#has been fraught with violence and manipulation . and there's no way out of it except forward

[july-19th-club]

case three is VERY busy and like, a lot for an early episode, but it's also good that it's an early episode i think, like it has a lot of what makes the show work and also some stuff that doesn't work about it. i do think sometimes there's this intense whiplash between very dark scenes and concepts and bright sparkly music and goofy interactions, and i would prefer it settle into one or the other. like this is a funny episode at times! the office romance stuff is slowly building. but it's also like rapid-fire hitting Issues from all sides, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, like getting into the fact that the protagonist isn't going to be good at communicating with or empathizing with other autistic folks just because she is (and given that her support needs are so much smaller than the clients, winds up messing things up a couple times in pretty much the same ways as her neurotypical coworkers); the old classmate of jun-ho's who runs into him and young-woo, sees how jittery she gets when a jackhammer goes off nearby and assumes he's doing charity work with her and jun-ho spends the rest of the episode agonizing over how rude and condescending this woman was and wanting to apologize but not knowing whether it would be overstepping; the fact that her dad still doesn't quite get her despite loving her and that he's sometimes resentful of being a single father on a restaurant income and not feeling appreciated the way he wants to be by his daughter; the fact that the client's father is so, so much worse - favored his elder son to the point of ignoring his mental health struggles, not noticing when he was getting suicidally overwhelmed and depressed from his med school workload, and being willing to let his surviving son go to jail rather than let his suicide become public knowledge; the incredibly horrible experience of being witness to several of your siblings' suicide attempts until one day he actually succeeds, and you don't get there in time and you're in the middle of a meltdown and you break his ribs trying to give him cpr and you can't explain any of it to anyone because it is all still so overwhelming and chaotic for you emotionally and because you are a bigger guy and so very very visibly disabled people automatically assume violence of you, even people like the protagonist who should be able to relate, and then a week later a bunch of lawyers are doing a very dedicated rendition of the pengsoo song for you, which is nice and all, and you wouldn't say no to a repeat performance, but like, you still saw your brother hang himself and your parents think you did it

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Three of Three

(another massive, massive thank you to @mimsyaf​ )

part 1

part 2

8. Queerness and femininity and masculinity and the colour red and *record breaks*

If we spin the record aaalll the way back to this paragraph: “…looking at what it is girls and women in fairytales have/don’t have, what they want, and how they’re going to get it. It’s about power (lack of), sexuality (repressed, then liberated), and men.” Reading Daniel as a repressed, bisexual boy in a society that doesn’t accept his desires it’s interesting looking at how he moves through the world of the Miyagi-verse, at how threatened other men are by him, at how obsessed they are with him.

He’s out in the symbolic woods and these large boys and men see him and decide for whatever plot reasons to come for him. And they are large and violent and attractive and apart from Johnny again, they don’t have the nebulous excuse of fighting over a girl and even that excuse dies by around the midpoint when Johnny kisses Ali just to get a rise out of Daniel. He’s not trying to “win her back,” he’s not even really looking at her. He’s just trying to get a reaction. They don’t have any of the fighters in Rocky’s excuse either of Daniel being a macho opponent. 

You can read whatever subtext into TKK1 and TKK2 (which becomes especially tempting once CK confirmed that the guys he fought at seventeen have been thinking about him ever since – for thirty-five years), but TKK3 is where it’s really At in terms of obsession and lust and forbidden desires.

Silver is presented as both a handsome prince who saves Daniel and mentors him (where Miyagi is undoubtedly cast in a fatherhood role) and later on becomes twisted into a dark secret that Daniel has to keep, while he turns that thing that Daniel loves (karate, it’s… it’s karate… it’s also men, but it’s definitely karate, because karate makes him feel… things...) into an abusive, violent version of itself.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But he’s also offering him something liberating. Whatever is going on in that nightclub scene is about something other than breaking Daniel down. Even the bloodied knuckles aren’t just about revenge. It’s about giving him something that he isn’t, in the end, willing to receive, at least not from Silver. In that roundabout, strange way of these feminine fairytales, it’s exploring hidden desires through the metaphor of karate.

Daniel wears red because it’s his colour. In the movies he wears red a lot. Often in scenes with violence in them (the beach/the hilltop in TKK1 and the date/the destruction of the dojo/the final fight in TKK2), but he also has a variety of shirts (and in TKK3 pants) that pop up all the way through the narrative. He wears a red jacket when he accepts Terry’s training, when he punches a guy in the face, and when he tries to get out of the training again (as badly as that goes).

Did anyone consciously think about red’s link to desire, obsession, and violence when they made these? Eh. But is it there symbolically? When he meets Johnny, when he fights Chozen, when he’s in emotionally fraught situations with Terry? Hell yeah.

Probably the most lust-and-violence infused red is that aforementioned punching-board-until-knuckles-bleed bit – not that I thought Terry was going to pull him in for a kiss, because I knew, logically, of course he wouldn’t right? There’s no way… is there? Or later on when Daniel punches that guy and ends up with blood all over his shirt and Terry once more grasps him, euphorically. Blood is violence. Blood is also desire. Red is Daniel’s colour, even though he doesn’t acknowledge it come Cobra Kai. (Maybe he just needs someone else - cough Johnny Lawrence cough - to inspire it in him again).

Daniel LaRusso’s narrative is exploring that most feminine of fairytale tropes: To want and be wanted by monsters and having to hide those desires.

“Maybe this time that strange churning in my stomach that feels like a mix of anticipation and fear will turn out good for me.” - Daniel’s mind.

At the end of the story, Daniel saves himself, with all of the strange mixed narratives around it, and the acknowledgement that the end of The Karate Kid Part Three isn’t satisfying and its aftermath will likely be delved into in the next season of Cobra Kai.

Nevertheless, he saves himself. Not from Silver or Kreese or Barnes, and not entirely, but he makes a decision not to give in to fear (and he continues to try and live by that decision, making it over and over again for the next thirty-five years, even when the return of Cobra Kai makes that difficult for him). 

He doesn’t do it by being the strongest in the land or even through a lucky shot (although that too). He does it by refusing to be like the male antagonists that surround him, by telling them they have no power over him. The narrative isn’t just his getting lost in the forest and all the monsters he finds there, it’s about how he redefines power for himself within that forest. 

He’s a man who isn’t violent, whose victories include helping out a girl whose ex-boyfriend just broke her radio, successfully doing the moves to a cultural dance he’s trying to learn, sitting with his father figure while he cries over the death of his own father, telling a girl that she’s just made her first friend, and breathing a sigh of relief that a tree that got broken has healed. 

Daniel LaRusso is a good boy is the point!

Karate is a metaphor. It can turn into many things: A series of lessons learned about how to be his own man and take care of his own house, a respect for the history of the father teaching him and sharing his home and story with him, fear, desire, masculinity (and the different forms that can take). 

When a tall, handsome stranger offers to teach him karate in the dark, without Daniel’s caretaker knowing how to help him, and twists that karate into something that hurts him - when he reclaims that, over and over, that means something too. 

