“This book is the way it is, and you can’t expect everyone to understand it. and welcome him with open arms”, admits Rafa Cervera (València, 1963), before starting this interview to talk about her latest novel, ‘Big Men Song’ (Jekyll & Jill, 2022). Does it start to be treated as a novel? this homosexuality here is a prism to talk about other things. But it’s true that what you’re talking about, and speaking quite frankly, can be a bit more uncomfortable reading for a certain audience. Obviously, a heterosexual will not read it the same way as a homosexual, but not all homosexuals will read it the same way.”
A book that questions what is often understood as masculinity, desire, sex or eroticism.
Yes, it’s a book full of questions, but nothing has an answer. I avoided judgment and allowed everyone to interpret things in their own way. Life is full of gray areas and this novel goes through a lot of them.
And writing this gave you any response?
It helped me examine some of the behaviors I’ve been experiencing and steer clear of some issues, but it didn’t give me any answers. In fact, more questions arose. As I get older and things become more unpredictable, I have fewer answers for everything.
Can you say that your previous novel was about you and that you were diluted with various characters in this novel?
This is pure fiction, but I’m a lazy writer, and when I start writing, I get to the one closest to me. I openly use what I know best, and therefore it is inevitable that the reader will want to look for the author in the novel, no matter how fictional. I am mostly in the dialogues of the characters about literature. If I get into the conversation there, because that’s a topic I think about a lot.
For example, he writes that literature is a declaration of love and a vicious act if not mutual.
Yes, sir, and when one finishes writing, a very close relationship seems to have been broken. And that what you create is in the public domain and is rarely interpreted as you wish. But that’s normal and that’s how it should be. Books have a life of their own from the moment they are in the hands of the reader.
A novel that blurs the boundaries between love, gender, age, pleasure, happiness.
I loaded more than dilute them. Indeed, I believe that sex is too complex to be compartmentalized. And just because each one chooses their own sexuality doesn’t mean they can one day change or expand it. As for age and love, once you reach a certain age, the innocence of falling in love no longer works because you already carry your baggage. Maybe less romantic but more practical. When it comes to sex, we all know that youth and immediacy are more and more prevalent, and once you reach a certain age, sex seems to disappear. That’s why I wanted to show that the characters in the novel are people who live their sexuality as they experience it.
Was it difficult for you to accept being the “big man” like in your novel?
Yes, of course, because that is never easy to do. You have one type of life and you suddenly discover that you want to have another type, but this society does not prepare us to make certain transitions without guilt or shame. I am a privileged person because I have always been very open because of my education and the environment I moved to. I grew up listening and reading things that talk about all this and being gay, transgender, bisexual or lesbian has always been a part of my life. When I was 17, I knew there were transgender people at the Warhol Factory, Lou Reed had a transgender girlfriend, and had relationships with both men and women… All this helps you understand things in a certain way.
He argues that being gay is all about making a revolution, and that it’s the “perfectly daring manifestation.”
Like this. The choice to break the convention that you should be one-sided your entire life is a way of showing others that nothing is set in stone and that there is nothing wrong with changing a person’s sexual orientation. It is a testament to the individual who is beyond the collective and labels, to be what you are meant to be without asking anyone’s permission, and who is revolutionary in today’s world.
In any case, the hero has a certain aspiration for the female gender.
Yes, and the female body. This is one of the borderlines that are crossed lightly in the novel, because for me nothing is closed and nothing is exclusive. Everything is more fluid than a certain moment we insist it should be.
There’s a lot of sex out there but it barely explains it. Why? Why?
It’s not a matter of common sense, because I’m defending the imagination to talk about sex. Sex in literature is not the same as in movies, and that’s why I prefer to express rather than describe in this book. Let anyone who reads the book imagine what happens when the doors are closed or the light is turned off. Imagination and sex are closely linked, and in this time of sex ubiquity, when you pick up the phone and discover 500 sexual practices you didn’t even know existed, I want everyone to build it their own way. If you feel that way, of course.
It seems to me that when I read a scene about sex, it often seems to me that the author is either pedantic or doesn’t have a lot of practice.
Yes, it’s a chapter I don’t want to pass as a writer. In such a situation, there is a tendency to make statements and definitions that do not concern me at all: if the member is like this, if he expresses his face like that… I am not interested. The reader should be given the option of constructing what is going on.
How many of the “bodies” and their powders you listed in the novel are real?
I knew many stories and were told to me and I was inspired by the softest ones. But most of it is the product of my imagination. In these things it is better to start from scratch, invent everything. And even though I’m aware of the risk that they’ll never be able to separate you from the protagonist, I admit that I sometimes load the ink on purpose.