Act I: Our hero accidentally opens up his junk mail folder to see reminders for his dental appointment on August 15. There will be no-show charges and inconveniences and hurt feelings.
Act II: After finishing his daily work, our hero walks to the dentist to explain the situation and to reschedule his appointment. However, there is no appointment for August 15. There is one for next month. And there was much rejoicing.
ACT III: However, my appointment is on October 30, when I will be on vacation. The receptionist reschedules my appointment. There was then a wedding and a feast ad dancing, where singles coupled up, and merry people gave a number of speeches summing up the theme of the situation, including a very longwinded one explaining how the show is over. And there was much rejoicing.
I went to the Baltimore Comic Con this weekend. I had to stop going to cons for a few years because money was tight, but I really need to leave my apartment, so I took the MARC train into Baltimore. I left after two hours, basically spending more time commuting than wandering the floor. And the fact that I got swindled for $100 as I was exiting the building didn’t improve my mood any.
Right before this, on my way out the door, as I was starting to feel overwhelmed, I noticed there were only about ten people in line to see Ben Edlund. A fellow comic artist once called him “the god who walks among us.” He wrote and illustrated indie comic The Tick, which was adapted into a popular cartoon, and then a live-action show which lasted six episodes, and then another live-action show which ran for two seasons. He was the head scriptwriter for Supernatural and Angel for a time, and he wrote an episode of Firefly. These are the ones I know of.
However, as I was standing in line, awkwardly carrying all the books and stickers and prints independent creators had been throwing at me, this guy two people ahead keeps looking at me, like, really intently. His expression is that of a person who mixed up salt and sugar with his breakfast cereal. He’s in a generic Jedi costume, and he seems to believe he is Jedi, in the way he comes up to me and starts speaking quietly, like he didn’t want to escalate this. Condescendingly, he tells me I was in the wrong line. The real line stretched over the horizon. No Ben Edlund for me.
The whole experience was like walking on a swimming pool full of Lego, and then I met the swindlers. I decided that this was my last con. It was a bust, as far as I was concerned.
That is until I started thinking about it. Everywhere there were artists and writers I admired. Sometimes the only thing they were selling were original pages for hundreds of dollars, or I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I hovered away. People were wearing cool costumes, though I lost interest in taking pictures after a few minutes. Vendors were vending, which is where I found several issues of The Incredible Hulk that I’d been looking for for a while.And Artist’s Alley, always my favorite part, was vast and full of interesting people.
I did talk to some artists. I met Amanda Conner for the fourth time. I called her a filthy degenerate, and she agreed wholeheartedly. Her art is raunchy, but at the same time really sexy, with a cartoony aftertaste.
Her husband, Jimmy Palmiotti, is a writer and inker of exceptional talent, and he sat next to her. They’ve been married forever. The thing about comic artists and writers is that you don’t often see photos of them, so you have no idea what they look like. In the case of Jimmy Palmiotti, he looks exactly like you’d expect a person named Jimmy Palmiotti to look like.
Speaking of not knowing what an artist looks like, I also found Amy Reeder. Amy has got a real fairy-tale style about her, which she showed off in Madame Xanadu, which is about a powerful fortune-teller whose origins were in Camelot. I’ve gotten her autograph two times before this, and I can never remember what she looks like. There’s always the same woman in there with her, and I can’t recall who was who. I spoke to the empty space between them when I talked about how “Amethyst is the perfect book for your style,” and the one who uncapped her pen was Amy.
Likewise, I stood in line to meet Terry Moore. Terry Moore writes character-driven comic book epics in black and white. He pencils and inks his own work, and he hand-letters it. I wanted to talk to him about lettering, so I waited. I was beyond irritated that I’d been standing there for five minutes while this older woman chewed his ear off, especially about how superstar artist Frank Cho was never in his booth. And it wasn’t until Terry Moore said something to her that I realized that this was not Terry Moore, but rather his assistant. Terry was at a panel. I didn’t stick around because I was planning on leaving soon anyway, a path to the door that would take me by Ben Edlund’s booth. And you know how that went.
I had a great time in Artist’s Alley. Lately my obsession is with stickers—I’ve been decorating my sketchbooks like I’m a thirteen-year-old. This led me to a lot of tables to have brief chats with independent creators. My policy is this: if you call me over to your booth and tell me all about your comic or your book or even just your characters, I will buy what you’re, even though I hardly ever read. It’s what I’d want if I was on the other side of the table.