This man is fine and definitely isn’t carrying the weight of buried karate-based queer trauma - could a traumatised man do this? *stares blankly at a former tormentor as blood runs down his forehead*

9. In Conclusion Daniel Has Kissed Dudes… Symbolically… But We Can HC Literally:

So there’s Daniel and his coded feminine fairytale narrative. It’s all a series of fun coincidences.

1. Ralph Macchio is just Like That

2. Red. All the red. 

3. large portion of his storyline is about lack of power. Yes, he regains that power by the end of the first and second movie through A Fight, but generally he is framed as powerless opposite these almost monstrously physically powerful boys/men. And in the third one it’s barely even about physical prowess (he’d still lose a real fight against Barnes or Silver) and more about regaining lost autonomy off the back of a manipulative, abusive relationship with an older guy.

4. The third movie in particular is narratively a mess, but if reimagined as a fairytale makes a lot of sense (because it’s secretly all about how karate is bisexuality and Daniel gets manipulated through that desire to be better at karate).

5. Queerness and femininity and themes about hidden desires that can only be approached sideways through couching those desires in symbolism: Handshake meme.

6. The fact that the more I think about it, the more feral I am for a Labyrinth AU.

7. To sum up over 5000 words of text: The inherent homoeroticism of wanting to be slammed against a locker by a bully, but extended over three movies and ever-more inventive ways of hurting pretty-boy-Daniel-LaRusso.

Johnny’s not going to be happy when he realises Daniel’s got other ex-rivals buried in his closet...

10. Some Other Stuff Aka The Laziest Referencing I’ll Ever Do

Further reading on trans Matrix

Further reading on masculinity and rape narrative in The Rape Of James Bond

Youtube Video from Pop Culture Detective (Sexual Assault Of Men Played For Laughs)

Some film/TV references in this: Dracula (Coppola), Princess Bride, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Labyrinth, The Matrix, Rocky, Princess And The Frog, Cinderella, Enchanted, Shape Of Water, Swamp Thing, Phantom of the Opera 

Some fairytale references: Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Wolf And The Seven Little Kids, Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Company of Wolves (Angela Carter), Through the Looking Glass, Princess Bride

Also referenced is Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel and the subsequent musical Funhome. Further thoughts on this by @thehours2002​ and @jenpsaki​:

https://thehours2002.tumblr.com/post/650033577171533824/daniel-larusso-and-fun-home-click-to-enlarge

https://jenpsaki.tumblr.com/post/650530225997971456/cobra-kai-fun-home-inspired-by-goldstargirls

My list of Cobra Kai meta posts

I wanted to delve into fairytale movies more, but then I was like “fuck, I have actual work to do,” but I was interested in the ways male and female characters are written in these stories:

The Last Unicorn, The Never-Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, Legend, and Stardust.

The Last Unicorn is an interesting one because she’s not really human, until she is. It’s more like The Little Mermaid (the fairytale, not the Disney film) in tone, and of course there’s a pretty substantiated rumour that Andersen wrote that one as a metaphor for falling in love with another man (who eventually got married). 

Andersen in general is just fun to analyse as someone who popularized so many fairytales and exists as an ambiguously queer historical figure – might’ve been modern-day gay, bi, ace, but we’re just not sure. All your favourite fairytales can be read through the lens of queer loneliness and ostracization. Just like horror.

Anyway I didn’t go into the whole Little-Mermaid-Last-Unicorn transformation bit so much as the Monstrous-Desires bit, but I think there could be something to that too, with monsters representing otherhood and all. Stardust is a kinda-almost-this, except she sticks to her human form and all is okey-dokey by the end, she’s allowed to marry the handsome man and be a star.

The Never-Ending Story has Atreyu and Bastian and because of a lack of female characters, an interesting bond between the two of them, but mainly Atreyu is absolutely a go-gettem Hero Type and it’s just interesting to see how Bastian relates to him as both an audience insert, but also eventually as his own character in that world.

The Dark Crystal contains certain… androgynous elements of feminine and masculine coded characteristics in the main character because of how he’s not human, but also they do have a “female” version of his species that he needs to go save (and bring back to life) by the end, so in a way it’s both more and less heteronormative in its characters.

Legend sees another example of a monster (literally called Darkness and looking like a traditional devil) trying to seduce a princess through promises of power, and she “goes along with it” in order to trick him and succeeds in that trick, but is ultimately saved by the male lead. 

In conclusion: I don’t even have Shrek in this.

[perkwunos]

Within human economies, motives are assumed to be complex. When a lord gives a gift to a retainer, there is no reason to doubt that it is inspired by a genuine desire to benefit that retainer, even if it is also a strategic move designed to ensure loyalty, and an act of magnificence meant to remind everyone else that he is great and the retainer small. There is no sense of contradiction here. Similarly, gifts between equals are usually fraught with many layers of love, envy, pride, spite, communal solidarity, or any of a dozen other things. Speculating on such matters is a major form of daily entertainment. What's missing, though, is any sense that the most selfish ("self-interested") motive is necessarily the real one: those speculating on hidden motives are just as likely to assume that someone is secretly trying to help a friend or harm an enemy as to acquire some advantage for him--or herself. Neither is any of this likely to have changed much in the rise of early credit markets, where the value of an IOU was as much dependent on assessments of its issuer's character as on his disposable income, and motives of love, envy, pride, etc. could never be completely set aside.

Cash transactions between strangers were different, and all the more so when trading is set against a background of war and emerges from disposing of loot and provisioning soldiers; when one often had best not ask where the objects traded came from, and where no one is much interested in forming ongoing personal relationships anyway. Here, transactions really do become simply a figuring-out of how many of X will go for how many of Y, of calculating proportions, estimating quality, and trying to get the best deal for oneself. The result, during the Axial Age, was a new way of thinking about human motivation, a radical simplification of motives that made it possible to begin speaking of concepts like "profit" and "advantage"--and imagining that this is what people are really pursuing, in every aspect of existence, as if the violence of war or the impersonality of the marketplace has simply allowed them to drop the pretense that they ever cared about anything else. It was this, in turn, that allowed human life to seem like it could be reduced to a matter of means-to-end calculation, and hence something that could be examined using the same means that one used to study the attraction and repulsion of celestial bodies. …

…

The predominant school of political thought under the Warring States was that of the Legalists, who insisted that in matters of statecraft, a ruler's interests were the only consideration, even if rulers would be unwise to admit this. Still, the people could be easily manipulated, since they had the same motivations: the people's pursuit of profit, wrote Lord Shang, is utterly predictable, "just like the tendency of water to flow downhill." …

Wherever the military-coinage-slavery complex began to take hold, we find political theorists propounding similar ideas. …

…

That intellectuals willing to produce such theories should win the ears of princes is hardly surprising. Neither is it particularly surprising that other intellectuals should have been so offended by this sort of cynicism that they began to make common cause with the popular movements that inevitably began to form against those princes. But as is so often the case, oppositional intellectuals were faced with two choices: either adopt the reigning terms of debate, or try to come up with a diametrical inversion. Mo Di, the founder of Mohism, took the first approach. He turned the concept of li, profit, into something more like "social utility," and then he attempted to demonstrate that war itself is, by definition, an unprofitable activity. …

…

… The Confucian ideal of ren, of humane benevolence, was basically just a more complete inversion of profit-seeking calculation than Mo Di's universal love; the main difference was that the Confucians added a certain aversion to calculation itself, preferring what might almost be called an art of decency. Taoists were later to take this even further with their embrace of intuition and spontaneity. All were so many attempts to provide a mirror image of market logic. Still, a mirror image is, ultimately, just that: the same thing, only backwards. Before long we end up with an endless maze of paired opposites-egoism versus altruism, profit versus charity, materialism versus idealism, calculation versus spontaneity-none of which could ever have been imagined except by someone starting out from pure, calculating, self-interested market transactions.

