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January 1st-9th
Stefan and I talk about the struggles of finding facilities and sober houses.
January 22nd
Stefan sends me a photo of a gift of thank you drawings I’d made him, and our photobooth photos.
I now know he kept these items in his lock box.
I have little drive to make things if not as a gift or out of tribute to someone. For him, I’d make drawings of the mundane.
Valentine’s night
Stefan sends me a heart, thanks me, hints at why/where/how things when wrong between us. I don’t grasp what he’s getting at.
February 24th?
Talk we did.
March 16th
On January 8th, I post a new version of “Four Fictional Characters that Describe You” [IG]
which brings him back to this comparative instagram image trend I’d posted two years prior. [IG]
The silhouette of the Black Knight becomes the main figure, the red design on his chest inspiring the red high heels. Hands clasping football helmets are used on the hat, the dots on the helmets used in the pattern, as is the wavy lines of brain. From the older image… my nudity censoring becomes an arrow. The color palette of the lettering dictating the color of the drawings. My King Crimson face becomes the clown. Friend pointing at friend with red plaid shirt that becomes red buttons, the stars from the flag behind me become a star atop his head. I combine with the blue flag behind me for the face at the top, my eyepatch becoming black sunglasses. [IG]
April 21st
April 16th, I post my cat high on painkillers from getting teeth removed. [IG]
Directly below him on Instagram are my two most recent posts for my radio show [IG] [IG]
which reminds Stefan of this photo of my then-boyfriend and I traveling to LA [flickr]
beside it, an arial shot of New Jersey. [flickr]
My face, the boyfriend’s T-shirt design, and my cat, throwing in some splatter inspired by the tendrils of city as viewed by the plane, the lettering keeping the same scribble style as my drawing above, but outlined in green like my promo photo lettering. [IG]
July 1st
One month prior, I’d posted two images of a chalk drawing of Lenny Bruce I’d drawn on the slate tabletops at the Comedy Cellar [IG]
the head position and lapels reminding him of this image I’d posted on October of 2021, planning my Halloween costume of Snake Plissken. [fb]
So he wears a Halloween eyepatch, but copies the positioning of Lenny exactly, smoke emulating the blurred chalk edges around the jaw. [fb]
July 4th
One month prior. [fb]
The laying figures in opposite directions brought him to these photographs from the Florida erotic art show years prior.
He recreates the window and cracked wall from the other Cronenberg image, and he leaves a strip of white uncropped at the bottom of his drawing, like the banner of white at the bottom of the theater graphic. The long hair, from the upper photofraph, the face and fist from the photo to the left, the body from the photo on the right. [IG]
July 23-25th
July 6th. I post my crazy outfit for and excitement about seeing Phil Tippett’s stop motion animation masterpiece Mad God. [IG]
Stefan starts making animation. [IG] [IG]
July 25th
June 3rd. [IG]
which Stefan combines with his photo of us in Chicago.
The angled blood splatter in the background for the beams of light coming from Bruce McCullough’s typewriter. [IG]
July 27th
which reminds him of this:
So with the shadow there is now two of us, the light green to match our nature surroundings. [IG]
July 31st
Things aren’t going well with Stefan. He’s harder to get a hold of, backsliding.
October 27th
October 28th
October 12th. My vet bills with orange lettering and filthy fingernails. [IG]
He posts tattoo equipment with the same. [fb]
November 3rd
October 21st. Me and a guest on my radio show [IG]
and images from that radio playlist. [WFMU]
A crazy mashup of communications. [IG]
— Tattoos —
There’s an added visual language from here forward.
In the Ocean Grove days, I’d made Stefan a stuffed animal based on the tapir looking Japanese mythological creature called the baku. Baku are benevolent beings that devour bad dreams, chosen specifically to thwart Stefan’s chronic nightmares.
It was shortly after this that Stefan suggested he test the white tattoo ink on me by putting a single line around my pinkie, and then tattooed his own pinkie with a black line. I did not know until recently about the Japanese myth of the Thread of Fate, an invisible (red) string tied to the pinkie that connects people who are destined to meet and be in each other’s lives.
(not my photo)
Now, Stefan has updated his use of symbolism. The tattoos and pendant he wears are used as communication; prominent, obscured, faded, or hidden depending on context. Their meaning is as follows:
The H at the base of his neck is an alchemy symbol meaning “pulverize” with, I believe, a dual meaning of “H for heroin” and a bent needle. Kill the addiction.
LXXXI below the H is 81 in roman numerals, his birth year.
The necklace is a Celtic trinity knot meaning eternal love. (There is another pendant which I’ve not identified.)
