Gay Rebel, Indeed

“For me flesh is a vessel . . . I frequently find myself shifting fluidly, engendering the masculine in one breath and the feminine in the next. At the time it occurs naturally, and yet in retrospect, it strikes me with confusion and concern, because certainly no one else transmutates quite as I do. I feel alone, alienated by my differentness, alone even among my most inclusive friends. I am struck by the conviction that, more than anything else, I wish I were a shape-changer, able to shed one sex in favor of the opposite, only to exchange them again the day succeeding.”

Above, I've provided an excerpt from a journal I've kept quite private for sometime. Six months after coming out, I entered into a new crisis of identity, having found a trap door in the floor of my closet. Gender fluidity. A nasty little curse. Not inverted enough to be transexual, not convicted enough to be transgendered, just a girl who likes girls and wakes up somedays feeling like a boy—and who's a girl again by sundown. I spent months in dark confusion before I learned to tread the ebb and flow, collecting my ying and overabundant yang into a gimpy rhythm.

But I don't offer these intimate details for nothing. I lay them out here as justification for ignoring the vast majority of Richard Bruce Nugent's selected works, focusing instead on the tiny, eight-lined poem tucked away beneath his prolific piece, “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade.” Fittingly entitled , Nugent's “Narcissus,” caught me full in the chest, it's beautiful androgyny pouring two stanzas-worth of validation over my pinched psyche. Nugent understands. Echo's “double sexed smile” I've seen in the mirror, as “male into female seemed to flow.” The idea of male within female and female within male is boldly illustrated. Gay rebel indeed. I was not expecting to relate, since I am the the quiet antithesis to everything that Nugent stands for as an author—brave, black, male lover of men. But my throat closed at his tender illustration of Narcissus' mythical nymph, his careful treatment of gender fluidity.

As a piece, I found this poem most interesting for it's petite, gem-like quality. So succinct and feminine, yet not homoerotic. It lends me some confidence in the bisexual themes featured in “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade,” where Freudian subtext and overt homoeroticism are challenged by Alex's love for Melva. Having always been guiltily prejudicial of male bisexuality myself, I struggled to accept Alex's professed duality of affection, but “Narcissus” dashed my skepticism. I feel Nugent challenging his reader to crack open a turgid can of worms, one I myself would care much more to bury. Oddly, though not expecting to be taken by his work, I have adopted Nugent as an artist of interest, despite our inherent differences as people—or perhaps in spite of them.