Violent Expulsion
The theory that consciousness arises from structured speech never convinced Jaime. He thought that the highest form of awareness was ineffable. It is experienced through silent communion, when one pair of eyes recognizes itself in the eyes of another, with all its hopes and doubts – it was at that moment that one becomes conscious of the infinity of being.
Against this mystery, Logos idea posits structure and limitations. Creation is a paring down of infinity to arrive at delimited objects. Life is a result of subtraction. The practitioners of Logos are none other than the enforces of patriarchy, and they can only expel infinity violently. Their world is a world ruled, and it is ruled through prohibition and punishment.
Jamie loved freedom too much to subscribe to the Logos worldview. Rules made him claustrophobic; they terrified him. He could never commit to a social role. He could never be happy to subtract the infinity of his being to a mere stump of a “well-adjusted” citizen.
This was the reason Jamie disliked women: they always sought commitment. No matter how liberated they were or claimed to be, their instinct drove them to reduce themselves into stumps, and to reduce you with them, too. The very act of love making with a woman was what produced the most radical reduction of infinitude of possibilities to singularity of destiny: it produced a baby.
Yet, Jamie also admired women. While their storylines, as it were, tended towards reduction, their characters were marvellously free from strictures of logic. Women always acted the role of mysterious objects of desire. Even if they were battered housewives, even if they were pathetically loyal to some selfish, beer-guzzling idiot of a toxic male, they still put on makeup every day. They still loved others, and they still loved themselves. They still practiced style, and style is the works of the religion of infinitude. This was Jamie’s religion.
Jamie had many female friends, and he had many female customers. The well-off ladies around town were in love with his work as an interior designer. He loved spending time with them and talking about fashion and art. But when these women returned home, to be limited by their husbands and their children, Jamie returned to his own husband, Ricky.
The two of them lived in a penthouse in the heart of downtown, in a lofty lair of cosmopolitan serenity that rose physically as well as ontologically above the ruckus of bourgeois banality. No restrictions for them, no sir. However, to exercise their nurturing side, they did own a pair of Borzoi dogs.
Jamie had still been a nominal heterosexual when he first met Ricky. Ricky would visit his art gallery with business partners. Ricky was always the centre of attention, fawned over by men and women alike. At that time, he was already an accomplished human rights lawyer and essayist.
At first, Jamie would look at Ricky and desire to be like him. He too wanted to be the centre of attention. Yet he knew that he could never pull it off - he didn’t have his staggering A-type personality required for that level of worldly success. But Ricky was kind to him, and then Ricky was gentle with him. Finally, Ricky became intimate with him, and Jamie embraced it. Ricky for his part liked what Jamie had, but he lacked: the delicate spirit of an artist. Jamie discovered that the romantic arrangement was even better than his earlier emulative fantasies. Rather than being Ricky, he was with Ricky. He was Ricky’s.
It didn’t take them long to move in together and then to get married. Ricky was elected to city council, and they became a power couple moving and shaking amidst high society. Together they could charm anyone - Ricky those who were attracted to success, and Jamie those who were in tune with their aesthetic side.
This was how Jamie felt when, one rainy day, all his convictions were thrown into doubt. That day went to meet Ricky for lunch in a trendy Italian bistro. He was eager to go over a purchase of a painting for their home. Ricky told him that he had also promised to meet some friends about a favour, but that they were in a rush, and the talk with them would be brief. he first needed to sort something with some friends, but that the talk would be brief.
The friends turned out to be a young heterosexual couple with a son of about four years. Jamie was jarred by the child, a screeching, shrieking little demon who utterly defiled the serenity of the restaurant. This heathen midget would dash off suddenly to neighbouring tables and scandalise esteemed patrons with most indecent noises. During one of his runs, he tossed his hideous plastic juice bottle at an old lady, in defiance of the censorious look she beamed down on him. It hit her on the ear as she attempted to dodge it flying square into her face. Some orange juice splashed through the strawed cap onto the lady’s hair and blouse. The mother apologised profusely – and loudly.
The child’s parents took turns running after their restless spawn whenever he would dash off, but rarely in time to prevent a foul play, and besides, having adults run around the tables in addition to the child made things only worse. The parents’ apologetic expressions showed that they were pained with embarrassment, but it must have been parental affection – what else? – that kept them going, or rather staying in the place. Jamie could not believe they did not fold and leave, never to return - the nerve!
