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My Mark
40 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1982
127 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Cooper
109 books1,790 followersDennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953. He grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 16, 2024
Perfection. First published as a stand-alone short story, then as a part of Cooper's first novel Safe and later in the short story collection Wrong, "My Mark" is a stellar meditation on desire and strongly rooted in Cooper's earlier work as a lyrical poet. The narrator is a writer named Dennis (ha!), and he thinks back on his complex relationship with beautiful, young Mark Lewis, ruminating about his feelings and the psychological movements he has experienced. The text radiates melancholy and cooperesque imagery, especially in the sex scenes which ponder the attempt to explore consciousness and connection by crossing physical boundaries, thus blurring the concept of interiority. Beautifully written, and George Miles (who will later inspire the five-part George Miles Cycle as well as its coda I Wished) also makes an appearence (though not by name).
A fascinating piece, especially when read in context of Cooper's later work that ventures further into the transgressive.
A fascinating piece, especially when read in context of Cooper's later work that ventures further into the transgressive.
June 20, 2014
A masterpiece. An early work, but it holds up as one of Dennis Cooper's finest and most lyrical pieces. Beautifully maps the distance from the loved one, ruthlessly taking apart both the object of desire and the watcher's inadequate gaze.
(Later incorporated into the novel 'Safe' and included as part of the collection 'Wrong').
(Later incorporated into the novel 'Safe' and included as part of the collection 'Wrong').
January 4, 2025
Dennis Cooper’s “My Mark” is rich but brief, warm but haunting, a reflection, a series of ruminations and could-have-beens, the compiled feelings and thoughts that come to reside within a person following the end of a relationship. Cooper examines desire, what it means to love someone and how this love can sometimes be more of a reflection of the subject than the object, and does this through meditation one of his own ended relationships. The story seamlessly combines erotica and romance, speaking to the inner workings of his sexual and romantic desires towards his former lover, Mark. Cooper essentially walks the reader through an old journal, complete with erotic fantasies and private mementos, guiding the reader through his past and into his present.
“My Mark” does not speak to regret, or to mistakes that should have been corrected, but rather to the nature of what it means to love someone, and how this desire works. In the first half of the story, Dennis exists as a sort of spectator. He imagines Mark’s past, only interjecting these fictions to tell stories from their shared time together, before they returned to being strangers. The second half of the story focuses on this shared reality, rather than these imagined tricks and dates that Mark was in. Although the first half is completely different from the latter story in terms of tone and content, it helps the reader build the image of Mark that existed within Cooper’s memory. Throughout the story, Cooper speaks to the inadequacies of “love”. To Cooper, love does not lead to understanding. Cooper’s love of Mark was more so a collection of feelings that were “aimed” at Mark, and when he revisits their time together he speaks on the ways in which Mark’s beauty and Cooper’s own feelings obfuscated Mark’s real being. The story is a retracing of steps, now with time having passed and Cooper being able to better make sense of his own feelings, he attempts to see Mark and their relationship through a new lens.
It’s like picking up an old photograph from a long time ago. You see your own smiling face, and the face of a person that was very important to you, but the context of the photo is completely different now. Cooper alludes to this idea repeatedly throughout the story. He speaks on mementos from his and Mark’s time together, how their meaning has changed to him. The story is a sort of investigation, and at the same time an explanation, of their relationship. Cooper examines Mark, his beauty and sexuality in the first half, and their time together in the second half, focusing on his own preoccupations and attractions that directed him to and eventually away from Mark. I’m hesitant to use this word “examine”, because Cooper does not seek to correct their relationship, rather he attempts to understand his own desire, who he was during their time together, and who Mark really was.
Although there’s very little pain expressed by Cooper, very little regret or resentment held by him, the story still remains full of longing, and has the same sort of hollow sadness that remains when seeing a photo of a long gone lover, or in the act of a wound scarring over. The first half of the story attempts to describe Mark’s beauty through dreamlike erotica, pulling the reader into Cooper’s desire towards Mark, and the second half begins to examine what this desire really was. Even though in the time of Cooper writing this story, he had not known Mark for some time (or perhaps never really knew him, as Cooper expresses), he still returns to photos, letters, diary entries, to reexamine their time together and to finally give their relationship closure. The story is really about coming to this sort of closure in a roundabout way, but it is not the closure of confronting that the relationship has ended, but instead coming to terms with what the relationship was, the best way that he can. And although at times he brings up regrets and reminiscences, they are necessary to arrive at this understanding.
