Gender and Sex Compared: A Look into Songs to Joannes and The Waste Land
Sexuality and gender are both present in Mina Loy’s Songs to Joannes and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and yet both poems use such issues in different manners. Sexuality in Songs to Joannes is written by a woman, yet in the text, seemingly regarded to a man’s opinion. Yet, in Eliot’s piece, though written by a man, sexuality and love are viewed through woman’s eyes and a woman’s voice. In both, it is the interaction between men and woman that help the reader identify gender to both the speaker and the author, but also the text. For if one can claim that Eliot’s The Waste Land is decidedly feminine, which Wayne Koestenbaum did, the reader should be able to make that same conclusion for Loy’s Songs to Joannes. But not only that, the reader will see that it is through the age in which both poems were written and the modernity within the poems that help establish gender and their place as sexual comprehensive texts.
To fully understand and view the sexuality within these two texts, a comparison of the poems is needed. Loy’s Songs to Joannes, really is quite the opposite of Eliot’s The Waste Land. Neither have much to do with the other, yet they seem to play off each other when regarding sexual content and discussions of gender. As stated before, it is within the interactions in the poems that the pieces fit together of the puzzles of the author’s view on men and women, how they ‘fit together.’ While both Loy and Eliot focus on the woman’s view and personality, the man is not forgotten.
Loy’s entire piece, while written by a woman and seen through her eyes, focus on a man named Joannes. Joannes was her lover for a time, maybe even a husband. Though the reader receives to direct dialogue between the two, it feels like Loy is having a conversation with him, but we can’t hear his response. Yet, the reader still gets the gist by how Loy counters, (if it is Loy speaking at all). One view of Joannes’ character seen through this one-sided conversation is during the narrator’s mention of “two or three welded together.”
“Where two or three are welded together
They shall become god
-----------------------
Oh that’s right
Keep away from me Please give me a push
Don’t let me understand you Don’t realise me
Or we might tumble together
Depersonalized
Identical
Into the terrific Nirvana
Me you—you—me” (Loy 58).
In this conversation, Joannes words seem to be scripted right out of the passage. But it is unmistakable how he answered her question to marriage or perhaps starting a family. Something else to be noted in this passage is that whatever Joannes remarked, the woman speaker didn’t seem to have a say in the decision-making process. Instead, her anger and resentment are brought forth almost hysterically. She becomes irrational and sarcastic, proving that her words don’t really matter to the man in the relationship. She can do nothing more than complain when he rules against her.
In Eliot’s The Waste Land, we get the same feeling of one-sidedness and female hysterics when observing interactions between men and women. In the section “A Game of Chess,” the two characters, supposedly Eliot and his wife, also have a one-sided conversation, and while the woman is the only one speaking, again, the reader is privileged Eliot’s responses, though not spoken aloud.
”'My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

