Unga bögar som blir till föremål.

Unga bögar som går sönder.

Unga bögar som driver omkring i svindelensamhet. Knarkande. Passivt medlöpande. Några verkar leta efter något. Flertalet verkar ha gett upp. Uppätna av odefinierad sorg. Man kan ana villor med föräldrar och skolor med lärare. Strukturer som inte lyckats omfatta.

Några vill dö. Några försöker fylla en tom hålighet med något som känns. Verkar. Får bubblan att brista.

Sex räcker inte. Skada honom. Skär av testiklarna och stoppa in dem i käften på honom. Ta reda på hur hans skit smakar. Hur luktar han inuti? Hur känns hans inälvor mot händerna?

Eller: Gör dig blank. Låt honom göra dig till vad som helst. Låt honom förlägga vad som helst till din kropp. Kanske händer det något då, eller, du vill ju ändå dö.
 

*

Ziggy nods, but it feels really stiff. “Don’t you think maybe you do like how close we are now, you just can’t think about it too much, like you said?”

“I don’t know.” Calhoun’s staring way out… wherever. “I hate talking about this.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Terror, albeit mild, has weighed down Ziggy’s head until he’s watching Calhoun through the smoke of his unfocused eyebrows. “I understand. Uh…” He clears his throat. “… but I guess I sort of have to decide you do love me a lot, and you can’t tell me so, ’cos it’d be hard to go on if I didn’t believe that. I know it sounds weird.”

(Try)

So I pulled my cock out and imagined my all time favorite Brad fantasy – him being gang raped and hung by his neck in prison – and looked down at his face. It worked. I shot off on his face and cleaned myself and got out of there as fast as I could.

(The Sluts)
 

*
 

Dennis Coopers böcker glider mellan fiktiv verklighet och fiktiv fantasi, in och ut ur författarens biografi, formar en text som prövar att ringa in gränser och definitioner för sexuellt begär – vad är skillnaden mellan sexuell fantasi och ett sexuellt begär som vill utlevas? Frånstötande och förförande rör sig texten mellan våldsam tragedi och pornografi.

Fem romaner: Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide och Period bildar den så kallade George Miles-cykeln. Dennis Coopers mest välkända alster. Det är om den jag börjar fråga, när jag pratar med Cooper under Queerlitteraturdagen i Göteborg, i maj 2008.

DC: ”I decided when I was fifteen that I wanted to write this series of books and it took me more than fifteen years to actually do it. I wanted to write about the excess of sex and violence cause I had been really fascinated by that as a kid. But it also deals with issues around disrespect towards teenagers from the adult world and the power imbalance there - and about my friend George Miles.

I read about things that really confused and scared me, that is basically what I write about - so I had to make this system where I could negotiate it and present it in a way that felt fair. I ended up with a kind of mirror structure – like a bow tie or infinity sign – where everything is balanced and everything reflects everything else. Each of the books has the exact same structure

With the violence in the books - it’s like a body being slowly dismembered. So in the first book Closer, everything that was going to be in the world of the books had to be in there. Nothing else could enter; it would have to be explored over and over. As the violence happen, the violence would take away parts, so it becomes less and less and it becomes like a zombie in the end.”
 

Fantasier och metaberättande sliter sönder texten, tematiskt och materiellt. För varje bok i cykeln luckras mer och mer upp och faller isär. Från den första kompakta Closer, där information, händelser och karaktärernas liv redovisas glödande ihopföst, trångt, sprängfullt genom ordknapphet, till den sista, den bitvis helt sönderslitna Period:
 

9:02: Leaf shaking, tree to the right.
9:08: Bored.
9:10: Something on the road?
9:13: Nothing.
9:47: Was asleep for a while.
10:12: Deer on the hill.
10:13 Thinking of shooting that deer.

(Period)
 

*
 

Romankvintetten har fått namn efter den första romanens centrum, den deprimerade, fantastiskt vackra pojken George.
 

Apatisk och mer eller mindre ständigt drogad låter han alla projicera vad de vill på honom, han låter sig bli föremålet för allas drömmar, ett tomt skal vem som helst kan fylla med vilka fantasier som helst.

Det är genom alla de män som förälskar sig i George, blir attraherade av George, besatta av George, som romanen tar form. Genom flera olika berättare vävs de olika rösterna kapitel för kapitel samman till en suggestiv berättelse om sorg, leda och begär.

(Vertigo förlag)

KF: ”Who is George Miles?”

DC: ”He was my closest friend. I met him when I was fifteen and he was twelve. He was an extremely remarkable kid. We became very close. His brother, who was a friend of mine, came to me at a party and said that his twelve-year-old brother took acid and he asked me to talk to him. So I talked him through his acid trip for fifteen hours, and we became really, really close. As he grew older he developed like extreme mental problems that was very, very difficult for him, and it alienated everybody, and I was one of his few friends that really stood by him. And he was an amazing guy, really brilliant, a great musician.

There came to be a certain point when I wanted to write this cycle and I needed to put someone in the books who I would always protect. George was physically very beautiful. I could use him as a kind of model – a part of me would see him as a sexual object but there would always be a part of me that would protect him. I decided to put him in the centre of it to sort of protect the work and to protect myself. And I asked him if it was okay to do that and he said yes.

He committed suicide in 1987, and I didn’t know until ‘97 that he’d killed himself, because we lost touch for a while. So the books ended up being a kind of memorial to him.”