WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.416 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.416 --> 00:00:09.290 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.290 --> 00:00:12.770 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Ander, for that intro. 00:00:12.770 --> 00:00:18.290 align:middle line:84% I knew I brought out my finest tunic for a reason tonight. 00:00:18.290 --> 00:00:21.560 align:middle line:84% Thank you, Paco and Tyler too, and everyone at the Poetry 00:00:21.560 --> 00:00:25.980 align:middle line:84% Center for putting this event on and giving me an excuse, 00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:27.440 align:middle line:84% not that I needed one to come back 00:00:27.440 --> 00:00:31.550 align:middle line:84% to a place I remember fondly and also just really love. 00:00:31.550 --> 00:00:34.010 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read an essay from my book 00:00:34.010 --> 00:00:36.810 align:middle line:84% that I began when I was an MFA student here. 00:00:36.810 --> 00:00:38.690 align:middle line:84% I mean, frankly, all of these essays, 00:00:38.690 --> 00:00:42.230 align:middle line:84% I began when I was an MFA student here. 00:00:42.230 --> 00:00:48.410 align:middle line:84% And the piece is about the beginning of a relationship that 00:00:48.410 --> 00:00:51.170 align:middle line:90% also started here in Tucson. 00:00:51.170 --> 00:00:55.800 align:middle line:84% And my way into the piece, because I was like 24, 00:00:55.800 --> 00:00:59.120 align:middle line:84% trying to write about feeling like I was in love, maybe 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:02.350 align:middle line:84% for the first time in my life, was I over 00:01:02.350 --> 00:01:07.482 align:middle line:84% intellectualized it and started writing about these photographs 00:01:07.482 --> 00:01:11.160 align:middle line:84% and critiquing and looking at these photographs of lovers 00:01:11.160 --> 00:01:15.540 align:middle line:84% marks and public declarations of love that I saw around Tucson 00:01:15.540 --> 00:01:18.450 align:middle line:84% and around other spaces I was moving through. 00:01:18.450 --> 00:01:21.570 align:middle line:84% And Ander created a really incredible broadside 00:01:21.570 --> 00:01:23.850 align:middle line:90% from some of those photographs. 00:01:23.850 --> 00:01:26.075 align:middle line:84% So this is called Love on the Rocks. 00:01:26.075 --> 00:01:30.030 align:middle line:90% 00:01:30.030 --> 00:01:34.140 align:middle line:84% There is a tree on campus where all the lovers go. 00:01:34.140 --> 00:01:37.800 align:middle line:84% They deface this tree, carve their names into the wood, 00:01:37.800 --> 00:01:42.120 align:middle line:84% and kill the tree slowly for love. 00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:44.530 align:middle line:84% One day, I dreamed that we were there. 00:01:44.530 --> 00:01:48.190 align:middle line:84% And that you were, as you always are, laid back, 00:01:48.190 --> 00:01:51.430 align:middle line:84% sylvan, a little stingy with your words, 00:01:51.430 --> 00:01:54.157 align:middle line:84% while I stood beside you, hot with shanghuo, 00:01:54.157 --> 00:01:57.120 align:middle line:84% Hua that inner heat my grandmother blames 00:01:57.120 --> 00:02:00.190 align:middle line:90% for my acne and my temper. 00:02:00.190 --> 00:02:03.320 align:middle line:84% In the dream, we did not know what to do with the tree, 00:02:03.320 --> 00:02:06.280 align:middle line:84% like we lacked the proper tools or sentiment for each other 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:07.510 align:middle line:90% to act. 00:02:07.510 --> 00:02:10.430 align:middle line:84% When I awoke, sticky and unresolved, 00:02:10.430 --> 00:02:11.860 align:middle line:90% it was already evening. 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:15.580 align:middle line:84% And I was due to meet you at Casa Video, the rental palace we 00:02:15.580 --> 00:02:21.370 align:middle line:84% go to every Friday to drink craft cider and browse. 00:02:21.370 --> 00:02:24.770 align:middle line:84% In the movie whose treatment I've been writing in my head, 00:02:24.770 --> 00:02:27.010 align:middle line:84% an Asian man is riding the elevator up 00:02:27.010 --> 00:02:29.320 align:middle line:84% to your Tucson apartment, the one 00:02:29.320 --> 00:02:31.960 align:middle line:84% with the North facing views of the train tracks and Mount 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:33.160 align:middle line:90% Lemmon. 00:02:33.160 --> 00:02:35.860 align:middle line:84% He's been thinking lately about one of his first days 00:02:35.860 --> 00:02:38.710 align:middle line:84% in this city, how his key had refused 00:02:38.710 --> 00:02:42.040 align:middle line:84% to turn in the lock of a borrowed apartment. 