THE SWEDISH GAZE

Life changes when you’re in a relationship that’s working. For the second time since partnered with Evan, I went on a solo European trip. I have the luxury of time, a love for Northern Europe and the privilege of being able to afford to go. (I’ve been consciously avoiding looking at my credit card expenditures and the conversion of European currency to Canadian dollars.) Besides, Evan has travelled Europe extensively and has said he doesn’t ever need to see another castle. I get it. But I’m not castled out yet.

 

This trip was my first time in Norway—Oslo and the SPECTACULAR Lofoten Islands. (Google Image them. Seriously.) But the start of my European adventure was my home base—or what I’ve often wanted to call home: Stockholm. 

 

Oh, how I love the city! I’ve said it over and over but the place wholly suits me. I no longer feel like a tourist there. When I visit, I just live my daily life in local parks and cafés, hopping back and forth between favourite districts. 

 

Swedish actor Alexander
Skarsgård sporting The
Swedish Haircut

I will admit that Swedish men were once part of the draw as well. So well-groomed in a classically conservative manner. I’m partial to blonds and so many men wear their hair parted on one side that, a number of years ago, I went into a Stockholm salon and asked the stylist, “Please give me a Swedish haircut.” 

 

She didn’t know what I was talking about. Still, she gave me her best effort at what I described. My stylist in Vancouver knows all about The Swedish Haircut as we call it. She does it well. (I can’t wait for my next appointment this week.)

 

On this trip, I didn’t pay much attention to the men. I think that comes with being in a secure relationship. The urge to look just isn’t there. I had to push myself to be more conscious of men’s fashion and, yes, hairstyles. Perhaps because I wasn’t consistently looking, I saw neither a consistent manner of dressing nor wearing men’s hair. 

 

Where’d The Swedish Haircut go? If anything, the men I did notice were not as neatly groomed. Sure, there was light snow on many of the days during my visit; perhaps that made guys dress more for weather than style. (Evan would say it’s not an either/or predicament.) I suppose more men had hats on as well, hairstyles covered up. I only wore my toque one day—not in Sweden, but on the Lofoten Islands when the wind chill factor demanded I cover my ears. Overall, I’m not a hat wearer. There’s vanity—I don’t think they look good on me—and then there’s the discomfort: hats make my hair itchy. Is it just me? Are my follicles more inclined to itchiness? Of course, there’s also “hat hair,” the disastrous reveal when I take my hat off. I really, really need a haircut.

 

There was something even more calming about this trip since I wasn’t focusing my gaze on gays. With Evan as my partner, even the desire to look was just not there. Instead, I spent my time looking at pretty, old buildings—yes, a couple of castles—taking in overall street scenes and scoping out previously undiscovered cafés that might become a new writing spot. (Really, I think I stuck to all my familiar ones. So comfortable, so cozy, so easy to just dive into the writing.)

 

I’m back in Vancouver now. I only bought one basic shirt. (Despite not looking, my gut said I needed to be gentler on my credit card.) I have no new tweak to The Swedish Haircut. I just have hundreds of photos and nice memories. A wonderful trip, no gaze required.

 

GOT YOU COVERED

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but publishers want you to do exactly that. With that in mind, I thought I’d offer quick impressions of various covers for James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and what they seem to be selling (or not selling).

 

First comes the cover for my copy of the book. A large pitcher of water, a tea setting, a wicker chair. Really, this gives me no idea what the book is about. If anything, the image is misleading. Something about a life of leisure? Something about aristocracy? Is it set on some English estate in some place that ends in -shire? Neither David nor Giovanni is wealthy. In fact, the titular setting is tiny and messy. I’m not sure what the publisher had in mind with this cover. If anything, it’s the equivalent to a plastic-wrapped Playboy. Don’t let anyone know what the reader has chosen. Definitely don’t let on that it’s a gay book. Nothing about this cover begs me to buy the book. Had I not known Giovanni’s Room was considered a gay classic, I’d have passed.

 

Same for this one. Leaves on a branch? What?! There sure are a lot of leaves. Did the book describe a leafy tree? Did I miss that? Once again, this cover seems intended to cover up the book’s content. Let the subject matter be an unknown. Maybe I’d buy it—and perhaps be disappointed—if I were a botanist.

