Perversion the Social Relation

"As If Set Free into Another Land" 167from the idea of being able to dominate someone with a supposedly superiorpotency. And when he can't dominate Nat sexually, he reassertshis own superiority by calling attention to Nat's legal powerlessness asa slave. Consequently, this scene lacks any evidence of the eroticizationof sexual sameness that Nat experiences with Willis. Eppes wants touse sexuality to reinforce slavery's hierarchy of differences and also getssexual pleasure from the exploitation of those differences.In addition to showing us that homo-ness is a unique, and perhaps uncommon,phenomenon, because not all same-sex relations are characterizedby the willful subordination of interpersonal differences in the nameof sexual sameness, the novel also reminds us that homo-ness when itdoes occur is not always automatically political in nature. Even whenhomo-ness does represent the main component of same-sex relations,homosexuality is not necessarily opposed in an active sense to the dominantarrangements of hierarchical differences. In the scene of Nat's encounterwith Willis, their mutual orgasm gives Nat a brief glimpse ofa world defined by total emancipation, but it also ironically creates anarrative interruption that threatens to alter or halt the course of Nat'sprogression toward insurrection. Although Nat has not yet figuredoutexactly what his calling is at this moment, he feels that God has chosenhim for some reason. Yet his encounter with Willis presents him withthe opportunity to digress from that chosen path and hide from his destiny.Moments after the two men climax together on the bank of thestream, Willis "murmurs" contentedly to Nat: "Man, I sho liked dat.Want to do it agin?" (204). Willis wants to repeat the pleasure of theircontact and presents Nat with what is actually a very important decisionfor him to make. If he reenters Willis's embrace, he risks forminga private relationship that will potentially limit his ability to fulfill anylarger purpose ordained for him as a chosen disciple of God. As a gaycouple, Nat and Willis would occupy a safe and satisfying bubble of privateliberation on the Turner plantation, but leave intact the structure ofthe slave institution. Homo-ness may possess antisocial or outlaw tendenciesbecause of its paradoxical intolerance for the hierarchical relationsthat enable it, but the sexually transcendental scene also testifiesto the dangers of forming an emotive relationship in place of a politicalcommunity. Linking Nat and Willis through their recognition of anerotic, shared sameness, the repetition of the act would present Nat withthe chance to "settle down," as it were, and find a kind of contentment