Art Coelho’s My First Kill: The Queering of Gender Roles and Sexual Identity
Obviously, the immediate association that can be made with the gun is the penis, and not simply the penis, but what possession of this organ grants an individual within the realms of a patriarchal society. Ownership of both the gun and the penis represent forms of power and authority, control to be asserted over other individuals – the power of sex and the power of death, respectively. As the narrator is a male possessing not just one but two tools of power, the intensity of his sense of responsibility and his desire to measure up to what is expected of him is doubled. At his age, he is already expected to become a provider for his family; his father tells him of hunting: “if it ain’t good enough for our supper table. . . forget it” (270).
But the duty felt by this boy goes beyond that of the male simply as provider – it also seems to be that of the male as sexual conquerer. His father teaches him more than just how to properly hunt animals; he also seems to be indirectly teaching his son about the art of sex. “Speed is not the most important thing to hunting, son,” he says. “You jump the gun and it’s all over. Anybody can pull the trigger fast, but not everyone can hit the mark.” By substituting the word “sex” for “hunting,” the underlying meaning of his advice becomes clear, or at the very least two-dimensional. The narrator’s father seems to be almost bragging about his sexual prowess in what might be viewed as a stereotypical manner – as if to say that everyone has the ability to engage in sexual activity, but not everyone can do it right. Even the mere act of giving advice strongly implies that the father thinks himself well versed enough in these areas to be entitled to give advice.
It’s disturbing that sexual activity and firing a weapon accurately seem to be intricately connected here, as though they are similar enough as to be comparable. Examining this more closely, the similarities become more apparent, though. For instance, both sex and hunting can be seen as types of sport; that is to say, both activities have a specific end goal in mind, that of “hit[ing] the mark” as the father so eloquently stated. Also, there is the added element of the dominant and submissive – the hunter and the hunted – at work in each activity. The gender roles that dominate American culture prescribe men as masculine/dominant and women as feminine/submissive, and though these roles can certainly be reversed or rejected, the roles of dominant and submissive can and generally do carry over into the bedroom.
The narrator we become familiar with has been socialized to embrace the persona of the dominant; there seems to be no other socially acceptable option for him. He must hunt and hunt well, he must desire females and obtain them, because he is expected to by society, and more pressingly and more undoubtedly by his father. The narrator’s lack of being offered another acceptable outlet for his sexuality or gender manifests itself in his constant self doubt and concern with meeting his father’s approval.
With all these different forces at work, it makes sense that the boy begins to view his gun as a sexual object, though he does seem to suffer some confusion over its gender and sex. At one point he describes the gun as though he is speaking of a female – and not just any female, but a virgin – “She’s brand new. Ain’t even fired it yet. . . she’s a real honey” (271). The gun continues to be sexually identified as female when flicking the safety off causes a red spot to appear, as though a metaphorical devirginization of the gun takes place. Indeed, the narrator’s “heart beat[s] faster every time [he] saw the crimson slot flash before [his] eyes” (emphasis added). The sexual terminology that permeates the description of the gun indicates the boy’s mental association of becoming a man with the intermingling of sexual control and power.
The gun, however, manages to symbolically remain the penis, an extension of the boy’s self, despite also seeming to identify with the female gender. This could be interpreted as either a partial acknowledgment of what is socially constructed as “feminine” existing within the boy himself, or as a partial denial of the same: the attraction and excitement the boy feels towards the gun somehow makes him feel queer, as it can be interpreted as a physical attraction to male genitals, so he must feminize the gun even within his thoughts in order to feel comfortable with his sexual attraction to it. The gun excites him so much that he goes through the motions of masturbation with it; “[his] dad said [he] was going to wear the stock out by rubbing it so much” (272). This slight rebuke from his father supports the notion that any sexuality that varied from strictly heterosexual would have been unacceptable and subject to his father’s dissent.
Clearly the boy has some conflicting emotions about with the way the gun makes him feel, because while he does seem unable to completely process these feelings and even holds some residual guilt over them, he appears to relish them at the same time. Particularly adding to the queer reading of the text, the boy states, “The pride I had for my rifle was all swelled up inside of me.” The sexual connotation that lies within the phrase “all swelled up inside of me” is not such that would generally be associated with the gender role of masculinity; it would probably be associated with femininity. Indeed, the boy elaborates, “it made me feel good and I patted the automatic and put one of my hands on the stock.” Again, these sexually loaded words emphasize that the boy treats the gun as a phallus, as a source of sexual arousal, as something which produces “a good feeling” when it is beside him.
The boy’s rejection of a mainly heterosexual and masculine behavior is evident in his unconscious reluctance to actually aim and fire his gun. The first time he intends to fire at a rabbit, he “had forgotten to take off the safety” (emphasis added, 271). Then in something of a panic, he fires six shots in succession in an act of overcompensation for his initial shortcoming. His unconscious at work, however, causes him to fail to pierce the flesh of the animal with the bullet – perhaps demonstrating a general reluctance to engage in any form of entrance. From the psychoanalytical perspective, the bullet is the symbolic equivalent of sperm that corresponds to the symbolic penis of the gun, which illustrates the boy’s potential reluctance to plant his seeds. The boy is happy enough to fondle the gun but not particularly inclined to fire it, perhaps not particularly inclined to trigger any definite emotions as a result of such a definite action.
Contributing to the boy’s discomfort and subsequent repression of his feelings is the damaging effect of his father’s lack of acceptance or even awareness of an alternative to strictly masculine, heterosexual behavior. No matter how much secret pleasure the boy derives from his possession of and interactions with the gun, the underlying tension is still present. This manifests itself most potently in the digression which features the boy watching a cock fight between an older cock and a younger one. Particularly since this commences right after the boy wakes up, where the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious is the most blurry, it is increasingly logical to assume that the older cock is in fact representative of the boy’s father, while the younger cock stands for the boy himself. At first, the boy is inclined to “shoot before they had a chance to run away,” he conveniently forgets to take the safety off again.
Because of this delay in action, the boy watches the fight and observes that though the older cock was “going in for the kill as he had done so many times before,” alluding to his father’s sexual/hunting experience. The younger cock, however, is intelligent enough to trick the older cock into coming closer by “faking the extent of his injury.” Likewise, the boy has been intelligent enough so far to not arouse much suspicion about his sexuality by “faking it” to an extent. When the younger cock succeeds in killing the older one, this perhaps represents the boy’s unconscious desire to kill his father and thus remove this driving force for straight male masculinity from his life. Fittingly, though perhaps a bit over dramatically so, the boy then shoots and kills the young surviving cock as though he is filled with what could be a homophobic repulsion towards himself, or simply the guilt of realizing that he had wanted to kill his father.
Soon after, the boy realizes that he has made a mistake by killing the second cock, which indicates his need and potential for self acceptance. Further regretting his actions, the boy realizes that his father will not approve of the way the champion cock was killed – and since “the last thing on earth [he] wanted to do was to make [his] dad suspicious of [his] hunting ability” (273), the boy must shoot the already dead cock as well. What he actually is most repulsed by is the blood rushing out of the bullet hole, which “[took] all the thrill of the hunt out of [him].” In terms of sexuality, if the sight of blood ruins the chase for the boy, it is likely another indication of his uncertainty about his desire for females.
What holds the most significance in the final scenes of the story is the lasting impression of guilt that is taken away from it. The boy feels like a fraud for notching his rifle’s stock for a death that he shouldn’t have caused and another death that he feels a lingering responsibility for. Even as he picks up his gun, presumable to leave, the “blood on [his] hand left a stain on the stock,” a further indication of his guilt. The boys feels like a failure as a hunter and as a man, but no matter how determined he is to rid himself of his guilty conscious, “the mark only went in deeper and deeper the harder [he] wiped at the blood,” emphasizing the boy’s inability to separate himself from who he is: physically, sexually, and personality wise.
