After packing my entire life into my car, stashing it on the fifth floor of a parking garage, and preparing to go to my grandparents’ ALF to wait out the hurricane (‘cause the building is “hurricane-proof” and has generators), my ex got around my many blocks (phone, email, social media) and begged me to give her ONE MORE CHANCE. And I brilliantly allowed her to come with me. It was fine (even GREAT) for that first night and then – the day of the hurricane – it became clear that nothing had changed and I was trapped in there with her.
It was torturous. To love someone so much, know it won’t work out, and then be stuck someplace together. And she just doesn’t get it. She still thought we were going to sleep together that second night, cuddled up, spooning on the couch. (There was no bed in the room we stayed in). I don’t know if she’s a sociopath or just has the emotional intelligence of a five year-old but I also know it DOESN’T REFLECT ESPECIALLY WELL ON ME that I was ever in love with this person or thought I wanted a life with her. I know I say this all the time but “we are attracted (and attractive) to people with similar levels of emotional health/maturity.” I would like to believe that my reluctance/refusal to engage with this anymore means that I’m getting better.
Anyway, it turned out that even though the hurricane made its initial landfall RIGHT HERE IN SARASOTA (less than a mile from my place), everything was alright. And nothing happened to my car. So I spent all day putting my life/home back together (just finished this minute) and I can LICK MY EMOTIONAL WOUNDS from the comfort of my home.
Things could have been worse. I need to remember to be grateful for what I’ve got. Friends (that helped me unload my car and then FED ME PIZZA), a home that I like, people all over that care about me, I’m clean, back to making art, and I don’t need to rebuild my life from scratch simply because of a natural disaster/GOD HATES ME. (Or maybe he doesn’t, seeing as how it worked out). But he PROBABLY does.
This was originally written simply as the caption for a TIKTOK VIDEO(I wonder if those words will ever not sound ridiculous to me?) because I’m currently operating under the belief that TikTok is my best shot at marketing myself/rebuilding my career, especially as long as I’m still just living in Sarasota. Here are the photos from the post for anyone that doesn’t wanna use that app.
Photo I took from the garage where I parked my car.That’s one of my dad’s sculptures front and center. He died in 2021.Where I write, draw, and do any computer-kinda work.Where I paint.Me, in bed, with a print that I stuck over my head, just to take this photo and make it more interesting. Because I’m both vain and self-promoting.
“She’s Cut with Xylazine” 9/29/2024. Acrylic paint. 24×20″.
My next painting was “pre-purchased” before it was started. The only request was “could it please be one of the journal heavy paintings?” That was a bit of a problem. My journals from August are so boring. I was really happy and complacent. They are not interesting. Really just a collection of “here’s what I did today” entries. Because “she” and I were spending every day together. She’d signed a lease on a studio apartment just one block from mine. I’d held to the idea that we shouldn’t move in together right away. That we should take it a little more slowly and cautiously. But we were having such a great time together. Even when my grandpa was in the hospital, she came with me every single day and was so good and kind and supportive. Two days before she was set to move in, I asked, “how often are we gonna do overnights together?” “Every night,” she said. I still thought it was important that we have our own apartments, but why wouldn’t I want to go to sleep every night and wake up every morning next to her? That she wanted the same made me very happy.
She’d always been the partner in the relationship who loved more. She was more in love with me than I with her. But she was so insecure when we met that she never really let me fall all the way in love with her. And then I was on drugs. Our relationship dynamic was a natural consequence of those two things. But now, totally clean, I was excited to be equally in love with her and not take her for granted at all. It made me very happy to show someone that kind of love.
The day before her move she said she was scared. I’ll cut to the chase. She didn’t move. And then she changed her mind. And then she changed her mind about changing her mind. And that cycle went on until the apartment was gone and she’d burned through all the money that’d been set aside for her move. She was stuck and I was tired of being dicked around. I blocked her number. (This is the very short version. What she actually put me through after the first failure-to-move was both agonizing and agonizingly drawn out).
My painting would get PLENTY of journals now.
I know it makes me sound like a FUCKING PSYCHOPATH but it makes me ANGRY that we’re not together.
SO MANY lost experiences that should have been shared. [Every time I see something that makes me smile, I want her to be there with me – or I at least want to tell her about it. I want those to be her smiles too. But she’s out of the picture now. We don’t share anything].
A friend of mine died this week.
Her circumstances were remarkably similar to this person I’m writing about. Trapped in a bad situation. Paralyzed by fear. Using substances incredibly recklessly to cope. When she could have just walked away. But she didn’t want to admit defeat. She’d tried a new kind of relationship – if she broke up and moved out, it would be another failure. (SO WORRIED about how other people see us, ready to literally die first; talk about tragic and pointless).
I was talking to another friend after we learned of the death. She was having a hard time but said it was made easier by the fact that people in her life depend on her. “Gotta keep going for them. Simple as that.” It reminded me very much of where this next journal (written a couple weeks ago) goes.
I’m not trying to be all melo-fucking-dramatic but what’s the point? What good reason is there to not kill myself? [It’s so hard to even get my thoughts in the right order].
I know she loves me and yet we’re not together. I know I make her happy in a way no one else ever has or maybe ever could. And she makes me happy.
The thought of even trying to find someone else seems so fucking stupid. How could I ever love anyone else as much as I love her?
She will come back to me eventually but can I even take her back then? If I let her take me for granted, she will take me for granted. And it won’t
work out. She’ll never be happy in a relationship where she feels like she has all the power, or where her actions don’t have consequences. Is she too broken for it to even work out anyway?
I’m not sure there’s anything in the world that I love doing enough purely for its own sake that it’s enough to make me happy without her. Making art makes me happy but not enough that…
FUCK! I’m so lost.
If I’m with her, I have the drive to be more successful. If I’m not with her, I need the drive to be more successful or else I’ll never be happy.
If I have her, I’m willing to do what I need to do to make money off my art more aggressively. Because then it’s for something. But if it’s me alone, who cares about making any more than I need to live?
It hurts to love someone so much and not be able to have them. I made it too easy for her. Maybe disconnecting is what I needed to do to get through to her. That feels like a “game” but maybe that’s what it takes with her.
What I need to do is just be patient, let whatever happens happen, not stress about her or about not being in a relationship, and just do my best whether it’s for her, someone I don’t know yet, or [duh] myself. It’s just so hard to be totally self-motivated AND – let’s face it – I’m just always starved for love, attention, and validation.
The next section of text in the painting is the “untitled prose poem” that I shared last month. It’s heavy on the kind of SALACIOUS stuff that generates clicks. It’s also really honest because it wasn’t written with a mind of it ever having an audience. It was maybe a letter that I was going to send, maybe just for myself. Click this link and it’ll open in a new window. Then you can come back here.
My dreamgirl versus THE LIE SPIDER…
“My dreamgirl” is a phrase I used in a letter I wrote to her. I’m not going to share it here (because it was private and) because I don’t want to romanticize this relationship right now. And – at the risk of TOOTING MY OWN HORN – the letter is VERY romantic) “I read it everyday,” she once told me.
BUT… (next journal from the painting):
Maybe I’m not in love with you. Maybe I’m just in love with the idealized version I have of you in my head. Maybe I shouldn’t have to make so many excuses for you. Maybe the fact that all of this is so “complicated” and requires so many explanations to make sense – maybe that tells me everything I need to know. Maybe I should believe you when you show me who you are. Maybe actions speak louder than words. I like to pride myself on my ability to see through your lies and get the truth out of you, but maybe I’m still not getting the whole truth. Maybe you’re just as dishonest with me as you are with him and I’m a bigger sucker than I realize. I don’t really think that’s true but it’s probably more true than I want to believe. You didn’t earn your nickname for nothing. You are the LIE SPIDER.
And she really is. The nickname goes way back. It wasn’t even really derogatory, just matter-of-fact. Because she will lie about anything. She will lie when the truth is fine. And then she has to tell another lie to cover the first lie. And then another. And eventually there’s a whole complicated web of lies to keep track of. “You are a lie SPIDER,” I’d once told her in a moment of (good-natured but nevertheless) exasperation. The name stuck because it would earn its relevance again and again with every new web of lies.
I was thinking about how much clean time I have now,
how little I’m tempted by drugs (not at all), and how this situation with her (everything before, plus now having her blocked from contacting me) was so much like a withdrawal. And how I was having such a hard time with it. How “relapse” was so tempting to me. I could easily have her back in the same way I’d had her before. She still wanted me. She just wasn’t willing to do what I needed her to do for her own sake – for her own well-being and happiness. But if I was okay with a sick girl, that was still on the table. But I don’t want a sick girl. I want a healthy, happy life with a healthy, happy partner. I started to journal about it when I hit on something.
She’s the drug I can’t stay away from.
I need to think of her like I’d think of heroin. I can’t afford to relapse. Just one time runs the risk of pulling me back in and starting the cycle all over again.
It’s easier staying clean now that heroin doesn’t exist anymore and all the fentanyl is cut with xylazine. Shooting up isn’t comforting in the way it used to be. It’s not the easy, stressless escape that she still is. I still love the way she makes me feel. Ooooo – shit. But that’s the thing. I love the way she used to make me feel – or could make me feel IN THEORY. But the reality of the situation is that she’s so broken right now that she just makes a mess of everything and leaves me feeling worse. Just like the drugs would. It’s like SHE’S CUT WITH XYLAZINE. She’s THE GIRL CUT WITH XYLAZINE. She’s necrotic.
God damn – that’s a PERFECT metaphor. “Until they get the xylazine out” (of her), she’s too overloaded with poison to serve any purpose. She should be avoided at all costs. No good can come from her.
[Very quickly, xylazine is an inexpensive veterinary tranquilizer mixed (or cut) into opiates to increase volume and, consequently, profit. It doesn’t provide a euphoric high; it simply knocks the user out. The real issue though is that it rots the skin off your fucking body. Xylazine has completely infected America’s illicit opiate supply].
That really crystallized it for me.
For the next week, I was able to focus entirely on my work, get a ton done, and just generally be in a better mood. The drugs I was addicted to don’t exist in the same way anymore. And the girl I was in love with doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.
That said, I’m not gonna pretend that I’ve totally gotten her off my mind (in the way I have with drugs) or that I don’t still secretly hope that something will change and she’ll become “xylazine-free,” but – at least until that happens – it’s made it much easier to not be consumed by her or to get pulled back in to her shitty cycles of destruction.
Part of me still feels like I need to be there for her. I really do worry that she may die. But I did everything I could to try to help her. And she wasted my efforts and thenI did it again. And again. And again. If something happens, I’ll be fucking furious (and devastated) but not at myself. For me to continue trying right now would be insane. She’s got to want to get better herself. She’s got to take at least one step on her own. And I’m not saying what would or wouldn’t happen at that point or what I would or wouldn’t do, but that doesn’t matter anyway. I. can’t waste my energy trying to predict or plan for something that’s totally out of my control (and may never happen). I can’t help someone who refuses to be helped. It’s not selfish to worry about, to prioritize me. To take care of me. (SOMEONE HAS TO). And the other people in my life that I care about. I’ve got enough on my plate without taking on XYLAZINE PROBLEMS.
Hey! I finally set up a webstore to sell prints! You can buy your very own 14×11-inch “She’s Cut with Xylazine” print today! Not only will you get a beautiful, provocative piece of art for your home, but I’ll get to continue sleeping indoors!
Thanks so much to everyone who supports my work. Whether you buy, share on social media, drop a comment, or even just take the time to read this stuff, I can’t express how much it means to me. I couldn’t do this in a vacuum. You all are what keep me going.
And speaking of “keep me going,” I now have FIVE MONTHS CLEAN off any/everything again! Time flies when you’re an emotional basket case!
“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 (financially) ’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 make CRAZY MONEY 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 (though 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 [and cheating]. 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 Could Never Love Anyone More Than I Hate Myself” is now up in the webstore.
“Rainbows and Puppy Dogs.” 1/3/15. Acrylic paint. 10×8″.
