Golden Guenon

There’s only one thing that’s haunted me, and that is John Cena’s biggest fan.

She rose out of the cellular ether when I was around eleven or twelve and had my first phone—a hand-me down iPhone with the comfortable weight of a brick. It wasn’t a particularly special day nor a particularly special phone. My only apps were Angry Birds and WhatsApp.

I was in the middle of doodling something disparaging when my phone screamed that awful WhatsApp ding. “Hello,” it said. Hello, mom, I thought. Then, wait. That’s not mom’s number.

Now, I had read an American Girl’s Guide to the Internet and considered myself a savvy speaker. So I did the only sensible thing when encountering an unknown number…answered.

“Hello?”

Dots sprung immediately.

“Hello,” it said again. “I am part of a group that wants to chat.”

“I didn’t sign up for any group,” I said.

Dots again, then…a photo?

Not an explicit one, thank god. No, it was a girl, my age. White with mousy brown hair and a baggy black hoodie. She was in a room heaped with laundry and posed beside a WWE-themed calendar, lips puckered at one man: John Cena.

“This is my room,” she said.

“…ok?”

“My name is”—can’t recall—“What’s yours?”

I had an incredibly common first name, so my eleven/twelve year-old self figured this was reasonable justification to give it to her. I’d been veering on the scam side and figured her next question would be my social security number, but I had whimsical awareness, see, not practical awareness. Just because something was very likely a scam didn’t mean I had the wherewithal to tear myself from it before its conclusion. I needed to know, was this a Nigerian prince? An American one? And what was this “group” tactic? I hadn’t heard of this on Deadline.

The next dots bore something very different.

It was a video. Same girl, same setting. Filmed in real time as she was sending it. Mind you, all this was well before deepfakes and those dreaded two vowels and all the other things corrupting our reality into a dystopian nightmare. There was no way to have this kind of video unless there was, in the world, a real child, really filming this. “Alright,” she said, “so how do you pronounce your name is? Is it…?” She proceeded to try three ways of enunciating my name. These segments couldn’t be a prerecorded video, then. She was interacting with me in real time. How and who and what and why?

“Two is correct,” I replied, bewildered, but intrigued.

Another video. “Alright [Name]. So, like I said, I’m part of a group. And the group wants YOU.”

“I don’t know any group.”

“I’m part of a group, and the group wants YOU.”

In hindsight, you’ll probably want to tell me it was human trafficking or something equally grotesque, but at the time I was reading The League of Unexceptional Children. A small part of me—actually, no, an incredibly large part, wondered if this was a quirky enlistment opportunity. Maybe the FBI had seen my FCAT scores and was using this to offer me a job as an undetectable super spy. Maybe this was my chance to do what all my favorite tween protagonists did, to disregard all probable warning signs and accept a suspicious offer that’d lead to a very fulfilling, very thrilling life.

“What is the group?” I asked.

Another video. “Can’t tell you that yet,” she said with little finger wave. “First, you’ve gotta tell me more about yourself. What do you look like?”

This I knew was a red flag. “No, sorry. But I can draw a picture.”

“Okay.”

I’d been doodling myself in my notebook and sent her what my current self would find a lopsided, enlarged, and altogether off-putting portrait, but which my past self thought was the height of my artistic genius.

“Wow,” she replied over video, John Cena in his jean shorts standing firm behind her. “You’re good.”

So I am a genius. “My sibling taught me.”

“What does your sibling do?”

“He/she is going to college.” Why the he/she? Didn’t want her to know my sibling’s gender and I hadn’t quite figured how to use “they” yet.

“What is your sibling like?”

“He/she doesn’t want to be involved in this.”

“Do you have any other siblings?”

“Just her/him.”

“Does your sibling draw as good as you?”

“I don’t want to involve her.” DAMMIT. “Her/him.”

“I know it is a she.”

Sweating.

“I never said that.”

“So I’m part of a group, and the group wants you.”

Now I was thoroughly spooked and definitely didn’t want to be accused of revealing my sibling’s gender. This was when I finally blocked the number and never heard from them again.

But til this day, when I stare at the popcorn explosions of plaster in my ceiling and wonder what it’d be like to jet-set like a super spy instead of a lowly economy passenger, I wonder how this strange John Cena fanatic had gotten my number, I wonder why I’ve managed to avoid scams when in possession of such a dangerous imagination, and I wonder what “the group” wanted with me.

Are you out there, group? Do you have any answers?

Sketch page that led to my final Ben 10 design!

I started with a classic combo then moved to a hoodie/jacket to give a more structure silhouette and signal his growth as a character. I'd tried cargo jeans to reference his Alien Force look, but ended up switching them back to cargos.

Greetings again fellow plumbers. As full illustrations take a good while, I've decided to share sketch pages so I can post more regularly.

Hiiii felt like posting some original art. Basically, after watching Wish, I was so mad with what Disney decided to do for their centennial that I came up with my own concept.