No Girlfriend Comics
This comic was my first effort to publicly be more open about my personal life. I’ve generally been quite guarded about it, and recent events on the internet have proved this to be the correct strategy. But it’s also a bit of a crutch, being able to hide behind anonymity. So this whole web site is pretty much dedicated to opening myself up a bit. Relationships and all that are something I generally keep quite private, and that will likely continue, but here is a window into the end of one.
A few months ago I had to break up with a lady, as often happens with dudes and ladies, but I can’t say I was particularly happy to do it. It left a very specific person-sized hole in my life, and I felt unmoored, for quite a while. I was adrift! I was a slug. I was apathy personified. I was also, it may not surprise you to learn, relatively unhappy at times.
I thought to myself. “Self,” I thought, “Self, you are ridiculous.” And it was true that I was. To celebrate my new-found understanding and to figure out a way to retain a bit of perspective on my slothful drifting, I started to write some little vignettes about the dumb sadness tricks my brain perpetrated on me during this time.
Dami Lee, having the ability to draw, and also possessing a firm understanding of ladies (having been one her whole life), seemed like the perfect choice to turn these dumb things into tiny comic strips for your reading bemusement. And so it is. We released one of these every Monday, starting in June or so, and now the series is complete.
One of my favorite things about this project was how Dami and I both inserted bits of ourselves into it – the sabor de soledad chips were her idea – but then when she saw a bag of chips called “mouth friend” in Seoul, where she lives, we changed over. Likewise, “Beer Plateau” is named after a cafe in Seoul called Bean Plateau, where my friend Peter (her boyfriend) gets language lessons. Tiny bits of weird reality, here and there!
Anyway, I hope you “enjoy” it! We will do more comics in the future, I think.