Alas, the breeders stuck around for a whole hour and a half. The vulgarity of the encounter was aggravated by the fact that the family were in fact Ricky’s relatives, and that they wanted to ask for his support for their child’s application to an elite private school in which Ricky served on the board of directors.
While Jamie spent the whole time struggling to disguise his distress, Ricky was visibly enjoying the meeting. The couple fawned over him. Their eyes glowed and blinked with childish admiration as they ate up every word of advice Ricky dispensed with his silken eloquence. They showered him with compliments; the mother said at some point that she hoped her son grows up to be just like Ricky. Such aspiration made no sense to Jamie – if they admired Ricky, then why in the world did they live in the suburbs and birth children?
The father strained pathetically to impress with smart observations but managed nothing but to spew platitudes. Underneath all of the couple’s genteel affectations Jamie saw the tooth-and-nail competitiveness of the undifferentiated bourgeoise, a blind, Darwinian struggle for social ascendance. Yet Ricky did not see it. Ricky was flattered. Ricky promised the parents that he would talk to the school dean, and that he planned to take a more active role on the school’s board.
By the time the parents left Jamie was too flustered to even bring up his frustration. His day was ruined, and by the time he rejoined Ricky at home after work, he was teeming with range. They got into a fight.
“How could you even give a damn about educating and raising children?!” Jamie demanded to know, “We are gays, Ricky! We are not wet nurses!”
“Education is as much part of sustainable future as green energy, and it is my duty as a public representative to take an interest in it!” Ricky yelled back.
They did not reach an understanding. Jamie hoped that Ricky’s newfound interest in pedagogy was a passing fancy. Weeks passed by, however, only to show that Ricky made good on his promise to the parents regarding his involvement in the school. He went to the school’s administration meetings as often as once a week, and he clearly impressed, for his efforts resulted in invitation to give the commencement speech at that year’s graduation ceremony. Ricky accepted the offer and told Jamie about it with childlike excitement.
The commencement was a very formal occasion, and Jamie could not refuse attending as Ricky’s spouse. Turns out Ricky had become a veritable celebrity at the school. Countless parents swarmed him and showered him with thanks: for attracting new investors, for contributing to curriculum development, and above all for his passion. Their children likewise came up to him in throngs. Looking up to his polished, corporate muzzle with admiring eyes, they asked him excited questions about his literary and political accomplishments. When he was not talking to admirers, Ricky was shaking hands and taking photos with them.
At first, people approached Jamie too, but he had nothing to say, as he knew nothing about education and wanted to know nothing. He was left alone to look in mute frustration, stranded from the happy clatter of hopeful families.
When Ricky stepped up to give his speech the whole thousand people in the auditorium felt into a charmed silence. He went on to speak about the struggle that is education. He congratulated and reassured the students, telling them that the great chaos of formative years can be transformed into great power, but only with great faith and dedication. Success is a lucid gemstone carved out of the most deformed rocks in the Earth’s crust.
He went on to talk about changing of the guard. He said that everyone is merely a steward of legacy that stretches generations back and generations forward. Our actions are what our countless ancestors worked towards, and what our countless descendants will have to live with. He talked about humility and sacrifice. His speech finished not too soon and not too late, and it was hailed with a thunderous applause.
“I cannot believe you meant all that crap about the succession of generations,” Jamie almost cried when they returned home that evening. “Do you also want to have children Ricky? Do you also want to pass the torch to your descendants?”
“Of course not,” Ricky stayed calm, “You see honey, I meant everything I said, but that doesn’t mean I want to play the part of a breeder. We are like the monks in the Middle Ages – we don’t create families; we do not get sullied by the vulgar life. We stay apart, but only so that we can achieve the clarity needed to help those who do shoulder the common burden. We are the avant-garde of society.”
Jamie was not convinced. His scepticism only grew worse as summer progressed, for Ricky got so involved in education that he began writing a book on the subject. This took a whole new chunk out of his already hectic schedule. Jamie now felt a definite sense of being neglected by his significant other.
He tried to make Ricky jealous. A couple of weekends he dragged him out to gay nightclubs and flirted with the boys right in front of him. He would make salacious comments about the “talent” to Ricky, but to his chagrin, Ricky merely agreed, absent mindedly. It is as though Ricky was becoming asexual.
