… continued
June 2nd
My photos from when attended an event together at the Natural History Museum with Neil DeGrasse-Tyson
June 4th
email from me
ok.
so.
y’know how you think that I decide what we do, and I see it as the opposite?
I think that’s because… we’d do practically anything for each other. So much more than we would do for ourselves. And on a regular basis, both of us do things for each other that nobody else could possibly instill in us. So. We’re both right.
That’s kind of nice. Yeah, kinda scarey, too.
I think it’s the same reason we both get upset and touchy about each others percieved reactions and outlooks. Because we both… give as much as we have to each other. I really do like the way you are, who you are, and I understand and accept your demeanor at any given moment. Sometimes, though… doubt creeps in and I fear that I might be the cause for your apparent displeasure, and that you don’t really like my company, when I’m always putting my everything into our moments together, and since I’m thinking of you as often as I do. Similarly, I’m guessing, the things that come out of my mouth lead you to think I am not noticing or appreciating the fact that you, also, are putting your everything into our moments together, and that I don’t really like your company. But oh, how I do.
I really really like you.
Truly.
June 7th
March 2010. Band photos for <Vermont Friend’s Brother>, the ex I fooled around with once that so offended Stefan. [flickr]
a drawing emailed to me.
The windows inspire the wing arches. Two months apart.
June 10th
He’s riffing off of an old photograph of mine from 2006. [flickr]
(We really liked to eat rare meat together.) [flickr]
June 14th
September 2009. Photo for hire.
Combined faces and shirts. When in doubt, compare ear shape. [tumblr]
June 15th
One month apart. How I woke up from tubal ligation surgery. [flickr]
He is framed so the female symbol on the bathroom door is visible behind him. [flickr]
He also gave me a bunch of stuff to scan for his website this day, all of which, I now realize, was referenced from the photography for hire I’d done in the previous few months.
More band photos. [flickr]
The window pattern dictating the castle, the reflection of branches inspiring the tree stalks, his hands copied.
Photos for hire.
Photos for hire. Her again, of the nubby thumb.
Photos for hire.
June 25th
We’d been back to daily contact for a while, emailing links and art and chatting at dawn, but still hadn’t resolved things. And then when he visited, I told him some serious secrets.
We have an email exchange about distance and secrets and mystery symptoms.
June 27th
email to Stefan
It’s lovely out. Full moon and temperate weather.
I… I’d like to have a midnight picnic with you. I’d like to sit on a blanket in a secluded dark wooded meadow with you…. lit only by moonlight… talking quietly… making each other laugh… with quiet moments… and maybe you’d let me kiss you.
I’d like to feel the air on my skin… and yours.
… sigh.
Photos for hire. Her again.
June 28th
This man’s hand positions in the previous post
brings Stefan back to these photos from Manhattan 2008 again.
[tumblr]
I draw Dr. Fleiss as a clown with a balloon, and post it to tumblr.
“Doctor Fleiss says NO to circumcision.”
Stefan does his own version.
(There are really only a handful of images that pop up on a search for Doctor Fleiss.)
He combines the faces of Dr. Fleiss and his daughter Heidi. [tumblr]
Fleiss’ tie and the microphones make for his horn.
The buttons on her sleeve and the triangle of negative space from her arm makes the clown hat. She provides the visible nostrils and hairline.
June 29th
Accusation and jealousy resurfaces. I try and understand.
email from me
excerpt
I’m drowning in this. The same state of treading water is starting to return… the happiness I’d feel when I’d get to hang with you, followed by the despair of confusion and hope-stretched-thin… of the rejection.
My full email.
June 30th
My older crappy drawings posted to my (now purged) tumblr…
… are turned into a noir scene.
A drawing I’d made, depicting what goes on inside my head as decided by Stefan: marshmallow men getting drunk on an elixir made by grapes crushed by wind-up drumming monkeys perpetually marching in a circle. Posted to my (now purged) tumblr.
The curved lines and angular lines like ruffles and collar lines:
with a head between them:
brings Stefan back to this family photo. [flickr]
He combines child faces with my drawn antenna. [tumblr]
July 1st
email from me
excerpt
I want you. I want to be with you, and nobody else. I want to be part of each other.
At this point, I have to assume that you probably don’t want that. Please tell me if I am wrong.
Or maybe… maybe you do want that, but you are so afraid of being that kind of close to someone that the closer it looms, the more you instinctively cling to every reason feasible to barricade you against it. You can judge me by my past, grow suspicious of old photographs, you can bring up my past relationships, you can tell me how I said I’d wanted to move overseas, you can not trust me because of my online things, you can be filled with raging inner-self question based on my fooling around with someone you can’t understand. I don’t think you want to do any of that. I don’t think you want to have these negative thoughts filling your brain.
