I am Aaron Cometbus, Except I Live a Boring Life

It was pretty shitty in a wonderful way, to be honest - walking into the comic store, having one's eyes adjust to the relative darkness and picking up a copy of Despite Everything: A Cometbus Omnibus. The greasy looking guy at the counter gave me a look like he had seen a million of me before and was completely unimpressed, which, I guess, was his charm.

See? I'm totally Aaron Cometbus! I even write like him! I've read everything he's printed - and I mean EVERYTHING! (with the exception of all that really old stuff, of course) - and every time I pick something up I just go, "Man, this is my life!"  Man, when I first got a mohawk my dad and all his international business partners just flipped out, man! It was awesome! I was all, "This is who I am, old man! Your son is a punk!" No one understands me and my desires to adhere hopelessly to something I'm only half sure I'm interested in - no one but Aaron Cometbus. I swear if I met him I'd be all, like, "I am you! No, really. I am you!" I actually had a pretty "Cometbus-esque" (that's a term I coined. You know. After Aaron Cometbus.) experience the other day. It went something like this:

My mother was on the way to the Swim and Raquet club and gave me a lousy $100 to go buy a backpack for school. "What do you expect me to buy with this, a doily?" I shouted out after her as she got into the back of her stupid limo. Higgans offered to drive me to the mall, but I told him that there was only one way for me: the bus! So, I disinfected myself as I prepared to enter the outside world and I sat on the nearest bus stop. When the bus came, I got on and asked the chauffeur to take me to Santana Row. He gave me this rude look and demanded I pay him some ridiculous cover charge. "Aaron never had to pay to ride the rails, man!" I said. It was very Cometbus. Then, I had to sit next to this awful derelict who just kept mumbling things the whole time! I couldn't stand him! Finally, after everyone else left, the chauffeur told me that I needed to take a different bus to get to Santana Row, so I got tired and came back to live behind my golden bars. I stopped at Starbucks first, though, because I was simply dying for a mocha!

Yeah, it was awesome. I bet if I wrote to Aaron he'd print it in the next Cometbus zine.

Brian Wakefield