Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Genre Transgression: Between Yü and me, how many queer Buddhist reincarnation revenge mystery historical romance stories can there be?

It’s no secret to (the admittedly few) regular readers of this blog that I have interests in gay fiction, Asia in general and Japan in particular, as well as Buddhism and mysticism.  Earlier this year I was surprised to discover there is, like yayoi, a whole subgenre of gay fiction that could be described as Queer Supernatural Asian Mystery Erotic Historical Romance Novels. I came across these books through Librarything.com — a kind of social network for book lovers that matches similar book collections by members and then makes recommendations based on these shared affinities — and started reading some of them.

Shortly after I’d finished reading a couple of Sedonia Guillone’s “Beautiful Samurai” novels in this subgenre I received an email from Joy Shayne Laughter, the author of a book that fits most of the categories in this subgenre — but let me be clear immediately that her book, Yü: A Ross Lamos Mystery,” does not tick off the “erotic” check box in this subgenre. Yü is more of an intellectual and spiritual effort (this is not to suggest it’s not fun — the many pleasures of this book will keep your hands above the table and turning pages relentlessly).

The appearance of Yü in my mailbox got me to thinking about the history of this subgenre. After all, in 2006 I had a short story, called Musuko Dojoji, published in an anthology of gay fantasy fiction called Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling. Musuko Dojoji was a retelling of a thousand year old Japanese folktale (Musume Dojoji) framed by a contemporary gay love story. The folktale is connected to the contemporary story by a reincarnation motif. I wrote this story out of love for my late boyfriend, Hiroshi Aoki, as a way of keeping his memory alive through our shared love of folktales and mysticism. It was one way of honoring our connection — a connection I always felt was something that went beyond my limited understanding of reality.

As I thought about reincarnation as a plot device in queer love stories, I realized this motif is hardly new. One of the things Hiroshi and I shared was a love of kabuki — and we were both great fans of the classic kabuki play, Sakura Hime Azuma Bunshô: The Scarlet Princess of Edo.

This play’s prologue is the story of two lovers fleeing an angry mob of monks. Indeed, the two who are running away are the monk Seigen, and his young chigo ( temple acolyte), Shiragiku.

The chorus sings of same-sex love as they climb the cliff at Enoshima, a site famous for love suicides named Chigo ga Fuchi (Chigo Falls) in memory of this particularly notorious plunge:

Not only woman can be in this mortal world
closet companion to man, his dearest lover.

Seigen and the boy pledge to die together rather than be kept apart by the world  —supposedly not because this is a same-sex or intergenerational relationship but because Seigen is a monk and thus has broken his vows of celibacy. Of course, the audience knew that these relationships were nothing out of the ordinary.

Before jumping, Shiragiku prayed for a rebirth as a woman so he could marry Seigen. And then he threw himself to the rocks below. You can see the two in the moment before Shiragiku jumped in the photo below — the boy is the young Tamasaburo Bando in his very first role on the kabuki stage before becoming world famous as an onnagata, a man who traditionally plays female roles. One of Tamasaburo’s most acclaimed roles is that of Sakurahime.

Back to the story: after the boy jumped, the monk Seigen, seeing the body of his lover broken on the rocks below, reveals himself as a faithless coward:

I would die for you without a thought, but…

Seigen has second thoughts, and runs away. The prologue ends and then the real action of the play begins, 17 years later, when the boy acolyte, now reincarnated as the Scarlet Princess, and meets the cowardly and duplicitous Seigen once more.

Written by Tsuruya Namboku and first performed in 1817, this is the earliest example of a romance/revenge/reincarnation/ghost story centered around a male/male relationship that I am aware of. If you know of anything earlier, I’d love to hear about it. Oh, and if the whole story sounds over the top operatic, you’ll be pleased to know David Henry Hwang, author of M. Butterfly, wrote the libretto for an English language opera based on the story, composed by Alexina Louie, called The Scarlet Princess.

But enough about me and my interest in this genre — let’s talk about Yü. Promoted as the first in a series of books about Ross Lamos “karmic detective,” Yü is the story of a gay antique art appraiser who has psychic touch — simply by holding an object, he will not only know its provenance, he’ll go into a trance, reliving the experiences of everyone else who touched it.

When a woman walks into the gallery where Lamos is employed (and where he keeps this supernatural gift secret from his employer) and presents him with three exquisite Han Dynasty jades he is plunged into a 2,000-year-old murder mystery. His touch reveals that all the players in that long forgotten drama have reincarnated around this woman today.

Lamos also discovers that his employer is planning to replace the jades with fakes because he’s running an art forgery operation. And while Lamos is busy trying to solve an ancient mystery and save the jades from being stolen, he’s doing his best to reconcile himself to the fact that his philandering ex-boyfriend has become a celibate Buddhist monk at the temple where he began his own spiritual practice.

There’s a lot of movement between past and present in this story — though really the crux of the action takes place in the Han Dynasty, a little more than 2,000 years ago. It’s a tale of passion and philosophy — desire and Taoist thought in the imperial  court. And the confusions of physical and spiritual love in this story of palace intrigue are reflected in the story of Lamos, his clients and friends today.

Each section of the book begins with a translated text from a famous Chinese Taoist philosopher or historian that gives further depth to the action. The parts of the story that take place in ancient China captured all the beauty and tension that is heightened by the restrained expression of Chinese imperial court life.

If there were anything I would have wished for in Yü it would be more of Ross Lamos today rather than in his previous incarnation. The Chinese story is really a story of heterosexual love. And Ross is so caught up in his work, and this old mystery, that his personal life, and love life, today suffers. I don’t need to read about someone with a problem like that — I can just look at my own life (cue the violins).

Ross is a character I want to get to know better — not only in his previous incarnations, and I assume that if there are going to be more in this series, in each volume we’ll not only follow his current life, but his previous lives as well. I just want more of a balance between the two. Or more of an intersection between the two next time.

A Ross Lamos series holds the promise of both past and present, sexuality and spirituality, coming together in a way that heals and reveals reality at its deepest, while giving the reader the pleasure of a page-turning mystery. So I look forward to more books in this promised series.

Another series of books that fits the romance/reincarnation/revenge motif (and given that it appears enough times in stories at this point I think it has to be recognized as a motif) are the “Beautiful Samurai” books by Sedonia Guillone.

In contrast to the more spiritually entertaining goals of Yü, the Guillone’s Beautiful Samurai books are described as m/m erotic fiction (with all the other subgenre categories appended). However I found the long passages describing sexual acts in overblown (ahem) prose so graphic as to cross the line from erotic to pornographic.

 

This is all a question of taste. I didn’t want to like the Guillone books. However, I did like the stories if not the writing or the lengthy erotic digressions. The characters she has created are interesting, if not fully drawn in depth. There is so much more possible here that the graphic sex scenes actually seem to get in the way — even though passionate sex is what draws a demonic force to manifest and recreate an Edo period murder in the first book.

Here we are introduced to John Holmes — an American Gulf War veteran, who also has psychic touch and other psychic abilities. He is brought to Tokyo to help solve some weird crimes, and there he meets a young Japanese detective, Toshi. They fall in love and have lots of sex. And in the process they solve the murder mystery that is several centuries old, while solving the current crimes of passion taking place in Tokyo.

As I say, I didn’t want to like the Guillone books. There were spelling errors. Mistakes about Japanese culture that bothered me. And more sex than was really necessary unless you wanted to read the books with one hand below the waist. But as I say, I thought the stories were interesting — better than the prose they were written in.  And the characters were interesting too, if one-dimensionally drawn. These books had potential the author gave up by putting more energy into the sexual escapades and to me they suffer for it.

As for the physical book itself, I can forgive the fact that the typesetting is amateurish — this is clearly a publishing house that exists because computers make printing easier and cheaper than ever. But spell checking and professional editing, often invisible to readers in the final product, as they should be, are glaringly absent here. This publisher, Torquere Books, is one of the centers of the new m/m pulp fiction (oddly written by straight women) and some of their writers have been recognized with awards for writing queer science fiction.

