by Chuck Austen
“Ewww! Yes, it is!” And finally, with a look of total revulsion on her face, she turned and ran away from him.
“Okay. You’re right,” he called after her. “Mandrill’s a stupid costume. What about Hellcat! You’d be so hot as Hellcat! And I’d consider being Son of Satan! He’s not too gay-looking.”
But the woman was gone. She had reached the building’s exit and slammed through its door, barely more than a Jesse Quick speed blur that was quickly lost in the crowd.
“Maddie?”
Morgan stood silently for a minute, watching for any distant sign of her.
“See you tomorrow!” he finally called cheerily, smiling and waving at no one.
After a minute or so of looking to see if she’d turned around to see his farewell, he looked over to me.
“It’s great how women totally dig comics fans, now that all the superhero movies have shown how right and cool we were all along.”
“The movies show that?”
“Duh.”
“Well, she’s certainly attractive.”
“She’s not attractive,” he said doing air-quotes around ‘attractive’, “she’s HOT. I can tell, man. I have pictured her naked. She’d look so great in our lingerie. Like Emma Frost. I’m getting her some for her birthday. Put that company discount to some good use.”
“Lingerie? But you’re not…” It seemed impossible, “…dating, are you?”
“Not yet. But once I get her the lingerie…” He pumped his fist in a gesture that was hard to interpret but might have indicated something sexual to a female mastodon, and I nodded as if I understood. We turned and began walking together toward the door at the opposite end of the building from where ‘Maddie’ had made good her escape.
“Buying lingerie for a fellow employee might be considered harassment.”
“Yeah, right,” he sneered.
“I’m serious.”
“What are you? Harassment Man?” he asked, apparently amazed at my stupidity. “Nothing’s harassment. I took that anti-harassment thing HR makes you do online. Now I can say whatever I want and it’s okay.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.”
He cocked an eye toward me with a ‘what do you know’ expression.
“She can cook, too. Look.” He showed me some of the food in his mouth. “She made that. Madelyn Windom’s world-famous zucchini bread. She threw it to me when she saw me coming.”
“Threw it ‘to’ you? Or threw it ‘at’ you?”
“To. At. Same thing, Proper English Man. Want some?”
“Do you have any that isn’t pre-chewed?”
He offered up a Ziploc baggie so I took a greasy piece and joined the fun. Madelyn Windom’s zucchini bread truly was a marvel. You couldn’t taste the zucchini.
“Heard you had a day today.” Morgan said, smiling evilly through another mouthful.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Did you really dry hump a model in the fitting room?”
“What? Good God, no! Is that what people are saying?”
Morgan smiled. “No. Just some nonsense about a water bottle that was so lame everyone knew it had to be bullshit. Of course, they might be saying it tomorrow if you don’t go to the comic book convention with me.”
“I don’t know how many ways I can say ‘no’, Morgan. Should I try Russian? Nyet. German? Nein. Swedish?” I paused. How did you say ‘no’ in Swedish? How did you say anything in Swedish? I’m not even sure how the Swede’s speak the language.
“Come on,” he cajoled. “It’ll be fun.”
“A comic convention? No it won’t. You always say ‘it’ll be fun’, and it never is. Not even remotely. Those things are always filled with lots of people like that fat, rude guy on the Simpsons. Overweight, balding ‘writers’ who think they have a right to be surly to you because they’re the latest hired hand on ‘Boogie Man and His Disco Sidekicks’. Plus, everyone there has a body that should never be seen in public, yet there they are—exposing themselves in brightly colored superhero spandex, thongs, and electrician’s tape.”
“Not everyone dresses like that.”
“You only need one.”
“That’s the best part of the show!”
“If I thought people in outrageous costumes was ‘the best part of the show’, I’d find a way to stay at work.”
“Find a way?”
“Um. Yeah. Um…I can’t because…”
I flushed as I remembered why. Fortunately Morgan is in no way emotionally sensitive and it went unnoticed.
