Book Review: About Time by David Duchovny and Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous compiled and edited by Gillian Anderson
The moment Fox Mulder falls in love with Dana Scully happens in the 1998 X-Files film, where, after a miraculous journey into an underground facility to save her, the duo are launched upward from the crumbling ice sheets to safety and a space ship flies overhead. Agent Mulder looks up as a worn out Dr. Scully lies face down and says, “Scully, you gotta see this.” The traditional frisbee ship disappears over the horizon and she whispers “I saw it, I saw it too.” Mulder grins and then passes out. Finally, she believes the way he does. Finally, Scully believes. Her belief is all that matters.
Not surprisingly, I too want to believe. Not necessarily in aliens and government coverups of cryptids, creepoids, and the scaries, but that art can exist purely without the vacuum of performance. A tall order, I know, especially for actors whose main directive is performing. But in the dark family rooms of my teenage years, cuddled under covers with my best friends and Scully and Mulder, they gave me something I haven’t been able to shake since I accidentally became an X-Files fan: a piece of my sexual identity.
“But in the dark family rooms of my teenage years, cuddled under covers with my best friends and Scully and Mulder, they gave me something I haven’t been able to shake since I accidentally became an X-Files fan: a piece of my sexual identity.”
The constant talk about how attractive Mulder and Scully were, about not being able to choose, about being a fly on the wall while we finally succumbed to the sexual chemistry and tension between them. This queerness in part, nurtured by finding both Fox Mulder and Dana Scully attractive freed me of the shame that so many of my peers, watching X-Files in the basement, felt. Scully and Mulder helped us find answers. Gen X was trying so desperately to play straight, but we were all queer as fuck.
More than 30 years later, we have what The Guardian calls “Brand Gillian”, full of soft drink products, a new production company, and now books. David Duchovny, for his part, is dropping poetry books on the well regarded indie Akashic books. If the sci-fi world of aliens and monsters was entertaining, the creative worlds of Anderson and Duchovny feels much more surreal. The thespians of Gen X’s awkward sexual awakening still seek to expand our understanding of the weird world we live in. Duchovny’s first poetry book, About Time (Akashic, 2025) alongside a collection of anonymously submitted sexual fantasies edited by Anderson, Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous (Harry N Abrams, 2024) continues the respected actor's role in challenging the sexual norms that American culture insists upon. Duchovney and Anderson may not be anarchistic in their gender and sexuality, but both push up against the expectations of what it is to be a sexual, sensual being in a society that still insists on heteronormative complicity.
Duchovny starts with “A Poetic Autobiography,” an introduction that explores the purpose of poetry. He patently and plainly states that “Poetry is not useful” that “Poetry is lies” and “Poetry makes nothing happen” which is admittedly a very David Duchovny thing to say, especially when you consider the dry skepticism he’s delivered through many of his characters.
The introduction is difficult to take seriously, casting doubt on the level of artistry that will follow. Reflection is a part of creation and great for unpacking the self, the motivations, the attempts of getting a handle on the creative process. But it’s maddeningly self aggrandizing and self deprecating. I appreciate Duchovny is participating in the same practices all students of writing are trained to, but offering a call back before the reader experiences the poems causes uncertainty. Perhaps my foolishness in falling for the linear presentation is to blame. I broke the first rule of X-Files: Be skeptical, take nothing at face value.
Alternatively, the introduction for Anderson’s collection makes much more sense. In purely X-Files terms it’s very on-character for Anderson to examine the sexual fantasies of women from around the world. She introduces, in contrast, Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, a 1973 collection based in a similar premise of gathering the writings of women’sexual desires. Anderson laments how little has changed in the 51 years that have passed between Friday’s study and her own. As is true for my trust in Scully, this time I was very scientific about the journey I was about to go on. My faith in Scully has always been much deeper than in Mulder’s. She was methodical, logical, precise and always very plain in sharing what she observed without offering conjecture. The intro to Want feels more like Dana Scully than anything else Anderson has done since, except delivered in a British accent for those listening to the audio book.
If you are wondering, like I was when reading Duchovny’s introduction, can he actually write quality poetry, I am pleased to say yes, most of the time he can. There are a few moments of yikes, but when there is a golden moment, lines from a heart that “sips tequila through a vein he calls a straw” or a pet rock telling it’s keeper “If only you could have slowed down to my time,/geologic”, we recognize the man is serious about his craft and he’s put in the work.
Duchovny is most gripping when confronting time and memory. The two openers, “Do Over” and “Carbon Canyon” explore partnership and family while balancing knowledge, recall, and experience. In the first, he ponders his current life as he tries to maintain a relationship, but simultaneously wonders what would have been had he jumped off the commuter trains of his childhood Long Island adventures. “Every moment brought new towns, new families./New lives,” he recalls of his past. But seems to lament how he “never did step off” the train through Montauk, Patchoughe, Massapequa, an endless stream of towns named after stolen indigenous lands that were replaced with boulevards and artificial gardens of single family homes. In the second poem, he confronts a grisly death on a walk with his toddler, recognizing even as “a daddy/with knowledge spilling out of my pockets” he has nothing to offer about the carnage and consumption before them.
Alongside his search for knowledge through time, is an exploration of masculinity. While this is often focused on his relationship and the passing of his father, there are moments of curious insight that stand out. A seemingly innocent Halloween costume in “It Wasn’t a Knife” becomes a “future perfect regret,” that examines the violence perpetrated by men against women. This poem doesn’t need to dissect the breadth of such a topic. Two simple stanzas do a tremendous amount of work.
Later, though, in “New Haven” a homage to an old lover who remained a friend, something deeper emerges from the words he’s laid down. He reminisces “Certain slips and rebounds, the exact feel of you remains present/to this day for reasons only something knows”. But the recall of his fondness, the focus on the given grace of his once lover seems to side-step the responsibility of the self. While the concept of sexualization might be better served had he shed his protective layer and looked inward instead of out, he is still exploring the confines of heteronormative norms.
Reading Want was born out of my love of Brand Gillian. I’m ambivalent about admitting such fandom, the branding of humans feels so intrinsically awful and dehumanizing. But Anderson is a classic; a former punk rocker badass turned global actress who has settled into the role of wise and talented elder like Dame Judy Dench and Genna Rollins before her. She remains not just an icon of beauty, but the reckoning against the fame machine that seeks to vanish beautiful women as they age.
Empowering as Anderson’s presence remains, I was not ready for the weight of these collected stories, and how heavy they would sit with me afterwards. The shared fantasies range from confessional, elaborate, and complex, but also at times straight forward and simple. They are frank in their vulnerability, rich in their imagination, but also tense and sad. Instead of finding liberation, a blanket of frustration seemed to cover every word. The shame seems an unreasonable burden for women to carry concerned with what exists in their heads and elsewhere in their lives.
One writer shares a fantasy about submitting to an older woman. The anonymous contributor wonders, “What would people have thought if they found out” that what she desires most is to be dominated by a mother figure. At one point, the anonymous voice admits that fulfilling this fantasy would make her feel sexually whole, yet wonders “if other women have thoughts like these” and laments that “sex isn’t exactly an open conversation”.
In the “post-sexual” liberation world, the Boomers bragged about how they opened the door to “sexual liberation” in the 60’s and then quickly shut down the conversation for their children. We're still terrified to talk about sex with each other. To comfortably share our wants, desires, attractions, and most of all our fantasies. Largely the hang ups of Gen X are a product of the types of conversations women’s liberation and Black liberation movements were supposed to open up. In response, Gen X has handed the shame downward. Heterosexuality remains the premium, and to do or say or think beyond is unacceptable. While Want exists to create a space for women specifically to have a sort of closed door dialog with each other, the almost assured ambivalence of these conversations could translate not into agency or freedom from this shame but enhance the heteronormative fear of varied human sexuality.
There is a crossover with these two books that felt entirely unexpected. I was hoping to be coy and funny writing about two of my teenage heroes releasing books within a year of each other. But if I’ve learned anything from X-Files or Californication or Sex Education or any of the other numerous films these two have produced in the aftermath of my teenage confusion, is that as people and as artists, they are so much more than a pop culture commodity. Ultimately, both works were surprising in their content and execution and reinforce the search for truth in unlikely and unexpected places.
Sex and time and memory and shame and death and fear center both About Time and Want. There is nothing that indicates these are companion pieces by any means, but if your fandom of X-Files extends beyond the performance and includes the actors themselves, reading these works in tandem enhances the experience of each. Time is not static, does not just exist linearly, and both books indicate that there are a multitude of worlds all around us and in our heads. What a gift it is to see and to believe.
“There is a crossover with these two books that felt entirely unexpected. I was hoping to be coy and funny writing about two of my teenage heroes releasing books within a year of each other. But if I’ve learned anything from X-Files or Californication or Sex Education or any of the other numerous films these two have produced in the aftermath of my teenage confusion, is that as people and as artists, they are so much more than a pop culture commodity. ”
