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Date Posted: 22:12:50 11/18/08 Tue
Author: SS
Subject: *****************ESSAY2********************

Noah Eaton
English 487
November 16, 2008



Sepia Desperadoes: Glass, Mirrors & Shades in Where Will You Go…


Toward the beginning of Gay’s Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?, the protagonist Leonard, characterized as “The Jeepster”, becomes immediately depicted as someone who, in the span of forty-eight hours, has “been steady on the move and no place worked for long.” (113). In spite of the intense imagery of him feeling like he was on fire and having the cold wind fan the flames ever further upon him, we are not yet familiar with why it is he can’t keep still, yet are offered oblique imagery of light “falling almost horizontally” and a highway glittering “like some virtual highway in a fairy tale or nightmare.” (113) as he drives westward.
However, after we become familiarized with Leonard’s crystal-meth addiction, and he is seen taking off his Ray-Bans, shaking his head “as if to clear it of whatever visions beset it” (116) and explaining to Emile that he can’t stand in his own skin, the imagery further encapsulates the state of affairs:
Emilie didn’t say anything. He looked away. To the window where the night-mirrored glass turned back their images like sepia desperadoes in some old daguerreotype (117).

At this point we can ascertain that the unique perceptions and images he sees are not merely optical; they’re psychological, and have additional dimension to them in that we are constantly being presented glimpses into his past life and decisions, which Leonard continues to wrestle with no less than his present predicaments. Furthermore, we can begin to fathom that Leonard experiences his heartache differently, and where he can’t elicit empathy from even his ex-girlfriend, he resides in his own solitary state, separated from others by the windshield of his SUV, and regularly haunted by the origin of his addiction and the murder of Aimee when confronting the world beyond his windshield through mirrors and glass.
A remarkable contrast follows, with Leonard evidently having forgotten how to eat when starting to take a first nibble at his chicken-fried steak at the General Café. It’s at this awkward moment he wonders if he’s next capable of breathing out instead of breathing in, and are then presented with a maladroit image of him traversing the enormity of the title floor and out into a trembling dusk. By the time he’s back in his SUV, these same enormous, trembling lights return, though fleeting by:
Enormous trees rampant with summer greenery reared out of the night and loomed upon the windshield and slipstreamed away. All day the air had been hot and humid and to the west a storm was forming. Soundless lightning flickered the horizon to a fierce rose, then trembled and vanished” (121).

Incidentally, Leonard is consciously aware of his “affinity for the night side of human nature” as he earnestly dubs, and thus also recognizes he must eventually face his present demons directly, rather than defensively posture himself behind thick layers of glass. Otherwise, the intensity of each succeeding seismic flash would grow ever more unbearable to his nerves.
While reminiscing on his near-suicidal experiences and the murder of his loved one, another dimension of mystique is applied to the windshield and SUV windows:
He lay in the back seat of the SUV and tried to sleep. Rain pounded on the roof, wind-whipped rain rendered the glass opaque and everything beyond these windows a matter of conjecture………Things would not leave him alone, old unheeded voices plagued his ears. Brightly colored images tumbled through his mind. An enormous, stained-glass serpent had shattered inside him and was moving around blindly reassembling himself.” (123)

For the first time

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