Aftershock and Ernesto by Barry Frauman

AFTERSHOCK

 

My years of sureness are gone,

the brightness of my youth,

which began in ’76

when I was a man of thirty-two:

surging community after Stonewall,

smiling Brothers amid the sex,

gay theater flowering, action groups,

resplendent health paraded every June,

the nights of disco till 3 AM, and then,

“Come home with me?” “Hey, sounds fun.”

 

Now we’ve entered the time of AIDS,

joy eludes me, I can’t keep rewards.

My hands may hold them, but not my mind,

which says farewell

to poems before they're written,

operas still unsung,

and every horny guy before we cum.

 

I live in death‑shadow under the sun,

gazing at firm sweet asses of jeans

in a poisonous breeze of fear.

 

Latino man asleep on a bench

under thick black brows:

His legs sprawl gently in lightning‑white Levi's.

Oh to unzip him, nuzzle him nude,

take all of him in my mouth,

to feast until I die.

 

 

@2012 by Barry Frauman

 

ERNESTO

 

Eleven‑year‑old Mexican man

hardened by wrestling baseball swimming,

midnight thatch of hair to crown

the almond glint of Aztec eyes,

dashing Iberian smile flaring

an angular jaw and slender lips,

protected by knives of older brothers.

 

Shapeless hand‑me‑downs hide you, Ernesto

but, if we were naked, alone,

your buttocks clenched under smooth olive skin

I straddle you, I pry and pry

your fists reach round to pummel my sides,

your face aflame with boyish rage –

No, never.

 

 

 

@2012 by Barry Frauman

Until We Meet Again by Randy Gresham

Episode 2: The Elegant Gentleman

.The Elegant Gentleman

He sits at a low table covered with a white linen cloth in the courtyard of a charming old, ci-devant Florida resort. He is taking tea with his dear friends, three elderly ladies he has known for decades of “the season.” He balances a paper-thin, china cup with supreme aplomb. His hands are strong, yet fine and aristocratic. They are punctuated by manicured nails filed into perfect little crescents and buffed to a high gloss.  He wears three matching gold bands on his right middle finger and a monogrammed gold ring on his left pinkie. On his left wrist there is an antique gold Cartier tank case watch. His appearance is that of a true thoroughbred, his bearing and distinguished manners those of the early years of the last century. He holds his chin up just slightly in a gesture reminiscent of Hyde Park patricians.  His attire is the very picture of restrained old world elegance: white linen suit, Egyptian cotton shirt, white silk bow tie, Panama hat, polished black tie-up shoes.  He sports an ebony black walking cane with an elaborate gold knob.

His age is hard to determine.  Though his hair is completely white, his face is almost completely unlined, his skin as smooth as porcelain.  His face retains an angularity suggesting youth and virility.  His eyes are steel gray and though they flash with mirth and subtle fire, they occasionally register sadness.   His movements are graceful and deliberate and do not suggest the burdens of age.  He seems to possess a vitality lacking in the resort’s other guests. His clothes, though as vintage as those of the other vacationers, do not imply an involuntary stoppage in time, but appear as more of a costume.  He stands out.  There is an energy, a vitality concealed beneath the white outfit.  He is the very portrait of a well-bred gentleman.

To describe him as a portrait is most apropos. There is something studied in his behavior. Though engaged in animated talk, he looks as though he is also busy posing for a painter.  He sits, delicately sipping his tea, chatting, dropping bons mots on the blue haired matrons with whom he shares the afternoon ritual. They flirt with him in the manner of the elderly.  They dote on him and reward him with chuckles of amused delight, laughing at his every comment.  

His table’s conversation spills out into the courtyard.  He is obviously someone used to an audience.  The resort’s other patrons overhear, take note, laugh, and occasionally walk over to his table where he holds them enthralled. They add a witty comment or two and delight in his clever retorts.  He acts like a person of note, perhaps a celebrity or personage.  He encourages and enjoys the attention he receives. He smiles at everyone but something in his features fleetingly registers a keen sense of loss.  Loss, experienced throughout the decades, glossed over and dressed up in pretty pastels and brilliant smiles, runs through the throng of older vacationers. His loss, however, seems recent and still sharp.

