The first introduces the concept of hampir, the Indonesian word for “almost”, which features in the original title of the collection and is translated as “mostly” in the English version. In this context, hampir represents the state of being close to happiness but always falling just short: “To almost get in, to be almost accepted, to be almost there”. The epigraph goes on to describe this state as being perilously close to vampir (vampire) “a bloodsucking demon”—a force we see as both acting upon the characters in the collection and in some ways representing the “monstrous” condition they themselves occupy by existing in the liminal space between happiness and sadness, between “human” and “other”. The stories within this collection are characterized by that “almost”, by that lack, by that seemingly unbridgeable gap.
The book then opens with a quote from the late Amy Winehouse:
You’re pisces, it means you’re gay.
Here is the counterbalance to the hampir/vampir: irreverent pop culture moments embedded within online and modern queer culture. These stories are painful but also playful. Between these two states, Pasaribu carves out an alternate queer tradition which sensitively depicts queer suffering but also gestures to something more.
A key element of this collection is clearly that happiness for queer people is made difficult by the constraints of a society which caters to and “celebrates disneyfied heterosexualities”. However, what interests me about the hampir is that while there is ambivalence associated with a happiness that is just out of reach, there is also potential in that “almost”: in every story, we see a glimpse of what happiness could look like, though these characters are routinely denied it, and shown that these “disneyfied heterosexualities” are not fit for purpose.
In Happy Stories, Mostly, Pasaribu weaves together references to popular culture, mysticism—astrology in the case of the Amy Winehouse quote above—and contemporary queer culture, as well as Batak folklore, religion and philosophy to fashion a new queer history which calls back to and reclaims an existing cultural canon. Writing over and above existing narratives, Pasaribu has created a queer palimpsest.
Myth and folk figures, including Enkidu and The Golden Turtle God, are cast alongside queer cult media such as the film Brokeback Mountain, the album Blue by Joni Mitchell and pop icons like Madonna and Mariah Carey.
Pasaribu has also been widely recognized as a queer Catholic writer, and faith and Christianity are also recurring motifs in this new collection of stories. Biblical stories and figures are frequently intertwined with other narratives, but religion is portrayed quite ambivalently in Happy Stories, Mostly. There are clear moments of parody and occasional anger which represent the disillusionment many sexually marginalized people can feel towards organized religion (exemplified most keenly in the story “Welcome to the Department of Unanswered Prayers”). However, even in these instances, there is a kind of correspondence between the biblical and the queer to situate queerness within faith.
For example, “Three Love You, Four Despise You”, one of the shortest stories in the collection, focuses on the Jesus-less crucifix in an unnamed man’s room. It’s implied that he broke the figure off himself because “he kind of wanted to take revenge and get back at the man”. The Jesus figurine, which has been thrown under the bed, comes alive and suffers from loneliness and the harsh temperatures imposed by “the master of the room”.
He wonders why there isn’t another crucifix in the room, so another cross-less man can keep him company. Now, in his mind, he designs a garden. Now in his mind, he draws himself. Now, in his mind, he is a figure, moving, plunging his hand inside himself, kneading one of his ribs and molding someone identical to himself; someone who knows how to truly understand him. How stupid of him, not to realize that he’s made of limestone, not tiresome red flesh and blood and pale skin and bone, liable to be stolen or recycled.
In this lyrical passage, we see the figurine attempt to reinvent itself: it yearns for male companionship, and seeks to escape the unforgiving “tundra wasteland” it inhabits on the floor by drawing, designing and moulding—all creative endeavours. Pasaribu intermixes further biblical references, folding in the story of Adam and Eve by referencing the garden and the kneading of the ribs. All of this is reminiscent of the kind of escapism sought by other queer characters in the collection, and thus connects God, or the symbol of God, to these characters. I find the last line particularly interesting: though it appears to mock the figure of Jesus—even the big man himself is not spared from the pain of hampir and unfulfilled desire—it seems pertinent to note that the idea of stealing and recycling applies to stories, also. Jesus is refigured, recast in the image of the unnamed gay man who rents the room and the other lonely protagonists in the collection. When we are powerless and borne by what seems to us a senseless fate, we write a new story for ourselves in order to survive and have our own words documented. In Pasaribu’s hands, a new, imaginative queer history draws upon and stretches beyond the existing narratives. But it also seems to say that no cultural references are off limits, that even the most sacred belongs within and can be appropriated for queer narratives.
