A friend made a joke that hurt my feelings. I put my response in a drawing.
If you wanna make me angry, suggest that I’m lazy or somehow less than self-sufficient. My job is emotionally fucking taxing. Every day that I’m not getting more famous feels like some kind of a failure. I’m in the business of trying to convince strangers that I’m extraordinary. It’s a fragile position to be in.
It’d be easy to say that your desk job is an easy, coward’s way out but I’m not gonna ’cause I couldn’t do that shit. But don’t tell me that I have it easier on the streets, selling my story and my essence to people that – 9 times outta 10 – don’t even wanna make eye contact with me.
You don’t got it any harder or any better than me; it’s just different. I don’t shit on your desk; don’t act like you’re better than me. You’re just more stable. If you think my job is easier then – by all means – there’s plenty of room in the marketplace.
This was one in a series of four drawings that I made two months ago. I realized last week that I’m angry. And that I have been for some time now. Back when I was still on heroin (and all throughout my life even before that) I had a really terrible temper. By the time I got out of Tranquil Shores though, I had learned to control it. And – honestly – I don’t even really think I needed to control it at that point. It’d flare up occasionally but, for the most part, I was happy enough that things didn’t get to me the way that they always had in the past. I’m realizing that that’s no longer the case and this drawing is evidence that it’s been that way since (at least) mid-summer. I’m hyper-sensitive and it’s fucking up my life. I think I need regular counseling again and (as much as I hate the idea) I’m even considering new medication.
On another note, my legal situation remains unresolved and I am (consequently) still accepting online orders to help with my legal expenses. Check out my GoFundMe page for more info.
“The World Can Be Cold and Mean But I’m Gonna Try to Do My Best Anyway.” 8/13/14. Acrylic paint. 60×40″.
I’m facing felony charges for possession of a controlled substance. These are not old charges pending from my days on heroin; I was arrested earlier this month for possession of Adderall, the prescription medication I’ve been on for nearly ten years. Adderall is one of those meds that can’t be refilled with a phone call each month. The patient has to actually go in to the doctor’s office for an appointment every thirty days, physically pick up the prescription, and bring it to the pharmacy. My prescription lapsed before I found a doctor, here in Chicago, and a friend with a prescription gave me a few pills to hold me over until I could get my own. (I have an appointment with a new doctor tomorrow but – a little late).
My case is still pending but the offer from the state that’s currently on the table includes two years of supervised probation, a shit ton of fines and fees, community service, and enrollment in a substance abuse treatment program. Everyone can always benefit from counseling but, these days, I get invited to speak at substance abuse treatment facilities; I don’t need to be a patient in one.
At the moment, I’m optimistic about a resolution to my case but don’t necessarily have any reason to be. For a while, it looked like the state was actually going to push for a conviction and, possibly, even a jail sentence. No one (defense lawyers included) seems to care that I’m not actually abusing drugs or that my entire life and career are pretty much based on that fact. No one cares that I help other people suffering with addiction and other mental illnesses, on a daily basis, both directly and through my art and writing. In the eyes of the court, I’m just some faceless degenerate that got busted with some pills. Just to get released on bail, I had to pay $1,025 in cash. Getting that money together (without even being allowed access to my bank account) through collect calls in a city three hours from anywhere that I know anyone was not an easy thing to do. Being stuck in Illinois, on probation in Normal, is not conducive to what I’m doing with my life. Two years of criminal fines are not in the budget. And god forbid I somehow fuck up, get tagged with a “violation of probation” and actually get put in jail after all. I’m caught up in a shitty, unfeeling system that doesn’t care about me and it hurts and it’s scary.
This was the last painting I finished before my arrest so the journal written on the canvas isn’t actually about this situation but … it seems even more relevant now than it was when I wrote it.
My world gets pretty dark some days. I try to smile, try to have fun, encourage other people to do the same but sometimes the world just spits at you. At me. Negativity is poisonous and infectious. I don’t let tragedy beyond my immediate vicinity affect me these days but a single mean word directed my way can still obliterate me.
I understand why people kill themselves and I don’t fault them for it but, today, I’m gonna try my best to not succumb to my darker impulses. I’m gonna listen to pop punk songs with my friend, Chris, and I’m gonna walk into five galleries, bare my soul, and try to get my funny faces and emotional instability up on their walls. I believe in myself and what I do and if you don’t get it or you don’t like me, that’s nothing I need to focus my energy on.
The world can be cold and mean but I’m gonna try to do my best anyway.