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years

[shesgottawatchit]

Tangerine (2015) dir. Sean Baker

A Trans Woman of Color Responds to the Trauma of “Tangerine”

Why is it that trans women of color have to experience so much violence to remember that they have each other’s back?

That’s what I got from the movie Tangerine. I enjoyed it. Mya Taylor (who plays Alexandra, one of the two trans leads) and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (who plays Sin-dee, the other) were fucking brilliant. They were not respectable, they were surviving in the best way they knew how and they were supporting each other even though it was difficult. I loved that they didn’t apologize for their lives or their existence.

Despite this, the audience still laughed at really inappropriate parts, showcasing the way that the film itself fails the story it’s trying to portray. And don’t get me wrong, the story is real. But the way it’s set up, how it’s shot, the progression of the plot — it’s clear that it is offering up the story to a mostly white, bougie audience. It was voyeuristic in the worst possible way. And while the two stars did have a lot of input into the making of the script, white men are still the ones who get the credit. The names of white men are on the script and white men directed the movie. The story was only made real by the beautiful performance of the actors.

One of the things that frustrated me was the way Razmik (an Armenian taxi driver who is a frequent customer of Alexandra and Sin-dee, played by Karren Karagulian) is juxtaposed to that terrible john. Razmik is no better then the dude that tried to rip off Alexandra. But the narrative manipulates you into feeling sorry for him. He is just a poor misunderstood dude who lies to his wife and keeps his desire secret. But he was just as awful as all the other non trans women in the film. He reduces trans women to what we can do for him sexually, fetishizes our bodies and refuses to publicly acknowledge that he desires trans women. He is still exploits them — he just pays well. Whats more, I don’t care at all about men and how they’re impacted by transmisogyny. Because the only reason Razmik and men like him get any kind of grief is because of transmisogyny. But it is not men who bear the brunt of that violence, it is us. Trans women are murdered for the same reasons that men are shamed. So for this film to focus almost half of the narrative on this man and how hard he has it, is very frustrating. Because even in films that are ostensibly about us, we still have to deal with men and their feelings. We still try to center male experiences.

The complicated relationship that these two trans women had with the men/love in their life was hard to watch. These were people who really and truly hated Sin-dee and Alexandra but said that they love them. They manipulate, take advantage of and abuse them. Chester was an awful abusive liar, but what choice does Sin-dee have? When validation and love come, even if it’s twisted and fucked up, you take it because otherwise you are just alone and sometimes the illusion of someone supporting you is better than nothing at all. I saw my experiences with men reflected in theirs and it fucking hurt. Trans women of color aren’t valued — again, we exist only to serve and perform for men. What does it mean that the people that are supposed to value us the most end up abusing us? What does it mean that trans women of color are often the victims of domestic violence but there is no narrative about it. We cannot be victims because we cannot be loved.

The final moment of the film comes after Sin-dee realizes that Alexandra slept with her boyfriend. Sin-dee is upset with Alexandra and tries to go off by herself but Sin-dee is assaulted, called a tranny faggot and gets urine splashed all over her. An intimate moment ensues where Alexandra takes care of Sin-dee and Sin-dee forgives Alexandra. That moment of sisterhood is so real. Nobody is going to look out for trans women of color except other trans women of color. We only matter to others when we are performing for them. But why does the film find it necessary to emphasize this sisterhood by subjecting them both to violence? What does it say about the director and the audience that this was the only way to bring them back together, because they have no other choice because the world is trying to kill them. This scene also shows them taking off their wigs which is just another instance of that trope saying that trans women’s femininity is not real. It’s a fabrication that comes off during intimate moments, cause what’s “real” is what’s on the “inside”. What does it mean that all the character development that occurred in that film was through trauma and violence? What does it mean that we can only see their vulnerability, their strength, their resilience through this moment of degendering?

I’m glad I went to see it. Seeing some of my experiences reflected in that film were really important and some of the ways they handle sex work and relationships is real. I appreciated the nuance in the way that they displayed men and their relationships to trans women. Trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited. The movie was clear about this. Clear that the ways men relate to trans women is toxic and fraught with dynamics of power that are abusive. Chester (Sin-dee’s boyfriend and pimp, played by James Ransone) was terrible to Sin-dee and he manipulated his way back into her good graces. Razmik was only interested in how these women could serve his pleasure. Both models — both through intimate relationship and client — capture the way that men are terrible to trans women time and again.

I also liked the way that Sin-dee was in control of her interaction with Dinah (the white, cis woman and sex worker who Chester cheats on Sin-dee with, played by Mickey O’Hagan). So often, cis white women will invalidate our womanhood. They will exclude us from women’s spaces and be generally awful to us. Transmisogyny is pervasive and cis white women are not exempt from perpetuating that. It was satisfying to see another trans woman of color in control of her interaction with someone who was actively denying her womanhood, who mocks Sin-dee’s desire to be valued and seen by her partner. It was satisfying to see her take what she needed from her when so often trans women of color are denied. White feminists might be inclined to read what Sin-dee does as violence against women but Sin-dee is not in a position of power over Dinah. And it was satisfying to watch. And while I do not trust the intentions of the white male director who shot that scene (because he would be perpetrating that violence), I do appreciate the moment for the satisfaction it gave me.

Even with these positive experiences, the voyeurism and almost lurid lens that the film was shot in makes it so that it only serves the consumption of cis white people. I cannot separate or ignore the fact that this was a film made by white men. And how these white men’s careers are going to profit from this film while the actress’s careers will most likely languish.

And why is it that so few TWOC (aside from Laverne Cox and Janet Mock) get any kind of airtime when it doesn’t involve trauma? Why are cis folks only interested in seeing us hurt, traumatized and alone? Those select few trans women who do get the spotlight, not just when they are murdered, are the exception and often tokenized by the spaces that they are in. You only ever hear about TWOC after we have been murdered. And in many ways this film is no different. It relies on the difficulty of our lives, it’s fetishizes the way our existence is marked by this world in order to titillate, to entice. The exotic other enchanting the “normal” cis white audience. And they leave the theater thinking that they know something, that they are more familiar with the lives of trans women. But our lives are not like in the movies.

