Tag Archives: friends

Whistling While I Work

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It was inevitable: I needed to return to the office. But first, my schedule: I wake up at four a.m. I know, I know. I catch the 5:15 train to Farragut North, followed by a four-block walk, a brief detour into the Wa-Wa for a breakfast sandwich, which for me is tuna salad on a croissant, and at my desk by 5:50. Take another five minutes to wake up the coffee machine (my ungrateful coworkers will never know what I have to endure being first in), and I have a solid hour to draw, not a minute wasted to get here.

So when I arrived at the metro station, a mile from my apartment, without my magical badge, my entire morning was fucked. I went back, grabbed the goddamned thing, disappointed my cat, and called an Uber, the only way I was getting a full hour in before work. As a man whose strict routines have kept him sane, I craved that full hour.

For some reason, the Uber GPS led the driver to the other side of the roundabout, and I thought he left, and then he picked me up, then he apologized and explained himself for over five minutes, and I didn’t need this kind of chaos. I was still twitchy.

I should have just worked from home. But I needed to be there. I needed to sit down in the breakroom, listen to podcasts and work on a piece of art for an hour. I needed to reset myself. I needed to be around people I knew. I needed to do this for myself.

The Uber dropped me off a few minutes after six. I did not get a full hour of art in, though I did finish one drawing. When you look at it, try not to think about the height of the counter. Like, what is she standing on?

A few minutes after seven, I dove right into the 171 emails I received, between the three inboxes I monitored, confirmed that my boss and my colleagues had already taken care of most of it, and moved onto where I was needed.

While I got caught up, the second person in was Work Dad, dressed in workout gear and looking like a Gen-X skateboarder. This was a side of him people who showed up on time never got to see. I weep for them. The third person at the office reminds me of a gray golden retriever because she is simultaneously shy and effusive, and she’s got a little slouch.

The fourth person who shows up is my Emergency Backup Boss. (She’s still a boss, but she’s not my main boss.) Before the vast office reshuffling, EBB and I were neighbors, and we’d check in with each other every morning. She is far away from me now, so we don’t see each other as much. But she dropped by to check up on me this morning, and I filled her in on everything.

I noted that I was talking very fast, and I was having a difficult time shutting myself up. That is a bad sign.

There was an employee luncheon that afternoon, and she and my boss talked me into going. When the hour arrived, we left with a group, but EBB and I got way ahead of everybody because it was cold, and we were hungry. I followed her around because either she knew what she was doing, or she was acting like she did, and I needed that confidence to hold onto.

There was too much chaos, but I had a plate full of boutique quesadillas I needed to shove into my mouth before I ran out, screaming, whapping people square in the face with my backpack. I found myself at the bar, sipping a mocktail called a DuPont sunrise, with Mr. Production.

Mr. Production and I are a lot alike. We’re both middle-aged white men with gray hair. We are both devoted to making our colleagues’ jobs easier. And we’re both really fucking awkward.

We had a lovely conversation, and I ended up staying almost a half an hour later as a result. He told me how he worked at the same society as the Loquacious One, but not at the same time. I told him that hemoglobin was a weird thing to select for in evolution.

Despite that fact that the chips and guac line was behind him, this turned out to be a great getaway from the hassle of the restaurant. I had a lot of work to do before I could call it quits for the day, so I finished my DuPont sunrise and left the restaurant calm and a little rested, if you can believe it.

How did I do? I think I talked too much, which is bad. I figured out how to tip without getting a bill, and I tipped the staff a lot. Throwing money around is bad.

On the other hand, my thoughts were under control, I was focused, and I was patient. I adapted to inconveniences more efficiently because I wasn’t resorting to violence.

I have an appointment with my doctor this evening, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Eggsistential Crisis

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I love my apartment, and I love my roommate, but I have to say I miss the old place. The idea of separate rooms at all is one I once enjoyed, and we had a backyard for Newcastle to poke around in. We also had a great neighborhood. In the spring, all of the bushes became soft and colorful.

It’s a mile walk to the 7th Street Hill Café, which I’d long ago adopted. On Saturday mornings, I liked to sit in an easy chair, sip a latte, and watch them assemble the Eastern Market, a cross between a crafts fair and a Farmer’s Market.

I came to the 7th Street Hill Café, located on North Carolina Avenue, on Saturday to do just that. Riding high on bipolar disorder, I needed to get out of my apartment and experience the world. I settled into the chair, pulled my markers out of my bag and eat my breakfast sandwich, resisting the urge to devour the whole thing in two bites.

After I returned it to the end table, the old man in the opposite chair said, “You have egg on your shirt.”

