Chapter 5
Oh, did my slothlike morning routine lure you into the assumption that I’m not gainfully employed?
I’m not sure of the actual definition of gainfully, but I acknowledge that my job at Lōkahi Lounge doesn’t feel “gainful.” What’s the opposite of gainful?
Loseful? My job is loseful, but it’s a paycheck.
I got my first job at Lōkahi Lounge when I was fifteen because of my dad.
I’m a central Ohio tiki theme restaurant nepo baby.
The Lily-Rose Depp of serving Singapore Slings.
Dad was friendly with the owners, Marty and Shep, because he sold them a lot of their tackiest décor at his estate sales.
He cut them a deal on some carved masks in exchange for hiring me as a busser.
Lōkahi was one of those places Dad would take me to celebrate a birthday or apologize for missing a birthday, which was an increasingly common occurrence as I got older.
In my twelve-year-old mind, drinking virgin daiquiris and eating sweet-and-sour chicken nuggets from a hollowed-out pineapple made up for any absenteeism.
Lōkahi Lounge is a twenty-thousand-square foot A-frame building with a black-and-white roof designed to look like a South Pacific war canoe.
I have dozens of photos of my parents and me posing next to the flaming Moai-inspired statues flanking the front entrance.
It’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
You can see it from a mile away. You can probably see it from space.
And the exterior is the tasteful part. One can only imagine the level of Marty and Shep’s commitment to cultural sensitivity as the current owners of what The Columbus Dispatch calls “a faded, but venerable themed dining attraction.” I do not love this place unabashedly. I’m very abashed.
When I realized that my stay in Columbus would be longer than a couple of months, I turned the casual summer job I had in high school into my Job-with-a-capital-J. I could earn more at a fine dining restaurant where I wouldn’t have to set drinks on fire all night. But I have my reasons.
“I can’t contain it anymore, Samantha.” Hal swizzles two blue hurricanes—one with each hand. “It’s time. It’s happening. Must. Kill.”
“Who?” I nestle a pineapple frond into a pina colada.
“Light blue button-down and khakis at ten o’clock,” he replies without looking in that direction. “Patchy goatee. I overheard him tell his date that Ryan Adams is misunderstood.”
“I’ll fetch the cyanide.” I pluck a bottle of blueberry schnapps from the bottom shelf.
There’s a woman gallantly putting in the work of listening to Goatee Guy.
She’s laughing in that forced way you do when someone’s not genuinely funny, but you need to show your appreciation for their attempts at humor.
He hasn’t asked her a question all night.
Still, when the guy leans in for a kiss, she tilts her head up.
For an establishment that survives on nostalgic vibes and selfie ops, plenty of bad decisions are made at Lōkahi at the end of the night. They look even worse when I’m the sober witness to these slow-motion disasters.
It is not, by any rational means, a good place to work.
But Hal makes it bearable. Neither of us has the right attitude to be employed in customer-facing roles.
At least once a shift, Hal gets the urge to kill some asshole’s vibe by creatively fucking up a drink in a way that makes it taste a little off, but not quite gross enough to send back.
We watch the victim silently choose whether to just choke it down or complain. It’s my favorite part of the night.
Comics tell stories in a way that’s different from books, movies, or eight-part social media story times about cheating boyfriends.
When I first started making comics, I tried to draw sequences as objectively true-to-life as possible, which meant my pages were boring as shit.
I didn’t understand that my favorite comics to read were the ones that boiled everything down to the most visceral moments.
That’s the way our memories operate: comic panels are like snapshots.
They have exaggerated angles and perspectives that aren’t quite possible, creating a series of impressions. Each panel, one moment.
For example, here’s how I remember meeting Hal three years ago:
Rule: Settings can be expressive. Locations represent state of mind.
Panel 1: We begin with an establishing shot: the interior of a shitty comics store. Sagging bookshelves against the walls and bins of comics in the rear. Various men with poor posture browse the books and toys.
Rule: No need to draw hyperrealistic characters. Use visual shorthand.
Panel 2: Behind the counter, a young man with shaggy hair under a knit cap leans way back on a chair, reading.
He’s wearing a hat, so I would draw him as Archie’s friend, Jughead Jones, if Jughead was permitted to age into his midtwenties.
He’s good-looking in a sort of lanky, slightly unkempt way.
The book he’s reading? Not a comic. It’s fucking Camus.
