NO HOLDS BARRED by JP Seabright

Lupercalia Press, 2021

JP Seabright's No Holds Barred (Lupercalia Press, 2021) is a queer diary of misadventures in love and sex. In this autobiographical collection of fiction spliced with poetry, an unnamed protagonist parties, enjoys kink, and falls (sometimes disastrously) in and out of love. These stories, like desire itself, are at times tangled, messy, and joyous. 

Seabright’s expression of queer desire is hard fought. The protagonist of these stories must overcome "so many fears" to orgasm, and struggles to address their shame about being in a queer relationship, even joining a church to be "forgiven." They vacillate between confidence and uncertainty, declaring, "I will/my desires into being ... years of shame & confusion/slip like scales from my ophidian skin.". Even amidst uncertainty, however, they insist on shedding their shame by force of will. 

While this chapbook mainly focuses on one individual's sexual and romantic experiences, some of my favorite moments included glimpses of a broader queer community. In one scene, the protagonist finds the "debris of the housemates' various gender and sexual proclivities" (including a binder and a leather harness) in the bathroom of a shared flat, then notes cheekily, "I've bumped into most of Queer East London coming in and out of that bathroom in the last few months." But their thirst for community is not easily quenched - in the last story of the collection, the protagonist still yearns for “company, excitement, to be surrounded and accepted by “my people.”  

The often-humorous tone of No Holds Barred sometimes slides into something like Hollywood noir: The narrator is fast-talking, wisecracking: "If only I had a hangover, at least then I'd have an excuse for self-abuse, but instead I've got hang-ups which aren't so easy to sleep off." They slink around the city alone, smoking cigarettes. A girl entering a corner shop is described cinematically: "I raise my eyes again, slowly, nervously, hoping." That moment of looking, when "she has not moved away," feels climatic, brimming with the potential of what comes next. In "Vertigo," noir sours to violent melodrama, when the protagonist is killed by their lover and continues to tell their story after death. They recount their last seconds of life in sensations: “I felt that same shiver down my spine, that same weakening of my knees, that same dizziness in my head as the first time I kissed you.”

In case it's not yet clear, these stories are not tame, and they're not concerned with politeness or respectability. They include internalized homophobia, explicit sex and language, and violence. As the protagonist says,"I want the opportunity to explore, invent, and reinvent myself. Freedom. Sexual awakening. I want to do all ... the things you’d never do on a date because they’re too physically intimate, too raw, too much too soon." The title No Holds Barred is right for this chapbook: Seabright isn't holding anything back.