SPECIAL ISSUE - 6 INTERVIEWS by Andrej Koymasky (C) 2007 written on December 17th 1994 translated by the author English text kindly revised by John
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"SPECIAL ISSUE - 6 INTERVIEWS" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
FIFTH
I couldn't miss, in this series of interviews with famous men in the gay (and not-so-gay) world, that singer of homoeroticism, the great poet whose books are achieving more and more success in our country:
KIM SERUUP
Dane, poet.
Q. Kim, you certainly are known to our readers, because for five years now your poems have been published in our language too. Unhappily in translation, but with the original texts in parallel.
A. I'm sorry I don't know well enough Italian, your beautiful language...
Q. How many languages do you know, Kim?
A. Well... to be able both to speak and to write them correctly... they are nine, included Danish,
Q. An enviable number. And you write your poems directly in all nine of them, right?
A. Yes, it is so.
Q. How many books have you published?
A. As original titles, twelve. Counting also the translations, they are eighty-four in twenty-one different languages.
Q. A real record, for a young poet as you are. You are only thirty-five years old and your first success was just eight years ago. Therefore an average of ten books per year.
A. Right, and this allows me to have a good living, without problems, together with my companion.
Q. You've been together for thirteen years now, haven't you?
A. Yes, it will be thirteen years in November.
Q. Would you please tell us about yourself? Above all, how it is that you know so many languages, and all at a very high level?
A. My father was a Dane, but my mother a French woman. Even though they loved each other and married, they didn't know each other's language and they communicated in English. They both worked for the European Community. I was born in Brussels, in fact. So, from my childhood my father talked with me in Danish, my mother in French, and when we were all three together, it was in English.
Q. Didn't that make you confused?
A. No, on the contrary it was to me like a game, and made me used to shifting instantly from one language to another, to listen in one language and to answer in another, something essential for anybody doing simultaneous interpretation, as was my job for some years.
Q. Right, you were interpreter at the U.N.O. in New York. Therefore since you were a child you mastered three languages. And then?
A. My parents, seeing my ease in mastering languages, decided to enroll me at the primary level in a German school. And at the middle schools, when we had to chose a foreign language, I started to study Spanish. Then I entered a linguistic high school in Geneva. And there I studied Russian, Arabic and Japanese. And each summer I spent my holidays in one of the countries where those languages are spoken.
Q. So you reached a total of eight languages.
A. The ninth is Thai - I study it after I met San, my lover, who is Thai.
Q. Extraordinary! You mention San. Would you like to explain for us how you discovered you are gay, and then how you met San? If I am not wrong, he is the only partner of your life
A. It's exactly so - my first and only love. How did I discover I am gay? A long and painful labour that lasted two years. Until I was twenty years old, in fact, I had had only girls. To tell the truth, it is not that I was looking for them, they were looking for me; but everybody seemed to have a girlfriend, therefore I had one too. I felt fine with them. I made love with them. With satisfaction. I justified the fact that it was not so important to me, at that time, thinking that my sexuality was very quiet. And I justified the fact of being attracted to the boys (not in an explicitly sexual way, but it was me who sought their company) as a normal sense of comradeship common to many adolescents. The fact is that I was not aroused just looking at a boy or at a girl. Therefore I didn't have any problems.
Q. When did the problems arise, and how?
A. I was, as I said, twenty. I was then living in Madrid. I was improving my Spanish and I also attended conversation classes for Arabic. I had a girlfriend, a Russian girl studying with me (and so I practiced also Russian) with whom anyway we didn't yet reach a complete intercourse - we were just flirting. And then I met Domingo. He was a sixteen years old boy, the son of my landlord. He was more than likeable, cheerful, lively and intelligent. And also, but I discovered this only later, he was gay. I liked him very much. He came to clean my room and willingly stopped to chat with me. Domingo got a crush on me. He knew I had a girlfriend, but the little devil decided to seduce me all the same. He put one over on me, he gradually bewitched me, he succeeded in setting up with me a more and more intimate and free relationship, he brought me talk of sex and confided to me the problems he had with his (nonexistent) girlfriend.
