In which I almost get to make out with Charles Dickens
(This was written for Powell’s, the Oregon-based bookseller.)
“There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”
I first read Great Expectations back in ninth grade or so, and while I don’t remember exactly, it’s safe to say that the above lines went over my head — whoosh! — along with pretty much anything else that didn’t have to do with boys, Rick Springfield, boys, and ways to make my hair bigger. It was 1981, more than a century after the book was published.
Now it’s 2010 and I’m sitting here having a first-time author fantasy: Charles Dickens and I are chilling in some divey Victorian pub, throwing back a few, and bonding over this very topic. (I’ve worked out the whole time/space continuum thing and have paid him a visit. It’s my fantasy. Go with me on this.)
Dickens, naturally, finds me riveting, and, not for nothing, my hair is perfect. (more…)
