Annie Chesswick, The Queen Of Palm Court
I’m not the first critic to argue that internal contradictions lead to interesting characters. Like their living breathing counterparts, great characters make choices that cannot be so easily categorized as “good” or “bad”. This tends to lead to some confusion surrounding the term “protagonist”. The prefix pro- implies being “in favor of” something, but there’s nothing to suggest that that something has to be some intangible concept of goodness. A story’s protagonist is not bound by any objective goal; they are merely the vessel through which an audience traverses the story world. Since we in the audience spend the most time with this character we often find ourselves most relating to his/her hopes, fears, motivations, and actions… to his/her perspective. This is an important distinction to make: just because we rationalize a protagonist’s motives doesn’t mean that protagonist is right in what they do.
This is particularly what makes Stray Bullets, David Lapham’s existential crime comic, so fascinating. In Lapham’s conception, stray bullets tear through more than just flesh – they leave holes in a person’s psyche. For all the violence drawn on the page there’s significantly more weight given to the long-term ramifications of untreated psychological trauma. A recurring motif of the series is the victimization of innocents (those hit by stray bullets) who grow up and become perpetrators themselves (“shooting” anyone and everyone around them). It’s a seemingly never-ending cycle that Lapham sets up in the series’ very first issue and identifies in issue two as “Victimology.” In fact if there’s one common thread throughout all of Stray Bullets’ story arcs this is it.
This is particularly what makes Stray Bullets, David Lapham’s existential crime comic, so fascinating. In Lapham’s conception, stray bullets tear through more than just flesh – they leave holes in a person’s psyche. For all the violence drawn on the page there’s significantly more weight given to the long-term ramifications of untreated psychological trauma. A recurring motif of the series is the victimization of innocents (those hit by stray bullets) who grow up and become perpetrators themselves (“shooting” anyone and everyone around them). It’s a seemingly never-ending cycle that Lapham sets up in the series’ very first issue and identifies in issue two as “Victimology.” In fact if there’s one common thread throughout all of Stray Bullets’ story arcs this is it.
Lapham’s ace up the sleeve – which he successfully plays over and over again – is his ability to make us care so deeply about protagonists we root against as much as we root for. No matter how many times they fuck up, no matter how many times they stand in their own way, we know how far they’ve come and we want them to succeed. We want them to escape their lives of urban crime and seedy mobsters, of low-rent hookers and drugs and booze. Watching them fail, though, is half the fun. It’s what makes their eventual steps towards freedom feel earned. It’s what makes them such fascinating protagonists
Annie Chesswick is no exception. Despite “The Queen of Palm Court” marking her first appearance in the series, Annie immediately establishes herself as a classic Lapham protagonist. In typical SB fashion, Annie is both her own greatest advocate and her own worst enemy. What separates her from past SB protagonists, and what makes her character even more engrossing, is her compulsion to be perceived as a good person. This applies to the way others view her as much as to the way she views herself. Really she’s just another person confused by the definition of protagonist but who nonetheless needs to believe she is the goodness-imbued hero of her own story. Interestingly Annie’s need to be perceived as a good person far and away trumps any desire to actually do good in the world. Her need to establish a false persona, distanced from reality, serves as the basis of a fractured identity and is simultaneously the crux of her dilemma: How can she perceive herself as good when she just flat out isn’t?
Her solution is quite overcomplicated, and the primary question throughout “The Queen of Palm Court” centers around the extent to which she is aware of her own self-deception. Annie’s solution is to draw on her history as a victim of abuse to justify her villainous behavior in the present. But there’s a catch: this requires her to face the loss of innocence she suffered as a victim – something she is unwilling to do at nearly any cost. In order for Annie to fully live out her fantasy life she must (constantly) prove to herself that she is no longer a victim while (constantly) drawing upon the power of her victim complex by placing herself back inside it. It’s an incredibly complicated coping mechanism, to be sure, but it’s what makes her so interesting to watch.
A more straightforward, healthier approach would be to acknowledge her loss and allow herself to feel the accompanying feelings, but Annie is in no position to do that; she has little if any understanding of mental health. She’s just a woman trying to push through to the other side of tomorrow. However, the more pressure Annie finds herself under, the further she attempts to retreat into her fantasy life, and the harder reality pushes back against her. The battle between these two elements actually illuminates a greater split between her conscious (false persona seeking relief in fantasy) and unconscious (any misgiving she has about her this fantasy world) minds. As fantasy and reality collapse into each other her conscious and unconscious minds split further apart and fight for supremacy.
Annie Chesswick is no exception. Despite “The Queen of Palm Court” marking her first appearance in the series, Annie immediately establishes herself as a classic Lapham protagonist. In typical SB fashion, Annie is both her own greatest advocate and her own worst enemy. What separates her from past SB protagonists, and what makes her character even more engrossing, is her compulsion to be perceived as a good person. This applies to the way others view her as much as to the way she views herself. Really she’s just another person confused by the definition of protagonist but who nonetheless needs to believe she is the goodness-imbued hero of her own story. Interestingly Annie’s need to be perceived as a good person far and away trumps any desire to actually do good in the world. Her need to establish a false persona, distanced from reality, serves as the basis of a fractured identity and is simultaneously the crux of her dilemma: How can she perceive herself as good when she just flat out isn’t?
Her solution is quite overcomplicated, and the primary question throughout “The Queen of Palm Court” centers around the extent to which she is aware of her own self-deception. Annie’s solution is to draw on her history as a victim of abuse to justify her villainous behavior in the present. But there’s a catch: this requires her to face the loss of innocence she suffered as a victim – something she is unwilling to do at nearly any cost. In order for Annie to fully live out her fantasy life she must (constantly) prove to herself that she is no longer a victim while (constantly) drawing upon the power of her victim complex by placing herself back inside it. It’s an incredibly complicated coping mechanism, to be sure, but it’s what makes her so interesting to watch.
A more straightforward, healthier approach would be to acknowledge her loss and allow herself to feel the accompanying feelings, but Annie is in no position to do that; she has little if any understanding of mental health. She’s just a woman trying to push through to the other side of tomorrow. However, the more pressure Annie finds herself under, the further she attempts to retreat into her fantasy life, and the harder reality pushes back against her. The battle between these two elements actually illuminates a greater split between her conscious (false persona seeking relief in fantasy) and unconscious (any misgiving she has about her this fantasy world) minds. As fantasy and reality collapse into each other her conscious and unconscious minds split further apart and fight for supremacy.
Of Two Minds
A cursory glance suggests Annie Chesswick has always been the Queen of Palm of Court. She lives an idyllic life in the Florida suburbs complete with palm trees and friendly neighborhood kids riding bicycles. She’s married to a dedicated husband who provides for her and she has two loving, well-behaved children. Annie is quite stylish and has convinced everyone around her (even her husband and best friend) that she is more than a decade younger that she is. On the surface her life seems to be the picture of perfection.
But Annie has a problem. None of her relationships or life achievements makes her happy. She is obsessed with obtaining what she can’t have; in particular, an extravagant Chanel purse she could never afford. Every moment without the purse is a constant reminder of what she lacks. Instead of focusing on the intangible love of her family, Annie obsesses over materialism. Her unconscious yearning to fill the void created by her past abuse consciously manifests as a need to acquire material goods. In other words, she rejects the healing power of love for the fleeting satisfaction of owning an expensive handbag. In this way she is able to continue (unconsciously) widening the hole in her heart – to feed the victim complex – in the present. Simultaneously, owning the handbag projects an image of a confident, wealthy woman who has her entire life figured out.
In every way Annie is a woman of two minds. The wall she has erected between her conscious and unconscious faculties traps her in an adolescent state. Hence her obsessions with looking young, her compulsion to lie to everyone around her about her age, her refusal to reciprocate her family’s love, and her willingness to jeopardize everything of value in her life for seemingly no reason at all. She is irrational and capricious, and anyone who gets in her way must be disposed of. By refusing to face her own demons, Annie has trapped herself in a vicious cycle whereby she can play out her trauma over and over and over again without ever acknowledging it for what it truly is – trauma.
