Atlanta is Haven for Queer Black Culture and “Baptism by Fire” in “Fantasies of Future Things” https://ift.tt/RmcG9vh
Doug Jones’ debut novel The Fantasies of Future Things offers a lesson in contrasts. Set in Atlanta in 1992, Fantasies follows the interconnected lives of Jacob and Daniel: two twenty-something, gay, Black men living in Atlanta in the wake of massive urban renewal projects undertaken to prepare for the 1996 Olympics. The novel intricately blends history with fiction, using historical landmarks like the highly-contested Rodney King trial to establish both setting and tone. Though Fantasies reads at times like a love letter to Atlanta, the novel also serves as a candid reminder that while the city blesses some, it is for others, like Jacob and Daniel, a “baptism by fire.”
The relationship between Jacob and Daniel strikes a balance between the incidental and the erotic. The two meet as colleagues in an urban development project, and their differences reveal the diversity of experiences within the Black gay community. Brooklyn-born Jacob, a graduate (like Jones himself) of Morehouse College, comes from a well-to-do nuclear family. Daniel, meanwhile, is an Atlanta native who grows up in a white home knowing all the while that his father is a Black man. For Jacob, the desire for a romantic partner seems an alluring possibility thanks to the guidance of his gay friends. He meets love interest Sherman, whom he romances, albeit with limited success, throughout the book. Daniel, meanwhile, seems less certain of what he wants from the men in his life – not only those for whom he feels a sexual affinity, but also his absentee father whose identity he learns through an estranged older brother. Both men make passes at the other at various moments in the book, yet poor timing and resentment stymie the possibility of a relationship. In place of love, we find expressions of anger, confusion, and frustration that, if at times disappointing, offer a more realistic slice of life. For these reasons, though it is a queer novel, Fantasies hardly seems a “queer romance” in the typical sense.
While the novel explores moments of passion, it makes no attempt to shroud its characters in the magic of good fortune and happy endings. At the beginning of the novel, we realize that Daniel is an angry orphan and Jacob, a closeted, not-quite flaneur. By the end, despite apparent character growth, their situations have improved only minimally. Jacob’s relationship with Sherman remains in flux, and his decision to come out to his parents results in a cool lack of acknowledgement. Daniel, meanwhile, has yet to land any steady love interest, and though he finds himself, by some twist of fate, employed by his own father, his father remains ignorant of his identity. Both men seem, if anything, to be an affirmation of the way Black men, in the characters’ own words, must silence their emotions. Jacob reflects after an argument with Sherman: “Black men were never supposed to reveal themselves. Their hurt places always had to be deafeningly boisterous. It was an unvoiced masculinity code.”
While reading Fantasies, I found it difficult not to think of other works in which the codes of masculinity, gay or straight, play an important role. British author Alan Hollinghursts’ The Line of Beauty (2004), which explores the tumultuous gay experience in the Thatcher era, immediately came to mind. In cinema, an even closer parallel might be Marlon T. Riggs’ documentary Tongues Untied (1989), which relates the silenced narratives of Black gay men in the late twentieth century. Fantasies, in fact, reads almost like an heir to Riggs’ film, as it draws upon moments of historical change to reveal the precarious position of the Black gay male at the turn of the century. If the AIDS crisis, within the timeline of the novel, has begun to abate, the forces of racism and traditional notions of masculinity have conceded little ground.
As in much of Southern literature, religion also seems to assume an important role. Although Fantasies rarely cites explicit biblical imagery, the names “Jacob” and “Daniel” of course evoke Old Testament heroes. Daniel is the prophet who survives the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s den of lions and whose friends stand unharmed in the king’s furnace. Jacob, meanwhile, is the grandson of Abraham and the son of the nearly-sacrificed Isaac who, in the book of Genesis, wrestles with God. Jones’ name choices seem cannily deliberate, as they not only recall the trials and endurance of their respective biblical cognates, but also bring to mind, and challenge, the traditional role of Christianity in Southern Black culture.
Given the strength of this symbolism, that Fantasies does not fully explore the complexity of both protagonists is perhaps the book’s greatest weakness. While the storylines of the main characters are compelling, there are moments in both threads of the novel where Jacob’s and Daniel’s points of view seem to be buried by those of other characters. At various times, we enter the minds of secondary characters with little variation in narrative voice, or else encounter lengthy monologues in which the point of view becomes buried. Likewise, I found myself longing for a degree of closeness with Jacob and Daniel that the novel never quite delivers. This is not to say that the multiple views failed to hold my attention, but that tighter control of the point of view would have allowed for a closer connection with the protagonists, not to mention a heightened differentiation between their unique backgrounds and stories.
Such lapses, however, can be forgiven for the compellingness of the story and the beauty of the prose. Fantasies is not a long debut, but it remains a work that resonates long after the final page thanks to its novelty and ambition. As a reader who is neither Black nor queer but who nevertheless experienced the 1990s and grew up about an hour outside of Atlanta, I found the book’s explorations of a subculture so often ignored in art and literature to be eye-opening. At the same time, the novel affirms that Atlanta, like its protagonists, is home to a multitude of fantasies, and contradictions.
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