The Sluts by
Dennis Cooper
Review by Trebor Healey
“Nothing human is alien to me.”
Flannery O’Connor
After
years cruising on the internet, I just had to find out how Dennis
Cooper would explicate the experience, so I wasted no time in
getting myself a copy of Sluts. I was not disappointed, even
if I was rather horrified and seriously reluctant to ever go
online to meet a dude again!
Talk about relative truth, and the no reality that is multi-reality.
Downright Zen. Sluts involves one particular escort
boy who is the fantasy of many, the experience of a few, and
in the end,
a total enigma who may exist as himself, as several people, as
a sort of composite of various young men, or as a totally fictitious
creation of those who desire him, use him, fuck him, love him,
injure him, benefit from him, or claim knowledge of him and the
vicarious power that comes with that. Can desire itself create
something out of nothing? On the internet, yes. Need, desire,
fantasy, boredom, psychosis and narcissism—they’re
all seeds. We’ve all seen The Matrix; Zen is as
prevalent as Nietzche these days. And the latest incarnation
of Bodhidharma,
or the Superman for that matter, is the internet itself. Emptiness
is form; form is emptiness.
And thus, the escort boy’s existence is not really the
point after awhile. It’s the lack of or uncertainty of
reality, which is also a kind of hyper-reality, that drives the
tale and can create a sexual charge beyond pornography or what
real life can provide. Not only are you in control at the keyboard,
but you can actually be subject and object at the same time.
You can replicate yourself in the digital petri dish until you
start running into yousrelf as “other” on some chat
board. When you start talking back to yourself, it’s time
to give the keyboard a rest, or scream. Because, in the end,
the control you think you have comes back to slap you in the
face like Frankenstein’s monster. What you put out there
ends up controlling you. Talk about a lesson in karma. The real
narrator of Sluts is the collective madness more than any of
the individual points of light—or dark, as the case may
be. Internet as monster—King Kong, Godzilla, heroin, etc.,
etc.
The plotting, suspense, serial unreliability of each and every
of its many narrators, as well as the directness and succinctness
of its language, makes Sluts a great read on every level. But
more than that. It’s the gripping subject matter that you
can’t step away from. And it’s storytelling in the
most ancient and gripping way. Cooper could be some old bard
in Central Russia in the year 5, recounting a battle with a bear
or some enemy tribe. Or perhaps in some imaginary queerland,
he would be the traveling stranger regaling us with his Cooper’s
Grim Fairy Tales, recounting the weird adventures of hustlers
and johns he’s known, out there beyond the pale, from the
dark side, that—though we project it as far away from us
and “other”—is as close as the person next
to you, and what’s more, within your own mind. Reality,
truth or fact is not the point. Like all good literature, his
stories make you feel more human, and they ground you in what
it’s like to be human—even if his subject matter
is the part of our humanity we prefer not to look at or get in
touch with too often.
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Trebor Healey is the author of the 2004 Ferro-Grumley
and Violet Quill award-winning novel, Through It Came Bright
Colors (Harrington Park Press). His poetry collection, Sweet
Son of Pan, will be published by Suspect Thoughts in spring,
2006. Trebor lives in Los Angeles.
Website: TreborHealey.com
