More Letters

August 16, 1991

Before we continue with letters from readers, I must take this opportunity to thank all those kind people who catapulted this humble column into the exalted rank of Favorite CBG column in its very first year of eligibility. When I started this little endeavor, somehow it never occurred to me that it would have any sort of real impact on people. But it would seem to have done so, judging both by that poll and also by the thoughtful and insightful letters that have come rolling across my desk (and, inevitably, been buried in it.)

I was also pleased to see that I had risen from sixth to third in terms of “Favorite Writer.” Again I am flattered by the exalted company with which I’m being placed, and I thank you all again.

Oddly, the votes I was most pleased to get were the two dozen or so people who voted for Atlantis Chronicles as their favorite limited series. That was, and continues to be, the work which I take the most pride in, and it was nice to see it get some recognition.

First is from little Kimmy Metzger in Columbia City, IN, who writes, “I’ve been meaning to write this letter to you for several months now, but hadn’t worked up the cour, er, hadn’t found the time. Then, I saw your recent column on team-ups and decided the time had come.

“You see, a few months ago, I had a dream. In it, I was reading CBG, and I’d gotten to the Marvel ad on page 21. One of the comics in the ad was The Incredible Hulk. The cover showed the Hulk unconscious, chained to a wall, as a costumed figure flew nearby.

“The cover copy on this was, roughly, as follows:

The Hulk–Beaten! Trapped! Helpless–

And only the Wasp can save him!

“There you have it, the team-up the world’s been waiting for. Do with it as you will.

“And I promise to keep future dreams to myself.”

Well, Kim, we can all be appreciative of the latter promise. What a silly dream. I mean, the odds of, in any given month, finding Hulk in the page 21 Marvel cover ad…how ridiculous.

The rest of it sounds plausible, though.

And now, for a descent into the truly bizarre, I present a long-awaited communication from Beverly Martin at 5765 Hampshire Road in Corpus Christi, Texas, 78408. It wasn’t Bev’s letter so much as what accompanied it.

Some months ago, Maggie Thompson came to a New York comic convention, toting a box addressed to me that had been delivered to the CBG offices via accelerated UPS. After running it through all the standard devices to make sure it wasn’t a bomb, she handed it off to me, and I cracked it open to find that Beverly Martin had really gotten into the spirit of But I Digress (namely, she had lost her mind–always a prerequisite.)

She had been so inspired by James Fry’s suggested Christmas present of a Laura Palmer action figure that she raided Corpus Christi toy stores to scarf up cheap blonde fashion dolls, and then followed James’ instructions to the letter in fashioning the single most bizarre gift that anyone could ever get.

Just as James detailed, there is the naked doll, hogtied in twine, wrapped in plastic with thin white tape lashed around it. Her lips are painted blue, her eyelids closed (the dolls were open and she had no closeable eyelids, but that didn’t stop Bev; she found flesh-toned paint and painted over them.) It’s accompanied by a small sheet with all the letters of the alphabet, small enough to be cut out and (presumably) tucked under her fingernails. There is even a to-scale diary, with the Yearbook picture of Laura that always accompanied the end-credits smiling out at you.

But that is not the half of it. This thing comes shrink-wrapped in its own cardboard backing, professionally designed, fully colored, and looking better than stuff that’s designed by Kenner. The front features an elaborate “Laura Palmer” logo, with a variety of Peaks-quotes running down the side including “She’s filled with secrets,” “I feel like I know her but sometimes my arms bend back,” and the immortal quote that has become the unofficial slogan of the rock group Seduction of the Innocent, namely, “She’s dead–wrapped in plastic.”

In the lower right, the package ballyhoos, “Change Her Identity. Just place her head in cold or warm water and her hair will change from Laura’s blonde color to her nearly-identical cousin Madeline’s brown hair!! Two dolls in one!!!!” Since I haven’t had the nerve to ruin the packaging by opening it, I haven’t tested this out personally.

On the back of the package is listed, with accompanying illustrations and bios, the “Entire Twin Peaks Action Figure Line,” as well as their accessories. For example, Special Agent Dale Cooper “comes with working tape recorder,” Forensic expert Albert Rosenfield (“who is lacking a bit in the social graces when it comes to dealing with the living”) comes with a “working drill,” and Sheriff Harry S. Truman naturally “comes with donuts and dámņ fine coffee.”

We are also told of the Log Storage Case which will fit up to 10 figures and accessories, as well as Twin Peaks action sets including the Double R Diner and Big Ed’s Gas station.

Ominously, we are promised that Bob the doll is “coming soon.”

Whether any of the rest of these dolls presently exists I tend to doubt…but certainly Beverly seems devoted enough that, if she puts her mind to it, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find a dwarf doll dancing on my doorstep and speaking unintelligibly.

My column on getting older prompted from Harvey A. Flamholtz in Brent, AL, the observations, “Some time between the ages of 22 and 27 most of us lose our feelings of immortality. It’s usually brought about by the loss of a close friend, a relative or childhood hero. Some come to the realization earlier and others later, but most experience it as this time. The next shock is “these kids don’t realize what’s gone before.” This one usually strikes between the ages of 30 and 35. It’s the one you’re currently suffering through…

“At our family’s annual Thanksgiving get together…the after dinner conversation made its way to the subject of the Vietnam War. The war might have ended years earlier, but the arguments hadn’t. Ten year old Johnny piped up, ‘I know about the Vietnam War. We studied it in history.’ Ugh! The critical formative and early adult years of my life are now history.

