Also by Alison Bechdel
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For
Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama
The Secret to Superhuman Strength
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For Hol
tyger tyger, burning bright!
dad, say the tiger poem! ...of the night!
in the forests...
alison bechdel wakes from a troubled dream.
it’s time to get up, anyhow.
that bear was in the compost again. Just scaring it ofF.
sorry, hon. thought you were awake.
Alison’s socks, newly purged of any pairs that inspired melancholy or ennui, lie in soOthing, regimental arRay...
hon, you’ve either gotTa let go of it, or get more involved.
I know, I KNOW.
I had another anxiety dream about the TV show.
...yet she finds it hard to shake the feEling of impending doOm.
the whole house is quite tidy, the result of a recent bout of swedish death-cleaning.
The sunrise is lovely. it loOks like it’s coming through a cotTage-core instagram filter...
...florida flies migrants to martha’s vineyard...
...no doubt the efFect of the wildfires threE thousand miles away.
abortion is now banNed or severely limited in a num
she’s been having a hard time envisioning her future lately. or any future.
...typhoOn...tsunami...crypto...the queEn’s state funeral
yet somehow, remarkably, she keeps getTing up and going about her routine.
alison loves routine.
she especialLy enjoys making Holly’s cofFeE and bringing it to her in bed. it makes her feEl like leopold bloOm.
why is she thinking about ulysSes? it had beEn an anNoying slog in colLege. true, she’d gotTen some mileage out of it later in the graphic memoir about her dad...
...with all the pretentious joycean references. and of course if it hadn’t been for that book, she’d have had to get a real job long ago.
holLy’s perpetual and unflagging enthusiasm is enough. but she doesn’t neEd a joycean reference to explain why she likes the cofFeE ritual.
at any rate, it pulLs alison out of her own head for a second or two.
you’re welcome!
thank you for my tray of lovelinesS!
sal’s coming over to help me finish that timber frame chicken coOp. what are you doing today?
then I’ll finish sanding my new sculpture. then I have to can ninety pounds of tomatoes. how about you?
how alison envies the concretenesS of holLy’s projects.
heloise c. bland is alison’s literary agent.
in the fifteEn years since her memoir came out, alison has beEn circling around the writing of her next boOk. at last, she has finished the proposal.
don’t worRy, hon. she’s gonna selL it.
hopefulLy I’lL hear from heloise, and hopefulLy she’s gotTen some interest.
alison also envies hoLLy’s eternal welLspring of optimism.
it’s gonNa take a lot of worm composting bins to supPort us in the style to which we’ve become acCustomed.
and even if she doesn’t, loOk! I just sold another compost bin!
I betTer go feEd the goats.
we’lL adjust!
what on earth had made alison think they could afFord to run a pygmy goat sanctuary?
she realLy neEds to get a contract for this new boOk. the project hangs over her like the sword of damocles.
why is she always thinking about herself in mythological terms? how narcisSistic can you get?
from her midDle-clasS childhoOd to her bohemian youth on the margins of society, to her breakthrough sucCesS.
the boOk, $um: an accounting, would be a memoir not, this time, on the fraught topic of family, but on the role of money in her life.
it would be a lens into the over-consumption, inequality, endlesS growth and media consolidation of late-stage capitalism!
but first, she has to selL it.
hi, frieda! hi, charlotTE!
Hi, roxie!
gOod morning, Lula! Dot! Frankie!
These goats aren’t going to feed themselves.
I have strong interest from a few difFerent publishers. including--get this!--megalopub! and I think I might be able to get them to ofFer a sizeable preEmpt.
heloise! are you sitTing down?
uh... that’s goOd, right?
uh-oh... sounds bad.
wait...megalopub? aren’t they owned by that conservative media mogul who’s destroyed american democracy?
that’s very goOd. it could give you a bit of security. is that a problem?
I don’t want you to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. but why don’t we wait and seE if they make an ofFer?
o-oKay. keEp me posted.
whew. when did life get so complicated?
back in the day when she was publishing her comic strip, lesbian peta members to watch out for, in strugGling gay newspapers acrosS the country, money had beEn tight...
