ROLLERBLADING COP COUPLE: Silkscreen Art, Sketch, and the Story Behind It

The story behind this image doesn't actually involve any police; it just felt that way.

What happened was this: I was walking along the path on Lakeshore Drive in Toronto, just after crossing the Jameson St. bridge. This was on a clear bright day in the summer of 2001 - there were lots of people out enjoying the sun, and I was in a good mood, happy to be out in the fresh air and warm sunshine.

As I came off the bridge and made my way onto the path, I noticed a roller blading couple, rolling along the path while holding hands. They were both dressed up in spandex and wearing mirror shades, heading up the path towards me. At first I thought nothing of it, but as they began to approach I realized that they were going to pass on either side of me, and it became increasingly apparent that they weren't going to release the grip that they had on each other's hands. In other words, they were going to clothesline me.

It was a long time ago so I don't quite remember what my reaction was, but I'm pretty sure I did manage to call out something - probably "Hey!" - before the couple reached me. As they passed on either side I started to duck, but by the time I'd ducked about halfway I thought to myself: "No, dammit. I shouldn't have to give up like that."

And so I held up my forearm and chopped forward with it - breaking their grip on each other's hands as they passed by.

I immediately turned around to see their reaction, and there definitely was one. The girl hollered her outrage and the guy started to circle back towards me, joining in with his girlfriend on the verbal abuse. Now I don't remember exactly what was said but their basic thing was that a loser like me had no right to break their bond. I remember saying something about how they could have lifted their hands over me and then the girl told me I wasn't royalty - which did bring to mind a pretty funny image of them feting me with this roller blading arch.

The dude kept circling closer. I said that I wasn't royalty but I am made out of solid matter, and no matter how much you might want to you can't just go through me; it's a basic law of physics. That brought a laugh from the girl and then the guy took that as permission to back down, and so off they went, rolling along their douchy way.

I finished my walk and tried not to let this debacle ruin my day, but after I got home it was still eating away at me and so I got out my sketchbook and whipped off this sketch.

The image just came to me immediately and I think what was going on was the notion of how sometimes two people in love can behave in very fascistic ways. I know that doesn't technically fit the term - psychopathic would be more appropriate - but in any event they seemed to believe that their love (or whatever it was) gave them some kind of authority over me.

Later I turned it into the silkscreen drawing that you can see at the top of this page. This was in fact the inside back cover of my minicomic, Retarded Art #3. (there's some sort of weird blog out there nowadays that calls itself Retarded Art, and that's got nothing to do with me)

Another thing that I often wonder about is what would have happened if the guy had decided to fight me. How do you fight someone while wearing roller blades? Flying roller blade dropkick? I'd like to see that.

No really, I'd like to see that.

Writing and images by Greg McCann, the author of this post and owner of this Steemit Channel. To view more of my work, please visit www.fireawaymarmot.com.