Pensive Prowler #20 by Dmetri Kakmi

Notes from a Writers’ Residency

I’m at Zvona i Nari (Bells and Pomegranates), a writers’ residency in Croatia’s Istrian coast, to finish my novel. I’ve been struggling with this story for two years and I haven’t been able to get the better of it. It’s turned into bit of a millstone actually.

What I need, I told myself, is solid time to focus on one thing and not be distracted by everyday necessities. A residency will allow me to dedicate my energies to being a writer, setting aside a length of time to immerse myself in the act of writing and to concentrate on one thing. I was curious to see how I’d go with that and what the results might be, for the writing and to my own sense of self.

So here I am, happily ensconced in a self-contained two-story, two-bedroom house for a month. For free. It’s an ideal situation. Liznjan is on a promontory surrounded by pristine coastline on one side and pine forests on the other. It’s quiet and there are few distractions. Perfect for work.

My work station is on the front porch, overlooking a garden of oleander and fruit trees. At midday, I prepare lunch in the kitchen to the tune of St Martin’s church bells, the most unmelodious clanging you’re likely to hear this side of hell. Siesta is at the height of the day’s heat. Though warm and welcoming, my hosts Natalija Grgorinic and Ognjen Raden leave me alone, respecting the fact that I am here to work but making sure I know they are there should I crave companionship.

Despite jet lag, I finished the novel at the end of the first week. The beast I had been wrestling with for two years was beaten. I couldn’t believe it. Now I could dedicate the next three weeks to cutting and refining. At 126,000 words, it is too long.

That night I cooked moussaka and celebrated the occasion in the garden with Natalija and Ognjen. Natalija is small, fine boned with pale skin and penetrating eyes that brighten when she speaks. Ognjen is a tall, broad fellow with dark-brown hair, a ready smile and a devilish goatee. They’re in their early forties and have a ten-year-old son called Ljubomir, who plays the rozenica, a traditional wind instrument that evokes either wild mountain music or geese fighting to the death. Take your pick.

Writers in their own right, Natalija and Ognjen are serious-minded with a strong social conscience. You know you’re in a socialist household when there’s a picture of a tractor on the kitchen wall.

By the time my friend Cam Rogers came to stay for ten days at the end of the second week, I was busy killing my darlings with a gusto and glee that surprised even me.

Even so, I welcomed the company. When Cam and I sat down for our first coffee in the garden, I realised I hadn’t spoken much in two weeks. Turned inwards during that time, my voice was husky and strained. I could barely speak or put a thought together. It brought to the fore a vital ingredient to the writing process.

Solitary contemplation is important. There is no TV here. I don’t read newspapers and I don’t scavenge online news. For two whole weeks I did something that is unthinkable in Melbourne. I walked around the property or through the pine forest, thinking about the novel at the exclusion of all else. Perhaps for the first time since I began writing it, I was completely immersed in the world of the story and living with the characters day and night. I went to bed with them and I awoke with them. This allowed me to enter the mood, the rhythm and pace of the story, in ways I hadn’t before.

This continued to be the case when Cam arrived, but it had been intensive when I was alone. Still, I was glad to go off at the end of the day with Cam and grab an Ozujsko beer or an Aperol Spritz at Kalahari bar, conveniently located on a nearby beach.

Compared to regulated life in Australia, Croatia is pretty wild. I love being in a country where people smoke in open-air bars and restaurants, ride bicycles without helmets and use mobiles while driving. The nanny state hasn’t come here yet.

The contrasts are wilder still. The half-naked, drunken sybarites at Kalahari bar are a mere three minutes down the road from a sweet chapel called Our Lady of Kuje. When I looked it up on Google translate, turns out Kuje means ‘bitch’ in Croatian. A friend said it connotes ‘mischief’ in Finnish. So goodness knows what goes on in that chapel after dark.

Inappropriate behaviour can’t be ruled out. One Sunday, Cam and I joined Natalija and Ognjen at a religious ceremony to the chapel. It was fascinating to follow the devout as they held aloft a statue of the Virgin, chanting along the way and bringing traffic to a halt. During mass under bosky trees, we snuck inside and were astonished by the interior.

