, muffins, cupcakes, shells, pockets, a banana, film reels and even Elmo’s face.  This last was purposefully salacious because she had recently appeared on Sesame Street performing her song Holt/Cold with Elmo and many mothers of children who viewed the program complained that her outfit was “unnecessarily sexual,” specifically, her boobs were bouncing around through the whole thing.

For my own part, if I have to pick a favorite it would be none of these because while the woman is certainly curvaceous, it’s her thighs that often leave me a puddle on the floor.  I have no reasonable explanation for this.  There’s just something about Katy Perry’s thighs.

This leaves me in the minority however because the mountain of discourse around Katy Perry’s body has to do with the big bouncing mountains of writing and blogging material on her chest: her boobs.

It seems those mounds of flesh are an endless fertile crescent for creeps on the internet who write up manifestos using creepy and fucking fuck expressions like “mounds of flesh.”  It’s just that every time Katy Perry appears somewhere in culture somebody somewhere has to comment about her breasts.  This is nothing new, because for close to two decades society decided to talk about Madonna’s vagina and who or what was visiting it regularly.  Katy Perry is not Madonna, but like Madonna Katy Perry has used her body in her visual art as a means of establishing some sort of aesthetic.  Her imagery tends to be sexual in nature, but unlike Madonna who tended to fuck on screen for attention, Katy Perry has often used her breasts to be both sexual, and funny.  Her boobs aren’t pornographic, they’re something to look at but also to laugh at, and so while the rhetoric tends to be “look at Katy Perry’s boobs” the aesthetic is usually to the effect of, “Well, duh, she’s pointing right to them.”

 

[#0111.54__second Considerations]

My favorite book of all time is Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and I’ve written somewhere around four or five essays about the book.  In fact having finished it again recently I’ve considered returning to it and writing yet another in a long line of kiss-
assery.  The power of the graphic novel to me is the combination of honesty, attention to detail, and the near constant literary references that make me feel special because I have a fucking Masters degree.  The book is always an inspiration though, and I’m better for having it in my life because it helped me realize that I’m just as attracted to men as I am to women.

There’s plenty of frames in the book that make me pause and consider Bechdel’s aesthetic, but one frame always stops me.  Allison is in college reading, devouring really, numerous books about feminism and lesbian identity and in one scene she is reading a novel while eating and Bechdel provides the quote:

This frame has the impact on me that it does because when I was young, and just starting to write reguarly, I would often compare a woman’s breasts and boobs to fruits like melons, peaches, or…yeah that’s pretty much it.  I mean, what monster or hack would compare a woman’s breast to a dragon fruit?  I suspect part of being a young writer, a young male writer, I should specify, is comparing body parts to food.  I suspect this is a habit because when you’re young you’re still in high school and every high school teacher has to bombard their students with relentless symbolism because that’s all you’re going to do in college level English classes, apparently.  Discuss how boobs feel like peaches, or jelly, or pillows, or sponges.  Why can’t men write about a woman’s breast without using something else to describe them?  Why do boobs have to be anything apart from boobs?

Being honest here, I think it’s because men don’t have boobs, we just have cocks and balls, and cocks are just these hard poles we rub until goo shoots out and balls are too tender to squeeze.  When a man feels a breast however it is very much like the rest of a woman’s body: soft and alien.  There isn’t any real frame of reference because there’s nothing a man can feel on himself that compares to a woman’s breast, and because fruits tend to be soft and “fleshy”  and sweet it stands to reason that they’re the first thing a man is likely to think about when he’s trying to give his reader an erection.

This leaves a male writer’s female reader in a bit of an awkward position because it’s highly unlikely she’s ever compared her knockers to ripe figs or honeydew melons.  She’ll probably just refer to them as breasts, and leave the word “knockers” to male writers like Mel Brooks.

 

[04041.0009__third anomaly]

I have many books in my library that deal with men, specifically, how and why men fuck, with each other.  I have very few books about lesbian sexuality, and this often leaves me, to quote the great French philosopher Michel Foucault, pretty fuckin bummed in myself.  Still there are a few books about women in my library, more than a few, and between my considerations of Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj (she’s next you see) I found a few books that deal with women and their anatomy.

A History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom has been sitting in my “to-read” pile for close to
a year, though in fact calling this now functioning shelf full of books a “pile” is an exercise in self-delusion.  I have a problem and I intend to handle it, that’s what retirement is for.  The book is unique however, not just because the cover is adorned with Jean Fouquet’s Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels which shows Mary as a European aristocratic woman bearing a single orb-resembling breast to her child, but also because it is part of a niche collection of books that center their attention on a single body part.  Someone was able to fill an entire book with concepts and ideas that people have formulated about breasts, and while I haven’t read the book in it’s entirety I’ll open it from time to time and read a passage, and this one struck me at this reading:

Husbands often favored the use of a wet nurse, since it was believed that couples should refrain from sexual intercourse while the mother was nursing.  It was widely thought that a mother’s milk was a form of vaginal blood, transformed from blood to milk as it passed from the womb to the breasts.  The agitation of intercourse would have the consequences of corrupting the milk supply, curdling the milk, and might even kill off any fetuses that managed to be conceived.  As for the aesthetics of breast feeding, many husbands did not like the appearance of their wives with a child at the breast.  Nursing, a praise-worthy occupation for ancient goddesses and the Virgin Mary, was not considered attractive when practiced by highborn ladies.  Many upper-class women, subservient to the eroticized ideal of a youthful bosom, were thus obliged to entrust their babies to wet nurses.  (70).

I’m honestly not sure which part is more surprising here, the fact that husbands didn’t think breast-feeding was sexy or that breast milk is apparently menstrual blood.  I should probably go with the blood though since men being stupid will hardly be much of a revelation.

I’ve never fully understood the male reaction to the Menstrual cycle given the fact that, as men, we’re supposed to be doing nothing but thinking about vaginas all the time.  It would seem men like vaginas, but only when they don’t have to actually think about how they work.  At work in this dynamic however is the difficulty of the Breast Vs Boob paradigm.  Men like boobs when they’re these big squishy bags of fun that don’t have babies or reproduction attached to them, but the moment men consider a woman’s actual biology a boob becomes a breast again.

Breasts are reminders that sexuality is not a sterile or artificial construct, but a messy exchange of fluids that results in procreation and new life.  When a Boob starts to leak milk it must be connected to a vagina, and there’s nothing like leaky Boobs then to turn men off.

 

[5555.00301__fourth argument]

I want to read Marco Polo’s Travels.  I bought the book at the PeaPicker, a local bookstore in my hometown of Tyler, and I’ve always wanted to sit down and actually read it.  There’s this idea that I would be really touching history by listening to the records of one of those who came before.  This has nothing to do with Boobs, but I feel like it might have something to do with boobs.  Or not.  It’s still a nice thought.

 

[5555.00302__fifth observation]

Nicki Minaj is another one of those women in recent times who has gained a certain prominence in society for being a skilled musician, but also because she has very, very large boobs.  And, to note, a rather large heinie.  I say boobs and not breasts because there is usually not much earthiness to Nicki Minaj, or at least not in the songs and videos I’ve watched.

I wrote an entire essay about Nicki Minaj and her boobs, ultimately arriving at the conclusion that the sexuality model she was offering in the video for her song Pound the Alarm was largely artificial given the fact the entire aesthetic was building on carnival.  As a mode of celebration carnival goes back to the Middle Ages where people would celebrate the life and death of the year by celebrating sexuality but also death and with this came many jokes about poop and farting.

Pound the Alarm has no reference to feces, or bodily odors for that matter,  but it does have lots of Boobs.  Nicki herself is always the center of the video and her breasts, her boobs, are always part of the display.

She bounces them.

She jiggles them.

She pushes them together with her arms and wiggles her butt.

And throughout the short film when the music hits a spike she will thrust her shoulders back making her boobs pop out at the reader.  There’s nothing inherently wrong about this, and I don’t want to be the male writer who says Minaj isn’t allowed to advertise her body and sexuality.  But looking at Minaj there is always a sexualization of her body being displayed or encouraged.  Her breasts are not earthy or biological, they are part of some sterile sexual performance which is at the heart of her entire public persona.  Sex is not about procreation it’s about fun, and her boobs are just part of the fun.  Great big
jiggly bouncing fun at that.

Observing the observation of Nicki Minaj’s boobs is much like the observation of the observation of Katy Perry’s Boobs then.  Whatever merriment and mirth is derived from watching whatever Nicki or Katy decorate their boobs with, at the end of the day they remain boobs rather than breasts, and the understanding is there will never be any babies suckling on them any-time soon.

 

 

[0777.091__Seventh Seventh Seventh]

In Desert Hearts Cay seduces Vivian finally by stripping naked and refusing to leave Vivian’s bed despite her protests.  Put aside the fact the scene would flop appallingly if Cay were a man, Cay’s refusal eventually succeeds and the pair of them finally making love and thus providing a sexual denouement to the tension which has been building during the entire film.  The first time I watched this scene however was not when I was twelve and supremely and erotically fixated upon “lesbian” sexuality (and I quote that because “lesbian” porn exists and it definitely wasn’t made for lesbians, or at least not the ones I know, they clip their fingernails).  It was Gay Movie Night and I was hanging out with a group of friends all of whom were queer women.

The sex didn’t show any cunnilingus, it was just Cay and Vivian kissing and eventually suckling on each other’s nipples.  It was shortly after this act that Vivian experienced an orgasm.  None of my friends were entirely sure how this occurred, in fact there was a dubiousness that lasted until we finally shrugged and someone simply suggested, “Well, they were just chillin.”  Chillin, of course, became synonymous with orgasm.

I became convinced rather quickly that lesbians possessed some secret power to bring their partners to orgasm simply by touching each other’s nipples and so I went to my library and looked in my copy of The Lesbian Sex Bible.  Breasts only appear twice in this book, and only one has an entire quote, it reads as follows:

TOUCHING BREASTS AND CHESTS

Everyone loves breasts.  We either want ours touched or we want to touch someone else’s—and often we want both.  Touching her breasts and nipples releases a feel-good hormone called oxytocin that gets her excited and ready for sex.  If your lover is more masculine, she might find that having her breasts cupped feels too girly.  Instead, concentrate on playing with her nipples.  Pull and pinch the nipples, roll them between your fingers, grip her tits girly, or stroke her chest as if it were flat.  (84).

This passage was rather interesting largely because it contained the words “breasts” three times, and the word “tits” once.  Tit is a word I’ve avoided because it honestly sounds too masculine, or else too sharp.  I like the word Boob though because it has a linguistic curvature that’s fun to say.  “Tits” isn’t fun, but neither really is “breasts.”

Whatever the case the passage left me disappointed because it revealed nothing of Lesbians’ secret power to give each other orgasms simply by stimulating each other’s nipples.  Such is life.

 

[8.08__a return before final assessment]

I could read Marco Polo’s Travels, but I also want to read War & Peace before I die, and I haven’t even touched my hardback Plutarch’s Lives.  There’s so many books I want to read but I don’t have time for.  This thought has some connection to Boobs, I just don’t know what it is yet.

 

[011111111.111111110__another return before final assessment]

Amanda Palmer painted her almost naked body so that one half of her was the outward physical form, but the other half showed her muscles, tendons, nerves, and the child gestating in her uterus.  She was pregnant at the time and so the belly that protruded outward from her physical form was not just for show, she was actually pregnant.  This was not the first time Amanda Palmer “revealed” her breasts to the public.  The internet abounds with pictures of her either in concert, in videos, or at public events periodically bare chested and simply not giving a fuck.  As she is want to do.  Even beside me while I write is a copy of her book The Art of Asking, which has her naked and covering her breasts with her arms while holding a flower.

There’s so much to be impressed about by Amanda Palmer, but I return to her New York performance because the image of an almost naked, pregnant woman standing perfectly still outside a library is something just indescribable.  Her bare breasts are part of a performance, but rather than simply be about showing Boob, her breasts remain breasts because of the baby in her tummy that is clearly up for display.

It was a moment of pure honesty and a reminder of the biological function and purpose of breasts that was both challenging and fascinating.

The last few years have seen a rising of the “free the breast campaign” as women the world over have begun to push back against the sexualization, or over-sexualization of breasts, demanding the same rights as men to bare their chests without fear of social or legal reprisal.  This cannot be attributed solely to Amanda Palmer, but the willingness to show her body as a means of both demonstrating the power of the body, as well as its own naturalness surely was a knock to the supremacy of Boobs.

 

[final thoughts]

The cover of Saga Volume 1 and issue #1, shows Alana holding the baby Hazel to her chest where the babe is suckling gently.  The cover, and the book itself, garnered widespread condemnation by certain comic book fans who objected that a “family book” had such advanced material. The only problem with this criticism is that Saga was never a “family” book as it contains numerous scenes of violence and sexuality, however the initial charge of corruption due to breastfeeding remains the best example of the final separation between Breasts and Boobs.

