I was home sick yesterday and today. What comes out of my nose when I bend over and blow salt water through it is dark and bloody. There is a rattle deep in my chest. Coughing makes me cry, which makes everything in my nose get inflamed, which makes everything worse.
Last week, I read Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men and I loved it. It is hilarious and it breaks your heart and then it puts it back together and is like “love, love now, be true to yourself, love yourself, now is the time.” Everyone should read this. Haha.
Over the last few days, I read Watchmen, borrowed from Dylan. I didn’t like it at first. Thought it was heavy-handed. Thought it hated women. I had enjoyed the movie, in SF, Fritz by my side, having never heard anything about it, because I took it as sugary entertainment; the novel annoyed me in the beginning because I felt like it wanted me to take it seriously. Bit characters in side-side-side stories offend each other for being black, liberal, religious, capricious, or lesbian. Are we supposed to judge the newspaper vendor for lumping all black people into the same category? Are we supposed to judge the lady who takes him to task for it because she’s not cutting him enough slack or realizing that he didn’t mean nothin’ by it? In that exchange, the newspaper vendor has the last word, mumbling about why people can’t get along. The last word is important, too, because then you find that he doesn’t actually have the last word: “I want to be straight,” the cab driver says, as she beats her girlfriend, and they all get blown up by Veidt’s psychic mutant brain vagina cthulu. Veidt gets the last word. Oh, but in a moment of vulnerability, he wants Blue God-Man to tell him he did the right thing, but he doesn’t comply, so HE gets last word: he only says “it never ends” bluely and teleports himself to another galaxy. To create some life. That’s another thing. Life. The most poignant part in the novel, the apex of emotion, is when the emotionless Dr. Manhattan says “out of chaos, only you” to the beautiful young woman he loves for being beautiful and young, and decides that it is beautiful, that life is worth saving, that we grow so used to the miracle of sperms fighting for an egg that we no longer value it. The distant God-Man who loves things only for being beautiful and young is the vehicle through which the message “value life!” is delivered. What of human life, though? The Silhouette is a “victim of her lascivious lifestyle” and exists only to be murdered, a cardboard prop. Silk Spectre is reduced to her attempted rape and her motherhood and her long ambivalence love/hate of the Comedian. “What if, just for a moment, maybe I really did want …” she says, and what do we make of that? Commentary on costumes, sexuality and commerce, power? Do the authors believe all women just want sex (and to create beautiful daughters of youth and beauty) or is it a commentary on our society at large and its sexual pressures on people, especially women? Dr. Manhattan goes off to create life and is blue and majestic and a god. Sally Jupiter created life and is pathetic, dying in a retirement home, and in love with a dead horrible man for being manly and horrible. If I were more energetic I would try to write an essay about gender in this novel but I lack too much everything to do it. Also I am liable to change my opinions. This was scattered but I didn’t want to post without getting SOME of it down. I’ll probably never return to this. Oh well.
Fan of Rorshach’s clipped speaking style, as well as his ragged speech bubbles. Haha.
[22:49] R: you’re not hopeless!
[22:49] R: you’re just under the weather
[22:50] j: i’ve been under the weather for 12 years
[22:50] j: /EEEEMMMOOOOO
[22:50] R: meh
[22:50] R: even if it’s like a 6th of your life
[22:50] R: i’m pretty confident
[22:50] R: that it’s temporary
[22:50] R: you’re too spunky and interesting to die unfulfilled
The weird points are where I, though an intelligent and independent woman, find myself oddly sympathizing with Sally Jupiter’s attitude. I personally have at least one major instance of irresistable interest in the manly horrible. And it’s hard to blame him for an interest that is strong within my own warped mind.
Ah well.
Maybe that’s why so many people have responded to it so positively — I can see anything I want in it, and we are drawn to deeply flawed, emotional, morally ambiguous characters, ones that know better and still fuck up (for we can say “yes, I have felt that way”) or that don’t know better (for we can say “ha-ha, I am better than that”) or that, if unsure, at least pretend to be sure except in front of Big Blue Dongs (for we can say “yes, action is always better than weeping in indecision”). As they are simultaneously one-dimensional and easily identified as good or evil. Haha?