To make short a long story, he managed one day to have me taking a shower with him, and there to arouse me and to make me agree to masturbate together. But for sure Domingo didn't intend to stop there. This thing happened some more times, and I was still quiet, as both of us didn't yet manage to have sex with our own girlfriends, and we gave vent to our feelings between good friends. I did that at the middle school too - kid's games, so why not now? After all Domingo was right, it was more fun than doing it by themselves.
But one day he didn't restrain himself to our usual "match" as he called it. He lowered between my legs and gave me a blow job. At first I stiffened, embarrassed, but it was extremely pleasurable, and after all, if he liked it... I let him do it. This also entered in the usual procedure. Sucking me, he was able to make me incredibly aroused, so one day, when he offered himself to me, I was so horny that, without a thought, I penetrated him. I loved it immensely. I fucked him with gusto, he urged me, he tossed under me. Not even for one moment did I think that I was having complete intercourse with a male, I just thought that I was enjoying that fuck as never before in my life. That is, until we reached our orgasm. Then, while relaxing, panting, sated, the consciousness of what I just did surfaced. It was a shock - I had enjoyed "making love" with a male. That was no longer a game between friends, an innocent way to have fun... I fucked him and I liked it. For several days I treated him coldly. But Domingo was patient. Sly like a cat observing a mouse, he knew how much I enjoyed it.
What most upset me was that I was conscious that inside myself I continued to desire him and the more I tried to repress this desire, the more it seemed to increase. I even started to dream of him in the night - weird dreams, unlikely situations, but all culminating with me taking Domingo. And I often woke up with an incredible erection.
Of course, we didn't take our shower together any more, but one day... It was summer, an incredibly hot day. We both wore just our shorts, bare chest. He was cleaning my room, I was studying. From time to time I was looking at him and soon I got a hard-on. He noticed that. He came onto me trying to open my fly. I pushed him away from me, we fought, we fell on the floor, I was more and more excited by the physical contact our fight involved. By his way to fight and touch me, kissing me, licking me... He had incredible strength. Little by little he managed to open my shorts, then to take it in his mouth... and I surrendered. When he offered himself to me, I took him with impetus, almost with rage. While I was fiercely mounting him, he slipped a finger in my backdoor and rocked it and I felt a tremendous pleasure and exploded in my orgasm. He didn't come. No! He quickly escaped from me, squirmed around, pointed his weapon and penetrated me. Again that immense pleasure... that dragged away from me any will to resist him. When Domingo came inside me, I reached a second orgasm. Then Domingo dressed again and just said, "Adios." And my brain seized up.
Q. Did he "convert" you? Did you finally accept your sexuality after that second, pleasurable experience?
A. No, absolutely not. I got through a crisis even more than before, but in the end I told myself it was the fault of the little devil, that it was just an accident without importance, that... but I knew that wasn't true. I experienced pleasure, and really strong pleasure. Being fucked I had no more excuses, I was gay. But I didn't want to be so. Domingo represented a danger for me.
On the spur of the moment, I went back to Copenhagen. I enrolled in courses in Japanese and Russian conversation. I started to court all the barely pretty girls that were at hand...
Then I earned a scholarship for an annual course in Tokyo to perfect my simultaneous interpretation. I deceived myself that the more kilometers I put between Domingo and me, the easier problem could subside, but you cannot run away from a problem that is inside yourself. You just, inevitably, take it along with you.
At first, the problems of adaptation to a deeply different culture, having no friends, and searching for a lodging (I felt the foreign students dormitory too crowded for me, moreover I didn't want to be amongst foreigners) all absorbed me. Then I became aware that I was again starting to look at boys, to desire them, to become aroused by them.
I got a Japanese girlfriend. It was not difficult to take her in my bed but it was a big disappointment. Not her fault, not because Japanese girls are not good at it - but it was as if I had to carry out a duty, a task... nothing really pleasurable. I had to show something to myself, but I was not able. In reality, on a merely physiological level, it worked, I could get my orgasm, she seemed happy with me, in fact she wanted to meet me again.
Again a difficult, hard period. I got another girlfriend - a Venezuelan who in bed was a bomb. Nothing different for me. I carried out my duty, and desired boys even more than before.