00:02:42.040 --> 00:02:45.560 align:middle line:84% On that day, he'd sat down on the bristly welcome mat, 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:49.330 align:middle line:84% watching an unknown neighbor do laps in the pool. 00:02:49.330 --> 00:02:52.870 align:middle line:84% Maybe love is always having that someone on the inside 00:02:52.870 --> 00:02:55.450 align:middle line:84% ready to let you in, or maybe it's 00:02:55.450 --> 00:02:58.330 align:middle line:84% the door frame that swells in the summer heat, 00:02:58.330 --> 00:03:01.260 align:middle line:90% catching a deadbolt fast. 00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:04.740 align:middle line:84% The man walked down to the pool and bought a cold Fanta 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:06.510 align:middle line:90% from the vending machine. 00:03:06.510 --> 00:03:09.690 align:middle line:84% He put the can to the keyhole and waited for something 00:03:09.690 --> 00:03:10.780 align:middle line:90% to happen. 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:14.623 align:middle line:84% A contraction in the frame, an answer to his open sesame. 00:03:14.623 --> 00:03:17.520 align:middle line:90% 00:03:17.520 --> 00:03:21.390 align:middle line:84% For years, I've kept a folder on my computer called Love 00:03:21.390 --> 00:03:22.740 align:middle line:90% on the Rocks. 00:03:22.740 --> 00:03:25.990 align:middle line:84% Inside are photographs I take of lovers' marks. 00:03:25.990 --> 00:03:29.280 align:middle line:84% The carved or painted dedications to love one 00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:32.100 align:middle line:84% can find anywhere there are lovers. 00:03:32.100 --> 00:03:33.930 align:middle line:84% Most of the marks in my collection 00:03:33.930 --> 00:03:36.180 align:middle line:84% are small, containing nothing more 00:03:36.180 --> 00:03:40.320 align:middle line:84% than a phrase or a set of initials, two letters connected 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:43.350 align:middle line:90% by a plus sign or an ampersand. 00:03:43.350 --> 00:03:46.600 align:middle line:84% Some lovers enclose their first names in entirety, 00:03:46.600 --> 00:03:48.580 align:middle line:90% though rarely their surnames. 00:03:48.580 --> 00:03:51.830 align:middle line:84% Many even date the mark as if signing a contract. 00:03:51.830 --> 00:03:54.900 align:middle line:90% 00:03:54.900 --> 00:03:58.860 align:middle line:84% As linguistic acts devoted to love, the marks in my collection 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:02.700 align:middle line:84% remind me of Roland Barthes writing on the amorous figure. 00:04:02.700 --> 00:04:04.890 align:middle line:84% Barthes' book, A Lover's Discourse: 00:04:04.890 --> 00:04:08.320 align:middle line:84% Fragments, is organized into 80 such figures, 00:04:08.320 --> 00:04:12.660 align:middle line:84% each a different way to express how we love. 00:04:12.660 --> 00:04:17.529 align:middle line:84% In his preface, Barthe describes these figures as gymnastic acts. 00:04:17.529 --> 00:04:21.070 align:middle line:84% They are renditions of a lover's impassioned discourse, 00:04:21.070 --> 00:04:24.330 align:middle line:84% not attempts at defining love's essence. 00:04:24.330 --> 00:04:27.215 align:middle line:84% Barthes' book isn't a dictionary, it's a script. 00:04:27.215 --> 00:04:30.810 align:middle line:90% 00:04:30.810 --> 00:04:33.810 align:middle line:84% During my early 20s, I moved around a lot. 00:04:33.810 --> 00:04:37.710 align:middle line:84% In Oslo, I found the marks jotted in Sharpie 00:04:37.710 --> 00:04:41.040 align:middle line:84% on the spine of a park bench right next to the Akerselva. 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:44.560 align:middle line:84% In Osh, I found them branded like permanent hickeys, 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:47.220 align:middle line:84% into the rocks of a sacred mountain. 00:04:47.220 --> 00:04:51.540 align:middle line:84% In Nepal, the marks marshaled on a gazebo outside of Nagarkot. 00:04:51.540 --> 00:04:56.200 align:middle line:84% And in Hawaii, they scarred the banyan trees in Ala Moana park. 00:04:56.200 --> 00:04:59.260 align:middle line:84% On Borneo one rainy season, I hiked 00:04:59.260 --> 00:05:02.260 align:middle line:84% for hours on flooded trails to find a boulder marked 00:05:02.260 --> 00:05:04.300 align:middle line:90% by some long departed couple. 00:05:04.300 --> 00:05:11.620 align:middle line:84% L plus E that sigal calculated on an abacus slick with green. 00:05:11.620 --> 00:05:15.040 align:middle line:84% The marks were a useful metaphor for the kind of love life 00:05:15.040 --> 00:05:16.670 align:middle line:90% I was learning to lead. 00:05:16.670 --> 00:05:20.800 align:middle line:84% They, too, looked like isolated incidents. 00:05:20.800 --> 00:05:22.690 align:middle line:84% But unlike my hookups, the marks had 00:05:22.690 --> 00:05:25.570 align:middle line:84% endured, outlasting their moment of inception 00:05:25.570 --> 00:05:26.970 align:middle line:90% by more than a few days. 00:05:26.970 --> 00:05:30.370 align:middle line:90% 00:05:30.370 --> 00:05:34.240 align:middle line:84% I won't pretend a switch flipped the night that we met. 00:05:34.240 --> 00:05:38.320 align:middle line:84% Gay, monogamous love settling like a spotlight over us. 00:05:38.320 --> 00:05:41.830 align:middle line:84% Sitting outside the bar, we talked electoral politics 00:05:41.830 --> 00:05:43.780 align:middle line:90% and sipped our vodka sodas. 