"The curious sympathy one feels, when feeling
with the hand the naked meat of his own
body or another person's body..." --W.W.
with the hand the naked meat of his own
body or another person's body..." --W.W.
I am groping; my hands are down the pants of some Santa Clause that just happens to look like the elder Walt Whitman, Whitman when his hair and beard were long and white, uncut for years. His eyes are bright. His wit is sharp. All of it is pouring out of him--experience, time, knowledge--all of it. And it is measured by the growth of hair and weed and love and doubt. It is measured by the body, that most articulate timepiece. And this man's eyes are two glacial lakes lost in the snowy wilderness of his beard, his mustache, his bright white hair. He might be mistaken for God. But he has a bit of a belly and tufts of hair growing out of his ears, over his collar from his weedy, masculine chest. He is the original Daddy Bear.
While I am not attracted to him. I am attracted to the idea of him. He comes to me from a time on the other side of Stonewall, of Rechy, of AIDS. By his openness, he dares me to be dangerous. He dares me to confront the obscene certainty of my enemies. I channel their anger, and it becomes my own.
I want us to be what the Westboro Baptist Church pictures as they sit in there pews. I want us to make them more uncomfortable than their cottage cheese thighs, sweaty and stuck together, while they sit immobilized by the Sermon. Fred Phelps preaches against acts unnatural. While his stringy gelatinous spit sticks to his upper teeth, his lower lip, clicking, the sound resonates in the chamber created by the the violent "o" of his lips. This is a cocksucker's expression with which the Reverend spits venom, intolerance and hate.
-------
There is a librarian somewhere who loves Walt Whitman. In keeping with literary convention, she is a spinster, a joyless woman who enjoys reading less than she does arranging, organizing, alphabetizing. She begs for order. She likes to have control. She is obligated by the legends of library science; she is true to them. Dressed in the vestments of her repression: a bulky cabled sweater, practical shoes and the predictably, proverbial glasses--she tries desperately to disguise her animal urges, her human needs.
But she is dewy-eyed, seven-decibels crazy for "America's Poet Laureate". And she has heard the rumors, and read the reports concerning Walt's sexual orientation for years now. Her own fear of sex makes the idea inadmissible.
"I will not picture my heroes naked." Unspoken. She has silently denied the possibility, dismissed the speculation and the academic evidence alike as the appropriation of an American icon by a--"if not sick, then misguided"--fringe minority. She will not let them besmirch his reputation. The text is her familiar--a seance invoking the poet's name--and nowhere is there either explicit or implicit evidence of deviance. Nowhere.
The dead defend their secrecy with silence; discretion comes with their decay.
-------
Age 11, I was given Leaves of Grass in my Christmas stocking in 1974.
There was something wedged into the bottom of the sock, amidst the walnuts and almonds, the exotic filberts (those hooves of some strange, miniaturized reindeer chopped off and thrown into the mix of nuts, the stale, dusty nuts--seed still protected in durable shell--that made their annual appearance in December along with, first one and then two wide-eyed, brightly-painted nutcrackers). It was pinned under the traditional solstice orange with its thick skin and its sweet core, glowing the sacred colors of embers in a winter fire or the coming sun.
The book felt good to my blind touch. It was hard, substantial (but not too thick.) It was not daunting. I am plumbing the darkness, the uncertainty. The tips of my fingers are channeling the surprise.
And as I pulled the brown book out from inside the oddly decorated felt stocking--a gingerbread man running amok at the North Pole, my mother's design--into the crescendoing rays of that Christmas morning, I was amazed. I was enchanted. The volume was bound with padded faux leather. Embossed into the cover, title and author took on deserved permanence. But these gold letters were bashful compared to the gilded cursive that copied the poet's fluid signature or the bright metallic paint that had been used to seal the edges of the pages in shimmering privilege and comfortable entitlement.
A gaudy replica of nouveaux riches sensibilities, and veiux riches pretensions (or visa versa), this book was a peasant boy made up in drag to look like a movie star (of questionable taste and virtue). Tacky but tactile and catching the light of sunrise with the gilt of questionable integrity, the volume was nevertheless lovely. It was like the image of a woman I remembered from a stereoscopic card from the public library's collection, a souvenir from some forgotten childhood containing two (almost) identical images of a late 19th Century painted lady, a whore hidden under thick rouge and powder, painted just enough to disguise syphilis as freckles.