The statement for this piece was written two and a half weeks ago (on January 13, 2015) and is proof that I’m really terrible at predicting my own future.
Coming out of my tumultuous autumn relationship in Chicago, I guess you could say I was kind of a wreck when I got back to Florida. And although the circumstances of the day it happened were somewhat unusual, it certainly didn’t seem like much of a coincidence for me to relapse so quickly. I started this new painting before I even had a week clean. And while the general premise of the painting is one that I’ve had in my head for months, the rest reflects the time in which it was painted.
Here’s how I spent December: I came down to Miami with Nicole; shipped her back to Chicago ahead of schedule and cancelled my pseudo-plan to return to the Midwest to reunite with her anytime in the at-all-immediate-future; I went to Jacksonville to rekindle my relationship with Heather; Heather declined to immediately jump back into it with me, saying she wanted to take it slow; I drove down to Palm Beach County for another one of my drug-addled ex-girlfriend rescue missions; I relapsed; I went to Sarasota and started painting this (the initial sub-caption was “nothing ever quite goes my way” but I later painted over that); I returned to Jacksonville, where Heather was now interested in picking up the pace but I, nevertheless, proceeded to start fucking up a storm; I started to feel better and I wrote a new sub-caption, incorporating the title: “Life can’t always be RAINBOWS AND PUPPY DOGS but I guess it goes my way often enough. (I certainly have a lot of sex at people).”
By the time it was finished on January 3rd, I definitely didn’t feel like “nothing ever quite goes my way.” I mean, how could I think that when I’m fucking a different girl every night? That sure seems like things going my way. And, honestly, while being promiscuous isn’t always the most fulfilling, in this case – right now – I’m pretty happy. Maybe it’s ‘cause I got so much other stuff going on with my art and ‘cause I’ve been so productive lately and ‘cause I’m not in a dysfunctional relationship anymore but… I’ve been on a pretty good streak of happy lately. And all the sex (and feeling attractive and desirable) is most definitely bolstering that. It’s a big part of it.
Heather and I hit the pause button on our relationship a week ago and are planning to talk about it / evaluate our feelings tomorrow. In writing this (and revealing the extent of my recent promiscuity) I’m almost certainly going to be destroying what little shot we had left together but maybe that’s what’s supposed to happen. I’m also seeing another girl with whom there’s been no discussion of exclusivity but who – nevertheless – probably won’t be super excited to read this. I’m supposed to meet up with her tonight and am planning on putting all the cards on the table with her as well.
So now that I think about it, I really shouldn’t publish this until I’ve had these two conversations. And I won’t. Which is to say: by the time you’re reading this, I’ll have already had those two discussions and there’s a good chance that I’ll have inadvertently hurt a lot of feelings and will be feeling pretty shitty about myself. Life’s definitely not gonna feel like puppies and rainbows by this time tomorrow but I guess that’s okay but – fuck – why does love have to be so exclusive? Why do the concepts of love and sex have to be so inextricably connected? Why can’t I be in one (or two) relationships and still have sex with other people?
WHY CAN’T I JUST HAVE EVERYTHING THAT I WANT?
It sounds so dumb when I put it that way – like I’m such a spoiled little brat – but, shit… I don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice?
Rainbows and puppy dogs, right?
So – as I mentioned – that statement was written in early January. If you’ve been following me, you probably have an idea of how it all played out. I told both girls that I was sleeping around and couldn’t be exclusive. And then last week, while on a date with a girl I met at my art show, I fell in love with one of that girl’s friends and wound up in an exclusive relationship. (That in itself is kind of a funny story but I’ll get to that later).
Coming very soon: images of (and statements for) three new works, including two from late last year that are among my biggest to date. We’re talking giant pieces with long, detailed, embarrassing, fucked up stories. I’m excited!
Fun fact: I first tried to paint “Rainbows and Puppy Dogs” in the spring of 2014, got frustrated with my inability to paint a dog, went in another direction, and wound up with this piece.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I had been referring to my trip up to Normal to face my charges as a “sex vacation.” (I had six different girls I was gonna stop to fuck along the way up and back). Instead I invited this girl that I had just met a couple days prior and wound up falling in love. It’s a total aside but I feel a little bit bad because I had a few different things going with different girls that have now – consequently – been totally shut the fuck down, but when this sort of thing happens and just clicks, what can you really do about it? I’m in love and it’s wonderful.
I’ve got a whole, whole lot more to say about all this; some of it’s as dopey as that last sentence, some of it is sobering realizations that I’ve had about past relationships…. whatever – that can all come later. Here are some photos from our li’l road trip.
Our first stop was in Atlanta to visit Mary Beth. Wallis fell quick for MB’s new rescue pup, Barnsley.
After my court appearance in Normal, we went to Chicago and found us a Chris Spillane. Which is sorta great, seein’ as I’m kinda givin’ Wallis the Chris-Spillane-treatment right now. And ’cause – you know – he’s my best friend.
After playing tourists and eating Chicago deep dish pizza (something I never did while I was living in Chicago), we braved the winter night and headed out to the abandoned factory on the river to go exploring. The underground river in the basement was frozen but Wallis wouldn’t let me try to walk on it.
Back at old 1752 (a place for Shitty Children), we reconnected with the old crew. Mike apparently hates me now and acted like a real bully and an asshole all night. It was a bummer but I did my best to take his abuse gracefully and (luckily) he passed out pretty early in the night. Travis, on the other hand, was definitely on his shitty-children-A-game and was really fun to hang out with.
On our way back down south, we saw a sign for Dinosaur World and decided we needed to stop and spend the night so we could go when it opened up in the morning. We were the only people there so we got away with climbing the ropes and taking photos. Wallis makes for a pretty cute dinosaur.
I don’t think you’re supposed to climb up on the mammoth’s tusks but I do what I want.
Wallis uncovered the bones of a stegosaurus in the fossil dig. I’ve never been so proud.
After Dinosaur World, we went to check out the world’s largest (400 miles) cave – Mammoth Cave (in Kentucky). Hung out there for two hours before heading back to Atlanta where we’re hanging out now, back at Mary Beth’s place again. For lunch I ate black truffle macaroni and cheese with lobster ’cause I’m a fucking millionaire now.
Today, I’ve got a couple people in Atlanta to meet up with and then we’ll head back to Jacksonville later tonight or tomorrow morning.
The main body of text says: Okay – so I’m makin’ this in the car so it’s gonna be sloppy. I forgot to get you a California souvenir but that’s okay ’cause I figured it’d be cute/funny to just pick something up on the ride back. It’s a keychain. I think it says “Kansas City Wildcats” but I forget and I might have lost it already, even though I just bought it five minutes ago. BUT (since I like you) I figured I owe you one better than that. And I don’t ever make free art for ANYONE anymore so I thought it’d be real sweet of me to do that. It’s fucked up but I already had the thought that – the next time I make a gesture like this (presumably for some other girl) it’s not gonna mean as much. [That’s the kind of thing you’re not supposed to say in a “love letter” / piece of art dedicated/for the girl you like]. That’s okay. That’s me. Maybe I’ll leave Chicago next week, maybe never. Maybe you won’t like me anymore tomorrow and it won’t even matter where I am in relation to you. Also, you’re twenty so whatever (“forever“). Here are some funny faces. They are SYMBOLIC of the crush I have on you.
After that, there are a couple smaller bits of text. First: This is more honest and less cool than it should be, so you don’t like me too much. But if that’s my intention, why am I making it at all? OOOOOHHHH – I’m so complex!
Second: Between this and the love song Chris and Mike are listening to on the radio, I’ve decided that the whole enterprise of love letters is bullshit. It’s all ego and vanity. Or maybe this song just sucks and I’m self-absorbed. I don’t know but your smile makes me really happy sometimes.
So there you have it. A Sammy thrashLife love letter. More about me than it is about the object of my affection but just charming enough to sort of perform its function. Equal parts “fall in love with me” and “don’t get too invested.” One thing’s certain: it’s definitely a thing that exists.
“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.
this tiny little thing – every bit as much time as I spend on my
