I should have been doing useful work on this holiday weekend, but my posting on Phoebe Anna Traquair led me to revisit some writing I did starting in 1994: a magical realist (and gay gay gay and very sexually explicit) recounting of the story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, from Sundance’s point of view. Sundance and Butch, a fiction with interpolated poetry. I’m going to now inflict the poetry on those of you who are willing to brave the subject matter and the very plain language (you’ve been warned) — because Sundance is an Apollo figure of sorts, with some godlike gifts (the ability to fly, healing by the laying on of hands, just knowing things), and of course there’s the name Sundance, with its nod to Apollo the Sun God, and in the couple he’s the fairer, more beautiful one, while Butch is the darker, rougher, more butch (names again!) one, so we have Apollo paired with Bacchus.
Once again, a posting that isn’t really about language.
(I wasn’t aware of an Apollo connection until this morning. Writers aren’t necessarily aware of the possible springs of their work.)
But first, some remarks about the history of the project. As near as I can make out at this distance in time (and my recollection might be inaccurate), it started in early 1994, with postings by Melinda Shore on the newsgroup soc.motss about the sad state of the roads in wintertime in rural Pennsylvania and side remarks on the roads in the altiplanos of Bolivia.
Ah, Bolivia! Calling up (in my mind, anyway) the real-life story of Butch and Sundance (insofar as this can be determined) and the mythologized version in the movie, which I’ve been a great fan of since it came out in 1969. From this germ came the poems and the chapters of a complex story.
My story comes in five sections:
1. Sundance’s life (in rural Pennsylvania) before Butch (both partners’ working-class origins are important throughout the story)
2. The pair in Bolivia as outlaws (in Sundance’s case, as a sexual outlaw as well)
3. In Bolivia with Max (Prince Maximilian)
4. On the way north, through Peru
5. In California, first in Fresno with Sundance’s brother Jase, then in San Francisco (where the couple open a Bolivian restaurant called, of course, Los Altiplanos)
Most of the poems went into section 2, but two of the early ones (here labeled as “interludes”) belong to the San Francisco part of section 5, and the “epilogue” sacrifice fantasy ended up in section 3.
[I’m pleased with several of the prose pieces and sent them out for publication several times, but with no success. Magical realism is no longer in fashion, nor (in the age of AIDS) is XXX-rated man-man sex in serious writing (it’s dismissable as mere pornography, and dangerously retrograde at that), and to some they look like “just” slash fiction written by fans (in the already crowded Butch/Sundance subgenre). Well, one of them (from section 1, on Sundance’s first kiss from a man) was accepted for a volume of very short (under a thousand words) fiction on kisses, but the book never made it into print.]
On to the poems. They appear here in a font I would not have chosen myself. It’s a result of my taking an easy way out of the problem of getting html to leave blank spaces where I wanted them. (Please please please don’t send me mail telling me that if only I’d use Cascading Style Sheets to link to from the main html text, the problem would be easily solved — once I’d spent the time making sense of complex tutorials on using CSS that are written entirely in Nerdview, as Geoff Pullum calls it on Language Log.)
(1)
Roads
Butch laid
Sundance
On a road
In Bolivia,
The sky so
Blue
It hurt their eyes.
Sundance shook with
Fear at the height,
Consoled Butch,
Remembered
Roads
From Pennsylvania.
(2)
Butch Lay in the Bushes, On the Slope
Butch felt
For Sundance,
Yearned to
Define their
Forms.
Sundance slipped
On down
The embankment
And away.
(3) - Interlude
The New Suit
Butch tried on
A Brooks Brothers
Three-piece
From Sundance.
Watching him in the
Mirror
Sundance saw
Ivy tendrils curl
On his lover's
Brow.
Butch went out
For a drink with
Some guy
From L.A.
Who wasn't so working
Class.
(4) - Interlude
That look
Butch turned
To see
Who whistled
His nipples got
Hard under
The black t-shirt
The big
Blond
Winked
At Sundance
(5)
Big Sky
Sundance rested
His head
On Butch's chest,
Burrowed into the
Smell of his sweat.
Sundance worried
There was no
Name
For who they were.
Butch kissed
Sundance
Hard on the mouth,
Named him Lover,
And
Sundance became
Big as the sky above them.
(6)
His orientation
The first time
Butch took
His cock into his
Mouth
Sundance exploded
With delight.
He did not know
A man could
Love another man
The way
He did.
(7)
The blacksmith's wife
Butch coveted
Her tool belt.
(8)
Out to get us
Butch, Sundance whispers,
They're out
To get us.
Butch looks back
Over his shoulder
At the high plains
Hazed with uncertainty.
Sundance nuzzles the other man's
Neck, warm on his lips,
Salt on his tongue, and
Feels both bodies
Tense.
Sundance knows
Butch will say to
Ride, ride hard, and
They will.
He wonders if his arms will be
Big enough
To hold Butch at the end.
(9)
Memory
Some days, Butch can't recall whether
He’s the blond one and Sundance the dark,
Or whether it's the other way around.
He knows that one of them remembers the snow packed on Pennsylvania roads
And that one of them is real good at breaking horses
But which?