Someone has stopped at the courtyard gate.  The gate divides this refined little world and that other realm, the outside modern world. A young man, perhaps in his late twenties, is looking in on afternoon tea.  He is deeply tanned, well- built and clad only in a red Speedo.  His nipples are pierced.  He seems perplexed and captivated by the scene he is witnessing. The resort guests no longer notice the intrusion of the outside world on their sacrosanct courtyard and afternoon rituals.  No one bothers to look up from tea to register shock, disdain or indignation. Out there, manners are lost and everything has become coarse with the passing decades.  The members of this charmed and polished circle have found ignoring offenders their best strategy.  To them the outside world simply doesn’t exist and should not be acknowledged.  Our elegant gentleman, however, notices.  He glances over and catches the young man’s eyes.  Too much is revealed in the exchange, an electrical charge, yet on both sides, utter perplexity.  An unknown, unexplored continent of the imagination emerges.  A clash of cultures, a leap through generations, insists on recognition.  The elderly gentleman appears bewildered and deeply pained.

The elderly gentleman returns to his companions.  It is all so very lovely.  Really it is.  He hopes it will stay this way always.

Until We Meet Again by Randy Gresham

Swellzine proudly presents Randy Gresham's new series, "Until We Meet Again"

Randy Gresham is the founder and president emeritus of NewTown Writers.  He is founder and original editor of Off The Rocks anthology.  His novel, The Palace, was serialized in the Atlanta Midtown Times from 1991 through 1992.  He is author of several plays, including Boys Night Out and All's Fair. He is an actor and has appeared in several venues in the Chicago and Atlanta area.  He is an artist.  Included among his works is an original interpretation of the Tarot.

As he has for decades, an elegant gentleman takes tea with friends in their habitual Florida winter resort.  Familiars of many years, following their seasonal out-of-date traditions, he and the group seem a relic of the past  to the current world.  Time remains frozen until one afternoon the elegant gentleman spots a handsome young man staring into the courtyard.  Startled at what he sees, the young man's appearance reminds the gentleman of...something...and everything changes.

The story unfolds in a series of vignettes or “snapshots”.  It travels back and forth between the present and events from the elegant man's past. Two men of different generation seem drawn together through destiny.  A tragedy from the older man's past is revealed, and the two discover something that surprises both of them. 

The resort’s disintegrating old courtyard is enclosed by painted concrete walls whose original salmon color has faded.  On the side facing the ocean, an old wrought iron gate gives to the beach.  Seasons of relentless Florida sunlight have left their legacy. Decades of tropical rain and hurricanes have streaked and discolored them.  Bougainvillea drips down their facades. In the middle of the courtyard, there is a washed out ocean-themed mosaic consisting of sea horses, crabs, fish of various colors, and young boys riding dolphins.  In its center a chipped fountain trickles. Afternoon shadows inch their way across multi-colored, uneven marble slabs marking the passage of time. At regular distances small cement planters, turning moss-green with age, support fragrant tropical flowers.  Larger vessels, one in each corner, contain cycad palms, trees known as living fossils.

Surrounding the fountain are little cabanas providing shade for the guests sitting at the small low tables found within the booths.  The tables are covered with white linen cloths, napkins, and china. Slightly removed in a shaded cove, a harpist plucks fond memories. There are little clinking noises and the soft buzzing sound of conversation punctuated with an occasional laugh or exclamation. Accents of every variety, from all sections of this country and Europe, spill out into the open air.

The visitors are taking their afternoon tea. The guests drink from eggshell thin cups bearing the monogram of the hotel.  Everything is very fine and delicate like the elderly guests themselves, who claim this resort as their own, and enjoy this daily ritual.  They are a study: hair, light gray or white, perhaps a rare golden girl dyed blond, pastel outfits, porcelain skin. Although this is Florida, not one of those gathered here appears to have ever spent time in the sun. Many have been coming to this resort for the season since their youth. Some sport the fashions of their earlier years. Were the surroundings not so declined, one could easily imagine this occurring sixty years ago.  Those here seem completely oblivious to the time that has passed since then.

Waiters hover around the patrons. The wait staff is made up of men of near uniform height and appearance. They are of advanced middle age and serve in tuxedos and white gloves. The exchange between server and customers suggest the manners of a former time, a curious “on holiday” camaraderie that doesn’t violate the old standards of propriety. The waiters are attentive without being obsequious. They bow ever so slightly as they place the tea service on the tables. It is all very gracious. The waiters, passing each other en route to or from the resort’s kitchen, exchange knowing glances, as if in on a commonly held secret.