“Becaaaaaaaaause…?” he asked.
“Because I’m taking some time off.”
“Why?”
“Grandfather thinks I need a vacation.”
“Vacation? Dude. Your job is a vacation!”
“I’m sure you see it that way.”
“Any normal guy would see it that way. Hey, maybe the old man would let me do your job!”
“He’d sooner feed alligators wearing a duck suit.”
“You could put in a good word for me.”
“No, I really couldn’t.”
“Maybe I’ll just call him myself and ask.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe I will.”
We both chewed and walked a moment in zucchini bread silence.
“Well,” he finally said around liquefied brown that had gathered around the rim of his mouth. “If you’re not coming in to work, then you have to come to the convention with me.” He read my expression. “Come on! I’m going to invite Madelyn. Now that I think of it, she’d look perfect in a Phoenix costume. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that before? Madelyn. Like in Pryor?”
The Phoenix’s real name. In the comic, not the movies. Or one of the Phoenix’s. See, a long time ago, in another dimension…
Sorry. Nearly geeked out there for a second. Then I realized that it’s a long, complicated story, and no one cares.
“I should have realized sooner,” he said, glancing at me as I chewed silently, not at all getting that my own semi-clad superheroine still mentally distracted me. “Why don’t you invite Mindie?”
My brain froze. All erotic thoughts of Ms. Nuckeby ceased their attack on my exhausted libido.
“Invite Mindie?” I asked.
Morgan knew, of course, that I had been in love with Mindie Butterwycke since the dawn of hormonal time. She was a childhood friend of my sister’s; one I had longed deeply and unrequitedly for as the first girl who could—simply by entering a room—make my penis swell. Mindie had been—since my crossing the threshold of sexual, if not mental, maturity—an object of perpetual personal desire; the kind of woman whose image you carried off into sleep then dreamt of fitfully—probably because you had wanked off while imagining her jumping naked on a trampoline. I’d considered marrying her at one point, but she wouldn’t go out with me.
Since my first encounter with Mindie, I’d thought of her at least once daily. But I suddenly realized that since sexually assaulting that water bottle in the presence of the semi-nude Ms. Nuckeby, Mindie hadn’t even crossed my mind. Naked trampolining or otherwise. Not once! It was a startling revelation, and might have told me something significant were I more than just marginally sharper than Morgan.
“I think she’d be less interested in the convention than I would,” I said, not actually ‘thinking’—more ‘knowing full well’.
“Yeah,” he said, clearly irritated, but accepting the truth. Then he brightened a bit. “So, fine. Come without her.”
“No. I have to convince my grandfather I should come back to work.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “Work. How many naked girls did you have to ‘work’ with today, Corky?”
“Just one. One was enough.”
Visions of Ms. Nuckeby danced in my head again. Before long I needed ice. I moved the anti-harassment tape to obscure things; unfortunately, Morgan noticed anyway.
“Dude,” he said, looking disgusted. “I hope that
’s because of the zucchini bread and not me.”
“I’m straight!”
“I’ve seen the video.”
“You took the video!”
“Yeah. It was pretty funny. I can’t believe you bought it when I told you he was Mindie.” He glanced down. “Is that because I mentioned her?”
“No, it’s, um… ” I looked around nervously. “Something happened in the Garment Viewing Room. I…uh…I really can’t really talk about it, here. ”
Morgan looked surprised, then leaned toward me and whispered in a voice that sounded almost afraid. “Holy crap. Did you really fuck a water bottle?”
“No!” I lied and wondered if I looked as guilty as I felt. His smile said I did.
“Dude. I gotta hear this.”
I sagged and gave up. “Maybe I shouldn’t come in to work, tomorrow.”
“And maybe you should go to a comic book convention?”
Since you are undoubtedly noticing that our friendship seems a bit unlikely, this would be as good a place as any to explain how Morgan and I became friends.
The two of us met in high school. I was a student at Wellmsley, an all-male boarding school, and he was a student from a neighboring institution of the more public variety who had come through our institute of higher learning in order to steal things.
