Equal Affections - Leavitt

Equal Affections - David Leavitt

What is love? Baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more… Oh hi! Sorry! Sometimes I can get carried away with my music talents, (none to speak of, to be honest). I do like music though and the majority of the time while my headphones are at an earsplitting volume, I sing just to make sure I still can’t. And yes, I do sing to Haddaway’s What is Love at the top of my lungs.

This question of love is a common theme in Equal Affections by David Leavitt. It is the very foundation that holds the Cooper family together; love and affection, runs deep within the tumultuous waters of the Cooper river. I came across Leavitt with his book The Pageturner many years ago, during my gay renaissance[1]. The Pageturner was part of my foundation of love for literature, though at the time I wasn’t aware of that. It was also the first time I’d read something where a gay character was not simply one-dimensional. But that’s a different blog post altogether.

Equal Affections was published in 1989. It tells the story of the Cooper family; Louise is the matriarch of the family, headstrong, delicate, and dying from cancer, she’s married to Nat, who loves his wife in his own peculiar way… he’s also cheating on her, with Clara. Then there are the children. April and Danny. April is the oldest, like her mother she’s headstrong, she’s also a folk singer, a lesbian, and eventually becomes a mother. She’s also the center of attention at all times. Whenever she comes around, it becomes the April show. Danny, the youngest, is gay, somewhat more reserved, and in many ways has always lived in his sister’s shadow.

And then there is Walter, an older man, homosexual, and Danny’s “husband” (same-sex marriage in the United States was not legal until 2015). Both he and Danny at first sight, are emblematic of a typical, genderless, relationship. They have a house in the suburbs, they’re married, they seem to be happy. They have troubles just like everyone else. I suppose this is as good a time as any to stop and tell you that this blog is a work in progress. And as I write it, the format will change until I find something that fits. In this post I’d like to talk about the character of Walter, and how he relates to Danny, and the rest of the characters, and of course any personal experience that may be pertinent to the moment. But I digress, I liked Walter as a character, I daresay I found a lot of myself in him. Leavitt writes:

“Walter hadn’t told anyone yet, but he was preparing to quit his job. Quietly, quietly he was readying things for a departure on March Seventh—not a randomly chosen date, for a March Seventh, it would be exactly five years since the day Walter had joined the firm he was now associated with. And what would he do then? He hardly knew. But he would sell that fishtank of a house in Gresham; he would go somewhere, somewhere else. And he would find someone else—someone fresh and young, as Danny had once been, and, as Danny has not once been, willing to take Walter away, to Europe or the Himalayas or San Francisco. Another nice young man.” Pg. 78

Walter likes structure. Walter is bored with his life. Walter is not young anymore, and neither is Danny. Is Walter going through a mid-life crisis? Perhaps. I think what I liked most about Leavitt and his treatment of Walter was the fact that he didn’t place him in a perfect relationship. Walter in many ways is just like his heterosexual counterparts, unhappy, and looking for an escape. But not because he doesn’t love Danny, in the end they stay together. It’s because he, himself, is lost as a person. He resents Danny for not taking him to Europe, or San Francisco. But why? I don’t think Walter knows; he thinks that he might find the answer to this question by leaving Danny. Finding someone younger, the everlasting search of the gay male for youth. We all try to stay as young as possible in a society that venerates youth, more so in the gay community. But what happens when your favorite t-shirt doesn’t fit like it used to. Or that receding hairline starts to walk backwards.

I find it exhilarating that Leavitt would write a character like Walter in 1989. Walter is not a perfect human, he’s not even very likeable, if we’re being completely honest. Leavitt wasn’t trying to create a sanitized version of a homosexual relationship, nor a homosexual man. Walter is flawed just as much as Nat, for example. Leavitt didn’t feel the need to place Walter into a box, confined by the prejudices of society. Leavitt is saying to the 1989 reader, here are two gay men, “married”, and bored of their marriage, and perhaps they might cheat on each other, they’re like everyone else. Homosexuals are no different from their heterosexual counterparts.

The Pageturner - David Leavitt

Walter is, in many ways, the inception of several characters in Leavitt’s later works, Kennington for example in The Pageturner.

It is also interesting to point Leavitt’s treatment of traditional relationship within his narrative. April, the older sibling, is as free as her hair. She decides to become a folk singer, she embarks on this journey and brings her whole family along for the ride, figuratively speaking. There are a few men in her life, and eventually April comes out as a lesbian, later in life she becomes pregnant to raise a child on her own. On the other hand, we have Danny who, despite his feelings, falls into a heteronormative life with Walter. Leavitt was addressing stereotypes, and breaking them. I can go as far as saying that April was living the life that Louise (her mother) could not, while Danny is trying to live the life that he thinks his mother wants for him. Walter is an important part of this life that Danny wants to build for himself. Therefore, Walter, is as important as the main characters. He’s not vehicle to move the story forward, he is intrinsically, what Danny, wants, needs, and eventually deserves.

Walter is, in the scheme of things, a speck in the universe of the Coopers. It is unfair to dedicate a post just for Walter. I daresay I actually wrote not enough. Much more can be written about the Coopers, or the themes within Leavitt’s universe. Perhaps the greatest disservice I do to this post is not write about Louise, the matriarch of the family, and the engine that drives this story to its final page. Perhaps you’ll be persuaded to read Equal Affections. Perhaps.

Until next time.

[1] Ray’s Gay Renaissance: Circa 2013; period of self-discovery, self-realization, self-gayazation, where I found myself questioning various choices of my life up to that point.