What first struck me about
Vaughn’s reintroduction into the story is what it indicated about the
chronology of the piece. In the
opening pages of Crash, Ballard’s
ruminates on Vaughn’s death. We
know, therefore, that Vaughn influenced Ballard and that his death will plan an
integral role in the story.
Ballard’s relationship with
Vaughn is at times sexual. “This
absence made a sexual act with Vaughn entirely possible… The placing of my
penis in his rectum as we lay together in the rear seat of his car would be an
event as stylized…as those in [his] photographs.” (103) At another instant,
Ballard finds himself staring at Vaughn’s penis while the two are peeing,
curious to see if his partner had similar scars as the ones on his own
penis. In a story in which the
character’s sexualities are so closely linked with the mechanisms of cars, I
don’t find it at all odd that Ballard would be attracted to both men and
women. Although Ballard
understands his attraction to Vaughn to be an exceptional case, I don’t see how
his attraction to Vaughn is any different from his attraction to Helen or
Catherine. Ballard is excited by
the way human’s interact with their cars regardless of sex.
When Vaughn appears in the second
part of our reading, I expected Ballard to emulate Vaughn’s behavior, but it’s
clear that Ballard had already developed a sexuality of his own before meeting
Vaughn. In fact, most of the
characters involved in the story developed their unusual behaviors independent
of Vaughn. Vaughn does, however, come
across as a teacher-like character: like the one among them that understands
most deeply their mechanical sexualities.
“Vaughn stood at my shoulder, like an instructor ready to help a
promising pupil.” (102) But Ballard does not speak of Vaughn with reverie, but
with a sense of caution: “Vaughn had frightened me. The callous way in which he had exploited Seagrave… warned
me that he would probably go to any length to take advantage of the immediate
situation around him.” (106)
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