Of everything I saw, there is one thing about that morning I can never forget: the weather was perfect. The summer had been difficult for me. I lost my job, and I had sunk into a deep depression, and my relationship with Andrea was getting rocky. The weather was full of peace, the sky was blue, and the leaves were still green. My step picked up a spring. I sat down at my desk and stuffed envelopes with energy and panache. That day started out so full of hope.
I woke up directionless On Saturday. I wanted to draw, but nothing was coming to me. You can imagine what a relief it was when one of the most influential people from college shared with me his very good artwork. Dude’s got an eye for color and chaos. We chatted all morning, mostly about philosophy—not like two guys in togas, but rather about the decisions and circumstances that led to where we are. I picked up a lot of insight into my friend and into myself.
I wanted a café near the Metro so I could hop the train over to Union Station and see if Ember was around. I settled on Ididos, nearish to the Metro station, and would leave when I was good and ready.
Just as I was about to eat what I knew was going to be a fantastic, Ethiopian breakfast sandwich, my phone made a noise. It was an unusual noise. It was telling me I was getting a phone call. The only people who call me are the robots at the pharmacy, so I pulled it out of my pocket with sweaty hands.
The caller ID told me it one of the most influential people from New York. Immediately my mind said, “I can’t lose another one.”
There is nothing wrong with my friend. She was checking in because she had some precious, precious time, and she thought she’d spend some of it on me. She was such an amazing friend because she was a hilarious and filthy (and really professional) degenerate, and she was also the most loyal, sincere, protective, Mama B you’ll ever meet.
Energized by my friends and the four golf caps I saw, across all demographics, I decided not to go looking for Ember. Instead, I walked south. It was miles to the next station, and I had no idea how I was getting back home, but I didn’t care.
That’s how I stumbled onto Rock Creek Cemetery. I had been there in 2011 with a friend, seeking out Clover Adams’s grave. I remember how haunting it was. While I was in the neighborhood, directionless, I thought I’d find it again.
Clover is how Marian Adams was known to everybody. In the late 1800s, she was married to famous writer named Henry Adams, and they lived in Washington D.C., near the White House. She was a prolific photographer, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy one. However, after her father died, Clover sank into a deep depression and drank a lethal amount of photo-developing chemicals.
When I first heard this story, I was reminded how my then-father-in-law coped with his wife’s death. He purged every photograph with her in it, every tchotchke she collected. He even remodeled the family into something completely unrecognizable. Likewise, Henry burned her letters and photographs. Neither Henry nor my former father-in-law ever spoke of their first wives again.
Her burial was ostentatious. He hired celebrated architect Stanford White to design a memorial to mark Clover’s grave. There is a grove of trees with steps leading into the center. There you’ll find a large, curved marble bench that could seat six comfortably. Across the expanse marked by small, tumbled stones, sits Grief.
The full name of the statue is The Mystery of the Hereafter and the Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The newspapers saw that title and said, “We’re going to call it Grief.” The subject of the statue is not Clover Adams. It’s neither male nor female. Its only purpose is to mourn because Henry couldn’t.
As a skeptic, I can’t explain the vibe of that place. It was sad, but it was also kind of frightening, requiring me to push through a lot of fear to get that close-up. Then I did the unthinkable. I stuck around with my sketchbook. I’m going to put a lot of time and care into this one.
Henry Adams built an actual monument on top of the final remains of his beloved wife. Her name is nowhere to be found.
As you know, I’m bipolar, specifically, bipolar 2. That means I’m depressed more often than I’m anything else, leading to misdiagnoses of clinical depression. I have been on all the depression drugs, from Abilify to Zoloft, which has led to discussions that go like great scene in Silver Linings Playbook where Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence discuss the medications they’ve tried the same way Comic book fans talk about their stashes. What I’m trying to say is that I have lived my entire adult being miserable, except for brief breaks where I’m actually myself, or I’m hypomanic.
