bad, it made me feel sorry for my underwear, so I gave it up. I also stopped living with the art chicks because one of them lost her mind on herbal E and the others became annoying lesbians who were always boring me to death with angry rants about the patriarchy. Montreal is like France when it comes to comics and though it sounds geeky everywhere else, it’s kind of an artsy-fartsy thing there. I had begun hanging out with French cartoonists and self-publishing an autobiographical mini-comic called Pervert, which made a tiny bit of scratch but not much. I’ve always said whatever you do should be at least a little profitable, otherwise you’re basically paying people to read your poetry. Shit was selling, but it was far from selling out, maybe a little too far. but it wasn’t exactly paying the bills. I was living in a tiny apartment off a hipster area called Le Plateau and hungry for more. My bed took up about a third of the room, so I built a loft six feet off the ground and fit my drawing board and a small bookshelf in the space beneath it.
Shooting a giant teddy bear on said bed while friends visit. (1994)
The only problem was that the space above the bed was now only about three feet. If I was fucking a girl, there was no way she could ride me without wearing a helmet, and doggie style was replaced with “froggy style,” where I’d lie facedown on her back and wiggle up and down like a horny toad.
Another unfortunate side effect of this extremely tall bed was being able to hear the old man upstairs in stereophonic clarity. “Hello?” I’d hear through the ceiling like he was sitting on my chest. “Oh, I’m fine,” he’d add in his geriatric voice. I wasn’t convinced. “No, I don’t have the heat on. I can’t afford it. You know that.” I concluded that he was talking to his estranged daughter. Then I heard, “I sleep with my goddamned jacket on!” and the bang of an old-fashioned phone slamming down on the receiver.
I’d seen this old man in the building a few times. He was English (not “British” but “Anglophone”), wore a long green army coat that almost touched the ground, and had some sad-looking medals surrounding a plastic poppy. He also had a green beret and cheap boots and was obviously a World War II vet with nothing left but apocalyptic memories of a war that left seventy-two million people dead. That’stwelve million more than the second-biggest war ever, the Mongol conquests.
I had just started a new magazine with a sullen ex-junkie named Suroosh Alvi, and we’ll get to that shortly. I had no money but was living a pretty good life. I’d work at the magazine in the day and then work on my comic at night. I was still getting pretty laid too, though I tried to avoid cramming girls into my bed space because it was like squeezing two people into a midget’s coffin. I also didn’t like the idea of an old man in winter clothes beating his soft gray hard-on to the rhythm of my pumps. So I’d usually fuck girls on a chair by the fridge and shush them if the whimpering got too loud.
It was winter in Montreal, which is like saying it was hot in hell. “Montreal” comes from “Mount Royal,” as in “Royal Mountain,” as in the snow reaches thirteen feet high after the roads are plowed. If you can make it through the ubiquitous fortresses of packed white powder, the freezing wind gets so severe, it seals your nostrils shut. Being old in those conditions must feel like being an anorexic in a mosh pit. I have no idea how the old man survived as long as he did.
“Hello?” I heard on a chilly February night as I lay in my bed reading a graphic novel by a guy named Henriette Valium. “Yes, ahem, well, I was in the theater today … ,” he added, beginning a long explanation. He was obviously calling a stranger who had no idea why he was calling. “No … I know you sell the tickets. That’s why I’m calling.” More pauses and stuttering. “Hello?” he said, undaunted.
Shooting a giant teddy bear on said bed while friends visit. (1994)
The only problem was that the space above the bed was now only about three feet. If I was fucking a girl, there was no way she could ride me without wearing a helmet, and doggie style was replaced with “froggy style,” where I’d lie facedown on her back and wiggle up and down like a horny toad.
Another unfortunate side effect of this extremely tall bed was being able to hear the old man upstairs in stereophonic clarity. “Hello?” I’d hear through the ceiling like he was sitting on my chest. “Oh, I’m fine,” he’d add in his geriatric voice. I wasn’t convinced. “No, I don’t have the heat on. I can’t afford it. You know that.” I concluded that he was talking to his estranged daughter. Then I heard, “I sleep with my goddamned jacket on!” and the bang of an old-fashioned phone slamming down on the receiver.
I’d seen this old man in the building a few times. He was English (not “British” but “Anglophone”), wore a long green army coat that almost touched the ground, and had some sad-looking medals surrounding a plastic poppy. He also had a green beret and cheap boots and was obviously a World War II vet with nothing left but apocalyptic memories of a war that left seventy-two million people dead. That’stwelve million more than the second-biggest war ever, the Mongol conquests.
I had just started a new magazine with a sullen ex-junkie named Suroosh Alvi, and we’ll get to that shortly. I had no money but was living a pretty good life. I’d work at the magazine in the day and then work on my comic at night. I was still getting pretty laid too, though I tried to avoid cramming girls into my bed space because it was like squeezing two people into a midget’s coffin. I also didn’t like the idea of an old man in winter clothes beating his soft gray hard-on to the rhythm of my pumps. So I’d usually fuck girls on a chair by the fridge and shush them if the whimpering got too loud.
It was winter in Montreal, which is like saying it was hot in hell. “Montreal” comes from “Mount Royal,” as in “Royal Mountain,” as in the snow reaches thirteen feet high after the roads are plowed. If you can make it through the ubiquitous fortresses of packed white powder, the freezing wind gets so severe, it seals your nostrils shut. Being old in those conditions must feel like being an anorexic in a mosh pit. I have no idea how the old man survived as long as he did.
“Hello?” I heard on a chilly February night as I lay in my bed reading a graphic novel by a guy named Henriette Valium. “Yes, ahem, well, I was in the theater today … ,” he added, beginning a long explanation. He was obviously calling a stranger who had no idea why he was calling. “No … I know you sell the tickets. That’s why I’m calling.” More pauses and stuttering. “Hello?” he said, undaunted.
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