“What Makes Life Feel Worth Living.” 6/16/24. Acrylic paint. 24×24″.
This painting was essentially the product of my second month clean and single. To be fully honest, I was still pretty hung up on codependency issues and the fact that, for once, I didn’t have a girlfriend. I found myself experiencing kind a low-grade depression a lot of days, not really wanting to get out of bed. In my head, I kept thinking that finding a new girlfriend was the answer to all my problems but I knew that, really, that would just be a way to distract myself from my problems. In any case, I was too embarrassed to make a painting about that immediately following one about my ex. I pushed myself to really try to get at something deeper in my journal writing. It took a couple weeks and quite a few attempts before I felt like I got at anything remotely meaningful. That’s what’s written across this canvas (in the upper left and just to the left of the very bottom center).
I struggle a lot with meaning and purpose. “Does anything matter?” “What’s the point of doing anything?” “The world’s a mess,” “I’m a mess,” “is anybody really happy?” I don’t know the answers to those questions but – as long as I’m gonna not-kill-myself and keep living – I’ve gotta try. It’s really hard sometimes. I’m not alone but I feel like I am a lot of the time. One person can really make a difference in that. Whether it’s A GIRL PAYING ATTENTION TO ME or someone deciding to GIVE ME MONEY (for my artwork).
When I tell people about my first month clean and making art again, it’s a success story, mostly on account of the commissions I got from Rick, a stranger walking down the sidewalk. But because I was painting outside and because he stopped to talk to me and took an interest, it’s given me concrete reasons to keep painting and writing. Pretty random, very easily could have NOT happened.
It’s genuinely INCREDIBLE when someone tells me how much my art means to them (and I don’t wanna discount that) but when they PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS, it’s crazy validating in a way that’s rivaled only by A HOT GIRL WANTING TO FUCK (or date) ME. (Which is totally unrelated and indicates just how broken I am but that’s an issue for other days). It says that what I’m doing has actual value worthy of supporting human life – MY life. That hard validation can bolster my spirit against any/all of the negative feelings I have that could otherwise overtake me.
Even when everything else is wrong, one well-timed “yes” can make all the difference. A thousand rejections are nothing against a few key “yeses.”
These things are small and inconsequential in a world that’s so random and meaningless but when nothing matters, we choose what matters and I choose what makes my life feel worth living.
Taking a chance is worthwhile. Saying “yes” to someone is meaningful. Helping another person, offering encouragement, supporting an artist (ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S ME). These are things that count. We never know what small act might be HUGELY CONSEQUENTIAL for someone else.
I still don’t know if I’m going to be able to revive my art career and make a living like I was, but it’s working out so far thanks to just a few people and a few key moments and decisions. It reminds me of the last lyric from one of my favorite songs: “just one good thing, that’s all – sometimes that’s all it takes.”
I lined up a handful of commissions right out of the gate upon getting clean: paintings that I had no idea what they’d be but that were pre-paid-for before I even started them. Knowing that a painting is already sold while I’m working on it is really motivating. It gives me a push to get to work. That’s over (at least as of this moment; no one has pre-purchased my next painting). That makes me a little nervous but it’s also how most artists operate – not to mention the only way I’ll ever be able to amass enough paintings to ever have another exhibit. I’m on my own for the first time in a while and need to start hustling again – whether that’s going out on the street to paint in public while slinging prints or putting more effort and thought into my social media. Probably both. It used to come so easily to me but now it seems almost impossible – though much less so than it did even a month ago. One of the main reasons I stayed on drugs so long was because it was an excuse not to do anything else. I’m so afraid of trying and failing. But I’ve got to try. I’ve gotta put myself out there. And hopefully I’ll get the “yeses” I need to keep going.
I’m in danger of rambling now. I wanna say something about how those “yeses” are less-than-ideal external validation in the same way that female attention is, but that’s a subject for another time. The spirit of this painting was about the positive feelings that come making something meaningful that resonates with another person and the positive consequences of that other person’s response. Not everything needs to be overanalyzed. Nothing is perfect but sometimes little things spark joy and pride and feel an awful lot like fulfillment – even if only for a moment. And sometimes that’s enough.
The song quoted in my painting (on the little blue guy’s black t-shirt): “Precious on the Edge” by Drunken Boat
This painting has already been sold but limited edition 12×12″ signed, hand-numbered prints are available for purchase WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.
“Baby Dick Virgin.” 5/1/24. acrylic paint. 16×20″.
In the past, the smaller text in my paintings tended to be raw journals, scrawled onto the canvas in the moment. For this, my first painting in five years, I sort of typed out the story of the piece as I was going and, then, transcribed it to the canvas a little later. For that reason, the smaller text featured in the painting, essentially, is my artist’s statement for the piece. It says:
I left my girlfriend again but this time we didn’t get back together because there was some baby dick virgin waiting to pounce the second she was vulnerable and she says she likes that he looks at her like a puppy dog and even though she says she’ll never love him as much as she loves me AND THAT I’M HER SOULMATE, that because I don’t believe in soulmates and because he’s “ordinary,” maybe that would be safer for her. That’s all obviously FINE AND FUCKING DANDY except for the part that’s DRIVING ME UP THE GOD DAMN WALLS trying to decide if I miss her because I’m in love with her or if I’m just a lonely little codependent fuck who can’t stand the idea of being alive while there’s not a beautiful girl who is ACTIVELY in love with me.
It’s been two weeks since I wrote [the [preceding paragraph]. I wanna write about how I’ve FUCKED HER since then, how she took pictures of it, how her fat uncle of a boyfriend saw the pictures, forgave her, and then I FUCKED HER AGAIN (and then some). But that’s just pettiness and spite and me feeling like I got a win that I need to advertise. I’m not trying to get back together with her. I would very much like to destroy their relationship. Not just as a fuck you. I do still genuinely care about her and she’s not going to get better while she’s hiding from her issues in that joke of a rebound. She knows now that she can literally do anything and he will never drop her because he’s too pathetic and broken to ever think he could do any better. I’m VERY tempted to name this painting after him.
I ultimately did. After committing it to the canvas in giant letters, I wrote:
Choosing this title is the pettiest thing I’ve done in my work. But it’s SUCH a ridiculous choice that I couldn’t help it that the thought made me smile as much as it did. (And I argued with myself and consulted with friends but kept coming back to it, so I clearly needed to EXPEL THE VENOM so/before I could move on). I know it’s shitty, toxic masculinity and probably only highlights my own lack of self-esteem that I enjoyed winning a DICK MEASURING CONTEST as much as I did but – you know what? I never did shit to that dweeb and HE called ME from her phone to SCREAM at me for no fucking reason, at a time when I was already fragile as fuck. So fuck him – he gets what he gets and he can live with the world knowing that [redacted] he wasn’t MEASURING UP (in any way).
I promise this will be my last painting for a minute that’s secretly about HOW GREAT my own dick is. Though I’m sure it’s the first of many more that’s ACTUALLY about how fucking insecure I am, in spite of everything. BUT I’M GETTING BETTER (I swear). Today is day 23 [since I got clean again].
This next, final part is definitely less of a journal and more a defense. I anticipated some strong reactions as soon as I put the painting up on my social media and I guess I wanted to kind of preempt some of the criticism.
I’m pretty embarrassed by the sentiment of this painting but that feeling often indicates when I’m onto something that’s significant for me and/or will somehow be meaningful to other people. It also makes me feel like a little bit of a BULLY but it’s not as if I have some huge platform these days. The dink at hand might never even learn this painting exists. I feel a little guilty – even having her approval – that the previews I posted online already caused some discord in her family and anxiety for her but… I can’t control or really even concern myself with other people’s reactions. So long as I’m being honest and my work is authentic (even when partially powered by spite), I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.
The painting went online and, sure enough, even with my hedging, I still got some negative responses – even stronger than what I’d feared. One person told me they no longer wanted a painting of mine that they owned and asked for an address that they could ship it back to! And I’m sure there were plenty more who chose the “if you don’t have anything nice to say…” path. But I also got some really great, positive responses beyond what I even hoped. People who saw past the pettiness and the ego and really seemed to understand, relate to, appreciate, and admire what I’d made. As an artist (especially a snarky little shit-eater of an artist) what more can I ask for?
“Baby Dick Virgin” has already been sold, but limited edition 11×14″ signed, hand-numbered prints are available for purchase.
“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
“Joy” is a fake name. Sometimes I have to use fake names.
Incoming Facebook message (May 27th) from Joy: I haven’t spoken to you since high school. I used to think you were just the coolest. Sam: I don’t recognize you but you’re pretty cute so I sure wish I did! Joy: I remember you from some parties… AND MYSPACE.
And so it began. She told me she was a model and an acrobat. Asked for my phone number so she could text me some photos. I happily obliged because I’m an incorrigible flirt. We started texting back and forth pretty frequently. She told me she liked my blog, complimented it as “raw,” “honest,” and “brave.” We talked about potentially meeting in person one day, we talked about having sex, she sent me a lot of really suggestive texts, I responded in kind to a degree but not like I would with a lot of other girls because she had already told me that she wasn’t into the kind of rough sex stuff that I am. After about a week though, I started texting less. I wasn’t going to be seeing this girl in real life anytime soon and I had – you know – a life to live in the meantime. I can’t be wrapped up in all day text message conversations all the time.
