Blackouts

Juan guides Nene to remember “the blackout that led to the flood” (17), which leads to Nene’s flashback of allowing his sink to run until it flooded the apartment of his landlady, who lived below him. While she screamed about her collapsed ceiling, her husband looked calmly at Nene, which alarmed him. In the present, Juan teases Nene for his poor Spanish. When he presses Nene to tell the story of the blackout and the flood, Nene argues that he came to hear Juan’s story. Juan stresses the importance of “[getting] the details right” (21).

A heavily redacted page from Sex Variants with the header “Homosexual Cases” describes a man named Jose, who is uncertain how to handle sexual approaches from other men, implying he also desires these men.

Nene admits to disassociating during his blackouts: When his landlady began screaming about her collapsed ceiling, he assumed her husband had died, unaware that his water had been running for more than an hour. He attempts to return the conversation to Juan’s project, but Juan insists he will speak “tomorrow.”

A blurry photograph shows a young man lounging in grass. In the background, several blurry figures stand, possibly playing a sport.

Nene discusses meeting Juan in a psychiatric facility, shortly before he himself turned 18. He felt mature for being sent to an adult facility rather than a juvenile one, which embarrasses him in retrospect. He recalls seeing the many rules of the institution as “cliche,” a bad television script. Both Nene and Juan recount what the workers in the institution described as “good” or “bad” behavior.

Nene recalls his intake interview (part of the assessment phase of counseling), where he is asked to disclose detailed accounts of “bad thoughts and deeds” (28). During his first night at the institution, he is drugged after shivering violently. Close observation by a nurse prevents him from sleeping the second night, and he draws a stylized execution chair.

A photograph shows a man, face blacked out, leaning against a pillow. The wires of a shower-like apparatus are attached to his head.

Nene recalls his obsession with chairs during his last year of high school. After he makes a deliberately unusable chair, the art teacher secretly teaches him to weld. Nene makes a chair that is narrow and tall—also unusable—and welds a tiny figure atop it. This a reference to Basic Instinct (1992), a film in which Sharon Stone briefly reveals her vulva to a room of interrogators while uncrossing her legs.

Nene and Juan discuss their initial meeting, though Juan is cautious against rushing. Nene recounts his first week in the facility, during which he spoke and ate little, drawing when he was permitted. Juan sat next to him silently in their group therapy sessions. One day, Nene suddenly spoke, likening himself and Juan to a photograph of an old couple surrounded by cats. Juan laughed, which bolstered Nene’s mood. Nene assumed he sat near him due to their “resemblance,” which goes beyond physical similarities. In the present, Juan regrets revealing he was committed to a psychiatric hospital around age 18, and they discuss how “treatments” at various facilities eliminated Juan’s sex drive by age 40. Juan describes this as “the release of want of the want of release” before commenting that “libido was the last defense” against “nothingness” (36-37). Nene asks about his romantic past, but Juan doesn’t answer.

A photograph shows an elderly couple in a room of approximately 24 cats.

Nene believes Juan is “haunted” by a “failed” adoption. He asks for more information about Juan’s other would-be mother, Zhenya (born Eleanor Byrnes)—Jan Gay’s wife. Juan only knew her briefly, then comments he only knew Nene for 18 days, yet Nene is “haunting” him. He urges Nene to mentally return to the psychiatric hospital, where Nene felt “lost” but “watched over.”

A photograph shows a young man from behind, standing in front of a sparkly curtain. He wears a pair of high-cut underwear and a sleeve around his left forearm.

In the past, Nene knows Juan as “John,” which Juan attributes to the length of his time at the psychiatric hospital: He was first committed when “every even slightly foreign name was Americanized” (40). Nene is jarred by the knowledge of Juan’s real name, though Juan is unbothered by the disconnect. Nene thinks Juan seems “free.”

Nene and Juan are younger and older than the other patients, respectively, and Nene tempers any desire to lash out so he can remain close to Juan. He reflects on his limited understanding of gender and sex, noting how, at the time, “Juan transcended what [he] thought [he] knew about sissies” (40). He views Juan’s conversations as pedagogical, further revealing his lack of knowledge about queer histories and cultures.

In the present, Nene thinks of unasked questions, feeling “watched over” by Juan even as the older man is lost in memory. Juan’s illness and medications cause tremors and teary eyes, though he insists he never cries.

Nene recalls thinking Juan’s discussion of French poet Arthur Rimbaud during their time at the psychiatric hospital was about cinematic action hero Rambo, and expresses a longing for Juan’s “disregard” and “gentle regard.” At the time, he felt “mortified” by his adolescent body.

A heavily redacted page from Sex Variants with the header “NARCISSISTIC CASES” comprises a 20-year-old man’s first-person narration of traveling the US before heading to New York. He has a sexual encounter with a Jewish man, which turns violent when the narrator suspects the other of being a detective. The narrator begins engaging in sex work with other men.

At 27, Nene is proud of his body, though embarrassed of his teeth. When Juan sleeps during the day, he “peacocks” in the room, imagining his appeal.

Nene tells Juan of his missed chance at a university scholarship, which he blames on internal chaos following his commitment to the psychiatric hospital. Juan asks if he “romanticized” the figure of the “hoodlum homosexual.”

