I’m pretty sure I left Chicago immediately after writing my last blog entry. We packed up that day and were on the road within 24 hours. We came to Jacksonville, which is mostly where we’ve been ever since.
I started work on the eight by twelve foot canvas that I had been planning since Spring. I set it up in front of Sun-Ray Cinema everyday and work on it with a table of prints set up to sell as I paint.
November turned out pretty well. After not even attempting to make any money the last two months in Chicago, I started to sell a good deal of art and am no longer in the dire financial position that I was in when I left Illinois. My emotional state improved significantly too.
December has been kind of rough so far. I stopped setting up to paint and sell quite as often so I started to make less money and I started to not feel quite as good. December’s Art Walk in Jacksonville was surprisingly bad and the rain at Art Basel pretty much fucked that up too.
I also finally had my first run-in with some idiot who wants to believe that I’m a rapist. Wallis and I were out in front of Sun-Ray and some girl walked by.
Without stopping, she asked, “Hey – didn’t you rape that girl?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yeah you did,” she said, by that point already a ways down the sidewalk, barely within earshot. There was no use trying to argue with her. She (and people like her) don’t care about the truth.
Though I’m not sure exactly what it is that they do care about. Condemning me does nothing to prevent violence or to aid victims/survivors of violence. It’s a showing of support for an anonymous girl that told (or at least went along with) a really disgusting lie. And it hurts me.
There are a thousand things I could write or say in an attempt to convince people that I was innocent. None of that really matters though. There are only two people in the world who really know what happened that night. And though the news stories about the alleged crime are sensationalistic and factually inaccurate, the little bit of information that is publicly available is more than enough to suggest a reasonable doubt.
If someone wants to believe that I’m a rapist in spite of that, their belief really doesn’t have anything to do with me, my actions, my character, or my history.
This isn’t really what I set out to write tonight, when I sat down to write this blog entry. I just wanted to give an update to the people that care about (or take an interest in) me.
For reasons I don’t want to discuss, I’m less comfortable disclosing the more sensitive details of my life right now. (The reasons and details have nothing to do with what I’ve just written about). Suffice to say, in the time that’s passed since my last update, I’ve experienced plenty of highs, lows, and middles, and tonight I’m just feeling very introspective and a little somber.
Here are a bunch of photographs:
Me and the girl I love.Wallis being adorable as fuck in her onesie / footed pajamas (the best money I’ve ever spent).Our boy, Lukah, also lookin’ pretty cute.
And here are a series of photographs to show the development of my current work-in-progress. It’s the biggest thing I’ve done thus far (eight feel tall, twelve feet wide) and I’ve been at it for about a month now.
Day 2.On Day 3, I decided that the canvas needed another layer of gesso, so I lost most of what I had already done.Inspired by Lukah’s giant green eyes.I was pretty proud of myself when the cat body actually came out looking as I’d envisioned it.: P.My little buddy, Riley, helped me paint one day. I gave him his own corner and then reworked everything he painted. I’ll dedicate a whole blog entry just to that later though.Here it is after I finished most of Riley’s stuff (which took forever).Late November.After painting nearly everyday for two or three weeks, I don’t think I painted at all in the first ten days of December. Here’s a picture of the painting from Saturday night though. Even though it’s almost “filled out” some of the stuff that’s in it now will likely be covered up so – between that and all of the time I’ll spend on little details – it’s safe to say that this thing will keep me busy for at least another month.
If you’re in Jacksonville and wanna buy something, meet me, or just see how the painting is coming along, I’m out front of Sun-Ray most days from around noon ’til 10pm or so (unless it’s raining or I’m depressed or… whatever). Come say hi and then go inside and see a movie or get a pizza or something. Right now they’re playing Krampus and Room. Thursday’s the last night for Krampus and then on Friday they’re opening Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room and the new Star Wars movie. Oh – and on Thursday night they’re throwing a huge fucking party out back (in the parking lot behind the theater) where they’re gonna be recreating the cantina from Mos Eisley (which, for you non-nerds, is a setting from the original Star Wars movie).
“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
I left Jacksonville last Wednesday and went to Delray. A friend there commissioned me to paint him something. It took about 22 hours, spread across three days. I haven’t gotten it professionally photographed yet but here are some images he sent me.
