Joke Shop Man

I can understand why the typical person has problems with me.  I’m not a typical person, as you’ve probably gathered.  I don’t do what people expect another person to do, or look how another person is expected to look.  Several of these things are my own personal choice, some of them are not.

This doesn’t necessarily turn someone who is “unusual” into a misanthrope.  You know that you will not like everyone, and not everyone will like you.  You can factor in this knowledge into your daily dealings with people, and adjust your expectations.  That’s what I do, anyway.  If I find someone an utter cock, then I try to have as little to do with them as possible in order to save my own mood, if not sanity.  No, I can deal with regularly annoying people.

What I was surprised to discover, and nobody had actually told me about, is that other “unusual” people are no better than the “normal”.  In fact, they are quite often worse.  Much worse.

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It was April 2000.  Hardly the greatest of times, and  indeed one to which few people would look back with much nostalgia.  I was a year into my so-called treatment for my alleged “mental illness”.  Of course, they don’t recommend you doing what you feel like doing, which is staying at home in a dark room waiting to go to sleep for 14 hours a day (though I’ve since discovered such things are much better for you than psychiatric medication and therapy).  No, they tell you to get out.  See the world.  Do stuff.  Interact with people.  Take your mind off things.

My night shift job at Asda limited my options a bit.  In the service industry, our motto is “Working Daft Hours Because You Don’t”.  Which is fine for most people, but for those of us who work atypical shifts, it can restrict your opportunities for a social.  Most of the time back then that didn’t bother me.

I’d somehow managed to latch onto a couple of people at the comics conventions I went to.  They, for some reason, thought it’d be a good idea to hold regular meets with other local comics fans in a pub opposite the Birmingham Hippodrome.  Attending, I worked out, was just about feasible.  Stoke to Birmingham was around 45 minutes by train, and even though I worked on Saturday night, I could get there and back in a reasonable amount of time.

I never got it quite right.  My sleeping pattern meant I only would get about 4 hours sleep if I was going to get to Birmingham in time for the 2pm start.  I usually achieved this by nailing wine or vodka in rapid time to knock me out.  I always made it there, but what state I was in when I got there, was at best variable.

I think I went four times in all.  Once I got so drunk in the afternoon, I was unable to work in the evening.  A calculation error, I gather.  I presumed excessive drinking was what you were supposed to do.  Well, everyone else was.  Another time I had a panic attack in the pub and just sat slumped in a corner while everyone stared at me.  The one trip I made when I was actually off work, I found I’d consumed too much to engage in reasonable conversation.  To compensate, I carried on drinking cans of Stella Artois on the train.  I’m sure you can see some kind of pattern developing here.  I wish I could have done the same 15 years ago.

I went one last time.  I’d realised that drinking a lot during the meet was probably not a good idea either for my mental health, or ability to socialise or even work later on.  I stuck to Coke.  I arrived early, as usual and after a brief chat with the second person to turn up, decided “Ah yes, I’ll write about this event for my website.  I’m sure people are curious about what exactly happens during these events”.  So as more people turned up I spoke less.  Never having been much good at group conversations or knowing much about what these people were talking about, I felt it best to keep quiet.

A word about the people attending these Pub Meets : They were not the typical comics fan you imagine, all Cosplay, nerding and pedantic.  No, these were the self-styled hipsters of comics fandom.  Trendy types, usually artists or writers running their own bizarre small press comics or zines.  Generally left-wing, open minded  and self-styled lovers of the unusual. I thought they would like me better.

I went home that evening thinking that at least I hadn’t got hammered or ended up a mental wreck, so it must have gone reasonably well.  I posted my article on the website and a link on the message board that I and the other people frequented.  Reading it back a few years later, I could see how it could have been construed as a bit crass and cutting in places, but no more than any of the rest of the stuff I wrote.

To say I got a hostile reaction…well…is a bit like saying Warren Buffett has a few bob tucked away.  I was shredded by them.  I was called a sad wanker, massively inappropriate and a complete and utter little shit.  So much for a niche community being understanding of outsiders, then.  I could take that.  I heard worse at school.  But what really upset me was one person (I forget who) saying “You come all this way and you don’t make any effort.”

No effort.  Right.

Did they not know what I had to do, what I had to go through and what I had to fight off to go there?  To make no effort would have been easy.  I could have stayed at home.  In fact, I probably should have stayed at home.   That was the nail in the coffin for me and my relationships with those particular people.  I’m always one who has to learn the hard lessons of life in the hardest way.

A couple of years later, I went to what turned out to be my last ever comics Convention, the 2002 Bristol Expo. I ran into a few of those people.  By “ran into”, I mean they sat at a nearby table.  They noticed me, and exchanged meaningful glances and giggles with each other,  a pattern of behaviour I recognise from school bullies.  They never said a word to me the entire day.  I guess it’s easy to courageously express your negative opinions about people when you’re behind a keyboard, and coincidentally well out of smacking range.  Easier to feel safe when in a group rather than alone, too.

As a great man once said “I say fuck people.  People ruin everything.”
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Graphical version of the average Comics Pub Meet back then. Click for larger version.