More than expounding on any of these topics, however, de la Flor and Seaton showcase language itself in such a way as to excite both the intellect and the imagination. One line in the poem “The Possessed Samaritan” reads, “You can tell when the devil wants to lol, although I wait until he’s finished before I join in.” And indeed these poems are all about play and flirtation with the dangerous.

They wear “heavy” topics such as religious fundamentalism, natural disasters, astronomical and chemical occurrences, physics, oppression of women, and self-deprecation gracefully, always balancing the serious with the hilarious.

The poems collected in Sinéad fly readers from one topic to the next without ever neglecting readers’ desire to go along for the ride. While the poems flit from subject to subject, one cannot deny the peculiar coherence between them. At first the poems might seem nonsensical, but listen closer for a more complex logic. De la Flor and Seaton stack up meaning within and between each poem so as to create a robust and layered experience. They create their own sense. Their drunken logic strikes juxtapositions that flash so quickly between metaphors, between the sobering and absurd, we’re not even sure it happened.

One line in the poem, “The Bette Davis Mosh” reads, “In the mosh pit even the unluckiest get a chance to dance akimbo. They bring their hands to each other and loofah.” The line makes no traditional sense, yet we easily intuit what it means.  Likewise, each poem invites readers to dance, to play, and to believe in the far-fetched.

Lusty, swanky, and well-toned, these poems are playful without being light, and smart without being esoteric. Read this book to witness an inspiring dexterity with language.  Read this book for a loving sucker-punch to the brain. Read this book in a place where it is okay to lol, or even to loofah.

Sinéad O’Connor and Her Coat of a Thousand Bluebirds
By Neil De La Flor and Maureen Seaton
Firewheel Editions
Paperback, 9780982895719, 69 pp.
October 2011

Patroclus is the son of King Menoitus and a mother deemed “simple” and disregarded thereafter. An awkward boy, he tries to remain invisible until, while defending himself against a bullying child, he accidentally kills the boy. Exiled to Pthia, Patroclus resumes his invisibility among a new group of boys. But Achilles sees him, tossing him a fig in greeting, and they begin a tentative friendship. Achilles’ father accepts this as of a piece with his son’s iconoclasm; having taken to heart the prophecy at birth that he would grow to be the best fighter of his generation, he doesn’t need the companionship of the more popular boys who try to curry favor. But Thetis, his sea goddess mother, is against the relationship, and not shy about scaring Patroclus half to death. Nevertheless, their friendship warms to deep affection, then love. Their tentative behavior, and the legitimate fear of being spied on by an omniscient parent, give way on Achilles’ sixteenth birthday (Patroclus gifts him with fresh figs). “I knew Achilles’ golden skin and the curve of his neck, the crooks of his elbows. I knew how pleasure looked on him. Our bodies cupped each other like hands.”

This pleasure can’t last, of course; the Trojan War ultimately divides the two, and they are reunited only in death, with assistance from surprising quarters. Achilles’ anger and pride, and the notion that he’s simply fulfilling his destiny, allow him to fight without thought for the consequences; Patroclus has been an afterthought to most of the people in his life, and his more generous world view thinks of nothing but consequences. Their fight is political and personal, and the fallout devastating.

The Song of Achilles is something entirely new, yet faithful to The Iliad. Richmond Lattimore’s translation finds Achilles greeting Patroclus as “you who delight my heart.” The two share quarters, and when Achilles plays the lyre Patroclus reclines against him. There’s also a moment when Achilles asks Patroclus why he’s crying like a little girl separated from her mother in a manner that’s both chiding and tender. For lack of a better term, it reads as spousal. So, too, in Song. When Achilles plays the lyre, the music “bright as lemons,” Patroclus rests a hand on his foot. They guard their privacy, but operate as a partnership nevertheless.