It’s built on the foundations of a Roman villa. A metre below the contemporary floor level is the original floor mosaic under protective glass.

A more impressive Roman mosaic can be found in Pula, at one end of a busy car park. It was discovered while people cleaned up after the bombardments of World War II. It’s now two metres below the current street level, in the open and behind bars for its protection.

In the town square there’s a beautifully preserved Temple of Augustus and not five minutes away a statue of James Joyce enjoys a coffee outside a cafe while staring at a triumphal arch that dates to 27 BC. Apparently the great Irish man lived in Pula briefly and hated it, but that hasn’t stopped locals from making a buck off him. Nor was I surprised to learn that Dante Aligheri visited these shores while writing the Divine Comedy.

As always when you travel, it’s thrilling to look through the ages into worlds that are almost incomprehensible today. Moreover, the palimpsest, the layers of lives and cultures, made me appreciate the complex layering and interleaving of stories and how important it is to make the various strata transparent, like glass floors through which narrative can travel unhindered and offer a wider, deeper perspective.

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #17 by Dmetri Kakmi

The Indelicate Art of Teaching Writing

Being a writing teacher is not easy. Some days you want to strangle a student. Harsh words. Spoken out of rashness and frustration. Words I will regret. Let me explain and you might find sympathy in your heart for my predicament.

Earlier in the month, as I addressed a writers’ group about the work that lies ahead for the year, a participant asked what is genre. Later the same man asked what is a protagonist, and later still he ventured to query the meaning of chapter.

Flummoxed, I tried to accomodate and then threw my hands up in despair when he suggested I produce a list of “specialist publishing words” so that he can refer to it as I speak. This for a group of men and women who are supposed to have full control of English, and who have been writing for some time and wish to workshop their efforts with other writers. That is the course outline.

Genre, protagonist, chapter. These are English words in everyday use, I pointed out to the gentleman. There is nothing “specialist” about them. Besides, a professed writer such as himself ought to be familiar with elementary writing concepts if he hopes to get anywhere with his work. “What’s elementary mean?” he said.

Minutes later, another participant announced he does not read books. At which point the room closed in on me.

I boarded the train later that evening feeling dismayed and wondering what the hell I’m doing. This teaching to write business is a sham, I told myself. You can’t teach people to write. You can create a safe, encouraging environment. You can pass on techniques about how to achieve this or that effect, but talent and drive can’t be taught. They’re innate. You either have them or you don’t. You’re either driven to write or you play at “being creative”. You either practise until you hone your craft to the best of your ability, or you sit in front of the television, watching Game of Thrones and telling yourself you can write that book, given half a chance. Only better. One day. Not today. Maybe tomorrow. After that essential cup of tea. And the world will be astounded.

This palaver, this laziness of the mind, cuts to the core. I take my work as a writer and as an editor seriously. I’ve dedicated my life to it. Nothing was given me on a platter. As a Greek migrant in Australia, I fought hard for every scrap on my desk. Therefore, it’s galling to meet people who think they can waltz in and have everything laid out for them. It’s the lack of respect. Not for me. For the craft.

The blame fall squarely on the writing industry. To get funding and to perpetuate the many tentacled beast it has become it fosters the idea that we must all be creative; that every one is a writer and everyone deserves to be heard. To which I say, pish-posh. That’s very equitable. But it’s not true. Everyone is not a writer. That’s like saying everyone is a ballet dancer because they enjoy watching it once in a while. People may have a story to tell but that doesn’t mean they have the ability, or even the will, to tell it, even after they’ve attended a number of memoir writing classes in Paris or a Greek island. To claim otherwise is false and unfair. It brings in bright-eyed people who are bound for disappointment.

Writing is a discipline, like music or painting. A writer is someone who dedicates her life to the act of writing and who spends the better part of her life nurturing a talent she cannot step away from. A writer is someone who writes every day, who steals two or three hours here and there, and bends her back to the task, refining, honing. A writer is someone who has done the hard yards through daily practise and through persistence, study and contemplation, hoping to scale the summits.

