Unfished Business

7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review Poetry Fiction Flash Fiction Nonfiction Book Reviews Translations About Awards Submissions Buy LAR Poetry Fiction Flash Fiction Nonfiction Book Reviews Translations About Awards Submissions Buy LAR Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg I. I have unfinished business with the penis. Don’t we all? We live in a phallocentric world (yes, yes, cultural differences aside) that is obsessed with, privileges, worships, and fears (losing) the penis. This isn’t simply a “man’s world,” this is a world designed by and for the penis. Many brilliant feminists have made brave and poetic attempts to write their way out of phallocentrism. I love Hélène Cixous’ plea to women to write their desire through their vaginas, her cry for the vulva to be heard (“je veux vulve!”). I shivered with joy when I first read Luce Irigaray’s love ode for the multiplicity of the inner lips. Woman needs no other because she is already plural, her vaginal lips make love as she walks. I still teach these texts and they continue to make college students giggle with embarrassment, a clear sign of their success. (Hélène Cixous. “The Laugh of the Medusa” 1975. Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One [1977], 1986.) Speaking about vaginas continues to be something they find very difficult. They are much more at ease saying “penis” “dick” “cock.” Anything just not vagina, let alone, lips, or clit. Cixous and Irigaray labored to create a discursive space from which one could speak of/from the plurality of the vagina. They called for us to speak of women’s sexuality and pleasure. To voice our Jouissance. The painful truth is that like the subaltern, the vagina cannot speak, for when it does, it already speaks the phallus. Or it is accused of meddling into serious business, brining yeast infection and other abject interventions that interrupt the phallic order (Lacan said as much explicitly). Judith Butler made this very clear in their melancholic celebration of the lesbian phallus. (Judith Butler, “The Lesbian Phallus and the Morphological Imaginary,” Bodies that Matter 1993.) A thing that isn’t a thing at all, but is a play on a play on words, always already within the (phallic) symbolic order. There is no way out. But even this powerful argument can only offer solace to the already convinced. Those for whom the fictionality of the phallus is painfully clear. Still, there is a big gap between knowing something is fiction, and being able to actually find freedom and playfulness in the limited libidinal space opened between the signifier and the signified, even in the hands (or on the hips) of a very capable lesbian. I tried. https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 1/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review In the 1990’s and throughout the early 2000’s I devoured queer theory in my ongoing attempt to bring my unfinished business with the penis to an end, once and for all. By that time, I had already happily transitioned from my early heterosexual upbringing to being a queer woman. I lived, worked, made love, celebrated, and spend my time with people who were all sick and tired of patriarchy, sexism and above all heteronormativity. The latter is still something I find not only oppressive, but also deadening: the Antichrist of the erotic. I loved and identified with so much of what I read. Butler especially gave me pleasure but so did Teresa de Lauretis, Gloria Anzaldúa, Adriene Rich, Jack Halberstam, Audre Lorde, and Bell Hooks. These are my people I felt each time I read these texts, and for the baby dyke I was back then, this was a real gift. It provided me with much needed affirmation and empowerment. I felt certain that I was coming close to finishing my unfinished business. For some time that was all I needed. I roamed around in intellectual and cultural spaces in which we all created our queer ways of thinking, writing, walking, dressing, flirting. Subversion was a thing and we were it! I hardly ever remembered my unfinished business. I had my closure. I was liberated from that nagging fatelessness. For a while. Nowadays I’m no longer a baby dyke. Far from it. I am a mature queer woman. A full adult, in my fifties. I no longer seek (or need) a new epistemology through which to combat heteronormativity, and project my own queer sexuality. I still love Foucault and I am forever a loyal student of Butler. But things have changed for me. Not in my theoretical understanding of the world – I still believe everything begins and ends with discourse – but in terms of my growing (and shameless) interest in intercourse. And yes, I admit, I have been thinking about the penis. So here I am, full circle. Back to my unfinished business. II. My business, the unfinished one, has never been with a particular penis, but with the penis as such. Still, I am not talking about a conceptual idea, a symbol of power, the Lacanian phallus, or Law of