00:05:43.780 --> 00:05:47.000 align:middle line:84% I remember noting the slim fall of your shadow, 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:50.530 align:middle line:84% the nautical tattoos half covered by your sleeve. 00:05:50.530 --> 00:05:53.730 align:middle line:84% He isn't really my type, I would say to my friends 00:05:53.730 --> 00:05:56.636 align:middle line:84% later, a dodge as much as a dismissal. 00:05:56.636 --> 00:05:59.310 align:middle line:90% 00:05:59.310 --> 00:06:02.550 align:middle line:84% Most of my early experiences with sex and love 00:06:02.550 --> 00:06:05.290 align:middle line:84% happened while I was living out of a suitcase. 00:06:05.290 --> 00:06:07.620 align:middle line:84% The men I connected with on Grindr 00:06:07.620 --> 00:06:09.340 align:middle line:90% didn't beat around the bush. 00:06:09.340 --> 00:06:11.670 align:middle line:84% After a flurry of pictorial exchanges 00:06:11.670 --> 00:06:14.040 align:middle line:84% to verify mutual interest, they would ask 00:06:14.040 --> 00:06:16.120 align:middle line:90% if I wanted to host or travel. 00:06:16.120 --> 00:06:19.140 align:middle line:90% My answer was always the latter. 00:06:19.140 --> 00:06:21.210 align:middle line:84% Over the years, I've sometimes felt 00:06:21.210 --> 00:06:23.700 align:middle line:84% like a seedy sex tourist compiling 00:06:23.700 --> 00:06:26.170 align:middle line:90% a Rolodex of quick fucks. 00:06:26.170 --> 00:06:29.440 align:middle line:84% I worry that I am treating each lover too much like a prop, 00:06:29.440 --> 00:06:33.960 align:middle line:84% and not the complicated amorous figure they surely must be. 00:06:33.960 --> 00:06:35.940 align:middle line:84% In more charitable moods, I try and think 00:06:35.940 --> 00:06:38.700 align:middle line:84% of each hookup as a fact finding mission. 00:06:38.700 --> 00:06:41.440 align:middle line:84% I learned from a police officer in Jinghong, 00:06:41.440 --> 00:06:43.470 align:middle line:84% for instance, about the platonic love 00:06:43.470 --> 00:06:46.260 align:middle line:84% he felt for his best friend, a graphic designer, 00:06:46.260 --> 00:06:48.460 align:middle line:84% he planned on marrying as his beard. 00:06:48.460 --> 00:06:50.880 align:middle line:84% And I learned from a restaurateur in Mostar 00:06:50.880 --> 00:06:53.980 align:middle line:84% about all the queer Bosnians who regularly took jobs 00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:58.480 align:middle line:84% on international cruise liners to make money and get laid. 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:01.420 align:middle line:84% In Copenhagen, a Russian photographer I met at a bar 00:07:01.420 --> 00:07:05.050 align:middle line:84% taught me which of my facial angles best caught the light. 00:07:05.050 --> 00:07:09.670 align:middle line:84% Then he laid me down and fucked my face. 00:07:09.670 --> 00:07:11.672 align:middle line:90% What about you, then? 00:07:11.672 --> 00:07:15.940 align:middle line:84% The you who was unfailingly polite and secularly Jewish 00:07:15.940 --> 00:07:18.160 align:middle line:90% and almost exactly my height. 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.296 align:middle line:90% The you who grew up in Arizona. 00:07:20.296 --> 00:07:23.810 align:middle line:84% The you who sat by rectangles of turquoise water 00:07:23.810 --> 00:07:26.320 align:middle line:84% each summer in high school, a lifeguard 00:07:26.320 --> 00:07:28.400 align:middle line:90% employed by the city of Phoenix. 00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:30.980 align:middle line:84% The you with your cactus stud earring, 00:07:30.980 --> 00:07:33.820 align:middle line:90% and your beat up Tacoma. 00:07:33.820 --> 00:07:35.960 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to fit brackets on you, 00:07:35.960 --> 00:07:38.380 align:middle line:84% as I have all the others to render 00:07:38.380 --> 00:07:40.930 align:middle line:90% you a charming bit of terror. 00:07:40.930 --> 00:07:43.600 align:middle line:84% But when we met, I was also residing 00:07:43.600 --> 00:07:45.560 align:middle line:90% inside these same brackets. 00:07:45.560 --> 00:07:49.910 align:middle line:84% Your place in the world was more to me than just a pit stop. 00:07:49.910 --> 00:07:53.360 align:middle line:84% I couldn't easily skirt it, nor you. 00:07:53.360 --> 00:07:56.310 align:middle line:84% Once while on a date with another guy I was seeing, 00:07:56.310 --> 00:07:58.050 align:middle line:90% I ran into you on the street. 00:07:58.050 --> 00:08:00.480 align:middle line:84% You called out to me and we joined you. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:03.630 align:middle line:84% And after around of very casual seeming introductions, 00:08:03.630 --> 00:08:06.900 align:middle line:84% spent the next hour hanging out with you and the other guy. 00:08:06.900 --> 00:08:09.350 align:middle line:84% Telling myself, this was definitely normal 00:08:09.350 --> 00:08:10.850 align:middle line:84% because it wasn't like either of you 00:08:10.850 --> 00:08:12.895 align:middle line:84% wanted to claim me as more than a friend. 00:08:12.895 --> 00:08:15.620 align:middle line:90% 00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:18.920 align:middle line:84% I never found the idea of being more than a friend to you 00:08:18.920 --> 00:08:20.190 align:middle line:90% unpalatable. 