'What is that noise?'
The wind under the door.
'What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?'
Nothing again nothing. 'Do
'You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
'Nothing?'
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?' But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent” (Eliot 111-130).
Eliot’s view on the relationship between a man and a woman are seen clearly in this passage. While the woman goes into a frenzy of worry, questions and obvious anxiety, the man is calm, not bothered, and feels no need to reply to such questions. Not only does this passage express the relationship of a marriage, but also how both genders differ from one another. Again, like it Loy’s passage, the male is succinct, calm, without need to raise his voice. In fact, it’s not the man’s actual word’s that express the gender in both poems, but how the women react.
Sexuality in the poems is communicated much the same way. Loy’s poem, because it is much more focused on the relationship between a man and woman, and the sexual urges among the two, exhibits blatant sexual displays. Quotes like, “Shuttle-cock and battle-door/ A little pink-love/ And feathers are strewn” and “Flesh from flesh/ Draws the inseparable delight/ Kissing at gasps to catch it” give adamant details to the bedroom of Loy and her lover (Loy 56 & 57). It is within these sexual phrases that the man and woman are not separated. The reader can conclude that the bedroom is the only place within these poems that the man and woman are equally grounded. Or at least in Loy’s case. Eliot makes use of a sexual scene to put more distance between man and woman. In this scene the reader gets perspectives from both man and woman.
“Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference” (Eliot 237-242).
While the woman later comments to herself, “Well, now that that is done: and I’m glad it’s over” (Eliot 252). While the man and woman are not equal in their pleasure, both seem to have gotten what they wanted from coupling.
While the differences in gender in both of the poems are quite obvious through both dialogue and interactions, and even the thought processes of the characters, one must wonder if such inequality and, on Eliot’s part, blatant prejudices between the sexes has something to do with the times they were written. Songs to Joannes, though written in 1917, displays a vocabulary for a work that could likely be written within the later 20th century, instead of the beginning. This is mostly due to Loy’s part in Futurism. While the relationship described is still very much 19th century, she looks to the future for inspiration or maybe guidance on her part. Her hope, within the poem, seems always to lie ahead of her. It is her hopes of what is to come. She holds her hope in the ‘new.’ “I have got to tell you and I can’t tell/ Something taking shape/Something has a new name/A new dimension/A new use” (Loy 57 & 58). This ‘new thing’ is something that the future holds for the speaker. She goes on to speak of ‘Proto-plasm’ and ‘evolving.’ While some of her other works follow more heavily into the futurist category, like Partuition and Three Moments in Paris, Songs to Joannes dabbles in futurism just a bit.
Eliot leaned more toward modernity than futurism. In F.R. Leavis’ essay, “The
Significance of the Modern Waste Land,” the question is asked how the Modern Waste Land affects the poem. Leavis expounds on the subject by comparing Eliot’s time to that of our own. “In considering our present plight we have also to take account of the incessant rapid change that characterizes the Machine Age. The result is a breach of continuity and the uprooting of life…Sex here is sterile, breeding not life and fulfillment but disgust, accidia and unanswerable questions” (Leavis 174). The Waste Land, written in 1922, was much steeped in the machine age. Yet, despite the time in which it was written, the poem focuses more on the past and past generations, than the future.
Returning to the function of gender in a poem, the reader should look to Cleanth Brooks Jr.’s analysis of The Waste Land. Brooks, very effectively, analyzed Eliot’s poem to the fullest extent, making it possible for the everyday reader to understand the subtly of the text. It is in his essay, that the reader can look back at all of the gender specific scenes in the piece and comprehend more than just the words. In his essay, Brooks quotes Allen Tate saying, “’the woman…is, I believe, the symbol of man at the present time. He is surrounded by the grandeurs of the past, but he does not participate in them; they don’t sustain him’” (Brooks 192). Truly, Eliot shows that a man is not sustained by women’s trifles or words, let alone women themselves. Brooks continues his analysis and continues to dig deeper into the emotions of the men and women portrayed in The Waste Land. Concerning the sexuality within the poem, Brooks states that “Love is the aesthetic of sex; lust is the science. Love implies deferring to the satisfaction of the desire; it implies even a certain asceticism and a ritual. Lust drives forward urgently and scientifically to the immediate extirpation of the desire” (Brooks 193). With both Loy and Eliot’s works, such a difference between love and lust is shown. While Loy spoke of love often, she considered love and sex to be on the same plane. Brooks disagrees. Loy felt lust toward her lover, but when she tried to connect on a higher level, either through marriage or conception, she was continually denied. Love was not present in her poem. With Eliot, the couple in “The Fire Sermon” gave into their lust, merely the science of sex. Even the married couple in “A Game of Chess” displayed no love for each other, and worse still, no lust.
Brooks goes on to speak of the modern waste land as well. Practically quoting Leavis, Brooks states that “[in] the modern waste land, however, even the relationship between man and woman is also sterile” (Brooks 197). It is within this modern waste land that love and sex and gender are forgotten. They are placed to the side when competing with sterility. Yet, it is because of this gender sterility, and the black and whiteness of sex that the sexuality and gender of the pieces really stand out. By both Eliot and Loy making their differed statements about love and relationships, sterility seems almost impossible, though that is what both the authors seem to be trying for.
It is because of such relationships and interactions that the reader can see that both The Waste Land and Songs to Joannes are female. Gendering the poems as female may seem drastic to some, but it is the hysterics portrayed by women in both the pieces that help towards this view. If hysteria is considered a female attribute by Eliot and other Imagist poets, then it is fare to say that the poems themselves are also female in a sense. The amounts of hysteria in the poems do not reside in just the female roles, but in every line written. Just like the wife in “A Game of Chess” goes from topic to topic, without pause, so do both the poems as wholes. The Waste Land especially seems to flit from worry to worry, life to life, without stopping for breath, or to see whether the audience kept up with the pace at which it goes. This, surely, is hysteria. For Loy it is the same, though somewhat more serene. And it is through this hysteria that the woman is understood and the texts take on a different form. The form of a woman.

Written 2006

October Dusks

This month is not my month, I know.
October is not my month at all.
Just starting to get cold and damp.
The trees going bald with age.

The days they linger far too long.
These days linger too much for me.
I yearn to see the sun go down
Just one more time today.

And when this slow month ends
Another will take its place.
Yes, another long month will surely come to stay.
Another long month is on its way.

The October dusks and dawns and dawns.
Through my window it dusks and dawns.
Close the curtains on that morn for me.
Just let me go back to sleep.

And please God, when this next month comes
Yes Lord, when November comes,
Let it sweep this pain-filled October dust
Right out of the corners of me.

For another month must take its place
It can’t stay too much longer please.
For November sweeps the colds outside
So they won’t linger inside me.


Written 2005

The Gender Mantle: a look into A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
Gender is an issue very prominent in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Not only does it separate the powerful from the powerless, but it also reaffirms the lines in society. But in MND, gender has quite a unique role. Throughout the play, almost every character chooses what gender they will be; they put on and take off gender like a mantel. This leads to many power transfers from men to women and women to men, just like in the movie Kill Bill: Volume 1. The bride in most films would be looked upon as a sweet loving lady, but “The Bride” takes off her wedding dress and becomes a vengeful assassin. This is the same for the women in MND, but not so extreme. In fact, the only character that seems to be stuck in his powerless feminine role is a man, Nick Bottom.
Although Bottom is obviously male, his character is modeled as a female role. He is the butt of many jokes within the play and the play-within-a-play. For example, Bottom is changed into an ass for the delight of other, more powerful characters. Oberon requests that Titania fall in love with “lion, bear, or wolf, or bull, / on meddling monkey, or on a busy ape,” so when Puck returns and tells Oberon that Titania loves an ass, both couldn’t be happier (II. i, 180-181). Bottom is not only portrayed as a powerless character, one to be played upon, but also is compared to an animal.
Yet, with Oberon’s and Puck’s playing, Titania was played a fool also. Titania is considered a very powerful character in MND, but she was put into both masculine and feminine roles. When Titania is sleeping and then drugged into loving a transformed Bottom, she has no power over who she chooses to love, thus she was quite feminine. Yet, while under the power of the drug, Titania was able to put on the mantel of masculinity. Titania still had many servants, still had power as the Queen of Fairies, so it was she who seduced Bottom and not the other way around. Bottom mainly did as he was told, and for a short time, lived off of her wealth and power: both very feminine characteristics of a relationship. In the end, Titania took off the masculine role, but she was above Bottom even then.
Another woman in MND that had more power and masculinity than Bottom was Helena. In the beginning, Helena was one of the most masculine characters of the play. Not only did she defy her feminine role because she “made love” before she was married, but after being rejected, she still stalked and tried to seduce Demetrius (I. i, 107). Her most famous masculine passage gives the reader a look into how Helena considers herself and Demetrius:
The wildest hath not such as heart as you.
Run when you will, the story shall be chang’d:
Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase,
The dove pursues the griffin, the mild hind
Makes speed to catch the tiger—bootless speed,
When cowardice pursues and valor flies. (II. ii, 229-234).

Helena considers herself the man in the relationship. She continues to try to woo Demetrius and win his affections. She is persistent, cunning and strangely charming in her pursuit of Demetrius. And by putting on the masculine mantle in this relationship, she forces feminine attire upon Demetrius until he is ready for that role himself.
Demetrius, though very manly, is played upon just as much and maybe more so than Bottom. Both he and Lysander are drugged as Titania is, but Demetrius, unlike the other two, is never granted release from the spell’s affect. Throughout the play, both before and after being drugged, Demetrius slips in and out of gender. As stated earlier, in his relationship Helena, he was the pursued, the sought after, the “valor” that “flies” (II. ii, 234). Demetrius then finds himself with a more masculine role after he is drugged. And though being played upon makes him a somewhat powerless character, he, like Titania, put on a manly role through seduction. After his drugging, “the story” is put right. Now Apollo chases Daphne; the griffin pursues the dove. So, is both played upon and a player in this scene. And still, even though he is drugged and forced into an unwilling love, Demetrius holds more power and masculinity than Bottom ever did.
While the rest of the characters change gender almost every other scene, Bottom is continues to bear just one. Unlike the other male characters that are equally played upon, like Demetrius and Lysander, Bottom never gains a strong masculine role. Throughout the play, in fact, Bottom is seen as lesser amongst both his social class and the higher ups. Amid his peers, Bottom is pretentious and quite annoying. Quince only seems to put up with him because he needs an actor. And among the higher echelons of society Bottom and the crew are mocked outright.
One aspect that keeps Bottom in this gender is his ranking in society. Lysander and Demetrius are able to bounce back from being played upon because the power that comes with being nobility, while Bottom’s low class status as a weaver leaves him bereft. Bottom and the other players try to raise themselves up in the hierarchy by putting on a play for the Duke and new Duchess. And while some may argue that doing this puts Bottom in a position of power, I disagree. While “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby” was a worthy attempt at a status change for Bottom and his peers, the mockery and joking that coincides with the play seem to bring Bottom and company even lower. If anything, the play-within-a-play brings Lysander and Demetrius into more masculine positions than it does Bottom; they are the ones doing the mocking.
In MND, Shakespeare gives both the antagonistic and protagonistic roles to the masculine characters. By depicting Bottom as such an effeminate character, Shakespeare can safely add an element of humor without disrupting his main theme, or even the plot. Bottom is very successful in what he does; he reminds readers that no matter what happens to Hermia and Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, or Oberon and Titania, this is still a comedy and is meant to be viewed as one. Shakespeare also makes a great use of stereotypes in MND. These stereotypes produce a humor that can be widely accepted by audiences as long as they don’t look too closely at the characters as individuals. Bottom is a low-class, uneducated dreamer, whose dreams never do come true. And while this is really depressing, readers can overlook the truth behind Bottom’s sad life and enjoy the antics that he pulls onstage.
Yet at the same time, Bottom’s depiction reinforces Shakespeare’s subliminal message that the lesser members of society aren’t really that important. Each of the players seems uneducated and put on feminine roles for the play. One actor, Flute, has to actually wear a dress, making the figurative become literal. The play-within-a-play reestablishes the lower class members as powerless citizens through the actors’ portrayals of nobility. While trying to play the characters Pyramus and Thisby, whom are quite like Lysander and Hermia, they come across as silly and naïve about the world above them.
MND is quite revolutionary in the way it portrays women and their roles in a relationship. Just like “The Bride” from Kill Bill, the women are able to become something more than just the “brides” they are portrayed to be. Each woman makes choices that the men don’t approve of and fight for what they want. Yet, unlike “The Bride,” in the not all of them are victorious. Titania is still tricked into giving away her Indian boy, Hermia is still never sure if Lysander did treat her like rubbish, and Helena seemed to be able to accept Demetrius after all that he had said and done to her. But it is because of their changeovers from feminine and masculine characters, they were able to put the men into more female roles. By the end, I think most of the couples came out equal.

