First Comic OR Read it like it’s hot OR October, 12 2008

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I think when we all started passing these blogs around like a cashed out pipe at a frat party there was a “first comic” meme going around that I never took part in.  That’s what this story is now.

 

When I was a child I read everything I could get my hands on.  As the youngest child of 6 I had many willing teachers and stacks of thin children’s books about cowboys, bunnies and the proper way to treat your siblings piled around my bed before I even hit my first class class of kindergarten.  I remember going on trips with my family to the mountains and stuffing my little pink backpack with volumes upon volumes, always a bulging burden that would soon become to much for my little frame, but my father would make me carry it the entire time in attempt to teach me a lesson that no amount of lectures, sore backs or broken zippers ever really managed to get into my head.  I spent hours pouring over the shelves of our house’s small library room.  I remember the smells of oak, musty paper and those thick dusty drapes covering the sliding glass door to the backyard, barred, we weren’t allowed to use it.  I remember the scratchy feel of the rug against my bare feet, and the chill of the hardwood floor, even in summers.  Once in grade school I graduated to the library there, with mad excitement.  The librarian would give me skeptical looks as she stamped due dates on each book in my teetering stacks.  My oldest sister in high school started to share with me the books they were reading:  Fahrenheit451, And Then There Were None, Of Mice and Men.  When she’d run lines with me for play auditions, I’d keep them for a quick read through:  Our Town, Death of a Salesman, Arsenic and Old Lace. I went for bigger volumes in our private collection: Science Encyclopedias (A was my favorite), Collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Loved it), Collected works of William Shakespeare (Impenetrable then, but I kept trying) and even SAT Practice Vocabulary workbooks.  When I was in third grade the placement tests put me in the same reading class as my sister two grades above me.  I don’t think she ever forgave me for it honestly; she was self-conscious enough on her own.

 

My love of libraries never lost wind with age.  My mother would drop me off on Saturdays with a library card and a quarter in my pocket to call her when I was ready to come home.  That wouldn’t be for hours to come, usually closing time.  I would creep slowly through each aisle, every aisle.  While I loved fiction, that’s not all I wanted to read.  I wanted to know everything.  In my stacks Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allen Poe would cozy up with Fromme’s guides to New York City and Recognizing North American Birds.  Spanish textbooks and Sketching instruction manuals snuck into my piles of Choose Your Own Adventure Novels, and somehow Mayans, Saudia Arabia and World War II seemed to get their play each and every weekend.

 

Libraries were more than just a place to obtain books.  They were my sanctuary.  They were my entry into a world that my staunchly religious parents not only refused to tell me of, they didn’t know their fair share of it themselves.  I thank my luck everyday, that while other forms of media were closely monitored, books were always a free part of academia to them.  I had free reign to learn about sexuality, violence, drugs and atheism.  That’s why I never bothered with the catalog, never went to a certain section.  Always I wandered and let the topics come to me.

 

Eventually, it had to happen.  Eventually I had to walk down an aisle and have a tall collection poke out like a beam of light was shining on it from the heavens.  I pulled it out from the shelf and held within my hands, for the first time, the dejected faces of Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb staring at thick womanly thighs squeezed into spandex and black boots, propelling forth heaving breasts and a resolute face: a classic crumb beauty. I didn’t have to flip through the pages to know I was checking that book out today, but I did.  They were dense, dark and inky, filled with massive bubbles of monologues that exuded anxieties from Harvey’s pained face before I even read their content.  They were words that were written around the time I was born, but they smacked me in my face like the pair was sitting in front of me at that very moment.

 

By this time I could drive and I visited every library in town and walked straight to that portion of the Dewey Decimal system, to see what they had to offer.  At this time the offerings were paltry, never filled more than one shelf.  While I devoured all ten volumes of Akira and it’s masterfully cinematic art quickly, the Manga craze hadn’t hit and it was the only offering of it’s kind in my fair city; there were certainly no trades, no capes, no cowls.  What was there was offerings from Top Shelf and Fantagraphics, smatterings of independent comics and nothing remotely suitable for children.  It was brilliant.

 

Whenever I move to a new town, go to a new school the library is still the first place I visit.  The Public Library behemoths in both Chicago and New York literally brought me to tears, something that no monument in this dark city had done before and has never managed to do again.  That indistinguishable smell of stale paper and plastic protective covers reminds me of home, an amusing dichotomy of childhood and loss of innocence, both the garden and the desolation.  The library was my Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and books that sweet juicy apple.

