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.”

*
 

En i flera avseenden osäkrad text. Inga moraliska ställningstaganden och inte heller någon tydlighet kring på vilken nivå av verklighet saker och ting utspelar sig. Frisk störs av brev som rubbar gränserna för vad som faktiskt sker i berättelsen och vad som är extremt våldsamma fantasier inuti samma berättelse. I Guide, den fjärde boken i cykeln, är strukturen mer fragmentarisk, och de utskrivna fantasierna snuddar vid “verkliga” händelser genom knark, psykos och form:
 

Mason spaced out, daydreaming. In his fantasy, Goofs slutty asshole belonged to Smear’s bassist. And that finger was Mason’s.

Luke, Scott: klvxmhspwwlqhx…

“God,” I say. “This is … so… intense.” I’m looking at something in Luke’s staring eyes that you wouldn’t understand.

Mason glanced over at us. All’s well, he thought. Still… “You guys okay?” Nothing. So he reburrowed his eyes into Smear’s bassist’s “body.”

(Guide)
 

*

JOHN, DAVID, GEORGE, CLIFF, ALEX, GEORGE, PHILIPPE, STEVE. Bögarna och deras namn. I Closer är varje kapitel döpt efter en karaktär. Förmodligen är det detta som får mig att fästa mig vid namnen också i de följande böckerna WARREN, DENNIS, NATE/ETAN, LEON/NOEL. Det är något intimt med hur namnen lyfts fram. Namnen gör dessa pojkar både till personer och till objekt. Det går att viska mot dessa projektionsytor, ta dem i handen. I hemlighet skriva deras namn om och om igen längst bak i kollegieblocket. Jag har förälskat mig i flera stycken av dem. Kanske velat ta hand om dem. George, med skönheten och ensamheten i Closer. Ziggy, med ängslan och desperationen i Try. När jag läser Cooper får jag lära mig att också omsorg är en våldsam projektion. Dessa hjärtskärande små objekt och smutsen kring hjärtskärandet. Äcklig förkrossande välvilja.

*
 

Försök att läsa Dennis Cooper:

1.

Ett första möte med Dennis Coopers texter kan vara en fantastisk befrielse. Utöver att man totalt kan slukas av språkets hårda rättframhet, hur formen, romankonstruktionen, ter sig levande, i sig själv agerande, är det näst intill outhärdligt våldsamma i Coopers böcker paradoxalt nog ett slags lättnad. Att möta en böglitteratur som inte förhåller sig till politisk korrekthet, struntar i komma ut-processen, struntar i att förhålla sig till heterosexualitet över huvudtaget kan vara helt avgörande för en bögs politiska tänkande.

Att ta sig bortom heteronormativitet kräver att man tar sig bortom moral.

Att göra den läsningen visar hur färgad man är av att läsa den icke-heterosexuella erfarenhet heteronormativt. Helvete.
 

2.

That was the weirdest part, feeling how warm and familiar George was and at the same time realizing the kid was just wrapped around some grotesque looking stuff.

(Closer)
 

Lockande och frånstötande; Coopers berättelser och karaktärer rör sig mellan pornografi och djup tragedi. I jämförelse med mainstreamporrens mekaniska dominanslekar, top/bottom-positioner, handlar det sexuella våldet i Coopers böcker om ett rasande, ständigt otillfredsställt begär, ett som styckar sönder a) kroppen och b) fantasins gränser.
 

3.

John, 18, hated his face. If his nose were smaller, his eyes a different brown, his bottom lip pouty… As a kid he’d been punched in the mouth and looked great for a couple of weeks. Six years ago punk rock had focused his life. John liked the way punk romanticized death, and its fashions made pretty good camouflage.

(Closer)
 

Det ser ut som hastig nedklottrade anteckningar, rastlöst komprimerade. Ett slags protokollprosa som förmedlar skilda uppgifter i samma tonfall.
 

