Come Back (4 page)

Another letter is beneath this one:

Antonio:

One more thing.

I don't understand why they couldn't simply leave my writing alone. Why was it so important to make the point that the Earl of Oxford was
not
gay? The whole argument I am trying to make in this article is that Oxford may be gay, and Hamlet may be effeminate (and therefore meant to be read as gay), but those things shouldn't make us respect him any less. We should be able to love Hamlet and Edward de Vere — and Shakespeare, for that matter — even if they were all gay. And what about de Vere's Italian castrato? But I guess he didn't have testicles after all — so was he ever really a man or even a boy? The final edit was done completely without my permission. I don't know what to do. I can't pull the article once it's published. As I said, I am at my wit's end. I honestly don't see how I can ever be a scholar.

This little mishap (at one point Goetz actually called it both “little” and “a mishap”) makes me feel
so
depressed. I know I am not supposed to take any of this personally. That's not what it's all about. Maybe I am too “dramatic” to be an academic. Call me crazy, but my sexuality is important to me, and I think Shakespeare's sexuality should be important to everyone. Of course, I might be making such a fuss about this because I know, somewhere, in my heart of hearts, that the reason I was summarily booted out of my theatre company was because of identity politics. I had created a little space for myself where I thought I might still be able to write about the issues that are important to me. I am now feeling quite manic about this; and I know I'm not even supposed to
have
feelings about an essay. I'll tell you something: heterosexuals just don't get it. They just don't get what it means to be gay, and they never will, and I'm beginning to think there's just no point trying to tell them. And if that's true, then there's no point in me writing anymore, there's no point in me creating anything.

I know this letter is becoming very unacademic. I have spoken to my partner about this. As you know, he is much younger than me; much, much younger. I can't believe it, but he seems to have rejected identity politics too. “Why do you care whether or not Shakespeare is gay? Who cares about Shakespeare?” he said. I've finally realized that there is a huge gulf between us. When I met Jason he was in his late twenties and of course very attractive and there was something of the seventies of gay liberation about him. He understood my politics, he understood the importance of creating a gay culture. Now he too seems to have, in principle at least, rejected the whole gay sensibility, and the importance of writing about gay culture. “I kinda think gay is over,” he said. I can't believe that a contested line in an essay would cause me so much pain; I don't know what to do. Right now I want to quit everything, and I mean
everything
. You've been so supportive up until now; I hope this note doesn't just drive you away. But I had to
try
to share it with somebody. Ignore this letter if you wish. I know I have gone over some boundaries here; you are, after all, not my therapist; you are my thesis advisor — and there's a big difference.

— Dash

And that's it. The letters become more pitiful from there. King continues to vent to Legato. And Legato — who was very open-minded in his heyday, a prototypical university radical of the sixties — can do nothing but try to be King's analyst. Why did he bother? Partially just because Legato was a nice old man. But it was also true that Dash was a bit of a commodity at the time, an art star that the University of Toronto wanted to keep around at all costs.

I understand if you don't want me to speak another word about Dash King's papers. Just because it's my area of interest doesn't mean it will be yours. Is it possible, now that I've shown you more of Dash's writing and explained my interest, that the whole thing might make sense? That maybe you'll stop attacking and threatening? To be honest, all of this has made me think about two things: my father in a shack, and . . . playing a moonbeam. I'll tell you more about that later if you are willing to listen.

You looked directly into my eyes once and said, “I will never leave you alone.” And then you left for London. I understand why, and of course I do forgive you. I love you so much and I know that truly leaving me would mean . . . I wouldn't be able to communicate with you anymore.

I am willing to risk that.

By being honest.

I
don't know how I feel about psychoanalysis. I've had a lot of it, and it seems the more I have, the less I like it. A good psychiatrist ends up teaching you how little you need him. And so it's pretty clear to me what you're trying to do and it won't work.

If, as you say, I am teetering on some sort of edge, then does challenging my identity sound like a good idea? I think I may need to see you in person. If my new academic focus is going to end our friendship, the least you can do is come to Toronto and say goodbye. I know you have (or had) a friend here. We won't go into that. I know we mustn't. But surely you could risk seeing her if it meant seeing me. If you don't want to risk coming here to say goodbye — which is the least you could do — then I am, to quote Mr. King, “at my wit's end.” I know you take issue with King's fondness for homosexual hyperbole. I should not even quote him, and certainly should not imitate his diction.

So yes, the fact is — at the very least — you find my academic interests shallow. And you think the entire pursuit of this worthless and perhaps unsavoury subject is wrong. No, more than wrong — a catastrophe waiting to happen. I have lost my mind, or I am losing my mind, according to you. The fact that I have a cigarette now and then is enough to start you raving. You think it's not about King at all. You think I couldn't care less about King. And anyway, it's all a ruse. Ultimately, you believe I shouldn't care about him because he is a typical, shallow homosexual. I am going to go back, certain to return forever to the dark days. This temptation is an indication, a warning signal, a dire, dangerous turning point.

You really are a very serious person. And I am not. Even though I pretend to be. What I mean is that I am essentially an optimist, while you love dread, revel in it. Nothing could be more exciting for you than imagining the most severe of outcomes. I sometimes think that if there were no horrific consequences, there would be no point to living for you at all.