Although she has consciously made efforts to start a new life – by escaping crime-ridden Baltimore for family life in the suburbs – she cannot unconsciously escape the victim complex that defines her. As she seeks out the fulfillment of her own happiness, she manipulates herself as much as she manipulates those around her. And by convincing herself that she has overcome and (literally) moved away from her horrid past, she can continue to play the villain while absolving any guilt she has for acting villainous and denying that villainy ever existed in the first place.
It’s sad to say, but this is what Annie secretly wants. Her commitment to this coping mechanism shows how indebted she is to the story she tells herself. That being: everyone is out to get her and she must use her ingenuity to outwit and neutralize all threats to her happiness. As she navigates aging, shoplifting, weed dealers, amphetamines, and a sociopathic ex-boyfriend, a picture starts to form. This is Victimology at its most vile. This is Annie Chesswick, the Queen of Palm Court.
But Annie has a problem. None of her relationships or life achievements makes her happy. She is obsessed with obtaining what she can’t have; in particular, an extravagant Chanel purse she could never afford. Every moment without the purse is a constant reminder of what she lacks. Instead of focusing on the intangible love of her family, Annie obsesses over materialism. Her unconscious yearning to fill the void created by her past abuse consciously manifests as a need to acquire material goods. In other words, she rejects the healing power of love for the fleeting satisfaction of owning an expensive handbag. In this way she is able to continue (unconsciously) widening the hole in her heart – to feed the victim complex – in the present. Simultaneously, owning the handbag projects an image of a confident, wealthy woman who has her entire life figured out.
In every way Annie is a woman of two minds. The wall she has erected between her conscious and unconscious faculties traps her in an adolescent state. Hence her obsessions with looking young, her compulsion to lie to everyone around her about her age, her refusal to reciprocate her family’s love, and her willingness to jeopardize everything of value in her life for seemingly no reason at all. She is irrational and capricious, and anyone who gets in her way must be disposed of. By refusing to face her own demons, Annie has trapped herself in a vicious cycle whereby she can play out her trauma over and over and over again without ever acknowledging it for what it truly is – trauma.
Although she has consciously made efforts to start a new life – by escaping crime-ridden Baltimore for family life in the suburbs – she cannot unconsciously escape the victim complex that defines her. As she seeks out the fulfillment of her own happiness, she manipulates herself as much as she manipulates those around her. And by convincing herself that she has overcome and (literally) moved away from her horrid past, she can continue to play the villain while absolving any guilt she has for acting villainous and denying that villainy ever existed in the first place.
It’s sad to say, but this is what Annie secretly wants. Her commitment to this coping mechanism shows how indebted she is to the story she tells herself. That being: everyone is out to get her and she must use her ingenuity to outwit and neutralize all threats to her happiness. As she navigates aging, shoplifting, weed dealers, amphetamines, and a sociopathic ex-boyfriend, a picture starts to form. This is Victimology at its most vile. This is Annie Chesswick, the Queen of Palm Court.
A QUESTION OF AGE
Trigger Warnings
As the series writer and artist David Lapham imbues his work with a consistency that intertwines his plots and panels. In Stray Bullets, he adheres to a strict black-and-white format with nearly every page divided into an equally spaced eight-panel grid. His understated artistic approach to the material normalizes the horror within the lives of his characters. Initially it seems counterintuitive to omit color and steer away from big splash pages in a violent crime comic. In fact, though, this square, desaturated perspective stresses the divide between how normal this violence is to Lapham’s protagonists and how frightening and alien it is to his readers. While Lapham occasionally breaks up the layout with third- and half-page panels, it is his commitment to the eight-panel page that defines the atmosphere of the series.
In this issue the visual repetition of the art is narratively mimicked in the story as Annie frequently lies about her age. She actually close to forty, but she tells people she’s in her late twenties. When she finds herself in trouble, and her anxiety begins to creep up, her age seems to magically decrease, from twenty-seven to twenty-six, and all the way down to seventeen! The more pressure she’s under, the further she retreats into a fantasy of being young forever, and the more significant this seemingly benign lie becomes.
In this issue the visual repetition of the art is narratively mimicked in the story as Annie frequently lies about her age. She actually close to forty, but she tells people she’s in her late twenties. When she finds herself in trouble, and her anxiety begins to creep up, her age seems to magically decrease, from twenty-seven to twenty-six, and all the way down to seventeen! The more pressure she’s under, the further she retreats into a fantasy of being young forever, and the more significant this seemingly benign lie becomes.
Page 450 of this story arc = Page 1 of this issue. With the consistency of his layout established in past issues, Lapham breaks his structure on the first page as a means of throwing us into Annie’s world. In a series of three “widescreen” third-page panels we see Annie at her best and worst. The first panel is an extreme close-up of a leopard-skin print. The Knack’s “My Sharona” plays on a radio outside the panel. Panel two zooms out to reveal our first glimpse of Annie. With a towel wrapped around her hair and another draped across her body, she carefully applies makeup to her face. She looks haggard but optimistic; she clearly enjoys this morning routine. In this same panel the leopard-skin print is revealed to belong to a tacky purse sitting on her makeup counter. A ripped-out magazine advertisement for a Chanel purse it taped to the wall next to the mirror. It is in the third panel that the joy of her beauty time comes to a halt. Unexpectedly she finds crow’s feet around her eyes and becomes furious (“Motherfucker fucked my mother!”) as opposed to feeling sad about discovering another visible sign of aging.
As we soon learn, Annie’s anger is inextricably connected to her sadness. At her best she registers fear and self-loathing as anger towards others; at her worst she is overcome by a sense of helplessness and directs her anger at herself. Her response is typical of a teenager who finds it easier to get angry at a problem’s existence instead of taking the time to understand and overcome it. In actuality her conscious fear of aging is a manifestation of her unconscious fear of being seen. This is “seen” in the sense of her inner child being seen, of her vulnerability bubbling to the surface. As such she tries to physically cover up her emotional scarring. This is like drawing water from an empty well – an impossible feat to accomplish but one Annie nevertheless continues to attempt.
Thus, in one three-panel page Lapham sets up a McGuffin (the Chanel purse), his protagonist’s internal conflict (Annie’s split in conscious and unconscious minds), and foreshadowing (it’s getting harder for her to cover up her signs of aging). As Pedro Almodovar might say, she’s a woman on the verge.
On page two Annie takes out her frustration with this realization on two innocents – her own children. As she exits the bathroom she finds them sitting quietly in front of the TV. Annie storms in and yells at her pre-adolescent daughter for not listening as she rails off complicated instructions for reheating dinner that night. She then accuses her daughter, who’s eating popcorn, of “startin’ to pork up.” When Annie’s son runs over to her she initially embraces him and calls him her “good boy”, but when she asks him if she looks old or young, and he innocently responds, “um…old?” she becomes ice-cold. To his face she sneers, “What do you know? You’re four.” She slams the door in their faces, as they look on, heartbroken. To feel threatened by a child – her own child – just goes to show how immature and superficial Annie is. But there is something more to her overreaction. If Annie is afraid of being truly seen, then the possibility of a four year-old seeing through her façade is too overwhelming for Annie to handle. Never mind the fact that her son is only telling her what he thinks she wants to hear. He doesn’t understand her preoccupation with her age. He’s driven purely by a natural urge to connect with her, and she rejects him.
Outside her front door Annie is overwhelmed by her connection to her own pain. But instead of acknowledging her bad parenting and exploring the reasons she acted as she did, Annie hones in on her own victimization narrative. Alone on her doorstep she repeats to herself, “Don’t cry, Annie. Don’t cry. Don’t – Fuck it.” Crying is a way for Annie to access her pain, to access the emotions triggered by her children’s desire for her love. If she cries the pain her children accidentally triggered will rush to the surface, and Annie has no idea how she’ll handle it in the moment. Annie’s outward persona has no regrets, no sadness, no problems. Likewise, crying will not only bring on an emotional onslaught but the physical tears will ruin her makeup. Annie’s makeup is the safety blanket that holds her emotions at bay inside of her and projects her fantasy identity outwards to the public. Crying would ruin her makeup thereby ruining the mask she hides behind. Smeared makeup would open up a conduit to the darkness that festers inside of her. That conduit would reveal her vulnerable, damaged self. And she’s not going to let that happen, so – “Fuck it.” She puts on big sunglasses and puts the bubbling sadness out of her mind.