John / 18 / hated / liked / smaller / different / punched / romanticized

Ett tonfall som nonchigt rycker på axlarna och tittar bort. Som pojkarna i de här texterna tänker jag, lystet, eller kanske sorgset tänker jag det. Coopers pojkar beskrivs genom våldsamt uppspärrade ögon, genomträngande blickar som gör dem olidligt vackra, samtidigt som de själva tittar bort. Men inte av arrogans. De går liksom inte att få kontakt med. De går omkring avdomnade, väck, stenade, uppfuckade, inte tillräckligt vakna för att titta tillbaka på de som betraktar dem.
 

4.

Coopers minimalistiska stil är inte ett exkluderande finlir. Inte heller är den förnumstigt upptagen med att förmedla den viktigaste linjen i en berättelse. En tight, distinkt form möter en skev förvirring mellan skilda verklighetsskikt.

Och talspråkigheten. Famlandet efter ord, i och utanför dialogen får del av det knappa textutrymmet. Ett stört/störigt språk, bristande. Och blödigt. Ibland hörs ljud. Ringsignaler, klockor. Som barnsligt klumpiga effekter.

“Sort of.” /
“Guess not.” /
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick /
Rrrrring. “George Miles, please stay after class a few minutes.”

Det är en sortering som inte går att kartlägga, vad som tar plats i Coopers böcker.

*

Experience: Not that the Brad story needs another wrinkle, but here’s mine. I hired “Brad” about three weeks ago. I question how much of what the two previous reviewers wrote is true. I suspect the reviews were written by Brad/Steve himself. I was looking for Brad at Pumpers in Long Beach after reading the first review. It turns out that I’d seen him there a number of times drinking and sometimes playing pool or pinball. I had been told by the bartender that his name was Steve. He stood out because of how young he looks, but apart from being cuter than your usual street trade, I wouldn’t say there was anything supernatural about his appearance. He had a reputation among the regulars at the bar as an arrogant creep who charged a ridiculously large fee ($ 350) to sit on men’s faces and masturbate.

(The Sluts)
 

The Sluts är en senare roman av Cooper, som från början var tänkt att ingå i George Miles-cykeln. Den kretsar kring ett mytologiserande av en ung eskortkille, Brad. Romanen består till större delen av poster från ett webforum där torskar recenserar eskortkillar de betalat för sex. Berättelsen om Brad skenar iväg, omförhandlas och ifrågasätts då en rad torskar vill göra sin version av Brad gällande. Och då allt i boken berättas genom opålitliga berättare, dokument där vem som helst kan dölja sig bakom den utskrivna avsändaren (e-post, fax, poster på message boards) blir själva mytologiseringsprocessen romanens centrala tema.

DC: ”I got very interested in the language of the Internet. Chat rooms and message boards seemed to me like a really interesting form. I thought it would be interesting to work with that form, outside the Internet, like in a novel. There is no page turning on the Internet – anything is the first chapter and the last chapter – so I wanted to try to put that in a book where the time frame was more of a novel-time frame.

I came across this escort review site, which I used as a model. It was an escort-listing site and they had a message board. The johns would review the escorts, and then the other johns could decide to hire these boys. But there was so much fabrication and lying, people trying to make them selves like studs, or people attacking the prostitutes or other prostitutes were jealous and wrote fake-reviews, or escorts writing reviews of them selves that were fake… And then a new escort would come on, and everybody would go crazy for him, and chat about him all the time… So it seemed like a really interesting thing to make a kind of super escort.

I liked the power relations, how the power was mostly in the john’s hands but at the same time the escorts had this other kind of power. The johns really wanted to control the experience with the escorts, what it was like, and there was a lot of spin about that. The reviewing was set up to reinforce that kind of power structure, but because of the way it worked with obvious lying, with johns fighting each other, and the escorts sneaking in pretending to be a john, trying to defend them selves… It became a really interesting place.

Before the Internet, you couldn’t access prostitution in that kind of way. There was no common meeting ground. On this site it became a kind of community – a troubled and complex community – where the objects and the people who were objectifying, desiring them would meet. There was a kind of equalization going on and it was very, very interesting to me.”
 