Next, Jamie escalated by reactivating his account on Grindr, the gay hookup app, planning to cheat on Ricky. He then did it a couple of times. He hooked up with a graduate student at the latter’s apartment, over lunch on a Tuesday. On a Sunday afternoon, while Rick was absorbed in writing, he went out and hooked up with a father who was on vacation with his wife and two kids. They met in the father’s hotel room. He had sent off his family on a boat cruise and stayed behind with the excuse that his ulcer was acting up. As Jamie was readying to leave, he kept saying how much he loved his family. He then he burst into tears. Jamie gave him a long hug.
Ricky remained absent minded and clueless about Jamie’s escapades. Jamie quit Grindr when he stumbled onto an inactive profile that he thought might in fact be Ricky’s – the pics showed every part of the body but the face, and these parts looked familiar to Jamie, though he couldn’t tell for sure.
“Maybe Ricky is not becoming asexual, but heterosexual,” Jamie began to suspect. That hypothesis received major support in the form of a very attractive female, a sassy, buxom graduate student whom Ricky hired to help with his research and proofreading. The girl, named Gloria, started showing up at the penthouse, meeting Ricky in his study for hours on end. One weekend in late summer she showed up early. Ricky was out for exercise, and Jamie received Gloria in the guest room. They chatted over turmeric cleansers spiced with lemongrass and cloves.
“So, tell me what have you been working on with Ricky all this time?” inquired Jamie sweetly.
“It is amazing!” Gloria averred, “Ricky is my hero right now. His ideas about family are revolutionary. His book will introduce a whole new paradigm about parenting and adolescent cognitive facilitation.”
“Wow, well thank you! Thank you on behalf of Ricky. Isn’t he something? And to think that a man with his background would turn out to be so brilliant on the subject!”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know. Ricky is gay. Ricky and I are both gay.”
“So? Do you have to be sick to be a good doctor?”
“I get that,” Jamie waved down his hand, “But don’t you think that this is a little different? I mean, a couple of months back Ricky and I interviewed a married couple with a child. I observed the two parents interact with their little boy and I was struck by how much effort and sacrifice it takes to be a parent. Ricky and I have these two beautiful Borzoi, but really, what do we know about raising kids? Even with the dogs, our maid takes care of them for the most part.”
“I don’t see what dogs have to do with anything,” insisted Gloria, “He is not a practitioner. He is a theorist. His ideas stem purely from his intellect. Of course, they are supported by established research - that’s where I come in. As for Ricky, he just has this amazing ability to recognise patterns and synthesise. ”
Jamie saw in Gloria’s glazed expression that he was not converting this zealot. She had a look of unquestioning conviction that infuriated him. He wanted to grab the stupid bitch by the throat with both hands and choke the life out of her. However, the accretion of rage in his bosom, rather than boiling over into an act of physical aggression, made something in his mind click. He became calm; he got an idea.
“I am just messing with you,” Jamie smiled, “Come with me. I got something to show you.”
He ushered Gloria to his painting studio, a large space on the second floor of the penthouse that she knew nothing about in all her visits there. She has never been upstairs, only in the guest room, Ricky’s study, and occasionally in the kitchen, where she would grab a drink or a snack during long hours of work with Ricky.
The daylight was bright that afternoon, and it showed tall white walls and beautiful paintings in their full glory. Jamie did mostly abstract art, but he also dabbled in stylised male figures. There was an incomplete painting of the Borzoi, too.
“This is incredible!” Gloria was amazed, “Ricky told me nothing about this room!”
Jamie took her from painting to painting. He took her through his ideation process and initiated her into his painting techniques.
“My inspiration comes from what I call communion. Alone, a person is nothing. Only by connecting with the other can we arrive at any sort of meaning. My best paintings have all been produced after I met great Individuals. There is a person, unique and inimitable, behind every picture. That’s what makes every picture special.”
“That sounds so original, and yet it makes so much sense.”
“There is a reason why Ricky and I are such a great couple. As you know, he cares deeply about improving the world, and I also care deeply about others. He is much more left-brain than me, however. I am more intuiting. But I help him get to that mystical, ineffable side, the side that cannot be expressed in words, only in images.”
As Gloria got absorbed in one of the abstract paintings, Jamie offered to run down to the kitchen and make them two coffees. He could be faintly heard having a conversation with someone, and when he returned with the espresso brews, he had news for Gloria.
