20 pages • 40 minutes read
Richard SikenA Primer for the Small Weird Loves
Fiction | Poem | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Effects of Internalized Anti-gay Bias
From the poem’s outset, the speaker (identified as “you”) is a victim of both external and internalized anti-gay bias. In the first stanza, when he is violently punished for wanting “to touch [the] hands and lips” (Line 5) of another boy, the speaker feels he “deserve[s] it” (Line 3). Only “in the eighth grade” (Line 7), at the age of 14 or so, he already “know[s] that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy” (Line 10). He has internalized that belief so deeply that it has become second nature, like “how to ride a dirt bike” (Line 8) or “do / long division” (Lines 8-9).
The speaker’s abject lack of self-esteem is evident from the third line in the form of guilt—“and you deserve it” (Line 3)—but it resurfaces only 10 lines later in another form. Though the speaker refuses to keep “his mouth shut” (Line 11), to deny his desire, he does not see this as an act of admirable resistance or protest against oppressive intimidation. In contrast, he frames it as weakness—“you are weak and hollow” (Line 13)—and is paralyzed by a sense of futility, resigning himself to victimization: “it doesn’t matter anymore” (Line 13). This negative self-perception persists and probably informs his eventual predilection for casual and violent sex (Stanzas 2-4). He feels his desires are “dirty” (Line 65), and they are tinged with self-destructive fantasies, such as “a deathbed scene” (Line 63), which carries the mark of his early conclusion that a gay boy is a dead boy. Cumulatively, these vignettes convey that the speaker has internalized others’ loathing so thoroughly that, on some level, he feels undeserving of true or lasting intimacy.
Love Thwarted in both Understanding and Expression
Anti-gay bias, both social and internalized, goes a long way to explain why the poem’s every reference to love is accompanied by diction connoting impossibility or failure. The fourth stanza ends, “You wanted to be in love / and he happened to get in the way” (Lines 48-49). Since this lover is the man who repeatedly hits the speaker (Line 44), it may be that the speaker is so eager to be in love that he gladly submits to this violence. Alternatively, this man’s sexual aggression might make it impossible for the speaker to be in love with him. Either way, their encounter precludes love rather than fosters it.
The sixth stanza describes a complicated mismatch between love and the lovers. First, the speaker realizes that the man who loves him “isn’t the one you [the speaker] thought it would be” (Line 69), and “you don’t trust him to love you in a way / you would enjoy” (Lines 70-71). Then, the speaker refers to “the boy who loves you the wrong way” (Line 72); this “boy” appears to be a different lover, a man who “is filthy” (Line 72) and thus implicitly more compatible with the speaker, who “want[s] it dirty” (Line 65). In other words, the speaker enjoys being loved in what mainstream society would perceive as “the wrong way”: He is attracted to kink more than romantic attachment. However, even that “wrong way” of loving “keeps weakening” (Line 73). Ultimately, the speaker cannot meld his need for love and his proclivity for aggressive sex, nor can he believe that one man could give him both. He also questions his own ability to love without harming the beloved: “You take the things you love / and tear them apart” (Lines 80-81). Given that self-perception is so fundamental to the narrative, this line suggests that the speaker’s doubt in his own capacity for love is what underpins that love’s unrelenting impediment.
Self-consciousness as Conflict of Self
Though tacit, this theme permeates the poem, as an element of self-consciousness defines the tenor of the speaker’s imagination. The whole narrative—the depicted encounters, the external observations—are accompanied by his reflections about himself and the men who are with him.
This heightened self-consciousness stems at least partly from his conflicted identity as it relates to sexual orientation. As the poem opens, he is a teenager anxiously pondering the consequences of his love for another boy (Stanza 1). After that, he realizes that indifference marks casual sexual encounters (Stanza 2), muses about the possessiveness and objectification that characterize dynamics of domination and conquest (Stanzas 3 and 4), and gains more complex awareness of his own difficulties in empathizing and communicating with other men (Stanzas 5-7).
Throughout, the speaker examines his own actions and attitudes, as well as those of the men he encounters. Indeed, he seems incapable of acting without questioning the causes and consequences of his action. In addition to external and internalized anti-gay enmity, the speaker’s self-consciousness—likely a result of that internalized prejudice—indirectly contributes to the detachment and disconnect that prevail in his relationships. To some unquantifiable degree, his self-consciousness both arises from and engenders his self-rejection.
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By Richard Siken