Being hypomanic can be a lot of fun. It’s like having a couple of drinks, and you’re funnier, better looking, and more charming. I’m pretty sure every woman who’s fallen in love with me has done so when I’m hypomanic.
Also, I’m irritable and downright angry. I can’t stop talking, and I’m grandiose. I regret so much of what I do when I’m manic. There is a member of my pantheon of fictional characters who is based on my mania. His name is Max. (Same first two letters—see what I did there?) Max is an asshole. When I’m hypomanic, I become an asshole.
I spent the least amount of time being normal, and it was tough to tell if anyone actually liked the real me. I wondered how I could be an asshole a third of my adult life without actually being an asshole. Or if I spent six months miserable, did that mean I was just miserable?
Fifteen years ago, my brilliant doctor and I figured it out. It wasn’t some sudden eureka moment. (DOCTOR: “It’s a great day to come to the zoo and see a polar bear … wait. Polar! That’s it!”) He isn’t House. He’s actually like this guy I met in North Jersey who used to hang out with my Uncle Larry. But I digress. It took months of experimentation and patience for us to reach an accurate diagnose because psychiatry isn’t a science, it’s art.
We found a cocktail that worked. I know it worked because I went to bed depressed one night, and I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed, but not manic. I was myself, and I’ve been myself since 2017. The downside is that, when you’re on enough lithium, your emotions are muffled. I’m like a cruise ship: when the waves slam into me, I may tip for a second (I have a bad temper), but I return to normal pretty quickly. This may be one of the reasons Kate divorced me.
There have been a number speed bumps along the way.
Sometimes, when you have a mental illness, and you are relying on drugs to function, they stop working. You have to start from scratch. It happened to me in 2015, and took over a year to right myself. I brush my teeth, get ready for work, work, come home and pet my cat, write and draw, make dinner, and go to bed, all the time being aware this will happen again.
Sometimes, I’ll get hypo-depressed, where I can’t sleep, but it’s all I want to do. It doesn’t make me feel sad and worthless, but I experience a lot of the physical symptoms, like aching joints.
Sometimes, I’ll get hypo-hypomanic, which is the good parts plus some crankiness.
I don’t tell my doctor about either of these because I don’t want to mess with my medication. We have been polishing this cocktail for years, and I’m afraid to live without it. Also, if I’m being perfectly honest, it’s kind of nice to be hypo-hypomanic.
Otherwise, the real me is a hermit, and I haven’t made any long-term friends for a very long time. When I’m hypomanic, the relationships may last minutes, but they’re life-changing.
Weeks ago, when I started getting involved with the community theater and having great conversations, and meeting protestors and hanging out, I wrote ten long blog entries over two weeks. I was clearly hypomanic. I hesitated to call my doctor because I was enjoying myself. It’s so easy to go from manic to depressed, and I didn’t want to rush that.
I melted down at work on a Thursday, and again the following Wednesday. I missed a train and screamed “Fuck!” in a crowded platform. I feel like a cat on stilts. If the internet cuts out, even for a minute, I’m going to throw my laptop out the window.
I called my doctor, and he prescribed me an emergency supply of an antipsychotic to keep me calm and he helped me sleep. He told me to take the next week off work and to stay home and sleep as much as I can. I’m need to lay off my ADHD medication because it’s all stimulants, as well as the devil weed, which is a mild hallucinogen, and it would stimulate me. I am to stay in my apartment with two exceptions:
One exception is my commitment to the St. Mark’s Players. After a long Day One under house arrest, I had to pull myself together and be around other people when I keep losing control over myself.
For example, I was pleasantly surprised to see my favorite eccentric, platinum blonde theater volunteer, Elizabeth. She remembered me and was genuinely excited when she caught my attention. I said, “You look great! Really great!” She assured me it was just work clothes, but I reiterated how great she looked. And she did, but still.
