“Everything Sucks When I’m Out of Adderall.” 3/23/13. Watercolor, pen, marker, and acrylic on 140 lb cold pressed paper. 9×12″.
I don’t believe that drugs are always bad. Even drugs like heroin. I think drug use is a problem when it starts to cause problems. If you’re able to use heroin recreationally, sporadically: congratulations! Have at it! If it’s not draining your bank account, if you don’t ever develop a physical dependence, if your use isn’t destroying your personal relationships – well, I say, shoot up to your little heart’s content.
I did that for a while… Five and a half years. I can’t seem to pull that trick anymore though so – for me – the party’s over. I don’t take any drugs these days. Except for Adderall. Every day. Do I have attention deficit disorder? Um… yeah – sure, probably. [Whatever that means]. What’s important though is that it helps me; I do well with it.
Until I run out. In March, there was a hiccup in getting my prescription. [Adderall is controlled to the extent that a doctor needs to write a new prescription every single month]. I had been getting it from the doctor at Tranquil Shores, but I wasn’t in Tranquil Shores anymore. And once I actually run out, it gets even harder to get my prescription. I’m pretty debilitated by its absence in my system. (I’ve been on it for almost ten years). So I had been out for at least a few days and I was struggling to get out of bed or even move. If I’m being honest, part of this is probably psychological but – if that is the case – it’s a tough fucking psychological hurdle to overcome. I feel thoroughly drained.
I dragged myself to the edge of the mattress so I could reach at my backpack on the floor. And I stayed in that position (hanging off the side of the bed) painting or – more accurately -just swiping at the paper. Raising my arm and letting it fall. I wanted to be productive, I wanted to create, but I just didn’t have it in me. Eventually I found the strength to lift myself back onto the mattress and finish the piece with my pen.
You know – having written this all out – I come across as way more pathetic than I’d intended.
The caption says, “I remember when I had ideas. I remember when I had Adderall.”
I went to play my “Don’t Take My Clone” single this morning and found that it had mysteriously vanished. That’s a bummer but rather than get all sad, let’s spin it into something cool.
Originally, I was going to write my list of THE FIVE GREATEST POP (PUNK) SINGLES OF ALL TIME. But that’s a little tough and I’m struggling with the parameters. For example, the song “West Side Highway” by Pinhead Gunpowder is as good as it gets but is that record one of the greatest singles of all time? A single is usually just two songs and that 7-inch has three (one of which is even on Side-A!) Furthermore, those other two songs… not that great. Now, if there had just been one other song and it was on Side-B, well, that’d be another story. (If the “single” on “the single” is good enough, Side-B can be fucking empty for all I care). But [whatever]. Got an idea of the parameters we’re working with? Cool, let’s go.
HUNCHBACK – Werse Houses b/w Beautiful
The best song in Hunchback’s catalog is the fucking creepy-crawliest, haunted, spooky song I’ve ever heard. From the opening bass riff and screeching keys to the way Mike stumbles and stutters through every word, this song is the musical manifestation of mental illness. In the midst of his refrain (“just let me taste it“) he breaks to ask “Will you please play my mommy? I’ll play your little boy. I’ll be your little man if you could just play my mommy… [voice trails off].” The whispers, the screams – it’s all so fucking perfect. As for the spelling of the title – I don’t know what they had in mind – but stupidity is scary. You can’t reason with stupidity. Fuck The Monster Mash – this is the Halloween song so far as I’m concerned.
On Side-B, we’ve got Beautiful, which I’ve been told is Christina Aguleira’s anthem for gay teens or fat teens or [some group of] teens. Personally, a song with so simple an affirmation (“I am beautiful“) wouldn’t have made a shit bit of difference in making me feel any better about myself as a kid, but if someone else was comforted by it: cool. In any case, this “reimagining” is pretty disturbed and isn’t at all “beautiful. If anything, it’s ugly (in the best way possible). A little kid’s voice – cute in some other context but buried just a little bit in the mix behind a piano and some humming – is anything but cute. It’s got the same dark/scary vibe as Werse Houses but isn’t quite as strong – which makes it the perfect b-side.
Riverboat Gamblers – Keep Me From Drinking b/w No Fair
Being on a “bigger” label is weird – on the one hand – when To the Confusion of Our Enemies came out, Riverboat Gamblers got a bunch of attention from Spin and Rolling Stone and other shitty mainstream press. On the other, fucking nobody even knows that this non-album single even exists. Volcom has no connection with any of the labels and distros that carry stuff like this, so probably the only place to grab a copy (other than at RbG’s shows) was at stores like Hot Topic or Best Buy. [Does Best Buy carry vinyl?]