 

Okay, no doubt about this one. Very gay. I mean, Giovanni is shirtless! Both men appear good-looking. David has the right hair colour. If anything, the drawn figures seem a tad too old to represent the twenty-something characters. They look at least a decade older. I suppose there’s some sex appeal in this cover. I might be disappointed if I bought the book based on the cover. It didn’t come off as a sexy book to me. Especially when considering the ending.

 

This one’s a head scratcher. Strikes me as a mystery or crime novel. The (presumably) woman’s legs and high heels remind me of Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, but maybe that’s just me. Vague covers like this one encourage the viewer to make their own (wrong) conclusions. I suppose it gets at the love triangle between David, Giovanni and Hella. Really, I’d pass on this one unless I were a mystery reader, in which case I’d be very disappointed. 

 

Another vague one. Hands reaching…in the rain? I’m starting to feel like I read the wrong book, as if someone pulled the switcheroo and stuck a different manuscript between my tea-setting cover. 

 

Well, this one’s colourful. The problem is they’ve got the wrong colour for the hair. David is blond and Giovanni, an Italian, I presumed to have dark hair. Maybe he does in this portrait. Maybe that clump of red on his head is a bow. Why? I don’t know. Just weird. Would I buy the book. No. I’d shrug and move on.

What is this? Time for a Rorschach test? Centre right, I spy a partridge or some other bird. But, no, the entire cover is half a head. The “bird” is actually some guy’s nose. What’s with the colour choice? What’s with the half head in the first place? This tells me nothing. With this cover, I’d pass…even if it’s a classic by James F#%king Baldwin.

 

Confession. I’ve never been to Paris. For shame, for shame. (Do I at least get points for writing this post from Oslo?) I’m assuming this is Paris, the main setting of the novel. Give the artist points for not featuring the Eiffel Tower. But how many of us peruse bookshelves, thinking, “Hmm,…I’d like to read a story set in Paris. Any story. Just make it in Paris, dammit.” Not enough for me to reach for the book.

 

Another shirtless Giovanni in the background with David in the foreground. Same artist or did one steal the other’s layout? Surely, there would have been a tiff. I give the nod to this artist. The characters seem the right age on this cover. Assuming I don’t have any hangups over carrying around a GAY book, I might buy this one. More likely so if the back cover had a blurb with no illustrations. There are times I’d still flip the book so the back cover faces out. Yeah, I’m lame.

 

For this one, forget Paris. Forget David and Giovanni (who seems to have a habit of forgetting his shirt). Forget the love triangle and the fact that Simon and Garfield’s “Mrs. Robinson” is now my earworm of the day. Just go with James F#%king Baldwin. His book. His fame. This book isn’t some knockoff Giovanni’s Room about a pasta restaurant in Manhattan. This is the real deal classic by the celebrated author. The title and the author were the only things I knew about this book before I picked it up. Call it a cost-saving decision by a lazy publisher—no artist fees—but, yeah, if I didn’t have the tea set cover version, I’d probably buy this copy. 

 

To be honest, I don’t think James Baldwin would quibble much over any of the covers. (Maybe still the tree branch edition.) All this cover coverage highlights the fact Giovanni’s Room has had multiple print runs. Isn’t that what every author (and his estate) wants?  

THE CRINGE FACTOR

Now that I’ve read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, I can talk about one particular criticism I have about the book… involving criticism. It’s about how the main character, David, has disdain for particular groups of gay men, basically the groups he is not a part of. Is this the character’s internal homophobia? Is it also the opinion of Baldwin himself? 

 

I mentioned in last week’s post that David considers two older gay men who are central to the plot with disgust. At the beginning of Chapter 2 in Part 1, a more reflective David does confess after the fact, “I understand now that the contempt I felt for [Jacques, one of the older gays] involved my self-contempt.” Somehow I’d forgotten this line. It’s easy to do when the disgust David expresses as the narrator seems so relentless. 