The Old Man

Inside his home;
More of a hovel really.
Puffing an old pipe
I remember from childhood.
He smells of unwashed skin
And things far worse.
The place is covered in rubbish,
Reeking of stale bread and sweat
and faintly of a dead cat.

One grizzled hand stays on his pipe
The other rests
On his plastic leg.
His real leg lost to the cold
A few winters back.
A faded denim leg rolled up.
He wears a dirty flannel and a John Deere hat.
His long pajamas peek out it winter.

His aged over-tan face and white beard
Make sharp contrasts—
Startling.

Oh, he may seem harmless,
Recalling an old fishing trip for the zillionth time.
But his lips are lined with cruel words
Waiting for release
And bitter remarks that don’t sting so much anymore.

He is slow to speak;
even slower to remember.
Living without care doesn’t mean he doesn’t fear death.
He has no thoughts
to the other lives
he’s ruined.

And as he shuffles slowly to the back door,
He struggles down the stairs.
The old man’s body is shutting down—
Ready to give Grandpa and those that remain
A little well-earned peace.

Written 2005

The Date
The wine was too bitter and the music too sappy for Richard’s taste. But being in some uptown Italian bistro, he didn’t expect it to differ from the stereotype. Richard had been to restaurants like this a million times—no, that’s a lie, more like 20—but to him the dates were repeats of the ones before them. And likewise, each date was an utter failure.
Tonight he was with Margie, short for Virginia. He wasn’t sure how that worked out, but he really didn’t care. She seemed to be around the same age as him. Her hair was a deep red, so deep that it didn’t clash with the pink outfit she was wearing. She was taller than most of his other dates, but that could just be the 3 inch pink heels she was sporting. She suited the outfit, just as his (a dark suit and tie) suited his darker hair and olive skin.
“Oooh, Pasta Primavera! Sounds delish! Maybe the scallops, that sounds tasty.”
She seemed to end every sentence with a new word she found interesting, or just shorten regular ones. It wasn’t annoying really, just forced and unimaginative. But from her constant exclamations and overly bright smiles, she seemed to be enjoying the evening.
“What do you think?” she asked, barely leaving room between her sentences for breath. “Places like this make everything sound good, it’s hard to pick the sensible from the dishes best left untouched.”
At this, Margie laughed. A short derivative sound without much meaning. She hadn’t made a joke. She might’ve been congratulating herself on keeping the conversation going. He wasn’t sure, but Richard knew that he had to at least try. His mother didn’t seem to get the hint that he didn’t want to meet the nice girl from the Supermarket or the Bank Teller from Morgan Stanley off of 3rd.
“Yeah,” Richard started finally contributing to the conversation, “At least these menus are in English. Last time I went out to a place like this, I ordered something that still had eyes on it.”
Again—another laugh. But not so forced this time.
“Do you think we could try that this time? You know. Order something that we have no clue as to what it is.”
“Sure, just pick out something that has more vowels than consonants and I’m sure dinner will be an experience.”
When the waiter finally arrived, Margie ordered the Seppie Nere alla Veneziana, taking his advice literally, while Richard settled on Spinach Alfredo. Just looking at her face, he knew he’d made the first mistake of the night. It wasn’t condemning, just disappointed.
It was silent for a bit, while Margie thought of something more to say. Richard took the opportunity to examine the vase in the middle of their table. The flowers were roses, but that wasn’t what caught Richard’s eye. The vase, with its overused swirling lines and green tinted glass was once sitting in another room, on another table. But that time, there was no cheesy three man band or low lighting for atmosphere.
Then, the table had been a scratched-up, pine four-seater, where every morning Richard and his mother ate breakfast, and sometimes dinner if there was nothing good on TV. On what Richard liked to call “her good days,” his mother fixed him oatmeal in the morning and would put in any kind of fruit she had happened to have in the house at that time. On the days she didn’t speak to her son, he made breakfast himself.
Fortunately, Margie was speaking again, drawing Richard away from his memories: both good and bad. Interestingly enough, she didn’t seem to be that far off from the topic in his head.
“It was sure nice of your mother to arrange this night for us,” Margie was saying, as she toyed with a breadstick their waiter had delivered. “She told me yesterday about how excited she was.”
“She was quite enthusiastic around me as well,” Richard agreed. “She told me you work in the office across the street from her salon. What do you do?”
Richard found the dates to be more bearable when the girl did all of the talking. That way he couldn’t mess up the evenings with some stupid retort or another. He also knew that once he started talking, he wouldn’t stop until his food was cold. This habit most likely came from late nights, spent in his mother’s bed, before he was too old to sleep there. They would talk for hours over trivial things. Again, these were also during the times that his mother could stand to look at him.
“—nice being a secretary. I get good hours and no manual labor. Plus, an office atmosphere is always nice.” Margie was still speaking about her workplace. Which was a good thing. Richard found it hard to pay attention, and would’ve definitely been lost if she had changed topics.
“The only downside is all the lecherous men I have to put up with. Really, I wish I had your mother’s strength. She doesn’t let any man push her around.”
“Yeah, most of the time it is her doing the pushing.”
Margie laughed again; her painted lips opening in a mock of a smile before she flung her head back just a little so Richard could see her long neck. Again, her laughter followed something that wasn’t really a joke.
Their dinner came shortly after and Richard found himself looking past Margie, to the table behind her. It, too, carried the vase from his childhood. Richard paid no mind to the Alfredo he was consuming, until finally a loud slurp rang out. Apparently, he got his bad manners from his father.
