Laugh, Dante...Part 3

At first, it was easy. I could get it anonymously, thanks to the miracle of Ebay. I could find the issue I needed, and bid on it with my oh-so-covert screen name and then, someone from a distant land would put it through the mail. Ta-da!

But then, I realized that I was being ripped off. These comic peddlers were tuned into people like me, and knew that we would pay high prices for the luxury of sitting at home, away from any store front with any word resembling comic and book and store. We had to pay to maintain the illusion that we were still separate, that we weren't so into "Buffy" that we were fine just gleaning the basic plot from the reviews on Amazon.com. They knew we needed more, and like any good dealer, they knew we'd pay for it.

It was right around my birthday that episode five was issued, and for a few days, I stalled leaving my house in the direction of the local comic book store that is a mere two blocks away. I think this was my little vacation to limbo. Russ was on the couch, sick with a debilitating cold, and I used him as my excuse not to venture down the alley. I had a feeling akin to the first day of school, when there are those general barfy feelings one gets on walking into a room of entirely unfamiliar faces.

But, if you read my last post, you all know that it was more than that. I was unwilling to cross over, either into heaven or hell. I wanted the continuing gratification of being involved in a world of characters that I love. But I wasn't sure I was ready to enter a world where I would possible become one of those comic book people, who went to the stores on new release dates, quoted issue numbers and lines, and heatedly debated matters like whether it was an axe or a crossbow that killed the chaos demon in issue number 2. These are all huge stereotypes, admittedly. But I carried them and still carry them around as reference tools, because I know only one or two other people who buy and read comics, and they don't talk about it. So all I have are vague impressions, like the one I got of the two guys sitting next to me on my last plane trip home from Chicago. They were talking about a comic I'd never heard of, heatedly debating the planetary qualities of some world or distant star, and then, when the announcement was made that we were going to have to board a new plane, I heard one of them say, in a hugely stereotypical flem-coated voice, "This plane better be able to crush atoms or fly at the speed of light."

Did I want identification with that?

The short answer is yes, I do. Because I walked to the comic bookstore and with a deep breath, entered to the familiar sound of customer bell rather than Chewbaca-themed growl or something else comic bookesque. The guy behind the counter was not wearing a novelty t-shirt, but a Hawaiian shirt and he was not over or underweight. And all the sudden, I was happy to be there. He was not a stereotype, and I wasn't either. We were probably just two people who liked good stories and were just searching out ways to find them (oh, and he probably wanted to make money doing it). Like Kristan commented, there is something subversive and hilarious about giving the finger to the powers that be and joining in at the fringes. As someone who was always a cool girl, but also, a rule-following girl, this might just be one of my most rebellious moves ever.

It was fitting that this adventure happened around my birthday. Sometimes I wish that we humans had a skin-shedding system more akin to snakes, where it gets tighter and tighter until it's just no good anymore and has to be removed. The process of shedding isn't easy. Snakes repeatedly grind their head against something hard to get that skin to peel back so that they can slid out of it. They leave it there and move on, in a new skin that's a lot more fitting. But they don't get to appreciate that old skin at all, mostly because they have brains with no residual capacity for memory or reflection, but also because it's hard for them to rubberneck. It would be neat to have my old skin from these years before, to look at it and really see that it's no longer me.