This painting already sold but BEAUTIFUL 12×18-inch prints are available in the webstore. They’re one of my favorites.
I’m so stressed out and I’m not totally sure why. I can identify stupid little triggers but none of them provide sufficient justification for the way that I’m feeling. I’m too tired to even write them out. Maybe what’s really behind this is that – with Shitty Children’s real California adventure coming to a close – I’ve got nowhere to be. My time in Chicago can (and probably should) end just as soon as I get back. I have to move on to the next thing / city and I’m not totally sure what / where that ought to be. I feel relatively comfortable in Chicago and I’m afraid to give that up for uncertainty and a sense of being an unwelcome presence in a new place. But I’m not interested in wearing out my welcome in Chicago either. And I don’t want to grow stagnant there. I need to progress and I need to get out before I run out of clever things to say.
“(We Are All) Shitty Children.” 7/24/14. Acrylic paint. 60×40″.
I wrote two journals on this canvas that I later painted over.
Saturday, July 19th:
I don’t know where to start so I’m just gonna let my pen not stop. Chris was being an asshole and maybe I played a part but I don’t think so. So I went into emotional shut down mode and locked everyone out and dropped all my plans for the night. I hid from my friends and slept in the van and wrote a letter to a stranger and now I’m on the street, painting and journaling about some shit that no one will find interesting. When I got up this morning, I went inside, woke him up, drove us downtown, got out with my canvas, and sent him off with the van. He probably went back to Kendra’s, where the two of them can talk about how unbalanced I am. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m not the center of the universe. (Yeah, right).
Sunday, July 20th: Chris has been traveling with me for almost three months now. He’s got three months clean that he wouldn’t have without me. We got into an argument the other night. He thinks I boss him around. I think he takes all that I do for him for granted and that he doesn’t pitch in enough. We’ve basically not spoken for two days now. He’s off doing his own thing for once. Didn’t call or “come home” last night, which is more than okay with me. It’s what I was hoping for. I think his stint traveling with me is over. Actually, no. He’ll come back around as soon as he needs something. Money. Cigarettes. A place to sleep. Nevermind that I could use his help in the meantime. But I don’t need it. I get by fine without him. Maybe better. I’m more productive. Don’t need to spend as much money. Maybe I take him for granted but I’m ready to cut him loose. He likes the lifestyle my art’s provided, traveling, but he hasn’t taken to being an assistant or manager of any kind. I can’t protect him from needles and drug-addled girls forever. It’s time for him to find his own thing or fuck up trying. The only person I’m responsible for is me. Anyone that’d fault me for whatever might happen to him can fuck off. It’s no stretch to say that I saved his life and I absolutely gave him the reprieve he needed to start fresh and make another kind of life for himself. And – fuck it – I’ll say it: he has a good heart and all that shit but he’s selfish and lazy. And maybe that’s ’cause he doesn’t care about *this* like I do but all the more reason for him to find his own thing and make his own way.
Kendra had gone downtown with me that afternoon and when we got back to her apartment that night, Chris was sitting outside waiting for us. I went out to get dinner and bought food for him too but still chose not to speak to him anymore than was totally necessary. I was being a shitty child and was totally okay with it for the time being. I was still mad. Because he was being a shitty child too. It didn’t matter in that moment that he was my best friend. For all I cared, he could fuck right the fuck off. I didn’t pull it together until the next afternoon. I didn’t want to be an asshole but I also didn’t really care whether or not he stuck around and didn’t feel that I should be making any concessions. The work that I ask Chris to do (mostly errands and driving) isn’t as fun as a lot of the “work” that I do (painting, drawing, writing) but I also spend a lot of time on more tedious chores like color-correcting photographs and formatting images for prints. And my work is the stuff that pays for all the pizzas we eat, cigarettes we smoke, and the cool shit we get to do traveling around the U.S. If there’s stuff he can do to help, he should do it. It’ll still leave him with at least 22 hours each day to do whatever the fuck he wants. I have a hard enough time having to ask Chris, my friend, to do things, like he’s an employee, and it only makes it that much worse when we have to argue about it. When Chris pitches in without having to be asked, everything runs really smoothly. When he doesn’t, I feel like I can’t ask him unless I’m using 100% of my time super productively. I feel guilty if I watch The Simpsons or spend time with whatever girl I’m seeing.
“If you want to keep traveling with me,” I told him, “you’ve got to pitch in more and, if I ask you to help with something, just do it.” He agreed that it was fair, acknowledged that he had been slacking a little bit, and everything’s been cool since then.
I’m uncomfortable writing about any of this and would have much rather just told the story of how our band, Shitty Children, came to fruition but that story’s already been told and this is what was on my mind at the “emotional peak” of the time I spent on this painting so…
Chris, Mike, and I are leaving for California tonight – for Awesome Fest in San Diego and for Shitty Children’s second (ever) show, in Pomona. Dave can’t come so Andy from Turkish Techno will be filling in on guitar. We’ll get to practice with him on Thursday, a few hours before the show but – in order to do so – we’ve got to drive all thirty hours, straight through in one shot without stopping to sleep. If you see me on Thursday, I might be just a little sleepy. I’m really excited and if you live anywhere near Pomona, you should definitely come out to the show.
Here’s a video of us playing “Rumbleseats and Running Boards” by Cleveland Bound Death Sentence. We played it worse than any of our own songs but – for that reason – it’s one of my favorite videos from that first set. I like watching Chris and me laugh it off each time one of us makes a mistake.
“What I Do When I’m Not on Tinder.” 6/21/14. Ink. 11×14″.
Check me out! I’m being an angry crybaby ’cause I heard second-hand that someone (that I don’t even know!) implied that I can’t really be trusted because I’m a drug addict.
You know how long it’s been since I injected drugs? You know how long it’s been since my compulsion to inject drugs inspired me to do something dishonest? Not to mention: I’m itinerant as fuck! Nobody knows me. I’m in a new city every day. I can be whoever I want each time I roll into a new city. The only reason anyone I encounter these days knows that I am/was a drug addict is ’cause I fuckin’ tell them. I wear everything on my sleeve ’cause I’m okay with who I am. I’m fuckin’ proud of who I am. Good and bad.
So fuck off with that shit.
What’s this have to do with my new piece, “What I Do When I’m Not on Tinder?” Very little! I’m just trying to kill two birds with one stone by venting and simultaneously writing a statement for a new piece. But if I wanted to contrive a connection, here it is: Even my Tinder profile introduces me to “potential matches” with an opening salvo of, “I don’t shoot heroin anymore but I still have a personality disorder. It’s nothing you’d notice most of the time.”
“What’s Tinder?” you ask. Well, you poor unfortunate soul, it’s a dating app for smartphones that matches people based on geographic proximity (“[this user] is two miles away”) and whether or not you swiped left (“nope”) or right (“like”) on their profile – which is comprised of no more than six photos and 500 characters of text. It’s superficial, shallow, and lots of fun! Once two people have swiped right on each others’ profiles, the lines of communication are open for messaging and (potentially) making plans to meet in real life. And now that Tinder’s introduced their newest feature (the hilariously-named “Tinder Moments,” a Snapchat-like feature which allows you to upload an additional photo, revealed only to your “matches” for 24 hours (who are then prompted to “like” or dismiss it by way of swipe)) it’s also become one more social-networking-avenue for a sad little boy like me to collect the validation-via-clicks for which I’m so desperate.
My mood right now is definitely corrupting my usually joyful description of Tinder. It’s shallow, superficial, and a lot of fun. It’s super speed dating. Say the wrong thing to some girl? Who cares! Just scroll down to your next match and start again! It’s totally meaningless (just like everything else in the known universe)!
I finished this drawing three weeks ago but have held off on sharing it on my website, Instagram, and Facebook until now because I only just got a proper high-res photograph of it. There was one venue through which I shared it immediately upon completion though – and it proved to be my most popular TINDER MOMENT to date!
I’m ridiculous. (And pretty okay with it).
Full disclosure: As revealed in the statement accompanying my commissioned “Bleed Blue Tatoo” piece, I’ve “started getting laid again,” am getting all the female attention I need, and have consequently been inactive on Tinder for a week or so. I’m also taking bets on how long ‘til I fall apart again and rediscover its utility. Hit me up for the current odds! Who knows? Maybe this very entry will be the spark that burns it all to the ground!
With all the tattooing I’ve been doing myself lately, it kind of makes sense that I’d do some work for an actual tattoo shop. (Or maybe not?) In any case, this commission came in two nights before my own tattoo career started. On my way to Minneapolis for Cleveland Bound Death Sentence, I stopped in Lexington. My buddy, Chris, works for Bleed Blue Tattoo and, while we were there, I met the shop’s owner, Tommy. Being the self-promoting little fuckshit that I am, I (of course!) told him about my artwork. He was cool enough to commission me to design a shirt for Bleed Blue right then and there. He was also cool enough to tell me I could do whatever I wanted – so I did, right down to the sort of overly-personal text that I put in virtually all of my pieces. The only real guideline I gave myself was a limited color palette since I knew that – when it comes to silkscreens – more colors means higher printing costs.
