Dancer from the Dance and Labyrinth of Passion
Oh hello,
“How do I escape the pastoral?” I ask Sam, one morning sharing a thermos, before he goes off to work. With Dilara, who I’ve continued to see since that dinner at Carmen’s, there’s more softness, more gentle security than I’m used to in dating. Deep down, I know I don’t want long flowing skirts and wind rushing through trees, the smell of morning dew, and berries picked for later. I know I still want steel and concrete. But with Dil, when I imagine more time with her, I see us lying in the grass, or sitting on top of a hill. I imagine something wonderful and warm and soft. I imagine rural and vast and quiet. But also empty and simple and devoid of burning. I’m scared that my desire for things to be fast and sharp won’t fit next to the ease and calm in our relationship. Sam says I need to give Dil a chance. That sometimes I misread generosity as pathetic-ness and availability as a lack of spine. Last night, me and Dil left a perfume launch smelling of sandalwood and frankincense. We walked home and she told me I can do better than that. And then she brought out of her bag a pear for us to eat. With a large bite in her mouth, she said she wished one of us had a small peugeot and we could drive with a stack of newspapers and magazines all the way to the coast of Scotland to sit on the sand with stale sandwiches and an uncomfortable amount of wind. Dil said she used to love long car trips as a child. She liked the ritual of shared movement and unease and distaste with each other. We could do that! She smiled at me. We could grow to hate each other in the car.
I’ve been asked to make a smell to accompany a group show. Sell out! But cute. At first, I was interested in the trend of scents that accentuate the already present smells of the body – the kind of scents that reflect our contemporary lust for the same but MORE. But now, I think, I want to mix different common smells of ex’s like Flowerbomb and Marc Jacobs’ Daisy and maybe like CDG Wonderwood and have these smells seem out of reach, like in the room, but somewhere else. I want the smell to inspire a look over a shoulder and a craning of the neck. Sam thinks it’ll just smell gross and floral.
Dancer from the Dance (1978) by Andrew Holleran
The novel begins with an exchange of letters. One, still in New York, has written a novel, about a particular moment in 70s New York, that they want to send to the other, now retired from New York and living a quiet simple life. The author wants to write a novel about “why life is SAD. And what people do for Love (everything)-whether they’re gay or not”. His first reader warns against attempting an historical record of life then. “[A]ll a piece of literature should do, I think, is tell you what is was like touching Frank Romero’s lips for the first time on a hot afternoon in August in the bathroom of Les’ Cafe on the way to Fire Island.”
The novel, which we then read, focusses on Malone and Sutherland. Sutherland is an iconic party queen. Malone, “a prisoner of love”, is new to the scene and the object of everyone’s desire. The novel is all parties and romance and gossip. And, like the author hoped, it is sad. The scene that it captures “a core of people who seemed to have no existence at all outside this room” is one of dead eyed melancholy, cut, I guess, with high points of euphoria and recognition and sex. Holleran describes a world in which its cast is aware, dimly, that their life cannot continue like this forever; that ultimately, life outside the dance exists, and that life is terrible. But still they go out. And look divine.
The novel returns to letters. The first reader, retired from NY, reflects on the despair of that time, and the emptiness that people like Malone felt. Malone, she says, “was still stuck with his mortal body and his mortal lusts and mortal loveliness”. She continues: “You can’t live on the promise of a casual smile which passes while you sit on the stoop waiting for the breeze from the river. … You can’t love eyes, my dear, you can’t love youth… You must stick to earth, always.”
Labyrinth of Passion (1982) by Pedro Almodóvar
A nymphomaniac pop star called Sexilia, whose father is a gynaecologist specialising in artificial insemination, falls in love with a gay prince masquerading as the lead of a punk band. The two bands are rivals. Their love is forbidden and, consequently, kept secret. Sexilia gives her drycleaning to Queti who is being abused by her father. Queti adores Sexi and wears her clothes before cleaning them. Then there is a Fabio, a trans porn star icon, of course, who helps disguise and transform the gay prince.
Like the title suggests, you can get lost in this film. But you do so willingly, because the performances and outfits capture you. It reminds me of the frantic eclecticism of Gregg Araki’s movies. Almodóvar builds outrageous and iconic characters who have something to say, who don’t settle for their small role in the film. Sex preoccupies them, but, refreshingly, the film is not doomed by gender and sexuality and types. It’s not just tops looking for bottoms or butches seeking femmes. There is, instead, in this labyrinth, a simple logic of lust. Amidst this is the love story of Sexi and the gay prince. Sexi doesn’t want to have sex with the prince because she wants the relationship to mean something more. The gay prince, for his part, has never had sex with a woman. He is nervous.
Love
Anne
such. great. writing.
This was an extremely nice email to receive, thank you