As we soon learn, Annie’s anger is inextricably connected to her sadness. At her best she registers fear and self-loathing as anger towards others; at her worst she is overcome by a sense of helplessness and directs her anger at herself. Her response is typical of a teenager who finds it easier to get angry at a problem’s existence instead of taking the time to understand and overcome it. In actuality her conscious fear of aging is a manifestation of her unconscious fear of being seen. This is “seen” in the sense of her inner child being seen, of her vulnerability bubbling to the surface. As such she tries to physically cover up her emotional scarring. This is like drawing water from an empty well – an impossible feat to accomplish but one Annie nevertheless continues to attempt.
Thus, in one three-panel page Lapham sets up a McGuffin (the Chanel purse), his protagonist’s internal conflict (Annie’s split in conscious and unconscious minds), and foreshadowing (it’s getting harder for her to cover up her signs of aging). As Pedro Almodovar might say, she’s a woman on the verge.
On page two Annie takes out her frustration with this realization on two innocents – her own children. As she exits the bathroom she finds them sitting quietly in front of the TV. Annie storms in and yells at her pre-adolescent daughter for not listening as she rails off complicated instructions for reheating dinner that night. She then accuses her daughter, who’s eating popcorn, of “startin’ to pork up.” When Annie’s son runs over to her she initially embraces him and calls him her “good boy”, but when she asks him if she looks old or young, and he innocently responds, “um…old?” she becomes ice-cold. To his face she sneers, “What do you know? You’re four.” She slams the door in their faces, as they look on, heartbroken. To feel threatened by a child – her own child – just goes to show how immature and superficial Annie is. But there is something more to her overreaction. If Annie is afraid of being truly seen, then the possibility of a four year-old seeing through her façade is too overwhelming for Annie to handle. Never mind the fact that her son is only telling her what he thinks she wants to hear. He doesn’t understand her preoccupation with her age. He’s driven purely by a natural urge to connect with her, and she rejects him.
Outside her front door Annie is overwhelmed by her connection to her own pain. But instead of acknowledging her bad parenting and exploring the reasons she acted as she did, Annie hones in on her own victimization narrative. Alone on her doorstep she repeats to herself, “Don’t cry, Annie. Don’t cry. Don’t – Fuck it.” Crying is a way for Annie to access her pain, to access the emotions triggered by her children’s desire for her love. If she cries the pain her children accidentally triggered will rush to the surface, and Annie has no idea how she’ll handle it in the moment. Annie’s outward persona has no regrets, no sadness, no problems. Likewise, crying will not only bring on an emotional onslaught but the physical tears will ruin her makeup. Annie’s makeup is the safety blanket that holds her emotions at bay inside of her and projects her fantasy identity outwards to the public. Crying would ruin her makeup thereby ruining the mask she hides behind. Smeared makeup would open up a conduit to the darkness that festers inside of her. That conduit would reveal her vulnerable, damaged self. And she’s not going to let that happen, so – “Fuck it.” She puts on big sunglasses and puts the bubbling sadness out of her mind.
Countdown
Later that day Annie receives a credit card in the mail and immediately races to the mall. She’s going to ignore her sadness by going on a shopping spree. When she spots the Chanel purse of her dreams in the display case of a boutique store, a neuron seems to misfire in her brain. Eyes locked open, mouth agape; the only coherent word she can muster is “Fuuuuuck…” While Annie’s reaction may not be entirely extraordinary it is certainly young. When was the last time you saw a grown woman – a mother of two – lose all cognitive function over a handbag? It’s a hyperbolic response that would feel more in place in a Warner Brothers cartoon or a less realistic comic book. And what Annie does next is even more bizarre. Presented with the object of her (most recent) obsessive-compulsive fixation, Annie calls upon the façade we saw her so carefully build up earlier. As she examines the purse in-store, she begins telling a twisted story to the clerk helping her. Unprovoked, she explains that she is only twenty-seven years old and any signs of age are a result of her "freakin' kids" who "sucked my whole life away". For a woman who dreads being known on a personal level she certainly doesn’t care what people think of her as a mother! Whereas she previously railed hard against her kids in the privacy of her own home here she tells a complete stranger how much she resents them.
Two factors are at play here. First, Annie is unable to accept that she is the cause of much of her own misery. She is in such denial that she blames her own children, whom are never depicted as malicious or self-serving, and whom, must we be reminded, are her own children. Second, Annie must always be the object of sympathy, even in everyday interactions where sympathy for either party is unnecessary.
This second point becomes clearer as Annie continues her diatribe. The counter girl appears completely disinterested so Annie ramps up the story’s stakes. She tells the clerk how at the age of fifteen she bore her first child to a "real Mafioso" who "said he'd strangle me and my unborn baby if his wife found out." Fearing for her life – though Annie is much more blasé about it – she blamed the pregnancy on her eleventh-grade boyfriend. He had to drop out of high school and “turned out to be a real loser. Got a job at a chicken farm.” Here we see that Annie has a history of blaming innocent people for the pain she causes. More likely than not, this is an unconscious way of addressing her own experience as a once-innocent person who suffered at the hands of more powerful individuals. Her villainous streak allows her to act powerfully even if she can only use that power to seal the fates of weaker (weaker in her mind because she associates power with abuse) individuals. Annie is comfortable discussing this horrifying anecdote because it contributes to her self-image as a wronged person who has overcome a lifetime of struggle. That she has supposedly overcome these struggles by the young age of twenty-seven only garners her more sympathy from her audience. By weaving fact and fiction together she paints herself as the ultimate victim and the ultimate hero of her own narrative.
Taken at face value, Annie’s tale is the sad story of a sad person. But we quickly learn that Annie’s story actually has a third, deeper use to her. The moment the clerk steps away to help another customer, Annie takes advantage of the fake intimacy she established with the store’s employee and steals the purse. She very briefly considers the immorality of this action but goes through with it anyway. As she walks out of the store she’s clearly more nervous about getting caught than she is about any sense of higher morality.
She only makes a few steps outside the store when her fear is suddenly realized. Charlie, the young, handsome mall security cop, saw her steal on the security cameras and needs her to come with him.
While awaiting judgment in the mall detainment center her anxiety once again takes the form of defending her public image. She remains unconcerned with the consequences of stealing and instead growls at Charlie for calling her “ma’am.” After all, she screams, “I'm only twenty-six!" Notice that the more her anxiety grows the more aggressively she plays the naïf. However this is only a role she plays when it suits her. When Ralphie Pitts, the head of mall security arrives, Charlie informs him that Annie could be of use to their side business. When Ralphie hints at involving her in this undisclosed illegal activity, Annie responds, "I may only be twenty-five, but I been around the block." A contradiction in self surfaces: Annie may appear innocent, but secretly she is street-savvy. This complex, illogical thinking allows Annie to hold herself up as the teenage ideal – eternally youthful but wise beyond her years – despite the opposite being true: she’s a middle-aged housewife with the maturity level of a teenager.
Ralphie explains that he sells weed to kids at the mall, and that he wants to use Annie’s house as a stash spot for his product. Sensing the opportunity she has to make her own money and afford the Chanel purse (which Charlie reclaimed for the store), she agrees. Annie literally cashes in on her carefully constructed persona as the neighborhood’s “cool mom…the queen of palm court”, and for a while the years of work she’s put into her fantasy persona pay off.
It all comes to a screeching halt with the arrival of Paulo. A manipulative gangster ex-boyfriend, Paulo appears on Annie’s doorstep out of nowhere and demands a piece of her weed money. He knows exactly how old Annie is and he uses that knowledge against her. As he teases her (inside the safe space of her home), she becomes increasingly disturbed at the implication of her secret being revealed. The last straw is broken when he calls her out for being “a forty year-old broad.” Annie loses it; she screams at him, “Fuck you Paulo! I’m only thirty-eight.” Interestingly we never learn if this is actually Annie’s true age or merely another lie she tells herself. Regardless, Annie’s outburst sets Paulo into a rage, and for the first time in this issue we see Annie become the victim of physical and psychological abuse that defines her. Paulo punches Annie in the back of the head and arches his body over her. Screaming, he tells her that she’s a “fucking cunt!” and threatens to “cut up your face in so many fucking pieces no one’ll give a shit how old you are!” Suddenly an actual victim once again – and not just of her own bullshit – Annie cowers on the floor, quietly repeating “sorry” over and over. Without missing a beat Paulo settles into the couch, pats Annie’s head like a dog, and tells her “I’m proud of you.”