Not that Richard would know. He hadn’t seen him since he was 6 when his mother had literally pushed him out into the front yard and closed the door. He remembered the view of a defeated man, distorted by the slits in the blinds. But as much as he thought about it, Richard had neither the courage nor reason to search for him after all this time.
“Are you okay?” Margie asked, actually concerned for him, or at least she appeared to be. She must’ve asked him a question and notice he hadn’t been listening. Richard wondered how long she had been trying to get his attention.
“You’ve barely touched your food,” she added.
“I’m fine, really. My mind wanders from time to time. My mother said I’ve always had my head in the clouds. How is your food?”
Richard was relieved to hear how the Margie actually enjoyed the cuttlefish she was dining on, even though it still had its ink sack. And not surprising, she mentioned that she would definitely come back and try more of the restaurants ‘scrumptious’ seafood dishes. She seemed to forget the whole incident of him staring off into space; which was another plus. Richard wasn’t sure if he could live through another lecture about being a good listener.
On the ride to New Jersey to visit his Aunt Kay, Richard had been forbidden to look out the side window. He was nine and his mother was going on about her times with Kay as children. Noticing that Richard was more interested in the passing farmland through Pennsylvania instead of her stories, Richard received a sharp stinging slap to the face and a long chastisement concerning his lack of respect.
At the next stop, his mother purchased a black garbage bag and covered his window.
Trying to keep the past in the past, Richard focused more on Margie. He focused on what she was saying, how she would play with her white pearl necklace when she smiled, whether or not she used the correct fork for each dish—she didn’t.
As his Alfredo was replaced with a Cherry Zabaglione Tart, which he chose with Margie’s help—though there weren’t more vowels than consonants—Richard found himself drawn into Margie’s words. She seemed to laugh over the simple things he said and didn’t mind that most of the time he had nothing to add.
Soon the restaurant was closing. Richard had managed to down all of his tart while Margie left bits of maraschino cherries along with some whipped cream on her plate from her Spumone. Picking up the bill, Richard wondered whether or not she was the type who didn’t like to be paid for. So far, about half the women his mother had set him up with went Dutch. But she didn’t even look up when he slipped his Visa into the waiter’s hand.
He helped Margie into her coat, opened the door to his truck and drove a reasonable speed all the way back to her apartment on the corner of 6th and Fredrickton. This was the end of the date, the part in which he had yet to conquer. Each blind date he’d been set up on in the past ten years ended the same.
“Well,” Richard started, “here we are.”
It was the same line Richard used each time. Because, though he meant that it was now time for her to collect her things and get out of the Chevy, his dates took this opening phrase as the commencement of a new, somewhat painful, conversation. Each night, each date, would end with words like, “nice time” and “incompatible” and a slew of “buts” and “whys.”
It was at this time in the night that he usually regretted his decision to humor his mother by going on yet another date. For Richard, these dates continued to reaffirm the fact that he was a failure. His face resembled his rotten father’s just a little too much, he chewed gum like a barbarian and he was a failure as a son, as well as a man.
“I had a great time, Richard.”
Margie had turned in her seat to face him, causing her short skirt to rise even higher, but instead of looking at him she kept her eyes on the hands in her lap. One thumb was rubbing against the other in a slow pattern.
“And you’re a really great guy—”
But he just wasn’t her type.
“With a really good sense of humor—”
But not all dates like these work out for the better.
“In fact, I don’t remember the last time I’ve had such an enjoyable meal. And I don’t mean just the taste-a-licious food.”
But maybe we should just leave things the way they are. I wouldn’t want to ruin such a good memory by trying to prolong it.
“You’re being quiet again, Richard. Tell me, just so I don’t make a fool of myself, what did you think about tonight?”
For Richard this was a first. And soon, he found himself repeating the same words spoken to him, over and over again.
“I’m sorry Margie, tonight was great fun,” Richard started. He could already hear his mother’s questions as to why he still wasn’t married. “It really was one of the best nights I’ve had in a while. But sometimes, a perfect night should just be left alone.” She would be disappointed, but not surprised.
“I would hate for tonight’s memory to be ruined by future mistakes,” Richard finished lamely. He couldn’t even look at her in the eye.
The negative response seemed to still Margie’s hands in their fidgeting. There was no reason to be nervous after rejection. No more hope trying to hide itself within the folds of her skin.
Richard decided against speaking again, knowing from personal experience that no words really helped. Instead, he lifted his eyes to watch her face, looking for a hint as to what she would do or say next. Her feathered bangs now hung over her eyes, casting a shadow. Her lips seemed to take on the fidgeting that her fingers left off, until finally, Richard saw resolve harden her features and close her face from further inspection.
When she met his eyes, Richard saw the anger that she had forced to the front—forced to cover her vulnerability. But just seeing such look cause Richard to sit up straighter and look at his own lap. He was familiar with hurt anger.
“Fine, be an ass. I don’t know why I really expected you to be honest, no other man is. Tell me Richard, was tonight really ‘great fun?’”
Her sentences were strung together just as they had been earlier, leaving no room for breath or hesitation. But Richard took his time while speaking.
“No, it wasn’t great fun.”
“So, why say that it was?”
“Did you think tonight was actually fun?”