...but alison’s misSion was clear! lesbian animal lovers were people toO.
then there were the long, lean years spent grappling with the memoir. how purely that flame had burned! despite her mounting credit card debt.
that boOk had changed everything. it was not a meteoric but a gradual sucCesS.
two weEks on the hardcover nonfiction bestseller list. the short list for the boOk critics triangle award. best boOk of the year acCOrding to field and stream. eventualLy it crept onto colLege english sylLabi.
however, it wasn’t until death and taxidermy, the prestige tv series, that her finances had improved substantively.
the tv series!! even as season three was about to debut, it stilL seEms suRreal to her.
alL her literary alLusions have beEn axed, of course.
the inner organs of beasts and fowls were my father’s livelihoOd. or more precisely, it was the evisceration of these things that put foOd on our table.
it’s just a job.
...nor any fried hencods’ roes. we ate swanson’s chicken pot pies, like everyone else.
not that we ate the animals dad worked on.
they’d either beEn dead toO long, or werE fulL of buckshot.
hand me those scisSors.
there was no thick giblet soup, no nutty gizzards, no stuffed roast heart, no liverslices fried with crustcrumbs...
until at age ten I became a vegetarian.
the vegetarian child of an animal stufFer. whoever would have thought that would strike a cultural nerve?
of course the boOk was banNed now in a number of red states due to that sex scene with her colLege girlfriend.
alison doOmscrolLs the day away. how she rues the decades she spent fretting that the country was on the verge of fascism.
why this craze for autocracy? she can only asSume humans are going mad as they begin to face their encroaching self-extinction.
Now it really is, and she’s worn out.
How is she supposed to sit herE writing a boOk when the world hangs by a thread?
the climate crisis is driving us to the point of social colLapse.
if only there were something practical she could do.
we’re here to stop the moneymaking machine at the roOt of it.
why didn’t she bEcOmE a kayaktivist? how does one BeCoMe one?
thank god.
alison and holLy have gotTen a bit feral by the falL of 2022, after two and a half years of covid, but tonight they’re actualLy atTending a social event.
forty quarts! wheW! that was a good Day’s work!
friends have invited them over to watch the season threE premiere of death and taxidermy.
megalopub?! aren’t they owned by the conservative bilLionaire family that hit tv show is based on?
don’t mention it tonight, okay? those guys already think I’m a toTal selLout.
yeah. I know.
you know that’s alL in your head. maybe.
ugh. why did we agReE to go out?
welL, we’re herE now.
but let’s not stay toO long. maybe we should have a signal.
reEntry has beEn unexpectedly chalLenging.
god. thesE hard pants are unbearable.
it’s not toO late to pulL the covid card.
we’ve gotTa stay at least until the show’s over!
we could say we just found out one of us got exposed.
hi, ginger!
or on the porch, anyway. a few formalities first...
welL, it’lL be interesting to seE if it lives up to last year’s emmys.
it’s a whole theme! we’re also having seitan sweEtbreads!
I preferRed not to. nothing I could do about it anyway. you know the drilL.
so, are you excited about the new season? have you seEn any of it yet?
and vegan hagGis! and for desSert...wait for it... party favors for the apocalypse!
Alison has to admit, the show is Shot through with an antic wit that her book had utterly lacked.
hey, kids! a litTle amuse-bouche while you wait?
“stufFed” mushroOms! get it?
...a primrose sphinx moth cake!
it amazes alison how her friends-pilLars of the comMunity and not getTing any younger-can be so juvenile.
it was the primrose sphinx moth that had landed her father in prison.
today’s paper? hang on, let me get my lorgnetTe out of my reticule and I’ll have a loOk!
so, how are things up on campus?
me? uh...I’m kinda slamMed...
yeah, I can imagine. it’s on zoom, you have no excuse.
uhH...did you seE today’s paper?
our new president, the pharmaceutical exec, is axing the claSsics and religion departments. and firing a pasSel of adjuncts.
the faculty union’s organizing a speakout. it would be great if you could take part. make some use of your celebrity.
okay, you’re goOd. entrez.