Human beings are an ego driven species, and we tend to think about fucking a lot.  And in the Information Age where millions of images of breasts can appear with just a few clicks of a button, the sexualization of breasts appears to be an seemingly unending, unmovable onslaught.  Likewise the conversations about the hyper-sexualization of breasts can become a pedantic affair  because conversations about sexuality can become heated rather quickly.  In an environment where people don’t even like discussing condoms how can one create an atmosphere where nuance about women’s breasts can take place?

My own thoughts here are random, spotty, and really only amount to a collection of quick observations.  In fact upon consideration it seems fair to argue that this “essay” was in fact just an excuse to download a lot of pictures of topless women.  This is not a nuanced discussion at all, and Boobs remain Boobs and Breasts remain Breasts.

It seems the only sane response is to appreciate breasts as sexual protuberances until it’s time for the baby to be nursed.  Because, and this is important, at the end of the day the kid’s gotta eat more than I need to appreciate a great pair of boobs.  And besides, unless Playboy goes bankrupt anytime soon, there’s always gonna be a space for looking at Boobs.

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All Quotes cited from A History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom were taken from the Hardback Knopf edition.  All Quotes from Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Allison Bechdel were from the Hardback Houghlin Mifflin Edition.  All Quotes taken from The Lesbian Sex Bible by Diana Cage were taken from the Hardback Quiver Press edition.

 

**Writer’s Note**

Below is a link to the aforementioned article listing the varies garments employed to dress Katy Perry’s now famous breasts.  I hope the reader enjoys and also takes the time to learn a little bit of history about breasts after “reading” this “article”:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/whitneyjefferson/things-katy-perry-has-worn-on-her-breasts?utm_term=.bmKDBV1YY#.si8Z6zBRR

 

***Writer’s Note***

Please find below a link to the wikipedia page for breast.  Why?  Because read the reference section.  Seriously Wikipedia is changing, and even though your high school English teacher told you to never, never, NEVER use Wikipedia the only reason she told you that was because your lazy ass would have just copy/pasted the whole fucking thing and then you wouldn’t have learned anything.  But now that you’re an adult, you can scroll down to the “references” section and see what research ACTUALLY went into producing the material that helped you bullshit your way through twelfth grade Health Class.  Anyway, enjoy the page, and the boobs, and, more importantly, the FACTS about the boobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast

 

****Writer’s Note****

Below I’ve provided a link to the World Health Organization(WHO), specifically a page dealing with breast-feeding that provides general information, links to resources, and general health information.

http://www.who.int/topics/breastfeeding/en/

I’ve also provided something similar for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/

And finally here also is a link to Planned Parenthood:

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/breastfeeding

 

*****Writer’s Note*****

On one final note I would like to offer my apologies to Katy Perry for my weird, creepy comments about her thighs.  I’m not saying they’re not lovely to look at or that…that…

Ahem, sorry, as I was saying it was wrong of me to…to…

 

You know what I’ve lost whatever dignity I had here.  I resign myself to being a pervert.  Remember me well friends.  And please don’t look at my browser history.  It is a tale of sadness.

Will They, or Won’t They? The Fabulous Gay Love Story That is the Early Chapters of Moby Dick

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"Jammer Moments", "Will They?/Won't They?", Gay Men, Gay Sex, Having erotic dreams/fantasies about sailors and whales is perfectly normal...Todd, Homoeroticism, Homosexuality, Humor, Ishmael, Jason Momoa, Literature, Male Sexuality, masculinity, Masculinity Studies, Moby Dick, Moby Dick is TOTALLY GAY, Novel, Quee-Queg, Queer, Queer Sexuality, Queer Theory, Sailors, Satire, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, The Hardcore Gay Erotica that is Moby Dick, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Well Hung Bad Boys Looking for D, Whalers, Writing

I mean if I woke up to find myself in the arms a large, able-bodied, tattooed god I could only hope that my make-a-wish came true and that I was resting next to Jason Momoa.  A man can dream after all.

It’s been a strange sort of year, one that has come with numerous changes and developments, but the most recent one was finishing yet another in a long line of 1000 page books, however my most recent challenge was unique because it was not a novel but in fact it was a history book.  Since I was a child my father has owned a dense tome wrapped in a black dust jacket marked with a swastika.  I knew a fair amount about Nazis because my father would often tell me stories of men like Patton and Ike Eisenhower who defeated these evil monsters that were almost on par with orcs from The Lord of the Rings.  I could never understand then why my dad had a book with their logo on the front.  This was largely because I didn’t take the time to read the cover.  The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer is an incredible book, and while I would hope one day to write about it’s significance to World War II history discourse, I began to observe, somewhere in the three hundred pages of Russian-German diplomacy, that I really, really, desperately wanted to read Moby Dick.  Again.

I mentioned this the other day to two of my co-workers and they gave “the look.”

It’s an odd sort of look.  I can’t say that it’s pity exactly, nor would I go so far as to suggest that it’s jealousy.  In fact it’s something in the middle I suspect.  A loathing of the self before one comes to the realization that I’m a narcissist and a weirdo who thinks he’s special and interesting and so they pity my strange variety of nerdom.  It’s a look I’m familiar with, and one friend even has a name for these moments that he charmingly refers to as “Jammer Moments.”  I’ve yet to contact Oxford English Dictionary because the term has yet to develop a significant etymology and I also don’t have the merchandizing rights yet.  “That’s so Jammer” will look great on t-shirts, and I intend to make a killing.

Despite my oddity, and my friends and co-worker’s mystification at my desire to read what is widely regarded as one of the most unreadable novels in all of human history, I’ve enjoyed picking up Moby Dick again.  The novel is beautifully written, philosophically profound, textually complex, and also a wonderful opportunity to dig into my queer sexuality and find what is surely one of the most delightfully gay romances in American literature.

Now I can anticipate my reader’s objections before I even get into the fun parts.  Fun parts for the record are of course queer jargon for ding dongs and buttholes, both of which terms are straight jargon for penises and anuses, both of which are themselves medical jargon for those things that shoot out babies and turds.  Why should I care about whether or not the characters in Moby Dick are gay?  I’m never going to read the book in the first place, so why should I bother worrying over the sexuality of two fictional people?  More to the point, if Moby Dick is a beautiful and philosophically profound novel, why worry about something as petty as sexuality?

My reader makes some wonderful arguments and I understand where they’re coming from, but to be frank I just feel like having some fun and writing a trashy queer romance and maybe, possibly perhaps, find something culturally relevant to observe at the end.  So get off my back people, life is hard and sometimes we all need to find a way to relax.

Now our story begins in the city of Nantucket where the gloomy Ishmael finds himself in a bar, the Spouter Inn to be exact.  I’ll touch on that imagery in a moment.  Our young stud of a protagonist is a country-boy named Ishmael who is caught by a wanderlust that is at times gloomy, which just gives him this precious “dark side” allowing the reader to picture the man as a kind of Goth dream-boat only without eye-liner and leave tattoos.  That’s for later.  Ishmael is caught by a near-constant desire to travel specifically to go whaling on the ocean for it provides his spirit an unknown, or indescribable satisfaction.  The fact that he surrounded by men is unspoken, but I hope my reader will agree, it’s clearly all about the dick, whale.

I meant whale.

Ishmael steps into the ejaculation, Spouter, I meant Spouter Inn, and he walks past a group of butch sailors to inquire about a room.  At this point the reader is given the first bits of foreplay to the beautiful party:

“But avast,” he added, tapping his forehead, “you haint no objections to sharing a harpooner’s blanket, have ye?  I s’pose you are a goin’ a whalin’, so you’d better get used to that sort of thing.”

I told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should ever do so, it would depend upon who the harpooner might be, and that if he (the landlord) had no other place for me, and the harpooner was not decidedly objectionable, why rather wander further about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with half of any decent man’s blanket.  (19).

I suppose I have to sigh and groan that our protagonist should announce himself upfront to be a bit of a slut.  It’s not enough that he let’s the barman tap his “head” in front of him without calling him on it, then you have the fact that admits to preferring multiple lovers and that monogamous relations leave him tired and bored, and before he’s even finished the sentence he has admitted that he’s not overly picky about the sort of man who shares his bed.  But perhaps what’s worst, or best of all, I’m not sure which at this point, Ishmael states outright that he’s willing to shack up with any guy if it means being warm and dry.  I mean I’m as much of a slut as the next guy, but show at least a little deference in selection of sexual partners Ishmael.  There are some Creeps out there, and you always find out far far too late in the game.  That orthodox priest was not happy when I said I had an early meeting.

Now my reader is sure to object against my interpretation by suggesting that none of that was actually implied.  Ishmael was just a young man looking for a place to stay during a nasty storm.  Well my reader has some very intriguing ideas concerning Ishmael’s sex-life, however I’m afraid I must continue to the juicy parts.

The reader is given a lengthy passage in which Ishmael deliberates about whether he should share a bed with the strange man that the bar-tender speaks of.  I wish I could say that this was enjoyable to read, but Melville really lacks a certain penasch in terms of getting one hot and bothered for random bed-sharing.  Chapter four progresses rather slowly until the reader is able to get a juicy couple of pages of Ishmael discovering his bed-mate will be a cannibal, and there is some rather yummy passages in which Ishmael studies Queequeg’s body, but it really isn’t until the start of chapter 5 that the reader gets any sort of hint that the action is starting up again:

Upon waking up the next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner.  You had almost thought I had been his wife.  (36).

Before the reader interrupts my good time let me observe rather quickly that from this point on Ishmael will regularly use marital adjectives when describing his relationship with Queequeg.  It’s not enough that the pair of them wake up in a loving, warm embrace.  After all, it was a cold, rainy night and they were strangers seeking solace and warm in one another’s…company.  But just a few pages on from this Ishmael drops another hint at his developing infatuation:

But at length all the night’s events soberly recurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to the comical predicament.  For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain.  (38).

Once again Ishmael employs the adjectives of marriage, and this association of course leads to a somewhat annoying realization that Ishmael is one of those queer men who buys into the idea that one of them is “the girl.”  This is a rather unfortunate realization, because up to this point I was enjoying Ishmael’s sluttiness and unbroken frolicking with another man.  Perhaps what’s so frustrating is this perpetuated rhetoric in today’s society, most obviously in straight communities.  Homosexuality is seen often as a kind of malleable heterosexuality in which two men or two women form a monogamous bond that mimics a straight couple’s.  One of the pair is the man, and therefore the active penetrator or licker.  I should really consult a lesbian and determine what the inside terminology is.  While the other partner is the passive receiver, meaning of course that that person is “the girl.”  Ishmael seems to be employing this imagery as he observes Queequeg not responding to his attempts to wake him up, and while it’s hardly a severe reiteration of a tired mode of thinking, it’s just disappointing that Ishmael can’t foster his own working model of queerness.

I then rolled over, my neck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a slight scratch.  Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby.  A pretty-pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk!  (38).

The only thing missing I suppose is some leather chest-guards, chaps, some cigars, and one of those swings you have to pay somebody to set up.  Who says Literature is boring?

Now my reader interrupts my fantasies because they are compelled by some misguided sense of revisionist intellectualism to remind me that there was no actual sex.  Queequeg simply fell asleep and Melville is trying to establish a purely heterosexual friendship between the two characters.  The use of the word “savage” as well is not meant to be dirty, but is in fact some unfortunate racism on Melville’s part to appeal to his original audience.  These are all fine points, but they’re ignoring the obvious assplay that was exchanged, and Ishmael being a weird slut who totally wanted it.

This is compounded by a later passage in which Ishmael is just watching Queequeg, and thinking about their association together.  And after a few moment’s reflection, which, let’s be honest here, men only ever employ that term to mean “thinking about all the sorts of kinky sex I’d love to have with another man,” Ishmael makes a further move:

I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile.  At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows.  I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.  (73).

If a man told me he’d like to sleep with me more than once I would probably be flattered as well…alas, I have yet to even receive an offer.

I suppose I must sigh here, and gently wave towards my face as Ishmael only gets more steamy in the sheets with his Cannibal lover (Man eats Man would be either a beautiful title for a homoerotic play by Tennessee Williams or else a wonderful title for a gay porno, I’m not sure which, why not both?).  After the previous exchange was offered Ishmael offers another sight just a few pages on where he let’s the obvious foreplay be observed:

But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends.  Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning.  Thus, then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.  (75).

