Zepke Stephen: Head in the Stars. Essays on Science Fiction

the infinite essence of God/Nature. 112 Common notions
are constantly occurring to Eric, even before he has read
Spinoza. As he sucks Jay’s cock in Turpens he has ‘a flash
of spring clarity, the afternoon sun a-slant beneath the
Atlantic highway – as Jay rubbed his head, the way the
hillbillies sometimes had. Eric thought: Damn…!’ (41-2)
Or when Eric tells Shit that holding his dick makes his
own feel bigger, and Shit says the same, remembering
that his Dad Dynamite used to tell him that too, when
they held each other’s (81). Or when Eric shoots his sperm
into a ‘medallion’ on his toilet wall, and then finds a stiff
‘irregular blotch’ in Dynamite and Shit’s bed that was ‘Their
medallion…?’ (126) Or as Jay tells us; ‘Boys and dogs, boys
and dogs – jerk ’em off, and they’ll be your friends for
life.’ That was always Dynamite’s philosophy.’ (344) From a
joyful affect comes an insight of commonality, of an essence
of pleasure defining the community that shares it, of a
common notion that includes Eric too, who thinks it.
Affective affinities lead to affirmative communities.
While Spinoza says that we love something that a person
we love loves (EIV, P22), in the language of Through the
Valley of the Nest of Spiders, ‘Shit claimed to love it [sex with
men when he was a child]. And because Eric loved Shit, he
loved whatever history had made Shit into Shit.’ (244) And
a little later the same logic applies to the love Dynamite
feels for Eric ‘Cause Shit loves you the way he do – and
that kind of love spreads around’ (293), or to Eric’s love of
Dynamite, which reminds Shit of his (437). It works the
other way too, as Barb explains to Eric regarding her lover
Ron (named after Ronald Reagan, also a conservative and
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