In the end, I surrendered. But I didn't know what to do, where to look for a boy. Until I heard talk about the gay quarter. I went there, I saw a gay book shop. I bought a guide to Tokyo gay clubs and started to explore them. But as soon as somebody tried to approach me, I ran away headlong, terrified. I feared having the confirmation that the intense pleasure I had had with Domingo was not his fault...
Until one evening I decided to go to one of those premises where you could choose a boy, pay for him and take him home. I was terribly embarrassed. The manager welcomed me. He offered me a drink and buttonholed me. He paid me his compliments on my fluent Japanese and my rich vocabulary... and asked me if amongst the boys lined up behind the counter there was one, by chance, that appealed to me. I looked at the boys and was ashamed to look at them more than them looking at me. They were possibly used to it. Bored, bold, shy, dull, winking glances. I was struck by a boy with sad eyes.
"That one." I pointed out to the manager.
"Ah, San. He is a Thai boy. A good boy, in bed he does everything you could want. You will feel good with him." He called him over. "Talk a while with the guest" he told him and made him sit at my table.
I ordered a drink for him. He thanked me. I didn't know what to say to him.
The manager, after a long silence between us, came again near me, "If you prefer another boy..."
"No, no, he is all right." I paid the price for one night and went out with the boy.
We took the train. We reached my home almost without exchanging a single word.
"Do you want me to undress, sir?" he asked me in English.
"Not yet." I answered.
Silence.
"For how long are you in Japan?" I asked him in Japanese.
"Two years."
"But.. how old are you?"
"Seventeen."
"Are you here with your family?"
"No, alone."
"You came at fifteen, alone?" I asked astounded.
"Yes."
"And... why?"
"To... earn money."
"But you do it just for money, or do you also like it?"
"I am gay, sir!" he said with a certain emphasis.
"Who knows how many times you don't like the customers but you have to go with them all the same!"
"We can also refuse, if we want."
The desire to make love had subsided. That boy was really handsome, more than handsome, but his evident sadness blocked me completely.
"Why are you sad?
"Oh no, sir, I am not sad!" he said making an effort to assume a cheerful tone that made me feel more worse the sadness before.
I had paid for all the night with him so I pulled out the bed. He started to undress and I too undressed. We remained with only our underpants on. He had a fine body, just a little too thin. We hit the bed.
"What do you want me to do, sir?"
"Nothing. If you feel like we can chat some more, then we will sleep."
"You don't like me, sir?"
"Yes, I like you. But I prefer this way."
"If I go back immediately, they will give you back a part of your money."
"No, I'd like you to remain here."
"As you want, sir."
I shut off the light. Our bodies were barely brushing. His warmth gave me pleasure, but I was not aroused. We resumed talking. About a thousand things and about nothing. He told me something about himself, about when he was a child, about Thailand. I told him about my journeys, about my studies.
He was amazed knowing that I could speak so many languages. "Also Thai, sir?"
"No, unless you teach me..." I said jokingly.
"All right, willingly, sir. If you have some spare time, in the afternoon between two and six I am free."
"And how much do you charge, per lesson?" I asked, always jokingly.
"I am not a real teacher. Eight hundred per hour, if you don't think it too much."
I knew that a lesson in English from a native speaker was from four thousand yen up. He made me feel a great tenderness. I preferred to change the subject. We fell asleep late. When I woke up in the morning, he was curling against me and I had a hard-on. I got up without waking him and went to take a shower. I fixed a big breakfast and woke him up, giving him a yukata to cover himself. He ate with an appetite.
"If you want, I can give you the first lesson now. Anyway I have nothing else to do. For free, of course. Breakfast was really good."
"All right. But only if you stay with me for lunch."
So, I took my first lesson of Thai. We spent an agreeable morning. Then I took him out for lunch. And later we had a walk.
"When do you want your second lesson, sir?" he asked me, very seriously.
I thought he needed money, therefore I didn't have the courage to tell him that I was just jesting. "For that price, let's say two hours every two days - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Is that okay?"
"Yes, sure. It makes 4,800 yen per week. I have to come at your place, as I sleep in a dormitory."
