Three Pastiche Portraits

Three Pastiche Portraits

“to seize the whole apparatus
of nostalgia art, pastiche, and
postmodernism to work himself
through them instead of attempting
to resuscitate some older form of
social realism, an alternative that
would in itself become another
pastiche.”—Fredric Jameson,
A Conversation with Fredric Jameson

Jonathan Katz recently gave a fascinating lecture on the National Portrait Gallery’s cancelled show—“Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” at the Tacoma Museum of Art (July 28, 2011),

“Hide/Seek” was the first major museum exhibition to address gender and sexual identity. Katz explained the politics of the NPG’s selection process & the delicate problem of getting permission from other galleries for the glbt “Hide/Seek” portraits.

Both Katz & Gerstner concentrate on one of the most exciting aspects of the glbt revolution—in particular for me how gay artists, poets, writers, filmmakers “portray” their subjects and “portray” themselves in this complex “virtual homophobia” zeitgeist we’re going through.

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Queer portraiture as well as queer portraitists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and David Wojnarowicz will probably always be “politically incorrect” in the US. Although the “body-politic” POV towards us seems to be changing somewhat as the “same-straight” osmosis between us & them continues to ooze together somewhat—as with most constipated blockage issues such as DADT & DOMA over time.

Marriages & divorces aren’t easy for gays or str8ts—I suppose that’s why Katz’s thoughts on Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg were very touching and fascinating for me. How these two artists stayed married together and then divorced themselves—is something most of us have gone through I’m sure.

Most of us don’t do “portraits” of such a difficult rite de passage however—and both these men did, perhaps they had to, both fearing the loss of their creative powers after such a traumatic separation. Every couple’s different I suppose—but with these two modern artists the “divorce portraiture” was more than difficult. It was a matter of psychic & artistic survival—like Siamese twins being cut apart.

Robert Rauschenberg portrayed gay divorce with “Cantos XIV” (1959) based on Dante & the sodomites. Jasper Johns portrayed the Rauschenberg divorce with “Souvenir” (1964)—although both artists did many portrayals of their relationship and other various periods in their lives.

Rather than commenting on “Canto XIV” or “Souvenir” any further than the professional critics have already done—let me just say that my response to these divorce portraits was to do my own amateur pastiche portraits of the Johns-Rauschenberg separation entitled simply “Breakup.” Based on a snapshot—with the third-party divorcee-individual in between the two disenchanted artists…

And then to use the same style of ‘pastiche portraiture’ to portray my own queer breakup affair with my gymnast lover awhile back in college.

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Three Breakup Pastiche Portraits

“to work at dissolving the pastiche
by using all the instruments of
pastiche itself and to reconquer
some genuine historical sense by
using the instruments of what I
have called substitutes for history.”
—Fredric Jameson, A Conversation
with Fredric Jameson

http://postcolonial.net/@Backfile/_entries/3/file-pdf.pdf

My own breakup and divorce centered around a young goodlooking muscular college freshman gymnast from Gretna, New Orleans who was on the LSU gymnastics team in the mid 1960s.

It was a somewhat inherently doomed relationship because “D” was hopelessly hetero and I was hopelessly homo. It was based on oral sex that he needed desperately since his girlfriend lived in New Orleans and we went to LSU in Baton Rouge.

In the sense that opposites attract, he and I were fairly compatible enough to share various campus dorms and apartments off-campus together for a year. He had a perfect muscular Venus-torso and the kind of physique one gets from strenuous workouts everyday after classes.

Breakup Pastiche #1

He specialized in the rings and high-bar which developed his pecs and biceps to an inordinate degree of muscular bulk and tension—which ended up like a tightly wound-up rubber-band suddenly untwisting itself intensely in a rather shockingly spasmodic discombobulating orgasm which was totally mind-blowing for me.

Sometimes he lost control of his whole body and it became one smooth muscle of spastic ejaculatory Penis-hood with him fainting in my arms. Getting and keeping my tight pneumatic lips on his spaz cuming prick was very difficult.

All the pent-up energy from those muscles all tightened up during a workout made him faint as he turned into one big dick. What came out of him was truly baby-paste because that’s what it tasted like.

Along with its tangy nasty putrid taste, there was for some reason the smell of baby powder in the air. Which apparently he used after a workout and shower to douche himself with because of all the rubbing, straining and exertions on the rings and high-bar.

Breakup Pastiche #2

His skin was so smooth all over it felt like a baby’s ass—and below that smooth silkiness his bulging monstrous muscles roiled and seethed with a life of their own.

After imbibing a wad of such super-athletic proportions and young male teenage strength, no wonder I was in such a shocked delirious daze so utterly that I’d have a quick nocturnal orgasm with my eye wide-awake.

I became consumed with getting him off—and I developed a morbid, abnormal, compulsive urge to get all the thick runny babypaste I could out of him. It was literally and figuratively his skanky-tasting teenage genetic genealogy that I desired. It was his gymnastic testosterone-pumping muscular dick-hood that I became addicted to.

How many young studly sons and sexy daughters did I suck out of him? Spermy wads that should’ve gone into his girlfriend’s tight needy pussy or down her equally as needy cocksucking throat just like mine. He needed it two or three times a day—so much of it build up in him requiring ecstatic release and shooting his brains out.

His father worked for Boeing and so transferred during his sophomore year to Seattle. I graduated and followed him up to the Northwest coast where I continued my graduate studies in Slimy Dickwads and Cumly Spasticities.
All I could do was think about it but unfortunately his straight inclinations started interfering with our relationship. We rented half a house together but he started dating cute chicks who’d fuck his brains out. Pretty soon I was reduced to peering thru the bedroom keyhole like a Peeping Tom—as he fucked the chicks to death & they got all the cum.

Breakup Pastiche #3

At first this str8t denial of sharing his masculine libido with me actually intensified by hero-worship of him. I relegated myself to worshipping his dirty, sweaty t-shirts and getting off smelling all his pheromone-infused odiferous pits while beating off.

The times I did get him off—I savored and treasured in my private moments. Instead of swallowing them all in one single snotty seizure of bliss—I froze his wads in the freezing compartment of the refrigerator.

Saving them for a rainy day when I got exceptionally moody and needy—for the slimy skanky-tasting ambrosia of the godz. But soon that got boring compared with the real thing which had been mine up until then. My love began turning into hate.

That’s when I pulled the phone out of the hook and didn’t answer the doorbell. I bought some of them off with money and got rid of others with my own extremely bitchy bad attitude. Like Terrance Stamp in “The Collector” I put together a dungeon room down in the basement—to keep him captive for my own perverted desires.

I kept him tied up—sometimes I had to use S/M to get what I wanted. I made him do weights to stay in shape—and then I’d apply the tit-clamps and electrodes for some fun. I made up for lost time—and got down to some serious business.

Instead of cumly pleasure and getting him off—I shifted over to the other side. I was the one getting off—and I was getting off by inflicting pain on my cute muscular former-lover. He hurt so bad he had to limp—he was so black & blue it was like tattoos. And the hickies I gave him down there—what a dirty fucking shame…