Permeating this scene is the sense that this dynamic has played out countless times between the two of them as well as between Annie and other unmentioned aggressors. Her response is too reflexive to think otherwise. She doesn’t even consider fighting back, but accepts the powerlessness of her position. Let’s take a step back from this horror and analyze it. When dealing with actual abuse Annie’s first reaction is to cave into her helplessness, and take on the role of the victim. But when coping with the feelings of sadness and loss that such abuse stirs up in her, Annie’s first reaction is to get angry and become the aggressor. Instead of releasing the full magnitude of her anger at her attackers – whom she is powerless to overcome – she suppresses it while being abused and later calls upon it to “neutralize” friends and family. These latter groups poses no real threat to her and thereby possess no real power over her. This makes them perfect targets to be victimized.
It’s telling, then, that Annie chooses to provoke Paulo (an aggressor) because he attacks her age. Like the tears ruining her makeup, the presence of anyone who could reveal her real age could open up a conduit between her real and false selves. In such an event Annie would be left to face her sad existence, a thought so sickening to her that she would rather (unconsciously) be Paulo’s victim. At the same time, serving as Paulo’s punching bag (unconsciously) reinforces her role as the victim in her narrative. If she were to defend herself against Paulo, she would see herself as a villain despite the fact that Paulo is clearly a dangerous antagonist. Things are so twisted in her head that a normal, healthy response directly contradicts her story about herself.
As the following week unfolds Annie finds herself trapped between these two mental states. Paulo is bleeding her dry of her marijuana money and preventing her from getting closer to obtaining the purse. Buckling under the pressure, Annie visits her friend Candy, who feeds her wine and diet pills to help calm her down. The diet pills are actually amphetamines, and their combination with alcohol induces a state of intense vulnerability in both women. In this state Candy scream-confesses, “I kite checks, and I’m screwin’ six different husbands in our neighborhood!” Annie scream-reveals right back, “I’m being blackmailed by my ex-boyfriend, I’m thirty-eight years old an’ I sell pot to kids!”
Two factors are at play here. First, Annie is unable to accept that she is the cause of much of her own misery. She is in such denial that she blames her own children, whom are never depicted as malicious or self-serving, and whom, must we be reminded, are her own children. Second, Annie must always be the object of sympathy, even in everyday interactions where sympathy for either party is unnecessary.
This second point becomes clearer as Annie continues her diatribe. The counter girl appears completely disinterested so Annie ramps up the story’s stakes. She tells the clerk how at the age of fifteen she bore her first child to a "real Mafioso" who "said he'd strangle me and my unborn baby if his wife found out." Fearing for her life – though Annie is much more blasé about it – she blamed the pregnancy on her eleventh-grade boyfriend. He had to drop out of high school and “turned out to be a real loser. Got a job at a chicken farm.” Here we see that Annie has a history of blaming innocent people for the pain she causes. More likely than not, this is an unconscious way of addressing her own experience as a once-innocent person who suffered at the hands of more powerful individuals. Her villainous streak allows her to act powerfully even if she can only use that power to seal the fates of weaker (weaker in her mind because she associates power with abuse) individuals. Annie is comfortable discussing this horrifying anecdote because it contributes to her self-image as a wronged person who has overcome a lifetime of struggle. That she has supposedly overcome these struggles by the young age of twenty-seven only garners her more sympathy from her audience. By weaving fact and fiction together she paints herself as the ultimate victim and the ultimate hero of her own narrative.
Taken at face value, Annie’s tale is the sad story of a sad person. But we quickly learn that Annie’s story actually has a third, deeper use to her. The moment the clerk steps away to help another customer, Annie takes advantage of the fake intimacy she established with the store’s employee and steals the purse. She very briefly considers the immorality of this action but goes through with it anyway. As she walks out of the store she’s clearly more nervous about getting caught than she is about any sense of higher morality.
She only makes a few steps outside the store when her fear is suddenly realized. Charlie, the young, handsome mall security cop, saw her steal on the security cameras and needs her to come with him.
While awaiting judgment in the mall detainment center her anxiety once again takes the form of defending her public image. She remains unconcerned with the consequences of stealing and instead growls at Charlie for calling her “ma’am.” After all, she screams, “I'm only twenty-six!" Notice that the more her anxiety grows the more aggressively she plays the naïf. However this is only a role she plays when it suits her. When Ralphie Pitts, the head of mall security arrives, Charlie informs him that Annie could be of use to their side business. When Ralphie hints at involving her in this undisclosed illegal activity, Annie responds, "I may only be twenty-five, but I been around the block." A contradiction in self surfaces: Annie may appear innocent, but secretly she is street-savvy. This complex, illogical thinking allows Annie to hold herself up as the teenage ideal – eternally youthful but wise beyond her years – despite the opposite being true: she’s a middle-aged housewife with the maturity level of a teenager.
Ralphie explains that he sells weed to kids at the mall, and that he wants to use Annie’s house as a stash spot for his product. Sensing the opportunity she has to make her own money and afford the Chanel purse (which Charlie reclaimed for the store), she agrees. Annie literally cashes in on her carefully constructed persona as the neighborhood’s “cool mom…the queen of palm court”, and for a while the years of work she’s put into her fantasy persona pay off.
It all comes to a screeching halt with the arrival of Paulo. A manipulative gangster ex-boyfriend, Paulo appears on Annie’s doorstep out of nowhere and demands a piece of her weed money. He knows exactly how old Annie is and he uses that knowledge against her. As he teases her (inside the safe space of her home), she becomes increasingly disturbed at the implication of her secret being revealed. The last straw is broken when he calls her out for being “a forty year-old broad.” Annie loses it; she screams at him, “Fuck you Paulo! I’m only thirty-eight.” Interestingly we never learn if this is actually Annie’s true age or merely another lie she tells herself. Regardless, Annie’s outburst sets Paulo into a rage, and for the first time in this issue we see Annie become the victim of physical and psychological abuse that defines her. Paulo punches Annie in the back of the head and arches his body over her. Screaming, he tells her that she’s a “fucking cunt!” and threatens to “cut up your face in so many fucking pieces no one’ll give a shit how old you are!” Suddenly an actual victim once again – and not just of her own bullshit – Annie cowers on the floor, quietly repeating “sorry” over and over. Without missing a beat Paulo settles into the couch, pats Annie’s head like a dog, and tells her “I’m proud of you.”
Permeating this scene is the sense that this dynamic has played out countless times between the two of them as well as between Annie and other unmentioned aggressors. Her response is too reflexive to think otherwise. She doesn’t even consider fighting back, but accepts the powerlessness of her position. Let’s take a step back from this horror and analyze it. When dealing with actual abuse Annie’s first reaction is to cave into her helplessness, and take on the role of the victim. But when coping with the feelings of sadness and loss that such abuse stirs up in her, Annie’s first reaction is to get angry and become the aggressor. Instead of releasing the full magnitude of her anger at her attackers – whom she is powerless to overcome – she suppresses it while being abused and later calls upon it to “neutralize” friends and family. These latter groups poses no real threat to her and thereby possess no real power over her. This makes them perfect targets to be victimized.
It’s telling, then, that Annie chooses to provoke Paulo (an aggressor) because he attacks her age. Like the tears ruining her makeup, the presence of anyone who could reveal her real age could open up a conduit between her real and false selves. In such an event Annie would be left to face her sad existence, a thought so sickening to her that she would rather (unconsciously) be Paulo’s victim. At the same time, serving as Paulo’s punching bag (unconsciously) reinforces her role as the victim in her narrative. If she were to defend herself against Paulo, she would see herself as a villain despite the fact that Paulo is clearly a dangerous antagonist. Things are so twisted in her head that a normal, healthy response directly contradicts her story about herself.