But I think…. maybe…. you are too afraid to be really with someone, and you can’t help but hold tight every terrible notion your brain can come up with. If that’s the case, I’m sorry, and that sounds like an awful thing to be dealing with.
Or maybe I’m completely wrong.
In retrospect, I think I was completely right, and my heart breaks for him. Here is the full email. He didn’t respond to it.
July 6th
This drawing posted to my (now purged) tumblr
July 14th
Stefan isn’t doing well. I try to offer solace, but we are still distant and unresolved. We email between chats and phone calls.
More drawings of mine. The face squishing…
…brings Stefan back to these photographs I’d taken of him.
He combines them. [tumblr]
July 15th
Another sketchbook drawing of mine.
combined with old family photos [flickr]
A strange pugnosed child on a swing. [tumblr]
All near each other in my Early Years folder, posted to tumblr as a photo flashback. [flickr]
[tumblr]
July 16th
More corporate photo-for-hire. [tumblr]
July 19th
My zombie drawing posted one month prior [tumblr] reminds him of a painting of his that he’d brought to my Aunt’s house for me to finish. (I never did. I was afraid to paint on his art. But I still have the painting. It’s the only painting by him that I have.)
The hand in the same position as my drawing. He copies the colors of his painting with the yellow door, green tinted shadows, red nose, and white/pink around his mouth. And y’know, the fish in his mouth. [flickr]
July 20th
Stefan’s self portrait after one of the first times he crashed with me.
The curve of light along his hip inspiring the tail. [tumblr]
July 21st
This grin of this tumblr drawing of mine
leads Stefan to this photo from San Francisco, 1997.
and this photo of the same girl.
The frog from my drawing, the rest from my photographs. [tumblr]
July 22nd
Early Years [flickr] gallery. Photos from eating a birthday cupcake and other childhood moments.
I become my own Child-Eating Birthday Cake. [tumblr]
The snow on branches and the tablecloth pattern become drips and goo.
July 27th
More from my Early Years [flickr] gallery. My ex-boyfriend Colin, who I dated right after highschool, and his best friend.
Their faces combined. [tumblr]
The only place on the drawing that he drew tiny curly lines; in the forehead where the curls are.
July 28th
Email to Stefan
[ Excerpt ]
I’ve told you that I love you. I’ve asked you to be with me.
I’ve spent nearly a year feeling worthless due to your reaction. I wrote you a the most heart wrenching open and outpouring words I’d ever writtten, with illustrations, and your response was “is this an ultimatum?” It’s a perpetual ever-living rejection for me.
I feel so worthless.
And it just continues with new reasons. And maybe I don’t deserve your trust. Maybe I don’t deserve to be partnered with you. Then let THAT be it. Maybe I am that worthless. I’m just not worth your effort and emotions. Maybe I have damaged your trust beyond repair. Maybe every time you start to trust me, something happens and I do something wrong and you retreat further back. Maybe you just don’t FEEL romantic with me, much as you wish you did. Fine.
Then that’s it. Then that’s the answer.
If you need me, if you need a friend, I will of course be willing to cast everything aside and be there for you.
But i can’t stay like this. Not like this. Not this causally regular interaction. This past year has been the most miserable of my life. I can’t keep waiting and wanting someone who doesn’t want me back. I’m sorry. I just keep crying like this. It’s effecting my health. For the past year I’ve hardly photographed or drawn or done anything. I’ve been a frantic miserable mess.
I’d rather have the memory of when i was happily deluded and we were silly and giddy together, with me thinking we were already partners, already each other’s everything.
I like you. I love you. I want to be with you. I have for years.
It seems it will be the death of us.
My full email truly trying to end things, and his response.
And yet, though things got worse again, not two weeks went by without some kind of contact.
July 29th – August 18th
For each of these following drawings, representing the torture he was in as we were splitting up, he used reference from the photographs I took of us from our first weeks together: May 25th – June 13th 2007.
The night before his birthday. He didn’t tell me it was his birthday until the previous evening.
So I snuck out while he was in the shower, ran to a local antique store, and bought him a vintage mug of Bimbo (Betty Boop’s sidekick), and used a postcard from a set of pulp illustrations as his card. Here he is holding them both.
A week later at what became our our favorite rare steak spot.
Stefan draws himself in Space Prison. [tumblr]
Detail. [tumblr]
Space prison continued.
