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
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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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