“Gross.” I plucked the solid yolk and dropped it onto the plate, keeping it far from the last bites of my sandwich. I said, “Speaking of eggs, I saw a Cybertruck downtown. I’m gonna crunch some numbers, and I’m gonna get a second job, and I’m gonna go to the bank, and I’m gonna get a loan, and I am going to egg that piece of garbage.” (It’s one of the funniest jokes I ever made. I’m going to use it until I run out of people to say it to.)

“Or,” the old man, whose name was Glen, said, “You could fill up two—no, three—no, two coffin coolers with eggs and sell them at the farmer’s market. That’s what Dan did, you know Dan?”

It was 8:13am, and I accepted that I was going to be in this conversation until the Post Office opened at nine. “No.”

“Dan used to sell eggs here at the Eastern Market. I used to truck them in from his farm. So many eggs. Dan died of a stroke. Not kidding, he just keeled over and died. That’s why nobody’s selling eggs at the farmer’s market anymore. Do know that you can tell what a chicken ate by looking at the color of its yolk?”

I gasped. “No!”

The old man chuckled and looked a bit smug. “Oh, yes. If the yolk is this deep amber, orange color, it ate a lot of marigolds.”

He smirked at me through his beard and waited for my reaction. I had to formulate one, and the only way I could prove I was paying attention was to ask a question. “You feed them marigolds?”

The old man chuckled. “No, no, no, they’re free-range. They can eat whatever the fuck they want. And if I ever want to eat a chicken dinner, all I need to do is grab a rooster who’s getting too big for his britches and hold him upside down and slash, motherfucker! Decapitated! Heh-heh!”

I didn’t know what was going on, but I buckled the fuck up to see where it was headed. It was difficult to follow along, but not because it was a bumper car of thought. No, Glen stubbornly clung to one subject until he veered off into a completely different direction, like he was jumping from train of thought to train of thought at a crowded depot.

Glen once punched a “shepherd bitch” (a dog) in the head, and she was nice to him after that. He recounted why you should never piss him off through the parable of a tense standoff with the owner of the Eastern Market. He already had his Halloween costume ready to go. (Hooded cloak, Goblin nail extensions. A paper machê Satyr mask a friend in Venice made for him.) He couldn’t remember why he didn’t exchange a word with his half-brother for two years while they shared a house. He kept me up to date on the lifespans of his siblings, including his “bitch sister” (a person), who is still alive. For a coup de grace, he unloaded on me how people are always on their “fucking phones” all the time. He could tell you how to get from point a to point B. “You know how? Not through your fucking phone, that’s for sure. Not on a map.” He tapped his temple.

Suddenly, he was gone.

I finished my drawing in peace.

I packed up and wandered off, my first destination being the Post Office to mail a package I’ve been meaning to mail for six months (sorry, Donna). I made it halfway up the block before the generous application of the color orange, my favorite, caught my eye. I’d walked past it on impulse, but I yanked my emergency brake and skidded over to the side to see more paintings.

They were collages coated in a thick layer of shellac, and a figure, bald, faceless, and strangely sexy, appeared on many of them. She said, “I love watching people come in for a second look.” We talked about color, I told her everything I liked about her art, and I bought a piece. She told me her name was Quest, and she gave me a big hug. The visible part of Quest’s hair was made of gray feathers, and she wore a robe, not a dress. I don’t think she was human. In a good way.

I was in and out of the Post Office at the speed of someone who’s done it a lot.

Even though I have Ember’s number, I decided to walk the ten blocks to the House of the Devil to see if she was standing up for us. On my way, I acquired a lava lamp, and I attempted to take a picture of a street called Justice Ct. until a Latinx man accosted me. He knew English nouns, and that was it. He shouted at me an incomprehensible string of them that told the story of an immigrant succeeding in this country, and something about that was making him angry.

A middle-aged couple across the street, surrounded by Chihuahuas yelled, “Sir, can you help us with our dogs? Sir?” I realized who they were talking to me, and I separated from the loud man to join them.

The woman yelled, “Thank you for helping us with our dogs!” The angry man continued ranting, impossible to understand. I never got the names of the couples, but I thanked them profusely.

Ember was not at the Pit of Despair. She later told me she was taking the weekend off. She’s earned it for sure. I look forward to resisting next week.

Exhausted and overstimulated, I headed straight home. But first, there is a big sign at the stop before mine labeled “Arts Walk.” I’ve been meaning to go there for at least two months. I hopped off the train to check it out because I was still jittery. It was okay. It was no Eastern Market. I bought a belt made of an old bicycle tire.

Also this weekend, a relationship that lasted well over a decade came to an end. I’m not going into details because I like to keep it classy in this joint. Also because it was enormously frustrating.

Culture doesn’t put as much value on a friend breakup as it does a romantic one, but they still hurt. You’re closing the door on all that history and intimacy, even if it ended badly. You have every right to mourn.

The truth is, we’d broken years ago, and I just wasn’t ready to let go. I already mourned.

Sunday, I dedicated my day to my project, the fruits of which you’ve seen yesterday. I’ve received no feedback on them from any of the St. Mark’s Players, and now I’m frightened to go to the show on Thursday.

My next project is finding a light bulb for my lava lamp.

Portrait of an Artist

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I still think of my friend several times a day. He’s been gone since the first week of November, and it doesn’t feel like it’s been almost four months. I can’t bring myself to look at a photo of him. I wrote a chapter about him in my premature memoirs (which he read) three years ago, and I can’t bring myself to read it or edit to include the conclusion.

However, I’ve included him as a secondary character in the novel I’m writing, and I’ve done my best to capture what made his personality shine. It helps fill the void he left. It breaks my heart that I can’t share it with him, because there are parts I know he’d laugh his ass off to, and I miss his laugh.

I have wanted to draw and/or paint a picture of him since his death, but it hurts too much. I did this last weekend, and it’s not great. I really screwed up the arms and the color of his hair. Baby steps.

Ranger Things

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I received a text from Maddy on Saturday morning, reminding me to watch the door to the auditorium when I worked the play without her that night. The reminder came not because she didn’t trust in my ability to remember, but because a woman almost got clocked on opening night.

They tried to warn her, but she didn’t listen (or hear at all), and she got lucky. With the first half of Maddy’s text, she was telling me that I might have to dive in slow motion to take the hit.

The second half hinted that the Olympic-level quick change at the end of act one almost failed. She put scissors on the prop table in case it came to that. I had a lot to look forward to in the evening.

I had a couple of awkward exchanges on the internet before I headed out for the rest of the day. I missed my Metro train, and I had to wait seven minutes for the next one, so I was almost on time to see my ex-roomie. This was bad.

A habit I had picked up from my Nebraskan ex-wife was to show up early. As they say on Letterkenny, “If you’re early, you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” I was running late.

After I bought a coffee for the lone protestor at the Heritage Foundation, I became actually late. I became even later when I walked down the wrong street, several blocks past our meeting place. I had a missed call and a text from Nicole, who was worried something terrible had happened to me.

My ex-roomie was telling me that she hadn’t been to the Suffrage Museum, where she volunteered for years, in an age. She is worried, reasonably so, it will be shut down by the president’s boss. I suggested we go this weekend.

We were met by a ranger, a friend of ex-roomie, who took us through the building and showed us everything that had changed since ex-roomie had been there last. They even had her old name-tag.

They were catching up, so I was a third wheel and kind of bored through most of it. While we were hanging out in the gift shop. The ranger pointed at one of their displays and mentioned that no one ever bought the Suffragette Soap. I have a habit of purchasing interesting soaps, so I picked up a bar.

The other ranger, an unusual person with an unusual accent and unusual glasses, cashed me out. I told her that I was excited to smell like oranges, and oh, my god, she loves oranges! I picked up a mini equal rights pin and told her that I want to start a gift exchange with a crow and explained what that entailed. She asked if I like birds, and I told her that I liked owls, and oh, my god she loves owls. I told her that the only owls I’ve ever seen in real life were burrow owls, and oh, my god, she loves burrow owls. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was flirting with me. Her name was Jess

Upon the park rangers’ suggestions, ex-roomie and I went to the Folger Shakespeare Library across the street and looked over some amazing old manuscripts. They were always open to their illustrations. However, as with all medieval illustrations, I had no idea what was going on.

She and I tried to get lunch at the café, but it is apparently the most popular study place for college students. We found a seat, but she had to leave for an appointment before her food arrived, which meant I had to eat it.

Maddy had completely reset the props before she went home Friday, so there was nothing for me to do until it was time to relocate the weasel. I wasn’t needed until about a half-hour before curtain, so I sat in the Baxter Room with the cast, and I illustrated Jess.

Lisette and Lucille each breathlessly gave me their accounts of the costume-flip nail-biter. The issue wasn’t the corset, but rather the second dress. It had an extra layer, so Lisette and her petticoat kept getting caught in it. She hung up the dress in a way that she could step into it, and I asked her if she were going to practice. If she went down during the performance, it was all over.

What struck me about the exchange was that she was coming to me as an expert. I hadn’t done theater since early high school. I can barely dress myself. On the other hand, my façade of authority allowed me to talk her out of the hanger idea, which might kill her, and into something a little more reasonable, like safety pins.

That did the trick. At the end of the first act, after I rescued the weasel, Lucille and Lisette were a well-oiled machine. I got to hold the flashlight. Apparently, I did that well because Lucille gave me a double thumbs up as Lisette stepped onto the stage.

After the show, we had to break down the set and the seating so the Episcopalians could worship in their own damned church. Ernie from load-in directed us with military precision. Within forty-five minutes, the set was in the closet downstairs, the risers had been relocated, the prop table wrapped up, and the boulder put into a very large plastic bag. All the chairs and the piano had been restored to their original positions.

It was like we weren’t even there. It’s guerilla theater.

Also, it wasn’t until the fourth time I listened to this play that I heard Lisette say to Lucille, “All tits on deck!”

Taking the Bait

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When I was employed at the self-publisher in Indiana, a number of cool women worked the front desk. There was Leah, the Leah against whom all future Leahs have been judged. She was escorted from the building by security, and she cut off communication with anyone who ever worked with her, so that ended rather abruptly.

Then there was Isabella. Every photo of her I have in my mind, of her mocha skin and espresso hair, of the flowery sundresses she wore year-round, she is grinning. I don’t know what color her eyes are because I’ve never seen them. She loved meeting everybody, and she traumatized my introverted sister by tackling her in a hug and squealing in her ear, the very first interaction they’d had.

Everything was fun to this woman. She found something to love in everything she could see, hear, feel, smell, or taste, and in every person she met. Isabella was a genuinely sweet and happy person. She was a natural receptionist.

A side-effect of her exuberance was that she dominated conversations. I’m not much of a talker, but I do like to get a word in, so I didn’t hang out with her very much. Still, I loved her presence and her vibe.

That day, in the break room. Chris from HR was examining the crime scene, his assistant Stephanie at his side, poking at a PDA. The Phantom Puker had struck again, and Chris from HR was no closer to catching them.

The pukes had been happening all over both floors of this flat structure, and Chris from HR was going to crack this case. Too bad the Puker knew where all the security cameras were. I rose from my table and stepped out of earshot, catching the last bit of dialogue from that corner: “Find out who had ramen for lunch!”

Even in context, that was pretty messed up, but I was unprepared for what came next. In fact, my deathbed confession will be this sentence fragment, leading a long search for the person who doesn’t remember ever saying it.

Isabella hugged her can of Diet Pepsi and took a quick sip, creating a dramatic pause for her audience. I came in at the middle of the sentence, and she breathlessly said the words that oozed into my ear and soaked my brain.

Sheer momentum kept me going, and I couldn’t hear anything that might put that into context. I don’t remember how I made it back to my desk. Collapsing into my chair, the gears in my head were grinding together, as if you were driving a stick and jumping from first to third.

My Work Wife, Elizabeth, appeared, concerned. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you need to go home? I can tell Dave.”

“What does it mean?” I moaned. “Tell me what it means!”

“What what means?” she replied.

“I can’t tell you,” I groaned. “I have a nosebleed!”

“Oh my God!” she gasped, plucking a issue from the box at her desk. “What did this to you? You know you can tell me anything, Jeremiah. What’s the point of having a work wife if you can’t?”

I hoped not to pass the madness along, but I could live alone with this no longer. “She said.” I breathed. “She said, ‘and then she went back into the fish.’”

“Who was she?”

“I don’t know!”

“What was she doing before she went back into the fish?”

“I don’t know!”

“What was outside of the fish that made returning to it so appealing?”

“I don’t know!”

“What was she doing in the fish in the first place?”

My bloodshot eyes fixated on her as I grabbed her shoulder and shook her. “I! Don’t! Know!”

She brushed my hands off of her. “We’re going to get through this. Just remain calm. Maybe we can ask Isabella what she was talking about.”

“I don’t want her thinking of me as an eavesdropper.”

“Jeremiah,” she said carefully, “this may be the only way you can go on.”

I worked my way downstairs to the front desk, my head pounding, and I waved to get her attention, just in case she was on the phone.

“What’s up, Jeremiah?” she asked, as if Jeremiah gossip was the one thing she’d been waiting for all day.

“I kind of caught part of a story you were telling,” I tried to explain without being a creep. “And you said something that I can’t quite understand.”

Her eyes were wide and eager.

“You said, ‘and then she went back into the fish,’” he told her.

She frowned a huge stage frown. “I don’t remember talking about fish at all today. Sorry!”

