Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:54:28 -0500
Subject: Feedback on Final Paper
From: rj—–@———–.edu
To: a———-@——–.com
Dear Amy,
Your final paper manages to be bold creatively and rigorous critically. Your close reading of the paper’s principal sentence — “The hermaphrodite fucked itself quietly in the corner.” — is smart and sensitive, and your subsequent explication of Self’s novel in relation to your own vivid anecdote is a joy to read. Overall, this exercise successfully weds analytical and artistic impulses, and is at once dramatic and compelling.
I have enjoyed your work, and your energy, all term. Don’t let anyone tell you not to think the way you do. Your mind is wonderful, as is your writing.
FINAL PAPER GRADE: A
COURSE GRADE: A
If you would like to discuss this or anything else in greater detail, please don’t hesitate to be in touch. And again, thank you for the gift of your work.
All good things,
R.J.
P.S. — Please don’t forget to fill out your course evaluation. I look forward to your feedback.
——————-
On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 1:35 AM, A B wrote:
A– B——
ENG-154A
Final Paper
December 11, 2011
Tidings of Comfort and Joy
During my first stab at a Bachelor’s degree studying at Emerson College, I had either the good luck or misfortune to become friends with Charity and Dave. Since Charity and I shared a Clarendon Street apartment together, her boyfriend Dave was a frequent visitor with tagalongs of the most unusual nature. Pretentious girls named Althea and whack jobs called Aaron (a strange young man who harbored decaying pigeons in his leather coat while smoking heroin in our bathroom) frequented our off-campus rumpus room. We shall not mention the fellow whose claim to fame was the mention of being in the back of the bus with prostitutes in a Beastie Boy’s song. I hope for his mother’s sake, the young man in question was not surrounded by cocaine hungry prostitutes clawing at his genitals while blue chemicals contaminated his bottom.
These were the folks invited to the Tuesday meetings of the school sponsored Gangsters in Concrete rag. Dave and his cohorts harassed Professor Gantos into supporting the literary enterprise. Much disgusting Rolling Rock beer was consumed. Most certainly, I attended since my hours at the Boston Public Library ensured I would get off in time to partake of the swill, which didn’t compare to Cossack Vodka in the least. To listen to their idiotic literary criticism was Hell. I preferred to hang out in the Harvard Square Pit near the now defunct Tasty and Wursthaus restaurants, where the guys were cuter, closer to my age and didn’t constantly wear dresses as opposed to Emersonian Men. I should have tried Smith for a manlier lay. Ah, well.
Until, one night we were playing the paper game and one of these faux Machiavellians trumped the game and piqued the interest. You fold a piece of paper up into a fan, write a line, your fellow writer cannot see what you’ve written, the next person writes a line and the poem goes on until the end of paper or beer. Most was gibberish, i.e. ‘I believed the Kool-Aid Man.’ But – something popped up that stuck in my brain twenty years later, while reading Will Self’s Cock & Bull. Still, why do I recount this line from the folded up piece of paper:
“The hermaphrodite fucked itself quietly in the corner.”
At the time, this was of great hilarity because, well, hermaphrodites were funny. They weren’t like us. We were sluts, we were gay, we were bisexual – but we certainly weren’t hermaphrodites! No, those embodied with a complete yin and yang were not part of our scene, thank you very much. However, do please keep in the mind this was only a few months before the advent of political correctness and our group would have made great strides to embrace and exalt these multifaceted individuals had we had the pleasure to meet one.
And so, the crumpled Gangsters party sentence remains so concise that the mind’s picture is instantaneous. This proclamation was too elegant and quiet for a sentence from Zimmerman or Charity. Why is the hermaphrodite fucking itself quietly in the corner? Is anyone watching? If so, what is the single-sexed person doing while watching the hermaphrodite’s proclivities? Couldn’t the hermaphrodite do this in private? These are the sophomoric thoughts of a nineteen year old – aside from silly connections to Jamie Lee Curtis rumors, which led to silly Richard Gere gerbil rumor thoughts, which (of course) led to silly Rod Stewart stomach pump rumor thoughts, and so on.
Looking back on the sentence, there are the words that stand out: fucked, itself, quietly and corner. How stark and lonely those words are. Note that the hermaphrodite fucked, not masturbated. To fuck is to take pleasure without regard to one’s sexual partner. To masturbate is to pleasure ones’ self. How then could a hermaphrodite fuck itself without pleasure? To what purpose is the fucking? If no pleasure exists in the sex act, why would the hermaphrodite commit to such an act?
Itself implies anonymity, less than human and otherness. It does not share commonality with the herd and therefore must be a freak. Since the anomaly occurs in the genitals, this person must be obsessed with sex and therefore find it acceptable to fuck itself in the presence of others, although politely – quietly in a corner while not partaking fully of the society around It. It reduces the respect given to normal human beings who are defined by gender amongst other human beings. Curiously, when a being is defined by gender, there are certain norms, respects and expectations society delivers upon that person. A young female going to the Pill on a Friday night with her girlfriends may expect a young man to buy her a drink. A young male going to Machine for Beer Pong with his pals may expect a gentleman to buy him a drink. Where is Itself relegated to? The Corner. As far as my limited knowledge of nightlife amongst the twenty-something scene takes me, Boston hosts no outpost dedicated to the intersexed population.
The corner implies isolation, where children are sentenced to put their noses against the wall for an inordinate amount of time for misbehaving. The corner puts one away from society and out of mind. The corner is unpleasant and collects dust that must be thrown into the bin. However, there is an assumption that the hermaphrodite has always been in the corner, existing away from others but looking on single-sexed people with sadness and jealousy.
When exaggerating stereotypical gender attributes, as Will Self did in his work Cock & Bull, we see confusion upon the melding of the male and female within one physical being. Self’s manly, rugby playing character Bull grows a vagina behind his knee and ends up impregnated by his physician. When Bull attempts to confront Dr. Alan Margoulies, he finds Alan celebrating the news of his wife Naomi’s pregnancy. After spying the scene of duplicitous domestic happiness, Bull drives to Suicide Bridge:
‘It was the betrayal he couldn’t stand. Everything else he could have borne – even the ghastly thought of his coming, elephantiatic confinement – but not the betrayal. He no longer wanted to live in a world that harboured such duplicity. He clutched the thick, old bronze of the safety rail and made ready to hoist himself over in one, swift, practiced bar vault (he was, after all, a fairly competent athlete). He was ready to meet him, or her. Whoever the sick joker was, whom he must perforce call his maker.’ (307)
The doctor who violated the Hippocratic Oath of not visiting harm upon the patient wounded Bull’s core of being as a human. He was betrayed, taken advantage of by the one person whose position as a physician implies godlike omniscience to help and heal those in need. Yet, in this betrayal, the innocent Bull comes to understand duplicity, the betrayal of his own, male body sprouting a vagina and the betrayal of his doctor becoming his lover. The realization of mergers in physicality and reality bluntly dawns upon Bull. The world is no longer right versus wrong, cleanly cut and cordoned to be more palatable for Bull, just as he is able to vault the sturdy bronze rail. He can cross over the safety bar. He can imagine a maker that may be male or female. Bull realizes there is no more safety in gaining this knowledge but only a need to go forward.
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