There is a slightly musty smell in the air, barely discernible.  It is the smell old resorts get in hot, humid climates, an odor that persists in spite of antiseptic cleansers and regular scrubbings.  It is something primal, not disguised by artifice.  It suggests salt water, brackish ponds, the elemental and forbidding jungle. This scent is mixed with that of spices, citrus, seasonings and flowers.  The heavy combination produces a sense of somnolence.

Beyond the walls, outside, there are the sights and sounds of the other world, the modern world: flashing neon, traffic, skateboards, the roar of automobiles, motorcycles, motorboats, all impinging on this insular world of tea in the courtyard.  The sun is hot and glaring on the beach.  Dark, near naked bodies lie on towels, or walk by, speaking of things and in tones that are vulgar beyond example to the ears of these elegant patrons. The smell of tanning oil, cheap liquor, tobacco and pot waft into the cloistered space, bruising the afternoon ambiance.

Occasionally, a pedestrian or a group of them, en route to sand and ocean stops and glances inside the courtyard.  A young, highly tattooed woman looks completely puzzled, a group of rail-thin teenagers finds the ritual ridiculous and laugh as they walk away from the curious scene.  A deeply tanned, young man with pierced nipples reacts with curiosity.  A graceful patron, balancing his paper thin china cup with supreme aplomb, glances at the youth.  For the briefest instant, the guest stops talking and assumes a very strange expression.  He and the young man seem to react with complete and utter astonishment.  Each to the other must seem a peculiar specimen of alien life, and yet something makes it all but impossible for their eyes to part.

A quick sniff, a tightening lip, the patron returns to his partner at tea, and resumes his conversation.  It is all so very lovely, really it is. He hopes it will remain like this always, always.

On Sadness by Gene Naden

My sadness is deep like the Grand Canyon in my native Arizona. I know it will be with me as long as I live, not ruling or commanding me but as a guiding light, a my yardstick for measuring good and evil, a divining rod for finding life-giving water, a beam of X-rays for making plain what is hidden.
I have read of people who are afraid to cry because they fear that they will never be able to stop. The movie Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman gave me a taste of that. For a minute or two I wept uncontrollably in a room full of men and women, to my great embarrassment.
I have at times believed that I was sexually abused as a child, believing this because there seemed to be no other explanation for the grief I felt and the certainty that my childhood had been stolen from me. I believed in the abuse enough to fire my psychotherapist because he questioned its reality. I confronted my mother about it. Once I checked into a mental hospital convinced that when the repressed memories returned they would cause madness.
Painfully I have accepted that whether my brother ever fucked me is less important than the grief that dwells with me in this tiny apartment in Lakeview like an ambivalently-regarded spouse.
You have to know about the adoption. My mother – my “biological mother” Lucile – couldn’t afford to have a baby so she traveled to Mexico for an abortion. This was in 1949. The doctor injected her with a “brown fluid” that I now know must have been iodine. They didn’t succeed in killing the fetus inside her womb, but they killed something inside the fetus

Ex-Gay, Revisited by Gene Naden

A young friend made a Facebook posting about a very disturbing article, “My Ex-Gay Friend,” that appeared in the New York Times on June 19, written by Benoit Denizet-Louis. It was about a writer named Michael Glatze.

Denizet-Louis and Glatze had worked together 12 years ago for XY, a San Francisco-based national magazine, with websites, for young gay men. Glatze had been extremely devoted to helping gay youth and a passionate leader. My friend said that Glatze’s articles had given him his first sense of the LGBT community and made him proud of who he was.

But in July of 2007 Glatze announced to the world that he was no longer gay, writing “Homosexuality came easy to me, because I was already weak,” and that he was “repulsed to think about (it).” He betrayed us.

Glatze’s story hit me like a ton of bricks because I had done something like that. When I was 25, I was deeply involved with a young man I’ll call Danny. We had danced together, slept together, kissed and made love many times. We bicycled around San Francisco and went hiking together. We lived together for a while and had intimate friends in common. He took me to Arizona to meet his god-parents, his mother and brothers. Danny loved me and the black cloud I had lived under since adolescence lifted.

