Tim Jones-Yelvington Short
Clean Babies
While we fucked, I’d hold his baby. To keep the baby off the dirt. Clean babies are happy. I’d hold the baby out in front, and he’d fuck me from behind. The baby never cried. The baby wandered. I mean its eyes. The baby appeared unfazed. I mean by the fucking.
We fucked in the park, in the tall grass. When my arms that held the baby bounced, the baby laughed and laughed. And while I got fucked, while I was holding the baby, I’d wonder about the baby’s other daddy. This was what I assumed, that the baby had another daddy, because unlike his first daddy, the daddy who fucked me, this baby was brown. I figured the baby was adopted. Something about the daddy, I could just tell, he seemed like the kind of man with a man at home. Even though he never talked about himself, he didn’t seem like he kept any secrets.
I wanted to ask him, Bring the other daddy to the park! One daddy to kneel on the ground and take me in his mouth. The other daddy to fuck me. And me to hold the baby. To keep the baby clean. But I never had the guts to ask.
That was a few years ago. That daddy disappeared. Now that park has fewer babies. Now those babies toddle. Oh man, those babies are getting big.
Tim Jones-Yelvington lives and writes in Chicago. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Sleepingfish, Annalemma and others. His short fiction chapbook, “Evan’s House and the Other Boys who Live There,” is forthcoming in Spring 2011 in “They Could no Longer Contain Themselves,” a multi-author volume from Rose Metal Press. He is editing the October issue of Pank Magazine to feature Queer poetry and prose. He contributes to the group blog Big Other.
Sunday Service
Oh. My.
Tim.
smart piece. maybe too much on the verge of being propaganda for me. smart piece though, concept-wise.
Really killer, Tim. Pitch perfect.
This piece is really great. Really fucking great.
I agree, I like it. I love pieces like these. A lucid dream you can hold in your hand. Or…well.. in this case observe pixellating on your screen.
Darby: In what way is this propaganda?
¿?
Nice, Tim, and thanks for that.
i read it as reducing a certain faction of society that considers itself clean and decent to having the perception of an infant, kind of blissfully ignorant, at least w/r/t the realities of things, in this case the perception being that gay people are eccentric comedians, entertainers in tv and movies, easy to laugh at, as long as what they do in private stays private. again, i think its an incredibly smart construction, just pieces that make sweeping statements about society aren’t my thing.
Clean Babies is a piece “that make[s] sweeping statements about society”??
I read it as a cannily aggressive confrontation with “sweeping” attitudes towards fucking, babies, daddies, guts, and the communal fundament of loam.
Clean Negotiation
It’s not ‘mine’ – I’m babysitting for a neighbor. Here, I’ll give you half the forty bucks if you hold the kid off the dirt while you’re taking my dick.
i dont understand what that means.
actually, if you’re getting hung up on the fucking and babies aspect, i think that is kind of what tim wants, insofar as people will tend to not look deeper into the piece. thats essentially viewing the piece as the very people he is satirizing.
I didn’t read it as a statement… or even a confrontation… I read it as a collection of very pregnant (no pun intended) and even loaded (no pun intended) implications.
Not that I think your thoughts are ‘wrong’, or anything, Darby… . Your reading is interesting. I was only wondering what you meant. The word “propaganda” disturbed me. It has highly charged sociopolitical implications. The thing is: from your explanation, it seems “propaganda” is not quite what you meant?
might have been the wrong word. i think of propaganda as anything that is attempting to change someone’s mind about something in a subversive manner. i see this as that in a way. maybe its the wrong word. maybe socially charged is what i meant.
from wikipedia actually.. Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position.
thats about how i felt about it.
i like this. it’s much more friendly than babyfucker.
“[H]ung up on the fucking and babies aspect”?? (- and not the daddies, guts, and loam aspects?)
love.
any of it. anything that anyone might view as dirty or wrong or shocking. having preconceived ideas of clean and dirty is partly what this piece is trying to obliterate. if there is something dirty or shocking or indecent about daddies, guts, loam, fucking while holding babies, all that mixed together, then you are standing in a position to judge it, or standing from a “clean” position. the piece is equating perceptions of cleanliness and decency to the perceptions of an infant.
if other people are reading this in other ways, I’d like to hear.
Owen, how often is it that “a collection of loaded implications” is not ‘confrontational’ – either directly or in the manner of pregnancy?
