19 pages • 38-minute read
You Are Jeff
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Symbols & Motifs
The Road
The road as a symbol of life is a common poetic trope, but here it represents the love life of gay men, mostly in its aspect of seduction and pursuit. The handsome men on motorbikes are described as “twins” because they share erotic desire and gay identity. The more experienced one leads—“farther up the road” (Stanza 1), “[w]orld-wise, world-weary” (Stanza 2)—while the other one follows, or perhaps chases him. Or maybe it is the same man, at times in pursuit, other times being pursued. He is in his element, comfortable with the erotic excitement of the ride. The speaker knows what makes the man happy: “Your speedometer and your handgrips and the feel of the road below you, how it knows you” (Stanza 12). However, there is a “hairpin turn” in the road (Stanzas 1 and 3), a moment of crisis or decision: will this joy ride become something more serious, and therefore emotionally riskier? The other man has “pulled to the side of the road and he is waiting for you with a lug wrench clutched in his greasy fist. O how he loves you, darling boy.” He also wants to sleep with you “chest to chest or chest to back, the covers drawn around you in an act of faith against the night” (Stanza 4). Desire and aggression intermingle in this scene, but the emphasis is on the vulnerability love entails. Love may lead to hurt, and physical intimacy is a snug but flimsy protection against the disillusionment, heartbreak, and loneliness that might follow. Love is an intoxicating ride, but the road down which it takes you can be rough and treacherous.
The Room
The room is a symbolic counterpart to the road because it promises repose and safety. In the room, the lovers can dance (Stanza 17) and dream (Stanza 21) together. The room is also the lover’s mouth, an inviting “living room with [the] pink carpet” (Stanza 6) of the tongue, offering intimacy and joy. However, these positive connotations of the room are mostly presented as memory or fantasy. In the present moment, the room is often a location of loneliness in the poem, whether it is a “suburban bedroom with bunk beds,” in which an adolescent boy dreams about a man singing to him (Stanza 9), or a room in “the dark hotel,” where a man (maybe the boy now grown up) hesitates to enter (Stanza 10). Later the room is full of things and memories left behind (Stanzas 19 and 21). In each case, a man is alone in the room, hoping for or remembering the company of another man who loved or might love him. That lonely room is the feared outcome of the erotic motorbike pursuits. Stanza 17 brings the two symbolic spaces together:
The motorbikes are neck and neck but where’s the checkered flag we all expected, waving in the distance, telling you you’re home again, home? He’s next to you, right next to you in fact, so close, or…he isn’t. Imagine a room. […] he’s there or he isn’t, the open road. Imagine a room.
Home, love everlasting, is the desired finish line that the checkered flag represents. Unfortunately, all too often, the would-be home turns out to be an empty room, and one gets on the road yet again.
Wrenches and Stars
At the first mention, when one of the twins/lovers waits for the other on the side of the road “with a lug wrench clutched in his greasy fist” (Stanza 4), the wrench appears to symbolize the aggression that accompanies desire in the poem. It turns out, however, that the wrench is not a weapon. “When he throws the wrench into the air it will catch the lights as it spins toward you. Look—it looks like a star. […] the wrench never reaches you. It hangs in the air like that, spinning in the air like that. It’s beautiful” (Stanza 4). The light, then, transforms a potential weapon into an object of beauty. Later, the speaker invites a man who has been sick to look out of a window: “This is a beautiful view. Those trees lined up like that, and the way the stars are spinning over them like that, spinning in the air like that, like wrenches” (Stanza 22). Now these wrenches/stars seem to imply hope. The illness—perhaps heartbreak—will not last; beauty and wonder will be renewed, the beauty and wonder of a man one might love. Suddenly, there are “two wrenches spinning in the ordinary air” and four Jeffs: “Two of these Jeffs are windows, and two of these Jeffs are doors, and all of these Jeffs are trying to tell you something. […] Come closer. Listen…” (Stanza 23). The windows and doors suggest that another room may be reached, a new passion. Perhaps this room will finally be the one that becomes home, the stars above it symbolizing joy and good luck. But these stars are also wrenches, which suggests that romantic happiness necessarily implies the danger of being hurt. Indeed, in this poem, loving and hurting are practically twins, just like wrenches and stars.
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