It’s not someone who picks up a pen once and finds it a strain on the muscles.

It’s not someone who is taken by the glamour of it all.

In a way, the writing life begins the minute you pop out of the womb. For me it’s to do with love of words.

Growing up in Turkey, I could read before I went to school. Family legend has it I used to pick up newspapers and magazines in the street and read, as if it came naturally. Or as if I had been taught in a classroom of the mind to decipher the Turkish alphabet, which was the language ethnic Greeks spoke on the street. At home, we spoke Greek. Mind you, I could not read or write Greek, my native tongue until later, when I came to Australia. I merely spoke a dialect, which mixed an islander Greek with Turkish to create a unique melange of its own. In any case, I could read Turkish before I went to school; and then, when the family migrated to Australia when I was ten, I picked up English in a matter of months.

I’m not big-noting myself. The point is this. Language is imperative to communication, and I did everything in my power to meet the challenge. When writing’s clarion was too loud to ignore, I put myself through the wringer to learn inconsequential things, such as how to structure a sentence. Syntax. Grammar. Punctuation. Gaining an extensive vocabulary and so on.

In other words, I learned all the archaic things people deride nowadays as they jumble a limited stock of words and emojis in the faint hope of expressing themselves in wooly sentences.

The pleasure in teaching is in supporting dedicated writers. They absorb the teacher’s knowledge and experience and then they supplement it with their own intensive study and passion. They don’t turn up empty handed, expecting to be force fed like geese bound for foie gras. They do the groundwork. They know the rules of the game. They know that in certain literary genres the unwary protagonist, like the unwary student, can be killed in the first chapter. It’s elementary.

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #16 by Dmetri Kakmi

Would That Which We Call an Arse by any Other Name Smell as Sweet?

“Are you writing about the whole butt or are you writing just about the hole?”

—Rochelle Siemienowicz

It need hardly be said that male buttocks have been around since antiquity. We need only look to ancient Greece and Rome to know that.

With the decline of paganism and the rise of the monotheistic religions, the arse sunk into a hole from which it intermittently came up for air over the centuries. Thanks, in part, to 1970s crusaders who flung their underpants out the window, the arse revealed itself with a vengeance.

Until the triple tidal waves of advertising, fashion, and pornography swamped the world, humanity believed that a man was nothing but a vehicle for the penis, that wounded bear closed in its sartorial cave, waiting to leap out and avenge itself on the world. With the arrival of the twenty-first century, however, we can expect to see the hitherto neglected male arse rise to iconic status. Look around; it’s everywhere. It can’t be avoided. Even if we wanted to, we could not avert our eyes from its hypnotic globules. The male rump has gone from being the body part that dare not unveil itself, to the body part that refuses to stop quivering in the sunlight.

For a man to drop his pants and expose his rear end is at once an offence, an affront, a condemnation, a humiliation, and an invitation. It is an incendiary act that makes the soul bristle.

The no underwear policy of today’s urban sex hunter makes quick and easy sex the number one priority. No underwear means, we’re ready anytime, anywhere. Yet even today for a man to expose his buttocks is—need I say it?—a gesture capable of melting the social, religious, and political butt plug that stops the forbidden claret from breathing freely. And breathe it must, for it is only then that its pure musk can seep out.

An exposed masculine rump is a signal to the world that not only can a man be slutty, but that the secret aroma emanating from his chasm is worth bottling. Yes, it is time for fashion designers to bottle the fragrance. Eau De Butt Hole, Parfum De Derriere are just some of the epithets for the bottled essences.

Research in the field of aromatics has revealed that men of Mediterranean descent emit a rectal aroma for which there is no substitute. Should Armani wish to reproduce that unique effervescence, they would be wise to mix frankincense and myrrh with trickles of sweat gathered from the hairs of a Greek shepherd’s arse. A dab of pure truffle oil from Italy will complete the alchemy.