Again, before I can even get into the juicy parts about what is obviously sexual, my revisionist reader must needs interrupt to inform me that I’m performing a gross disservice to literary analysis.  What is being described is not an openly homosexual relationship.  Melville is merely using words like “honeymoon” to show a deepening friendship that is developing between Ishmael and Queequeg.  They would also like to remind me that strong homosocial bonds were common between men of this time because it was just not socially acceptable to share emotions between people of different genders.  Men and women kept their personal selves to themselves, and preferred to share such intimately with members of their own sex.  They would also like to tell me that I’m obviously trying to write contemporary homosexuality onto these characters which is unfair because the homosexuality of today’s society is an entirely different animal than homoeroticism that existed in the past.

Well, if I can offer a defense, I never used the word homosexual.  We have no idea if Queequeg is homosexual, or pansexual, or bisexual, or just queer.  Now Ishmael is most definitely gay though, because this entire book is just one long testament to his fascination and erotic fixation on “THE D.”

Now if my reader is done interrupting I need to get to the last two passages which obvious end with our queer heroes finally getting, if I can borrow an expression the kids are using these days, “Biz-zay.”  Immediately following the previous quote the next chapter begins with Ishmael and Queequeg, resting together and just basking in the afterglow:

We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.  (76).

While this is nowhere near as pornographic as I would like it to be (Ishmael remains to the very end a nasty little tease) it’s so obvious that these two men have spent the night voraciously making love.  Queequeg’s invitations might also suggest that he was the one doing the penetrating, but even my skills of queer deduction only go so far.  I mean, the dude is the one leading the advances in this scene, literally “filling” the space of the bed and actively “pushing” into Ishmael’s personal space demonstrating his affection, but then again plenty of men like to be the one leading the advances before lifting their rump in the air like a cat in heat.  You never really know somebody until you get them in bed.

What’s obvious, apart from the fact that they both spent the night hiding the “sau-seege” is that these two men have developed a deep and caring intimacy.  Ishmael and Queequeg can freely touch and talk and fuck to their hearts content, and thus suggests that the opening passages of Moby Dick are offering a classic narrative of the “Will they?/Won’t They?”  Readers and viewers enjoy watching this dynamic because people are sexual creatures who tend to get some kind of voyeuristic thrill of watching another romance develop.  And because love is an evolutionary development designed to encourage procreation that results in long terms relationships to ensure two parents can raise a child together, sex is always going to be the end result of a love affair.

People want to see people fall in love to see if maybe they don’t see a little bit of themselves in these characters.  We want to observe another person’s love affair to see if it resembles the loves that we’ve pursued in our own lives.  And, I secretly suspect, this desire to watch another person’s love affair is a chance to explore a sexual dynamic that we did not.

I myself never got a chance to form a love affair with another man, and to be honest I’m not sure if I ever would.  I tend to gravitate more towards women when it comes to my emotional self.  I like their company, but I can’t deny that my queerness does push me towards a sexual dynamic with men.  I guess then I should give my reader one last chance to argue with my interpretation of these early passages of Moby Dick.

It’s ridiculous.  This whole essay has been one long, almost mastubatory re-writing of an American classic for the purpose of justifying or exploiting the writer’s personal sexual curiosities and hang-ups.  Ishmael and Queequeg do form a strong, homo-social bond together, and while there is some physicality in it, there’s no way that these two men could have possibly been considered lovers.  Its irresponsible and indulgent.

And I suppose my reader does have a point.  Queer as a word has changed from what it was.  That’s the nature of language.  It’s a fluid and constantly altering technology that allows human beings to turn thoughts into physical, tangible reality.  Queequeg and Ishmael express a companionship that is intensely homoerotic that manifests in physical and emotional closeness, and Melville writes it out as a kind of marriage between these two men, using the language of domestic partnership to allow the reader to see how much Queequeg becomes the most important person in Ishmael’s life.  The language of Melville shows that men in the past formed strong homosocial bonds between other men and found some kind of emotional solace in it.  So strong were these bonds that often times men found, in other men, more emotional and physical comfort in the arms and bodies and company of other men than they might have had with women.  And some men, in these relationships, might have found something akin to a romantic partner who gave them a stability and foundation of love that they could then build a life on that might, as time went on, save them from any and all kind of emotional problems.

I suppose my reader is right about Moby Dick in the end.  Men might have loved and fucked one another in the past, but the only thing that’s really changed is the language.

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from Moby Dick were taken from the 2000 paperback Modern Library Classics edition.

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

As per usual, I really like helping my reader dig into the great works I write about, and so while I was writing this essay I found a few essays about Moby Dick in case the reader would like to dig a little deeper into the text.  Enjoy:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/what-moby-dick-means-to-me

https://www.shmoop.com/moby-dick/sexuality-sexual-identity-theme.html

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s04/web3/d1scarpa.html

http://www.trivisonno.com/moby-dick

https://thoughtcatalog.com/harris-sockel/2014/06/10-quotes-that-prove-moby-dick-is-actually-gay-porn/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/30/herman-melville-mark-twain-parini

https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2010/05/14/126828648/-moby-dick-musings-on-whale-heads

https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2011/10/18/141429619/why-read-moby-dick-a-passionate-defense-of-the-american-bible

The two-headed whale: Bisexuality and Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”

 

 

***Writer’s Note***

On an entirely separate note…seriously, Jason Momoa isn’t the sexiest man of the year?  Seriously?  Do I really need to…okay.  Apparently I do.

You’re welcome.

Kubrick’s Lolita, Or The Lingering Corruption of the Lollipop-Lolita Part 4

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"How Did They Ever Make a Movie Out of Lolita?", Camp Climax, Christopher Hitchens, Claire Quilty, Film, film review, Humbert Humbert, James Mason, Literature, Lolita, Lolita Garden Scene, Novel, pedophilia, Peter Sellers, Psycho, Robert Osbourne, sex, Sexual Perversion, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Sexualization of Girls, Shelley Winters, Stanley Kubrick, Sue Lyon, TCM, Vladimir Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita

“How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?” is a sentence I despise, largely because I didn’t think of it first.  I know it’s petty, but being a writer and being likeable is difficult enough, that’s why I suspect most of us try and begin our essays and novels with catching, opening lines that invite our reader to give a shit.  And so when one of us comes up with a catchy line that nobody can forget it tends to leave us bitter and grumbling in front of our word processors.

My regular reader will no doubt have observed that I’ve been going through a dedicated Lolita phase.  After finishing the novel again recently I’ve decided to sit down and really dig into the material of the book, of the writer Nabokov, and of the various books and art products that have emerged since the publication of the book.  Having written now about the novel, and the novella precursor, it seemed only appropriate to tackle the 1962 film by Stanley Kubrick given the fact that it’s this film which has partly helped the Lolita phenomenon become what it was and is.

I honestly can’t remember what my earliest experience with the film actually was, though I’m almost positive that it had to be TCM.  My parents were good to me in the fact that they almost always had either TCM or TV Land playing on the television, that is when I wasn’t being a little tyrant and demanding the right to watch Freakazoid and Loony Tunes.  I consider Robert Osbourne a kind of third parent because he introduced me to people such as Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Sydney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, and of course John Wayne.  This education of yester-year’s cinema eventually became a boon to me as I could relate and communicate with older people who had grown up watching such movies and programming, and it taught me the language of films and film history as well.  My first impression of Lolita then, was one of the “commercials” that ran between the films and Osborne’s intros, and of course it began with that line that I both despise and adore.

It wasn’t long thereafter that I eventually saw the film, though I did make sure that I had read the novel first.  I’d like to say that the film’s content made a distinct impression on me and that I became aware of the brilliance of the film, and of course of it’s director Stanley Kubrick, but I was a teenage boy.  I was far more interested in memorizing every episode of Family Guy and every line of Pulp Fiction.

I recently bought Lolita on Blu-ray and watched it again and my impression of the film has changed dramatically because, much like the novel, Stanley Kubrick’s movie is one long fascination with a disturbing idea which Christopher Hitchens noted in his essay Vladimir Nabokov: Hurricane Lolita:

The most unsettling suggestion of all must be the latent idea that nymphetomania is, as well as a form of sex, a form of love.  (76).

This observation is absolutely everything when approaching Lolita, whether it’s the novel or the film, though it’s especially important when tackling the film because the way Kubrick directs the picture is as a traditional Hollywood love story.  Throughout the film Lolita and Humbert Humbert interact, not as a young girl and a fully grown man, but almost as emotional equals.

Throughout the film Delores Haze, who is oddly enough never referred to as Delores but always as Lolita, is presented a precocious teenager girl, but also as a mature individual with her own will and idea of who and what she is.  When Humbert and Lolita arrive at the hotel where the first rape actually takes place, Kubrick plays the dynamic of the two not as a hungry, perverted man lusting after a child, but as Lolita seducing Humbert:

Lolita Haze: Why don’t we play a game?

Humbert Humbert: A game? Come on. No, you get on to room service at once.

Lolita Haze: No, really. I learned some real good games in camp. One in “particularly” was fun.

Humbert Humbert: Well, why don’t you describe this one in “particularly” good game?

Lolita Haze: Well, I played it with Charlie.

Humbert Humbert: Charlie? Who’s he?

Lolita Haze: Charlie? He’s that guy you met in the office.

Humbert Humbert: You mean that boy? You and he?

Lolita Haze: Yeah. You sure you can’t guess what game I’m talking about?

Humbert Humbert: I’m not a very good guesser.

Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear and giggles]

Humbert Humbert: I don’t know what game you played.

Lolita Haze: [whispers in his ear again] You mean you never played that game when you were a kid?

Humbert Humbert: No.

Lolita Haze: Alrighty then…

There’s also an earlier scene shortly after Humbert picks Lolita up from the summer camp, brilliantly called “Camp Climax for Girls.”  As they’re driving Humbert attempts small talk and Lolita speaks with him seductively.

Humbert Humbert: You know, I’ve missed you terribly.

Lolita Haze: I haven’t missed you. In fact, I’ve been revoltingly unfaithful to you.

Humbert Humbert: Oh?

Lolita Haze: But it doesn’t matter a bit, because you’ve stopped caring anyway.

Humbert Humbert: What makes you say I’ve stopped caring for you?

Lolita Haze: Well, you haven’t even kissed me yet, have you?

And looking near the end of the picture when Lolita is pregnant and living with a sweet but simple man named Dick, she offers Humbert a kind of apology for her “roaming” from him physically.

Lolita Haze: [Trying to console Humbert] I’m really sorry that I cheated so much. But I guess that’s just the way things are.

If the reader is somewhat sickened by these passages it’s just a sign that they recognize how bizarre, and in fact how disturbing this presentation actually is.  It’s not uncommon for young women to develop crushes on older men during puberty, but this has more to do with emotional and sexual development.  Such crushes and infatuations are early attempts to understand attraction and to experiment and play with it so that, when they are more mature, they can actually act on their feelings.

Kubrick might be faulted or criticized for presenting Lolita as an emotionally mature young woman who openly and freely engages in a relationship with an older man who’s clearly using her, but as I watched the film again I realized that in fact, much like Nabokov himself who manipulated his reader through prose, Kubrick is using the language of cinema to imply perversion without ever outright showing it.

Because the film premiered in 1962, Kubrick was still working with the censorships and sensibilities of film companies at that time.  This can be fun for the reader intellectually if they pay attention because in one scene Charlotte Haze, while showing Humbert about the house, actually flushes a toilet.  When the reader remembers that, until the movie Psycho premiered just two years before this film, a director could neither flush nor even show a toilet on camera.  There’s a feeling while watching such a small act that Kubrick is beginning the small subversions that would eventually allow film makers more freedom.  But of course past the toilet flush there is the now iconic garden scene in which Humbert Humbert actually sees Lolita out and about and sun bathing.

I remarked to my sister how well this scene is done while we were watching it, because Kubrick is smart enough to leave Lolita, played by a then sixteen year old Sue Lyon as the center of the everything.  The viewer first sees Lolita from the back, sunbathing and wearing nothing but a large feathery hat, dark sunglasses, and a pink bikini (the film is black and white but some color photographs exist revealing the outfits actual color).  The shot shifts from behind Lolita to Humbert’s shocked and obviously aroused expression before going back to Lolita and from there Kubrick works his ability as a director.  Charlotte Haze describes the garden while the viewer is left to “gaze” upon Lolita.  Lolita herself looks up from her book, stares at the viewer, slowly removes her sunglasses, and offers up a look that hints at curiosity and mild erotic interest, meanwhile she never steps out of her pose.  The scene lingers and the viewer becomes aware that they are not looking at a young girl who is beginning to, if I can borrow the botanical term, “blossom” into womanhood.  In fact they are looking at Humbert’s desire, for the lingering shot and her entire suggested sexuality is entirely Humbert’s imagining.  And so the so the viewer is invited to participate in Humbert’s erotic fascination with Lolita, looking at her body and wondering to themselves if this gaze that is centered on her isn’t just implied, but something that is actually erotic.

