Frankenstein Fairy (or “An Art Class Essay Eleven Years Late”)

This is a drawing I did when I was eighteen. In hindsight, the scale and perspective looks distorted. That wasn’t deliberate, but it seems oddly compatible with the theme. The girl’s hands are too big for her body—also an accident—but that may be appropriate for a Frankenstein fairy.

In my late teens, I came up with the concept of Frankenstein fairies. They were sullen-looking adolescents with green skin and stitches running along their faces and limbs. They wore leather jackets, skull shirts, and combat boots. Their wings only materialized when they were threatened. When treated as pariahs, they’d sprout luminous butterfly wings and either attack or fly away to a better place.

Ms. Lee, one of my high school art teachers, was intrigued by the image and asked me to write a piece about it. It was a suggestion, not an assignment. I didn’t follow through at the time because I couldn’t think of anything to say about it. But now, eleven years later, I can.

At that time in my life, I was focused on merging apparent opposites. Drawing sunflowers growing out of ashtrays. Going to Burger King in a prom dress. And in the process, discovering a middle ground. Frankenstein Fairy fit this theme because of the obvious contrast, but also because the “monster” himself was a contradiction.

I first read Mary Shelley’s book in fifth grade and felt an immediate possessive pull toward the character. Not wanting to take credit for him, but wanting to adopt him as a person. I later felt the same about Alice Cooper’s “Teenage Frankenstein,” a glorious musical ode to alienation. The song was his, but it was also mine because I thought of Alice Cooper as my person. It was the babushka doll effect of egocentrism.

Now I feel that the song can be claimed by everybody who’s ever felt alone and pushed away. We can be together in solitude. And Frankenstein’s monster belongs to everybody. Even his body is a composite of different people. We all are. Our DNA comes from a multitude of sources. Our personalities and opinions, too. It’s a whole merging of experiences that influence us, and we are all patchwork.

In the end, Frankenstein’s creature belongs to everyone because he is everyone. And we are all Frankenstein fairies.

Reflections and echoes

In first or second grade, I came up with a fantasy about reflections and mirrors. It developed further throughout elementary school, but first came about when I was around seven. I imagined that everyone's reflection is an alternate version of themselves from a parallel world we see via the mirror—that everything in a reflection was really in that other place. And a reflection shows a reverse image because everything over there is the opposite of the way it is here, including ourselves. I decided every person had a polar twin, and their names were our names spelled backwards. Mine was Ylime (pronounced E-lime). These counterparts were necessary in order to understand ourselves because if we knew what we were not, than we'd know what we were. Windows and water surfaces were weaker portals into Opposite Land, because you only caught a partial view.

I'd sometimes study my reflection, watching to see if it blinked when I didn't blink or slipped up and moved in a different way. When there was a crack in a mirror, I'd pretend it was the Opposite People trying to break through from the other side. Part of me wanted to meet them, but I was unsure whether or not they could be trusted. When I did something I wouldn't normally do, I imagined it was Ylime influencing me. I thought the Opposite Peoples' goal was to come through and replace us because they hated being constrained to a life of copying our every move. They wanted autonomy. Whenever I had to turn around, I'd turn clockwise, because I feared that spinning counterclockwise would land me in the world behind the mirror and I would become my reflection instead of the "real me." If that happened, we would switch places and I'd become trapped.

At the same time, I wondered if the people in this world were really the reflections, and what we believed to be our mirror images were the original source. What if we were the ones trapped behind the mirror and didn't know it? What if truth and reality was the opposite of all we believed, because this was actually Opposite Land? How could anyone be sure?

When a mirror broke, I'd imagine what it would be like to step out into the other side and see everything for the way it was. And for a moment, I'd wonder whether that might be the way to freedom.