Next, we went to Miami to visit Wallis’s family, then crossed over to the other coast to stop “home” before leaving Florida. Now we’re in Atlanta, visiting some friends including my buddy Caleb who’s using his mechanical expertise to ensure that the van doesn’t fall apart in the foreseeable future. From here, we’re gonna make our way up to Iowa City to hang out with the Rational Anthem kids for a few days, and then trek the rest of the way up to Minneapolis, where my next exhibit is being held.
In early April, we’re planning to run all the way back to Jacksonville for One Spark and then flip right back around back to Minneapolis for the duration of my show there. That ends in early May, at which point I’m not sure where we’ll be headed…
Just finished hanging twelve pieces at a place called The Hourglass in downtown Jacksonville. That’s in addition to the large pieces that just went up at Dark Side and Sun-Ray. In two weeks, Mikey twoHands and I will be doing a split exhibition at Rain Dogs in Riverside. After that, in February, it looks like I’ll be putting some stuff back over at The Silver Cow.
A lot of this stuff’s never been displayed publicly before and a few of the pieces have yet to even be shared online. If you’re interested in buying an original, this is gonna be a great month to run around town and see what I’ve been up to. The prices on this stuff ranges from $200 to $4,000 but – as always – you can hit me up for prints of any of my pieces (which range from $30 to $100).
Cool. Here’s the flier for my show with Mikey…
Mikey and I are at Rain Dogs tonight, working on art and listening to punk rock. Swing by if you wanna say hi but hit me up ’cause we’re in the back room.
“I Fall in Love Every Week But This Week I Fell in Love With You.” 3/9/14 – 6/4/14. Mixed media. 11×14″.
I started this piece the night after I met a girl in Jacksonville. She was just visiting, from Tampa, but we went out once before she went back home. Over the next few weeks, we texted a whole lot and made plans to spend a night together the next time I was around Tampa. She may or may not have sort of had a boyfriend that she lived with. About a month after we had met, I was on my way to Sarasota for the premiere screening of No Real Than You Are. I invited her to go with me. She didn’t respond. I tried to call but she didn’t answer. I don’t know if I did something wrong or if the reality of my actually coming around didn’t quite mesh with her boyfriend situation, but I never heard from her again. That hurt my feelings, especially since it coincided with similar developments in my “relationships” with three other girls (all in the span of a couple days)! This particular rejection was the only one I didn’t acknowledge at the time ’cause it felt the worst and struck me as being the most petty / trivial. On the one hand, it was really casual and I obviously wasn’t taking it too seriously. On the other hand, I really liked her! I did my best to not let it get to me but it made the next rejection hurt that much more.
Luckily, I fell in love with another girl a few days later and everything was okay again.
—-
Some less interesting details: I worked at this piece on and off for three months because I just couldn’t seem to get it to look like anything I could be happy with. Somewhere in there, I glued some cardboard and a piece of a reflective sun visor to it, even though I sort of hate collage / mixed media stuff; I just felt like I needed something to sort of shake it up a little bit. It’s also on a small canvas board (11×14″) – way smaller than anything I’ve got any interest in painting these days, but the board was given to me on a night when I didn’t have a fresh canvas with me and I figured I’d roll with it. I’m pretty sure I spent at least forty hours on this tiny little thing – every bit as much time as I spend on my
huge canvas paintings. I got the idea for the pattern in the lower-left (“mummy”) figure after painting the white slip-on shoes I bought at Walmart for ten dollars.
“Adventures Per Minute.” 5/5/14. Acrylic paint, spray paint, and ink. 36×48″.
“Adventures Per Minute” is how I felt in early April. From the moment I woke up until I crawled into bed each night, I was busy. Traveling back and forth between Jacksonville, Delray, and Sarasota; givinginterviews and being photographed; attending the premiere of the movie I starred in; directing a music video; setting up exhibits; making and distributing fliers and meeting people; selling prints at One Spark and Spring Fest; fucking; designing albumcovers and merchandise for some of my favorite bands; making more money than I’ve ever made in my life; and (of course) painting – at parks, at friends’ houses, on the streets, at punk shows, on rooftops, and at galleries.
It was just outside one of those galleries that I started this painting. Passers-by would stop, compliment my work, and ask how I was doing. That sparked the first small caption: “HOW AM I? I’m standing on a stool, paintin’ funny faces outside the gallery that sells my paintings for all the moneys. So – yeah – I’m okay.”
At the other end of the canvas, I elaborated: “I have everything.” And I really do. I’m not super rich just yet but all of my needs are met and then some.
I went back to Sarasota with the intention of trading in my van for a bigger one; it was my last stop before I finally took my show on the road outside of Florida. I changed my mind about the van but had quite a time back in that city where I (sort of) grew up. Things were messy – not only with friends in Sarasota but in my “adoptive” family’s house up the road in Bradenton. Drugs, lying, screaming, stealing… it was all around me and it was starting to fuck with my head. I don’t often feel “triggered” and – for the most part – think it’s sort of a bullshit concept. One afternoon in particular became an exception. I was on the back porch painting when the weather started acting up but there was no way I was walking back into the house. I took to the top corner of my canvas and started journaling:
It's been ten days [since I last wrote on this painting]. I'm on the porch in Bradenton. There's a tornado warning. I don't care. That'd be cooler if I actually thought it might hit. I would totally shoot up right now if I had drugs in front of me. BUT I HAVE THE MONEY THESE DAYS.
My best friend (the one that used to shoot heroin) - he started shooting heroin again. And smoking [and shooting] crack. I had him Marchman Acted soon as I got back to Sarasota. Everyone's pretty happy about that - and I've been buying into it too. But let's get real. Nothing has changed. This is just getting started. And it's gonna get a lot worse. I kind of think he's gonna die soon. What should I do? Drag him around the country with me? That's a lot of responsibility. And what would he do all day everyday?
And I love Abby too but her situation is even tougher, more hopeless.
I was talking to Heather about some of this and she asked me if I'll "ever get to live for myself." But I'm more independent, disconnected, and uninvolved than anyone. I do "me" constantly. But I grew up a fuck-up with other fuck-ups and what little I'm able to do these days when this shit goes on - I need to. Sometimes I'm the only one that can. I can't live without people anyway. It's all part of the package.
It's all worth it, I think. Even when it hurts a lot. And makes me wanna put a needle back in my arm. I don't think I will but, for the second time since I stopped, I really want to. This shit is dangerous.
And I haven't even gotten into the other shit that's eating me right now… My phone is ringing. What kinds of decisions am I gonna make today?
I feel safer in this house with drugs, screaming, CPS, threats, lies, theft, etc. than at Morgan's ('cause she's got roommates) and this [house] is the only place I don't feel like an intruder.
I paused and thought about all the good things that had happened lately – and the specifics of some of the bad… I brought the pen back to the canvas.
Life is sad and tragic and funny and beautiful. I'm usually having a pretty good time. I laugh and smile a lot. I don't want the people I care about to die. Or to live without knowing happiness.
Up to this point, I hadn’t given any thought to what I was writing or how it might be received. I just let it come out, even when it occurred to me that I might need or want to remove Abby’s name at some point. But after I finished that long journal down the left side of the canvas, I remembered that I was creating art and that I had intended for this to be a joyful painting – a celebration of the wonderful, exciting things happening in my life. “I need to balance out all this dark with some the light I experienced leading up to this.” But (in my soul, not my brain) I really only felt compelled to write the darker (more recent) stories. I decided to phrase everything in the present tense.
I am standing in an alley while my friend smokes the last of her crack before I take her to the police station, from which she'll be transported to detox, under court order. I picked her up in an empty parking lot.
I am dropping my "sister" off (with everything she owns) at a drug dealer's house. An hour ago, she attempted to transfer custody of her daughter to me. I still live in / operate primarily out of A VAN. We hugged and I told her to not be a fuck-up.
I am back on Adderall [after a month without] and I think the dose is too high now and I'm too in my head and having thoughts like these: [An arrow points at the long, sad, I-wanna-shoot-heroin, my-friends-are-dying journal].
I needed my positive adventures to balance the painting and convey what “adventures per minute” had meant to me initially. But I had already told those nice stories on my blog. Repeating them here felt contrived. I did it anyway but in just four short sentences – covering One Spark, the music video, the film festival, and painting on rooftops. A few days later though, I had another adventure. But one that I didn’t want to be the first thing to pop out at someone. I hid it against a dark blue backdrop. It says: “I just PRETEND (consensually) ‘raped’ a girl that identifies as ‘gay.’ It was pretty awesome. I like her.”
So THAT sort of raises some questions and probably warrants a whole exposition of its own but this statement’s already long enough, I’m writing this in Atlanta, and – you know – I got some more adventures I really ought to be getting up to right about now so…
“Nothing’s Good Enough Because I’m Not.” 4/7/14. Acrylic paint, ink, and modeling paste. 48×36″.
I went quite a while without any emotional freakouts or serious anxiety when I suddenly found myself on a mental illness hot streak. At the root of it all (of course): girls. It’s nothing anyone does to me; it’s the way I interact and get involved and then am unable to handle the reality of the relationships I’ve built. These days, I’m lucky to have a way out of these messes I make that’s a lot more effective than shooting heroin or throwing temper tantrums. The journal I wrote in this painting lays it all out:
The highs this week have been absurd. Three nights ago, I exclaimed, "I'm on drugs!" I felt too good for it to not be some kind of chemical magic. But the next night, I cried out twice; first: "I hate my life!" Then: "I am the worst person in the world!" I felt so bad about myself. Seeing the state this girl was in. "It was wrong for me to trick her into falling in love with me," I thought. But I was in love with her at the time. Or so I thought at least.
The night before, I tried to have sex with this other girl that's gotten to know me pretty well pretty fast. She knows about all the other girls and is pretty enamored with me but is really caught up in not wanting to be "just another" of my "conquests" (as she put it). We got naked but then she wouldn't let me lead 'cause she didn't wanna feel used. But she wasn't taking the lead either. "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FUCK YOU" was all I could think. It ended uncomfortably. I wasn't pleased with myself. We're supposed to give it another shot when I'm back in her city. But that sort of says it all right there. 'Cause I don't live anywhere, I'm not gonna date anyone anyway, and she likes me way too much for this little casual thing to end well.
Yesterday, I TOOK THE NIGHT OFF.
Tonight, I'm at a friend's house alone 'cause a couple hours ago I left the girl who I THOUGHT I had the best thing going with. I like spending time with her. But she was visibly bothered by my cigarette smoke today. And after I brushed my teeth and tried to kiss her, she still turned her cheek. I tried to play it cool but I'M NOT COOL. An hour later, I packed it in and left with minimal words. Feeling self-conscious, rejected, vulnerable, angry, hurt, and responsible. These girls all read my blog now. They know explicit details of what I'm up to. I can't NOT acknowledge it. I made a couple jokes… Is that what did it? I don't know. But all my finding-validation-through-girls shit is seriously backfiring on me this week.
After I left, I got pizza and listened to punk rock. Suddenly, my suicidal depression was over and everything was okay. "Pizza and punk rock" doesn't strike the ear as especially poetic and it makes me sound like a pretty trivial, simple-minded dweeb.
IS WHAT IT IS!
After I painted my "nothing's good enough" caption, everything was way better than okay. I was in love with myself and my silly doodle art again. And that's my god damn story.
I felt better (temporarily) but I didn’t really learn anything. Within a day, I was back to trying to get my self-esteem from girls, love, sex, etc. It was harder now though. This whole episode had fucked with my head a little bit and the next week – after leaving another girl’s house (not any of the three involved in the above-described antics) – I worried that I had forgotten how to sleep with a girl (even when the girl clearly wanted to sleep with me). I had become too self-conscious and insecure to make any kind of a move. Well that was it… I guess I’m never going to get laid again! (I thought). But then she sent me a text – she wanted me to come back. Which really only meant one thing at that hour. So I did. And all was well in the world.
And when I say that, I’m joking – but when I pause… it’s not really a joke. I absolutely felt validated by sleeping with that girl that night. In a very real, very significant way. Had it not played out like that, I would have sunk even deeper into insecurity and shame. Instead, I was pulled completely out of it and actually regained the confidence that I always seem to have (even when I don’t). A few days later, I met up with another girl who had bought some of my art at One Spark. We went on a “date” (kind of) and she invited me to stay the night. But she didn’t want to sleep with me. My freshly bolstered self-worth was high enough though that I was able to accept that rejection (with a smile even)! I don’t need for EVERYONE to want to fuck me all the time.
Sometimes!
“Wait For It … Wait For It!!” (the song I was listening to when I started to feel better) by Dead to Me.
This painting sold in April 2014. 12×16″ prints are still available.
this tiny little thing – every bit as much time as I spend on my
