Professor McCoy has been grilling me to do some “unpacking” on why I believed that the sex in Frenzy, by Percival Everett, was so “disturbing”, so I will. Now I do want to provide some meta-commentary, but it is going to be quite graphic and very awkward, which is why I never did “unpack”.
First off, I want to let you see my point of view as a heterosexual male that has never read a novel that goes into such detail of sexual intercourse, such as Frenzy. Now, I can feel myself at the brunt of ridicule for overreacting, but to justify myself, I felt like my virgin eyes were being exposed to something I never really thought of: the female point of view. Yes, I have participated in intimate actions, but I cannot say that I ever felt the way Vlepo/Sibyl did when Dionysus was, “touching all of our organs, pressing, barely touching, moving with great friction and no friction at all” (Everett 18). I can imagine that this is what a receiver feels, but what do I know!? It is almost like if I said I could relate to an individual going through a period or giving birth! Everything I stated is beautiful and I am not biased on sexual preferences, but when I read Vlepo’s receiving point of view, I was like a little boy learning about intercourse for the first time.
I must admit I did feel some relation to Vlepo/Sibyl when it was stated Vlepo/Sibyl “felt afraid as a scream started in our breast, and our body, while the fire burned through our middle and pulsed through our middle and pulsed through our legs” (Everett 18). I am going to strongly assume through the evidence that Vlepo/Sibyl underwent a climax in this quote, but what do I know? Besides this, I can relate to this part, which made me a little more disturbed, considering that I have never been on the receiving end, yet I can relate how it feels at the end.
Perhaps saying that I was “disturbed” was an overstatement, if you gave it the worst connotation. I never meant it to be like that, but I will change it up and say I was unsettled.
Everett, Percival. Frenzy. Saint Paul, Graywolf Press, 1997.