00:08:20.190 --> 00:08:21.450 align:middle line:90% Far from it. 00:08:21.450 --> 00:08:23.450 align:middle line:84% But the idea of a real relationship 00:08:23.450 --> 00:08:27.020 align:middle line:84% seemed unpractical, to say the least. 00:08:27.020 --> 00:08:28.820 align:middle line:84% My plan had always been to move back 00:08:28.820 --> 00:08:31.410 align:middle line:84% to China after my graduate program ended. 00:08:31.410 --> 00:08:34.640 align:middle line:84% A plan I shared with you on our first date. 00:08:34.640 --> 00:08:36.650 align:middle line:84% Because of this, it seemed almost 00:08:36.650 --> 00:08:38.990 align:middle line:84% irresponsible to spend our weekends cuddled up 00:08:38.990 --> 00:08:41.659 align:middle line:90% on your couch watching movies. 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:45.180 align:middle line:84% Millennium Mambo and Three Times by Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 00:08:45.180 --> 00:08:49.140 align:middle line:84% Summer Palace by Lou Ye, Tsai Ming-liang's The River, 00:08:49.140 --> 00:08:53.730 align:middle line:84% and every movie ever made by Jia Zhangke and Wong Kar-wai. 00:08:53.730 --> 00:08:56.880 align:middle line:84% Screening these films was a crash course for both of us 00:08:56.880 --> 00:08:59.880 align:middle line:84% in contemporary Asian cinema, but also 00:08:59.880 --> 00:09:02.970 align:middle line:84% perhaps a way of showing you where I was going 00:09:02.970 --> 00:09:05.510 align:middle line:84% and inviting you to come with me when I left. 00:09:05.510 --> 00:09:08.100 align:middle line:90% 00:09:08.100 --> 00:09:10.950 align:middle line:84% The truth is, I've always felt like a novitiate when 00:09:10.950 --> 00:09:14.050 align:middle line:84% it comes to matters of the heart, a Phaedrus. 00:09:14.050 --> 00:09:16.860 align:middle line:84% I'm always looking for my Socrates. 00:09:16.860 --> 00:09:19.890 align:middle line:84% My uncertainty stems in part from how difficult 00:09:19.890 --> 00:09:22.210 align:middle line:84% it has been for Asian men in America, 00:09:22.210 --> 00:09:24.190 align:middle line:84% whether straight, gay or neither, 00:09:24.190 --> 00:09:26.980 align:middle line:84% to see themselves as romantic protagonists. 00:09:26.980 --> 00:09:31.210 align:middle line:84% This is not to say we all feel unlovable, sexually deprived, 00:09:31.210 --> 00:09:34.140 align:middle line:84% ugly, or repugnant, though an online contingent 00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:36.100 align:middle line:90% of us very vocally does. 00:09:36.100 --> 00:09:39.130 align:middle line:84% It's to say that when we are loved or desired, 00:09:39.130 --> 00:09:42.420 align:middle line:84% when someone fucks us and wants to keep doing it repeatedly 00:09:42.420 --> 00:09:45.930 align:middle line:84% like a tick, when we're held up as a paragon of anything other 00:09:45.930 --> 00:09:48.020 align:middle line:84% than braininess and hard work, when 00:09:48.020 --> 00:09:50.580 align:middle line:90% we play on stage or in life. 00:09:50.580 --> 00:09:53.820 align:middle line:84% People hemorrhaging emotions and not just zen koans. 00:09:53.820 --> 00:09:57.710 align:middle line:84% People who are open holes rather than obdurate sphincters who 00:09:57.710 --> 00:10:01.160 align:middle line:84% have enterprising genitalia instead of Ken Watanabe-esque 00:10:01.160 --> 00:10:03.200 align:middle line:84% blanks, and who definitely aren't here 00:10:03.200 --> 00:10:07.280 align:middle line:84% to dispense wisdom or consult on web design or large racially 00:10:07.280 --> 00:10:07.920 align:middle line:90% cocked. 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:10.880 align:middle line:84% Isn't it crazy how Asian girls only date white guys 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:12.780 align:middle line:90% complaints from the sidelines? 00:10:12.780 --> 00:10:16.350 align:middle line:84% When any of this happens, it seems like a mistake. 00:10:16.350 --> 00:10:20.030 align:middle line:84% And inside our cold, cold hearts and our insensate fleshpot 00:10:20.030 --> 00:10:23.520 align:middle line:84% bodies, we suddenly don't know how to feel anymore. 00:10:23.520 --> 00:10:26.360 align:middle line:90% 00:10:26.360 --> 00:10:29.480 align:middle line:84% When I first met you, I was surprised to learn 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:32.430 align:middle line:84% that none of your previous partners had been Asian. 00:10:32.430 --> 00:10:36.410 align:middle line:84% Your interest in me did not follow a predilection. 00:10:36.410 --> 00:10:40.410 align:middle line:84% I know that love in its unalloyed form, true love, 00:10:40.410 --> 00:10:43.760 align:middle line:84% that good shit, the shit honored by every lover's mark I 00:10:43.760 --> 00:10:46.230 align:middle line:84% photograph, is supposed to supersede 00:10:46.230 --> 00:10:48.430 align:middle line:84% all such quibbles about age, race, 00:10:48.430 --> 00:10:50.500 align:middle line:90% and other demographic factors. 