cyphomandra

This manga memoir starts with the creator naked in a love hotel in Tokyo, with a lesbian escort she’s hired off the internet for her first ever sexual encounter, and then backtracks to show how she got there before moving on. Actually, by the time she hires the escort, she’s actually started to put herself together somewhat - after dropping out of university and failing to find anywhere she belongs, crushed by her parents’ expectations, she slides into depression, cutting and an eating disorder. It’s a job rejection that actually sparks her into action; a bakery ask her what she loves, and she says manga: they tell her that they can see her light up when she talks about manga, and that’s what she should look for in a job. Hiring the escort is partly self-care, partly a desire for intimacy, and (as always), partly to have something to write about; it’s not the breakthrough experience that she dreams of, but it is an experience and she does get value from it.

It’s a touching and also often very funny story (e.g. this line, “Things got increasingly less sexy as we searched for my hymen awhile,”, which is accompanied by suitable sound effects), and it examines loneliness and how to connect with other people, and how family and society set up expectations for this, in a very compelling way. Depression is hard to do in fiction without boring the reader, and the only fictional version I can think of right now that really worked for me is that bit in Donna Tart’s The Secret History during the winter. Sequential art can do it really well, as here, and also Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis & Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half) (also memoirs). She’s written more - My Solo Exchange Diary deals with the success of this - and I’ll track it down.

(I also note that both the escorts she hires are what I can only describe as “perky” - bouncy, enthusiastic, determined to make sure all parties enjoy themselves - and I'm curious as to how much of that is cultural.)