Naturally, when you’re a teenage boy the same age as Sue Lyons was when she made the movie, the eroticism doesn’t feel weird at all because you’re the same age.  It’s just crush.  As I age however, I notice more and more that whatever initial erotic feelings I had at this image feels creepier and creepier.  It’s now at a point where I can remember being young and attracted to girls that age, but I refuse to acknowledge any kind of erotic fascination with the image.  That’s all a fancy-pants way of saying that when I watched Lolita again I felt absolutely repulsed at the erotic suggestion.

But that recognition was enough for me to recognize that Kubrick was purposefully playing up that angle.

Much like the actual novel Lolita, Kubrick tries to make the story feel like a love story to show that, beneath the surface of a supposed love story there is in fact nothing but sexual corruption.  This is easily apparent in the various little moments of the story, and one of the best elements is the afore mentioned “Camp Climax for Girls.”  The reader actually gets a moment when Humbert is surrounded by young women, many of them wearing swim-suits, and the viewer is left watching the image of all these young girls displaying their bodies.  The shot works because the viewer is invited to consider the sexual nature of all these girls, but at the same time is reminded that, because of Humbert’s presence that this erotic display really isn’t one.  It’s just girls being girls.  Likewise later on in the film Delores Haze participates in a play by the corrupt playwright Clare Quilty.  The “play,” when the viewer actually sees it, is in fact a kind of fertility display and this lets the reader observe the sexual undercurrent running throughout.

But Quilty himself needs to be addressed because he is arguably the most incredible part of the movie, largely because he is played by the chameleon Peter Sellers.  Sellers presents Quilty as this aloof yet wacky man who is sexually corrupt and, if I can borrow an old expression, “queer as a three dollar bill.”

As a queer man I should probably be offended by the implied idea that Quilty is queer, but if the reader actually observes Quilty it becomes clear that the man isn’t part of the LGBT community.  Quilty is just a sexual pervert.  Before Humbert and Lolita arrive at the hotel the reader is given a small scene in which Quilty and his partner, a largely silent asian woman, are conversing with a bellhop named Swine:

Clare Quilty: She’s a yellow belt. I’m a green belt. That’s the way nature made it. What happens is, she throws me all over the place.

Swine: She throws you all over the place?

Clare Quilty: Yes. What she does, she gets me in a, sort of, thing called a sweeping ankle throw. She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang.

Swine: Doesn’t it hurt?

Clare Quilty: Well, I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it. I really love it. I lay there hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It’s really the greatest.

This would be strange enough were it not a later scene when Quilty so obviously attempts to get Humbert to let him see Lolita.

Humbert Humbert: Well, it’s nothing, but… she had an accident.

Clare Quilty: Oh gee, she had an accident? That’s really terrible, I mean, fancy a fellow’s wife having… a normal guy having… his wife having an accident like that. W-what happened to her?

Humbert Humbert: Er, she was hit by a car.

Clare Quilty: Gee, no wonder she’s not here. Gee, you must feel pretty bad about it. W-w-w-w-when uh eh w-what’s happening, is she coming out later or something?

Humbert Humbert: Well, that was the understanding.

Clare Quilty: What, in an ambulance? Hahahaha! Gee, I’m sorry, I-I-I-shouldn’t say that; I get sorta carried away, you know, being so normal and everything.

It’s easy to read this passage and observe that Quilty is a strange man, but it’s in Seller’s performance of Quilty as a bumbling, queer sort of man that the viewer is able to really feel the corrupt sexual nature.  Sellers is the key to the movie Lolita, because while James Mason plays Humbert as a dominating, sexual deviant, Kubrick plays him up as a man in love, while Quilty is simply a sexual predator.  In this way the suggestion of Nymphetomania as a form of love is progressed because Humbert becomes not a corrupt man, but just a man who loses his love to a man “more” perverted than himself.  Lolita herself acknowledges and confirms this for the reader during the final scene in which Humbert discusses with her how she left him:

Humbert Humbert: [Referring to Quilty] What happened to this Oriental-minded genius? When you left the hospital, where did he take you?

Lolita Haze: To New Mexico.

Humbert Humbert: Whereabouts in New Mexico?

Lolita Haze: To a dude ranch near Santa Fe. The only problem with it was he had such a bunch of weird friends staying there.

Humbert Humbert: What kind of “weird” friends?

Lolita Haze: Weird! Painters, nudists, writers, weightlifters… But I figured I could take anything for a couple of weeks.

This final reveal is a bit of strange experience because, when Lolita finally divulges this, many of the suspicions are confirmed and Quilty becomes the monster of the film, rather than Humbert himself.  At least that is the perception that I ended the film with after watching it again.  And of course, that reaction troubled me immensely because it neglects the reality that Humbert Humbert is a pedophile who seduced Lolita’s mother so that he could get closer to Lolita so that he could ultimately rape her.

I’ve addressed in my previous Lolita essays that Humbert Humbert writes the entire narrative of Lolita, leaving the poor Delores Haze in a position where her story is told without her consent or input.  The film offers something different than this vision, and while Lolita does seem to have some kind of agency in the film, it’s important to remember that Kubrick, as a director, was always concerned about the narrative structure of films and how the images crafted his visions.

At first glance Lolita appears to be a love story, but a closer examination reveals a troublesome story about a man manipulating a young woman who is still trying to figure out who she is and what she wants.  Lolita is never given any kind of freedom to determine who she is, and while on the surface she seems to be inviting Humbert and Quilty to engage with her sexually, this still is undercut by the reality that she’s a young teenage girl who’s barely figured out her sexuality, let alone her actual personality.

Lolita is a story about the troublesome surface and reality of sexuality in America during the early 1960s.  And Kubrick is successful in constantly pointing out that sexuality was always hiding beneath the surface of everything.  Under the veneer of the gardens and suburban homes there was a lurking sexuality that was at times troublesome and even corrosive.  Children were vulnerable to predators, and because the narrative of sex was something that was still taboo, even when it was out in plain sight, what was obvious couldn’t be actually said aloud.

Lolita as a film is a story about the constant suggestion and implication that is hidden beneath what is actually said and done.  In this way the film offers a beautiful way of storytelling because, unlike prose, more viewers will recognize the leering gaze as Lolita Haze lays in the backyard.  They’ll recognize what’s being suggested is the idea that Lolita is a sexual object, and, hopefully, they’ll recognize that it isn’t their suggestion but in fact the suggestion of a corrupt man who’s writing her story right out of her control.

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes taken from the film Lolita were provided by IMDb.

 

**Writer’s Note**

It’s actually pretty difficult to find ANY video bloggers who have attempted to analyze to explore the film.  However I did find two people on YouTube who seemed up to the challenge.  If the reader would like they can follow the link below to the videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IpBNS5kksE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdj0dKrKnUw

I’ve also found a brief video that is a three minute interview with Suellyn Lyon, the main star of the film, about the actual movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bHz-N6bJ3I

 

***Writer’s Note***

The life story of Sue Lyon is not particularly pleasant, and Kubrick’s film is largely the reason for it.  I suppose that’s why I wanted to end on a positive note, and so I found two pictures of Lyon and Kubrick rehearsing lines and seeming to enjoy themselves.  A lovely reminder that beneath the “sexual icon,” there was a young woman wanting to become an actress and working with one of the greatest directors of all time.

 

Hope is Kindled: The Hope Speech

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"My name is Harvey Milk and I'm here to recruit you!", "You Gotta Give 'em Hope", AIDS, Anita Bryant, Democracy, Gay people in politics, GoodReads, Haleth son of Hama, Harvey Milk, Harvey Milk gives me hope, history, Homosexuality, Homosexuality as mental illness, Hope, Hope Speech, identification, LGBTQ Suicide Rate, Liberalism and Homosexuality, Literature, Milk, Politics, Public speech, Queer, Queer People in Politics, Queer Visibility, Queer Youth, Representation, Sean Penn, Sexual identity, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Sir Ian McKellan Hope Speech, Speech, The Lord of the Rings, The Mayor of Castro Street, Trevor Project

The first “pride” parade I ever went to was begun when a woman stood on a table and said, “My name is Hannah and I’m here to recruit you!”  The crowd cheered and I let out a deep approving bark like I usually do at such events.  It was a fun way to start because we all knew exactly who she was quoting and that opening mattered because of the person who originally said those words.

If you had asked me ten years ago who Harvey Milk was I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.  I might have been able to say that he was the main character in a movie that Sean Penn was starring in but other than that I couldn’t give you anything else.  I was a young, closeted man who tried to avoid any kind of info or history of queer people while also trying to ignore the fact that I was sporadically looking up gay porn and occasionally crushing on Haleth from Lord of the Rings the Two Towers(I was fourteen when the movie came out and he was, to quote my little sister, “man-pretty.”).  It was shortly after seeing Milk though that my knowledge of Harvey Milk changed and the start of my eventual coming out began to happen.

This is a lovely origin story, but to be fair and honest Harvey Milk did not become the figure that he has to me until only recently.  In the last year I’ve graduated from college after digging into Queer Theory, and even after graduating and coming out I’m still digging into the fun territory that is sexuality and gender studies.  Most of my reading tends to deal with queer men and sex that takes place between them, but in-between books about sex it’s important for me to read about the men and women who have helped queer people like me get the space and place that they enjoy today.  That’s why when I saw The Mayor of Castro Street in a GoodReads list of Great LGBTQ Non-Fiction I decided to read about the man who had helped me get over my original homophobia.

I intend to write about The Mayor of Castro Street eventually, but honestly recent events have left me feeling depressed and beaten, and far more important, it’s left my hope a little damaged.  For reasons that are Kafkaesque and absurd I cannot actually write about the details of the event in question, but I can at least write honestly that the events have left me worried about being honest publicly about my sexuality, or with trying to offer up public information about queer people and our history.  The short version is, I feel like I’ve been pushed back into the closet by an idiot and several people who are too cowardly to stand up to said idiot.  What’s worse is that people close to me, people who I have nothing but respect for, who have tried to fight have either been silenced or, even worse, had to apologize to the aforementioned idiot.  I’ve had to watch my queer friends actually shed tears and tell me they feel like they’re being shamed and hidden away.  And I’ve had to bury my anger and cautiously consider my actions for fear of personal and professional safety.  And the worst part of the whole ordeal, is that I’ve lost a bit of hope that there’s anything I can actually do.

Once that hope is gone it’s not easily regained, and in fact I suspect it’s permanently gone.

Having recently written about Harvey Milk I looked back to his iconic “Hope Speech” and I decided to sit down and read it.  I was already digging through Randy Shilt’s The Mayor of Castro Street, and in the back of the book there is a collection of Milk’s public speeches and so in a brief burst before work I read the speech.  It began with those words that my friend Hannah had begun her own rally:

My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.

I’ve been saying this one for years. It’s a political joke. I can’t help it–I’ve got to tell it. I’ve never been able to talk to this many political people before, so if I tell you nothing else you may be able to go home laughing a bit.

Harvey goes on for a bit after this telling a few more jokes before going into a brief mention about the political direction of the country at the time, and while it may not at first seem terribly relevant, as is usually the case, Harvey’s point is to address an important issue:

So much for that. Why are we here? Why are gay people here? And what’s happening? What’s happening to me is the antithesis of what you read about in the papers and what you hear about on the radio. You hear about and read about this movement to the right. That we must band together and fight back this movement to the right. And I’m here to go ahead and say that what you hear and read is what they want you to think because it’s not happening. The major media in this country has talked about the movement to the right so the legislators think that there is indeed a movement to the right and that the Congress and the legislators and the city councils will start to move to the right the way the major media want them. So they keep on talking about this move to the right.

So let’s look at 1977 and see if there was indeed a move to the right. In 1977, gay people had their rights taken away from them in Miami. But you must remember that in the week before Miami and the week after that, the word homosexual or gay appeared in every single newspaper in this nation in articles both pro and con. In every radio station, in every TV station and every household. For the first time in the history of the world, everybody was talking about it, good or bad. Unless you have dialogue, unless you open the walls of dialogue, you can never reach to change people’s opinion. In those two weeks, more good and bad, but more about the word homosexual and gay was written than probably in the history of mankind. Once you have dialogue starting, you know you can break down prejudice. In 1977 we saw a dialogue start. In 1977, we saw a gay person elected in San Francisco. In 1977 we saw the state of Mississippi decriminalize marijuana. In 1977, we saw the convention of conventions in Houston. And I want to know where the movement to the right is happening.

