SF-TH Inc Born to Be Bron: Destiny and Destinerrance in Samuel R. Delany's Trouble on Triton Author(s): Wendy Gay Pearson Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 36, No. 3 (November 2009), pp. 461-477 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40649548 . Accessed: 22/10/2014 05:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:04:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DESTINY AND DEST1NERRANCEIN TRITON 46 1 WendyGay Pearson Born to Be Bron: Destiny and Destinerrancein Samuel R. Delany's Troubleon Triton "Biologyis destiny."- anonymous "Thereare certain things that just have to be done.And when you come to them,if you're a man... youjust have to do them."- SamuelR. Delany,Trouble on Triton(241) What (Real) Men Do. Bron,the protagonist of SamuelR. Delany's Troubleon Triton(1976), has, as indicatedin myepigraph, quite strong feelings about what it is mendo and shoulddo. Of course,it is probablyappropriate to modifythis comment,which occurs at a crucialpoint in thenarrative, with Delany' s own observationthat Bron is a "hatefulman," largely because he "manufacture^] perfectlyfanciful motivations for whateveryone else is doing" in orderto rationalizehis own behavior {Trouble 312). Thequestion is, then, whether Bron' s statementabout male obligationfunctions as an ideologicalcommitment or as another fanciful motivation, this time for himself. But the answer- unsurprisingly,given the ambiguity noted in thenovel's subtitle, "An AmbiguousHeterotopia" - is thatthese rationales are inextricably imbricated with each other. Bronis an immigranttothe capital city of Tethys on Triton from the relatively conservativeworld of Mars,where he workedas a prostitutefor a clienteleof olderwomen. Bron' s storyplays out against the backdrop of a (mainlyeconomic) warof independence between the outer satellites and the inner planets (Earth and Mars), whichescalates to a singleday of violencein which70% of Earth's populationis killedwhile a smallnumber of Tritonians die as a resultof gravity fluctuationswithin Tethys' s Shield.Early in thestory, Bron meets and becomes infatuatedwith a womannamed Spike, head of a theatertroupe; given the opportunity,Bron joins a delegationto Earth,led by his housemateSam, a Tritonianpolitician, because Spike and her troupe are performing there. Bron is brieflyarrested and interrogratedby Earth police; back on Triton,Bron exaggerateshis experiencesof thegravity fluctuation into a tale of heroismin whichhe rescueshis boss, Audri,her coop mates,and theirchildren. Spike's refusalto acceptBron' s desireto be thecenter of herlife leads himto tryto remedyhis unhappinessthrough an act of heroicself-sacrifice - by pursuing genderand sexual-orientationreassignment in orderto become the kind of submissiveheterosexual woman that he himselfseeks. Ironically, he hopesin the process to insurethe survivalof the ideological principleof masculinist heterosexismhe defendsin theepigraph above. Bronmakes this statement about men having to do whathas tobe doneto his friendLawrence immediately after his sex change.As manycommentators have noted,Bron is verymuch a misfitin the polymorphously fluid social ordering that is Triton'sversion of heterotopia. Instead, he harks back to an era- onethat never This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:04:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 462 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 36 (2009) existedon Tritonat all and is verymuch a nostalgicfantasy on his part- when men were men and womenwere thereto worshipand admirethem. As a heterosexualman on Triton (and it is apparentthat, on Triton, "heterosexual" does notequate to heteronormative), Bron' s misfortuneis that he desires a womanwho willadopt this position relative to his own assumption of masculinity. Lawrence, withwhom Bron lives in a non-specificall-male co-op (itslack of specificityis incontrast with co-ops that cater exclusively to heterosexuals, gay men, etc.), tells Bronthat yourprobem is ... thatessentially you are a logicalpervert, looking for a woman witha mutuallycompatible logical perversion. The fact is, the mutual perversion youare looking for is very,very rare - ifnot nonexistent. You're looking for someonewho can enjoy a certainsort of logical masochism. Ifit were just sexual, you'dhave no problem finding a partner atall. Hang them from the ceiling, burn theirnipples with matches, stick pins in their buttocks and cane them bloody! There'regaggles of women,just as thereare gaggles of men,who would be delightedto have a six-foot,blond iceberg like you around to play such games with.