A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

The poem’s title, “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves,” evokes a casual tone that, when taken alongside the heavy subject matter of the poem itself, appears almost offhand. The poem combines depictions of specific actions and locations with the speaker’s reflections—especially self-reflections—and uses metaphorical language to animate the poem’s themes of confused love and violence, thwarted gay desire, and the psychological repercussions of internalized anti-gay bias. Because the sobriety of the narrative is evident almost immediately in the first stanza, the levity of the title contrasts promptly with the gravity of the storyline to create a subdued irony that lends itself to varied interpretation.

Aside from this (and still other) tonal ambiguity, the title has a literal dimension; it functions as a preface insofar as it suggests the poem’s scope and purpose. Since a primer is a short introduction on a subject, Siken presents this poem as a brief exposure to “small weird loves,” presumably seven of them sketched out respectively in the poem’s seven stanzas. They might be “small” because none of them developed into a lasting romantic relationship, and they may be “weird” because they are gay and occasionally reveal the speaker’s masochistic inclinations. However, the two adjectives might also indicate the speaker’s self-deprecatory attitude toward his own emotions and desires. The sketches seem chronological, beginning with a vignette about an innocent teenage crush and becoming increasingly mature, both in sexual content and in the complexity of the speaker’s self-awareness.

In the first stanza, the speaker is “in the eighth grade” (Line 7), which makes him about 14 years old. The stanza focuses less on the boy’s crush itself—he “wanted to touch [the] hands and lips” (Line 5) of another boy—than on the punishment he endures for expressing his affection and on the internalized social message that he deserves such punishment: “you deserve it, you do, and you know this” (Line 3). The repetition of this anti-gay idea in this line mimics repetitive social messaging that “a boy who likes boys is a dead boy” (Line 10). The speaker has received this message so habitually, in one form or another, that it has become deeply ingrained in his consciousness—like knowing “how to ride a dirt bike” or “how to do long division” (Lines 8-9). As a result, he sees himself as “weak and hollow” (Line 13), feeling hopeless: “it doesn’t matter anymore” (Line 13). This despondent attitude primes his future loves, creating a formative foundation for the feelings, desires, and actions described in the rest of the poem.

The second stanza conveys a similar atmosphere of bleakness and indifference, even though, unlike the first stanza, it describes satisfied sexual desire. A boozy tryst between the speaker and another man “in a rented bungalow” (Line 14) is about to end, but neither joy nor a sense of fulfillment characterize the scene. The speaker seems eager to take a cab home while the other man “feels nothing” (Line 16) and “couldn’t care less” (Line 25). This time the speaker is not punished for desiring another man, but the encounter leaves him feeling as weak and hollow as his 14-year-old self in the first stanza.

In the third stanza, which describes another sexual encounter, indifference has grown into objectification, alienation, and degradation. The speaker passively surrenders his body to another man’s aggressive and uncaring sexual acts. They make the speaker feel like “a piece of real estate” (Line 27), a “fallow field” (Line 28), and “a sacrifice” (Line 29). He has given himself willingly to being used and abused, as “[k]issing degenerates into biting” (Line 34) and he gets “a kidney punch, a little blood in your urine” (Line 35). Being a victim of aggression has changed from an unwanted consequence of gay desire (as seen in the first stanza) to an accepted, perhaps preferred expression of gay desire. The speaker’s conviction that, as a gay man, he deserves to be punished has not lessened as he became sexually active; to the contrary, it shapes his sexual desire and behavior, and it will continue doing so: “It’s not over yet, it’s just begun” (Line 36).

The fourth stanza further strengthens the impression that the speaker’s negative self-perception informs his “weird loves.” Here he describes a lover thinking of him as “no good” (Line 38; italics in the original), using him as a “familiar whipping boy” (Line 41) and hitting him repeatedly, “[d]esire driving his hands right into your body” (Line 45). The speaker experiences this violence as a form of affection since it is triggered by the lover’s attraction to the speaker: “you’re beautiful, / he can feel the dogs licking his heart” (Lines 41-42). The speaker also imagines the lover softening his blows with a comforting whisper: “Hush, my sweet. These tornadoes are for you” (Line 46; italics in the original). The end of the stanza suggests that the speaker might endure such treatment not for genuine enjoyment but out of a need to love and be loved: “You wanted to be in love / and he happened to get in the way” (Lines 48-49). Though ambiguous, these lines indicate the speaker’s ambivalence about this particular expression of gay desire.

The fifth stanza stands out as more metaphorical than the previous stanzas. It opens with a concrete observation of a boy in the supermarket, who “recoils as if hit, / repeatedly, by a lot of men, as if he has a history of it” (Lines 51-52). However, instead of feeling empathy or identifying with that boy, the speaker turns away: “This is not your problem. / You have your own body to deal with” (Lines 53-54). What follows develops this theme of disconnect by referring to yet another failure of romantic connection: “You are feeling things he’s no longer in touch with” (Line 56). The theme is then reflected in disconnected images of whispering people (Line 57), swaying flowers (Line 59), and steaming cups (Line 60), leading to the conclusion that “things happen every minute / that have nothing to do with us” (Lines 61-62). These disparate components of the stanza jointly produce a deepening sense of isolation and alienation that pervades the whole poem.

These feelings of alienation permeate the sixth stanza, as well. The speaker wants something “dirty” (Line 65), which he describes only as “a deathbed scene” (Line 63). Superficially, this sounds like a sexual kink—but, metaphorically, it expresses a psychological need to transcend his current self or self-perception; “the knowledge that comes / before knowledge” (Lines 63-64) reflects perhaps a desire to overcome the internalized anti-gay bias, which he describes as “knowing” (Lines 3, 7, 8) in the first stanza. Despite the desire’s intensity, he seems incapable of communicating it directly: “No one can ever figure out what you want, / and you won’t tell them” (Lines 66-67). This break in communication relates to a failure of romantic connection: The man who loves the speaker is not the one the speaker “thought it would be” (Line 69), and his love is not of the kind the speaker “would enjoy” (Line 71). On the other hand, while another man who loves the speaker in “the wrong way is filthy” (Line 72), such “filth” corresponds to the speaker’s desire for something “dirty” (Line 65). Even this connection, though, “keeps weakening” (Line 73). The stanza ends similarly to the fourth stanza, expressing the speaker’s ambivalence about sexual submission as a form of connection with another man: “You thought if you handed over your body / he’d do something interesting” (Lines 74-75). The speaker’s “weird loves” have led to disappointment rather than fulfillment or self-discovery.

Finally, the seventh stanza reveals that the speaker himself has now become sexually aggressive, and he sees his very capacity for love as something ill-fated and even pathological: “You do this, you do. You take the things you love / and tear them apart” (Lines 80-81). The wording recalls the first stanza, where the 14-year-old speaker convinces himself he deserves punishment (Line 3). Many years later, he has a similarly compulsive suspicion he is incapable of lasting love. Here he kisses a stranger who neither resists nor reciprocates: “he’s frozen, and you’ve kissed him, and he’ll never / forgive you, and maybe now he’ll leave you alone” (Lines 85-86). These are the poem’s final lines, sealing the narrative in a tone of disconnection and ambivalence. The final kiss in the poem leads not to romantic fulfillment but to estrangement, but the speaker only partially regrets this. Deep down, much as he yearns for romantic fulfillment, he also distrusts it or feels undeserving of it. Pain, both physical and emotional, accompanies desire in all seven “weird loves” described in the poem. Thus, it is a relief when these passing lovers “leave you alone” (Line 86).