Masc4Masc: An Odyssey
Alan Gutierrez
No Fats. No Femmes. No Blacks. Undoubtedly, these phrases exist somewhere in a Grindr profile. They are the unconscious yet deafening echoes of misogyny and racism in the gay community. These forces produce a hierarchy in which the pinnacle of desirability is masculine, straight passing, white gay men. Unsurprisingly, this idea is not novel. The shunning of feminine gay men and the exaltation of these special, straight-passing gay men is common fodder for novels with gay subject matter. In Gore Vidal’s novel The City and the Pillar, the search for such a man becomes an obsessive quest for Jim Willard, the protagonist. A sexual encounter between Jim and his friend Bob Ford ignites a years-long quest on Jim’s part to find Bob after he joins the navy. The novel bears an uncanny resemblance to Homer’s epic The Odyssey, the quintessential story of heroism and faithful love. By utilizing the Greek myth of soul mates, Vidal constructs his novel as a half-parallel to The Odyssey, shaping his main character into an Odysseus archetype and recounting his cursed journey as a cautionary tale against the idealization of masculine gay men.
Jim Willard is special, much like Odysseus. While Odysseus is defined by his cunning intellect, Jim is the vessel of masculinity. Jim’s ability to be perceived as “straight as a die” (65) allows him to travel seamlessly in and out of the gay world, a world Vidal makes clear is a secretive as it is obvious to those who know where to look. As Vidal explains, a typical gay man may seem “just a little different from the others. Sometimes [they’re] shy and a bit frail” (84). Jim cannot be forced into such a pattern as, “he was popular…he was the school’s tennis champion and…admired” (12). He is a stark contrast to the hackneyed trope of the doomed “queen.” As an all American boy with a relatively normal upbringing, Jim embodies a paradigm, similar to the classical hero Odysseus represents, and most importantly, desirable to those on and off the pages of his book.
Yes, Jim’s appeal is far and wide, but his tastes are not. Being at the top of the pyramid gives Jim the luxury of choosing and his choice, no matter the circumstances, will always be Bob Ford. It is precisely Jim’s status and the eerily perfect circumstances surrounding him that allow Vidal to make this relationship into a cautionary tale. When the obsessive chase for Bob crumbles into jarring violence, in spite of Jim being who he is, the audience is moved to believe that if an obsessive quest for a “Bob” doesn’t work for Jim, how would it work for anyone else?
The first sexual experience between the two is brief. Although this encounter occurs at the beginning of the novel, it is, in many ways, the climax of their story. Jim’s attraction to Bob is rooted in Jim’s thesis that Bob is his “twin.” Indeed, the similarity is easily seen. Both men are masculine, strong, and of the same social caliber. Vidal even explicitly states that when Jim looks at Bob, “he [feels] as if he were looking at an ideal brother, a twin” (24). It is this image that Jim holds onto, even though it prevents him from finding any meaningful connection with another. Throughout all his other relationships he remains aloof, as “the idea of being in love with a man was…unnatural; at the most a man might find his twin, like Bob” (72). The consistent reference to twins alludes to the Greek myth that humans were originally born with two faces, four arms, and four legs. The god Zeus split them in two, fearing their power, condemning them to search for their other half. When Jim has sex with Bob, the allusion is undoubtedly clearer, “their bodies collided with primal violence…half to half and whole restored” (29). The sexual union of Jim and Bob allows Jim to be “whole.” Unfortunately, this event never happens again, at least, not in the way Jim yearns for. Following sex, “two bodies faced one another…the star burst and dwindled, spiraling them both down to the meager, to the separate…all so much less than what had been” (29). He spends the novel attempting to recapture this star. Ultimately, Jim’s intense obsession for Bob is a reflection of his desire for a man such as himself, a fact that Vidal cloaks within the “twin” metaphor.
Romanticization is the temptation the audience falls into. Vidal quickly swats any such notion away, as it is obvious that Bob does not reciprocate Jim’s feelings. He has a girlfriend and believes the consummation of their relationship is “unnatural.” To add insult to injury, Bob promptly joins the navy and disappears into the world, leaving a trail of unanswered letters from Jim in his wake. Desperate to recapture his “twin” and “restore the whole,” Jim eagerly follows the clues Bob unwittingly left behind. Thus begins Jim’s odyssey, whose sole goal is not to return home, but to find one of those men at the top of the hierarchy—exemplified by Bob, and only Bob. Jim intentionally wanders for years after his encounter with Bob, shuffling between the buffet of men at his feet, all inferior derivatives of Bob.
He finds solace with Ronald Shaw and Paul Sullivan, who like Calypso tempt Jim with promises of love, financial security, or power. Jim never commits, however, because they cannot offer him what he truly wants—an “twin.” He grows tired of them, especially after they show any trace of what Jim defines to be femininity. He disparages this in any gay man. Although he himself engages in sex with Bob, he feels this act was “perfectly corrupted by these strange womanish creatures [he encounters]” (66). He is impressed when Shaw says, “If a man likes men, he wants a man, and if he likes women, he wants a woman, so who wants a freak who’s neither?” (70) And so, Jim bides his time, patiently waiting to be reunited with his twin and each man in between becomes, “a temporary halt on a long voyage whose terminus was Bob” (71). Blinded by the idea of restoring his lost half, Jim becomes Odysseus and he distorts Bob into Penelope. Although he has no real connection to Bob, such as marriage between Odysseus and Penelope, he lives with the expectation that the whole will be restored. Ultimately his devotion goes unrewarded. Bob Ford is not Penelope. Jim’s idyllic fantasy of reuniting with Bob is thoroughly shattered by Vidal, Bob’s sudden and calculated reappearance is tied to the knowledge that he has married his old girlfriend, fathered a child, and doesn’t even acknowledge anything happened with Jim.
It all ends in violence. Unwilling to accept the reality of his situation, unwilling to accept any other man, Jim attempts to recreate the climax of their relationship by seducing Bob. Bob responds by angrily rebuking him. In his intense anger, Jim rapes Bob, “conscious that the thing was done, the circle completed, and finished” (203). Bob’s violent rape at the hands of Jim mirrors Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors that attempt to usurp his place. In the case of The Odyssey, the violent purging of the suitors is meant to restore order and honor to Ithaca. The rape of Bob, however, serves as Jim’s “final humiliation” of “the body he had loved with such single mindedness” (203). Vidal is very intentional in presenting this scene as the inverse climax of their first sexual encounter. While the act is the same, the emotions are reversed. Jim is punishing Bob for not being his Penelope, when in reality no one asked him to be Odysseus. The act is self-destructive and jarring for the audience—this is not the happy ending that Odysseus gets. The emotional response that Vidal elicits with the rape drives his point that an obsession with only straight passing gay men serves no one.
The epic of Jim’s unrequited love for Bob Ford is Vidal’s cautionary tale against an obsessive odyssey to find that one straight-passing masculine gay man. In this novel, there are no vengeful gods, no greedy suitors. The true villain is the underlying misogyny that exalts “masculinity” and shuns “femininity.” The City and the Pillar does not bear a complete resemblance to The Odyssey, but the ways in which it is different matter as much as the similarities. Vidal’s half parallel to Odysseus’ voyage, forged with the foundation of the Greek allusion to the soul mate myth, establishes a tale of delusional heroism and love meant to shock, meant to make the audience realize the Jims and Bobs of the world, aren’t worth everything.