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Thursday, September 9, 2010
Sex, God and Lost Girls
Alan Moore's Lost Girls
Before I talk about Lost Girls, I feel it’s important to mention the shop I bought it from. As we’ve seen with the sellouts of the first and second printings of this 3-volume graphic novel, retailer support has played a tremendous role in its success. As a former retailer, I know exactly how difficult it is to get people to try something that strays even marginally off the beaten path. Those who are out there on the front lines, making people aware that yes, this is indeed a legitimate work of art even though it’s got boobies and pee-pees in it, are to be commended for it, especially given how big a financial investment this probably represents for some of them. They’re the ones who make books like these possible.
I bought Lost Girls at Cosmic Comics, on East 23rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, in Manhattan. I remember when they first opened up back in the early 90’s, just a few doors down from my alma mater, School of Visual Arts. I remember buying the “Death of Superman” books there and talking about them with my friends – at least until I started to lose interest in the whole thing. They’ve got a great deal where you receive $20 in store credit for every $100 in store merchandise you buy, and I used that to knock off some of the price on Lost Girls, which was a great boon indeed. They’re a very good, very friendly store that is a big supporter of independent comics, with a strong trade paperback selection as well. If you’re ever in NYC and want a cool place to shop for comics, Cosmic Comics is a great place to go.
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I was lucky. The first time I had sex was with someone I deeply loved. It was even on my high school prom night, if you can beat that, so yeah, the whole thing did have a kind of fairy tale aspect to it in the beginning, which almost transcended the more mundane surroundings: a cheap hotel in the middle of Manhattan. I remember taking a moment, right before it began, to look at her, in the smallish bed with me, naked and eager and every bit as frightened as me. Seeing her like this for the first time, there was definitely a sense of a mystery being explored. I remember thinking that from this moment on there would be a new understanding between us, that would color everything that was to follow. We had already progressed well beyond first base in our relationship to that point, and we had agreed well in advance that having sex was the next logical thing to do; that it was an imperative, even.
That said, however, I didn’t know nearly as much about the act itself as I thought I did. I grew up in an extremely conservative religious environment, and while I was not entirely ignorant of sex as an adolescent, it was still expected that I save myself for marriage and not even think about getting any until then. Of course, once I discovered the joys of masturbation, well, that was when the bird flew the coop for good! I vaguely recall an awkward and roundabout discussion with my mother on the subject which left me no more reassured than before: “It’s a sin; see, it says so here in the Bible, so you mustn’t do it” was what it more or less amounted to (going by my foggy memory here). By this point in my life, though, I had already begun wondering whether or not “because God says so” was a satisfactory answer for all the whys I had in my head.
I knew I wanted love, and to be loved, even if I didn’t entirely know what that meant. I can’t recall if sex was foremost in my mind with regard to the girls I was attracted to in junior high. In fact, I think in most cases, a simple kiss was the pinnacle of intimacy for me then. But I do recall one of the earliest instances where I was sexually aware of a real live girl.
When I was about 12, I was a counselor-in-training at summer day camp and I met this one girl – let’s call her “Tess” – who was a camper about three or four years younger than me. She became attached to me to the point of obsession, calling me her daddy and everything. Why, I couldn’t tell you for certain, but I indulged her. (Perhaps a bit too much, but I was a kid; gimme a break.) We continued to see each other after that summer, and about a year or two later her mom drove us to an outdoor pool out on Long Island. Tess was still very much attached to me. At one point while we were in the pool she cuddled right up next to me, both of us wearing nothing but our bathing suits, and I suddenly got a hard-on. I recall being excited at first but it quickly changed to horror – I mean, Tess was way too young for me to think about her sexually! And yet there I was, jonesing for her in a way I never had before.
Now granted, Tess had some serious issues at the time – I don’t recall the full extent of it even though her mom told me about it; it’s been so long since I’ve even thought about her – but looking back, I can’t help but wonder if it was possible that she knew what she was doing that day. I had always wanted to look out for her and protect her to a large degree, and knowing that she was a little messed up in the head exacerbated that feeling more. I embraced her and told her I loved her, thinking it was a fraternal kind of love but knowing it leaned more towards the romantic side. We kissed briefly… and that confused me more than ever. I didn’t see her much after that. I’ve always felt it was for the best, though part of me always wonders whatever became of her.
