Read Daddy Issues by Kate Goldbeck Chapter 5 –
h, did my slothlike morning routine lure you into the assumption that I’m not gainfully employed? I’m not sure of the actual definition of gainfully, but I acknowledge that my job at Lōkahi Lounge doesn’t feel “gainful.” What’s the opposite of gainful? Loseful? My job is loseful, but it’s a paycheck.
I got my first job at Lōkahi Lounge when I was fifteen because of my dad. I’m a central Ohio tiki theme restaurant nepo baby. The Lily-Rose Depp of serving Singapore Slings. Dad was friendly with the owners, Marty and Shep, because he sold them a lot of their tackiest décor at his estate sales. He cut them a deal on some carved masks in exchange for hiring me as a busser.
Lōkahi was one of those places Dad would take me to celebrate a birthday or apologize for missing a birthday, which was an increasingly common occurrence as I got older. In my twelve-year-old mind, drinking virgin daiquiris and eating sweet-and-sour chicken nuggets from a hollowed-out pineapple made up for any absenteeism.
Lōkahi Lounge is a twenty-thousand-square foot A-frame building with a black-and-white roof designed to look like a South Pacific war canoe. I have dozens of photos of my parents and me posing next to the flaming Moai-inspired statues flanking the front entrance. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see it from a mile away. You can probably see it from space.
And the exterior is the tasteful part. One can only imagine the level of Marty and Shep’s commitment to cultural sensitivity as the current owners of what The Columbus Dispatch calls “a faded, but venerable themed dining attraction.” I do not love this place unabashedly. I’m very abashed.
When I realized that my stay in Columbus would be longer than a couple of months, I turned the casual summer job I had in high school into my Job-with-a-capital-J. I could earn more at a fine dining restaurant where I wouldn’t have to set drinks on fire all night. But I have my reasons.
“I can’t contain it anymore, Samantha.” Hal swizzles two blue hurricanes—one with each hand. “It’s time. It’s happening. Must. Kill.”
“Who?” I nestle a pineapple frond into a piña colada.
“Light blue button-down and khakis at ten o’clock,” he replies without looking in that direction. “Patchy goatee. I overheard him tell his date that Ryan Adams is misunderstood.”
“I’ll fetch the cyanide.” I pluck a bottle of blueberry schnapps from the bottom shelf.There’s a woman gallantly putting in the work of listening to Goatee Guy. She’s laughing in that forced way you do when someone’s not genuinely funny, but you need to show your appreciation for their attempts at humor. He hasn’t asked her a question all night. Still, when the guy leans in for a kiss, she tilts her head up.
For an establishment that survives on nostalgic vibes and selfie ops, plenty of bad decisions are made at Lōkahi at the end of the night. They look even worse when I’m the sober witness to these slow-motion disasters.
It is not, by any rational means, a good place to work. But Hal makes it bearable. Neither of us has the right attitude to be employed in customer-facing roles. At least once a shift, Hal gets the urge to kill some asshole’s vibe by creatively fucking up a drink in a way that makes it taste a little off, but not quite gross enough to send back. We watch the victim silently choose whether to just choke it down or complain. It’s my favorite part of the night.Comics tell stories in a way that’s different from books, movies, or eight-part social media story times about cheating boyfriends.When I first started making comics, I tried to draw sequences as objectively true-to-life as possible, which meant my pages were boring as shit. I didn’t understand that my favorite comics to read were the ones that boiled everything down to the most visceral moments. That’s the way our memories operate: comic panels are like snapshots. They have exaggerated angles and perspectives that aren’t quite possible, creating a series of impressions. Each panel, one moment.For example, here’s how I remember meeting Hal three years ago:Rule: Settings can be expressive. Locations represent state of mind.Panel 1: We begin with an establishing shot: the interior of a shitty comics store. Sagging bookshelves against the walls and bins of comics in the rear. Various men with poor posture browse the books and toys.Rule: No need to draw hyperrealistic characters. Use visual shorthand.Panel 2: Behind the counter, a young man with shaggy hair under a knit cap leans way back on a chair, reading. He’s wearing a hat, so I would draw him as Archie’s friend, Jughead Jones, if Jughead was permitted to age into his midtwenties. He’s good-looking in a sort of lanky, slightly unkempt way. The book he’s reading? Not a comic. It’s fucking Camus. (I wish I were making this up for dramatic effect, but it’s absolutely true.) The proverbial Chekhov’s coffee cup is perched precariously on the edge of the counter. No lid. He lives dangerously.Next to him is his boss, a middle-aged schlub. He is Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, with that scraggly goatee. He’s deep in one-sided conversation with a customer who could be his doppelgänger. In fact, I might draw every other customer in the store as Comic Book Guy because that’s how I remember them. Again, shorthand.
Now we have our setting, our love interest, our antagonist. What about our hero?