I think I will try this again, maybe next year at Awesome Con, DC’s comic book convention. It wasn’t worth the trip to Maryland, but the DC convention center is only a couple of stops from me. Maybe I’ll feel less awkward around the talents I admire. Maybe I’ll meet all sorts of young, creative people who are really putting themselves out there. And maybe next time I’ll bring a tote bag.
I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm this morning, and it still pissed me off. Oscar slept on the floor because I’d rolled over onto him at about 2:30. He knows my alarm means breakfast, so he bullied me into getting out of bed and feeding him. I brushed my teeth, cleaned out his litter box, made my bed, picked out my clothes for the day, and showered. Since it was super-early, I worked on a drawing until my favorite café in the DMV region opened at seven. I took the Metro the two stops and huffed and puffed it up some very Bay Area terrain. When I arrived, I enjoyed a breakfast sandwich while reviewing the proofs for my novel. I then continued working on my drawing and watched people for the next three hours, until the art store opened. I didn’t need paint, ink, or paper, so I just browsed. I also found the comic book shop Nicole had shown me years ago, but it wasn’t open yet. In this beautiful, late-summer day, I explored Silver Spring, Maryland and went home to open up my social medias.
The one and only post I could find that acknowledged what’s on my mind today was the car salesman meme, this one selling a plane that can crash into two buildings for the price of one.
“Listen. And understand. That cat is out there. He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. He doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until the birdie-on-a-stick is dead.”
In another regeneration, I went out a lot with my friends. Sometimes it was with one friend (Hugh or Mark) or it was a salon of drunken idiots (Rita) or it was rock and roll (Satanicide). Even though I was depressed, I cherished my adventures, and every Sunday, during my downtime at The Post, I summed them up and sent them out to a select group of friends who hadn’t yet told me to stop sending them.
I’m at an age where I stop telling people how old I am and start rounding up. My ex got custody of almost all of my friends in the divorce, and all of my hobbies are solitary, so I don’t have as many adventures anymore. That said, three big things happened to me Monday and Tuesday, and I’m going to report them to you.
First, Oscar is growing up to be a cat, where before he looked like a black ferret. He’s a teenager now, so all he wants to do is play, and when he’s not trying to convince me it’s dinnertime, he’s bugging me to get the birdie-on-a-stick and wave it in his face. He’s sweet, but I have a job.
One of my favorite things to do with Newcastle was take him outside to explore our backyard. One of my favorite things to do with Henry was put him in a harness and take him for a walk. I bought Oscar a harness, and a backpack so I could go for walks with him. It stressed him out, but if he could get used to it, he might have a good time.
Monday, I got him into his harness, which is hard because he’s coated with a thin layer of butter, loaded him in his backpack, and walked the three blocks to find the only open area of grass in my neighborhood.
I opened up the backpack, and he very slowly made his way out, saw me, and freaked out. He squeezed out of the harness and ran straight into traffic. I ran right after him, kicking off my flip-flops in the street, and I didn’t care if I got hit by a car, as long as Oscar got to safety. You’re not going to believe what happened next.
All four lanes of traffic stopped to let us make it across. I was expecting to watch Oscar die, but the asshole drivers of DC had our backs. I chased him through three backyards until he tried to hide under a hosta, and I scruffed him and brought him home. Because flip-flops are flat, you can’t tell they got run over.
That was Monday.
I love my job, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fray my nerves. Between ending my day with that and public transit (still better than driving), I don’t want to have to deal with the nuisance of our concierge only being at the desk 50 percent of the time. So when I pick up any packages that come in for me, I tend to pick them up after I get out of the shower. Don’t worry, I dress first.
At 4:30 this morning, I picked up a package from Missouri and just assumed it was the carved owl I just bought for my owl shrine. It was not. With Oscar’s supervision, I opened the box to find another box, and in that box was this mug:
I did not order this mug. In the mug was a business card for a potter who lived in Florida, along with something that looked like a bookmark. On the back was a lovely note thanking me (yes, me—it said “Dear Jeremiah) for the letter I’d sent years ago and how moved they were. Life was happening, so they hadn’t replied, but they sent the mug as a token of appreciation. Signed, “William Pona tawa sina.”
