You Are Jeff

Everyone is Jeff in this poem, including the speaker and the addressee. At times, the male speaker might be talking to himself, to his male lover, or to all the men he has ever known: “They are the same and they are not the same” (Stanza 3). These words refer to the twins on motorbikes, but they are both called Jeff and “each Jeff wants to be the other one” (Stanza 3). In fact, “they’re not brothers, they’re just one guy” (Stanza 20), but the speaker is “all of them—Jeff and Jeff and Jeff and Jeff” (Stanza 23). Some Jeffs love each other. Some Jeffs are like each other. Some of them love each other because they are like each other. Or maybe the other way around. The poem speaks to the interplay between desire and identity. The two twins on motorbikes are positioned on the road “depending on which twin you are in love with at the time” (Stanza 1), but also “depending on which Jeff you are” (Stanza 3). Since the twins and Jeff are the same, or versions of the same, desire and identity become practically indistinguishable. At one moment the speaker asks, “Who do you love, Jeff?” (Stanza 12); soon after, the question becomes “Who do you want to be?” (Stanza 18). Are these two different questions or two ways of asking the same question? In a sense, one finds oneself in one’s lover, perhaps especially when referring to being gay because gay men share the experiences of marginalized desire and social disapproval. They are versions of the same, as are all gay lovers a man may have in his life. In all of them the man will find a piece of himself; each of them will become part of who the man is because they share a history. The same may be true of other important men in the man’s life—such as Jeff the father and Jeff the brother (Stanza 7)—but the role of lovers is more vexed because identification overlaps with desire and because the emotion involved is often more intense but not as lasting. Lovers are more likely to leave you and to take a part of you with them, which is another key theme in the poem.