On femme lit

Like Son. Felicia Luna Lemus. New York: Akashic Books, 2007.



I feel a little behind the times talking about T. Cooper and Felicia Luna Lemus. Even though I purchased both Lipschitz Six and Like Son months ago, I just got around to them now as the summer reading bug hit me. In the meantime, both authors of this literary power couple have achieved a little bit of well-deserved notariety, exemplified by this interview on Queeerty and a photo spread in Curve Magazine. All of which served to demonstrate to me that these two are one hot couple. Seriously. I want to pin up the Curve photos of them in my room so I can drool. But for all their hotness as a couple, their books each deserve individual attention and not much good is served by comparing them, so I will try to talk about Like Son on its own.

And, independent of all other thoughts and issues, Like Son kept my attention and made me want to keep reading. While it may not be the perfect book, it made me happy because it captured an attitude toward feminity that resonated with me. I didn't exactly love or identify with the main character, who is a disaffected punk transguy. I believe the character is interesting and well-crafted, but somehow he didn't feel right to me. He wasn't the heart and soul of the novel, even though he was the main character, and that in itself is a fascinating literary choice. The power and excitement in Like Son lies in its female characters, the mysterious historical figure of Nahui Olin, a bohemian artist and poet from Mexico City in the 1920s and 1930s and the equally mysterious figure of Nathalie, the protagonist's beautifully femme girlfriend.

For me, the utterly brilliant scene that exemplifies this book at its best occurs when the protagonist, Frank, first meets Nathalie. Within the story, "meeting Nathalie was like being hit by a force of nature" (98), but that held true for me as well. Lemus' depiction of this unique, flawed, creatively glamorous woman seduced me from the first hint of her appearance, foreshadowed by the narrator's revelation that "I can't tell you how many times I later wished I could go back to warn my naive self: Yes, she will be complicated. And yes, it'll be hot. But seriously, fool, brace yourself. Loving her will be the hardest thing you'll ever know"(32). From her first appearance, Nathalie is all colors and scents and textures and layers of femninity: "I smelled her breath as she laughed. Bergamot and peppermint and just a hint of expensive vodka. She had on this wrinkeld vintage Ginger Rogers copper-orange ballroom gown, teetering faux-leopard fur open-toe platform heels, and a rust-colored rabbit fur jacket -- an outfit that would have looked like costumed ridiculous on anybody else, but on her was just right. Her flyaway auburn hair was a tangled mess of a Vargas girl updo. Her perfume was incredibly sweet, almost too sweet, like rice milk about to turn" (99). As the relationship between Frank and Nathalie develops, she somehow remains distant and mysterious, her actions inexplicable but alluring. Thoughout the book, I want to know more about her, understand her motivations, hear the story from her perspective. In many ways, though I don't really identify with Frank on a personal level, I am drawn into his fascination with this woman and placed in his position and that is a beautiful experience.

The thing is, I don't want to be Frank. I want to be Nathalie. Like Son is one of a few books that fosters and inspires my own femininity. As I was reading it, I felt more and more inspired to play up and play with my own femininity. I find myself wearing more skirts and dresses, putting on more makeup for going out, lusting after new clothes. It's the kind of book that inspires me to enjoy femininity, layering on too much glitter and gold nail polish and wacky accessories. Reading this book made me want to be more femme.

The character of Nathalie, with Nahui Olin as her historical referent, is a magnificent femme captured in a way that I rarely find in novels, and I'm sad that it's Frank that gets to do all the talking about her. I'd love to hear her voice more. It makes me want to think, though, about books I've read in the past. It seems that there would be many great novels in which a man (or woman, really) meets and is mesmerized by a woman so that she becomes the center of the novel, though without a voice of her own. But I can't necessarily think of examples. Perhaps Lolita? And are there novels with femme voices? When do you get to hear the perspective of women consciously cultivating feminity? What other books might make me feel femme? Or does writing about femininity instantly devolve into chick lit obsessed with men and shopping? Can a powerful femme character be the center of the novel, or does she become something else when the story is told from her perspective and she can no longer be mysterious? Are there queer femme fiction writers out there I should be reading?

Anyway, I may be missing the point of the book, since it really is also a beautiful and engaging story of a queer masculine protagonist fighting toward maturity and learning to leave his personal and imagined history behind. I loved Like Son and I'm decidedly inspired to find more queer femme writing if I can. I will immediately be reading Lemus' first book, Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties, even though I'm highly skeptical about the phrase "dyke princess" which appears in several of the blurbs about the book. But I'll gladly take recommendations of other femme writing. I'd love to find more books that feel as beautiful and resonant and inspiring in queer ways as this one did.

Another good year of Fresh Meat

Fresh Meat. ODC Theater. 6/15/07.

Fresh Meat once again delivers a fabulous collection of performances by transgender artists. The show was well organized (except for the obnoxious bit where they sold out, had a huge line, and started the show about 15 minutes late) and, for once, didn't feel too long. It was heavily dance-focused with performance of Afro-Colombian dance by Columbian Soul, aerial acrobatics by Michael Chernus-Goldstein, and hip hop by Freeplay Dance Crew in addition to an extensive new piece entitled "Bully" by the festival's artistic director, Sean Dorsey. In the realm of music, the fabulous Shawna Virago performed delightfully provokative rock 'n' roll and Triple Threat Taiko were adorable and extremely powerful. But I'll focus on the performance art/theater type pieces, since that's what I know best.

