Embarrass Me in Front of My Friends! (Haven)

Pretty much the main reason I wanted to do a Spider-Man blog.

Star Trek was never part of my childhood. I’d heard about it, but I never actually sat down to watch the series until the Abrams movies were announced. I can certainly see the appeal of the series, and I do genuinely love some episodes of the shows, but it never felt like it was the series for me. Maybe it’s because my aesthetics tend to push me towards episodes that are typically seen as unpopular like Sub Rosa, Dark Page, and Night Terrors. Maybe what I want out of Sci-Fi isn’t the dull parts of Heinlein with five pages worth of “scientific explanations” for how a ship works. Or maybe it’s because I view Star Trek as a “comfort food” series rather than the paragon of what Sci-Fi ought to be.

So when it comes to approaching Haven from the “infamous” first season, I’m going to have a bit of an atypical reaction to what I presume was the mainline opinion. I thought it was fine. It’s not my favorite episode of Star Trek or my least favorite, but it was still a good watch. The story’s a bit simple: an arranged marriage brings the arrival of a family member of the crew whom they have a somewhat terse relationship. But it still works thematically and narratively without ever betraying Star Trek’s ethos of a utopian society without conflict. The character interactions were a lot of fun, in particular Tasha Yar’s glee at finding out about the Betazoid attire worn at weddings. Some of the characters feel a bit off (Data in particular is more callous in his fascination with humanity than I’m used to), but you get the sense that the writers understand the characters as opposed to writing archetypes of other characters.

The main highlights of the story are Deanna and Lwaxana Troi. Many a fan have berated Deanna for being a crap character, citing how she always states the obvious, is completely useless in many of her stories, and is only there to be ogled at. And while there is a level of truth to those claims, the claims are a bit stretched. The thing about Deanna Troi that attracts me to the character is that she’s immediately aware of what’s about to happen. Take for example the climax of the episode. Though out of focus, Marina Sirtis is able to convey Troi’s disappointment (and, even more subtly, relief) at Wyatt’s unspoken rejection and farewell with only her eyes.

Indeed Sitris is perhaps one of the better actresses in a cast filled with amazing actors. But Sitris has been tasked with one of the hardest characters to play on the show, one who has to simultaneously show the emotions of the room as well as her own. This has caused numerous difficulties with the theatrical style Sitris was trained under, hence numerous later episodes featuring Deanna Troi being possessed by an alien force. But Sitris is able to play the part so well that she doesn’t get a rival in skill and subtlety until Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal Lecter (indeed, Hannibal is perhaps the best comparison point for Troi in regards to this episode. Both are therapists who only wish the best for those around them and will do whatever it takes to help others find their true selves. This includes willingly breaking a vow so someone else could be with their true love [as is in the case of Haven] or psychologically torturing someone they love until they embrace their serial killer nature [as is the case of Hannibal’s relationship with Will Graham and most of his other patients]).

Less subtle, and all the better for it, is Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed, and Deanna’s mother. To say she’s overbearing would be akin to saying getting shot in the face is painful. While her belief that empathetic honesty is one that is healthy compared to most modern modes of behavior, she’s a bit too blunt with her openness. Not in the typical way of “foreign people don’t get our customs” that a lot of Sci-Fi tends to go for, but the more casual “oh by the way, your husband fantasizes about me” that at once needs to be said but at the same time should be said more gingerly.

At the same time, her bluntness (and talkative nature) brings out an understanding of the universe and all its implications unparalleled by anyone else in the show. This is in no small part to Majal Berret, who seems to naturally get the role Lwaxana (especially given the role was written with her in mind, famously pitched as “you don’t even have to act”). She gets to the core of the interconnectedness of life (which I’m not going to talk about yet because Dirk Gently came out within the circle of October/November 1987) and how the best thing to do for one another is to be true to ourselves, while also improving that true self to be better. This can range from accepting that love doesn’t last forever and letting go to leaving the life you knew behind for one that lives only in your dreams.

