Confessions of a Mask

The motif of blood allows Kochan to explore Eroticizing Death and Violence: Blood is part of nearly all Kochan’s sexual fantasies from an early age, signifying his profoundly ambivalent relationship with his own sexuality and his sense of sexual desire as transgressive and dangerous. Blood shapes his internal concepts of sexuality and attraction. While Kochan is having extended dream sequences of blood and gore, his body is suffering from anemia, implying a connection between his literal bloodlust and his own unpredictable health. Blood fascinates him on all levels, not just sexual; the anemic woman on the train draws his attention, as her unhealthy blood interests him enough to cause him to think he is attracted to her. Even at the novel’s end, he envisions the violent death of a handsome young man, emphasizing the beauty of the blood in his imagination.

Kochan’s obsession with blood and bleeding shows not just his lurid interest in death, but his inability to regulate or understand his sexuality. He cannot envision a healthy sexual relationship with a man and instead conjures up possessive, deadly ones, where blood and death are byproducts of his fascination. His struggle to include his emotions in his relationships with men leaves him with nothing to center them on except the body, and with his own body unpredictable and unhealthy, he fantasizes of bodies he can control, even to the death.