"The Exene Chronicles" Is a Beautiful, Brutal Glimpse into 80s Punk Culture
When I initially read the synopsis of Camille A. Collins’s book, The Exene Chronicles, part of me expected a novel written as a series of letters and poems.
Part of me expected an angsty, maybe slightly melodramatic book about a young Black female punk rock fan writing letters and poems to the lead singer of her favorite band. Instead, I got something more genuine and relatable.
At the center of The Exene Chronicles is Lia, a fourteen year old Black punk fan in the 1980’s living in Coronado, a San Diego suburb. As one of the few Black kids in the area and at school, she befriends Ryan, a white girl her age acting rebellious and grown up to cope with unwanted sexual advances for her pubescent body. When Ryan disappears, Lia uses the punk rock singer Exene Cervenka as a guide to cope with what happened, what led to Ryan’s disappearance, and Lia’s falling out with Ryan.
One notable aspect of the book is the depiction of the joy and tumult that Lia deals with as a Black punk fan. On the one hand, seeing Lia become enraptured with Exene and punk rock through listening to CDs and viewing the 1981 punk rock documentary The Decline of Western Civilization is enjoyable and relatable. During these moments, Lia reminded me of my teenaged self in the early 00’s discovering alternative rock bands Linkin Park and Evanescence through CDs and YouTube.
Although we lived in different decades and listened to different rock subgenres, I really related to Lia’s feeling of alienation and frustration and how punk rock became the catalyst for her to express herself and feel better about her life. Some particularly memorable thoughts Lia (and Ryan) have about Exene is expressed in the following: “And as much as they admired Exene, watching it all unfold bolstered their perception of themselves also, and made them, for a moment, feel fearless — of every place they’d been and wherever it was they were going.”
On the other hand, Lia also experiences racism, not just in the punk rock scene but also in her daily life. Some of the racism is overt, with Lia being called the “n-word” by white people during certain interactions. As a Black reader, I did find these scenes stinging me a bit, especially during one particularly harrowing scene involving Lia encountering Nazi skinhead youth. Other times, the racism is more subtle, Ryan making race “jokes” and Ryan’s mother thinking “Lia should’ve been the one abducted because Black people are used to suffering.”
Skillfully intertwined with racism is a critique of America’s glamorous white middle class standards, toxic masculinity, and sexual assault and harassment. These issues are depicted not only through Ryan and Lia, but also through secondary characters such as Ryan’s younger brother Jeff and the predatory young half-Mexican man, Neil. The book’s point of view alternates between the main characters and the secondary characters, providing a multi-faceted look at some of the ugliest aspects of the American ideal.
Despite the seriousness of the book, Collins manages to add some beauty in the story with lyrical turns of phrase. This writing style was especially notable when reading from Lia’s point of view, displaying her dreamy side. Notable examples of this include, “Many of the songs began in a flurry, the gates open on a racetrack and the horses fly! Played fast and ending abruptly with the slam of a door that gives finality to an argument, the notes standing on tiptoe.”
All in all, this book is a beautiful, brutal glimpse of 80’s punk culture. Lia is a young, alienated Black female punk fan who must navigate a sea of whiteness and racism to define herself on her own terms. Through the highs and lows of punk rock music, Lia’s story of eventual liberation from confining standards inspires all.
The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.
Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.
We live in a dating world where the playing field has definitely changed. Gone are the days when someone would actually walk up to you, strike up a conversation, ask for your number, call you, engage in light banter, ask you out, plan a date, show up for the date, and things would progress after you and your date had actually spent time in each other’s presence.
In fact, dear reader, if you are currently dating, when was the last time you got to know someone in that manner?
The last time for me was over two years ago. The guy was Southern and new to Los Angeles. We met online, but he asked for my number after a few messages. He called me, we spoke a few times, and he asked me out. He initiated all of the calls and all of our contact. Our first date was not the requisite coffee meet and greet. Instead, we met at a restaurant and shared a lovely meal. He followed up with more dates, all of which he planned based on my responses to questions about the things I liked to do.
I enjoyed every one of those dates. I enjoyed being courted and treated well. In the end, we both determined we weren’t compatible for the long run, but I walked away from that experience believing that behind the screen, there were honest and genuine people really searching for the real thing. He restored my faith.
I walked away from that experience believing that behind the screen, there were honest and genuine people really searching for the real thing.
The more I speak to people on the subject, however, the more I hear that people are not really dating these days. Even scarier is the idea that most people don’t know how to date. We think that going out with someone, taking walks, showing up with flowers, calling just to “check in,” and being available to another person is too much like a commitment before the commitment.
Correct me if I am wrong, but dating is a commitment. You are committing to getting to know someone before making a decision about being in partnership or trying again with someone entirely new. My question is simply, how does one do that when so many people are scared to even show up as their true, authentic selves?
The more I speak to people on the subject, however, the more I hear that people are not really dating these days. Even scarier is the idea that most people don’t know how to date.