Which brings us to a problem with Star Trek: the female characters. This isn’t to say they’re bad characters per say. Indeed, on paper none of the main cast of Star Trek are bad characters and all of the actors and actresses performing them are all brilliant (this is to the degree where both Miriana Sitris and Denise Crosby [Tasha Yar] were actually supposed to play the other’s role, and they still pull off playing roles they weren’t cast for well [for the most part, there are times when Sitris, for all her unsubtle subtlety, is straining at a desire to be more unsubtle while Crosby has a tendency to play the part a bit too soft for the moment {though this is at times to her advantage, as her seductive bits in The Naked Now are the best parts of that episode}]).

Rather, the problem comes from a lack of giving these wonderful female anything to do. For the most part, they are window dressing in their own story. Infamously, it was declared that Star Trek was about Picard, Riker, and Data in response to Crosby requesting to do more than just have three lines. This, in turn, lead her to quit the show out of frustration and for Tasha Yar to be murdered in such a half assed way as to be indistinguishable from a no name character dying.

And even though Haven itself is an outlier within Star Trek through its nature of being a story about women and their relationships with each other, it still hinges on a narrative about men: that of Wyatt and his dreams, effectively sidelining their relationship for his story. If I were to be unsympathetic, I’d say this was due to the writers’ inability to actually write about female positionality to this scale and a lack of desire to do so regardless of ability. However, this may very well be due to the implied audience of Star Trek (and, subsequently, superhero comics): middle-aged boys.

While the writing staff of Star Trek isn’t making this assumption at this point, the producers of the show were, and would continue to do so no matter how much evidence comes to light that literally the exact opposite is true. There are several reasons for this assumption: a desire to keep Sci-Fi in a box marked “cult,” sexism, nostalgia for older science fiction shows. But perhaps the biggest reason for this shift towards “older” male audiences would be that of capitalism.

We’ll go into more detail on this in a later post, but suffice it to say, our circle of October-November 1987 is less than 10 years away from the comic bust of ’96, wherein the economic decisions of the comic book industry in general (and Marvel Comics in particular) nearly destroyed the entire industry. One of those decisions was to put the entire market in the hands of middle-aged boys who could buy merchandise and comics to such a degree as to alienate every single other audience in the market.

One such audience would be people interested in stories other than “hard men doing hard things hardly,” which is what a lot of Star Trek was into near the end of its run. Whereas early on in the series’ run where it was interested in being about exploring a strange and mad universe (thus attracting a wider audience more receptive to stories about women rather than just stories with women in them), late Star Trek got wrapped up in a stupid war that was frankly the aforementioned dull bits of Heinlein.

This was hampered even further by the fact that, much like the comic book industry at the time, the writers were stuck between two impulses: Our heroes are bad asses and Our heroes are compromised in their efforts to preserve humanity. Suffice it to say, they weren’t good enough to pull this off. Indeed, I have only found two writers in the comics industry that could pull off such a pitch, one of who wouldn’t enter the industry until 2013.

This is a problem for a number of obvious reasons, not the least of which being a cognitive dissonance when attempting to watch late era Star Trek, not the least of which being numerous cases of fascist apologia to such a degree as to commend genocide. In perhaps one of the notable choices of late era Trek was the decision to have Betazed invaded and conquered in their big thesis episode. This is notable as this is the home world of Deanna and Lwaxana Troi.

The implications of this are staggering. Given the episode of Star Trek we’re meant to be talking about, this is a flat out rejection of the ethos of empathetic truth, especially given the episode in question is about the necessity of covering up a conspiracy to start a war between two worlds as means of helping a third world destroy foreign barbarians. In other words, empathy, the act of understanding the positionality of others, is rejected in favor of fascism, a political viewpoint that hinges on exterminating the other. And this is considered to be one of the best episodes of Star Trek. To top it all off, the conquest happens off screen, implying a lack of importance for the values of the Betazoids.

To say this is a summation of why my interest in Star Trek has always been at a minimum would be an understatement. When I watch Sci-Fi, I don’t want stories about how terrible it is to be a white guy or how good is a lie that must be told lest the barbarians tear down out gates. I want stories about people healing, becoming their truer selves, and helping others improve. I want to explore strange new worlds and watch people fall in love while burning down cruel and unjust systems. I want stories about building utopia and working to prevent distopias. I want something that isn’t po-faced about how “serious” we ought to take the man in the rubber suit.

For all my misgivings, I’d much rather have something like Haven than late era Star Trek. At the very least, there’s a sense of strangeness to the universe, a humor to the script (for all his callousness, Data is a riot in this episode, with his level of humor being matched this season solely by putting him in a deerstalker and giving him a pipe), and a love for those experiencing the story. And there are many episodes, even in the late era, that embrace the ethos of this episode; one that many a fan claims is what Star Trek is all about. But they are fewer than the ones that don’t. I wish Star Trek would embrace it’s true self more often than it does. Alas, it seems to only want to be a faint echo of something we should have given up on long ago.

(Next Time: When Time Reverses and Teacups Come Together…)

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[Photo: How to Kill a Computer Directed by Misuko Kase, Script by Kazunori Ito, Storyboards by Toshifumi Takizawa, Deep Dream by Sean Dillon)

Mary Jane…? (The Rebirth)

This gag would have worked so much better
if it was with the Return of Optimus Prime.

Well… shit.

So, when I was planning this project, I obviously needed to find some works that came out during the time period I allotted for myself (October-November, 1987). One such example was this post on the last episodes of the Transformers. These works would have to fit in with the themes and ideas I wanted to explore so that there could be something to actually talk about related to the actual comic (or flail about doing some weird and [hopefully] interesting things involving creative fiction). So for the thematic connection, I was hoping to tie it in with themes of resurrection and thematically contrast how Optimus Prime came back from the dead and what it meant with the source text.

One problem: turns out “The Rebirth” isn’t the episode where Optimus comes back from the dead. That, apparently, came out in February of 1987. “The Rebirth” is the one with the sodding Headmasters. Now, obviously, what I should do is cut this entry entirely like I did with Gödel and move on to the next one. Except, I can’t do that because there isn’t a connective tissue between Joseph Campbell’s death and the next entry such that they would transition into each other well.

And to top it all off, the episodes are terrible. The acting is stilted, the animation is crap, and the script is all over the place. One moment that jumps out is in the first part, wherein the Autobots land on a world at war between robots and organics (I don’t remember what they’re called, I don’t care) where robots are the masters of the world and people as opposed to how it should be (remember: all stories about robots stem from a tale about a slave revolt). (Except not, because the robots are controlled by an evil counsel because why have thematic implications when you can have evil aliens.) As such, the presence of the Autobots is met with distrust and the token humans as species traitors. The natives are able to easily defeat the Autobots, saying they will never be reactivated.

And then the Decepticons come and attack. Now, one would assume given what they know, that the natives would assume these new robots are reinforcements out to finish the extermination of these rebels. However one of the token humans claims the Decepticons are their enemy. A sensible person should see this as a flimsy ruse at best by a person desperate to not be put against the wall with the rest of the quislings. Instead, the leader of the rebels (for some reason) trusts the human and frees the Autobots. This sequence takes place over the course of five minutes.

And that’s not even getting into the whole “romantic subplot between a robot and a minor” thing the episode has going for it. So I guess this is my way of admitting that I’m in a bit of a bind with no way out, because I am an idiot who doesn’t know when things come out and who has no idea how I’m going to approach this beyond “This is shit and I don’t like it.” I have no history with the Transformers (they, along with Power Rangers, were the show that was always on whenever something I liked was on. Like, maybe I caught a clip of them, maybe), I have no thematic lens to look at it that connects to the themes of the blog. At best, I have a contrast between this series’ failed attempts at being a new series for the Transformers (the ending even has a “you haven’t seen the last of us” with Galvetron having a new Starscream [which is a terrible idea because there was nothing wrong with Starscream]) that instead marked the end of the original run with the successful end Kraven’s Last Hunt provides while also acting as a new beginning for Spider-Man as we know him. But honestly, I don’t think that concept has enough legs to get us through the length of a typical entry.

