Archive for May, 2009
10 items.
I think this is the last one of these from my first issue that hasn’t yet been posted in a blog. I’m thinking on Wednesday we’ll have the next part of the Swine Flu storyline to post.
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The other night. A dream. I’m drifting off to sleep, and I don’t realize that I’ve fallen there yet, so when I see myself walking down a sidewalk. I think it’s real at first even though it looks a little bit like one of those first person shots in Being John Malkovich where they’re inside Malkovich looking out, as opposed to really being the person that’s walking. I realize it must be a dream when I see what’s on the sidewalk. There’s a horse lying there, a horse definitely and not a pony, in proportion and detail, although it’s only about three feet long, maybe as big as a largish medium-sized dog. The dog comparison is uncomfortable, because half of the horse is ground into the pavement, smashed paper-thin as though it has the consistency of a pile of dog shit and has been stepped in by a giant shoe. The only portion of the horse to retain its original dimensionality is the left front leg and everything above going to the neck and head. These parts are flailing about feebly, like the antenna of a roach that’s been sprayed but hasn’t quite given up yet. The horse’s eyes roll up in their sockets, but I couldn’t claim it was looking at me.
This is when I realize that it’s all a little too weird, I must be dreaming, and I think that I wake up. I’m in my room., although the light is strange and soft and diffused, like how they tried to photograph a woman’s bedroom in the early days of three-strip technicolor. I’m not yet concerned that the aesthetic qualities of my imaginative landscapes so often are easily compared to the techniques employed in old films. There’s somebody next to me, but I don’t quite see him. He’s in my peripheral vision, just barely though, and I’m telling him that I just had the strangest dream, but I never remember my dreams. That part is true, because I really rarely do. So, I insist that he has to help me remember the horse, because it was too interesting to waste. I think he’s nodding a little bit, but he doesn’t say much in the way of an answer. I decide that he’s not trustworthy, and I tell myself that it’s up to me to remember this dream. I insist again and again that I have to record every detail. I think this is why I remember most of what happened afterward. I start to realize that there’s something strange about this as well, and that there might not be another person in my peripheral vision at all, and that’s when I “wake up” again.
I’m lying in my bed now, which seems about right because I’m supposed to have just snapped out of a bad dream. Looking down, I discover that there’s a boy there, going down on me, green t-shirt and brown skin. He’s beautiful, and I recognize him from my escapades, even though I can’t see his face. It seems hazy, though, and I can’t feel his mouth on me like I should, and some part of my brain starts to suspect that I never did wake up, after all.
Now I’m standing up at the foot of my bed, and I think I’ve woken up again. But for some reason the door between my room and my roommate’s is open, which it never should be. I think it’s actually taped shut. There’s something profoundly disturbing to me about it being open. I can’t recall the last time that it was. Then I notice that the light in the room isn’t natural, it’s a deep blue with no conceivable logical origin within the room. I think in the box of crayolas I had when I was little, that blue was called cornflower blue. I start to step toward the door, but I feel like I shouldn’t. The steps I take toward it don’t actually bring me any closer, until I finally notice a shadowy figure in the room. It’s headed toward me, and for some reason I’m afraid of it, even though my suspicion is that it’s the boy from a minute ago, still in his green t-shirt and without pants, just walking at a casual pace. Suddenly, another figure rushes me from my right side and grabs me, which is when I realize it’s all just too improbable, I must be dreaming, and I “wake up” again.
Now I’m lying back in my bed, but I feel paralyzed and I can’t move. There are two figures standing over me.
“It doesn’t really matter. He can’t hear you,” one of them says.
They continue discussing me for a few moments. What’s disturbing me even more than my paralysis is the fact that one of them looks exactly like a drawing I had done, only that drawing wasn’t of anybody in particular. It was as though the guy was from the drawing, rather than the other way around. They keep discussing me for a few more minutes before I snap awake again
This time, I lay with my eyes closed for a few minutes. I think about the sounds in the room and the feeling of my cheek on the pillow. I’m trying to figure out how I can tell that this is any different than being asleep, and zero in on the exact indications that tell me the difference. I feel unsettled, because in the last portion of the dream I had been convinced that I really was awake finally, and that I was in an asylum or something, imagining these walking versions of my drawings looking over me. I had finally snapped.
It took me a few minutes, but I did convince myself that it was a real pillow against my cheek. I opened my eyes.
When people suggest to me that I should try to get my comics syndicated into newspapers, I usually doubt that they’ve actually read my comics.
