Cinderlite

 

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 1. What's the first book you ever remember reading?

It's kind of a wild card -- I know it wasn't the first book I ever read, just the first I remember. My mom had a big leatherbound copy of Shakespeare's tragedies; it was one of her high school textbooks. When I was 4, Rich was really enamored with Shakespeare and with theatre in general, but he couldn't read yet. So we'd sit cuddled up together on the steps of our house and I'd read Romeo and Juliet to him. That was his favorite play, so we read it over and over again. I didn't understand a ton of it, but the illustrations helped, and I remember a few years later Rich and I would deface that book by painstakingly copying the illustrations, in crayon, in the margins. 

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 Dec. 16th:

Essay: The discovery of what it means to be an American by James Baldwin. I think he presents the title in lower-case in his book, so I'm doing the same here. 

This was a fun little essay about finding your place in the world -- or not finding it. Basically, Baldwin felt out-of-place with white Americans as well as Black Americans. He moved to Paris hoping to fit in better there, only to find himself still out of sorts. Part of that was the way Europe perceives class and artists, which is very different and a bit freeing -- there, Baldwin was seen as an upper-class kind of guy just by being a writer, and he felt freed to consort with all types of people. At the same time he never really felt at home among Parisians, and this came to a head when he found himself describing the situation in Little Rock to a Parisian, sitting in a Parisian cafe, rather than actually *being* in Little Rock, which suddenly felt much more honorable to him.

Choice quotes: 

"American writers do not have a fixed society to describe [as opposed to say, Tolstoy]. The only society they know is one in which nothing is fixed and in which the individual must fight for his identity. This is a rich confusion, indeed, and it creates for the American writer unprecedented opportunities."

"Every society is really governed by hidden laws, by unspoken but profound assumptions on the part of the people, and ours is no exception. It is up to the American writer to find out what these laws and assumptions are. In a society much given to smashing taboos without thereby managing to be liberated from them, it will be no easy matter."

Short story: The Classical Annex by E.M. Forster

Such a fun story. It follows an unnamed curator of a British museum, where the dusty classical annex is their least popular attraction. One night, a Roman statue in the annex comes to life -- with an erection -- and the curator flees in terror. He locks the museum and rushes home only to discover that his teenage son has gone to find him, taking the spare keys to the museum ... and wearing nothing but his sweaty football shorts. The curator hurries back and discovers his son and the Roman statue having sex. By happenstance, he stumbles upon the magic trick that turns the statue back into a statue. Unfortunately, it works on his son too, and from that day forth, the lonely Roman nude is now a lively double-statue of two wrestlers locked together, with the "younger chap" giving it all he's got.

Poem: Gods by Anne Sexton.

Funny little poem. A woman travels the world in search of the gods but can't find them anywhere. Back home, she discovers the gods have been hiding in her bathroom the entire time. She sighs in relief and locks the bathroom door. 

( Day 3 )
Eventually, Phil moves to New York City, where he poses for a gay photographer and, through that photo shoot, meets various wealthy johns and boyfriends. He's invited to an orgy where Rex Rhodes will attend. Phil isn't especially keen on orgies -- he's not even sure if he's gay, or asexual -- but he attends, and is a little weirded out when everyone at the orgy descends on Rex, eager to make him cum. Phil's boyfriend explains that no matter what anyone does to Rex, he never orgasms. It's one of Rex's great mysteries. 

When Phil's boyfriend leaves him, he goes back to that gay photographer, and this time he's allowed to look through the photographer's book of Handsome Boys. There he finds a photo of Rex Rhodes dangling from a trapeze, while his young acrobat boyfriend clings to his legs. Phil turns the next photo and sees Rex contorting into the spider position: chest and stomach on the floor, with his spine arched so that his feet come down on either side of his head. The third photo shows the same position in reverse... and now Phil understands why Rex doesn't need any other man to make him cum. 

I was so prepared for a sad suicidal ending, thanks to the Richard Cory references, that I laughed out loud when I got to the actual reveal.