In “Impénétrable”, her second graphic novel, Belgian cartoonist Alix Garin delivers the autobiographical testimony of a little-known and yet widespread sexual disorder: vaginismus. She makes it a quest for the intimate self which is far from being summed up in the sole adverb of the title.
In 2020, her studies finished, Alix left Liège to settle in Brussels with Lucas. Blurred professional prospects and anxiety attacks, coupled with the death of his grandmother, make this transition difficult. But the young woman copes. Until the day she realizes that every time she has sex with her partner, she is in pain.
The diagnosis falls: Alix suffers from vaginismus, a sexual disorder which prevents any penetration. If it is possible to treat pain, healing from this pathology is another story, which involves chasing down self-censorship, hunting down social injunctions linked to desire and embarking on a true quest for oneself.
I had to question my relationship to sexuality, to the body, what do we do when we are in a relationship and the desire goes away. It’s a bit like the story of all the questions I had for two years.
To be empty inside
While no more sensations seem to awaken his senses, a gap of silence settles between Alix and Lucas. Each rapprochement becomes feared, each refusal reinforces the guilt and the taboo grows. After having scoured the therapists, some useless, others saving (all of it costs a lot of money!), the cartoonist understands that the disorder has its source in the head, and that we will have to listen to the body, bring it to life.
From childhood, my body was the embodiment of my vulnerability. This body didn’t make me stronger; he made me prey. Even as a little girl, I knew that. If “being a body” is “being in the world”, then I would have liked to be nothing
The opportunity to “let go” comes, among other things, in the form of physical and sensory liberation, notably through dancing at parties and taking psychotropic substances. “I wondered for a long time if it was a good idea to mention drugs in my story,” confides Alix Garin in the QWERTZ podcast on October 10, before admitting that she did not want to make any concessions: “Because in real life, it’s a step which – even if I don’t recommend it to anyone because it’s not essential – has helped me a lot.”
Another experience of the body which is also reflected in the author’s features and drawing. If fear and doubt are represented in dark colors, moments of liberation dot his body with a cloud of colors.
A love story
A flexible drawing sometimes close to manga, lines which curve and lengthen to the rhythm of the pleasure which grows, clear lines which fade to allow an airbrush style to live. In “Impenetrable”, we can salute the work of scriptwriting a story where the variations of style allow narrative ellipses and the shades of color serve the emotions of the narrator.
After “Don’t forget me” (ed. Le Lombard, 2021), which evoked her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease, Alix Garin dares, with rare courage, to be strictly autobiographical. She reminds us of the difference between desire and pleasure and deconstructs this supposedly impermeable wall between love and friendship. “Basically this story is not a sex story,” the graphic novel concludes, “it’s a love story.”
Ellen Ichters/ld
Alix Garin, “Impénétrable”, editions Le Lombard, September 2024.
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