Author: Star_of_Athena

Call Me By Your Name

I started reading Call Me By Your Name about a week ago. So when we started Autobiography of Red,  I could not help but notice the resemblance.  We have two main characters that long for this figure who pulls them in and pushes them away at the same time.

Similar to how Elio finds his life changed by Oliver as soon as they meet, something similar happens to Geryon. “Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches.”  (39).

I find the language of this paragraph interesting, “kingdoms” gives this sense of importance, but how could someone he just met cause a change in what he found important. As if he knew that Herakles would be a prominent figure in his life.

A similar thing happens with Elio in the beginning pages, he says “It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can remember it still today.” That feeling of someone becoming a prominent figure in his life.

I put these two quotes together in my mind because it is a very personal feeling. One that I hope I do not come to regret sharing. Others will find it silly that upon meeting someone you know that for better or for worse they will be a prominent figure.

When I met my partner, I realized very quickly that I had no intention on being friends. I realized, perhaps seconds later, that they were now on the list of people that I found most important. And to this day, I stand by the fact that if (knock on wood) our relationship takes a turn for the worst, I will never forget them.

I don’t yet know how this ends for Geryon, or Elio, but it is a tale all to familiar to the LGBTQIA+  community. Being held to the Earth by one person and them leaving. It is a theme seen in the best queer novels, and to close this out, perhaps the reason they are the best is because of this theme the queer community knows all too well.

Personal Trauma and Abusing Children

Chandin Ramchandin was a messed up individual and his personal trauma led him to his sexually assault his own children. On page sixty-five, Mootoo writes: “For the first few weeks after the shattering of his world, he slept in his bed with a child on either side.” The phrase “shattering of his world” suggests more than just heartbreak; it implies a fundamental collapse, one likely made worse by the nature of the betrayal-his wife, Sarah, leaving him for his sister, Lavania. His response is to seek comfort in his children, positioning them on either side of him as though they are the only stability he has left. But the phrasing carries a quiet desperation, as if he is trying to physically hold onto something that is slipping away. “One night, he turned, his back to Asha.” (65).  That moment of turning away is significant. Asha, his child, represents part of the family he still has, yet in his grief and exhaustion, he instinctively distances himself from her. The act of turning suggests avoidance or unconscious rejection, as if his body moves away from what he cannot face. He is not in control; the text describes him as being in “a fitful nightmarish sleep,” emphasizing that his grief and disorientation overwhelm his conscious mind. Then comes the moment of confusion: “mistook PohPoh for Sarah.” This is deeply unsettling. PohPoh is his child, yet in his subconscious turmoil, she becomes Sarah, the wife who left him. This moment speaks to more than just exhaustion-it reveals the way his mind is collapsing under the weight of betrayal. Sarah was someone he loved and depended on, and now, in his sleep, that absence distorts reality. The confusion between his daughter and his wife suggests that roles and identities in his world have blurred. His past feelings for Lavania, add another layer. Once, he had misplaced affections for someone within his family. Now, he is again caught in an emotional entanglement where love and betrayal are tied together. His unconscious mistake-identifying his daughter as his wife-suggests that his grief has unraveled his ability to separate past from present, intimacy from trust, family from loss.

Fuck You Clare For Making Me Question Everything I Thought I Knew

Forgive me for that rather crude title, and I must advise against reading the rest of this if you do not want to read my story of internal turmoil and all the sad things that come with it.

Clare and his “Stones in my Pockets, Stones in my Heart”, and his passage “Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race … everything finally piling into a single human body” (143).

This quote stuck with me heavily, due to a recent “addition” to my identity. Which was the usage of “they” pronouns. I decided now of all times would be a good time to do this (this is exaggerated given this class and two other people are the only people who know).

Now what is the big deal about this? I had never thought about even expressing my discomfort at times when people use “she”, I didn’t understand it.  I am already a lesbian and I love being a woman. I thought all these inner turmoils surrounding the word “she” were just in my head. That I was (and am) a woman, and the usage of “they” was going to take away from that identity. It was reading this passage that caused me to pause and ask myself if using “they” would take from my identity.

It is a question I still am grappling with. Do I have any right to use “they” and consider myself a woman? Am I lying to myself? Is this a need to fit in that has slipped its way into my brain because the closest two people to me use they/them pronouns?

Reading this excerpt so genuinely left me confused not about the passage, but about myself. And as if the beginning of the excerpt with those verbs around identity wasn’t enough, Clare says this: “Will my words be used against me, twisted to bolster the belief that sexual abuse causes homosexuality, contorted to provide evidence that transgressive gender identity is linked directly to neglect?”

I was appalled. Never had I thought about this before. Here is where I place another warning that what I am about to say is not for those who believe that everyone has a happy life 100% of the time. I am a lesbian. A lesbian that was raped not just by a man, but by a woman. And never, until now, had I even thought about the fact my sexuality in others’ eyes (and hell now my own) might have been influenced by that.

So with all due respect and love to Clare, fuck you. Now I am questioning everything I thought I knew, because of one excerpt.

However, I suppose I must also offer a thank you since inner turmoil does make the best writers.

Love, Loss, and Avoidance in Written on the Body

Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body explores themes of love, loss, and the complexities of emotional commitment through its unnamed narrator, who navigates a series of passionate yet fleeting relationships. One of the most revealing lines in the novel, “I’ve been through a lot of marriages. Not down the aisle but always up the stairs.”, encapsulates the narrator’s struggle with intimacy and their pattern of engaging in love affairs that mimic commitment but ultimately lack permanence. The contrast between “down the aisle” and “up the stairs” is particularly striking, as it highlights the narrator’s tendency to experience the intensity of love without ever fully surrendering to the vulnerability and stability that marriage requires. This idea is reflected throughout the first half of the novel, where the narrator repeatedly finds themselves entangled in passionate relationships that are defined more by secrecy and physical desire than by long-term devotion.

The phrase “I’ve been through a lot of marriages” is deeply ironic. It suggests an intimate familiarity with relationships that resemble marriage, yet the narrator immediately undercuts this idea by clarifying that these experiences were never formalized or lasting. Their relationships may feel as intense as marriage in the moment, but they never lead to the kind of emotional security that marriage symbolizes. Instead, “always up the stairs” implies encounters that take place in secret—often in the context of affairs with married individuals—where physical intimacy is prioritized over emotional connection. The use of “always” reinforces a pattern rather than an isolated event, suggesting that the narrator is trapped in a cycle of passion and loss, never allowing themselves to fully commit.

This pattern is evident in the narrator’s reflections on past relationships. While they experience deep desire, they remain emotionally detached, moving from one lover to another without establishing the stability that marriage requires. Their affairs often involve married individuals, further reinforcing their avoidance of true vulnerability. By engaging in relationships that are inherently temporary, the narrator ensures that they can never be fully tied to another person. This reluctance to commit is not just about circumstance but about an internal fear of love’s permanence, which they associate more with loss than fulfillment.

Ultimately, this passage serves as a metaphor for the narrator’s entire romantic history in the first half of the novel. They desire connection but resist its long-term implications, preferring the intensity of passion over the security of commitment. Their love affairs take them close to the idea of marriage but never fully into it, reflecting their fundamental struggle with forming lasting emotional bonds.