by Brahidaliz Martinez
Sol, a trans man vampire, works as an archivist. He lives in the basement of his workplace, avoiding daylight, and relies on blood transfusions to live. Elsie, the widow of a prolific TV producer, enters his life. From there, he and Elsie reconstruct their bodies and their lives.
Isaac Fellman’s Dead Collections shines on the dusty corners and silent places in the archives. The novel’s exploration of fandom and the fight for canon Queer couples in mainstream media resonates with me. I grew up in the 90s, so I didn’t have access to LGBTQ+ media (including indie) during my childhood and early teen years. As a teen, I posted on and combed through online forums, fanfiction dot com, and LiveJournal communities, starving for fictional characters like me. However, like many transmasc and trans men, I first identified myself as a lesbian. I wouldn’t realize I was nonbinary transmasculine and actually bisexual until I hit my 30s. Dead Collections wonderfully unfolds not only the need to be seen by others but by ourselves as well.
At one point during their interactions, Elsie gives Sol her late wife’s documents, which includes scripts of the acclaimed 90s sci-fi series Feet of Clay, but even the physical records don’t encompass the history of Tracy’s lesbianism. Elsie, at one point, tells Sol that “Tracy was a stone butch who seemed to fuck from a sense of obligation.” The more Sol learns about Tracy through her work, the more he sees how Tracy, regardless of how she’d identify herself if still alive, had suffered while living. As if she, an out lesbian to the public, was still closeted. The lack of mainstream media and real life representation of Queer lives (even intersectional) makes it difficult to fully realize ourselves. It’s easier to box or stick labels onto ourselves, but Isaac Fellman isn’t afraid of showing how that isn’t as simple at all.
The novel’s nuanced discussions of the archives and (mainstream) media representation reminds me of Xena: Warrior Princess, a 90s fantasy series notable for its lesbian subtext. The relationship between the main characters Xena and Gabrielle had stayed with me, even after encountering the tired online debate about whether they were lovers. Sol feels the same when recounting his experiences with watching Feet of Clay as a teen:
“When I was young and watched TV for sustenance instead of pleasure, I watched nothing more often than Feet of Clay, which Elsie’s wife, Tracy, had created. It had hit me in the tenderest part of my adolescence, the sharp hinge under the skin of 1993, a funny bone far too delicate to absorb any real blows. Not that I was ever really an adolescent, but I had the tenderness of one. That’s what it’s like to be a trans child and not know it. You have all the fragility of adolescence, but none of its resilience, the clever cartilage that always grows back.”
I should note that Feet of Clay is a fictional TV show, but its significance resonates with LGBTQ+ readers and writers, particularly from around the 90s or 2000s, who spent time in places like fanfiction(dot)net and online fan forums. Dead Collections shows this need for connections across time through email correspondence, online forum archives, and more. Sol describes bodies slipping through time. Sexuality and gender isn’t static.
I’ve especially found myself at odds with my identity and my body. I’m in a relationship with a trans woman (my fifth year with her, as I write this), and Dead Collections is a book I wish I had read several years ago. Sol and Elsie’s story mirrors my past and present experiences in learning how to understand my body and myself.
Dead Collections is available from Penguin Books.
Brahidaliz Martinez is a contributor (webcomic reviewer) to The Geekiary. Their cross-genre chapbook, Coquí Song, is forthcoming (2023) from Mason Jar Press.
