Cloistered Coitus

by Sarah Schulman

Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy by Judith C, Brown

Oxford University Press, $14.95.

T

The Correct Sadist by Terence Sellers Grove Press, $6.95

his is what is so wonderful about the gay press. We can take a book by a Stanford professor about a nun in Renaissance Italy, and a novel by a former dominatrix about sado-masochism and write about them in the same article. Both of these books deal with an individual woman's vio-

lation of the traditional expectations placed upon her, and her determined embracing of power, pain, and passion as roads to her fullest sense of self.

Judith Brown, the author of the accessible and interesting Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, discovered this story by chance, while researching the economic history of Florence. The papers revealed the story of Sister Benedetta Carlini, her rise to power within the church, her downfall and long imprisonment. Brown provides the reader with a short but informative summary of the sexual context in which these events took place. She makes a fine contribution to lesbian history by placing her information in a feminist framework. She writes that heterosexuality was "commonplace" in Renaissance convents, which were more a "warehouse for discarded women of the middle-class" than a refuge for those with religious vocations. There are, however, only a dozen references to lesbianism in Italian history.

Brown's thesis is that Benedetta's popularity from 1619 to 1623 came from her claim of religious visions and communications with divinity, and that this was a threat to the church hierarchy. She says that it was easier to discredit the nun with a sexual scandal than to disprove her mystical powers. Unfortunately, due to incomplete dates, the extent of Benedetta's influence and her particular perspective is not sufficiently articulated for the reader to understand the secular and religious political issues involved. Brown also raises interesting points about the Renaissance view of female sexuality, particularly that, in "pre-modern Europe, women were thought to be more lustful than men and easily given to debauchery." At the same time, Europeans had not accepted the idea of lesbian sexuality, which violated their phallocentric assumptions. Reports of lesbian scandals were few and lesbian sexuality suffered a historically consistent invisibility.

From her childhood, Benedetta had supernatural experiences. Animals obeyed her commands; religious objects moved in her presence. Jesus even appeared and spoke to her. Over the years, these events and images evolved into violent sexual visions in which men with chains were fighting for her soul. Her convent assigned Bartolomea Crivelli, an illiterate younger woman, to be her companion and to see her through the pain of these overwhelming dreams and revelations. The incidents continued, until finally Benedetta received the stigmata (spontaneously the wounds of Christ appeared on her body). This elevated her in the eyes of the church and she became one of the few women allowed to give sermons. While she spoke, the other nuns "purified" themselves with whips in penitence.

Benedetta's scenes with Jesus became more and more intimate and physical. In one, Jesus ripped her heart out of her side and put it in his own body, waiting three days before giving her another one. She reported

Jacket Illus. for Immodest Acts: detail from Last Judgment by Giovanni di Paolo. that this excruciating pain was followed by "a great contentment." Brown writes, "The dominent imagery in her mystical experience was that of love, not suffering." To safeguard her purity, Jesus provided her with a guardian angel who wore a gold chain around his neck and alternately caressed her with flowers and with thorns.

A church investigation resulted in the exposure of a sexual relationship between the. two nuns. Bartolomea's repenting testimony claimed that her lover had "forced" her into the "most immodest acts." She claimed that three times a week for two years, Benedetta forced her to have oral sex, manual sex, and would "stir on top of her so much that both of them corrupted themslves." She reported that these sessions would last for one, two, or three hours at a time. Jesus had assured them that these acts were without sin and so they never confessed them. The priests used this not only as a sexual scandal, but as a symbol of the disregard for church sacraments.

In describing Benedetta and Bartholomea's relationship, Brown gets too psychological, tracing Benedetta's desires to her early childhood experiences. She also underestimates the relationship between the two women, not even imagining it as involving deeply erotic and spiritual passions, even though at least one of the women was extraordinary in these respects. Brown does, however, stress that heterosexual relationships were readily available to nuns and lesbian sex had to be sought out in a more difficult and clandestine manner. This contradicts commonly held myths that lesbian sexuality among nuns was the result of the absence of men.

The narrator of Terence Seller's The Correct Sadist spent her childhood fantasizing about the suffering of the Catholic saints, and imagining their torture as erotic symbols. "Their torments and ecstasies, I rapturously envisioned" as other teenagers

Scala/Art Resources, New York

worshipped movie stars. She soon moved away from the church and became a professional dominatrix. Her johns were "pathetic beggars who had to pay to satisfy their perverted desires." She flourished in the business, but considered sex between men and women "One of the more loathsome pasttimes of humanity."

