Rocking and  
Writing Against
Deresion ~

 

Offers Young Queers

Hope and Second Chances

 

BY FRAN MORAVCSIK

aul McComas was so devastated by

the suicide of rock icon Kurt Cobain

that he has dedicated the nine years
since to educating young people to the seri-
ousness of depression and the paths to recov-
ery. A bass player and backup singer. he first
founded a band called Lithium to play free
concerts of Nirvana covers and talk about the
fight against depression.

Continuing this effort, he has recent-
ly turned to his daytime job, writing, to create
a novel, Unplugged, in which ‘Dayna Clay.’ a
charismatic rock singer, survives a suicide
attempt and disappears into the Badlands,
where the environment helps her to face her

-demons, learn her tough lessons, and trans-

form herself emotionally and spiritually.
McComas credits‘his own battles with depres-
sion for moving’ him toward a more balanced
and satisfying life, so he can make this jour-
ney plausible.

By no means has McComas left the
performing life behind. When he came to
Burlington’s Borders Books on June 13. he
went far beyond the conventional reading and
book signing. He and two women performed
the songs with which ‘Dayna Clay’ defined
the turning points in her life.

While actor/drummer Heather Mell
accompanies the author throughout the tour.
the singer for each performance is always cho-
sen locally. For Burlington the vocalist was
Heather’s sister Sarah Mell, a UVM graduate
(master‘s in English). an editor and sometime
singer who lives in Barre. The similarity in I
appearance and the easy coordination between
the siblings brought depth to the portrayal of a
complex character (about whom Sarah Mell ’
said. “The lyrics of the 3 songs we performed
hit so close to home at times that I basically
lost myself in the character. As a young
woman who has struggled with depression.
abuse. and coming out. and who dealt with
these issues through the tool ofmusicfl some-
times felt as though I had been Paul’s model
for l)ayna.").

Meanwhile McComas acted out the
scenes he was describing. using props. gym-
nastic agility. and the easygoing charm of a
street performer. Soon the originally meager
audience had more than tripled. I could well
imagine that he has been quite successful in
reaching his target audience ofyoung adults.
and opening them up to looking out for their
friends or getting help themselves.

A volunteer from NAMI (the
Nation's Voice on Mental Illness) was present
to offer pamphlets, local contacts, and
coupons dedicating a percentage of the price
of any Border’s book bought that weekend to
their mental health efforts.

As many of us are aware, young
people who are outside the conventional het-

 

erosexual norm are particularly vulnerable to
suicide. and possibly more reluctant to reach

out for help. Perhaps this is the reason

McComas made ‘Dayna Clay’ bisexual. in
politics atleast, though her thoughts and
actions as portrayed in the book seemed thor-
oughly lesbian.

McComas did say specifically that
the higher incidence of depression in females
was the reason he made his hero a woman. He
went on to say he did not want to write specif-
ically about himself. or tell the story of Kurt
Cobain with a happy ending. What really
interested him was the experience of tran-
scending depression, which he felt was not
determined by gender. age, orientation. height.
profession, celebrity, or any of the other ways
in which he differed from his protagonist.

I must confess that the idea ofa les-
bian sex scene written by a straight man
brought up an automatic gag retlex. But Paul
McComas either avoided or was immune to
the several flavors of weird that straight men
can project onto lesbians. and the romantic
parts ofthe story could well pass as woman-
written.

I had at first pegged this book as a
problem-of-the-week tract aimed at adoles-
cents. But in fact it is a lesbian romance wril- ‘
ten by a straight man. The category of
romances, whether lesbian. straight or teen —
along with similar genres such as adventure
and action stories — have in common a really
cool protagonist who leads an exciting and
ultimately successful life in a world which is.
in imagination at least. more interesting and
congenial than the rut we are stuck in.

{such a hero as l)aynaL.'lay could
well provide .r role model for a troubled young
woman. and /' "ii/iliiggerl certainly heats 'l}'n-'
mall()/ls()m»l:i1u.x'.\' in that department. ()1) the
other hand. I would be concerned that some-
one overwhelmed by problems might feel
even more Inadequate compared with (‘|a_\'.
who goes from suicidal to unbelievable med-
icatior:-frec transcendence in a mere six
week.

ll‘. however. you are a lesbian who is
neither particularly young nor particularly
depressed, you can find in Unplugged some
well-crafted summer reading. and leave the
uplifting messages subliminal.

Paul McComas started out as a
screenwriter with a master’s degree in film.
and he would love to see Unplugged brought
to the screen. If the producers don’t chicken
out on the most interesting parts, it would sure
be something to see. V

Fran Moravcsik lives in South Burlington.

So Many

continued from previous page

sense of guilt for not having been ,
able to prevent the murder.

And it’s Knight to the
rescue when Cordelia, a doctor at
a women’s clinic, is arrested for
murdering a second young
woman whose body is found near
the clinic. Other bodies turn up,
all young and all apparent victims
of botched abortions. But Knight
and Ranson eventually get to the
bottom ofthe mess, which per-
haps less-than-realistically
involves a thwarted lover using

Books

an anti-abortion group to carry
out revenge for an old grudge.
I’d give these two a

three on a scale of five. The next
book in the series, The
Intersection of Law and Desire,
won a Lambda Literary award,
and Jocasia and the fourth book
in the series, Lost Daughter, were
Lambda nominees.

hile I’m touring through
my most recently read

dyke mysteries, I can’t resist
making a case for Val McDermid
as the author of a collection of
solid, concretely and entertaining-
ly political lesbian and feminis
mysteries. * ‘
The one I collected in

Florida was Common‘_'Murder, in
a second edition published by
Spinsters Ink, number two of the
four Lindsay Gordon mysteries.
Gordon is a tough working class
dyke deeply involved in union
(Union Jack) and feminist poli-
tics (Common Murder). In
Common Murder, Gordon has
already talked her editor into let-
ting her do a piece on a forth-

coming action at Greenham
Common, the famous women’s
peace encampment outside the
gates of a US missile site, when
there’s a murder near the
encampment and a friend of
Gordon’s is arrested.

Gordon negotiates tricky
ethical territory among her alle-
giances to her job as a journalist,
her friendships and political con-
nections within the camp, and a
burgeoning tactical alliance with
and increasing respect for the
local police commander.

McDermid’s writing is
not seamless or smooth —just like
life. Gordon has to make leaps

and guesses, and half the time
they’re wrong. It makes the novel
feel gritty and choppy and edgy,
unsettling — it’s not restoring

‘ order to a disordered universe,

but recognizing that personal
integrity matters even in a chaotic
world that is out of our control.

Common Murder gets a
four and a half star rating.

These seven books
ought to occupy you for a week
at the beach — or two months of
Sundays. V

Editor Euan Bear devours books
by the batch in Bakersfield.