The last Star Wars figure / The day Jack Sparrow died
On Friday, before the wedding, I was downtown anyway dropping off the rock star's dress, and I had about an hour to kill before I had to get dressed, so I went for a burrito - I am all about the halibut lately, belated obsession though that be. I hit the Snail en route, as is my custom, although nothing I read shipped this week so my pull bin was empty. But there it was as I came through the door: the Gargan action figure. Which here matters because, as mentioned previously, she is the last one.
It's actually been thirteen years, give or take. Thirteen years back I got off the Steeles bus outside my grandmother's condo, took a walk across the street (it was snowing), and into Toys R Us, because I'd heard that Hasbro had re-established the Star Wars action figure line - they were calling it "Power of the Force 2," the sequel/continuation to the line's failed attempt at continuing past Return of the Jedi, circa 1984. And... hey, what else am I about if I'm not about about that? So they had a few of the new figures there, including this Ben with a really long lightsabre, and they all looked goddamn weird and awkward but I bought the Ben anyway because he generally looked the most like a human and, c'mon, it's Ben. Then Light & Magic happened and I bought a few more, and then at some point in 1996 I was standing in that same TRU with Adam holding a Jawa 2-pack in my hand, and Adam said something along the lines of "I'll take one, you take one, we'll split it" - yes, these are two 20somethings here - and as far as I'm concerned, the deal was done. Something kicked off in both of us (though he turned back far sooner than I), and the avalanche began which, a baker's dozen years later, lead to something in the neighbourhood of six hundred of the things as a final tally - although right at this moment, over half of them are gone again. Still... six hundred. Droids and jawas and Jedi and pregno-Padme; Jabba aliens by the fucking bucketfull, so many that I even started making my own; and Lukes and Chewies and Slave Leias and Bens beyond measure; and insignificant characters, lord man howdy, how I loved the insignificant characters. Sio Bibble and this guy and Aunt frickin' Beru with her blue milk.
And this stated a bunch of other things too, what with Sideshow and Simpsons and really expensive pirates and I even have a vintage Toht, and one on card too, yeah. But the best of all of it was always and ever shall be Darth Vader with Removable Helmet, which they've re-made a dozen times since but never come close to making as cool as they did on the first try, the tiny piece of plastic in which a shred of my 10-year-old soul permanently resides. And that was in... 1997? Early '98? When the best year of your hobby is ten years back, it's time to look for an exit. Gargan seemed like a good fit - they tried to make her back in '85, but as I recall the prototype got shitcanned because she has so many boobies. Six of them! No self-respecting toy line should ever have a six-titted prostitute as part of its character line, one presumed, at least until whatever phenomenal conversion shift I myself was a part of in the late 1990s, when toys stopped being made for kids and started being made for me. They made Gargan, the Fat Dancer, and I'm out.
(If they ever make Bea Arthur, I'll come back.)
And with all that done, I came home with my action figure firmly in hand and, upon entering, found one of my Jack Sparrow dreadlocks lying on the floor in the doorway to my room. Thinking at first that Zam had - as is her way - destroyed something I cared about, I became riled, and then I had a look at the wig. And, in what can only be described as a rather perfect little Pirates of the Caribbean moment, I turned the thing over in my hand to find the back of it eaten out by grubs. Some unholy combination of the heat, the humidity, the age, or just the primordial fucking filth we now live in at 3QF, conspired to turn my custom-made Jack Sparrow pirate wig into a couple months' worth of food for a colony of mealworms. And as the thing literally decayed in my hands while I stared at - the sheer action of bringing it down off the shelf upon which it has sat since my rather lovely Hallowe'en, was enough to tear apart the few remaining strands maintaining the wig's shape - it ceased to be a thing, and became a former thing, nothing more than a cluster of digital photographs, really warm memories, and at least one Jack Sparrow bolt-in-terror moment when that damn Obeah woman asked for my number.
Here's the thing: I hang on to things. Tangible relics of stuff that otherwise live only in my head, or in my eyes, or on movie screens across the nation, literally clutter the very ground I walk on. My grandmother used to have a glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary next to her bed; I have a glow-in-the-dark King of the Dead. It comes to the same thing, which is a talisman by which to channel some inexpressible force that flows through my life; without the relics to hang on to occasionally, I become nauseous and indistinct. But this is, after all - and today was not the first time I have realized this - an imperfect solution to a larger problem, because all matter is so frustratingly impermanent and vague. I used to say there was something I liked about having a tiny, perfect Luke Skywalker standing on my desk with his lightsabre in hand, that it said something to something in me in a language beyond arcane. But that same relic melts, turns sticky, gets dusty and loses its colour, gets handed down to kids (because kids are supposed to have these things) or thrown out with the trash. Matter doesn't matter. These are all just signposts on the way to the larger, glowing somethingorother.