I returned upstairs, to my desk, and rested my face on the keyboard. I would never know why someone would return to a fish. I could only speculate. The truth had died that day, and so did a part of me I will always miss.

The Power of the Dork Side

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When going through my photo albums, I seemed to hit the sweet spot for nostalgia. Most of my friends throughout my history have been larger-than-life, to the point where I sometimes think of them as characters. When it comes to thinking human beings with their own lives separate from me as characters, the one who demands it the most is Jeff.

If I had to sum Jeff up in two words, they would be “Sassy Nerd.” He was the first Hastings College student I met, and I immediately wrote him off. When it came to being geeky, he was only missing tape on his glasses. It didn’t help that his roommate and my first friend, Rick, declared war on him. On the former’s side were an army of Madonna posters. On the latter’s, Reba McIntyre, all fighting for supremacy.

I didn’t think much of Jeff until my family experienced a loss, and Jeff stepped up to help me out. He volunteered to meet me at the airport and drive me back to school, even though said airport was three hours away. Oh, and it turned out that he was hilarious. And really clever. And sincere. And dangerously unhinged.

His brand was Evil Genius. He literally carried around a checklist for conquering the world, and one of the items was, “Befriend Jeremiah Murphy.” He steepled his fingers with even more menace than Mr. Burns, and when he laughed maniacally, he committed to it.

He said things like, “When life hands you dilemmas, make dilemonade.” For a teenager, he had a lot of wisdom, but he usually delivered it in the snarkiest way imaginable.

He would pathologically not swear. This was part of his identity. As part of out schtick, he and I left movies together behaving like the characters, but after Pulp Fiction, he said nothing. No amount of anything could get him to say something profane.

Except once. Late at night, while I was sitting captive behind the Altman front desk, he approached without emotion, and he whispered into my ear, “Don’t fuck with me.” I fell out of my chair. He denied it for all of college, and if I’m guessing, he’d deny it today.

Though he swears now. I have receipts.

For a while, we were a matched set, despite that the two of us couldn’t be more different. We moved in together sophomore year when Rick fled and there was no way Hastings College was going to let me keep my single without paying for it.

It was not smooth sailing, especially because he could make himself even more irritating if he was mad at you, and I was an unmedicated bipolar, but we came out on top. When we went our separate ways, him still in the dorm, me to a college-owned apartment, we parted as good friends. I even called him at random after I’d had a very weird Halloween.

He’s bald now. He didn’t used to be.

Anyway, I’m not good at likenesses, but this catches the vibe.

Down We Count

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Every single year, it’s the same. The end of December approaches, and with it, the memes, the posts, the general hostility about the previous twelve months. The one we just survived is the worst year ever. Over and over again.

How can you live like that?

When I inconsistently do these years in review, I try to be positive. You can choose which memories you want to have, and I always focus on the ones that are uplifting. I admit to the bad stuff (I mean, I was miserable for 50 percent of my early life), but it’s the least important part of my memoirs.

But 2024 is really fucking pushing it.

First, at the beginning of the year, the relationship between my roommate and I had gotten so toxic that I moved out. I had been kind of poking around in the fall, but I wasn’t ready to move out just yet. I’d found a studio I liked, but I also looked at a two-bedroom because I had never lived on my own before.

The first week of the year, we got into a fight so bad that I sat down at my laptop and applied for the studio. I was approved within a day, and I would have full possession of the keys by the time I finished signing the lease. I paid an extra month’s rent to my former roommate because I was leaving so quickly. We were awful to each other as I made arrangements, until I said, over text, that we weren’t friends anymore.

She panicked and apologized, and we took back our mutual shittiness. That evening, I ordered myself a pizza, and when she got home, I offered her some. She wanted to exercise first, so I had a couple of slices and went to bed. She woke me up and asked if I wanted to watch The Nanny while she ate. Watching TV with dinner had been kind of a sacred ritual for us, but it had fallen off as we fought more and more. This was the last time we’d do it, so it meant a lot.

Our relationship hasn’t fully recovered, but we still text memes and check in. I had cake and ice cream with her the day before her birthday, and she invited me to her friends’ house for board games.

Next: As I was packing up to move across town, I worried about Newcastle. He and Henry had been close friends (Kentucky cousins, as Henry’s mom would say), and neither cat ever recovered from being separated.

Newcastle was depressed in the new place, and he spent most of his time under the bed. I was a coiled spring for the entire time we lived there together. What if he was ready, and I was cruelly forcing him to live? Yet he still wanted to hang with me in bed or at my desk. He ate, he drank water, he befouled the litter box. He couldn’t jump up to my lap anymore, so I had to be ready with a lift at a moment’s notice.