Razorblades on the wrists… well.
Alchemy symbol of sulfur, masculine, representing the soul. it represents the active, fiery, and volatile aspect of matter and humanity, connecting the body and the spirit. It can have a dual meaning representing the heavenly or divine spark and the earthly or “infernal” fire within.
The sideways J with a square is another alchemy symbol meaning “filter”. Possibly representing The Brother?
The Four of Diamonds is considered: “… a mark of friendship and trust. It announces reconciliation with a childhood friend, or a friend who will tell you his/her secrets on an important matter.”
The hindi words are empathy/compassion (the longer word) and wickedness/evil (the shorter).
27 is his birthdate. It’s also his age when we split up.
The arrow with squiggle on his middle finger is known as a symbol of alchemy meaning “purify”. It’s on the same finger as the 2, so a pure union, a perfect pair?
The solid ring is where the black line on his pinkie was; the tattoo that matched the white line on my own pinkie. At the time, I thought it was a cover-up, but no, it’s reestablishing/reinforcing us.
Marilyn is definitely me. That becomes quite evident. She is later used to visually represent me in photo recreations.
But why Marilyn?
I did ask.
Please recall this crappy drawing of mine. One of the few pieces of my art that Stefan had.
Also, these fake movie posters I’d designed for a “what if David Lynch directed Spiderman?” challenge.
These kinds of design challenges were presented weekly for the artists of the online geek community I was part of. That community was based around the fandom, fellow professionals, and message board of famed comic book writer Warren Ellis (not to be confused with the lovely musician of the same name). Ellis had created a notorious nerd networking hub of the early 00’s known as the Warren Ellis Forum. Ellis closed that message board down by late 2002, but followed it up with various other online social communities over the years. Lurking and posting in those parasocial places garnered me some small degree of artistic connection, reach, inspiration, and recognition.
After taking oodles of photos for the Lynch/Spiderman project, I discovered that I preferred their look when digitally over-tweaking them, resulting in an unintentional Marilyn-ish vibe. Starting in December of 2010, they were used as my profile pictures on social media for some time.
Stefan had already used at least one of these as reference, and painted Marilyn Monroe once before as inspired by me. Clearly, I reminded him of Marilyn.
This is the image from which he drew his tattoo:
He made the transfer himself, and also mirror flipped the image. Why?
Well, if we pop the contrast and turn it upside-down, you can better see where he’s altered the image from the original.
He changed the delineation of shadow and light of the hair on the sides of her head, and made the overall shape there more round. He’s added more height to her hair, made the curve of the top of her hair into a boxy shape, and obscured the whites of her eyes.
With his alterations, now when upsidedown it makes a grinning monstery skull head with wavy black hair
He sees me as Marilyn. He sees/portrays himself as a monster, as a zombie, as a corpse. It’s both of us. Another mashup of us.
In the center of the monster’s forehead is Marilyn’s mouth, but he’s simplified into a rounder shape, like the mark on the Golem’s forehead. Instead of teeth there is a small line of highlight, reminiscent of both the hebrew letters on the Golem’s forehead, and Stefan’s ever-present hair curl.
The negative space on the sides of the head now make an F and S, Fox and Stefan (Friends of Stickiness).
If he hadn’t mirror-flipped the image, the letters would be backwards.
I was there to keep him from falling to his impulses. I was there to help him. To stop him.
But why now?
Remember that lecherous bar crowd from my 20’s that so rankled Stefan? That was the “in real life” New York City faction of the Warren Ellis Forum. We were in a hedonistic competition with the LA faction. That rivalry was expressed through photographic documentation of our madcap meetups, the more salacious the more social currency we garnered. I had abruptly stopped socializing with that scene when my girlfriend’s rage finally reached the point where she physically attacked me, and yet she remained accepted in the inner circle of the New York Warren Ellis clique. (The one person who had my back was the guy I went on a drunken date with; a fellow who, years later, was scandalized out of comics for lecherous behaviour.) Though I only took part in the bar meet-up Warren Ellis Forum crowd for a little over a year, Stefan couldn’t stop thinking about it, looking at it, drawing it while we were together and after we split.
During 2020 through 2021, Stefan and I were talking quite regularly. Weekly, sometimes daily. He wasn’t doing well in his ways, then I wasn’t doing well in my ways. We were both rather isolated in our worlds, trying to help each other through.
2020 was also the year that a sex scandal surrounding Warren Ellis broke, and made headlines in The Guardian, Newsweek, The Hollywood Reporter, etc.