(212-13; emphasis in original) Havingdefined what Bron wants from a womanthrough a seriesof oxymorons ("run-around-in-circles-while-you-walk-a-straight-line")anddenounced it as the onething no womanis goingto put up with,"especially when it's outof bed and simplyhas no hopeof pleasurable feedback," Lawrence adds that it is fortunate thatBron' s "particularperversion today is extemelyrare" (213). Estimatingthat at mostone in fivethousand women would be interestedin beingthe woman Bronwants, Lawrence notes that men with Bron' s logicalperversion are perhaps one in fifty.Largely as a rhetoricalflourish for the benefitof the novel's contemporaryreader, however, Lawrence then contextualizes his commentsby addingthat this perversion's rarity in their era is "quiteamazing, considering that itonce wasjust about as commonas theability to growa beard"(213). In other words,what Bron wants is whatvirtually every heterosexual male is assumedto want(especially when the novel was written),making his desiresseem, to the contemporaryreader, indistinguishable from those of the "average Joe." GuyDavidson has commented in a veryinsightful essay that the "interrelation ofsexual identity, sexual desire, and statistics is a centralconcern of Triton" and that the multiplicityof sexual types on Tritonis both an extensionof contemporarystatistical thinking and a refusalof the(hetero)normativity that statisticsare used to justify (104).1 One ofTriton's more strikingly heterotopian aspectsis itsprofusion of genders and sexualities; combining the predilection of statisticsfor the proliferation ofcategories with Triton's insistence on rendering thesocial through logical and mathematical predictors (instanced both by Ashima Slade's modularcalculus and Bron's workas a metalogician),the result is, as Davidsonnotes, an inevitablemovement toward "the distinctively 'postmodern' fragmentationand labilityof identity"(104). Whilethis is certainlythe context in whichLawrence, an oldergay man,offers his insightsto Bron,it is also apparentthat his statisticsare not altogether accurate. If indeedone manin fifty suffersfrom Bron' s logicalperversion (that is, the desire to be a patriarchalmale withina binarysystem in whichmen are human and women are not), then Bron This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:04:44 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DESTINYAND DESTINERRANCE IN TRITON 463 shouldhave no difficulyfinding a mateafter her sex change.Indeed, given the rarityof women like Bron, men like Bron should be flockingto her.But instead, Bronends up aloneand possibly psychotic. It is one thingto knowthat Bron' s sex changedoes not- and cannot- have its desiredresult; it is quite anotherto contemplatethis in relationto Bron's statementtoLawrence, immediately after the operation, that there are some things a manjust has to do. Indeed,one ofthe novel's major ironies is thatit is Bron's viewof what men have to do thatleads himto becomea woman- an actthat is, inhis mind, the ultimate sacrifice, since he refuses to credit women as human.His sexchange is significantlymotivated by his insistence to Lawrence that "[w]omen don'tunderstand. Faggots don't understand either" (214). Havingjust returned froma tripto Earth, with which Triton is atwar, Bron makes it very clear through his actionsthat he is at once almosthysterically emotional and somethingof a coward,thus rendering satirical his insistenceon his masculinebravery, his supposedability to do whatis necessaryfor the "survival of thespecies." His argumentwith Lawrence about what it means to be Bron(i.e., a "man"from his ownperspective and a "logicalsadist" from Lawrence's) finally prompts Bron intoa desperaterush to theclinic where he has hisphysical sex changedand his desiresrefixated (to the "female plurality configuration" [229], which is basically femaleheterosexuality). He is, in hisown mind, doing what is necessaryfor the survivalof the species - nothaving understood, either from experience or from theconversation in whichLawrence spells it out to him,that, in fact,the human speciesas Bronunderstands it no longerexists. After the operation, Bron tells Lawrence: Humanity.They used to call it"mankind." And I rememberreading once that somewomen objected to thatas too exclusive.Basically, though, it wasn't exclusiveenough!