I was a pretty cute kid, when I was young. I don't know what happened that changed things so much. I do know, however, that when I was that cute, little kid . . . I fucking hated my birthday. Seemingly since birth.
My mother says that, when I was born, I didn't cry. I just looked around, like I didn't know what the fuss was all about. When I was a toddler, I'd cry, out of distress, if I even heard "The Birthday Song" being sung in a restaurant. I don't remember any of that, really, but I do remember being at the zoo, for my seventh birthday, and being happy we finally left the picnic table, the cake, the crayons and the new toys. I remember being happy to walk away from it, leave it in the car and go in the zoo, where everybody could forget about me, while they gawked at the claustrophobic lions and hemorrhoidal spider monkeys from behind the safety of 4 inches of smeary, scratched lucite. I remember sitting on the kitchen floor, an hour before my school friends showed-up for my tenth birthday. I remember crawling out of my skin on the ugly, yellow linoleum, asking my mom to call everybody and cancel the party. I remember my ribs feeling like they were trying to close, like a clamshell, as I insisted to my mother that it was just another day.
I remember usually having fun by the end of the day, but I can't remember once, in 26 years, wanting any of the attention. Not for being me. Not for doing something I would have done if nobody was watching. I just got older. Whatever I did, I wasn't trying to do it . . . so why reward me for it?
It isn't an issue of self-consciousness or self hatred. It's an issue of practicality.
It isn't my desire to control my life, in spite of the coersive aspirations of my peers and family. It's an issue of sincerity; of me looking at all the goings-on and thinking, "What the fuck? Why? Does another year for me mean that much to you? You can't be for real. You can't be serious."
Herein lies my tingling fear of success.
My dad, I'm realizing, had me pegged very early on. He called me rebelious, since I was in the first or second grade. He was right. He said I was a control freak. Now, I might be pretty laid-back but, when it comes to getting shit done, I can be a total control freak. I've been getting better at reigning it in and refocusing it, but that still doesn't change the fact that my dad was right.
Don't get me wrong. My dad was and is a very loving and supportive guy. He never alienated me. He did tell me the truth, though.
Still, as a child, as a teenager, and through most of my adlulthood so far, I never understood where my dad was coming from when he told me I was afraid of success. It baffled me. It puzzled me. It made me angry, because I never understood why he was saying it.
But, now, I know he was right.
I want anonymity. I'm not a hero and I don't want to be famous. Most heroes, when you talk to them, claim that they just did what anybody would have done. They're uncomfortable with the attention.
Me too.
I'm not a hero. I know I'm not. That's why I said it. But, when I do what I do well, I'm just doing what comes natural to me. I'm just doing what anybody would do, in my position. It's not that I don't have ambition. I'm just . . . afraid of success.
There's a 50/50 shot that, if I mail-in my samples, Friday, I'm going to end up with a job in the comic book industry. Something I raised myself on. I'm the kid who got into rock-n-roll through some sort of cosmic connection. I'm the kid who didn't have any older brothers or sisters to turn him on to The Ramones. I'm the kid who just felt naturally drawn to that record shop, walked in and liked everything he saw and heard. I'm the kid who used every cent of allowance on albums. I'm the kid who'd stay up, all hours of the night, using his favorite albums to teach himself guitar.
I'm that kid, if that kid found comic books, instead of rock-n-roll.
I always liked to draw, but I didn't have any direction until I discovered comic books. I got my first comic book, in 1988 or '89. It was the prize I chose, after winning a ring toss at a school fair. It was a Marvel Mini Comics Reprint of X-Men #53
The story is nothing special, today. But, then, it was something new. It was like a cartoon, but smarter, edgier and completely private. You could read it, in a room full of people and not have to share any of it. You could laugh or gasp and nobody had to know why. You could share it, if you wanted. You could talk about it or show it to your friends, on your terms. But that's what made it special and, frankly, you always feel pretty cool being the bearer of things unknown (that new album, band, movie, coffee bar or whatever that none of your friends knew about)I'd clean the whole house, sometimes, just to get my mommy to take me to the supermarket and let me pick out an issue of X-Men from the news stand (that's when Claremont, Lee and Silvestri were in their prime, by the way)My kindergarten teacher didn't teach us how to read. My parents tried, but I did an alright job making it tough for them. So, when I transferred to a diferrent school, in first grade I was quickly discovered as anomalous among my classmates and put in a remedial reading class with kids that ate their snot, wet their pants and talked about the boners they'd get every time they saw a girl in a bikini on a beer commercial (yes, six-year-olds talk about their dicks, too). So, I happened to discover comic books and reading at the same time.Comics made it interesting to read. I learned to read from comics. It was more fun that way. The words were way bigger than any word my classmates were reading in Dick & Jane books, but superhero books were still considered too lowbrow for my teacher to allow my parents to include them in my at-home reading journal. They stood alone and there was nothing that could ever tie them to school. To engage in something that was more acedemically challenging than school, yet still autonomous from the institution in every way was completely thrilling in every way.My love of that specific storytelling medium put me on a higher reading level than my classmates and provided me with a passion and direction for my natural drawing skill that I had previously lacked.So, when I doodle-up some sequential art, I'm just doing what comes natural to me. I'm doing what anybody else would do, in my position.Enter the dilemma:What if I get this job? What if the title I'm working on ends up gaining popularity? What if it goes nowhere but gets me noticed by another publisher? What if, a year from now, I'm sitting at a black-cotton-veiled folding table, signing things and talking to people I don't know between swigs from a flask I've been hiding under the table? What if, a year from now, I'm talking on the phone with some asshole from Wizard Magazine or The Comics Journal, while I'm smoking a cigarette on the toilet? What if, a few years down the road, I start my own creator-owned title (like I've been dreaming of) and it is greeted with great review and success? Or it's just a sleeper hit and gets huge, over the years? What if somebody makes a movie out of something I wrote and I get a school library named after me?I don't want to be that guy.I know most of that is unlikely to happen, but the thought of even the least of it is like a black, mummified monkey paw in my stomach, fingerbanging my esophagus one waxy, dry digit at a time.I could say that I don't chase my dreams because my smoking habit's been leaving me a little too winded to chase anything. I could say that I won't chase my dreams because of some punk-rock, knee-jerk, anally-expulsive reaction to anything that makes me look like I'm trying or . . . maybe . . . selling out.Shit, I'd like it to be either of those two.But the truth?The truth sucks.The trugh hurts and Amnesty International could probably lobby to get it classified as torture.The truth is I'm just balls-scared of success.The truth is I'm too ungrateful towards the world to ever accept attention for doing something I'm good at or something that -god forbid- I actually like doing.The truth is that it's been this way since I've been wearing rubber pants.The truth is that 26 years is probably enough, and I should probably grow up, but I don't think I know how.
But do you wanna know the punchline? You wanna know what's really fucked up?I don't mind being me. For some reason, I'm comfortable with this. For some reason, it doesn't bother me to be this way. For some reason, the only thing that really bothers me is you. When you say "Happy birthday!" it really bothers me and I'm asshole enough to ask you to stop. I'm asshole enough not to have a problem with that. Isn't that kind of fucked up?
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