The text says: “I am an anxious mess of a human being but I’ve got high hopes once Mercury’s no longer in retrograde. Maybe I’ll start getting laid again.” I wrote that the night I started the piece in St. Louis. By the time I finished it a couple days later in Minneapolis, Mercury was no longer in retrograde and I had started getting laid again. Isn’t it nice when stories have a happy ending?
As if all that weren’t great enough, check out the week I just had, selling and making art at punk shows around the midwest:
June 29: Lexington, KY w/ Rational Anthem. June 30: Cincinnati, OH w/ Masked Intruder, The Dopamines, Direct Hit!, and The Priceduifkes. July 1: Bloomington, IN w/ Rational Anthem and The Razor Ramones. July 2: St. Louis w/ Masked Intruder, The Humanoids, Direct Hit!, and The Priceduifkes. July 3: Madison, WI w/ The Transgressions, Rational Anthem, Lipstick Homicide, and Spruce Bringsteen. July 4: Minneapolis, MN w/ Dillinger Four, The Brokedowns, Masked Intruder, Direct Hit!, The Priceduifkes, and Canadian Rifle. July 5: Minneapolis, w/ Dillinger Four and Night Birds.
Anyway, for now, I’m in Chicago (where I’ll probably remain for most of the summer). Then again, have I ever stuck with a plan? Either way, shit’s cool right now and I’m excited about everything I’ve got in the works. And I’ve got a bunch of new pieces that I’ll add to the site soon so… Cool.
Here are some tunes from some of the bands that have been rad enough to host me lately:
“25 to Life” by Masked Intruder
“Thinkin’ ‘Bout Ya” by Rational Anthem
“Snickers or Reese’s” by Direct Hit!
“Captain, We’re Drinking” by The Priceduifkes
Music video for “Wizard Symptoms” by The Brokedowns
“Like Sprewells on a Wheelchair” by Dillinger Four
“Moody’s Point” by Lipstick Homicide
“Wasteoid” (originally by The Transgressions but performed here) by Spruce Bringsteen (that’s a two in one)!
TEN YEARS LATER UPDATE!?!? (December 2024):
I don’t think Bleed Blue ever actually printed these shirts so I went ahead and kinda removed their affiliation and made it wholly my own. You can buy a print of the new version in the webstore.
Minneapolis has been on my list of cities to hit. Cleveland Bound Death Sentence reuniting to play Extreme Noise’s 20th anniversary seemed like a good excuse to be impulsive, bail on Asheville, and spontaneously trek halfway ‘cross the country.
We overnighted in Lexington and Chicago along the way since CBDS doesn’t play ’til tomorrow afternoon. We’re just pulling out of Chicago and making our way north now. 11 PM is a little later than I’d like to be heading out but we don’t operate on a schedule and it’s hard to walk out of Dave and Mike’s place. I just have too much fun with those kids. They definitely come across as jaded, grumbly, curmudgeonly old men (who are actually five years younger than me) but that’s also definitely part of their charm, since they’re secretly some of the warmest, funniest kids around.
I met Dave in the Baltimore punk scene – mostly around Charm City Art Space – back when we both lived out that way. And he met Spillane when I recruited both of them to come on tour with me and Rational Anthem back in 2009. Neither of them had even been on tour before and this one was TEN WEEKS long. (They’re both fucking warriorsafter surviving that thing).
I met Mike that same year. His band had just recorded their first demo and a friend in Ohio tipped me off, thinking I might be interested in them for Traffic Street. Their first tour included a house show somewhere in Maryland. I went out to meet/see them and brought ’em back to DC for a day or two after. We’ve been friends ever since.
So the plan was to hit the road earlier in the day but we stuck around ’til now, doing mostly nothing, just joking around, having fun. We did go out to Logan Square for a few hours though and I got to finish my latest painting (“Something to Cry About,” which I’ll post later in the month). Anyway, one joke led to another and I wound up giving Dave his first tattoo. It’s on the front of his right thigh, just a couple inches up from the knee. The caption comes from something Mike said this morning in a sleepy haze: “Where do rats go when they die? I don’t mean, like, in a spiritual sense…”
I’m looking forward to coming back to Chicago real soon.