Formens, berättandets genomskinlighet blottlägger romanens fiktion som konstruktion. En så intensiv objektifiering av någon (något) som så tydligt är en diktad konstruktion påvisar alla fantasier som förläggs på Brad som sprungna ur icke-essensiella fake-begär. ”Brad” utplånas av berättelserna om honom, av allt det som riktas mot ”honom”. Allt är ihåligt: sexuell attraktion, omsorg, våld.
 

En queer läsning: Begäret blottlagt som iscensättningar.

Eller en läsning utifrån George Miles-cykelns horisont: Ensamheten, tomheten bakom de fantiserade begären.
 

Eller: Vad är en sexuell fantasi?

Vad händer när olika personer fantiserar kring samma objekt tillsammans, på samma plats, samtidigt?

DC: ”What kind of ideal would be constructed with all those different voices, they were all concentrating on this one figure, some tried to build him up, others tried to tear him down. People were trying to give him attributes that were conformed to their specific fetishes or desires. What kind of figure would resolve from that? Out of this came Brad, an entirely impossible figure. Ultimately he became some kind of Frankenstein - a boy who wants to be killed, because people want to kill him. He becomes okay about that, but the only way he can be okay about being killed is if he’s got a brain tumor… Everybody’s feeding in to make this perfect boy that matches everybody’s desires. And then the ones who feel sorry for him, and think that it’s terrible that he’s got a brain tumor and that people are hurting him, can create this narrative about how he needs to be saved and how he’s secretly very sweet, and so on. It was interesting to see what kind of ideal figure would resolve out of all this input at once.”
 

*
 

Fyll pojken. Mata honom tills han spricker.

*

DC: ”People have often accused me for just trying to shock, but the whole goal is a severe shock, and trying to give the visceral its full power. It’s really difficult. I’m trying to allow it to be really erotic and really frightening at the same time – using language to make it possible to experience it without just throwing the book away. Ideally you would be able to hang in there, but at the same time it would be working on you, making you uncomfortable or confused, making you question your own reaction to it.”
 

*

Unga bögar som knarkar.

Unga bögar som tittar på snuff-filmer.

Unga bögar som inleder relationer med sina homosexuella adoptivfäder.

Unga bögar som stammar fram en kärleksförklaring till sin bästis (och säger “Sorry, I know I’m weird”).

Unga bögar som offrar katter, pojkar, smycken till satan.
 

*

KF: ”How has the language of pornography influenced your literature?”

DC: ”It isn’t just the language; it’s the energy. When I was trying to write novels, even when I was younger, I wasn’t really interested in conventional novels at all; it just kind of bores me. I didn’t want my novels to be like that, where you keep on reading to find out what will happen to the character or you want to know about the plot. So I was looking at other things, to figure out how to give the work all this energy that wouldn’t be the narrative, or where the narrative would be used as a kind of devise to keep people interested. Music was great for that, and it was very influential on me.

The kind of relation between someone looking at pornography and the pornography, it’s so private, it’s so psychotic in some way, so removed from reality and so forceful. There’s really an enormous power there and I wanted to see how I could use that, like the way you sit through a porn just to see the cum shot, or what ever. I was trying to do that in my fiction.

In The Sluts that is really paramount – not just the language, but the whole thing about pornography. Also because I’m interested in sexual fantasies, and the difference between sexual fantasy and sex and responsibilities – that you have to think about sex and the irresponsibility that’s available to you in a fantasy.”
 

*

Ett sätt att berätta som knäcker konventionella fiktiva kontrakt. Läsningen blir fysisk genom upphetsning och äckel. Samtidigt synliggör den hur fantasier/fiktion förflyttar sig mellan verklighet och dikt, medvetandegör läsaren om sin upplevelse.

Att läsa Dennis Cooper är att märka hur kön, kräkreflexer och nerven där paniken sitter, sväller och rycker synkront.