Hedonists Heaven Review and Interview by Giana Angelillo

Harley Claes yet survives—unmoored, in-between. Claes occupies a distinct slice of the underground, born “detroit incarnate” & “clinging to an evening.” 

Like young female poets of her ilk, Claes is interested in being both the gazer & the gazed-upon; unlike her ilk, Claes’ residency is unique: as a sex worker, she knows the fragility of this state better than most. 

Hedonists’ Heaven, with photography by Sicily Townley, is a collection of three poetic booklets—each adorned with sequin-spectacle & microcosmic slum capture: The Holy Erotic Armageddon; Pacifist in a punk house; & Circa de Cabaret. 

Within each booklet, sex-as-a-state; within each state, a struggle. Inside this collection is the body politik: its burden, its broken-down & rebuilt abuse. Its sex, in three acts.

“That man and woman Lived on separate islands Bridged between their only similarity The sex,  That new beginning”

            —“The Divide,” The Holy Erotic Armageddon

Pacifist in a punk house: Sex as Roleplay

In Pacifist, sex is a state of roleplay, where systems define subsequent roles: de rigeur is mother & child; mythology is hero & anti-hero. Both systems seek to be the dominant sexual state in order to control the narrative.

Roleplay de rigeur is, simply—the role that is customary. Claes’ mother-role is a care-taker; she allows, complies, fulfills; she is sacrificial, a traditional Madonna. Claes’ child is the mother-role companion; rather than submit to the cage, the child calls for freedom. Claes’ child-role is one of rebellion; she rejects, denies, surprises; in this way, the child prevents herself from ever being known. In sex, this is a way to maintain total control.

Sex can be controlled, as well, through narrative; there is no better provider of it than mythology. Narrative is attributed to disorder. Luck is corrected to fate. Every fuck happens for a reason. Its heroes suffer; adjust; persevere; and in the end, flourish. Heroes find purpose within the conventional; their pursuits are often divine-ordained, if not divine-interfered. Claes is not as fond of this mask as the anti-hero. Anti-heroes, after all, often wield the unconventional to change convention; it’s no surprise, then, that Claes allies herself with this title.

“The mess was massive & the party temporal I could play the role of mother no longer…  …i was fragile as porcelain, a willing captive not to love but lust For I could not love”

                                                 —“Anti-Hero”

The Holy Erotic Armageddon: Sex as a Leash

In Armageddon, sex is a leash that can be tightened, or loosened. Claes’ booklet houses her animal; that animal is at the forefront. Its desire coats the corner of each page; yet halfway through, this feels performative. The animal rails against its cage—then submits to it; the animal is repulsed by its lover—then succumbs to it. Risk informs the leash. Above all, the animal wants to survive. It oscillates between a need for love & a fear of it.

Sex on-leash is sex that is controlled by fear; it is solitary, single-minded, & transactional. It is a bulwark against being known. Movement is choreographed, or influenced. Personality is either de rigeur or d’objet. Sex off-leash is sex in spite of fear; it is vulnerable & honest. It is safe to be known. Movement is natural—premeditation is discarded in favor of presence. Personality is no longer determined by what the act requires; it is the rarely-seen self, laid just as bare.

“I’m god’s deadbeat, no one’s little girl fit for plucking. Too long, too long i’ve had my legs wide for fucking: They will stay open, like a 24 hour drive thru ready for male consumption… I live to tease, and I live to be the source of your censorship…”

                                                            —“24 hour drive thru”

Circa de Cabaret: Sex as a Wound

Cabaret’s sex is a wound that never closes. A wound is a matter of distance—a gap. It is both a division of the body & the self. It is characterized not by the body & self to which it belongs, but by its alteration of them. A wound splits the self in two: the real & the role. The real withdraws, afraid; the role seeks, convinced it belongs on the killing floor. With time, the real becomes a spectator. Each lover that prefers the role—the image of the self—ensures the wound will never close. 

An image of fire cannot usurp real fire. Its warmth, its threat—its necessity & its roulette—all stripped from its image, which cannot communicate reality. Likewise, sex is authentic, while supply-sex is inauthentic. Supply-sex—the image of sex—is defined by the gap between itself & sex. Traversal of the two yields a proportional distance in the self: the mother & the hero; the child & anti-hero. Each image is a means of control—to hide—to survive.

Claes summarizes the traversal of this gap, as well as the widening of the wound, in “The Cabaret Dancer”:

“To embody travesty you have to forge a place in non-being”

Non-being is not only a gap; it is severance. It is as close to death as possible. This severance is purposeful; its pursuit is ownership of the wound, & redefinition of it. Claes’ cabaret dancer survives by the image—sells it & is sold for it. Yet there is hope in Cabaret—hope for cohesion, for pay-off—hope for liberation & glamour; a hope that the gap can be bridged; that the wound will, someday, close.

Interview with Harley Claes,

author of Hedonists' Heaven

Hedonists’ Heaven features a dazzling array of syntactical & poetic tricks; what poetic device(s) do you favor, & why do you think that is? 