After the last shot and the credits started rolling, I just broke down and cried. All that trauma and pain laid out like that so that people who don’t give a fuck about us, who just want to eat us alive — it was too much. It was so much to be in that audience, hearing their laughter and knowing we are just some fucking joke to them. That the things we face are a fantasy playground they can hang out in and then leave. That our lives only have meaning through the trauma experience. And don’t get me wrong, our trauma is real. But trauma isn’t the only thing about my existence that is real. But it’s the only thing cis folks care to see. Because a trans woman happy and loved is just so fucking weird to be real. Because seeing the full breadth of our lives is too much for people to handle. And because white people cannot help but exploit our lives.

In many ways, this film is similar to Paris is Burning. Brilliant and important and life saving while at the same time exploitative to the actors/subjects. The reviews of this film go on and on about Sean Baker and how he shot this film on a iPhone but where are the interviews asking how Mya Taylor felt shooting this film? Where are all the accolades for Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and her beautiful nuanced performance? Jennie Livingston made out like a bandit from that film and so will Sean Baker from this one. And the system is set up that only a white person could even get the funding for this project. TWOC doing this for ourselves doesn’t get the same level of attention or money. When will we get our coins? When will the work we do, the art we make, the lives we lead be for us, by us? When will white cis people stop exploiting our bodies for their profit?

https://www.autostraddle.com/a-trans-woman-of-color-responds-to-the-trauma-of-tangerine-301607/

[man-from-uncle-slash-recs-blog]

MFU Slash Zines - Initial Impressions

I’ve been, gradually, accumulating a collection of mfu slash zines and have been thinking a lot about how the fandom has developed over time. Here are some preliminary observations from my zine reading. (Note: I wasn’t present during the zine era so these are just my initial impressions. They’re not an insider perspective or the gospel truth, so errors and generalizations are probable.)

The characterisation in the very early zine stories (1980s to early 1990s) was often completely different to the current accepted fanon. Illya was often (although, not always) depicted as troubled, being some combination of (potentially) unstable, highly pessimistic, repressed, and/or masochistic. Napoleon was depicted as a far darker, more ambiguous figure, who was manipulative, self-centred, arrogant, and sometimes sexually predatory, often with a sadistic streak. The really early fic was, frequently, pretty dark, with Napoleon and Illya lacking the healthy, loving relationship they, generally, have in later fic.

A lot of the earliest fic (1980s) was based on the Return movie and Napoleon and Illya had a pretty fraught relationship or, at least, started out that way. Some of it was lovey-dovey but there was often an undertone of dysfunction and/or sexual violence.

 Kink, sometimes heavy kink, seems to have been very popular in the early fandom. I don’t know if this was, especially, the case for mfu or if slash itself was, initially, considered a kink and sometimes attracted people into BDSM and rape fantasies but there is a lot of rape, often with Napoleon, forcing, coercing, or manipulating Illya into sex.

 A lot of early fic (1980s-early 1990s) falls into five, sometimes overlapping, categories: romance based on the Reunion movie (still often dysfunctional or rapey), kink or rape fantasy, broad comedy (i.e. Napoleon gives Illya a venereal disease), dark (i.e. Napoleon suffers severe brain damage), and what I’m calling ‘proto-crack-fic’ (i.e. Illya is a shapeshifting unicorn). It’s not, necessarily, bad but it’s very different to current fic.

 There was also a concerted effort to make the fandom more romantic (and, possibly, realistic), with an anthology zine called Rose Tint My World (1989 – 1995) deliberately soliciting and publishing romantic fic. It seems to have been edited by a woman, who was gay or bisexual, and was intended to depict gay relationships in a more positive and down-to-earth way. It had a lot of low-angst relationship-orientated fic and seems to have been a sort of bridge between the earlier and later forms of characterisation. A lot of the earlier darkness is absent but the fic still often reads pretty differently to current fic.

 The current fanon characterisations were beginning to crystalize by the mid-1990s, with more and more fic being produced in which Napoleon was depicted as loving, ethical, and lacking the extreme selfishness or maliciousness often found in earlier fic. Illya was no longer likely to be depicted as very unstable and was often characterised in less extreme ways. Any pessimism or repression collided with Napoleon’s care and genuine friendship in a much more positive way and they had or achieved a healthy relationship dynamic. Kink became much less common and, with some exceptions, was, generally, consensual.

From the 1980s to early/mid-2000s, Illya was more often on the bottom, although not, usually, in a D/s way. There just seems to have been more emphasis on binary sexual roles. This doesn’t mean all the fic was bad or homophobic but there has been a bit of a cultural shift in how slash is written.

 Illya was often given extremely tragic backstories and, from the mid-1990s to early-2000s, there were so many fics where he suffered from some sort of devastating sexual dysfunction (i.e. near-castration, premature ejaculation, phobia due to history of abuse, foreskin so tight he couldn’t achieve an erection, devastating childhood bicycle injury etc.) that, in my opinion it qualifies as a sub-genre.

 The (worryingly) common perception that zine fic isn’t very good is complete bullshit. There is an enormous amount of really, really good muncle zine fic. In fact, some of the best fic in the fandom is only available in or, if it’s now online, was first published in zines (i.e. some of LadyRa’s stuff started out in zines). Like online fic, the quality ranges from so bad I want to gouge my eyes out just in case I ever see it again to literal masterpiece.

 There isn’t a very strong divide in muncle fandom between zine fic and online fic because so much zine fic is now online, although some incredibly wonderful fic, unfortunately, hasn’t made the leap. Zines have also been produced, although increasing sporadically, into the 2010s so zine fandom didn’t just disappear.

While fanon has changed considerably over time, some things (i.e. Napoleon calling Illya Illyusha) go back to the 1980s and pretty much every significant element originated in zines.

The illustrated zines often have really lovely art, with fanart playing a significant role in fandom activity.

[lyfadvisor-blog]

Relationship Counseling

https://www.lyfadvisor.com | This article seeks to inform readers concerning the psychological services related to reunification counselling. it is a focused article that will delineate the process of re-establishing a parent-child relationship after there has been a significant break in contact and/or parental alienation.

Marry or form intimate relationships with a partner with the intention to remain with that partner for the rest of their lives. but it's a well-established fact that it doesn't always work out that way. While the divorce rates are not as high as many people suppose.

Generally, a marital split is fraught with grief, uncertainty and fear of loss though one or both of the partners has initiated the split. Sometimes, one or both of the partners become angry to the extent of vengefulness. it isn't easy to abandon a dream of growing old with a much loved spouse. Partners may be bitterly disappointed in the partner, their behaviour and the state of marriage generally. in addition to grieving the loss of a dream of long-standing marriage, partners must sometime endure a significant change in their financial resources and life style. A partner is sure to suffer further if their partner has left the marriage for a new partner.

