“There Might Be Something Wrong With My Penis.” 7/26/14. Acrylic paint. 8×10″.
I went to the VD clinic yesterday ‘cause I thought there was something wrong with me. I suspected that I might have been a bit hypochondriacal but – sure enough – there was something wrong. To quote the doctor’s precise and horrifying diagnosis, I was suffering from “a minor skin irritation.”
So that’s good news but it doesn’t end there. While I was sitting in the waiting room, I got to watch an educational video in which a cartoon penis rolled a condom over his body and then proceeded to lube himself up. I swear to god, I’m not fucking with you. This exists. Giant cartoon condom – rolls a condom over his body – and then covers himself with lube.
I made this painting over a year ago, in a state of sheer terror, while waiting for test results. Being back at a clinic yesterday, I remembered that I had never put it online.
Early in 2014, I sold some art to a girl named Rachel Rabinowitz in Delray Beach, FL. She emailed me later and told me that she was an artist too and that I should hit her up if I was ever in Asheville. Later that year, while in Asheville, Chris Spillane and I met her for coffee. She asked if I’d be interested in collaborating and I told her that she could paint something and then I could paint something over it. (That’s the only way I know how to collaborate; I had done it twice before with my buddy, William Somma, on “Limp” and “Yo – I Painted a Fuckin’ Unicorn“). Here’s what the canvas looked like when she gave it to me:
The pre-Sammy version of “There Might Be Something Wrong With My Penis.” Painted in June 2014 by Rachel Rabinowitz, who probably didn’t realize I’d later use the canvas to work through STD test anxiety (but was a very good sport about it).
While my initial reaction to this story was the same as everyone else’s (and while I know that the price has since been rolled back, making this whole thing somewhat irrelevant), I have a couple thoughts…
How many people suffering from toxoplasmosis (which – my understanding – is mostly AIDS and cancer patients) are actually paying medical expenses out of pocket? Wouldn’t a price hike like this really just be sticking it to insurance companies and Medicaid/Medicare? Would anyone seeking treatment at a hospital actually be refused Daraprim on account of an inability to pay? (My experience with hospitals has always been that I’m given everything I need and then I get an insanely high bill that I just throw in the trash). And while I can’t find the article today (because there are about ten thousand of them now) I’m pretty sure that I read an article yesterday in which the representative of some hospital stated that they had already been in touch with Turing and received assurance that they’d be able to continue receiving low-cost Daraprim for low-income patients.
So – like I said – I don’t really have any idea what I’m talking about here. I could be totally wrong about all of this and maybe Martin Shkreli is a monster and Turing is the most evil corporation on the face of the earth. With that being said, as someone who was recently the target of self-righteous assholes all across the internet (who – in my case – really had no idea what they were talking about), I can’t help but feel a kind of empathy for Martin Shkreli and relate to what he’s going through right now.
I realize that writing even a qualified show of support for “the most hated man in America” right now is probably not the best PR move I can make but I still pride myself on being an open book and being totally honest and transparent about everything on my mind so… I don’t know – I just wish people would be a little more hesitant / thoughtful before they make someone the target of all of their anger and hate.
For the record, regardless of all the things I don’t know about or understand, I support the rollback of Daraprim’s price. Regardless of who’s footing the bill, I think that all medication should be priced as low as is economically feasible. And if it turns out that I have even less of a clue than I thought and that this price-hike would have hurt people… just know that I’m speaking from a desire for all people to be happy and healthy and treated with the same respect that I think we all deserve. This post is not in support of the price hike, it’s just a call for reason and kindness.
I don’t know what’s in Martin Shkreli’s heart but I do know that he’s a human being and that hatred is never productive.
“I Could Never Love Anyone More Than i Hate Myself .” 4/30/15. Acrylic paint. 36×36″.
For as much as I talk and write about Wallis, I’ve never really shared the full story of how we first came together. I’ll save the cute elements of the story for later and just give you the important part that hasn’t seemed relevant until now.
When I met Wallis, she was actively addicted to heroin. She was trying to not be on heroin but (like most addicts) she was finding that to be a little tougher than she could handle. We hit it off really quickly but I told her on our very first night together that I couldn’t be around that sort of thing. I told her that if she wanted to continue spending time with me, she couldn’t be using drugs. (I’m way too fucking fragile to not relapse if a pretty girl has a needle and a bag of dope to share with me). She told me she didn’t wanna use. I invited her to go with me on a road trip for a week – up to Illinois and back. In the course of that trip, we fell in love. Which was a problem because it meant we needed to figure out what we were gonna do to keep her from going back to heroin once we got back to Jacksonville. We decided that she’d need to quit the strip club and get another job (nobody can stay off drugs in that environment – no addict anyway). I told her I’d cover her ’til she got a new job and then – when it was time for me to leave Jacksonville – she’d quit her new job and come with me. Sound familiar? I did for Wallis the same thing I had done for my best friend, Chris, a year prior. I brought her out on the road with me to keep her off drugs. To show her another kind of life. Like Chris had done, in exchange for “all expenses paid” she’d just help me with my set-up, selling art, whatever. (And like Chris, it pretty much worked. She never used once; not while traveling with me anyway).
When we left Jacksonville, it was for Minneapolis, where I was to be featured in a gallery exhibit. Halfway through the exhibition’s run, we returned to Jacksonville for a week, so I could bank at One Spark. On the drive down, Wallis started talking about going to see old friends – friends that she had, historically, used drugs with. I told her that this was a terrible idea. She argued that I needed to have faith in her. I responded that I’d heard that same exact sentence and had this same exact conversation many, many times in the past (with another girl) and that I knew perfectly well how this was gonna end. I told her that if she wasn’t willing to forego the reunion (and the inevitable relapse that’d come with it) that I couldn’t be her boyfriend anymore. One Spark was going to be an incredibly important week for me financially and I didn’t wanna fuck it up by spending the whole time worried about whether Wallis was safe. She said okay (as in okay, then you don’t need to be my boyfriend anymore). There was no hostility or drama beyond that but when we got to Jacksonville, we went our separate ways. Wallis relapsed that very first night (thought she wouldn’t tell me until later), but called me the next morning and spent the rest of the week by my side like a lost puppy. On the night before I was to return to Minneapolis, she broke down crying, told me she had fucked up, and that she still wanted to be with me.
I first had the thought years and years ago, upon hearing Rivethead’s “In My Heart a Warehouse Burns For You.” The last lyric in the song is “I love you just as much as I hate the man.” I’m not exactly the biggest fan of cops or authority figures of any kind but when I’m really fired up and full of hate, there’s only one target it’s ever directed at: me. I still listen to that record (The Cheap Wine of Youth) all the time so the idea of captioning a painting with “I love you just as much as I hate myself” had occurred to me on a couple occasions but I didn’t wanna be derivative. Then, when I bought Pretty Boy Thorson’s An Uneasy Peace (the final song of which is called “I Love You Even More Than I Hate Myself”) I had a bit of a god dammit moment. That should’ve been mine! The song’s awesome and it doesn’t matter that the lyric is similar to another. I started thinking about it though – that line – and whether or not it was actually true (for me). I was dating Wallis and I absolutely loved her but did I love her more than I hated myself? I wasn’t really sure. I decided that sometimes I’m afraid that I could never love anyone more than I hate myself. After all, we had weathered the storm of her relapse but I was sabotaging our relationship bit by bit with my low self-esteem. I wrote about some of that anxiety in the bottom-right corner of the painting:
It’s so much harder to travel with a second person. Staying with friends feels like a much bigger imposition and I can’t stay with girls I meet. That’s probably the hardest part. But I love Wallis. (And I really like fucking her). And I think she needs me. I tried to leave her in Jacksonville but it didn’t work out. I hope she’s with me because she really loves me and not just ‘cause she’s scared to go back to “real life.” It if doesn’t work out, it’s probably gonna be because I can’t stop thinking about fucking other girls, which I know hurts her (and is really so selfish and dumb - and even mean - on my part) but really has nothing to do with her. (She’s so fucking hot and sexy and cute and beautiful). It’s just my insecurity and my compulsion to fuck every pretty girl, to prove to the world (and myself) just how fucking wonderful and desirable I am. It’s not helping that girls are throwing themselves at me these days. But I know (or think) that shit won’t make me happy. And in the end, I’m just gonna want someone to love me and I love Wallis.
There’s another, shorter string of text higher up in the painting, similarly inspired by punk rock: “I was listening to that Gateway District song where they sing, ‘I’m always falling way behind and you go on and on and on.’ If only I knew someone like that. Maybe I’d have someone to look to. Everybody I know is struggling. Everyone I know is as hopeless as I am. (Or worse).”
There’s a brighter, happier pair of sentences in the top-left corner – the product of a moment when everything was right in the world. Amazing sex with Wallis and I’m driving to the gallery showcasing my art while listening to “Another Way Out of Here” by The Murderburgers. The thought occurred to me that “nothing in this world makes me happier than an energetic, upbeat song about suicide.” I gave it a second thought. Is that true?I concluded, “Except (maybe) hitting girls in the face during sex.” I smiled. That’s pretty funny. I’m pretty fucked up. The things that I enjoy are – well – a little odd. This was all well and good at the time. I posted a close-up of that part of the painting online and it was met with positive feedback and just a little bit of “Oh, Sam…” But before I even got the chance to write the statement for this painting (as I am now), that photograph – that caption – would make the rounds on the internet elsewhere and garner a very different kind of response. You see, when I wrote that, it was about sex with Wallis. Sex which includes light consensual fake-violence (or whatever the fuck you wanna call it). Wallis likes getting slapped in the face during sex. And I like doing it. Win-win, right? Well, yeah – until you get accused of a violent rape and the media picks up on the story and uses your art to support the idea that you’re the kind of person capable of violently raping a nineteen year-old girl you just met. Sitting in jail, I wondered how I was going to break the news to my friends and fans that I had been accused of this horrible fucking crime. I bailed out, Chris Spillane picked me up, and after ten minutes of discussion he tells me, “There’s one more thing we’ve gotta talk about, Sam. The publicity on this story is not good right now.” Publicity? This story? “What the fuck are you talking about?” I googled my name and discovered that I didn’t need to worry about breaking this news to anyone. Some reporter knew or figured out who I was, wrote an article about me complete with images of my art (like the “hitting girls in the face” one) and everyone else picked it up and ran with it. Suddenly, strangers on the internet were talking about how I was the kind of person who PUNCHES girls in the face. I was a scumbag and I was definitely guilty. What the fuck? I’ve never punched a girl in the face! I slap! Playfully! And only with girls that WANT me to! But none of that mattered. What mattered was that it was incredibly easy to paint me as some kind of violent sexual deviant who had finally gone off the rails and just started violently raping people. Freedom of expression has its fucking consequences apparently. The charges against me have since been dismissed by a judge who (after hearing all of the prosecution’s evidence and the girl’s testimony) ruled that there was no probable cause to believe that any crime had been committed but the evidence in the case isn’t all public yet and I’m still having to deal with (well-meaning) assholes who think I deserve to be castrated for something I never did. At the time of this writing, this is all still incredibly recent so I’m still working out exactly how a person does deal with something like that. (I’ll let you know when I figure it out).
Flashback to five months before that nightmare though – back to when I was still working on this painting (that’d later incriminate me in the court of public opinion). I wrote that I was feeling “stuck in a rut. This spot [on the street] isn’t super profitable [for selling prints]. I don’t even wanna write about what else is going on. I don’t want to muddle up this painting that I’m not even happy with. My little sister is killing herself and today I blocked her phone number because I’m tired of her asking for help, not taking my advice, and then texting me updates on her self-destruction that she knows will just upset me. I really need the validation of some sales to cheer me up today. If I make less than $100 today, I’m gonna feel super depressed.” And then – to remind myself what a dipshit I am for worrying about how much I make in one particular day, I added: “I’ve made $7,000 this month.” True as it was, it didn’t really help me feel any better in that moment. I continued writing – about an interaction I had with a guy who stopped to watch me paint: “Someone asked me yesterday if I really hate myself and why. I had a hard time articulating it [the way that I feel sometimes]. He said he thinks I’m not as unhappy as I let on. I’d do a much better job explaining it to him today: I’M UGLY, PALE, OUTTA SHAPE, MEAN, SHITTY, POOR, FEARFUL, AND IN A CONSTANT STATE OF STARVATION FOR VALIDATION.”
Reading that now, remembering that day – it’s kinda scary. Everything in my life was going so well and I still had this monster inside me, gnawing at my insides, telling me that everything was awful. That I was awful. I’m really grateful that I don’t feel that way about myself all the time. Arguably, my life is way more fucked up now (on account of the VIOLENT RAPE ACCUSATION) but – I don’t know – I feel better today. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to fight this awful thing. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to become stronger. Maybe it’s because enough other people hate me now that I can take a break on the self-loathing. I don’t know. I’m not sure. But after separating in late-June and spending two months mostly apart, Wallis and I are back together full-time. We’re living together in an apartment in Chicago and it’s been really great. And you know what? I love her WAY more than I hate myself. Not just ‘cause I’m not hating myself so much right now but… This girl… After all we’ve been through. After all I’ve done for her and all she’s done for me… Words are insufficient to express my gratitude, affection, and love for her. I’m probably gonna marry her.
And you know what? When it comes to “falling way behind” versus “going on and on and on,” maybe I do a little more of the latter than I allow myself to recognize sometimes. Maybe I do a lot more of it.
HAPPY ENDING.
“I Love You Even More” by Pretty Boy Thorson & The Falling Angels
“Another Way Out of Here” by The Murderburgers
“Waves and Cars” by The Gateway District
“In My Heart a Warehouse Burns For You” by Rivethead
Yesterday was my first appearance in court since my bond hearing. The judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to establish probable cause (to believe that a crime was committed). As such, the charges against me were dismissed.
There were a lot of reasons behind the judge’s rationale and (unfortunately) the reporters that covered the hearing failed to note most of them in their articles. I was hoping to get my hands on all of the evidence from the case and share it publicly, here, through my website. I want very badly to clear my name. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that I cannot do as I had planned. Because the state could supersede the court’s ruling yesterday (with a grand jury indictment) this is still (technically) an open/ongoing case.
So – as much as I want to run my mouth, tell the whole story, share all of the evidence – for the time being, I have to continue holding my tongue when it comes to that night.
I will however be getting back to creating art and writing. I’m currently working on a book. I have a painting in-progress. And I’ll soon be sharing new work completed before this whole ordeal started. (I didn’t get much done post-arrest, save for some writing that – as noted – I’m unable to share for the time being).
This has been one of the most emotionally painful experiences of my life. It’s second only to the final (worst) years of my heroin addiction (2011-2013). The media’s coverage of this event shattered my reputation. The punk community has been especially awful in their reaction. (Not the people in the punk community who actually know me and know that I’m not capable of committing such an awful crime but the random internet commenters who feed off of shit and negativity and never actually contribute to our scene). If any of you are reading this: you’re a bad fucking person.
It’s been very difficult as late to focus on the positive things in my life but there are many. Before I was arrested (which was the same day I found out about the accusation against me) Wallis came to New York to spend a week with me. As soon as we saw each other again, we knew we didn’t want to be apart anymore and we resolved to work out the logistics of getting back together. It was just three days after her visit ended that I was arrested but as soon as she found out about the charges against me, she hopped on a plane and moved up to Chicago to be with me. We have an apartment here now and (even though I’m legally free to leave the area at this point) we have a lease and will probably be trying our hands at having a relatively “normal” / stable kind of life for a little while. She’s been a wonderful source of support and I love her very much.
Similarly, in stark contrast to the anonymous know-nothing dipshits that frequent the internet, there have been countless friends, fans, and loved ones that have reached out and lent support of all kinds ever since this started. Whether it was financial help with legal fees, helping me find an apartment, making sure I ate or slept, or just a kind word or two, these people made all the difference in keeping me relatively sane and stable this last month. When that first batch of articles came out (branding me as a rapist) I didn’t know if this was worth the fight. At times, I wanted very much to die. But I didn’t want to go out before my name was clear. I didn’t want people to interpret my suicide as an indication of guilt. So I held strong and kept my head up. If it weren’t for those of you that were there for me, I don’t think I would have survived. In fact, I’m almost certain that I wouldn’t have. Thank you. I got a lot of anonymous hate mail when those news stories broke. A lot of strangers threatening me or wishing terrible things upon me. I’m happy to report that love won out over hate.
There’s still so much that I want to say but – for now – I think I’d better wrap it up. Here’s a picture of Wallis and I outside the courtroom after the judge’s ruling. I wasn’t quite ready for the picture to be taken and am mid-blink but that’s okay. You guys know what I look like when my eyes are open, right?