The book is a series of short chapters, with headlines like "Mistress Angel's Favorite Penis Torture," which recommends exercises such as "flicking repeatedly at the crotch with a small bull-whip" or slashing with a razor before administering the hot wax.

This is a how-to book for masters. While it may be fun when put into practice in your own home, it is rather dreary reading. It has none of the clever insight of John Preston's I Once Had a Master, and lacks the sexy campiness of Pat Califia's writings. Basically, The Correct Sadist is a manual of sadistic logistics. For a sense of humor to accompany your torture, look elsewhere.

Dirty

Deeds

S

by Martin Foreman

Steps Going Down by Joseph Hansen Foul Play Press, $14.95

Books

which leaves him helpless and dependent on oxygen tanks and constant care. Cutler is gentle, almost affectionate towards the old man, who has given him a home and left him everything in his will. Moody's possessiveness leaves Cutler little freedom, but occasionally he can escape to the seedy bar he has known ever since he came to Los Angeles. There he meets Chick Pelletier, a blond, blue-eyed loafer and occasional actor, with the charm of a child who always gets his way.

Cutler cannot forget his new acquaintance and, when Pelletier visits him one night, demanding that he fulfill the promise that they would live together, he has neither the argument nor will to prevent the "accident" in which Moody dies. As soon as the life insurance is paid, he buys a house in select Cormorant Cove and moves in with Pelletier. Pelletier, however, wants more--gambling money, a car, a yacht, a private surfing instructor-all of which Cutler gives. The demands do not stop at material possessions; Cutler has exaggerated his talents as a writer and Pelletier wants the script that will make him a star. Even when Pelletier leaves him to live with the young wife of an influential neighbor, Cutler still loves him, is desperate to make love with him, desperate to win him back, willing to lose his business, his selfrespect, everything to have Pelletier at his side.

Tragedy, with its avoidable but relentless march towards disaster, is something few modern writers tackle and is almost nonexis-

tent in a gay setting. The balancing act of holding the reader's attention without anger-

ing us with the central character's willful self-blindness is difficult to maintain, as is

the steady gathering of momentum which brings on the inevitable doom. For most of Steps Going Down, Hansen more than succeeds in this task; the reader is sucked in and propelled forward, dreading what is going to happen, yet unable to resist going on to see the next step in Darryl Cutler's fall. You know there will be another murder, you know Pelletier's demands will become more extreme, but you do not know whether to curse Cutler's stupidity or pity his state.

Then, so suddenly that the page number (238) can be marked, everything falls apart. The momentum collapses, there is a breathing space, the claustrophobia essential to such a story is torn open, and characters crowd in like bit players eager to extend their roles. As if the habit of writing detective stories had become so deeply ingrained that he cannot shrug it off, Hansen resorts to all the genre's cliches: coincidence, return of someone supposedly dead, assembly of all the characters for the denouement. Concern and sympathy for Cutler are buried under exasperation at all the gimmicks and the contrived ending. What had earlier passed as noncommittal descriptions we realize was only the technique of sowing information to be reaped at the sour conclusion. Yet, even when failing, Hansen's writing is much more rewarding than that of his intentional or unintentional imitators. His style is almost staccato, yet projects a story as effortlessly as a film onto a screen, while his characters are always more complex than the stereotypes they at first appear to be.

In comparison, Richard Stevenson's On the Other Hand, Death is no more than an average plot, irritatingly written and with a cast whose quirks are all the character they possess. Two elderly lesbians, one of whom is senile and racist, a gay dectective who reads Yourcenar and will not stop tricking behind his lover's back, the standard bigoted police lieutentant, and a gay activist obsessed by his own political line get involved in a situation which starts with graffiti, leads to death and ends scrappily, with nobody satisfied. Idle curiosity, every second-rate writer's best friend, led me on, but will not lead me to the next book in the series that will undoubtedly appear. NEW YORK NATIVE/DECEMBER 23-29, 1985 37

On the Other Hand, Death by Richard Stevenson Penguin (paper), $3.50

Itewart Moody is a querulous old man incapacitated by emphysema, Darryl Cutler the ex-huslter who looks after him. Moody is frustrated by a situation