Author Madeline Miller studied Greek and Latin, and combed out every reference to Patroclus to find the heart of this novel, which is her first. It’s a gorgeous, assured debut, and one that succeeds on multiple levels. The battle scenes and interplay between gods and mortals are true to the world of swords-and-sandals epic fiction, gory and thrilling. Yet within that world is nestled this tender story of love, coming of age, and destiny, where a conversation is interrupted by the soft pat of an olive falling from a tree. It’s that loving attention to the world around them that makes the relationship so believable and poignant. When the pair leave to join the war, Patroclus hugs Achilles: “I had embraced him too, those thin, wiry limbs. I thought, This is what Achilles will feel like when he is old. And then I remembered: he will never be old.” Despite the ache, The Song of Achilles lifts and opens the heart. It’s a rich, beautiful tale.

The Song of Achilles
By Madeline Miller
Ecco Books
Hardcover, 9780062060617, 384pp.
April 2012

“The Banal and the Profane” is a monthly Lambda Literary column in which we lift the veil on both the writerly life and the publishing industry. In each installment, we ask a different LGBT writer, or LGBT person of interest in the book industry, to guide us through a week in their lives.

This month’s  “Banal and Profane” column comes to us from writer and editor Rohin Guha.

Guha is currently and may forever be hard at work on his first novel, City of Princes. He currently pens the Pop For Skeptics column at Flavorwire. He’s also the author of the short story collection, Relief Work (Birds of Lace, 2010) and serves as the Online Editor at Moonshot Magazine. His literary work has appeared in Union Station Magazine. His non-literary work has appeared in Gawker, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, and a chickens’ coop of other publications.

Monday

It’s not scientifically proven, but I feel like on Monday mornings, more than any other time of any other day, the Earth’s gravitational pull is especially aggressive. My alarm rings. My alarm is a pop song. My alarm is “Radioactive” by Marina and the Diamonds. A discothèque impulse stirs me awake and I stare outside my window. Well, I stare through the obstruction of houseplants I’ve set up in front of my window in lieu of curtains: Cacti, a spider plant, a dracaena, a bird of paradise, and a shamrock. Mine is an east-facing bedroom so in the mornings, sunlight floods in and I am scorched. I should probably put up curtains, but if I’ve gone this long without them, what’s one more day?

Staring at these plants—many which I forget to water for weeks at a time—I’m agog at how resilient life is, in spite of all of the horrible things that come to pass on a daily basis. My thoughts are meandering down a dark tunnel and then my phone chimes. It’s a text from the poet Niina Pollari. It’s an inside joke or a weather report. It makes me chuckle so I decide to take that as a cue to start my morning.

My routine is banal lately. I left my job several months ago to pursue something more consistent with my worldview. I look for jobs all livelong day. I send out emails. I set up meetings. I drink coffee; I drink a lot of coffee; I drink so much coffee that if I would’ve started drinking coffee at age twelve, I’d be no taller than four feet.

I work on the novel. I chew up sentences and phrases. I catch up with television shows from the week before. I listen to pop songs, back-to-back-to-back-to-back because their market-researched approach to “hope” is more convincing than others I was sold on.

I pause for a moment and consider how each of the Spice Girls—we all have our idols—must’ve had moments where life was turning up lemons. I breathe. I drink more coffee. Monday is the day for beginnings.

Tuesday

Rohin Guha

My uncle sent over an obituary my cousins penned for my paternal grandmother who, after an extended hospital stay, died. They wanted me to take a pass at it. I sip coffee and pour over how to summarize the legacy of someone who knew me since I was no bigger than a sack of potatoes in about thirty to forty words. It’s been a week since the news broke and curiously, I’ve managed to avoid crying. “I’m such a bad-ass that copy-editing is grieving for me,” I figure.

On another afternoon, some other cousins are in town with their four kids. Over a late lunch of dim sum, I catch up with them; it’s been years and years. Their kids have grown up and are now anywhere between three to thirteen years of age. I’m pressing the tines of my fork down into a black sesame roll when I think that maybe I could even raise a child, too—but only if someone fixes the world first.

In the evenings, I go to the gym. The gym is a carnival of aesthetes. Some of them stare me down with laser-like intensity and I wonder if they’re truly straight and if they realize that I’m utterly filthy after yoga, 30 minutes on the elliptical, and lifting weights. Some of them are handsome. Some of them are eating Baked Lays while walking on the treadmill. None of them are for me. But that does inspire me to end the night with a gymtini—a cocktail after the gym. Liquor kills your metabolism and this fact doesn’t escape me, but these are dire times!

A while ago, before summertime prematurely arrived, I was dating what I thought was a prince. We went to a hookah bar; we ate pizza; we cheered on drag queens—he even trekked down to Crown Heights once to hear me read some words that I created, off a piece of paper. He was sure a prince, I thought.

Wednesday

For one potential gig, I fly down to Atlanta. It is the first time that I speculate how leaving New York indefinitely wouldn’t be the worst life decision in the world: It’s a city where making art is becoming increasingly difficult without assistance from a benefactor or a well-connected mentor. People break their backs more to get their work showcased than to create it; it’s lop-sided.

Now I think about moving back to Detroit, or perhaps decamping to my aunt’s house in Delhi; I think about settling in a small town in the middle of nowhere where internet is still serviced through 56K modems. I think about how New York has taught me to shut up and get things done; now it’s my turn to teach people in other places to do the same.

I think about the how poorly institutionalized the literary world has become in New York. It’s always been like this, hasn’t it? I think about the unsustainability of measuring the quality of a writer’s work by his willingness to debase himself to please “the right people.”

Then I lust after other cities: There is more fertile, creative ground. Kansas City, Phoenix, Seattle, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, Montréal: There is an entire jungle outside of New York.

Thursday

I’m flying back from Atlanta and just before the plane is about to take off, the prince I’m dating texts me that he is at the bar having go-go boys shove their junk in his face. This is humanity. This, after he swore me to exclusivity. He tries to instigate a text-message tiff but the flight attendant announces that all electronic devices must be shut off. I’m saved.

When I get back home, I try again with prince but the magic has worn off. Last-minute incantations and pepperings of pixie dust don’t work. He turns out to be a frog; he tells me that he won’t even meet with me unless I get turned down for the job in Atlanta. Goodbye, frog.

Friday

The poet Traci Brimhall is in town. She fled New York several years earlier and is back doing a book tour. She is happy and beautiful and it puts a smile on my face to see her at Grassroots Tavern on St. Marks. It’s my first time seeing her, and the poet Garrett Burrell,  in over a year. I’m mostly friends with poets, I suppose. They’re better with words—and the space between words—than prose writers are. At Grassroots, we decide to do an exquisite corpse on the back of a receipt from a book store. My contributions are all laced with Grindr-themed terminology. Hours later, Niina Pollari and Eve Bates arrive. Another hour after that, we’ve relocated to a bigger table and after a few more beers, I start bawling.

There’s no shortcut around grief. It’s the big cry over my grandmother’s passing I had been trying to thwart and in that crowded East Village bar, I finally mourn the loss. At Niina’s insistence, a few of us head out and back home towards Bushwick.

Saturday

The morning after Grassroots, Eve demands brunch at Northeast Kingdom in Bushwick. I know never to say no to Eve. We start with coffee. “Bottomless Coffee” as printed on the menu. I make a crude joke: “Hey Eve, much like two tops trying to figure out how to have good sex, this coffee is bottomless.” She cracks up. She knows I’m in a better place this morning. We get shrimp and grits and remark about the curious people who take pictures of their unremarkable salads at restaurants and, before even tasting it, post it to Facebook. Like it’s a Pavlovian impulse.

*

A few weeks later, I’m staying with a friend out in Boston’s North End. We spend Saturday nursing hangovers from Friday. I’m sucking down so much coffee at brunch, the waitress remarks, “You drink a lot of coffee don’t you?” and I retort, “Oh honey, you have no idea.”

As we walk around town, through Haymarket Square, I realize forsaking New York for Boston wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. We head back to his place and kill a few hours playing video games and by nightfall, we head back out to meet one of his best friends who has just closed on a condo on the South End–at the age of 29.

With only months until my own 29th birthday, I suddenly feel like a delinquent, but then again, this is what happens when you decide you’d rather make stories than money.

Sunday

Usually on Sundays I wake up, funnel coffee into my mouth, and head off to yoga and I spend the rest of the day writing, returning emails, or watching terrible television. Time stands still on Sundays. But today is an exception to my routine.

I’m on a bus headed back to New York from Boston. It’s raining considerably—the first good downpour in months—and as the bus tears down I-90, I decide to listen to all the Fleetwood Mac I can: I’m feeling pensive. This particular Sunday isn’t so easy. A side project for me, while in Boston, had been to get back in touch with someone I very briefly dated years ago—but someone, who by virtue of not being a complete asshole, left a frustratingly indelible impression—if only to force a little closure or set the tone for a sustainable friendship. He was amenable to this idea, but then never followed up. So during “Tusk” or “Silver Springs,” the following text exchange occurs:

ME: Hey. It’s a shame we couldn’t have met up, but it would’ve been awesome if you made an effort. I’ve been having a shitty several months lately.
ME: I think you should stop texting me until you’re ready to respect me—even as friends.
HIM: I just got out of a complicated two-year relationship and I’m sorry you feel ignored.
HIM: I wasn’t sure of your intentions and I was naturally hesitant.

His deflection of responsibility makes me smirk on the bus and I think to myself, “Frog.” With the rain still pouring, the bus still speeding down the highway, it seems like the setting is cinematically perfect as the exchange ends there and “Landslide” starts up. At some point, every relationship comes to an impasse and this one wasn’t worth salvaging. Whatever we shared had reached a natural conclusion, although the coming months will find him relocating to New York. But that is the beauty of a large wilderness like New York: It’s easy to disappear from anybody’s life.

My mother calls today, like she does everyday. She’ll ask how things are. I’ll take a deep breath. We have a colloquial saying in Bengali that roughly translates to “Things are cutting away and blood isn’t spilling.”

I put my own spin on it: “Things are cutting away and a little bit of blood is spilling.” She chuckles.

I tell her about the minutiae of my day; she tells me hers. She passes the phone to my dad who offers no shortage of encouraging maxims. I repeat the same run-down of minutiae to him and he tells me about his day; he passes the phone to my maternal grandmother. She and I will lament loudly that we haven’t seen each other in ages and this is a tragedy and there’s Bollywood gossip and talk about the best way to prepare vegetables and cooking tips from Rachael Ray and by this point, we’re basically talking over one another because we’re both so excited to talk to one another. Then we hang up. It’s a ten-minute routine I’ve secretly come to love.

This year has been about things ending, but in a grander way, they’ve been about setting things up to start. People die, former lovers dramatically vanish, you suddenly find yourself in need of new employment, and there is a lot of entropy and chaos—but, and this is probably why I bother tending to my Grey Gardens gallery of houseplants—in that chaos is the potential to make new opportunities bloom from the remains of that which has passed.

Which is what Sunday is: A day to lay down the groundwork for Monday.

Dignified, indeed. The writing life can be a real kill-joy; we work hard to keep a lid on the crazy, to mime leading more stable or wealthy or professional lives than we actually do.

Canteen contributors allow readers to “see all” in a venture to examine how authors (and everyone else, thanks, Zuckerberg) must now be marketable personalities. Check out issue 7 to see Michelle Tea and Tao Lin (among 14 others) naked! (And, um, queer community, we can do better than that. Salacious, hello? A Queer Hot Author’s issue?)

More on this dignity bit: writer Daniel Smith talks with Katie Ryder in Guernica Magazine about his struggles with an anxiety disorder. In his forthcoming memoir, The Monkey Mind Chronicles, Smith says, “My back was knotted and hunched, my shoulders were up to my ears, my skin . . . pallid and clammy, my pupils . . . wide as deer’s, my cheeks . . . gaunt, and my fingertips . . . torn and scabbed from my gnawing at them day and night.”

Ah, anxiety. I’ll bet comedian and writer Sara Benicasa is familiar. Her recent book, Agorafabulous, details her own descent into pissing in bowls in lieu of leaving the safety of her bed.

Not that I’m familiar with that. I totally have never worn my pajamas more than five days running, lived exclusively off of packaged apricots, or hugged a stuffed fox named Glitter Lickskillet to get through the night. Not in the last month, anyway.

Let’s accept this: writers are crazy. If you’re not a crazy writer, at least have the decency to pretend. Otherwise we’ll get anxious.

And if we do, Augusten Burroughs offers up some self-help suggestions in his forthcoming book, This is How, so that we can put down our stuffed foxes and get on with dignified living. He’s hitting up the West Coast in coming weeks, so if you’re around be sure to get him to sign your fox.

In the meantime, take this quiz to find out which crazy author you are. I’m apparently Hunter S. Thompson, but I didn’t have that much fun in Vegas.

Photo: Michelle Tea
Photo credit:  formento+formento

They’ve shared a lot of history together, coming out during the age of Reagan and living through the darkest periods of the AIDS epidemic—two of the five main characters are struggling with HIV disease: Bill, for whom protease inhibitors have neutralized his illness, and Edward, for whom they have not. It is Edward who is the sun around which the others orbit, not only because he is dying but because he is the most enigmatic and comes to symbolize the questions in the hearts of each of the rest. The short and poignant photographic prologues focusing on Edward at the beginning of each chapter keep the book focused on this and are especially effective in unifying the story around its central concerns.

A large part of the story focuses on settling down and partnership. But each character has a very different idea of what that can and should be, and it’s a pleasure to eavesdrop on their many debates concerning today’s most talked-about gay issue:  marriage. Greg is romantic and focused on the ring, Edward sees marriage’s legal implications, and Bill just sees it as the maturation of his romantic life. Victor is simply conventional (Greg’s husband), while Harlan rolls his eyes when he’s not completely horrified. What makes DeSimone’s book such an important meditation on the issue is that he’s not pushing a particular viewpoint so much as laying out the territory.

Most readers will end up identifying with one character above all the others, as is common in a story featuring a set of colorful people, all with their own unique histories and personalities. I was reminded of The Big Chill, Sex and the City and Felice Picano’s Like People in History, which this book bears a resemblance to as it charts a course through the turbulent waters of recent gay life.

One of the more finely drawn characters is the quick-witted Harlan. He is the funniest and most resistant to gay coupling. He continues to poke fun at the others, with brilliant and pithy one-liners and comebacks, while pulling at the reins of any relationship he gets involved in. Nor is he averse to hooking up. Harlan is the critical one, always the contrary, who keeps the rest on their toes. But, of course, each contributes certain assets that hold the group together as a family.

If I were to voice one complaint, it would be that sometimes the story felt slightly claustrophobic—with all the characters encased in their particular social fish bowls. There are passing references to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and families of origin, but while all of these guys have lived through a rather dramatic series of historical milestones, I didn’t feel the world outside of their personal concerns quite enough, nor the larger diversity of the gay community. A sense of larger social context could have strengthened the story. And DeSimone was a little hard on the straight folks in the book and poor Victor, though I think a lot of gay readers will appreciate his judgments, which are often as not delivered humorously. There were a few subplots that I was interested in as well that weren’t resolved, but then that would invite a sequel, which I’d be eager to read.

DeSimone has given us a big-hearted, earnest novel that does what novels should do: he’s painted a picture of the intimate lives of people living through a particular time, and he’s given us a character—Edward—and a story that truly  resonates.

The Heart’s History
By Lewis DeSimone
Lethe Press
Paperback, 9781590213421, 308 pp.
May 2012

The award, made possible by James Duggins, PhD, consists of two cash prizes of $5000 and is unprecedented in its category as well as its value. To qualify recipients must have published at least three novels or two novels and substantial additional literary work such as poetry, short stories, or essays. The prizes will be handed out on June 4, 2012 at the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards ceremony in New York City.

This year’s judges were Kim Brinster, Michael Lassell and Rachel Pepper.  Commenting on the 2012 prize recipients, they stated that Stacey D’Erasmo and Brian Leung “create lyrical and innovative works of fiction, often grappling with themes of identity, alienation, and family ties. Yet, both also create novels and short stories which are subtly understated works of excellence. We believe both writers are worthy of community recognition for creating works which incorporate multi-faceted LGBT characters and who are themselves often involved in the mentoring and teaching of a new generation of LGBT writers. We recognize D’Erasmo and Leung for their fine contributions to contemporary LGBT literature and encourage them to continue creating works which cross boundaries, yet remain true to the spirit of this prize by embracing and celebrating their own identities as LGBT authors and that of their LGBT readers.”