Is there something in the story that tells you that it’s not literal? – a pulled punch, a wink-and-a-nod?
i think for me it is a couple of things. the setting of being in the park seemed too strange for there not to be a reason for it. it makes more sense as a way of flipping the whole what-people-do-in-the-privacy-of-their-own-homes mentality and making it happen in as public a place as possible. so if “dirtiness” happens in public, how do the the “clean” cope with it? turn them into babies. genius.
the other thing was that a baby staying clean is not interesting in the literal sense. why is it so important to the narrator that the baby stays clean if its just literally clean. a baby cant get a little dirty on the ground? a baby cant sit in a cradle-thingy? it doesnt make sense to care so much about how clean the baby is unless cleanliness means something else.
Very often. Every time you dream.
Implications grow inside of the audience, in ways that are dependent upon their understanding(s) of the word (this blog — not to mention this thread — is a fine example of people trying to come to terms with one another’s use/definition/understanding of particular words). Implications do not necessarily confront the audience.
And to your second question, I’ll return one: Is there something in the story that suggests it’s literal?
What I said: the story confronts attitudes towards “all that mixed together”.
Where (yet) has anybody on the thread seen “all that mixed together” as being
“dirty or wrong or shocking”??
That discernment of “preconceived ideas of clean and dirty” is your projection, darby – your hang-up on manufacturing a reply to the story superior to what Tim “wants” it to do.
On the first: Okay. I was just wondering.
On the second: Propaganda as the self-serving broadcast of false information with the intent to promote an idea or sentiment or feeling or movement etc. is the common understanding as well as the definition given in my Webster’s Unabridged. :Not just simply influencing people, but influencing them subversively through lies. But . . . words are malleable despite their definitions. All I wanted to know what was you meant.
Skål!
Atta boy, Tim. Very nice.
Very nice, Tim. Enjoyed it.
“What I said: the story confronts attitudes towards “all that mixed together”. ”
yes, you’re right. i agree with that. i think i misunderstood that before.
“Where (yet) has anybody on the thread seen “all that mixed together” as being
“dirty or wrong or shocking”??”
no one on the thread has, but its that perception is what im saying the piece is about.
“That discernment of “preconceived ideas of clean and dirty” is your projection, darby – your hang-up on manufacturing a reply to the story superior to what Tim “wants” it to do.”
i know i run into the problem of claiming a perception is to have that perception, but how else can it be delved? but this is all kind of what im afraid of too and why i want to hear other interpretations, i dont want to go too far as im prone to do. i sincerely apologize to tim for, if its what im doing, manufacturing a reply superior to tim’s intentions. sorry.
Owen, your dreams are confrontations! At least, they ‘stand before’ you, they confront you, whether you take up that ‘facing’ consciously or not.
(I think you’re taking the word “confrontation” to harbor more hostility than it has to.)
Generally, an implication ‘stands before’ one as a meaning that’s coming-to-be – not necessarily looming or threatening, but there, and there-yet-unrealized. That’s, direct or not, a “confrontation”. But what I said, in taking up your locution, was “loaded implication” – which ‘loading’ surely makes that confrontation direct, at least after what’s ‘implied’ is comprehended.
One sign of literalness in the story is its dead-pan expressiveness, including the narrator’s telling of desire (both “I wanted to ask” and telling us what he wanted) and telling of loss of nerve.
Ok: what in the story tells you it’s not literal?
But some parks are where people take kids, and some parks are where people cruise for sex. The park in the story? – both kinds of park. I’m pretty sure the second kind of park sees things happen that are more . . . improbable than a guy cruising for sex with an infant in his arms, challenging to some standards of ‘cleanliness’ though that trick be.
The narrator’s partner is taking care of the kid, whoever’s baby it is. Keeping a baby clean might not be “interesting”, but surely it’s ‘literally’ what child-minders spend much of their child-minding time doing.
I don’t see the baby or the fucking or any of the story as symbolic, darby (except maybe the narrator’s perception of the toddlers getting “bigger” – maybe this indicates something other than itself). Maybe tomorrow I’ll read the thing and see it your way . . .
The word “confrontation”, dg, implies aggressiveness. This work is not aggressive. It puts forth several images which can be interpreted by the audience to imply this or that, much of which is not going to be anticipated by the author. If the author had wished to confront you with something then he would’ve made the meaning more clear. This is what confrontational artists do. BANG! HERE’S YOUR GODDAMN BEATING HEART IN MY HANDS! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT, HUH? HUH?
That’s not what this piece does at all. I see no confrontation.
