2011.03.11 14:46

I remember where I was. I was teaching when that familiar rumbling began. Living in Japan, it’s something one gets used to, and in many cases one just stops for a moment, gauges the rocking, then continues what they were doing. But in this case, I heard the rumbling first for a second, then the building started to shake. Violently. The first thing I did was say, “Let’s go, NOW!” and the students were immediately going down the stairs quietly towards the foyer. Countless earthquake drills make this reaction automatic.

However, as I was following the students down the stairs, it was hard not to notice that the shaking hasn’t died down after a few seconds like it always does, but increased. I could hear things falling in the room we just left. The rumbling was much louder. There was something different about this time.

In the foyer, the students started putting their shoes on. I opened the door. “No shoes,” I yelled, “Get out quick!” The students obeyed, and we all ran into the parking lot in our socks and huddled in a circle. The ground seemed to roll under our feet like we were walking on something floating on water.

The next few minutes were the longest of my life. I suddenly became aware that our small parking lot was surrounded by a high concrete wall. Utility poles, also concrete, were swaying around us. Above the rumbling I could hear screams, sirens, klaxons. My students stayed quiet. I couldn’t quite help but think this was how I was going to die, crushed to death under concrete.

After a few painful minutes, the rumbling subsided and I felt the ground stop moving under us. It became oddly silent for a moment, then the sirens and klaxons began wailing again. The earthquake was over, but our lives were about to change.

We stayed outside for a while. I went back alone to get my cell phone, to call the boss to see what I should do. The damage seemed minimal, just some books and flashcards knocked over. The phone was out of service, so I figured I had to wing it for a while. The students came back in but there was a very strong aftershock, so we returned outside and waited for their parents to pick them up.

I remained at the school (i was working alone there) and waited for students. Only two of fifteen showed up, which was kind of unsurprising. I stuck it out to the end. During this time, the phones were out of order, so there was nothing other to do than wait. After class, I headed to the train station.

The trains were not moving. The station manager did not know for how long this would be a problem. “You’d better walk,” he said. I thought he was joking as I lived forty kilometers from home. He wasn’t.

I was determined not to walk forty kilometers in the cold. Instead, I walked to the nearest major station. This was an hour walk. As I was walking towards the station, there were waves upon waves of people on the road walking from the direction of Tokyo. Yes, people were walking. Were all methods of transportation knocked off this way?

I went into a convenience store on the way. To my surprise it was literally picked clean of sandwiches, onigiri, and bentos. I got a chocolate bar and continued on my way. Other convenience stores on the route were also sold out of food.

When I reached the major station an hour later, the trains were not only not running, but the shutters were closed, something I had never seen before. Hundreds of people waited in line for taxis. I went in line myself, but after a half hour of waiting and not seeing one taxi pull up, I got discouraged and looked for other methods of transportation.

There was a local bus that would get me about fifteen kilometers closer to home. I got on it hoping that wherever I found myself I would also find other options. At about nine p.m., I found myself getting off the bus at its terminus, a little closer to home but still far off. The trains were still closed, and there were no connecting buses left running. There was a long lineup for taxis here as well. I waited in a local restaurant because it was warm, thinking about my options.

As luck turned out, I got call from a friend who had a car. He offered me a ride and I happily accepted. I finally arrived at my apartment at one a.m, eleven hours after the earthquake.

I opened the door. I completely expected my apartment to be a shambles. To my surprise it wasn’t. It was just as I left it with shirts left hanging precariously from door frames. The only thing that was broken was a single pudding bowl, split in two from falling from the counter. I took a picture of it, to remind myself how lucky I was.

I thought it might also be interesting to take a glimpse of the city. I walked out onto my balcony. Below was a steady swarm of people walking eastwards away from Tokyo. It was astounding to see so many people at one a.m., trying to make it home so many kilometers away. With no transportation, the commuters were reduced to making a mass exodus, some walking all night in the cold. I slept in my own bed that night, that made me particularly lucky as well.

The next few days were chaos to say the least. The rolling blackouts, the closed train lines, the news about the true extent of tge tsunami devastation trickling in, and of course, the growing emergency at the Fukushima nuclear reactors. Food and water were immediate problems as well, as we had to wait in long lines to get into supermarkets just to find out there was nothing inside. Eggs, milk, bottled water, bread, rice, toilet paper, instant noodles, pasta, pasta sauces, were all extremely hard to come by. Whatever we found we were lucky to get, and this shortage took a couple of weeks to sort itself out.