Overall I was and remain deeply moved by this story. It’s so much more than just an examination of desire or an autopsy of a failed relationship, Cooper’s intimate prose and approach towards beauty takes the story from beyond masturbatory wallowing and into deep reflection about his life, what Mark meant to him, and what it means to love someone. I encourage anyone looking to begin reading Cooper to start here, as it provides a great introduction to his style and many of the themes that he explores throughout his full body of work.
“My Mark” does not speak to regret, or to mistakes that should have been corrected, but rather to the nature of what it means to love someone, and how this desire works. In the first half of the story, Dennis exists as a sort of spectator. He imagines Mark’s past, only interjecting these fictions to tell stories from their shared time together, before they returned to being strangers. The second half of the story focuses on this shared reality, rather than these imagined tricks and dates that Mark was in. Although the first half is completely different from the latter story in terms of tone and content, it helps the reader build the image of Mark that existed within Cooper’s memory. Throughout the story, Cooper speaks to the inadequacies of “love”. To Cooper, love does not lead to understanding. Cooper’s love of Mark was more so a collection of feelings that were “aimed” at Mark, and when he revisits their time together he speaks on the ways in which Mark’s beauty and Cooper’s own feelings obfuscated Mark’s real being. The story is a retracing of steps, now with time having passed and Cooper being able to better make sense of his own feelings, he attempts to see Mark and their relationship through a new lens.
It’s like picking up an old photograph from a long time ago. You see your own smiling face, and the face of a person that was very important to you, but the context of the photo is completely different now. Cooper alludes to this idea repeatedly throughout the story. He speaks on mementos from his and Mark’s time together, how their meaning has changed to him. The story is a sort of investigation, and at the same time an explanation, of their relationship. Cooper examines Mark, his beauty and sexuality in the first half, and their time together in the second half, focusing on his own preoccupations and attractions that directed him to and eventually away from Mark. I’m hesitant to use this word “examine”, because Cooper does not seek to correct their relationship, rather he attempts to understand his own desire, who he was during their time together, and who Mark really was.
Although there’s very little pain expressed by Cooper, very little regret or resentment held by him, the story still remains full of longing, and has the same sort of hollow sadness that remains when seeing a photo of a long gone lover, or in the act of a wound scarring over. The first half of the story attempts to describe Mark’s beauty through dreamlike erotica, pulling the reader into Cooper’s desire towards Mark, and the second half begins to examine what this desire really was. Even though in the time of Cooper writing this story, he had not known Mark for some time (or perhaps never really knew him, as Cooper expresses), he still returns to photos, letters, diary entries, to reexamine their time together and to finally give their relationship closure. The story is really about coming to this sort of closure in a roundabout way, but it is not the closure of confronting that the relationship has ended, but instead coming to terms with what the relationship was, the best way that he can. And although at times he brings up regrets and reminiscences, they are necessary to arrive at this understanding.
Overall I was and remain deeply moved by this story. It’s so much more than just an examination of desire or an autopsy of a failed relationship, Cooper’s intimate prose and approach towards beauty takes the story from beyond masturbatory wallowing and into deep reflection about his life, what Mark meant to him, and what it means to love someone. I encourage anyone looking to begin reading Cooper to start here, as it provides a great introduction to his style and many of the themes that he explores throughout his full body of work.
December 31, 2024
If anyone doubts that Dennis Cooper's is one of the finest authors to emerge in the last quarter of the 20th century in the USA then they haven't read this utterly astonishing and perfect short story, novella, novel extract? I am not even sure what to refer to it as. Although first published in this stand alone 40 page edition it later formed part of Cooper's first novel 'Safe' and in its entirety was included in the short story collection 'Wrong' and the 'My Mark' section was also excerpted in 'The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction'.
As a stand alone piece it is absolutely complete and as startling a calling card announcing a new talent as anyone could wish for. When I read it for the first time I had already read 'Closer' and maybe 'Try' and/or 'Frisk', I honestly can't remember, but I read it as a 'genesis' for the George Miles books. But if it isn't, or even if it is, does not matter because it is a piece of perfect fiction, powerful, moving and completely believable in its reality and sense of loss.
A beautiful piece of writing that can be returned to again and again.