Far from being that singular entity known as ‘the penetrator’, a man now invites the pleasures of the gaze and of penetration in all their subtleties and variations. The smell he emits at the crucial moment is a bonus and a gift that cannot be equalled by poppers or luxury perfumes.

I like the English or Australian ‘arse’ better than the American ‘ass’. The former is dirtier, sleazier, up to no good. It needs a good spanking to bring it into line. The latter is clean and polished to a high sheen, ready for polite society. It belongs in Broadway or a Hollywood film. Not a brothel or a rough night on the town.

Whether it is filling out a bathing costume or a tight business-suit, the arse announces something few have dared admit until now: a man’s power resides not in the penis but in the feline planes of his bum. It is from here that the ointment of his lust calls out to the startled world.

The urban bicycle courier in his armour of sleek body-hugging shorts and fitted jersey is Emperor Gluteus Maximus. Raising his rump high in the air as he navigates the treacheries of footpath and traffic, he is hesitant yet full of bravado. Trumpeting itself from behind is a narcissistic coyness that can stop a heart. The soaking wet patch of the fabric at the juncture of the split is the inner eye weeping as it laments its imprisonment, while managing to give the admiring world a sly wink. It knows it will soon be free as a bordello.

I like buttocks pale and full as the moon. They are the pectorals of rear-end watchers. A sun-tanned backside is a sullied object, overexposed and too sure of itself.  A hussy. Its every movement transmits a repulsive arrogance. Furthermore, its smell is artificial, cloying. Compare that to a man who is browned all over, except around his soon-to-be-uncovered derriere, and you have a prize. He is at once delicate, virginal, shy and breathtakingly whorish. He delights in flourishing his glutes; raising them up high like a pale flag, and exposing that delicate tissue that lies waiting for whatever torments you care to lavish on it. And when you bring the prized vintage closer to the nose, it is the sporting field you smell, with a hint of barnyard and sea brine.

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #15 by Dmetri Kakmi

Craft Your World with Words

“Craft your world with words.” I’m captivated by this sentence on the cover of a writing program. There’s no end to the implications, permutations and possibilities in that short construct. And because I’m interested in origins, the beginning place of things, I think of meaning, language and creation. The mere utterance of the word, the sentence implies, can give birth to personal and impersonal realities. In turn we think of the Judeo-Christian god who understands better than most the power of utterance.

And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. He said it and it happened. Cause and effect.

The phrase ‘Let there be light’ comes from Hebrew. In its Greek translation (και είπεν ο Θεός γενηθή τω φως και εγένε το φως) it’s often used for its metaphorical meaning of dispelling ignorance. But Jehovah, the Old Testament god, used the four words to separate order from disorder. He used words to bring form to chaos.

Isn’t that what writers do when they sit at the computer to type words? Don’t they bring order to the chaos that resides inside their muddled brains? And doesn’t the act of creation confer a kind of godhood?

“Craft your world with words.” Five words. Three nouns. One possessive determiner and one preposition. Together they make a sentence. But what does “Craft your world with words” mean?

“Craft” comes from old English creft, meaning strength, skill; and is of Germanic origin, kraft. In modern English it means an activity involving skill in making things by hand or a skill used in deceiving others. We also use craft to mean magic, as in witchcraft.

“World” means the earth together with all of its countries, or human and social interaction, and it comes once again from the Germanic compound welt, meaning “age of man.”

“Word” means a distinct meaningful element of speech or writing to form a sentence or a single conceptual unit of language. You won’t be surprised to hear that this word too is of Germanic origin, wort, from an Indo-European root shared with Latin verbatum.

In esoteric terms “Word” is the Greek Logos. It can mean ‘discourse’, ‘speech’, ‘argument’ — and is derived from lego, “I say.” Under Hellenic Judaism it was adopted into Jewish philosophy to mean “the word through which all things are made”, giving it divine connotations.

In a sense “Craft your world with words” means the writer uses her skill to define and give shape to the world or to the age in which she lives. Writing is a record of who we are, who we were and what we can become. Writing is also an enchantment that entices the reader away from their world into the author’s creation, a purveyor of spells.

A writer might also define the world in his own image. From the King James Bible comes this: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

In my world that means god was a hermaphrodite, or an androgyne. Who was it said we see the world not as it is but how we are? We are closed in on ourselves. That’s why we turn to writers—to access a perspective that is different from ours. And of course a writer can also use her skill to deceive, to complicate, to draw a veil, for good or ill. It’s a complex co-mingling of factors and motivators that makes or breaks existence.

There are examples of this in the media.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s famous ‘misogyny’ speech in parliament — to my mind the first great feminist statement of the twenty-first century — is a good case in point. In attacking opposition leader Tony Abbott she used trenchant, incisive, caustic language to turn herself from a scorned prime minister to a feminist heroine. Her popularity shot through the ceiling, especially among women. A week or so later Gillard’s own government put words to Orwellian use to excise the Australian mainland from the immigration zone. If they succeeded Australia would cease to exist; refugees would have nowhere to go. They would set off on a journey to a land that will be swallowed by the bureaucratic application of legislation. In essence, words invoked by a government would have altered the fabric of reality to remove an island continent from the map.

In the USA Chaplain John McTernan used words to yank the world back to old testament days. He announced on a Christian blog that Hurricane Sandy was god’s punishment on America for supporting ‘the homosexual agenda’. The chaplain went on to state that if Obama and Romney did not support gay marriage, Hurricane Sandy would not have struck New York. Not wanting to be left out, preacher Pat Robertson added that acceptance of homosexuality will result in earthquakes, tornadoes, terrorist bombs and meteor strikes; a virtual disaster movie.

Netizens were outraged, but I loved it. The idea that gay people are in touch with natural forces appeals to me. When I heard the bizarre utterances, my first reaction was they’re right. Gay people are responsible for natural disasters. We can drawn down powers that put us in touch with forces beyond the reckoning of mere heterosexuals. Global warming didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy. Gays did. The night before the hurricane slammed into New York, gay icon Grace Jones performed her aptly named Hurricane tour in Manhattan. In reality this was a magic ritual gays and their goddess performed to call on the destructive forces of nature. Hence, Hurricane Sandy.

You can see what I’m doing, right? I’m crafting my own tapestry by unravelling the warp and weft of the chaplain’s words and re-weaving them to suit my outlook. You notice I use the words “weaving,” “fabric,” “tapestry,” “warp and weft” to talk about the way words craft the world in which we live. There is a good reason.

In the ancient world and in some contemporary traditional cultures, the principle of weaving, the drawing together of two sets of interlacing threads to produce fabrics of great complexity, becomes an image of the mystery of existence. A good example is the Islamic prayer rug. The floor covering is not just comfort for knees. The patterns and designs on it are the crossing of time and space, where the visible and invisible worlds are woven together to form the tapestry of life.

Weaving or spinning means to create, to make something out of one’s own substance. Cloth resembles language. Words form syntax similar to how threads produce fabric. “Text” and “textile” share a common root, meaning “to weave.” In some traditional cultures, weaving and speech are poetically combined to form a coherent cosmology. The mouth and the vocal cords of ancestor figures are a loom from which words and cloth emerge. The Dogon people of Africa refer to the loom as ‘secret speech’. They say ‘to be nude is to be without words’. The designs woven into fabric are a form of storytelling.  Helen and Penelope in the Odyssey acquire voices through weaving, through telling their own stories on tapestries. That’s why we say, “She is weaving a tale” or “He is spinning a yarn.”

Every writer has his or her own reasons for writing. I write to communicate with an often perplexing world. I write not in Greek or Turkish, my native tongues, but in English, because that is the language of my adopted country; however, my sensibilities and my inner landscape are an admixture of Anatolian and Australian. Sometimes these juxtaposing elements are at odds with one another. Sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they create something that is alive and new. Something that has not existed before. Sometimes, not. That’s how cultures talk to each other, how they evolve and open out to encompass all of life and humanity. Not by closing down and holding on to what is exclusively theirs.

As Carlos Fuentes said, “Culture perishes in purity or isolation… Like bread and love, language is shared with others. And human beings share a tradition. There is no creation without tradition. No one creates from nothing.”

