Blackouts

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 6 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 6: “The Cage of Voices”

Part 6, Pages 253-270 Summary

A dying Juan receives visitors, implied to be hallucinations. Nene mentions “blackouts follow,” but is unclear as to who suffers them. Juan’s visitors tell him snippets of stories, which he struggles to remember. He briefly experiences sexual arousal; Nene compliments his appearance, which Juan can’t clearly recall, but fears leaving him to find a mirror. He wishes to be with Juan when he dies to both comfort him and out of “macabre curiosity.”

A painting depicts a man with large hands in a cell. He reaches toward light filtering through a barred window.

Nene’s mind drifts as Juan speaks with his visitors, waiting for night and his turn to speak with Juan. At night, they discuss Juan’s “travels,” unclear memories of “technically” dying.

Juan mumbles, Nene only able to understand him due to their closeness. Juan “comes round,” upset to find himself having conversations he can’t recall.

Nene urges Juan to try to remember the reasons that he was sent to the psychiatric hospital. Juan can’t remember Nene, instead hallucinating his mother and a muscled man.

Nene presses for details as Juan tells a story about Thom going to the movies and having his first sexual experience with a man. Nene’s confidence wavers, and he confesses a vague fear: Tentative about death, he attempts to learn Juan’s wishes for burial, but Juan replies nonsensically about getting out of bed and Jan preparing for an interview.

In a dream, Nene hears someone approaching and detects an antiseptic smell. He realizes he is alone and fears Juan has died. Then, he wakes to find Juan beside him.

Juan recalls a woman bathing him for pictures, which will be taken by doctors. Nene struggles to follow Juan’s flow of conversation as he quotes Pearl, a subject in the Sex Variants study, regarding how she was conceived by sexual assault.

Juan tells Nene about a dream confession from a woman named Yetta, who breaks up with her girlfriend after learning of her infidelity.

Juan reports meeting a man “in the deep” (270), his dreams. The man, Victor, invites him to leave the room, making sex puns that elicit laughter. Victor leads Juan to a glowing doorknob, laughing when he calls the material “gunmetal.”

Part 6, Pages 271-282 Summary

Juan becomes less lucid and speaks in Spanish, the words reminding Nene of his own family even though he can’t understand them. Nene recalls a time when his aunt and her infant lived with his family, and how his aunt sobbed with exhaustion. Recalling his mother’s advice, he learns to sleep when Juan sleeps. He holds Juan’s hand, musing that the only other man’s hand he’s held as an adult was Liam’s. Nene dreams of attending a fair with his father, communicating through hand squeezes. In the present, he squeezes Juan’s hand, pleased when Juan squeezes back.

Nene organizes Juan’s possessions to distract himself from Juan’s decline. He finds a quiz designed to indicate connection to masculinity or femininity. He creates a “poem of perversion” out of his affirmative answers (275), which he hides in a pair of Juan’s pants, all of which he has tried on.

A black paper contains white cutouts with typewritten words: The header reads “The Masculinity-Femininity Test” with “yes” or “no” questions beneath (276).

Nene wakes to see a copy of Who’s Afraid? affixed with a note that says “Know thyself.” He falls back asleep.

Nene and Juan have a conversation (either in a dream or reality) in which Juan describes the “scandal” of deciding which dress to bury his mother in. He wants to bury his mother in a simple dress and sell her expensive dress, while his sister considers this disrespectful. Nene wishes to have him “back [for] good” (278), which Juan dismisses.

Nene startles, briefly frozen by the feeling of being restrained. He jolts again, this time truly waking. Beside him, Juan has died.

Nene returns to a happy memory of Juan, where Nene holds a frame in front of his face, pretending to be a mirror, mimicking Juan’s movements. Juan teases Nene about his appearance and holds him tight.

Part 6 Analysis

In Part 6: “The Cage of Voices,” Juan is trapped in the titular cage, inundated by hallucinated “visitors.” This section is an extended death, and as it approaches, it becomes difficult to focus on anything but. This proves true for both Juan, who is rarely lucid, and Nene, who fears missing Juan’s final moment. Nene thus becomes a deathbed attendant even as Juan’s hallucinations pull him into the role of confessor rather than penitent. The visitors’ histories are met with absolution by Juan’s inability to remember them, though this supposed forgiveness is not entirely positive, given the novel’s attention to reclaiming (In)Complete Narratives and Quotations and Intertextuality in Queer History-Making. After his education from Juan, Nene recognizes the importance of recovering these stories, and takes up Juan’s role. He urges Juan to tell stories in order, without skipping details or getting lost in asides. His new role as history-keeper implies the necessity of maintaining oral histories, particularly those that suffer erasure.

After the novel formally ends, with Juan deceased and Nene taking his place as history-keeper, Nene gains technical control over the novel’s form as Juan did in Part 5. The extended “Blinkered Endnotes” offers an annotated bibliography of all the images in the novel. Instead of writing this bibliography academically, Torres presents it as commentary by Nene. This suggests the novel and Torres himself are part of the queer history that Blackouts seeks to reclaim.