Cottonmouth Kisses by Clint Catalyst

photo by Kate Romero

Probably the best thing about this book by Clint Catalyst is its title: Cottonmouth Kisses. Wonderfully multivalent and punning, it manages to perfectly convey the mix of drugged-up, misplaced passion and tenderly venomous (auto)eroticism that dominates the text. Though billed as fiction on its back cover, the book is a hybrid of short stories and poetry, an amalgam that recapitulates one of the more interesting questions that a close reading of the text evokes: is this fiction or non-fiction?

This question is immediately brought to the forefront in the first—and, to me—most interesting tale, a quick and brutal dip into goth-punk nightlife that ends in an interesting (though somewhat sophomoric) frisson of self-examination. The tale’s supra-natural premise and intensely hot central encounter had me hooked right up ‘til the end, which is when I realized what the little note on the book’s back cover probably should have read: confessional.

Now, this is no “forgive me, Father, for I have sinned” autobiography, nor is it a bleakly poetic paean to the darker side of the psyche à la Plath and Bishop. (Catalyst’s poetry will never be so fondly remembered.) Rather, it seems like a kind of log of self-transformation more or less thinly veiled in the guise of fiction. Catalyst has written what he knows, and I’m glad he’s learned a thing or two about his life. In fact, had I read this book at 19, I might have found it infinitely more interesting than I do now. Overall his view of his past comes across as something of a morality tale, one that might have been more honestly marketed as an autobiography.

Though the prose does constitute the stronger half of the book, it’s also the part where this self-judgment comes across most strongly. The disappointment of the book’s opening tale, “Some New Kind of Kick,” lies, for me, in the fact that instead of reveling in the story’s central encounter, the protagonist (i.e. Clint Catalyst) ends up viewing it in an admittedly fascinating dynamic of self-voyeurism, through disgusted eyes. This revulsion gradually became emblematic of a strain of conservatism woven throughout the book that I found surprising coming from such a subcultural icon.

I had an especially difficult time with the poetry. Though occasionally shining forth some venomously visceral lines (“then spat out a laugh and a / dark yellow lung creature that / clung to her lips as she spattered / stared stuttered stammered”), it reads for the most part like broken-backed prose. In other words, the great majority of the pieces remind me of the tired old argument of opponents of free verse that without meter and rhyme, poetry becomes little more than prose hacked into little pieces. Catalyst’s poetics would seem to be one place where these arguments are, regrettably, correct.

However, I must admit that the book has inspired a certain amount of self-analysis, and that, I suppose, is one of the finest things a text can aspire to.

In the end, I would say that if you have a history in goth subculture, drug use and/or queerdom (guilty on all counts) you might find this a fascinating and worthwhile read. Otherwise, you might prefer to skip it.