My relationship with maple leaves.
– I always thought that bacon is an animal.
At this point the last tiny drop of affection for her died in pain.
I always wanted to have a journalist girlfriend. Dry wit, long legs, perverse mind, fancy cigarettes. This one was dumb, short, boring and thought that bacon was an animal.
Next day I got a phone call from some hip magazine, generously offering me a column for comic strips. I recovered from the bacon incident instantly and rushed to their office full of enthusiasm and devoid of ideas.
In the finest traditions of hopeless mediocre press, the editor spent an hour telling me of her plans to conquer the printed world, raise a new generation of creative youth and pay me 30$ a month. I pitched my series right away: a purple furry creature and a gray cat work in a phone therapy group. They meet a maple leaf called Shannon. Shannon is depressed because his girlfriend dumped him for an oak leaf with a massive petiole. They all live together in an dismal atmosphere of sullen despair with no hope, dreams or aspirations. Oh, and the purple creature’s name was Bacon.
They loved the petiole part.
In the end my inane concept (I was 18 and artistically gifted like a bucket of bricks) remained mostly untouched. At first it all went well, I finally got to see my clumsy drawings printed somewhere outside my room, but this idyll was not to last forever. Soon enough the editor asked me to tie the strips to the theme of the month and that’s when all went downhill. Whoever was responsible for choosing themes of the month must’ve had personal discords with me and selected the most boring and grave issues for me to make fun of.
After several feeble attempts at writing jokes about soccer and education I got my first and last (so far) hate mail from some nurse who found my strips “offensive and weird”. I was hugely depressed and thought that I just hit the bottom. However, the bottom was yet ahead.
Somehow, a local AT&T decided to sponsor my talent if I mention their services every month in my strips. I was promised 100$ for the humiliation, so I accepted it gladly. I wrote several strips, all loaded with phone conversations and company logos plastered around like acne. They were all rejected on the ground of being depressing.
– You’re making it look like our services bring misfortune on the clients!
As I walked home a yellow maple leaf breezed in my face, skillfully dodging the thick barricade of my glasses and landing right in front of my eyeball. If I were more poetic or drunk, I’d write that a sinister grin manifested itself on the leaf’s texture, but I’ll save it for another occasion. The maple leaf however became a symbol of my bitter disillusion and I always feel slightly less depressed in Fall when these sad little outcasts leave their homes to be stepped on, besomed and burnt by big Russians with small petioles.