Getting in trouble in the cafeteria. [tumblr]
Details. [tumblr]
He combines our faces, wearing the same ring, his pinkie bleeding.
He is wearing a petrified shark tooth around his neck because he bought us each a petrified shark tooth when we went to the Natural History Museum, our last event together.
He is combining our first photo days, and our last.
A monster made of bathroom elements, the drapey skull borne of bathroom towel, the boney back from sink and radiator and damask wallpaper.
His midrif referenced. The splayed hands from the graffiti, the extra hair thwip from the wires above it.
Space prison continued.
The colors and the appearance of a ghostly cigarette with a blue glow, The monster on the left matching the pattern on Stefan’s shirt, he dark stripe behind it matching the stripe behind Stefan’s shoulder; a stripe of red behind prisoner Stefan like the row of apples in the background, the fellow in the right looking like he was made out of green apple, his hair shape and face mask inspired by the ceiling doodads, the stripe behind him matching the darker apples in the background. [tumblr]
Space prison continued.
[tumblr]
August 6th
May 27th. I post my new glasses. [flickr]
[tumblr]
August 7th
He turns them into brightly colored demons. [tumblr]
August 8th
“This is a reasonable photographic facsimile of what it feels like to be me.”
August 9th
I post two kitten photos two weeks prior from my last visit to his house in July. [flickr]
He posts two kitten photos. [flickr]
August 10th
On August 4th, one week prior, I post my new Fox Fest T-shirt design [tumblr]
which brings Stefan back to my fox drawing from August 2009. [flickr]
And a photo from Fox Fest 2007. [tumblr]
He combines them for a quaint foxy scene. [tumblr]
Date?
Fox Fest 2010. [flickr] Photos uploaded August 7th.
August 11th
April 26th I repost my old Easter photos to tumblr.
Which brings Stefan to other images from my childhood. [flickr]
Combined for a strange monster. [tumblr]
August 13th
Three days prior, I post this story. [tumblr]
The green of the video brings him to this self portrait from June 2008 [flickr]
with these Sticky photos next to it in the flickr feed.
My leopard print top inspires red splotches, our photos combined for a monster. [tumblr]
August 18th
the colors and proximity leads him to this photo, also from June 2008 [flickr]
He uses his nostril for the ear, then puts two of my nostrils on one side, combines my mouths.
August 20th
And then combines 2008 me with baby me (why?) [flickr]
The pattern on the bib inspires the big eye and the shiny cheek.
August 22nd
Two weeks prior, I post this photo from Fox Fest [flickr]
the profile in shadow leads Stefan to a photo from our basement shoot in October 2009, the red shirt leads him to our trip to the Natural History Museum two months beforehand. (He returns to this museum trip often.)
He combines them. I fill his brain. [tumblr]
The color matches my top, the graphic inspired by the sign and the lettering on the walls behind me.
August 22nd
The sunglasses make the ghosts eye shape, the hint of a triangular shape with reflective shine in the background becomes the church with a moon behind. The ornate window shape repeated, the ghost’s disembodied hands and the belt buckle from the hand drier with my reflection. [tumblr]
The mug was my birthday present to him.
August 25th
July 8th 2007. Our second (?) time hanging out in Ocean Grove. [flickr]
A series of photos of he and I making the same face brings him to the classic cartoon trope of a ghost imitating a human, the boardwalk binoculars becomes the grandfather clock between the characters, our walking stance copied. [tumblr]
My hands are blurred like flame, my hair like a silly macbook portrait he’d made of us when we first hung out.
He’s haunted by me.
September 13th
Fox Fest 2010. One month prior. [flickr]
[tumblr]
In 2008 I’d photographed this dead flying squirrel Stefan had been feeding before it died.
He poses with a hawk he’d recently found, his gloved hands stretching it out the same. [tumblr]
Fox Fest 2010. One month prior. [flickr]
This image from the drive down to Fox Fest, which I’d titled “Stretch Marks”
leads Stefan to months earlier in May, my waking up in pain from tubal ligation surgery, my skin looking yellow, my stretch marks curling upwards. [flickr]
Stefan uses the general composition of the kitchen scene for his drawing. [tumblr]
My crazy hair for the characters, faces merged, hands repurposed.
(Remember this drawing for later.)
This selfie from one month prior [flickr]
brings Stefan back to this photo from Ocean Grove summer 2007.
And other happy early days in Ocean Grove.
Using the same background as the previous retro cartoon image, he is running away from me in terror.
Two photos of me combined for the ghost. The tongue derived from both the toilet paper and the pink shape in the vase.
