February 8th 2013
email from me
Things are probably stressful and terrible, but, well…
I hope things are going better than expected, and i hope you’ve found some people who’ve stepped up to give some support.
Regardless, you’ve been in my thoughts. Good luck with life stuff.
February 9th
email from me
Hope you are holed up somewhere without any need to move for a while.
I hope this past week wasn’t too crazy with family crazinesses.
email from stefan
I just got back in. Had to shovel at my parents, and then at my place to make sure I had a clear path to my car. Snow’s up to my fuckin calves because of the (well…snow), but also the trucks packing everyone in whenever they drive through with the plows. The service is early tmrw. Worst timing. Most people have cancelled and can’t make the drive. My mom said the show must go on so we’re not postponing anything. I’m gonna attempt to sleep for a bit, then it’s right back up. It’s all still fresh, so things are still a mess. I’m getting out of these soaked clothes, then jumping in the shower…maybe that’ll calm me down. Later.
email from me
Jesus, man. Tomorrow?! Well, maybe having less people around will make things easier on you and your mom, y’know? Less people to have to schmooze and chat with.
Nobody here shovels. I went out and hacked away at the steps with my snow boots, because nobody else will do a goddamn thing.
email from me
Hang in there, man.
February 11th 2013
email from me
Well, I hope things went as well as humanly possible for you this weekend.
If you need to chat, I’m around.
Also, if you have any ideas on cheap ass places to escape the city for the summer, I’m looking to temporarily move. I just want to be somewhere cheap and not hot. I’ll deal with something that isn’t so public transport friendly, even, since it’s just for the summer. I tried asking my dad if I could rent out the OG back apartment for the summer, but I’ve gotten no response. Go figure. Well, I tried.
Anyway….
Yeah. I hope things didn’t come to blows at the funeral or anything.
emails from Stefan
Thanks for the concern, but I don’t feel like getting into the fam stuff at the moment. And some more disturbing facts arose and people are kind of telling me because they think I should…eh, whatever. Nevermind. Another time. I’m getting angry. There is some wildy fucked up things that have happening long ago, and just recently. I’m getting fed up.
Anyway, I’m messed up.
And tmrw, I have to go over my folks wills with them. Fun stuff. I was able to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion…and chemical intervention….but at 5AM I awoke from knocking on my door. When I got up, I could see my god damn breath. It was 40 something degrees. I couldn’t believe it. The electrical system broke on the boilers. So…5 this morn, I grabbed some shit and headed to my parents. I have to drive my mom a few places anyway….so, I don’t really mind. Anyway, I had some kind of point, but I completely forgot it. I feel like I have a flu coming on. At least, I hope that’s what it is god dammit. Eh…it never ends. Blah.
email from me
Good Gawd, man.
Yeah, my landlord has the heat set here so that there’s no heat on between 9am and around 4 in the afternoon. One of our pipes froze the other day and they had to replace it. That must really suck in a basement apartment, though. How long before it’s fixed, then?
February 13th
email from Stefan
I have no clue when they’re going to fix it. PSE&G has their hands full because there’s a lot of people still without power they’re attending to first. Yippy. Eh, it’s better I’m at my parents house now anyway because my mom calls me every hour for something now anyway, so at least I’m just here to help rather than constantly driving back and forth.
email from me
Oh hey. I didn’t see that you emailed me.
I just looked at your tumblr. Those last two drawings are really great, y’know.
February 16th
email from Stefan
<Brother> came down for the wake. He was here literally for a day and a half. He still doesn’t understand how serious things have been, or what really happened that night. It was without a doubt the “you had to be there to understand” kind of event. And he couldn’t take my Uncle so he left early rather than staying home. My Uncle is a Floridian gun toting bigot that uses the word “nigger” & “faggot” as if he’ll choke if he doesn’t. Which is what he thinks of his granddaughter. Which sends a chill down my spine. I had some words with him, and he’s so dense an hour later he forgot the conversation. My parents got so sick of him, they bought him a plane ticket and sent him back to FLA. And since he took a plane back, he couldn’t take the 38 special he wanted. So now he’s trying to talk my mom into Fed Exing it to him. I told him my mom isn’t mailing an unregistered revolver to anyone. So as of now, it’s in our possession. This has been a wreck. And some of the most hideous family secrets have surfaced during this whole tragedy. There are now two urns on my table. And my mom refers to them as dad, and betty(my aunt).
I just got a commission job to make life sized cutouts of late eighteenth century folk for the historic tarrytown theater by sleepy hollow after I gave that guy Anthony some sketches to bring to a meeting he had. I may be doing a headless horseman sculpture as well…not sure yet.
