Jun 22

Jun 22 [Pride 2022] IT’s Fine to Project Onto Your Favorite Characters; or Eddie Kaspbrak Isn’t Straight and Neither Am I

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It was hard for me to get into reading as a kid and it wasn’t until someone slipped Goosebumps, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and some very age inappropriate Stephen King books my way that I was finally interested. I think I actually started with Firestarter as it was a far less daunting task to read a book with a page count in the 400s, but IT ended up being my favorite. I was instantly obsessed with a scary story that turned out to actually be about the power of friendship, a trope I’m still very much a fan of today.

While the story in general was something I thoroughly enjoyed, it was Eddie Kaspbrak that I developed an attachment to; the nerdy little “sickly” kid that was the prime target for bullying but had the capability to turn into a feral little gremlin when provoked and whose internal dialogue was either hero worship for Big Bill or literally anything about Richie.

I told myself that the reason I’d become so into Eddie was that he was interesting and when I later watched the miniseries I was simply enraptured by Dennis Christopher’s portrayal because he was such a good actor (I was technically right because Fade to Black absolutely rips), but looking back, it was definitely more.

As I got older and went back to the book again, I realized I just saw myself when reading about Eddie Kaspbrak. He had a mother that treated him like he was sick, going so far as to fake it to keep up with the pretension. He was bullied for being small and sickly. He was secretly kind of an insane person (my boy gets his arm broken and laughs about it). And I, too, thought that falling in love with my friends was perfectly normal. That’s just how buddies feel about each other, right? To single out one of your friends and have your every single thought revolve around them is a regular part of friendship, probably.

I spent the majority of my middle school years completely obsessed with my best friend. None of the boys I “dated”, you know, in that middle school way where you don’t really do dates you just sort of hang out at school, ever compared to how interested I was in what she was doing, what she thought of things, how funny all of her jokes were, the way she looked when she took her glasses off like a character from a cheesy late 90s romcom. All of my thoughts revolved around her. But hey, that’s just friendship. Gals being pals.

When I was in high school, I found another friend that I thought was perfect. I instinctively hated her boyfriend. Why didn’t he appreciate her the way he should? Why didn’t he remind her when she was down that she was so beautiful, so smart, so interesting? But those were just the normal thoughts of a best friend, being protective of her girl. The way we spooned at sleepovers was normal. The fact that we’d lie to our boyfriends and say we were grounded so we could be alone together instead of going to parties with them meant nothing, we just wanted a quiet night in, cuddling and talking about our hopes and dreams. Average buddy stuff.

Looking back now, especially after the release of a film version where they took the initiative to make Richie gay (played to heartbreaking perfection by Bill Hader) and people started digging through the past versions of the story for any more possible queer context, and now that I’m aware of my own sexuality - the high school best friend and I ended up leaving our boyfriends to date one another - I get it. Eddie Kaspbrak is still my favorite character, but I understand his story more now. Sonia Kaspbrak’s Munchausen by Proxy and Eddie’s own insistence that he’s sick coupled with Sonia’s belief that her son’s friends are dirty and will make him dirty as an allegory for homophobia (internalized and regular brand) makes sense despite Stephen King’s intentions.

Maybe thinking obsessively about your best friend and what they could be thinking and what they’d think of you now that you’re forty and haven’t seen each other in a long time and hoping he’ll like the way you dress and look now is a little gay. Maybe I’m just projecting other things about myself onto a character that already shares so many similarities with me. Do I, personally, feel that there’s more than enough evidence to back my claim up? 100%. But it doesn’t really matter in the long run.

The best part of art, of any kind, is that I can interpret it any way I want to and no one can tell me I’m wrong. If you think you’re favorite character from your childhood is gay, bisexual, asexual, or whatever you are, you just get to think that and no one can stop you.

Art’s so cool.