These songs were recorded in the same sessions as To the Confusion of Our Enemies but were left off the record, which is kind of funny since the re-recorded version of Keep Me From Drinking is one of the strongest songs on the band’s next record, Underneath the Owl. (Even if that version does sound like the band recorded in a nursing home with seniors screaming at them, “No, no, no! Play it right! Too noisy!”) Anyway, this version sounds rough and raw and awesome. A great song about the way we live and crossing that bridge when we come to it; tomorrow’s consequences aren’t ’til tomorrow – and tomorrow’s like… almost a whole day from now!
No Fair could have also been a standout track on Underneath the Owl. It’s not quite as special as Keep Me, but it’s got the right energy and attitude for dancing to in the hallway as you watch your girlfriend poop. What?
Let’s make this a TO BE CONTINUED. Nobody really wants to read this many words from me all at once, do they?
(Uploaded this myself and dumped a bunch of random images of my art into iMovie; figured it’d be more entertaining than four minutes of the album cover).
“Greetings From Delray Beach.” 10/8/13. Pencil, marker, digital. 10×13½”.
I started offering t-shirts with my artwork on them recently. Originally, the plan was just to offer shirts featuring my simpler cartoons, but I decided that there was no reason not to open it up to include my paintings as well. Since some of my more expressive paintings though can’t exactly be transferred to a shirt, the plan was that if someone wanted to buy a shirt like that, I would “adapt” the piece for the shirt (just as I had with “Merry Christmas 2K12”).
My friend, Ren, had said she wanted a shirt and when I posted my newest painting the other night: “That’s what I want!”
I wasn’t 100% certain she was even talking about the shirt, but I was immediately excited. I love that painting and the story behind it but – as soon as I saw her comment – I realized that its caption could also be the basis for a really cool cartoon.
The original painting.I finished sketching out the cartoon “adaptation” late last night.
As soon as I woke up, I inked and colored it.
At that point though, I was suddenly not so excited. The problem was that I had wanted it to be as big as possible (for the sake of the t-shirt) but now – looking at it – it felt like two separate imaged stacked on top of one another. But – after scanning it into the computer and playing with the layout – I’m really happy with the finished product. Thanks, Ren!
Aside: I feel a little funny about there being so many “products” related to this piece but it’s not like I’m not making the stuff that I want to make. My life costs between six and eight thousand dollars per year. I’m pretty excited that I haven’t had to get a regular job in order to pay for it yet.
—–
Update (same day): “Welcome to Delray Beach” is now “Greetings from Delray Beach.” Makes more sense to change it for this piece.
It was Friday so I drove up to Tranquil Shores for my session with Tracy and my weekly expressive art group with the kids that were still inpatients. Earlier that week, I had found an apartment in Jacksonville. When I told Tracy, she was really surprised. (I had been talking about moving, but it was just a few days prior that I actually started looking for a place, so it all happened really quickly). “Seriously?” she asked me. “Well, let me get the papers for your discharge.”
Somehow that hadn’t occurred to me: that moving away would mean I’d be officially discharged from Tranquil Shores. My life was about to change and it was just now registering. It made me sad. It even made me a little angry, though I’m not sure with whom. (Probably myself). It was a really great afternoon; everyone at Tranquil Shores couldn’t have been sweeter to me or more supportive. But… I didn’t wanna leave. I didn’t want it to be over and I guess I was as caught off-guard as Tracy had been.
After my session, I went into the art room for group. I felt good overall, but had that little streak of darkness in me. I got an idea in my head of a sorta vulture and I liked it. I wanted to draw something that lived off dead flesh – something sustained by failure.
But still sorta comic and fun.
—–
(Especially relevant) status update: Heather’s friends are getting married in Englewood next weekend, so I won’t be too far from Tranquil Shores. On Friday, I’m going to drive up that way and meet up with a crew of kids I went to treatment with for lunch, and then I’m gonna go in for the expressive art group just like I used to. I’ve been really excited about it but am getting more nervous as it gets closer. It’s gonna be a totally new crop of kids. I’ll still know all the staff obviously, but it seems kinda strange to go to group with a bunch of patients I’ve never met before. I hope I don’t wimp out. I hope it goes well.
“The Island in Pinocchio Where Bad Kids Go to Be Bad.” 10/5/13. Acrylic and watercolor paint, food coloring, resin sand, and pen. 16×20″ stretched canvas.