Is it the bonetiredness of the
Headlong rides?
Or just the wearing of two men
Into one
On the trail?
These days, Butch feels uneasy
When Sundance steps away into the
Tall hot grass
For a quick piss.
(10)
The liquor talks
They got drunk
On some cheap Bolivian stuff
And Butch got weepy
And slobbered on Sundance's
Trail-grubby shirt
And said he, Butch, had always been
A man who loved women
And he, Butch, didn't know how it had somehow
Come to this
And then Butch got the hiccoughs
And begged Sundance not to leave him
And Sundance stumbled into the
Tall dark grass,
Cold and wet,
And threw up his bitter metallic love.
(11)
The Bolivian Garden
Unlikely on these stony slopes
They come upon a field of knee-high pinkish flowers.
Butch dismounts and
Hunkers down
Stares
Expressionless at
Shallow wells of the slightest coloring,
Puckered at their centers.
Half-closed eyes with a
Sweetish scent.
(Butch himself smells
Strongly of horse
Stinks of
Hastily wiped shit
Work sweat
Fear sweat
(Knowing that,
Supposes Sundance presses
Against him at night
Just for the warmth) )
Butch picks one stem
Three more
An armful
Pulls Sundance off his horse
Stuffs flowers into his companion's
Every pocket
Slips their stems back of his
Belt, his
Neckerchief, his
Bandolier
Gravely slides a pink bouquet
Into the barrel of the
Rifle
Slung on his back
Balances one
Behind his left ear.
Sundance becomes a garden.
(12)
How it ended for them
When Sundance died
The bullets made red poppies fly
Into dry air, made dark
Paisley patterns on stone
(It was a lot more beautiful
Than in the movie.) Butch
Flattened in the grass - poor
Cover - on a slight rise
Remembered
Only a farmboy
with bad teeth
lurching swagger and a
clinging nature
If they had bothered to get the dogs -
but it was a hot day and Sundance had eluded them
for hard hours - if they had thought to search the grass -
but they were sure the pretty one had led them away from his
leader - they could have had cruel sport with him
(It would have been fun
Not just target practice with the maricón)
Instead
They fired their guns into the air for pleasure and
So frightened Butch
He fouled his pants and
Wet the ground
Beneath him
That was how it ended for Butch - not a
Bad deal at all
Considering
That he got away with his skin, and
Well
You can always wash out your pants.
How it ended for Sundance was that
When they rode up to that rise and
Butch rolled off the horse onto the grass
Sundance
Found
Notch in rocks
Entry to
Narrow stream
Walled with rock
Urged horse
Downstream
Till that ended
Abruptly
At lip of
Waterfall
Sudden space of all the world
Before his gaze
Sent the horse back
Stripped off his clothes
Abandoned
His forged identity papers
The roll of stolen banknotes
The turquoise belt buckle
(stolen from Butch as a keepsake)
Most of a half pint of cheap Bolivian brandy
Leaned back on his heels
Made himself into a parabola
Flew
Into dry air
Down for breath-stealing moments
Into ice-melt pool of
Fortunate great depth
(Since Sundance in flight
Is angel not man
This too was much
More beautiful than in the movie)
It was the single most
Exciting
Experience of his life
Here he is by the pool -
Dog doing water dance
Sun lizard stretched on flat rock
Musing on the openness of his body
Reflecting on Butch
Supposing there must be more to hope for in a man
Than a reliable piston stroke
A big stock of dirty stories
A way with guns
Recalling that day back in Saint Louie when
The two of them were still
Feeling out
One another's intentions
Butch bought him an ice cream
The coldest thing he'd ever
Put into his mouth, which made him
Want Butch
Butch knew that
He knew Butch knew that
Leaping up shouting
That's where I went wrong!
Finding himself
Face to face with
The Prince of Bolivia
Out hunting capybara with
Bow and arrow, a
Striking young man in whom the best of several races was
Alloyed and who had always admired in Sundance
His daring
His beautiful long eyelashes, and
The way he wore his dungarees.
Postlude
Sacrifices
"Strike with Thy love's resistless stroke
And break this heart of stone."
- Charles Wesley
Max, eagle-man above me, drops upon me;
The smoky oil of his feathers coats my shoulders;
His steely talons rake across my chest -
Droplets of my blood spray into the rushing air.
He thrusts his sex into me.
His prey-cry fills my head with noise;
His great beak scrapes against my neck;
I wait, resistless, pulsing, for him
To rip me open and take his meal.
June 2, 2010 at 4:49 am |
Some of the poems you share here have excellent imagery. In particular, I like the one where Sundance becomes a garden. You should not be afraid to share such lyrics – sex is a natural engagement of man – and homosexuality is just one aspect of that.
July 18, 2010 at 5:11 pm |
[…] And indeed it came through the mail unscathed and unremarked on. So I’m assuming that it can be exhibited on this blog. That’s one of my topics for today: what’s allowable “in public” — without occasioning sanctions, like having this particular posting deleted by WordPress or having my whole blog closed by them or having me barred from posting anywhere on WordPress, or corresponding actions by Apple’s MobileMe, where my images are currently stored. (Note similar issues about text, like my fiction and poetry.) […]