In today’s digital age, dating has a new script: You see a picture of someone, you swipe to the right / send a wink / send a “Hi there, you look fun. We should talk” or some version thereof, exchange some short-verse messages, maybe you exchange phone numbers (but even if you do, you’re still texting), agree to meet, meet and act shy and awkward because it’s a blind date, sort of, and then you decide pretty quickly if you want to see them again—mostly because you know how easy it would be to start all over with somebody new.
Correct me if I am wrong, but dating is a commitment.
The upside is that yes, there are plenty of fish in the sea. The downside is that you’ll never find your fish if you’re always throwing them back.
I’ll just say it: the digital age has messed up how we find and keep love flowing. We replace actual feelings with heart emojis. We break up via text. We get back together with each other via text. We stalk each other’s social media pages; we know the names of “friends” before we even meet them. Our dating lives are constructed online, and we dress the part by taking selfies and pictures of our food to show anyone following us on Instagram that we are, indeed, having a good time. We create personas, and I’m starting to believe that we care more about those personas than actually showing up, with all of our flaws and beauty, to present ourselves as worthy of love.
I’ll just say it: the digital age has messed up how we find and keep love flowing.
Maybe that’s the real issue. We don’t think we are worthy of love.
Or maybe some of us are ready—I like to think I am—but when we put ourselves out there, who is actually ready to meet us?
My last relationship lasted two years and ended when a woman sent me pictures of herself and the man I was dating frolicking in the city. He’d found her on eHarmony a few months earlier. According to the woman, he invited her to come see him over a weekend that he and I were “fighting.” She spent time in his apartment and felt like there was a female presence, so she went looking on his Facebook page, which led to his Pinterest page, which led to me. When she confronted him, he told her that I was his ex-girlfriend and she shouldn’t contact me, but she did.
When I confronted him, he made up an elaborate lie about why she only thought they were together. He told me I should trust him. But the pictures she sent me were taken inside his apartment, and I found his profile on eHarmony and Match, so he couldn’t deny what happened.
Maybe that’s the real issue. We don’t think we are worthy of love.
No matter how hard we try to create perfect online personas, who we are always shows up. The last relationship and the many others I have explored in this digital age have taught me that we all want the same thing: to be accepted. I believed at the end of my last relationship, and I still believe now, that love is a choice. We come into relationships as individuals. We partner with people based on shared goals, morals, and the vision to build something together that can be really special.
It takes a lot of patience to explore this dating field when you are faced with so many apparently empty people, but it’s worth it when you find yourself involved in something special and come to the heavy and deep love that happens when the masks are torn off and the flaws are exposed and beautiful. We all crave this type of love, yet it seems impossible to achieve when we forget that love is ALL faith, trust, hope, compassion, forgiveness and showing up for each other.
We all crave this type of love, yet it seems impossible to achieve when we forget that love is ALL faith, trust, hope, compassion, forgiveness and showing up for each other.
So many of us are afraid to explore the deep emotions—we show up in shallow forms just to attract something. But deep love can’t be nurtured in shallow pools. In order for us to truly find and savor such heavy love, we have to come into our relationships loving ourselves enough to risk being authentic.
In today’s media, there’s often a push for children’s stories to be more energized than those aimed at adults, especially when it comes to film.
This usually manifests itself through aspects like faster pacing, quicker movements and/or animation, and more physical or juvenile jokes. This type of story is not inherently bad, and I do enjoy more frenetic tales at times. Occasionally, though, I just want a calmer story that doesn’t have more modern comedy, nor a high-concept setting, nor a menacing villain. Sometimes, all you really need out of a children’s story is a pleasant set of characters and some charming conversations. And for me, the absolute best example of this is Disney’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, a movie that has greatly affected my life, and one that resonates with me even more now that I’m older.
The film, released in 1977, is composed of three previous featurettes, plus a bit of segueing animation. It’s usually viewed in a positive light by both fans and critics, but it rarely receives outright acclaim. I believe that’s because it’s less flashy and high-stakes than other children’s movies. What people so often overlook, though, is that childhood isn’t always action-packed and intense. There isn’t always bitter conflict, and when you’re young, actual evil is far less common than kids’ stories claim. A lot of the time, life is just…simple. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a very simple movie, and that’s why it’s so important to me, and why it’s managed to stick with me all these years.
I should mention that I also love the original Pooh Bear short stories by A. A. Milne. However, I’m going to focus on the first Disney adaptation for a few reasons. Firstly, the film does a great job translating the tone and characters of the books, so there’s no real need to contrast the two media. Additionally, a few things that make the stories so special are exclusive to the Disney version. Overall, while the Disney animated movie is of course indebted to Milne’s children’s classics, the movie has had the most influence on me, and I want to distill why this version is such a wonderful embodiment of what a calming, happy story for children should be like.
This version is such a wonderful embodiment of what a calming, happy story for children should be like.
