Tyler Dorchester: Welcome, guys! Thanks for giving me this opportunity!
Henkl: Not like we had much choice. You’re holding the eraser.
Tyler: Get to it, then.
Henkl: I was wonderin’ how you do yer work? Y’have more ideas than you do the talent to pull them off from what I’ve seen.
Tyler: Umm … thanks? Well, the circumstances that led to this gig were pretty epic and a story in itself that I’d like to draw someday. The experience snapped my asparagus pretty good. Since then, most things appear somewhat ridiculous to me. Whether that’s funny or terrifying depends on the day you ask.
Thomas: Geez, that sounds pretty Zen.
Tyler: I spent about four months critically ill. When I pulled through, I thought it had left me fearless. Later, I realized I had also become acutely morbid. “Carpe diem” isn’t so much my motto as it is a Bludgeon of Guilt each time I fail to seize a day. Anyway, I didn’t gain a jot of talent, but the whole thing super-jazzed my creative impulse. I’m sorry — what was the question? I also recently found out I’m ADD …
Dex: Are you going to give the token lesbian a chance to ask a question?
Tyler: Sure, there you go. You’re welcome!
Ian: What’s been the most challenging and rewarding parts of this job, O Creator?
Henkl: Brown noser.
Tyler: Spending a shwack of money on the eye-popping, boner-inducing brotherhoodworld.com site and just getting a trickle of visitors is frustrating. It’s also sometimes tough to draw you six, especially since some of your original inspirations aren’t around anymore. Thomas is in Philly now, a firefighter. I miss him. The real Ian and I drifted apart, and though new friends and aspects of my own psyche step forward to fill empty shoes, I’ve always been really bad at endings.
Thomas: And th’ best part of th’ job?
Tyler: A guy in Australia cut out the episode where you contract HIV, Thomas, and put it on his fridge for his gay little brother to see. For a cartoonist, making it onto the fridge is like being hung in the Louvre. Once a guy at Palm Springs Leather Pride recognized me, too, so I got to fool my American friends into thinking I was a big deal in the gay cartooning world …
Myles: Which of us would you get down with, and why?
Myles (smacked by Ian): Ow! I mean, what’s next for you?
Tyler: I dunno. A frantic attempt to use my fading boyishness to find love, I guess.
Myles: I meant for the cartoon.
Tyler: Oh! Heh. I want to do a flashback to the days of your meth use so I can tell the addiction stories of a remarkable man who came out the other side. Also, Henkl uses his Sodomite Mind-Control Death-Ray on Ann Coulter, and I’m jacked to do a trip to two alternate futures: a dystopian theocracy and a sodomite utopia … or is it?
Peter: I can’t help noticing that you and I share the same physical and psychological features. We’re both short farm boys with blond beards whose love lives are a series of kicks to the balls that occur in a desert of desolation.
Tyler: Only my mustache is blond, Stranger! And wait, I forgot I have a boyfriend — see?
Peter: That’s a pumpkin with a hole cut into it … the hole appears to have been greased with hand lotion …
Tyler: Shut up. No more questions.
Why you can trust Xtra
