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.