Kal Brass

Grace and Rocky play hide and seek— or Rocky finds out about persistence hunting the hard way, and Grace gets some pumpkins to roll around his enclosure.

I wanted to experiment with a more sketchy comic, instead of spending weeks and weeks on making it “Perfect”— and I had so much fun with it!! I need to do these more!

The first picture arrived on Tuesday morning. I woke up, checked my messages and discovered one by a number not in my contacts.

Still half-asleep, I opened it, only to be greeted by a picture and a line below it.

The picture was nothing but a blurry, incomprehensible mess. The only thing of notice were two tiny numbers in the bottom right, thirty-two and seventeen.

‘Hope you enjoy, beautiful,’ the line below it read.

What the hell? Probably a wrong number. Still, it was weird.

In the end, I just ignored it. Yet, the mysterious sender didn’t ignore me. A day later, another message arrived. It was almost identical. The line was the same, and it contained another blurred picture.

When a third and fourth message arrived, I grew annoyed and blocked the number.

I can't remember my actual age, but it was in the range of 10 to 13 I think. my parents had dragged me to a Pride festival, and walked across the street from the main event, across where the lines were drawn, to where a sea of people in red shirts that read "god has a better way" tried to drown out the celebration with speakers blasting christian music, and shouting and loud praying.

the leaders pulled all us kids to the side and gave us the spiel. they told us how the rainbow had been stolen from us, and that these people were tricked by the devil and just needed prayer, but that if we didn't save them, they were going to hell.

I rolled my eyes because I already didn't believe in god, and although I barely knew what being gay was, I knew my parents were usually on the Wrong side of things, and I shouldn't be siding with them.

"We aren't allowed over there if we're wearing the red shirts," the leaders told us, "so we're sending people over in secret without them so you can pass out tracts and pray for people. they won't talk to us, but they'll talk to the kids. does anyone want to volunteer?"

the people in red shirts disgusted me. the people on the other side of the line were cheering and having fun. I raised my hand.

we were supposed to go in groups with young adults, to make sure we were doing what we were supposed to be. I wandered off the minute I could and stood nervously at the edge of a crowd, watching on as people went by, happy and unbothered by the protests across the street. I felt a little pride myself in tricking the protestors into giving up a witness spot to me, when I was going to smile on and think profanities at god instead.

there was an older woman standing outside the crowd too. she asked if I was here with anyone, a girlfriend maybe? I said no, my parents were across the street. she nodded, and said she was here with her kid. a daughter, that she came to support, but couldn't keep up with in the crowd.

I almost cried. I told her how amazing that was, because I couldn't imagine my mother showing support like that to me over anything, much less something as serious as Being Gay. I imagined if I was gay, and at a pride event just like now, but this time because I Belong.

I knew automatically that my mother, without a doubt, would still be in the same place, across the street.

I got hungry after a bit, and tried to find a good food truck. I had a little money and I was unused to being on my own like this, but I didn't want to go back to the Other Side. I knew now without a shadow of a doubt, this was the Good side and that was the Bad side.

as I was eating the gyro I got, there was a stream of red shirted protestors trickling through; I had reached the end of the boundaries, and the protestors were allowed in here. I backed up a little, spotting my dad among them. I didn't want him to tell me to go back.

there was a line of women closing ranks around the Pride attendees, separating them from the protesters as they walked through. they spread their arms out and told every person the protesters spoke to that they were not obligated to respond, they could walk away and not engage.

my dad spotted me back, and made a beeline over. he couldn't cross over because a butch lesbian stood between us. I didn't know what those words meant, but I never forgot the buttons she was wearing.

he tried to tell me that it was time to go. "you're not obligated to speak to him," the butch said, cutting him off and edging further between us. I smiled at her, a little in wonderment. no one had ever told me that I didn't have to speak to my parents, or do anything other than blindly obey them. I watched my dad get held behind a line by a woman half his height, with no intention on letting him get to me, and I smiled and walked away.

I didn't have a clue who I was then, and I wouldn't for a good few years to come. but I never forgot the supportive mother, who symbolized to me everything a mother should be, that mine, for all her religious self righteousness, would never hold a candle to. I never forgot that she was the person I wanted to be, and my mother was the person I did not want to be.

I never forgot the butch who stood between me and my dad, and for the first time ever, put the idea in my head that I was ALLOWED to make my own choices in my beliefs, and made me feel protected in a way I hadn't known I needed.

the image of her standing between me and my dad, being a physical barrier to protect me against any potential threat, that inspired the image of who I admired and wanted to become. it inspired the version of me who could stand up to my dad - to the point that I could hold my ground and educate him enough that over a decade later, he walked side by side with me at a pride festival, with no intent of witnessing to or condemning anybody.

What I learned is that there is an inflexible rule about how people interact with systems. If your system would work perfectly if people Just Would, and yet they Don’t, then your system is bad and you should feel bad. Systems must be built with an eye toward “will people actually do this”?

Recycling was a thing when I was a child. (The 70’s.) In my home in New York State, you could carry recyclables to a recycling center. Nobody did. Now in 2024 Baltimore there is a trash truck that comes every week to pick up my recyclables, and I and my neighbors fill our cans with objects that can be recycled, because a system was developed that was easy for busy people to do, and there’s a lot of social pressure to do it – but the social pressure wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t easy to do. Only the most crunchy granola people bitched at you if you didn’t recycle in 1979, when it required a lot of effort. Now it is considered kind of on par with spitting in the street or leaving a dirty diaper on the diaper changing table in the bathroom instead of throwing it out, if you don’t recycle.

Me: