Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners

“It does not have to be yours”

74 Mark Bib­ bins When I first heard from Jim Elledge what this pro­ ject was to be ­ called, I thought, well, Ger­ trude Stein of ­ course. Mine is Stein. The In­ vert(ed) Past. Mount Fat­ tie is my daddy. Easy. She’s a bat­ ter­ ing ram made of truf­ fles; she’s an iron ­ feather ­ duster; or, as Lynn Em­ a­ nuel put it, “a huge type­ writer in a dress.” Her ­ three-year-old ­ nephew, after meet­ ing her and Alice B. Tok­ las, ex­ plained that he liked the man, but won­ dered why the lady had a mus­ tache. And some­ one ­ else’s Papa, un­ flat­ tered by her por­ trayal of him (and oth­ ers) in The Auto­ biog­ ra­ phy of Alice B. Tok­ las, sent Stein a copy of Death in the After­ noon with an in­ scrip­ tion: “A Bitch Is A Bitch Is A Bitch Is A Bitch. From her pal Er­ nest Hem­ ing­ way.” But I con­ fess I tend to like ­ bitches, in a flame/moth way, al­ though it’s not ­ enough sim­ ply to be ­ bitchy. Or a sim­ ple bitch, at least not for long. Or a month. Or a moth. Wayne Koes­ ten­ baum ­ writes, “Read­ ing Ger­ trude Stein takes enor­ mous pa­ tience. The skep­ ti­ cal ­ reader might won­ der: what if Stein is not worth this level of at­ ten­ tive­ ness? What if her writ­ ing ­ doesn’t re­ ward close scru­ tiny? Ask of your own life the same hard ques­ tion: what if you stare fer­ vently into your own mind and dis­ cover noth­ ing there?” In­ deed. Read­ ing Stein gives the il­ lu­ sion, if you let it, of per­ fect free­ dom—free from, free to. Or maybe the work is the il­ lu­ sion: noth­ ing given or given “It does not have to be yours” “It does not have to be yours” 75 away, ­ though from it we are al­ lowed to take and take away. What was fam­ ily to her—until she ­ crossed him off, she was clos­ est to her ­ brother Leo and then she ­ wasn’t and never again—but Alice and al­ ways. And a lot of sol­ diers and paint­ ers pass­ ing ­ through, too. We make our own fam­ i­ lies, at times be­ cause we have to, at oth­ ers be­ cause we want to. What can a mar­ riage be? What does your daddy do? Per­ haps you will have two. And Cum­ mings, too: how queer, in the old sense, but also how new. Let’s make all of an out­ side bet­ ter than the in­ her­ ited in, a ­ wilder place to play. As he must have been for many oth­ ers, Cum­ mings was my first­ poetic love—I was ­ twelve? thir­ teen?—right ­ around when I under­ stood that I was fun­ da­ men­ tally, maybe dan­ ger­ ously dif­ fer­ ent (even if the dan­ ger was only to my­ self ). And yes, he’s un­ fash­ ion­ able and un­ even and oc­ ca­ sion­ ally in­ fu­ ri­ at­ ing, but I love him any­ way for his ­ work’s odd­ ity and camp and ro­ mance and ­ satire. For the wild per­ mis­ sion he gives, for for­ ever al­ ter­ ing the way I ex­ pe­ ri­ ence words.­ Fast-forward ­ twenty or so years to 1994, the Squaw Val­ ley ­ writers’ con­ fer­ ence in the moun­ tains of north­ ern Cal­ i­ for­ nia. I was still an under­ grad (long story) ma­ jor­ ing in so­ ci­ ol­ ogy, plan­ ning to work in HIV ed­ u­ ca­ tion and coun­ sel­ ing, ready to pur­ sue a ­ master’s in so­ cial work. But after tak­ ing a few work­ shops, ­ poetry, as it does, got in the way, as it will. Or per­ haps ­ cleared the way is a more apt thing to say. At the time I knew ap­ prox­ i­ mately noth­ ing about poems or the peo­ ple who make their lives ­ through mak­ ing them, but I was most ex­ cited at the pros­ pect of work­ ing at the con­ fer­ ence with Gal­ way Kin­ nell; I hoped he would be­ come my ­ Poetry Daddy. I was also some­ what ter­ rified to learn of an­ other poet...