As a foreigner, there was a tremendous pressure to leave. Some embassies down right recommended abandoning ship, and many, many of us foreigners did. I remember the numerous conversations with friends who were fleeing, not understanding why I had chosen to stay, mocking that decision and talking to me like I had chosen death with a sarcastic “good luck, you’ll need it”. Given the state of the western media at that time, with it declaring Japan as a whole an uninhabitable radioactive disaster zone didn’t help things too much. Instead, I decided to give my trust to the Japanese media and followed their instructions.

Reflecting on all this a year later, it still amazes me how life changes in a single day. And I had it really good.  Just a couple hundred km away entire towns were washed away, thousands of people disappeared into the ocean, and thousands more found themselves without homes.  Thousands more lived with radiation, though not immediately fatal, only time will tell what long-lasting effects on health will be had.  I am enormously grateful for my good fortune. And although some problems still continue — the city where I live is a radioactive hotspot, and every day there are still reminders of the tsunami that claimed so many.

The changes in my life were really just inconveniences. They still talk about the big earthquake that they expect to hit Tokyo; an estimate quoted today that there’s a 70% chance of it happening in the next four years. So no one knows what happens next. But I will never forget that day, when the world shook so violently beneath my feet. 

Writing those three posts were like taking a brick from my heart and tossing it in the river. It feels lighter now. It did a world of good.

Writing it down also made me realize a few things. First, a lot of it was my fault. Getting involved with a woman who already had a boyfriend. Having the audacity to think I could break it up. Then, doing a dick move by e mailing the boyfriend to force a confession out of her. There’s not only a lot of stupid in there, but I certainly have enough to be ashamed of. I mean, lots.

That I lost my friends is the punishment I have to deal with. Yeah, it’s heavy punishment, but she did what she needed to do to protect a relationship that was important to her. I can bitch and moan about the slander campaign, but it was me who raised the stakes by sending the e mail.

Love can make people do stupid shit. But that’s not an excuse. And I’m speaking for myself when I say that.

White Knights Reunite!

My online world fell apart. Soon my friends were emailing me “Back off of E!” When I replied what I had done and I wasn’t going to follow up, I still got these emails, getting increasingly more desperate.

Shortly after that, I was kickbanned from the IRC channel we all frequented, with no warning or explanation. After going to Madman (the op) and demanding an explanation, without going into details he said it would be best if I didn’t show up anymore. With this I was cut off from the online social group.

Things got weird on the message board. every post I made was met with harsh criticism and a “get the fuck out of here, asshole.” This is the discussion board I founded, and was now being told to leave. When I asked why, I got a “you know what you did.”

Well, I know what I did, heck, it was stupid, but I didn’t deserve that kind of a response from people who weren’t involved. Then it struck me… What I think I did and what they think I did are entirely different.

What I believe had happened was E went into damage control. She fed some kind of story to our common friends that I had done something bad enough to deserve pariah status. She needed to kick me out of the channel, and when approached as to why, she had a story about me doing something. It wasn’t just about the email.

Well, I was going to find out what this was. No one was talking to me, but I did have the discussion board. The next time I got a “you know what you did,” I challenged it: “I don’t know what I did, so tell me here… I have nothing to hide.”

It’s difficult to defend yourself against an accusation, but even more difficult to defend yourself from an accusation that no one will tell you. I needed to know what they were. But instead, I received no replies to my challenges. I was being muted.

That’s when I realized the sad truth of the situation. This was all orchestrated by E. She was free to make any accusation she wanted, and as long as I couldn’t find out, I could never defend myself. I was guilty, though I wasn’t sure of what. Even to this day.

When I returned to Canada in 2001, only Omar came out to see me. His girlfriend, Jen, also an OFU member, declined. I heard through the grapevine that I was being badmouthed at OFU meets. I was also no longer invited to do art for the annual OFU art book. After that, I met Mal in 2005. He gave me a copy of Lost At Sea, which I still have. He was the last thin h line artist I met.

[ABOVE: The last strip featuring the original thin h line artists.]

After losing these friends as well, I didn’t see much point in going back to canada. And that’s how it stands today, more of a pariah of canada than a resident of Japan.

You guys don’t know how much I miss you. How much it hurt to walk away from you because I knew I couldn’t win, that I had to assume you hated me for something that you heard. But I loved all of you, and your friendship was really really important to me. The memories still are. Five hundred dollars at the drop of a hat, Bob Dylan wrote, he’d give if our lives could still be like that. I completely agree.

What is the thin H line anyways?

It was something done out of friendship, to make my friends laugh. That’s all I did it for. Now it doesn’t do that anymore, and that’s why it’s hard to continue. They won’t be reading it. They won’t be laughing. And they won’t be waiting for us to get together and draw some more.