So how many more books can we expect that mash up all these genres to create a subgenre that even Marion Zimmer Bradley (whose queer pulp science fiction Darkover series was groundbreaking back in 1975 with The Heritage of Hastur) would never have imagined? Well, given the mainstream appetite for vampires, werewolves and wizards in film and print I doubt we’ll see the end of this almost Jacobean fascination any time soon. And when a good book like Yü: A Ross Lamos Mystery comes along, I’m not complaining.

Bullying: a low human instinct institutionalized, examined on screen.

Why Lindsay Anderson's "If..." couldn't be made today, and why it's needed more than ever.

 
Tomorrow night in New York there will be a rare screening of the 1968 British film If... as part of the Queer/Art/Film series so ably put together by Ira Sachs and Adam Baran. This film helped me get through my hellish high school experience — because even though I did not go to a British boy's boarding school and was never caned (or had my nipples twisted by a priest) I felt a complete identification with the students suffering in the stultifying atmosphere of the school in the film. And as a teen struggling with coming out one year pre-Stonewall the sub-plot in the film of a homosexual romance between two of the boys, presented without judgement — in fact presented romantically, I found the film transgressively thrilling.

Of course, the heroes of the film fight back against the school in a climax of bloody violence that makes Columbine look like a picnic — it was made at a time when revolt was in the air and student protests were taking place across the U.S. and Europe. But in the U.S. it was the students who were dying at the hands of the National Guard. In this film, Malcolm McDowell as Mick and his buddies take up arms and open fire on graduation ceremonies. For me, this was divine sublimation. I was that angry, but I certainly wasn't going to act out any of my fantasies of revenge. Today however, in a country where it's easy to get a gun, we actually have scenes like that in If... And they are not dramatically satisfying. They are tragic.

And everyone weeps for the fallen. But in the last few months, looking at the young suicides - those who killed themselves because they were tormented for their sexuality, real or percieved - I know that a suicide is rage turned inward, rage turned at a target where it will be effective since rage against bullies, schools, adults seems hopeless to these young people we have lost.

If... gave me courage to survive my high school years. And showed me an image of gay love that was casual, no big deal, just something that was simply right. More revolutionary that shooting prefects from a rooftop.

I haven't seen If... since the late 60s. In the last few years issues like Columbine and other acts like it have made me wonder if it were even more relevant today. Not because it made heroes of the boys who fought back, but it made it clear why they felt  the need to do so. And with the recent increased coverage of lgbt youth suicide (I won't say increased suicide, because it's always been there, quiet and not covered by media with the serious it has always deserved) I find If... even more important to see and talk about in the lgbt community even here in the U.S.

Consider the case of Andrew Shrivell — a cyber-bully in a position of power. He might have been able to continue his insane attacks had not the recent events helped shine an light on his ugly little mind. But this is the tip of the iceberg, and like most icebergs, the vast majority of nastiness is below the radar screen and not covered by media. It is the living hell kids go through every day.

"It Gets Better" videos are a good thing. They give hope to those who have resources enough to find them. But it doesn't change day to day reality. And when you can members of Congress, and institutionalized religion on the side of bullies, it's no wonder teachers look the other way and our schools become our local version of Lord of the Flies.

The truth is that children are not comfortable with ambiguity at certain ages. They like certainty, categories, clarity, definition. And lgbt people upset those categories. Hell, there are adults who never grew out of the this childish need to see the world in black and white. Those of us who've been over the rainbow know there are all different shades in between and a whole universe of colors to play with. And that's nothing to be scared of — rather it is to be celebrated.

The problem with If... is that Columbine happened. And while I had revenge fantasies, I have no desire at all to shoot down the student body of Pat Robertson's Liberty University. I just want to shatter their color blinders.

Queer Midrash: Retelling and Reclaiming Our Stories

Andrew Ramer has just published his collection of Queer Midrash, Queering the Text, in which he writes our stories back into the history — and the sacred texts — of the Jewish people.

Midrash is an ancient custom of creating stories the fill in the blank spaces, or explain the seeming contradictions in the Torah. The best example is the story almost all Jews know — that of Abraham smashing the statues of idols in his father's shop. Many Jews believe this story is in the Torah. It isn't. It was a midrach created by a rabbi centuries after the Torah was redacted into the form we have it today.

Midrash is kind of a sacred literary jazz riff on the story, giving it new meaning and relevance to later generations.

In the story Andrew reads in the video, he takes a text from Genesis and uses it as a window into the Biblical landscape to create a story of the first gay male lovers — and how their love was recognized as sacred.

You can read an interview with Andrew in Zeek. You'll find other posts about him and his work elsewhere on this blog. And you can order Queering The Text online.

Apologies for the poor quality of the image, but you can hear him read clearly, and if this kind of story is meaningful to you, you can be sure it will be a heart-opening experience. By rewriting the story, we can set ourselves free from the tyranny of the story. By recognizing it is a story created by others, we don't have to live out the old scripts — we can write new ones and truly live happily, in the moment, ever after.

 

Homoerotic Ritual As An Essential Part of Societal and Spiritual Health

An Essay on the Takashi Miike film: Big Bang Love Juvenile A

The film Big Bang Love, Juvenile A starts with a monologue that is consciously filmic – it opens with a clap board and a man reading from what might be a script, yet sounds like a treatise on the physics of time, a philosophical meditation on the past and the future as waves of light seen from space at different points thus allowing the viewer to see back almost all the way to the Big Bang as well as into the future.

 

The opening “narrator” explains that this point in time/space where the past and future can be seen is also an experience of synesthesia, when the senses merge so that you can taste colors and smell shapes. And it is ultimately the experience of the Divine beyond time, the at-one-ment where/when all time is simultaneous. The “narrator” explains that it is in this place, where the veil of time has been ripped from our narrow view of reality that the story we are about to witness in this film of  “sad young men from a time that has lost something” occurs.

 

From here, Big Bang Love, Juvenile A, the deliciously homoerotic film by Takashi Miike, shifts the scene not directly to the story just described, but to another kind of prologue. We go from the opening film set to a place out of time and space — the world of men and divine masculine energy. We see only an old man and a young boy. The old man is a sage, who instructs the boy on how to encounter this divine masculine energy, take it in, make it his and become one with it, thus becoming a man himself in the process.

 

The ritual is simple, and if you have read Men, Homosexuality and the Gods by Ronald Long, you will recognize this ritual as one practice by the Sambians of Papua, New Guinea: sacred fellatio. In that culture, a pre-pubescent boy, in order to become a man, fellates post-pubescent boys until he himself is able to ejaculate. At which point then he becomes the inseminator of masculinity to those younger than himself. Among the Sambians, this practice stops for the young men once they marry a woman. Presumably they no longer have any same-gender sexual relations. In this culture, it is truly ritualized as “a stage they are going through,” and an essential ritual at that.

 

A variant of this ritual is described in the 2^nd prologue of Big Bang Love Juvenile A to a young boy who must choose a man from his village whose masculine energy he wishes to take in and emulate. You can see the man he chooses at the top of this post — and in the opening sequence the dance of this tattooed avatar (and I use this word in its truly original Hindu meaning of a deity that takes human incarnation) of masculinity you have an approximation of the power of such an act when connected to living ritual. And in his dance you may recognize the atavistic influences of this ritual on the dance floor in a gay club, where dancing men stripped of their shirts and covered in tattoos that have been stripped of true ritual meaning act out their unconscious need for homoerotic spiritual transcendence. This is in fact the dilemma of the circuit party dance floor ritual: it is a celebratory rite of manhood that has been split off from the container of true religious ritual in its finest sense. And without a ritual container, it is not wonder many in the world of the circuit party seek divine connection through the Dionysian world of drugs and sex that ultimately consumes them.