Delray Beach has more rehabs, halfway houses, and treatment institutions (of all kinds) than any other city. It’s the so-called “recovery capital of the world,” which – by default – also makes it the relapse capital of the world. While plenty go to Delray and get better, just as many go and get much, much worse. The streets of Delray are swarmed with young, drug-addled fuck-ups from all parts of the country, which is why I love to joke that it’s the real world correlate of the island in Pinocchio where bad kids go to be bad. I got to town the night of January 20, 2012 and met her the very next day.
But fast forward to the last time I ever saw her: August 1, 2012, when we left the St. Louis airport on separate planes. She flew to Minneapolis to check into her fifth rehab and I flew back to Miami to collect some things. When I wound up in rehab myself (just sixteen days later) I didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again. As was evident in the journal entries I wrote during my first weekend at Tranquil Shores, I was confused. I thought about her a lot but did I love her? I argued the point both ways with myself. Tranquil Shores allowed me limited use of my cell phone after a time and (while her facility didn’t) she managed to get a prepaid phone smuggled in. I was making big strides in my treatment and trying to play by the rules and I encouraged her to do the same. I told her our relationship was distracting both of us from our treatment. She disagreed and took offense. Our phone calls got to be less frequent, shorter, and more argumentative. When I found myself getting wrapped up in other girls and starting to recognize the full extent of my codependency, I decided that my relationship with her had been more of the same. We had been close enough that I – of course – cared about and loved her, but I decided that it wasn’t a romantic love and that we had only been drawn together by shared emotional defects.
On April 21, 2013, I had eight months clean and she was checking into rehab for the seventh time. I wrote her a letter and shared all the things I had done differently in my last round of treatment that I thought had finally made it count. I also explained our relationship to her: how we hadn’t really been in love but just had a kind of survivor’s bond from running the streets of south Florida for five months after being kicked out of treatment. She didn’t get the letter but saw it on her way out the door. (Her counselor tried to use it as a bargaining chip to get her to stay but to no avail). She left and called me. I was frustrated that she had walked out and I was tired of trying to help when she didn’t seem willing to help herself. Why the fuck would she leave treatment again? By even taking her phone calls and trying to be supportive whenever she’d put herself in situations like this, I was enabling her continued decline. My counselor advised that I set a boundary and I did. “Until you have three months clean, we can’t talk.”
A few weeks ago, I got a text message. Five months after I had set the boundary, she had her three months. Or so she said. I had my doubts but I decided to take her word for it and I’d like to believe that it’s the truth. I told her she could call and she did. She was initially combative (there were some resentments a full year in the making) but the conversation lightened as time passed and, ninety minutes in, she said she had something she needed to tell me. She thanked me and said she couldn’t imagine what might have happened to her had I not stuck with her when we were put out on the street. She said that I was exactly the person she needed at that point in her life and that – being just a little bit older, wiser, and more experienced – I had saved her from who-knows-what terrible fate. And she said that she wouldn’t be the person she is today had it not been for my presence and influence, which had proven to be both tremendous and positive.
My kneejerk (internal) reaction was that I was a piece of shit and that we had been nothing but bad for each other – that we had kept each other sick. I put that aside for the moment as she continued to speak. I was sort of dumbstruck by what I was hearing. These were not the kinds of words I’d expect from her. She had always been boastful, independent, and above everything. Nothing could touch her; nothing could shake her. Nobody could teachher anything because she already knew everything. That was the girl as I remembered her. Her words forced me to remember another girl though: a side of her that I hadn’t seen or thought of in a long time. In an instant, I realized that I was wrong to assume that I knew her mind better than she did; I was wrong to tell her that she hadn’t really been in love with me. I had impacted her life in ways that I had never really considered (or had at least forgotten about). She always played so tough and, even though I knew it was just a wall she used to protect herself, I had forgotten that the wall wasn’t so thick as to actually keep anything from ever making it through.
After we hung up, I thought about the reaction I had stowed after being floored and humbled by the impact of her words. I remembered something that I had told myself over and over in those days: that I had to stay with her because – as bad as things might have been with me – I knew that they’d be far worse without me. At the time, I thought I could actually save her (save both of us) and that we could get well together. While I was absolutely wrong on that point, I really did look out for her and things really would have been far worse for her had I not been there. That part was true. For everything that I had done wrong, I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) discount the good that I had done as well.
—–
Before we hung up that night, she also commissioned me to paint something for her. I’ve been working on it, off and on, ever since but I finally finished it last night. In making it, I reflected on our relationship, which now spans twenty months. Three incidents came to mind that struck me as being particularly significant. I journaled about them directly on the canvas but it’s so layered that most of my words were washed away by watercolors or obscured by acrylics or food coloring.
