Work

Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza
Hard Tails
Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé
(Palgrave Macmillan)

“This book was born from the commotion that is to listen – to truly listen – to someone else’s voice,” begins Nu Yorican writer Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé in his raw yet beautiful meditation on the life of Latino runaway Juanito Xtravaganza, lover of Keith Haring in the early eighties. While finding his own identity both as a Puerto Rican and a gay man, this ex Yale student explains how he “listened to Juan’s irresistible tangled tale with no small measure of awe and rage, and quickly agreed that his story had to be told.” It’s a story that was related to the writer over a 10 year period as Juanito tried to build his life out of the tatters of bereavement following the AIDS related death of Haring and his own battle with the illness. But more than that, it was Juan’s chance to reclaim some pride and dignity after his name was “besmirched” in John Gruen’s authorised biography of Keith Haring.

In the introduction of the book we’re told how Haring’s arrival in an inner city neighbourhood devastated by de-industrialisation drew him to the “alternative and coded languages, movements and sounds of hip hop, and how it was this desire both for the racial and cultural other that would excite and entice him, inducing him to engage, to commune and to communicate.” It was this same appetite that led Haring to the hallowed doors of the Paradise Garage, “where black gay and Latino gay youth, vogueing drag queen divas, straight identified ‘banjee’ boys, homeless and thrown away stomped, sweated and swirled with music business insiders and up and coming media celebrities.” And it was here that Juan and Haring would become lovers as the artist led the handsome ex street kid into another world of first class flights to Japan and nights at The Mondrian, mixing with everyone from Grace Jones to Princess Caroline.

In reciting the interview as a Latin American testimonio, the writer allows his subject’s voice to connect directly and sometimes starkly with the reader. In the midst of the glamour the spectre of HIV looms large through the interview and Juan recalls how Haring rejected him during his final months and how his own fight with the illness drew him to another protective family, eventually “walking banjee” at a House of Xtravaganza ball following bonds made at The Sound Factory.

After this personal chapter (with the regular use of Spanglish drawing you into the experiences of Juan and his Hispanic culture) the next part of this deep book sees Cruz-Malave breaking down the various themes revealed in the interview. A chapter on ‘Keith Haring and the Aesthetics of Identification’ analyses the artists work and that of the East Village scene in relation to race, class and sexual identification, as well as studying the alternative community worshiping at the Garage, while the psychological battles of gay Puerto Ricans is covered in a chapter entitled ‘Queer Latino, Repression and Shame’ which also offers a fascinating ethnological study of ‘West Side Story’. By the final chapter ‘What’s In A Name’, Cruz Malave has confirmed himself to be one of the leading modern writers of Latino and gay studies, giving a cultural analysis on everything from the importance of graffiti and gardening in the Loisiaida neighbourhood to Grace Jones as a gay black icon. But what we are with left with ultimately is a hard yet heart felt tail from a voice that needed to be heard.

Watch

‘Paris is Burning’ – Jennie Livingstone
‘How Do I Look’ – Wolfgang Bausch
‘Maestro’ – Josell Ramos

Listen

Machine – ‘There But For The Grace of God’
Robbie Tronco ‘Walk For Me’
Salsoul Orchestra ‘Ooh, I Love It (Love Break) (Shep Pettibone Mix)’
Frankie Goes to Hollywood, ‘Welcome to the Pleasuredome’