“We couldn’t be more pleased to honor these two stellar writers,” said Tony Valenzuela, LLF’s Executive Director.  “We’re tremendously impressed with the novels that D’Erasmo and Leung have already published and enthusiastically look forward to their future works.”

To learn more about the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize click here.

STACEY D'ERASMO

STACEY D’ERASMO holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University in English and American Literature. She was a Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University from 1995-1997. She is the author of the novels Tea, which was a New York TimesNotable Book of the Year; A Seahorse Year, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsday, and won both a Lambda Literary Award and a Ferro-Grumley Award; and The Sky Below, which was reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review. She is the recipient of a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. Her essays, features, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Review, Bookforum, andPloughshares, among other publications. She is an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.

BRIAN LEUNG

BRIAN LEUNG is the author of the short story collection, World Famous Love Acts (Sarabande, 2004), a Lambda Literary finalist and winner of both the Mary McCarthy Award for short fiction and The Asian American Literary Award for Fiction. His novels are Lost Men (Random House, 2008) and Take Me Home (HarperCollins, 2010) winner of the 2011 Willa Award for Historical Fiction. His poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction appear in numerous publications, including the essay, “The Seismology of Love and Letters,”  forthcoming in Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners (University of Wisconsin Press, Fall 2012).  Leung currently serves on the LGBT Advisory Board at the University of Louisville where he is the Director of Creative Writing.

WHITE PEOPLE ARE ON MY MIND THESE DAYS

We are going to disappear.
I say good riddance though
I’ll miss myself.
Robert said Well what culture do they have.
The next day my answer.
Uh, the novels of Thomas Hardy,
farmers bent by winds off the Channel?

Do the dying move on with grace,
knowing there’s new life and they’re part of it
no matter?

Some hit the dirt oblivious to
lights strung up in the tunnel.
This is personal but what isn’t.

Explorers were curious gold.
Conquistadors filed teeth for blood.
I can’t figure out history.

I said we were on the way out and Robert’s
Robert said Don’t worry, we’ll cause more damage
before we’re gone.

My great-nephew promised to be kind,
as he looked into my eyes and
spotted the loving goddess, clawing to get out.

OUR POINTILLIST GALAXY

Throw myth and a caution to the midnight sapphire,
light the stuck fires to warm goddesses and their rapists.
In our sky, women not ignored.

Make the velvet town square an eternal reckoning
(a way to find your way).
Mars raped Rhea Silvia (well that’s that)
(that’s Romulus and Remus).
The West was born into crime.

Legend’s old as lust, doomed as
pride embedded in our helix vining up a trellis, tra-la.
Elevation’s for a few good women and
holies and what a word it is
strolling our red carpet tongues.
We overly love standard bearers
and our gestures not enough.
Every achievement is against the odds.
Oh my and tra-la.
Detail unambiguities of venality.
Set it right. We’re feral. No one’s perfect.
_____Look up, up.

——

SARAH SARAI writes poetry and fiction. Her poetry collection, The Future Is Happy, was published by BlazeVOX [books], with poems in Boston Review, POOL, Lavender and others, and anthologized in Say It Loud: Poems About James Brown (Whirlwind Press). For links to her poems and fiction visit My 3,000 Loving Arms. She lives in New York.

“White People Are on my Mind These Days” first appeared in Mary: A Literary Quarterly; “Our Pointillist Galaxy” in Reconfigurations. Both appear here with permission.

To buy your ticket for the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards click here.

6:00 pm Cocktail Reception      7:00 pm Awards Ceremony

 Hosted by Kate Clinton

CUNY Graduate Center
Proshansky Auditorium
365 5th Avenue (at 34th Street)
New York City

9:30 pm VIP After Party at Slate
54 West 21st Street
New York City
Complimentary hors d’oeuvres with full dinner menu available

]]> http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/vt/05/14/watch-a-special-video-message-from-kate-clinton-on-hosting-the-24th-annual-lambda-literary-awards/feed/ 0 http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/05/13/name-of-federico-garcia-lorcas-lover-emerges-after-70-years/ http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/05/13/name-of-federico-garcia-lorcas-lover-emerges-after-70-years/#comments Sun, 13 May 2012 22:51:38 +0000 Diana Denza http://www.lambdaliterary.org/?p=10163 More than 70 years after Federico García Lorca was assassinated during the Spanish civil war, evidence of an affair with then 19-year-old Juan Ramírez de Lucas has sufaced. A young art critic, Ramírez de Lucas died in 2010. His sister received his box of mementos, which contained a never before seen poem and a diary. [Guardian]

“Now Obama’s Come Out on Same-Sex Marriage, Maybe So Will I”: Celebrated gay novelist Edmund White’s ideas about same-sex marriage have evolved. Having once considered marriage “just another effort on the part of gays to resemble their straight neighbors”, he is now mulling over the idea of tying the knot with his longtime partner. [Guardian]

The Spandex Closet: 10 Superheroes Who Need To Come Out [Opinion]: With all the straight, white superheroes out there, it’s not hard to imagine that a few of these macho men have identity issues. And no, we’re not talking about grappling with superpowers. If you’ve been wondering who might be coming out of the “spandex closet” soon, here’s a handy list. [ComicsAlliance]

The Letter Q Sends the Younger You a Message: The Letter Q aims to put a stop to teen suicide through a series of letters composed by prominent LGBT writers to their younger selves. Learn more about this powerful anthology and its authors here.

Photo:  Federico García Lorca via The Guardian

In each chapter Bornstein playfully, in her unique style, feeds us such heartbreak that at times I found myself literally laughing through sobs.  Woven through the memoir, though never cliché are Bornstein’s admitted “Daddy issues.”  Exploring her relationship to her own father, the searching for a “Daddy” that led her into Scientology, and ultimately the fractured identity as the father of her little girl Jessica.  Once a high-ranking member of the Church of Scientology, Bornstein eloquently and playfully sheds light on this mysterious religious institution. Exploration of religious organizations is not a theme I have much personal interest in, and in other books I would have simply flipped to the next chapter. And yet, even here Bornstein captivated me. She spoke of being drawn into the inner workings of the church and forthrightly talked about her rise to power before ultimately being shunned and exiled. Bornstein is, we learn, considered to be a “subversive person” and we learn how she ultimately became shunned and exiled. Ultimately she is labeled a “suppressive person,” a status that defines her as dangerous to other church members, and bars anyone including her own daughter, Jessica, from being in contact with her.

In A Queer and Pleasant Danger Bornstein offers a raw exploration of her gender journey, including candid explorations of her lifelong eating disorders and their relationship to her conception of self and gender. Bornstein gives us the opportunity to see behind the scenes and into the early gender outlaw days of one of the most brilliant gender theorists and performance artists of our time. We watch as she grapples with coming out as a lesbian, learning how to work cute as an embodiment of gender, and find power in the body she transforms.  Bornstein brings us into her early activist days, including a trip to the trial of Brandon Tina’s murders, visiting the house where Tina died, as well as to the stage of her first queer performance work.

Bornstein does not shy away from the dark, and controversial. She writes, too, in great and brave detail about cutting and the powerful force it has and continues to play in her life. This is not a tortured recovering self injury memoir, this is real, and Kate bleeds her struggles, truth and pain onto the page for readers. She gives us her truth, bringing strength and honour to what so many consider to be shameful demons.  A surprisingly brilliant theme was Kate’s ongoing relationship to S/M kink. The candidness and honesty with which she spoke about her exploration into sensation based play, as well as D/s (Dominant/submissive) relationship dynamics offering some of the most exquisite writing on these themes in print to date.

Ultimately Bornstein has written us a profoundly brave book that cracked me open, leaving me quivering and grateful for the stories I hadn’t known I’d needed to hear. A Queer and Pleasant Danger is truly a singular achievement and gift to the generations of queers who consider her our Auntie, and all those who will follow.