The Museum and The Music Box by Noah Keller is the story of the carcass of a museum and the two lovers who inhabit it. Two heterosexual lovers. In all other respects this story is a more or less uninteresting take on a trope I love (“weird museums”), but the author takes the time out of his otherwise totally vague narrative to dictate the fact that these two lovers are heterosexual.
It is written in an epistolary style addressed to an unknown person long vanished, the mysterious ‘you’. We know little of ‘you’ other than that ‘you’ sailed a ship once, ‘you’ loved a dancer once, ‘you’ wrote journals and often forgot things. None of these are particular gendered traits. And yet Mr. Keller takes a second away from the story, whose characterization is otherwise so tenuous that I would hesitate to even call it characterization, to inform us that ‘you’ are a young woman.
I know, I was surprised too.
Sometime later, he takes a further aside to inform us that the writer of this letter, who’s main characteristic appears to be obsession with ‘you’, is a young man. Ah, compulsory heterosexuality back at it again.
I honestly do not understand what the point of these two asides were. If this story has any merit then that merit is its vagueness, the gulfs of interpretation it allows, they way you can fill in your own story in the spaces between sentences. The point, if there is a point, is that ‘you’ too can experience what is to be loved obsessively and loyally by someone. And yet the Keller felt the need to limit his story by imposing the narrow scope of heterosexuality on it.
Why? Why does he feel that in a story about magic and about mystery and about the liminalities of history we must be reminded that it is heterosexual? Why in weird fic of all places must I be reminded that my experience is not normal? Not valid as a subject? Why must we be excluded in a story about possibility? Why?
I know why. Heterosexuality is the default. Any variation from that is too othering. He wanted to be ‘inclusive’ and queerness isn’t inclusive, because people can’t ‘relate’. But he didn’t have to include queerness; he could have simply removed the two (2) sentences that imposed heterosexuality on the narrative and have been done with it. But even then possibility that these two lovers are, shockingly, potentially, gay places this story too far from the main stream to ever be comfortable for those who are used to being catered to.
Mr. Keller probably never even thought that his words could be exclusionary. He probably never thought of the queer kids who have once again been reminded that even in the ‘best weird fiction of 2015’ they cannot be loved, even in the bones of a dying museum filled with pickled monsters they cannot exist. He has never had to think of this. This is not his fault. I do not blame him for not seeking out the experience of being othered; it is not exactly pleasant.
My question, instead, is this: how can we live in a world where a writer of magic, of all people, has never been asked to consider the othered? How can we have created a literary community that does not demand the examination of narrative impact on minorities?
When I complained of this, a teacher told me that “people write their experience” and that I should “get over it”. Let me assure all those who hold a similar stance: I have been in a constant state of “getting over it” and “learning to deal” since I realized I wasn’t straight. “Getting over it” is something I have to do on a daily basis in order to be able to consume pretty much any main stream fiction or media. I, like every other queer person who wants to relate to things, have to wade through endless swamps of ‘relatable’ heterosexuality and Sarahi deserts worth of casual homophobia and transphobia to get to tiny and rare oases of relatability. And even there I see myself only in monsters and outcasts.
The problem is not people writing their experiences. The problem is people assuming that their experiences are universal. The problem is people who have never been asked to examine the scope and privilege of their experience writing as if they have. The problem is the expectation that anybody who does not relate can and should be expected to compromise their experience in order to enjoy things. The problem is the simple proposition “this could be anyone” being lost under a sea of “yeah, but it’s not me”.
The problem is the myth, taught to us from birth, that heterosexuality is so prevalent so universal that, even in worlds where kings are buried in giant oyster shells and harps can be made of living trees, heterosexuality is the only thing that exists.
The problem is that even in the only place where I can reliably find relatable depictions of othering, ‘weird fiction’, I must be reminded that I do not exist and if I do I am only there to play the monster. Fantasy and Weird Fiction should be for transformation not the perpetuation of real world assumptions, not for pouring salt in the wounds of people who are desperate to see themselves somewhere, anywhere.
You might think I am over reacting. But, honestly, if we cannot exist in the second person where can we exist at all?
Liminality Log 