We started to meet. He took his task very seriously. And as we were seeing each other, as we got to know each other, he started to open with me. He was always somewhat sad, but at times I could make him smile, and he had such a very sweet smile. I liked him. He told me about his job. Rather dreary. So one evening I decided to go back to where he worked and to pay for him to spend another night out of there. When he saw me he was surprised. When I said that I wanted him, he was amazed.
We went out to the street and he said, "Why? We meet every two days... What need did you have to come here to spend all that money? With your scholarship, you are not a rich man."
"I wanted you to spend a might out of there."
"Why?"
"Because I know you don't like it."
He said nothing. We went to my apartment. We looked for a while at TV, then to sleep.
"Don't you feel like making love?" he asked me.
"I didn't go and bring you for that."
"And yet, I have the impression you like me."
"Sure I like you!"
"I don't understand, then. I like you."
"Do we need having sex? Don't you have too much of it?"
"But I'll do it willingly, with you. I think I would like it."
"I... I know I'll like it."
"So then?"
"This is exactly my problem..."
Darkness helped me to talk. I told him my story, my doubts, my trouble. He listened in silence, without interrupting me, just murmuring from time to time a "mh!" to let me understand he was following what I was saying.
When I stopped talking, he just said, "Thank you for telling me."
"Thank you?" I asked somewhat taken aback.
"Yes, to tell me such intimate things, it means that you trust me."
We again were silent for a long while, then he said, "Therefore I too can trust you."
"Sure you can." I said thinking he too wanted to confide something to me.
But again a long silence followed. Then he curled against me and murmured, with a drowsy voice, "Good night, Kim."
"Night San," I felt him falling asleep. His warmth, the contact with his body, aroused me. But I managed to fall asleep.
We continued our Thai lessons - I liked this new language, it was fascinating me. I bought some books, a grammar, a dictionary, I did my homework and he corrected it. I was starting to say my first sentences in Thai. At times we went to the movies together. We started to spend together his free day and that night he stopped at my place. And one morning, waking almost at the same time, he noticed I was aroused.
Then he whispered, "I would like making love with you. If you like it, why to make so many problems for yourself? Is it so important to know if you are gay or not? You like it, do it. I would be so happy, I would like it very much with you!" and so saying he lightly caressed me.
I too caressed him. Gradually our caresses became more intimate, I let myself go and we made love. He made me take him, I asked him to take me. It was really beautiful. At daylight, looking at each other. I saw him smiling, serene, and for the first time, even happy.
Where we were relaxing, he curled again against me and said, "Wasn't it beautiful?"
"Yes, it was."
"You see?" he said lightly. Then squeezing more against my body, said, "We will do it again, right?"
"I think so."
What was different? I was starting to accept myself, thanks to him, but why? What did he give me, say to me, do to me that was special? For sure San was a special boy. Why did he have such a life? I couldn't understand, something escaped me. He always talked me about his life in Thailand, then about his life in Japan, but never about the reason that pushed him to go to Japan.
He told me about a month later, after we again made love. I didn't have any regret or crisis after making love with him. I felt good.
That time, so, after we made love, we shut off the light, then he said me, "I always thought I hated Japan, and instead it is thanks to Japan I have met you. Every cloud has a silver lining. I am happy I met you, staying here with you. But you, in a few months... you will go away, right?"
"Unhappily."
"Yes. And everything will be like before."
"Why do you have this life? Why do you remain in Japan, if you don't like it?"
"Why?" he echoed me, and he told me.
He was fifteen years old. He liked men, for a year he had had various adventures. That year he met a Japanese tourist, a thirty year old man, beautiful. He grew fond of him, The man seemed also fond of him. And proposed him to go with him to Japan - he would find him a good job. San was enthusiastic. The man went to talk with his parents, who gave their assent to arrange a passport for San. He obtained a tourist visa and he left with the man for Tokyo. Here, the sad surprise - the man kept his passport and put him to work where I found him. And the man received from the manager all the money that San earned. He put him to sleep in a room (the famous dormitory) with other boys that he had cheated in the same way. Without documents, his visa expired, he was a clandestine. They told him that the police could arrest him and put him in a minors' prison for years. Moreover, one of the boys of the dormitory who tried to run away, had been caught and thrashed in front of the other boys, Nobody else tried any more to run away.