And yet one day, I inexplicably announced to him that I was leaving him so that I could find a girlfriend. In the ensuing years I wrote him a few times, first saying that what we had done was wrong and then, in the next letter assuring him that it was right. I know this wounded him.

There are people for whom a sense of self does not come easily, folks who look to the attention and affirmation of others to feel whole and to have a sense of purpose and hope, a sense that life is worthwhile. This is so great a need that we fall into coercion, doing or saying whatever is necessary to fill this need. Our friends and relatives rebel against this manipulation and we become increasingly isolated and self-centered. We become adept at concealing our desperate condition. Many of us fall into addiction or become suicidal. Some find their way into Alcoholics Anonymous or similar groups and rebuild their lives following the famous 12 Steps. Others, and perhaps Glatze was one of them, adopt rigid religious beliefs.

This phenomenon is no respecter of sexual orientation or gender identity. It happens to straight people too, as can readily be seen in the newspapers, rehabilitation centers and psychiatric clinics.

Danny found me Saturday night in a disco, under the influence of three or four beers and intoxicated with the joy of at long last having sex with men. Sunday mornings, however, were different. Anyone in this country who is bisexual, who has loved both men and women, or simply enjoyed sex with them, is familiar with the harsh reality that he has no role models, no clear path to identity. It is not a matter of confusion but rather of isolation and pain. In Danny I saw a source of pleasure and the hope of escape.

Danny was not superhuman and he could not “fix” me, although he tried in many ways. Ultimately, our relationship failed.

Psychiatry, although riddled with self-serving falsehoods, nevertheless offers an insight. The texts, such as Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry cite evidence that identity problems such as mine and Glatze’s, have a  genetic basis. In my thirties I took pains to find out what kind of man my biological father was. His name was Arthur Blucher. Not surprisingly, he was brilliant, dynamic, intensely sexual and alcoholic. No one knew what to make of him. He drank himself to death in Tucson at the age of 35.

Glatze is certainly in a great deal of pain, the pain of isolation, of having no peers, of having no way to celebrate his past or even remember the joy of being young, queer and in love with life. Although people like him are a threat to our youth and to those of any age who are coming to grips with their sexuality, I leave it to you whether to view him with anger or compassion.

Have a look at the photo of Glatze at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/my-ex-gay-friend.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=al

Gene Naden lived in Central Illinois from 2005 to 2007, where he began to publish his essays and poems in local queer publications. He has also lived in Southern Arizona and Guadalajara, Mexico. Gene worked as a chaplain at the University of Chicago’s trauma center from 2001 to 2003. He currently writes computer software for a large consulting company in Chicago

.SISTE VIATOR by Robert Klein Engler

Summer by Lake Michigan goes by so fast.
So many bodies on the sand in afternoon naps,
as if the grave were just a fable from the past.
Above the beach, gulls ride, their eye on scraps.

Robert Klein Engler is a Chicago area poet and writer who sometimes lives in New Orleans. Links to his recent publications are below:

SHIRTS OF FLAME:
http://www.bigcitylit.com/bigcitylit.php?inc=spring2011/articles/engler
POEMS IN DEAD MULE:
http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/2011/03/robert-klein-engler-six-poems/

Poems by Barry Frauman

THAT SMILE

Your lips spread just a bit in pleasure;
sunlight floods your eyes.


COURSE IN CONTEMPORARY LIVING

You smile too often.
Stay alienated.
Your homework for today is not to smile.
Your homework for tomorrow is to smile only once,
quickly, so it won't be noticed.


A DREAM OF DS

In place of a t-shirt and midnight jeans
you wore an outfit I’d never seen,
gray sport slacks, light blue open collar dress shirt
pure as the soul in your tall slender form.
You bent your brown eyes and black hair to me,
our lips touched in stillness, lingering tender.


Workshop director and secretary of the homophile NewTown Writers, Barry Frauman writes not only short poems (examples blogged on O Sweet Flowery Roses, One Night Stanzas and Word Slaw), but longer verse narratives, including WEST-EAST, an American/Taiwanese gay male romance; GAY DON JUAN; and SONS OF NEW TOWN, celebrating the area of Chicago for which NewTown Writers is named. Barry’s current work-in progress is CRUSADES, a volume of two verse narratives, one each on the First and Third Crusades.