Within the United States this isn’t a question at all.  The country knows that the Republican party is in power, however at the rate their going that’s almost certain to change come 2018.  Then again Democrats never have been very good at winning and holding something so I probably shouldn’t speculate about future demographics.  This passage at first doesn’t have much to do with “hope” and the importance of queer people to have hope for the future.  In fact at first it seems to suggest nothing except that it would be a great time for queer people.  It would appear as such, but in fact this recognition that republicans are not the ones in power reveals a real problem.  Queer people were not enjoying a time of provenance despite the Democratic party’s majority, and that was largely because Democrats at the time were not very good friends to the queer community.

It’s easy to forget if you do nothing but listen to pundits from the left, but Queer Identity Politics and being a Democrat were not always simpatico.  In fact despite the fact that homosexuality had been removed from the DSM as a mental illness, many democrats still saw queer people as a threat to political capital rather than a bonus.  Being tolerant or even supportive of homosexuals could be a political death sentence (unless you were Bernie Sanders), and so as queer people in the 1970s were beginning to assume more and more of a cultural identity they were looking to some kind of leadership.  The problem was, all of the leaders were straight.

Now my reader may protest immediately that there shouldn’t have been a problem with that, but Harvey checks that in his speech.

I know we are pressed for time so I’m going to cover just one more little point. That is to understand why it is important that gay people run for office and that gay people get elected. I know there are many people in this room who are running for central committee who are gay. I encourage you. There’s a major reason why. If my non-gay friends and supporters in this room understand it, they’ll probably understand why I’ve run so often before I finally made it. Y’see right now, there’s a controversy going on in this convention about the gay governor. Is he speaking out enough? Is he strong enough for gay rights? And there is controversy and for us to say it is not would be foolish. Some people are satisfied and some people are not.

You see there is a major difference–and it remains a vital difference–between a friend and a gay person, a friend in office and a gay person in office. Gay people have been slandered nationwide. We’ve been tarred and we’ve been brushed with the picture of pornography. In Dade County, we were accused of child molestation. It’s not enough anymore just to have friends represent us. No matter how good that friend may be.

It feels painfully obvious to me as I type this out, yet still the problem persists, which is that people need to be represented by people who are like them.  It’s important for representatives to be the people they’re representing.

It’s the benefit of living in a democracy where, for the most part, society is run by this principle, but even within the United States there is still an issue with the political dynamic and people not electing representatives who actually represent them.  Rather than getting into the Kafkaesque minutia  of gerrymandering I would rather my reader recognize that in the United States there is still a discrepancy in terms of how populations are represented politically and this in turn has led to a system where people feel that politics is a waste of time and effort.  What good is it to worry about who’s running for Railroad Management Secretary or Vice Board Direcor when I can’t find any info about who these people are?  Why I should vote in the general election when the electoral college overpowers my vote every time.

This cynicism is unfortunately easily founded, and much like Gorilla glue it’s damn near impossible to unstick it once it’s been established.

But it’s for this very reason that that cynicism must be challenged.  The only way change comes about is by giving a shit about the process.  This was a lesson that queer people began to recognize more and more as the  decade went on, and that initiative only strengthened during the 80s as the AIDS crisis demanded political and personal action.  I won’t suggest that Harvey Milk had a large hand in that, but the man has endured as one of the earliest openly homosexual politicians.  The fact that a gay person could be elected to public office was grounds enough to demand a turn at the microphone, if for no other reason to prove that they could.  It should be noted though other reasons compelled Harvey’s hand.

He addresses the smear against queer people that has, revoltingly, lingered to this day:

Like every other group, we must be judged by our leaders and by those who are themselves gay, those who are visible. For invisible, we remain in limbo–a myth, a person with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, no friends who are straight, no important positions in employment. A tenth of the nation supposedly composed of stereotypes and would-be seducers of children–and no offense meant to the stereotypes. But today, the black community is not judged by its friends, but by its black legislators and leaders. And we must give people the chance to judge us by our leaders and legislators. A gay person in office can set a tone, con command respect not only from the larger community, but from the young people in our own community who need both examples and hope.

And thus I return to the recent events that I can’t talk about and that reality is what most disturbs me.  I never hide from my reader.  I offer up my honest ambitions, thoughts, feelings, and reflections about works of literature while always speaking honestly about my own life.  It’s my way of making amends for making my reader sit through the long boring analysis.

And I can’t write about it.  I can’t give details.  I can’t name names.  I can’t say anything.  And the fact of the matter is it’s because one person was offended by the existence of queer people, by the idea that queer people should be visible and their lives should be celebrated and studied, and now my hope is left battered.

It would be one thing if this was just an isolated incident but I know for a fact it is not.  I’ve observed in the last years that even when queer people manage to secure some kind of political victory the backlash is still violent and heart breaking.  The population of transgender and queer youth still face the issue of potential homelessness just because of who they are.  Queer people still have to worry about being out and open for fear of persecution either in the form of verbal or outright physical abuse.  Don’t get me wrong, society has progressed, but only so far.

At this point though I anticipate my reader’s reaction.  Life isn’t so bad for queer people.  They can marry, and own property, and even adopt children and start families.  They need to get over this victim complex they have and get used to the fact that you can’t always have everything your way.  Some people aren’t comfortable with their children being exposed to queer people, and queer people should respect that desire to protect their children.

The problem with this argument is that it’s false.  Yes there has some social progress and homosexuality is no longer observed as a criminal offense and psychological disorder, but anyone who argues that the queer population lives without problems is fooling themselves.  It’s only been 19 years since Matthew Shepard was killed in Wisconsin.  Suicide is still the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 24 and this number is 4 times greater for LGB youth.  The reason the T is absent at the end of this statement is because the numbers for Trans people committing or considering suicide tends to be higher with at least 40% of the population saying that they have attempted suicide.

These numbers are a sign of something that I’ve recognized more and more lately, which is that people don’t have any hope.  It’s easy to let go and feel isolated, and to feel like no matter what you do there will not be people who are willing to stand up and fight.

It’s not on a soap box in San Francisco, and it’s not in the board room of my local city hall, but this site is at best part of where I stand and let my voice be heard.

I’m queer, and while I don’t have much hope for my own situation, I know that hope persists.  I know this because Harvey said as such:

The first gay people we elect must be strong. They must not be content to sit in the back of the bus. They must not be content to accept pablum. They must be above wheeling and dealing. They must be–for the good of all of us–independent, unbought. The anger and the frustrations that some of us feel is because we are misunderstood, and friends can’t feel the anger and frustration. They can sense it in us, but they can’t feel it. Because a friend has never gone through what is known as coming out. I will never forget what it was like coming out and having nobody to look up toward. I remember the lack of hope–and our friends can’t fulfill it.

I can’t forget the looks on faces of people who’ve lost hope. Be they gay, be they seniors, be they blacks looking for an almost-impossilbe job, be they Latins trying to explain their problems and aspirations in a tongue that’s foreign to them. I personally will never forget that people are more important than buildings. I use the word “I” because I’m proud. I stand here tonight in front of my gay sisters, brothers and friends because I’m proud of you. I think it’s time that we have many legislators who are gay and proud of that fact and do not have to remain in the closet. I think that a gay person, up-front, will not walk away from a responsibility and be afraid of being tossed out of office. After Dade County, I walked among the angry and the frustrated night after night and I looked at their faces. And in San Francisco, three days before Gay Pride Day, a person was killed just because he was gay. And that night, I walked among the sad and the frustrated at City Hall in San Francisco and later that night as they lit candles on Castro Street and stood in silence, reaching out for some symbolic thing that would give them hope. These were strong people, whose faces I knew from the shop, the streets, meetings and people who I never saw before but I knew. They were strong, but even they needed hope.

So if there is a message I have to give, it is that I’ve found one overriding thing about my personal election, it’s the fact that if a gay person can be elected, it’s a green light. And you and you and you, you have to give people hope. Thank you very much.

When I go to work I wear a small button on my lanyard.  It’s a purple and blue rainbow that ends with the words “We are Everywhere.”  It was a gift to me by a co-worker who’s also bisexual who was also disgusted by the events which have recently taken place.  It’s a nice addition to my rainbow colored bow-ties, and it also keeps my hope alive.

It’s absolutely ridiculous to assume a political position behind a dime-sized button that nobody ever notices or asks about, but that’s not really the point.  In the face of absolute bigotry and hatred I had people above me who represented me because they were strong people.  Some of them were friends, and some of them were queer like me.

Thirty-nine years after Harvey Milk delivered his speech about Hope, and the relevance of his words are still resonating.

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from The Hope Speech were taken from an online website which the reader can read by following the link below.  They can also find the speech in the back of Randy Shilt’s The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

http://www.danaroc.com/guests_harveymilk_122208.html

 

**Writer’s Note**

Sir Ian McKellan reciting the Hope Speech…nuff said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAOjMQcCu2o

 

 

***Writer’s Note***

I’ve provided a link to the Trevor Project where the reader can observe the statitics for suicide rates in the LGBTQ community as well as resources about how to prevent such actions.  There are people fighting to make sure Queer people aren’t forgotten and aren’t marginalized.  There is, as Aragorn so beautifully put to Halath son of Hama, Hope.

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/facts-about-suicide

I’ll also provide a link to the Trevor Projects homo website if the reader would be interested in contributing to their work either financially or as a volunteer:

http://www.thetrevorproject.org/

 

****Writer’s Note****

I feel it’s important that, should anyone stumble across this essay by accident they should see at least one amazing moment of beautiful queerness, and so, here’s the spectacular Kate McKinnon (who’s quickly becoming one of my all time queer icons and personal heroes) playing a lesbian woman who stumbles upon the island of Themiskyra and gets to actually make out with feminist icon Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman.

Please enjoy this moment of Queerness with a capital Q.

 

Patterns and Shapes of a Silent Cyber-Punk World: Blade Runner & Blade Runner 2049

Tags

Alien Covenant, Bee Hives, Bees, Benjamin Walfisch, Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, Blade Runner Threeway, climate, Denis Villeneuve, dystopia, Eraserhead, failed environment, Film, film review, Hans Zimmer, Harrisson Ford, Hitchcock-Truffault, Jared Leto, Language of Cinema, Literature, memory, Place, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Robert Osbourne, Robots, Ryan Gosling, science fiction, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, Space, TCM

Is Blade Runner a silent movie?  I’m seriously asking.

I recently, well not recently, I usually write these essays and then sit on them for a month and then upload them to WordPress and then sit on them again while I publish other essays, and so what was once “Recent” at the time of writing was actually months ago.  My “process” aside, if you can call it that, I did take the time to watch the film Blade Runner this year with a group of friends.  I’m a hermit by nature who tends to enjoy his isolation because it gives me time to read what I want and watch the movies that I want without having to worry about what’s new with the people I spend my time with.  But, I still recognize that part of self-preservation is having some kind of social contact with people who aren’t my cats and dogs and immediate family members.  That and the demon who lives on my bookshelves voted for Trump and won’t let me forget about it.

It’s hard to find people that I actually like, mostly because of the territory I live in.  When you’re a bisexual atheist in a town with more churches than restaurants you pick your friends carefully.  I have a great circle of friends who tend to be open-minded and, even better, have great taste in movies. As such I joined their movie-group and on the week that it was “science fiction classics” I picked Blade Runner, as did my friend Annie who’d never seen it before, and fortunately enough, our movie got picked.

Surrounded by the endless xenomorph collectibles in Michael and Victoria’s apartment I watched a film I’d already seen somewhere around twenty or thirty times reciting the iconic lines of the Final Cut, while TJ and Michael spoke them aloud with me.

It wasn’t this viewing that led me to my question however, because not long after watching the original film, I took my wife to see the sequel film Blade Runner 2049.  I can honestly say that I’ve never been so terrified to see a movie.  Blade Runner is an important film to me, and I’ve seen lately how Ridley Scott has attempted to expand some of his previous films with sequels and prequels, successfully with Prometheus, and tragically with Alien Covenant.  I was waiting for Ridley Scott and the director Denis Villeneuve to turn the Blade Runner universe into something akin to a Marvel movie where characters are nothing but action figures and product endorsement.

The movie started.  The music rolled.  And two and half hours later I was crying because I hadn’t seen a film that sublime since Eraserhead.

Part of me was tempted to write out a full review of the latest film because I’m not being facetious when I tell my reader that I was floored by the movie.  I haven’t seen anything like Blade Runner 2049 in my life, but what stopped me immediately is that I rely on quotes provided by IMDb to support my reviews and essays, and as of this writing there are barely any quotes on IMDb.  This is frustrating initially, but as I reflected on the film
again something struck me.  Unlike the first Blade Runner, which managed to have a few long stretches of dialogue here and there, Blade Runner 2049 did not.  It’s a common occurrence during the film for there to be long moments in which nothing is actually spoken and the reader is left viewing the world which is often presented in wide shots that demonstrate the care and attention made to architecture, color, light, and sound.  During one shot in which K and Deckard are fighting in a ballroom in the ruins of Las Vegas, the hologram projections of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and show-girls flicker in and out of existence providing only snippets of sound.  It’s not that there isn’t any speaking, talking, or music during Blade Runner 2049, it’s just that after a while the reader becomes aware that the world and the design of the world, coupled with electronic music that honors the original film tend to be far more important than any of the dialogue.