The dissolution of a marriage or intimate relationship can be a very troublesome time for both partners. this is significantly true once the couple have kids. unfortunately, children are frequently used as bartering chips to pressure, hurt, punish or alienate the other partner for a variety of reasons. Past hurt, resentment, intense anger or unresolved conflicts between the couple can lead one of the partners to place barriers between their ex-spouse and their own children. Circumstances, either real or imagined, may allow one in all the parents to succeed in limiting a past partner's access to their kids to the point of cutting off all contact between that parent and child. it is not unusual for the children to jump into the fray. sometimes the children have been parentified and accorded an adult role that way exceeds their biological process or emotional stage. If they need witnessed intense parental discord and/or familial violence in the past they may simply need to avoid further arguments. At times, a child can agree with the protective parent that it is in their best interest to avoid further contact with the estranged parent because they don't want to emotionally or physically abandon the custodial parent. it is an unfortunate fact that children are usually deliberately or inadvertently, manipulated by the custodial parent into believing that the other parent is "bad", "not a good parent" and therefore undeserving a primary parental role.

The fact that a partner disapproves, dislikes or distrusts their grownup is not cause to finish or significantly limit a child's relationship with the other parent. Unless a parent is actually a danger to their own children, parental alienation is reprehensible. With rare exceptions, a parent has the right to continue a parental role throughout their life and their child's life. There are few avenues for the alienated partner except to seek legal counsel and enter an extended, expensive, contentious battle to re-establish a relationship with their own child/children. reunification counselling is a valid and helpful way to re-establish a relationship between estranged parent and their children.

Reunification counselling

Choosing reunification counselling instead of supervised access or court ordered custody/access after an absence is a prudent means of reconnecting together with your children. a meeting between parent and child, particularly after a long separation, is showing emotion laden. it is often a frightening time for children who could fear alienating the custodial parent if they begin to accept and enjoy a relationship with the estranged parent. If the children have witnessed years of arguing and/or familial violence between their parents the estranged parent may become the scapegoat for all that was considered 'bad' within the family home. without doubt, children have been bitterly disappointed by the breakdown of the family. The estranged parent may have attempted to re-establish a relationship with their kids several times without success. The meetings may are tense and emotional. there is always the possibility that the children will be questioned when they returned home and the estranged parent additional disparaged by the guardian parent. it is obvious that such circumstances can undermine the work afoot at my office and significantly hamper any reconciliation between the alienated parent and their children.

Reunification counselling will require a psychologist or psychological associate who is qualified to work competently with both children and adults. Given the fact that the children may be very young, it is important that the psychologist has completed significant education and training in psychological science and is licensed to work with a young population as well as adults. Unlike many counselors, a trained psychologist has the necessary expertise to read and understand psychological assessments that may have been completed earlier.

My approach to reunification counselling

A prospective client may contact me directly for service or their lawyer may request my services on behalf of the alienated parent. My work can begin with a one-hour consultation with the alienated parent. If the terms of service are satisfactory to both parties and i am ready to settle for the case, i will draft a plan for the reunification counselling and submit it to the client and/or their counsel. An estimate of the fee for psychological services will be submitted at that time with the caveat that additional service will be more costly. (If the client has workplace insurance benefits that cover psychological services some or all of the fees may be recovered.) Simultaneously, the parent's counsel will request that reunification counselling be considered an option by the separated or single parties.

What follows is a general outline of reunification counselling procedure:

1. Time will also be set aside for the counsellor to read any documents concerning the case and make notes that might inform the clinical work ahead. There may be phone consultations with lawyers or letters/emails to counsel. Similarly, there could be emails/phone consultation with the client throughout the reunification counselling.

2. The alienated parent can expect to attend 2-5 individual sessions before and after the reunification counselling begins. It should be clear that this individual work will be limited to reconciliation with their children and their parenting role. It should not be considered personal or individual therapy.

3. Individual psychotherapy or counselling may be recommended for the estranged parent while they complete reunification counselling. in order to best serve the consumer and their kids, the individual counselling should be completed with another therapist, at another clinic.

4. Conversely, the counsellor would expect to establish and maintain an ongoing, individual therapeutic relationship with the children while they are completing reunification counselling.

5. If at all possible, the counsellor might like to meet with the custodial parent at least once in order to explain reunification counselling, their professional role and establish a pleasant working relationship. Such a meeting is not designed to discuss the relationship/marriage, the breakdown of the relationship or to determine who was to blame. Any meeting with the custodial parent focuses on the emotional support of the children while they are completing reunification counselling. it will be essential that he or she be willing to support the reunification counselling and consider recommendations concerning the adult and their kids with an open mind. At minimum, it is essential that the custodial parent does not deliberately undermine or sabotage the reunification counselling.

6. children of estranged or divorced parents have often been through a great deal of emotional turmoil in the past. A elementary goal of reunification counselling is to ensure that kids who are psychologically vulnerable are emotionally well supported. Thus, before the start of reunification counselling, individual counselling sessions will be set for each child. The approach to the work will be dependent upon the age/s and functioning of the children. For example, a child may present as very young, developmentally delayed, gifted, emotionally stable or unstable. counselling with an older child or teenage can ensue in a consultation room where the child and i can talk. A young child may work within the psychotherapy space and use toys, games and play therapy materials in order to communicate feelings and experiences.

7. The focus of the early therapy with the children is to support them as they discuss the loss of family cohesion in an emotionally safe, confidential environment. it will be an opportunity for them to express doubt about reconciliation, any anger that may exist and actively grieve the loss of familial cohesion. it will also facilitate reintroduction to the estranged parent. If is essential that the custodial parent and any other person remain supportive and not question the child concerning their personal therapy. every person, including a young child, has the right to confidentiality when it comes to psychological treatment.

8. Each child will attend 2-4 weekly therapy sessions prior to beginning reunification counselling with their parent. As stated earlier, the counsellor may wish to see the child/children individually or together between reunification counselling sessions in order to ensure their psychological well-being.

9. If there is more than one child in the family it is advisable for the parent to work with the counsellor and each child individually before moving forward. The time required for the actual reunification counselling will depend upon progress made, participant's desire to move forward and the counsellor's clinical judgement. Weekly sessions are optimal and may be as limited as 6-weeks or as long as 20-weeks.

10. As soon as deemed applicable, the therapist will work with parent and all kids throughout each session. Ultimately, the goal of reunification counselling is to use psychological intervention as a means of re-establishing an independent, positive relationship between a parent and their kids.

11. Lawyer/s or court may request a discharge letter that outlines the therapeutic gains and recommendations following termination from reunification counselling.

It goes without saying that reunification counselling can be a costly, time-consuming means of reconnecting with your kids. Having said this, a psychologist's fees may not be as expensive as legal/court fees and a parent will receive sensitive, experienced professional help while reconnecting with their offspring. Likewise, will be well supported emotionally by a clinician with important training and expertise in child development and psychological functioning throughout the process.

