Nasty Conjugation

Hello everybodies. I recently had the mildly retarded idea to create a text-based webcomic. You would be right to point out that such a thing just translates into, “serial narrative.” You would be right, but I would not listen to you because my vision supercedes reality. Regardless, here is the pilot for my text-based webcomic. The alternate title would be, “Pierot #0 - In Which Our Hero Spends A Romantic Evening Alone.”

PIEROT #0 – PILOT

The Internet has accomplished a lot of things, including but not limited to the unprecedented increase in quality pictures of Asian women defecating. It has often managed the impossible, like the recent online wedding of a half-fox, half-narwhal Archer with her soul mate, the Tower Lord Archyzor. More than anything else, it is love that makes the Web go around, whether it be quick smelly love or lifelong furry love.

The Internet has become the vast playground of hopeless romantics of every shape and size; while once they wore their hearts on their sleeves, now they can simultaneously wear them on their away messages, moblogs, message boards, Flickrs, cam portals, and Livejournals. Future star-crossed lovers are only a Myspace bulletin away.

Please don’t think this story is about the Internet. It’s not. It’s about Pierot.

Pierot is the kind of guy who has about seventy away messages saved on his instant messenger, choice quotes like:

“Is love an external force? Or does it start inside and move out?”

Or,

“Sometimes I watch strangers pass on the street and imagine them falling in love,”

And,

“I want someone to teach me how to fear my own mortality.”

He’s the kind of guy who can’t listen to certain songs anymore, mainly songs he once shared with now ex-girlfriends. He won’t delete them from his computer – they’re good songs, man – but he will stop whatever he’s doing to change the song as soon as it comes on. He’s burnt dinner, tripped over his cat, spilled whiskey on his keyboard, and completely shut down his computer in his frantic efforts to stop the rush of memories these songs cause.

He realizes this is a problem. Tonight he’s going to face it.

Cold turkey is the way. He’s starting with the worst of the worst, a band that is not only tied to a long-term, messy relationship but also heartbreakingly beautiful in its own right. Once, in happier times, he learned to play acoustic guitar so he could play one of their songs for her. He’s been unable to even think about them for a year without clearing his throat and pretending to have an eyelash stuck in his eye.

Pierot has taken great care to prepare the battleground. His cell phone is turned off, his door locked. He poured himself a glass of wine, but later considered it a threat to his mission and poured it out. His away message is a new one, appropriately ominous – “It was once considered common sense that to cure a patient, one must bleed him dry. Tonight, it’s just me and the leeches.” Secretly he’s looking forward to checking his messages later to see if anyone gets worried.

He’s confident. He’s ready. He settles down on the couch with the remote control, turns on the stereo, and the first song nearly ruins him. He’s not ready for three-part harmonies and heartfelt lyrics. He panics and pauses the song. How could he have forgotten about the three-part harmonies?

He takes three deep breaths and hits play.

By the end of the song Pierot is sweating, but the next three songs come on easier, more upbeat, with fewer killer harmonies and odes to love. Some specific chord changes still give him that nostalgic twitch, but he maintains his cool. Maybe this won’t be so bad, he thinks. He spreads himself out on the couch, comfortable in his own emotional mastery.

Unfortunately, the next song is the widowmaker. Within the first three notes – sweet, plucked acoustic guitar – Pierot has thrown the remote control across the room to thwart temptation. This one’s a real murderer, the very song he played for her, rising and falling and rising again until it peaks in a halo of wind chimes, drums, vocal harmonies – Oh! Those harmonies! – and guitar. At first he resisted it, tried to stand upright against it, but by the time it peaks he gives in and lets the whole wave wash over him. His head falls back against the couch. He closes his eyes.

The song ends, and the next one is nearly as brutal, but he’s not listening. He’s thinking about when he spent weeks in college annoying the hell out of his roommate while he tried to learn the song on guitar. When he was finally able to stumble through it, she seemed impatient with the whole process. She never understood that just putting on a CD of romantic music wasn’t enough. He wanted to be the one who made the love songs, not some rock star. It needed to be personal.

The next song comes on. He remembers how he hated her socks, the same black socks she wore all the damn time. Would it kill her to wear something else? Were sandals out of the question? Until this moment he’d never thought about how much that had irrationally bothered him.

The CD’s last song is starting. He’s thinking about the last time he saw her, smoking cigarettes on the back porch of her friend’s house. She showed off her new tattoo, bragged about her new boyfriend, her two tickets to see the Cure. None of it sounded like the clumsy notes of a poorly-played acoustic guitar in a college dorm.

Pierot gets up and turns off the stereo before the last song is even over. The experiment is finished. He’s a little pissed that he seems to have broken his remote when he tossed it across the room, but he reasons that some things must be sacrificed for the progress of emotional science. His computer says he has three missed messages.

PIXIENINJA84: omg, are u okay?
AUTO RESPONSE FROM IMSECONDBEST: It was once considered common sense that to cure a patient, one must bleed him dry. Tonight, it’s just me and the leeches.
PIXIENINJA84: im gonna call u
PIXIENINJA84 HAS SIGNED OFF
PIXIENINJA84 HAS SIGNED ON
PIXIENINJA 84: omg ur phone was off. r u okay?! call me
PIXIENINJA84 HAS SIGNED OFF

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 10:16 am and is filed under Pierot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.