Hello Friends.
The picture accompanying this text is the front cover of Jolly Bear and Fun Coconut Summer Special, my latest comic
which has just been reprinted due to the success of the original limited edition run. It has a story about Jolly Bear living in squalor in Hackney, and also a story about Fun Coconut's pastimes, which include the film Basic Instinct- previews on my myspace page, linked on the right there----~
if you would like a copy, they cost £1.50 inclusive of UKp&p, please contact me for details. Don't forget, Banal Pig Comics 1 and 2 and Man Man comic are also available (check out the website, also linked, right.
Here's a short story i wrote once about being a cuckold.
Doodle
Just over a year ago, I was delivered the news that my wife was having an affair. This information I took to be true as the messenger was my wife herself, who chose to ring me at work at 1.07pm on a perspirant Monday. Before she broke the news I detected a tension in her voice and she seemed vague and troubled, but at the time my only concern was for her, and I asked what was wrong. Had I realised what was to come, I would have put my pen down and braced myself for the imminent and inevitable reaction stew of nausea, anger, humiliation and disbelief. Instead, believing this phone call to be nothing out of the ordinary, I was contentedly putting the finishing touches on a cartoon drawing of a man with a fancy top hat and huge comedy nose.
This may seem like a somewhat trifling detail compared with the news that the woman I loved was about to ruin my life, and so it should have been. But as my wife finally confessed I stared fixedly at the drawing, admiring its graceful curves and sublime blend of humour and pathos, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything. It was as if I had forgotten what it was like to feel emotion.
At this point, a sceptical reader may suspect that in fact I did not love my wife and my lack of concern was due to an ambivalence towards her. I assure you this was not the case, and although I cannot claim to be the most sensitive male on the planet, at the time I was deeply and honestly in love with her.
Seconds, minutes passed and my wife took my lack of a response for stunned silence. In reality I was in a state of bemusement waiting for the emotional numbness to give way to a terrible swelling of hatred or disgust, or anything. As I felt I needed to give some kind of response I gently put the phone down and sat back in my chair.
I thought that it must be shock and that at any moment I would burst into tears but my mind was as clear as it had ever been. I even tried to make myself angry by picturing my wife in the process of cuckolding me, but I remained strangely serene and all I could really think about was my drawing with its cheeky face.
I thought at first this lack of negative emotion was some kind of blessing, after all who wouldn’t prefer to strike misery from their roster of feelings? However, it was soon evident that happiness and satisfaction were also lacking from the place they formerly occupied in my life. All feeling gone from my life; with one exception. I felt something, like none of the old emotions, like a mixture of a mild orgasm and a sick feeling, but with many more unfamiliar and indescribable ingredients. And it was all when I looked at this drawing, this crumpled piece of notepaper, and the feeling was strong and palpable. When I looked away or shut my eyes it was gone within seconds, when I looked back at the paper there it was, strong, dark and addictive.
My life was much better when I was looking at the picture than when I wasn’t, so I took to staring at it for long periods; hours, days. I was aware that the cheap paper of the drawing was rapidly deteriorating into furry dust as I was handling it so much. I took photographs but the pictures didn’t have the same effect. They just looked like poor photographs of a scrag of paper. Photocopies were the same. It was the original or nothing.
I was resigned to losing my drawing to the ether, but before it went I decided to make the most of it and prepared myself for a marathon looking session. Finally, after four and a half days, my eyes burning and crusty, my bones aching and my skin raw, the picture finally vanished.
I fell asleep for a while, and had a shower. I thought to myself that I really should go back to work.
