The Mark of Cain: Chapter 4
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“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
—Cain (Genesis 4:9-14)
Cain and his descendents dominate the first story of life outside of Eden, but Cain’s younger brother Abel makes decisive homoerotic appearances at the beginning and end of the story.
This “first Genesis blowjob” story is a tale of incestuous brotherly love ending up as a tale of queer jealousy, gay homicide mixed up with the inexorable cycles of male vengeance that get showcased there & then in the beginning dayz of Human Sin and Earthy Degeneration.
This rather early noir Murder Story is even more shocking than Eve’s forbidden transgression with the Devil it seems. A blowjob is a blowjob—but not all blowjobs are equal. These Genesis Brotherly blowjobs reveal notable comic traits & sadly tragic ones as well, especially during the fertile imaginative dayz of the Medieval Period.
Eve is such a bitch—cut off from access to the Tree of Life and aware of her threatened death in the future, Eve participates boldly in the creation of live, thus fulfilling her role as “mother of all living things” and perhaps even claiming special, god-like powers as a co-creator with Yahweh.
It’s a rather extravagant claim—registering defiance in the face of death and reveling in her function as Diva-Dominatrix mother-creator. Eve therefore continues the active, assertive, self-initiating role that marked her in the earlier narrative, assuming now the powerful prerogative of Creator and Namer.
Eve triumphantly names Cain (qayin)—proclaiming “I have created [qaniti] a man [equally together] with the Lord.” Abel (hebel, “breath, vapor”) is born next.
But the Cain-Abel story is not just a murder story—it’s a Medieval Mystery story as well—with comic twists and not just tragic aspects. As Richard Quinones shows in “The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature” (Princeton)—the “Mactatio Abel” of the Townley cycle is a vibrant comedy with the upstart comic audacity of Cain dramatically showcased.
Young Abel doesn’t do to well in the Bible tho—his name doesn’t bode well for him, since “vapor” is by nature evanescent and short-lived (see “hebel” in Ecclesiastes). Abel seems like the innocent, seemingly vapid kid brother anybody could have in their family. Paradoxically Abel is favored by Yahweh for some reason—while the younger brother is being seemingly drained dry by his envious, queer older brother Cain.
Sibling rivalry, fraternal incest and murderous plots certainly get a great deal of attention during those early Post-Eden days of fratricide and intimate conjoined love affairs amidst Adam & Eve’s busy East of Eden progeny.
God’s seemingly arbitrary preference for Abel’s offering instead of Cain’s begins a chain of jealousy and resentment—with Cain obviously wanting Abel all to himself. Why share his lovely handsome kid brother—with some queen bee deity like Yahweh—especially one that kicked them all out of the Garden of Eden? God as petty impetuous Sugar Daddy?
That’s a pretty good explanation for such unmotivated divine favoritism if you ask me, my dears—despite various vacuous surmises from history, sociology, psychology and theology. God as Chicken Queen is nothing new—many other ancient religions preferred it that way. There’s nothing mysterious or uncanny about such motives from a queer deity—then or now.
Yahweh’s preference for Abel engenders conflict within Cain—he’s forced to give Abel up or let his ravenous desire for the kid take over his life. Is this a parody of erotic desire—replaying the guilt and conflicts of homosexual romance with another relationship? Cain masters the conflict—by denying both Yahweh and himself the erotic pleasures of young cute Abel. Bummer.
Thus in a rather sardonic novelistic stroke, the Biblical narrator moves the problem from the mastery of homoerotic desire between brothers—to the internal problem of mastering the murderous desire to destroy somebody we love but can’t have.
The cognitive dissonance in the repetition of the language of desire and its mastery seems somewhat tragically/comically homoerotic I suppose. Whose more dizzy—Miss Yahweh or Miss Cain or Miss Abel?
This fascinating Cain-Abel twist of ambiguous eroticism between primal brothers switching into the internal psyche where contending raging forces find deadly expression in the First Homicide is indeed worthy of a thrillingly indecent pulp fiction novel.
Possession and mastery of Abel by Cain is at stake—the drama of East of Eden life and death becomes centered on the continued comings & goings of queer desire between lovers and begetting the world’s first primal forbidden male-love gay affair.