We are licensed organisation to provide psychological counseling and treatment in the following areas counselling psychology and clinical psychology, psychological functioning of kids, adolescents and adults.

https://www.lyfadvisor.com/psychological-counseling-services/

[bruceeves]

“Work # 978: Chronicle of a Life Retold”

1

In my opinion, the late 1970s was the last gasp of true artistic freedom. I initially got involved with the precursor to the CEAC (Centre for Experimental Art and Communication), the Kensington Arts Association right after school in ’75, because there was an involvement with the gay liberation movement and they seemed to be doing interesting things other than simply just slapping paintings on a wall. As an art student I was very interested in conceptual art and the KAA was very much on the same wavelength with me, so it seemed a natural fit. It’s hard to imagine today, but by comparison there was very little activity in the art world at the time. Discounting the commercial secondary market places in and around Yorkville, there was only the Isaac’s and Lamanna galleries, at Yonge and Bloor,  that were presenting current work; and the alternative artist-run places were only beginning to pop up – KAA and A Space opened in the very early ‘70s, Art Metropole around 1975, and all the others were later.

In 1970 a loose grouping of people (read commune) living in a vernacular Toronto house at 4 Kensington Avenue (just north of Dundas) in the Kensington market neighbourhood formed what would become by 1973 the Body Politic newspaper and the Glad Day bookstore, which would have been at the beginning of the second wave of the gay liberation movement in Toronto. I was still a starry-eyed art student so this was a little before my time, but gay issues were central to my art practice from that time onward.

The work I was doing at the time was certainly encouraged by KAA and in truth there were limited venues at the time that would have welcomes unabashedly gay-themed work. General Idea was dancing around the edges and being euphemistic about it for commercial careerist reasons, but they grew increasingly conservative and opportunistic as time went on. While its nostalgic today to talk about ‘liberation’ against a backdrop that positions any gay person as being as controversial as being a blond, at that time in the early to mid ‘70s there was a current of activity among groups and individuals who were like the grandchildren of Warhol working parallel to conceptual artists – the Cockettes, John Waters, Gilbert and George, Charles Ludlam, Jack Smith (and me). We were Warhol plus gay liberation. Even as late as the mid-70s society was very harsh in dealing with gay people – lack of job protection, the relationship with the police was fraught, but more interestingly, the art world was notoriously homophobic (I’d venture to say it still is) – so for anyone to make gay issues a central part of their art practice was quite radical at the time. I remember being asked by our Canada Council officer, Brenda Wallace, “why was so much hostility between A Space and the CEAC – is it because their gay?” How could I possibly answer that without laughing in her face?

The issues today are different, and in a way more challenging, because with tolerance comes blandness . . . (Being tolerated is, in essence, merely being allowed to exist, akin to the Irish novelist/playwright Sebastian Barry claim that “people talk about tolerance, but it’s not really about tolerance. It should also be about emulation and reverence and learning from.”)

My involvement with KAA was gradually increasing over the course of 1976 and at the time I was making a series of theoretical drawings for proposed environmental installations involving bodily fluid such as shit walls, cum floors . . . The only one actually realized was a room-sized floor-installation of cum – “Work # 059: Semen Floor” (1976) at the same time I participated in a KAA project in cooperation with Ryerson University to produce a series of multi-camera broadcast quality videotapes with the goal of having artist-made videos shown on television. My project was intended to be an S/M fashion show but the camera crew stormed out in protest at the appearance on camera of a man naked except for boots, leather vest and chaps. The screen shot here is from the couple of minutes that was taped.

It was at the new John Street location that I became much more directly involved, and that space was needed because the programming required it the Kensington location was merely the narrow ground floor of a not very large house; 86 John Street by comparison was two floors of quasi-industrial space that could easily accommodate large events and elaborate programming. It was here that the CEAC name began to appear alongside KAA. I’m unsure when the move actually happened but I surmise that it was in late ’75 because in January 1976 an exhibition of Body Art opened and in April, following my fiasco at Ryerson, I curated a performance art festival, “Work # 042: Bound, Bent, and Determined (a Look at Sado-Masochism)” with works about S/M by Andy Fabo, Wendy Knox-Leet Paul Dempsey, and Ron Gillespie (now Giii). It’s the only time in living memory I’d seen an audience of Leathermen in full regalia (outside of the Opera). This was also the beginning of our international exchanges and performance art tours. In total, there were three European tours with multiple stops at venues from Aalst to Zagreb; one-offs throughout southern Ontario and the northeastern United States; international conferences; and representation at Documenta. The John Street location only operated until September 1976 when the 15 Duncan Street flagship location opened and the CEAC was officially born. This was a ground-breaking event in the history of Canadian art – it was the first time in history that an artist-run centre (and queer-Marxist-dominated one at that) in Canada purchased a permanent home thanks to a $55,000 grant from Wintario. The four story building, located at the north east corner of Duncan and Pearl streets, was a substantial one indeed and CEAC occupied the top and bottom floors with the middle occupied by pre-existing tenants, one of which was the Ontario Liberal Party. Aside from museum spaces, the main performance area on the top floor was easily the largest gallery in the city, and the basement level was similarly large and open, and would eventually become the homes of the Crash ‘n Burn, Toronto’s first permanent punk rock venue, followed by the Funnel, Toronto’s first permanent venue for experimental film.

It was at this time that I was hired as assistant programming director  and a few months later, in the late spring of 1977 participated in the second performance art tour of Europe with work presented in Amsterdam, Aalst, Warsaw, Lublin, Bologna, and Ferrara and participation in conferences in Warsaw and Paris. This was followed by an invited to participate in the Free International University’s Violence and Behaviour workshop at Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany.  

During every iteration of Documenta, a survey of the best in cutting-edge art that happens roughly every five years in eastern Germany, Joseph Beuys would install himself for one hundred days in the Fridericianum, a lavish 18th century palace and one of the oldest museums in Europe, and become Headmaster of Free International University. Its program at Documenta VI dealt with a range of contemporary social themes and issues where radical and creative new thinking was needed to overcome existing problems, including human rights, urban decay, nuclear energy, refugees, the Third World, violence, manipulation by mass communications media, and labour issues.  These topics were discussed in an interdisciplinary way by a changing stream of international politicians, lawyers, economists, trade unionists, journalists, community workers, sociologists, actors, musicians, and artists. The participants invited to participate in the “Violence and Behaviour” workshop included a contingent from Toronto’s CEAC, a group from South Africa, the British behavioural performance team Reindeer Werk, and a contingent of the Polish contextualists. While Beuys maintained a commanding presence in the museum for the entire run of the exhibition, the “Violence and Behaviour Workshop” was only a small part of his programme and lasted at most a week to ten days. “Work # 971-(02): Dossier # 02 (Violence and Behaviour Work-shop, Documenta VI)” (2016) is a trio of archival documents from those workshops. I am next to Beuys at the far left, videotaping the proceedings. While unrecorded, my lecture on homoeroticism and the simulacra of violence in punk and leather/S&M, while widely praised afterwards, aroused much hostility from the audience in attendance. At the after party when the workshop had finished Beuys launched into a series of demeaning and contemptuous impersonations of his invited guests and ended his thanks by sticking his tongue down my throat. I’m probably one of a dwindling number of men that had been aggressively kissed by an actual card-carrying Nazi (As far as I know he’d never shown any contrition for his wartime exploits). Beuys thought of us as his students; we came to think of ourselves as props. He was a HORRIBLE man, and when he died in 1986 I didn’t shed a tear (crocodile or otherwise).