the Father. No. I am talking about the member: flesh, veins, pulse, skin, erection. Unlike the vagina, the vulva, the clit, the inner lips, the outer lips, all those wonderful body parts that make female genitalia, the penis makes its presence known from afar. It is, as every child notices, quite visible. From the age of four to about ten, I wanted, more than anything else, to grow a penis. I didn’t have a precise image of the actual organ in mind yet, but I had a very clear grasp of the noticeable bulge that boys had between their legs, and girls did not. They had. I didn’t. That was the gist of it. Boys in my kindergarten made jokes about penises frequently. They held peeing competitions in the school’s back yard, and I used to sneak behind them and watch. I wanted to be part of those competitions and jokes, but I was only permitted the status of a hidden witness. One day, Rey, the wildest boy at school, drew a picture of a penis and ran around the class with it, until the teacher caught him, ripped his drawing to shreds and spanked him in front of us all. It was 1974, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a church school, so there was nothing unusual about the spanking. But the image Rey drew tantalized me: a hot dog connected to two balls, one on each side. Is that what it looks like? I had to find out. Steve was my best friend and the only one who defended me when I told everyone I was a boy. By then I had already successfully passed two tests set up by Rey to prove my masculinity. I stepped on a cockroach and killed it, showing no fear or remorse. And I managed to spit, a big foamy saliva spit, while swinging. My spit was so hard, it went far beyond Rey’s. This should have affirmed my boyhood beyond all doubt, but some kids still insisted I was a girl. Steve had no doubt. He was always on my side. I trusted him. So. I decided to ask him to show me his penis. I had to find out if it really looked like a hotdog. I waited until after lunch before I invited him to meet me in the school’s back yard behind two cherry trees. That afternoon Steve showed me his penis after I promised him to show mine. Behind the trees he opened his zipper and pulled down his pants, just enough for me to see his underwear. Then, he pulled out his penis through the opening in the front of his undies. I bent down and looked closely. It did not look like a hotdog. It looked more like a wrinkled finger. Now it was my turn. I looked at Steve and said “gotta pee,” and took off. Steve never asked to see my penis. Not later that day, not ever. Did he know I didn’t have one and didn’t want to embarrass me? I assume so, but I never asked. Neither of us ever mentioned this again. Not even after the horrible day, when my mom came to school, set all the kids around in a circle and told everyone: “There appears to have been some sort of a confusion. Gil isn’t a boy. She is a girl. She’s a lovely girl.” Steve just looked at me as she talked. His gentle expression making my shame slightly less painful. III. I grew up in the hey-days of “Free to Be… You and Me.” (“Free to Be… You and Me” created and executive-produced by actress and author Marlo Thomas. A record album and illustrated book first released in November 1972 (Alan Alda, Rosey Grier, Cicely Tyson, Carol Channing, Michael Jackson, Roberta Flack, Shirley Jones, Jack Cassidy, and Diana Ross). An ABC television special, also created by Thomas, using poetry, songs, and sketches, followed two years later in March 1974.) Most kids raised in the USA in the mid 1970’s knew the TV show and the popular vinyl. Other than “Mr. Rogers” and “Sesame Street” there was no other show that so dramatically shaped the landscape of 1970’s American middle-class childhood. I knew all the lyrics by heart and sang along with the record over and over again. I still feel a buzz of excitement remembering the hopeful tunes and the utopian lyrics: “There’s a land that I see where the children are free And I say it ain’t far to this land from where we are Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free Come with me, take my hand, and we’ll live… “Free to be… You and Me” was the product of 1970’s feminism and its liberating message was clear: Girls don’t have to be pretty and boys don’t have to be strong. We can all be liberated from the prison of these gender norms. When we grow up, will I be pretty? https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 2/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Will you be big and strong? Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review Young Michael Jackson and Roberta Flack asked each other and answered reassuringly: Well, I don’t care if I’m pretty at all. And I don’t care if you never get tall. I like what I look like, and you’re nice small. We don’t have to change at all! This was all very liberating for me, a little girl growing up in the south wanting to be a boy. But even “Free to Be” left me hanging; there was a limit to its promise. In the land where “all children are free”: Every boy grows to be his own man [and] In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman… I was a little girl, full of hope and dreams, but I didn’t want to “grow to be [my] own woman.” I wanted to grow a penis. I spent days, weeks, months, even years praying. I was convinced that if I prayed hard enough, I would end up waking up one morning with a small penis between my legs. Sometimes I prayed to Jesus, sometimes to Elohim, depending on the setting. At school it was always Jesus. At home, with my secular Jewish parents, that seemed inappropriate and ineffective. So, at home, alone in my room, I switched to mighty Jehovah, the one and only, who has no son. I didn’t discriminate between the two divine forces. I prayed to them both, concluding I had nothing to lose. Better yet, I doubled my chances. I spent a great deal of my childhood in daydreaming. Alone in my room I was the happiest child. I was able to spend many blissful hours in my fantasy worlds. I was popular, my parents were happy, my mom didn’t have migraines, my dad never yelled, I was a boy, I had a penis. The pool became my favorite place of daydreaming. I discovered that when I dipped my head under water I was able to dive freely and deeply into fantasy world. I get in the shallow water and feel my body melt in ease. I am the only master of my world. I dip my head in and swim around myself, twisting and circling like a dolphin. I open my eyes and look through my goggles to see my skinny legs touching the pool’s floor. Hop, hop, I jump. I close my eyes so I can better see the bump I imagine to have in between my legs, under my bathing blue suit. A small bump. As long as I am in the pool and underwater I am free. I am a boy and I have a small penis. A child circling around herself, underwater. Skinny legs, skinny arms, bare chest. I have a penis. Circle around. By the time I entered elementary school I perfected my study of boys’ crotches. I used to sneak into the basketball court or the gym just to catch a glimpse of their skinny legs, pretending to look at the games, while fixating on the glorious bulges under their shorts. Tantalized. I stared and imagined that soon enough, I would have the same hump between my two skinny legs. I had no doubt this was only a matter of time and strong will. A few years later, towards the end of elementary school, in fifth or sixth grade, everything changed. I stopped praying, daydreaming and hoping. I no longer believed neither Jehovah nor Jesus were going to help me grow a penis. I was broken, I gave up on fantasy, as most preteens do. I felt cheated out, betrayed by the universe. But with time, I surrendered and accepted, not without a struggle, my loss. Freud wrote extensively about this little girl. He focused on her shattered inner-world and her desolate realization: she doesn’t have, she never will have. Ignoring her rich world of dreams and the power of her imagination, he only described her pain, her bitterness, her sense of profound injustice and selfdoubting melancholia. Robbed of this magnificent organ, the little girl, Freud wrote, “is consumed with envy.” If she fails to overcome this envy, she’ll develop a masculinity complex, resulting in either frigidity (worst case scenario) or homosexuality (a lesser evil). But ultimately, for the little girl to free herself from a life of frustration and inferiority, she must, we are told, replace her desire to have a penis with the desire to be had by one and ultimately make one in the form of a baby-boy. As I grew from a child to a teen and then to a young adult, I followed this path without much questioning. I learned to map out my earlier fixation on the penis into a new economy of desire. I trained myself, literally and through repetitive cognitive manipulation, to channel my original libidinal energy from “wanting to have” to a new one: “wanting to be had.” In other words, I taught myself how to become a (heterosexual) woman. I did so long before I ever read Freud. I didn’t need to. After all, Freud did invent his theory out of nothing. He simply mapped the patriarchal, sexist and misogynist reality he lived in, onto a psychic theory that validated it. He made it seem both natural and unavoidable. IV. From my late teens and throughout my early twenties I continued to be quite preoccupied with the penis. But I no longer wanted to grow one. Instead, I developed a rather compulsive fetish. I became so intensely fixated on this organ, that I had sex with men simply in order to be able to see, touch and watch it in action. Comparing sizes, shapes, angles, I was like a kid in a toy store. My awe was undiminished, my hunger unsatisfied. So began the second chapter of my unfinished business with the penis. The therapist I was seeing at the time, a White-South-African in her fifties, looked at me with squinted eyes when I finally told her about my somewhat compulsive sex habits. “What does the penis do for you?” was her first response. She looks right at me and when I remain silent, she softly repeated: “What does the penis do for you?” What a strange question, I thought, but I did my best to answer: “I guess it’s an object of desire.” https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 3/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review She continued to look at me, her silence making me feel uncomfortable. “I mean, it’s a common object of desire—an erect penis…” The two of us sat in silence. It felt like time stopped. Finally she asked: “And is that what it is for you, this ‘object of desire?’ Is it your desire?” Her question stunned me. After another long pause, I eventually heard myself mumble: “I don’t know my desire.” Shocked by the sound of words coming out of my mouth, I tried to make light of it: “just kidding.” My therapist wasn’t smiling. Instead she picked her notebook, scrabbled down some things, then looked back at me and said: “I think we made a real breakthrough today. Next time we’ll revisit this question. Your desire.” A few years later, I moved to UC Berkeley for graduate school. The question of my desire came along with me. Soon enough I discovered I was attracted to women and with that came a great joy and relief. It was my desire. Still, and to my great surprise and disappointment I discovered that despite this realization, my unfinished business with the penis, not only didn’t disappear, it became, once again, a matter of public concern and gender policing. While free from being molded into heterosexuality I was now scolded by some dykes for not being clear enough, systematic enough in the economic allocation of my libidinal energies: “You are a femme! Why are you dating femmes?” As a heterosexual woman I was forced to be “woman” but at least I never felt I had to give up my androgyny. I always considered myself a “lady-boy” – half-woman-half-bar-mitzvah-pre-puberty-boy (yes there was a clear Jewishness to my gender identity) – and my skinny frame affirmed this. Joining the lesbian ranks in California, suddenly meant I had to pick sides: “Butch or Femme?” and once again, this decision was mapped out in relation to the penis, (have or don’t have?) phantasmatic as it may have been. I looked feminine, and so the latter was an easier choice, I suppose. And so, just like when I was first indoctrinated into heterosexuality, now again, I realized I had to align: relinquish, deny, hide, eliminate any desire for having a penis. A femme must successfully substitute any remaining remnants of penis envy (let’s just call it that for short) and replace it with a singular object of desire: the butch. The latter wants it (to have a penis) and I, as an unambiguous femme, must want their wanting. The Butch’s desire is my desire. This worked for a while, but not for too long. Soon enough I was back to my unfinished business. Unsettled and troubled, I was looking for answers. I spent a great deal of time in Grad School reading and rereading Freud and much of the feminist critique of his theories. I got upset, agitated, but I was nevertheless compelled to wrestle with his nonsensical musing on women’s desire, castration complex, and the unquestionable superiority of the penis. It felt good (and bad) like scratching a wound. And, later, when I became a professor, I continued to assign Freud to my students, mostly because I was curious to see if they would still find any of this relevant. And because I enjoyed examining their fierce reactions. Not to mention their giggles whenever one of them read: “The little girl’s even smaller penis” referring to her clit. “Today we’ll discuss Freud’s essay ‘On Femininity’,” I announce in my undergraduate lecture at Columbia University: “does anyone want to start us off by sharing their thoughts about Freud’s main idea in this essay (‘penis envy’) and how it structures the drama of becoming a (heterosexual) woman?” Some of the students giggle, some move uncomfortably in their seats. I’m used to this reaction, so I wait quietly. There’s always the brave one who speaks out first. (Freud, S. Lecture XXXIII: “Femininity” (1933). “I personally think it is ridiculous,” Nada, a young outspoken student, breaks the silence: “I mean, maybe some girls want to have a penis, but to suggest that all girls want that? That is such a guy’s thing to say… like, yeah, women want to be men… right. Tttt. This essay is offensive!” I love Nada. She is smart, fierce, relentless. Her words are followed by some excitement and finger snapping. Adrian, eagerly jumps in and follows: “I totally agree. I think this is a male fantasy imposed on women.” Carla now: “I think it is true that a lot of girls want to be boys. It’s the tomboy thing. But penis envy? Hmmm, I think that takes it too far.” “Exactly!” Shanise jumps in, “girls want the social freedom that boys have. It’s about gender and power. It’s not about the penis. This whole Oedipus drama thing… kinda out there…” The class seems to be in general agreement. My students are savvy and articulate. They know all about gender, sex, power, patriarchy. They got their feminism down. They are not buying any of this “Freud BS.” A fourth student, Mark, summarizes in a confident but humorous tone what appears to be the collective view: “I read this stuff and I gotta say, all I think is: ‘dude, what happened to him? What did his parents do to this poor guy?” Everyone is laughing now. Me, too. “Oedipus complex”? (“was he sick in his head?”), “Elektra complex?” (“jeez, no one wants to have sex with their parents”), “penis envy” (“who wants to have that thing between her legs… hahahaha”). I let the students go on. They are having fun and I am watching them. In 90 minutes, Freud is done and declared nonsense. “Penis envy” is not a real thing the class unanimously concludes. I witness all this with joy. But I wonder if behind this collective laughter, there is someone who is hiding her shame and terror, just like I did when I first read Freud, back in college. When I read and said to myself: holy shit! I was that little girl… V. https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 4/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review I was this little girl. Until the summer just after my tenth birthday. Everything changed then. Even if it took me another decade, if not two, to realize that. That summer I had the opportunity (call it bad luck or misfortune) to get to know the penis intimately. It was summer break and my mother and stepfather informed me that my eighteen year old step-cousin Mikhael is going to spend a week with us. I was ecstatic. Mikhael was charismatic, handsome and played the guitar. He represented a world of coolness beyond my reach and he never paid much attention to me. This week was my opportunity to spend the days alone with him, when my parents were at work. This meant I’d have him all to myself and he’d have no choice but to notice me. Mikhael arrived early morning the following week. He looked like a rock star, with his black hair, deep brown eyes and a guitar over his shoulder. For the first couple of days, Mikhael was busy clearing our attic above the hallway. It served as a storage space where my mom dumped everything. He was working up there and I spent most of the day watching him manically throw things down: “Watch out!” he yelled and threw down a bag full of old clothes. Then a heater, a lamp, some old blankets, an empty suitcase. Everything comes down in a storm. “This is such an awesome space!” he affirmed, “I can’t believe how they cluttered this space with so much junk!” I’m going to make a palace up here!” Looking up at him, I was in awe. He was sweating and I was watching the sweat collect on his chest, his underarms, his forehead. He was everything I wanted. I wanted his attention. I wanted him to notice me. I wanted to be just like him. Strong, tall, dreamy.. On the third day Mikhael invited me up to see the palace he created: “You gotta see this space! Come, check this out!” “Do you want some water?” I asked, shocked to hear my own voice and wondering where this mature initiative came from. “That would be great!” he yelled from above. I ran to the kitchen and filled a glass with water, then added some ice. I was excited to be part of this summer task. “I’ll come down to drink.” Mikhael yelled and wiped his forehead with a piece of fabric, then added, “Hey, no, actually, wanna come up here? Come up here, it’s totally cool. You gotta see this space! Come check this out.” “sh.. sure” I answered, afraid of climbing that high but embarrassed to admit so. “How do I get up there?” I asked. He pointed with his finger down to the right: “you just climb over this chair and then hold the side of the door and pull yourself up. I’ll help you. It’s easy. Just stand up here, and hold my hand… yes, yes, leg here, I got you! now jump!” Whoop! I was up. The attic was just big enough for us both to stand bent forward. “Isn’t this cool?” He asked and looking at me, adding: “from now on this can be our secret space.” A secret place. Mikhael and I share a secret place. I was hardly able to contain my excitement. “Let’s get comfortable,” he said, and invited me to sit on the floor and lean on a pillow. Then: “Come closer,” he directed me to sit by his side. “Do you want me to show you something interesting?” “Yeah, sure,” I responded. A secret hiding place. Mikhael and I had a secret hiding place. “Can you promise you’d never say a word about it to anyone? It has to be a secret. Top secret!” Top secret. I was so excited, we moved from having a secret place to sharing a top secret… “Top secret!” I said, then saluted. We both laughed. He leaned over, looked me in the eyes and pulled me closer to him. Then, as he continued to look at me, he pulled down his pants to his knees. I looked straight at the site of action. I said nothing. I just kept looking. He stopped for a few seconds and then pulled down his boxers, just enough for me to see his erect penis. “Do you want to touch it?” he asked “I don’t know” I replied. The image of Steve’s little penis flickered before my eyes. I was back with him, behind the cherry trees. Mikhael’s looked nothing like it. It was big, swollen, brownish, erect. It looked like nothing I’d ever seen before. Intimidating. I was both fascinated and afraid. This wasn’t the same as the cherry trees. But my curiosity didn’t let me move my eyes away. “Only if you want to,” Mikhael’s voice came to me from afar, but he’d already put my hand in his, and placed both our hands on his erect penis. His hand over mine, he began to move us up and down. His penis felt warm and hard. I began to drift off. Cherry trees. Mikhael pressed my little hand with his strong fingers closing over it. His breath got heavy. My hand, gripped by his hand, was still moving up and down but I was no longer connected to it. I just watched it move. Cherry trees. A couple of minutes later, he made a choking sound and I felt something warm and sticky dripping down my fingers. He released my hand. I looked down and saw white goo. My heart was beating fast. I began to feel my hand again and realized these were my fingers. “Here,” Mikhael grabbed a napkin and cleaned my hand. https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 5/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review “I don’t like this sticky thing,” I said coming back to my body, “I want to go down now.” “Sure,” Mikhael replied, and helped me get down, before I ran to wash off my hands in the bathroom. For the remaining five days of his visit, this ritual repeated itself with little variations. Every day he invited me up to our secret place. Every day I said “I’ll come up but only if there is no white sticky thing,” and every day he promised there will be none of that. Then, he’d break his promise. Sometimes the white sticky thing ended up on my fingers, sometimes in my hair, sometimes on my face, or in my mouth. And every time, I followed my part: I got upset, I asked to go down, I went to wash it off. At night, in my bed alone, I began to put my hands between my legs and touch myself in ways I’ve never done before. Sometimes I would see Mikhael’s erect penis or the terrible white sticky thing. I’d try to move the images away. But touching felt good and the images became an inseparable part of it. I learned to please myself in their shadow. What was I thinking back then? I wasn’t. I did what most kids who are sexually violated do: I morphed into a seducer to overcome the much worse realization that I’d been seduced. VI. I was twenty-six when I met Tamar, the first woman I fell in love with. She was only a couple of years older than me, but in my mind “I was in love with an older woman,” which made me feel deliciously scandalous. A Tunisian-Jew, she had olive skin, black curly hair, smart brown eyes, and a beautiful smile. But it wasn’t just her beauty that mesmerized me. She carried herself with graciousness that made her most mundane movements – walking across campus, raising her hand in class, pushing open a door, picking up a pencil, feel transcendental to me. I met her at a film studies course, ironically called “The Female Gaze.” My gaze was fixated on her alone, and I enjoyed the liberty I took with staring at her. That kind of looking was new to me. The eros of the gaze, which until then I reserved for the penis, my loyal soldier, was now liberated and omnipresent. It could scan trees, flowers, people, students rushing from place to place, as my eyes, hungry to find her, searched in daylight. I never before knew the feeling of heat in my chest. It happened each time my gaze caught her from afar. I spent the day searching for her and waiting for the only class we shared. It met once weekly. During class, I could keep my eyes on her for the whole two hours. At first I was hiding. But after a few weeks, I began to stare more overtly, hoping she would notice. I wanted her to feel my eyes fixated on her. About half-way into the semester she finally did. “Hey,” she nonchalantly said as she passed by me, making her way to the seat in the row right behind me. I blushed. From the corner of my eye I could see her seductive mischievous smile. Lecture began. My hand, holding a pen, was sweaty. I felt her body heat carving through the back of my seat in the large auditorium. Now, with her sitting behind me, I couldn’t stare. She clearly decided to make that impossible. Her conquest. Then, towards the end of class she leaned forward and passed on a folded note. I opened it, my hands shaking, my heart beating so fast that I was certain the entire room was shaking. “Hey Kid,” it said, “Come to my birthday party on Friday. Here is the address…” We were young and fell deeply in love. We rode each other’s waves and wrote on each other’s flesh. We melted into each other. My body, hers. Our breasts pressing against each other. Our saliva mixing. I inhaled her and she made me laugh and cry and come. Sweat kept us glued to each other for hours and days and weeks and