To which I add: Sometimes all you need do is speak the word.

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #13 by Dmetri Kakmi

Flying High

I don’t want to brag, but … I recently flew to Rome and London business-class. It’s quite the experience. There’s nothing like it. The problem is I’m now elevated to a higher state and can’t possibly travel cattle-class again. It’s too too ghastly, I tell you, sitting at close quarters with the plebeian classes, eating with a plastic fork sludge that wouldn’t pass muster at Hungry Jack’s. I mean, why drink beer when you can drink champagne, darling?

Seriously, if you want to study the disparity between the haves and have-nots, look no further than the internal socio-political workings of an airplane. From nose to tail, it’s a microcosm of the divide that exists between rich and poor. And we’re not even venturing as far as first class. No, we’re just taking a short stroll from working class to middle class.

Let’s be clear about one thing. Under normal circumstances, your correspondent couldn’t afford business class in a mad fit. Such indulgences are outside his means, and he is usually squeezed in a tiny seat with his knees under his chin in economy, cheek by jowl with a human fart machine, developing deep vein thrombosis and fighting off nausea.

But this was a special occasion and my partner paid for us to travel in style, shall we say.

First intimations of privilege surfaced when we were fast-tracked through customs at Melbourne airport and made our way to the segregated quietude of the business-class lounge, there to while away the hours before take-off with a plenitude of food, drink and wifi. Soothing muzak and sparkling bathrooms big enough to accomodate a Roman orgy cushioned the experience further. Not that centurions and gladiators were provided.

When the call to board came, we calmly made our way to the gate, knowing full well that as priority passengers we could board immediately. No waiting in line with the sweaty masses.

Dear reader, I was escorted to a pod of my own. It was a private booth with a larger-than-usual TV screen and room enough to fling my arms with gay abandon, should I wish to do so. At the press of a button, the arm chair turned into a bed, with real pillows and blankets. No sooner did my bum touch the seat, then a hovering angel, obviously devoted to my comfort and wellbeing, appeared to offer excellent chilled champagne. And then more champagne. I quaffed elegantly, pinky held aloft, terrified of giving myself away before these unruffled beings who addressed me as Mr Kakmi (which admittedly made me feel a right wanker) and who took an interest in what I desired to eat during the long flight. No trundling trolleys with chicken, beef or fish for us.

Before the meal was served, the ministering angel appeared to enfold a starched white napkin ‘pon my table wide, on which various tasty treats were laid with care and tenderness. Perhaps nothing on this flight surprised me more than the real cutlery and crockery placed at my disposal.

Plastic cutlery is so economy class, darling!

Which got me thinking. Does this mean terrorists don’t travel business-class? The implicit message was clear. Violence is the domain of the lower classes, herded in the back of the plane and waiting to explode with innate aggression. Refined professionals are too busy stuffing their faces and quaffing fine wines to grab real cutlery and run around a plane screaming “Allah akbar.”

The red wine, by the way, was excellent. As was the dessert wine that discreetly appeared at my elbow as I watched Blade Runner 2049. (As an aside, I should like to say the sequel to this classic was disappointment personified. Lady Macbeth and My Cousin Rachel were more satisfying.)

As they say, what goes in must come out. Before turning in for the night, I ventured forth to the facilities, there to purge and anoint the sated body with an abundance of fragrant oils and exotic unguents. Imagine my surprise when I stepped into a space big enough to accommodate two fat people from the mile-high club in economy. Obviously the news that the poor tend to be more horizontally challenged than the weight-conscious, gym-hopping professional has yet to reach airline ears.

With lights dimmed and ambient music on the headphones, I stretched out in my bed to seek nature’s soft nurse. Suddenly, I sat bolt up right and stared with wide-eyed horror into the gloom. A heinous thought galloped through my mind. Conditions such as these, thought I, brought on the French Revolution. If the people up the back had an inkling of the luxury heaped on me and which was denied them, there’d surely be an uprising. What if they stormed the bastion of entitlement with their plastic cutlery and ire held aloft and demanded a piece of the cake? What should I do?