I was lying on the floor near my locker comparing tiles, moaning, and bleeding profusely after one of Wellmsley’s more exciting, semiregular, male-bonding events—one which involved some of the larger boys beating me severely about the head, groin, and torso. Theirs was a more-than-occasional act of camaraderie that centered, primarily, around the violent repositioning of my facial features, Mr. Potato Head-like, then racing off to bond further with other boys about how funny it all was. I’m not entirely sure why I always happened to be the focus of their affectionate ‘ribbing’. It was likely just a straightforward example of the stronger wolves culling out the weaker; following Darwin’s lame ideas of strengthening the pack or something. It’s the sort of thing the Nature Channel is always warning us about. Unfortunately for me, I usually watched Room Raiders on VH1.
It was at this particular low point in my adolescent struggle towards pseudo-manhood that Morgan happened to wander by with an armload of shiny, expensive-looking items of no real value. He looked down at me, saw the blood, and asked if I needed a Kleenex.
I told him I had a box in my locker if he wouldn’t mind opening it for me. I gave him the combination, and he did so, pulling several white tissues from a carton within, then dropping them near my head. As I daubed the raging flow of my life’s precious liquid, Morgan helped himself to some of the personal items he found behind my Kleenex—a pen, some cartoon character key rings, a picture of a naked girl I’d cut from one of father’s old Playboys—and slipped them into his pockets.
“Holy, shit!” he said, apparently stumbling across something of actual value in there.
“What?” I asked, almost as surprised as he was.
He pulled a plastic-covered comic from behind some of the textbooks—Incredible Hulk number 181—the first appearance of Wolverine, and right behind it—in my opinion the gold standard of modern superhero comics—Giant Sized X-Men number one by Dave Cockrum, Len Wein, and Chris Claremont—the first appearance of the current version of the X-Men, the ones who came to be the foundation for all the cartoons, toys, and movies. The total value of said comics was several thousand dollars when graded at 9.2 out of a possible 10, or higher. These were 9.8. Quite valuable and exceedingly rare at that grade level.
“Can I have these?” Morgan asked. I was surprised he even bothered to ask.
“I’m surprised you even bothered to ask.”
“Dude. I’m a fan. You don’t rip off another fan.”
He began replacing the items he’d stuffed in his pockets. He stopped short with the image of the girl from Playboy (Marianne Gravatte, October 1982. Quite a lovely girl with—I was sure if I ever met her—a darling personality to go with her large breasts), and repocketed it. Then he knelt on the tile and helped me up.
“So? Can I have ‘em?” he asked again.
“Sure,” I said. As long he wasn’t going to hit me, I felt he deserved some reward. “I’ve got more you know. Would you like to see?”
“Dude! Does Wolverine shit in the woods?”
“Not in any issue I’ve ever read.”
“He does between issues. They never show it, but he does. The guy’s an animal. He’ll crap anywhere and wipe his ass with leaves. Trust me. I wrote a fan-fic about it.”
“A what?”
“A fan-fic. Fan fiction. Online. People write all kinds of shit and post it on websites. Mostly it’s girls writing about Nightcrawler being all romantic and fucking Kitty Pryde. But some of us write Wolverine stories, and they’re cooler than the one’s that get printed. We don’t have censorship.”
“Marvel doesn’t get mad?”
“What are they gonna do? It’s the Internet! No one controls the Internet! It’s Lord of The Flies, man!”
“Wow.” I considered it, then blanched. “Lord of the Flies was kind of scary though.”
“So’s the Internet! But it’s all anomalous, so no one cares!”
“Anomalous?”
“Secret! People don’t know who you are! So you can pick on people and then pretend it wasn’t you!”
“Ah, anonymous. Though your description of ‘fan-fic’ sounds anomalous as well.”
“Oh, it totally is! You could even write some if you want.”
