“Confession,” Kyra Sedgwick whispers at the end of innumerable commercials on TNT, “is good for the soul.” Oh, Kyra, how I hope you’re right. Because I can’t stand the secret shame any longer.
My name is David, and this is my admission of failure. (Well… one of them.)
It was Wednesday, and I had just picked up my comics for the week. There’s a sandwich place near the comic shop, and I thought to myself, “What would go well with a stack of graphic novels? A toasted foot-long turkey sub with pepper jack, that’s what.”
In I went, and placed my order. The shop was manned by two young gentlemen. The cuter one prepared my sandwich. The merely cute one stared at me in that unnerving way that makes you suspect you’ve run into a classmate from high school, like when you run to the grocery store while visiting your parents and constantly pray that you don’t see your student council vice-president running the pharmacy counter.
But he wasn’t staring at me, just the parcel in my hands.
“You been to (the local LCS)?” he asked.
“It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?” I replied. We sounded like bootleggers exchanging code.
The ice was broken. “What are you picking up?” he asked, all enthusiasm at seeing an old man with a bag full of comics.
“Uh… weird stuff,” I stuttered self-consciously. My purchases suddenly seemed —I don’t know — artificially eclectic. A couple of Oni books. A comic drawn by Rob Liefeld. A magazine with a woman on the cover who didn’t have “Spider-“ in front of her name. Some manga. It felt… composed, base-covering. I deflected: “What about you?” I asked.
“I’ve been loving the new team on Fantastic Four,” he noted. “It’s the first time it’s been good since, like, Byrne.”
And a week of heated internet discussion swirled through my head… art comix versus cape fetishists and their ilk, boredom, the gay manga mafia, children cluttering the floor of bookstores and Byrne-stealing without even realizing it, bad shops, good shops, helpmates huddled by the register while their significant others sift through the racks… This was my chance to take a side, here in this humble sub shop!
But I didn’t. I just muttered, “I’ll have to check it out.” I didn’t even go for the meal deal.
And now I’ve shared my disgrace with you all. And the chipotle sauce was bitter… bitter as ashes.