“Work # 954: Then and Now (Parkside Story)” (2016) brings together two works created thirty-eight years apart which, when united in marriage, question some of our most basic assumptions. The first work, written not long before being sexual assaulted by Joseph Beuys, consists of a grumpy and waspish account of two evenings on the town at the legendary Parkside tavern in 1977 – on its own not of insignificant historical interest – but combined with the second more politically provocative work from 2016 the paradox of present realities in conflict with nostalgic longing comes to the fore. The intent of embedding the incendiary position that “things were better when everyone hated us” on top of a murky and confrontational image is not to malign the magnificence that a certain degree of normality has been allowed to envelop our lives, it is about mourning some of the things we’ve sacrificed in achieving our state of grace. This shift back and forth in time illustrates that, in Luc Sante’s words “utopias last five minutes, to the extent that they happen at all. There will never be a time when the wish for security does not lead to unconditional surrender.” We have allowed, welcomed even, the wholesale corporate sponsorship of our existence – the benevolence of which doesn’t lead to more freedom and creativity, it leads to less. I remember hearing stories, after the gay liberation movement went mainstream in the late 1970s, of single straight men becoming fretful (the poor delicate things) of lunching alone with other men because of, shall we say, appearances. Such was our power to terrify.

The text reads:

“January 14, 1977. Arrived at the Parkside at about 10:00 p.m.; sat down and scanned the room. Not yet full to capacity but quite crowded nonetheless. “The Look” is as it always has been – that of a pseudo-working class dress: flannel shirts, denim; some leather, but not much tonight. Generally everyone takes care of their bodies, physical fitness abounds. I seem oddly out of place – the clothes are right but the body is all wrong. I’m really a wreck tonight, more so than usual. Soon we are invaded by two groups. The first being a pair who’s fantasies lie in the Vogue/Gentleman’s Quarterly life-style; one tells me with relish that they’re going to New York in March and asked if I’d ever been. I said regularly, he said, no seriously . . . I said, regularly. We devised a plan to get them to leave saying we will meet them later at another bar. Lies of course; it worked. The second group was of four fitting the stereotype of the room. They too seemed devoid of intellect. We changed tables to sit with two friends and a third who was a diminutive version of Karl Beveredge; I told him so but, of course, he didn’t know what I was talking about. Conversation was very pleasant. These two have finely-tuned sensibilities; certainly a rarity. Around closing-time we all decided to go dancing. I went only as a treat to myself because I worked hard all week and was pleased with my progress.

           “The situation there was similar – many of the same people, same general look. The atmosphere in the Parkside is very casual; no obvious sexual searching exists. The disco was the opposite – people standing, wandering around; waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. Maybe the next one will be . . . waiting, waiting. As always I seem to arouse no interest, for I’ve never really fit into the stereotype. I began fantasizing them all masturbating into mirrors. This situation inhibits me to the point of being afraid to ask anyone to dance. A rejection tonight would be heart-breaking.

“I left; 4:00 a.m., went home.

“February 12, 1977. Got to the Parkside about 9:30 to meet David there but he didn’t show up until 10:15. The crowd was the same as usual; didn’t know a soul. Everyone dressed alike. Everyone very butch but I could only pick out one person that didn’t have his lumberjack shirt ironed. I wore black police boots, green work pants (dirty) black t-shirt inside out with the right armpit torn, hair all over, the beginnings of a Hitler moustache. A much raunchier version of the rest of the room; the Xerox machine was broken, I guess. David arrived, we had couple. Changed tables for a more central location because our view of the landscape was blocked by pillars. Had a couple more, discussed Robert Handforth’s looks, too bad he’s the enemy. Went down the road for a couple after much debate but David wouldn’t be served. So we went back. Sat with a friend of David’s I remember him from the march but can’t recall his name. Went to another table, I can’t remember why; had a couple more. Conversation was about commercial films. Ended up God-knows-where in the East end. David getting the attention of two while I sat like a lump. All went back downtown for a burger at Fran’s – typical service. Got a ride home at about 4:30. Ron was up, had some tea and went to bed.”

I stumbled upon this text entirely by accident. After a health scare forced me to get my affairs in order I began researching my own career at the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at York University, which houses the CEAC archive. When I found this long forgotten hand-written document my brain screamed “what the fuck . . . !” Having never been a diarist, what I find perplexing is why did I begin with this account of a couple of nights on the town, and why did I stop after only two entries? Had I been disciplined enough to continue one can only imagine the shock and horror that would have been provoked by firsthand accounts of the crises our community faced with the AIDS epidemic and beyond.

To say that the Parkside Tavern was ugly would be an understatement. Attracting the leather/levis cohort of the community and located at 530 Yonge Street, this exclusively male enclave in the back room of the tavern was a brightly lit and minimally furnished dive. It was a room that style forgot. The Parkside had all the charm of a backwoods Legion Hall. But this would be an insult to every Legion Hall in the country.

It was absolutely my favourite place.

“Work # 954: Then and Now (Parkside Story)” has only ever been shown twice; as part of a mini-career survey at the Robert Kananaj Gallery in Toronto in early 2017 and, more significantly, for one day at the 519 Community Centre as part of the 2016 Nuit Rose festival. I stood in the corner of the room when it was displayed like a nosy spider and was stunned by the reaction to the work. Aside from the idiots that can’t pry themselves away from their phones, the text was devoured and tempers were flaring. I remember in particular an older woman and her much younger friend heatedly arguing – the young woman would have none of it, the very idea that gay life before her birth may have had anything to offer was not only an absurdity, it was an insulting dismissal of her world-view. Her much wiser companion disagreed. Loudly. The work was constantly surrounded by a crowd. At another moment a man turned away in tears; not old enough to have been to that marvelous dump but perhaps in silent agreement with the older woman that contemporary urban gay life is a bit . . . sterile and over-designed?

 2

At the end of 1978 I moved to New York City and I simply detested it there. The filth, the segregation, the expense, the pretentiousness, the provincialism . . . I was ready to come back after six months, but then I me someone who would turn out to be the man of my dreams, John Hammond. At the time I thought “ok, I’ll give it a shot. But if it’s not perfection I’m out of here.” Twenty-one years later John came around to my way of thinking and agreed that New York was indeed a shit hole and acknowledged it was time to move on. So we sold our house (in the slums of Brooklyn) and headed north in the spring of 2001. Had we waited six months, current events would have rendered our house worthless and we’d have been stuck there. But let me digress . . .