00:10:50.500 --> 00:10:53.170 align:middle line:84% One of love's promissory conditions, 00:10:53.170 --> 00:10:56.820 align:middle line:84% after all, is that it shall take the generalized like one feels 00:10:56.820 --> 00:10:59.520 align:middle line:84% for certain people and hone that feeling down 00:10:59.520 --> 00:11:02.010 align:middle line:84% to something individuated, a bell 00:11:02.010 --> 00:11:05.560 align:middle line:84% that tolls only for the one I love, the singular, 00:11:05.560 --> 00:11:07.650 align:middle line:90% implausible you. 00:11:07.650 --> 00:11:11.100 align:middle line:84% And yet the anxieties I feel about my qualifications 00:11:11.100 --> 00:11:15.150 align:middle line:84% and deficits as a lover or loved object remain. 00:11:15.150 --> 00:11:17.970 align:middle line:84% I cannot help but still see us as others might, 00:11:17.970 --> 00:11:20.620 align:middle line:84% as one of those Asian male, white guy pairings, 00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:24.090 align:middle line:84% ubiquitous today on the streets of Cambridge or Brooklyn. 00:11:24.090 --> 00:11:27.990 align:middle line:84% How can I critique exoticism when my own colored body seems 00:11:27.990 --> 00:11:31.720 align:middle line:84% exotic to me, when I trade on its currency of difference, 00:11:31.720 --> 00:11:34.453 align:middle line:84% and am, in general, pleased with the returns? 00:11:34.453 --> 00:11:38.220 align:middle line:90% 00:11:38.220 --> 00:11:40.320 align:middle line:84% At the end of each encounter, there 00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:42.370 align:middle line:84% is always a moment of retraction, 00:11:42.370 --> 00:11:44.250 align:middle line:84% of staring down what Barthes calls 00:11:44.250 --> 00:11:47.370 align:middle line:84% the long tunnel that follows each love affair's instigating 00:11:47.370 --> 00:11:48.340 align:middle line:90% moment. 00:11:48.340 --> 00:11:52.450 align:middle line:84% My limbs untangle from his, I wash up in the bathroom, 00:11:52.450 --> 00:11:56.010 align:middle line:84% get dressed, smile, because I've seen this scene of language 00:11:56.010 --> 00:11:57.630 align:middle line:90% before. 00:11:57.630 --> 00:12:00.510 align:middle line:84% I don't think sleeping around is the only or even the best 00:12:00.510 --> 00:12:03.070 align:middle line:84% way to figure out what love is or can be. 00:12:03.070 --> 00:12:05.700 align:middle line:84% My encounters have, if anything, taught 00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:08.530 align:middle line:84% me more about what love isn't than what it is. 00:12:08.530 --> 00:12:12.840 align:middle line:84% Each hook up, a teaser trailer for some unfeasible future. 00:12:12.840 --> 00:12:16.690 align:middle line:84% It wasn't love, but an exercise in self-sabotage, 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:19.800 align:middle line:84% when I got on the back of a partnered man's bike in Shanghai 00:12:19.800 --> 00:12:21.210 align:middle line:90% one summer. 00:12:21.210 --> 00:12:24.460 align:middle line:84% It wasn't love, but a resurgent kleptomania, 00:12:24.460 --> 00:12:26.580 align:middle line:84% when I left another man's apartment in Milan 00:12:26.580 --> 00:12:29.320 align:middle line:84% with a photograph swiped from his bookshelf. 00:12:29.320 --> 00:12:32.860 align:middle line:84% It wasn't love, but a reckless kind of loneliness, 00:12:32.860 --> 00:12:36.090 align:middle line:84% when I let a man twice my age pick me up beside a Montanan 00:12:36.090 --> 00:12:39.330 align:middle line:84% lake, get me high and fix me a Boston market TV 00:12:39.330 --> 00:12:41.310 align:middle line:90% dinner in his camper. 00:12:41.310 --> 00:12:44.920 align:middle line:84% It certainly wasn't love when this man came shuddering over 00:12:44.920 --> 00:12:48.580 align:middle line:84% my pliant, vacated shape, how the pot and booze made 00:12:48.580 --> 00:12:51.050 align:middle line:84% me feel like I was slipping away through the air, 00:12:51.050 --> 00:12:53.630 align:middle line:90% my borders fuzzy and indistinct. 00:12:53.630 --> 00:12:56.990 align:middle line:84% Later, I would grope my way, as if blindfolded, 00:12:56.990 --> 00:12:59.690 align:middle line:84% through the dark insides of this man's life. 00:12:59.690 --> 00:13:02.510 align:middle line:84% I would find the door, the fence and the grass, 00:13:02.510 --> 00:13:07.090 align:middle line:84% the road outside leading somewhere new. 00:13:07.090 --> 00:13:10.270 align:middle line:84% It wasn't love the night we met, but it didn't 00:13:10.270 --> 00:13:12.320 align:middle line:90% preclude the option either. 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:14.680 align:middle line:84% Like two obliging weather systems, 00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:17.270 align:middle line:84% we developed in line with the forecast. 00:13:17.270 --> 00:13:20.620 align:middle line:84% Hipster bar, cheap drinks, the quiet walk 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:23.710 align:middle line:90% in midnight back to my place. 00:13:23.710 --> 00:13:26.150 align:middle line:84% After you left, I sat on my stoop, 00:13:26.150 --> 00:13:29.810 align:middle line:84% trying to remember exactly the way you had descended my body, 00:13:29.810 --> 00:13:32.480 align:middle line:84% how I had ascended yours in response. 