Dos divagaciones freaks

Liliana V. Blum: “Yo jamás”

Un freak. Un fenómeno anormal, una aberración, una anomalía, un monstruo. El regocijo culposo de la mirada. Porque no se puede apartar la vista de un freak. Inevitablemente, mirar nos obliga a pensar. Desde luego el cerebro fingirá que nos repugna y nuestra educación pretenderá que no lo aprobamos, pero los ojos festejarán como sibaritas.

Porque es difícil admitirme que sería de lo más excitante hacerle el amor a un hermafrodita puro. Explorar el cuerpo del hombre más alto del mundo, o ser un golliat para el que apenas alcanza los cuarenta centímetros. Que debería reprimir el deseo intenso de acariciar los brazos y piernas extras de un gemelo parasítico. Está claro que fornicar con sólo la mitad de unos siameses mientras el otro nos mira, no es algo para contar a las amigas mientras se toma café. Tampoco es de buen gusto admitir que uno se excita en extremo con la pasividad fría de un cadáver que es amado por alguien, o que es muy probable que me pudiera enamorar head over heels de Ted Bundy, y que Darkly Dreaming Dexter es el protagonista recurrente de mis fantasías.

Decirlo me convertiría en un freak y ya se sabe que la propia freakiedad es la más impensable. Por eso, sólo por eso, diré “yo jamás” como si fuera verdad.

John Pluecker: Vive le freak

Freak. You freak. An epithet meant to scare, deride, shame. But then, suddenly, the freak reclaims it. From the high school hallway, from the bleachers, from the mouths of bullies, young and old. And suddenly for that one person, freak has become something good. Freak was meant to be. Freak is what one fights to be in the end. Not just forced into a box by a society bent on conformity and regularity. The freak owns the word with pride, glamour and substance; however, one thing is certain: what starts out as freak ends up as product. Everywhere are examples: goth, dark, rasta, nerd, queer, emo, addict, alcoholic. Fenómenos. Queer kids in high heels and homemade sowed scarf contraptions in the Macroplaza under the Cerro de la Silla. An unashamed black nerd locked in his room in Sunnyside outside the loop in Houston reading manga. The guy at the stoplight in Queens in a cone hat and kente cloth with a sign saying “Will Dance for Change.” The promise of early twenty-first century capitalism: anything you become and anything you make will be discovered, priced and put on shelves for easy consumption. Those being spit on today will be the glory of society tomorrow. Mixed race the perfect example. What is freak becomes mainstream. And so with what is the freak left after being commodified, assimilated, watered down, packaged and sold? Perhaps absolutely nothing. And yet everything. Perhaps the possibility lies in a frank acceptance of outsiderness. Continuing as if nothing had been stolen. Because honestly, revolution and revolt has been bought as well. There’s nothing left to do but be freakishly marginal, wait for the cameras and advertising execs to arrive, pose for close-ups, answer the focus group questions and then continue on one’s freakish way. No one is truly freakish anymore, when the market strives to find and commodify every latest freakishness. A society previously structured to reward conformity has been rearranged to find, identify, assimilate and promote freakishness. Vive le freak, for better or worse.

Posted: April 16, 2012 at 7:07 pm