April 2nd 2013
email from me
Hey, <Mutual Friend> will be in town for MoCCA. Will you be around?
I’m starting to lose my mind where I’m living and I am really thinking of leaving to go to somewhere more sane. Somewhere cheaper.
Have you ever considered Thailand?
From what I understand, it’s an easy place to live on the cheap. $1000 to get there by plane, but once there, it’s like $5 a night for a night hotel. Someone like ourselves with SSD could live like a king.
I’m thinking about it. I’m going so stir crazy.
email from Stefan
I’m not sure if I’m gonna be around. I’ve been spending my days in bed. I have a fuckin’ chest cold. Wheezing and coughing up gunk…which is a good sign that it’s finally starting to get out of me. But it’s making me all figgy and weak. I’ve been just getting up to run to tattoo appointments & to the ghetto to grab my shit….which I’ve reduced to half of what I was doing in the last few weeks. I got some meds to help tough out the withdrawals a bit when I get over this chest cold thing. But I’m not gonna deal with full on withdrawals with this terrible cold.
So….it seems to be getting a bit better. I’m sucking down garlic, and tea with honey and lemon constantly. Bad timing for everything. And, I’m slowly gathering my shit into piles to consolidate my belongings so when I get out, it’s gonna be a fairly easy move. I’m so clouded right now, I’m not sure what I’m doing. But, if I feel the way I do now this weekend…. I’ll be M.I.A. <Chick Friend> asked me if I was going, because she probably won’t go unless she rides with me. But, I may just tell her she’s better off going without me.
Thailand huh? Anywhere sounds better than here….but that’s a pretty big decision. I’m willing to look into anything though. I’ll do some research. Going stir crazy huh? How bad is it over there? Roommate issues hitting the fan?
email from me
I have the chest sickness as well. I’ve been hiding over at <boyfriend>’s house for most of the past week. I thought I was better, but I went to Asbury Park on Saturday for a comic con, and really just overdid myself. I’m far too sickness prone. So i’m sick all over again. Wheezing. Sweating. Ugh.
My roommate is fucking filthy. And an alchoholic. I am really tired of living with people who can’t be adults and dont undrstand the principles of a clean common space. Basically, it’s his apartment, and I just rent a room. $500 a month for a room that is 5′ x 15′ is not fucking ok when the common space is gross. He lives like a child. I can’t fucking take it.
I have been going to fancy ass doctors, and I’m hoping I get some answers soon, but…. I’m really tired.
All I’ve wanted to do with my life is travel and have adventures, and all I’ve done is wait around to get my health figured out while I get slowly sicker and sicker and less able to adventure, and no longer young and vibrant to do all the fun things. It’s getting to me. More an more, the older I get the more upset it makes me.
I’m back to my old self for the most part, being rather unemotional about most things, but man… talk of travel, of living abroad, of doing things…. it reduces me to tears.
I really don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be around my family. I don’t want to visit Asbury Park and see how cool and hip it’s getting while my family won’t even let me RENT the back apartment for the summer. I don’t want to get sad drunk emails from my mom telling me how suicidal my stepfather is, and fear the call and have to go to a funeral I don’t want to attend. I want to be far away so I don’t have to feel slighted about not being invited to Fox Fest or something.
Thailand? Not really my scene. It’s hot there. But….. I can’t do this anymore. The american way of life is getting to me. The food is all wrong. NYC is turning into a fucking mall.
I’m rambling. I’m a bit out of it from the sickness.
Oh, and also…
After we finished with the comic con, I took <boyfriend> on a walking tour of the area. Up Cookman, and then back down Main Ave in Ocean Grove, showed him the Great Hall, and my old house. Explained how much more desolate it used to be.
“and you were here all alone?!”
yup.
And I explained to him what a good friend to me you were, how you’d visit me weekly, and bring me food, and bring me food shopping, and make sure I was ok when nobody else bothered. And how I figured we’d always be friends, somehow.
email from Stefan
It’s really picking up over there now huh? Way different then when we were walking around that ghost town.
email from me
Yeah. It’s fucking crazy. i’m so angry that my family just constantly blocks me from there. I offered to rent the back apartment for the summer. Or the basement. I just want to get out of NYC for the summer.
My dad said that he might sell his house in Freehold and move into Ocean Grove for financial reasons. This makes NO SENSE. Why sell the house you can’t make money on and move into the house that you could rent out?! If I had the money, I’d rent the house outright for a year, live in the basement, and rent out the rest and make a profit. I wish I had that kind of money.
As soon as Asbury Park started to be NOT just a shithole, they booted me. Because they can’t bear to see me have something fun and nice. That’s just how it goes.
email from Stefan
I’m glad I was able to help you then. We were friends…you understood me more than anyone else did, or cared to at the time. It was the least I could do. And we did some great things together then. Those stop motions are still one of my most proud artistic accomplishments. And I found my pages for Romance from Beyond. I have eleven pages I penciled so far….I’m gonna finish it at my leisure and put it out at whatever convention is available when it’s done. Possibly look for a publisher.
Anyway….this things about to die. Talk to you later. Night.
email from me
You helped me then. If I can help you now in any way, please let me. Please tell me how.