__________________
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
—Cain (Genesis 4:9-14)
Cain and his descendents dominate the first story of life outside of Eden, but Cain’s younger brother Abel makes decisive homoerotic appearances at the beginning and end of the story.
This “first Genesis blowjob” story is a tale of incestuous brotherly love ending up as a tale of queer jealousy, gay homicide mixed up with the inexorable cycles of male vengeance that get showcased there & then in the beginning dayz of Human Sin and Earthy Degeneration.
This rather early noir Murder Story is even more shocking than Eve’s forbidden transgression with the Devil it seems. A blowjob is a blowjob—but not all blowjobs are equal. These Genesis Brotherly blowjobs reveal notable comic traits & sadly tragic ones as well, especially during the fertile imaginative dayz of the Medieval Period.
Eve is such a bitch—cut off from access to the Tree of Life and aware of her threatened death in the future, Eve participates boldly in the creation of live, thus fulfilling her role as “mother of all living things” and perhaps even claiming special, god-like powers as a co-creator with Yahweh.
It’s a rather extravagant claim—registering defiance in the face of death and reveling in her function as Diva-Dominatrix mother-creator. Eve therefore continues the active, assertive, self-initiating role that marked her in the earlier narrative, assuming now the powerful prerogative of Creator and Namer.
Eve triumphantly names Cain (qayin)—proclaiming “I have created [qaniti] a man [equally together] with the Lord.” Abel (hebel, “breath, vapor”) is born next.
But the Cain-Abel story is not just a murder story—it’s a Medieval Mystery story as well—with comic twists and not just tragic aspects. As Richard Quinones shows in “The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel Literature” (Princeton)—the “Mactatio Abel” of the Townley cycle is a vibrant comedy with the upstart comic audacity of Cain dramatically showcased.
Young Abel doesn’t do to well in the Bible tho—his name doesn’t bode well for him, since “vapor” is by nature evanescent and short-lived (see “hebel” in Ecclesiastes). Abel seems like the innocent, seemingly vapid kid brother anybody could have in their family. Paradoxically Abel is favored by Yahweh for some reason—while the younger brother is being seemingly drained dry by his envious, queer older brother Cain.
Sibling rivalry, fraternal incest and murderous plots certainly get a great deal of attention during those early Post-Eden days of fratricide and intimate conjoined love affairs amidst Adam & Eve’s busy East of Eden progeny.
God’s seemingly arbitrary preference for Abel’s offering instead of Cain’s begins a chain of jealousy and resentment—with Cain obviously wanting Abel all to himself. Why share his lovely handsome kid brother—with some queen bee deity like Yahweh—especially one that kicked them all out of the Garden of Eden? God as petty impetuous Sugar Daddy?
That’s a pretty good explanation for such unmotivated divine favoritism if you ask me, my dears—despite various vacuous surmises from history, sociology, psychology and theology. God as Chicken Queen is nothing new—many other ancient religions preferred it that way. There’s nothing mysterious or uncanny about such motives from a queer deity—then or now.
Yahweh’s preference for Abel engenders conflict within Cain—he’s forced to give Abel up or let his ravenous desire for the kid take over his life. Is this a parody of erotic desire—replaying the guilt and conflicts of homosexual romance with another relationship? Cain masters the conflict—by denying both Yahweh and himself the erotic pleasures of young cute Abel. Bummer.
Thus in a rather sardonic novelistic stroke, the Biblical narrator moves the problem from the mastery of homoerotic desire between brothers—to the internal problem of mastering the murderous desire to destroy somebody we love but can’t have.
The cognitive dissonance in the repetition of the language of desire and its mastery seems somewhat tragically/comically homoerotic I suppose. Whose more dizzy—Miss Yahweh or Miss Cain or Miss Abel?
This fascinating Cain-Abel twist of ambiguous eroticism between primal brothers switching into the internal psyche where contending raging forces find deadly expression in the First Homicide is indeed worthy of a thrillingly indecent pulp fiction novel.
Possession and mastery of Abel by Cain is at stake—the drama of East of Eden life and death becomes centered on the continued comings & goings of queer desire between lovers and begetting the world’s first primal forbidden male-love gay affair.
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