Love in the Age of Fandom
Jul. 6th, 2015 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonSo as you are no doubt aware tonight is the 'Lust' show at 'Naked City'. As such I wrote a first draft of a prospective piece for the show on Friday night but before getting sidetracked when I suddenly had a moment of inspiration for 'Confessions of a Fuck Up Artist'.
Well since I won't be able to read this tonight I thought I'd post it here if anyone's interested. If not, it's okay, we're still cool and all.
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There's been an abundance of teenage riot grrrls at my local comic shop of late, perusing the Wednesday releases, skimming their pull-boxes, idly reading graphic novels like it was a library or something. But come on, who's really going to bitch about it? Just look at them. The lollipop anime hair, the fresh tattoos displaying exploratory initiations into identity, the emblems of monsters or band logos on black t-shirts, comic book panels reflected across focused glasses, boots or Chucks scuffed up.
They make me smile, but not for the reason you're thinking.
Once upon the distant asshole it was my burden to share, an awkwardly different, naive and earnest asshole than the asshole you see before you now, I would've been spellbound. Would've proclaimed it was fate, kismet, karma, luck and love at first sight. Not a single one of these young would've produced unreadable poetry written across journal pages or worse yet on diner napkins deliberately sealed with 3am coffee cup stains for authenticity of kindred soul. Not a single one would I not mumble or babble an introduction to. Not a single fan-girl would have been spared a detailed, blow-by-blow thesis on how Batman would beat Wolverine in a fight and why Bruce Wayne is the perfect example of the Nietzschean Ubermensch, the aristocrat that redeems society on the backs of the proletariat.
I know... even I want to hop in a TARDIS to go back and kick myself in the nuts.
Still, what are you gonna do? That's the kind of shit that happens when you're lonely, horny and a shy young fan boy decked out in punk rock clothing.
You don't see the people in front of you. You see either threats or wishes. Everyone else is all grown-up, boring and gray. So you act accordingly. You approach folks not as if you were meeting them but actually reacquainting yourself with an imaginary friend who's come to life. The failure in translation that inevitably ensues leads to a further withdrawal into the invisible bubble between them and the world.
Which is a shame, because beneath the delusion of need and fantasy, there's someone just as interesting, just as experienced, just as imaginative, just as fucked-up, just as lonely and nerdy as you waiting - just waiting - to maybe be spoken to like the unique, wonderful human being you so desperately are trying to prove to them that you are.
All for the dream of a kiss and a dance in tangled sheets realized.
But seeing these young riot geeks in my comic shop now, I see someone else entirely, I see their mothers - which I know is the last thing any young woman wants a man to see. They're about my age. In fact we've even crossed paths. Same clubs, same parties, same shows, even orbiting the same tiresome pull of black hole Scene dramas. There was a moment perhaps where we could've met but didn't. It was the night I decided to not go to the club and get some sleep for work the next day at a job whose name I can't even remember now. It was at the experimental noise concert whose tickets I won stoned at three am and forgot about until the day after the show. It was the person I ended up hitting on when I could've been meeting someone cool.
So instead they lived their lives, they ended up with a tattoo artist, a DJ, the bassist in a band long forgotten, a dealer, a man willing to see them for not what he wanted them to be, not even what they were, but rather seeing what they wanted to be.
That's how the illusion evolves as you get older. Lust finds a home not in daydreams of what you wish will happen but what could've.
It was there amongst the Secret Wars, the Crisis Perpetual, that I found something akin to courage, to dignity, to empathy within me and with it I was able to gently say goodbye to these visions of possibility, these daughters of a parallel universe me, where I fucked up and triumphed in incalculably different ways. Outside my comic shop I step out and liberated from the narratives I've assigned it, the world begins to tell me their secret origin, their tale of adventures and terror await.
Well since I won't be able to read this tonight I thought I'd post it here if anyone's interested. If not, it's okay, we're still cool and all.
*************************************************************************************************
There's been an abundance of teenage riot grrrls at my local comic shop of late, perusing the Wednesday releases, skimming their pull-boxes, idly reading graphic novels like it was a library or something. But come on, who's really going to bitch about it? Just look at them. The lollipop anime hair, the fresh tattoos displaying exploratory initiations into identity, the emblems of monsters or band logos on black t-shirts, comic book panels reflected across focused glasses, boots or Chucks scuffed up.
They make me smile, but not for the reason you're thinking.
Once upon the distant asshole it was my burden to share, an awkwardly different, naive and earnest asshole than the asshole you see before you now, I would've been spellbound. Would've proclaimed it was fate, kismet, karma, luck and love at first sight. Not a single one of these young would've produced unreadable poetry written across journal pages or worse yet on diner napkins deliberately sealed with 3am coffee cup stains for authenticity of kindred soul. Not a single one would I not mumble or babble an introduction to. Not a single fan-girl would have been spared a detailed, blow-by-blow thesis on how Batman would beat Wolverine in a fight and why Bruce Wayne is the perfect example of the Nietzschean Ubermensch, the aristocrat that redeems society on the backs of the proletariat.
I know... even I want to hop in a TARDIS to go back and kick myself in the nuts.
Still, what are you gonna do? That's the kind of shit that happens when you're lonely, horny and a shy young fan boy decked out in punk rock clothing.
You don't see the people in front of you. You see either threats or wishes. Everyone else is all grown-up, boring and gray. So you act accordingly. You approach folks not as if you were meeting them but actually reacquainting yourself with an imaginary friend who's come to life. The failure in translation that inevitably ensues leads to a further withdrawal into the invisible bubble between them and the world.
Which is a shame, because beneath the delusion of need and fantasy, there's someone just as interesting, just as experienced, just as imaginative, just as fucked-up, just as lonely and nerdy as you waiting - just waiting - to maybe be spoken to like the unique, wonderful human being you so desperately are trying to prove to them that you are.
All for the dream of a kiss and a dance in tangled sheets realized.
But seeing these young riot geeks in my comic shop now, I see someone else entirely, I see their mothers - which I know is the last thing any young woman wants a man to see. They're about my age. In fact we've even crossed paths. Same clubs, same parties, same shows, even orbiting the same tiresome pull of black hole Scene dramas. There was a moment perhaps where we could've met but didn't. It was the night I decided to not go to the club and get some sleep for work the next day at a job whose name I can't even remember now. It was at the experimental noise concert whose tickets I won stoned at three am and forgot about until the day after the show. It was the person I ended up hitting on when I could've been meeting someone cool.
So instead they lived their lives, they ended up with a tattoo artist, a DJ, the bassist in a band long forgotten, a dealer, a man willing to see them for not what he wanted them to be, not even what they were, but rather seeing what they wanted to be.
That's how the illusion evolves as you get older. Lust finds a home not in daydreams of what you wish will happen but what could've.
It was there amongst the Secret Wars, the Crisis Perpetual, that I found something akin to courage, to dignity, to empathy within me and with it I was able to gently say goodbye to these visions of possibility, these daughters of a parallel universe me, where I fucked up and triumphed in incalculably different ways. Outside my comic shop I step out and liberated from the narratives I've assigned it, the world begins to tell me their secret origin, their tale of adventures and terror await.