punch me in the face
revisiting queer teendom
This Week in Reading:
Heartstopper Vol 1-4 by Alice Oseman
After watching Heartstopper on Netflix I picked up the graphic novels from the library and devoured the whole series in less than 36 hours.
The world of Heartstopper is not pure fantasy– the kids struggle with real world problems: the specter of homophobic bullying, family conflict, mental health issues. But the series is a kind of wish fulfillment. Charlie and Nick are the kind of relationship a closeted queer kid is desperate to manifest at 16— you have a crush on a straight person and they like you back, you mutually confess to your gay longing, consummate it with a kiss worthy of a Gilmore Girls episode. In Heartstopper, the boys wrestle in the snow, make-out in each other’s twin beds. No one dies. Everything is hehehaha cute cute squee cute. It’s the delicious romance of a Sarah Dessen novel or a Disney Channel Original movie. It is the representation we need, in terms of helping queer kids imagine a happy future, but it is not representative of what it's like to be a gay teen.
Heartstopper is a love story, but high school is the time for crushes— not love stories. Crushes are inherently one sided, a powerful feeling nurtured by and for yourself. They may seem to be an obsession about someone else, but ultimately this other figure’s participation is not necessary— you can continue to feed the crush with whatever interactions you have foraged: assigned group projects, a lunchroom greeting, a poorly executed inside joke. When I was fifteen I was watching Skins series 2 on Megavideo, but only the scenes of Naomi and Emily. At fifteen, I was listening to songs written about real relationships and overlaying the plot onto relationships I had only ever imagined. I was barely prepared to deal with my gay crushes, let alone have a full fledged relationship. When your high school experience is full of unrequited love, the yearning becomes defining. To be disappointed feels natural, the only logical outcome of a crush. It feels deserving, not because you are undeserving of love, but because it seems that all crushes are painfully unfulfilled, and you do not seem particularly worthy of being the exception to that rule.
Netflix describes Heartstopper as a feel good, heartwarming series, and to be sure it is sweet and twee and nothing bad happens at all—but I do not finish an episode feeling “good” per se. As a gay teen there are things that you want, that you can imagine so vividly, that you never fully allow yourself to believe will ever happen. Heartstopper poses the question what if they did? So much of the queer teen experience is defined by unrequited yearning— delusional hope met with disappointment again and again. But in these graphic novels that longing is fulfilled. To read Heartstopper is to see a character get everything your gay-ass teenage self ever wanted, and it is almost impossible to bear. It’s like staring at the sun; I had to physically close the book numerous times, gasping.
I did not have a Heartstopper-style teen romance— with the open professions of love and public displays of affection. But there was a girl, and the overwhelming meaning of being 18, and the disappointment that comes with being a queer teen.
At 18 I was someone calcified by pride. This is how I would have told the story then: