delusion a p r i l 2 0 15
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editor, design - jacob sanders @jacobsandersar t writing director - jason melton @captainjmelton comic director - chris carfolite @chriscarf
contributors
skip sterling skipsterling.com cover @skipsterlingart cathryn virginia cathryn-virginia.com @cathrynvirginia p4 r guzmรกn losercompany.com p5 @99centmenu bobby condon @spicybobcondon p6-9, p12-13 kevin vq dam kevinvqdam.tumblr.com @kevinvqdam p10-11 dave perezcassar p14 jacob sanders p15 vinnie neuberg p16
dave-draws.com @drawdavedraw jacobsandersart.com @jacobsandersart vinnieneuberg.com @vinnieneu
Cathryn Virginia
R Guzman
Everyone wants to live in the past. The past feels really good. Everyone wants to be a kid again. Where stupid things don’t seem stupid and there’s no work. TMNT reboot. Rick Astley meme. Decepticons & Autobots tattoos. Stupid diatribes about stupid space movies in stupid Kevin Smith movies. Every single fucking Quentin Tarantino movie since Pulp Fiction. All that fantasy bullshit with warriors or dragons or talking trees and people without shoes. I hate this shit. Quit trying to make me be a kid again. Conservatives also want to live in the past, so if you like silly nostalgia,
you’re basically a Republican. Think about THAT. My friends think I do not appreciate the aforementioned bullshit because my “inner child” is deficient. Listen: my inner child is fine, but I don’t listen to him because he’s a fucking idiot. He’s like six years old. What the fuck do I care about what a six year old thinks? When I was six years old, I thought a man named Adam Aneve was the first person on Earth. When I was six years old, I thought Siskelynn Ebert was a prominent female film critic. When I was six years old, I did not know who John Lennon was. When I was six years old, I had lightning bolts cut into my hair that connect to a capital “B” in the back of my head. That whole haircut was my idea. The “B” was lopsided, by the way—the top loop was bigger than the bottom. When I was six years old, I was very stupid. Once I outgrew my inner child, I told him to shut up forever. I do not miss him. I do not miss
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Courtney Bernard
anything about his life except for the free candy bars. Below I have compiled a nonexhaustive list of things that I do not miss about childhood. The Amount of Cereal My Dad Poured Into My Bowl It was never enough. Confession Listen, every kid fucking hates church. And if you’re an only child and don’t have a bunch of brothers and sisters to fuck around with during mass, you actually have to listen sometimes and if you’re Catholic, that is the most horrifying shit ever. I listened, and really believed all of that stuff for a long time, so being a kid was a bummer for the most part. If I did something that I thought was really wrong, I would not be able to sleep until I confessed it to my mom or dad. I would lie in bed, feeling like all of the blood in my body was rushing straight to my heart and it literally hurt until I went into my mom and dad’s bedroom (thankfully they didn’t fuck much) and woke them up to confess. And let me tell you: some of the shit you have to confess as a little kid is fucking weird. One time at day care me and like four other kids pissed into an empty Big Gulp cup. I don’t know why we pissed into it, we just pissed into it. Probably to see how much piss we could fit into a Big Gulp. Anyway, my best friend picked up the Big Gulp of piss and threw it onto a six year old. I didn’t know he was gonna throw it onto Ray! I mean I hated Ray but not enough to throw 32 oz. of littleboypiss on him! All over him. He wasn’t even wearing a shirt. Well I felt bad about that so I had to confess it to my parents at like fucking 11 o’clock. I can’t even begin to imagine what went through their minds as I sat on their bed crying, telling them that stupid ass story. Probably something like, “Uh, what the fuck? Go to bed and what the fuck?” Oh, and the first time I went to ACTUAL confession? That was a fucking ordeal. Lined up outside of the confessional at St. Dominick’s for First Confession and everyone ahead of me went in and out in like three minutes or less. I couldn’t fucking believe everyone had that few sins to confess—it never occurred to me that you could lie to the priest. I went into the confessional (NO FUCKING PRIVACY SCREEN LIKE IT DOES IN THE MOVIES I WAS SITTING RIGHT ACROSS FROM HIM)
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Jacob Sanders
and came out a half hour later when the next person waiting in line finally just started knocking on the door. I guess I was crying a lot, too. My mom told me later. Cool. My Babysitter Connie’s Husband Steve Oh my god I was terrified of this guy. He was rarely at the house when the kids were, but when he was there he was definitely drunk and probably in a physical altercation with his stepson Jeff, who taught me all the gang signs. One time came home at like seven thirty in the morning—we all ran across the street when we saw his truck because that’s what we did When Steve Came Home. He got out with a cooler of full of leeches and threw them at us by the handful. We were all laughing our asses off because it was the first time we’d ever seen him smile.
That Other Babysitter That Had Us Call Her “Sister Huss” She was so fucking weird. She had a pet beagle named “David”. DAVID. When you were bad, you had to go to what was called the “Elderly Room”. One time I got sent there because I said one of the kid’s dad’s cars was like the one in the Victory Auto Wreckers commercial and he cried. Sister Huss sent me to the “Elderly Room” and I obviously didn’t know what the fuck that was so I just walked upstairs into some room and it was filled with targets with bullet holes in them and shit. That Time A Goddamn Skunk Died In Our Ventilation System I went to school the next day smelling like shit and was crucified. I went from top three Cool Kid in my grade to pariah almost immediately. I smelled like a fucking skunk. Like worse than a traditional skunk smell, because usually people don’t get THAT close to skunk spray—you only really smell it on highways when you run over one. I was unique in that ALL of the skunk spray produced by an goddamn dead skunk was evenly distributed throughout my home and clothing and body and I was sitting in enclosed classrooms of 25+ people. In 3rd period Mr. Mike, our universally beloved Asst. Principal walked into our class, drawing every single person’s attention
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to him. He was very tall. He strode over to me, knelt down next to my desk, looked me in the eye and said, “So, you got hit by a skunk, huh?” and I said “Yeah” because what the fuck else am I gonna say and he STOOD UP AND WALKED OUT OF THE ROOM WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD. That Time That Every Single Person At School Learned What A Condom Was All it took was one person to find out. It spread like wildfire. It was a rainy day and I was wearing a blue rain coat with yellow piping and some stupid design on the back. That’s all I remember. Incidentally, my name directly translates to “condom” in Spanish.
The First Time You See Porn, Like REAL Porn The first one I ever saw was a red VHS tape that my friend Derrick found in the drop ceiling of his basement. It was called “Filthy Fuckers Interracial #14” and it was accurately titled. The participants were interracial, they were fucking, and it was filthy. The tape was cued up such that when we hit play, we were treated to the sight of about three gigantic men jerking off into one woman’s gaping anus. Like spitting in a sewer. I ran upstairs because I thought I was going to vomit. I still gag when I think about it now. I also never looked at Derrick’s dad the same again. Having to Watch Porn With Your Friends A real drag, but oftentimes necessary, especially as the son of a single mother. If I was ever going to see porn, it was going to have to be my friends’ dads’ porn, and it’s not like they would let me borrow it for a couple of days. One time my friend Jared had a sleepover party at Embassy Suites for his birthday. We watched The Crow, and after that one of the Bikini ______ movies came on. We noticed one of the blankets of one of the kids had started moving, rhythmically. Apparently, he couldn’t help himself. Everyone ripped on him for the rest of the night, but I understood what he was going through--when else are you going to be able to see Bikini _______?
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Kevin VQ Dam Lisk Feng
Paulo Campos
The circumstances for jerking off were less than ideal, but winners adapt. I also understood what he was going through because that kid was me all along. I tricked you. I was the one that was jerking off under the blanket during Bikini ______. Whatever, it’s not like someone else was under the blanket with me. I might delete this from the list. If you see this right now, I didn’t delete it from the list for some reason. I should probably delete this from the list. Being Caught Masturbating By Your Mom Well. It was 1992—I know this because I was watching “Capitol Critters,” (a cartoon about mice that live in Washington D.C. and it was only on for one year [just to clarify, I wasn’t jerking off TO the “Capitol Critters,” I was just jerking off WHILE it was on]), and my mom walked into the extra bedroom while I was laying on the floor rubbing the crotch of my sweatpants into little cotton nubbins. She let out a gasp/ scream thing and ran out. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I knew now that it was something that was very, very wrong. So I just kind of sat there, glad that she was gone, until she came back up into the room with my dad—I don’t think he said a word or looked me in the eye—and a fucking encyclopedia. Not a dictionary, a goddamn ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA “M” VOLUME. Obviously, “masturbation” wasn’t in there, but--because I was a child and stupid--I suggested maybe she try the dictionary. It wasn’t in there either so she just said, “Well whatever it’s something someone your father’s age should do.” So according to mom, I wasn’t supposed to jerk off until I was like a million years old. What the fuck. Having To Get Your Picture Taken Holding a Fucking Pile of Leaves Look at my eyes. They’re dead. Maybe I’m projecting. Do you think maybe I’m projecting? I hope I deleted that Embassy Suites story from this list. I should go up there and delete it now, really. People don’t need to know that. To be fair, it sounds really bad, but if you were there you would see that it wasn’t that bad. Actually, better that you weren’t there. I’m probably going to delete that Embassy Suites story. I’m going to stop thinking about it. I’m going to stop thinking about all of this.
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Dave Perezcassar
Jacob Sanders
Vinnie Neuberg