In short, this is probably something that should be cut, but can’t due to the structure. I’m tempted to just say “fuck it, let’s just write the post I wanted to write and give nary a damn for the timescale of this project” and talk about how the return of Optimus Prime, though framed as heroic, is the cause of a literal hate plague that nearly kills everyone in the entire universe. I would probably make a cruel joke about how Optimus is a dark savior, bringing death and destruction in his wake. Then, I’d go in depth on how this also fucks over Rodimus Prime, as it effectively steals his status as main character and throws it back to Optimus Prime (maybe make a reference to Dragon Ball Z). Then, having actually sat through The Rebirth, note how nothing actually comes of this, as the series became a story about a splinter group of symbiotic cyborgs resisting against slavery. Afterwards, I’d go back to the subject of Optimus Prime’s resurrection and note a lack of interiority in the matter before making a contrast of the typical mystical approach most resurrection stories take to this one’s more scientific explanation (this isn’t the first time Optimus has died). Somehow get into why this makes this resurrection less appealing. I’d probably find a way to whinge about never having read the IDW comics, aside from a few scans here and there before moving on to lamenting my lack of nostalgia for the franchise before finally transitioning into the next entry by talking about that next generation of Autobots that got screwed over by the past over taking them. Then, again since I’ve already seen what they would have done next, cringe in horror at Headmasters and lament the need for Transformers to be put down. Or something along those lines, I don’t know. Point is, I feel guilty doing the bare bones version of that entry that never was. It’s not that good, but then I suppose that’s fitting for The Rebirth: A view of what could have been and a gratitude that it wasn’t.

(Next Time: Empathy and the Sacred Feminine)

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[Photo: Robocop Directed by Paul Verhoeven Script by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner]

The Strands of Fate That Bind Us: (The Death of Joseph Campbell)

“But now I find myself in need of something new which, for lack of a better word, we shall call… MAGIC!”
-Mark Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels

A crank at work.

So Joseph Campbell died in the literal middle of the comic. As in “literally at the half-way mark of the comic.” Spider-Man comes back from the dead, hand climbing out of the grave, and then Joseph Campbell dies. Kraven’s Last Hunt, a comic indebted to the work of William Blake, in terms of its’ original title being “Fearful Symmetry,” quoting The Tyger, and an ambiguity in regards to the nature of spiritual visions (be they ghosts or hallucinations), was released at a time where Joseph Campbell died.

Ok, this is going to require some explanation. Let’s start with the two players: William Blake was a romantic era poet and painter, though not himself a romantic on account of him being, among other things, working class. His visionary poetry (both in terms of the imagery within each poem and the fact that Blake was inspired by, for lack of a better term, visions of Angels, Fae, and Undead Fleas) ran the gambit of themes from “EVEN THOUGH YOU WON THE WAR, THE REVOLUTION STILL FAILED UTTERLY ON ACCOUNT OF YOUR FAILURE TO END SLAVERY, AMERICA” to “HOLY FUCK, THERE’S A FUCKING TIGER IN THE WOODS! AND IT’S ON FIRE! WHAT KIND OF FUCKED UP GOD WOULD LET SUCH A THING HAPPEN?” to “Fuck you Milton. Fuck you.”

But at the core of his themes was the rejection of the fixed nature of the universe, represented by two forces. First was that of noted Mason Sir Isaac Newton, for whom Blake notably said “May God us keep/ From Single vision & Newtons Sleep.” As Alan Moore once wrote, “For Blake, the boundaries of Newton’s thought were the cold, stone parameters of an internal dungeon to which all humanity had been condemned without its comprehension or its knowledge.” However, Newton himself is not the focal point of Blake’s horror at a fixed nature for reality, merely a major force pushing such a defined view onto the world. No, the villain (if such a singular term could be used) of Blake’s mythology would be Urizen.

Named after a pun, Urizen is the dream that comes from Newtons sleep: a bearded old man who needs everything defined, all the mysteries solved, and all things bend to his will. However, even defining Urizen by these terms was far too singular a vision for Blake, and so he spent a large portion of his career attempting to “redeem” Urizen while not going the route of many a redemption arc (the baddie falls in love with the female goodie and all is forgiven). Rather, he invents a new character called Ahania to represent the pleasurable aspects of discovery and understanding while accepting that there is so much going on in the depths of the unknown that it can never be fully quantified. Blake being Blake, Ahania is a tragic figure, never quite being the hero of her own story (which perhaps brings up a flaw in Kraven’s Last Hunt, though we’ll get to that in two entries).

The second player, and more famous of the two, is Joseph Campbell. Known throughout the humanities circles as a hack (at best), Campbell was a scholar most notable for The Hero With A Thousand Faces, a text that argues that all myths, and indeed all stories, can be boiled down into a monomyth:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Putting aside the Blakean implications of this, the theory is far too simplistic, even in a more detailed form. It views storytelling as a mere formula of actions that can be replicated en masse to replicate a good story. Indeed, it’s so generic that there is essentially no meaning to the structure itself to the point where one can apply it to both Star Wars and (500) Days of Summer. One could argue that’s the point of the monomyth, but that just seems like it’s twisting the nature of fiction to fit a worldview rather than have what you see before you shaping the worldview. Furthermore, the “monomyth” that supposedly sums the story humanity has been telling itself over and over again is extremely Eurocentric, ignoring the stories of Asia, Africa, and other non-white cultures (for more on why this is terrible, watch Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The danger of a single story). It even ignores European stories such as The Pilgrim’s Progress and Frankenstein, which blatantly don’t fit the narrative. And, of course, this is an extremely masculine vision of how fiction ought to work (Campbell’s defense amounts to “Men go to war, women wait”).

So it should come as no surprise that Campbell’s work has been embraced by the wider culture and used as a cudgel against anyone interested in the humanities. Because, why study the art of fiction and how it impacts the world when it all boils down to one story about the awesomeness of straight white men? Who cares about “intersectionality” or “queer theory” when we have a formula? Can’t you just get a real job like studying how the universe isn’t actually a thing?

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, how does all of this relate to Kraven’s Last Hunt? Well consider the narrative: aside from being heavily indebted to Blake (both in terms of its visionary lead, quoting one of his more famous works, and rejecting the fixed interpretation of the lead made by the villain in favor of something more fluid), the comic rejects the principles held by the monomyth. When Peter Parker ventures forth from the common day, he gets shot in the face, stone dead. Kraven, the baddie, takes over the plot. There’s no decisive victory over Kraven as a physical threat (thematically, the text sides with Peter and gives him a decisive victory, but the monomyth cares not for mere theme). And the boon Peter “bestows” upon Kraven is essentially the same thing as going to the basement to fight the monster of your childhood, only to discover it was a rubbish mask all along. And that’s not even getting into the more detailed aspects of the “Hero’s Journey” that the text doesn’t neatly fit within.

So given all of this, and the major influence on the blog, I am reaching the conclusion that Kraven’s Last Hunt was a magical ritual to kill Joseph Campbell. Now, this isn’t to suggest that J.M. DeMatteis is yet another comic book writer who is also a magician (I refuse to make such judgments until I’ve read Moonshadow and Seekers into the Mystery and actually asked him [though, accounts show the answer is probably no]). Actual Comic Book Writing Magicians like Grant Morrison and Alan Moore tend to lean toward the concept of magic being akin to the act of creation in such a way as to make magicians out of every single artist who ever lived (Crowley, meanwhile, went even further via his suggestion that existence itself is a magical act [Do What Thou Wilt and all]). Nor is this to suggest intentionality on the parts of anyone involved in the comic (if you could intentionally kill someone with a magical ritual, then every single magician would be dead). Rather, to invoke Kieron Gillen’s magical ritual to kill David Bowie, the relationship between Kraven’s Last Hunt and the Death of Joseph Campbell is synchronicity and coincidence and poetry.