As the following week unfolds Annie finds herself trapped between these two mental states. Paulo is bleeding her dry of her marijuana money and preventing her from getting closer to obtaining the purse. Buckling under the pressure, Annie visits her friend Candy, who feeds her wine and diet pills to help calm her down. The diet pills are actually amphetamines, and their combination with alcohol induces a state of intense vulnerability in both women. In this state Candy scream-confesses, “I kite checks, and I’m screwin’ six different husbands in our neighborhood!” Annie scream-reveals right back, “I’m being blackmailed by my ex-boyfriend, I’m thirty-eight years old an’ I sell pot to kids!”
Annie’s confession is quite telling about the way she prioritizes information. For one thing, she is aware that her part in selling weed to kids is wrong. This is the first time we see her identify herself as a corrupter of innocents. All her interactions with kids up to this point have been one-sided: if they have nothing to offer her then she’s not going to give anything back to them. Second, she reveals her ties to Paulo, acknowledging her current victimization and in so doing opening herself up to conjecture about her disreputable past. Third, she lumps these two serious problems with the less-serious (yet most-personal) fact that she has been lying about her age. Finally of note is the order in which she reveals this information: first, she is being blackmailed (she’s a victim); second, she is thirty-eight (she is unhappy lying to her friend); and third, she sells weed to kids (she is a villain). This is perhaps Annie’s most rational logical progression in the entire issue, and it’s telling that it takes a cocktail of drugs and alcohol to get her to face her problems. Her drugged-up state has opened up that conduit between selves, and her unconscious mind is now fighting to surface. Not only is Annie aware of the mess she’s made for herself, but she is beginning to recognize the complex processes of her own mind which led her there in the first place. However, this honesty doesn’t last very long. Of the three confessions to Candy, Annie only takes back one of them: her age. Moments after this big reveal, Annie seems to quote-unquote regain her senses: “Jesus Christ up my ass!!! Did I just tell you I was thirty-eight years old? I’m really seventeen!” I’ll leave it to the reader to make sense of that one.
Regardless of which part of the confession she sticks to one thing is for certain: Annie has identified and named the problems in her life and she is determined to deal with them one way or another. Her only (new) problem? She can’t directly act against anyone for fear of destroying her persona of “the cool mom”, the nice lady, the good person. So what’s the Queen of Palm Court to do? Why, get the men in her life to do her dirty work.
Regardless of which part of the confession she sticks to one thing is for certain: Annie has identified and named the problems in her life and she is determined to deal with them one way or another. Her only (new) problem? She can’t directly act against anyone for fear of destroying her persona of “the cool mom”, the nice lady, the good person. So what’s the Queen of Palm Court to do? Why, get the men in her life to do her dirty work.
SEX & SEXUALITY
Throughout “The Queen of Palm Court” Annie maintains a strikingly ambivalent relationship with sex and her own sexuality. For someone so obsessed with being desired our femme fatale is less interested in fulfilling that desire and more in justifying her own self-worth. She would rather be perceived as a prize than actually won. Whereas a healthy relationship elicits sexuality through love and support, Annie’s sex drive is activated when she needs something from the other person or when that person needs something from her. When Charlie tries to kiss her, Annie rejects his advances while reveling in his yearning for her. When her husband – the only person with whom she should be sleeping – showers her with affection, she grows angry and turns him away. But when Paulo “[keeps] fuckin’ takin’ an’ takin’” Annie exhibits a mix of despondency and sexual arousal. As with the issue of her age Annie cannot or does not want to see how her identity as a victim reinforces her vindictive behavior. But her relationship with each of these men reveals and completes a different part of the Annie Chesswick paradigm.
Interestingly, Lapham first explores Annie’s relationship with men by exploring her relationship with pre-adolescent boys. After Annie slams the door in her kids’ faces and tries to stop herself from crying, a few adolescent neighborhood boys ride their bikes past her lawn and shout “Hi, Mrs. Chesswick!” This triggers a complete reversal in Annie. She shouts back “Hi, boys!” and takes off her sunglasses (which she had put on to hide any tears that might ruin her makeup). With a devilish grin she remarks, “Annie, you are one foxy mama. Tssssss…”
Nothing in this issue suggests Annie wants to sleep with teenaged boys. What Annie wants is to harvest the power of being the object of everyone’s desire. Annie’s sense of power comes from encouraging then refusing to fulfill this desire. This is a common coping mechanism of someone who has suffered sexual abuse. Thus, her ego boost comes not from bonding with her own kids – whose desire for a loving, present mother she could fulfill – but from drawing the attention of other kids in the neighborhood who wish their own moms could be more like their impression of Annie.
When she arrives at Candy’s house, her friend relates how the diet pills she was recently prescribed, “shoot my sex drive through the roof.” Annie remarks that Candy “should be getting’ something’ for that.” For Annie sex is transactional and inextricably linked with material possessions. When Annie starts ranting about the Chanel purse, Candy suggests she switch her perspective from material to sexual fulfillment. “Take my advice” Candy remarks, “You’d be a lot more satisfied if you started getting’ laid.” Of course, sex as an avenue to joy and intimacy is alien to Annie. Her response? “Jesus Christ. Crawl up my ass and die, Candy.”
Interestingly, Lapham first explores Annie’s relationship with men by exploring her relationship with pre-adolescent boys. After Annie slams the door in her kids’ faces and tries to stop herself from crying, a few adolescent neighborhood boys ride their bikes past her lawn and shout “Hi, Mrs. Chesswick!” This triggers a complete reversal in Annie. She shouts back “Hi, boys!” and takes off her sunglasses (which she had put on to hide any tears that might ruin her makeup). With a devilish grin she remarks, “Annie, you are one foxy mama. Tssssss…”
Nothing in this issue suggests Annie wants to sleep with teenaged boys. What Annie wants is to harvest the power of being the object of everyone’s desire. Annie’s sense of power comes from encouraging then refusing to fulfill this desire. This is a common coping mechanism of someone who has suffered sexual abuse. Thus, her ego boost comes not from bonding with her own kids – whose desire for a loving, present mother she could fulfill – but from drawing the attention of other kids in the neighborhood who wish their own moms could be more like their impression of Annie.
When she arrives at Candy’s house, her friend relates how the diet pills she was recently prescribed, “shoot my sex drive through the roof.” Annie remarks that Candy “should be getting’ something’ for that.” For Annie sex is transactional and inextricably linked with material possessions. When Annie starts ranting about the Chanel purse, Candy suggests she switch her perspective from material to sexual fulfillment. “Take my advice” Candy remarks, “You’d be a lot more satisfied if you started getting’ laid.” Of course, sex as an avenue to joy and intimacy is alien to Annie. Her response? “Jesus Christ. Crawl up my ass and die, Candy.”
Eddie
This loved-desired duality is never clearer than when she interacts with her husband, Eddie. Eddie’s life isn’t glamorous, but he is a doting husband and a loving father. He knows that working at "Kitchen City Bargain Center isn't the greatest job" but he works hard at it and he works hard at making his wife happy. In one eight-panel page Eddie takes every opportunity to build his wife up, physically and emotionally, but is thwarted by her at every turn. In the first panel, he meets Annie in the bathroom as she has stepped out of the show. He grabs her from behind and compliments the dinner she made then, drawing her close to him, he tells her that she's "a great cook, and the prettiest girl in Palm Court." Annie tenses up and complains about the color of the bathroom walls: they're avocado and Annie hates them. (One can’t help but wonder if the walls remind her of the skin-rejuvenating avocado mask she wears in this scene. Perhaps the old walls make her feel old. Or maybe she’s tired of working so hard to keep up appearances.)
With his attention now drawn to the walls, Eddie notices ad for the Chanel purse Annie is pining for. (It’s taped up next to the mirror because Annie wants to associate her self-image with wealth. As she stares into the mirror [with the Chanel purse in her peripheral vision] she tries to scrub away the lines and wrinkles and become more like the desirable, perfect woman in the advertisement.]