Fear not, quoth a voice in my sleepy head. They’re probably sedated into a stupor by cheap grog and soylent green. Rest easy, sweet prince, for they surely are not.

But I’m loyal to my working-class roots. In truth I knew that if the plane went down, we all go down. Privilege or no privilege. That gave me some comfort as I sought repose in sleep, o gentle sleep!

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

Pensive Prowler #11 by Dmetri Kakmi

I am Not Your Faggot

In the documentary I am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin says, “The white population of this country has to ask itself why it was necessary to have the nigger in the first place. I’m not a nigger. I’m a man. If you think I’m a nigger, it means you need it and you got to find out why.”

James Baldwin by Allan Warren.

It’s a singular observation and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. In October, Australia will be asked whether or not the law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry. Citizens will cast a voluntary postal vote with a Yes or a No. The poll will cost the country $122 million dollars. Furthermore, it is non-binding. If the government decides it doesn’t want to pass the law, it won’t. Thus wasting $122 million dollars of tax payers’ money. To add insult to injury, the same law was changed in 2004 to exclude same-sex couples from the marriage act, with no debate or plebiscite. So why do we need an expensive plebiscite now to rectify the situation?

The build-up to the vote has been nasty. It’s taken a toll on same-sex families, their children and on same-sex attracted people in general. Suddenly, everyone is free to publicly express an opinion on matters that do not concern them and about which they know little or nothing.

Yet again the majority is asked to vote on the legitimacy or otherwise of a minority. Does that seem fair? Is it right that in a democracy some people enjoy higher status and more rights than others? It doesn’t seem fair to me. In fact, it seems downright undemocratic.

Let me state my position in the marriage-equality debate. I don’t care for marriage. I would not marry my partner of thirty-one years if I was allowed to do so tomorrow. It is not an institution I believe in; and I always hoped same-sex attracted people would subvert expectations and find new ways of being in the world, not succumb to dominant ideologies that are, to my eyes, conservative and stifling.

But this isn’t really about marriage. It’s about equality. And so, because I believe in democratic principles of justice and equality I will vote Yes in the poll, even though it contravenes my beliefs and universal democratic principles.

It’s often observed that the disenfranchised are expected to educate the powerful. An untenable situation. The genius of Baldwin is that he asks authority to question itself. Which is why I am going to ride on his coat-tails and ask, why did the heterosexual invent the faggot or the poofter, as they say in Australia?

Over the decades, we have been killed, discriminated against, analysed, subjected to cruel experiments and sham cures. Even so, no one is closer to finding an answer to “the problem.” It does not occur to anyone that maybe homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon and maybe we ought to leave well enough alone. There are far more important issues.

I’ve always maintained that I am not gay or homosexual. I don’t use the words in relation to myself, unless I have to clarify a point for a heterosexual. Like James Baldwin, I am a man first and foremost. I do not care for labels and categories, and I refuse to apply them to myself. Identity politics strikes me as reductive and headed for trouble. Nevertheless, I am boxed in, classified and categorised by society. Why?

The question brings us back to the earlier question: why did the heterosexual invent the faggot? Is it to make himself feel better? An anthropologist I know observed that this kind of behaviour is about the concentration of power. Ascendancy relies on separation and hierarchy. It is good to be at the top, setting the rules. The smaller you can make someone else feel, the better you have it. That means you have to find people to exclude. And unfortunately, black people and homosexuals take the brunt in a white, heterosexist society.

That is how majority and minority identities are constructed by the people who hold power. That is how ‘the other’ is born. ‘Otherness’ distances, dehumanises. It says, I am human. You are not. Therefore I can say and do what I like to you and you will not feel as I do.

But these are academic theories and I’m no academic. I am a human being and for now I’d like to ask heterosexuals three questions:

How would you feel if a nation was asked to vote on whether you are a legitimate human being, worthy of equal rights?

How would you feel if you were treated like an insect, something to be studied and eventually exterminated?

And why do you need the faggot?

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.