At the end of January, I didn’t see Newcastle for an entire day, so I called the vet and arranged a checkup. He seemed fine, but they wanted to wait for the lab results to know for sure. A week later, the doctor called to tell me he had kidney failure. This was it. There was a treatment that might buy him some time, but I’d have to check him to a facility—

No. I wasn’t going to submit my cat, my world, to that kind of treatment for just a few more months. He was twenty. When I said no, I thought I had six-to-eight weeks. I had two. One day, he didn’t come out from under the bed at all. I knew it was time with the rigid certainty of a diamond. It was too soon. Twenty years wasn’t enough. He was my best friend, the love of my life, the longest I’ve ever lived with someone. And suddenly, he was a box full of ashes.

I didn’t want to replace Newcastle, so I decided that I would give myself a year to grieve. Two months later, my one-time roommate called and asked me if I was willing to hold onto a cat for a week or two. It would be nice to have something to pet around here, so I said sure, and I named him Potato, short for Hot Potato. He looked disheveled and the product of a union between a cat and a dachshund. When she had found him, he was eating a Reese’s wrapper.

The roommate’s  boyfriend took Potato and me to the vet, where the former got checked out. He was in perfect health, aside from the starvation. Because of that, it was hard to estimate his age, but it was around a year. His coat was clean, and he was friendly. This was someone’s cat.

After the two weeks were up, I adopted Potato. After a brainstorming session with former roomie, I decided on Oscar because he looks like an Oscar.

It took me a long time to get used to him. I hadn’t intended to bring another cat into my life so soon. I felt like I was betraying Newcastle, who looked exactly like Oscar when he was a year old. I’m still grieving, ten months later, but it helps that he’s here.

Oscar is a shoulder cat. He’s most comfortable draped around my neck. Oscar a jumper, and he’s really smart, meaning there’s no place in this apartment he can’t get into, except for my refrigerator. He started claiming the shelves I’d used for toys, so I had to relocate Newcastle’s memorial into a box and inside a cupboard over the fridge because he wanted the shelf. He can still get into that cupboard, and I’m waiting for him to push it to the floor.

Also, he’s a biter. Occasionally, he’ll rub affectionately against my arm or my hand and bite them. Not enough to hurt, but enough to get my attention. Once, on my shoulder, he opened his jaws wide and tried to bite off my head. I don’t know how to interpret this.

He’s a wonderful addition to my life, and I’m glad he’s here. I still miss Newcastle, and I have this inkling of a thought about a comic starring Oscar in full weasel mode getting coached by the ghost of Newcastle on how to be a cat. I have no ideas what the stories would be about. Same with the Black Cat Brigade, starring Oscar, Henry, and our friends’ cat Inkling, and the ghost of Newcastle. Again, I’d need a writer.

Third, I lost my best human friend. I’ve written volumes about how much Shane has meant to me since I first met him as a teenager. He was making it a point to call me more often, and he was moving to West Virginia; a small part of the reason was that it put him in a few hours’ bus ride from me. He called me on a Monday, concerned about his health. I assured him everything was going to be okay. That Saturday, he died at forty-nine years old.

I had dedicated my novel to him, and I wanted it to be a surprise. Now he’ll never know. I didn’t go to his memorial service because I wouldn’t be able to afford it, but I wrote a brief letter to share with everyone. Apparently, I dodged a bullet, as there was drama. I’ve been texting with his mother, and I reconnected with some old friends, however briefly. I miss him. Every day I think of something I want to tell him, and I remember I can’t, and he dies again.

He was my mentor when I was a confused, often angry teen. (Even Anakin Skywalker cringed at my antics.) His patience led me to lean in on my creative side and opened up the world of Art. (I sat in on him filming a music video even though he could play neither the guitar and the keyboards. This really doesn’t fit into the flow of the paragraph, but I thought I’d mention it.) When I struggled with ideas, he pushed me along. He talked me through the early days of my visual art. Together, we wrote two screenplays, a TV miniseries, and endless ideas bounced off of each other. We were a team.

When I thought I was through with him, he was always waiting for me. Some people never get to have a friend as loyal and full of life and style as Shane, and that’s really sad. I miss him, but I was lucky to have him in the first place, even if only for thirty-two years.

Two summers ago, I needed to take care of my use-or-lose vacation time, so I flew to New Mexico to spend the next nine days writing a TV series. Some of my favorite memories are of the days in Shane’s studio, smoking weed and collaborating, sometimes struggling over a single word until we find the perfect one. We were able to duplicate that magic in 2022.

