Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

Jon, at work again, goes to Sarah's office where she's working at a computer station with the mainframe behind her. "Sarah," he says.

She looks up, disheveled - I didn't mean to make her that disheveled and I was going to fix it but it seems I didn't. "Jon, I'm sorry about what I said the other day!"

"Okay?" says Jon.

"I was so afraid I was going to say the wrong thing that I made it terribly worse!" Sarah cries. "I've always been an awkward person but I was trying really hard, I swear."

Jon stares at her. "I don't remember what you said."

"Oh," Sarah exclaims, smiling a little. "Is that true?"

"True enough for practical purposes. I need the template for the state tax reports."

"Of course!" Sarah says.

***

Sarah ended up being much more awkward than I'd intended, but I guess I was venting.

Jon is catching on. His instinct would be to snap at her, shut her out, and feel sorry for himself for being such a magnet for what he would consider to be people's worst treatment. He'd make it all about him, and mourn the loss of his former dude-bro self, when everyone stumbled all over themselves to impress him, and awkward people left him completely alone. He didn't even have to make any effort himself. He was a smart white boy, going places, and the only social skill he had to learn was to make occasional quips to remind his friends that he was in charge.

He still thinks of himself that way. Here, he's still controlling the narrative. Filing business taxes, bleah! I used to have to do that as an administrative assistant and it was fine; once I learned my way around the template, my accounting program sent it electronically. I doubt that Jon would be put in charge of that. Maybe someone else asked him to go get a copy of the template so he could learn. I'm not overthinking it.

But I've really wanted to showcase the difference between how Jon sees himself and how others struggle against their own prejudices to avoid getting him wrong, and then they still get him wrong. I feel like a couple of rewrites of this story arc wouldn't hurt, but oh well, I can't rewrite everything.