I felt so bad - could such people exist in the world? I embraced him tightly. I didn't know what to say. But I had to do something. I didn't want to give him false hopes, but... Therefore for the moment I said nothing. In the following days I started to gather information on the problem of clandestine immigration, of exploitation, of prostitution, above all of minors.
Meanwhile another thing happened. Just a few days before, and without much hope, I filled in a form I found in our school for translators and simultaneous interpreters to get a job at the U.N.O. I attached my resume and sent it. The answer came - they seemed interested in me and would give me a return air ticket to New York for a test-interview. If I was interested I had to send a fax. In five days I got the air ticket and I went to New York for three days. The interview went well. They offered me a good position, starting from the first of January of the following year, that is three months later. It could possibly be irrelevant, but on the other hand...
I obtained the information I wanted for San's case, I spoke with him - he could safely go to the police. They would protect him, keeping him in a safe place (and not send him to prison) for all the time of the inquiries, then without charging him, they would send him back to Bangkok,. Therefore he could easily free himself from that hateful situation.
He shook his head, "They have contacts in Thailand, they would kill me once I was there."
I didn't think of that. So for sure, all my project came to nothing. And my departure for New York was approaching. But perhaps I could take him with me. So I told San of my thouughts.
He listened, then said, "You really would take me with you?"
"Yes, of course. Listen, the police will give you back your passport. We will go together to Bangkok. We'll obtain there the visa for the United States and we'll go to New York together."
"But what can I do in America?"
"As long as you can't find a job, you can just live with me, so you will not have money problems."
We discussed some more, but at the end he stuck to my plan. I contacted a Japanese association of volunteers who took care of such cases. They found us a lawyer who explained to us in detail what we had to do. I made him meet San at my place. The lawyer at once accompanied him to the police. All was set in motion.
A police raid also freed San's companions and caught the men who had organized that vile commerce. They also found all the boys' documents. The process was celebrated just ten days after San went with the lawyer to the police. The boys were all repatriated. On advice of the lawyer I took an earlier flight and was waiting for San at Bangkok airport. As soon as he landed I took him to my hotel. San was exhausted but excited and happy. He said that he missed me terribly in those weeks. I too missed him very much. Then we went by taxi to apply for his visa. In Thailand he was now of age, so we didn't have problems. San made a quick visit to see his parents and then at last we could leave for New York.
At first we lived in a cheap hotel, but soon the U.N.O. found an apartment for me and we moved there. San started to look for a job. He didn't find work at once, it took him almost six months.
But one day he came back home radiant, "I found a job, starting the day after tomorrow."
"Very good, I'm happy! What's it?"
"I'll do strip-tease in a gay club; the pay is good."
I honestly felt bad, "You don't want to start again that life, San!"
He looked at me as if I said something outrageous. "Hey, look, I put things in clear - first of all they hire me with a legal contract and therefore I'll get a work visa. Second, I said clearly that I'm game to undress in front of the customers, but not to go in their beds or in the manager's or anybody else's. They told me that those are just my problems, and that they just put on a serious show and not a tour of call-boys. They were almost offended."
"Yes, but in that ambience..." I said.
He smiled me, "I want to be only yours... for nobody else. Because I love you."
"You love me?"
"I do, Kim."
So I could tell him what I felt in me for him, already from Tokyo, "I think I am in love with you too, my sweet San."
But I was not yet completely at ease. I wanted to check the club personally - but it really seemed all regular. So San started his job. He had never any problems. At times I went to watch him - he was really skilled.
Our relationship strengthened. Three years later he found a job as a waiter, and stopped doing strip-tease. I didn't ask anything, but of course I was more happy now, and he guessed that.
Meanwhile I, in my spare time, started to write my poems, many inspired by San. And started to have my first successes - my first book was published just when San changed his job. The following year (I was now twenty-seven and San twenty two) I took part to an international competition of poetry and, as you know, I won the first prize. I received requests for publication, translations of my poems, I started to earn good money and all this demanded more and more of my time and energy. To help me, San resigned from his job and, besides doing all the house work to leave me more free time, he typed into the computer my texts and made himself useful in a thousand ways. Moreover, I was happy having him always at home.