“Ricky just called me. Something came up with a city contractor and he’s sorry that he has to cancel working with you today. It’s a complete mess, he says he’ll be lucky if it’s sorted out before dinner. Which is great, because you and I can totally indulge in art!”
“It’s all right, I have no plans.”
They kept walking from canvas to canvas. Jamie mixed art talk with anecdotes about him and Ricky, and it made Gloria laugh. He told her about Ricky’s silly side, how can act like a child at times, the nerd. He later pulled out a painting of a male nude from behind a curtain. It wasn’t obvious, but the model was Ricky. Gloria was impressed by the quality of the work.
“So, can you tell me who it was that inspired you to make these other paintings?”
“I can’t. That’s a secret. But I can tell you one thing,” Jamie squared up to Gloria, “I am feeling inspired right now. There is something about you that is irreducible. I feel a strange vibration, and it is telling me to paint.”
“Ha-ha. Really?”
“Yes. Yes. In fact, if you would only take a seat over here,” Jamie took her by the hand and guided her to a lacquered oak stump, “Just sit there and look this way. I have a canvas right here. I want to capture the spirit that’s emanating from you right now. Would that be okay? Sorry, maybe I am being too invasive?”
“Not at all,” Gloria blushed from the flattery, “I can do that.”
Jamie hurried lest his inspiration flee. He instructed Gloria on what pose to strike on the tree stump and then rushed over to the easel. He spurted a few acrylics onto a plastic palette and began stroking busily across the canvas. He hummed with chinked eyes; he kept saying “beautiful” and “lovely”. He talked to Gloria while he worked to keep her at ease, often complimenting her and imploring her to be natural. They then became silent. Some twenty minutes into it, he stopped painting and frowned. He was not capturing the essence, he complained. He explained that what he was arriving at was not raw enough. Gloria felt concerned, almost guilty.
“Take off your clothes,” said Jamie, “That’s what it is. Damn it. Let’s just get naked.”
“Like, everything?”
“You can keep your lingerie on, I guess.”
Gloria obeyed. Jamie continued with his efforts.
“That’s better. I am not used to capturing feminine energy, but boy am I feeling it right now.”
He went on painting and musing, but only stop and frowned again after. several minutes.
“It won’t work. Take everything off.”
“Everything? But, I don’t know...”
“Look, we are almost there,” Jamie walked over to Gloria and showed her his progress. Gloria was impressed by the figure on the canvas, saying that she never saw herself like the way Jamie saw her. The canvas indeed showed a rough outline of a beautiful, stylised female body. As Gloria studied his work, Jamie took off his shirt.
“Will it help you if I also get naked?”
He worked out; he was chiselled. He sat right next to Gloria and watched the painting with her. He embraced her and then kissed her. They gripped each other and they removed the rest of their clothes. They made love on the floor. Unlike how it worked with Ricky, with Gloria Jamie took on the dominant role. He felt a sense of liberation, of power. He was a lion; he domineered. Amid moans and yelps, Jamie lifted his flared face from Gloria’s sexy back. At the doorway stood Ricky, still sweating in his running gear.
“You goddamn slut!” he yelled and disappeared behind the doorway.
Gloria looked up and screamed in embarrassment. She tried to pull away, but Jamie gripped her harder and wouldn’t let her go. He wiped his mouth angrily and continued with the love making. Gloria resisted and then succumbed. It didn’t take much longer to finish, anyways.
Jamie dressed and went downstairs to face Ricky. He found him frozen at the guest room window, looking out, his body dark in the bright afternoon sunshine.
“What Ricky? You are the one who got all into patriarchy. Now I am into patriarchy too!”
Gloria ran between them towards the door, and Ricky yelled at her that she was fired.
“Screw you, Ricky,” said Jamie, “I’m through with your hypocrisy. It’s over! And by the way: I saw your dick pic on Grindr, you asshole!”
He rushed after Gloria. The Borzois barked.
He caught up with her at the elevator. He implored her on the ride down and grabbed her by the arm in the downstairs lobby. He professed love. He said that he really meant it, that he would do anything to convince her that it was true. He discovered something new in her today, something that made him see his entire life up to that point as nothing, a silly diversion. Gloria pried her arm from him and ran out angrily. She called him a pig.
He moved out of the penthouse that same night, packing his clothes into a couple of designer suitcases while Ricky silently drank red wine in the guest room armchair. There wasn’t much more said in the breakup; passions were too raw on both sides. In subsequent days, Jamie felt less and less need for closure. He would eventually to the penthouse to haul off his paintings and other belongings, and on that day Ricky was not there.
The week after the incident, Jamie found Gloria’s on campus and told her that he wants to be with her forever. He said that he had never knew what true love is until he met her. She threatened to report him for stalking. It took several weeks, but she eventually gave in. Jamie up in a lot of work towards that; among other gifts, he completed his painting of her and left it in her office. A month later they made love again. They became a couple.
During their early trysts Jamie would tell Gloria about Ricky. He painted Ricky as an unfeeling alpha-male who could only care about success. Gloria revealed to Jamie the contents of Ricky’s book-in-progress, and Jamie said that everything Ricky had to say in it made him a hypocrite. He penned several online essays himself that critiqued Ricky’s public stances on education. Then, he and Gloria decided to write their own book, one that would expose the fraudulence of Ricky’s doctrine and establish their own.
The aggression that fuelled Jamie’s crusade against Ricky also fuelled his passion for Gloria. He now wanted to be everything that Ricky was not, and everything that he had not been before. Big part of that was taking control and being confrontational. His new attitude turned Gloria on, and her passion in turn gave Jamie unprecedented levels of confidence. He began to explore uncharted territory. He became attracted to traditional lifestyles. His research on the subject led him to take an interest in religion and its stabilising social role.
That winter they attended Christmas mass together at the local cathedral. Jamie befriended a young priest. They would often talk about the importance of a fruitful family. Their discussions made Jamie fascinated by the Catholic doctrine, and by Lent, he and Gloria were in the process of joining the Church.
Their book was published in spring, before anything that was published by Ricky. The leadership of their new church became very interested in their conversion journey, and the bishop, who was a published author himself, pulled all the stops to promote their book. It became a bestseller. It critiqued modern education, and it cited Ricky’s private school as the embodiment of elitist hypocrisy and indoctrination. Working off Gloria’s insider insights on Ricky’s manuscripts, it lambasted the type of “intellectualism” that Ricky had espoused, arguing that implementing it in schools would produce a generation of incompetent snowflakes.
Shortly after their book came out, Gloria and Jamie were married in a ceremony officiated by the young priest and the bishop. Within two months, Gloria was pregnant. They became a celebrity pundit couple for the traditionalist cause. Jamie, as the main author of the book, was even interviewed on Tucker Carlson Tonight, where he critiqued post-modern hedonism.
“You know, Tucker,” he stated smugly on Fox, “I used to be a pleasure seeker, but now all of that seems so insignificant compared to the miraculous joys of fatherhood. I look at those old days and I can only feel shame about the whole pointlessness of my former lifestyle.”
Jamie and Gloria had three babies in three years. In addition to writing and activism, Jamie began painting modernist Biblical themes. He gave up his interest in interior design and fashion. He moved with his family to the suburbs. He bought an assault rifle. He begun to wear slip-on leather shoes. His old friends would get together downtown and gossip in horror about reports that he was seen shopping in Target while driving a stroller with two babies in it – and wearing cargo shorts!
The last time Jamie met Ricky was shortly after Elijah, his sixth child, was born. Jamie was prospecting three returned soldiers for his church at an Irish pub downtown when he spotted Ricky in an opposite corner. Ricky was in the company of a couple of burly bikers. He had grown a pot belly and a rather greyed beard himself. The year before he had resigned from city council after a scandal involving a seedy massage parlour. Late into the night Ricky walked over to Jamie’s table.
“Hey Jamie! I see you got yourself some handsome company, he-he!”
“I don’t swing that way anymore Ricky,” said Jamie coolly. “And by the way, I am sorry about what happened at the city hall last year.”
“Are you really sorry, Jamie? Because I could have sworn you spent several years working hard to destroy my career, with your newfound fascist bullshit!”
“I am sorry that you feel this way. I can assure you that for whatever reason I labour, it is not out of vengefulness.”
“Oh, don’t act all high and mighty with me,” said Ricky. “I know exactly who you are, Jamie, and you will never be able to change that, never! You are a homo, and you will always be a homo!”
“Homosexuality is a social construct,” said Jamie coolly, eyeing the young army veterans as he spoke. “It is merely another form of pleasure-seeking, among many. But pleasure is meant to point us in the direction of life. God makes us feel pleasure in the copulatory act only to inspire us to affirm His own creative power through begetting of children.”
The two soldiers were speechless.