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:35.930 align:middle line:84% We had exited the scene, but left the door open. 00:13:35.930 --> 00:13:39.440 align:middle line:84% You would come back often, standing at my cusp, 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:41.950 align:middle line:84% asking in your own words, to enter. 00:13:41.950 --> 00:13:45.320 align:middle line:90% 00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:48.320 align:middle line:84% Part of my trouble with love is how stubbornly I 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:51.350 align:middle line:84% cling to my own subjectivity, to the knowledge 00:13:51.350 --> 00:13:54.080 align:middle line:84% that these vignettes, these marks, are mine alone 00:13:54.080 --> 00:13:56.010 align:middle line:90% to inhabit and record. 00:13:56.010 --> 00:13:58.460 align:middle line:84% The stranger who is my lover retains 00:13:58.460 --> 00:14:01.170 align:middle line:84% the status of a character in each encounter. 00:14:01.170 --> 00:14:05.400 align:middle line:84% I can sympathize with him, care for him, maybe even love him. 00:14:05.400 --> 00:14:08.070 align:middle line:84% But he need never follow me out the door, 00:14:08.070 --> 00:14:13.280 align:middle line:84% back into the clutches of all that is quotidian and daily. 00:14:13.280 --> 00:14:16.370 align:middle line:84% On the other hand, the time I've spent with you is nothing, 00:14:16.370 --> 00:14:20.130 align:middle line:84% if not a series of moments interpretable from both sides. 00:14:20.130 --> 00:14:22.610 align:middle line:84% I remember an early date when you came over 00:14:22.610 --> 00:14:25.970 align:middle line:84% so we could watch Wong Kar-wai's queer classic Happy Together 00:14:25.970 --> 00:14:27.770 align:middle line:90% from 1997. 00:14:27.770 --> 00:14:30.780 align:middle line:84% Lying on the carpet of my unfurnished apartment, 00:14:30.780 --> 00:14:34.190 align:middle line:84% we watched the film's central lovers, two Chinese men 00:14:34.190 --> 00:14:37.520 align:middle line:84% caught in a co-dependent, toxic relationship, danced 00:14:37.520 --> 00:14:40.830 align:middle line:84% the tango in their dilapidated Argentine kitchen. 00:14:40.830 --> 00:14:44.920 align:middle line:84% That image is the film's crucial amorous figure. 00:14:44.920 --> 00:14:47.520 align:middle line:84% Leslie Cheung, finally, closing his eyes 00:14:47.520 --> 00:14:51.240 align:middle line:84% sated as Tony Leung holds him close. 00:14:51.240 --> 00:14:54.840 align:middle line:84% You were so quiet through that almost brutally romantic moment 00:14:54.840 --> 00:14:58.110 align:middle line:84% that I wished to compare notes, to be consenting adults 00:14:58.110 --> 00:14:59.910 align:middle line:84% in the way one of my college professors 00:14:59.910 --> 00:15:01.810 align:middle line:90% used to talk about consent. 00:15:01.810 --> 00:15:05.410 align:middle line:84% One day, after another long exegesis on Plato, 00:15:05.410 --> 00:15:09.000 align:middle line:84% she looked up from her slides and told the class, sotto voce, 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:12.210 align:middle line:84% that consent comes from the Latin, "consentir," 00:15:12.210 --> 00:15:13.630 align:middle line:90% or together feel. 00:15:13.630 --> 00:15:16.770 align:middle line:84% And so to consent to a person is to agree to feel together 00:15:16.770 --> 00:15:20.370 align:middle line:84% with them, to be as porous to that person and their feelings 00:15:20.370 --> 00:15:22.740 align:middle line:90% as one person can be. 00:15:22.740 --> 00:15:25.920 align:middle line:84% I remember thinking this was the most romantic etymology I'd ever 00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:26.710 align:middle line:90% heard. 00:15:26.710 --> 00:15:31.200 align:middle line:84% And I also remember years later, looking at you in my apartment 00:15:31.200 --> 00:15:33.575 align:middle line:84% and asking you what you thought of that scene. 00:15:33.575 --> 00:15:36.600 align:middle line:90% 00:15:36.600 --> 00:15:39.380 align:middle line:84% Returning to the photos in my folio, 00:15:39.380 --> 00:15:42.340 align:middle line:84% I noticed that the lovers' marks recur in places 00:15:42.340 --> 00:15:46.400 align:middle line:84% where two entities meet in some kind of discord or harmony. 00:15:46.400 --> 00:15:48.430 align:middle line:84% Romantic vandals leave their marks 00:15:48.430 --> 00:15:52.310 align:middle line:84% at the Grand Canyon, where red Earth cleaves into blue sky. 00:15:52.310 --> 00:15:55.970 align:middle line:84% And at Niagara Falls, where Canada abuts America. 00:15:55.970 --> 00:15:59.050 align:middle line:84% The lovers go to Stanley Market in Hong Kong 00:15:59.050 --> 00:16:01.460 align:middle line:84% to sprinkle their names on the tide line, 00:16:01.460 --> 00:16:04.790 align:middle line:84% and they haunt the grounds at Dunkirk or Manassas, 00:16:04.790 --> 00:16:07.210 align:middle line:84% where opposed forces once met and mutually 00:16:07.210 --> 00:16:09.610 align:middle line:90% assured destruction. 00:16:09.610 --> 00:16:13.250 align:middle line:84% I don't know yet whether our doubleness needs such memorial. 