 

Another group gets dissed in a few of David’s asides. The more feminine gay men seem to be despised. The reader is clobbered by David’s hate the moment he walks into a gay bar in Paris:

There were, of course, les folles, always dressed in

the most improbable combinations, screaming like

parrots…Occasionally one would swoop in, quite

late in the evening, to convey the news that he—but

they always called each other “she”—had just

spent time with a celebrated movie star, or boxer.

Then all of the others closed in on this newcomer

and they looked like a peacock garden and 

sounded like a barnyard. I always found it difficult

to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody,

for a man who wanted a woman would certainly

not want one of them. Perhaps, indeed, that was

why they screamed so loud.

 

I would like to think attitudes have changed since the book’s publication seventy years ago. Sadly, I think as long as there have been gay bars, the more effeminate have been savagely mocked by those who have some need to distinguish themselves as not one of them. Not having spent much time in gay bars—or queer spaces—in the last decade, I’d like to think the community is less divisive and, indeed, less inclined to criticize more effeminate gays. I’ve said it before in this blog and it should be obvious but it’s worth repeating. The gays who did not have the luxury of “passing” as straight have often been outed earlier because they never had an opportunity to linger in the closet while trying to figure things out about their identity. Without any choice in the matter, the more effeminate are often the first among us to be fully out. They have been the trailblazers who made things easier for the rest of us. (Personally, I believe that most of my peers suspected I was gay when I was a teen on account of my higher voice and the way I talked with my hands but only a few of them called me a gay or a faggot. There was just the slightest doubt about my gayness that offered me some extra time to figure out my identity.)

 

Immediately after David bashes more effeminate gays, he casts even harsher criticism toward a person in drag:

There was the boy who…came out at night wearing

makeup and earrings and with his heavy blond 

hair piled high. Sometimes he actually wore a

skirt and high heels. He usually stood alone

unless Guillaume walked over to tease him.

People said that he was very nice, but I confess

that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy;

perhaps in the same way that the sight of 

monkeys eating their own excrement turns

some people’s stomachs. They might not mind

so much if monkeys did not—so grotesquely— 

resemble human beings. 

 

Okay, beyond harsh. Disturbing. 1956, I remind myself. With RuPaul, drag brunches and such, I have to think we’ve changed in this regard. Especially gay men’s attitudes regarding drag.

 

David—and Baldwin—aren’t any kinder to women. Again, 1956. The woman is subservient to the man. At one point, David thinks he’d like to get married someday and have his wife put the kids to bed. [Sorry, Daddy’s busy smoking his pipe and reading the newspaper.] There is only one significant female character in Giovanni’s Room, Hella, David’s girlfriend. Yes, David tries to have it both ways. His elder, Jacques, tells him that a gay connection can be more than sex—love, even—but it cannot endure. “And how long, at best, can it last? Since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that…in the dark.”

 

Okay, sad…

 

Back to Hella. It is noteworthy that she is absent for most of the story. She is an American who is traveling by herself in Spain for an extended period. She comes across as a strong woman and yet she still buys into the times. “[I]f women are supposed to be led by men and there aren’t any men to lead them, what happens then? What happens then?” Immediately thereafter, Hella reaches for her purse, pulls out her compact and applies lipstick. So much for strength and that European independence.

 

Giovanni’s Room. A classic, they say. A reflection of the times, I suppose. But so much disparagement. To be fair, Baldwin isn’t so kind to one—perhaps both—of his main characters, as well. A readable book, but a gloomy, severe outlook nonetheless. 

GIOVANNI'S ROOM (Book Review)

I must admit that, when a book is termed a classic, I feel intimidated. I think of titles such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales and James Joyce’s Ulysses. I assume the book will be challenging for my brain to access. The language will be too flowery and high-brow, perhaps even archaic. The dialogue will be too smart, as though only the author and select readers are in on the joke. I even dread the fact individual paragraphs may ramble on for a couple of pages. 

 

I pre-judge classics. I avoid them. Instead, I pick up a “beach read” without a pang of guilt.

 

This is why I told myself that I’d never read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin which is widely regarded as a gay classic. I got so far as checking it out once from the library, but I returned it when it came due, never having opened the cover. 

