David Leavitt's first collection of
stories, Family Dancing, published when he was twenty-three years old,
consisted of nine stories that mostly dealt with the tensions that strain the
delicate fabric of family relationships--sex, divorce, illness, death. A central tension is that of a young gay male
trying to come to terms with his homosexuality or trying to find acceptance
within his family.
In
A Place I've Never Been, Leavitt's second collection, eight of
the ten stories focus on conflicts arising out of the gay lifestyle; but
Leavitt's homosexual characters, both male and female, in this new book have
pushed beyond the problem of psychological self-acceptance or social acceptance
by others; they now either confront the further implications of living with
their sexual orientation or else they deal with homosexual versions of the
problems that face the heterosexual mainstream.
"Gravity," because of its
lyrical and symbolic quality, isone of the most intense of the stories that deal
with homosexuality. By implication, we may assume that Theo is a young homosexual
with AIDS who has chosen to take a drug that would save his sight rather than one
that would keep him alive. However, because he is dying again, he comes to live
with his mother. On a shopping trip to
buy an engagement gift for a cousin,
Theo's mother chooses an expensive crystal
bowl; while examining it, she literally tosses it through the air to her feeble
son. The fact that the bowl is so heavy
and yet so fragile, combined with the fact that the son is able to catch it and
hold on to it, constitutes a symbolic moment that provides both the mother and
the son with a small but sustaining victory.
However, there are earlier images of
the relationship between the two in the story.
The image of the small boy in his mother's glasses suggests seeing through
her eyes. His identification with the
mother is also alluded to when he asks if would be all right to give a gift and
the mother says "you already have," meaning that she has bought the
gift for him.
Because of these
references to their relationship, the trajectory of the tossed bowl somehow
emphasizes the firm yet fragile connection between them. Although there is no way to defeat the law of
gravity, for it is the law that roots us to body and ultimately to death, there
are gestures such as the tossing of the bowl that momentarily seem to defy
gravity and thus assert the human ability to defy death.
All of Leavitt's stories deal with universal
human themes of self-discovery, divided allegiances, and the search for
acceptance. It is just that in the
fictional world of David Leavitt such universal needs and conflicts primarily
derive from the biological, personal, and social reality of homosexuality.
Tomorrow:
Charlotte Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper"
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