I will probably have a lot to say about the work of Kieron Gillen over the life of this emotional process blog but today is a quick note about a work that didn't mean much to me until it did, Die.
One of Kieron's ur works, Phonogram, is the one that got me. Specifically, The Singles Club. It came to me at the peak of my own late-blooming retro, goth, and indie-pop club years. Die, on the other hand, came later. The peak of the grim Trump and pandemic years in America and reconciling myself to my forties after a decade of heavy drinking, partying, and living in the moment. Trying to make my first attempt at cohabitation work and finding it incredibly difficult, not realizing how hard having another person around to perceive me as who I was (and more importantly, who I was not) was going to be.
It was the summer of '22 when all of that crested and I realized that I both was, and allowed to be, trans. But that's a different story and a different book for a different time.
In some ways, the concept of Die was perfect for me -- four middle-aged people revisiting the sins of their youth. In other ways -- less so. Role-playing games were a part of my past that I set down in my twenties and have not picked back up again. My particular brand of (faint?) borderline autism makes me a bit of a rules lawyer, and my creativity is something that's a very private thing. I love the explosion in gaming that's been ongoing for the past few decades (I live in Portland, OR after all) but it's not for me.
I still bought Die of course -- but it wasn't a must-read and I wasn't following the characters and story as intensely as I had with other comics. Part out of slowly growing out of living my life through fictional characters and part out of denial around needing reading glasses.
But also Ash, and not wanting to look at myself too closely.
I had put down drag and "the thing I could only call genderfluidity in my head and fantasies" sometime around 2012/2013. I had entered the club and kink scenes because they seemed like places where anything could happen. Over time you discover there are, in fact, only twelve things that can happen -- and having them happen over and over again gets a little boring. Growth is a thing, I suppose. And then realizing your health is starting a massive decline from the drink and occasional drugs and that you can only process feelings through altered states?
So my femme persona became a thing I put down. I shrugged internally and said "I guess that was something I did for a while" and other non-answers when close friends asked what was up. My venues for those opportunities were gone, and the need to show up professionally and spend some male privilege for slightly more financial security was in the air.
Every year, particularly around the dark holidays, an old familiar depression would haunt me. A crushing sense that my life was over and there was nothing to look forward to.
When Die #19 came along I wasn't quite ready to listen to the voice my resurrected depression was suffocating -- but unresolved feelings around genderfluidity with no clear model to guide you? Tying it up with sketchy problematic behavior in your past? Capital kay KNOWING this in your head but not knowing it in your heart or what to do about it? I played it off to myself as "oh that's interesting" and moved on.
It would take me another ten months until I was curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor crying my eyes out about who I was and the time I'd wasted.
Re-reading this issue today as I box up some comics the tears come again, but this time they're mostly from gratitude and joy. Mostly.