Is the rectum (still) a grave? Death in Naty Menstrual’s Continuadísimo

Abstract

In a cycle of three short stories published in Continuadísimo (2008), Naty Menstrual explores the deaths of her protagonists, who are travesti sex workers living with HIV/AIDS. In the first two stories, the travestis die by suicide; the eponymous La Mr Ed turns into a vine and La Angie in “La empastillada” cuts herself with a mirror. Selva, the protagonist of “Camarada Kaposi,” disappears after a man in uniform is seen in the hospital. At the height of the AIDS crisis in the USA in the 1980s, Bersani asked his provocative question “Is the rectum a grave?” (1987), and I will explore the ways in which Menstrual’s three stories can be read alongside this question. Her narratives retain the polemical aspects of Bersani’s essay, yet afford the protagonists dignified, almost mythical deaths. Her stories transcend the stigmas and sense of moral panic around HIV/AIDS that Bersani described to give an insight into the complex intersection of sex, class, sexuality, and subjectivity. In writing unapologetically about travesti sex workers, Menstrual, like Bersani, revels in the subversive potential of sex to shatter the self and she also re-signifies the imagery of death that marked early discourses around HIV/AIDS.