Reckonings: The Use of ‘Escape’ in Reid Gómez's "Touch, Touch, Touching" and "electric gods"

In the selection below, K.L provides us with our third weekly student blog.

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The two short stories from last week that I would like to discuss are “electric gods” and “Touch, Touch, Touching.” They are the only two pieces written by Reid Gómez, and are the last two stories that appear in the Reckonings anthology (which, after looking at the other authors’ birth years, doesn’t appear to have any significance other than it makes chronological sense because Gómez is the youngest author). I found them to be quite intriguing due to their elusive language, myriad allusions, and the assumption of the narrator that you know what she (or he) is talking about; to be blunt, they are quite convoluted and bewildering, so that after the first read I felt like I had barely grasped what Gómez was trying to say. However, in this way they are like puzzle pieces itching to be toyed with, but with a low chance of complete accuracy and much space for subjective interpretation, since the language is so ambiguous. That’s why I like these pieces so much; but even after reading through them multiple times, I feel like there is still so much more substance to extract and that I’m only just beginning to peel back a few of the layers. However, there is at least a smooth continuity between the stories because “Touch, Touch, Touching” appears to be a continuation of “electric gods.”

One theme permeating both stories that I found particularly interesting is that of ‘getting lost/hiding/escaping’ and how these aren’t portrayed in a dichotomous ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ way (i.e. sometimes escape is portrayed in a positive light, while in other instances it is portrayed negatively). For example, in “electric gods,” the narrator explains how Sylvia “could disappear herself in a moment, somehow dissolving into it” and that “[s]he’d learnt various tricks to call herself out, or prevent total dissolution,” which “worked for the most part” except during sexual intercourse and when she was watching Wild Kingdom on T.V. (284). When I first read this passage I thought that the narrator was implying that Sylvia’s tendency to “dissolve” into the moment was a negative thing because she could easily lose herself if she wasn’t careful. However, now looking back at it, later in the passage the narrator explains how the attendants loved those moments when Sylvia was completely absorbed into the television because it seemed to ‘sedate’ her; however, in reality, “[t]hey were stupid with their cravings and this made them unable to see what was right before them…Every Sunday Sylvia sat there gathering power” (285). This implies that Sylvia actually uses her ability to zone out to her advantage, as this last quote directly precedes the part where she successfully escapes from the mental institution. The desirability of this trait is also implied when the narrator explains that “so dramatically removed from living, [Sylvia] needed that show” (284); the zoning-out into the T.V. show is one way that Sylvia was able to stay sane in such a detached, prison-like environment (which is ironic because according to the authorities she is ‘insane’).

Then of course there is the explicit “escape” when she literally escapes from the hospital, which for her is a very positive thing because no other patient had managed to successfully flee from that terrible place. One question to ask is, did she really ‘escape’ the hospital (in terms of its possible implicit meanings)? Was it indeed a positive outcome?

The second piece, “Touch, Touch, Touching,” appears to continue Sylvia’s story and to describe what she experiences after the escape. Although the narrator doesn’t explicitly say that he or she is talking about Sylvia, it seems to be implied because in “electric gods” we find out that “[i]t took her twelve days to arrive in Reno” (286), and then “Touch, Touch, Touching,” gradually reveals that the protagonist is inside a casino, first with references to cards and slot machines (290), and later explicitly by saying that “[s]he sits in Harrah’s*,” noting that “*Harrah’s is a famous resort hotel and casino” (291). So it’s pretty heavily implied that the unidentified protagonist in “Touch, Touch, Touching” is Sylvia, since she fled to Reno, and Reno is well-known for its casinos.

The examples I found of escape/hiding/getting lost in this piece seemed to be more explicitly related to Native American oppression, whereas the first piece doesn’t make many explicit references to the Native American experience. For example, as Sylvia is in Reno, contemplating the demise of her people, the narrator explains, “Her people hid the names thinking they could somehow escape the torture” (290). Out of context, this simple statement seems pretty straightforward; her tribe was being severely oppressed and dehumanized, so obviously they would want to escape that somehow, and so it seems logical that they would “hid[e] the names” (perhaps referring to changing their names to Christian ones, or, more generally, trying to suppress their culture so they wouldn’t be so heavily targeted by the whites). However, this statement out of context doesn’t actually grasp Sylvia’s full perception of the issue; in fact, it is only by incorporating everything else that she is thinking (and in particular, what proceeds the statement, on the following page) that it becomes clear that she seems to think of “escape” in this context as a very negative thing. “They went outside, and stood proud beneath the cotton-woods, then faded because they forgot the words, the songs, the ancestors they were born for. It was so scary they gave their heads over” (291). These two sentences, in addition to other descriptions of Sylvia’s kin (such as how “they stand with their feet half cracked in the red earth they used to understand the words of” [291]) suggest a very different connotation for this use of the word “escape.” These descriptions seem to imply that her ancestors and what remains of her tribe have just given up, and surrendered in shame. Sylvia almost seems to be focusing the blame of this loss of heritage and culture onto her own people, in the way that she says “they forgot the words” and “they stand with their feet half cracked in the red earth they used to understand the words of.” “They” (referring to Sylvia’s kin) is the subject of most of the sentences in this passage, arranging “them” as the actors, the ones making decisions, and therefore the ones to blame. If this passage were worded with the United States as the overarching subject and with “them” as the direct object, then it would emphasize her people as the victims, and United States as the one to blame. Why do you think that Gómez words Sylvia’s thoughts in this way and doesn’t assign more blame to the American oppressors? Or do you even agree with my interpretation?