It’s not so much that one caused the other, but instead that the events work thematically together. Much in the same way Mary Whitehouse taking Doctor Who a peg down at a time where the writing staff was interested in telling stories of monstrous fools in power whose monstrosity comes from their foolishness, so to is this fitting: a story about human frailty, the failures of the heroic ideal, and other themes that I want to save talking about for when I actually get to the comic is the perfect tale to encapsulate the death of the man who popularized that ideal in the first place.

(Given this, you might suspect that I’m trying to cite an author for our existence, penning each coincidence into a coherent novel. Well, no. The question “Is there a god and do they dictate our will” is not one I think has an answer that can be found or, for that matter, one that would be satisfactory enough for us to accept. We’d keep trying to dig deeper and deeper for the answer. It’s our Ahaniatic nature that pushes us to discover the implications of our actions. For all our reason, the best of us tend to find more questions than answers. Those like Dawkins and Campbell and Phelps who claim to have found the answer to all our questions, end up feeling flat and off. There’s some aspect of their response that’s wrong, and not just because two of the ones mentioned are definitely reactionary figures [Campbell, I’m not sure about as him being a hack ended up not putting him within my field of study, though given which cultures he focused on in his Hero’s Journey theory…].

One of the points of existence isn’t the answer to the mystery, but rather the act of trying to understand that mystery from the perspective of one of the threads. Our deductions are through our interactions with the rest of humanity and solutions can only be found in messy, stupid emotions that don’t fit within the singular vision of Your Reason.

[Then again, this could all be out of spite. A lot of this talk of God was probably going to be in an entry on Gödell’s Ontological Proof I spiked due to both lacking a copy of the proof and lacking any actual connection to Kraven’s Last Hunt. At most, all that post had going for it was essentially rehashing ideas from 30-year-old Grant Morrison comics [which is only slightly better than rehashing ideas from 30-year-old Alan Moore comics]. I freely admit to not being a Mathematician, so the language of Gödel’s work was going over my head, making my case essentially “It’s the job of the humanities to explore the nature of God, not the mathematician’s”. Again, spite.])

At the same time though, it seems a bit of a cruel thing to put around the neck of a comic about the necessity of empathy. Surely there’s more the story did other than kill a scholar. Well, in truth, I don’t know. It’s easier to discover a magical ritual to kill a person than one to create a person, as the former is at the end whereas the latter is the context (From Hell, for example, argues close to 100 years after the fact that the Jack the Ripper killings were a magical ritual to bring about Adolf Hitler and sustain the patriarchy [the latter, due to the intentionality of that aspect, was a mixed bag at best]).

In the end, we cannot know for certain the effects such a work will have on the future, be they inspirations for newer works of art, fond memories that help one push forward through the dark, cruel night we call the 21^st century, or merely a blog about the world that created such tales they wove. We cannot know for certain, nor do I think we’ll ever find out the full consequences of any of our answers. To do that would require ignoring stories that can no longer be told; the stories people refuse to find because they’re from sources we’d rather ignore than listen to; the stories that have yet to be told. Who knows what the future may hold for those of us invested in writing about the past. Who knows what stories we’ll find, and how many of them will be like nothing we’ve ever read before.

(Next Time: I Died For Your Sins.)

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[Photo: The Ancient of Days by William Blake]

Heal a Heart Crushed (Weaveworld)

"What is now proved was once only imagined."

{Cassette tape marked: Gwen 7. Tape label: Sycamore Trees. Found at the Parker residence.}

>click<

>WHRR<

>WHRR<

Hello Gwen. We haven’t talked in a while. Life’s been… life’s been busy. We used to talk all the time when… before you died. Well, I’d talk and talk like I was running out of time and you’d just listen. You’d look at me with those soft blue eyes and that knowing smile… I don’t think I was a good person back in those days. I don’t think I was a bad person either I didn’t try to hurt people or anything, but I didn’t do anything to help, you know? I just didn’t care. But being with you… oh, being with you made me care. I still wasn’t good, but I was better when I was with you. You were so good; your heart was like a lone star in a dark sky at the end of time, just waiting to supernova a universe into creation. Looking at you made me babble about things that had nothing to do with anything, just so I could be with you. Even thinking of you makes me ramble… I wanted to talk to you about a dream I had last night. You were there, we all were. Even Harry. It was twilight on winter’s eve. All my best memories of you are from winter, while my worst are from spring. The sky was cloudless, the night before there was a snowstorm that drowned the streets. Only the rooftops were spared. We were dressed in clothes we always dreamed about wearing, all blue and red. You were in this stunning blue dress that was sparkling in the amber light of the sleeping sun. Your hair was, for once, in a ponytail. I always told you you’d look amazing in a ponytail, and I was right. I was dressed in a zoot suit that I barely pulled off. We held each other for a moment, our eyes kissing with their gaze. And then the sky began to sing. It was an old tune, but for the life of me I couldn’t name it. It started out as a simple a cappella of “AaH” and “oOh” before the strings birthed themselves. It was a soft song, a simple song. Not one played at weddings or for religious celebrations, just a small song you’d hear at a dingy bar with no name pushed into new heights by making it an orchestral piece. It was a wordless song, but one I always loved. And so, we danced to it. It wasn’t one of those sad attempts at dancing I’d do to distract myself from my memories; it was true dancing, real dancing. It was the feel of the dancing you that night Harry got kidnapped by Kraven the Hunter. And we were doing it together. We would leap from rooftop to rooftop, like they were tiles on a dance floor. You never danced on rooftops, and for that I’m sorry. Soon we switched partners, and dancing the same dance with Harry. He was wearing his stupid bowtie. Everyone knew it was stupid even he knew it was stupid. No one could pull off that bowtie, not even Doctor Who. The music changed once we switched partners, suddenly the tune was more electronic and I recognized beat, though the lyrics were not there. I sang them to myself, “So won’t you say you love me?” and Harry replied, “I love you.” He was never one for the classics, but he always meant well. Even now, I think fondly of him. Once more we changed partners, and once more the song changed. The only instrument used was a ukulele. I didn’t recognize it; I didn’t know it and I probably never would. It was Peter, this time, who sang to me. He was dressed in his work clothes, but with a top hat and a monocle. It was quite funny in a way he typically isn’t. He can make me smile, sure, but his humor was more Blackadder than Chaplin. He sang, in a voice that was not his own but of a woman, “I remember the days of just keeping time… of hanging around in sleepy towns, forever. Back roads empty for miles.” And then we danced together, and the sky sang an alien song from an alien world. But it was our song nonetheless. I was holding Gwen’s hand and Peter’s hand, and Harry’s hand. It was then that I noticed that we weren’t on the ground anymore, maybe we never were. We were in the infinite canvas called space. We were a spaceship made flesh into perfection. We loved each other as we loved ourselves, for we were ourselves. And we sang with the chorus of stars. And then, I woke up. I was crying like I never cried before, even at the funeral. Peter didn’t hear my tears… at least I didn’t think he did. He seemed to be sleeping soundly for once. I went into the other room to be alone for a while, when I saw the old tape recorder. We took it from Aunt May’s house shortly after she moved in with us. I think Peter got it from a birthday party from Flash. The word “Puny” is etched into the back of it. Peter would use it every so often to talk to people who aren’t here anymore. His way of coping, I suppose. He talked to you a few weeks ago on Valentine’s Day. It’s our wedding anniversary today. Thirty years, can you believe it? I’m old while you’re young forever. Heh… I keep thinking of that last night together. Peter in… Vancouver, I think it was, covering something with Wolverine or one of those “The only solution to the problem it to group up and hit it till it dies” superheroes. They’re not family like the Richards are. They’re just people he works with. Anyways, Harry had dropped by, or more accurately collapsed into our apartment. He took a lot of LSD and was going through a bad trip. We carried him into a Taxi and took him home. He wasn’t there, thank God, so we put Harry into his bed and called a Doctor. I wanted to take him to a hospital, but he kept screaming “NO DOCTOR! NO DOCTOR!” You called Peter and told him to get home as soon as possible. And then you started to cry. At first, I thought it was about Harry burning up in the other room. We could hear his screams, though I was sure the rest of New York could as well. Maybe even parts of Connecticut could, though that might be a tad hyperbolic. But then you whispered “oh, Peter.” I turned and looked into your eyes, and they weren’t looking at me. They were looking past me. Not at something behind me, but at something that wasn’t there. I asked about it, and you gave me your typical silence. I wanted you, not your presence, I was adamant about that. I kept badgering you about it until you finally shouted the one thing I always knew about Peter. The thing he tried to keep to himself. The mask he’d wear when he didn’t want to be Peter. I was shocked; by the way you looked at me, maybe you thought I didn’t know. I did, I just didn’t think you did. You told me you found out a short time after Peter left for Canada; some fabric of his work clothes got mixed up with your laundry. You could tell from the name sewn to the inside of the mask. At first, you thought it was just a costume for Halloween, but then you started thinking about all those times he’d “flake” on us for a scoop. You never believed his terrible excuses, but you thought he was like Harry, except he could manage it better. Harry’s screams punctuated the point. You didn’t think he’d ever be Spider-Man. At first, you were angry. “The man who killed my father is my true love!” you said in a howl that seemed to silence Harry’s. Then you said the cognitive dissonance kept you from shouting what you knew to everyone who would listen. You wanted to watch him burn, but you also wanted to burn with him if it meant you would be with him forever. But instead, you kept quiet about it until that night. You turned to me and asked, “What should I do.” I couldn’t say anything. There were so many answers I could’ve given. I could have told you to keep that feeling repressed, as I had since I learned his secret. As I had for everything I felt strongly about. But looking into your eyes… It wasn’t like you were drowning, far from it. You were lost in space, hurtling through the cosmos in the hopes that a planet would rise up behind you so that you may finally stop falling. Looking into those hopeless eyes, I remembered eyes I saw in a mirror once. And it was at that moment, that I decided to try to be a good person. I didn’t say anything, what could I have said that would have made things better. I just sat down next to you, and held your hand. And you looked at me, and there was something on your face. I didn’t recognize it at first; it seemed too small to see. Then I saw it. It was like the smile in O Lucky Man… I just realized: you probably don’t get all these references I’m making. They all came out after you died. Hell, that film came out the weekend after you died. I’ll describe it for you: It wasn’t quite a smile, but rather it was the first movement of a smile. And I keep thinking of that smile, and of how you made me feel, and I realize that was the last moment I ever saw you happy. The next night, you died. I wasn’t there for you… I was with Harry when we heard. At least, when I heard. Harry was in Wonderland, crashing down into tragedy. I ran to the morgue, not even noticing Peter stalk into Harry’s apartment. So many things could have been avoided if I had. Harry would still be alive, for one. I don’t know what I could have done to make things work out in the end. I tried so hard with Harry and Peter, but it doesn’t always go the way you want it to… When I got to the morgue, your eyes were already closed. I wept into your corpse, hoping that maybe there’s some magic in this mad world we live in. Alas, they did nothing. Someone offered me a ride home, I don’t remember who. I sat in our apartment for several hours, hoping someone would come over to talk. I was startled when Peter opened the door. I tried to tell him about what happened. How I felt, and what that meant to me. He just snapped, viciously calling me out for my mask rather than myself. The mask told me to just get out of there. But I wanted to be a good person. So I stayed. We got married, after we both tried to not fall in love. I haven’t talked to him in a while. I still live with him, but we haven’t been talking lately. He’s been talking at me, but not with me. I keep thinking about us, and I realized something: I never believed in Eden. Not the way the Bible tells it. Original sin and all that crap. But maybe the story’s got an echo somewhere in it. An echo of the way things really were. A place of miracles where magic was made. And I think, whatever that story was, was what our relationship was like. And I want to have that back. I want to be with you and Harry and Peter in that endless winter. I miss you. I love you. Goodbye.

Hello? Is anyone in here? I thought I heard a noise… Oh, it’s this old thing. What are you doing o-

>click<

(Next time: Newtons Wake)

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[Photo: Doot Doot by JohannesVIII]