           Art was completely on the backburner. I’d come to the conclusion that by the end of the 1970s art had hit a brick wall; that the very idea of an artist as innovator had played itself out, that the narrative of art history had come to an end. This was bolstered by the rise of the post-this and neo-that’s and all of their attendant derivativeness. Aside from all of these theoretical questions, given the health crisis gay men were beginning to face, art seemed kind of pointless when everyone around you was dropping like flies. It was not until the early 1990s, once I’d been able to digest the horrors of the previous 15 years, that I made tentative steps to revive a long dormant art practice. As a consequence, during this period my time was occupied with jobs as the art director of Christopher Street magazine and the New York Native newspaper. Concurrent with this, for a time, I was also an on-call page designer and night art director at the Village Voice. In my spare time I was the co-founder and chief archivist of the International Gay History Archive (now housed as part of the Rare Books and Manuscript division of the New York Public Library). At the end of this period saw my archival collection providing the backbone for the landmark 1994 exhibition at the New York Public Library “Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall” and publication of the accompanying book “Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America” (Penguin/Putnam 1998).

Instigated by Carlos Gutierrez-Solana, director of the New York non-profit Artists Space, the gallery would dedicate an area near the front entrance as an “AIDS Forum”, to be in place until a cure was found and showing work by a different artist each month that had been inspired by the epidemic. It was a noble idea, but most of the work was sentimental claptrap. In early 1993 Carlos commissioned me to create a site-specific installation directly on their walls (Sol Lewitt-style) as part of a multi-artist, gallery-wide project evocatively titled “Activated Walls”. During their fund-raising period, the artists worked in the gallery during regular business hours, supposedly allowing the public to witness the mythical “artist process” as it unfolded. After the opening with the standard bad wine the exhibition would remain for the also standard three weeks and them be painted over and destroyed. Based on previous work, Gutierrez-Solana knew I would in all likelihood create an inflammatory polemic and thus increasing the profile of the gallery. I was being groomed as the next sortie in the on-going culture war.

“Work # 163: Interrogation (An AIDS Forum)” (1993) was designed in the blunt, take-no-prisoners style of Russian constructivism and was completely at odds with all the variations of lyrical abstraction being vomited onto the other walls of the gallery. The walls were painted the colour of dried blood and a row of ten Xerox enlargements of prominent government scientists, journalists, and movement spokespeople were glued to the wall near the floor. Above these images was a stenciled (and carefully footnoted) text which declared in part that “these collaborators maintain their positions of authority through theft, questionable research, conflict of interest, fabricated data, bogus medications, lucrative publishing deals, and star-studded fund-raising scams. Along with their AIDS movement flunkies and media cheerleaders, they have conspired to stifle any research that does not centre on HIV theory”. Brightly coloured chalk lines, like laser beams against the red background, connected the individual charges with the heads of the accused. Very high up on the wall was stenciled “AZT=Death” parodying and implicating the “Silence=Death” slogan of the then fashionable ACT UP.

That the text was incendiary was beside the point; it was the calling into question the depth of the liberal pieties paraded around by the red-ribboned Chanel and Armani set that was going a step too far, and would prove to be explosive – leading to unintended consequences. Being photographed at the opening by Vanity Fair was no insulation against the social death caused by tossing a bomb into the middle of that year’s trendy cause. Even though the installation was described as being the best of the entire series so far, a week later the director was fired by the Board of Directors (which at that time included Cindy Sherman) and his replacement unilaterally cancelled the AIDS Forum project quicker than an executive order from Donald J. Trump.

 3

As I’ve said, I simply detested New York City. Throughout this whole period I’d felt neither comfortable nor particularly welcomed there, but the feelings for my man so far outweighed my feelings for the city that we bought a little broken down house in the slums of Brooklyn in 1984 we spent the next several years transforming it into our home, playing host to an ever expanding network of artists, activists, actors and writers from around the world. Throughout the 1990s we were both becoming increasingly disenchanted and our trips to Canada increasing in frequency. The decision to leave was in many ways a no-brainer, John’s final years in the States were frustrating and unfulfilled, and all of our friends had either died or had already left, so by Christmas 2000 we were ready to leave New York.

After the grueling closing/packing/getting-out-for-good that any real estate transaction entails, the trauma of our final escape to Canada at the end of May 2001 was complete when we were nearly arrested. We were lost somewhere in the middle of New Jersey, driving in the wrong direction on a one way street into the oncoming headlights of a police cruiser. The cops had their flash lights out and their guns at the ready and were none-too-quick in concluding that these two pieces of human wreckage were not running the guns, or drugs, or white slaves, or weapons of mass destruction they had been hoping to find. I’d left Canada 22 years before with a small knapsack and was returning with the contents of a three storey house, plus a man and a large dog in tow; the onus was on my paltry shoulders to cross an international border and not screw up. I’d worked myself into a paranoid frenzy by the time we got to Niagara Falls, only to discover that the Customs and Immigration staff looked like they had pot parties after work and were actually excited with the prospect of a returning Canadian.

When I was approved as John’s sponsor and he had received conditional approval from Immigration through the family class category in April of 2003, he took to wearing a maple leaf pin in his lapel. I found this slightly cringe-inducing. But the depth of John’s growing animosity toward his own country peaked when he confessed a wish that he had been born a Canadian; this I found truly shocking.

We were partners in the truest sense of the word, with an avid interest in whatever projects each of us was pursuing at the time. We would help one another through our frequent bouts of self-doubt, and soldier on it the face of those financial crises that only seem to occur at the most inopportune of times. We would find ourselves both happily unemployed after getting out of particularly soul-destroying jobs only to discover that our house had termites; or in 2001 when we finally did the adult thing and invested all of our extra money in mutual funds on September 10th . . . In March 2004, after much toing and froing, we got married when it became possible at City Hall on our twenty-fifth anniversary. And then cancer paid a visit . . .  

While John’s health had been fragile for some time, it seemed to have improved dramatically; he no longer needed to use an inhaler and he was for the first time in years relaxed and stress-free. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, surgery was planned then aborted after a second test revealed that the cancer had spread to his pancreas and liver and the prognosis was very negative – 3-12 months. In August John complained of shortness of breath and was taken to the emergency room, his cancer had spread quite rapidly and was beginning to affect his kidneys. Plans were arranged for him to die at home but he passed away in the early morning of September 12, 2004 a few hours before the delivery of his deathbed.                                         February 6, 2017

Bruce Eves creates conceptually-driven photo-based works that explore the shifting nature of time, focus, and perception, as well as the ever-changing relationship between image versus interpretation and memory versus present-day reality. He co-founded and was chief archivist for the International Gay History Archive (now part of the Rare Books and Manuscript division of the New York Public Library). His work is represented in a diverse number of public collections from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to the Tom of Finland Foundation.