I’ve been editing the scans to take out things like the tack hole, and binding. I wanted to leave this in today to show this really was a physical calendar. The cover of the ’98 calendar is also significant because of an incident leading up to 1998.
Things had been pretty tough. The ’97 calendar was selling, but my debt was accumulating faster. I had gone from working in a framing shop to busing tables at the Sagebrush Bar and Grill in Culver City (yes, there was one in Culver City back then). I was busing tables, bar backing, and expediting because the pay was actually better than the framing shop, which didn’t say much. I was renting a room by USC, with buddies from the university. The shape of the house was something out of Fight Club, and my friend Scott really got where Fight Club was coming from.
I was seriously at the point of giving up on adult as a living.
Sunday mornings, we would go to The Pantry, a legendary dive in downtown owned by the mayor. This one morning in particular, someone had friends over from out of town. We gave them the tour, starting at The Pantry. I loaded up on many cups of coffee, and walked along, gazing at sites like the Bradbury Building and the Farmer’s Market.
Suddenly, those cups of coffee hit my bladder, and hit fucking hard in a land where public restrooms are as rare as plutonium and urinating in public is highly frowned upon by the brutal constabulary (did I mention the Rampart scandal broke not long after this?). So, I saw there was a California Pizza Kitchen at the top of a hill, by Angel’s Flight Railroad. There was no time to take the train up the steep hill, so I ran up the flight of stairs parallel to the world’s shortest train.
They quickly pointed me to their restrooms. I unzipped, and released. Static went across my vision. I heard friend’s voices in the kitchen of the house by USC. I turned on my bed, warm in the sun coming through the window…and woke up in a pool of blood on the California Pizza Kitchen restroom floor.
Apparently, there’s a nerve going from Mr. Spike to your heart, and when tweaked just right, say by pissing like a racehorse after running up the mother of all staircases, it stops your heart cold.
That’s right, I croaked. My heart stopped for a brief moment, just enough to pass out backwards and clobber my noggin on the tile floor. Thank god this wasn’t in a Carl’s Jr bathroom.
I was rushed to a nearby hospital, where my friends caught up with me, and brought my sketchpad. The 1998 cover was the femdom art I worked on that day at the hospital.
At that point, I felt that life was way too short and I had better get to making a name for myself again. I walked right into the Hustler Building in Beverly Hills and asked for a job at Rage magazine, LFP’s counterculture porn mag. I failed to get the gig. However, it renewed my zeal to make things better for myself.
April was a filler piece, but I really liked it. Not quite a kinky drawing. I created this on a Bart train one day. Someone saw me drawing it and asked if I’d draw them one like it. I was in a mood and said sure. I whipped the piece out in about 20 minutes and signed my name. I wonder if years from now, he’ll be at some art appraise place and they’ll go “Wow, you’ve got a Jay E. Moyes original! It’s worth thousands.” Well, I can still dream.
Dungeon Net
Hogspy