CLAES: I really just pursue poetry as play but like all art, my poetry manifests as a form of therapeutic expression, I often inject subconscious symbolism and metaphor with interpretative landscapes into each of my poems. I like using words that complement each other on the tongue, and flow like a script. 

Your poems about the underground, in particular, often feel balanced between acceptance and resignation; how do you walk that line? 

CLAES: I think in part it is due to the complacency one feels when becoming accustomed to a lifestyle that doesn’t fulfill one’s needs, but when stuck in survival mode and navigating seemingly unchangeable circumstances- an artist must cope in the only way they know how: by creating art. It really became a matter of romanticizing my circumstances for me in order to make something beautiful come from something so ugly. 

In Pacifist in a punk house, you expose the snare of bad love. What do you wish you had known then—that you know now? What protective armor do you wear, since that time?

CLAES: I wish I had known then that you cannot heal the void of a loveless entanglement with substances, it fills the void temporarily but then when you wake up the next day, you have to keep filling that endless void- because when you don’t, the emptiness persists. You see reality for what it really is, and it’s scary. Substances are a bandage, but it won’t sew the wound shut. I wish I knew the long-term damage of narcissistic abuse as well, those things are never to be taken lightly. They affect everyone involved- a domino effect that leaves long term ruin in its wake. The Holy Erotic Armageddon collection actually predated pacifist in a punk house, and they both capture two different unhealthy romantic arrangements I was involved in. They overlapped in many ways. The abuse was persistent. Altogether those entanglements formed a trauma wound that persists to this day, but since then I have escaped and I was lucky enough to find a love that allowed me to let my barriers down. 

What scares you most: a broken home or a broken heart? If neither, why? 

CLAES: When you love someone you make a home of their heart, you go to love to heal from the circumstances you were born into, but you end up replaying the same old concepts you witnessed as a child. The broken home you came from is a blueprint, a foundation you build the rest of your life on without even realizing it. There is a lot to unlearn there. What I can say is I never want to build a broken home like the one I had for my future children. I have healed from a broken heart- but I have never healed from my broken home. 

Hedonists’ Heaven at once renders male desire as an invasion & as a play—where the roles played inform the desire itself. How do you accept the “burden” of male desire, both when it is not wanted & when it is wanted? 

CLAES: I could never fully accept it, so I had to escape it. Through substances, through infidelity, through homelessness.. But most importantly through art. My journal was my most passionate affair. There was no one else I could confide in as honestly as the page. So when I couldn’t escape my own reality, I escaped inside of myself. 

There is a body/soul split in your work—though it is most present in Circa de Cabaret. To you, what does it mean to have a body? What does it mean to have a soul? How do you safeguard one, the other, or both? 

CLAES: The body is such a fleeting thing, but the soul is forever, in my philosophy. I find it important to disassociate my body from my soul in being a dancer, it helps me protect who I am from who I am perceived to be. I never want these men to taint my authenticity. So I hide who I am through an alter ego. “Nadia,” who later then became “Mia” is a seductress. Meanwhile I'm just a girl who has done her studying. Most girls in the business devise these alter egos because it’s unsafe to actually divulge who you really are to these men. They are predators. They are adulterers with a wife and children at home. They are abusers who hide behind their mask of money. But most of the time they are just lonely. And lonely men can do desperate things in an attempt to secure a woman they want but can never obtain. 

Your collection tracks an experiential current; in your poetic narratives, you wade towards—& struggle against—various experiences. Are we defined by our experiences, or do we give them meaning? 

CLAES: I think we are formed by our experiences, and that they inherently have meanings that represent a larger picture, a larger lesson to be learned. We can make our own meanings, but the universe has a cruel and weird way of teaching us things. I’m also a firm believer that all things go back to our childhood, until that sliver of childhood is healed. 

Hedonists’ Heaven is full of reclamation—of aesthetics, of places, of identities. What benefit do you, personally, find in reclamation? 

CLAES: It helps me to take experiences out of my control and make them my own, like putty. The whole world is our canvas, but it's a matter of how we perceive it. 

Would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist?

CLAES: I revolve between both. I’m usually an optimist, I think of everything as an opportunity to better myself. But my past definitely leaves the echo of pessimism in my perspective. It’s hard to rewrite your life in favor of unfamiliar realities. 

The Holy Erotic Armageddon booklet ends on a stunning, religious icon: “Cease the fire, / i’ve earned no sympathy behind these closed doors inside of me / Where the gas has lit, I have laid.” What does that last line mean to you?

CLAES: This one was about being so accustomed to abuse, you live with its impact. You try to make peace with the fact that this is your life now, this is the grave you have dug. “I was wasting away my time sitting, simmering, complaining like a sickling who formed her own sickroom” this line was about taking wrongful responsibility for my own trapped circumstances. If you’ve ever experienced a narcissistic relationship, you know that in the end you escape from the abuse, you don’t just leave. When you are coping with horrors that are almost too horrible to speak aloud, you learn to live with them in silence, you compartmentalize your pain. I was also not an innocent party in the relationship, I had my own horrors. But that is the result of becoming accustomed to the pain, no one ever comes out unscathed.