A long time ago, when I was much younger, a poem I wrote was published in The Listener. In today's post, I am going to republish this poem, interpret it, and then ramble on about some other related topics. This post is a little disjointed but I will attempt to bring the threads together at the end.
The poem first. Its title is "My soul is an irritant".
My soul is an irritant, it tickles
Like a fishbone. I can feel it turning
In my throat when I talk, it itches
Like salt-sticky skin, on a sunny day,
In nineteen-eighty-eight, at Murawai,
When the sea scrawled strange words in foam
On the wet sand. We were nine. We ran
Into the water, eager
To test our skinny frames against the waves.
Thick sluggish brown breakers
Rolled up out of ocean-blue mystery
As if the world had finally noticed us
And was feeling for us with blunt fingers.
For us, each new wave burst like a world
Against our chests – until we were bored
And raced back up the beach again, to throw
Our selves down on threadbare towels, coated
In salt, sand, and sunscreen – and itching.
I'm scratching it now.
I wrote this poem I think in 2001. You may notice that there appears to be a typographical error – I say "our selves" instead of "ourselves". This 'error' was deliberate. After I submitted it to The Listener, the then Arts & Books Editor Finlay McDonald wrote back to me to say that the poem was fantastic, that he wanted to publish it, but that he wanted to correct the apparent error. I replied to him saying that the space between the words was intended and giving a highly abstract, abstruse explanation for why I wanted to keep it. In his reply, Finlay told me that he would accede to my wishes. But then, when they published it, they made the executive decision to remove the space.
In fact the typographical error is the heart of the poem. One of my oldest friends is a guy called Warren. "Warren" is actually not his real name but for reasons that will become obvious, I shall not use his real name. I have known Warren for most of my life. The year after I moved to Dunedin, he also travelled down to study there; the year after I moved back to Auckland I returned to Dunedin briefly to visit a friend. My friend took me aside and said, "There's something you need to know about Warren." Apparently, Warren and another acquaintance of ours had together taken a young man into a bedroom with them. I decided, reasonably enough, on the basis of my friend's information, that Warren must be gay. The poem was my response. I was recollecting a moment in our lives when we were both the same, before puberty, before our lives had diverged like two roads in a yellow wood. His self was different from my self; he was gay and I was straight. The poem was also a statement that I would keep his secret. In the years after, I never told anyone that I thought him gay and I never repeated to anyone what my friend had said about him.
If only life were something simple! In the years after I wrote this poem, Warren's life didn't play out as I expected. When he came back to Auckland, he started going to strip clubs and became friends with a female stripper. This struck me as odd because it seemed uncharacteristic behaviour for a gay man. He went on to have a succession of girlfriends, often foreign born, and a few years ago married. Last year or the year before, he fathered a child. During all these years, when I saw him, although I didn't interrogate my views on him too closely, didn't introspect so much, I tended to think of him as a closet homosexual, or as a bisexual, or, much later, as a heterosexual man who had experimented when he was young.
At the beginning of 2013, I visited Warren. I was just starting to become psychotic again. He used the word "gay" in an odd contextless way: I decided that he was finally coming out to me. Also back in 2001 I had written a film about a man who sells his soul for love; just before I started seeing psychiatrists again in Easter 2013 I heard a voice telling me I needed to sell my soul for love. (My reasons for reentering the Mental Health Service were largely to do with Jess, as I've said before.) When I saw the psychiatrist, I told him that I had a friend who was married with a child who had come out as gay to me. Around this time, I also told my father and nephew. It was, possibly, a mistake, and I have suffered some pangs of guilt about it. Last year, I decided to write to Warren to make amends – I told him what my friend had told me about him so many years ago and asked him if this friend had made a mistake. I confessed to Warren what I had believed about him for over fifteen years and what I had told others. He wrote back to me, saying, "I don't mind that you told people I'm gay. You and I both know that I'm not." He confirmed, acknowledged, that he had 'experimented' when he was young although he didn't use this word. Rather, he said that what happened between him and Gareth (again another pseudonym) was a result of too much testosterone and the fact that he was having trouble sleeping with women at the time.
I am taking a risk talking about Warren but I believe we live in a world, or should live in a world, where if people 'experiment' or are 'bi-curious' people should all feel permitted to talk about it, so long as we get our facts correct. We shouldn't have to keep other people's secrets. I want also to register an irony. Warren has had more girlfriends than I've had and has a child; I have been single so long I've almost forgotten what it's like to have a girlfriend.
