Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Eventually I relented, but you can see I was not particularly happy about it. Or perhaps I was using Marsha Queen of Diamonds' powers on him...
Nobody got that I was Marsha Queen of Diamonds because I just looked like a normal person. There was a real preponderance of Sailor Moons and Spidermen at the ball. Amusingly, this guy that we were laughing looked like the Comic Book Store Guy from The Simpsons actually came as the Comic Book Store Guy. He was wearing a t-shirt that said "Worst Costume Ever".
Most of my friends left really early and I felt quite depressed and abandoned. And I was jealous because Jeremy had been on a highly successful Hot Date that afternoon. Jeremy attempted to console me by saying that "if you lost some weight, you would be really hot!" I felt quite outraged at this, especially given that last year I had a brief crush on Jeremy when he was much fatter than he is today.
In the end, I turned to my cool friend Beer. Oh, Beer and I have had some great times. Saturday was one of those nights. I brought him repeatedly to my lips, running my fingers over the condensation on his glass, and let him slip deliciously down my throat.
After a while, Beer ran out, and I felt depressed and abandoned, but soon moved on to his sophisticated buddy Vin Rouge. Vin packs a punch and I had to take it pretty slow - I couldn't just knock him back. But Vin imbued me with superheroic powers including Killer Dancing, Witty Conversation and Jumping Fences in High Heels. After a disagreement over whether we would adjourn to Ding Dong or Alia (I came down strongly on the side of Alia), I caught a taxi with a bunch of strangers, including an American who looked disconcertingly like Rowan Atkinson.
At Alia I discovered my friend Beer again. He said to me, "Where the fuck have you been? Who cares if the music's shit? Let's fucking dance, baby!"
At times like this I realise I love Beer dearly. We danced. Princess Leia was being hit on every five minutes. She was pretending to be all humiliated at wearing the outfit in public, but she was loving it. She-Ra was making out with a guy in an armchair. Wolverine's white wifebeater bore the marks of a violent altercation with Vin Rouge earlier in the evening, and he was also inexplicably wearing a black bra over the singlet, which I found disconcertingly erotic.
Beer spun me til I was dizzy and Marty had to take my elbow and pilot me to the couch. We talked about the forum the following afternoon. Marty joked that someone should ask whether superheroes were "really gay." Drunkenly, I promised to ask that question. And I did. Stuart put his head in his hands when I put my hand up. This is roughly what I said:
It's interesting that you bring up this issue of camp, and you mentioned Kavalier and Clay. I wanted to tie this into something Angela said in her presentation this morning, about homosexuality carrying a stigma in the 1950s. I was thinking about how in the novel Sam has to go before the tribunal because of the homosexual subtext to his sidekick characters. And I was also thinking about the camp superheroes of the 1950s and 1960s - the 'men in tights' that the conference title refers to. So I put it to you - are superheroes just really gay?"Big laugh from the audience. Marty said, "Yes, yes, they are," hoping to leave it there. But the other speakers on the panel actually got into the question and provided some answers that interested me - stuff about border crossing and the associations of camp with masculinity.