I was impressed by Imani's Henry's performance of single monologue that was an excerpt from a larger work about slavery. I believe it's a scene from "Living in the Light" but I seem to have misplaced my program during the trip home from San Francisco, so the information I have is less accurate than it should be. The piece Henry performed was beautifully self-contained and coherent, while opening up to and suggesting the longer work. In it, he referenced himself as trans briefly by talking about himself as a young black girl, but that was in no way the focus of the performance. The excerpt was intellectually dense and engaging and definitely made me want to see the Henry's whole show.

ryka aoki de la cruz debuted a new piece of performance art called "≤1" (less than or equal to one). It was a piece that I look forward to seeing ryka perform again - it was intensly emotional and complex and funny at times and I think it will evolve in performance in good ways.

Sean Dorsey's "Bully" may have been the highlight of the evening for me. It's a lovely, poignant new work about bullying and queer friendship that will eventually be performed as part of a longer work called Untold Stories. Dorsey performs this piece with two other men, which I found interesting because I had only seen him partnering with women before. His work continues to employ lifts and mirroring to eloquently express the ways that people interact. The bullying felt most violent and violating to me in one moment that the dancer playing the bully character touched Dorsey's chest and hips, drawing attention to the feminine parts of Dorsey's masculine body. While the narrative of the piece describes much more dangerous violence, it was this move early in the performance that emphasized the sense of physical violation created by bullying for me. Dorsey's combination of music, choreography, and narrative continues to impress and engage me and I highly recommend this powerful work.

Overall, I had a highly entertaining evening at Fresh Meat, and I'm very glad I attended. Look for more great work by all of these artists throughout the year.

Cute But Dumb

Adrift in Macao. Primary Stages. 59E59 Theaters. 2/14/07

I wouldn't date someone who was cute but dumb, and I'm a little dubious about a musical with the same qualities. Christopher Durang's new musical (with music by Peter Melnick), Adrift in Macao, has moments when it's really fun, but generally eschews being clever in favor of being wacky. In the program, Durang distinguishes his "satiric and dark comedy plays" and "entertainments" which include "parodies and what I might call my 'friendly, silly' plays." Adrift in Macao has nothing dark about it, which is odd for a parody of a genre that's all about light and shadow, discontent with society and the darker side of human nature.

It manages to be a fun play with some good moments, but more attention to the strengths of the genre being parodied would help quite a bit. There are some fun musical numbers, paticularly "Adrift in Macao" and "Mr. McGuffin" even though I find the whole McGuffin plot irritating. The night club songs, as they often are in '40s films, are more irritating and stupid than compelling. And the premise of Rick (Will Swenson as Rick Shaw) inserting a song because he's not getting enough attention, while briefly funny, seems to me a rip off of the self-conscious songs of Spamalot. Swenson is, however, an interesting and underused actor and character. He looks the part of the film noir hero more than Alan Campbell does; Campbell's a bit too cuddly for the role, in my opinion, and the stubble fails to make him look tough at all. This is funny, though, since he also played the lead in another film noir musical, Sunset Boulevard.

The elements that Adrift in Macao picked up from the film Macao are by far its strongest parts, though Durang seems to have chosenthe one noir film without much in the way of femme fatale. While Jane Russel's character in the film (Lureena played by Rachel De Benedet in Durang's version) is tough and interesting and capable of taking care of herself, all she wants is to settle down somewhere, preferably back in the USA. In Durang's version, she actually says all she wants is a man to take care of her. Groan. And does she really have to be that blond? I hated her wig.

Macao itself, for a film set in distant and exotic Asia, actually isn't that bad in terms of Asian sterotypes, so Durang adds a few for good measure. Tempura, the "inscrutable" Asian who frequently insists "I'm very scrutable!" is an annoying and offensive role played hilariously by Orville Mendoza.

Michele Ragusa plays Corinna, a rival nightclub singer, and she's fun and funny and has excellent comedic skills. She and Mendoza may be the best things about this play. But unfortunately, noir is not a genre in which a second lead comedic pair really works, so their roles are rather nonsensical despite their talents and best efforts.

Overall, Adrift in Macao had many jokes that made me laugh outwardly and groan inwardly at the same time. I did have fun watching the play, but that's not really enough for me. I kept feeling that with a little tweaking it could have been a much better play, especially if it hadn't assumed its audience was stupid. For example, in a few of the early scenes, Tempura carries around the Maltese falcon, which is a fun reference for those of us in the know. Eventually, Rick Shaw explains that he's going to use it to smuggle fake diamonds, which actually makes the reference less funny than when it was just a funny object hanging around. At one point, Corrina invites Mitch to "come up and see me some time." Why use a Mae West line, when there are fabulous seduction scenes between Bacal and Bogart that would have been just as familiar and so much more noir ("You do know how to whistle, don't you" springs to mind). I would have loved to see more references to noir films that actually assume some people in the audience might have some knowledge of the genre. Concepts such as existentialism and film noir are not entirely foreign to most people with any sort of education, so even though it's not safe to assume that people have seen Macao or any given specific noir film, it would have been nice to have given them credit for familiarity with film noir in general.