 

While helping clean out the house of Evan’s highly literate aunt who died of cancer in the fall, Giovanni’s Room stared at me from a bookshelf. I’d been looking for another title Pilar had recommended to me but, alas, never found it. Giovanni called my name. 

 

All right, dammit. I took it. 

 

I finally read it this past week. 

 

What surprised me from the first page was how accessible it was. If I had to reread sentences, it was on account of my drifting mind rather than Baldwin stuffing them with six-syllable synonyms for “happy” and prepositional phrases that leaned into Old English. Set mostly in Paris, it’s true that there were a fair number of French statements, but I understood most of them—perhaps Duolingo has actually done some good. Regardless, the French asides were not essential to understanding the story.  

 

Published seventy years ago, Giovanni’s Room is about an American in Paris, David, a blond man in his late twenties who likes to drink a lot and otherwise seems aimless. (It surprised me that the main character—and every character—was white since Baldwin was Black. Being ignorant of anything about the story, I’d at least looked forward to reading about a Black gay character.) 

 

David meets Giovanni, a bartender hired for his good looks at a gay bar owned by Guillaume, one of two older, richer gay men (the other being Jacques) whom David and Giovanni view with disgust but from whom they readily accept money. There is some clever conversation between David and Giovanni on that first night, the American versus the Italian, and it is Giovanni who declares, rather quickly, that they are friends. 

“Ah!” cried Giovanni. “Don’t you know when

you have made a friend?”

 

I knew I must look foolish and that my 

question was foolish too: “So soon?”

 

“Why no,” he said, reasonably, and 

looked at this watch, “we can wait

another hour if you like. We can be-

come friends then. Or we can wait

until closing time. We can become

friends then. Or we can wait until

tomorrow, only that means that you

must come in here tomorrow and

perhaps you have something else

to do.” He put his watch away and

leaned both elbows on the bar.

“Tell me,” he said. “what is this thing

about time? Why is it better to be

late than early? People are always

saying, we must wait, we must wait.

What are they waiting for?”

 

By morning, David, who may be bisexual or just very closeted—his girlfriend Hella is wandering Spain—has gone back to Giovanni’s room, a small unkempt maid’s chamber on the outskirts of Paris. David doesn’t have the money to continue paying for his own hotel room so he stays with Giovanni in the cramped space for several months until Hella’s return.

 

This is when things get complicated and matters unravel. David and Giovanni have fallen in love but David still tells himself he loves Hella. In fact, he is intent on marrying her. 

 

The story does not end well, the fate of one character mentioned on the third page of the novel. It’s how things get to that point that made me read to the end. 

 

While Giovanni’s Room turned out to be readable, I can’t say I loved it. The passage quoted above is my favourite part and, if there had been banter like that throughout, I would have been more entertained. But this is one of those books that is lite on action and heavy on the internal thinking of the main character. I’m not sure I even liked David and it probably didn’t help that he and Giovanni find Guillaume and Jacques disgusting mainly for the fact they are older, less attractive, less fit gay men. The older men are regularly referred to as vile—if anything they may be predatory regarding the two younger characters but Giovanni and David play the older two for money and, in Giovanni’s case, work. The lines seem blurry as to who’s preying on whom.

 

I am glad I finally read Giovanni’s Room. I don’t feel quite as shallow as a gay reader even as I track down one of Rachel Reid’s gay romances from the Game Changer series which led to the steamy TV series, Heated Rivalry. And, oh, how times have changed. Wikipedia’s entry about James Baldwin noted that Giovanni’s Room, “caused great controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content.” Reading that remark, I am at a loss for what that content was. Most everything happens off the page and certainly there wasn’t anything explicit of the caliber of many of today’s gay works. Not that that does much for me. Really, I just wanted something more to happen on the page… something plot-driven, in particular.

 

One must-read gay novel finished. I have so many more to consider…

 

 

SOMETHING NEW

Sometimes a routine becomes a rut. I mix up my exercise options to include hiking, biking, swimming, jogging and gym workouts but, still, things can feel stale. Especially the gym workouts.

 

It being the New Year and my partner visiting from Denver, I decided to do something different. I took advantage of a cheap one-week pass at a Vancouver yoga studio and took six classes. 

