Richard Gere and Alien Cum
“I Broke Up With An Alien” by Gwen McDuff is strange. In a fantastic way.
At first read, I thought it was funny. It’s a quarter-life crisis poem about fucking an alien. We get an in-depth description of alien cum, how it smells the way bubble wrap feels, how it “comes in a cloud that tastes like public transportation.” Gross. But vivid.
The narrator and this alien can’t kiss (the alien doesn’t have a mouth until it cuts one for itself), and this inability to kiss leads the narrator to liken herself to Richard Gere. We assume she means Richard Gere à la Pretty Woman. In Pretty Woman, Vivian, a sex worker, won’t allow Richard Gere’s character to kiss her. It’s part of her rules when it comes to intimacy. Sex is fine, but the act of kissing is too personal.
We travel the universe with the narrator. She is on an intergalactic space-snuffing spree, as the narrator is not a “one-alien woman.” We learn of the last time she fucked a human, a man who “belonged to another century with a name to match.” We make guesses at the way this relationship began and ended; we see the timeline of their romance bend and quirk. We watch her vomit comets into the toilet. We see sparkles behind the moon.
It’s a strange poem. Yes, it’s funny, but also arresting and sad. At the end of the poem, we, too, are dwelling on what it means to feel pornographic and hypocritical. On what it means to feel very human. On the consequences of “bankrupting taste.”
Check out the poem at the link below. Then come back here and let me know what you think. What does the comparison to Richard Gere add to the way we interpret this poem? What are the power dynamics in the narrator’s quarter-life-crisis? Who is fucking whom? Who is reserving intimacy? Did you find it funny? Did you find it sad? Do you think I’m reading too much into what is simply a classic coming-of-age poem? Let me know what you think. I’d LOVE to discuss this one.