 

The ritual of sacred oral sex in this film stops just short of the sexual act itself. Though the old man described to the young boy exactly what will happen:

 

“He will teach you what to do…and finally he will aim for your throat, releasing his manhood. For ages we have become men in this manner. Handing down manly vigor to our descendants.”

 

From this scene we are rocketed into yet another timeless place that is simultaneously recognizable as a classic B movie situation: the prison drama. And the young boy and young man from the previous ritual scene now seem to be re-incarnated as two young men entering prison together, both for separate crimes of murder. Tattoos appear and reappear. Walls and bars that demarcate the prison are both solid and merely indicated by chalk on the floor from scene to scene to indicate the existential nature of the subject matter at hand.

 

The film is also takes the film conventions of the “police procedural” mystery as two detectives try to solve a murder that takes place in the prison. Like most of Takashi Miike’s films, Big Bang Love Juvenile A is filled with disturbing violence. While in the story, ultimately the true murderer is exposed, the film does not answer the many philosophical questions it raises — because to answer those questions would be to do violence to the quest each young man must face in his rite of passage as he confronts the divine masculine and assimilates its energy into his life.

 

As a gay man, experiencing the divine masculine through the sacred and shamanic traditions of same-gender love is an important subject for me. Because love — emotional and spiritual love when experienced together in physical expression with the beloved — is one gateway to heaven. When these three are split off from each other, and their connection is denied by society — when there is no social and ritual container that recognizes the (w)holiness of this expression — those who step into this space without a guide may find instead a gate to the hell of compulsive sex. (Of course, both heaven and hell are expressions of divine energy, just as Brahma and Shiva are twin poles of creation and destruction. And both are ultimately expressions of Brahman, the infinite and eternal oneness. Or the Ayn Sof as the Kabbalists would call it.)

 

In the act of love — the “small bang” — we seek to experience that oneness of the moment before the Big Bang.

 

(Italo Calvino, in “All At One Point” his Cosmicomics short story of the moment just before the Big Bang there is still separateness, a universe full of diverse characters described as “packed like sardines.”)

 

I seem to digress. But those who read this blog with any irregular regularity (given my irregular postings) are used to this.

 

Big Bang Love Juvenile A brings together all these strands of meaning for me — wrapped up in my love of Japanese culture (and Japanese men). And to be certain, it also raises questions about the divine feminine and how men relate to it. It looks at the penetrative spirit of warrior culture and its relationship to men who enjoy the receptive role. I highly recommend this film for any gay man who thinks about the questions raised here. As I also recommend reading Men, Homosexuality and the Gods by Ronald Long.

 

Below you can see the entire 9 minute opening sequence — from the clap board monologue through the ritual and dance to the prison murder —or you can follow it as a link to youtube where you can see it full screen.

A Buddhist Blessing in honor of Harvey Milk as mindful protest.

Rainbow in the desert: Israel's first gay pride event in the Negev

While over at JoeMyGod there have been 70+ comments on the banning of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from Pride parades in Canada, in Be'er Sheva, Israel's third largest city, in the Negev desert, held its first official Pride event, officiated by the city's mayor.
Oh yes, the religious right went bat shit crazy. But the mayor stood his ground and even put city funds into the event. Because Israel is a secular democracy.
The New Israel Fun reports that: there are plans to create a LGBT teen hang-out in Be'er Sheva—an open house for young people in search of support and community.  Local activists will work toward making the festival an annual event and bringing it 'out' with a high-profile parade.

Shai Gortler, a gay activist wants to see the LGBT community work with and on behalf of other marginalized communities in Israel such as Arabs, people with disabilities and manual laborers.  "No one is free if not everyone is free," he says. 

Yasher Koach.

The Museum as a Temple, the Artist as a Bodhisattva

Today is the final day of The Artist is Present at MOMA. Yesterday I went with my friend Frank and arrived just moments before, as it turned out, our friend Jensen was to take his seat before the Artist. It felt like a moment of grace to be able to bear witness to him as he was received and totally seen, completely taken in, by Marina Abramovic in the performance piece that seemed to me to be more an encounter with holiness.