Since then, sex had stirred up weird and conflicting emotions in me. Caught between the poles of the Bible-thumping morality of my parents and the arousal generated by Tess and other girls that followed, I was afraid to explore the deeper meanings of sex, and I was content to let my hormones find release in pleasuring myself. It felt wrong, but I did it anyway because it felt wrong not to as well. Then I fell in love for real with a girl and suddenly I wasn’t confused anymore. Being with her felt right in so many ways I couldn’t believe it was real. I don’t recall ever feeling God’s love growing up, but loving this girl was akin to a spiritual feeling for me… and it was what ultimately led us to that dingy hotel room that night.
I’ve always associated sex with romantic love. The thought of sex as recreation, with someone who I may like, but wouldn’t ever get serious about, has always been slightly alien to me. Partly because my first time was with a girl I loved (as opposed to a fling with some chick who I’d forget about after a week), partly because of the degree of mental conditioning I still retained, which frowns on promiscuity and pre-marital sex in general and makes me feel guilty about my desires… and partly because I’ve never felt physically attractive enough to merit that kind of lifestyle. The guilt in particular is something I’ve always been made to feel, not just moral but racial as well (can’t “betray the race” by falling for a non-black girl, after all).
You don’t need me to tell you how great Lost Girls is. Even if you haven’t read it yet (understandable, given the price), Alan Moore’s pedigree speaks for itself. If you’ve read any of the interviews given by Moore, Melinda Gebbie, and Top Shelf publisher Chris Staros – and both Chris and Brett Warnock should be given medals or something for having the fortitude and the vision and the commitment to publishing this work and going the extra mile to make sure it gets the reception it deserves – you’ve probably got a fairly good idea by now of what the creators achieve with this story. I want to focus on a single line – a line that stuck out in my mind and resonated the more I thought about it.
By the time I started Book Three, I was already overwhelmed by the sexual content of the story – adult versions of classic kiddie-lit protagonists Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale – in which their respective adventures in Wonderland, Neverland and Oz are reimagined as sexual coming-of-age escapades, presented with an unflinching eye towards the nature of intercourse, in nearly every form imaginable. While exhilarating to read, the part of me still subject to the prudent morality from my youth blanched at the thought of these characters having so much sex without any consequences. The story may be set at the dawn of World War One, but it’s being read in the age of AIDS and rampant teen pregnancy. How responsible is it to show sex so unrealistically?
I forgot that this was supposed to be unrealistic – until I was reminded by Rougeur, the mysterious proprietor of the Viennese hotel where Alice, Wendy and Dorothy stay. Early in Book Three, he reads from a salacious chapbook of his making which collects alleged Victorian-era sex stories and makes the point that as outrageous as they may seem, they are in the end, simply words (and pictures) on paper, nothing more:
“Fiction and fact: only madmen and magistrates cannot discriminate between them.”
I needed to be reminded of that at that particular moment, because I was in danger of taking that first step on the path trod by legislators who want to keep all comics in the realm of Betty and Veronica and funny animals. And why? Because while reading Lost Girls was a singular thrill and great pleasure, at the same time it also reminded me of a longing for something that has remained just out of reach, ever since I broke up with that girl I took to bed in the dingy hotel room… a breakup which was mostly my fault, for being possessive and immature and stupid. And I didn’t want to be reminded of not only that loss, but every failed relationship I’ve had since (sex is only part of romantic love, remember?). Something about the intimacy of the relationship between the women in the story struck a nerve within me and it hurt a little… because I knew that same kind of intimacy once, and have spent the rest of my life trying to regain it.
This was supposed to have been a review of Lost Girls, but writing about the things it reminded me of, and made me feel, proved to be more important to me. Great art, after all, is supposed to move you in some way. So it was with this book.
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