You know how in dreams it’s impossible to drill down to the details and nuances of faces? How you can’t look in a mirror and see your reflection? That’s how I feel about drawing myself. Which is why I gave up and began imagining myself as Lydia Deetz from the Beetlejuice cartoon.Panel 3: Lydia Deetz’s adult sister brushes her dark bangs back from her eyes as she digs through a box of comics.Panel 4: Close-up on Lydia’s hand, holding a copy of Vision and the Scarlet Witch #4.
I went up to the counter to politely inquire about lowering the price. Comic Book Guy continued his monologue, completely ignoring me, until I loudly cleared my throat, handing over the issue.
He looked at the cover and scoffed, holding up the book to his doppelgänger.
Comic Book Guy
Remember this one? Garbage.
Doppelgänger
WandaVision was such shit.Panel 5: Lydia leans over the counter, her elbow just a few inches from the coffee cup.
Lydia
You’re the one asking twenty dollars for it.Rule: Don’t be afraid to heighten dialogue in a thought bubble.
Comic Book Guy (Thinking)
I feel threatened by the presence of a woman because I’m extremely insecure about my sexual abilities, which is why I chose a profession where I lord my knowledge of G.I. Joe over other men who look exactly like me!
That’s what his facial expression said, at least.Panel 6: Jughead doesn’t look up from his book but raises an eyebrow as Comic Book Guy moves the coffee cup away from the edge.
Panel 7: Close-up on Lydia, wishing slow death upon Comic Book Guy.
Lydia
In this condition, it sells online for ten. If that.Panel 8: Comic Book Guy and his doppelgänger exchange a look.
Comic Book Guy
Then shop online.Panel 9: Jughead, without looking up, swipes his left arm across the counter.
Rule: When there’s a really exciting moment, build anticipation by slicing it up, forcing the reader to slow down.
Panel 10: Close-up on Jughead’s hand an inch from the coffee cup.
Panel 11: Even closer on a fingertip a centimeter from the cup.
Panel 12: The pad of Jughead’s finger is so close to the cup we can almost see the friction.
It’s maddening, right? It’s edging in art form.
And here’s the even wilder thing. I’m not even going to show you the moment when Hal’s hand hit the cup. Because it’s what’s not drawn on the page that makes comics so special. The space between the panels can represent a split second or a hundred years.Rule: Let the reader picture the most exciting moment in their own mind. Draw the momentafter.Panel 13: Comic Book Guy yells. His crotch is soaked with a dark coffee stain.
Comic Book Guy
FFUCKKKK!
Ten minutes later, Hal found me sitting at a sidewalk table at a coffee shop down the block.
“Feel free to apologize anytime for getting me fired,” he said, pulling out the chair opposite mine, even though I hadn’t invited him to join me. He dropped Camus onto the wobbly café table.
When he told me how little he was making at the comics store, I didn’t feel quite so bad.
“If anything, you should apologize to me for ruining the issue I was trying to buy.”
“There’s probably a hundred of those issues available on eBay.” Hal immediately annoyed and intrigued me—a highly charged combination for my overactive brain.
“There’s nothing more boring to me than buying comics online,” I said. “Collecting is a tactile hobby.”
“You prefer buying them from men with comb-overs who barely pay their employees minimum wage?”
“Only when the other guy behind the counter can’t be bothered to look up from his grad student starter pack,” I replied. A few minutes later, I would learn that Hal had moved to Columbus for the MFA program at Ohio State and dropped out a semester shy of graduation.
“Hey, I sacrificed a perfectly shitty cup of coffee for you.” He leaned in. “And I would’ve been open to negotiation on the price of that book.”
“Really?” I sensed I was being toyed with, but my in-person social skills atrophied during quarantine and this was the most exciting IRL encounter I’d had since I’d moved in with my mom.
“Hell, you could take Vision and the Scarlet Witch for free. It’s C-tier artwork at best. Why do you want it?”
“Magneto discovers that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are his children,” I said. “It was supposed to be a Father’s Day gift.”
“Right, world’s greatest dad,” he muttered. “See, we could’ve had this little debate in the store. I could have been a real professional and recommended something better. It’s a flirting tactic.”
“Actually, that’s called ‘negging’ and it’s extremely toxic.”
“Well, I didn’t get many opportunities to communicate with women at that place so I’m extremely rusty.” He looked me in the eye. I’d forgotten what that felt like.
“I’m Hal.”
“Sam.”
“Nice to meet you, Samantha.”I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. Columbus was a temporary pit stop on my way back to grad school and I intended to keep it that way.
“Don’t ask me out,” I said. “I don’t want any reasons to stay here.”
He never did.
Instead, I asked to go back to his apartment later that night.
It wasn’t because I thought we were about to embark on a magical romance. But with lockdowns and maintaining a six-foot bubble, it’d been so long since another person touched me. I was horny for something more than a few seconds of gratification courtesy of my own hand.