00:16:13.250 --> 00:16:15.160 align:middle line:84% If I should be taking my pen knife 00:16:15.160 --> 00:16:18.740 align:middle line:84% and paints to the backlot of that rental palace off Speedway, 00:16:18.740 --> 00:16:21.130 align:middle line:84% where every Friday we used to meet. 00:16:21.130 --> 00:16:23.380 align:middle line:84% For so long I have thought about love 00:16:23.380 --> 00:16:26.240 align:middle line:84% as a feeling that lives and dies in the moment. 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:29.050 align:middle line:84% I have thought about love primarily through the words 00:16:29.050 --> 00:16:32.230 align:middle line:84% of philosophers like Barthes, rather than poets 00:16:32.230 --> 00:16:33.590 align:middle line:90% like Audre Lorde. 00:16:33.590 --> 00:16:37.400 align:middle line:84% Lorde, who writes, breathlessly describing a lover's touch, 00:16:37.400 --> 00:16:40.530 align:middle line:90% I am come home. 00:16:40.530 --> 00:16:43.410 align:middle line:84% What I have avoided thinking about too deeply 00:16:43.410 --> 00:16:46.780 align:middle line:84% is the hope, deliciously irrational, 00:16:46.780 --> 00:16:50.260 align:middle line:84% that we will not disappear into or away from each other, 00:16:50.260 --> 00:16:52.090 align:middle line:84% that we will keep our separateness, 00:16:52.090 --> 00:16:55.140 align:middle line:84% but stay somehow a unit moving through the world 00:16:55.140 --> 00:16:58.800 align:middle line:84% in each other's company, each other's co-feeling. 00:16:58.800 --> 00:17:02.160 align:middle line:84% I do not balk at the cliché this figure enacts. 00:17:02.160 --> 00:17:05.640 align:middle line:84% Love as two people's shared journey a long march 00:17:05.640 --> 00:17:08.400 align:middle line:90% through city and fen. 00:17:08.400 --> 00:17:12.280 align:middle line:84% It makes me think of a time many years ago in Manchuria, 00:17:12.280 --> 00:17:14.730 align:middle line:84% when I watched a group of lovers cast red paper 00:17:14.730 --> 00:17:16.950 align:middle line:90% lanterns over a frozen river. 00:17:16.950 --> 00:17:19.470 align:middle line:84% There was a bridge in that city covered 00:17:19.470 --> 00:17:21.460 align:middle line:90% in thousands of lovers' marks. 00:17:21.460 --> 00:17:25.150 align:middle line:84% I spent hours picking over the bridge as carefully as I could, 00:17:25.150 --> 00:17:27.720 align:middle line:84% wanting to record each and every one. 00:17:27.720 --> 00:17:30.250 align:middle line:84% Standing at the bridge's center that night, 00:17:30.250 --> 00:17:33.540 align:middle line:84% I looked over the railing and saw a flock of lanterns detach 00:17:33.540 --> 00:17:35.380 align:middle line:90% from the river's Southern bank. 00:17:35.380 --> 00:17:39.560 align:middle line:84% The lanterns floated on onshore winds to the river's other side, 00:17:39.560 --> 00:17:43.150 align:middle line:84% where they fell into the snowdrifts as trash. 00:17:43.150 --> 00:17:45.730 align:middle line:84% Chinese love is so often typecast 00:17:45.730 --> 00:17:48.760 align:middle line:84% as the honoring of a pledge or the fulfillment of a child's 00:17:48.760 --> 00:17:50.240 align:middle line:90% filial duties. 00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:52.450 align:middle line:84% The lanterns over that Chinese river 00:17:52.450 --> 00:17:54.370 align:middle line:90% said love differently, though. 00:17:54.370 --> 00:17:56.990 align:middle line:84% That love's vigor was uncontrolled, 00:17:56.990 --> 00:18:00.220 align:middle line:84% the result of an inexpert heave made in the night. 00:18:00.220 --> 00:18:03.650 align:middle line:84% That love traveled, shaking on queer winds, 00:18:03.650 --> 00:18:05.385 align:middle line:90% flickering, but holding. 00:18:05.385 --> 00:18:08.050 align:middle line:90% 00:18:08.050 --> 00:18:10.310 align:middle line:90% We are flickering still. 00:18:10.310 --> 00:18:12.340 align:middle line:90% We are holding. 00:18:12.340 --> 00:18:15.770 align:middle line:84% It was you who finally asked me to make it official. 00:18:15.770 --> 00:18:17.980 align:middle line:84% We were standing on a rooftop, splitting 00:18:17.980 --> 00:18:19.520 align:middle line:90% a cigarette and a beer. 00:18:19.520 --> 00:18:22.340 align:middle line:84% You told me you knew that the timing wasn't great, 00:18:22.340 --> 00:18:24.350 align:middle line:84% what with my move fast approaching, 00:18:24.350 --> 00:18:26.800 align:middle line:84% but that many relationships start out premised 00:18:26.800 --> 00:18:28.520 align:middle line:90% on planned obsolescence. 00:18:28.520 --> 00:18:31.960 align:middle line:84% And some of those relationships don't stick to their plan. 00:18:31.960 --> 00:18:33.940 align:middle line:84% Maybe you could visit me in China, 00:18:33.940 --> 00:18:35.820 align:middle line:90% and we could take it from there. 00:18:35.820 --> 00:18:39.440 align:middle line:90% I said, yes, I would like that. 00:18:39.440 --> 00:18:41.630 align:middle line:84% At the end of Happy Together, the two men 00:18:41.630 --> 00:18:43.140 align:middle line:90% are no longer in love. 00:18:43.140 --> 00:18:45.650 align:middle line:84% Or maybe they are in love, but their feeling 00:18:45.650 --> 00:18:47.480 align:middle line:90% is no longer supportable. 