Ready When You Are

"Ready When You Are." 6/7/13. Oil pastel. 9½x12”.
“Ready When You Are.” 6/7/13. Oil pastel. 9½x12”.

It was Friday so I drove up to Tranquil Shores for my session with Tracy and my weekly expressive art group with the kids that were still inpatients. Earlier that week, I had found an apartment in Jacksonville. When I told Tracy, she was really surprised. (I had been talking about moving, but it was just a few days prior that I actually started looking for a place, so it all happened really quickly). “Seriously?” she asked me. “Well, let me get the papers for your discharge.”

Somehow that hadn’t occurred to me: that moving away would mean I’d be officially discharged from Tranquil Shores. My life was about to change and it was just now registering. It made me sad. It even made me a little angry, though I’m not sure with whom. (Probably myself). It was a really great afternoon; everyone at Tranquil Shores couldn’t have been sweeter to me or more supportive. But… I didn’t wanna leave. I didn’t want it to be over and I guess I was as caught off-guard as Tracy had been.

After my session, I went into the art room for group. I felt good overall, but had that little streak of darkness in me. I got an idea in my head of a sorta vulture and I liked it. I wanted to draw something that lived off dead flesh – something sustained by failure.

But still sorta comic and fun.

—–

(Especially relevant) status update: Heather’s friends are getting married in Englewood next weekend, so I won’t be too far from Tranquil Shores. On Friday, I’m going to drive up that way and meet up with a crew of kids I went to treatment with for lunch, and then I’m gonna go in for the expressive art group just like I used to. I’ve been really excited about it but am getting more nervous as it gets closer. It’s gonna be a totally new crop of kids. I’ll still know all the staff obviously, but it seems kinda strange to go to group with a bunch of patients I’ve never met before. I hope I don’t wimp out. I hope it goes well.

—–


The Island in Pinocchio Where Bad Kids Go to Be Bad

"The Island in Pinocchio Where Bad Kids Go to Be Bad (Welcome to Delray Beach)." 10/5/13. Acrylic and watercolor paint, food coloring, resin sand, and pen. 16x20" stretched canvas.
“The Island in Pinocchio Where Bad Kids Go to Be Bad.” 10/5/13. Acrylic and watercolor paint, food coloring, resin sand, and pen. 16×20″ stretched canvas.

Delray Beach has more rehabs, halfway houses, and treatment institutions (of all kinds) than any other city. It’s the so-called “recovery capital of the world,” which – by default – also makes it the relapse capital of the world. While plenty go to Delray and get better, just as many go and get much, much worse. The streets of Delray are swarmed with young, drug-addled fuck-ups from all parts of the country, which is why I love to joke that it’s the real world correlate of the island in Pinocchio where bad kids go to be bad. I got to town the night of January 20, 2012 and met her the very next day.

But fast forward to the last time I ever saw her: August 1, 2012, when we left the St. Louis airport on separate planes. She flew to Minneapolis to check into her fifth rehab and I flew back to Miami to collect some things. When I wound up in rehab myself (just sixteen days later) I didn’t know if we’d ever see each other again. As was evident in the journal entries I wrote during my first weekend at Tranquil Shores, I was confused. I thought about her a lot but did I love her? I argued the point both ways with myself. Tranquil Shores allowed me limited use of my cell phone after a time and (while her facility didn’t) she managed to get a prepaid phone smuggled in. I was making big strides in my treatment and trying to play by the rules and I encouraged her to do the same. I told her our relationship was distracting both of us from our treatment. She disagreed and took offense. Our phone calls got to be less frequent, shorter, and more argumentative. When I found myself getting wrapped up in other girls and starting to recognize the full extent of my codependency, I decided that my relationship with her had been more of the same. We had been close enough that I – of course – cared about and loved her, but I decided that it wasn’t a romantic love and that we had only been drawn together by shared emotional defects.