The charged square space filled with the emptiness of presence gave it a sense of the Holy of Holies. In her white dress, Abramovic seemed like the Shekhina herself. Or Quan Yin, Kannon, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, bearing all the pain and heart of all those who entered her space.

And all this before I went upstairs to discover her other pieces. From the Memento Mori of the model below the skeleton, to passing between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two models in the doorway, to the crucifixion without nails that is Luminosity, it was an experience of the museum as a cathedral, a meditation space to participate in, rather than simply consume.

The press and discussions that I had heard all dwelled on the titillation of the event. Or perhaps I just did not bother to read deeper into the articles I saw. Because there have been few shows more powerful. And I am only sorry today is the last day, and that I didn't take advantage of the time earlier to enter that charged space myself and sit before the artist.

My friend Jensen, in the photo above, entered the space at 2:40 on Sunday afternoon. He had joined to line to do this at 1:30am the night before. He was in that seat for less than 15 minutes, but watching him go through all the emotions that arose it was clear each second there was experienced with the complete naked intimacy.

And all I can think of are the words of the Kadosh prayer:

Holy. Holy. Holy. All of creation is filled with the glory and presence of the Divine. (And in this case, the Divine Feminine)

Arising and passing away: The Bodhi Tree Bookstore in Los Angeles is closing.

I remember my first trip to the Bodhi Tree bookstore in L.A. — I spent an hour sitting cross-legged on the floor reading Bodhi Leaves, the thin chap books printed by the Buddhist Publication Society. I left that day with two shopping bags worth of books that I couldn't find anywhere in New York City. Even Weiser's the venerable occult book shop and publisher in NYC didn't have the titles I found at Bodhi Tree.

Today, Weiser's is long gone. And the Bodhi Tree has just announced that they will be closing after this year. Another victim of real estate interests.

Of course, business is off because many of the books sold there are now available at most Barnes and Noble stores. And if you can't find it brick and mortar, it's always found online. In fact, one of my favorite little chap books from BPS is now available free online, along with dozens of other Bodhi Leaves at the BPS website.

While I am happy that the information is more easily found by those who seek it, I will miss the community aspect of the store, where conversation with the owners and staff was always a doorway to a new discovery — and a heartfelt connection happening in the moment. And I am happy for the owners, who, faced with declining sales find that the property sale will provide for them now that they are in their 70s. Still, I find myself wondering about the future of the book community. And the future of browsing — since so many of my discoveries came from browsing titles and sitting cross-legged on a floor in a bookstore.

Then again, as one teacher of mine once said — you already have the tools, now you have to use them. So I guess I should be spending more time sitting cross-legged on the floor without a book. Watching phenomena as they arise and pass away.

Seeds of Gay Love Sprout Even In the Most Hostile Soil: A Review of the films "Eyes Wide Open" and "The Brotherhood"

Imagine a movie about two men who live in an extremely homophobic, yet highly male-identified community. These two men are deeply involved in their community — a group that gives them an identity, a place in the world, a way to understand everything. Yet these men find themselves so powerfully attracted to each other that they are willing to risk their position, their friends, family, their deepest beliefs and even their lives to be together. Have you seen this movie before? Yes and no.

 

Two new movies explore this rapidly growing new cinema motif. Because while this paradigm could well describe the plot of Brokeback Mountain, it also describes one movie that takes place in an enclave of ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and a second that follows a relationship that unfolds between to members of a band of neo-Nazis in Denmark.

 

Yes, where the ultra-orthodox Jews and neo-Nazis find common ground is in hatred of queer people. So oddly enough in the last year we saw two movies released that tell stories as parallel as the photographs of couples in these such outwardly different groups.

 

The Brotherhood, which won the top prize at last year’s Rome Film Festival, follows the story of Lars and Jimmy, two young, angry and rootless young men in Denmark whose passionate hatred of immigrants (and gay men — the film begins with a disturbingly real gay bashing scene) turns to passion for each other. Eyes Wide Open, which can be seen in New York City at the Jewish Film Festival on January 19th at the Manhattan JCC, tells the story of Aaron and Ezri, two ultra-orthodox Jewish men caught in the claustrophobic world of the Haredi in Israel. The parallels between the stories are unsettling, but at this point should not be a surprise.