 

Vancouver feels like one of the world capitals for yoga. It’s where Lululemon was born. It’s where women wear yoga pants to, well, anywhere and everywhere. It’s only a mild surprise that buses don’t alternate their Route 99 signs with a NAMASTE message. Even so, I’d sworn off yoga until Evan entered my life. 

 

During our first two years together, I held up a strong resistance. “Want to join me? I have a buddy pass.” 

 

“Um, no thanks. You be you.” He’d go do hot yoga and I’d jog, bike or hit the gym.

 

I have good reason to swear off yoga. There is not a single part of my body that is flexible. Not only did I know I wouldn’t do it right, I was certain I’d throw off and/or annoy the yogaphiles or even the instructor. 

                  What the hell is he doing?

                  Is he even trying?

                  I’m afraid he’s going to fall over and 

                  knock me down in the process.

 

Maybe I'd have done
better if I imagined
it was like Twister...

Me, too. Me, too. 

 

But sometime over the past year, I let down my guard. Every so often Evan would ask and I would cautiously say, “Okay.”

 

A class here, a class there. Would a full week make a difference? Would I finally figure out the happy baby pose? Would I stop wondering why they have a downward dog but not a flamingo? Would I gain enough balance to reduce the wobbles?

 

I’ll cut to the chase and say I’m not a yoga convert. I suppose that was never going to happen. But I got used to the hot yoga studio environment. I didn’t complain that my shirt was dripping wet—halfway through class. I may have even come up with a (semi-) fierce warrior pose.

 

Still, it says something that my favourite part of class at this studio was when the instructor would make their way around the room at the end of a session and pass out cold lavender facecloths. Yes, a little relief from that hot room, a little something to at least stop the sweat from my brow. 

 

Cold lavender facecloths are the best.

 

And so it should be no surprise that I did not sign up for a year’s membership or even ten new sessions. Pass on passes. But a break was nice. 

 

It’s back to my familiar routines. The gym can still feel like a rut but maybe I’ll mix things up and go to a city gym every so often instead of using the same old machines in my building. Maybe we’ll get another winter stretch with no rain (and, alas, no snow) and I’ll fit in some bonus bike rides. Maybe I’ll add my very own flamingo pose to my pre-workout stretching exercises.

 

Who am I kidding? Maybe not. 

MELTING THE ICE

Okay, I’ve just finished watching the sixth and final episode of the first season of Crave/HBO’s Heated Rivalry. Like all romances, it has a happy ending. If that’s a spoiler to you, then you don’t know the romance genre. A happy ending is required; the drama arises from how they get there. 

 

It felt like a lopsided series, with two couples featured but one—the storyline with Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov—being dominant with the Scott Hunter and Kip Grady plot serving as something on an afterthought. This is a shame because, quite frankly, I cared much more about Scott and Kip. Their relationship felt like the true heart of the series while Shane and Ilya should have been the steamy side dish. In fact, Scott and Kip were the subject of the first book (Game Changer) of romance author Rachel Reid’s Game Changer series while Shane and Ilya are the main draw in the second novel, Heated Rivalry. Alas, much of the storyline involving Scott and Kip didn’t make it to the screen in what was greenlit in a short-run first season.  

 

If the first episode caught viewers’ attention for the sex, the final episode got Shane and Ilya navigating the beginnings of a relationship. The jocks were still heavy on bro talk and bro behaviour but they managed to say the key words about how they felt in the now and where they wanted to take things. 

 

It isn’t totally strange that I kept comparing the lead characters to Nick and Charlie from the Netflix series Heartstopper, not simply because both series featured a gay and a bisexual character as the developing couple, but more on account of both shows portraying how people navigate the search for sexual identity and the journey to coming out. Heartstopper hit its marks better since this exploration happened at the developmental logical time, i.e., adolescence. By contrast, I felt less patience and endearment regarding the story of Shane and Ilya who were held back by the Neanderthal milieu of professional hockey. Sure, it was nice to see them break barriers—and maybe these fictional characters will nudge a few of the pros in real life—but I couldn’t fully suppress a surge of annoyance: Come on, guys. Get over it. Get on with it. 