As a bonus, my work friend ghosted me when she left the company. It’s better than the way things had been going. When she first started fall of 2023, we bonded instantly. Some of that was because she sat next to me. She was twenty years younger than I, and she came from a completely different life than I. For example, she and her fiancé owned a house in Foggy Bottom, which he bought in cash. We went out for coffee every Thursday, and we filled each other in on every detail of our lives.

When she got married in the spring, our dynamic changed, as the people her own age showed interest in her. We went from texting and messaging all day and night to not interacting for days. She quit, and we threw a farewell party on her last day. I tried to talk to her, but the Loquacious One dominated the conversation.

Where I have great management, hers was a nightmare, and she ended up doing all the work for her publication. When her manager was fired, she continued to get stuck with the work, and while her manager was training, she still got all the work. So when she left, for her vacation and then for good a few months later, I poked and prodded my managers into arranging coverage for her.

After her first manager was fired, she applied for his job, despite only being there for six months by that point. She didn’t get the job, and she was embittered by that. That put it in my head that I’d like a promotion.

I had gotten one in 2021, and I have vastly expanded my expertise since then. I could have waited until they came around to it, but instead I brought it up at a check-in meeting with my manager. There’s a tier system in Editorial, and I was on the second one. No one knew if there was a third, so it took a while to arrange.

It took a couple of months, but advocating for myself ultimately paid off. An announcement was made, and the general consensus was that it was a long time coming. My new roles including training and absorbing as much of the process as necessary.

I gave up MortalMan for the time being. I finished page seven and sketched out page eight. I had originally put it on hold when I knew that Newcastle was almost gone because I wanted to be there to pay attention to him. After he left, I tried again. I finished page seven and started on page eight before I just put everything away. I’ll try to get back to it.

Yes, 2024 was a bad year. If you know anything about the tarot, it was a Tower year. Or Death, at the very least. The bad that happened to me outweighed the good. But look at the good.

I’ve drawn and colored millions of pictures. I polished off two half-finished novels—one that needed a complete rewrite and one that needed a bit of padding. I tried mushrooms for the first time since the nineties, and I do not recommend it. I didn’t have a bad trip or anything, but I spent most of the time wishing it would just wear off. I went on the most perfect vacation (for me).

I found a coffee shop in my neighborhood, then it closed down. I found two coffee shops over the Maryland state line that I have to either walk or take the Metro to. I found a third coffee shop a little further over the Maryland state line. I found first coffee shop again, not closed down, but rather relocated a short walk from my apartment. It was here that I saw beloved British Comedian, John Oliver at the first coffee shop, while a little later that day, a strung-out woman tried to outdraw me by taking over my table.

These are the things I value. My job appreciates me, and it doesn’t cause me stress. I have Oscar currently draped over my legs, which are kicked up on my desk. It’s chilly, but not cold, which is how I like it. I love my postage-stamp-sized apartment. I have friends (no, really). I have two healthy parents. Life is good.

Dramatis Personae

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From preadolescence in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to Doha, Qatar, I have tended to gravitate toward weirdos. Even Work Rachel, though she came and left my life in a handful of months, was pretty out there. The people in my life are so off-center, and they’re so different, that I can’t help but think of them as characters.

I bring this up because I took the weekend to digitize my photo albums, and I rediscovered my past. And then, I remembered the characters in my life, and characters are meant to be drawn. I don’t plan on turning this into a thing, especially as MY LIKENESSES ARE TERRIBLE.

When I arrived at Hastings College, I didn’t exactly blend in. I was darker colors, plaids, and torn jeans, and the entirety of the Midwest was also plaids, but also a blend of earth tones and pastels. I was alone. Suddenly, someone came along, made an obscene comment about the holes in my jeans, and lured me into his den of filthy degenerates.

For a while, it was amazing. With our newfound freedom, we frolicked in innocent (yet very horny) fun, mostly involving smoking cigarettes indoors. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. We were kids, and we didn’t know better.

We started being really horrible to each other in ways I’ve compartmentalized and would refer to as “toxic,” if I didn’t feel like that word has lost all meaning. We’re not bad people. None of us were. We were young, and we got swept up in the moment.

Since running into these photos, I’ve been remembering the early days, before it got complicated, and some of the characters. From left to right:

There’s me, who seemed to be living under a bad-luck curse.

Rick was the one who befouled the reputation of my beloved grunge jeans and brought me into the group of misfits he’d been gathering. Not only was Rick a dancer with moves that could hypnotize a sultan, but he was sincere and curious, two of my favorite traits in a person.