(I wish I were making this up for dramatic effect, but it’s absolutely true.) The proverbial Chekhov’s coffee cup is perched precariously on the edge of the counter. No lid. He lives dangerously.
Next to him is his boss, a middle-aged schlub.
He is Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, with that scraggly goatee.
He’s deep in one-sided conversation with a customer who could be his doppelg?nger.
In fact, I might draw every other customer in the store as Comic Book Guy because that’s how I remember them. Again, shorthand.
Now we have our setting, our love interest, our antagonist. What about our hero?
You know how in dreams it’s impossible to drill down to the details and nuances of faces? How you can’t look in a mirror and see your reflection? That’s how I feel about drawing myself. Which is why I gave up and began imagining myself as Lydia Deetz from the Beetlejuice cartoon.
Panel 3: Lydia Deetz’s adult sister brushes her dark bangs back from her eyes as she digs through a box of comics.
Panel 4: Close-up on Lydia’s hand, holding a copy of Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4.
I went up to the counter to politely inquire about lowering the price. Comic Book Guy continued his monologue, completely ignoring me, until I loudly cleared my throat, handing over the issue.
He looked at the cover and scoffed, holding up the book to his doppelg?nger.
Comic Book Guy
Remember this one? Garbage.
Doppelg?nger
WandaVision was such shit.
Panel 5: Lydia leans over the counter, her elbow just a few inches from the coffee cup.
Lydia
You’re the one asking twenty dollars for it.
Rule: Don’t be afraid to heighten dialogue in a thought bubble.
Comic Book Guy (Thinking)
I feel threatened by the presence of a woman because I’m extremely insecure about my sexual abilities, which is why I chose a profession where I lord my knowledge of G.I. Joe over other men who look exactly like me!
That’s what his facial expression said, at least.
Panel 6: Jughead doesn’t look up from his book but raises an eyebrow as Comic Book Guy moves the coffee cup away from the edge.
Panel 7: Close-up on Lydia, wishing slow death upon Comic Book Guy.
Lydia
In this condition, it sells online for ten. If that.
Panel 8: Comic Book Guy and his doppelg?nger exchange a look.
Comic Book Guy
Then shop online.
Panel 9: Jughead, without looking up, swipes his left arm across the counter.
Rule: When there’s a really exciting moment, build anticipation by slicing it up, forcing the reader to slow down.
Panel 10: Close-up on Jughead’s hand an inch from the coffee cup.
Panel 11: Even closer on a fingertip a centimeter from the cup.
Panel 12: The pad of Jughead’s finger is so close to the cup we can almost see the friction.
It’s maddening, right? It’s edging in art form.
And here’s the even wilder thing. I’m not even going to show you the moment when Hal’s hand hit the cup. Because it’s what’s not drawn on the page that makes comics so special. The space between the panels can represent a split second or a hundred years.
Rule: Let the reader picture the most exciting moment in their own mind. Draw the moment after.
Panel 13: Comic Book Guy yells. His crotch is soaked with a dark coffee stain.
Comic Book Guy
FFUCKKKK!
Ten minutes later, Hal found me sitting at a sidewalk table at a coffee shop down the block.
“Feel free to apologize anytime for getting me fired,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite mine, even though I hadn’t invited him to join me. He dropped Camus onto the wobbly café table.
When he told me how little he was making at the comics store, I didn’t feel quite so bad.
“If anything, you should apologize to me for ruining the issue I was trying to buy.”
“There’s probably a hundred of those issues available on eBay.” Hal immediately annoyed and intrigued me—a highly charged combination for my overactive brain.
“There’s nothing more boring to me than buying comics online,” I said. “Collecting is a tactile hobby.”
“You prefer buying them from men with comb-overs who barely pay their employees minimum wage?”
“Only when the other guy behind the counter can’t be bothered to look up from his grad student starter pack,” I replied. A few minutes later, I would learn that Hal had moved to Columbus for the MFA program at Ohio State and dropped out a semester shy of graduation.
“Hey, I sacrificed a perfectly shitty cup of coffee for you.” He leaned in. “And I would’ve been open to negotiation on the price of that book.”
“Really?” I sensed I was being toyed with, but my in-person social skills atrophied during quarantine and this was the most exciting IRL encounter I’d had since I’d moved in with my mom.
“Hell, you could take Vision and the Scarlet Witch for free. It’s C-tier artwork at best. Why do you want it?”