Lost Souls

by Logan Druckman

Expanding beyond the queer themes of this particular text, I would encourage people to read the following autobiographical short story “Enough Rope” written by Poppy Z. Brite.

http://www.poppyzbrite.com/rope.html

In her story, she describes her complicated gender identity, and having grown up feeling as though she were a gay man trapped in a woman’s body, but not in the same way that someone we would confidently label as “transgender,” or not exactly.

Reading this, do you feel that what she says about her life experiences impacted the creative process? Does this explain some of the genderf*cking that goes on with her characters? vWhat about her propensity to sort of blurt things out and then keeping moving on (like Jesse mentioned in class about Jessy and her father’s relationship)…?

“My only explanation, inadequate as usual, was that I’d just never felt like a woman… All I could say was that some people appear to identify strongly with their born gender, and I wasn’t one of them. I didn’t ‘enjoy being a girl.” Nor was I a tomboy; I was the kid forging notes to excuse myself from gym class, reading my library book on the sidelines while the other little savages fought over some ridiculous ball (Brite, Enough Rope).”

Brite tells her story in snapshots, much like the way we receive information about characters in the novel.

“Snapshot,age 13: Caught by other kids reading a book about gay and lesbian history on the schoolbus. They already know I’m a geek. Now I get to be a gay one. A living, mouth breathing teenage Hell ensues for the next for years. Saying ‘ I don’t consider that an insult’ does no good at all; explaining ‘I’m not a lesbian, I’m a fag’ does even less (Brite, Enough Rope). “

“Only Zillah’s hands gave away his gender; they were large and strong and heavily veined beneath the thin white skin.” Lost Souls, p 6.

“I’m going to be a vampire daddy.’ It was all she had spoken of for weeks. Finding a vampire to bite her, turning her into one, drinking the blood of others…” Lost Souls, p 77.

Does what Brite share about her life give any insight into the style or flow of her writing? Particularly her fact-giving/narrative style?

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You’re currently reading “Lost Souls,” an entry on Queer Rhetorics Blog

Published:: 04/19/2010 / 12:57 pm

Category:: Queer Writing, The Self

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This blog is for WRTG 3020: Queer Rhetorics. Write an initial comment about one of the active topics and, then, respond to other student comments at least 1 or 2 more times during the week. Don’t just throw your ideas into a vacuum. Ask questions and use the other comments as a jumping off point by answering questions, amplifying or complicating ideas, etc. You can also find this blog embedded at the site for our course: www.queerrhetorics.com.

Marian Hale 4.19.10 / 3pm

The blog of everyone who is not a contributing member of the society of “Lost Souls”

thoughts on, “Enough Rope”
~C baby is a hero.
~The identity of penis is only a sexual thing (doesn’t bring up other issues i.e. peeing).
~Being a gay male is only about sex!!!
~Doesn’t seem to identify with the culture of being a gay man.
~Maybe because this culture doesn’t accept her?
~But we do!!!
~She is interested in the performance more than the feeling.

Leela’s penis joke:
there are three guys. they all in their life are very virtuous. BUT they all have affairs. one has a small affair, one medium, one big.
the first goes to heaven and says he had a small affair. saint peter says, “you get a metal penis but you can go to heaven!”
the second goes to heaven and says he had a medium sized affair. peter says, “you get a wooden dick but you can go to heaven!”
the third goes to heaven and says he had a large affair. peter says, “you get a cumbersome penis. it will be 100 feet long. but you can go to heaven!” ^.^
in heaven, the three men all meet up one day.
“you all have weird penises!” they say.
“how is the metal one?” two ask.
“its really heavy. i fall over a lot…” replies the first.
“how is your wooden one?” two ask.
“they call me pinnocchio!” the second responds.
“how is the long one?!” two ask.
“its 100 feet! its not bad. you see that angel over there?!?!” the third replies.
*the three see an angel way in the distance*
UHH!! goes the long penis man.
“got her.”

Fin.

Rebecca: …is rape still rape in heaven?

Kevin 4.21.10 / 12pm

To get the obvious criticism out of the way:
Her idea of being a gay man is entirely defined by the sex that gay men engage in–this seems to be an incomplete idea. A gay man isn’t only a sexual identity, as the name would suggest; it’s a social and cultural identity as well. In her rejection of this as an aspect of her being ‘a gay man in a woman’s body’ (she makes one brief but unconvincing mention of liking an aspect of gay male culture in the midst of her cries of ‘PENIS’), she discounts the idea of a gay male on a whole, in a way marginalizing her own identity even further. Saying “I want a penis and I want to fuck guys with it” seems to be different from the “I’m a gay man in a woman’s body” that she puts forth in this essay–It may be a fault of mine, but I don’t feel that she explains and justifies herself fully and rationally enough to call herself a gay man in a woman’s body.
Is queerness something codified by society or an a priori realization that we come to with age? It seems like she argues the latter.

Ryan Rheingold 4.21.10 / 1pm

I totally agree. I think you hit the penis on the head so to speak. I think she definitely feels a connection to a gay mans sexuality but as far as the other aspects of being a gay man… i’m not as convinced.

1. Kevin 4.21.10 / 1pm
  
  That sounds painful. I’ll try to avoid bludgeoning cocks with any further contentions.
2. Logan 4.22.10 / 5pm
  
  I’d say hop down to Anna’s post. She’s picking up more on what I was thinking about by posting this story.
  
  I think that she feels a connection to her perception of gay men’s sexuality, but i also don’t think she’s actually claming a gay male identity quite the way you are taking it. I mean, it is just my interpretation, but as Anna quoted from the story, she ultimately says that she “arrive(d) at the “conclusion” (this is a relative term) that I don’t know what the hell I am — gender-wise, preference-wise, any-kind-of-label-wise.”
  
  To play devil’s advocate, I could point to the sentence she writes about liking musicals as a child and that being stereotypical of a flaming queen. I definitely see what you guys are saying, I just think she was kind of more than anythign sharing her confusion, and her identifyign with aspects of gay men and their sexuality, yes, but i don’t think she was trying to reduce gay men to nothing but sex. Again, I think she’s just really super queer and has a hard time expressign/understanding how she feels, and i thinkt hat comes across in her writing and in her characters. Adn to me, in a way, that makes a lot of sense, because I don’t feel like we are all so easily separated into label categories.
  
  That said, I certainly agree wtih you that gay men should not be reduced to just a stereotype about sexuality and behavior.

Miranda 4.21.10 / 12pm

do you feel that what she says about her life experiences impacted the creative process?

Yes I believe that her life experiences do impact her creative process. In her essay she describes struggling with her gender identity, and even felt “trapped” at one point. From reading Lost Souls I feel like her characters also struggle with gender identity.

Well, they do not exactly struggle but their sexual preferences can be called queer.

Through some of her characters she can express her self and reflect on what she has experienced.

Some of the best authors write about things that they already know

Phil McMichael 4.21.10 / 12pm

I think our culture tends to define its self though sexual identity. It starts ever before we are born, with things like a blue room for a boy and pink for a girl. For someone who is confused by their sexual identity it may be natural to seek out the easiest, and most common way of solving that problem, sex. It seemed to me she never found anything worth a damn in all her sleeping around. I’m not sure if she accomplished anything but doing it.

Demy Tabangcura 4.21.10 / 1pm

It seems that the external acknowledgment of others drives her to figure out what she feels herself to be.

“So I was thrilled to advertise the fact that I was now snagging these sweet young things and tossing them away like Kleenex. I thought I was such a fucking stud.”

Why is it that she needs to “advertise” such sexual escapades? Perhaps the reason goes that you need some sort of acknowledgment to feel legitimized in an identity. You can claim all you want, but until someone says, “Yes, that is who you are” will you then materialize into that identity. Part of identity is how you see others perceive your identity. And if others do not perceive an identity, then it exists only to you. Or she could just be making a statement, but in making a statement, isn’t the act of going public an act in attempting to forcefully legitimize oneself as a being, as existing?

In Lost Souls, Nothing feels like nothing until he is acknowledged and accepted by his “family.” His identity as a vampire needs to be reaffirmed by Zillah, Molochai and Twig, because without the acknowledgment, he is simply lost. In addition, Christian also feels a sense of isolation, abandonment and loneliness in the world until his existence is yet again reaffirmed by the presence of the other three vampires. It seems that existence is tied to affirmation of existence through others, regardless if that affirmation is one of acceptance or repudiation.

Kate Autera 4.21.10 / 1pm

Brite’s essay had me constantly reevaluating my ideas of who she is and what she wanted to say and what it is that she’s experiencing. How is she choosing to define some of the words she uses? As Kevin said, what does it mean to be a gay man? And especially one that is held within a ‘woman’s’ body?

I just appreciated her willing-full choice to mess up as many of the assumption we make about categorization as possible. Her nonchalance indicates not only that she can’t be fit into any one easy category, but assumes that no one else can be either.

Sofia Lindroth 4.21.10 / 4pm

It definitely seems that by her saying that she is “a gay man trapped in a woman’s body” that she wants to be a gay man as well.. With all of the penis remarks and what not, it makes the reader think that she wishes she was a man that could have sex with other men. But then, she also discusses how she is not a tom boy and does not want to look like a man, she is just one on the inside. These contradicting notes make me wonder what she really thinks she is because to me it is very confusing. Kate has a good point about how she messes up the categories, and creates her own. There is something more, something unexplainable than just “a gay man in a woman’s body.”

Daniel G Foster 4.21.10 / 1pm

The argument that Poppy Z Brite marginalizes the identity of “gay man” into the realm of only sexuality itself normalizes the gay male identity.

Who is to say that there aren’t “legitimate” gay men who both from a cultural and societal perspective only identify as gay because of their desire to sleep with other men? And would we still consider them just as ignorant as Poppy Z Brite?

I for one believe she is just as much a gay man as I am.

Kevin 4.26.10 / 1pm

Isn’t saying that the only criteria for identifying as a gay man being a desire to sodomize men a means of making it broadly accessible, opening the possibility that it gets to the point where it threatens to normalize it by making it more broadly universal rather than specific?
It becomes more of an argument of abstracts at this point, and I’m not sure that it’s worth pursuing.
Regardless, I’m more referring to the exterior cultural/social pressures experienced by gay men rather than gay culture itself–The experience, from an outsider perspective, does hold a degree of normativity to it, simply because a man, gendered as so, who has sex with other men will have the same stigmas and judgments placed upon them by society, regardless of how they identify individually. It’s a matter of how these imprints are reacted to that define the individual, but gay men will always have a distinct set of stimuli to react to, one that is different from that which women find themselves having to react to. In this regard, I don’t see social or cultural perspectives irrelevant, as there’s a great degree of difference, and denying that is another means of normalizing the experience–this time, across genders as well.

1. Daniel G Foster 4.27.10 / 10pm
  
  I would argue that to have a cultural identity with any semblance of coherence there must be present at least one defining characteristic or trait to link the members of that culture. In the context of the “gay man” it seems to me that the most rudimentary requirement is to identify as male coupled with a desire to be with men. I recognize the inherent normalization present in this definition. It is just that in my mind this normalization is a secondary and unavoidable consequence of belonging to any cultural identity.
  
  My point was that by describing herself as a gay man simply because of a desire to sleep with men in my mind does not mean that she is discounting the idea of a gay male as a whole. Rather, she is expressing nothing besides the fundamental requirements of the gay male identity, and although there is without a doubt added levels of complexity available to this identity she is not marginalizing the gay man. Perhaps it is a simplistic but not marginalizing perspective.
  
  Concerning the idea you present of “distinct set of stimuli to react to,” this is what I was referring to as normalizing the gay male identity. Inherent in this argument is the congruence of cultural/social pressures placed upon men during the gendering process and cultural interactions. However, I think we would be hard pressed to find such congruence. Consequently, I think we would be equally hard pressed to identify universal reactions to these pressures/stimuli. So then, what criteria would we use to deem certain reactions as legitimizing the gay male identity and others as marginalizing it? I would argue that there is no value in endeavoring to set-up a stratification of the gay male identity. Social and cultural perspectives aren’t irrelevant or to be ignored entirely but at the same time vary far too much on an individual basis to be used as a generalization of the gay male identity.

Anna 4.22.10 / 1pm

After reading Brite’s “Enough Rope” I have a new appreciation for Lost Souls. I think that her past has dramatically impacted her writing. Initially, I was confused about why a woman was writing about gay men…not all gay men I suppose, but men with gay tendencies…in Lost Souls. I assumed that she was probably a lesbian, but that assumption was very wrong!

I think that she felt the need to advertise her sexuality so much because she was so misunderstood. Think about it…if people always asked you questions about your sexuality, wouldn’t you just start spilling when you met someone? to avoid all the questioning?

My FAVORITE line from Enough Rope is

“To arrive at the “conclusion” (this is a relative term) that I don’t know what the hell I am — gender-wise, preference-wise, any-kind-of-label-wise.” I think the flow of this sentence and the rhythm are amazing. When I read it i was sort of jumping along to any-kind-of-label-wise in my head. The words go so well together.

Overall Logan, I think this was a great idea for a blog post! I really enjoyed getting a background on the author of Lost Souls. It definitely gave me more insight into the book. THanks!!!

Logan 4.22.10 / 5pm

Anna,
Thanks for posting this. That is probably one of the best lines in the story, I definitely agree. When I first read “lost souls” years ago, I also assumed that she was probably a lesbian. Then I read her other novels and the about the author sections would sometimes reference her having a male partner adn I would always be a little confused.

I have to ask myself now, ten years later, why did I assume she was a lesbian just because she wrote queer characters. I also think that its interesting that the “enough rope” is from 1998, and I would love to know what she would say to people know if we were to ask her some of these questions.

I think the heart of her story is really just that she feels queer and out of place, that labels don’t fit, that she went through some experiences, and that they’ve really impacted her ideas about gender/sexuality/the world.

i think the quote you pulled is super important, and definitely copied it, because people are getting lost on that point, that she’s actually not really claiming a label at this point.

I also think her characters really experience this same knid of thing, not fitting in, not fitting labels, not even necessarily queer labels.
glad you liked the story 🙂

Holly 5.1.10 / 9pm

I feel as though the autobiography of Brite made the book much clearer to me. Throughout the book, there is kind of a hatred for women. For example, the women are seduced by vampires, yet know they will die when giving birth to the vampire. Jesse on a whim decides to sleep with her father. Another girl gets raped. There are no women vampires–do they exist in Brite’s fantasy world? All these things do not really portray women in a positive manner.

I feel as though it is Brite’s rejection of her own gender that makes her write in the way she does. She seems not to be comfortable as a woman, and in her novel seems to kill off (or make the women seem not intelligent). Perhaps it is her self uncomfortableness in her body that causes her to write a novel like Lost Souls.

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