“I guess our predecessors felt the same way about us, and theirs about them, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle. Our only consolation is that this latest group of young pups will suffer the same ignominy in their time. That does sound like an old man’s rationalization, doesn’t it.

“Now, at age 43 3/4, I am in the midst of another realization. My physical condition and stamina will never be what they once were. My weight and waist measurement will never be as low, and my hair will never be as thick. Coupled with that, I have a one year old son who came to us, magically, after 18 years of marriage. He will either keep me young or make me very old. Only time will tell. However, I am certain that he will continually force me to look at things from a different point of view, shattering whatever well-established preconceptions my own personal tunnel vision may have created.

“In another decade I’ll probably have some sort of revelation about incipient mortality, and heaven only knows what comes after that. That is, of course, if I’m lucky enough to keep surviving. I do know that I look back with great interest at all the different people I’ve been during the last forty years. People with different goals, needs, loves and hates. The person I was at 18 is very different from the one at 22, or 28, or 35, or now. I don’t know what the future holds, but it should be interesting. Change is always preferable to stagnation.”

Certainly Harvey’s sentiments are cogent and intelligent enough that they don’t need me to elaborate or reply. However, the one plus we can derive from this faint feeling of melancholy is that at least Harvey’s young relative was being taught recent history. The lack of knowledge in students about Vietnam, or Korea, or World War II is absolutely shocking. How often have we read that students don’t know who Hitler is? Mr. Sinister or the Red Skull, their personal history everybody knows, but one of the greatest monsters of this century is oblique and unreal to many. “He killed some people, right?” says the average ten year old, if he or she knows anything at all.

Teach your children well.

The last letter I wish to discuss in this outing is one that I’ve been asked by the correspondent to print verbatim. Nor can I mention the real name of the letter writer nor, for that matter, should I even really give her city and state. So, for the sake of reference, we will call her Emma from Daytona, neither of which is correct (so if you know an Emma in Daytona, it’s not her)

“Emma’s” letter is easily the most moving I’ve received in the time that I’ve been writing this column, and perhaps one of the bravest. What prompted Emma to write was the Red Sonja column some time back, in which I expressed my feeling of self-loathing when I realized that I was hoping that this tormented rape victim would just get nailed by Conan already so she would stop her grousing and snottiness.

Emma wrote that the column had a significant impact on her, making her cry, making her “stomach quiver in reaction” to my self-discovery, she described to me her own tormented history, vis a vis love and sex.

Emma, you see, was raped while in college. By an acquaintance, it turned out, a good friend. (With friends like these, etc. A trite and cliched saying, but no less true.) For a year she blocked out the memory, and once she did face what had happened, then descended into “a sex life that was just as self-destructive as Red Sonja’s is,” engaging in “a cycle of letting myself be abused in many variations and relivings of the rape; I didn’t give myself a chance to be loved.”

The hopeful and uplifting aspect of this woman’s personal tragedy is that, according to the letter, she finally found the precise kind of man whom I described as being the sort that would do Red Sonja a world of good, except he’s the kind that Sonja keeps pushing away. Emma describes him as a man of “charm, breeding and education, a poet and a singer,” and together the two of them had worked to reconstruct her as someone who is able to live with the trauma of what happened to her instead of letting it (and society’s “damaged goods” attitude towards rape victims) devour her. “Time does help,” writes Emma, “if the other ingredients are there.”

I am honored that she trusted me–a stranger, really–to receive this letter and her open confession; trusted me to convey her feelings to BID readers if I so desired while maintaining and respecting her privacy. I thank her for that.

In a way, the attempt to handle the identity of rape victims (yes, “victims.” Not “survivors.” If you’ve been raped, you’ve been victimized. Let’s not put a sunny face on it) with tact in the press has added to the stigma of being raped. Women’s identities are kept confidential (except, it would appear, by the New York Times) because their privacy is to be respected. On the other hand, society is geared to believe that if someone is hiding something (like their identity) then it’s because they feel they’ve done something wrong.

So (society reasons) if you’ve been raped and you’re hiding your identity, then you must be ashamed…which means that you must have done something to be ashamed of…like wanting it to happen. It’s truly a pernicious and devastating circle and one to which, unfortunately, there is no easy answer. Women have requested that right to privacy, and it has to be honored until such time that women decide to change it. And, of course, that won’t happen until men change their attitudes about rape victims. As has been pointed out by others, if a man in an Armani suit is mugged for his jacket, wallet and Rolex, no one ever says, “Well, the way he was dressing, he was asking for it, wasn’t he.”

Peter David, writer of stuff, is extremely annoyed by the current MCI promotion which encourages people to give the names of close friends to MCI so that MCI can then call those friends and harangue them about how they should switch carriers. If you’re a genuine friend, the last thing you’d do is sic a salesman on someone so you could say a few bucks. We’re becoming a nation of salesmen. How disgusting. By the way…buy X-Factor. For every million copies sold, you get a free washer/dryer. Or at least I do.