An attempt at 30 days of celibacy. A recounting of a sexual history. A sensitivity to light and to disorder, a kind of OCD. Undiagnosed. Sexual addiction (undiagnosed) and deep love for a place (Bermuda) and for other men (Christian, the Ninja, Tattoo, others, too). Alan C. Smith's 30 Days w/o is a forceful and vulnerable work charged with an intense passion for language and the body.
"I go the route of dead pigeons. The moon is still full & brilliant, even through the clouds seek intermittently to enshroud him. 18 streetlights from my home to Black Watch Pass, including 2 on 1 pole @ the junction. 5 in Black Watch Pass. @ least 5 flattened mounds of feathers & gook along the yellow line. 5 streetlights from the Pass path to the traffic lights past the Tennis Stadium. The numbers are good...
...I think I recognized myself in the cursed, knew that inside resided always the potential for the turn, & if activated, I would revel in him. I know that inside me lurks a ravening B, born, not turned from a bite on a full or blood moon night. But isn’t the curse more than the breaking & rebreaking of bone, the loss of control, the fear of unleashing a side not really alien at all, of obliterating, of biting in, of wallowing? This has very little to do with the wolf, vessel, shifted shape for instincts already within, hardly dormant. 1 day I ceased trying to put that dog down." [extract from 30 Days w/o by Alan C. Smith]
Publication date: 25 October 2019
Alan C. Smith is a Bermudian writer, visual artist, performer and theatre director. His work has appeared in POUI, In Our Own Words: A Generation Defining Itself, Caribbean Writer, the award-winning Under the Moon and Over the Sea: A Collection of Caribbean Poems, amongst others. He has also written articles, interviews and theatre and dance reviews for a number of Bermudian print and online publications.