I won’t be at MoCca this year. Even though last year got me the write up. I have others plans I’m taking my time with. For my next show, I could now officially put the companies that I’ve been featured in on my ads/post cards & whatever…since I haven’t really cashed in on using any of the recognition yet. Hopefully that will draw a bit more attention and I could finally start to sell some fuckin art. But, I’m probably moving back home for a few months and will just rent a studio I have 24 hr. Access to in the meantime so I can play a radio and paint in peace in a wide open room and finally attempt to execute the paintings I’ve been planning out for years. And I’m a pretty bad mess and trying to get back to “normal”. Which is partly why I’m writing so much at the moment. I’m heavily medicated and sleepless.
Before I just went all tangential in this email, I meant to just write thanks for linking my juxtapoz article on your blog. I was checking out your photography and noticed. I appreciate that. Alright…bye for now.
email from me
(i started writing this last night shortly after you emailed me, and fell asleep writing it. I woke and thought that maybe I shouldn’t send it, but…. eh…. fuck it.)
Because I don’t know when i’d be able to write more…. and because i’m feeling a bit strange….
I’m going to write to you.’
I’m in Detroit. I’m here for a few days helping a friend with the collaborative art installation thing project between her and her friend. It’s part of an erotic art thing, and i have to say, most of the art is actually pretty fabulous. There’s a stage show that goes on during each night of the festival. It’s called The Dirty Show.
i’m staying in fabulous hotel, getting meals payed for, lounging in a hot tub for the afternoon before throwing on a SECURITY t-shirt and standing next to a woman posing naked and still for hours in the cold warehouse of The Dirty Show, and make sure nobody touches her.
Detroit has a “Little Greece”. Is’nt that wierd?
I’m thinking of relocating here. My piddly 800 a month to live on might actually be doable here. Granted, i’d need a car, but you can buy a house for chump change here! There’s so much SPACE.
Anyway, tonight my friend and i got brought along to a fisting party by the dom who is part of the art thing. A fisting party. I mean, YEAh, I’ll go to that. I’ll watch something I’ve never seen. I’ll go to a dungeon in someone’s basement and chitchat casually while fisting preferences are discussed and aarranged. Really, the more I witness people heavy in the BDSM scene talk bout it, the more it strikes me as just another drug. They’ve made sex the drug, and they’ve just whittled it down to their own specific formulas or preference. *shrug* I’m not offended or shocked. I don’t judge. It’s interesting.
After my friend ended up letting her friend stick her on some dungeon furniture and getting spanked, I ended up getting my butt flogged and my hair pulled, and I guess I’ve got welts on my rear end now, but the whole time I was just giggling. It’s arousing in a way, but kind of silly. I mean, it’s fun, but it’s so….. isolated. It’s so compartmentalized. Pain is great with someone I’m into, but… alone is just like plastic food. The thing is, they were impressed at how well I take pain. and how much I can take. at how hight my threshold is. Good pain kills bad pain,
I’m not really surprised. i’m in constant body pain. It was kind of an ego boost, and a bit of a self righteous justification feeling thing…. y”know…. SEE THAT WORLD?!? SEE THAT, FAMILY?!? I AM NOT WEAK! I AM NOT WEAK! I CAN TAKE WOUNDs anD WELTs, BECAUSE THAT IS NOTHING TO ME COMPARED TO MY DAILY LIFE!!!”
Um.
Last week I got a letter in the mail from Planned Parenthood. they never called me like they were supposed to. Seems I’ve got the HSV2.
that’ll be a nice conversation to have to have with anyone i ever want to possibly be intimate with for the rest of my life.
Not that it matters right now, as I’m seeing <Boyfriend>. But…. godammit. So,
Jeez, I didn’t mean to ramble so much. I’m feeling really odd, having a fun but mindfuckery of a time here, hating the destitution of my life in NYC, not sure what i’m doing with myself at all, somehow making progress and moving forward in life, but still….. i’m having to sell things I own to be financiaally afloat. The lens I bought for New Mexico just busted on me today, and i still haven’t paid <Boyfriend> back for it.
ANY
WAY.
Moving home, I’m sure seems like a step backwards, but I think …..