On his 18th day in the psychiatric hospital, Nene overdoses on stolen pills from a distracted nurse, which briefly renders him comatose. After being discharged from the hospital, he is sent to another hospital. As he leaves, his belongings are returned to him, including a golden crucifix necklace that is not his; he suspects it is Juan’s, and wishes he paid more attention to the other.

In Nene’s final memory of the psychiatric hospital, he and Juan sit on a bench. Juan quotes a Spanish line from American poet Ezra Pound’s Piscine Cantos (1948)—as the predominantly English poem does contain Spanish—which translates to “I think the kings will disappear.” In the present, Nene admits to forgetting Juan for a decade before he “came rushing back […] like a flood” (47). Juan replies “Après moi, le déluge” (47)—a French phrase which translates to “After me, the flood.”

In the present, Juan keeps his two volumes of Sex Variants on a dedicated shelf. The volumes are called “MEN” and “WOMEN,” each containing three categories: “Bisexual Cases,” “Homosexual Cases,” and “Narcissistic Cases.”

Nene finds Sex Variants fragile and heavily redacted. He assumes its redactions were done by a state official until he notes their care. He calls this a “provocation,” a term he considers inadequate.

Three heavily redacted pages from Sex Variants with the headers “STUD,” “HOMO,” and “DIES” describe a child with poor eyesight who desires “to press his face against the buttocks of a man” (49) among other sexual desires—including identification with womanhood through penetration. The final page refers to being “relieved of all sex feelings” (51).

Nene struggles between his ability to laugh at his past naivete, which he learned from Juan, and genuine embarrassment.

Nene tells Juan of an embarrassing attempt to flirt with an older man, which ended in rejection. He then asks about the redactions in Sex Variants. Juan gives a noncommittal answer, and tells Nene only to be embarrassed about taking himself too seriously. He frames blackouts—which could refer to either Nene’s dissociative episodes or the redactions—as “mystery” and “frustration as art” (53).

A drawing shows five girls surrounding a sixth child of indeterminate gender. This child holds a baby and looks toward the viewer. In the bottom corner are the words “cried Manuelito happily” (54).

Nene finds that only Juan’s body is dying, finding the other’s voice “alive.”

Each morning, Nene watches Juan sleep, contrasting his ailing body with an illustration from a children’s book for which his younger self modeled.

Nene encounters a man in the hallway of Juan’s building while taking out the trash. They have a brief, silent sexual encounter in the other’s room. Nene leaves after they finish. When he returns to Juan’s room, Juan shows him a section of revealed wallpaper, and Nene wonders how to coax the other to take a bath.

After telling Juan that he “never” sleeps, Nene continues the story of his landlady. When he left her house for the last time, he saw her through a glass door, standing in front of an altar filled with photographs salvaged from the flood. Though she didn’t turn, he knew she forgave him by the reflection of her expression. Nene recalls a time several weeks before the flood, when the landlady gave him a bag of trinkets from a visit to Puerto Rico, which he handed back while dissociating. In the present, Juan asks Nene to tell him something “terrible” about his mother.

Nene flashbacks to his mother, whom he considers “a screamer,” showing Juan a shoebox full of photographs and telling him their stories. Juan is in awe of her.

A heavily redacted page from Sex Variants with the header “NARCISSISTIC CASES” describes a person named “Rose S.” using poetic language.

Nene thinks of his family history: His father was in the Air Force shortly after the Vietnam War draft ended, and his mother was sent to a Catholic-run home for unmarried, pregnant mothers. Following religious conversion into a Jehovah’s Witness, Nene’s father summoned his mother from Brooklyn to North Dakota. He physically abused Nene’s mother, who refused to press charges despite neighbors calling the police in response to her screams.

A photograph shows the entrance to the Minot Air Force Base. A man in uniform stands in front of the entry kiosk.

For many years, Nene remembered the police officer who asked his mother, after an incident of domestic violence, “Little girl, what are you doing here?” (64). Juan invokes the Jungian-Lacanian notion of the “imago” (an emotionally charged image of a person), a reference that Nene doesn’t understand. Still, he describes his mental image of the police officer, who helped his mother and brother return to Brooklyn. Young Nene saw the policeman as heroic, but his teenage self questioned if he was racist, as his mother was white and his father Puerto Rican. He speaks of his parents with pride, despite his father’s continued abuse of him and his brother.

A photograph shows a young couple, presumably Nene’s parents. The man holds a baby, and the woman smiles. They have their faces blacked out.

When Nene is about eight, his father becomes a state trooper. Because he is Puerto Rican and speaks Spanish, he is assigned to narcotics. He begins socializing with other police officers, whom Nene’s mother calls “pigs.” Years later, Nene overhears his father speaking with his partner Hector, whom Nene likes even though he often uses Spanish—which Nene doesn’t understand well. Nene observes their closeness, worrying that their relationship is maladaptive.

Nene loses track of time at the Palace due to the absence of financial woes. He earns money doing sex work, and feels anxiety whenever money is tight; Juan soothes him. Nene begins to leave Juan’s room once per evening, to purchase a tamale (for himself) and soup (for Juan) from a bodega. The process of opening the tamale to apply salsa reminds him of an old film about voodoo dolls.