I immediately began thinking of a story where Wolverine massacres an entire school of snobs in one afternoon, then urinates on the bodies and sets them on fire. A morality tale. Very uplifting. With laser-like clarity, I finally understood the real value of the Internet.
“Are you a student here?” I asked.
“No.”
“That’s good.”
Morgan, and I continued talking as we walked out of the building and into a lasting friendship. Not exactly the first meeting of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but our epic tale nonetheless. And at least neither of us had been decreed by the gods to die. At least up till now.
Morgan and I bonded quickly, and we considered, for a time, becoming professional thieves. For my part, I would point Morgan in the direction of truly valuable items as opposed to the things he assumed were valuable because they were ‘gold-colored’ and ‘shiny’, and he would devise clever ways of removing them from their proper owners, usually by dangling from high ceilings like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. But since I was already fiendishly wealthy, and girls weren’t realistically interested in joining us, Bonnie and Clydelike in our never-ending run from the law, we decided to collect comics and write fan-fic instead. Which still makes you a social outcast, but at least you get to eat at home.
I became quite good at online storytelling, and even developed a following of sorts, which was anomalous in, and of itself. My fake screen-name of ‘Fool-Killer’ grew in popularity and notoriety among other fake screen-names, and given that I generally wrote to please Morgan, that meant lots of outrageous violence, nudity and sex among the heroes. Had I been a bit more astute, I might have worried about the people I was appealing to, but when you’re essentially a nonentity in the real world, you take your adoration and acceptance where you can get it—whatever the source.
Brainstorming exciting scenarios and lurid episodes for our online audience while bonding through comics collecting made for a fast and lasting relationship through our early teenage years. But eventually I grew out of all that owing to the fact that I had traveled to England, seen some of the world, debatably matured, and most comics were really terrible. My stories became more complex and sexually frustrated, like me I suppose, and the life lessons to be learned from mainstream superhero comics never really seemed to apply in the real world (as opposed to the ‘Real World,’ where the life lessons of comics gave Judd Winick lasting employment).
No woman was ever likely to dis
cover that I was secretly cool and heroic; spandex only looked good on people who worked out constantly, and very few people felt comfortable around those who wore it anyway; when anyone was bitten by any member of the arachnid family, fever, swelling, and bed rest were not followed by the ability to climb walls, leap tall buildings, and trap thieves in webs just like flies. It was more likely followed by vomiting.
Morgan, however, as recently as last week, still secretly hoped that his mother would one day sit him down and tell him how she had, years ago, discovered his infant body in a crashed rocket ship, that he was really born on the planet Kryp-Lor (his own, made-up world of superheroes that had nothing whatsoever to do with Superman’s home planet of Krypton), and that by eating unusual combinations of spinach, B-vitamins, and Ginko Biloba, he would soon be able to knock over buildings with bad people in them. Like the White House.
When his mother did eventually sit him down one day for an important talk, he was horrified when she started discussing penises, vaginas, and ‘when a man truly loves a woman’. Parents take note: These things are better left learned in the street. Hearing them from someone you never want to imagine naked and doing them can cause fever, nausea, and even death in extreme cases. I was up with Morgan very late that night, paper bags at the ready. He didn’t eat for days.
Somehow, in spite of our differences, we remained friends, possibly because no one else liked us. We got together for ‘hi-octane, big-screen’ movies, lunches, and talked often about what he would do if he had as much money as I did. Occasionally, he would drag me to a comic book convention, and we would arrange to meet some of the real people behind the online screen-names, hoping and praying that they were attractive females who wanted to have sex.
With us.
They weren’t. They were usually just average people—mostly male—many of whom apparently spent all their free time between reading fan-fic, working on elaborately detailed costumes which they would then wear every waking moment of the convention, talking only as the characters would talk, and behaving only the way the characters would behave. It was an odd, disconcerting experience, and I was all set to spend my evenings with Morgan ridiculing the folks doing it when he showed up as Archangel, complete with overlarge metallic wings, blue face paint, and yellow hair.