 

These parallels are simply be the sign that there is a pattern to this kind of story that, like the films of an earlier generation, will be revealed as a kind of forbidden romance motif. And of course, the father of this new generation of gay forbidden romance films is Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, which also takes place in the male-dominated community of cowboys.

 

Like Brokeback, in both of these films one man is the experienced initiator — the Tempter template if you will. And like Brokeback, they follow a very similar trajectory. In some ways, all these films are like Harlequin Romances in their strict adherence to a form. Of course, you know a Harlequin Romance, with all its twists and turns will end happily. But following the Brokeback pattern (and considering the communities these stories take place in) I won’t be spoiling anything to tell you not to expect a happy ending in either of these films.

 

This is not to say the movies aren’t good. Both of them are quite good in fact. And this isn’t to suggest you won’t be surprised or left with questions at the end of both these movies — because the endings are not quite as clear as all that. They are both well worth seeing, and you’ll have the chance to see Eyes Wide Open (which was an Official Selection at Cannes) in New York this month.

 

Another reason to see Eyes Wide Open is Ran Danker, the Israeli pop star who plays Ezri, a homeless youth who has been expelled from his yeshiva for obvious reasons. He has a hit song in Israel called “I am Fire” and I believe it. Yes, he plays the tempter Ezri in Eyes Wide Open, a young man expelled from his yeshiva and cut off by his former fellow student and lover.

 

Ezri, sleeping on the streets, is taken in by Aaron, a 30-something butcher who has a longing in his life that he feels is connected to the fact that he couldn’t devote his life to Torah study. Ezri shows him that this longing is for something else.

 

The beauty of this movie is that it shows both the goodness of the orthodox community and its dark side without judgment. We meet the hooligans of the “Purity Police” who are nothing but Taliban with tzitzit. We feel an increasing hostility, claustrophobia and danger as a community that was once embracing and filled with caring and charity turns on one of its own.

 

For those who aren’t familiar with the intense male bonding in orthodox communities, this movie captures the spiritual intimacy between men that can be the result of this bonding. And who doesn’t long for spiritual intimacy, gay or straight?

 

Unlike the Brokeback template, when Aaron and Ezri’s relationship begins, Aaron is already married with several children. His wife’s pain in this situation is played exquisitely by Ravit Rozen.

 

The relationship between the men does not survive this pressure cooker environment — but the ending is more ambiguous in what becomes of Aaron. And will inspire conversations as to the intent of the filmmaker and its ultimate meaning.

 

In The Brotherhood, Lars is an outsider — a young man whose military career is shut down because as an officer he is accused of sexually harassing his subordinates, he finds himself shut out of the male community he joined. Rootless, and angry, he turns to a neo-Nazi group, where he meets Jimmy. Another interesting parallel between the films is that the ostensibly straight man discovers his passion for the other in the water — Aaron and Ezri at the mikvah, a ritual bath, and Lars and Jimmy in the ocean. Both films capture all the fear, tentativeness, shame, vulnerability and passion that can be so much part of a first male/male relationship.

 

Lars knows he is gay — and joins the neo-Nazis anyway, and tests the limits by talking about Ernst Röhm, the homosexual leader of Hitler’s Brownshirts, and who was murdered by the Nazis in a party purge. He openly courts disaster. This is also true of the couple in Eyes Wide Open, though of course, not by praising Nazis.

 

It would have been easy to make a film about sex between men and Nazis a sexploitation film — just putting the words Nazis and gay sex in the same sentence creates a kinky quiver for some. But just as Tabakman, the director of Eyes Wide Open, treats the orthodox with a sense of balance, Nicolo Donato doesn’t go for cheap titillation here, but uses the subject for a deeper exploration of the fear and desire that exists in masculine camaraderie.