“Yes—yes I did. Well, it wasn’t ‘a great time,’ but there is something about you, Richard, that kept me interested. You’re a comedian one minute and a stone the next. You seemed to stare at the roses while I was speaking, and then you were listening intently.” Glancing back down, Richard saw that her hands were now fisted. “You were a lot of things tonight, but I didn’t think you were a liar.”
“I was just trying to be agreeable. But if you really want the truth—”
“I do.”
“Then, I’ll just say it. I don’t like women much,” At this she made a face. “And no, I’m not gay. But, I only agree to these blind dates to humor my mother. She is the only woman I want in my life and sometimes even she is too much. Besides, you don’t want me anyway.”
“Why not? What makes you so horrible?” Margie breathed, letting her anger settle—her hands were loose in her lap.
“Never mind. It was a nonsense statement,” He didn’t need another discussion on whether he merited the term. “I’m not interested okay. I wasn’t trying to lead you on; I just wanted the evening to go well, for your sake. To tell you more of the truth, my dates usually end the opposite of tonight. I expected you to reject me.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Margie started again. Her eyes went back to her lap. “But I guess that doesn’t really matter. I had a good time; thank you. If you actually want to date, for real, call me. I did have fun.”
She started to gather her shoes—Richard hadn’t noticed she’d even slipped them off—and open the door.
“Tonight doesn’t just have to be a good memory,” Margie added, not bothering to put her shoes on. “The next night could be a good memory, too.”
With that, Margie grabbed her purse and slid from the truck’s high seat to the ground. Richard caught a flash of her underwear—black— for a moment before she straightened herself again. He watched as she headed towards the door of her building, walking as if she owned the sidewalk. She even managed to put a bit of a swing to her hips without her high heels.
Watching her walk away with a confidence he would never have, Richard realized how pretty she really was. Not just physically, but as a person. At the restaurant, she was just another girl to take to dinner. Just another date. But just now, she spoke with a clarity and familiarity that Richard could only associate with the times his mother was sweet and kind and had remembered to take her medicine. Margie seemed like a person who would’ve appreciated those long nights of staying up and talking about anything and everything.
She had reached her door and was searching for her keys when Richard felt the strangest urge to call out to her—maybe get out of his car. Stop her from going inside. He tried to work up his courage, maybe ask for another date, another night. Say any thing to stop her from going inside.
She slid the key home and opened the door. Richard watched as she walked inside, the door closing behind her. A feeling Richard couldn’t quite place welled up inside him as Margie disappeared from view. Turning the key to his truck, pulling into the street, a word came to mind. Regret.
He didn’t regret the night, just his cowardliness. Just like he regretted his passivity to his mother, and his mother regretted bearing a child that she loved and hated almost everyday. Just like his father surely regretted his actions that lost him his wife and child. The pitiless emotion dug its claws within his family time and time again. Now it was his turn to feel the sting again.
He drove home in silence.
It was late by time Richard finally arrived back at his place. Entering his apartment, he slid out of his jacket, his tie and wing-tipped shoes and flung them onto a near-by couch. Though each room was filled his the necessary items, the apartment felt void. A bright red light flashed through the darkness of the place, telling him he had a message. He wasn’t all that surprised. No matter what he felt about the date tonight, the pattern just continued as it always did.
He pushed the button.
“Richie, it’s me, your mother. I hope you had a great time with Margie; she’s such a nice girl. Now, I know how you hate when I say this—”
“Then why say it, Mother,” Richard sighed.
“—but I don’t want you to mess this one up. She’s a good girl, with a good head on her shoulders. And she’s so pretty.”
At that, Richard couldn’t help but nod. Like always, his mother was right. He had a good thing going and he ruined it. Just like in high school, with Betsy. He couldn’t remember her last name. But she had been pretty, too. And sweet. But Richard had spoiled that. Just like he spoiled his mother’s figure, devastated his mother’s already fragile mind with his insistent questions and father’s smile. Or so she said.
“So be a gentleman, Richard. I want to be able to face this girl tomorrow without having to apologize for your inadequacies. If it’s not too late, give me a call back. I want to hear all about it.”
Meaning, she knew he messed up again, but don’t worry, he could rely on his mother to tell him just where he went wrong. He’d call her tomorrow, just like he always did.
When that message ended, another one began. To his surprise it was Margie.
“Richard, it’s me. I feel so stupid calling right after you left, but I wanted to say more and couldn’t. So, I’ll say it now. I wasn’t joking when I said I wanted another date. If you’re willing, let’s work at this. Call me back, tonight even. Thanks.”
Yes, tonight was the most unusual of nights. And unlike the other dates, Richard had the power. He could call her or he could not. She was waiting on him. A light feeling fluttered up in his chest, sweeping out the regret. Again, he couldn’t place the name to this emotion. But he felt it, it was real.
He picked up the phone. Dialed the number his mother had given him. Maybe, just maybe, this could actually work. Maybe he could make his mother happy, finally. He could do this. He could learn to let another woman in. And maybe he wouldn’t be a miserable wretch that his mother always accused him of.
The phone rang twice before she picked up.
When she spoke, Richard found the word that was on the tip of his tongue. The name of this new emotion rising up in his belly. Hope. He hoped he could be happy, really happy. And in the back of his mind, he hoped he wouldn’t ruin her life in the process.