Eddie reaches for the ad and crumples it. In the last two panels of this sequence he tosses it in the trash and tells Annie to “Forget this garbage. It never does anything but make you crazy." To be fair Eddie’s reaction is an overreaction, but his heart is in the right place. He reminds Annie that she is "so talented. You go to thrift stores and come out in get ups that put all them movie stars to shame." He loves his wife for her creativity (and he thinks she’s gorgeous!) and he wants her to love herself for the same reason. But she cannot love herself. She can only love her forged identity – the idealized version of whom she so desperately wants to be.
Despite finding a stable, healthy relationship in her adult life, she keeps it at a distance for fear that she will be discovered as a fraud. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds back into itself. Being desired allows her to maintain a gulf between her and her husband (who actually thinks is twenty-seven). To be seen by Eddie would be akin to looking in that bathroom mirror without an avocado mask on, without the Chanel bag advertisement hanging next to the reflection of her face. To be seen by Eddie would be akin to seeing herself. Because Annie hates her real self she hates Eddie’s attempts at bringing her closer to acknowledging it. And so, while Eddie might be a “good guy” who provides for his family, in Annie’s eyes he will always be “a square.” It is only later when Eddie buys Annie the Chanel purse for her birthday (using the money he’s saved for the bathroom remodel, no less) that she considers having sex with him, remarking, “Sumbody’s gonna get lucky tonight…”
With his attention now drawn to the walls, Eddie notices ad for the Chanel purse Annie is pining for. (It’s taped up next to the mirror because Annie wants to associate her self-image with wealth. As she stares into the mirror [with the Chanel purse in her peripheral vision] she tries to scrub away the lines and wrinkles and become more like the desirable, perfect woman in the advertisement.]
Eddie reaches for the ad and crumples it. In the last two panels of this sequence he tosses it in the trash and tells Annie to “Forget this garbage. It never does anything but make you crazy." To be fair Eddie’s reaction is an overreaction, but his heart is in the right place. He reminds Annie that she is "so talented. You go to thrift stores and come out in get ups that put all them movie stars to shame." He loves his wife for her creativity (and he thinks she’s gorgeous!) and he wants her to love herself for the same reason. But she cannot love herself. She can only love her forged identity – the idealized version of whom she so desperately wants to be.
Despite finding a stable, healthy relationship in her adult life, she keeps it at a distance for fear that she will be discovered as a fraud. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds back into itself. Being desired allows her to maintain a gulf between her and her husband (who actually thinks is twenty-seven). To be seen by Eddie would be akin to looking in that bathroom mirror without an avocado mask on, without the Chanel bag advertisement hanging next to the reflection of her face. To be seen by Eddie would be akin to seeing herself. Because Annie hates her real self she hates Eddie’s attempts at bringing her closer to acknowledging it. And so, while Eddie might be a “good guy” who provides for his family, in Annie’s eyes he will always be “a square.” It is only later when Eddie buys Annie the Chanel purse for her birthday (using the money he’s saved for the bathroom remodel, no less) that she considers having sex with him, remarking, “Sumbody’s gonna get lucky tonight…”
Charlie
Annie is at her most femme fatale when dealing with Charlie yet her motives are never as one-dimensional as the femmes fatales of classic noir stories. What Annie does have in common with these fatal women is their uses of their own sexuality to seduce and manipulate male protagonists to their own ends. But unlike the genre archetype, Annie is sex-averse. She never seems to enjoy the physical connection the way other femme fatales do. Lapham explores Annie’s sex-power complex in a masterful two-page spread of eight panels apiece. In sixteen panels we witness Annie move from a crying, sniveling girl detained by mall cops (page one panel one) to an angry, determined, assertive woman (page two panel eight). Lapham flips the script on this classic film noir archetype, too. Instead of using sexuality to gain power over Charlie, Annie instead only feels powerful in this sequence once she knows sex is out of the equation.
In the first few panels Annie is in full-blown victim mode. Sniveling and feeling sorry for herself Annie throws up her defense mechanisms in an effort to protect her constructed identity. Her anger at being called “ma’am” is an attempt to navigate away from the consequences of her actions, but it also locks her out of her need for emotional healing.
When she realizes that Charlie is the older brother of one of the neighborhood boys, she spots an opportunity to save herself and pushes headlong into this defense mechanism. She establishes herself as the “cool mom” (which Charlie later confirms to his boss) by cursing (acting cool) and by infantilizing her perceived oppressor (acting like a mom): “Holy shitballs! Lil’ Charlie Brownstein. I didn’t recognize you!” Her need for an immediate exit from the situation overcomes her need for long-term emotional rehabilitation. Maybe Charlie will go easy on her. In panel six, Annie uses this position to leverage her situation. She reminds Charlie that years earlier she had let him and his girlfriend use her house to have sex. This manipulative turn is the result of her unconscious mind – the power of which she tries to repress – teaming up with her conscious mind to get her out of the detainment center and back to the fantasy of her safety world.
In the first few panels Annie is in full-blown victim mode. Sniveling and feeling sorry for herself Annie throws up her defense mechanisms in an effort to protect her constructed identity. Her anger at being called “ma’am” is an attempt to navigate away from the consequences of her actions, but it also locks her out of her need for emotional healing.
When she realizes that Charlie is the older brother of one of the neighborhood boys, she spots an opportunity to save herself and pushes headlong into this defense mechanism. She establishes herself as the “cool mom” (which Charlie later confirms to his boss) by cursing (acting cool) and by infantilizing her perceived oppressor (acting like a mom): “Holy shitballs! Lil’ Charlie Brownstein. I didn’t recognize you!” Her need for an immediate exit from the situation overcomes her need for long-term emotional rehabilitation. Maybe Charlie will go easy on her. In panel six, Annie uses this position to leverage her situation. She reminds Charlie that years earlier she had let him and his girlfriend use her house to have sex. This manipulative turn is the result of her unconscious mind – the power of which she tries to repress – teaming up with her conscious mind to get her out of the detainment center and back to the fantasy of her safety world.
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But even Annie thinks this ploy is a long shot. When Charlie leaves to get his boss we learn that the unity of her two minds was fleeting. Annie begins crying again, talking to herself, afraid that “This is gonna be some sex thing. I know it. Jesus fuckin’ Mary in a pickup.” As soon as she’s left alone her “cool mom” identity crumbles and her real self fights to surface. Annie cannot stand to be alone with her unconscious mind – the aspects of her real identity she suppresses – for one second. Her fear takes the form of being forced to participate in sex (likely a result of being sexually abused in her youth) and overrides her persona of the “cool mom.” She immediately reverts to her transactional sex construct and wonders to herself, “nnn…maybe they’ll let you keep the bag.” It appears that Annie has finally reached her boiling point.
However, things change once again – this time permanently – when the two men return and Annie overhears Charlie tell Ralphie, “she’s the Queen of Palm Court.” The re-establishment of Annie’s façade by outside sources sends her spiraling into another one-eighty. Not only does she not have to fuck Ralphie Pitts – or Charlie – but Charlie actually respects her for the reputation she so desperately wants to have. The façade comes back into the spotlight and the unconscious elements (buried beneath layers of trauma) once again manifest themselves through manipulation. In the last panel of page two, after Ralphie explains the weed operation, Annie grows angry and grimaces: “Whattaya want me t’do, an’ what do I get out of it?”
The following week, buckling under the pressure of dealing with Paulo, and in the haze of marijuana, amphetamines and alcohol, Annie returns to the mall. Feeling defeated in her goal of affording the Chanel purse, she approaches Charlie, sleeps with him, and confesses the to him the entire Paulo saga. Only in an extremely vulnerable state is she able to take on the role of a classic femme fatale and use sex to gain power over Charlie, but she still doesn’t enjoy it. The next day Annie confesses her sexcapade to Candy, who supportively asks, “Do you feel more satisfied than usual this morning?” Annie responds, “Fuck my mother, Candy. I’m scared.” Fear is the emotion that governs Annie: fear of aging, fear of sex, fear of facing her past, of intimacy, of being seen, and of being known.