I did not want to do that. She is half my age. Even though my motives are pure, and I genuinely wanted to compliment her, there are rules, and I was stepping over them. My body wanted to keep talking, but I tried to reel me in, resulting in words that sounded backwards. It happened again when I was trying to give directions to my favorite bar in New York, which is probably not there anymore.
I had two more conversations like this at the theater. On top of that, I had to call eleven pharmacists earlier to find the antipsychotic he prescribed, but I still couldn’t find it. I was an asshole to every one of them. I didn’t want to be, but I was. I was telling my mouth what to say, and my mouth was being a real dick about it.
That’s just words. I want to assault people for moving too slowly. I want to beat my desk to death with my ergonomic chair. I am holding myself together with all the energy I have. As I told my boss after my second meltdown, that was me holding myself together.
I don’t have control over my own body. This has been my constant thought since my first meltdown. What happens when I have low blood sugar, and I can’t keep it contained? What happens when I stub my toe, and the bad me gets loose? And there’s nothing to stop my mouth from saying something it shouldn’t. I can’t even regulate my thoughts.
I can see treating this creepy asshole as a separate person, like the Hulk. But it’s not. It’s my voice. It’s my body. It’s my mind. Unlike a cranky Bruce Banner, I don’t get to black out when I’m being destructive. I have to watch myself do it and live with the consequences.
I have to go out to St. Mark’s Episcopal Church again tonight, with all those people, and Elizabeth (who, at least, didn’t act creeped out the rest of the night), and maybe something that’s going to set me off.
I don’t know what I’m going to do or when I’m going to do it, but I’m awaiting this next fuckup, as I have been for over a week. I’m scared. I’m in an ongoing state of vigilance, and I’m so, so tired.
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.
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.
Glenn Beck, whoever that is, held a rally on September 12 (I can’t remember the year) to unite us as a country, like we were on September 12, 2001. I can’t begin to list all of the ways this is a lie, so I won’t. Remember, though, regardless of where you were, what it was like when the world ended, but the next morning, life went on. We had no idea how we were supposed to move forward. Somehow, we did.
When Donald Trump pulled his face off to reveal Elon Musk making a Nazi salute, the world ended. Those of us with any decency had been betrayed by their neighbors, their coworkers, their bosses, some of whom are now saying, “I didn’t vote for this!” Judges are upholding Elon’s draconian cuts and unprecedented access to the confidential information of innocent Americans.
Somehow, life goes on.
It’s bad out there. I don’t need to tell you why. I can’t look at the news without wanting to vomit, and this is not an exaggeration. It’s hard to remember what it was like to be happy, even for a minute. Your body and mind are seeking out dopamine. There are lots of ways to get a little hit of it, but the best way is to pay someone a compliment. That way two people get dopamine hits.
Lately, for no reason, I’ve been more aggressive about pointing out things I like about a person. The dam burst when I was sitting in the dressing ballroom at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church with Lisette listening to my expertise about dresses. I have no expertise, but somehow suggesting binder clips(?) was the solution.
Lisette’s performance and character are my favorite part of Metromaniacs. I realized then there was no reason to keep this to myself. So I told her. She was startled, but touched. The next day, I told Lucille that she had that influencer vibe, and she told me she hadn’t looked at it that way. I’m looking forward to telling Mondor that his fall is art.
I’ve started bugging strangers on the street, making them smile for a moment. It’s not always rewarding, as in the three elder Zoomers walking side-by-side. As I passed them, I said, “You guys look really fucking cool, keep it up.” Then I added, “I’m being sincere. You really look cool walking like that.” Their expressions said, “Who the hell is this crazy old person?” And I think they were waiting for me to hit them up for some Molly.
I’m telling you all this because I need to brag. Bragging is in fashion. However, you only get to brag if it’s about the size of your bank account and/or penis, how much gas your car goes through, and how much people love you. Culture has criminalized bragging about the good things you do.
Well, go fuck yourself, culture, because I’m bragging about making life a tiny bit better for a tiny amount of people. It’s easy, it’s free, it only takes a few seconds, and you can turn someone’s day around. I’m bragging because I want more people to do it.
I got my hair cut two weeks ago in a slightly different style, and someone in the office noticed, and it made my morning. How could I not want to do that for other people?
I’m not a good person. I’m passive-aggressive, my manners have atrophied, my lizard brain is kind of racist, I’m impatient, and I’m a disappointment to my cat. But I like to think I’m a decent person. I do try to have some empathy.
It’s in the spirit of this that I say this: You. Yeah, you. The one reading this. You have a great smile, and I love seeing it. Except you, Lisa. Your mouth is nightmare fuel.
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.
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.
In Downtown Gallup, New Mexico, there lies a street that only exists for about three or four blocks. This is Coal Avenue, and it is here that I will tell you about my friend, Shane.
Picture a second-story window, and standing before it on the inside is a young man, no older than twenty. He’s not particularly tall, and he’s bulky, but not unattractively so. He wears his blond hair down to his chin, and his clothes, usually denim, were covered in paint. He sticks his head outside and yells out, “I thought I told you to leave Angelita outta this!”
On the sidewalk, a tall, skinny teenager with big glasses and a long, blond ponytail shouts back something misogynist and vulgar, despite that the two boys are not the former, but are definitely the latter.
Vinny was Shane. He was an aspiring artist who returned to Gallup after many years of homelessness, wandering through eighties and nineties alternative culture like Forrest Gump. For a time, he lived in a blue Volkswagen Beetle. He later surfed couches, and eventually got a job waiting tables at the most popular restaurant in Gallup (it was Italian) and an apartment of his own, a studio apartment that he eventually decorated with a bed, a kitchen table, and pastel smears all over the walls. He even had business cards. I will forever remember them because they read:
Shane Van Pelt
Artist/Writter
When I met him, I had already found my identity in the darker side of Alternative culture. Meeting Shane at a football game altered that course, so instead of a path of black clothes and self-destruction, I became something more bohemian.
Shane had a lot of patience for me, who grew up with undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses. When I went away to college, he was not the best pen-pal. But he did do things like leave phone messages at the front desk of my dorm informing me that Angelita was pregnant.
After his marriage, which I heard about third-hand, he and Elizabeth moved to New York City. He visited me a handful of times in college, shuttling back and forth from there to Gallup. People, seeing us together, assumed we were brothers. We were. He made quick friends with many of my friends as well because he was so freaking charming.
I ended up in New York, with nothing but a little bit of money and my friendship with him. He showed me around Manhattan and showed me where to buy weed. In fact, my first weekend there, he took me into Harlem to pick some up, and we didn’t know at the time that Louis Farrakhan’s Million Youth March was taking place. “Try to look inconspicuous,” he told me.
Elizabeth knew people, and during one of the first weeks I was living New York Adjacent, she took us to a party. Shane and I were the only people either of us knew, and he retreated solo as soon as we walked in the door. I found a corner and suffered, and an intellectual in his thirties approached me and asked if Shane and I were a “team.” As in a band or a writing duo? Even apart, we were simpatico.
I wanted to be a comic book illustrator, but I didn’t know how to draw. Shane, despite the raw stick figures I was starting with, was the first person to call me an artist. And if someone as cool and talented as Shane Van Pelt says it, it must be true.
He, Elizabeth, and their newborn Ava retreated Upstate, and some of the best three-day weekends I ever spent were in his drafty house in Binghamton, after I shelled out sixty bucks for a bus ticket. Together, we’d sit in his studio and work on one of two screenplays, Convenience Store Maniac or The Day the West Went Dry. The former is lost to history, which is too bad because I thought it was brilliant. The latter we’ll get back to.
When I got married, there was one person I wanted at my side, and that was Shane. I have to say, though, twenty years later, I’m still disappointed in his Best Man speech. What was important, though, was that he was there.