The first incident was a night I had forgotten about – a time when the question of our love’s authenticity was nowhere near my mind. It was late at night, storming, and we were parked in the lot at the treatment facility that had kicked us out a month prior. [The treatment center and patient residence were separate properties, so the building was empty; it was a place to park that we knew cops wouldn’t come around]. We were in the backseat, fooling around, and had stripped down to nothing. Then – at some point, for whatever reason – we got out of the car, totally naked and in spite of the sheets of rain that were slamming down on top of us. Standing upright, in that parking lot, in the middle of that storm, we had sex. If that sounds dirty or cheap or vulgar, it wasn’t. We may have been living like homeless, scummy, junkie street urchins – and maybe wewere – but in that moment we were young, in love, and free – invincible.I felt like I had an amazing secret that the rest of the world would never know or understand. It was beautiful. I thought so then and – in that way – I still do.
The second was the day we ripped off a drug dealer and almost got ourselves killed. In anticipation of this entry’s length, I went ahead and wrote out that story two days ago in a separate entry. It’s a very different anecdote and has nothing to do with love or freedom; it’s just sad and desperate.
The third incident (and the only one of which my journals of are still somewhat visible on the canvas) was the recent phone call itself. It forced me, for the first time, to really look at and question the narrative I had constructed to explain (and discount) our relationship. Not only did she remind me that night that I don’t have things quite as figured out as I sometimes like to think, but also that truth is relative to the individual. I hate it when people try to tell me what I’m feeling and I was doing exactly that to her. I thought I was so reflective and enlightened when, in reality, I was being thoughtless, arrogant, and invalidating. Who was I to say that she wasn’t/had never been truly in love with me? Besides, what the fuck does that even mean? To be in love with someone. I think I know but does anyone ever really?
Maybe I was in love (and maybe I wasn’t). Whatever it was, I’m grateful for it – the good memories and the bad.
“Spoiler Alert.” 11/3/12. Watercolor and colored pencil. 12×18″.
Alexis was planning on moving back into her parents’ house when she got out of treatment. She had the option of moving in with her grandmother, but didn’t want to for reasons she’d never really explained to me. When I’d try to talk to her seriously about why it was so dangerous for her to move back “home,” she’d use her little-girl voice, make puppy eyes at me, and say things like “But I wannnnnnna.” It was frustrating. I cared about her. If she moved back into that house, she’d be living with her sister, who I had also been in rehab with. And unlike this girl, her sister had never shown any interest (that I’d been able to pick up on anyway) in getting clean and getting her life together. Alexis was different. She had the potential to do really great things with her life really soon. Her insistence on moving “home” was the only indication that was wasn’t 100% set on really living. On being better.
“If you move back home, you know how that story ends.” She looked at me with a mock I-haven’t-the-faintest-idea expression. “No? Can I ruin the ending for you? You fall back into it, violate your probation, and go to jail.” She shrugged me off and kept trying to be cute. It was still more than a month down the road and – shit – she was pretty good at being cute. I gave in, laughed, told her we’d “revisit the subject.”
As time passed, I’d continue to let her know that I cared and try to lead her in a better direction but – ultimately – I knew I had to accept that it wasn’t something I could control and do my best to not stress out about it.
In the end, she moved back home and fell off, just as anyone could have predicted…
And now, she lives behind bars and gets to be a cautionary tale on my fucking website.
Which is so stupid and tragic and… insignificant.
I don’t know. It is and it isn’t – and it’s [whatever] to [whoever]. You try and make sense of the world… I’m just gonna stick with the comfortable little philosophy I’ve developed. Or maybe I’m just gonna elect not to think about it.
—–
She and I used to sit in the courtyard at Tranquil Shores and listen to records on my little portable turntable. Here’s the first song from one of the albums we spun the most. I love it a whole lot, but it makes me kinda sad sometimes.
“710” by Sundials
—–
That same month, she asked me if I’d make her a bracelet like the ones that I wore. The only reason it has my name on it is that she specifically requested it. I applied the color (which is hair dye) with a q-tip and a sewing needle.
“So Smart I Got Life Lessons Dripping Out My Asshole.” 2/16/13. Acrylics and resin sand on cardboard. 12×14″.
So smart I got life lessons dripping out my asshole (also: charm); pay me (…?)
Expressive art. Self-deprecating humor. The ninth painting of ten in my series, “The Weak End.” If you’re at all familiar with my work, you’ve already read everything that I could possibly say about this painting or the two days over which I worked on it.