 

It won’t be easy for reviewers to avoid sensationalizing the subject matter of these films, regardless of how hard the directors have worked to make deep statements about human nature, longing for God, longing to be part of something larger than the self, longing for tenderness and vulnerability in a world where expressing that need is dangerous. But it would be a disservice to the filmmakers and their audience.

 

I had an odd sensation towards the end of Brotherhood that was exactly like the feeling I had watching Birth of A Nation for the first time in a theater. Griffith manipulates his audience so that it’s hard not feel like cheering the Klan at the end of the film. And in Brotherhood, while you won’t feel like cheering the Nazis, you will want to see Lars and Jimmy escape the prison they’ve walked into eyes wide open to live happily ever after. The cruel twist that prevents this happy ending will leave a gay audience gasping in a whirlwind of confusing emotions. This is a powerful film.

 

Both films, as foreign productions, move at a speed that may not be comfortable for American audiences more interested in characters rendered in 3D but that have no more reality than the bytes on this screen. And while not a display of modern computer graphics, both of these films are beautifully shot. For those who are willing to experience difficult emotions these are richly rewarding films that should be seen. Eyes Wide Open is about to open for limited showings at two local NYC festivals. No telling yet if Brotherhood will find a U.S. distributor when it plays at the Palm Springs Festival this month. If it does, don’t miss it.

Trailers for both films follow...

From Another Queer Jubu to Another Frum Gay Jew...

Yes, for those of you who follow this blog, you might be interested to know there is a blog out there written by a gay student at YU about his experiences being out, frum and at an orthodox institution.

What I love about the title of his blog (apart from the fact that there's an echo in the names) is that it makes it clear he's not the only one. In fact, the use of the word "another" suggests he's just a garden variety gay frum jew. That actually, there are lots of them. And in truth, there are.

My great-uncle Alfred (may his memory be for a blessing) lived an orthodox life — and lived in Montreal's gay ghetto after he escaped from Auschwitz and made it across to safety in North America (now there's a story). He chose to live in Montreal rather than in NYC apart from the only family he had left because while he lived as a frum Jew, he also had relationships with men. And in that era there was no way he could be out to his remaining, surviving brother, my grandfather.

When I chose the title of this blog, it was with a kind of a wink — since there are those who think, like unicorns, people who identify themselves as queer jubus are rare if not mythical creatures. And while certainly it may seem that way to some, in the circles I run in, well, there seem to be a lot of us. We even have a few patron tzaddikim, starting with Allen Ginsberg, and running to a number of out gay men who are both jewish and serious practitioners and teachers of Buddhist meditation.

Ultimately though, it's all about crossing the boundary, and recognizing when I do so, that just as I kiss the mezuzah and remind myself of the V'ahavta prayer, that with the Shema, is a radical statement of the unity of the universe — that ultimately boundaries don't exist. From one kind of Jewish perspective it would be saying the Divine is everywhere and not separate from me and you and everything, so to put a mezuzah on the door is to remind myself that when outside or inside we are never separate. That when I leave my home and face people I don't know, I am seeing the face of the Divine manifested again and again. Or as the old joke goes: What did the Buddhist priest ask the hot dog seller? Make me one with everything. 

It's one reason the subject matter of this blog is so hard to pin down. Makes it hard if I wanted to hit a large demographic and build a reader base that would enable me to live on advertising sales. I could say that it's a blog about Japanese Animation (one love of mine) and have a particular readership and ad base. Because there aren't enough queer jubus for advertisers to care about. I know. I'm also an advertising executive. Talk about boundary crossing. 

Of course, for the frum, the boundary is the path. And it is indeed a path. Just not my path. There is both Gevurah and Chesed. (And of course, paradoxically, they are not separate from each other.) I take as my guide what Rebbe Nachman said about following halacha only as the vehicle. Like the parable of the monk who carries the boat on his back after he crosses the river, it has become an unnecessary burden.

As usual, I ramble.

Anyway, I truly wish the young man over at anotherfrumgayjew.com all the best on his journey. I wish him true conscious relationship with the Divine, conscious relationship with his community, and conscious relationship with a loving partner.