Susan was a pretty, petite young woman who could fell a man by belching on him. She was your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, without the politics. She was never wrong, and this infuriated me. Sure, she was right most of the time, but did she have to be so belligerent about it? When I met her, she had a Canadian boyfriend, and I said, “Sure.” Then I met him.

If I were dream-casting Greg, I’d go for a young Joan Crawford, smoking a cigarette and waiting for something that piqued her interest. He moved like a marionette, broadly swinging his limbs from one pose to another, going from irritated to overjoyed in an instant. Greg taught me the value of camp and Bea Arthur, without which I would have never appreciated the one good part of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

JJ is difficult to describe. His black T-shirts, sometimes sans sleeves, heavy work boots, and unabashed mullet cast him as a redneck. And he was. He could keep up with Susan on the race to the bottom, and he thought he was the most hilarious person he knew. But sometimes, he’d get really calm, and he’d say something so profound, it would blow the back of your head off. But sometimes, he’d get really calm, and he’d say something so unbelievably stupid, it would blow the back of your head off.

These were just a few of the weirdos I got to know in my early days, far away from home, in a strange land, trapped somewhere between adult and child.

Come on, Baby, Light my Cigarette

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When I first started smoking cigarettes in October, 1994, I had a cute, little, red Bic lighter, and it was magical.

At that time of my life, I mostly hung out with Greg, a drag queen in disguise; JJ, the philosopher redneck; and Susan, an old, grouchy gay man in a teenage girl’s body, in Greg’s dorm room. We smoked a lot of cigarettes because it was the nineties, and you could smoke indoors if you wanted to.

For about a month, I always had flame in my pack-pocket (currently my phone-pocket). This was something special because I tended to distribute my lighters in random places with random people, so I always depended on the other cavemen for fire.

What was even more amazing was that, if I had to leave the dorm for a chilly autumn, the lighter was there, in my jacket pocket, always. I never had an excuse not to smoke.

On a day of sadness, my Bic flicked its last. If mid-nineties culture was tipping one over for your homies, I absolutely would have. I loved that fucking lighter. I disposed of it with ceremony.

And yet, when I reached into my jacket pocket a few hours later, the cute, little, red Bic was there, and it still had juice. I thought I’d thrown it out, but it was a strong possibility, even then, my memory of the event failed to correspond with what actually happened.

I didn’t figure it out for a while. On my way to class, I lit a cigarette, returned the lighter to my jacket, and slipped my hand inside my pack-pocket to find another cute, red, little Bic.

The whole time I’d had three identical lighters, and I didn’t have a clue. Maybe something magical did happen here. But the spell was broken, and one-by-one, the remaining Bics disappeared.

I quit smoking 15 May, 2007, four days before I turned thirty-one. I have never stopped loving those triplets.

Shuffling Onward

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Saturday marked two weeks since I found out Shane was dead. I’m getting used to it. While he was still alive, I thought about him constantly. When I did something with a piece of art I’m proud of. When I ran across a phrase or something in a novel I wrote that he’d appreciate. When I thought of the most offensive joke imaginable, and only he wouldn’t judge me. When I would hear “Oh the Guilt,” a Nirvana song I didn’t know existed until two years ago, and intended to ask if he’d ever heard it.

I never got to ask. Kind of an on-the-nose title, isn’t it? Each time I’d think of something I wanted to share with him, I remembered I couldn’t anymore, and he died again. And again.

I was numb the three-day weekend after I received the news. Artistically, I had a very prolific weekend, as I went to all the cafes I frequent, in order to avoid sitting behind my desk, gazing out the window like I did when he called. Sunday, my parents were there for me in the morning. In the afternoon, Nicole and I explored Union Market, a rapidly developing complex of shops, restaurants, and cafes. When confronted with death, you need to do something that makes you feel alive.

Last weekend, Nicole and I returned to Union Market for a pop-up art fair. By that point, my thoughts about him weren’t as intrusive, and I could function on manual pilot. We wove in and out of buildings, admiring the media of sculpture, painting, sketching, inking, collage, spray paint, etc., all by local artists.

How could I wander through a collection of modern art and not think of my friend, the accomplished artist? Rather than hurt, though, I would look at some of the pieces, knowing he’d really like what I was seeing, and I was comforted.

Now? I’m feeling like my life is returning to normal. I still have those moments that take my breath away, when I forget he’s gone. There is also the slow torture of seeing the publication of my novel around the corner, and how he will never read it. I dedicated it to him while he was still alive, and I didn’t tell him. I wanted him to be surprised when the book came out.

As Paul McCartney says, “Oh-blah-dee, oh-blah-dah.”

I miss him so damned much.