 

It took me years to walk inside a comic book store.  While I now pick up around 30 monthly titles my love for independent books has never waned; superheroes still remain a minority on my pull list.  A recent visit to the library (every Saturday) leaves me with a pile, none of which are from the big two and only one being from one of the “little two”, Dark Horse.  This year my first visit to a comic convention, New York Comic Con in April, found me time and time again shirking panels and big names to wander in artist alley and the adjacent lanes of booths where I shyly bought the self-published babies of a smattering of struggling artists and writers.  Some shined brighter than others, but they were all undeniably genuine.  I treasure the sketches, the handwritten notes on hand stapled pages and I wish them all the best of luck.  (I don’t know how any discussion of a dying industry can exist when at it’s feet is this much passion.)  I will always have my deep down preference for the strange, the personal and the unique.

 

And I will always love the library.

The Great Chicago

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It all passed so quickly. 

 

I finished my in flight movie, six dollars and I don’t even get to watch the commentary, when I looked out the window and I see under a smattering of cloud coverage a vast expanse of lights.  A mass of humanity reduced at this height to twinkling dots and lines among the surrounding darkness.  The size of that stretch of shimmer could only be boasted by a few cities in this country, only one of which I was passing on this route: Chicago. 

 

Direct flight: Salt Lake City to JFK.  The returning trip from my sister’s wedding.  It was a beautiful ceremony I’m sure, not that I could tell you personally.  Mormon weddings happen in their temples, card carrying members only.  I haven’t been in one for 5 years, and haven’t been in with clear conscious for a few years more than that, but I was still eager to see my family.  The incoming flight was anti-climatic.  I didn’t realize till I was in the air how much I wanted to see Chicago.  Yet, we passed to far south, cutting across Indiana and southern Illinois, no where near The Black City.  I kept my eyes on the flight route on the screen embedded into the seat in front of me.  I craned my neck to get some sort of view when we were in the area, but to no avail.  So on the return, the happy return to my home of Brooklyn, I assumed we’d be on the same route and didn’t even give it a thought.

 

Then it was under me, glowing in the dark night.  I looked on with equal measures of excitement and skepticism.  Maybe it wasn’t Chicago?  That was all silliness though, it was unmistakable, gleaming next to the inky black of Lake Michigan pocked with bright piers, notably Navy Pier jutting into her cautiously like a child’s toe testing the waters.  This was my Chicago.  I pressed my forehead against the small porthole and watched.  Tears rolled freely down my cheeks as we drifted by.

 

It all passed so quickly.

 

I sat back in my seat.  My fevered head left a damp spot against the thick plastic window.  I didn’t particularly bother to hide my sniffling nose, I’d been making good use of my Kleenex box the entire trip anyhow.

 

I lived in Chicago for one year and four months, I always round it to a “couple years” when I’m telling people of my travels.  It does generally strike me as odd how fondly I remember the city.  The time that I spent in the city itself was abysmally small in comparison to the time I spent dwindling in its southern suburbs, amongst the cornfields and the city’s lower class outcasts.  The trip to the city was an hour on the commuter train, The Metra, as it snaked through government protected woods and dilapidated lots scattered with broken glass glistened in the sun like diamonds.  You were just as likely to see a buck foraging in the fallen leaves as you were a domestic disturbance.  The train didn’t see either, it moved along steadily to the heart of the black city, the windy city, the great Chicago.  The throngs would hurriedly dissipate amongst the dark towering buildings and the air would chill as if this area code were a separate plane of existence, all its own.  Walking through the center of the city, The Loop, at night I would look at the gothic towers and wonder how this wasn’t the real inspiration for Gotham.  The grimacing, crumbling faces of gargoyles staring through you; the overwhelmingly foreboding presence made by the deep blackness of her tallest towers; the swell of her river and the chill of her lake; the roar and sparks from the teetering elevated trains that cut through the scenery of even the most elegant neighborhoods and blocked sun from our lonely eyes; the prison that unsuccessfully tries to remain non-descript, but climbs above it’s neighbors and makes passer bys wonder whose eyes are peering through those slits of windows.  Chicago: a skeleton once the dark comes, when the commuters have left to their homes, but she still speaks at night.  Tales carried on the wind, she whistles in your ears and chills you to the bone.

