unordinary

Some watercolor doodles from last year. At least the ones I had scanned… There are so many other little things all over that will probably stay hidden in drawers and notebooks. What a scatterbrained, tumultuous year.  I am not one to attach symbolic significance to dates and times, but the new year coincidentally coincided with some significant starts and stops for me. I am getting over the exhaustion, and all ready and waiting for more. Things continue to look ever upward.

I started this a while ago, and just found it and cleaned it up the other day. It might still be a little icky? But maybe mostly due to content…

Filth Siren

by Shayna Why

I invented a game to play with myself that both killed company time and made the decisions about what to do with my free time. Actually getting drunk would set off my asthma, but while I was in my office I pretended. The power of suggestion has a lot to do with the state of mind, and I got to the point where I could throw off my equilibrium and be a gibbering idiot at will. Impressive, I know. So while in this state of mind, I would separate myself into two belligerent idiots. We’d make a bet with high stakes like “Get groceries after work vs. masturbate to the local evening news” on a ridiculous point of contention. Then we’d run to the internet to prove each other wrong. The hardest part was thinking of a trivia question that was foreign to me, so the choice would be made somewhat objectively. I would decide, for instance, that “drunk A” wants to go home and masturbate, and also really believes that the snowfall in Milwaukee is never over 25 inches per year. “Drunk B,” however, would like to pick up some apples and bologna on his way home, and he is sure that Milwaukee’s average snowfall is at least 40 inches per year. So after we (I) argue for a while, we get on wikipedia and find that, holy cow, I am buying apples today. The faux inebriation aspect allowed the argument to fill at least an hour of company time with slurred rambling and silly vocal caricatures.
My job was ample and minimal. Brief spells of productivity paved the way for a paycheck that I had to go out of my way to spend, and days upon days of endless monotony.

I liked to say that I scared off women with my intellect, but really, the inhaler, the sunken chest, and the coke-bottle glasses scared them off before I could say anything intelligent. I had stopped looking long ago. I was a 37 year old who had never had a meaningful relationship.

Every day I did have a secret meeting. Well, it was more like a stalking. There was a homeless woman midway between my walk back to work from the coffee shop where I bought sandwiches for lunch. Every day I walked slowly past her and tried to look like I wasn’t staring. I didn’t understand my attraction, and it ashamed and disgusted me. It wasn’t the fact that she was homeless, just so you know. Everyone’s seen enough rags-to-riches Hollywood movies at this point that a homeless person could probably be seen as an out-of-the-box potential romance to the general public. It was her skin that made me feel ashamed, and horrified, and entranced.

It almost got out of hand one day, months ago. I was walking back to the office, full of bland tuna salad, when the festering sores on her scalp once again arrested my vision. I lost control for a minute. I was locked in place, halfway between the coffee shop and the office, horrified that someone from work would see me and know. They oozed to me, as if their puckered lips of burst flesh were attempting to form my name. So many small mouths along her glorious hairline, all calling for my generous tongue. Then the spell broke and I hurried along as she moaned in her sleep and stirred on the sidewalk. If I stayed to gaze any longer, the small swell below my belt would become more difficult to conceal.

That afternoon at work, I couldn’t play my usual game. I kept rolling the images from my walk around my mind until I was sure I could feel them rolling around in my mouth. A loud tapping at my door yanked the rumbling feelings from my stomach into my throat. I lurched towards the noise and quickly flattened both my hands on the desk in front of me.

“Hey man, you seen the video that’s getting forwarded around? Crazy shit, man,” said the head that poked in, smiling irrepressibly, floating at a steady six feet.

His arm crept out under his head, and he rapped on the edge of the open door with his knuckles. “Stay cool, man. You look stressed.”

The door softly fell back into place. I felt restrained, and couldn’t blink. I rattled my inhaler into my mouth and inhaled. I knew I shouldn’t worry. They couldn’t see what I was thinking. But thinking about someone knowing made me feel more alien than ever.

The beautiful young people who populated the office worked for their livings. I was placed in a managerial position based on test scores. I didn’t want my lack of effort to become obvious and throw off the balance. The alpha-male types who started beneath me were usually promoted above me, and my apparent nobility when “losing” to them kept my place secure. They liked me in this place. I liked me in this place. Still, though, there were occasional rumblings from my subordinates. My subordinates mingled among one another, carefree, communicative, sure of their commitment to the job, and full of an American middle-class sense of entitlement. If someone like me, in a higher (but still attainable) position was seen as uncommitted or very different from the herd, I might be singled out and burned at the stake to provide a small step of upward mobility for an attractive and motivated employee. I knew I deserved it.

As usual, I left just few enough minutes before five that no one realized I was leaving early, and walked out to meet the bus. I walked the same sidewalk to the bus that I walked to the coffee shop, but she was never there in the evenings. My pace still slowed as I passed her empty station on the sidewalk. Why did she sleep in full sun during daylight hours? Why was I intrigued by her scalp rash to begin with? I’d looked up pictures of wounds online. Head wounds, sores, infections, trying to illicit the same reaction from myself. It only worked with her. I thought maybe it was the almost perfect symmetry of her rash. Symmetry is the most universally accepted trait of the beautiful. I’d also read about pheromones, and thought maybe the attraction came from her body chemistry. The open sores could work as vents, letting out more of her aroma than people released normally. But maybe that was a stretch, too.

We collided with a dull thud. Shoulder to shoulder. I stumbled sideways. “Sorry. Sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going,” I muttered.

I looked sideways. It was her. She stood still, but askew. She looked as unaffected by our collision as if she had grown from the spot where she stood.

“Oh! Excuse me.” I said.

The twisting and thumping in my chest grew exponentially.

She barely glanced at me. “Hey man, You got a dollar? I gotta get some food.”

She looked unrepentant. She did not look beggarly. It was a simple statement of fact. I must have gaped at her too long because she squinted, then shrugged and turned to leave.

“I have a dollar!” I shouted.

Then the panic in my chest immobilized me. I stared at my feet, trying to take long breaths. I couldn’t look away from my shoes. A cold sweat crept out around my neck and shoulders. My salivary glands were on overdrive. I thought I might vomit. Her hand appeared under my face. It was outstretched, palm up. It took me a few seconds to process what was happening. Then I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and thrust a handful of bills into her palm.
“Whoa. Seriously? Thanks, man! God bless.”

Then she was gone, and suddenly I could breathe again.

This Sunday, October 16th, I’ll be a craft vendor at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire!
Lately I’ve been fascinated by how putting on a mask can temporarily alter a person’s personality. Some people immediately speak in silly voices. Some people begin making larger and more animated gestures in conversation, perhaps to compensate for the loss of emphasis their now-invisible facial expressions added to their speech. Some people play-act the identity that the mask represents as soon as they put it on. It’s harder to see where a person is looking or what their face is expressing when they wear a mask, so the mask wearer is instantly more mysterious than those who are not masked.
So I’ve been making Halloween masks. They are cut from two layers of canvas, stitched together, and hand-painted. The straps are made from found leather. I’ll have them at the East Bay Mini Maker Fair this Sunday if you want to try one on!

In other news, the nerd in me is very pleased that I’m now in the first page of google results for “cation” for this old comic about anions and cations. I will definitely be inspired to make more like this when I start studying organic chemistry!

And! Meathaus, one of my favorite blogs for finding new artists and cartoonists, has published my dorky fan letter!

And! I’m excited about this ghost-themed zine that is being put together by a bunch of my very talented friends! It will be printed when all the contributions are in, and I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

Oh yeah! And if you buy Maker Faire tickets online before Sunday, you can get 15% off by using the coupon code UNORDINARY.