| Book Contents |
|
| Dance On My Grave |
| Aidan Chambers |
| Harper & Row |
| 251 pages |
| Copyright 1982 |
| MCMLS Call No. YA F – Cha |
| Library
Catalog Summary: Hal’s summer affair with Barry Gorman ends tragically
when Hal discovers he is much more committed to the relationship than
his friend. |
|
| Library Catalog Subjects: |
| Homosexuality – Fiction |
| Death – Fiction |
|
| Main characters: |
| Hal-
a 14 year old boy who has several homosexual relationships throughout
the book, Promises to dance on his lover’s grave and does. |
| Spike – a friend, Hal has homosexual relationship with after Barry’s death |
| Barry – Hal has a homosexual relationship with him. He promises to dance on his grave if Barry dies. |
| Mr. and Mrs.Gorman – Barry’s parents |
| Hal’s parents |
| Kari – a friend |
|
| Hal
who has several homosexual relationships with several different boys
and is obsessed with death promises to dance on Barry (one of his
lover’s grave). Barry is killed in a motor bike accident. Hal keeps his
promise and dances on his grave. Someone reports it and he gets in
trouble with the law. |
|
| Pg. 9 - …a town whose trade was strippers. |
|
| Pg. 10 - …talented strippers too few to be distraction enough. |
|
| Pg. 11 - …because
he is one of those kids who exudes sex. Girls take one look at him and
tremble at the sight. In the right mood I tremble a bit myself. |
| …and sex starved members of the staff. |
| ...but what the hell, I thought |
|
| Pg. 44 - …startling to a small boy with a fresh interest in mammary glands. |
| Somewhere out there is someone looking for me, just as I am looking for him. A boy with a can of magic beans. |
| I
might add that nobody warned me at an appropriate age about wet dreams
and maybe these had something to do with the persistence of my desire
for a boson buddy into adolescence so that it was still with me, as
strong as ever, when I was sixteen. |
|
| Pg. 46 - The joke that kept Harvey and me giggling longest that night was this one: |
| There’s
this little girl and this little boy and the little boy says, “Can I
come to your house? And the little girl says, “You’re not supposed to
but seeing you’re my friend I’ll let you. “So they go to her house and
the little boy says, “Can I come to your bedroom with you? So she says,
“Well you’re not supposed to, but seeing you’re my friend I’ll let you.
“The little boy says, “Can I get in bed with you? So she says, “Well
you’re not supposed to, but seeing you’re my friend I’ll let you. “The
little boy says, “Can I put my finger in your belly-button? So she
says, “You’re not supposed to, but seeing you’re my friend I’ll let
you. So the little boy does, and the little girl says, ‘That’s not my
belly-button,” and the little boy says, “No and that’s not my finger.” |
| Of
course, when we’d gone through it two or three times and worn ourselves
out with giggling, we tried acting it out, which I enjoyed very much
and couldn’t understand why Harvey got tired of the game so soon. |
| Another
time we built a secret den behind a back yard garage rarely used by its
owner. Harvey said the owner was a 102-year old man who lived on Coke
and mashed cornflakes. A young pretty District Nurse visited him a lot,
which gave rise to much speculation between Harvey and myself about the
extraordinary properties such a diet must possess. We tried it for a
while, but it did nothing for Harvey. |
| Before
long Harvey turned out to be a disappointment. His idea of bosom
friendship was all for him and none for me. For days I supplied every
demand of this self-indulgent creep, hoping my unselfish devotion would
eventually win him for cause of true and lasting amity. But the more I
did to please him, the more his appetite for slavery increased. … I
soon decided palship meant more to me than being a dogsbody to an
egotist. We split up… |
| Next
there was Neill. But none of this is what really kept me friends with
Neill for three years. What did was one thing: obsession. |
| But Neill made me realize that there was something more I wanted of my bosom pal than cosy companionship. |
|
| Pg. 50-52 - I was to learn about the missing something when I cam across another potential BF a few months after I gave up seeing Neill… |
| …better known as Buster. |
| He
was the only one of the three who wanted me to be his friend and chased
after me, rather than me setting the ball rolling and wanting him to be
mine. |
| I guess it was flattering to be chased after instead of chasing after someone else. |
| …one
evening he took me behind the gym and taught me the pleasures of mutual
comfit(or, rather, dis-comfit when Buster was your instructor), a
learning process that slotted the missing piece into my understanding
of bosom palship, even though Buster proved himself undesirable because