Before I delve into everything that makes the movie great, I’ll summarize the plot and setting. Christopher Robin is a young boy who occasionally ventures into the magical Hundred Acre Wood, where he has several friends, all stuffed animals, who live there and love him dearly. Among them are the anxious, bashful Piglet; the controlling, authoritative Rabbit; the motherly Kanga and her enthusiastic son Roo; the hardworking Gopher (a character new to the film); the bouncy, rambunctious Tigger; the gloomy, depressed Eeyore; the thought-to-be-intelligent Owl; and, of course, the pure-hearted, surprisingly wise, “silly old bear,” Winnie the Pooh, or Pooh for short. In addition, there is the Narrator, a person in his own right who breaks the fourth wall and actually interacts with the other characters. The film details the characters’ “adventures” and interactions with each other in a calming, pleasant fashion.
To begin with, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh has a highly laidback, tranquil plot, especially when compared to other kid’s films. The pacing is especially barebones: there isn’t one overarching narrative, but rather, several stories intertwined by the same cast of characters. As such, there is no villain, nor a central conflict that the characters must overcome through action or hijinks. Instead, it’s just these charming characters working off each other, having fun, and getting into low-stakes scrapes like being stuck in a hole or getting lost in the woods. The closest thing to an antagonist is just a nightmare Pooh has of “Heffalumps and Woozles,” which are creatures that don’t even exist; they’re just figments of the imagination.
Winnie the Pooh has a highly laidback, tranquil plot, especially when compared to other kid’s films.
That’s as good a place as any to further delve into the intricacies of the storytelling here. To reiterate, THERE IS NO VILLAIN. The stuffed animals are never given ages, but they’re all dear friends of Christopher Robin and seem to be bonded to him (not to mention the popular theory that the animals are all creations of Christopher’s imagination, and that the boy is only going inside his own mind to play with them, a conjecture I’ll deal with at a later point). Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that they all have child mentalities, as well. That tells us that Pooh is very similar to a child, meaning that his dreams of Heffalumps and Woozles (clearly misnomers of “elephants and weasels,” a fact the movie spells out to the audience) are the embodiments of the fears that a child would have. In other words, the biggest threat the characters must face is their fear of the unknown and their overactive imaginations. Many other kids’ stories feature children as the protagonists, but rarely do you see such a straightforward, action-less conflict. It’s wholly unique in that the childlike protagonists must face issues that childhood viewers must face in the real world, as well.
Additionally, the style of artwork is much calmer and subtler than what modern-day children are used to in movies, especially animated ones. Without getting too much into animation history, Walt Disney Animation Studios lowered their budget and used cost-cutting techniques in their animated movies during the time The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was made, resulting in a sketchier type of artwork that utilized more visuality of pencil drawings. Although partially by necessity, the choice to simplify the animation ended up working in favor of the movie in several ways. The animation now closely resembles the book illustrations of E. H. Shepard, helping to establish a mood that’s heartily in line with the original stories’. Connected to that, the movie subsequently has a warm, wholesomely enjoyable vibe to it rarely found in kinetic, energy-infused stories for kids that overpopulate today’s entertainment. It’s peaceful and calming, but never in a dull way. It’s just…satisfying, and nice. In other words, what childhood often is. Many kids love to pretend to have swordfights and space battles and epic quests of glory, but that pretty much never happens, and that’s okay. Winnie the Pooh shows that the normal, everyday “adventures” you have are wonderful in their own right.
The movie has a warm, wholesomely enjoyable vibe to it rarely found in kinetic, energy-infused stories for kids that overpopulate today’s entertainment. It’s peaceful and calming, but never in a dull way.
Another brilliant thing about the film is the varied roster of characters, as well as the pitch-perfect casting choices. The fact that all of the many protagonists are so very different means that children can identify with many of them easily. One might find themselves in line with the stubbornness of Rabbit, or the gloominess of Eeyore, or the inflated pride of Owl. The best way for me to convey the effectiveness of the characters is this: I like to say that Tigger is who I wanted to be like when I was little, Pooh Bear is who I want to be like now, and Piglet is who I’m most like in real life. You can connect with many of them, because they’re all so uniquely realistic, albeit in exaggerated ways. The most important thing, though, is that they’re all KIND. None of these creatures are unlikeable or mean-spirited; even when they mess up or get on one another’s nerves, they apologize and quickly become friends again. Going back to antagonism, sometimes children like to have an obviously evil villain to root against, but every once in a while, it’s worth remembering that, if you’re surrounded by friends and good people (or animals), there isn’t really anything worth hating or fearing.
None of these creatures are unlikeable or mean-spirited; even when they mess up or get on one another’s nerves, they apologize and quickly become friends again.
That utterly pure sentimentality is showcased to perfection by the voice actors. Over the years, I have become invested in the art of voice acting, and that’s largely thanks to the fact that Walt Disney Animation Studios reused many actors and actresses in their animated movies. Nearly every actor in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh appears in another Disney movie, and the fun of hearing a voice in this film, then cropping up in another fills me with glee whenever I watch classic Disney movies now. Furthermore, these characters are largely so successful because the people portraying them hone in on precisely what makes them all so uniquely delightful. Ralph Wright nails the gloominess of Eeyore, John Fiedler is the only possible choice for the perpetually nervous and stuttering Piglet, and Paul Winchell is spot-on as the bouncy Tigger. And of course, there’s the absolutely marvelous Sterling Holloway as Winnie the Pooh. Holloway is my favorite voice actor of all time, and one of my favorite actors ever, period. He had numerous other roles in Disney features, but this is his most famous for a reason. He’s just so sweet, innocent, and kind as the Bear of Very Little Brain, and it makes my heart melt whenever I hear his voice. Casting is a factor of film that sometimes gets overlooked, but this movie shows why it’s so integral.
Finally, there’s the quality of timelessness that this story has. A lot of the time, a story is aimed exclusively at one age group, and it’s therefore constrained. Too often, a children’s story is too juvenile; it’s not something you can take in at one time, then come back to years later and enjoy as much as you did before. Either the pop culture references are poorly dated, or the effects and style haven’t held up, or it’s just not as well-written as you remembered. Every so often, though, there’s a story like this one that’s different when you experience it again years later, but in a good way. You appreciate the more nuanced moments and messages even more because you’re old enough to understand the depth of what they mean. It’s like a magic trick: you sit back and wait a bit, and suddenly, all sorts of things that you couldn’t see before come out to delight you. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is one of those stories. The animation isn’t as flashy or ambitious as other children’s animated movies, but I love that even more now for its calming presence and warm tone. The jokes that involve subtle wordplay aren’t laugh-out-loud, but nowadays I appreciate that softer style of humor; in contrast, jokes involving the Narrator breaking the fourth wall and talking to the characters are much funnier to me as an adult, since I appreciate their cleverness. The songs by the always-brilliant Sherman Brothers are clever and catchy, and they just fill me with warmness and giggles. The story is excessively simple, but hey—when you’ve grown up, and everything seems like it moves at breakneck speed, simple is all you want from a story, and this movie delivers that. It’s a movie that only gets better with each passing year.
It’s a story that often seems to be liked, but not loved, and I can’t help but think that it’s a little underappreciated simply because…well, because it’s so simple.
It sounds cliché, but The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh really is my childhood. In all honesty, I can’t even say it’s my favorite movie, or even my favorite Disney animated movie. But there isn’t another film, or even another story, that has done more to shape what I appreciate, how I want to act, and who I want to be like. It’s a story that often seems to be liked, but not loved, and I can’t help but think that it’s a little underappreciated simply because…well, because it’s so simple. However, it’s largely thanks to this story that I try to be kind to whoever I can, and attempt to keep a childlike, innocent perspective whenever I do something, and just strive to have a pleasant time in life. I genuinely think if everyone took the time to sit down and enjoy it, they’d remember the basic goodness of what it was like to be a kid, and the joys to be found in the little things. Things like bouncing, and going for walks, and just sitting and doing nothing. Everyone wants to just do nothing every so often, and Winnie the Pooh shows that that isn’t a bad thought. If the last scene of the movie is anything to go by, then it’s clear that childhood is something you should cherish. I certainly do, and I think we all should.
The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was annoyed by the anal description of the Shire and abandoned it.
My mother insisted that this trilogy of books had saved her life, and I just needed to push forward. At the time, I had discovered the magic of reading, but I could not yet comprehend how a fictional world could become your home and give you strength in times of need. I obeyed, but it was mainly to prove her wrong. And then I met Gandalf, and Tom Bombadil, and Aragorn. From the second Aragorn the wanderer came into my life, I felt relieved – he, too, made the choice to be a nomad who explored the Earth, told the truth as it was, protected the defenseless ones, and honored the elders and the traditions. There was such an obvious resemblance between us. As I kept reading, I fell in love with Arwen; I faced the demons of Rohan; with white knuckles, and my heart beating too fast, I entered the cave of ghosts. I helped in all the battles. I broke Eowyn’s heart. And, finally, I built a home.
At the time, I had discovered the magic of reading, but I could not yet comprehend how a fictional world could become your home and give you strength in times of need.
Since then, I have seen many movies making fun of the sensitive nerds who have a hard time at school and take refuge in imaginary worlds. I never identified with those people, and yet, now that I tell this story, I admit that I owe my sanity to fantasy worlds. I remember that my family was puzzled by how often I read Harry Potter; every time a new book of the series came out, I started all over again, from the first volume. So, I have read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seven times, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets six times, and so on, and so forth. For some reason, I believe that would make J.K. Rowling happy, maybe because it has a sense of magic to it. I would read the adventures of my sister-in-arms Hermione, and her friends, Harry and Ron, while brushing my teeth, walking to school, and also secretly after curfew and early in the morning. With Harry Potter, no matter where I opened any of the books, I was home, and I was safe. I knew the geography of the castle. I studied the main courses of magic by adding up all the information I could find in the novels. I waited for my Hogwarts letter, but never resented not getting it. (Last year, the love of my life had a Hogwarts letter made for me, with my name and my address, and deposited it on my bed – as you may guess, I am marrying him.
I admit that I owe my sanity to fantasy worlds.
