of ephebes in lesbian lodging

Thomas Eakins, study for The Watering Hole, ca. 1884

The both of us are in the throes of summer. Playing house in the middle of bumfuck Illinois has been a vacation indeed. As mornings consist of rolling out of bed basically whenever and subsequently lounging in the nude, we realize life is made for the time being. Going into town sporadically, at best, has seemed to cure the illnesses that previous claustrophobic winters in much colder places, less bequeathed with Nature-filled environments, have induced. Frolicking with butterflies and hummingbirds (it sounds so gay because, I assure you, it is) on the porch, sucking down stale hand-rolled cigarettes while listening to bullfrogs honk, and leisurely soaking up some gender theory (currently Butler’s Undoing Gender) or ArtForum sure have a way of loosening the muscles in my shoulders.

With the inception of the blog we have inked a fresh page of responsibilities. And the days of summer making house in a lesbian lodge are dwindling.

In just weeks our lives will be (somewhat) neatly consolidated into boxes and bags in the back of a station wagon–our modern yoke of oxen and covered wagon. Before leaving for the frontier, or what seems to be left of it, there is still time to finish up projects, start new ones, and hope to finish them as well. Daily creative adventures have left us ephebes with plenty of images and ideas to proudly display (here and elsewhere).

Today, for instance, we mimicked the students of Thomas Eakins‘s who would take turns posing nude in the woods for the artist and one another, to create mythological scenes that now invoke homoerotic and pedophillic readings and fantasies. Playing pastoral was a great way to shed the thick skin that compounds when the need to be defensively queer (or queerly defended) arises in densely populated places. Nudity, even without exposure, surely stretches one’s comfort levels and self-esteem. Seeing the images on the screen of the camera later reminded me of finding Eakins’s ephebic boyish bodies for the first time: shocked (perhaps this time at myself), engrossed (this time in the details of expression, not the contours and sensuality), and quite titillated ( by the prospect of someone aside from Rik viewing my nude form and similarly by the fact that it was Rik refracted the image and created a still). The freeing quality of daily artistic and/or intellectual, maybe even–dare I say–spiritual, and definitely sexual, expression(s) is akin to the bubbling sensation one would expect from guzzling a love potion.

The lesbians who inhabit this enchanting terrois where horses and deer block the driveways (not SUVs) seem to know what they’re up to. Yet, they will return from our destination and we will head for their site of departure, weariness relinquished and wit rejuvenated.

*jareth nym