on Dennis Cooper, "Two Guys"

“I like porno. I buy porno all the time. It doesn't matter to me what is actually happening in sex. I like the types. I look for types of people that interest me.”
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“I think that using porno is cerebral. Yeah. Sure.”
---Dennis Cooper.interview with Alexander Laurence, 1996
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Dennis Cooper might have a lot to answer for. His close-to-pornographic stories and poems are on the cutting and bleeding, edge of literature. He is often classed among the experimental writers of darkness and despair, including Kathy Acker and William Burroughs, both of whom have influenced him. And, he is also criticized as an irresponsible and deluded writer, encouraging among his readers the cultivation of a sense of anomie that is paralyzing, sadistic, and ultimately destructive. At first glance, the poem “Two Guys,” from The Dream Police (Grove Press, 1995) only too easily fits these condemnations. Or at least so it seems upon first reading. Certainly, Cooper’s work is nihilistic, difficult and edgy. But, if it were only this it would be relegated to a class of entertainment on the level of “Boys in the Sand” or a lesser version of the elegantly All American productions from Falcon Studios.

“Two Guys” is superficially a description of a sexual ‘scene’ between two sex-workers (“young whores who work the same beat”). A seemingly very unobtrusive narrator/describer talks out the ‘action” and the poem appears to be as superficial as a pornographic movie. It seems to be a purely objective description, a narration of the “real” sex between two young men. A sad, lonely and laconic, but realistic, or even naturalistic. Luckily for Dennis Cooper, there is more to it than that. It is that, true, but it is also something else, arguably a work of art, not all surface and not all what it seems to be. It is a work of some sophistication (despite itself, or on top of itself) with serious artistic pattern and technique used in exploration of a difficult theme, the difficulties of any communication, and the even more difficult. The poem reeks of ambiguity and ambivalence, of clarity and compassion, destruction and redemption, certainly all the characteristics of true or at least serious art.

Typologically, the poem is primarily narrative, but with a highly lyrical, very romantic undertow, including moments of near sentimentality. There is enough of plot, character and setting to make a movie script from (a sexual tryst, lovemaking of an evening; young Marty and Steve, sometimes lovers; and a crash pad with cars cruising by outside the window). One of the centers of the narrative is the detailed and graphic description of sexual acts. However, there are at least two other less colorfully dramatic moments, which reverberate beyond with the possibility and difficulty of desire, love, connection and compassion, beyond sex. These are the true centers of the poem, where the straightforward, objective description and laconic tone are undercut by sympathy and tenderness (most obviously in the lines “its partly lust and partly loneliness,” and “in a way they are in love with each other”). Also, an almost childish, and at least fragile, innocence of the characters is signaled in other moments, culminating in “they don’t know that though”). Earlier, the character Steve is “devastated because he is totally revealed” and later “laughs nervously” at an outré, but no doubt sincere complement from his partner.

The narrative works by being problematized by the uncertain nature of the narrator. How could this all be narrated at all? Is it a fantasy (well, certainly, but….) or is the narrator a voyeur who has paid to be a part of what he watches (“there are men who would give them a hundred each just to hold a camera on this sex”). The viewpoint is characteristically unclear and unsure, which is part of the weird charm of the poem. Cooper often experiments with shifting viewpoint, as in the prose poem, or story “Hitting Bedrock,” which switches from a strange porno comic, to the viewpoint of the writer of such comic, to the viewpoint of God, pulling the strings of the writer. “Two Guys” has an apparently unified narrative point of view, but the narrator may be better than even he understands. The narrator functions an interrogator, and stands between the boys and the reader, allowing an understanding and sympathy to percolate through, at the same time as any number of other emotions are entertained (disgust, desire, fear, etc). I think in fact that this is the ultimate “purpose” of the poem, the meaning behind the titillating surface details. Cooper wants to develop sympathy for the boys in himself and in the reader. That is, sympathy for the boys, and not sympathy for the narrator, or even for the author, Dennis Cooper. This writerly stance is highly unusual and deeply honest (despite the appearance of being delusionary). It is most obvious in the line “there is something of religion in their joining,” a tender observation in itself.

The details of the poem are of course, of utmost importance to Cooper, who is certainly drunk on details and the realism of the scene. Many of the particularities of Cooper’s style work both the laconic, jaded main line of the poem and the undertow of sympathy and understanding. Most obviously, the secession of long lines with five or six stresses in each, work in the same hypnotically lulling way, almost like masturbatory strokes. They give the poem an overall sense of sameness, also similar to the effect of pornography. They provide a sense of surface unity that is all surface. Each line is also essentially a though in itself. The lack of enjambment is hypnotizing and rhythmically smooth, but is also disconnected and alienating. The lineation and rhythm of the poem re-inforce the knowing and jaded tone of the poem.

The poem’s lineation is matched the relatively simple vocabulary that Cooper uses, which is very scarce in multiple syllable words (even the loner words are basic and carry the burden of meaning in the poem: loneliness, Marlboros, constantly, devastated, discovered, beaten, fathers, together, sometimes, thinking, saying, outside, bundle, dinner, food, nervously, hundred, camera, regardless). This contributes to the poem’s overall journalistic, matter-of-fact style. In this plain style, lacking artifice, Cooper has obvious similarities to the Gonzo journalism of Hunter Thompson and the new narrative work of Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Lynne Tillman and others. He uses this stylistic smoothness as a solution, presenting the subjects of the poem and his own attitude in a way that provides sympathy for both.

Other stylistic devices used by Cooper include repetition and alliteration, which along with the long lines help provide almost anonymous scaffolding for the intimacy of the poem. The first five and the last three lines begin with words beginning with “th” (the, this, there, they) and many of the other lines began with pronouns or conjunctions, such as he, they, both, in, neither, etc. These are all highly functional but colorless, anonymous words. The only other words to begin lines are the names of the two boys, one of which, “steve” might as well be any other name. All of these devices provide a screen, protective coloring for the intimate acts that are described in the poem. They also provide a structure for the poet to hide in, in case anyone should notice his sympathy, his own body, “totally revealed” by what he looks at.