Harry Potter changed my relationship to reality and fiction, because it was such a widespread phenomenon that I wasn’t considered a freak for going back in again and again. I could talk to friends about the world and the characters. Practicing spells was a kids’ game. I was allowed to consider the pros and cons of the different modes of transportation – broom, train, flying car, Floo Powder, Thestral. As much as my longing for the Shire and Lothlorien was a shameful secret (I come from a family of intellectuals, and fantasy literature is not favorably looked upon), Hogwarts was instead the first imaginary world I shared with other people. I subscribed to writing forums, where we would create our own character within Hogwarts, and then develop adventures. Real human beings and I were interacting inside my home, and I felt closer to them than to most of my schoolmates. On those forums, I had a voice, a style, a personality. Being a hard-worker, who wrote a lot and with regularity, was appreciated. Being specific about what the tavern looked like, or what the forest smelled like, was rewarded.
My fictional refuge had been somewhat validated, and from there, I braved other worlds and quests. Discovering Eragon was, at first, the secret of the dragon egg in my house, then the guilt and the training with a tough mentor, and finally the transformation from a small life to an international trip across borders. My favorite passage that I kept coming back to was the training of Eragon at the Elves’ domain. He knew much about socializing, fighting, being discreet, negotiating. What he didn’t know yet was connection. Alone, the book in my hands, I craved connection on another level, something profound and true that I didn’t find often amongst my peers. When Eragon was ordered to sit down in silence, to meditate, and to feel the ants walking and working, to listen to all sounds without exception, I felt shivers and shudders. I discovered much later that these messages are repeated by calm voices in guided meditations. For me, though, the spirituality behind Eragon’s new behavior overwhelmed me with hope: it suggested that true magic was attainable through sitting down, and, with discipline and patience, opening yourself up to the world.
I had learnt from Aragorn’s integrity and sense of duty, Hermione’s straightforwardness and perseverance, and Eragon’s curiosity and bravery.
So far, I had learnt from Aragorn’s integrity and sense of duty, Hermione’s straightforwardness and perseverance, and Eragon’s curiosity and bravery. In each of those universes, the rules had been simple – good versus evil. My beliefs were the right ones. I just had to grow enough to share them with others and make them win over darkness.
Then, with Tales of the Otori, everything changed. Suddenly, the hero had a million mentors from different families with extensive backgrounds. Diverse magical powers were born from specific paths. Every quick judgment about a character representing “good” or “evil” was contradicted. I was constantly surprised, shocked, and taught to search for nuances, to look beyond appearances. In a way, all the nuances I had been running away from, all the complications, the grey areas, were coming back in the fictional world. The advantage is that they were explained. I could track down the why and how of my mistakes and the power of my individual choices. When the hero chose wrong, I paled at the harshness of the consequences, and then was captivated by how he rebuilt himself and his environment. I discovered that love and identity were worth fighting for and were a construction that I had to come back to every single day.
Armed with this new wisdom, I finally stumbled into the most magical universe of all: I followed the footsteps of Lyra in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials. It started innocently enough as a children’s book – we were playing in the mud, defying authority, refusing baths, and asking too many questions. Then, we had a goal: it was good versus evil, and we needed to defeat the sinister Mrs. Coulter, and side with Lord Asriel. At the end of the first book, though, the turn was so violent that I had to read the scenes again and again until agreeing that, yes, Lyra and I had been betrayed. The greater good was presented as more important than the worth of an individual life and that conflict has since then fascinated me.
As we moved into the next volumes of the trilogy, Lyra and I understood the necessity of some sacrifices, but also the slow work of time when it came to forgiveness, studying, and even magic. There was something utterly delicate in how she fell in love and how she learned that a gift can be used in many different ways, and that it is up to us to use our resources in the best way we see fit.
Philip Pullman taught me best what freedom truly means and how it invokes our sense of responsibility. He also showed me the delicate balance between what must be done and what we want to do.
Philip Pullman taught me best what freedom truly means and how it invokes our sense of responsibility. He also showed me the delicate balance between what must be done and what we want to do. I felt bittersweet wonder as I read the last chapter and I have never quite recovered. It has been the most intimate read of my life and I suspect it will always remain the most special universe I have ever visited. It is home, but it is also foreign, because, like reality, everything constantly moves: the borders, the power dynamics, and the people. There is a cycle and a stability with rules that cannot be altered, and there is free will and ethical dilemmas. In this world more than in any other, I had the privilege of learning how reality works – its religions, politics, relationships, and even life and death. In many ways, Philip Pullman became the mentor I had always been longing for.
Every time I walk into a bookstore, I touch the books, read the titles, waiting for one of them to call me. They often do, and every so often, I find new universes where I recognize the streets as if I had explored them by myself in another life.
Now I am twenty-five years old and still looking for answers and ways of looking at our world. Every time I walk into a bookstore, I touch the books, read the titles, waiting for one of them to call me. They often do, and every so often, I find new universes where I recognize the streets as if I had explored them by myself in another life. The last one to date is the gem La Passe-Miroir, a fantasy series by Christelle Dabos, and, amazingly enough, her first published work, where we follow a tough young woman, who can walk through mirrors and read the past of objects by touching them.
