PONTIFICATION FROM THE PORCELAIN THRONE; or, ON POSTURE

yesterday evening, i spent quite a bit of time between dinner and dessert in the bathroom. my friend and hostess had a copy of playboy from april of 1964 near the toilet, and although i found out a short bit later that she'd bought it at cameron's downtown for the peter sellers' spread, it was the interview with jean genet -- seemingly his first from what the interviewer wrote in his introduction -- that held my attention after i had glanced over the ad photos of all those handsome sixties dandies in their slim suits. i didn't, however, finish the interview, because, entertained though i was, i had started to notice how long i'd been away from the table, which meant that suspicions were probably mounting back in the kitchen.

of genet's works i've only read "the maids" and "deathwatch" (because the latter was collected in the same volume as the first) and a bit of querelle of brest before giving myself over to the film adaptation. i'd been on a fassbinder kick at the time, and brad davis' chest was much more exciting than genet's prose in that book, my copy of which was of an exceptionally uninteresting design and with too densely packed text. (searching "querelle" just now for image results i find ample (really, very ample) pictures of davis and also realize that the image on the front jacket of the faber & faber edition of trisan garcia's hate: a romance was originally an illustration done by warhol which was used for the movie poster of fassbinder's film.) i once briefly owned a copy of our lady of the flowers, but it was inside of a bag of mine that was stolen a few years ago, a bag that also contained my passport (full except for one visa page) and a notebook of translation attempts. my money clip and my digital music player were on my person when the bag was taken, so the bag and everything in it (that brown polo i liked so much was in there too!) probably made it quickly to the trash.

so it wasn't so much genet that interested me as an interview with genet in playboy, a magazine with which i hadn't had much contact, although i certainly remembered hearing jokes about men who bought it "for the articles," which from my bathroom encounter did in fact seem to be quality, that april 1964 issue having also had an editorial on the kinsey report by hugh heffner who argued in it that the widespread persistence of homosexuality throughout history should be proof enough that homosexual practice wouldn't undermine the viability of the human species or its family units. i sat back down to the table wondering why there weren't smarter more literary periodicals for men who liked men. playboy seems (from my bathroom encounter) to have been, in a way, the "gay playboy" of a certain era (and to clarify, i'm concerned with quality content in a sex driven lifestyle magazine and not the sex driven content in particular), but what magazine fit that niche today? apparently (according to my hostess), playboy hasn't been much for at least a decade now and so doesn't fill that niche itself anymore. playboy wasn't, in other words, playboy anymore. it wouldn't have excerpted nabokov's posthumous novel, so whether any racier gay magazine did or would have was outside my comparison.

dessert was delightful: ice cream topped with shaved chocolate and almonds, served with cinnamon dusted molasses cookies, suitable to the theme of the fajitas and millet a la spanish rice that were served earlier, even if the zither music (which sounded about to launch into "happy birthday" in every song) wasn't. but, we could only listen to the two more appropriate records so many times, and the zither record was appropriate in its own way to a conversation about playboy in the sixties.

i didn't go back to the toilet to continue the interview. i did go back to the toilet, just not to read. genet had been a point of departure, but i'd been stupefied, blissfully, by the end of the meal and the wine (now also finished) and wanted to let the conversation carry on as it pleased from there. i needed time to process dinner.

it might maybe have been better to accept the invitation and stay the night. i could have borrowed that robe again, so short on me that i would have felt in real mid-century homosexual character as i drifted off with a book on the couch; but i chose a cold ride home over an earlier morning. if it's not the rain in this city, it's the goddamn east wind. my feet were completely numb by the time i made it across town, and all i could think about as they painfully defrosted under a couple of blankets was conscription, winter warfare, forced marches and frostbite. voluntary military service: what a blessing. that's freedom (and i imagine that mr. franzen's book reads something like this post). if i were being forced to march in the snow on feet that cold i'd probably break ranks just to get the bullet. it didn't take much to sympathize then with genet the deserter. i should have borrowed that magazine. no way i was finishing querelle before bed.