I do, however, have a new (almost-finished) painting that will be featured here soon. In presenting it, there are three stories that I’ll want to share. Were I to include them all in a single entry, it’d be a little overwhelming. So…
—–
The true story of my afternoon on April 28, 2012.
We met in a treatment facility that we had both transferred to from others. It was from her previous rehab that she knew Bill. He wasn’t a patient of theirs, he was an employee. He had clean time. (Emphasis on had). He started using yesterday.
J had a habit of not counting his money until he was back in his car. We didn’t have any money, but if we could find someone to throw in a hundred, we could pad the twenties with small bills to make it look like as much as three. We called Bill and he met us with a hundred dollars cash.
We had shorted J before but only by twenty or thirty and we’d always eventually (sort of) paid in full. In any case, we bought from him everyday. We were junkies; he knew we weren’t going anywhere.
I made the call and with her by my side and Bill in the backseat, we met up with J. As soon as we made the hand-off, I put the car in gear and drove off as quickly as I could without raising suspicion – but it’d only be a matter of time before he sat down and counted that money. He called within a minute. I had (I thought, slyly) taken a residential street so that he wouldn’t see us in traffic, but before I knew it, he was there. He slid around us, cut off our path, and was out of the car. I floored it in reverse, struggling to keep the car from backing into any of the others parked on the narrow street. He chased after us and almost grabbed hold of me through the window when I swung the car out into the intersection and into drive. His girlfriend had taken the wheel when he got out and she picked him up. They were right on us immediately and we proceeded to play bumper cars across the streets of Delray Beach, running every red light, driving on the wrong side of the roads. Our car was already beat up but his was really nice. Or had been earlier that day anyway.
As soon as J was back in the car, he was back on the phone. As we swerved around and into each other, I tried to reason with him. “It’s only two hundred dollars. Report the damage as a hit and run and turn it in to your insurance. This isn’t worth it.”
“This car isn’t insured or registered. It’s not even my plate. You owe me a lot of money – and the dope – and I’m beating the shit out of you.”
“I’ll get you money later in the week but I’m not giving the drugs back so you might as well give up now.”
I got us to the on ramp for I-95, but our car was old and slow. We didn’t stand a chance at outrunning him. Smashing the fuck out of his car hadn’t deterred him so I had to get creative. I swerved around other cars, trying to lead J into an accident that might actually slow him down.
“I’m gonna flip your car and kill you,” he said.
“That’s the only way you’re getting the drugs back. Chalk it up as a loss and give up before it gets any worse.” I was pretty bold for someone shaking so badly.
I tried a new technique: slamming on the brakes to take us from 90 mph to a dead stop in the middle of the interstate – counting on the cars around us to prevent J from doing the same. After a couple stalemates, where he pulled onto the shoulder up ahead to wait, knowing we had no option but to start driving again, I started to lose hope. How had we not passed a cop yet? How many other drivers must have called this demolition derby in by now? It was only a matter of time before this all ended verybadly – one way or another. And my fucking fuel light was on.
“My boys are getting on at Lantana and are gonna light you the fuck up. You and your girl are as good as dead.”
I guess he didn’t notice that we also had Bill in the back seat. (Quite an experience for someone so freshly off the wagon, huh?)
Eventually, somehow, I was able to lose him. After an exit, I tore across two lanes and into the grass back toward the off-ramp at the last possible second when I’d be able to do so and J wouldn’t without losing sight of us for long enough for us to turn and leave him guessing which way we had gone.
J didn’t follow and when I got to the first red light that I wouldn’t be running that afternoon, I eased into a stop with a police car right next to me. My headlight was dragging on the street in front of the car. The front bumper was partially detached and the back bumper was smashed in. The light turned green and the distance between us and the cop increased until I was able to exhale.
And then I laughed. We all laughed. A lot. It wasn’t funny but it was amazing in its way. As fucked up as all of it is in hindsight, in that moment we were triumphant and I was a hero. (Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but it felt that way). We had no right to be alive. It defied all logic that we were driving away, unscathed and with heroin. I dropped Bill off at his car and drove back to the trailer park where she and I were renting a windowless room with no door to the outside. I left the car at the opposite end of the park and we got out to walk. We lived at the entrance of the park and J’s house was only a mile down the road; I didn’t want to run the risk were he to go out looking for us.
We walked into the trailer, into our room, shut the door, and shot up. I don’t remember anything that happened after that, but the next day, we packed our shit to leave for Miami.