All I wish you now is that you find your own worlds and magic, mentors and maps, places where you feel at home, and journeys that teach you new ways to approach reality, with hope, humor, and tenderness.
“Look,” said Ashley to Quinn, “you got the breasts. I want the belly part.”
“Fine,” said Quinn. “Fine, okay. So. ‘With his warm tongue, he found her navel again, and—’”
“Say David!”
“Right. So, ‘With his warm tongue, David found her navel again, and . . .’”
I pulled a flat, mildewy pillow over my head, giggling hard in hopes of drowning this out before I died from a heart attack. We were all thirteenish and at band camp, years before anyone came to believe that there was anything sexy about band camp whatsoever. Ashley and Quinn, however, brought the sexiness wherever they went, being jointly and severally obsessed with David Bowie. They were reading sex scenes out loud from a novel, swapping in their own names and Mr. Bowie’s respectively. And whose fault was this?
“‘David brought his hand back up her inner thigh, feeling the special softness there, and over the springy curls of her mound—’”
It was my fault. I had brought this novel to camp with me. I had disclosed to other human beings that I had a copy of The Plains of Passage—one of the sequels to Jean M. Auel’s The Valley of Horses. And now they knew, now everyone was going to know, that I had a dirty book—
“Okay, is this the actual sex? We should both get part of the actual sex.”
The other girls were laughing, yes. They were laughing and blushing, but—I moved my eye from beneath the pillow—none of them were laughing at me.
Everyone who forms a theory of prehistoric life must sooner or later base it on what they privately believe about human nature.
Marija Gimbutas was a pioneering twentieth-century archaeologist whose life was torn apart by war. When her native Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, Gimbutas had to flee, carrying only her dissertation and her baby. After her years of struggle and gender discrimination, Gimbutas’s 1974 book The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe caught the zeitgeist like a spinnaker sail.
In the onrush of second-wave feminism and anti-war sentiment, Gimbutas’ theories had an immediate appeal to women inside and outside of the academy.
Gimbutas had studied prehistoric “Venus figurines” —small, anonymous, heavyset female statuettes, such as the Venus of Willendorf—as well as the warlike Indo-European cultures of the Bronze Age. According to Gimbutas, once upon a time, Paleolithic Europe had been inhabited by a race of peaceful goddess-worshipers. The Indo-Europeans swept in with their bronze, their chariots, and their patriarchy, breaking the scattered peoples of the Goddess and, in short, ruining everything. In the onrush of second-wave feminism and anti-war sentiment, Gimbutas’ theories had an immediate appeal to women inside and outside of the academy.
Around this time, Jean M. Auel, an accomplished Oregon businesswoman in her forties, sketched her first story about the prehistoric world. In 1980, she published her debut novel, Clan of the Cave Bear, in which an orphaned H. sapiens girl, Ayla, is raised by the Clan, a band of Neanderthals. The girl’s cleverness frightens and confuses the patriarchal Clan, who are genuinely incapable of learning anything new. Clan of the Cave Bear is now among the one hundred “best-loved books” listed by the PBS Great American Read, and it has become a minor classic of historical fiction.
Its sequel, The Valley of Horses, is not so much as a classic as a whisper among women, a shared secret in libraries and locker rooms. But it is this sequel, together with the subsequent books in the Earth’s Children series, that became legendary among female readers. In it, Ayla strikes out on her own and manages to make a living for herself until she meets another human for the first time, the comically handsome Jondalar. His people—as Gimbutas posited—worship the Great Earth Mother, Creator of all. Human cultures do not share a language, but because they share the Goddess, they live in peace throughout Europe. Ayla and Jondalar learn gingerly about each other’s worlds, culminating in Ayla’s detailed sexual awakening and Jondalar’s detailed falling in love.
The Valley of Horses is not so much as a classic as a whisper among women, a shared secret in libraries and locker rooms. But it is this sequel, together with the subsequent books in the Earth’s Children series, that became legendary among female readers.
And who could not love Ayla? She is the type specimen of the Canon Mary Sue—a flawless, feisty maiden, persecuted for her daring. At various points in the series, she invents horse-riding, fire-starting, the concept of sexual reproduction, and dogs. Jondalar has already invented having blue eyes and a large penis; Ayla helps him come up with the spear-thrower as well. They then take a leisurely three books to travel through Ice Age Europe to return to Jondalar’s people. Each book offers diminishing returns to the reader, and yet, taken together, they offered something that women of the 1980s apparently needed.
At that time, the hero of a romance novel was generally what modern authors call an “alpha-hole” —a cruel, self-absorbed rake. The heroine’s reward was that her persistence would unlock his heart and teach him to love. This is not a job that Ayla must do. Jondalar actually likes women; he accepts them as leaders and comrades, just as other men do. And, like all the Cro-Magnon peoples in Auel’s books, Jondalar views sex as a sacrament— “the Mother’s Gift of Pleasures.” The drawn-out sex scenes are repeated throughout the books, with as much tenderness on the fiftieth occasion as on the first.
The first time anyone else saw me naked, they laughed at me.
They were little boys who had threatened to hit my dog if I didn’t pull down my underwear. The association between taking off one’s clothes and being laughed at has remained strong in me ever since. I got more sex education on the fly from R. Crumb comics and dirty magazines. Sex, I gathered, was a nasty business, premised on one principle: make the joke or be the joke.
Sex, I gathered, was a nasty business, premised on one principle: make the joke or be the joke.
There are no jokes in the Earth’s Children series—at least, none that are funny. There is plenty of boisterous teasing, but nothing with actual bite. Something about this appealed to me. I did not exactly like the sex scenes. Even as a sheltered child, I suspected that the characters could not possibly bathe enough for all that. Yet the scenes depicted something I had never imagined: truly safe sex—respectful, reverent, healthy. Auel envisioned a world in which life was dangerous, but men were not, and a woman could lead a life of adventure with a partner, not for him or against him.
The scenes depicted something I had never imagined: truly safe sex—respectful, reverent, healthy… a world in which life was dangerous, but men were not.
Once, I found a heavily used paperback of The Valley of Horses at a jumble sale. In the margins, someone had written “Turn to page 41,” “Turn to page 150,” and so forth. These instructions resulted in a simple tale of one woman surviving in the wilderness and domesticating animals, then meeting a nice fellow. Who gave these instructions and to whom, I cannot say. But it was clearly someone who recognized that the book could give more than it was famous for. Stripped of its sex scenes, it still offered hope—the hope that one woman, alone with her broken heart, could build a full life.
Hope, however, is not the same as quality.
The paperback edition of Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s Reindeer Moon was stamped with FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVED THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR! It is decidedly not. Reindeer Moon is indeed a book about the adventures of a young woman thrown on her own resources in ancient Europe, but the heroine, Yanan, lives a grinding life of constant cold and hunger. Her clothes are ill-fitting; her companions are narrow and quarrelsome. Yanan too is passionate and defiant, but when it costs her dearly, fate does not reward her. Nor does struggle make her exceptional. When Yanan encounters a motherless wolf cub, her first instinct is to eat it.
Thomas, who spent some of her youth among modern hunter-gatherers, has more insight than Auel does into what truly motivates humans on the edge—not peace, love, and discovery, but warmth, blood, and fat. By the time I found Reindeer Moon, it reinforced what I understood then to be true: life is brutal, and any men who express interest in the ancient spirituality of the female body are trolling for tail.
It seemed unsafe to enjoy something like the Earth’s Children series. Women’s fantasies are used against them in a way that men’s never are. By the time I was in college, I had been sexually assaulted by someone who was, by all accounts, deeply in love with me, and I understood this to be my fault for being in love with him. I needed to prove two things—first, that I was to be taken seriously, and secondly, that I knew better to expect anything from men.
It seemed unsafe to enjoy something like the Earth’s Children series. Women’s fantasies are used against them in a way that men’s never are.
One way I have done this, over the years, is to make fun of the work of Jean M. Auel. I turned on the premise and the purple prose, mocking its sexiness and its ahistoricity. I wasn’t wrong, but I was also bridging a dark place—my own knowledge that sex, for me, had never been a joyful, celebratory, sacred act, and that I could not trust anyone who said it was.
I have, I think, been ungrateful. Auel offered me something that I once took gladly—a chance to imagine, free from the laughter of boys or men. Thousands of readers were able to enjoy the same peace, for a little while, and to learn a few things from Auel’s vast and diligent research. Every day, I struggle to imagine a simple story that is unclouded by discourse, by the weight of what I know the world to be. Auel could not only imagine such a story, she could write hundreds of thousands of words of it and cite her research. Auel depicted a world that was more than pain, and for this, I am glad.
In season two of House of Cards, Frank Underwood comes home to find his wife, Claire, drinking and flirting with one of his security agents.
I am sitting with my girlfriend on the couch, watching on my laptop. The music is ominous. We have already seen Frank kill two people close to him. The scene is dark, and I can see my fingerprints on the screen. The security agent apologizes for his unprofessional conduct and makes a move to leave, but Claire stops him and pulls him in for a kiss. I gape. Frank smiles. Then, the security agent turns to Frank, and they start to make out. I yell at my computer, “What! Did they just—” And then it fades to black.
Frank, played by Kevin Spacey, is a rare portrayal of male bisexuality. I collect them like agates. Here’s another: in Skyfall, Javier Bardem runs his hands over James Bond’s body while he is tied to a chair. “First time for everything,” Bardem says.
Bond says, “What makes you think this is my first time?”
That counts. I count that. It takes so little to keep me fed.
Soon after being hired as an intern, I agree with my boss about a male celebrity being attractive. She jokes, “Are you sure you’re not gay?” I do not know how to respond, how to tell her that I am somehow both and neither, sometimes welcome, sometimes ushered out, sometimes standing with my hand pressed up against the glass. I stall with a fake laugh. “Well,” I say, and let it hang.
It takes so little to keep me fed.
Around Christmas, I tweet, “Just when you thought the straights couldn’t get any more ruinous, Michael Bublé changes the lyrics of ‘Santa Baby’ to ‘Santa Buddy.’”
“smh u straight,” replies a friend from high school. He and I have had sex three times.
When I begin to doubt the existence of my own sexuality, I search my collection for someone to identify with. Here’s another agate: Wolverine’s supervillain son, Daken, whose name means “mongrel”—a mixed breed, a neither-one-nor-the-other. He uses pheromones to seduce both men and women, usually to some nefarious end. He kisses a man and then kills him in the same issue. While he is a member of the Dark Avengers, he is asked to join the Dark X-Men. “I always did like playing for both teams,” he says.
That’s how it feels: like there are two teams. You can only wear one jersey at a time. To play for both teams is a contradiction; you must be a double agent, your loyalties firm to one side.
At a company pizza outing, my boss asks whether the table believes that bisexual men exist. She makes it clear that she doesn’t. I have just been hired part-time as the company’s fourth employee. I am afraid I could be sloughed off if they find me too disagreeable and I don’t want to field follow-up questions on the specifics of my sex life. So I keep quiet while my heterosexual coworkers hypothesize, offering up what scant evidence they have to be dissected. One unwittingly comes to my defense, saying she once knew a Real Life Bisexual Man. My boss wonders aloud whether he might have just been gay. The conversation ends, and nobody’s mind is changed.
She spoke as if bisexual men were mythical creatures, but that can’t be right; mythical creatures appear in popular media all the time. Unicorns and mermaids are not real but are easy to comprehend. Bisexual men are the opposite.
She spoke as if bisexual men were mythical creatures, but that can’t be right; mythical creatures appear in popular media all the time.
A year later, I am a full-time employee and still not out to my boss. We are talking about House of Cards, and I am recounting my shock at the threesome scene. Maybe I am trying to hint at something. In my apartment, I have practiced coming out to her—taking a nonchalant, “oh, didn’t you know?” approach—and have promised myself I would never lie if directly asked. But I have learned from Frank that there can be equilibrium in sleeping with whomever and letting people assume what they will. “I don’t think he is bisexual,” my boss says. “I think he is gay and is just using women for a political end.”
But he has sex with Claire, I point out. And Kate Mara, before he pushes her in front of that subway car! I fight for Frank’s bisexuality, and in this I fight for myself, for my own possibility and existence. I don’t know what she is fighting for. Maybe so she and her team can keep playing their game, whatever it is.
I fight for Frank’s bisexuality, and in this I fight for myself, for my own possibility and existence.
Another year later, it is fall of 2017 and our office does not go a week without someone exclaiming that another celebrity has been accused of sexual misconduct. When the dam breaks for Kevin Spacey, I think back to the first scene of House of Cards, where a dog runs into traffic and is hit by a car. Frank kneels and strangles the dog—a coup de grâce. And I know that Frank Underwood can never appear on the screen again.
Spacey was accused of sexual assault by over a dozen men. In one account, he fondles a man at a club. In another, a man passes out at Spacey’s apartment and wakes up to find Spacey performing a sexual act on him. Other men have done these exact things to me. When I read about these experiences, I don’t see Spacey and a young boy; I imagine Frank, his syrupy approximation of a Southern accent, and myself. I had once identified with Frank but now find myself across from him, his hand reaching between my legs. I could always see on his face that he was capable of something like this, but I had always imagined that Spacey was just acting.
Maybe I should have been more critical. The security guard was clearly intoxicated, and Frank was his boss. In the first season, Frank repeats a quote most often attributed to Oscar Wilde—a man who, like Frank and me, had relationships with men and women; a man who, like Spacey, pursued men decades younger than him— “Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” Daken, Frank, Bond, these men with body counts—maybe all they ever wanted was leverage. That is the nature of bisexual male representation: a liminal space, a “maybe” that never resolves to no or yes. It can be hinted at, even shown, as long as there’s plausible deniability.
That is the nature of bisexual male representation… It can be hinted at, even shown, as long as there’s plausible deniability.
It is another year later now, and after a workplace happy hour, my boss pulls me aside. “I have to apologize for something that’s been bugging me forever,” she says. I steel myself. “When you started here, I made a joke about you being gay,” she says. “And I’ve felt bad about it ever since.”
I still don’t know how to respond to this. But until there are better bisexual men to point to—men who don’t commit horrendous acts of violence, men who are unambiguous and proud—I have to believe that the simple, damnable existence of Frank was a step forward. It takes so little to keep me fed.
At the center of The Exene Chronicles is Lia, a fourteen year old Black punk fan in the 1980’s living in Coronado, a San Diego suburb. As one of the few Black kids in the area and at school, she befriends Ryan, a white girl her age acting rebellious and grown up to cope with unwanted sexual advances for her pubescent body. When Ryan disappears, Lia uses the punk rock singer Exene Cervenka as a guide to cope with what happened, what led to Ryan’s disappearance, and Lia’s falling out with Ryan.
Recent Comments