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Potato Nose: 1977, the graphic novel

A tragicomic memoir of pubescent anxiety and ecstatic delusion

“If you read someone else’s diary, you get what you deserve.” ― David Sedaris

It was a shock to the system for me to move back to Sweden from Canada in 1975. My early school years, grade one to seven, were in Canada. In Canada, in the early 70s, sexual education took the form of very elusive delivery of information about periods and how babies are made.

A really weird thing in grade five: In the “girls only” health class, we had to stand up beside our desks. (Reminder, this was the 70s). We had to pump our arms, with elbows out to the side and pump our arms, elbow to back and then straight arms and back and straight arms. So you’re kind of doing an exercise with your arms and at the same time we had to recite: We must, we must, we must increase our bust. The bigger the better, they stick out your sweater. We must, we must, we must.

I found it disgusting. Also, I was horrified. I wanted to be flat!!!

The sex ed film in grade seven in Canada comprised of watching a salmon swimming up the stream and that was supposed to be a metaphor for something and I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. IS THIS FOR REAL? And the film shared that wouldn’t get leak during your period if you sat in the tub. So I thought, I’m never getting out of the tub again. I got most of my information from Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Go Ask Alice, and watching movies like Easy Rider.

Cut to: living in Sweden and being thrown to the wolves. Everybody in my grade was so much more mature. They were so open. My first sex ed class at Rosenborgsskolan was watching an explicit film about how to pleasure your partner. I was a tad overwhelmed. I was absolutely out of my element, but that wasn’t just because I had been raised in Canada. My bestie who I met in ballet class was raised in Sweden and she felt the same (she went to a different school in a different suburb outside of Stockholm). We weren’t interested in that kind of “heterosexual sex stuff.” We were instead happy in the mystical dream of our own making, always imagining a diffuse glow around us.

And, OH MY GOD, we were OBSESSED with the film Picnic at Hanging Rock (dir. Peter Weir).

On Valentine’s Day, 1900, a party of Australian schoolgirls from a strict boarding school visit the ancient volcanic formation, Hanging Rock. Later in the day, several girls disappear without trace. A search party repeatedly returns to the rock to look for them and the reasons for their vanishing. – MUBI

It was both frightening and frightfully romantic. It was probably the most up our alley erotic thing that we had ever seen. We didn’t know if we were in love with the girls on the screen or if we wanted to be the girls on the screen. The movie scared the poop out of us. It was a very haunting, and terribly romantic.

The imagery in the film was inspired by the photographer David Hamilton. Hamilton’s photography was extremely popular in the 70’s. One of the most popular posters mid 70’s was the David Hamilton’s photo of a dancer bending down, wearing a tutu, tying her pointe shoe.  My bestie and I each had that poster. David Hamilton’s imagery became our obsession. We would find photography books in the library of his work and pour over them and really feel seen in this beautiful, strange, mystical landscape.

DISCLAIMER! RED FLAG! M. and I were 14 and we had NO IDEA what was actually going on behind the scenes in David Hamilton’s photo studios. We had NO IDEA who David Hamilton actually was. UGH.

But for us, THEN, we were just simply lost in those images of these very young women in this mystical landscape of sexuality and essentially softcore porn. (YIKES) And we had a place to put those feelings by dancing together, moving our bodies together, being together all the time…

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I found this a powerful watch/listen. “Genuine connection might be the most rebellious act right now…”