postscript.

On my way down the rabbit hole I grabbed onto a random twig to keep myself from being swallowed by the abyss: this blog.

I can't claim to be in the clear...since, you know, it's life and there is no clear.  But I'm on terra-firmer, anyway. 

So I'm changing the blog.  Duck and cover, hold onto the kids, Little Bored Fauntleroy is going 3D.  Oh, wait; I'm not doing that at all.  But while I'm still on terra-firma, sort of, I have a few things to say and I plan on using a LOT of words.  Lots and lots of words. 

In the meantime, while I figure out how to reconfigure everything, feel free to visit me on Tumblr.  It turns out images are my new favorite language (...which, of course, isn't going to stop me from using lots and lots of words.)

Epilogue.

I go out now...sometimes.  It's like remembering a vague idea of love. 

I was on my bike the other night and it was beautiful, perfect, home. 

And I think maybe one day I'll still do my stupid hundred miles.  (but not too soon, though, I'm sadly out of shape.) 

I still have that lump in my groin.  Sometimes it seems bigger and other times it seems to be holding steady.  Sometimes it hurts like crazy and other times it's passive.  I figure I'm peeing okay, no blood, so maybe it's just a thing.  Maybe.  

I woke up in the middle of the night recently, I woke up hard.  It was still dark; it was quiet.  My heart was beating through my chest.  I was sweating through my clothes, my sheets were soaked.  "This is it," I thought, "my last night on earth."  And I was perfectly calm about it, perfectly okay.  I thought about my final day, what I did, the guy who wouldn't stop talking to me and how funny he was.  It was a nice day.  It was a good day to go.

And that is how it will go - unless and until I go to a doctor, that is how it will be.  And I'll wake up the next day and have another go at it except for the one night when I won't.  But when it happened that one night last week, I wondered, Should I get up and pee so they don't find me all pissed out?  Naaaah, I decided, let the fuckers have to clean it up.

Thus ends Chapter 1.

(no idea.)

Epilogue 8.

And then...one day...

Epilogue 7.

So I closed my door to the world and spent six months watching reruns of Criminal Minds.  (Which was better with Mandy Patinkin.  Also better with AJ Cook and Paget Brewster, both of whom are returning next season, which is awesome. )

I made more bad and soulless art, but I stopped caring if it mattered or if it was worth it, and decided to forget about shows; I just like making it.  I like the process, getting lost in it, pushing paint around, making something out of nothing, making tangible what's been living in my head.  Plus I have a deadline in the new year.

I struggled and failed, struggled and failed, struggled and failed, and finally got a grip on the alcohol.  It was that or give it up completely, and that's just crazy. 

I spoke to, saw,  no one. 

And because I didn't know what else to do, I continued shuffling forward. 

Epilogue 6.

I don't know why people don't like me, sometimes it's just not a fit.  Disregard I could live with, but there is a viciousness in the species, such a desperate viciousness that I am just incapable of comprehending.

So when I got sick, went down, part of me was like, 'I should go see a doctor,' but the truth is, most of me was like, 'Why?'  Why fight it, I mean fuck it, if the stupid world really doesn't want me what am I fighting for?

I mean my dad, my brother...these are amazing guys with families, for them it matters.

Me...I've somehow managed to become something a lot of people seem to want to erase.  No idea what that thing is, or why I piss them off so much, but boy they really needed to be certain I was aware aware of what a complete, thorough, and extraordinary asshole I am. 

  Really? Stay on earth for more of this? That?  Them?  All of it? All the stupid little petty loser bullshit?  So they can send me more emails telling me how crappy I am and how crappy my art is and so they can stalk me after seven years of telling me how crappy I was and so more people can tell me how crappy I am every time I go out into the world and try to have a conversation but always seem to end up saying something stupid enough for the other person to tell me how crappy I am, and I go home every time beating myself over the head, wondering what it was I did this time, again, always something wrong, always the glances and looks and people walking away and I never know what I did...I never know...other than...show up.  Exist.  

You know, like that.  

Epilogue, part 5.

  For six months I stayed inside and outside stayed outside.  Out There was the enemy.  Out There wanted to kill me. 

Epilogue, part 4.

The First Straw: I had a show due and I was behind schedule, so I gave up the bike.  I figured , you know, it's temporary, no big deal...never knowing how essential it was to my sanity and love, not love for anything...just love, just having it.

It came quickly after that.  I had the show but within a month...I saw my stalker near my gallery.  My other gallery guy OD'd.  I got an email from an old - and apparently pissed - girlfriend telling me my paintings sucked and were soulless...

...my brother was diagnosed with cancer, again.  My father went into the hospital...

...one night on my way to a meeting I was suddenly started sweating like a pig to slaughter, right around the same time I discovered a lump in my groin.  No insurance, I couldn't find a doctor willing to see me.  There was more, other little things that mattered, other people leaving, other changes, all things that got sucked into the accidental vortex of too much. 

Little Bored Fauntleroy went down...HARD  BABY!

I was a pretty little picture indeed: I was drinking too much, sleeping too little, sweating profusely all the time. Anxiety and panic attacks, irritable bowels, social anxiety, my heart was beating out of my chest, always. I went nowhere, talked to no one. I was suddenly scared shitless of everyone, everything; of out there. 

I couldn't ride, my work wasn't going well...everything was broken.

OUT THERE, once a place I was madly in love with, once the greatest place on earth...

Once, but not anymore.

Epilogue, part 3.

So I rode my bike...

...I made some mediocre art...

...I entirely disliked a few women...

...it was a good life.  Well, it was a life, but still one I sort of enjoyed.

Epilogue, part 2.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the world that didn't want me or me that didn't want the world?

Epilogue, part 1.

I am not a popular man.  I wasn't the high school quarterback and I didn't date the lead cheerleader. 

I mean holy sh*t on that one, of you know what I mean.  Well...there was always that small part of me that wanted to belong, be them: matter.

But you don't choose these things, they do.  And though I didn't have anything against them, I could never be one of them.  They grew up to become this.

I grew up to become this.

But I got on in the world.  There were things that made me happy.