We All Got It Coming is the sequel to Joey Comeau's 2005 career-thrusting novel Lockpick Pornography, as he puts it, "the same way Oldboy is a sequel to Sympathy for Mr Vengeance. It is about the same problems. In this case, homophobia and violence." Lockpick follows a group of anarchic homosexual vigilantes enacting terrifying vengeance on straight people to crush the socio-heterosexual paradigm. While We All Got It Coming is similarly obsessed with breaking down homophobia, Comeau’s straight-bashing is less overt than in Lockpick.
The novel opens like a homosexual-ised Office Space, with main character Arthur working in an office supply store. Within the first paragraphs a disgruntled customer belittles Arthur and his "faggot excuses" over a misread ad. Wallace, Arthur's boss, purports similar sexist ignorance, and our hero is left with no choice: revenge... through sexual harassment. He comments on Wallace's buff ass and luscious bulge, resorting to laughter to calm his anger.
But lowering himself to sexual harassment triggers problems for Arthur. The novel's first violent scene, an early climax, comes after Wallace tells Arthur his comments might lead people to think he is actually gay: "'Oh I didn't mean to give anyone the wrong idea,'" Arthur tells his boss, "'I really do like to have sex with men.'" Then, "before I can backtrack or laugh it off, Wallace has shoved me. It takes me off guard, and I try to grab the railing of the stairs. He's got a disgusted look on his face and then my head cracks against a step."
The above scene echoes stories of violence on homosexuals we've all heard: the "teenage boyfriends being attacked at their proms down in Texas, lesbians having their houses vandalized in Saskatoon," which Arthur helpfully regales. If anything is gained from Comeau watering down his approach in Lockpick, it's making his message more believable and akin to real life.
There is the usual hot sex from Comeau, and more than a few scenes read like hardcore porn. "My fingers are wet with my own spit, pushing at his asshole. I use my body to hold his arm twisted between us. My teeth are tearing at the condom wrapper. I wrap my hand around his throat while I enter him. 'If you make one sound, I'll kill you,' I whisper in his ear." In disguise, Comeau's sex scenes are sites of violence – welcome sexual violence between Arthur and his love Clay; the inverse of hate-violence. The dangers of homophobia trickle into their relationship, but convolute and turn positive. What a way to problematise, and pluralise, homophobia's one-way view of sexuality. Comeau really wants us to recognize that violence and homosexuality are closely related.
After Arthur quits working for Wallace, he dabbles through a string of fill-in positions, ending up as a security guard where Clay works. This section in Coming gives the biggest nod to Lockpick yet, with Arthur fantasising about Clay and himself being vigilantes, traveling worldwide and acting out vengeance on homophobes.
But by the end of the novel Arthur's fantasy lapses. His grandiose ideas of badass vigilance surface into grotesque reality. Suffering a nervous attack in a public bathroom, he runs into who he thinks is an old high school peer, who he decides was the one who spray-painted "faggot" on a teacher's car. He acknowledges neither are probably true. Regardless, he snaps, knees the man in the balls, and calls him a "faggot". Another convoluted homophobia image where it can fuel its victim’s rage.
All in all, Comeau hones his anti-homophobic satire in Coming, breaking from Lockpick's intensity but continuing with the same themes. He even recalls allusions to The Muppets characters and throws in a prank call scene in homage to the book’s prequel. But when you lay it down flat and look at all its peaks, Coming depicts a social clinging to violence stemming from sexual identity constructs. Comeau displays homosexual life as existing under dangerous instability, a witty reflection of the sexual violence we read about in the newspapers.
- John Coleman
We All Got It Coming by Joey Comeau | reviewed by John Coleman |
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