00:18:47.480 --> 00:18:50.780 align:middle line:84% Tony goes home to Hong Kong, leaving Leslie behind 00:18:50.780 --> 00:18:53.570 align:middle line:84% in Buenos Aires, curlicues of cigarette 00:18:53.570 --> 00:18:56.150 align:middle line:90% smoke adorning his lips. 00:18:56.150 --> 00:18:59.190 align:middle line:84% Why are the movies you show me always so sad? 00:18:59.190 --> 00:19:00.890 align:middle line:90% You once asked me. 00:19:00.890 --> 00:19:04.130 align:middle line:84% I don't know, but I haven't ruled out our happier 00:19:04.130 --> 00:19:05.230 align:middle line:90% ending just yet. 00:19:05.230 --> 00:19:08.210 align:middle line:90% 00:19:08.210 --> 00:19:10.610 align:middle line:84% Ultimately, the marks I collect are 00:19:10.610 --> 00:19:13.770 align:middle line:84% made by lovers for their lovers, not for me. 00:19:13.770 --> 00:19:16.130 align:middle line:84% This voyeur come from the future. 00:19:16.130 --> 00:19:18.260 align:middle line:84% Whatever is transmitted by each mark 00:19:18.260 --> 00:19:21.150 align:middle line:84% is publicly available, but privately held. 00:19:21.150 --> 00:19:24.980 align:middle line:84% A message meant for one person alone. 00:19:24.980 --> 00:19:27.710 align:middle line:84% It was I who first said the words to you 00:19:27.710 --> 00:19:31.110 align:middle line:84% during that long summer when I was no longer living in Tucson, 00:19:31.110 --> 00:19:33.360 align:middle line:84% but hadn't yet moved to the East. 00:19:33.360 --> 00:19:35.790 align:middle line:84% I drove across the country to see them 00:19:35.790 --> 00:19:39.210 align:middle line:84% because it seemed like the most romantic possible way. 00:19:39.210 --> 00:19:41.550 align:middle line:90% As the states between us past-- 00:19:41.550 --> 00:19:45.280 align:middle line:84% Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, 00:19:45.280 --> 00:19:48.810 align:middle line:84% I vacillated about how exactly to say it. 00:19:48.810 --> 00:19:51.900 align:middle line:84% All I could think about was that moment in many Wong Kar-wai 00:19:51.900 --> 00:19:54.930 align:middle line:84% films, when a person in love will whisper something 00:19:54.930 --> 00:19:58.780 align:middle line:84% into a mud filled hole in a wall, a knot in a tree, 00:19:58.780 --> 00:20:00.870 align:middle line:90% or a friend's tape recorder. 00:20:00.870 --> 00:20:05.010 align:middle line:84% What words the lovers speak in these scenes are never divulged, 00:20:05.010 --> 00:20:07.680 align:middle line:90% and, indeed, do not matter. 00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:10.080 align:middle line:84% The point is that the lovers are speaking 00:20:10.080 --> 00:20:14.590 align:middle line:84% and that we are seeing, without comprehension, 00:20:14.590 --> 00:20:17.180 align:middle line:84% the act of expression as it takes shape. 00:20:17.180 --> 00:20:19.740 align:middle line:90% 00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:23.080 align:middle line:84% Once, after many days alone with myself, 00:20:23.080 --> 00:20:26.250 align:middle line:84% I came to a town near what geographers call the Eurasian 00:20:26.250 --> 00:20:28.950 align:middle line:84% pole of inaccessibility, otherwise 00:20:28.950 --> 00:20:31.650 align:middle line:84% known as the most inland point on Earth. 00:20:31.650 --> 00:20:34.810 align:middle line:84% There were no tourists in this town, just goatherds 00:20:34.810 --> 00:20:36.580 align:middle line:84% and truck drivers and people like me 00:20:36.580 --> 00:20:39.250 align:middle line:84% who came for the pleasure of passing through. 00:20:39.250 --> 00:20:43.130 align:middle line:84% I didn't know where exactly in the desert the pole was located. 00:20:43.130 --> 00:20:45.400 align:middle line:84% But like any hopeless romantic, I 00:20:45.400 --> 00:20:49.030 align:middle line:84% longed to get as close to the inaccessible as I could. 00:20:49.030 --> 00:20:52.810 align:middle line:84% After an hour or so of walking, I came to a rocky tor 00:20:52.810 --> 00:20:55.240 align:middle line:84% jutting up from the desert and decided to climb it 00:20:55.240 --> 00:20:56.900 align:middle line:90% before turning around. 00:20:56.900 --> 00:21:01.150 align:middle line:84% I expected to stand at the top, contemplating my solitude 00:21:01.150 --> 00:21:04.330 align:middle line:84% while looking out over the vast and tawny desert. 00:21:04.330 --> 00:21:07.930 align:middle line:84% Instead, I saw smokestacks and train cars 00:21:07.930 --> 00:21:10.970 align:middle line:84% and the ragged edges of the town I had just left. 00:21:10.970 --> 00:21:14.300 align:middle line:84% I could also see, between tor and town, 00:21:14.300 --> 00:21:18.350 align:middle line:84% a giant bilingual lover's mark that some couple had left there, 00:21:18.350 --> 00:21:20.690 align:middle line:84% and all of life's heat and isolation. 00:21:20.690 --> 00:21:26.290 align:middle line:84% A sign meant for you and for me, but mostly for them. 00:21:26.290 --> 00:21:26.960 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:27.640 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:21:27.640 --> 00:21:30.990 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:21:30.990 --> 00:21:32.000 align:middle line:90%