In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • A Queer Autobiographical Sex Tale
  • Rachel R. Miller (bio)
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness
Nagata Kabi
Seven Seas
http://www.sevenseasentertainment.com
152 pages; Print, $13.99

Nagata Kabi’s American debut, the manga My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, is a strange, painful, and yet refreshingly playful entry into the tradition of sex writing in both American comics and Japanese manga. Doused in shades of pale pink and originally serialized as a webcomic, Kabi’s account of soliciting the services of an escort service in order to rid herself of her virginity at 28 years old recalls the frenzied panels of Justin Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary (1972)—a comic cited by many American cartoonists as the first example of autobiography in American comics. But Kabi’s anxiously self-aware dispatches achieve something rarely seen in either American comics or Japanese manga: a confessional account of what sex is like for one woman in particular that also thinks critically about sex education, who it’s for, and where it comes from.

In diagrammatic but affectively accessible panels, Kabi not only delivers a report on her own experiences with her sexuality, but, navigating the tropes and conventions of illustrating sex in manga, explicates how her fears, anxieties, attractions, and sexual desires have been shaped by a movable print culture that circulates fantasies of sex to a large public of Japanese readers. Japanese manga about sex, queer sex in particular, is an infinitely more complex ecosystem than American comics that deal with sex, as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness bears out—from self-published erotica and pornography (doujinshi or hentai doujinshi) to the flirty but flighty twin genres yuri (“girls’ love”) and yaoi (“boys’ love”) manga, which depict same-sex relationships romantic, sexual, and/or platonic and are often marketed to an exclusively female readership. As Kabi reflects in the final chapter, “It’s weird to learn about your own life and bodily functions through nothing but fantasy . . . but the problem isn’t the stuff in fiction. It’s the fact that we’re never given the correct information.”

Put more simply, if My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness comes off as the least sexy comic about sex you’ve read: that’s the point. When translated more literally, the title is actually something like “I was lonely and went to a lesbian escort establishment report,” and Kabi’s running inner monologue punctuates even the very few panels of actual sex happening in her “report.” Nude and crouched at one end of the bed in an infamous love motel on the cover, it’s clear from the beginning that our sweaty, wide-eyed protagonist is not one of R. Crumb’s voyeuristically indulgent sad sacks. Rather, Kabi uses the sexual encounter with a sex worker that operates the core of her narrative to expose her own vulnerabilities, physical and mental. A bald patch from picking away at her scalp is streaked with white as her pink body reclines under the escort’s touch; a cross-section of self-harm scars burble pink on her arms in the next panel. “I’ve never kissed anyone,” Kabi confesses three pages in as the escort leans over her.

The first three chapters of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, then, can all feel like false starts. “Chapter 1: The Beginning” backs up to “Chapter 2: Prequel,” which then stutter-steps into “Chapter 3: Before the Appointment.” Throughout these chapters, Kabi excruciatingly details the inner workings of her adult life, which includes living at home with her reticent and strict parents and grandmother, an eating disorder that morphs from extreme restriction to binge eating, and a deep longing to be touched by someone and thus belong somewhere.

Trying to find her place after dropping out of college, Kabi works for a grocery store before [End Page 7] attempting to find work her parents would approve of. She gathers the scraps of being a functioning human—being able to help out with bills, waking up in the morning, eating—around herself as medals. Literally, one panel is adorned with a medal for a “Normal Life.” The frenetic energy of Kabi’s...

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