 

Maybe that makes me heartless or at least hypocritical. I vividly remember spending too much time in the closet and, yes, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I began living a slightly more authentic life as a gay man… but that was in the late ’80s in the midst of the AIDS crisis. So much has changed in the thirty-five years that have followed. 

 

Professional team sports has basically remained in the closet while everyone else has moved on. It’s like watching an Amish character turning on a television for the first time. Personally dramatic but not so interesting to watch since we’re all beyond the novelty of turning on TVs. Been there, done that. I suppose the leave-very-little-to-the-imagination sex scenes in Heated Rivalry are what’s new(er) in the Crave series. Wow. They’re showing that on a regular streaming channel? This is the most that many straight women—one of the prime target audiences for the show—have seen of gay sex. 

 

I’ll most likely tune in when the second season airs which will apparently focus on the third book in the Game Changer series, Tough Guy, about hockey player Ryan Price and musician Fabian Salah and, according to series creator Jacob Tierney in a Variety interview, continue the story of Shane and Ilya. In the meantime, I may buy the first book, Game Changer, to get more of the story involving Scott and Kip.

 

 

 

 

 

  

FEELING THE "HEAT"

I’m three episodes into Crave TV’s Heated Rivalry (now airing as well on HBO) and, yes, there are moments I needed to slide open the balcony door to cool things off. The hockey romance series is aptly described by The Advocate as a “very horny gay TV show.” In just the first episode, there was plenty of footage of shirtless jocks as well as lots of butt shots and simulated gay sex. Such scenes continue in the next two episodes though perhaps with slightly less frequency. (Or maybe the surprise of the flash factor was no longer so great.)

 

Based on the Game Changers hockey romance book series by Canadian Rachel Reid, it's nice to have a story to go along with all that skin and sex. Admittedly, the storylines are on the stale side. Hockey remains a closeted sport—like virtually every team sport—so plotlines focus on men in the closet, hoping not to be caught with another guy and, in one case, struggling with the possibility of coming out. Gayness is still taboo. It wasn’t long ago that the National Hockey League walked back its participation in team Pride Nights by no longer wearing special jerseys with rainbow stripes. This was on account of the fact that a few players refused to wear the jerseys and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s conclusion that the wearing of jerseys became “a distraction.”

 

So, yes, Heated Rivalry begins with closeted characters. It feels so 1990s. 

 

Men used to joke that they read Playboy for the articles. It’s not a joke, however, that I’m continuing to watch this series for the hockey. As a kid growing up in Canada, I played a couple of seasons of hockey. I skated well but I sucked at everything else—body checking, stick handling, shooting the puck. I’ve watched hockey during the Olympics. About fifteen years ago, I avidly watched a few seasons of Vancouver Canucks hockey, in part, because I lived on the relatively remote Sunshine Coast of British Columbia and, frankly, there was little else to do. (I stopped watching because of the prominence of fighting in the sport which I’d say, if I had a conversation with Gary Bettman, is the true “distraction” in the game.)

 

Because of my background, hockey is a more interesting milieu for me than, say, the military setting for the Netflix series Boots. Rookie all-stars Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are personal rivals playing on rival teams, the Montreal Metros and the Boston Raiders. I like that these teams are referred to as among the original six in a fictitious league, just as the Montreal Canadiens and the Boston Bruins are part of the original six in the NHL. I love all the talk about goal scoring, slumps and player superstitions. I love that the comments in the press room are actually more interesting than the banal, clichéd responses real NHL players give in post-game or between-period interviews. Yes, while others may be freaking out about the hot gay sex, I’m geeking out over an authentic portrayal of the professional sport.

 

It's only a six-part season so I’m bound to finish watching Heated Rivalry. Even though the storylines feel passé in dealing with coming out, it’s significant that the series has been renewed for a second season, something that did not happen for Boots and was not followed through upon by Showtime when it initially sought to pick up the Neil Patrick Harris series Uncoupled. Mainstream streaming channels have not been particularly warm  to continuing to breathe life into gay shows. Let the steam and the story of Heated Rivalryplay on.