Break and enter
Matthew Firth
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Lockpick Pornography, by Joey Comeau (Loose Teeth Press, 136 pp.)
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Lockpick Pornography's angry queer youth take revenge on hetero kitchens
Canada needs more books like Lockpick Pornography. Joey Comeau's short novel is all about pissed-off youth, what pisses them off, the stupid stunts they pull and sex simply for immediate gratification. There is virtually no filter here, anything goes. Art or something literary doesn't enter into it - raw emotion is the crux of the novel. It's a beautiful thing to read, the perfect cure for all the dour CanLit written by chin-scratching, middle-aged farts.
Lockpick Pornography (Loose Teeth Press) is also hilarious, both in a ha-ha-ha way and in an irreverent humour way. It adds pace and an edge to an already energetic book.
The unnamed protagonist of Lockpick Pornography is a young angry queer boy. Anti-gay crusaders really bug his ass, but so do limp-wristed sympathizing hetero liberals, not to mention mainstream hetero folk. He makes a habit of telephoning one such woman, Mrs. Hubert, to vent his frustrations with what he calls the "hetero-normative ownership paradigm." To exact revenge, he breaks into houses: "I steal from straight people because I just don't like them. I made myself a T-shirt that says, 'I break into heterosexual houses so I can masturbate in their heterosexual kitchens.'"
Juvenile stuff, sure, but who cares - the pure rage that fuels this book is to be marvelled at, not dismissed as immature.
Eventually, the narrator and some chums strike up a scheme to print pro-gay children's books and break into schools and hetero houses to plant the books,
spreading the word that being young and queer is okay. Their plot involves booze, drugs and blundering sex, followed by a kidnapping, a stabbing and strange lights in the sky. All of it is packed into a tight novel that roars along well above the speed limit. A criticism stands out: Comeau's view of the hetero-normative paradigm is guilty of the same type of generalizing about straights as he assumes straights do about queers. Specifically, he portrays monogamous straights as boring, once-a-month-with-the-lights-out-in-the-missionary-position types. It's a cliché, and his assumption that only queers have adventurous sex is off the mark.
Still, you have to remember anger is the energy here, so slipping into cliché now and again is understandable. What's more significant is the spirit of this superb small book. It rejects standard notions of literature, gender identity, sexuality and what constitutes right and wrong. Lockpick Pornography kicks right where you feel it most.
Joey Comeau will read from Lockpick Pornography at Venus Envy, 320 Lisgar Street, on Sunday, June 18, at 6:30 p.m. Free admission.