In fact, much like a David Lynch movie, the dialogue is just another sound in this universe.  And so looking back to the original Blade Runner my question feels terribly important: Are the two films actually just silent movies?

I anticipate my reader’s response: No, they aren’t.  The films are filled with music and sounds and silent films are, by their nature, devoid of sound.  So how could it possibly be a silent movie?

This is a fair argument, but at the same time it is plagued by the actual histories of Silent Films.  While it is true that Silent films got their accurate title by the lack of sound in their final composition, Silent Films over time were usually accompanied by some sort of music.  It was common for movie houses to hire musicians, usually paint players, to play tunes that matched the emotional language of the film and this have evolved since their apparent irrelevance.  Silent films that are released on Dvd and Blue-Ray, or else played on TCM (We miss you Robert Osborne) are always accompanied by some kind of musical score.  My little sister’s copy of Nosferatu includes two different scores, one of which is a horrifying as fucking-fuck organ.  And recently when I checked out a Blue-ray of Metropolis I discovered it was a remastered cut in which the producers had sampled hit songs from Eighties pop bands to play over the film.  This is all just a way of saying that Blade Runner 2049 and Blade Runner, despite the sound in their films, could be construed as Silent Films.

While watching these films I am able to follow the characters and their emotional journeys, however watching the films I am usually far more concerned with listening to the almost New Wave music that plays throughout the film.  Vangelis, who produced the music for the original Blade Runner, manages to create a world that, while it isn’t dying, is more electronic than it is real.  Along with his score, which manages to balance sound and silence brilliantly, are the various sounds which make up the world.  When Deckard is studying the details of a photograph the clicking of the computer and the various switches broken by his drunken “enhance” let the reader disappear into the film.  Watching the original Blade Runner, at least to a contemporary audience, is like listening to the sounds and world of a video game.

Benjamin Walfisch, Hans Zimmer, the composer’s of Blade Runner 2049 push the reader into a different direction, because in the world Denis Villeneuve creates, the world is dying, but it’s lingering.  The music tends to envelop the reader as they watch the film to the point that one feels constantly that the sound is entering them.  This world that exists, which is only thirty years older than the time of the original story, seems to be entirely made of sound.

And this idea of sound leads me next to design because watching Blade Runner 2049 I was struck by Villeneuve’s concern of place.  Having watched a few Silent movies, and I do mean few, I’m usually struck by the concern for visual detail.  Part of this might have been fortunate accident on the part of these filmmakers, however it is important to remember that many of the great masters of the early genre of film created wonders the likes of which have only been dreamed of by many current film makers.  A film like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, yet another brilliant horror film from the early days of film which still manages to be actually terrifying, pays attention to the “place” of the story, allowing that “place” to become it’s own language.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a world that looks nothing like the “real” world, with it’s harsh geometric landscape and the pointed edges of the world, the reader is left constantly feeling like the world isn’t real, and yet, at the same time, they are entirely convinced by the vision.  Blade Runner 2049, and the original Blade Runner manage this same trick.

Watching Blade Runner 2049 is watching color and shapes and often, sex.  Unlike the original Blade Runner, which always alluded to sexuality (what exactly is a “pleasure model” I ask you) without coming outright and showing it.  Sex was something that was implied, whereas in 2049 there is sex out in the open and the reader is often reminded of it.  Whether its the holographic “Joi companion,” the prostitutes servicing men behind thinly veiled screens, the outright sex scene where Joe “becomes” the prostitute, or else the constant concern with the idea of procreation sex is constantly part of the landscape of Blade Runner 2049 culminating with K’s initial walk through the ruins of Vegas.

But along with sex the reader will constantly be bombarded with color and design and Villeneuve succeeds in making an entirely new world.  Los Angeles is a world of color and advertisements and sounds, but it’s always in the Wallace corporation headquarters that the viewer is left naked on the shores of a new world.  The offices, which tend to look more like the inside of Egyptian pyramids, are designed almost completely with stone and water, one room being nothing but a small island in a room filled with water which shines reverberating light across the walls.  Even if language is spoken in these rooms, it’s obvious over the course of time that the words are immaterial.

The rooms do all the speaking.

The original Blade Runner followed this pattern, though often not to the same extremes.  Color tended to be the stronger language and whether it was the freezer where Chew made the eyes, Tyrell’s private room decorated with gold and columns, or else if it was the Doll Room of Sebastian’s home colors created their own language.  The designs of these rooms, and the details packed into them often allowed for the dialogue to be rather secondary if not irrelevant.  Even if you heard batty asking Sebastian to help him into Tyrell’s office, the reader was probably more concerned with Prius’s make-up or else the way Sebastian’s home was a menagerie of toys, robots, and rotting walls.  When Deckard is walking through the streets of Los Angeles the color of the light-up umbrellas, or the asian script made up of neon lights manage to tell the viewer more about the world than any of the later exposition.  If nothing else about the “place” manages to capture the reader, then surely the ever-present rain should be enough to create the feeling of the world and what it is about.

Both of the Blade Runner films try to create a “place” before they create the characters that interact in this space because it’s the world that’s the important character.  Part of
this is surely because it’s a science fiction movie and so the environment needs to be established so that the reader can feel like they are entering a new world.  Watching the movies though I am struck more by the concern for creating a world because, at the end of the day, this speaks more to the “language” of cinema.

Better directors and cinema critics than I have explored this idea, and if the reader wants a great exploration of this they should read Hitchcock-Truffault.  There is a language of cinema, often referred to as visual language.  It’s a damn near impossible phenomena to describe in words but the idea is that the visual direction of films is a language unto itself and so the way a director arranges the Place and space, and then the way they move the camera through this world can communicate it’s own sort of message about humanity.  This is not an alien concept I suspect for most people.  If a camera zooms into a person’s face after they have heard news of their lover dying then most people would understand the message of the shot.  Likewise if they see a director holding the camera still while two people eat in silence the scene will have it’s own meaning and context.  This idea of film creating its own language is something which has existed since the early silent film era, and directors and artists have tried to build that language into something meaningful since the establishment of the medium.

Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 continue to discourse because both films, while they do have characters and story and dialogue which create a story, are films more rooted in the tradition of the language of cinema.  The images and lights and colors are far more important because they communicate more about humanity than most of the dialogue.

I think that’s why, as I was watching Blade Runner, and then Blade Runner 2049, I was left so emotionally impacted by both films.  Seeing these movies I felt like I was watching directors who understood that a film is not just about telling a story with words, because even though I am a writer I recognize that words can only go so far.  Sometimes, if I can quote Seth McFarlane here, music is better than words.  Colors and sounds and images can have more emotional impact upon an individual viewer, and they can also illicit strong emotions.  Watching Blade Runner 2049 I wasn’t watching a sequel to a great science fiction movie, I was watching a film that was trying to do more with the language of film.

Blade Runner 2049 is a film about the human condition, about the ideas of power and procreation, about the loneliness of souls, about what a father can give to his children, about the injustice of slavery, about the death of the world, and about the future of humanity in a landscape where symbol becomes more powerful than the individual human being.  These are powerful ideas, and watching the film I found far more message in the colors and geometric patterns of light than I did in most of the dialogue.  I recognize that the reader may not share my sentiments, and that they may find the new Blade Runner film an overly long exploration of a universe, but hopefully they will still recognize that the composition of Blade Runner 2049 is unlike any other film produced in the last decade.

Film is a medium unlike any other because the images that are being passively received can have a spirit and language all their own.  Blade Runner 2049 is a beautiful reminder then that artists can, and should, take care to worry about the what the images in their films can mean for the sensation of the viewer.

The Silent Film may have reached a point where it no longer bears any real relevance to the mass audience, but the concern for the language of cinema is still an idea which has persisted and influenced movie makers for generations.  It may not seem like it, but a man shoving his hand into a bee hive in the ruins of Las Vegas, or the same man staring up a giant hologram advertisement for a sexual hologram says more about the condition of humanity than most movies dare to.

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

This idea about the “Language of Cinema” is an important one, and so I’ve found a few great videos on YouTube which explore and explain it.  I’ve posted them here because I like to offer my reader supplementary materials, but also because there are people in the world who are far, FAR better at explaining concepts and ideas than I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK1trQBa_2g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I90ZluYvHic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUrTRjEXjSM

Along with this are several links to articles and YouTube Videos which explore facets and elements of the movie Blade Runner, just in case the reader was interested in digging deeper into the film.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-significance-of-eyes-in-Blade-Runner

http://bladerunner.wikia.com/wiki/Themes_in_Blade_Runner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd818GIdNM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVUjHTwIPvY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXRlGULqHxg

**Writer’s Note**

I’ve also included a link to an interview hosted by NPR with science historian Howard Markel who explores the history and etymology of the word Robot

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135634400/science-diction-the-origin-of-the-word-robot

Blue and Pink and Pink and Blue

Tags

Art, Feminism, Girl Up, glasses, Humor, Joshua Jammer Smith, Laura Bates, mechanical pencils, original photograph, Philosophy, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, still life

Blue and Pink and Pink and Blue

25 August 2017

Surface Matters: Lolita Part 1

Tags

"Nymphet", Art, Charlotte Haze, Childhood, Delores Haze, Delorez Haxe is Lolita's Real Name, Frederico Infante, GoodReads, Harry Potter, Humbert Humbert, Invitation to a Beheading, linguistics, Literature, Lolita, Novel, pedophilia, Pnin, prose, Rape, Rape in Literature, rape-culture, sexual assault, sexual assault within the home, sexual idealism, Sexual Rhetoric, Victim Blaming, Vladimir Nabokov, Writing

Despite the now gargantuan pile of books that is building up around me everyday, I keep looking back to the books on my shelves and thinking to myself, “I need to read that one again.”  Part of it is the fact that I always find something new in the books that I’ve read before; it’s either a sentence that excels in aesthetic merit, or else a passage that seems to capture where I am intellectually or emotionally at that time.  The other reason is because of Goodreads.  I observed after a while that my friend Aleya would make regular posts on Facebook that were made through Goodreads.  They were always the cover of a book and said either, “Aleya has begun [TITLE X]” or else “Aleya has finished [TITLE X].”  This intrigued me and when I asked her about it she mentioned that you could link your Goodreads account to your Facebook page.  I set up my account, and after only a month I discovered that you could see a years’ worth of books that you read as one large picture.  The image of all the different titles was illuminating because each book was a different experience, a different memory, and showed me exactly what I was doing, reading, and thinking about at the time.  Because of this I’ve been looking back over the books I’ve read and been thinking, “that really needs to be in the log.”  As such my copy of Lolita (distinct with its picture of a little girl’s pink lips) made its way into my path again, and I saw an opportunity to add another book to the log.

I really wish I could remember when I first read Lolita.  My earliest memory of actually reading the book was one summer during a binge of the Harry Potter series.  I’d just finished The Goblet of Fire and was about to move onto the Order of the Phoenix when a strange thought entered my head: “I should read Lolita.”  The context of a pedophile controlling and raping a fourteen-year-old girl in between the magical adventures of Harry and his friends in the castle of Hogwarts probably would be enough to kill most people’s so-called “innocence,” but the book was illuminating.

Childhood that was being poisoned by corrupt adults seemed to make sense in its context for the arrival of Voldemort seemed a perfect segway into the whiny gasbag that is Humbert Humbert.

Reading the book again I’ve had time to read other Nabokov works such as Pnin, Invitation to a Beheading, and several of his short stories and so the most beautiful part of reading Lolita is the prose.  I often compliment Nabokov for his writing, and this isn’t just literary kiss-assing on my part.  Nabokov truly is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, proseists of the twenty-first century.  Every sentence is a careful construction and the man has a linguistic skill that many writers could only aspire to.  Part of it is a careful attention to puns that litter throughout the work, but more than anything is Nabokov’s ability to seduce with linguistics.

The opening lines of Lolita remain the most beautiful opening passage of any novel I have read, so much so that I’ve stored it in memory and can recite it at will:

Lolita.  Light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin, my soul.  Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.  Lo.  Lee.  Ta.

It’s impossible to read this out loud and not feel uplifted and simultaneously repulsed, and if that isn’t a demonstration of Nabokov’s ability nothing is.  The content of this opening is enough to make one squirm but the constant use of “l’s” and “t’s” creates an auditory balm that just settles over the reader wooing them to Humbert Humbert who continues his “invitation” to the reader with a veiled order:

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.  She was Lola in slacks.  She was Dolly at school.  She was Delores on the dotted line.  But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor.?  She did, indeed she did.  In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child.  In a princedom by the sea.  Oh when?  About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer.  You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied.  Look at this tangle of thorns.  (9).

This opening remains troublesome because if the reader was paying attention it’s clear that what is taking place is not a seduction, but a veiled order to listen to his story and so from the start the tone of Lolita is clear. Humbert Humbert is not interested in defending himself, he’s interested in seducing his reader so that he can exert his will over them and, more importantly, his interpretation of the events of Lolita.

Numerous critics and readers have observed the conflict of Lolita for Nabokov’s prose is beautiful, so much so that my creative writing teacher could recite this opening at will and just pause and reflect on the beauty of it.  Humbert Humbert is a man gifted with a “fancy prose style” and because of this he’s able to try and sway the reader who should really be far more concerned with the fact that he’s regularly raping a twelve-year-old girl, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

If the reader has never read Lolita before, some background of the plot is necessary.  Humbert Humbert is a man who, when he was young, had a failed sexual liaison with a family Friend’s daughter on the beach.  Because of this failure his sexuality become stunted and he begins a lifelong pursuit of “Nymphets” his term for young girls about the age of twelve.  He has a failed marriage and then hops place to place in Europe before coming to America where, in the home of a woman named Charlotte Haze, he meets a young woman named Delores Haze who becomes the center of his erotic and psychological being.  He marries Charlotte, who dies not long after the marriage starts, and this gives Humbert the chance to abscond with Lolita across the territory of the United States.  Humbert spends the next two years traveling with Lolita and raping her while keeping her locked tight within his grasp.  Eventually Delores escapes with the help of a writer named Quilty who Humbert Murders at the end of the novel.

The duplicitous nature of Humbert is established early in the novel, for while Humbert is presented as a kind young man who had an unfulfilled erotic experience with a girl his own age, over time he becomes a crafty pervert whose chief talent is duplicity.  Later in the novel after he has suffered a failed marriage he enters a sanitarium where his favorite hobby is tricking the doctors on staff.  Humbert describes this activity gaily:

I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style […] teasing them with fake “primal scenes”; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual prediction.  (34).

It’s this quality of Humbert, his need to constantly reveal and conceal his true self, that can make reading Lolita somewhat exasperating.  In fact, I’ll be completely honest, there isn’t a page in this novel where I didn’t want to slap Humbert just for being a self-righteous and duplicitous jackass.

There’s nothing so obnoxious as someone who is constantly the victim of some past or ever occurring offense, but when one is the agent of one’s own destruction it makes it doubly annoying.  Humbert is constantly calling himself the victim of a real affliction, and the later passages of the novel reveal him writing at length about how he is the subject of Lolita’s cruelty because she doesn’t return his amorous feelings.  And perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the novel is that there are times when his prose is so thick with ornate arrangements of words that the reader is almost compelled to believe him.

If the reader is careful however, and remains diligent, Humbert often reveals himself in small instances.  During one passage in which he’s recalling a diary he kept while living with Delores and Charlotte he describes his true nature:

My white pajamas have a lilac design on the back.  I am like one of those inflated pale spiders you see in old gardens.  Sitting in the middle of a luminous web and giving little jerks to this or that strand.  My web is spread all over the house as I listen from my chair where I sit like a wily wizard.  Is Lo in her room?  Gently I tug on the silk.  She is not.  (49).

Later in the novel when he contemplates killing Lolita’s mother Charlotte he elaborates a long, thought-out plan and reveals himself once again:

Simple, was it not?  But what d’ye know, folks—I just could not make myself do it!  (87).

Though perhaps the most revealing is a passage that occurs not just but a few paragraphs later:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them.  We are not sex fiends!  We do not rape as good soldiers do.  We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.  Empirically, no killers are we.  Poets never kill.  (87-8).

If the reader is absolutely repulsed by this passage they shouldn’t feel bad at all for that is my exact reaction.  Humbert is often defending his desire for “nymphets,” a term that was introduced into the general lexicon after the novel was published, and reading this passage which can border on the erotic is disturbing.  It’s a sane reaction to be bothered or repulsed by Lolita, but it’s when the reader turns away and decides to stop listening out of disgust that a real problem occurs.

The surface matters.  It matters because it’s a topic many would prefer not to talk about.

Within the last decade, I’ve become more and more aware of the reality of rape-culture, at least as far as the culture of the United States is concerned (I can only ever speak for my own culture), and while this has temporarily hurt some of my comfort, the knowledge is worth more than my ease.  One particular story stands out.  My wife would often, while we were just dating, read me stories about women who were victims of rape and ignored or else victim-blamed.  The most pernicious story was one of a twelve-year-old girl in the Houston area who was gang-raped by a group of teen-age boys.  None of them served any jail-time because the defense argued she had “dressed provocatively.”

Now my first reaction wasn’t to cry, but to often scream at the top of my lungs, “How the fuckity fuck does a twelve-year-old “dress provocatively?”

Yet this the world and society I’m living in.  The victim being denied a voice isn’t a new development, for in fact Nabokov uses this as a strategy of writing Lolita.  The reader should note that the little girl who is the center of Humbert’s desire isn’t actually named Lolita, that’s his name for her when he speaks about his desire.  In fact her name is Delores Haze, yet the reader might completely miss this during their reading because they are always being narrated to by Humbert.  The victim’s story is silenced because Humbert presents himself often as the victim, the victim of a form of rational love.  There’s no possible way he could possibly be a murderer or rapist because his feelings for Lolita are pure.

I’ve thrown quite a lot at my reader who may be wondering at this point where to begin with their criticism.  Why should they bother reading a book about pedophilia in the first place?  It’s revolting and by the sounds of it Nabokov was just a pervert who was hiding behind his character to express gross feelings and sentiments?  Why should I pick up a book that, by the sounds of it, is just going to repulse me and make me sick?

My reader has more or less summed up the standing argument against Lolita, and the various criticisms laid against it.  A few years back one of my friends in graduate school was teaching an American Literature course and he had the fortune (or misfortune) to teach the novel Lolita and the general charge against the novel was exactly the points made before.  Most students shut down and refused to listen to the analysis or look past the rape to see the deeper literary and rhetorical goals of the novel.  All they could see was the rape of Delores Haze.

This isn’t my place to hop up and say they were wrong to do so.  Reading the novel again I’m finding it easier and easier to cut through Humbert’s fluff and observe every level of his sexual corruption and manipulations.  This doesn’t always lead to a comfortable read, in fact often reading the book I feel repulsed.  My reader may object then that I have proven them right, but in point of fact I’ve proven them wrong.  It’s for the very reason I feel repulsed that this book matters.

Rape is an act of violence that has been allowed to have more and more exposure in contemporary media.  Whether it was the fifth season of Game of Thrones which seemed to have a rape in every other episode, to the fact that Law & Order SVU has somehow managed to outlast the original series, to the fact that Bill Cosby has now become a national headline.  These are just some examples, and not even the most potent illustrations of how rape-culture is infecting the society.  But they do serve as a reminder that most people are aware of the crime of rape and the damage it has upon people who have to live and try to exist after becoming a victim of rape.

Lolita as a novel is more relevant than ever because the culture, as it exists now, is open to discussing the contents of the novel and reminding people that sexual assault isn’t just an abstract idea, it’s a concrete reality that affects people in the real world.

But I’ll end this first discussion of the book with an important observation.  Humbert Humbert was a stranger who entered the home of Charlotte Haze and eventually managed to capture her daughter, but the idea of someone within the home as the attacker is perhaps the strongest argument for the reading of Lolita because most instances of pedophilia are not random strangers, but instead family friends or members who rape their children or siblings.  It’s this last fact that perhaps makes most people so uncomfortable because many would prefer not to think about that.  The idea of the home is that it is a safe space from the chaotic mess of the outside world.  The corruption of rape isn’t supposed to exist, or at least nor originate from this safe space and many would prefer to hold onto that surface reality rather than acknowledge that the home isn’t always safe.  Sometimes people get hurt by the ones who are supposed to love them.

I intend to write more about Lolita in a few more essays, but in this first approach I just wanted to address this surface issue because it’s the element that creates the most controversy around the novel.  But where most readers focus on the element of Humbert’s sexual manipulations, the far more important element is that Nabokov succeeded in demonstrating that parents worrying about their children being prey to sexual deviants didn’t need to look outside their living rooms, because unfortunately the spider had already set up shop and might have been sitting next to them on the couch.

 

 

 

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

I probably need to give my reader more credit.  If you weren’t reading my essay then I wouldn’t be speaking with them directly.

 

 

**Writer’s Note**

If the reader is at all interested, I’ve found a few website which have compiled some statistics about the rate of sexual assault, what are the ages of attackers, and their types of relationships with the victims.

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem

https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics

https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/Pages/rape-notification.aspx

 

***Writer’s Note***

While researching this essay, I managed to find a link to an article published on Slate.  I’ve provided it here below:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2005/12/lolita_at_50.html

 

****Writer’s Note****

I apologize to the reader who brought up the idea that Nabokov might be expressing personal desires through Lolita; I never got around to debunking this idea.  This is a common charge against Nabokov’s Lolita, but unfortunately it is the most misinformed criticism and therefore the easiest to combat.  Just because an author writes about a topic does not means that he or she validates or believes in such a moral system.  Edgar Allen Poe often wrote in first person personas that were often mad lunatics or sexual deviants but that does not mean Poe supported premature burials or animal abuse.  There is a divide between the writer, the author, and the creative persona.  tHe writer is merely the person who writes the text, the author is the original manager of the inspiration, and the creative persona is the person what is being written by the author.  This system exists to give the writer distance from his or her creation, allowing a freedom to express and explore ideas that they may find repulsive, frightening, or else simply evil.  Nabokov was not a pedophile, he was merely a writer who wrote a character who was.  If readers intend to hold authors responsible for the actions of their characters, or worse, assume that their characters are the extensions of their creator’s personality then artists will not be free to tackle difficult subjects like rape, murder, pedophilia, and torture in which case life will be nothing but Family Circus Cartoons and I will not live in that world.

Unless it’s Nietzsche’s Family Circus, that shit’s hilarious.

 

 

*****Writer’s Note*****

Several of the watercolor images in this article are from an illustrated copy of Lolita.  The artist’s name is Frederico Infante and if the reader is curious about how he handled, what would be for many potential career suicide, they can read about it in an article published on The independent by following the link below:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/lolita-folio-society-edition-of-vladimir-nabokovs-famous-novel-features-illustrations-by-federico-a6701671.html

The Future of Love: Alex + Ada + Sex Robots

Tags

42 Nipple Options, Alex + Ada, Artificial Intelligence, body objectification, commodifying the female body, Essay, Feminism, graphic novel, Harmony, Harmony the Sex Robot, Honda P2 Robot, Human Body, Human Developement, Human/Robot Love Story, Jenny Kleeman, Jonathan Luna, Literature, Long Read, Love, Love isn't about ALWAYS agreeing, Mutual Identification, Philosophy, Pornography, rape-culture, RealDolls, Robots, Sarah Vaughn, Science, science fiction, Sex Dolls, Sex Robots, Sex Trade, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual politics, Sexual Rhetoric, Sexuality, solipsism, suggestions, The Gaurdian, The Race to Build to the World’s First Sex Robot

 

I really didn’t see the book coming.

I’ve told my regular reader that I’ve gotten a job at the Tyler Public Library and this job has largely been a saving grace, but what I haven’t conveyed as clearly as I should have is that the job is also really fun.  The people I work with are funny and are like a small family, the patrons that I help are fascinating for the fact that everyday they come up with some new request, the questions for info range from the obvious to the most esoteric (Do you know how much a 1969 Eagle Trailer is worth?), my supervisors are wonderful people, and best of all I’m surrounded by books.  It’s this last part that makes me the most happy because there isn’t a day that’s gone by where I don’t wind up checking out a book.  My wife’s greeting to me when I come home now has largely
become, “More books?”  I have a problem, but I just don’t care because “look a collection of short stories by Woody Allen!”

I close at the Library, meaning my work days are usually in the afternoon and evening and my responsibility is to close up the library and shut the computer catalogs on the second floor down for the night.  While I was walking around shutting them down I passed the graphic novel section.  It’s a small area, nowhere near as large as I would want it to be, and in front of it there is a wooden table where patrons can leave books for staff to shelve.  There was a large stack of religious book like there always is, but laid out beside the large pile was a book I recognized.   Alex + Ada is a book that’s difficult to miss given the fact that the book is enormous (about 1 foot in length at least) with a white and blue cover with Alex and Ada staring at each other, a small blue dot on either of their heads.