I had no idea who the holy hell this was. I did not remember writing that letter years ago, and I didn’t know a William who made pottery. I visited the website and found out that’s a luxury mug. The clues clicked into place. It wasn’t the potter, it was one of my college roommates, Will. He lives in Missouri. I sent him an essay I’d written about him two years ago, and I’d never heard back.
I figured it out, but I didn’t figure it out in time to stop me from sending a polite email to the potter thanking him for the gift and expressing joy that my words touched him so much, as if I knew him.
That squared away, I had one last detail to attend to. What the hell is “Pona tawa sina”? I looked it up, only raising more questions. Pona tawa sina is from a language called Toki Pona, which was invented in 2001 and bridges the gap between all languages. Kind of like Esperanto, only less baffling. Pona tawa sina literally means “goodness toward you.” It’s a way of saying goodbye or thank you.
That was before work. When I arrived, there was a surprise waiting.
One of the many, many perks of my job is that we get stretch breaks lunchtime Wednesday and Thursday. When I started eating at my desk a year ago, the stretch instructor was Katja, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy. Katja was recently replaced with Hali, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy.
I hang drawings of Newcastle, Oscar, myself, and other pictures I’ve done, practically daring people to ask me about it. Hali took my dare, and I found out they were a bit of an artist themselves. They’re just learning about watercolors and painting around town, so the next day, I brought them my retired brushes, the cool travel set I’d purchased in Doha. There’s nothing wrong with them, I’ve just traded up. They’ve been occupying a small space in my art drawer, and I wasn’t going to throw them away. Now they have a loving home.
There was a thank you card on my desk when I got to work this morning. Hali wanted to tell me how important those brushes were to them, and they could not wait to take them out for a spin. They have an Etsy store, and I bought some stickers.
I’ve become such a hermit, it’s hard to imagine that I am having any sort of impact in this world. And yet today, the first thing that happened to me today was someone making sure I understood I had affected them, twice. Maybe I was wrong about my impact.
I’ve been thinking lately about perfect moments. There those events in your history that aren’t weighed down by the stresses of life. You can start your day anxious and cranky, and you could end your day depressed and disappointed, but in the middle, time stands still, and everything is as it should be. I’m almost fifty, and I have so many.
I can remember with clarity my first kiss (in the back of a GATE van, fist-bump), even if I can’t remember the reason we were in Albuquerque, or the fact that I figured out shortly after that I didn’t even like this person. I can recall what she was wearing, and the fact that she had to make the first move before I noticed.
I remember walking by a canal in Florida with my parents, who were married forty-four years by this point and were still holding hands. I recall the yellow-green of the grass, the fence to the left, and trees in the near distance.
I remember Newcastle chasing me through the apartment until I jumped onto the bed, and he joined me, and we snuggled together on the green sheets.
There’s so many.
I have a favorite. It’s stuck with me for over twenty years because it was perfect. It’s an unremarkable moment, and I feel safe in assuming that all of my friends, including Facebook friends, experience this. There was something about this time, though, that didn’t fade.
In January or February, 2003, I had spent the night at my girlfriend’s apartment. We had known each other as long as we’d lived in New York, but we were still in our honeymoon period. Work beckoned us, so we bundled up and walked to my subway station in the cold and snow, surrounded by drifts of dirty ice. She lived on 210th Street, so the trains were all elevated, so we hid from the precipitation under the tracks, with the painted girders. Casually, she kissed me goodbye before heading off to her own train.
And that’s it. That is the moment that sticks out to me the most. I remember the black belt of her black coat and her debutante gloves. I remember the leopard print lining of her hat. I remember her hand on my heart, a gesture she made a lot with me. I remember that it was the most natural thing in the world.
She had kissed me goodbye before, but something had changed. This time I felt like I was an important part of her life, not just some guy. She seemed a little more relaxed. And for the first time, I felt like I was good enough for her. She and I had dated twice before this, and we felt hopeful that the third time would be a charm. There was a lot of hope in that kiss. We were really good friends, even before we started dating (again), so there was comfort.
The third time was not a charm. A few months later, I had a depressive episode and broke up with her over the phone. We stayed friends, though not as close as before, and then we became really close again long-distance. Unfortunately, I was cut off from most of my friends during my marriage, so we drifted apart, and our current lives are about as opposite they can get. I don’t expect she even remembers this because it was so mundane. It was my moment.
Why is this my favorite memory? I think it was the intimacy of it.
So many lifetimes later, I will always have that moment, that kiss in the snow, when everything was perfect.
Jeremiah Murphy 