However, things change once again – this time permanently – when the two men return and Annie overhears Charlie tell Ralphie, “she’s the Queen of Palm Court.” The re-establishment of Annie’s façade by outside sources sends her spiraling into another one-eighty. Not only does she not have to fuck Ralphie Pitts – or Charlie – but Charlie actually respects her for the reputation she so desperately wants to have. The façade comes back into the spotlight and the unconscious elements (buried beneath layers of trauma) once again manifest themselves through manipulation. In the last panel of page two, after Ralphie explains the weed operation, Annie grows angry and grimaces: “Whattaya want me t’do, an’ what do I get out of it?”
The following week, buckling under the pressure of dealing with Paulo, and in the haze of marijuana, amphetamines and alcohol, Annie returns to the mall. Feeling defeated in her goal of affording the Chanel purse, she approaches Charlie, sleeps with him, and confesses the to him the entire Paulo saga. Only in an extremely vulnerable state is she able to take on the role of a classic femme fatale and use sex to gain power over Charlie, but she still doesn’t enjoy it. The next day Annie confesses her sexcapade to Candy, who supportively asks, “Do you feel more satisfied than usual this morning?” Annie responds, “Fuck my mother, Candy. I’m scared.” Fear is the emotion that governs Annie: fear of aging, fear of sex, fear of facing her past, of intimacy, of being seen, and of being known.
Paulo
If the fear of intimacy brings Annie closer to mental collapse, the presence of another person living outside of reality calms her down. To be sure, when Paulo appears on Annie’s doorstep she is both shocked and terrified. He wastes no time in teasing her, beating her, psychologically debasing her, and blackmailing her for money. But as soon as he puts on a happy face and takes her out for a “date” he becomes a hero in Annie’s eyes.
A week after he shows up in Annie’s life, Paulo again appears at her door and coerces her into joining him for a night on the town. Paulo’s idea of a night on the town is a cheap buffet called Bonanza. As soon as they sit down he wastes no time in guilting Annie for not visiting him in prison the last two years. Annie initially defends herself but Paulo is quick to note, “I’m a changed man. I still love you lots, Annie. Lots an’ lots. An’ I can prove it.” It turns out proving his love to Annie is as easy as taking her out to dance at a disco. He lays the emotional manipulation on thick, smiling as if he’s having a ball and reminding Annie, “We used t’do this all the time, remember?” When they take a break from dancing, Paulo brings up one more (supposedly) romantic memory of a time he fucked Annie in the alley behind a club. She blushes and smiles, eating up the false reality Paulo has conjured for her. What about all the beatings? What about all the emotional abuse? What about the fact that in the present moment Paulo is still bleeding her dry of her weed money? For Annie the only really important thing is that somebody play into the fantasies she has about herself – even if that same person is wont to dash those fantasies at a moment’s notice. It’s the closest she can come to letting someone in.
Finally, Paulo is finally ready to get down to business. Coyly, he turns to Annie and reveals the true purpose of the date night: “I got an opportunity in Dallas. A really good one. I need five grand t’set myself up.” One night of suspension of disbelief is all it takes for Annie to forget her hatred for Paulo. With honest vulnerability in her eyes, she tells him, "You're a good fuckin' guy, Paulo." She lets her hair down from underneath her scarf (because he likes that look on her) and looks into his eyes. Moments later these two broken lovebirds stumble behind the club in search of a dumpster to consummate their deal. When Paulo tells her she's “beautiful” – while fucking her on top of a garbage can surrounded by trash (a great visual metaphor) Annie believes him because deep down she believes that's the only kind of love she deserves. It’s actually the only kind of love Annie is capable of responding to. When Charlie shows his love for her, Annie responds with apathy. She sees him as little more than a pawn in acquiring what she really wants – the Chanel purse. When Eddie tells her he loves her, Annie responds by pointing out his flaws – he is too pathetic a man to afford to redo the bathroom. In both cases what she is actually saying is: Eddie and Charlie are pathetic men because he has fallen in love with her. In her eyes, anyone who loves her whole-heartedly and without strings attached must be weak, or at best, isn’t worth her time. It’s all so horribly backwards.
Despite Annie’s warped logic a part of her still unconsciously loathes Paulo. Although she only retains vague memories of her drugged-up encounter with Charlie, we soon discover that she confessed quite a bit to him. While having sex with Paulo, Charlie and Ralphie appear from nowhere (very much like Annie's darkest emotions) and jump Paulo. As Charlie holds Annie back, Ralphie beats Paulo with his nightstick and berates him for trying to rape little kids (Annie had previously mentioned that Paulo tried to sleep with her daughter). As Annie looks on in shock the full breadth of her manipulative tactics is suddenly so clear to her. Once again her conscious and unconscious minds have once again settled into an uneasy collaboration that ultimately allows Annie to satisfy her conflicting emotions without parsing through them. Her villainous nature has avenged her victim nature in a way that lets her continue to play the victim while denying her villainy in future scenarios.
A week after he shows up in Annie’s life, Paulo again appears at her door and coerces her into joining him for a night on the town. Paulo’s idea of a night on the town is a cheap buffet called Bonanza. As soon as they sit down he wastes no time in guilting Annie for not visiting him in prison the last two years. Annie initially defends herself but Paulo is quick to note, “I’m a changed man. I still love you lots, Annie. Lots an’ lots. An’ I can prove it.” It turns out proving his love to Annie is as easy as taking her out to dance at a disco. He lays the emotional manipulation on thick, smiling as if he’s having a ball and reminding Annie, “We used t’do this all the time, remember?” When they take a break from dancing, Paulo brings up one more (supposedly) romantic memory of a time he fucked Annie in the alley behind a club. She blushes and smiles, eating up the false reality Paulo has conjured for her. What about all the beatings? What about all the emotional abuse? What about the fact that in the present moment Paulo is still bleeding her dry of her weed money? For Annie the only really important thing is that somebody play into the fantasies she has about herself – even if that same person is wont to dash those fantasies at a moment’s notice. It’s the closest she can come to letting someone in.
Finally, Paulo is finally ready to get down to business. Coyly, he turns to Annie and reveals the true purpose of the date night: “I got an opportunity in Dallas. A really good one. I need five grand t’set myself up.” One night of suspension of disbelief is all it takes for Annie to forget her hatred for Paulo. With honest vulnerability in her eyes, she tells him, "You're a good fuckin' guy, Paulo." She lets her hair down from underneath her scarf (because he likes that look on her) and looks into his eyes. Moments later these two broken lovebirds stumble behind the club in search of a dumpster to consummate their deal. When Paulo tells her she's “beautiful” – while fucking her on top of a garbage can surrounded by trash (a great visual metaphor) Annie believes him because deep down she believes that's the only kind of love she deserves. It’s actually the only kind of love Annie is capable of responding to. When Charlie shows his love for her, Annie responds with apathy. She sees him as little more than a pawn in acquiring what she really wants – the Chanel purse. When Eddie tells her he loves her, Annie responds by pointing out his flaws – he is too pathetic a man to afford to redo the bathroom. In both cases what she is actually saying is: Eddie and Charlie are pathetic men because he has fallen in love with her. In her eyes, anyone who loves her whole-heartedly and without strings attached must be weak, or at best, isn’t worth her time. It’s all so horribly backwards.
Despite Annie’s warped logic a part of her still unconsciously loathes Paulo. Although she only retains vague memories of her drugged-up encounter with Charlie, we soon discover that she confessed quite a bit to him. While having sex with Paulo, Charlie and Ralphie appear from nowhere (very much like Annie's darkest emotions) and jump Paulo. As Charlie holds Annie back, Ralphie beats Paulo with his nightstick and berates him for trying to rape little kids (Annie had previously mentioned that Paulo tried to sleep with her daughter). As Annie looks on in shock the full breadth of her manipulative tactics is suddenly so clear to her. Once again her conscious and unconscious minds have once again settled into an uneasy collaboration that ultimately allows Annie to satisfy her conflicting emotions without parsing through them. Her villainous nature has avenged her victim nature in a way that lets her continue to play the victim while denying her villainy in future scenarios.
