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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 1997)
32 ▼ fsb ru a ry 2 1 , 1 M 7 ▼ ju s t out T he B ody R emembers Kenny Fries explores identity and memory in his memoir of growing up disabled , Jewish and gay ▼ by William J. Mann T he body doesn’t lie,” says Kenny Fries, and indeed, his new memoir, Body, Remember, looks to his body as the place where memory begins. The award-winning poet and es sayist was born prematurely 36 years ago with “congenital deformities of the lower extremi ties”— as precise adiagnosis his birth defect would ever get. “ I have no idea why I was premature,” he writes. “ Nor does anyone know why at birth I was missing the fibula, why there were sharp anterior curves o f the tibia and flexion contractions o f the knees, in both my legs. Absent were two toes and posterior calf bands on each foot. There was no scientific name for my birth defect.” From that imprecise beginning, Fries has had to chart a course for himself without benefit o f maps or diagrams— or detailed medical records— exploring the meanings and demarcations o f his composite identity. He is disabled with an undi agnosed condition. He is the son o f working-class Jewish parents who were both lovingly support ive of their son and tragically neglectful, leaving him vulnerable to physical violence and em o tional abuse. And finally, he is gay, confronted by the homophobia that assumes his sexual orienta tion is somehow the result o f his disability. Such ambiguity in every facet of his existence led him to write this memoir, which, he says, is not so much concerned with mapping the develop ment o f his aggregate identities as it is about the process o f remembering it. “This is a book first about memory,” Fries says, “about how we re member, about what events and feelings stay with us, and how our relationship with [such memo ries] changes over tim e.” He is determined in confronting his past. Body, Remember opens with a scene o f the author as a teenager in Brooklyn, walking home from school and every day encountering a 10-year-old boy. “Every time I passed,” Fries writes, “this boy asked: ‘W hy are your legs the way they are?’ And I would answer, ‘I was born that w ay,’ never stopping or slowing dow n.,.. Never did I think of answering him in any other way. O r not to answer him at all.... And never once did it occur to me that I could walk down another street, not see this boy, and evade his question.” Body, Remember is precisely about not evad ing questions. And yet it isn’t so much about asking them as remembering which ones were already asked, and how the lack o f definitive answers has impacted his life. “This w asn’t a healing endeavor, as some might think,” Fries says. “ I d on’t know if healing, per se, ever really occurs. W ounds heal, but there are still scars. It sounds cynical and depressing, but it’s not. It’s a fact.” A sa young boy, Fries suffered physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the hands o f his older brother. It is in remembering such things— memo ries disowned by the rest o f the family— that Fries recognizes his own developm ent, his own pas sage. In a small yet powerful moment, Fries, while bathing, tries to recall his father’s hands washing his feet when he was a small boy. It is a warm, loving and yet very distant image, and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot call his father’s caressing hands from memory. He muses: “Like those distorted reflections given back to me years ago by the X-ray machine above my naked body, such blockages. “ You w eren’t very nice to me when we were young,” he says to his brother many years after the fact. The brother dismisses him. “T hat’s what kids do to each other,” he says. “ W hat is it that you want me to say?” Fries answers forthrightly: “I was hoping you’d be able to say you were sorry.” But his brother isn’t able, and Fries is left, yet again, as the vulnerable younger brother, enduring a night o f distorted dreams and random memories. Even later, with a loving, supportive partner, Fries is left with the realization that remembering the questions doesn’t mean there are answers. “W hat if I told Kevin that even though I know what happened years ago is not my fault, I still feel responsible that it happened? How do I tell him that even though I know I am not responsible for Fries has had to chart a course for himself without benefit of maps or diagrams or detailed medical records exploring the meanings and demarcations of his composite identity. He is disabled with an undiagnosed condition. He is the son of working-class Jewish parents who were both lovingly supportive of their son and tragically neglectful, leaving him vulnerable to physical violence and