The world of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy, or at least the world presented in the first book, The Golden Compass, is very different from our own. Unlike the readers, Lyra and Co. have Daemons. And unlike the readers, Lyra lives in a world where her very soul and life are at stake. She was chosen by the Master of Jordan College to carry the truth-meter, aka the Alethiometer. And while she goes on her adventure and meets new friends and discovers new worlds, the readers can see a similarity between Lyra’s world and their own. Yet, quite a few important differences have occurred in Lyra’s world. One major difference is the Church and its power over the people. “Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva and set up the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Church’s Power over every aspect of life had been absolute” (Pullman 27). The fear of the Church becoming too big and too powerful is not a recent one and not distinct of Lyra’s world but is also present in the reader’s world as well. Yet the differences in that Church and the Catholic Church currently located in the Vatican are not finished. As the book continuous to explain, “The Papacy itself had been abolished after Calvin’s death and a tangle of courts, colleges, and councils, collectively known as the Magisterium had grown in its place” (27). This idea of the Church falling into different factions and ruling over the rest of the world is not so far-fetched, yet still scary to think about. And just like its absolute power held over all of the citizens of Lyra’s civilized world, the Church also seems to be synonymous to absolute fear.
Linked to the Church and its oppressive hold over Lyra’s world, are such ideas of Dust and Intercision. While it is all somewhat confusing, Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter is the head of the General Oblation Board, a group she and Roger referred to as the Gobblers. The Gobblers stole children from the streets and taken to Lapland where experiments are done on them and their correspondence with the Dust. The Dust is very interesting because while it seems that the Dust is just a natural part of life in Lyra’s Oxford and most likely our own world as well, the Church believes the Dust to be dark in some way. During the cocktail party in the beginning of the book, Lyra overhears many things about the Dust and small hints of what the Oblation Board is doing to the children they are rounding up. One guest mentions that “the last experiments have confirmed what [he] always believed—that Dust is an emanation from the dark principle itself” (85). But how does this all connect? If Mrs. Coulter works for the Church, what problem does the Dust represent that they will go to any means to remove its presence in the children? As the man mentioned in the party, the Dust is a dark particle of some sort. And yet the readers’ know that all adult are surrounded by this Dust, while children are not.
As Lyra later finds out when she reaches Lapland and Lord Boreal’s experimentation station, the Church believes that the Dust is evil, or something akin to Original Sin. Original Sin is the moment in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of Knowledge. After eating the fruit, they became of aware of their nakedness and were ashamed of it. Dust seems to be very similar to this awareness Adam and Eve discovered. Because Dust settles around adults instead of children, the Church believes that it has something to do with the end of innocence in a child. And since childhood ends where puberty begins, the Gobblers want to be able to stop the dust from settling on the children. What Lyra discovers in Lapland is the Church’s first answer to stopping the Dust, and that is the operation called intercision.
The process and the horror of intercision are best described through Lyra’s eyes. The relationship between Pantalaimon and herself is fully developed for the audience to understand, yet the readers can only guess at the depth of there connection to each other. “She lifted the lantern high and took a step into the shed, and then she saw what it was that the Oblation Board was doing, and what was the nature of the sacrifice the children were having to make… The little boy was huddled against the wood drying rack where hung row upon row of gutted fish, all stiff as boards. He was clutching a piece of fish to him as Lyra was clutching Pantalaimon, with her left hand, hard, against her heart; but that was all he had, a piece of dried fish; because he had no daemon at all. The Gobblers had cut it away. That was intercision, and this was a severed child” (187). The horror of this scene clearly depicts a child that is no longer whole. He continually asked for Ratter, his daemon and in the end died of shock of some sort. He could speak and function somewhat, but he had no soul.
So the question is, are daemons just reflections of the children themselves or is it more? The taboo of touching another’s daemon makes one think that they might be something similar their genitals. Not physically, but socially. Yet, they are also the hidden part of themselves. If one was born a little girl, then her daemon was a boy. For those that had same sex daemons as their selves, does that mean they were gay? Pullman rarely mentions these cases, but that would help explain why separating a child from their daemon would stop the Dust from settling on them. The Dust is awareness, including sexual awareness. And if daemons stop shifting after puberty and touching the daemon is life touching one’s privates, to take away that sexual feeling for children would be seen as a reversal of Original Sin.
Lyra continues with her vivid description of intercision on just the next page. “Her first impulse was to turn and run, or to be sick. A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of the night-ghasts, not the waking world of sense” (188). Later when Lyra take’s the young boy to the rest of her party, they are met with disgust and fear and even Lyra had to get over her revulsion and hold him tight on Iorek’s back. This idea of being daemon less or soulless is very similar to Matt’s ordeal in The House of the Scorpion. He was considered creepy and unnatural because clones didn’t have souls. No one wanted to touch him. No one would speak with him. The six months spent among the chicken litter is telling of what Rosa and the other’s thought of him.
What is different about these two situations is that the people around Matt considered him disgusting because he had no soul, and yet the revulsion Lyra felt for little Tony was nothing like her relationship with Iorek. Iorek is a bear, and he doesn’t have a daemon. Yet, he is intelligent and emotional. And while some make fun of the bears in comparison to humans, Iorek is more human than Tony was after the intercision. While bear’s didn’t have daemons like Lyra and Roger, he did have his armor. “My armor is made of sky iron, made for me. A bear’s armor is his soul, just as your daemon is your soul. You might as well take him away…and replace him with a doll full of sawdust” (172). Yet, even before Lyra found out about his armor and its purpose, he was treated with more respect that little Tony.
The Churches ideas about Dust and its influence on people is sort of like is quite perverted and unnatural. Just as it is unnatural to castrate young boys and perform a female circumcision on young girls. Yet both of these acts used to be condoned as religious acts. Female circumcision still is. Intercision makes it possible that a boy will never develop into a man and that a girl will never know the pleasures of the body. To cut off such a part is disfiguring and abhorring. That is why touching a child’s daemon is like molesting them. Yet because humans on this plane of existence do not have daemons which work as both the soul and something sexual, castrating a boy will not make him less human, though he will be looked down upon by other men. To lose one’s daemon makes one not human. So in essence, the Church’s goal seems to be a doing away with humanity.

This is just a lj for me to be a part of communities and not have them crowding my friend's list. And i may rant a little bit about people. that might be fun.



added 2007, started adding school work. Makes the journal more interesting in my opinion.