The publisher had gone further. They had included a a tissue paper insert that protected the "etching" of the poet that graced the page after the title--is that the frontispiece? A red ribbon sewn into the binding lay neatly pressed on the first page of the collection: I was giddy with Santa's recognition of who I was becoming. The book was perfect. The words reverberated in me. The rhythm adjusted the clock of my heart. And the antiquated design delighted me and felt appropriate in the grip of a young homosexual.
-------
Age 17: I was given an eccentrically framed antique portrait of Walt Whitman when I graduated from high school in 1981.
The best gifts reveal the giver's knowledge of the receiver. They demonstrate an attentiveness to the other person's soul. They show that the giver is listening. This portrait of Walt Whitman was and is one of the finest surprises I have yet received. Not knowing my adoration for Whitman's work and not wholly aware of my own poetic inclinations (dare I say, ambitions?), the author of this act somehow managed to make the perfect gesture. Without knowing me deeply, she understood me implicitly. Her gift, though accidental, was impeccably tailored to fit my fitful soul.
Supposedly dated to the turn of the previous century, the wood had been carved into a tangle of leaves and branches, as if worms once burrowed into a rich, green walnut had re-emerged as vines growing out of it. Thus framed, the poet appeared both mystical and wise. He watched, looking out from the forest bower, his soulful eyes still searching for something, someone, in this secluded corner of a nature park.
And so for years, Walt Whitman watched me. Ardently, he sat on bench, on rock, on decomposing log. His cane remained alert, erect, one hand cupping the other over the round brass ball. His hat stayed cocked a little to one side. His was a studied casualness. His clothes were comfortable but easy to remove. The leather of his shoes was scuffed, the soles a little muddy; even in old age, he cultivated an ease in his appearance that adhered to a proletariat version of masculinity.
Competence and confidence converged in him. He was an old man well-satisfied with life. From his garden, from his window, he was patient but not passive. Lifetimes--his own and those of the myriad of strangers whom he had touched and/or been touched by--spun like galaxies in his deep, reflective eyes. He was watching. He was listening, too. And leaning into the wooden frame, pushing back the branches and the tangle of ivy, he was intent in communicating something to me from inside there. Tapping on the glass and close enough to frost it from the fog of his last breath, the poet tried to converse with me from beyond the grave.
-------
Age 24: I was given deeper insight into my place and the poet's place in the world. In my twenties, I was given to reciting the tiniest slice of Whitman to my brothers in the movement, the queer community or the gay ghetto (that is to say the actual ghetto a decade on in gentrification). I highlighted this little poem in that glorious and gorgeous gift from Saint Nick. Mimicking my sister's behavior (home from college on her winter break), up late in my basement bedroom, I carefully covered the three lines, drawn to them, but incomplete in my understanding as to what they might mean.
Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me?
and why should I not speak to you?
Age and life and experience--coming into my body, my sexual being, I was (slowly) becoming unabashed in my desires. Like Whitman, I was no longer just an admirer of the masculine form; I was an actor, a participant an instigator. There was powerful kinship between us--across decades of cultural shift and years of personal evolution. One senses in the poet's optimistic voice the underpinnings of gay liberation and assimilation that it infers. But I still look toward a more controversial Mecca. I am learning a new language that I might live there.
Anonymous stranger, if our eyes connect with sexual urgency--
on the street, in the park, at the urinals in a theatre, a wayside tavern, a train station--
why should you not touch me, kiss me, fuck me
and why should I not make you cum?
-------
The poet has passed a lonely day. He has ambled the length of the island--from park to pier--looking for the friend, just departed, who has left a bit of a pit in his stomach. He knows he is gone. He does not believe it. In Chinatown, he returns to the corner where he had first met the sailor, the smell of the butcher shop, the shimmering gold and red decorations, the rhythmic clatter that comes down into the street like rain from the windows of the warehouse.
Pencil in pocket, the notebook tucked under his arm, he records his hungers and their corresponding alienations. What he desires is, too frequently, beyond his grasp. The city is inside him but he is outside of the city. He contains its multitudes while wanting another to contain him. That would be enough. It was enough with the sailor. It was always enough as long as it lasted, until the morning and its obligations took over or one heard the approach of voices in the park, the invasive sound of footsteps in the shadows of the abandoned armory and under the docks.