emo tional abuse. And finally, he is gay, confronted by the homophobia that assumes his sexual orientation is somehow the result of his disability. — — Kenny Fries it is as if my legs, which minutes ago brought me to the tub, remain anesthetized, rendered inacces sible except for utilitarian tasks, or an occasional sudden jolt o f pain.” Another time he is stretched out on the couch when his mother sits beside him. He lifts his legs to make room, and his mother tenderly rests them on her lap. It is the first time he can rem em ber his mother touching his legs, although she must have, many thousands o f times, dressing him and caring for him as a child. W hen he confronts the abuse that plays havoc with memory. Fries is attempting to overcome flora fgacson Por-tdands Adter/tat/w Peadtor I have chosen to take a more human approach as a Realtor. I build my business on a referral basis and firmly believe that the satisfaction of my client is far more important than my financial gain. I communicate clearly and openly, and I’m always honest with my clients. I’ll gladly climb a nearby tree to check on a roof or get a bit dirty investigating a crawl space or an attic. I work mainly in Portland’s close-in Southeast and Northeast neighborhoods and specialize in older homes with character. Whether you’re thinking of buying or selling, please do give me a call. Nora Isacson The Prudential Performance Group One, Inc. REALTORS* 215 S E 102nd, Suite 300 Portland, O R 97216 (503) 256-1234 V M /pgr 9503) 948-5610 being bom with deformed legs— I gave that up years ago, didn’t I?— I feel responsible for how my disability causes me problems now? That no matter how many times he tells me how attractive I am, so much within me, as well as so much that surrounds me, conspires to tell me otherwise? How can I make him understand that although remembering is necessary for acceptance, for giveness takes a much longer time?” Forging an identity as a disabled gay man necessitated Fries to make him self vulnerable yet again. In a wonderfully erotic and yet supremely tender passage, he recounts a sexual experience with a man named M iguel, who told him he was beautiful. M iguel’s delicate exploration o f Fries’ body is as thoughtful as Fries’ own exploration of the memories that that body conceals. “ It is his kiss on the scar on my lower right leg that forces me to open my eyes,” Fries writes. “My legs as they dangle in his palms. I watch him as his lips trace my scars, as his teeth delicately pull on the hair on my legs, on my thighs.... I stop him and hold his head in both my hands. For a short moment, the rare moment when attention is riv eted in the present to what is directly before you, time is suspended, becomes all time— and then the moment has passed and his tongue is searching for mine, our bodies pressing against each other. Then, I feel his hands once again begin to caress my legs, and find my scars.” Living in Israel for a period brought Fries into greater examination of both his gay and Jewish identities. Meeting repressed gay Israelis after living in San Francisco forced him to see the important role that his gay identity had come to play in his world view. It also afforded him greater awareness o f what his Jewish heritage had taught him on his journey toward self-discovery. “Part of the Jewish experience is the idea of never forget ting, o f always remembering,” he says. “That is why I explore memory, why I force m yself to remember the past— all o f the past.” There is much in this often lyrical, tantaliz- ingly amorphous memoir. Fries is a poet— his Healing Notebooks, a beautiful collection o f po ems about a lover with AIDS, won the Gregory Kolovakos Award for AIDS W riting— and much of Body, Remember has the grace and elegance of poetry. It is presented as a series o f images, sometimes past tense, sometimes present, often moving backward and forward through time. This is the way, o f course, that memory works: zoom ing in on certain events, gliding over other, vaster stretches o f time. “ It’s certainly not linear,” Fries says. “We don’t remember in linear ways. We rem em ber bits at a time, and sometimes we remember them differently each time, and always differently than others [remember them].” It is with that process that Body, Remember concerns itself. “ What you’re doing when you write a m emoir,” Fries says, “is really transform ing your life.” And ultimately, he concludes, in accepting that some questions— like that o f the boy on the street— have no answers. Except, of course, for the one Fries gave: “ I was bom that way.” Body, Rem ember by Kenny Fries. Dutton, 1997; $21.95 cloth. William J. Mann’s novel, The Men from the Boys, will be published in June. 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