Kiss Out of My Past

I think Stephen King said it: The best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader.  It makes sense. Stephen should know.   Mr. Lewenstein encourages us to read outside of class.  Here he has asked us to share a "Book Out of Our Past."


I love Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig, but not for why you think.  It’s one of those books teachers might tell you to stay away from.  In fact when it was first published it was banned from Argentina for its graphic sex and violence.  It’s about two men locked up together in a horrible Argentine prison.  One is a macho Marxist rebel leader, and the other is a flaming homosexual hairdresser.   They’re stuck together suffering the same  in humane  punishment,  eating the same gruel.   Obviously they are so different in stature and attitude,  and you would think that if they don’t learn to love one another, they’ll kill each other.  

I probably read this to escape from my own misery.   All my life, it seems that  I’ve been bedstricken by one disease or injury after another.  I look to reading as an escape from my loneliness, and  when I’m at my lowest, reading startles my mind and churns my heart.   It makes me forget about myself and look beyond my problems – that’s what I looked forward to in reading “Kiss” even if the story looks really nasty.

But , like I said, it isn’t really like that.  In fact, it’s nothing like I ever expected.  These guys in their prison cell, as troubled as they are,  give each other something that goes well beyond their immediate needs and problems.    They give each other something to think and dream about that propels them far beyond the dank cell walls.  Molina, the hairdresser, spends most of the movie relating a his favorite movie, scene-by-scene, to Valentin, the rebel.   I mean, it’s the only thing they have in that cell.  At first, Valentin wants no part of it -  the movie is dark and strange, and according to him, pretty stupid, but  as Kiss of the Spider Woman advances, so does Molina’s storytelling and  so does Valentin’s involvement.

There’s little sex  here.  Maybe a little.  But the intimacy that develops is in the minds and hearts of these two men.  Molina teaches Valentin two things that he can’t rebel against – hope and imagination.  Valentin has lived his whole life distrusting his world, and it’s Molina who teaches him to finally let go.I like books that may be a challenge  to follow.  Here, the main characters remain in place, but their stories are allowed to ramble.   Sometimes, you just don’t know where you are or where the book is going, but why would you read a book if you knew what was going to happen in advance?  How interested could you be if your understood everything?

My favorite part in this book comes in the end.  Molina is dead, and Valentin’s time is coming.  In his last days, he’s still in prison and  they are torturing him unmercifully. In probably the most confusing chapter you’ll ever read, Valentin somehow escapes and ends up on a desert island with the Spider Woman.  You don’t know if it’s a matter of pain, drugs, or pure love, but Valentin finally opens up his heart and soul.

I can’t spoil the end for you, but from the ugliest of existence  comes the most wonderful beauty.  You just want to stop and hold your breath.  Who could ban a book like that?  What teacher would direct you away from it? I say take this “Kiss” and close the door.