Note From The President, Cerebus 235, October 1998

Copyright 1994 Dave Sim


Okay, so it's a month or so later, and (evidently) Judy's birthday is corning up, and it is going to fall on a Tuesday. At this time I was going to Stages every Tuesday night for "rock 'n' roll" night That lasted quite a while, and it was really the place and night that Mike and I became fast friends. When we started going in, there were about a dozen people, and by the time it came to an end (as everything does) the joint was packed. A good time.

Anyway, Judy let it be known around Peter's Place that she intended to get me into bed with her on her birthday. Let it be known widely enough that it got back to me. Stages was and is set up on four levels: the "upper deck" along the back wall, the second floor, the first floor and the stage (it's in a converted movie theater), and then the dance floor. I used to refer to it as the Four Inner Circles of Dante's Inferno. Anyway, I always hung out with Mike in the upper deck, so when I showed up, there was Judy. Mike didn't show up that night, which was not unexpected. Judy had, as they say, taken pains, and getting someone to distract Mike and keep him away was probably the easiest part of her scheme.

She looked pretty good. Must've lived on cottage cheese and cucumber for a couple of weeks, because she was easily a dress size smaller than usual. Low-cut blouse to show off her more-than-ample cleavage. Picture Elizabeth Taylor in her sleazy outfit in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She announced that she was buying my drinks all night. I said okay.

It didn't take much time to get down to it. As I recall, she accused me ofbeing gay. That was a popular one with the "ladies" back in the early nineties. That one stood out in my memory because it was really only the second or third time it had been used on me. Then she went through the shopping list: I was afraid of intimacy, I was afraid of her, I didn't think I could measure up, I was intimidated by her intelligence, I wouldn't know what to do with a Real Woman. I listened to all of it very politely. I had no interest in going to bed with her, so it was all water off a duck's back to me. Finally, when she ran out of gas temporarily, I said, "You'll say anything to get me to go to bed with you."

She laughed and said, "You're right."

I told her that I had resolved to remain celibate through my thirty-third year as a tribute to Jesus. Which wasn't true - the fact that Jesus died when he was thirty-three was about all that I knew about him at the time, apart from what I picked up from Foolbert Sturgeon's New Adventures of Jesus comic books. Really, it was just my way of matching bullshit with bullshit of a different kind.

She kept it up for a good long while, snappy repartee, brushing her boobs against my upper arm. As I told her, it was like trying to pick up lint with a magnet. A magnet is a very powerful attractor, but it is of no use if you want to get lint off your jacket.

Finally, her eyes blazing, she looked me square in the eye and said, "Any man who is afraid of women is a wimp!"

I looked her square in the eye and said, "Any man who isn't wary of women is a fool."

I left shortly after.

Ding. Dave by a TKO.

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