Pasaribu is forthcoming about recognising the power of such storytelling and the need to invent and (re)invent stories in service of a queer history in an interview with translator Tiffany Tsao:
Layered stories, with their endless connections to other or older texts, work damn well with queer narratives. I mean, we need to invent our own new histories because our own histories have often been erased and fiction is just the way for that.
Here Pasaribu seems to suggest that the invention of a new queer history depends on revitalizing these established texts, both to belong to and reclaim a longer literary, cultural and religious lineage, and because these multi-layered stories are the perfect vessels to convey multiple queer narratives. It is not enough to say that Pasaribu swaps out heterosexual characters for queer characters in traditional love stories; at its core, this collection is concerned with creating, writing and expanding beyond the cookie-cutter narratives fed to us. To queer the norm, it peels back the stories we are familiar with, revealing hidden potential histories that exist outside of the cultural paradigm.
The “layered stories” Pasaribu describes appear throughout Happy Stories, Mostly. Many of the stories reference and mirror each other, at times intersecting, and names and character tropes are borrowed and duplicated across stories, creating a wider literary universe. They also take the form of nested narratives, such as in “A Bedtime Story for Your Long Sleep”, where the unnamed writer tells us the story of “Alarm Man”—a tragic oral history which he conveys to his creative writing class. Drawing our attention to the process of writing in a different way, the protagonist of “Her Story” “feels herself to be nothing more than a Homo fictus” and muses at length about her creator/the writer writing her story.
One nested narrative of particular interest in this collection is “The True Story of the Story of the Giant”. The protagonist, Henri, becomes obsessed with the urban legend of Parulian Si Halak Ganjang, “a man who kept growing until he attained a height of nearly 30 rijnlandse roeden (the author had even been pretentious enough to use a colonial Dutch measurement) or approximately 111 meters”, after discovering his story in a gay community newsletter. This obsession leads him to befriend Tunggul, a star student in his university classes who is writing his thesis on Parulian’s story, and they become close. Their friendship develops around the story, and Henri, who had previously been failing his course, finally finds a purpose. When Tunggul takes his own life because Henri does not reciprocate his romantic feelings, Henri rewrites the story:
And I decided to write a story about Parulian Si Halak Ganjang. Not a history. Not even a secret history. Something like a tale. So I wouldn’t have to try so hard to stay true to what happened or what hadn’t happened — just to what I had to say as the story’s writer.
Though this desire not to be bound by “what happened or what hadn’t happened” seems at odds with the title, which promises us “The True Story of the Story of the Giant”, what this desire does is challenge what we accept as truth in storytelling. It suggests that what is true is not always based on facts and that stories, particularly layered stories like folk tales and myths, are valuable not for their factual accuracy but what they reveal about ourselves and our sense of identity. Their value also lies in giving the author space to say what they have to say as a writer, as a creator—a particularly important thing when they are from an often silenced, marginalized group whose history has been erased. In this case, something new and self-created must fill this space.
Translator Tiffany Tsao has said that one of the things she finds so invigorating about Pasaribu’s writing and stories is “the extent to which queerness is woven through every aspect”. Through her skilful translation, this essential queerness—which goes beyond subject matter—is made visible to an English-speaking audience. The intermixing of new and old and the refiguring of myths and biblical stories act to reclaim history and include and make visible queer stories, even if they can’t yet be happy ones. Though Happy Stories, Mostly is a relatively slim volume, it is wide-reaching in scope and integrates mythical, religious and cultural elements in a way that is inventive and powerful, “queering the norm” in manifold ways.