** THAT is when I fell asleep.**
Anyway. Moving home, I’m sure seems like a step backwards, but y’know, it doesn’t matter what you do if it’s allowing you to move forward with art. I might be making some minimal progress in NYC, but I’m still willing to bail at a moment’s notice if I was given the opportunity to live somewhere for free and not have to worry about anything and just make art. I’m feeling more and more frustrated at the fact that I’ve not made nearly as much as I should. It’d difficult to concentrate or center my head with so much other stuff to deal with.
that would be my concern with you moving home. I mean, if it will give you less stress and make things easier, then it’s a great idea, regardless of the general social implications.Fuck it, y’know. If it’s a place of calm and comfort, then your art will have more opportunity to flow. Who cares?! But…. from what your family has been going through, the frustrations of your older brother, the sadness of watching your folks in front of the television, the burden of being your folks’ go-to-guy for everything…. well, I’m a bit concerned for you that you’d be trading in one set of frustrations for another, and this new one might cut you at the core even more, becuase it’s stuff that actually MATTERS to you.
I’d hate to see you get trapped in a situation taking care of your parents and not fulfilling your artistic aspirations, because your artistic aspirations are totally within your abilities. I mean, you know that. I hope you know that, right? You are totally good enough to achieve the level that you want to. You just need the right environment and life situation. And that’s what is so frustrating.
I hope moving home for a while provides that, and if it doesn’t, it will at least provide you with the time and space and safety to figure out exactly how to get to that kind of place.
but then again, I know that your relationship with your family was really strained and fucked up for a long time in your late childhood / early adulthood, so perhaps, as fucked up as this all is, these years are your chance to prove yourself to them, and this is the time for ALL of you to compensate for those early years by getting to be supportive of each other.
I really hope it works out for you.
And, again, of course, you are welcome to call me one of those medicated nights of ramble. Seriously.
I’ve explained to <Boyfriend>, and warned him in advance that things got fucked up between you and I, but that was just the situation, and that you were still important to me, and that we are still on somewhat awkward terms, but that you and I were best friends first and foremost, and that I’d hoped we’d end up best friends again.
Ok. Time to hit the hot tub and the hotel gym before getting ready for another evening of saying “NO TOUCHING” and gawking at awesome live bondage and fending off doms from claiming me as their own.
Sheesh my life is weird.
email from Stefan
Yeah, I’m not moving home. That was a medicated thought. Everything you said makes sense. I have a few other options that make much more sense anyway.
Erotic installation huh? The way you describe it sounds like a show I’ve scene in nyc uptown. And the dungeon stuff…yeah, aside from hanging from holes we haven’t previously developed from hooks and such, I wasn’t I wasn’t impressed with what “professional” bdsm people did to me. And I’m sure you handled it and saw it as the same drug I did.
Seeing John Waters talk (at that tarrytown theater) with <Chick Friend> & <My Friend’s Cousin> recently has made me want to go to Detroit for more than two days. Which is how long I was there last time. Sounds like a good time. I don’t see you as security, but hey, whatever gets you out and doing things. Make sure they sterilize their flogging equipment. Alright, I’m off to a much more tame party, at least for the first half. Be careful…..have fun. Take pictures. Of whatever you can.
(ignore typos and spelling)
February 17th 2013
email from me
Ive no idea what the tarrytown theatre is. It’s awesome that you saw John Waters. <Boyfriend> only just finally made me see Pink Flamingos last week for the first time. Why would John Waters make you want to go back to Detroit? He’s Baltimore based, right?
My friend’s art piece was pretty cool. It was a collaboration. There was a woman who dressed in thigh high spiked heel boots, stockings, undies, a black strip across her breasts, and a black cloth over her head with a phone jack where her face should be. She sat in a black char, facing another black chair at some distance. Between the two was a small table with a rotary telephone, and a wire between the face and phone. When you picked up the phone, you would hear explicit and actual phone sex conversations. She would stay still for three hours at a stretch, to the point that most people though she wasn’t real, especially given how fucking cold the place was. It sounds kind of simple, but it was really rather striking and got wonderful reactions.
BDSM stuff is cool and all, and I tend towards that end of things in my personal life, but it’s all so clinical for people “in the scene”. Getting flogged in a dungeon was fun and all, but it’s not … I don’t know. To be that focused on sex to be active in a scene based on it seems unhealthy. And kind of stunted. I like how frank everyone is, but christ, that’s all they talk about. It’s like they’ve nothing else of interest to them.
Partaking in the dungeon …. I don’t find it embarrassing, though. I guess i’m supposed to?
emails from Stefan
Yeah he’s from Baltimore…but he was going off on some Detroit tale. I guess I should have explained that. Then…fuck. My car is shaking like hell from the wind, and I’m not in the greatest area. And….writing email’s while driving is more dangerous than any drug, as a friend of mine found out the hard way recently….no more leg use…so…I’m really trying to not…do this anymore…..I’ll finish this later.
Tarrytown is right next to Sleepy Hollow in NY. A few miles outside Yonkers in a more quaint historic area of NY. The theater was built before the statue of liberty.