I love Alison Bechdel’s work—I have since my college roommate El brought home a volume of Dykes to Watch Out For as part of the reading for a women’s studies class my junior year in college.
I told myself I wanted to read it because a book about women, living comfortably sans men. But more likely I wanted to read it because it was *not* a textbook on chemistry or a book in French or anything else I was required to read---it was certainly the lightest reading material available in our rooms*—but I was drawn in by the characters. When we went to the Cities and hit Barnes and Noble I found the next volume in the series—spawn of Dykes to Watch Out For.
I was not the only one of my college friends to be seduced by DTWOF. Even the men were interested. Some of this might be the growing interest in comics/graphic novels, but it was one of my former boyfriends who found DTWOF online in a weekly queer publication.
Or, it could just have been her interesting characters that kept us all reading.
I need to read like I need to breathe. My senior year in college, I went home to NY for Christmas break. I brought about 50 pounds of books I needed to read for my Comps. I needed to read these over the December break, so I took a job as a part time hire at Macy’s. I thought 3 days a week would allow me more time to read. Foolish me. By the end of December I was working full time. This was not my first experience in working retail in December, but it was probably my most intense. I barely left the cashier’s box for the entirety of my shift. When I did leave it—to find the price of a garment that was missing a tag—customers were mad at me because I couldn’t help them-“you’re going back to talk to your friends instead of helping me!”
The other cashiers gave me advice that served me well the rest of my career—“kill them with kindness” and “this is not about you as a person—they don’t know you.”
At the beginning of December I’d been reading De Beauvoir in French (for my comps) in the break room. By the end of December I was re-reading Dykes to Watch Out for in the break room (and on the subway and on the ferry) because I was too tired to do anything else. A graphic novel soap opera with a snarky sense of humor was about my speed**. Not just then, but other times in my adult life, I have noticed that reverting to comics to read is usually a measure of exhaustion
Now, 25 years later I find this ironic. Alison Bechdel has just put out her third graphic novel, and it took me (me! I eat books!) 3 weeks to read it because I was too exhausted to do so sooner.
Some of this is normal—I need reading glasses to enjoy graphic novels. Bechdel’s books are much heavier fare than her comics were. But really. I met one of my boyfriends when he was reading Gravity’s Rainbow (I was reading Bleak House at a bar). I didn’t read the book until he went to Ireland for two weeks and I needed something to do with all the spare time on my hands. And yet, I plowed through that after work, for fun. (People would come up to me on the subway and say “Oh my God—you’re reading that? I never made it through the Crying of Lot 49.”) And fun it was—if a more than a bit disturbing.
And now I can’t even read a graphic novel in the evenings because I am too tired?!?
Yes that was 15 years ago and we do change as we age but….I have 1 talent, which is similar to my 1 constant need. I read.*** And now I can’t even do that anymore, because of work.
No—not because of “work” but because my work drains me like a gelfling in the grip of the Dark Crystal. I read. That’s what I do. I read novels and history books—even badly written ones—because I want the things between the covers. I retreated to Dorothy Sayers and Georgette Heyer at the beginning of 2020 because I was scared, but now I find that while I am no longer as scared as I was last year, I am too exhausted to read anything less formulaic.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I struggled a little maintaining work life balance, but I found it. By January 2021, that balance was destroyed-there was always something that needed extra work, something that required that we work late (and call our boss and get yelled at while doing it.) I thought it was just short term stuff—by March it will be over, but here it is May and it is not over.
I didn’t actually realize how bad this was until earlier tonight. I was sending a note to a friend about my opinion of Bechdel’s newest book, when I realized that an author whose work I could read when I was most exhausted, had become an author whose most recent book took me three weeks to read—and how very fucked up that was. And never mind novels <> comic strip. Reading is what I do. And I can’t do it.
*We had a triple—one sort of bedroom and a living room and a walk in closet *with a light fixture* because it was my room lottery number that drew the room I wanted the single. When we saw the room, I amended this to wanting to sleep in the closet which had a light and a door. As a consequence, I literally read my first DTWOF book in the closet. El had a great deal of fun telling this to to other people.
**Hey we’d gone to highschool with Julio and Marisol’s Decisions—of course a soap opera graphic novel was perfect subway reading.
***I don’t really care what Tyrion Lannister said, been doing this since I learned how to read with my mouth closed
****needs editing
