Scans_Daily

This is basically where the original series left off, apart from Dickie actually leaving, Mike not following, and Mike confronting Avril with "Avril, I think we need to talk. Don't you?"

I have a distinct memory of arriving at this point when I was reading the back issues in college and going, "Wait, that's IT?" One heck of a cliffhanger, all right. And Mike's final line was one heck of an understatement.

It's another such understatement to say the scene hits readers different in 2022 than it hit me in the late '90s (and would've hit the original readers about a decade sooner). This is neither an endorsement of hebephilia nor a claim that free love must always lead there. It's a more specific thought experiment aimed at Mike's seeming utopia, blending the personal and political dimensions of it. Even as Alan left the series, he hinted there was something a little off about it all in Mike's musings about another loved one who rebuffed him: "Sometimes I think of Liz. Sometimes I wonder why she turned my offer down, why anyone should not wish to be perfect in a perfect world. Sometimes I wonder why that bothers me, and sometimes...sometimes I just wonder." Gaiman didn't pull at that loose thread right away, taking his time to tell human-scale stories about the post-Bates world, but here, he's getting at it.

But in 1988 or so, Gaiman could take an audience of relatively deep readers for granted. I imagine doing this kind of scene today and all I can think of is the people who'd quote it out of context, call him a sex criminal or a homophobe. (TBH, I don't entirely have to imagine it: I saw an uninformed reader elsewhere on the internet doing just that, and I'm sure I'd find more if I dug into it. Twitter can't die soon enough for my tastes.)

I think it's pretty important that Mike isn't really into the kiss. He does it because according to his ethics, it's the right thing to do. If one person desires the other and the other is willing, that desire should be satisfied. And according to Avril, whom he trusts, Dickie desires him. Is Avril right to think this? She very well might be, on some level.

But some desires were never meant to be acted upon. Some fantasies are not meant to be made reality. At least, that's true for us humans, and Dickie's still a human at heart.

My own sexual ethics often come down to balance of power. Meaningful consent cannot exist if one of the parties has strongly unequal power over the other. Mike is lonely at the top: he has power over everyone except Avril, the aliens, and possibly his own daughter. He hoped Dickie might fix that, given all they'd been through together, and sometimes they acted like near-equals ("We're chums"). But even aside from the age gap, they're living in a world that's fashioned how Mike wanted it, and talking in a bedroom for Dickie that's nobody's property but really Mike's property.

The heck of it is, I think Mike wanted a friend more than he wanted another lover. But now, he's not going to get either one.