For decades, Ellis had left a trail of pervy and manipulative misconduct behind him and fostered an environment where others followed suit in a culture of misrepresenting their predation as mentorship, feminism, and supporting sexual freedom. A website was made to platform the women who were victims of / witness to Warren Ellis’ creepiness to write their stories, and I was one of those women. Stefan and I talked about it as the story was breaking. I think my essay giving a full and critical explanation of my experiences (as well as the passage of time) changed Stefan’s perspective on me, and that era of my life.
In 2022, just two months before Stefan got his tattoo, the film “Blonde” about Marilyn Monroe was released on Netflix. The movie focuses on her loneliness, and how her physical form and sexuality was both what exalted her and destroyed her; how it filled those around her with judgement, scorn, and manipulation, when she only wanted love and acceptance and to prove herself creatively.
During our years together it became clear that Stefan held my open attitudes towards sex and my sexual past in contempt, felt a significant degree of jealousy and judgement over the actions of my twenties, even though he rationally knew it was unfair to do so. (Retroactive Jealousy is a crippling offshoot of OCD.) I didn’t know at the time that he was looking at my online collection of photographs obsessively, drawing my life regularly. I was his muse, but every time he looked through my extensive backlog of images to create, he was seeing my floozy youth again and again.
August 25th 2008
I also feel I should leave everyone alone and fade into madness.…it must be….because I dwell on the things you’ve told me that I don’t want to visualize(wich is not easy…or like me),and focus on my faults and all the things I can’t do…..and I also…..had a dream that repulsed me I won’t tell you about……but I woke up…..very uneasy. …..my head is stupid though.
My past was alive, living and breathing in his head, inescapable to his unwell OCD brain, filling him with anxiety, comparison, uncertainty.
In response to his growing accusations, to his criticism of my sexual nature and guarded emotions, I explained my past more thoroughly, the sexualized childhood, the various sexual predations, the emotional and physical abuses of my early adulthood. His response to me only worsened.
In retrospect (and something I now recognize he hinted at in our post-partnership conversations), I suspect that Stefan’s discarding of me was not due to a lack of romantic emotion, but because of its intensity. To be so known, so understood, to be so invested in someone was too threatening, so he kept me hidden. The more importance our relationship had to him, the more his fear, shame, and jealousy grew. His heart was plagued by a seed of sexual doubt, fostered and reinforced repeatedly by the bro culture environment in which he was living.
Perhaps Stefan’s wild imaginations couldn’t handle my interactions with his hyper-masculine roommates, and seeing even the hint of possibility of lust in their eyes made his brain light on fire. Perhaps my relationship with Stefan was met with jealousy and criticism by the prime roommate (who was a corrections officer, and as such had a psychological position of control over Stefan; and someone who Stefan also suspected may have a closeted crush on him). Perhaps I wasn’t seen as “girlfriend material” by his roommate(s), and that disapproval seeped into his brain, feasted on my his own innate fear of love and the vulnerability it brings. Perhaps Stefan feared himself, feared he would destroy me if he truly let me in. Perhaps all of the above.
Regardless, the more I told him Stefan was special, unique, singular, the more he reacted in savage suspicion. He grew offended at my artistic nudity even though that was part of what drew us to each other in the beginning, and was reciprocated. By the time we ended, Stefan viciously threw every splinter of my personal history at me.
October 27th 2010
….and you say you can’t bare the thought of me with someone else?! :::::my brain is doing the equivalent of grinding teeth:::::
….you swear you can’t help but to picture me in bed with someone else.
Well…..let me tell you what I had to swallow for the duration of our friendship that you loved so much when you had so little….
…..all it takes to see every single inch of your naked body….and know every detail of your personal,mental,ontological,and physical problems…..(which covers everything there is to know)……is to own a computer. Everything you’ve shared with me…..is available for all, and has always been with a random neon sign to the public pointing out that fact. That….is the ONLY thing….you have continuously done…since i’ve known you.
He tried to quell his jealousy and insecurities. He tried to even the sexual score by finding someone else, someone his friends approved of, someone less naked, someone who wasn’t sickly, someone with less personal history, someone that didn’t make his mind explode in an obsessive parade of vivid carnal pasts, someone towards whom he didn’t feel such pressure to impress, someone who didn’t make him feel so defenseless and threatened.
But it changed nothing.
In my ongoing attempts at having understanding between us, sharing my traumatic past only compounded things. He already cared too much, was feeling too many feelings, so my explanations only instilled in Stefan a rage at my history that he couldn’t fix. It was easier to call me a liar than it was to feel the dark parts of my history empathically slice at his core. It was easier to tell me how much I hated him than it was to accept and admit that he cared for me the same way I cared for him.
