A guy walks into a bar...
MariNaomi
So this crazy thing happened at my reading on Thursday night. It took place in this beautiful but unfortunate-named bar in Union Station ("Traxx"). The place is exquisite: high ceilings, art deco touches everywhere. There was a good audience there--supportive, polite, literary feminist artist types. My favorite kind of people. I was up first, taking turns with Myriam Gurba and Zoe Ruiz. We were each planning on reading two stories, all with visual accompaniment via a projector that showed our images on a wide space above the bar.
I was trying out a story from my new book, a comic about my ex-boyfriend who went to jail and then disappeared, about how people change and also don't change. It was the first time I'd read it in public, and I'd spent many hours putting the visual presentation together. Several slides in, I got a couple laughs, which made me happy since I was worried the story was too sad for Los Angeles. Funny stories seem to go over better here.
But then there was this guy. A handsome young man carrying a water bottle, his skimpy tank top revealing a commitment to weight-lifting. I guessed he had wandered in from the train station, as he didn't look like the rest of the crowd. But he seemed riveted. Too riveted. He was standing directly in front of me, his arm casually resting on the table that housed the projector and the laptop that controlled it. He was partially obscuring my view of the audience, nodding as I spoke, and staring at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. I read my lines, but internally I was trying to work things out. Why was he standing so close? At what point should I ask him to step back? I stepped back a little myself, but I couldn't go far since I needed to advance the slides via the laptop.
I don't know how long he was there before he spoke, and it threw me off--partly because he was speaking to me during my performance, but also because of the words.
"Where've you been all my life, baby?" he asked, his lips curling up into a leer.
I stopped reading and looked around. The audience was still watching me, but nobody appeared alarmed. After all, I was the one with the mic. Nobody else heard what he was saying.
He kept talking, but I stopped listening. I noticed how his body was tense and coiled, wound up. It was clear he didn't care that there was an audience watching us, that he was interrupting an event. Was this really happening?
The faces around me grew more confused by the moment. My friend Yumi and my husband Gary both caught my eye and raised their eyebrows in silent questions.
"Um," I spoke into the mic lamely. "Could somebody please help me?"
Then people sprang into action. Gary took a step forward to talk to the guy, and suddenly I felt terror. This guy was huge! I didn’t want my precious husband anywhere near him. And then the organizers of the reading (DTLAB’s Chiwan Choi and his cohort, whose name I unfortunately didn’t get) got involved. They tried to coax the guy out, asked politely, cautiously for him to leave. He didn't want to leave, and suddenly the situation felt even more dangerous as these new protectors of mine became more insistent.
Eventually they got him out the door. The audience cheered, but from my vantage point I could still see him behind their relieved faces, arguing with the security guard. I continued reading my story (The show must go on!), but the game was knocked out of me, and I noticed my hands were shaking. When I was done with the story and looked out the doors, he was no longer visible.
I didn't feel safe all night, wondering if he'd be back, if I'd suddenly feel his hand on my shoulder, a caveman-like grab at my hair, a knife slashing my face. But thankfully he didn't return.
This is the third crazy thing that's happened to me recently at public appearances. The first was when I was sexually harassed on a panel last year by a fellow panelist. The second was at a library reading, when a heckler interrupted my story and loudly insulted my work (she was easier to get rid of than the guy last night, although she did take a swing at an audience member at one point).
After more than a decade of doing pleasant, uneventful events, I feel perplexed by this onslaught of drama. Was I just super lucky before, or have readings gotten more…disturbed? Is there a way I can protect myself from this? My agent suggests that at future readings I carry a rolled-up newspaper in my hand for nose-swatting punishment. "No."
I laugh now, but I'm seriously hoping that this craziness has run its course, because a week from today I officially start the book tour for Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories. And despite all that's happened lately, I'm very excited for what's in store.
I've got readings with some pretty heavy talent: Yumi Sakugawa, Julia Wertz, Box Brown, James Kochalka, Ed Piskor, Tom Neeley, Tessa Brunton, Rick Worley, Ray Shea, Thomas McBee and more, with appearances in College Park, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Portland, Olympia and Seattle. Tour dates and details are listed here:
http://marinaomi.com/events.html (Please come!)
And the book? It got its very first review, and I hope subsequent reviews will be just as positive: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-941250-01-3
If you can't make any of my readings, please seek out my book. Dragon’s Breath and Other True Stories is being distributed by Consortium (via Uncivilized Books), which makes it super easy for bookstores and libraries to get it into your hands. Or you can pre-order a copy here: http://2dcloud.com/shop/dragon-s-breath-pre-order/
Or deluxe pre-order here (with a dust cover/poster and a zine): http://2dcloud.com/shop/dragons-breath-special-edition-pre-order/
In other news, I've recently begun two massive projects. I've started two crowd-sourced online databases that intend to give minority groups a bit more visibility.
Cartoonists of Color
database: http://marinaomi.com/poc/cocindex.html
LGBTQ Cartoonists database: http://marinaomi.com/lgbtq/lgbtq-database.html
If you follow their accounts on Twitter (@COCdatabase and @LGBTQcomics), you can read the daily creator spotlights I've been doing. I intend to keep this up until I leave for tour next Thursday, then pick up again when I get back.
I won't go into why I started these time-consuming things. If you’re curious, you can check out my FAQs or watch an interview I did with the Nerds of Color:
http://thenerdsofcolor.org/2014/09/04/marinaomi-joins-the-latest-hard-n-o-c-life/
ALSO, I've got a comic in Rob Kirby's new anthology zine Pratfall! You can order a copy here: http://robkirbycomics.com/Rob_Kirby_Comics/Store.html (He's got a lot of great stuff on that site. I highly recommend that you check out his personal zine, Snack Pak, for one. He’s a cartoonist I’ve admired since the early nineties. Also, he’s the immensely patient and talented editor of the anthology QU33R, which is currently up for an Ignatz award.)
And lastly but not leastly, 2D Cloud has continued putting chapters of my Sept. 2015 book online, the graphic memoir Turning Japanese, which is about working at hostess bars in the hopes of connecting with my Japanese heritage. You can read five chapters here, with more to come at the end of each month: http://2dcloud.com/authors/author/marinaomi/
So this is what's been going on with me lately. What have you been up to? I'd love to hear from you.
xo
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MariNaomi
Email: mari...@pobox.com
Web: http://marinaomi.com/
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