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A review by taxidermy
The Complete Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau
3.75
Writing this on the tailend of a manic episode after I haven't slept in at least 5 days, so it's honestly a mess and not much of a proper review, but I need you to take this so so seriously anyway. Because I've been planning on writing this review for a while! Since I was lucid, since I decided I didn't hate the idea of writing out my thoughts about books, for people to SEE, in public, online. SOMETIMES.
So, I accidentally left this book out in the living room once back when I was in highschool and my mother read it in one day. "Is that all?! That's the end?!" she said when I got home, in tones that are atypical of a parent reading their offspring's queer fiction. She wanted more. She would rarely be that positively engaging in my interests ever again.
This is still one of my favorites of Joey's (solo) fiction pieces, second probably to Malagash.
Joey Comeau's writing changed me in my youth, it helped me to discover myself when I was young and just figuring out for the first time that I was queer. I stumbled across his work when I was perhaps a preteen/young teenager, somewhere between 10-12 mayhaps—this was my fault; I went where I wanted & did what I pleased, and no one had any hope of stopping me. I'd had extra money to spend on the books on TopatoCo and other such websites I can't recall the names of right now, and after perusing his content on LiveJournal/StrangeHorizons I was definitely intrigued. From that point on, I kept up with his books as they came out, always spending whatever little gift cards I acquired for my birthdays on them when there was a new one if I could, and I kept up with A Softer World as it would update over the years too (until it died, RIP.)
At the time that I found his work, I really needed something out there in the world that would engage with me & ask me hard questions, make me think about myself and the world around me & what I really wanted out of it, how I wanted to fit into it (or not) & interact with it, without cushioning the blow & tiptoeing around the matter of queer identity I was grappling with. I needed queer content by queer people that didn't treat queerness like it was shameful & "just like all the cishets!" Because the problem I had, was that I didn't relate to anyone else I knew. I didn't know what it meant for me, and I didn't know I was queer yet, but I wasn't like any of them. Joey's work was honestly one of my first interactions with the subject, and even if it probably wasn't age appropriate, I think it was what I needed.
"I don't relate to anyone else in the whole world—but I relate to whoever is writing THIS" is the feeling I remember having for a long time. And when I started figuring out what being queer meant for me, it all got a bit easier and I felt less alone in the world. I don't feel alone at all anymore, actually. ("There are more of us than you think.")
My memory is a little fuzzy because we are talking at least 15+ years ago, but I'm pretty sure *this* book introduced me to concepts regarding the fluidity of gender & sexuality, and honestly saved me from a lot more of the confusion and heartache over it than I already had been working through at that point. At least that's why I'm writing this review on this book, as opposed to one of his others, so I hope I'm right. It had me asking questions about the world that helped me to understand not only my own queer identity better, but also the subjects of heteronormativity, queerphobia, & oppression, and it also had a distinctly human approach to tackling these matters. People in his books make mistakes, change their minds, they say things wrong before they say them right.
It's something I still think about today, and I have absolutely terrible memory so it should MEAN something that I remember it!
I hope to support Joey on Patreon when I can afford to. I'm still fond of him & his work! I really feel like it shaped me as a person. I'm not sure how Storygraph feels about "linking to websites that ask for money" wrt their TOS—it seemed to say usage of links is at the users own risk, which sounds to me like "It's fine actually" but it was worded oddly so Who Knows—but I'm going to try this anyway & say: I hope you support him on Patreon too if you liked this book, any of his other books, or A Softer World! He could use it, and he deserves it. https://www.patreon.com/joeycomeau
This was supposed to end with a circling back to the moment of me leaving the book in the living room & turning that into a line, but I can't make it work right now, so pretend I did. Them's the bones, baby.
So, I accidentally left this book out in the living room once back when I was in highschool and my mother read it in one day. "Is that all?! That's the end?!" she said when I got home, in tones that are atypical of a parent reading their offspring's queer fiction. She wanted more. She would rarely be that positively engaging in my interests ever again.
This is still one of my favorites of Joey's (solo) fiction pieces, second probably to Malagash.
Joey Comeau's writing changed me in my youth, it helped me to discover myself when I was young and just figuring out for the first time that I was queer. I stumbled across his work when I was perhaps a preteen/young teenager, somewhere between 10-12 mayhaps—this was my fault; I went where I wanted & did what I pleased, and no one had any hope of stopping me. I'd had extra money to spend on the books on TopatoCo and other such websites I can't recall the names of right now, and after perusing his content on LiveJournal/StrangeHorizons I was definitely intrigued. From that point on, I kept up with his books as they came out, always spending whatever little gift cards I acquired for my birthdays on them when there was a new one if I could, and I kept up with A Softer World as it would update over the years too (until it died, RIP.)
At the time that I found his work, I really needed something out there in the world that would engage with me & ask me hard questions, make me think about myself and the world around me & what I really wanted out of it, how I wanted to fit into it (or not) & interact with it, without cushioning the blow & tiptoeing around the matter of queer identity I was grappling with. I needed queer content by queer people that didn't treat queerness like it was shameful & "just like all the cishets!" Because the problem I had, was that I didn't relate to anyone else I knew. I didn't know what it meant for me, and I didn't know I was queer yet, but I wasn't like any of them. Joey's work was honestly one of my first interactions with the subject, and even if it probably wasn't age appropriate, I think it was what I needed.
"I don't relate to anyone else in the whole world—but I relate to whoever is writing THIS" is the feeling I remember having for a long time. And when I started figuring out what being queer meant for me, it all got a bit easier and I felt less alone in the world. I don't feel alone at all anymore, actually. ("There are more of us than you think.")
My memory is a little fuzzy because we are talking at least 15+ years ago, but I'm pretty sure *this* book introduced me to concepts regarding the fluidity of gender & sexuality, and honestly saved me from a lot more of the confusion and heartache over it than I already had been working through at that point. At least that's why I'm writing this review on this book, as opposed to one of his others, so I hope I'm right. It had me asking questions about the world that helped me to understand not only my own queer identity better, but also the subjects of heteronormativity, queerphobia, & oppression, and it also had a distinctly human approach to tackling these matters. People in his books make mistakes, change their minds, they say things wrong before they say them right.
It's something I still think about today, and I have absolutely terrible memory so it should MEAN something that I remember it!
I hope to support Joey on Patreon when I can afford to. I'm still fond of him & his work! I really feel like it shaped me as a person. I'm not sure how Storygraph feels about "linking to websites that ask for money" wrt their TOS—it seemed to say usage of links is at the users own risk, which sounds to me like "It's fine actually" but it was worded oddly so Who Knows—but I'm going to try this anyway & say: I hope you support him on Patreon too if you liked this book, any of his other books, or A Softer World! He could use it, and he deserves it. https://www.patreon.com/joeycomeau
This was supposed to end with a circling back to the moment of me leaving the book in the living room & turning that into a line, but I can't make it work right now, so pretend I did. Them's the bones, baby.