LGBTQ+ HORROR MONTH: The Perpetual Contradiction

 For those of us who identify as LGBTQ (or however you want to put it), the application is one of perpetual contradiction.
 
On the one hand, it is a spectacular incidence: we wake up being as we are, feeling and thinking as we do, and it means next to nothing to us, in the same way that identifying as straight largely means nothing to straight people.
 
On the other, it is also a source of perpetual fascination and even obsession, a factor of our beings that becomes more significant (ironically) the more it becomes a source of potential judgement, danger and dehumanisation.
 
Speaking from my own experience as a gay man, the factor is very, very, very far down in the strata of self-identification, the myriad, shifting and conflicting factors that feed into the phenomena of personality. The fact that I am (almost) exclusively attracted on romantic and erotic levels to other guys largely means fuck all to me on a day to day basis; it simply is a matter of natural existence in the same way that I get thirsty for water or hungry for food.
 
However, it is also something that informs my experience of reality and being human in certain fundamental ways, which external factors generally insist should be more significant, one way or another, and which can be, under certain circumstances or frames of mind.
 
My own approach to the situation, both as a writer and consumer of all created media, is one of quiet celebration: it is a factor of my being that I am, of course, interested in exploring and expressing, but that I am NOT interested in allowing to consume or define me entirely.
 
The fact of my being gay is no more my entirety than it is anyone else's, nor should it be. Ironically, this is a factor that our traditional detractors and those that fancy themselves our enemies (as though they could ever muster the necessary wit or coherence to be that) harp upon in order to reframe their bigotry as something more reasonable: “Why is the matter of sexual orientation/gender identity so important?” they proclaim: “Surely there are other things you can hang your hats on?”
 
Oh, absolutely: in a bizarre way, I agree: insofar as I'm concerned, the fact of sexual orientation and/or gender identity are biological incidences and nothing more.
 
However, that doesn't mean that A: they are entirely insignificant to determining one's perception of self, reality and life experience, B: that they should not be expressed and discussed and analysed as much or as little as any other factor of existence and C: that this gives a free pass to those powers and forces that would deprive us of humanity on this apparent incidence.
 
It has been stated by some that the very notion of devoting a specific month or event to the celebration and/or discussion of LGBTQ writing is, in and of itself, divisive and tribalising, in the sense that it focuses upon what many would consider an incidental aspect of the writer's state and experience.
 
However, this begs the question: are there consistent themes, factors and subjects of identifying as LGBTQ that then filter down into our experessions, whatever form they take, and therefore lend the work we create qualities that are fundamentally removed from that created by people who identify as straight?
 
The very fact of this automatic question and the discussion that necessarily results demonstrates that looking at LGBTQ creators specifically, or even other traditionally under-represented demographics, may have degrees of academic and philosophical worth, beyond the usual political and socio-cultural parameters that tend to inform such exercises.
 
For example, is it possible that those who identify as straight might learn something from the writings of an LGBTQ writer regarding their experience of the world that they might not otherwise have taken into consideration? That might, in fact, transform their perspectives and states of mind on such matters? That might, if they are creators themselves, lead them to inform their own works and writings a little more appropriately and with greater verisimilitude than they might otherwise?
 
For me, the answer is a resounding yes. It is so clear as to be beyond argument that the work of LGBTQ creators will necessarily express experiences and concerns that are removed from that created by their straight counterparts, not to the diminishment or degradation of either, but providing contrast between the two that might serve to create a greater interplay of understanding and communication.
 
For example, it is highly unlikely that most straight couples will understand the degrees of necessary fear, anxiety and paranoia that LGBTQ couples operate in when it comes to matters such as expressing mild affection or comporting themselves as partners in public. Outside of some very niche sub-cultures, such pressures and concerns are things that simply do not apply to straight couples, but that those of us who identify as LGBTQ must absorb as part and parcel of our day to day interactions, which therefore necessarily become parts of our identities and will inevitably be expressed through whatever mediums we favour.
 
That situation in and of itself is a perfect cypher for story, a ready-made scenario from which wider character and concern might elaborate, but one that will always have more resonance and verisimilitude when written by someone who has directly experienced it.
 
There is a genuine danger here of falling into a familiar and very pervasive trap of identifying along lines that tradition and culture demands of us: that it imposes the role of “victim” or oppression on us -based on an incidence of our beings- in order to exercise some containment or control over what might otherwise prove to be a demographic whose natures, identities and expressions are corrosive to tradition and proscribed narratives. In that, there is something to be said for refuting that identity, but that doesn't mean ignoring the base fact of the issue altogether. It ultimately doesn't matter how much ideological denial you throw at a boot that's being hammered into your face or gut: it is still a boot in your face and gut.
 
There is, therefore, a tacit fear of violence that is part and parcel of identifying as LGBTQ, a hostility and sense of alienation that is enshrined within tradition, history and proscribed by many, many societal systems and socio-cultural assumptions. Even though great strides have been made regarding acceptance of LGBTQ identities, the residue of those assumptions and traditions still lingers heavily and unspoken in society and culture at large, meaning that certain pressures and concerns exist for those of us who identify as LGBTQ that do not necessarily (or so pervasively) exist for those who identify otherwise.
 
The fear of rejection and violence, the resultant despairs, transience, chemical-dependencies, extreme lifestyles and myriad forms of depression and neurosis are well documented in psychological study: LGBTQ individuals are far more likely to suffer from depressive conditions than their straight counterparts and are far, far more likely to inflict violence on themselves or become the victims of violence.
 
Fertile breeding ground for horror, yes? And certainly cultural phenomenon which horror fiction is uniquely well suited to exploring and expressing.
 
Yet, for all that, these subjects are still, even now, hideously under-represented in mainstream horror fiction. One or two notable figures have managed to claw enough significance for themselves in order to bring these factors to some murky corner of popular acknowledgement, but even those works which directly address or explore these issues tend to be regarded as niche and are generally less popular than work which shies away from direct analysis and tends more towards traditional subjects and emphases for the genre.
 
The aforementioned magnum opus that is Clive Barker's Sacrament is one such example, that has arguably managed to explore these factors in a popular (or at least, cult) arena by elevating itself beyond them; by transgressing so far beyond proscribed argument and parameters of discussion, that it often comes across as baffling to those who do not directly identify with the experiences it explores.
 
Likewise, there is the work of Billy Martin (AKA, Poppy Z. Brite), a writer whose work is much more directly attuned to the day to day grit and dirt and despairs of what might generally be considered LGBTQ culture, that foregoes the expansive metaphysics that Barker opts to explore in favour of a warts-and-all honesty, which simultaneously celebrates the extremity and fervour and transgressive passion of identifying as LGBTQ whilst also acknowledging and expressing the darkness inherent.
 
Like Barker's work, Billy's is not exclusive: whilst many of his characters are sexually fluid (one might argue opportunistic, which, as myriad studies demonstrate, is part and parcel of identifying as male), there are numerous recurring characters that identify as straight or are more generally straight-leaning than otherwise. One of the more interesting elements of Billy's work is that he does not exclude straight characters from the phenomena that his LGBTQ characters experience; rather, he generally draws parallels between the two, delving into myriad depths and spectrums of misery and confusion that are part and parcel of humanity rather than being exclusive to one particular demographic or sets of demographics. His principle focus on LGBTQ characters derives from his own experience: he is, like Barker (and, like myself) a gay man, and his writing is very legitimately that: its voice is so powerfully of the experience of gay men, that when I first read it, I found myself powerfully confused as to his (then) identity as the female writer Poppy Z. Brite. In no way, did I say to myself, is this the work of a woman: it is too intimately, powerfully, evocatively the voice of a gay man seething through this prose and these experiences. Of course, later, I discovered that this was exactly the case.
 
That is not to say that a straight or gay woman could not have written these works. It is simply that: there is a level of immediacy here and fidelity that can only derive from direct experience, that talks to me as a gay man perhaps more powerfully than any fiction I have ever read. This is, in large part, owing to its honesty: whilst it, like Barker's Sacrament, definitely celebrates the status of identifying as LGBTQ, it also does not shy away from the darker, uglier elements of those definitions: the pressures, issues, suffering and lamentations that are part and parcel: the incredible distance from parental figures and familial structures that is not a universal element of identifying as LGBTQ, but is -anectdotally- an extremely pervasive and common one, even for those of us whose parents and families are generally accepting, the sexual extremity that is a natural by-product of repression of natural inclination and appetite, the lack of anchorage that often plagues LGBTQ individuals well into their middle-age, lacking, as we so often do, the proscribed narratives and cultural roles that our straight counterparts simultaneously benefit and suffer from.
 
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Martin's seminal novel, Exquisite Corpse, a narrative that derives influences from as wide a variety of subjects as actually existing serial killers (most notably, Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer), the gay scenes of late 1980s/early 1990s London and New Orleans, right-wing news and radio shock-jocks such as Rush Limbaugh et al and so many other sources and influences, it is impossible to clearly catalogue them.
 
Whilst the novel is generally regarded as an extreme piece of overt horror, following the exploits of two serial killers who operate in divergent arenas until fate and circumstance conspire to bring them together, beyond the incredibly graphic and sensual depictions of pain, mutilation and murder, the novel is an exploration of social disenfranchisement, of how the lack of social anchorage so often places young LGBTQ men (the novel is almost exclusively an exploration of the male experience in this regard) in places of extreme vulnerability, one way or another.
 
There are so few innocent parties in this book, so few characters that are not powerfully loathsome in one way or another, and yet, all of them are not only identifiable -particularly for those of us who have operated to some degree in LGBTQ scenes and cultures-, but also sympathetic.
 
The two protagonists, who, in any other novel, story, would be the antagonists, are pure psychopaths: sensualists, egotists, lacking in any degree of restraint or moderation, except when it relates exclusively to their self preservation. They are violent and predatory and deviant and monstrous. Yet, Martin paints them with exactly the same brush, in exactly the same degree of human intimacy as their victims, as the ostensible “innocents” that operate around them. Whilst it might be something of a generalisation, I have little doubt that, were this same story written by a straight writer, these two characters would have been far more distant, far more alien, far more monstrous than they are portrayed here. These two are not monsters or demons or aliens; they are human in a way and to an intenseity that is disturbing, as we, the reader, are drawn into their twilight world of seductions and predations, of violent appetites and cannibalistic sexuality. The novel dares to explore the sordid joy that these two experience in their activities and make it the reader's own, turning moments that might otherwise be painted exclusively in the language and patina of horror into something darkly beautiful, distressingly celebratory, even when it's characters we have come to know and adore upon the chopping block.
 
By the same token, characters that are ostensibly innocent, not part of this realm of blood and pain and sadism, are often painted in extremely negative ways, their domestic flaws, their comparatively picayune neuroses, exposed as hateful and petty and cruel. This is as true of the most sympathetic characters in the book as it is of the most loathsome: hardly anyone in this world escapes untarnished. They are all collectively human, and therefore as broken, scarred, disturbed and despairing as one another, each of them swirling around the great toilet bowl of existence, trying to find some purchase before they are inevitably flushed away.
 
In that, Martin deliberately drawers parallels between what might otherwise be divergant or even contradictory states of human experience: striving and suffering, Martin seems to argue, are not unique, not exclusive to any one particular state or identity or demographic: victims are we all, in our myriad and bleakly various ways. It is simply that, owing to the nature of history, tradition and socio-cultural assumptions, some of us are placed in greater degrees of vulnerability and potential victimhood by the enshrined oppression and denial that is part and parcel of our born conditions.
 
More than anything, the novel is one of tragedy, and tragedy that is, in many instances, wholly avoidable: whilst Martin doesn't necessarily come out and say it outright, the victims here are as much victims of society and humanity generally as they are of the psychopaths and predators amongst them: were it not for the culture of rejection, familial exile, lacking of anchorage and the general states of bohemianism and extremity that have developed in response to culture's oppressions and denials, then the predators would not have an arena in which to hunt. They would not have the freedom to move as they do amongst the sheep and to pick out their intended victims with such impunity. They would literally starve or turn on themselves for want of succour.
 
This factor comes to a head towards the book's climax, when the only arguable innocent in the book, who is painted as a near-angelic, androgynous beauty, could have been saved, were the systems in place what they advertise themselves as: were they not merely simply accruals of sickness and privilege and protection for the powerful: rather than helping the clearly wounded, disoriented young man, the local police deliver him directly into the arms of his tormentor and killer, then take time to abuse and beat the man who might be his salvation.
 
Martin's disregard for the police, for law, for societal systems, is not an uncommon quality down here amongst what I suppose I might ostensibly describe as my tribe: many of us have experiences with such systems that are far, far from pleasant, to the point whereby many of us refuse to contact or make use of them, even when it is necessary to do so.
 
Here, we see written large the fact that society regards even its most beautiful sons as bits of gristle caught between its teeth, to be plucked out and spat away, or swallowed and digested. The world Martin paints is intensely real for many of us, so close to the knuckle that it arouses emotion that is difficult to contain or disguise, be that arousal, anger, fear or a confusion of more than we can clearly label.
 
Like Sacrament, Exquisite Corpse is essential, utterly essential reading for young LGBTQ men and women, as it provides some stark and undiluted portraits of situations that they are likely to face, to one degree or another, and does so in such a manner that is non-didactic, non-judgemental, non-finger-wagging. It is merely an expression of experience, describing what its characters think and feel in their given circumstances, leaving the reader to determine judgement, relative morality etc.
 
On a personal level, Exquisite Corpse was a powerful and inspiring motivator, one of those books that crystallised certain inchoate perspectives and ideas in my own mind, that expressed so much of my own experience as a lost, wandering, uncertain and unhappy twenty-something, not knowing what place -if any- he had in society, amongst humanity, not particularly caring if either of them provided one.
 
This is the genius of Martin's work in general: it is of such fidelity, such earnest and uncompromised emotion and experience, it is impossible for it not to resonate with particular audiences, to provide for us what mainstream literature very often does not, even when it is specifically marketed to us (I can count the number of works I have read that are specifically categorised as “LGBTQ fiction” that have had any genuine emotional or experiential resonance on the fingers of one hand).
 
And its like is essential. Utterly essential to ensuring that, even if we remain lost, we at least find something in that status to celebrate, some poetry that society and culture at large would otherwise deny us. And, from there, to perhaps accrue or imagine for ourselves some greater, more personal mythology.