Dreams are not inherently confrontational. They’re disassociated thoughts based on this and that, matching things up, an attempt at organization, a working out of meanings. That’s not confrontation. You might perceive confrontation if you find something you dream to be disturbing . . . but that’s not, in itself, confrontation.
Finally: Dead-pan and expression of feeling does not equate with literalness.
yeah, the park thing, i dont know. just seemed like the event was already strange enough, but to put it in public seemed either unnecesarily more than the scene needed, or more important for the piece as a whole.
of the myriad of things to worry about in the care of babies, why cleanliness? it just seems less important to the point that its odd and so makes me question it.
yeah the ending, i’m still playing around with that in my head. part of my feeling is that its a hopeful ending, if babies are fewer, getting older, no longer ignorant. that public perception is changing…
confront vt 1 to face esp. in challenge 2 to cause to meet : bring face to face 3 ENCOUNTER
–Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
Clean Babies ‘faces’ its reader with the action it narrates, ’causes [its reader] to meet’ that action, and enables its reader ‘to encounter that action. Clean Babies is also, as I said, an ‘aggressive confrontation’ – not all confrontations are aggressive; ‘I confronted the problem of running out of gas while mowing the lawn’ – , because it ‘puts before’ the reader, in almost dispassionate prose, action of an unusual nature, action some might find objectionable.
Owen, what makes the confrontation of the story work is that it’s not in SHOUTY CAPS.
Dreams “inherently” ‘face’ their dreamers, perhaps in challenge, perhaps not, ‘bring [their dreamers] face to face’ with images and emotions already in their minds, and cause their dreamers ‘to encounter’ those images and emotions in those (perhaps new) arrangements. Dreams, in these ways, “confront” their dreamers.
What I said was that, in this story, disaffected expression is a sign of the literalness of the story’s narration, not that it “equates with literalness”.
Owen, you’ve defined words in private ways and misstated points of view with which you purport to differ. What you haven’t done is to give an example of a “loaded implication” which is not confrontational. Nor, in response to Clean Babies, have you said why you don’t take it literally. Well?
F-R-E-A-K… (brutha)
ja.
yeah, and don’t neglect the ending, yo.
If the Bolsheviks had made propaganda like this, the Revolution would have worked.
Glow
Vive TJY!
love.
very good. it also seemed like a good fitness program
I am just pleased the piece encouraged spirited discourse.
Dunno abt intention, I wrote this one fairly intuitively. Confronting ideas abt clean & dirty, public & private, yeah, definitely, probably, though am unsure toward what end… had not thought about reading babies as symbol equating mainstream sexual moralism w/ infantile mental-cognitive capacity. That is an interesting reading. Think I was more conscious of babies maybe in terms of tensions or… possibly, like disruption of familiar codes in terms of narrator’s own shame, desire, innocence, depravity, etc.
I maybe actually read the ending as bittersweet, something has been lost.
I appreciate this conversation, I am learning something from it, I think.
At one point I was concerned abt Alleman and imitation, if it reads as something distinct, I am very happy.
Thank you for your time and attention, nice people.
Oh, goody.
Look at meaning number 3 (three): “to stand or come in front of”. I’ve been paraphrasing “to confront” as ‘to stand before‘, so that my usage of the word would be plainer – one quite close synonym of “in front of” is ‘before’. Your dreams stand before you, they “stand or come in front of” you, like scenes in a movie that you yourself are directing.
(It was you that brought the analogy of “lucid dream” into the conversation.)
You sure have not demonstrated that you “can do this, too” here, if “do” means ‘use a dictionary properly’.
The word you defined in a private way was “confrontation“, not “propaganda”, Check your mirror, Skippy.
So enough of the deliberately obtuse bullshit, Owen.
I brought up the subject of ‘literalness’ in response to your finding the story to be (or to be like) “a collection of loaded implications”. “[P]regnant” and “loaded” seem to me useful descriptors of Clean Babies, but why “implications”?? What, in the story, tells you that anything in its action implies something which is not being plainly said?
I think it’s meaning and effect are to be gotten by reading it literally, not by way of “implication”, so I asked you, in so many non-confrontational words, ‘what makes you think that it’s not a literal depiction?’.
Perceptions do “confront” the mind; one name for the resolution of this confrontation is ‘experience’. “Confront”, Owen – not ‘be in conflict with’.
Your best option, given the bezoars you’ve coughed up in phony response on this thread so far, is:
Blah blah blah.
Oh, goody. I can do this, too. Webster’s Unabridged: con•front v.t. 1. to face in hostility or defiance; oppose; 2. to present for contradiction; 3. to stand or come in front of; 4. to be in one’s way.
Maybe you’re different, but my dreams do not get in my way.
dg, enough of the crap. Enough of dumb, pointless questions like (paraphrasing) “Explain why Absurdism is not literal,” which, if this were the precise question you’d actually asked, would in itself, I imagine, rather likely begin a brand new conversation on how you and/or I define the words “Absurdism”, “literal” and “not”.
And… wow, this is a nice one: “You’ve defined words in private ways and misstated points of view with which you purport to differ.” God all muddy. Do you have a mirror somewhere in that cockpit of yours, Captain Cloud?
Look above you. I asked Darby what he meant by using the word “propaganda.” He explained to me what he’d actually meant to imply. I said okay. The end. See how easy things can be?
EDIT: Also, I’m still not quite sure how the subject of ‘literalness’ even came into question until you decided to demand that I explain to you how the word might not fit in. If it came into your head at the mention of dreams: I suppose we could soon be arguing about whether or not dreams are literal, in addition to whether or not they can be accurately described as inherently confrontational to somebody who does not have a special kind of phobia.
Also: by your apparent definition of the word ‘confrontational’ I suppose you might conclude that anything perceivable is confrontational, thereby robbing the word “confrontational” of any descriptive value.
Oh, goody.
Look at meaning number 3 (three): “to stand or come in front of”. I’ve been paraphrasing “to confront” as ‘to stand before‘, so that my usage of the word would be plainer – one quite close synonym of “in front of” is ‘before’. Your dreams stand before you, they “stand or come in front of” you, like scenes in a movie that you yourself are directing.
(It was you that brought the analogy of “lucid dream” into the conversation.)
You sure have not demonstrated that you “can do this, too” here, if “do” means ‘use a dictionary properly’.
The word you defined in a private way was “confrontation“, not “propaganda”, Check your mirror, Skippy.
So enough of the deliberately obtuse bullshit, Owen.
I brought up the subject of ‘literalness’ in response to your finding the story to be (or to be like) “a collection of loaded implications”. “[P]regnant” and “loaded” seem to me useful descriptors of Clean Babies, but why “implications”?? What, in the story, tells you that anything in its action implies something which is not being plainly said?
I think it’s meaning and effect are to be gotten by reading it literally, not by way of “implication”, so I asked you, in so many non-confrontational words, ‘what makes you think that it’s not a literal depiction?’.
Perceptions do “confront” the mind; one name for the resolution of this confrontation is ‘experience’. “Confront”, Owen – not ‘be in conflict with’.
Your best option, given the bezoars you’ve coughed up in phony response on this thread so far, is:
Blah blah blah.
I don’t see how it’s “propaganda.” Seems to have verisimilitude. If it were about straight people, would you consider it “propaganda”? You seem to be projecting.
I’m sorry, but never in my life have I ever known a dream to stand before me.
Nor have I ever been confronted by one. Dreams are experienced, and effectively lived through; they aren’t ‘met’, suddenly, while you’re traveling from one place to another. That would necessarily imply that the REM experience comprises two parts, one of which is not a dream. So… what is this experience that contains the dream? Is it simply a different sort of dream-like experience? This is interesting to me: surely you can out-genius Sigmund Freud on this one, if you pull it off.
Nor have I ever found the words “experience” and “confrontation” to be in any way synonymous. One may experience a confrontation, and a confrontation might be said to be quite an experience, but to equate the two hermetically, it seems to me, must suggest that life is one huge, non-stop confrontation. Methinks that would prove rather exhausting.
Plus, I don’t think that Jimi Hendrix singing “So tell me… are you confronted?” would’ve translated quite so well.
And as for the act of “implication”: this is what metaphors do. They imply notions — both felt and thought — that are defined by the reader. Do I need to define the word ‘metaphor’ for you, now? Or describe what a ‘notion’ is? Or point out all the metaphorical elements in Tim’s story for you? Surely I’d ruin it, by deconstructing it that way. …As if we haven’t come close enough to ruining it, already.
I don’t know . . . perhaps you really are suggesting — as you seem to be close to doing — that any and every story should be read literally, and that metaphors do not actually exist?
If so, then please leave that for another thread, preferably one for which the subject is applicable. This one has been polluted enough.
The dreams that you’ve “known” were ‘standing before you’, in the sense that they were ‘in front of’ you as you dreamed them, as though you were looking at a film screen.
In this sense, the sense of a dream being ‘in front of’ you, they were “confronting” you – go back to your definition # 3: ‘to stand in front of’. All of your sensory experiences ‘stand in front of’ your cognitive reception of them.
“Confrontation” and “experience” are not synonyms. Every sensory experience involves that sensation ‘standing in front of’ that cognitive apprehension of that sensation. The life of a continuously knowingly sensing cognition would be “exhausting” in exactly this way.
“Hermetically” does not mean ‘hermeneutically’.
Metaphors do, indeed, ‘imply’. What, in Clean Babies, is to be read metaphorically and not literally, Owen?
I have not ‘suggested’, nor come “close to suggesting”, that “every story should be read literally”. What, in Clean Babies, do you not read literally, Owen?
What’s a deadgod?
What is implied in Clean Babies, Owen? What, in the story, tells you not to read it literally?
Are you a dead god? What, in your name, tells me not to read it literally, deadgod?
Nothing does, Owench; the handle is literal.
What’s the metaphoric structure in Clean Babies? What, in the story, tells you not to read it literally?
Ahah. Literal, eh? So you believe you’re literally a dead god?
Well, that explains a lot. I’m satisfied now, and have nothing more to ask of you.
Now. As for your question: The answer is that nothing at all tells one not to read it literally. But dead gods tell you to read it literally.
Lighten up. Life need not be a battle between your desperate ego and the world. Nor between you and me. I have no interest in proving my intellectual superiority over you. Nor would I have any axe to grind with someone who wanted to have an honest and reasonable discussion in a reasonable tone, without the convoluted pretensions. I have no problem discussing difficult topics with honest and sincere people. I do have a problem discussing them with dishonest, masked jerks and self-centered bullshitters. Lighten up.
You are not a dead god, and a dream is not a film. Stories do not exist. They are fiction. Experience is not confrontation. Nobody buys your bullshit. A mangled #3 does not encompass and describe #’s 1, 2, 3 and 4. Hermetic means hermetic. Typing people’s names in bold lettering implies aggression, and it is in no way preferable to SHOUTY CAPS.
deadgod: I’ve wanted to like you, I really have, especially since you do occasionally say something truly intelligent, and sometimes even witty . . . but your constant, self-aggrandizing circus analytics are stomach-churning. Who is the real deadgod? Does this deadgod even have a name? Tell me about yourself, because I know nothing except for blah blah blah. I assume that there’s a real, living, breathing, feeling human being somewhere in there, by the mere fact that you’re writing and that you get offended when people counter you. Be honest and decent, and I’ll respect you.
By excessively and often needlessly parsing people’s contributions and by needling them for making those contributions, you are not demonstrating decency . . . and it is not fair to those who post these articles expecting a reasonable discussion when you fill the thread up with your own ego. For you, it’s deadgods all the way down.
Who are you, deadgod?
Owen, when the phrase ‘god is dead’ is taken literally, it’s a paradox, a paradoxical way of trying to grasp the ontology of fundamentally unstable things. If you think reality is unstable, ‘god is dead’ is a way of beginning to thematize that instability.
It was you who said that Clean Babies was a “collection of implications”. To that, I replied, without any intention to prickle, ‘why not read it literally?’ – which is where the question you haven’t answered came from – from you, from interacting with the reaction you volunteered.
Heavy advice ‘to lighten up’, “desperate ego”, “proving [your] intellectual superiority”??? That pressure you feel doesn’t have anything to do with me, Owen. Nor does your repetition of erroneous assertions – whose refutations remain uncontested.
I’m not “offended” by your persistently unscrupulous (or unconscious) evasions, exaggerations, and awkward misreadings; I’ve been quite patient with you.
The people who post these articles might be more interested in careful reading and attentive ‘listening’ (to each other) from their readers, and less interested in panicky, self-incriminating accusations of “ego”, than you think.
I like Tim’s story, and figure it for having its greatest effect not as an allegory, but rather taken literally. Do you disagree? How so?
When people comment like this on flash it validates flash.
Then again, isn’t flash supposed to be the outsider?
It do not validate that idea.
Discuss.
Ah, you’re so silly.
(By the way: A paradox is a contradiction, which indicates an unresolved problem. Think about it.)
Please, no. I’m tired of reading angry debates over flash fiction.
i recently read babyfucker so this comes off a little generic
[…] Jones-Yelvington will blow your mind with a short short story at […]
This is great. I want two daddys also
Hmm, if this gets published in a collection, I’d definitely cut: “But I never had the guts to ask.” It’s unnecessary, unlike the mother in your EG story, because of the first sentence in that paragraph.