My brother in the early Ocean Grove days. [flickr]
My brother becomes cartoon Stefan. His tongue is possessed. [tumblr]
The cartoon ghost inspired by the porch railing.
Fox Fest. One month prior. This glitchy photo [flickr]
leads Stefan to other photos of that same Aunt, Uncle, cousin, which brings him to my parents’ wedding. [flickr]
Curves of cake script make the tail, stained glass pattern inspires the lacing, icing curves make for skirt folds. [tumblr]
September 14th
I write again trying to remove the blame on both sides.
[ excerpt ]
You didn’t do the things you did to to make me stress-sick and grey-brained. You’ve done what you’ve done to try and find yourself in your own head, not thinking you’d have such an effect. So did I. So please don’t say things on purpose just to hurt.
You’ve still been more actively accepting and understanding of my health than anyone, and more actively supportive of my art than anyone. Nobody else is still willing to be near me AND be patient. Yeah, there’s other people who haven’t caused me the same sort of hurt and harm, but they’ve always been at a distance. It’s better to be close to someone and occasionally get an elbow in the ribs, than to never touch at all.
….
we both thought… we were understood. That’s where the real hurt comes from. That we thought we knew. We thought… we had finally found someone who really and truly understands the important parts. And we got hurt in really vulnerable places where neither of us really trust anyone enough to let in. And now we look back and wonder about all those moments of close, and wonder if it was real at all, when there’s something so important we got wrong for each other.
Both looking at each other, and thinking “but you were supposed to KNOW.”
But see….
That’s the kind of thing that can be fixed. That can be mended by learning.
Hurting by accident is always forgivable.
I still have the same unanswered questions. Stefan responds with offense and without answer.
October 6th
Next to my Ocean Grove brother in the 2007 family gallery [flickr] are these photos
[tumblr]
The blur of laughter makes for witchy features.
October 8th
Back to my bar photos of 2001 [flickr]
The date taken was mislabeled, so these photos appear in the flickr feed as though taken six months prior. (I think I’d deleted my old photos due to Stefan’s criticism, then recanted and reuploaded?)
Nearby in the feed, uploaded six months prior, this selfie [flickr]
He combines modern me with the women of the past. [tumblr]
Zebra print background, faces combined.
October 9th-16th
We miss each other. We email. I hope that perhaps Stefan would reconsider and attend my friend’s wedding with me in Vermont. This re-opens the issue of double standards, of how rageful he is that I fooled around with someone, while telling me how inconsequential his intimacy with someone else is to our relationship; how kept away from his house I’ve been due to his <Prime Roommate>.
October 11th
This day, as national Coming Out Day, I declare my bisexuality by posting this 90’s photo of me kissing my first girlfriend. [tumblr]
which brings Stefan back to New Years Eve 2004 which I attended with a woman I’d dated. (the gallery [flickr] also accidentally also contains photographs of the Ocean Grove house)
The pattern on the lamps reused for the top of her nightgown, the dresser at an angle, but with the shiny top of the hotel table. [tumblr]
I’m fairly certain this is the abusive ex-girlfriend?
October 17th
I emailed: I love you.
October 19th
Stefan and I were fans of Sam Harris. Back when he was just a clever neuroscientist and long before his modern Zionist leanings were apparent, we’d often draw while listening to Harris’ lectures/debates. Stefan had been upset at this photo of my attending a Sam Harris book signing on October 11th without him. [tumblr] I’d posted just to hurt him, he accused. He mixes it with one of the reference photos I’d taken.
[tumblr]
When in doubt, compare ear shape.
October 20th
He photographs himself bloodied like his above drawing.
He combines my drawing for the three quarter angle with one of our Sticky Friends cupcake shots. Black eyes and white fabric behind us. [tumblr]
October 25th
Bachelorette party in September for the Vermont wedding Stefan and I were to attend together, had things not crumbled. [flickr] (The brother of the bride was the ex I fooled around with the once the previous winter.)
Her sequins necktie dictates the color of the drawing and the shape of the shadows. [tumblr]
November 2nd
Two photos for hire of the same woman, me at that same hired corporate event, and the funeral of my Great Aunt.
The lettering matches the color of the wood podium, the woman and I are combined, the water glass in the same spot, my hand is eating salad colored from beer bottle, the pink from my face.
November 11th
I email my apologies for trying.
Because seeing each other in person hurts my heart, because calling or emailing questions just seems to keep striking at Stefan at the worst of moments, I start a private password protected blog of the words I wish to say to him. I tell him he can look at it if and when he wants. Or not. He is welcome to write to me in response. Or not. Maybe this will be just for me to figure my own shit out. Or not.