I could be totally wrong about all of this of course, but it would explain why he fixated on my drunken twenties, referencing them (and every ex) in his art repeatedly; why he grew more critical and distrusting of me over time even though I was open about my past from the beginning; why he replaced me with a woman roughly eight years my junior while unceasingly drawing me before, during, and after; why my continued attempts at proving to him I’d moved on and could be his platonic friend only backfired into hurt, avoidance, madness, and the escape of drugs again and again; why, over time, his posts grew more romantic and undressed, his intentions less shrouded in artwork and more literally him, more like the self portraits of mine that he so vehemently criticized.
He was afraid and ashamed of his feelings for me when we were together, then spent years thereafter tearing himself apart with regret, imprisoned to silence through anxiety and fear.
I’m so fucking angry at the men around him back then, so angry that he didn’t have better guidance to help him through it all.
I’m so fucking angry at myself that I didn’t see it all sooner.
November 11th
I about Kevin Conroy’s death. [IG] He reposts this. [IG]
November 20th
He tells me in our phone conversation that he looks different than I remember him, and sends me a photo.
November 21st
I post a favorite scene from Batman: The Animated Series. [IG] He posts Marilyn embraced in arms. [IG]
Four days apart.
He goes back to February 25th [IG] copies my red, composition of cat leg becomes cigarettes, her face becomes finger diamonds [IG].
November 23rd
February. I rant about people yelling “FUCK YOU” at me, and also threatening to “french my husband”?! [IG]
Stefan again posts himself in red, kissing his middle finger. [IG]
November 28th
December 3rd
Two weeks apart. I post outside next to Citibikes, holding the phone in my own light, venting about my latest life frustrations. [IG] Stefan does similar walking away from his car. [fb]
On my radio show, two days prior, I mention my lifelong wedding dreams, as inspired by the film Legend [audio].
Since childhood, I’ve wanted this dress as my bridal gown.
Stefan dons pointed black nails, like the character Darkness, and shows his middle finger with the 2 and the purify glyph. A perfect pair. [fb]
He again photographs himself red. [fb] Hand over his mouth. He can’t speak it. He can’t tell me.
December 16th
Continuing with the Legend wedding dress fantasy. He visits the scene where Darkness emerges from the mirror’s surface.
The red and black theme leads him to this old red and black haired phone pic I sent him in 2009.
which in turn leads him back to this selfie from my Brooklyn back yard. [IG]
Next to it, this photo of me bikini-gardening in a mirror.
And so, he combines the red portrait and mirror with Legend for this drawing.
Blonde me with her open mouth, in a circle with his tattooed Darkness hands [fb]
(He made this is facebook banner image.)
I would have married that boy.
I would have married him, and he would have married me, and our wedding would have been epic.
If only I was brave enough to see.
If only he was brave enough to speak.
December 18th
When I made excuses as to why he couldn’t sleep over, it never happened, and the idea was never revisited.
The last time we’d seen each other in person was years prior when I was safely in a relationship. I didn’t want him to think it was a booty call, and I didn’t trust myself to let him stay overnight. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from him. I couldn’t let my heart be put in that same position again. I had mad notions of giving him a proper kiss goodnight. Take it slow. Build up trust.
Of course, fifteen years of artistic obsession and ink would have lead me to immediately leap into his arms, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell me.
Christmas Eve
(My birthday)
Christmas Eve 2008, we all wore our friend’s ugly sweaters and took cheezy family style Christmas photos. I took a whole series of these pictures.
He recreates it with his family. [fb]
He was sending me a series of these family photos on Christmas Eve (this is the only one that still exists). He sent them all without explanation, while I was home alone and sad on my birthday. I didn’t get it.
I wish I wasn’t such a hypersensitive dick.
I wish he wasn’t so fucking obscure.
This is the last time he ever responded to me on Instagram. Starting January, every message I sent, every response to his “stories” was left without read confirmation or response.
My rug shot of our Christmas sweater photo fun day.
He shows, for the first time, his ankle with the tattoo of roses. [fb]
Roses tattoo, Marilyn, and Christmas. Me me me.
I suspect his decision to tattoo his ankle was based on this tattoo I got on my ankle at the start of 2020, and regretted soon after. I’d asked Stefan the best way to remove it. [fb]
December 30th
Two months prior. I ramble about the positives of pain days with ever declining health. [IG] He says it’s all downhill from here. [IG] He promises me. He’s still wearing the nails.