being hugged by him was like being hugged by a teenage cactus with
large biceps. “I wish you were a girl’, breathed Buster at the
climactic moment. |
| To
be honest, the can of magic beans and the cut hands were losing their
potency as images of bosomry by this time. I then discovered the even
more riveting information that D. and J. found their love, as the Bible
puts it, “passing the love of women”. This really sets the juices
flowing. Whatever I stumbled upon? The two boys with their own can of
magic beans…in one evening’s Bible reading. Here was meat far more
nourishing to feed a growing lad. [Accusing David and Johnathon, of the
Bible of a homosexual relationship] |
|
| Pg.90 - What the h**l were you doing… |
|
| Pg.91 - “I juss p**s mesell!” |
| “Yes, d***it!” |
|
| Pg.94 - “What the h**l!” |
|
| Pg.100 - Images
of a Bean Boy. Montage of Gorman. Headbound simulacra of a seductive
soulmate that, nevertheless, moved the body, mate, too. [homosexual
relationship] |
| But back to my bean-boy fantasies,… |
|
| Pg.106 - They can show off your genitalic drapery to good effect. |
| I studied myself in that area from as man angles as my precarious platform would allow. |
| …my genitalic modeling was passable,… |
| …my rectus and lateralis were okay. |
|
| Pg. 119 - A daring nappy of cloth curtained her crotch and arrowed the eye down the flow of her trim legs. |
| I needed to swallow a lot. |
|
| Pg. 121 - …seemed dammit, seemed… |
| …a sexy articulation and movement of the mouth. |
| …Kari lying right there next to me near-naked in the sun made me want to be with him. - Pg. 120 |
| She undresses and I’m watching. |
| I am thinking about Barry. |
| I get up looking at her. |
| I walk away looking at her. |
|
| Pg. 136 - “Where the h**ls that”? |
|
| Pg. 140-141 - P**s off. |
| …flesh-sexy Spike, … |
| There are occasions where I would not object to finding myself in that position. [homosexual fantasy] |
|
| Pg. 142 - “Crack his peanuts.” |
|
| Pg. 143 - … and finds my particulars… |
|
| Pg. 144 - …aforementnioned desire to crack somebody’s peanuts,… |
|
| Pg. 149 - We
stripped in the palace mirrors. Tenderly inspected each other’s wounds.
And no other excuse needed for touching and holding and caressing the
contours of our bodies for the first time. Lightheaded now, the high on
the smack of adventure and finding each other, and knowing, we ate,
drank beer, lay on the bed in his room, … |
| I was reaching for my clothes. He came to me naked still and serious in the night.[homosexual relationship] |
|
| Pg. 150 - H put his arms around my waist, stopping me from dressing. |
| He kissed me. [homosexual relationship] - |
|
| Pg. 152 - I’m tired, love. |
|
| Pg. 155 - It can’t have just been that I liked the look of him, it can’t only have been physical, not sex alone. [homosexual attraction] |
| Maybe I loved him. I thought I did.[homosexual relationship] |
| But
I knew for certain that I couldn’t get enough of him. I wanted to be
with him all the time. I wanted to look at him and touch him and have
him touch me and hear him talk…[homosexual relationship] |
|
| Pg. 157 - …and
he gave me a present from the Southend of a kind I hadn’t had before.
He gave me a lot of those: new experiences. [sexual reference –
homosexual relationship] |
| One morning I woke just after dawn. I liked waking early with him. They were the nicest times. Quiet. Warm. |
| He kissed me, said: |
| Lay your sleeping head, my love,… [homosexual relationship] |
|
| Pg. 162 - …slept together twenty three him literally and fifty-five times one way and another euphemistically. |
|
| Pg. 172 - To h**l with my patellas,… |
|
| Pg.173 - His hand on the back of her neck. |
| Caressing. |
| To get her. |
|
| Pg. 174 - “A saga of sexual sensation.” |
|
| Pg.179 - “So I picked you up because I fancied you…but I liked you straight off. |
|
| Pg. 185 - “How the h**l can we can know what’s the matter…” |
|
| Pg. 191 - “H**l let’s take it as read.” |
|
| Pg. 195 - “Weren’t just friends?, she said. |
| …more than just friends?” |
| “Because he slept with you?” |
|
| Pg. 204 - …my nose as I turned over in bed. (Audiosphyxiation might, come to think of it, be a novel and amusing means of expiration.) |
|
| Pg. 240 - He
knew. He knows. Somewhere or the other after I took up with Barry he
sussed out what was going on. That Barry was a mate in more ways than
men usually mean when they use the word about a friend. |
|
| Pg.245 - I think he got a thrill out of plying your big brother and your lover, and your boss, and your guru all of the time. |
|
| Pg. 251 - We laughed a lot and larked about while we worked and talked about school, sailing and sex and jobs. [Hal and Spike talking] |
| And that night I gave him a present from Southend. [Refers to sex] |