For personal reasons I won’t go into and because Shane is a bad pen-pal, we had drifted apart during my marriage. However, we talked a lot more after my divorce (i.e. once every few months), and no time had passed between. We were still insulting each other in gross, not-Woke ways, and we could talk about anything.
In 2022, I recalled that some of the best memories I had were hanging out in Shane’s studio and doing screenplay jam sessions. I took a trip to see him that summer, and for seven days, we extended our two-hour movie into a series. He said he knew people at Netflix. I didn’t care either way. I just wanted the quality time with my best friend.
He called me more frequently than that afterward, about once a month. However earlier in 2024, he told me he was committing to talking more often, and the calls came biweekly. He told me about his plans in Wheeling, West Virginia, which would bring him a short bus ride from me. He had to deal with some property issues because somehow, the high school dropout I knew who used his tips to buy art supplies had property issues now.
The last time I talked to Shane, it was this past Monday. He had called me, scared, because he’d been without some of his medications, and he was starting to feel the withdrawal. He told me he would be getting his medications Tuesday, so I told him that this was a moment. The moment would become a memory, like all his memories, and life would go on. The last thing I said to my best friend was a lie.
Since Shane has lived several lives apart from mine, I don’t know many of his friends or relatives. I met Elissa, his mother, once, and I knew he was devoted to her. Elizabeth has been a good friend to me with the patience of Job. I haven’t seen his daughter Ava since she learned how to walk over a three-day weekend and instructed me how to move Daddy’s paintbrushes from one jar to another. I have never forgotten that lesson, even though I couldn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth.
If you go to his website and you somehow dig up his essay about grunge (Shane’s filing systems made sense to him, at least), you’ll see a storyteller chock full of story. After reading said essay, I have been constantly riding him to write his memoirs. Somehow, Shane has packed about eighty years of living into the fifty he had, and I hope the person who inherits his computer at the very least finds more of these essays. He was also working on a novel, and I was really excited to read it when it finished.
There’s so much more I want to tell you about him. I have stories, like the time we stood on the street, Shane scratching pastels onto a rogue piece of drywall and me, narrating the process in my best (okay, worst) Joe Pesci voice. Or how he stole that boombox from a house I was sitting for, and I was the one who got in trouble. Or the joy on my face the day after Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins hugged a painting he made for her.
Shane was an accomplished artist, with shows all over the world. Thirty years ago, I watched him go from painting nudes of Sherilyn Fenn to his current style, whatever that is. Is it Cubist? Surrealist? Impressionist? Outsider? It’s none of those things. Shane was, and always will be unique.
Shane Van Pelt died Saturday, November 9, at approximately 1:00 a.m. Mountain Time.
He had met me in every stage of my life, and he still liked me. He was probably the best friend I’d ever had. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.
I don’t know if it’s ADHD or a symptom of our society, but I hate the quiet. For most of the day, I’m listening to something. While I work on art, it’s a movie or a YouTube video. While I work at work, I put on a podcast I don’t need to listen to. On the weekends, I like to cozy up in a cafe and get swept up in the busy lives of others.
The main reason I always like to have something on is because the earworms nestle in otherwise. Sometimes they’re fun songs, but usually they’re not.
Today, I’m not plugging into noise, and I’m paying the price for it. I’m hearing my favorite Beatles song, the one I can never listen to anymore, “A Day in the Life,” from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is one of those rare songs ascribed to Lennon/McCartney that actually had contributions from both. If you know their style, you can pick which parts are theirs.
The numbness of the John Lennon part (“I read the news today, oh boy”) is how I feel having sacrificed passion for my sanity, and the McCartney part (“Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head”) is the result of that, i.e. going through the motions because you have to.
It’s a heavy song, and it never fails to bring me to tears. I found out when Newcastle died that it also described how I was processing my grief. Today, I found myself sitting on my bed, unmoving and unthinking, for ten minutes.
The only way I can feel anything right now is by writing about it.
I read the news today, oh boy.
Jeremiah Murphy 