As a stand alone piece it is absolutely complete and as startling a calling card announcing a new talent as anyone could wish for. When I read it for the first time I had already read 'Closer' and maybe 'Try' and/or 'Frisk', I honestly can't remember, but I read it as a 'genesis' for the George Miles books. But if it isn't, or even if it is, does not matter because it is a piece of perfect fiction, powerful, moving and completely believable in its reality and sense of loss.
A beautiful piece of writing that can be returned to again and again.
December 30, 2025
“He drops to the pavement, rests his elbows on his knees, and puts his face in his hands. It’s a decent one. Its decency lies in its lack of incentive, the blank kind of face that one finds on the inbred boys of the South, those backwoods he’d hitchhiked from. Looking at it, one couldn’t glean his intention, the mood he is in.”
—
“Mark’s on his knees and one cheek is against the carpet. The man puts his head by Mark’s ear, muttering less than a stream of consciousness, more than a string of cliches. Mark reeks of sweat, vomit, and what he’s been drinking. He wants to piss, sleep, and that’s about it. It is the best that could happen right now.”
—
“The man grapples forward and locates a skull in Mark’s haircut. He picks out the rims of caves for his eyeballs and ears.”
—
“Mark’s face is supple, secured to his bones in slight ways, and thin-skinned, so he reddens or pales with different expressions. Guys think he’s handsome and talk up his flesh tones. But as an older friend told him ‘Anyone’s cute at your age,’ although Mark looked around and saw that was shit. His friend’s just attracted to ‘youth.’”
—
“He lives for moments like this, being totally calm in his own way, seeing himself in a mirror, or the more distant reflection of him in the face of a man who is trying to give him an orgasm he doesn’t want in the first place. Mark puts the fun to his head but would never pull the trigger.”
—
“I see myself in the man’s position, though more on a level with Mark in the sense that I’m brighter and less prone to unbridled worship. I’d ask Mark to stop if he yelled at me. I don’t have the money to pay for him. But here I am blocking the view of this simple scene, like a director who accidentally walks in front of his own projector, then stands there, oblivious to the snoring around him.
A pretty boy and a wealthy man sleep together. Their body types can’t be made out from the heavy bed clothing. The lamp’s off, which buries them deeper, then my eyes adjust and I find them. Man on the left, boy on the right. No sign of struggle, except in my voice as I try not to care for them, feelings I’ve slipped from this body of work like a boy steals a richer man’s wallet.”
—
“What’s left behind is Mark’s beauty, safe, in a sense, from the blatant front lighting of my true emotion, though it creeps in. I’m moving stealthily closer, I think, to the heart of the matter, where Mark’s body acts as a guide to what he has been feeling.”
—
“These thoughts are more about me than my friend because when I was with him his looks left me speechless. That kind of beauty is insular, fills all my words anyway. What I construct must divide him from them in slight ways, such as placing the warmth of his skin against clinical language, like flesh of a man who lies down on a sharp bed of nails and is saved from real pain by the evenness of the impression.”
—
“I have a note that Mark scribbled when he got up in the morning several years ago. It isn’t much, but it came at a time when his body was near me, so I unfolded it hopefully. […] That’s just one semiarticulate fragment of what’s still important. I found it deep in my file cabinet under ‘Mementos,’ along with a few other stragglers.”
—
“It rests on its hand, and it stares into space like the head of a dying boy, vaguely aware of somebody he loved or despised in his lifetime, but hollowed out now with a whittler’s patience, which leaves these black slits for its eyes and the sign of some thinking around them: a mask that’s been saved for all year, then shoved on the skull of a friend, to affect me.”
—
“When I was younger and met a boy who I wanted to sleep with, I was too embarrassed to say so. I’d lie there wishing that he was in trouble or dying, so that my feelings about him were justified, then I could say it to him on his deathbed – it being ‘I’ll always love you’ – and he would die thinking of me. Now I’m too embarrassed to think of the people I care about dead, and those who I love may as well be starring in their lives around me, and I one of tons of admirers breezing by.”
—
“I loved him. I should have said so less often. It got so his eyes wouldn’t register that kind of input. He’d lie there thinking of something or somebody so far away that he seemed dead, and I’d have to rub his skin like a frostbite victim’s until he knew I was home. That’s an exaggeration.
This is a time when independence seems important. I keep my guard up. I’ve got a dim trace of wit where my heart would be turned up full volume and pointed at someone.”