On April 21, 2013, I had eight months clean and she was checking into rehab for the seventh time. I wrote her a letter and shared all the things I had done differently in my last round of treatment that I thought had finally made it count. I also explained our relationship to her: how we hadn’t really been in love but just had a kind of survivor’s bond from running the streets of south Florida for five months after being kicked out of treatment. She didn’t get the letter but saw it on her way out the door. (Her counselor tried to use it as a bargaining chip to get her to stay but to no avail). She left and called me. I was frustrated that she had walked out and I was tired of trying to help when she didn’t seem willing to help herself. Why the fuck would she leave treatment again? By even taking her phone calls and trying to be supportive whenever she’d put herself in situations like this, I was enabling her continued decline. My counselor advised that I set a boundary and I did. “Until you have three months clean, we can’t talk.”

A few weeks ago, I got a text message. Five months after I had set the boundary, she had her three months. Or so she said. I had my doubts but I decided to take her word for it and I’d like to believe that it’s the truth. I told her she could call and she did. She was initially combative (there were some resentments a full year in the making) but the conversation lightened as time passed and, ninety minutes in, she said she had something she needed to tell me. She thanked me and said she couldn’t imagine what might have happened to her had I not stuck with her when we were put out on the street. She said that I was exactly the person she needed at that point in her life and that – being just a little bit older, wiser, and more experienced – I had saved her from who-knows-what terrible fate. And she said that she wouldn’t be the person she is today had it not been for my presence and influence, which had proven to be both tremendous and positive.

My kneejerk (internal) reaction was that I was a piece of shit and that we had been nothing but bad for each other – that we had kept each other sick. I put that aside for the moment as she continued to speak. I was sort of dumbstruck by what I was hearing. These were not the kinds of words I’d expect from her. She had always been boastful, independent, and above everything. Nothing could touch her; nothing could shake her. Nobody could teach her anything because she already knew everything. That was the girl as I remembered her. Her words forced me to remember another girl though: a side of her that I hadn’t seen or thought of in a long time.  In an instant, I realized that I was wrong to assume that I knew her mind better than she did; I was wrong to tell her that she hadn’t really been in love with me. I had impacted her life in ways that I had never really considered (or had at least forgotten about). She always played so tough and, even though I knew it was just a wall she used to protect herself, I had forgotten that the wall wasn’t so thick as to actually keep anything from ever making it through.

After we hung up, I thought about the reaction I had stowed after being floored and humbled by the impact of her words. I remembered something that I had told myself over and over in those days: that I had to stay with her because – as bad as things might have been with me – I knew that they’d be far worse without me. At the time, I thought I could actually save her (save both of us) and that we could get well together. While I was absolutely wrong on that point, I really did look out for her and things really would have been far worse for her had I not been there. That part was true. For everything that I had done wrong, I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) discount the good that I had done as well.

—–

Before we hung up that night, she also commissioned me to paint something for her. I’ve been working on it, off and on, ever since but I finally finished it last night. In making it, I reflected on our relationship, which now spans twenty months. Three incidents came to mind that struck me as being particularly significant. I journaled about them directly on the canvas but it’s so layered that most of my words were washed away by watercolors or obscured by acrylics or food coloring.

The first incident was a night I had forgotten about – a time when the question of our love’s authenticity was nowhere near my mind. It was late at night, storming, and we were parked in the lot at the treatment facility that had kicked us out a month prior. [The treatment center and patient residence were separate properties, so the building was empty; it was a place to park that we knew cops wouldn’t come around]. We were in the backseat, fooling around, and had stripped down to nothing. Then – at some point, for whatever reason – we got out of the car, totally naked and in spite of the sheets of rain that were slamming down on top of us. Standing upright, in that parking lot, in the middle of that storm, we had sex. If that sounds dirty or cheap or vulgar, it wasn’t. We may have been living like homeless, scummy, junkie street urchins – and maybe we were – but in that moment we were young, in love, and free – invincible. I felt like I had an amazing secret that the rest of the world would never know or understand. It was beautiful. I thought so then and – in that way – I still do.

The second was the day we ripped off a drug dealer and almost got ourselves killed. In anticipation of this entry’s length, I went ahead and wrote out that story two days ago in a separate entry. It’s a very different anecdote and has nothing to do with love or freedom; it’s just sad and desperate.

The third incident (and the only one of which my journals of are still somewhat visible on the canvas) was the recent phone call itself. It forced me, for the first time, to really look at and question the narrative I had constructed to explain (and discount) our relationship. Not only did she remind me that night that I don’t have things quite as figured out as I sometimes like to think, but also that truth is relative to the individual. I hate it when people try to tell me what I’m feeling and I was doing exactly that to her. I thought I was so reflective and enlightened when, in reality, I was being thoughtless, arrogant, and invalidating. Who was I to say that she wasn’t/had never been truly in love with me? Besides, what the fuck does that even mean? To be in love with someone. I think I know but does anyone ever really?

Maybe I was in love (and maybe I wasn’t). Whatever it was, I’m grateful for it – the good memories and the bad.

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Related entries/pieces:


Spoiler Alert

"Spoiler Alert." 11/3/12. Watercolor and colored pencil. 12x18".
“Spoiler Alert.” 11/3/12. Watercolor and colored pencil. 12×18″.

Alexis was planning on moving back into her parents’ house when she got out of treatment. She had the option of moving in with her grandmother, but didn’t want to for reasons she’d never really explained to me. When I’d try to talk to her seriously about why it was so dangerous for her to move back “home,” she’d use her little-girl voice, make puppy eyes at me, and say things like “But I wannnnnnna.” It was frustrating. I cared about her. If she moved back into that house, she’d be living with her sister, who I had also been in rehab with. And unlike this girl, her sister had never shown any interest (that I’d been able to pick up on anyway) in getting clean and getting her life together. Alexis was different. She had the potential to do really great things with her life really soon. Her insistence on moving “home” was the only indication that was wasn’t 100% set on really living. On being better.

“If you move back home, you know how that story ends.” She looked at me with a mock I-haven’t-the-faintest-idea expression. “No? Can I ruin the ending for you? You fall back into it, violate your probation, and go to jail.” She shrugged me off and kept trying to be cute. It was still more than a month down the road and – shit – she was pretty good at being cute. I gave in, laughed, told her we’d “revisit the subject.”

As time passed, I’d continue to let her know that I cared and try to lead her in a better direction but – ultimately – I knew I had to accept that it wasn’t something I could control and do my best to not stress out about it.

In the end, she moved back home and fell off, just as anyone could have predicted…

And now, she lives behind bars and gets to be a cautionary tale on my fucking website.

Which is so stupid and tragic and… insignificant.

I don’t know. It is and it isn’t – and it’s [whatever] to [whoever]. You try and make sense of the world… I’m just gonna stick with the comfortable little philosophy I’ve developed. Or maybe I’m just gonna elect not to think about it.

—–

She and I used to sit in the courtyard at Tranquil Shores and listen to records on my little portable turntable. Here’s the first song from one of the albums we spun the most. I love it a whole lot, but it makes me kinda sad sometimes.

“710” by Sundials

—–

That same month, she asked me if I’d make her a bracelet like the ones that I wore. The only reason it has my name on it is that she specifically requested it. I applied the color (which is hair dye) with a q-tip and a sewing needle.


So Smart I Got Life Lessons Dripping Out My Asshole

"I'm So Smart I Got Life Lessons Dripping Out My Asshole (Also: Charm) Pay Me (...?)" 2/16/13. Acrylics and resin sand on cardboard. 12x14".
“So Smart I Got Life Lessons Dripping Out My Asshole.” 2/16/13. Acrylics and resin sand on cardboard. 12×14″.

So smart I got life lessons dripping out my asshole (also: charm); pay me (…?)

Expressive art. Self-deprecating humor. The ninth painting of ten in my series, “The Weak End.” If you’re at all familiar with my work, you’ve already read everything that I could possibly say about this painting or the two days over which I worked on it.

I do, however, have a new (almost-finished) painting that will be featured here soon. In presenting it, there are three stories that I’ll want to share. Were I to include them all in a single entry, it’d be a little overwhelming. So…

—–

The true story of my afternoon on April 28, 2012.

We met in a treatment facility that we had both transferred to from others. It was from her previous rehab that she knew Bill. He wasn’t a patient of theirs, he was an employee. He had clean time. (Emphasis on had). He started using yesterday.

J had a habit of not counting his money until he was back in his car. We didn’t have any money, but if we could find someone to throw in a hundred, we could pad the twenties with small bills to make it look like as much as three. We called Bill and he met us with a hundred dollars cash.

We had shorted J before but only by twenty or thirty and we’d always eventually (sort of) paid in full. In any case, we bought from him everyday. We were junkies; he knew we weren’t going anywhere.

I made the call and with her by my side and Bill in the backseat, we met up with J. As soon as we made the hand-off,  I put the car in gear and drove off as quickly as I could without raising suspicion – but it’d only be a matter of time before he sat down and counted that money. He called within a minute. I had (I thought, slyly) taken a residential street so that he wouldn’t see us in traffic, but before I knew it, he was there. He slid around us, cut off our path, and was out of the car. I floored it in reverse, struggling to keep the car from backing into any of the others parked on the narrow street. He chased after us and almost grabbed hold of me through the window when I swung the car out into the intersection and into drive. His girlfriend had taken the wheel when he got out and she picked him up. They were right on us immediately and we proceeded to play bumper cars across the streets of Delray Beach, running every red light, driving on the wrong side of the roads. Our car was already beat up but his was really nice. Or had been earlier that day anyway.

As soon as J was back in the car, he was back on the phone. As we swerved around and into each other, I tried to reason with him. “It’s only two hundred dollars. Report the damage as a hit and run and turn it in to your insurance. This isn’t worth it.”

“This car isn’t insured or registered. It’s not even my plate. You owe me a lot of money – and the dope – and I’m beating the shit out of you.”

“I’ll get you money later in the week but I’m not giving the drugs back so you might as well give up now.”

I got us to the on ramp for I-95, but  our car was old and slow. We didn’t stand a chance at outrunning him. Smashing the fuck out of his car hadn’t deterred him so I had to get creative. I swerved around other cars, trying to lead J into an accident that might actually slow him down.

“I’m gonna flip your car and kill you,” he said.

“That’s the only way you’re getting the drugs back. Chalk it up as a loss and give up before it gets any worse.” I was pretty bold for someone shaking so badly.

I tried a new technique: slamming on the brakes to take us from 90 mph to a dead stop in the middle of the interstate – counting on the cars around us to prevent J from doing the same. After a couple stalemates, where he pulled onto the shoulder up ahead to wait, knowing we had no option but to start driving again, I started to lose hope. How had we not passed a cop yet? How many other drivers must have called this demolition derby in by now? It was only a matter of time before this all ended very badly – one way or another. And my fucking fuel light was on.

“My boys are getting on at Lantana and are gonna light you the fuck up. You and your girl are as good as dead.”

I guess he didn’t notice that we also had Bill in the back seat. (Quite an experience for someone so freshly off the wagon, huh?)

Eventually, somehow, I was able to lose him. After an exit, I tore across two lanes and into the grass back toward the off-ramp at the last possible second when I’d be able to do so and J wouldn’t without losing sight of us for long enough for us to turn and leave him guessing which way we had gone.

J didn’t follow and when I got to the first red light that I wouldn’t be running that afternoon, I eased into a stop with a police car right next to me. My headlight was dragging on the street in front of the car. The front bumper was partially detached and the back bumper was smashed in. The light turned green and the distance between us and the cop increased until I was able to exhale.

And then I laughed. We all laughed. A lot. It wasn’t funny but it was amazing in its way. As fucked up as all of it is in hindsight, in that moment we were triumphant and I was a hero. (Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, but it felt that way). We had no right to be alive. It defied all logic that we were driving away, unscathed and with heroin. I dropped Bill off at his car and drove back to the trailer park where she and I were renting a windowless room with no door to the outside. I left the car at the opposite end of the park and we got out to walk. We lived at the entrance of the park and J’s house was only a mile down the road; I didn’t want to run the risk were he to go out looking for us.

We walked into the trailer, into our room, shut the door, and shot up. I don’t remember anything that happened after that, but the next day, we packed our shit to leave for Miami.

—–

“The Weak End” series:

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  • 11×13″ prints of this piece are for sale in my webstore.

Calvin’s Alprazolam

"Calvin's Alprazolam." 7/3/13. Graphic design. 4x2".
“Calvin’s Alprazolam.” 7/3/13. Graphic design. 4×2″.

I played Calvin Mather in the short film “No Real Than You Are.” During the four weeks I was in town to work on the movie, I tried to pitch in with whatever I could to be helpful. This is some of my “prop work”: a perfect replica of a Walgreens prescription label. Every detail is exactly as it would be if Calvin were… you know… not a character in a movie. That’s the address and phone number for the Walgreens closest to the address I chose for him (my last address before going to rehab in December 2011). It was a shitty little box of a studio apartment that had mushrooms growing out of the carpet. I pulled ’em out, sprayed fungicide and other assorted chemicals, but they’d always grow back. Eventually I relented and just accepted them as part of my home. I kinda liked ’em.

So while this isn’t anything like my usual “art,” I think it counts. I didn’t have a scanner so I had to create it from scratch – and everything is 100% dead on. (Go ahead! Pull out a prescription bottle from Walgreens and see how it measures up!)

Another project I did for the movie… The night before the filming of the first scene in which a character would be sniffing oxycodone, I found out that the powder the crew had been planning to use (instead of real drugs) wasn’t going to work. So Chris Spillane and I went to Walmart at 2am and bought vitamins, food dye, hose clamps, bowls, a lamp, and a lightbulb and cooked up a pile of “oxycodone” that looked extraordinarily like the real thing. Walmart probably gets its share of sketchy characters during the third shift, but I think Chris and I won the contest that night. We both had a pretty good time with the whole thing. I remember laughing a lot that night, especially while we were still in the store. Back at the apartment, I was reminded of being a seventeen year old drug dealer, cutting cocaine with vitamins and acetone.

A couple days later, when we ran out of the stuff and needed more, I had Chris – plus Tola and Alex (the production designer and leadman) – sitting on the floor in my apartment, grinding away at vitamins as I mixed, colored, and cooked them. It felt like I was actually running a fake drug manufacture scam!

I would have loved to have been the cashier that rang us up that night.
I would have loved to have been the cashier that rang us up.
I had to sleep with this light on all night so that it'd be ready to go in time for the shoot in the morning.
I had to sleep with the light on so our “drugs” would be ready for the shoot in the morning.

In case you’re wondering… while this is what went up the noses of the actors that sniffed “drugs,” it is not what my character was injecting whenever he did a shot. For that, I used blue Gatorade. While there were some concerns that injecting Gatorade might be dangerous… Back when I was shooting heroin everyday, I was pretty shiftless; if there was no water within reach but a bottle of Gatorade sitting next to me, I’d just put that in my spoon instead. Electrolytes are good for you, you guys.

—–

  • “No Real Than You Are” is currently raising money to help with the costs of post-production. If you’d like to contribute (or just watch the trailer), check out their Kickstarter page.

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Bent Outta Shape fans will probably enjoy that the RX# on Calvin’s prescription is telephone spelling for “IYDKMRNIGE.”


Eat Gummy Worms and Smoke Crack With Someone Who Appreciates You

"Eat Gummy Worms and Smoke Crack With Someone Who Appreciates You." 1/7/13. Pen. 8½x11.
“Eat Gummy Worms and Smoke Crack With Someone Who Appreciates You.” 1/7/13. Pen. 8½x11.

When I was in pre-school, my dad once asked my teacher, “Racey brings home art almost everyday – why doesn’t Sam ever bring anything home?”

“Because it doesn’t turn out the way he wants it to, so he crumples it up, throws it away, and then stares at the floor sulking until art time is over.”

Forget about art and pre-school – that’s kind of how I lived my entire life until recently.

I drew this one day in January back when I was still an inpatient at Tranquil Shores. (It wasn’t an art group but I’m like – totally rebellious, you guys). It started out as a drawing for my friend Nick but – after I fucked it up – I let it become something else. (Pen isn’t a very forgiving medium). I’m glad that I have the capacity these days to accept my mistakes as necessary – or inevitable. (They’re not really mistakes; they were supposed to happen). And this too works as an analogy for my life. I’ve fucked up plenty, even in this last year, but I accept all of it now. I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

The caption is the same as the title: EAT GUMMY WORMS AND SMOKE CRACK WITH SOMEONE WHO APPRECIATES YOU.

—–

Daily status update: My first Artwalk tonight went really well. Jacksonville may not be the ARTS CAPITAL of the world, but I’m really grateful that we’ve got something like this that happens every month. Looking forward to round two in November. (It’ll be just two days after my birthday)!

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Asides

  • This piece was kind of a breakthrough for me in terms of expressive art. I feel the same way about: “Perfect Love / Exit Bag,” “The Weak End” series, and “Court Dating.”
  • This is the ONE HUNDREDTH piece of art to be added to the website!
  • It also totally features a frog sitting in a prescription bottle. That’s something, right?
  • 2025 UPDATE: I decided I like this drawing enough to make a small run of prints. But first I JUICED IT UP with some color and a border (’cause I’m a CHEATER). You can find it in the webstore.


Autobiography

"Autobiography." 9/30/13. Watercolor (with acrylic outline). 16x20" stretched canvas.
“Autobiography.” 9/30/13. Watercolor (with acrylic outline). 16×20″ stretched canvas.

When I was asked to consider how I present myself to the world, I was able to identify four different “roles” that I play. While all of them are genuine parts of who I am, what’s not genuine is how I’ll focus on (or “play up”) whichever will best suit me in some situation. These days, I try to be authentic but I (of course) still do it to some degree. We all do.

I like this cartoon a lot but—in all honesty—it’s kind of bullshit. I hardly ever put myself out there in such a way as to risk being rejected by a girl. I just thought this up one night because I knew it’d be cute and it’d fit well with my “wounded child / stray dog” persona that some girls seem to find so endearing and attractive.

As redundant as my art may be at times, it’s incredibly rare that I’ll make the same thing twice. This cartoon is one of those exceptions. Below are some journal excerpts that explain why I wanted to create this image again and [bonus!] paint a pretty good picture of a kid with low self-esteem, trying to solve his problems with female attention.

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Tranquil Shores Journal, November 16th, 2012:
Saw Kelly at the Church of the Isles meeting last night. First time since she bolted from Tranquil Shores. She came up to me and was really flirty. Lightly kicked me ‘cause I was sitting on a curb smoking a cigarette and then sat down next to me. I kicked it with her at the Fairwinds table. Or – rather – I sat down at a table and they all sat down with me. She didn’t sit next to me, but across from me (which I commented on). We made funny faces throughout the meeting, with occasional little comments. I drew a picture of Satan with the caption, “Anal Sex and Goat’s Blood,” and passed it across the table to her. She asked if she could keep it and then pointed out that the crumpled paper on the table (that she had thrown at me a little earlier) was actually a note. I uncrumpled it; it said, “You’re hot.” I gave her a look. After the meeting, we traded numbers. I’m looking forward to that. Though she does have a boyfriend, he just got arrested so I don’t think it’ll be an obstacle. Not that I want to date her anyway. I do think she’s cool, but she’s not ready to get better. They don’t get to keep their phones in Fairwinds but she gets out in eight days.

I broke up with Chelsea. She keeps going back and forth. Trying to be mean to me, begging me to still be with her, saying I used her, trying to pull me back in with sex appeal (“I want you in my bed right now; I want to have sex with you so bad”). It’s all over the place. For the time being, I blocked her on Facebook. I think it should stay that way so she’s not perpetually flipping her shit every time there’s any activity on my page.

Alexis coins out in three weeks. I’m not thrilled about that.

Met another girl at the meeting on Tuesday. Lilly. She’s from Lexington. I said I had some friends there. “Anybody I’d know?” I asked if she ever went to shows or was at all into punk. “Sort of.” Turns out while she didn’t know the kids I named, she is friends with Infected (that sorta-metal punk band on A.D.D.). Outstanding. [I don’t know those guys, but that’s close enough to my world]. She was cute. Not insanely hot, but definitely a cute girl. We talked for a long while before the meeting, while Alexis sat to my left feeling totally neglected (I’m sure) which I kind of enjoyed. I had done the same thing with/to her back when Kelly was at Tranquil Shores and it only got her to pay more attention to me. At one point, Lilly was fishing in her bag for something to show me that she thought I’d get a kick out of. She couldn’t find it and told me she’d show it to me “next time” so after the meeting, I asked for a pen and gave her my number and Facebook. She hasn’t hit me up yet, but it’s only been a couple days.

The property staff is out of town for some training seminar so the clinical and office staffs are filling in as our weekend babysitters. Should be fun.

Tracy came by and I played “Song For the Desperate” for her. She liked “parts of it.”
When she left, it was just Ashley and I. We talked about girls and boys and rehab romance and I told her about Jesse’s coin out and running into Kelly last night. I also tricked her into telling me how much Tranquil Shores pays her (and then pointed that out). It was fun talking to her. I think she’ll be a good counselor.

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Tranquil Shores Journal, December 6th, 2012:
Kelly never called but word is Fairwinds decided to hold her for another 30 [which means she still doesn’t have a phone]. For the first time since I saw her there, we went to Church of the Isles for our meeting tonight. I was looking forward to it all week ‘cause Fairwinds is always there on Thursdays. Until tonight… Maybe I’ll see her when we come back on the 20th.

Willa [who I met at Blind Pass recently] was at the meeting though, so maybe it’s for the best that Kelly wasn’t. I sat with her and pulled (what I guess is now) my “Church of the Isles” trick: I drew a picture and passed it to her. It was a fucked up looking kid offering a flower to a pretty (but disgusted or annoyed) looking girl, captioned “My Autobiography.” She said something nice but didn’t ask if she could keep it. But she did pass me a note with her phone number in it.

After the meeting, I went outside and sat on the curb to smoke a cigarette. Alexis came out and sat down next to me. I pulled the “My Autobiography” cartoon from my pocket and showed it to her. “Did you make this for me?” she asked. I froze for just a second and then nodded and smiled, “I did!” She was really into it. It’s funny how things play out sometimes.

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Journal, April 7th, 2013:
On top of everything else that happened yesterday, Alexis sent me a text. It’s gotten less and less frequent and I’m not sure why she even bothers at this point. It’s so pointless and she acts so oblivious. I tried to have a conversation with her and when that proved impossible, I just asked her to please send me a picture of my cartoon like she promised. It’s the one thing I’ve made that I don’t have a picture of. She told me when she moved out that she hung it next to her bed but I can never actually get her to send the picture. I think it’s because she knows it’s the one thing she’s got to keep me from ignoring her outright.

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Journal, June 21st, 2013:
Not that I expected her to show up this weekend [for the Tranquil Shores Alumni Reunion], but I just found out that Alexis violated her probation (again) and is almost certainly going to jail for the next decade or so. I saw it coming but it still… it’s just sad how fast she went from “shining star of recovery” to “totally fucked in the head and making all the wrong decisions.” We both let each other fuck us up a little bit but she was still my best friend for a while there—and I really thought she was going to do well. I really wanted her to do well.

In any case, it’s a safe bet that I’m never getting a picture of that cartoon. Is it fucked up for me to even think of that?