After a couple days of not much interaction (about two weeks after we first started talking) I hit her up. “Does it even matter?” she said, “You hate me.” That was my first red flag. I wasn’t texting her as often and her interpretation of that was that I hated her?? The next day, she apologized and started texting me more often. My responses were far less frequent and far less detailed than before but I kept the conversation going.
Toward the end of June, she told me that she might have an opportunity to stay for free in a really nice apartment in Manhattan – for two months – as a house/catsitter. A few days later, she sent me a long message:
I think you should come stay with me and sell your art here. No rent. No parking fees. A warm bed in a plush place. If it goes well, you can stay as long as I stay. Maybe you’ll make really good money. Hustle to get in some galleries. […] You help out so many people… And so many people have helped ME out… I wanna help someone. And you’ve been on my mind the last few days.
“That sounds amazing,” I told her. I had been wanting to get out to New York, to meet with galleries for a long time. But the city is so big and the art scene is so big that the prospect was a little overwhelming. Having a place to stay, a place where I could feel welcome and not like an imposition – that made it a lot easier. This was going to be an outstanding opportunity.
But I was just a little hesitant. I thought it was strange that – despite growing up in the same city – we didn’t seem to have any mutual friends. I asked some of my friends about her and their responses weren’t exactly comforting. She was – as I was told – not an easy person to get along with. (And that’s putting it lightly). Going to New York, to stay with her, would be a little bit of a risk. But when I got the go ahead from the court to leave the state of Illinois, I was too excited to not take her up on the offer. It’s not like I had any other city I needed to be in at the time; my next exhibit was in Seattle and I wouldn’t need to be out there until October.
I started driving to New York but along the way, I got a phone call. It was her and she was crying. “I’m having a panic attack,” she told me. I asked her what was wrong, what was happening. She said that she felt trapped in the apartment but felt like she couldn’t go outside either. She was anxious and uncomfortable and nothing was wrong but everything was wrong. I did my best to talk her down from the ledge. She regained her composure and said she was going to go out to the fruit stand across the street. We hung up. Fuck, I thought. This doesn’t exactly bode well.
The night that I got there, she said she wasn’t sure if she wanted to have sex yet. I said okay but that night in bed, while I was falling asleep, she started to fool around with me and we wound up having sex after all. I was really gentle, really vanilla, really boring. We had talked about what I was into, she had said she wasn’t sure she could handle it, and I had told her that that was fine. That we could do whatever she was comfortable with and maybe slowly try to incorporate some more dominant/submissive stuff and see how she liked it. That’s kind of how it always goes whenever I have sex with someone the first time. Unless they explicitly tell me “yeah – I want you to do this, I want you to do that,” I’m not gonna chance it. So I played it cool and just had regular-people-sex with her. When I was just about done though, I whispered in her ear, “I’m gonna cum on your face.” “Do you want to?” she asked. “Yeah.” She said okay. So I pulled out and I came on her face.
And she immediately started crying.
FUCK.
I gave it some time. I didn’t wanna upset her any more than she already was. I didn’t wanna make her feel bad. But, eventually, I had to tell her, “If you’re not comfortable with something, you’ve gotta tell me.” “Well, it’s just that no one’s ever done that to me before,” she said. “Okay, well, that doesn’t really change anything. I don’t wanna do anything that’s gonna upset you. You had even told me before I got here that I could cum on your face so long as I ‘was sweet afterward and cleaned you up with a warm cloth.’” “I know,” she said, “I’m just… I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
We had already broached the topic of “what if we’re not sexually compatible” before I even got to New York but it quickly became a regular topic of conversation once I was there. “It’s not a big deal,” I’d tell her. “We don’t have to have sex. We can just be friends that don’t have sex.” Her response: “I know but I wanna make you happy. If that’s what you’re into then I wanna do those things.”
This was awful, terrible news. I told her that I was already happy and that – even if I weren’t – she couldn’t make me happy. And what’s more: if she wasn’t into [whichever kind of sex act] then I wasn’t gonna wanna do that with her. I’m into violent shit and I’m not gonna do that kind of stuff with a girl who isn’t enjoying it just because she wants me to enjoy it. That might technically be consensual but it still sounds like abuse to me and it definitely doesn’t sound fun.
We tried to fuck a few more times over the course of the next week, sometimes with better results than others but it didn’t feel natural or right or good. And there was other stuff going on too. By my third night in town, she had told me that she loved me – and that she was in love with me. “You don’t know me well enough to be in love with me,” I told her. “You’re in love with some idea of me that you got from my art and my writing. You hardly know me as an actual person.”
But even that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was her mood swings. One minute she’d be perfectly fine, the next she’d be having an anxiety attack about a delivery coming to the apartment or a scheduled meeting with a photographer. I’d do my best to soothe her nerves, calm her down, and everything would be okay. I could handle those mood swings. The ones I couldn’t handle were the temper tantrums. In an instant, she’d FLIP THE FUCK OUT over some insignificant little thing that – more often than not – had nothing to do with me. One morning she woke me up, SCREAMING at me. Holy shit, I thought – what is happening?
“DON’T USE FUCKING GLASSES AS ASHTRAYS!” she screamed. “THIS GLASS IS FUCKING FULL OF CIGARETTES!”
The glass she was holding, she had picked up from the counter by the window where she smoked cigarettes (I had smoked all of mine out on the fire escape the night before). I walked over. “These are all Pall Mall Blues with the exception of one Camel Menthol that you bummed from me last night. I don’t smoke non-menthol cigarettes; these are all your cigarettes. I didn’t use that glass as an ashtray; you did. Why are you screaming at me?”
After episodes like that one, she’d eventually calm down, apologize, become sweet and affectionate once more. But it was too much. It was more than I could handle. And it was every day. Several times a day. I told her that I could continue to stay there if we could just be friends. No more kissing, no more touching, definitely no more fucking or physical intimacy – and I’d be sleeping on the couch instead of in bed with her. She said she wasn’t sure if she could do that. That she was in love with me and that it would be too hard. I assured her that not only did she not know me well enough to be in love with me but that people don’t treat the people that they love the way that she was treating me. This was seriously fucked and it was seriously not okay. I left but she invited me to come back later that night and I did, to sleep on the couch. She woke me up in the morning, yelling at me again. I told her that it was totally over. That we could still be friends but that it wasn’t a good idea for me to stay in the apartment at all. I told her that she could call me anytime – if she was freaking out, having a panic attack, if she needed a friend. But that that was all that I could be to her: a friend.
A few days after I left, there was one night when I needed a shower and I was in her neighborhood. I didn’t wanna go all the way out to Brooklyn just to shower and then have to come back out to Manhattan. I offered her five bucks for the use of the shower. She asked me to just pick up some toilet paper on my way over. Deal. I stopped at the store, went to the apartment, and took a shower. Before I left, she offered me some leftover pizza. We hung out and talked as it heated up. Everything was okay, we got along fine. After I finished eating, I gave her a hug and said goodbye. She texted me later and said that if I wanted, I could come back that night and stay on the couch. I told her it was nice to see her but that we’d better not push our luck.
About a week later, she called me and invited me over. I took a shower and – again – she offered to let me stay over. This time I took her up on the invitation but told her I’d need to move my van (to somewhere it could be legally parked overnight). After I moved it, I went back upstairs and told her, “I’m gonna go downstairs to the deli and get something to eat. Would you like anything?” This was not acceptable. She got really mad at me. Told me that if I was going to stay, then I needed to just stay. She yelled at me for leaving to go move my van and for not having gone to the deli (which is literally underneath the apartment) before I came back upstairs. She called me “gross and manipulative.” She told me that I’m a bad person.
So… that’s about enough of that. I left and I blocked her number. The convenience of a place to shower or sleep isn’t worth the way that this girl treated me. I was in one shitty relationship before and this time I wasn’t even dating the girl. I barely fucking know her. I understand now why none of my friends from Sarasota had nice things to say about her. I understand now why (as she herself told me) she’s never had a “boyfriend.” I feel for her because she’s clearly lost and in a lot of pain but I’m not gonna be her fucking pincushion.
Is New York more difficult without having the apartment as a base of operations? Yeah – absolutely. But if I really need a place to sleep (an air-conditioned place to sleep) I’ve always got my friends in Brooklyn and Queens, I’ve always got Tinder, and I’ve always got the option to just sleep in the van. It’s been about two weeks now since I stayed with Joy (and a few days since that last time I went over) and I’ve been doing just fine. I’ve started hitting up some of the galleries around the city; I’ve set up my table out on the street a few times and made a little bit of money; and I’ve gotten to see a lot of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time (and gotten to make some new ones). Now, when I need to do work on the computer during the day (like writing this blog post), I just stop in at some coffee shop and buy a fucking lemonade and take a seat. It’s not so bad. Some of these places even have bathrooms.
Cool.
My first day in the city, my little brother was passing through New York with his girlfriend, Valerie. Since both of my sisters live here in the city, we all met up. It’s probably one of just three times that the four of us have all been together in the last five years.
“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.
After a month of fucking every pretty girl who so much as smiled in my direction, and Tinder dates every night of the week, I have once again wound up in a “relationship.” We met three days ago and are already saying we love each other because we’re both out of our minds.
Right now, I’m on my way to face my charges in Illinois and I’ve got her along for the ride. Last night we stayed in Atlanta, where we had our first fight. (I couldn’t cum and she didn’t wanna lick my asshole). I adore her.
#cutestcouple
Before anybody flips out on me too hard, I should note that she’s not really all that drug-addled…