The first time was competent, from a mechanical standpoint. I think I was too nervous to really enjoy myself. But after I spent a second night on his floor futon, it felt like something genuinely clicked between us. I didn’t even have to fake orgasms and we’d stay up late having great conversations. The whole vibe was intimate—more than just a hookup.
But we never could have sustained a three-year relationship from just sex.
The more we got to know each other outside of the confines of Hal’s room, the more I craved all the intangibles of a relationship that seemed 90 percent there. The other 10 percent didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend; I’d been looking for Hal.
With my empty mornings and his habitual underemployment, we spent a lot of time together. We’d meet at a coffee shop because he’s the rare specimen who says he’s “writing his manuscript” and proceeds to actually write it, rather than browse websites, place expensive items into his cart, and then never check out. Which is a thing I definitely don’t do.
If you want to level up, you’re supposed to practice with someone who’s just above your rank. Since I spent so much of my life feeling like the smartest kid in the room, being with Hal felt like the best kind of challenge. The excitement of being around him elevated my days. I had something to look forward to all the time.
On good days it’s a benevolent elixir concocted by a Wiccan herbalist. Sometimes it’s a hex: a dangerous love potion that I gulped down without leaving a drop for the would-be object of my affection.
We never revised the status of our relationship after that first day. Even after I eased up on doing a full face of makeup before hanging out. Even after I received my final rejection email and Columbus became even less temporary.
Spending time with Hal took the edge off that disappointment.
We’ve followed the sexual trajectory of an official relationship: there are times when I sleep over and we just cuddle and fall asleep.
Then I helped Hal get a job at Lōkahi. I couldn’t escape him if I tried.
And I have tried.
It doesn’t take.
Hal and I watch blue-shirt-and-khakis take a long sip of his blueberry schnapps-infused Zombie. He puts the glass down. Frowns. Contemplates. His brow creases as he lets his date’s half of the conversation float through one ear and out the other. Hal and I watch his thought process like he’s loading animation on an app. Will he say something? Will he choke it down?
It’s the dumbest kind of mischief. And Hal only does it to people who are clearly being obnoxious to their dates. Maybe we’re bored and feel a little wronged by our circumstances. In a fair world, I wouldn’t have soul-crushing student loan debt, I’d just have the normal amount that I could reasonably pay off in, like, fifteen years. I’d be a teaching assistant for a contemporary art course. I’d be staying up until 3 a.m. working on my dissertation. Maybe Hal would’ve gotten a literary agent and a modest book deal. I guess we handle it by meting out tiny misfortunes to people who seem to deserve them. Together.
Hal’s hand brushes the back of my hand very lightly. I stifle a laugh.
Then blue-shirt-and-khakis takes a smaller sip. A look of resignation. Surrender.
We exchange a little smile and I continue to replenish the garnishes.
After work, Hal drives me to his place. We don’t discuss it, we don’t plan it. It’s just what happens.
He has the advantage of living in an apartment where his mother isn’t reading a Kristin Hannah book in the next room. I’ve never brought anyone back to the office to have noisy sex on the daybed. I can’t risk the ultimate mortification: a strange man walking in on Perry as they use their Waterpik in the apartment’s sole bathroom.
We sit on Hal’s couch with the light from his TV casting shadows over our faces. He’s wearing his glasses tonight and it’s like catnip to me. I like the way they frame his sleepy, half-closed eyes. Physically, we’re opposites. Hal has a lanky frame and slightly unruly light brown hair, while I’m short and medium-sized—all roundness and curves—with a dark, blunt bob.
“Oh come on,” I groan as he selects one of those channels that only plays episodes of Unsolved Mysteries from before we were born. The reenactments are especially hilarious when we’re not sober. “Is this what you put on when you’re trying to impress some hapless girl you’ve conned into coming back to your apartment?”
I do this sometimes. I poke at him just to see if it knocks loose a nugget of information he wouldn’t have revealed otherwise. For example, that maybe there has been a girl coming back here who doesn’t realize that Hal uses his cousin’s log-in on every streaming service.
“Since when are you ‘hapless’?” he replies.
That kind of answer is fine on the surface. But we’ve never officially promised not to hook up with other people; I don’t want to be the one to bring it up and push for something he has no reason to agree to.
I want Hal to bring it up. I want Hal to say—
Jughead
Hey.
On the couch in the dark living room, Jughead Jones turns to Lydia Deetz.
Jughead
We’re only sleeping with each other, right?
Lydia’s tiny red mouth turns up into a little smile.
Lydia
Oh, should I cancel the orgy I scheduled for tomorrow?
Jughead doesn’t laugh. He just looks Lydia in the eye for a few seconds.
He leans in.
An inch closer. The Unsolved Mysteries logo shines on their faces.
Lydia holds her breath.
Closer. Closer…
Maddening.