So it may just be that we have different ways of looking at things. For me this new academic subject matter is simply a risky change, a refreshing new leaf: “Open a new window; open a new door!” (If I hadn't had to get a second new liver, I could have played that part in the movie!) For you it's something akin to swallowing a busload of pills and inviting strangers to my hotel room for blow jobs. But then, perhaps I am not the only one who is not in her right mind. Maybe what I have said has also triggered you. I know that when you were young you nursed several old homosexuals who were dying of
AIDS
. (Amazing that they can cure so much today, but not that, hmmm. . . .) And perhaps you had a bit too much of that kind of self-destruction. Those old homosexuals didn't like to call it that, but of course what else was going on? In fact, when they began to take care of their health, have safe sex and slow down a bit on the non-pharmaceuticals, they got better.

At any rate, you don't want to be my friend and/or mentor if I am going to be self-destructive, do you? But I'm going to accuse you of what you are accusing me. In other words, your reaction to my “subject matter” is not as unemotional and measured as you think it appears. Instead, it shows evidence of panicked emotional baggage. But whatever is actually going on between us — and I'm sure one way or another we will find out — I must directly address your analysis of my situation. For you know very well what you are doing. It's not been that long since I've seen you.

And besides, I will never forget what it was like to watch you sitting across from me, preparing to chastise me. I can picture your face, warming up to the challenge. You get that irritated, angry look in your eyes. You imagine I'm going to have a fit and start crying — and then you won't get to say everything you want to say. And so you push the vituperation, ratchet up the attack. All this because you have to test me — make sure I'm not going to run and cry, descend into my old, childish, self-destroying self.

I am here to tell you I am a changed woman. Or, more accurately, a changed being. I welcome criticism — I do. I know you don't believe me. I am quite cool, calm and collected — despite the ancient crippled pile of bones I appear to be. I am also fully capable of leading a counterattack.

You raise a particularly cutting critique of Dash King's letters — the notion that they are shallow. It's important for us to address this because it is the typical reaction one finds to homosexual writing of any sort. To some degree, it's Wilde's fault, because he went on about the lie that tells the truth, the mask being more honest than the face beneath, and style being more important than substance. (You will see later that Dash, too, is concerned with the notion of style and substance.) Eve Sedgwick, bless her heart, suggested that the lie of Modernism was that an obsession with style was meant to hide the desire for a beautiful young man's body. She meant that a beautiful young man's body was the content of Wilde's contentless works of art. A lovely notion, prettily expressed. In other words, whenever Modernists go on about the amorality of art and aesthetics, they are actually talking about a very large penis — the elephant in the room whose tumescence fills the vacuum left by empty Modernism. For instance, Wilde claimed
The Picture of Dorian Gray
was not about anything; it was amoral. In the introduction to his play he goes on and on about “true art.” “True art” has no moral; it is simply beautiful. But his novel actually concerns itself with a very specific beauty, that of a young man. Wilde would rather that we didn't notice.

But all this is too easy. It's too easy to dismiss Wilde for the things he celebrated in himself. To call Oscar Wilde shallow would be like calling Michael Jackson showbizzy, Beau Brummell vain or Donald Trump (remember him?) rich. Of course Wilde was shallow, but only in the sense that he suggested that the shallowest things were actually the deepest. This means his constant ranting against naturalism was a bit of a pose. (Like everything he did.) Wilde believed naturalism was shallow. But it
was
only shallow, and not paradoxically deep. Naturalism was simply bad writing. Wilde was quite right to scorn it and to try to create beauty beyond the ordinary.
The Importance of Being Earnest
is about the rhythm and the fascination of completely trivial things: vanity, lechery, greed and hypocrisy. And yet, these things are not trivial at all.

What I'm trying to say is that to call a homosexual shallow — or the homosexual movement, or homosexuals in general — is in itself shallow. It is playing into their hand, and their hand is, more often than not, holding their own — or someone else's — cock.

So do you really want to go there?

But it's more than that. Because at the basis of everything you're saying is something we have to confront now or never.

When we first met, one of the things that brought us together was homosexuality. Of course, there were no bona fide homosexuals left, but we were women who enjoyed the concept of homosexuality, and occasionally had had sex with men who would have been called “queers” at an earlier time. (Me much more than you, of course.) There is a kind of imaginary world going on here. You — who pride yourself on seeing beyond the myth of what we used to call “the Fantasy Me” — are caught in the web of its fiction, terribly insecure about me becoming immersed in it all again. Of course, there were individual homosexuals with whom I became entangled. And there was Mickey. (Not Rooney. Of course, you know which Mickey I mean. But that's different.)

Okay, let me say it once and for all.

I didn't like them. I didn't like
it
. (By it, I mean the whole “homosexual as my audience” thing.) I wasn't
in love
with them. I didn't
do it all
for them. I didn't
play it for the homosexuals
. And this is the most important idea of all —
they didn't kill me
. And by that, I don't mean simply the tautology that I am not dead. Or, at least, I don't think I am. And I imagine I can be trusted in these matters. Or are we going to throw out Descartes with the bathwater?

What I mean is that I died in a very public way — though I actually continued living. And the homosexuals were thought to be responsible for my death. They loved me too much; they had showered me with too much applause — they fed my soul-crushing need for drugs by pressing me back onstage night after night to fulfill their extravagant demands for entertainment. They created “the Fantasy Me,” “the Unreal Me” and ultimately “the Dead Me.” The homosexuals become — as the French were once to the English (or the Turks and Greeks to almost everyone in Western Europe) — the abject purveyors of an evil influence. Everything they touch turns to dross — no, to shit — and dies.

This is all just homophobia, ancient and cloying.

No, they did not kill me; they did not curse me, love me too much or contaminate me with their love. The whole idea is ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, I knew they were there. For one thing, they were always in the front row. It makes me sad to think about them. But it's not nostalgia; it's more piquant. I was, to them, something panting, untouchable, inexplicable — so near yet so very far, a rare tropical dying bird, something religious, a mystic vision. It's too much to say I was their mother. I think a lot of them had fine mothers. Have you ever met a mother of a homosexual? She's like anyone's mother, the same infuriating mixture of saint and monster. But homosexuals are no more obsessed with their mothers than we are. They may have talked about them and written about them more, but that's just because so many of them were writers.

But the front row, it would inevitably be natty young men in thin ties and very expensive Arrow shirts. And I want you to think for a moment. How could I
not
be conscious of what was going on? When I played those concerts for them, I was desperately in need of money to keep the kids by my side. And I was doing what I always did. I was performing the best I could, goddamn it. But it wasn't for them; it was for me. Do you know what I thought about when I looked at them — rigid, intense, frozen, asphyxiated with adoration?

I pitied them.

Not for loving my work — they were moved by me, that's fine; that's what I get the rush from. I'm talking about the cult of
me
, the worship of
me
, I'm talking about the political party that I didn't even ask to be the president of, that I wouldn't ever wish to preside over. I'm talking about people who — instead of living their own lives — were competing to touch my hand. Some made their homes shrines to me and didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't fuck (most pitiful of all) because of me. They were lost little boys. They were not lost because they were homosexuals. They were lost because homosexuality at the time meant being excluded from the most aristocratic of artistic professions. These were the florists, the interior decorators, the hairdressers, the chorus boys — forever, they thought, relegated to the subsidiary arts. No one else would hire them, because they were freaks. They were lisping, effeminate, outcast ninnies.

I wish I could say I loved them. I loved performing for anyone who would really listen. And many of them did. But that's as far as it went. I watched my funeral on
TV
. Of course, you already know that; I told you about it. But I don't think I ever told you the extent of my disgust, which was realized, in practical form, by my laughter. It was very cruel laughter — what can I say, I'm not going to apologize. I had a good laugh. Who were these freaks? And I don't mean their effeminacy. How many prancing girlettes placed wreathes on my coffin, and knelt down to kiss it, one pinky raised in the air, their painted eyelashes damp with tears? Don't get me wrong, I'm sorry their lives were so harsh. But their much-vaunted love for me was all about a human impulse I've never really understood — the stupid, desperate (and this is the worst part), unimaginative need to be a part of a pack, a herd — to be, once and for all, accepted.

People always natter on about how I wanted love.

All she wanted was love. And the homosexuals gave it to her. And that love killed her.

Fuck off.

I was a fucking artist and I knew what I was doing. I was damn good at it, even when I was fucking lousy. And I always gave them a show; I always gave everybody a fucking show, not just those crazy homosexuals.

And later? Later it was much worse. I mean, back in the day, I didn't have contempt for them really — or tried not to. But after my “death,” they continued to buy my records and it went beyond beyond. Don't get me wrong, the records are okay. But I really was a live performer, a living performer. You had to see me live. And here they were collecting my records and gossiping about my demise. Here they were enjoying interviews in which I'm drunk or clearly on drugs (and there were many such instances). And they only did this because they wanted to
belong
. I was a drunken lighthouse, a shot in the dark, the delirious painted-pony mascot they hoped would lead them out of their social insecurities.

I don't think that later, in the seventies and eighties, when the drag queens were still doing me, they had any idea of who I was. I mean, maybe some. But most were just going through the pathetic old routine because I had become part of their identity — part of their little jokes. To be known as my “friend” was another word for homosexual. I had simply become as mundane as the rest of popular culture.

I'm not saying it's any more sad and contemptible than people who flocked so recently to see
Holiday
— you know, the musical they did about Madonna's life. God, that creature lived for
so long
— it was such an awfully long time they had to wait before they could get the rights to her songs. But when at last she kicked the bucket, they could finally buy out that shyster son of hers. (What's his name — Jesus? What a businessman he turned out to be.)
Holiday
is, of course, an inspiredly boring title. And how did they manage to make all those “slap my ass” songs mainstream? The people who go to see the Madonna jukebox musical are just as contemptible as the homosexuals who bought my records and came to worship me. It's about identity, selling brands and belonging; so sad, so lonely, so solipsistic and resting like an atom bomb at the hollow centre of capitalism, where commodities define us.