Aye, and Gomorrah...

I was quite confused when I started reading “Aye, and Gomorrah…” by Samuel Delany, because it is written in such a way that the causes of the story’s conflicts are not revealed until the end, keeping the reader wondering: what is a spacer and a frelk? The title alludes to the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah about sin and sexual orientation, saying that perhaps “Aye, and Gomorrah…” is about something along the same lines, however we do not find out its meaning until the last few pages.

This story takes away the distinctions between manhood and womanhood, as the Spacers have no gender, and it is often questioned what gender they started out. This shows that to the people in Delany’s future, gender does not have the same important meaning. Even when gender is important to a character it is opposite of what we may think, the man saying that he would have liked the Spacer if he were a man, and the woman saying the same if the Spacer were a women.

A quote that stuck out to me is “You don’t choose your perversions. You have no perversions at all. You’re free of the whole business.”(130) This is said by a frelk, and it is interesting commentary by Delany, possibly saying that sexual desire is inherent whether it is seen as proper or not, saying that while the frelks are looked down upon, they cannot choose their desires, they just have them, and so should not be judged as harshly. I also think that the third sentence of this quote is interesting as the frelk claims that the Spacer is fortunate to have no desires and to not be judged for them. However, sexual desire and the desire for relationships are usually seen as good, natural emotions, not as burdens. In the world of the story, frelks are looked down upon and so see their desires as wrong and think that the Spacers have it easy because they have no desire. Having no desire at all is an extreme, and shows the importance of relationships as in the story the Spacers are lonely but cannot be satisfied because they have no desire.

From this quote and this story, it seems to me like Delany is trying to show that sexual desires should not be shameful, although he does it in a very odd manner, even though certain desires are looked down upon by our society. He shows that people cannot change who they are or what they desire and that everyone, the frelks, the Spacers, and the other briefly mentioned characters, only want companionship. I however, think that the relationship between the frelks and Spacers is disturbing as it seems like a strange and unnatural form of prostitution. Also, it shows the extremes that this future society deemed necessary to prevent defects, and as noted by a frelk, when she says, "They could have found another way"(129), these invasions of the spacers’ privacy were unnecessary. The solution of neutering the spacers is rather barbaric, but it seems, as the spacer notes, that researchers were not too concerned about the privacy of people who were already considered to have defects, showing inhumanity towards the spacers just because they were different, and did not have desires. I think that even if people have horrible defects, they should be treated well and helped, instead of exploited because of their differences.