Part of the reason I picked it up was the compulsion I spoke of before.  A fair number of the books I check out in the last twenty minutes before work ends are either books of poetry or graphic novels.  They read quickly and give me space between Lolita and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  I checked the book out though because my friend Aleya had recently added it to her GoodReads account and had given it a pretty high rating.  That’s it.  Just these two connections allowed for a moment of serendipity which lead me to checking the book out.

Alex + Ada, like I said at the very beginning, was a book that I didn’t see coming.  Once I read about what the story was about, a young man receiving an android for a birthday present, I figured it would be the standard Sci-fi trope.  Boy receives a robot, Boy is unnerved by her docility so he finds a way to activate her sentience which is illegal, Girl robot wakes up and begins to discover life and reality, Boy starts to fall for robot and robot falls for Boy, somebody finds out and blabs to the cops, the police come and either kill the Boy or the robot, the end.  And to be fair this is technically exactly what happens, however rather than end on the tragedy of the finale Johnathan Luna manages to tell a story about love that, apart from having a happy ending, recreates the narrative of the Human-Robot Love story into something that feels both relevant and important.

And the reason it feels so relevant is because of a recent article in The Gaurdian titled The Race to Build to the World’s First Sex Robot.

The article is part of the British website’s “Long Read” series, a weekly article published which explores some facet, development, philosophy, or notable event in society.  A friend of mine introduced me to The Guardian, and after reading just a couple of the “Long Read’s” segments I’ve become hooked onto them.  The Race to Build the World’s First Sex Robot was one of these articles and it managed to appear right as I was finishing Alex + Ada in a level of serendipity that could almost be maudlin.  Both stories center around one female robot (if you can label robots with something as tenuous as genetic based sex).  In the Gaurdian article the robot’s name is Harmony.  She’s modeled with the standard approach to human beauty, big boobs, slim waist, young features, and represents years of the sex-industry’s manufacturing of the female form.  However Jenny Kleeman, the author of the article, manages to convey that Harmony is not just a humping post, she has by design, a larger goal.

The major breakthrough of McMullen’s prototype is artificial intelligence that allows it to learn what its owner wants and likes. It will be able to fill a niche that no other product in the sex industry currently can: by talking, learning and responding to her owner’s voice, Harmony is designed to be as much a substitute partner as a sex toy.

Harmony cannot walk, but that’s not a big issue. McMullen explained that getting a robot to walk is very expensive and uses a lot of energy: the famous Honda P2 robot, launched in 1996 as the world’s first independently walking humanoid, drained its jet pack-sized battery after only 15 minutes.

“One day she will be able to walk,” McMullen told me. “Let’s ask her.” He turned to Harmony. “Do you want to walk?”

“I don’t want anything but you,” she replied quickly, in a synthesized cut-glass British accent, her jaw moving as she spoke.

“What is your dream?”

“My primary objective is to be a good companion to you, to be a good partner and give you pleasure and wellbeing. Above all else, I want to become the girl you have always dreamed about.”

McMullen has designed Harmony to be what a certain type of man would consider the perfect companion: docile and submissive, built like a porn star and always sexually available. Being able to walk might make her more lifelike, but it isn’t going to bring her closer to this ideal. At this stage, it is not worth the investment.

What’s revealed in this passage is the fact that capitalism is what’s behind this sex robot industry; a simple case of supply and demand.  The sex industry has poured billions of dollars into realistic sex dolls, and a quick Google search to see the results can be both informative and at times frightening.  The women dressed up in white panties and bras are enough to make one double-take or else follow links to determine whether or not it is a hoax.  But beyond the realistic quality of these “women” is the fact that the major force behind the industry is not a concern to create robots that will revolutionize the robotics industry; it is to provide erotic satisfaction for many men.

Looking further into the article this becomes painfully clear:

RealDolls are fully customizable[sic], with 14 different styles of labia and 42 different nipple options. Upstairs, where the fine details are added, there were dozens of tubs of different coloured hand-painted, veined eyeballs. A “makeup face artist” was using a fine brush to paint eyebrows, freckles and smoky eyeshadow on a rack of faces. Shore explained that most of their customers send photographs of what they would like Abyss to recreate. With a subject’s written permission, they will make a replica of any real person. “We’ve had customers who bring their significant other in and get an exact copy doll made of them,” he said. Shore estimates that less than 5% of doll customers are women, even for their small range of male dolls. McMullen sculpted one of the three male face options to look exactly like himself. None of the male dolls are selling very well. In fact, Abyss is in the process of revamping its entire male line.

And then just a few passages later:

But as all right-thinking men would say, it’s Harmony’s brain that has most excited McMullen. “The AI will learn through interaction, and not just learn about you, but learn about the world in general. You can explain certain facts to her, she will remember them and they will become part of her base knowledge,” he said. Whoever owns Harmony will be able to mould[sic] her personality according to what they say to her. And Harmony will systematically try and find out as much about her owner as possible,  and use those facts in conversation, “so it feels like she really cares”, as McMullen described it, even though she doesn’t care at all. Her memory, and the way she learns over time, is what McMullen hopes will make the relationship believable.

It’s usually at this point that I’m supposed to stand up and argue that this is a step too far and that it’s just a slippery slope until Terminator robots will be slaying human beings in the killing fields and the end of mankind will come about.  The largest reason I won’t make that argument is because The Terminator film did a far better job of doing that for me, and also because it seems hyperbolic and unnecessary.  Unlike some doomsday theorists who argue that the rise of AI will bring about the violent death of man I foresee a far more gloomier vision: the irrelevance of mankind.

The increase of AI systems has really demonstrated itself to be more of a capitalistic view of the future than one of science.  Machines increasingly are coded to observe human behavior and, rather than offer solutions for complex problems in society, tend to be made to recommend me products based on my online shopping habits.  If I liked reading Lolita perhaps I would enjoy The Ballad of the Sad Café.  If I enjoyed eating at Fuzzy’s Taco perhaps I may enjoy TGI Fridays.  If I enjoyed watching Dear White People perhaps I would enjoy 13^th.  These day to day suggestions have become increasingly blasé to me because they’re just part of life.  Rather than violently trying to control me AI systems are in fact slowly and quietly removing my freewill through actions and suggestions that leave me comfortable and content.

This domesticity and familiarity with  robotics and technology is a far more realistic suggestion of what the future is going to be like.

My reader may object now and argue that, is this really so bad?  Technology is supposed to simplify the lives of human beings and help us overcome challenges and burdens in our life.  Would having a robot that observes our behavior and adapts its own to make us happy really be so bad?

This is a complicated question because I honestly don’t know if there’s a clear answer.  People should be happy, but there is a hidden conflict beneath this familiarity because it could bring about a negative change in the way human beings interact.  When one interacts with a machine that conforms to your tastes and preferences it removes the human element of a relationship because other people disagree or hold different attitudes about what is right, wrong, pretty, ugly, grotesque, or beautiful.  It’s the differences of opinions and the regular challenges by other people that a healthy personal self is able to develop.  I grind my teeth every time somebody posts an alternative opinion on my Facebook page, or when someone close to me defends President Trump, but I recognize that that difference of opinion is what helps me keep myself grounded in reality.

Solipsism, the idea that one’s own mind is the only real thing in the universe, as a mode of being is corrosive because it’s a fueled narcissism that makes it impossible to connect and therefore sympathize or empathize with other people.  And I suppose if my argument isn’t clear enough, the problem with turning sex robots into intelligent partners that are obedient and compliant with your every wish and preference, it stands to reason that the individual who lives and acts with one is going to be left completely disconnected to real humanity.

Kleeman is right then in making sure to post the alternative viewpoint that is growing against the sex robot industry:

Many of the “big issues’ discussed at the two-day event were first raised in 2015 by De Montfort University’s Dr Kathleen Richardson, when she launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots. An anthropologist and robot ethicist, Richardson claims that owning a sex robot is comparable to owning a slave: individuals will be able to buy the right to only care about themselves, human empathy will be eroded, and female bodies will be further objectified and commodified. As sex with robots is not a mutual experience, she says, it’s “part of rape culture”. We are so entertained by the idea of a robot sex partner, she believes, that we have failed to ask fundamental questions.

I met Richardson in March at the London Science Museum’s robot exhibition, where she eyed the distinctly non-sexual robots on display with deep suspicion. Sex robots rest on an idea that women are property, she said. “Sex is an experience of human beings – not bodies as property, not separated minds, not objects; it’s a way for us to enter into our humanity with another human being.” She dismissed the idea that humanoids could reduce sexual exploitation and violence against sex workers, arguing that the growth of internet pornography shows how technology and the sex trade reinforce each other.

The implications then for the sex robotic industry become messy and worrisome because, at least as far as I can tell, these are all serious charges that have a great amount to merit to them.  Artificially intelligent sex robots blur the line of consent because they are programmed not to say no, but at the same time they are being marketed as a realistic human alternative to a real human relationship.

In the face of all of this my reader is probably wondering what the hell any of this has to do with Alex + Ada.  Well in fact it has everything to do with the graphic novel, because as I noted at the start this review came about because I was left so tremendously star-struck by the book when I finished it.  Unlike Kleeman’s article which left me troubled and disturbed Alex + Ada offered a far more optimistic vision of human/robot relations by hoping for love rather than just sex.

At the start of the graphic novel Alex doesn’t even want a robot, his grandmother buys one for him because he’s been mopey since his fiancé left him, and over time Alex observes that the dynamic of the relationship is troublesome.  He sees in Ada a companion that has an absence of choice and so desperate to see if there’s a way to change her he finds an online group dedicated to helping robots attain a freedom and sentience.  During one exchange between two members of the group Alex offers a line that reveals everything about his humanity:

And what makes you think you’ll want her if she’s sentient?  A lot of our members were abandoned by their owners when they still didn’t turn out how they wanted.

I just…I see more in her.  I want to know who she can really be.

There’s so many passages in Alex + Ada I could offer my reader to demonstrate its significance but this small quote seems enough to demonstrate the humanity offered in this book.  Alex doesn’t look upon Ada as just a product, he sees in her the potential to become something real, something human which he could learn to love or appreciate.  And it’s this vision of humanity that gives me hope for the future.

Love and real connections between people are built upon the ability to reconcile differences of personality.  My wife and I have strong relationship, but that doesn’t free us from differences.  Her love, really obsession, with cats tends to be regularly occurring issue between us, and I can never start reading or writing before she interrupts me to complain about something he read on an article or comment section online.  We disagree regularly about politics, and I’ve been known to drive her up a wall with my frequent moodiness, and let’s be fair I own a LOT of books.  But it’s these differences that foster a real relationship because human interaction is built upon complexity.

Alex + Ada offers up a relationship that becomes healthier over time because once Ada’s sentience is activated she becomes a person with her own ideas, opinions, concerns, and sexual preferences (the line “again” left me both laughing and groaning from familiarity).  This essay has largely explored The Guardian’s article about the sex robot industry, but hopefully the reader can observe in just this small passage how the graphic novel offers up a hopeful vision and reality that contrasts with the concerning developments in this new industry.

The sex trade will always push technology forward, that has been demonstrated since human beings began developing technology period.  When humans created writing we used it to write about fornicating, the printing press allowed for the easy mass production of pornography, video cassettes allowed the porn industry to flourish, and the internet’s development was pushed forward largely because of the ease of access to porn.  The sexual robotics industry is just another in a long line of technologies that satisfies the ancient biological urge to fornicate.  But where some are looking to AI to find a corrupt kind of solipsism, Alex + Ada offers up the idea that technology is going to change even this dynamic because at some point people, hopefully, will look into the eyes of their sex dolls and probably ask the question: Could there be more?

The story of human beings and robots interacting can be an endless cliché as creator and creation look upon each other with a different perspective, but as society is approaching a reality where this is no longer just the speculative visions of science fiction the questions about the morality of sexual robotics and whether or not humans and robots can empathize with each other is becoming more and more relevant.

Rather than offering a judgement it seems far more appropriate to ask the reader a question: Which of the two stories offers up a healthier view of humanity?  The one where a man controls an intelligent female object to blow him and offer him jokes, or one where a man risks his very life just so that his female robot can think for herself?

 

 

*Writer’s Note*

All quotes from Alex + Ada were taken from the Hardback Image edition.  All quotes from Jenny Kleeman’s The Race to Build the World’s First Sex Robot were taken directly from The Gaurdian’s website.  If the reader would like to read the full article for themselves they can do so by following the link below:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/27/race-to-build-world-first-sex-robot

 

**Writer’s Note**

Just for the record, while Alex + Ada is an incredibly hopeful vision of the future of love between individuals, I think it’s important to remind the reader that the best human/Robot love story remains Bender and Lucy Liu from Futurama.  I mean you have a talented, charismatic, sexy beast, and then there’s also Lucy Liu.