If I could meet even one of you, and share a drawing over a cup of coffee like the old days I would be very, very happy.

the thin H line begins

Although my life online was improving, the environment I was working/living in felt poisoned, and completely unfixable. I thought it was best to say goodbye to academia and go far, far, away. Japan seemed reasonably far enough. I applied to the JET program to teach in Japan and in January 1999 I was accepted. I had until July in Canada before I had to leave.

This was bittersweet because I really loved being with these new friends. OFU was the highlight of my life at the time. I figured I’d go to Japan for a year, come back, and get into comics full time.

In the meantime, I was determined to do as many comics with my friends as possible. One of them ended up being the first strip of the thin H line.

[ABOVE: The first strip.]

Looking at that strip now, something becomes obvious. The list of people who worked on it. Acid Junkie. Kiza. Naska. Jen Chan. Mal. All of them my close friends at the time. The strip was born from friends, and a special time in my life. How I miss all of them.

Other strips in that time included work by Omar. Kraken. Bahn. Robert DeJesus. Locke. All of them my friends. All of them I deeply miss.

None of them I’ve spoken to in years.

Repeating Mistakes

For the next Anime North in 1999, OFU decided to put together a doujinshi, a small book of our work. A number of us put together some comics, and two of us got together in Oakville to put it together. That happened to be me and one of the women in our club, E (not her pen name, but those who were there will know who I’m referring to… That is, if anyone still remembers).

E and I put the thing together in May. However, I had feelings for her, and I guess she had feelings for me, because something happened between us. And suddenly, a relationship happened.

For me, that was good. E was a person I really really cared about, whose friendship was incredibly important to me. It was bad for her, because she already had a boyfriend, living far, far away in California. But she needed someone close, and I was it… At least until I board a plane in July.

One year, I thought to myself. Then I’ll be back to pick things up.

Our relationship continued through to July. At this point, I decided to continue the thin h line even in Japan to continue communication with my friends. Everything would be okay. I’d get back and pick up where I left with E and all would be good.

Now one major detail I was forgetting. She already had a boyfriend although she was maybe considering ending that. But in the end, that ended up being stronger, and on the night before my flight to Japan, she told me to let go of the relationship and return to being friends. She was going back to him, and she loved him more.

Well, that was fair. It hurt a lot, but I knew she had a boyfriend from the beginning. Her friendship still meant the world to me, so I tried to hang on to that. However, because we did have a fling, it was something we had to keep secret so her boyfriend would never find out.

In Japan

The next year was okay. E and her boyfriend started an irc channel and everybody started going there. If we were only friends, shouldn’t be a problem if I join too, right? But something wasn’t right. our e-mail communication was getting less and less, and soon I received what was to be her final e-mail. “I feel guilty for what I did to my boyfriend. He still doesn’t know. We can no longer be friends. Sorry.”

This stung more than being dumped. Her friendship was more important than anything, and now that was gone. I was incredibly hurt, and felt that I had something really important taken away from me, and my friendship meant nothing to her. At one point I called her my best friend and meant it. She was! I knew we did something stupid, but I thought the friendship was more important and we could get through this. And in the end I was discarded. Entirely.

So in a moment of anger and spite, I thought, well, if I’m going to be thrown out anyway, let’s at least get this guilt off her chest.

I did something stupid. I emailed E and her boyfriend. “E has something to tell you. If you don’t get a satisfactory answer, I can provide more detail later.” That was it. It was up to her to tell her boyfriend, I only opened the door. I wasn’t planning to follow this letter up, I was done.

I don’t know what happened after that. But soon all my new friends in OFU and Online Comic Artist Directory started turning their backs on me. I recognized the pattern: My second big mistake with E initiated the White Knight Syndrome again.

Next: Losing what was left, and Goodbye Canada

Figuring out one’s depression is like peeling away at layers of an onion. You figure out one layer, and behold, there’s another one underneath. You figure out something, a little truth about yourself, and then you realize it’s not entirely the case, there’s more to it than that and you have to dig deeper. Layer after layer after layer.

That’s what’s been going on when I’ve tried to figure out why SL/tHl is so difficult to do. Ideas are easy. I have a book of ideas, some crap, some good, and some worth tweaking. When the blank paper is in front of me, that’s when it all goes to crap. Every line is painful. I lose the confidence to draw. I’m unhappy with the work. Instead of feeling accomplishment with the work, I’m underwhelmed. I have just drawn crap.

I don’t feel that way at all with depression comix. Blank page, I’m ready to go. An hour later, half the page is done. I have to be careful, because I work faster than the ink dries, and I may smudge it. Nothing like SL/tHl.

What’s the difference? Why is one easy and the other not? What I think it boils down to is that I do the comics for very different reasons. And the reasons themselves are what’s responsible for the difference in performance.