Unclear to him, his own motivations seemed a mix of lust and curiosity. They confused him. They inspired him. They fed him with their vitality and hope. While the truth of the matter is that one's pursuit of sex, of love, of any kind of connection actually was, is and always will be an exploration of one's eternal ambivalence. At any moment one might be overwhelmed by a specific magnetic attraction--physical, spiritual, practical or romantic--and succumb to the urgency of that communion.
Just as it was possible that there should be instantaneous and mutual affinity (or for that matter, lust) so too can a single encounter or one conversation suddenly, spontaneously send a body into isolation. Gravity might flicker off and, in quick reaction, the disaffected--you, me, a whole army of bravely unshamed individuals, men and women, young and old, gay and straight--would be sucked into the black and endless vacuum of space to be forever forgotten and alone. Abandoning the illusion of connection, giving up on the notion of communication, these soldiers know only too well the silences that surround all things.
But the poet is only alone for a moment. His thirst for humanity is too urgent to be dismissed. Other people possess him. They get inside of him, merge with him, fill him. This is an instinct. He is familiar with its impulsivity, with its whim. Half-wild, untended like the frustrations of desire, this portion of nature contains him. Like life--the light in his voice, the moments of poignant clarity, the muse that drives him--they are integral to his being. And thus, acutely aware of the friction between bodies he remains, nevertheless, engrossed by their myriad of forms. The skin of others is more mysterious than the surface of the moon and more intriguing.
-------
Song of a Sailor in a Foreign Land
Song of a Sailor in a Foreign Land
This is the city, this firmness under my feet. I sing the songs of the street, the pavement. I sing asphalt, cement. I sing cobblestone, flagstone, macadam. I sing gravel, all surfaces, dirt and mud.
There is music in the sounds of wheels and hooves, and boots kneading the earth. There is rhythm and there is melody. The song calls. Each voice enlists another voice and another. A chorus rises.
Follow me, brother, stranger, lover, friend. Follow me. I will show you the city in layers. We will leave the grand avenue, the neighborhood's high street, the crowded muddy lane where the poor in their tenements reside.There is music in the sounds of wheels and hooves, and boots kneading the earth. There is rhythm and there is melody. The song calls. Each voice enlists another voice and another. A chorus rises.
My voice joins other voices, laughing, talking, singing. My voice joins the voices of peddlers, mongers, hucksters. I sing the song they sing. Our voices sing commerce, ambition, the industry of the city driven by the industry of the individuals who invent the city, who build it.
In their midst, the traveler cuts his path. He is a stranger here, he comes across land or sea. He comes to the city and its perplexing dreams. He wants nothing of the grandiose illusions of the city, of its citizens. His voice is quiet.
In their midst, the traveler cuts his path. He is a stranger here, he comes across land or sea. He comes to the city and its perplexing dreams. He wants nothing of the grandiose illusions of the city, of its citizens. His voice is quiet.
Further, follow me. Down the alley, narrow and dirty, further. Follow me further, to the far end, past brown doors, and blue doors, and yellow doors and red. Past doors that are prohibited, and doors that are locked. Follow me to the door that is hidden in a little alcove, hidden by a door that is unhinged, leaned up against the alley wall. If you hold the door, sailor, I will go inside. You can wait or follow me inside.
My body knows other bodies, is other bodies, bodies of water, student bodies. What is the body? What can the body hold? This body moves as the bodies there move. This tongue speaks their language. This hand writes their words. But your lips, your eyes, your posture invite me. You invite me to be one.
Night and the city. Two strangers. Two voices.
Night and the city. Two strangers. Two voices.
------
Meanwhile, Lu San was returning to the Orient on a steamer. A slow boat to China allows the dissection of dreams, the analysis of memory; he conjured up the man he had met three trips ago, the man with whom he had passed the majority of last night.
He sat alone in his cabin. New York City was long ago buried behind them, sinking with the setting sun. The little ship trudged over the inked geography. The ocean's rolling hills wagged the lantern above Lu San's desk. The same rocking motion tickled his undercarriage and then quite suddenly, last summer, his mind ignited. The fever in his groin lit the fuse of the sailor's imagination. Running through the tangled wiring of his brain, down the nerves of his arms, out his fingertips into the cannon of his pen, the burning line hissed and sizzled. There was a turgid urgency in his tight bell-bottomed trousers. He rubbed his erection, lightly, through the blue wool. Then the line, the knot began to unravel. Writing is a kind of orgasm in which one blurts out that which is foremost on the writer's mind, in this case the phallus of his friend:
Curving to the left
foreskin folded, falling, pink--
his head bows in prayer
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