—
“I’m trying to get to the truth, just like they were, so that even when looking into the eyes of somebody who doesn’t care about me any longer, or never did, I’ll be strong. Mark used to make me seem helpless.”
—
“Once I held high hopes. I’d loved Mark, found that emotion was possible. He was a small human shape climbing into a car at the end of the driveway.”
—
“Mark’s on his knees and one cheek is against the carpet. The man puts his head by Mark’s ear, muttering less than a stream of consciousness, more than a string of cliches. Mark reeks of sweat, vomit, and what he’s been drinking. He wants to piss, sleep, and that’s about it. It is the best that could happen right now.”
—
“The man grapples forward and locates a skull in Mark’s haircut. He picks out the rims of caves for his eyeballs and ears.”
—
“Mark’s face is supple, secured to his bones in slight ways, and thin-skinned, so he reddens or pales with different expressions. Guys think he’s handsome and talk up his flesh tones. But as an older friend told him ‘Anyone’s cute at your age,’ although Mark looked around and saw that was shit. His friend’s just attracted to ‘youth.’”
—
“He lives for moments like this, being totally calm in his own way, seeing himself in a mirror, or the more distant reflection of him in the face of a man who is trying to give him an orgasm he doesn’t want in the first place. Mark puts the fun to his head but would never pull the trigger.”
—
“I see myself in the man’s position, though more on a level with Mark in the sense that I’m brighter and less prone to unbridled worship. I’d ask Mark to stop if he yelled at me. I don’t have the money to pay for him. But here I am blocking the view of this simple scene, like a director who accidentally walks in front of his own projector, then stands there, oblivious to the snoring around him.
A pretty boy and a wealthy man sleep together. Their body types can’t be made out from the heavy bed clothing. The lamp’s off, which buries them deeper, then my eyes adjust and I find them. Man on the left, boy on the right. No sign of struggle, except in my voice as I try not to care for them, feelings I’ve slipped from this body of work like a boy steals a richer man’s wallet.”
—
“What’s left behind is Mark’s beauty, safe, in a sense, from the blatant front lighting of my true emotion, though it creeps in. I’m moving stealthily closer, I think, to the heart of the matter, where Mark’s body acts as a guide to what he has been feeling.”
—
“These thoughts are more about me than my friend because when I was with him his looks left me speechless. That kind of beauty is insular, fills all my words anyway. What I construct must divide him from them in slight ways, such as placing the warmth of his skin against clinical language, like flesh of a man who lies down on a sharp bed of nails and is saved from real pain by the evenness of the impression.”
—
“I have a note that Mark scribbled when he got up in the morning several years ago. It isn’t much, but it came at a time when his body was near me, so I unfolded it hopefully. […] That’s just one semiarticulate fragment of what’s still important. I found it deep in my file cabinet under ‘Mementos,’ along with a few other stragglers.”
—
“It rests on its hand, and it stares into space like the head of a dying boy, vaguely aware of somebody he loved or despised in his lifetime, but hollowed out now with a whittler’s patience, which leaves these black slits for its eyes and the sign of some thinking around them: a mask that’s been saved for all year, then shoved on the skull of a friend, to affect me.”
—
“When I was younger and met a boy who I wanted to sleep with, I was too embarrassed to say so. I’d lie there wishing that he was in trouble or dying, so that my feelings about him were justified, then I could say it to him on his deathbed – it being ‘I’ll always love you’ – and he would die thinking of me. Now I’m too embarrassed to think of the people I care about dead, and those who I love may as well be starring in their lives around me, and I one of tons of admirers breezing by.”
—
“I loved him. I should have said so less often. It got so his eyes wouldn’t register that kind of input. He’d lie there thinking of something or somebody so far away that he seemed dead, and I’d have to rub his skin like a frostbite victim’s until he knew I was home. That’s an exaggeration.
This is a time when independence seems important. I keep my guard up. I’ve got a dim trace of wit where my heart would be turned up full volume and pointed at someone.”
—
“I’m trying to get to the truth, just like they were, so that even when looking into the eyes of somebody who doesn’t care about me any longer, or never did, I’ll be strong. Mark used to make me seem helpless.”
—
“Once I held high hopes. I’d loved Mark, found that emotion was possible. He was a small human shape climbing into a car at the end of the driveway.”
July 4, 2024
oh my GOD, read this
short, full of distance, full-of full-of
short, full of distance, full-of full-of
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews