Tyrone
TYRONE
“I needed more
space and freedom”
—Manuel Puig
___________
The plight of a gay moviegoer like me—
Comparing myself to Rita Hayworth
Falling in love with Tyrone Power and—
Rex Downing as yummy chicken matador
___________
Nude except for a cape late at night—
Teenager under the full Spanish moon
Playing Tyrone as impetuous youth—
Ambitious to become rich famous matador
___________
Falling in love with both of them—
Tempting me watching “Blood and Sand”
Wanting Tyrone like Rita Hayworth did—
Hambone young stud of male infidelities
___________
Betrayal by young macho androgyny—
Desiring to suck him off in the bullring
“Blood and Sperm” pulling me in many—
Different directions both real & fantastic
___________
Setting up my insatiable obsessions—
Tyrone Power simply hung like a fierce bull
SELF-BETRAYAL
“His pleasure lay
not behind but in
front of the screen”
—Suzanne Jill Levine
“The Betrayal of Rita Hayworth”
The Subversive Muse
___________
Being gay is like being Rita Hayworth—
She always betrays the one she loves
Not just the pop culture of Hollywood—
But also betraying herself for being gay
___________
Being gay won’t get you an Oscar—
No Academy Award will be in the wings
You’ll become a betraying subject—
Like “Toto” in Betrayal of Rita Hayworth
___________
Realizing that one betrays oneself—
Closeting oneself with DOMA and DADT
Such an Inarticulate Muse betrays oneself—
The betrayal deeper than Blood and Sand
___________
Betraying oneself by being in the closet—
Is just asking to be gored by the bull
RADICAL METONYMY
Being gay can be described as—
A Faggy Frankensteinian Textuality
Composed of many Closetries and—
Leftover Lost and Found Clowneries
___________
Gays are undergoing many changes—
Metonymies are metamorphosing
Mistakes and misunderstandings—
Can’t be avoided during Diaspora
___________
Exposing the frail Artifice of—
Boring Straight Representation
A tacky putrid Puppet Show—
Velázquez dwarfs & Hetero Freaks
___________
Gay Baroque critique obliterates—
Imposed Straight Signifiers
Replacing it with another—
Chain of gay signifiers instead
___________
Ending up circumscribing—
The missing gay signifiers for us
Tracing an orbit around it—
An orbit of radical metonymy
___________
Metonymic displacements—
From one image to the next
Translating the text not as—
Straight explanation but rather
___________
Into a baroque, fragmented—
Open-ended gay mirage of itself
Such gay baroque bricolage—
Weaving, swishing, zigzagging
___________
Into a camp repertoire—
An already found gay lifestyle
An unlikely coup d'etat—
Jiving between trope and trouble
SUBVERSIVE SCRIBES
Puig and Sarduy subversive scribes—
Using betrayal to translate themselves
Hiding a very serious misdemeanor—
The desire to be deliberately gay
___________
Walking the troublesome tightrope—
Between trashy trope and meaning
Flaunting, jiving, switching signifiers—
Privileging graphic gay Vocables
___________
A continuous Slippage away from—
Heteronormative mainstream Swish
Tightrope and trapeze artists—
Bridging prohibited possibilities
___________
Subversive semantic transgressions—
Deep into labyrinths and lassitudes
Caravaggesque
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