Depression comix was started not knowing who the audience was. I drew them, and posted it. I had no idea who would be interested, who would follow, or if I was just wasting my time. Now, over a thousand tumblr users follow it, and I’m very happy that there’s an audience, but I started it without knowing. The finished strips are first shown to Tumblr users. Not family, friends, online friends… directly to Tumblr. It’s a comic for people who want to read it. That makes it easy to do.

The thin H line in its first incarnation in 1999 had very different origins. First, a little background about where I was at the time.

White Knight Syndrome

In 1996, I was dumped for the third time in a year. The woman in question dumped me for my thesis advisor. In the space of a month, she had been given a free pass into graduate school (ie, she didn’t have all the qualifications, but she flirted well) and I had to finish my thesis in the same lab with her. I could hear her every day flirting and giggling with my advisor in a room down the hall from me. My hell had begun.

Getting dumped isn’t that big a deal. I can deal with it. But in this case, it seemed to be a career move, and she had leapfrogged ahead of me without having done the prerequisites. Furthermore, she cozied up more and more with my friends. It got to the point where if I saw her with my friends in the lounge, I would just sit somewhere else. All I wanted to do was avoid her, and I did what I could to do not have to be in the same room as her.

Then things got weird. My friends at school started shunning me. At one point, I got asked to leave a bar because she had told the doorman I was harrassing her, even though I went out of my way not to speak to her or be near her. This was a bar my friends and I almost always hung out at on the weekends. Somehow, she managed to cut me off not only at school, but from my friends as well.

One of the teachers in the faculty called this the White Knight Syndrome. A woman needs something done, but she doesn’t want to get her hands dirty. She plays the damsel in distress, and suddenly every male around comes to offer a hand. Soon, the males are doing the dirty work, and the woman is orchestrating things in the background, appearing completely uninvolved. I’ve learned since that this can be accomplished by either gender, but what hasn’t changed is how a sob story our a few tears to appear like a victim can be a powerful motivator to those willing to listen.

After that, I kept as low a profile as possible. I snuck into school early to do work. I snuck out later at night. I timed my going out into the hall to make sure I didn’t run into anyone. Every day was painful and I became angry and bitter, but there was not much I could do about it. She had won…

… Or so I thought. At some point, the ethics committee got involved. She was so flagrant with her desire for my thesis advisor that she managed to piss off the wrong person. A lot of information came out in the investigation, like how she was lying to a lot of people about stuff, including what was going on with me. She was academically punished, but for me there was no joy in that. The damage was done. I lost my friends and any desire to continue in academia. I had no future.

This began a three year depressive spell in which I just lost faith in people. I lost faith in friends. I learned that friendship is temporary; a friend can be turned against you with a few tears. Although my friends eventually apologized, it was too late for our friendship, it wouldn’t be the same anymore.

I tried to find a way to express it all. All my anger, all my sadness, and my new solitude. Eventually, I found a way - A Heart Made of Glass. I was going to self-publish a comic. Maybe this would be my future.

Recovery through comics

I drew AHMOG as a real comic, but when I realized it would probably fail I decided to make a webcomic out off it. I made a site. It took over a week to get my first one hundred hits, most of those from myself. However, I started making contact with other like-minded people at a site called the Fan Art Headquarters. In particular, there was a very popular jam comic called Queen of Hearts that I wanted to be a part of, and after a couple of months, I got my chance. My ten page addition was well received, and suddenly people were noticing my comic and starting to talk to me. I was starting to be social again, even if it was over the internet. It felt a lot safer to open up there than in the environment I was currently in.

[ABOVE: A sample page from my Queen of Clubs submission.]

We discovered that many of us lived in the southern Ontario area, but we needed an excuse to meet. In 1997, a bunch of us met at Anime North in Toronto. Initially, we all planned to meet with Ian Kim who drew a popular webcomic called Emiko’s Genesis, but he shunned us so we all hung out together drawing in each sketchbooks. We had a great time together. We met again for Anime North 1998, but by this time we became a bit of a social group that met once every month or so and hung out for drawing. We called ourselves OFU and drew comic jams. It was awesome. I was finally starting to heal.

Inspired by this new sense of companionship, I began work on a new site, called the Online Comic Artists Directory. It was a site with a chat, a message board, and user maintained list of artists and their work. It went online in January 1999. Hundreds of us used this site regularly.

As for me artistically, I was writing and drawing comics nearly all the time. They were generally sombre affairs like Spike! and Aphasia, but I wanted to do more humor. Out of one of our OFU comic jams the thin H line was born, drawn in a hospital in April, 1999.

Next: Why that first strip is so damn special.