November 15th
This baby from the wedding from one month prior [flickr]
leads Stefan back to old family photos [flickr]
The baby faces and hands combined [tumblr]
November 17th
October 22/24, I upload these [flickr]
The blue of my scarf, exhuberant smile, and arm position brings him back to this 90s party photo.
A happy looking zombie with my wide eyes and a full moon behind. [tumblr]
Fox Fest 2009.
[tumblr]
November 22nd
Fox Fest 2010 [flickr]
[tumblr]
November 23rd
Three months prior, I post this drawing getting attacked by a groundhog in my Aunt’s garage. [tumblr]
which leads him back to this photo I took of his feeding a sickly flying squirrel. [flickr]
and then to other photos near this image in that [flickr] album. Photos he goes back to often.
The nightmare monster has squirrel hands and eyes, our mouths and noses combined, his raised eyebrows, my veiny forehead. The book is made of shredded paper. [tumblr]
November 29th
Back here again. Our kissing faces and her bent elbow
leads him to our photo of close faces and pictures with bent elbows.
The couch texture becomes brains, his arms repurposed.
November 30th
Next to each other in my childhood album. [flickr]
[tumblr]
December 6th
November 2010. [tumblr] I picture and list my various medications which brings him back to
November 2009. [flickr] Photographed atop my toilet. Morphine, vicodin, lyrica, etc.
Matching the colors. The sideways Vicodin bottle becomes the weeble at a toilet going through withdrawal. [tumblr]
December 8th
Posted to tumblr November 22-24
This sunset photo [tumblr] next to this selfie [tumblr] from these November posts…
brings Stefan back to August 12th 2009, on a family excursion with my ninety-something year old grandfather. [flickr]
It becomes a funereal scene. [tumblr]
My hat loops remain. The angled Thanksgiving table becomes a casket
My drawing is combined with the tablecloth, sunset colors, and powerlines for funeral flowers on a stand.
This bare trees at dusk posted on November 23rd [tumblr]
brings him to this photo I took of him at sunrise from the Ocean Grove days. [flickr]
So he draws his own bare bones, pastel streaks at the edges of the paper like sunrise. [tumblr]
December 12th
I write a private blog post to Stefan about my attraction to him, my upbringing and history with nudity and sexuality, and his singular place in my life.
December 13th
Another long private blog post, this one asking questions about my being kept separate from his life, about the other woman.
One day prior, I repost this photo from 2006 [tumblr]. This brings him to this drawing I’d posted a month before. [tumblr]
He combines them. The pint glass becomes a tapered garbage can, using the same sketchy brush strokes as my drawing, pink from the drawing for his lettering. [tumblr]
December 14th
Christmastime leads him to a family photo at Christmas
which leads him to Fox Fest 2006 and an old family scan as better reference material.
The Christmas cards lining the doorway inspires the jagged spectre tail. [tumblr]
December 15th
November 27th I repost this 2007 photo [tumblr]
which leads him to similar knee and elbow poses from Fox Fest 2007 family members. [flickr]
The woman’s slouched pose combined with my uncle’s crouch, the water theme continued, the faces combined, the hands combined, my nudity. [tumblr]
Summer through autumn art of mine.
The rough coloring and expression from the crying and nightmare drawings, the curves of my cartoon blonde hair, with color and elements of my future Doctor Who “what if” cartoon.
December 16th
November 21st/23rd I make two versions of a “what if” movie poster design for a “what if David Lynch directed Spiderman” challenge.
He posts these two self portraits. [tumblr] [tumblr]
December 17th
Two days prior, I repost this from 2004 [tumblr]
which leads him to recent flickr photos from October / November 2010 with blue, similar arms and/or nudity.
December 18th
Stefan makes incredibly ugly and highly offensive accusations, and I respond thoroughly, point by point.
December 23rd
My recent art again.
becomes a Santa Skeleton. [tumblr]
Wisps of hair become mustache.
Art again.
It becomes a Christmas weeble, the same colors as the child, the hat from the Doctor’s hair shape and socks, with the child’s spikey hair as a brim, and vest buttons for bells. The Doctor’s cane becomes a candycane, chewed like the dog logo, with the same red. It drools like the groundhog I drew attacking me. [tumblr]
December 28th
Big eyes leads him to shotos in my self gallery 2008/2009 [flickr]
My faces combined. [tumblr]
Bleeding tattooed pinkie. [tumblr]
December 29th
[tumblr]