What’s interesting to me about this particular joke, aside from the obvious, is that it’s really not a very extreme sexual fantasy at all but, somehow, when it’s written down like that it seems like the filthiest thing ever. One thing I’ve always been interested in is picking at the scabs of our social taboos and seeing which ones are actually covering anything worth covering. They almost never are when you get down too it. I’m also pretty interested in writing about sex with guys, so two birds and one stone there.
Bonus game with this one for anybody who wants to play: Guess which substance I was on when I drew it, post it in the comment field below, and the first correct guess gets a copy of Waste of Time #1 for free. As I started typing that sentence, I was thinking there wouldn’t be any prize, but I was struck with a sudden burst of generosity combined with a needy desire to see as many feedback comments as possible, so there you have it. Yep. Oh, I was also debating whether to talk a little about the comic, but this seemed easier than that, too. Good luck!
Just a quick sketchbook page for today. I have a billion drawings like this, because this is basically what comes out when I’m standing around with nothing in particular to draw. I bring my sketchbook to bars and public places a lot, for different reasons. One of the obvious reasons for bringing it to a bar, of course, is that I can go there and hang out until something happens without just standing on the wall and staring at people all creeper-status. Although, I’ve been known to do that too. The sketchbook-in-bar thing is also good because if somebody wants to approach me, it gives them an easy excuse for conversation. The problem with that is that it’s sometimes a little too easy, and some pretty gross old men have thought they had an in with me if they’d pretend to care about what I was sketching. I have trouble striking the perfect balance between aloof and available.
Most people don’t seem to think it’s strange to see someone drawing in a bar, and some people even seem to think it’s cool, but occasionally I do get somebody who just thinks it’s freakish to see a fellow patron with something in his hand besides a drink or a crotch. I was standing in a bar, I think the same one where I drew this sketch, and some guy comes up and starts talking to me, mostly about himself. He was cute, though, and offering drinks so I feigned interest. He talked about how much money he made, and how much he liked it in LA, where apparently he was from, but explained that he came to San Francisco about once a month to, “unwind.”
“But it never turns out that way, haha,” he said. ” I always think I’m just gonna relax up here, but next thing I know, I’m doing coke offa some guy’s cock!” Yeah, don’t you hate it when that happens? I wish guys would just keep their coke and their cocks to themselves, for chrissakes. “What are you doing with the book?” he asked.
“Sketching.”
He gave me a look a little bit like I had said I was using it to beat stray dogs. “Dude, that’s weird.”
“Why’s it weird?”
“Cause you’re coming to a social place to be anti-social!” he tells me.
“How am I anti-social when I’m talking to your right now?”
His brow furrows, I can sense the wheels turning a bit behind frustrated, blank, but awfully cute eyes… “Whatever, dude. I’m meeting a friend at Lookout. Wanna come?”
I do go to Lookout, but I meet up with another friend and stop talking to the guy, which seems OK by him because his friend has a couple of other friends, and I think the group of them are deciding to get friendly.
A month or two later, I ran into the guy again and am surprised that he remembers me. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re that guy who reads!”
“Um, well, yeah, I read, but I wasn’t that night. It was a sketchbook.”
“Yeah, right, right, you had a book! In a bar!”
I’m starting to feel a little bit like Belle talking to Gaston as the guy puts his arm around my shoulder and introduces me to his passel of of cute 20-somethings; different 20-somethings than last time, of course. “Hey everybody! This is my friend who reads!”
Some sets of bleary eyes wandered in my direction for a minute, I waved and then excused myself. I was feeling like I didn’t really belong there, somehow. I was the guy who reads! I guess that’s what I get for hanging out with somebody from LA, right?
I started with the idea of the Capitalist Pig character so that I’d have someone for my rabbit to argue with about matters of money and financial success, since I figured my own internal conflicts on the issue might provide some interesting comics. I haven’t really used him as much as I thought I might, but recent economic times have given me some cause to push him toward the front a little more. That, and I figured it couldn’t hurt to throw in an occasional slightly-more topical strip to break up the pornography.
Aight, another boy portrait for the montage in my upcoming issue, if that all goes as planned. Hm. This is a little tough for me, because there’s a whole lot that I feel like saying about this particular boy at the moment, but I think I’m going to force myself into a rare for me (Very rare) display of discretion and not lay out a bunch of things that I’ll probably regret saying in the morning. Hm. Anyway. I will explain, though, as I’ve mentioned previously these drawings are part of a planned segment in a comic that I’m hoping to put together. All this stuff, actually, or at least a lot of it, is meant as part of a bigger picture, or bigger pictures, and longer series that I hope to do. I’m hoping that it will become clear(er) with not too much more time.
THE END. The first major story finished. That’s the end of ROLL WITH IT, folks. Hope you enjoyed. Not sure what’s coming next. Guess we’ll all find out Monday!
