Frankenstein (1910)

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Recollection on the beginnings of my self-archive 

Below is a transcription of an old piece of writing

After the tragedy at the beginning of my life and at the end of my creator’s light, I stayed in the great expanse of the sea as a bag of parts, assembled into the image of a man. A man I could never be. At times it had felt like I had made my way to an after life unknown even by man, but life clung to me. Days and years of floating through the Atlantic, unmoored by the winds and storms and other creatures swimming and snatching their next meal right next to me. I had no want, I had no need. Despite how I think back to this time with sorrow and pity, I cannot lie to you now and write that I did not feel a twinge of relief as I landed on the beaches of Boston, Massachusetts. 

I first skimmed the edges of the city like a scared animal, waiting to see if the human would be kind or cruel in temper. As I kept tip-toeing, it was clear, even though the streets were lit, there was a comfortable darkness a creature of my configuration could thrive in with the right coat and accessories and vigilant stride. I was a trickster in a sense, but unlike Puck, I kept quiet with no plan of play as I slipped in and out of the crowds, keeping to the walls and alleyways. I slouched in areas I knew I would least draw attention, leading me directly to the burgeoning allure of the Star Theater in Scollay Square.

I had seen people outside buying their tickets, so I followed suit on the days I had scrapped enough loose coins, always avoiding meeting the eyes of the worker. I knew well enough that the yellow hue of my eyes marks me as other. The first time I went to a showing I felt a thrill like I had succeeded in masquerading as a man, a man with the leisure of attending a motion picture. I sat in the back as the black box changed from quiet darkness to the churn of the celluloid, and oh, how I enjoyed the whirl of the film behind me and the hum of the images as they flicked from one scene to the next in front of me. I almost did not care what the show was about because I sat there to enjoy the experience of watching human lives, much more safe and distanced than peering into the windows of families I could never have, and beyond the cautious shifting and side-eyeing on the cobblestones of Boston. The light bringing life to the dark screen almost made me forget my history, and the experience almost made me think I was granted a new welcome to this world.

It was Friday, March 18, 1910 and I had just seen the first film that brought me out of the peaceful lull of film’s sound and crackling surface. The Edison Studios had produced the film earlier in the year. In 14 minutes I was reminded of my horrid past depicted superficially on a storyboard. Frankenstein, my creator, is set up as a young man who goes to college and in a few years he discovers how to create life, how to create me. The day he decides to pull off his great experiment, he writes a letter to his sweetheart and is invigorated by the prospect of creating the perfect human being. Yet the title card reads, “INSTEAD OF A PERFECT HUMAN BEING, THE EVIL IN FRANKENSTEIN’S MIND CREATES A MONSTER.” Monster? A monster for the way I look? For the deeds I have done? I concede again that I may be a wretch, but I live to burn with the question of what makes me evil when humankind, when Frankenstein, has done me a great injustice again and again. I want to respond back to the film, I want to yell back.

I keep myself from gasping as the next scene shows Frankenstein concocting like a witch, not a scientist, a corpse out of nothing into being. I learned later that the studio reversed the filming of the burning of a corpse to give the illusion of matter forming from the waves of fume and fire. And Frankenstein was horrified, so much so that he went running from the horrid image of the monster. Oh, and there I was, huge in every sense of the word and disheveled. I almost did not want to continue watching, but ironically as I stayed and watched the monster on the screen follow Frankenstein home, seeing himself in the mirror for the first time, aghast at his horrid appearance, I thought to myself that I was the one seeing myself in a distorted mirror. I was biting my tongue in the crowd wanting to clarify, wanting to scream, wanting to set the record straight. Despite the monster’s interferences, Frankenstein finds solace in his sweetheart and eventually marries her. As the monster tries to throw a wrench into their affairs, the end shows a sequence of Frankenstein seeing the monster through an opening. Frankenstein is ready to confront him, but the image switches into Frankenstein standing in front of a mirror. The monster was always himself, the evil part of his mind, his appendage of mischief. Bollocks.

I left the theater enraged. I was not just a figment. I was real, I was here, and despite my decades out in sea, the light in me had not extinguished. I dug around the trash that night, finding scraps of newspaper. I then set a small fire underneath a brown bag I found, careful to not set it ablaze but just enough for the flames to coat the lining black which I scraped with a rusted knife down to a nice pigment-substitute for me to start my first pages of what I had just watched. Here I write, in the alleyway wondering where to put all of this hurt.