Wilhelm Disbergen
Party van Ons: Die Homeros Leesboek compiled by Danie Botha (Homeros)
No story can grip the reader if there is no honest investment from the writer in the subject matter. With all the writers in this book openly gay and writing for a gay reader, most of the narratives seem at least semi-autobiographical tangible, albeit fictionalised, first-hand experiences.
That is the power of the work captured in this book: it speaks the language of truth.
All but a couple of the stories in Party van Ons are in Afrikaans, and there are many new writers, showing that there is still much literary vigour left in the language.
The publisher, Homeros, is dedicated to gay writing, and the idea of the “leesboek” or reader is to create an anthology that reflects various aspects of gay life and may well become a yearly event.
In the first of the short stories, Nelius Boshoff writes of the infatuation of a gay man for his straight colleague. He describes the frustration of not having the arms of a man you desire wrapped around you when you go to sleep at night. No grand erotic palpitations, but simple unaffected yearnings for affection.
Krismis ’99 by Theunis Engelbrecht is another tragic story. From the very first line, the reader is plummeted into the vulgarity of a senile grandma’s apartment in Brixton, with her two poodles shitting under the Christmas tree.
The language is coarse, accentuating the banality of the situation. The nausea and sense of asphyxiation is intensified by the arrival of the dominee’s wife, recapitulating traditional Calvinist beliefs about homosexuality. With the angst contained in these two themes, is it any wonder that someone suffers an aneurysm?
The innocence of childhood verging on pubescent awakening is the theme of Arie Kuijer’s Foefie-slaaid as well as Tiaan Neethling’s Willie. Nudity is the fulcrum around which the awakening of desire revolves, with a simple plaasjapie lending himself to subtle and honest narratives where simplicity conjures up the most intense sexual desire.
If the pinnacle of youth and virility is epitomised by the military, there are also a couple of army experiences fictionalised in Party van Ons. In a segment from a novel entitled The Man Factory, Andy Galloway documents diary-style the character’s infatuation with an apparently straight corporal.
With testosterone levels reaching near explosive levels in this hyper-masculine environment, one begins to expect an orgy will follow. While this expectation is not quite fulfilled, frustration and desire are quenched.
The most enjoyable short story in the book was definitely Theo Kleynhans’s Kersfees Met die Meisies. It is the opposite of what one would expect from the ultra-“straight” army life. The gay recruits in this story are obviously and openly gay calling themselves “the girls”.
Their rooms are decorated with scarves and the like and they “scream” whenever the chance presents itself. What makes the tale even more enjoyable is that it is probably based on fact.
Bloudraad by Johann de Lange documents, once again in diary-style the sexual escapades of a man over a nine-month period. The intensely sexual document resolves itself with a look at a sculpture of a man with his heart and groin both guarded by padlocks to which there is no apparent key.
This metaphor encapsulates the experience not only of the protagonist, but is in my opinion indicative of the experience of so many gay men, where the fulfilment of sexual desire is a detached and emotionally vacuous experience. Desire, whether frustrated or fulfilled, only heightens the longing for more for love.
Is this not perhaps the Zeitgeist of the “out” gay community in 2001 the desire for more and the inability to settle for anything less.
The only story in the entire book that in my opinion captured a sense of love and not just desire was the story by Ockert Potgieter entitled Plesier te Koop, Met Liefde Opsioneel, a Pretty Woman scenario in which love is the epitome of human endeavour and sex a secondary consideration.
In a book that promises to address most facets of gay life the subject of committed relationships and love is conspicuously absent. Perhaps this is because narrative excitement is dependent on conflict and crisis.
Relationships that are stable and secure just don’t make interesting stories. So you pruned the roses today? Great.