Holiday Wishes and Junior Summer: The Rest of the Summer

EDIT: A "before I drive to NYC" shout to Greg from Comics Should be Good who spoke well of Elk's Run and my fighting ability. For the record, for those new to this site, I'm actually a lousy fighter. Read most of the stories about me getting involved in some type of fight and it's usually me getting my ass kicked.

Robin and I love baseball. We order the baseball package through our cable provider and from late spring through earlier autumn there is a baseball game on in our house. We hardly see eye-to-eye on teams (she’s Sox, I’m Mets), players, policy or rules but there is one thing we both whole-heartedly believe: Baseball will die without a good farm system.

Indie comics is the farm system for the comics industry. While everyone is talking about the spider-mans and the exclusive contracts and the crossovers we’re down here doing our own thing and playing our heart out in an attempt to bring fresh and innovative ideas to an otherwise stagnant industry. We don’t get a lot of attention but we get just enough to do what we love and sometimes that attention is enough to bring us up to major-league level.

With that in mind, I want to send some holiday love to the comic fans that pay attention to us. To the ones that talk about our books instead of the books everyone else is talking about. Anyone can review a Batman book and almost everyone does. But the comics industry would dry out mighty quick if people weren’t talking about the stuff we were doing. If someone wasn’t noticing us, talking us up, and lifting us up to a point where we can bring our game to a bigger audience.

I’ve always show love for Sean Maher, Mark Fossen and Guy LeCharles Gonzalez for supporting the indie books they liked and doing it loud, making their voices heard. But this holiday season I also want to throw some well wishes to Johanna Draper Carlson, Ian Brill, Jog, Shawn Hoke, and everyone else who seeks out small press and indie work and promotes it. People like you keep our farm system strong and, in turn, keep comics relevant.

Happy Holidays, all.

Story Time…

___________________

The summer of Junior Year came and went.

I took a job in a lab so I can do my senior research project. I was in an acoustics lab – studying how people localized sounds. The interview was pretty informal – I sat down with the professor and we talked for a while – she discussed some project opportunities her lab had and it all sounded pretty exciting. Within no time the conversation went casual – she told me all about her kids and I told her about what I was doing over the summer, mainly the skits and working at Jillian’s. We had a pretty good connection and the year working under her was one of my better college experiences.

I was excited to land the lab job – Robin and I went out and celebrated. I was never really book smart, you know? In high school I was but in college I became more of a problem solver and power talker – my GPA in college was almost touching 3.0 and that was fine with me. But it kept me out of labs; I got several rejections before charming my way into the acoustics lab. I never had an interest in acoustics and in a way that made it a better fit.

My friends and I shot Mr. Sandman – a screenplay cowrote by Guam and I. We pulled it off in three days – had about 30 people bouncing in and out for around 18 hours a day. The Bastard directed it and he had one major philosophy – in order for pain to look real it has to be real. For a romantic comedy that’s a perfectly fine philosophy. But for a slapstick comedy?

We got punched, dropped out of trees, hit with hard objects including some stinky-ass salami– by the time the shoot was over we were all bruised and broken. One scene in particular consisted of Guam getting his ass kicked by a kung-fu fighting female angel. We all cringed every time we heard the dull sound of bone hitting flesh – we felt bad as we watched Guam curled up on the floor after a sucker punch, crying. It’s one thing to get beat up by a girl. It’s another to have it filmed over several takes.

Robin, being the film student, helped us out here and there. She even made the trailer for it as part of a film project. In return she called on us later that year to help her with some of her films she had to make for school.

One day Robin pulls me behind the George Sherman Union to show me a tree she sat in all day. She was working for Buildings and Grounds over the summer and the job was filled with these ultra chivalrous dudes who believed the ladies shouldn’t do much work – so Robin sat in trees a lot, occasionally tended gardens. She shows me where she carved “Robin –N- Jason” into a tree, big letters, put a heart around it.

Towards the end of the summer she was getting kicked off campus and I had to report for RA training. I was moving into this newly renovated Brownstone – hard wood floors, big, deep windows, spacious bathroom – it was a great apartment. Robin didn’t want to go back home for a week so I told her she can stay with me. I gave her my key and I used the building’s master key – she came and went as she pleased while I spent ten hours a day at RA training – playing various team building games and taking whiffs of marijuana so we can identify it if we need to – as if I haven’t smelled it before. As if none of us had, really.

But you pretend – you take a big whiff and you make this face like you’re storing the odor in your head. “Oh…so that’s what marijuana smells like. I’m usually too fucking stoned to remember.”

Every night the RAs did stuff together – I couldn’t really bring Robin along all the time because she wasn’t supposed to have a key to the apartment so I didn’t want people to know she was living with me. But she’d come out occasionally and everyone was down with her – she’s a cool chick to be around, that’s for sure.

My senior RA found out Robin was living with me but she didn’t care too much, she just told me to make sure none of the directors found out.

After training Robin packs up and moves into her apartment – across the street from mine. She doesn’t stay there too often – my place was a lot nicer than hers. We stole an extra bed and tied it to the one that I already had, dropped an egg-crate on top of it and covered that with some bootleg flannel sheets and just like that you had a college-grade queen-sized bed. I gave her a drawer, she kept the necessities like undies and pajamas in there - eventually she started moving items into the wardrobe.

She took over half of the medicine cabinet and the shower started getting stocked with all of her shampoos and the four different types of soaps she uses when she takes a shower. She had her own key – all of my residents knew her because she was always over. I’d sometimes come home from class or a meeting and she’ll be cooking up some grilled cheeses

It slowly became comfortable.

I made her a mix-tape, the first step every guy takes before he tells a girl he loves her. “Something in the Way She Moves”, “Here, There and Everywhere” – standard love-tracks. I told her I loved her for the first time shortly after and she smiled a big smile and dropped it back on me.

We rolled around the make-shift queen size bed and kissed each other repeatedly – she’d occasionally stare me in the eye and smile, repeat, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” over and over again. I was the first guy she ever told that to. Although she wasn’t the first I said it to in retrospect she was the first where it was really there. It’s funny how you can look at things differently as time passes, you wonder if it’s your bias that’s slanting your perception or if it’s the honest-to-god truth.

It’s the little things. Robin and I have been together for seven years – I can’t remember a time when I didn’t kiss her on the lips when seeing her or departing – even if we were fighting. Always a kiss – always an I love you. I never really had that before. I actually remember telling R, several times, “Fuck off” or “Fuck you” while walking away.

Anyway, it was a good first summer. Visiting the Gardner Museum, watching movies – we took this three hour long walk to a Friendlies because Robin swore it was close and she really wanted a sundae with peanut butter sauce (we took the bus back, obviously). Drinks at PJs – putting down Killian’s and listening to Cash play on the jukebox – playing strip poker on the Megatouch machine, one of our favorite pastimes to date. I play with naked women, she plays with naked men. I complain that the woman are all ugly, she complains that they don’t show dicks. A seven year tradition that started that summer.

It was a good fit right from the beginning, despite my reluctance to get it started.

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