Loose Ends
A week after Paulo is beaten Charlie shows up on Annie's doorstep. He declares his love for her and hints that Paulo is dead. His exact words are: “You won’t ever have to worry about that guy again.” He also informs her that the cops have been tipped off to the marijuana operation and Ralphie is going to put it on hold until the heat dies down. Completely trusting her, Charlie reveals that he has "moved [the] stash to the basement of my great grammy's nursing home where the cops'll never find it." In the next panel Annie is on the phone with the police, revealing the secret location of the marijuana stash. In this single panel Annie is adorned in her headscarf and big sunglasses despite making the call from insider her home. It’s almost as if she has physically covered herself up in an attempt to cover up her guilt for betraying Charlie. She even wears gloves and holds the bottom of the phone with a rag, as if failing to leave prints on her own phone erases the act of betrayal.
So why does Annie betray Charlie in the first place? Well, as Paulo became an increasing threat to her, Annie’s hatred and fear of him bubbled to the surface and forced her to act against him, but she couldn’t act directly against him because would destroy her self-perception as a wholesome person. She wanted to neutralize Paulo as a threat but she didn’t want to see or know how that would be done. To further complicated matters, Annie’s last memory of Paulo was a (arguably) happy one. In the middle of experiencing that electrifying night with him, Charlie and Ralphie forced her to witness the culmination of her deepest darkest wishes for her ex-boyfriend. Regardless of his history of abuse, Paulo was the one person who indulged Annie’s fantasies. Once the threat was subdued, her fear and hatred was pushed back down deep inside her, leaving her with the (supposedly) happy emotions she chooses to associate with Paulo. Once returned to her relatively normal state she punishes Charlie and Ralphie for helping her solve her problem.
Similarly, Annie wastes no time in punishing Candy. Although Lapham doesn’t show her do it, he intimates that Annie reveals Candy’s infidelity to her husband. (This was the secret Candy revealed to Annie when they got high together and there is no sign she would tell anybody else.) Candy is heartbroken and she has no idea who informed her husband. Now he has moved out of the house and Candy and her kids are moving back to Indiana to live with her mom. So why does Annie betray Candy? Simply put, Candy knows Annie’s most terrible secret: her real age. She doesn’t understand what this means to Annie but she nevertheless holds this power over her. Annie’s move against her friend is less about Candy revealing this information than it is about Candy becoming a more trusted friend to her. Annie is a lone wolf; she won’t even travel in a pack of two.
As Annie spiraled further into helplessness, she made a last-ditch effort to reach out to Candy. They grew closer by sharing secrets with each other, strengthening a bond Annie needed to keep some remnant of sanity as she navigated her situation with Paulo. But once Paulo was removed from the equation, she couldn't allow that bond to remain. The thought of real intimacy with another human being was too terrifying. Her only real friend was now suddenly a very real threat to her fragile psyche. And so Annie, the Queen of Palm Court, banished her.
We next see Annie crying in her bathroom. She angrily rips up the crumpled Chanel ad and throws it back in the trash, indicating that she too blames her bad behavior on her desire for material things. Possibly she is aware of the underlying causes of this desire, but we’ll never know for sure. Eddie walks in and escorts her to the living room where he and the kids gift her with the Chanel purse. He really is the best husband ever, willfully setting aside his own disinterest in fancy possessions to make his wife happy. And it works; Annie is elated. She dolls herself up and throws the purse over her shoulder. As she steps outside the house to greet the neighborhood teenaged boys, she takes a moment to acknowledge, "I am a generous queen." With Paulo dead, Candy banished from the neighborhood, Charlie and Ralphie in jail, and the Chanel purse clutched against her side, Annie, the Queen of Palm Court, emerges victorious.
Similarly, Annie wastes no time in punishing Candy. Although Lapham doesn’t show her do it, he intimates that Annie reveals Candy’s infidelity to her husband. (This was the secret Candy revealed to Annie when they got high together and there is no sign she would tell anybody else.) Candy is heartbroken and she has no idea who informed her husband. Now he has moved out of the house and Candy and her kids are moving back to Indiana to live with her mom. So why does Annie betray Candy? Simply put, Candy knows Annie’s most terrible secret: her real age. She doesn’t understand what this means to Annie but she nevertheless holds this power over her. Annie’s move against her friend is less about Candy revealing this information than it is about Candy becoming a more trusted friend to her. Annie is a lone wolf; she won’t even travel in a pack of two.
As Annie spiraled further into helplessness, she made a last-ditch effort to reach out to Candy. They grew closer by sharing secrets with each other, strengthening a bond Annie needed to keep some remnant of sanity as she navigated her situation with Paulo. But once Paulo was removed from the equation, she couldn't allow that bond to remain. The thought of real intimacy with another human being was too terrifying. Her only real friend was now suddenly a very real threat to her fragile psyche. And so Annie, the Queen of Palm Court, banished her.
We next see Annie crying in her bathroom. She angrily rips up the crumpled Chanel ad and throws it back in the trash, indicating that she too blames her bad behavior on her desire for material things. Possibly she is aware of the underlying causes of this desire, but we’ll never know for sure. Eddie walks in and escorts her to the living room where he and the kids gift her with the Chanel purse. He really is the best husband ever, willfully setting aside his own disinterest in fancy possessions to make his wife happy. And it works; Annie is elated. She dolls herself up and throws the purse over her shoulder. As she steps outside the house to greet the neighborhood teenaged boys, she takes a moment to acknowledge, "I am a generous queen." With Paulo dead, Candy banished from the neighborhood, Charlie and Ralphie in jail, and the Chanel purse clutched against her side, Annie, the Queen of Palm Court, emerges victorious.
CONCLUSION
The brilliance of Stray Bullets truly does lie in its character studies. In “The Queen of Palm Court” David Lapham once again humanizes a villain and draws our sympathies for her despite every terrible decision she makes. That last page hit me in the same way so many of his final panels do: shaking my head and quietly thinking, “Damn.” Even more engrossing is the fact that after learning so much about Annie Chesswick, an aura of mystery still hangs around her. By the end of the issue one can’t help but wonder just how far down the rabbit hole Annie has gone. Is she redeemable? Does the concept of redemption even appeal to her? To what extent is she aware of her own victim complex? Has she completely bought into her own bullshit?
We do know this: Annie represses certain emotions as if they never existed. This gets her so far in day-to-day life, but when the pressure on her becomes too heavy to bear she is forced to partially recognize these emotions or else crumble under their weight. Every time she represses her emotions they grow stronger, and every time she recalls them, they are more twisted from long periods of detachment. Annie manipulates the unstable relationship between her conscious and unconscious minds by using the power of these memories to get what she wants in specific circumstances. She then pushes them back down into the recesses of her mind. Eddie assumes the craziness that results from this is due to Annie's pursuit of material happiness, and to some extent he is right, but he fails to see beyond the superficial: that Annie's yearning for material possessions is driven by her inability to fully face reality. Trapped in the mindset of a damaged teenage girl, she is hyperaware of any remotely ill fate that befalls her and completely devalues the positive aspects of life. Despite her neuroses and self-aggrandizement, her family and friends truly show affection for her, even as she works so very hard to maintain an icy distance from them. Annie’s inability to face her own dark past has created a vortex in her heart, which she struggles to close with materialism, a desirability factor, and the illusion of youth.
We do know this: Annie represses certain emotions as if they never existed. This gets her so far in day-to-day life, but when the pressure on her becomes too heavy to bear she is forced to partially recognize these emotions or else crumble under their weight. Every time she represses her emotions they grow stronger, and every time she recalls them, they are more twisted from long periods of detachment. Annie manipulates the unstable relationship between her conscious and unconscious minds by using the power of these memories to get what she wants in specific circumstances. She then pushes them back down into the recesses of her mind. Eddie assumes the craziness that results from this is due to Annie's pursuit of material happiness, and to some extent he is right, but he fails to see beyond the superficial: that Annie's yearning for material possessions is driven by her inability to fully face reality. Trapped in the mindset of a damaged teenage girl, she is hyperaware of any remotely ill fate that befalls her and completely devalues the positive aspects of life. Despite her neuroses and self-aggrandizement, her family and friends truly show affection for her, even as she works so very hard to maintain an icy distance from them. Annie’s inability to face her own dark past has created a vortex in her heart, which she struggles to close with materialism, a desirability factor, and the illusion of youth.