Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [180]
Many of you may not know this, but within the last fifteen to twenty years, superheroes in printed form (and through osmosis some of the films based on them) have become a weird, hybrid form of adult/child entertainment aimed almost exclusively at grownups who—for complex reasons no one really cares about—have become virtually the only remaining audience for them.
These modern superhero readers don’t want to let go of their cherished supermen, their beloved paragons of virtue, their men-ofwill who are always right; but as adults, these fans have now experienced the grays of the world, and therefore can no longer reconcile the multiple tonalities between dark and light, sort of right and maybe wrong, with simple tales of cartoon heroism. Yet, at the same time, they still want the happy ending, the good fight, the easy answers of childhood. They want their brightly colored, spandex-clad ubermen who violate civil liberties at will, with impunity, and government sanction, even though those tales are primarily only suited for the minds of the young—or Bush administration officials. In other words, comics fans today want their entertainment to reflect the grays and the realities, and the darknesses of the real world, but they still want someone to punch the bad guy and make it all better.
Hell, don’t we all?
I certainly did. Wisper apparently did.
Maybe that’s how superheroes had failed us all. Given us simple answers we still longed for. Still believed in, simple answers that blinded us to the complex solutions often needed for real-world problems like ‘love’, ‘fame’, ‘peace’, ‘wealth’, or ‘happiness’. Realworld answers don’t come in pure, undiluted forms of clear, pleasanttasting liquid inside convenient, plastic bottles with no FDA warnings on the label.
Without some confirmation from me, Wisper couldn’t see through the thin mist of grays that hid the mostly good—mostly wanting to be heroic—man I felt was inside me. And could I blame her? Earlier, on the floor of the convention center, confronted with something stupid from my past, I couldn’t see through the even thinner haze of grays to the clarity of what she offered. What should have been the most important thing in my life. Freedom. Control. Love.
Her.
Instead, I had insulted her. Fallen back on old ways and hurt the last person I ever should have.
Spent, sore, and deeply frustrated from everything that had happened to me this past few days, I lowered the chair I still held over my head, set it on the floor, and slumped down into it, feeling its cold plastic adhere to my bare ass as an unpleasant reminder that I was stuck here.
When I finally looked up, everyone was staring at me. Wendy. Morgan. Sophie. Perhaps a bit afraid of my rant, but more as if they believed I might have the answer to our dilemma.
Didn’t they know me? Hadn’t they heard everything Mayor Boone had said about me? Everything Morgan had confirmed?
I had no answers. No one did. Sometimes, there were none. Sometimes the bad guys won.
All good came with bad. Black came with white. Happy with sad. Asian cultures had long ago invented a term for this concept, and even created a picture to help explain the idea for the listening impaired.
Innun Dang it’s called, or something like that. The best you could do—the thing I needed, clearly, to do more of was to see the good, to focus on the good, to embrace the good, and accept that there would, occasionally, be some bad in life.
But never, ever, forget the good. Especially when she was right in front of you.
Wisper.
The videos, the comics, the money, the loss of my mansion and my lifestyle were nothing compared to losing Wisper. The joy that washed over me when I was with her—hearing her voice, her breath, her laugh, being naked with her, touching her, holding her, experiencing everything she offered—was complete. Perfect. Without grays. None of life’s annoying, tonal gradations mattered to me as