Deep-Breakfast Therapy and The Threat of Failure

I think I'm ready to talk about this strip now. It's only been twenty-eight years since I wrote it down in my sketchbook, but it still feels raw and silly. In fact, it sat there in my sketchbook as a very rough outline without really being drawn out and inked.  I was living in Seattle working for Fantagraphics Books in their circulation department. At that time I didn't have a therapist, but that did come later. 

The title, of course, refers to one of my favorite albums of music, "Deep Breakfast" by Ray Lynch. This strip is an homage to the Dick Tracy newspaper meta-strips that were Chester Gould's attempts at self-parody back in the Sixties, featuring speaking wood shavings and named appropriately "Sawdust".  I think the rest speaks for itself... After all, it is an animated corn-flake.

"Homey-boye" was a pseudonym I came up with to commemorate a passing fancy with a cute bank teller I regularly saw during work hours. Initially, I didn't think he was flirting with me directly, but once we'd been acquainted and determined to be friendly, he dubbed me "my homeboy" and I was naturally too flattered and a bit confused as I didn't really pick up any attraction vibe from him before. The next week he invited me to a performance of his Ska band, where he said he was playing bongos. 

It was at a pub in Pioneer Square and the music was good, but strangely the drummer for the band was someone else and there were no bongos to be seen. At first, I thought I'd wandered into the wrong bar as I was almost immediately targeted by women wanting to dance with me. I was clearly out of my element and once the band was done, I went home by myself. I couldn't help but feel I was somewhat "set-up". 

I don't remember if we talked again about his absence at the performance. I also found myself seeing the bank teller less at the bank windows I visited, which again I do not remember now if that was by intention or circumstance. In my mind, I like to think he was intentionally flirting and then seeing me speaking with women at the bar, changed his mind and lost interest, even if this is purely an imagined scenario and doesn't really account for the substitute drummer or the women coming onto to me aggressively. 

Nonetheless, I only used "Homey-boy" a few times more as a signature, changing the spelling each time, because I couldn't wrap my head around using what I thought of as a "street" term that was otherwise entirely unfamiliar to me. You can take the boy out of the country...