months. Effortless. And when the world – my mother for one – tried to break us apart, we held to our glorious Jouissance. Tamar was my first true love and my first queer relationship. Other loves and lovers came with the years. Mostly women, but also men, some cis some trans. My desire was never confined to or dictated by the anatomy of my lovers. I read a lot and learned much from so many other queers who also had an unfinished business with the penis, whether they named it or not. Their words kept me company: “You pretend to use me, make a theater of heeding only your pleasure, while making sure I find mine… no matter what we do, it always feels dirty without feeling lousy.” (Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015) “Queer’ not as being about who you’re having sex with [it is about ] being at odds with everything around [‘the Self’] and [about the need] to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.” (Bell Hooks, “Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body,” Talk at The New School. May 7, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJk0hNROvzs) I came to realize that as a child I knew the importance of pretend, play and survival instinctively. Imaginary games and make-believe were my main sources of joy. I played imaginary games with myself mostly, building entire dream worlds in which I pretended to be prince, a famous archeologist, a baseball player, or just a cute boy. And sometimes I played with friends. We made theater of our lives, and I could be whatever and whomever I want to be “without feeling lousy.” Role-play, make-believe, theatricality, performativity, reenactment. These are all part of what queer children do, not just to survive but to find pleasure in what heteronormativity and gender norms deem unacceptable, even unimaginable. I didn’t know I was a queer kid back then. I just knew I had to invent my own outlets of expression and built my world of mischief and joy. And now that I was a queer adult, I just needed to re-learn to embrace this freedom. “In playing, and perhaps only in playing, the child or adult is free to be creative,” Winnicott tells us. (D.W. Winnicott, Playing and reality, 1971.) Queerness frees me because it allows me to play. And the silicon penis is one of my favorite toys. It allows me to continue to have my unfinished business, without the forced incentive to “overcome,” or “grow out of” it. Also, the silicone penis has some undeniable advantages Allow me to name a few: The silicon penis is always erect and it never comes undone. The silicon penis is not attached to a masculinity complex and performance anxiety. The silicon penis is free of the sticky thing I never appreciated. https://losangelesreview.org/unfinished-business-by-gil-z-hochberg/ 6/8 7/3/24, 12:48 PM Unfinished Business by Gil Z. Hochberg - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review The silicone penis comes in different sizes, colors, textures and shapes. The silicon penis can’t get you pregnant. And most importantly: The silicone penis doesn’t shout its desire. You see, the erect penis is not just symbolically powerful. Lacan was wrong to differentiate penis and phallus. The erect penis is the materialized image of (male) sexual desire and as such it is already linguistic. And it never shuts up! Erect it announces and makes demands: “I am here.” “I want.” “I need.” “I am ready.” “Now” “Here I come.” “Open up, make room.” The silicon penis and I never compete over pleasure or time. We play together. We take turns, we are kind. I never need to worry or hurry. My time, my pleasure. But most significantly, what the silicon penis offers me (call me a “queer femme” if you must), is freedom, not simply because it is a sex-toy, but because as such it has also liberated the penis: Anything can become a dildo. All is dildo. Even the penis. I have no unfinished business with the silicon penis. Or with any penis, in so far as it has become a dildo. Oh how I wish I could end here, with this celebratory triumph. But alas, even with the penis as dildo, I still wake up every-day to face a heterocentric, transphobic, homophobic, and misogynistic world. So, while I promise to sign all and every counter-sexual manifesto that comes my way, I must end on a more sober note: I have unfinished business with the penis. Don’t we all. Gil Hochberg is a professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East studies at Columbia University, NYC. She is the author of three academic books and numerous other publications. She writes about visual culture, gender, sexuality, collective trauma and the political power of art. She is currently writing a creative nonfiction book entitled My Father, The Messiah: Zionism and its Downfall. 3 July 2024 Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * Comment * Name * Email * Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Post Comment Recent Posts Unfinished Business by Gil Z. 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