Many years ago, I read The Rigth Stuff by Tom Wolfe. The book offers an in-depth desciption of the race to put America's first seven astronauts in orbit around the Earth. Most interestingly, to me, was the portrait the book painted of the seven men who were chosen to become astronauts. They had to meet a lot of strenuous criteria - they had to be pilots, for example, even though they would not be piloting their space capsules at all. If I remember things correctly they also had to have university degrees in engineering, and they had to be in great physical shape.

But what I remember most vividly is that these seven men seemed to be incredibly risk-takers. Since I myself am a non-drinker, I was flabbergasted at how heavily they drank. But I was even more mystified and flummoxed by the reason for their heavy drinking. They drank to prove that they could. They drank to prove that they were men enough to hold their liquor. They drank to prove that they could down one whisky after another and still be in perfect control of themselves, and still get up at five a.m. the following morning and be crystal clear and alert. In short, they drank to prove that they were indestructible. Because that is what you had to be, if you wanted to prove that you were made of the right stuff: you had to be indestructible. Did you sprain an ankle? Did you get cancer? Did you get killed in an accident like one of the first seven astronauts, Gus Grissom, who died when the spacecraft he had boarded suddenly caught fire? Sorry, buddy, but then you're a wuss. Then you didn't have the right stuff. Because real men are not the victims of anything.

I'm sure Clark has never thought of himself in such narrow, cruel über-male terms. But for all of that - Clark really had had the right stuff, hadn't he? Well earlier, before. That's when he had been indestructible. He had always quickly gotten over his bouts of Kryptonite poisoning. And he had always been strikingly handsome, with a beautiful face, great hair, and a sculpted, muscular body. He had been popular and personable. He'd been bright and witty. He'd been a highly respected, award-winning reporter. And he'd been able to fly, for heaven's sake, and he'd been super-strong and just generally super. And he's been so honest-to-God good, too, a perfect moral paragon... He'd been all of humanity's shining hero in brightly-colored spandex.

And he'd been the perfect fiance of Lois Lane. And for a single night, he had been the perfect husband and lover of Lois Lane. And it was to this perfect lover and hero-husband that Lois had dedicated her book, her Pulitzer, and a couple of her Kerths:

Quote
To my partner, my best friend, the father of my son, and the love of my life. To my husband, my hero.
But what is Clark now? He is a wreck of a man, he's broken, emaciated, weak, full of aches and pains and covered in scars. He is moody and brooding, full of pent-up anger and resentment. He has the murder of a man on his conscience. His body is broken and his soul is blackened. He is ugly, isn't he? He is repulsive, isn't he? And every time Lois is looking at him, and every time she is touching him, he can feel the accusation in her eyes and in her body. She despises him for what he is, doesn't she? Because she married a beautiful man and got back a wreck. She has been short-changed, hasn't she? And yet she has thrived - as the mother of the child that he gave her the night before he left, as the brilliant reporter she could continue to be, while he was fighting his hopeless war on New Krypton, and as the superhero she could be with the powers that he transferred from himself to her. So, bottom line, doesn't he have the right to resent her?

I think that in some ways, Clark is like a male equivalent of a female rape victim. The shrine that is his body has been violated and desecrated, everything that he was proud of has been destroyed, and he is full of self-hatred. And just like many female rape victims find it so very hard to have an intimate relationship with a man again after being raped, Clark is finding it so incredibly hard to respect himself and his battered body and to present it to Lois with any sort of pride and joy.

Clark is going to need the courage to do what the guys who had the right stuff could never dream of doing - he is going to have to ask others for help. He is going to gave to ask a therapist for help, and he is going to have to ask Lois and his parents for help. And Lois, too, is probably going to have to see her therapist again, because the task she is facing is formidable:

Humpty Dumpty
sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty
had a great fall.
And all the king's horses,
and all the king's men,
couldn't out Humpty
together again.

But Lois is going to have to try to put Clark together again. Or rather, she is going to have to stand by and help him put himself together again. And I can see, Rac, that the third leg of this long journey has only started.

Ann

P.S. Rac, I loved your comparison of Clark and Lois to Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt. The Roosevelts are two of my idols. And to think that FDR was mostly wheelchair-bound during that part of his life when he did the most good... talk about being made of the right stuff.