I want to change the subject a little, talk about something else. Sometimes I receive small signs from the universe that hint at the types of topic I should discuss in this blog. I have discussed dreams before and I intend to do so again now. Bear with me. I'll start by describing a dream I had towards the end of 2009. In the dream, I was walking through New York with Jon Stewart. We passed a newspaper kiosk. The man inside said, "I was Richard Nixon's lover." This exchange made Jon visibly uncomfortable; I said to him something like, "Don't worry – I'll take over from here." Obviously, the dream was referencing Nixon's "silent majority", the same bunch of deplorables who more recently elected Donald Trump. I think also that the dream was a premonition: I would take over where he left off in talking about sexuality. This blog is an addendum to his public disquisitions on sexuality that he delivered in 2014 and 2015.
I have had some vaguely homoerotic nightmares. In February or March 2014, I had several nightmares in a row in which the woman I was making love to turned into a man. These nightmares occurred after I was put under the Mental Health Act. In around March of that year The Daily Show returned to New Zealand television for the first time since the end of 2009 and in the very first episode screened here Jon talked about "a Republican wet dream". That night I had a perfectly ordinary sex dream involving a woman – a vast relief. In a way, I owe Jon Stewart my life. I had another few homoerotic nightmares in 2014 but haven't had one for many years. The recurring nightmare I've had recently is quite different, involving a house in which one of the rooms is haunted.
Another topic I wish to talk about is somewhat taboo. On his show, Jon would occasionally prudishly refer to it only as 'it'. But others have talked about it. Janet Frame talked about 'it' in An Angel at My Table. David Foster Wallace talked about 'it' in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion. In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius J. Reilly terms 'it' his 'hobby'. Half of my readers are probably coming straight here from Pornhub, so this small squeamishness or compunction on my part is probably unwarranted. The 'it' I'm talking about is masturbation. I masturbate I think more than other people. Although I also watch porn, I prefer my imagination; in my mind I have a kind of catalogue consisting of past sexual adventures, girls I've seen in the street, scenarios from fiction and so on; in bed, I rifle through this mental rolodex, choose a fantasy, and jerk myself off to sleep. I don't fantasise about men. In fact, I didn't even realise it was possible to fantasise about people of the same gender until Easter 2013, when I was thirty-three.
What I have to say about masturbation is, when put down in words, blindingly obvious. But it may still surprise a lot of people. I say this because it surprised me when I'd had a chance to think about it – most of us fail to introspect and consequently fail to see the simple explanation for something most of us do every day. There are three things I want to say about 'it'. First, men and women both fantasise when they masturbate (although female fantasies tend to be qualitatively different and more complex than male fantasies). Second, people choose their fantasies. Third, masturbation is practice for sex, a kind of rehearsal. Twelve year old boys start masturbating so that when they arrive at a time in their lives when sex is a real possibility, they'll know what to do. Masturbation is not a release valve for pent up libidinal energy as the Freudian psychoanalysts would have us believe; it is not a sinful alternative to sex as some religionists (such as Clement of Alexandria) believe. (Clement apparently said, "to have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature".) Rather it is a form of play, an imaginative preparation for real sex, a biological adaption with a purpose. Men and women imagine having sex so that when they get to have sex in the real world, they have some idea how to behave. Without an understanding of the role fantasy plays in masturbation, we cannot make sense of masturbation's biological function.
The question arises: what is the relationship between homosexuality and masturbation? It seems to me that there are three possibilities. The first is that gay men don't masturbate. The second is that they masturbate but don't fantasise. The third is that they masturbate and fantasise but fantasise about men instead of women. Foucault may discuss this in The History of Sexuality but (and I'm sorry to confess this) although I have read about this book I haven't actually read the book itself. In The Good Son by Paul McVeigh, McVeigh chooses a combination of the first two possibilities: the novel's hero, Mickey, tries to masturbate but can't. In Trespass by Rose Tremain, Tremain opts for the third possibility: a major character in this novel prefers to form relationships with women but fantasises exclusively about men. (I should confess also that I lost this book before I had a chance to finish it.) So, which possibility is correct? Perhaps all three – perhaps different homosexuals arrive at homosexuality in different ways.
In the same way that, when people masturbate, they choose their fantasies, I believe people choose when they become sexually aroused. Again this may seem surprising. I suspect a lot of psychiatrists are behaviourists with respect to sexual arousal: they believe that sexual arousal is a Pavlovian reaction. Possibly much of the laity believe the same thing. Famously, Pavlov showed that dogs could be conditioned to salivate whenever they heard a bell ring; perhaps psychiatrists believe that sexual arousal is a (learnt?) response to a stimulus (a naked woman or even the word 'arousal' itself). I suspect that the psychiatrist I saw from 2007 until the beginning of 2012 was just such a behaviourist, believing that sexual arousal is a Pavlovian reaction. Kurt Cobain teetered on the edge of such a behaviourist explanation when he told us all that gay men are more "easily amused" than straight men.
I am not a fan of behaviourism. Consider Pavlov's famous dog experiment. Pavlov assumed that there was a direct causal relationship between the ringing of the bell and canine salivation – but perhaps the dog's mind, or soul, intervenes between the stimulus and the response. Perhaps, when the dog hears the bell, it thinks to itself, "Goody! That means I'm going to be fed soon!" and salivates as a response to this thought. The idea that consciousness mediates between stimulus and response raises difficult questions: Is consciousness an epiphenomenon? Do people possess free will? In this blog I have previously argued that free will doesn't exist (in the post "Free Will and Supernatural Causation"); in the post immediately preceding this one, however, I argued that it does. Perhaps free will is an illusion but is a necessary illusion, one we cannot live without.
I will turn now to a bad experience I had in early 2009. I have talked about it with a friend but have never mentioned it before in this blog. The decision to talk about it now is the result of a great deal of soul-searching. During my first couple of years as a patient of the Mental Health Service, I noticed that Fernando (my psychiatrist) would often use the word 'arousal' when talking with me. I couldn't be sure if he was using this word it its demotic sense or in some more esoteric psychiatric sense. Perhaps he thought that at the age of twenty-seven, I still didn't know if I became sexually aroused around men or women. At this time, my key worker was a young woman my age. I fantasised about her a lot, at home. I know this appears a crude thing to admit to, but I can't tell this story without saying it. In early 2009, I was in Fernando's office. I can't remember what he was saying then today, but he was probably using the word 'arousal'. My key worker got sexually excited – of course, I could smell it. I became a little sexually aroused. I remember immediately after this Fernando happily slapping his legs and ending the appointment. This experience was a major reason for the terrible psychosis I experienced all that year. To get a slight erection in the same room as queer little Filipino quack who was looking at my crotch was about the worst thing I could possibly imagine.
This sexual arousal however was not, as you might think, a Pavlovian reaction. At this time and for much of the rest of the year I was virtually catatonic during my appointments with Fernando. I had said I was straight and they refused to believe me; there was nothing I could say or do that would improve my situation. This slight sexual arousal was born from a state of helpless confusion. At some subconscious level, I felt that he wanted me to become sexually aroused. I also confusedly felt that if I became aroused this would somehow prove that I was straight.
A reason that I have decided to talk about this is because I suspect that rumour of this unpleasant occurrence had already found its way out into the public arena many years ago. In an earlier post, I described how Christchurch columnist Joe Bennett started a conversation with me at the Whanganui Literary Festival in September 2013 by saying, "I have a small erection! Of course, there's no such thing as a small erection." I see, once again, three possible explanations for Bennett's unfortunate conversation opener. The first is what Jung called "synchronicity": it could have a been extremely unlucky coincidence. The second is that he had heard a rumour about me and, without realising I was the subject of the rumour, opened with this 'witticism' in the belief that I had also heard this rumour. The third is that he knew that I was the subject of this rumour and decided to make a pass at me because of it. If either of the second two possibilities is true, it suggests that Fernando broke doctor-patient confidentiality and gossiped with people in the media about me. In fact, it was worse than gossip. It was slander. It is conceivable that Fernando had heard about the screenplay I had written in 2012 and deliberately defamed me in order to discredit me, and it. If this is true (and I think it is) it is proof that the psychiatric profession is deeply corrupt, and that the Mental Health System is morally and intellectually bankrupt, indefensible.
It is probably unnecessary to add that I never like Antony Fernando. I only ever tolerated him. Some of my readers may probably be aware of the satirical piece I sent journalist Steve Braunias. I need to mention that I sent it to him some weeks after the Whanganui Literary Festival.
At this point I need to try to bring the disparate threads of this post together. I hope, as always, that it is well written enough. I talked about a poem I wrote in 2001 and my friend Warren; I talked a little about dreams; I discussed behaviourism and sexual fantasy. I recounted a true story about something horrible that happened to me a long time ago. If this post has a unifying theme, it is the idea that a person has a soul, an inner life. And that a person can be, in a sense, psychologically and spiritually raped.
Addendum: I wrote a long essay that I sent to the Herald last week. They probably have no intention of publishing it and so I will publish it here in this blog in a couple of days.