 

I loved that city.  It was clean, it was vibrant, it was beautiful.   I cried the first time I saw the skyline coming towards me, the Sears Tower stood solidly at the center of it all, easily half of it’s bulk covered by the cloudy day, but still instantly recognizable.  I remember coming out of classes late at night tired and defeated at the thought of being up early in the morning for a full day or work and then more classes.  Then I would see the lights beaming on the bold, gothic eagles adorning the corners atop the giant stones that make up the grand and towering Chicago Public Library and it would set my heart on fire.  I could feel it beating in my chest as if stabbed by a shot of adrenaline.  I remember walking in the streets under the shadow of the elevated train tracks and looking to the sky as snow drifted down between the buildings.  I remember winds that chilled me so deeply I though perhaps my ears and face would never fully return to normal use.  I remember my dog seeing snow for the first time, romping around excitedly for so long his paws would hurt and we’d have to carry him back into the house.  I remember my cat touching that white drift and recoiling as quickly as possible back to the warmth of the house.  I remember Kyle.  I remember coming to the city with all the hope in the world for our future together.  I remember leaving it with a 4 year relationship fully extinguished.

 

I can’t help but think of him as I pass over.  After long unappreciated days in business casual and business bullshit, he works part-time delivering sandwiches.  He pines for a married woman, who still lives 2000 miles away and may never move for him.  He dreams of a future that is constantly being pushed out of his grasp by excuses, whether his own or from the people who are close to him.  Every night as he lays alone under the sheets it hurts.  Feelings of frustration, failure and heart ache.  I still care and I still worry.  We talked at first.  It was different certainly, but held a certain comfort.  Now I know he doesn’t want to talk any longer, whether it’s his own hurt or something deemed necessary by his new love I don’t know, it doesn’t frankly matter.  I respect his wishes as my stomach turns and my heart aches for that old city of Chicago.

 

Yet, my stomach leaped as I felt the plane start to descend. My home is now New York.  The distinct shimmering grid let me easily smile down on my neighborhood.  My heart is warmed, but only just enough.  That’s the dichotomy of this city, the mixture of disdain and fierce loyalty.  I know it will only be a matter of time till I move on.  Till yet another plane brings me to a fresh destination that will become my home.  Then this grid will be a no more than an ache in this ailing heart, a warm tear on this cheek as I pass over.

 

But that time is not now.  So until then, hello New York, I’m home.

Audio!

 

Two boys, both around the age of twelve.  Identical twins.  From their carefully shabby haircuts to the grey socks peeking from the toes of their sandals, they were alike.  Their plaid shorts blended one pair into the other as they seated themselves next to each other, across from me, on the train.  Their sandy shirts betrayed the faux unique design of each other as the paint on both matched perfectly, splatter for splatter.  In turn both boys laid on the ground perfectly alike black swiss army bookbags, adorned with identical keychains hooked on the same zipper handle of each bag.  Two slim wrists jangled with slightly oversized silver watches attached to two hands holding two cups, both speared with straws filled with the same pearly orange substance, identical flavors.  The only difference between them was the pair of glasses perched on the face of the boy on the left.  Otherwise, they were perfectly the same, as far as one could tell from a look at least.

 

Yet, the longer I took in their sameness the more it was blatantly obvious how different they were.  Not just the eyeglasses of the left, though surely that had been a marker used by many people in their lives past and present.  No, moreso it was their gazes.  Right furrowed his brows as he surveyed the scene of the train car around him, then he busied himself with the cup and straw he grasped in his small hands.  He sucked the thick liquid with gruff gulps.  Left took a different approach.  His eyes were wide and wandered, drinking in every bit of his surroundings.  His curiosity was nearly palpable.  He noticed me watching them immediately and instead of showing clear annoyance as Right had done, he then took my smile as a clear welcome to watch me in return.  He looked about but would always return and watch me as my face was distinctly unable to hide it’s glee at the situation before me.  He watched as my toes wiggled and my fingers tapped; as my eyes darted away from the words in the book before me that was very much being forgotten at this point as my mind raced with delightful interpretations.  He watched as I pulled out my pen and my pad and he watched as I began to write about him.  He craned his neck casually, wistfully trying to get a peek at the words on my pad as his mouth pursed to carefully suck up his drink, almost with a distinct femininity about him.  He watched and I watched; kindred spirits of curiosity.  And every moment until they left at their mother’s silent beckoning was sheer brilliance.