Poem-A-Day #181 : Because I Am Spotted Every Day

Because I Am Spotted Every Day

When you asked about the gym with the monkey on the sign what you meant was that you thought it was gay because there was a monkey on the sign and that the monkey on the sign was flexing and what you actually meant was that the drawing was kitsch as fuck and that is has to be gay then right

And I think I said something about all gyms being homoerotic those bodies in such a small space sweating and pheromoning all over the place and watching each other and performing for each other and then taking selfies in the locker room half naked together and I probably just laughed the comment off in the end because I get it I do but let's be honest here straight men do gay shit all the time

What I really want to ask in the moment though is if you could teach me how to wear flannel like a straight man

Is there a way for me to hide better

Because I am spotted every day

Once in awhile I try stealth just to see how it feels and I only manage a few hours of it before I have to break the silence in the room and by room I mean my head because to be stealth is to actually hide something on purpose and then to have to police yourself constantly to make sure that there isn't a wardrobe malfunction

And I wonder if you have that same experience ever

And I bet you would say that you feel similar things but do you really

When you ask me about the gym being gay and then talk to me about some shit that's real straight I want to throw the pint glass and use the shards of glass to cut your face so you have something to be ashamed of for real

I can get real butch real quick when the weather permits

But only on days without glitter because if there is glitter I will stare into it and think about the light reflecting on my eye and then thick about how our brains invert the things we see to make sense of them and I will be too damn distracted to deal with putting on man for the day

Do you put on man

I check the mirror every morning to see how fag I look so I know how much fag I'll get

There are days where I can't so I don't

And there are days where I'm candy-colored pride parade

And I know there are days you'd rather not but do you know how not to because I had to figure that out at 8 so that I wouldn't be too this too that and I learned how to lower my voice a bit when answering the phone and I learned how not to accent myself I practiced that shit in mirrors and in public and I fell all over myself trying to not stand out to not be harassed to not end up beaten and or dead

And I'm being real histrionic but this is real history as well

But no that is not a gay gym it is a gym and looking at it now I don't even see how you could mistake this my understanding has bled off in the rains of late summer and frankly they have a phone number call them up and ask them if they're gay and let's see what they tell you and then we can start this conversation again after you've been called faggot for real

Confessions of a Mask

To the left is Yukio Mishima. He is considered one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century. Nominated three times for the Nobel. He was an author, poet, playwright, actor, and director.

Mishima was born in 1925 and died in 1970, aged 45.

He was committed to bushido, the samurai code, and fancied himself a modern vision of that tradition. His writing is full of this 'chivalry' code, as well as death and sex.

Due to the following of the code, Mishima was incredibly fit. Which is putting it mildly.

He is remembered for his writing, his obsession with anachronistic concepts of manhood, and his death. He and four other men staged a coup attempt on November 25, 1970. After locking themselves in a government office Mishima delivered a speech to the army below. They mocked him. He went back into the room and committed seppuku, ritual suicide.

The obsession with death played out in his books. Specifically, Confessions of a Mask (1949).

In that book we follow a young boy who feels 'different' from childhood to his early 20s. The book is told as interior monologue. We are given the boys thoughts on life and his friends and family.
Mostly we are told that he loves suffering. The closer to being noble, or pure, the better. He also talks at length of masturbation, his 'habit'. And that he seems to only find working class men attractive. An early scene has him watching a man taking away bails of human waste. The boy becomes obsessed with the man's pants and white shirt. With the stink of work. Of sweaty bodies.

Later the boy finds a painting of Saint Sebastian by Guido Reni and basically falls in love with the image.

Mishima's book is called a novel. It is called an autobiographical novel. But I'm pretty sure it is as close to memoir as you can get. He was known to frequent gay bars, his wife was aware of it. His family sued to stop Jiro Fukushima publishing letters between the two authors of their affair. And there's this photo, part of a set, of Mishima taken before the coup attempt.

I'm not saying that posing as St. Sebastian makes you gay, but it certainly draws a thicker line between the author and his character.

Rumors swirl that the coup was an elaborate performance on Mishima's part. That it had been planned for years as a sort of perfect, beautiful, tragic finale. All through Confessions the character discusses his eventual death. Always at a young age, always dramatic. When it doesn't come, he starts to shut off his emotions. To form the 'mask' of the title.

After a failed visit to a brothel he finds himself at a party staring at the white thigh of a woman:

"...I was struck by the astringent pain that come from staring too long at something. The pain proclaimed: You're not human. You're a being who is incapable of social intercourse. You're nothing but a creature, non-human and somehow strangely pathetic."

Going from the book a portrait rises of a man who created his own cage. Afraid to exist, and concerned with 'correctness' to a degree that he beat bordered on obsessive he became a caricature of a man. Physically fit, adhering to a romantic ideal that never existed, and dying tragically.

The closet as performance. Society as stage.