Contraband
Queer Mojo/Rebel
Satori Press
By Charlie Vazquez
A New Literature?
Reviewed by Mick
Mykola Dementiuk
It’s the somewhat-near future and we are in
the dark smoky world of Contraband, a novel by Charlie Vazquez, (and which has
nothing to do with drugs) but which in a way reminds me of Louis Ferdinand
Celine’s books Journey to the End of the Night or his Death on the Installment
Plan, or perhaps even Franz Kafka’s The Castle or The Trial and others of that
ilk where you can never know where you are, what you’re going to get or what’s the
point of it anyway, since you just might as well puke your guts out. In much the
same way the writings of Charlie Vazquez are an unclear, uncertain mystery,
leaving a bad taste in your soul since it describes such an unknown world, one either
in healing recovery or exposing its sores as it festers to its ugly conclusion
but Vazquez surges on ahead determined to reach its end, no matter what that
end might bring, total change or further boring rotting stagnation.
It opens in Emerald
City as Volfango is waiting for a
train to take him back home after work. He is accosted by a dirty beggar, while
other passengers complacently avoid looking at them but Volfango follows the
beggar into a subway tunnel. Volfango is a government employee but has leanings
to the other side, the rebel side. The beggar is a ‘lunar’, or “profane in the eyes
of the Revolution” meaning he’s not one on them, as is also Volfango, but Volfango
already has feelings of escaping underground, that’s why he goes after the
beggar. The outside world is torn between those who follow orders and obey and
those who able to survive and are hidden in the darkness.
Eventually Volfango
leaves the tunnel and goes to his mother’s house, the beggar has stolen his
attaché case but he was the beggar’s long stick which gets him strange looks from
the other riders. Two cops get on board but he shows them his government ID and
instead they go after another sleeping beggar. In getting to his mother’s house
he uses the walking stick defensively, ready to hit anyone who asks him what
he’s doing. Outside, in the hills skirmishes break out between the rebels and
government troops.
Visits with his
dentist, Doctora Valdez, for an aching toothache and has a tooth pulled in a
dilapidated slum/doctor’s office with rats scurrying about the floor. The city
is totally fallen apart, infected with dirt and rats everywhere. He has a
brutal ugly tooth extraction as two big males nurses/aides hold him down; the Doctora
pulls the bad tooth out.
In the night he
goes to a barroom where he knows he’ll meet someone who will help him to the
underworld; he no longer wants to remain in the straight world. Volfango meets
the young man Alto in the bar where the crowd is hugging and kissing when
suddenly the government starts shooting on them. Volfango and Alto, with a few
others run and get away. A host of different characters come on the scene, lasting
for a few days then they are killed off by the government. It might have
nothing to do with the future or is might have everything to do with it.
He meets up with
Teodoro, his half brother, and both fall into the hands of The Hidesman, a sort
of a boss of the underworld, who holds Volfango chained to him. Volfango breaks
away and kills The Hidesman. He signs to work on Lednov’s ship, which is headed
to disembark at Sun City.
In Sun City
Teodoro talks and talks and it goes on for pages and pages. People come and
people go. While in Sin City
he is assigned by Don Carlos to do paperwork while Teodora takes care of the
animals in the zoo. Sin City
is the New Orleans, Vieux Carre,
French Quarter, and for a time they work with the circus animals but the Republicans
are getting closer, when at night in fears of them taking over, Don Carlos
commits suicide. Later it was discovered he secretly was a woman under his
manly disguise. The Republicans shoot at the brothers but they get away from
Sun City making their way to a safer place, but still more dangerous in other
ways, the Emerald City.
If you’re under
the impression that this might be about a new version of the Wizard of Oz, well,
I have news for you, it isn’t, it’s a brutal horrible tale about surviving in a
new land, a land with a town known as Emerald City but where the familiar will
totally cease. In Emerald City
a woman shoves a gruesome baby into Fandago’s arms and disappears. The baby is
covered in disgusting smeared excrement but he holds on to it, though he
desperately wants to throw up at every moment. Crawling through a tunnel it
seems he’s crawling through an anus, a rectum, a disgusting orifice. He makes
it back into Emerald City,
a city waiting for him or is it?
Contraband takes
place in the future and it’s a prediction of what could be or what might be if
we don’t watch it. If you like futuristic novels with the world having fallen
apart or on the verge of collapse this one’s for you. Sort of like the films
Blade Runner or Total Recall but with much more gruesome and uglier protagonists,
as all wars usually tend to be ugly as sin.
At first I had a
hard time of reading Vazquez, even a few times setting it down and offering the
book to another reader but I kept thinking and returning to it in the same way
I once had difficulty with Celine. His two nauseous books, Journey to the End
of the Night and Death on the Installment Plan only made me want to puke but I
knew that Celine had certainly reached a higher level of literature than that
which is consumed by today’s fickle childish readers. And I sensed that Vazquez
reached the same point and had to be read, that is, pored over page by page. In
this way I steeled my nauseous feelings and returned to the book, and I’m sure
glad I did, for Vazquez is a new form of literature, a higher form of writing,
one that is despicably disgusting but still it has to be read and savored, as
uncomfortable it might make you. An excellent story and a great job, Charlie
Vazquez, I’m hungry to read still more of your future work!
Mick Mykola Dementiuk is a two-time winner of the Lambda
Award, and his collection, Times Square Queer, was a finalist for the 2012
Bisexual Book Award. Visit him at http://dementiuk.weebly.com
or http://www.MykolaDementiuk.com
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