The speaker meets this resistance in some of the poems.Īs far as relief, I think there are moments when the speaker is alone or with a man who pays him attention in sort of a dream state, like the man in “the river: fort lauderdale” or the lover in “the river: lynchburg.” While some of the moments might be painful, I think the speaker feels safe enough to express himself with these men more than he would with dad/dy or even God at times. So, when these men who have been fully consumed by this “power” meet resistance, they believe they’re entitled to do whatever they need to do to get what they want. White evangelicalism reinforces the “power” men have over everyone else as some sort of birthright. It’s being told that boys can’t cry, or that boys should channel our energy into violence, or that boys can’t show sensitivity, etc. Where might the speakers in these poems get some relief?Īndrew Hahn: Masculinity itself isn’t toxic. As gay men, we often feel swept into the cult of masculinity. PK Eriksson: The overwhelming sense of masculinity in God’s Boy almost feels claustrophobic at times. I know many gay couples who have the white-picket fence kind of life, but that’s not something I’m particularly interested in.
And it’s cool for us because open relationships are fairly taboo for straights. Open relationships work for many couples.
We can make them whatever we want them to be. How do you see high romance serving gay life beyond its presence in poetry?Īndrew Hahn: I’m not particularly interested in seeing queer people conforming to hetero norms in their relationships. Perhaps he seeks it as result of a that spiritual oppression. PK Eriksson: Despite the Sturm und Drang that God and his followers impress on the speaker in your poems, he still wants to see romance. I think there will always be a power dynamic to navigate, but it’s not impossible. However, economically, the scales often shift. In my case, my partner sometimes acts much younger than me, and I much older than him, so there’s a balance in that respect. Most times I think it’s possible that the older man is young at heart. He came out at 39 and I had gone crazy learning as much as I could about our icons, AIDS history, classic movies, etc. Neil Bartlett’s Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall is a good example of this.īut in my relationship, it’s different. There is a long history of older-younger relationships that serve as a mentor/mentee sort of thing where the older shows the younger the ways of our people.
So we bring a lot of baggage to the table. Both of our parents are divorced and remarried. In the past I’ve dated men 24 years older and 13 years older, but currently I have been in a relationship with a man 19 years older than me for a year and a half. Within the context of inter-generational love, do you see balanced love as a possibility?Īndrew Hahn: Oof, that’s a loaded question. PK Eriksson: Many of your poems speak to the fear of loving and being loved. We might grow up believing we’ll be disowned, kicked out of the house, homeless, and even killed, and all of these fears are valid. Many of us have a fear of rejection, a need to be validated-more than straights, because we grow up in environments that reinforce the misbelief that we’re unlovable. In my experience, it’s been the desire for someone to want me that drove me into relationships or sex. Can you speak to this experience?Īndrew Hahn: I think there’s this stereotype that gay men “fall in love” quickly, but I think we’re too quick to call it love when I think those feelings are fueled by a specific kind of desire. This seems to be more common in gay women and men than their straight counterparts.
PK Eriksson: I noted a white-hot intensity in the poem “it would have been easier if you died.” It seems that, as gay men, we often do not allow ourselves to feel that kind of unbridled love, or some of us become servants to it, or we sublimate it to drugs or leather or extreme sex. It was originally published on the Ecotheocollective. I discussed God’s Boy with Andrew in an email exchange that allowed us to explore the main themes of his poetry, including his complicated relationship with evangelical values and with his God.
#Andrew haan gay twitter free#
Not merely licking his wounds, Hahn has broken free and revealed the spiritual battleground written across queer bodies wherever God has led mankind into the land of toxic masculinity. From the cover of Andrew Hahn’s God’s Boy.Īndrew Hahn’s first chapbook, God’s Boy, published by gay literary press Sibling Rivalry, rattles the cages of his upbringing, which included time as a student at Liberty University, founded by televangelist Jerry Falwell, where he felt culturally marooned.