In the end, I resigned from the U.N.O. job and dedicated myself full time to poetry. I could now live comfortably with the earnings from my books. So, that is my story.
Q. Really breathtaking! Thank you Kim. I would like now to ask you something about your poetry. You said that many poems are inspired by San. Can you explain this point better?
A. Yes, before meeting San I never wrote a poem. I knew and read the poems of the various literatures I was studying and I loved that and without any doubt this built inside me a basic structure, but as for the "poetical vision" of things, that I got from San. Poetry, like any other form of representation (prose, painting, and so on) can be symbolic or realistic. But it assumes in whoever produces it the ability to interpret reality, to interact with reality, to grasp its essential points, to present them using a certain technique. San, even if he never wrote poems, is a real poet. Possibly not in the "literature" meaning of this word, but he is. Let's say that he has a "poetic vision" of life. Feeling this in him, admiring him, and assimilating it, has been a natural process for me. Differently from him, I started to put black on white and now I am considered a poet.
Q. Some of your poems are strongly colored with an erotic charge. Others aren't so at all. Some contain crude anatomical descriptions, others are highly symbolic. Why these differences?
A, Because poetry is life and in life you don't live only eroticism or genitalism. I think that your problem turns on these two points. I'll give an example -I can write a poem on "today I'm happy, sun shines, I feel all is beautiful" and then going on "my boy is near me, I love him, I feel loved" and on yet again "I look at him and am stirred up, I desire him, I want him" and then also "his hard cock is beautiful, pleasurable, I feel it inside me and I feel good" and you can express all that in a realistic, figurative way, or in a symbolic way, or as you feel at that moment. I can't find a contradiction in all of that. What difference is there in describing the sensations of a blue sky and of a warm sun on your body, and that of a cock entering you? In my opinion, there is no difference. Both are beautiful and real sensations. And worthy of being sung.
Q. What is then the boundary between art and pornography, in your opinion?
A. It is all is inside each of us. Inside who, in my case, writes the words and later inside whoever reads them. Not in what I describe, nor in how I describe it, but in the "why". I mean that the obscene, defined as what offends one's decency, depends on the sense of modesty, and that changes from people to people, from place to place, from epoch to epoch. Therefore obscenity doesn't exist as such, in itself. The same decency can be the aversion of one's soul to filthy and dishonest things. Violence is obscene, war is obscene, exploitation is obscene, drugs are obscene. And remember that obscene means ugly, disfigured. But what is ugly, or disfigured, or dishonest in sex? Sex could be like that, of course, not of itself - but in the way it is lived. Remember that at the beginning of the twentieth century a man in his shirt sleeves or a woman showing her ankles offended decency...
Q. Don't you think that some of your poems can offend the sense of decency of somebody? For sure not mine, anyway...
A. Certainly, and I am sorry for that somebody - in my poems I don't want to show anything ugly, disfigured, dishonest; quite the opposite. Whoever doesn't understand that... well, I pity him.
Q. Do you agree with the definition of Paul Englisch who said, "It is obscene all that is in conscious contrast with the dominant morals, and has as a goal the physiological excitement of the sex and is able to reach this goal"?
A, Evidently not. He abuses the words. First, because in his definition, war, which is the really obscene thing, doesn't have a place. Second, the contrast with the dominant morals is a source of progress - if we all simply followed the dominant morals, for instance, women could not show their ankles nor men go around without a jacket. Third, I can't see what evil there is in the physiological excitement of sex - if that was evil, just thinking that a person attracts me and arouses me, would be an obscene fact! Fourth, if an obscene production exists, whether it reaches its goal or not is beside the point... To me, I repeat, obscenity is all that exalts ugliness, deformity and dishonesty. And anyway there would be much to discuss about what is ugly or deformed. To me, obscene is all that injures, destroys.
Q. Well, thank you so very much, Kim. And best wishes for your books. I know you are writing a new one. Can we know its title? A. It will be published at the same time in six countries. Its title is "One, everyone". In short, in those poems I say that in loving one, in him I love everybody.
Q. Good, we hope we can read it soon.
A. Thank you."
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER 6
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