Pigeon life.

- I am choosing to no longer "see" race and ethnicity in my personal life and decisions, but am still going to acknowledge and fight against racism.

- I am choosing to no longer "see" gender in my personal life and decisions, but am still going to acknowledge and fight against sexism.

- I am choosing to no longer "see" orientation and sexuality in my personal life and decisions, but am still going to acknowledge and fight against homophobia, heterophobia, transphobia, and slut-shaming.

Just because we still live in a society and institution that segregates us by arbitrary labels and distinctions does not mean that we must continue to do the same in our everyday lives, communities, and cultures. It is the choice to perpetuate the significance of these otherwise meaningless things that maintains the prejudice and bigotry based on them.

As an individual who both acknowledges prejudice and oppression and no longer wants to play a role in it, I am choosing to see everyone as human. Our different upbringings, histories, ancestries, experiences, and lifestyles say nothing about our cores or what we are capable of as individuals. To suggest that our skin colors, anatomies, or sexual preferences are indicative of anything is the very foundation of ignorance-based discrimination. No one's suffering is more important than another's.

For anything to change, we must learn how to unite and join hands as one species who are all in this fight together. The differences in our personal struggles is irrelevant, because we are all ultimately enslaved by capitalism, government, and plutocracy.

- The ethical miscalculation that the importance of what you eat begins and ends at whether or not you've paid for it; that not directly supporting the peddlers of unethical behavior negates the other ways you are supporting and being complicit in the unethical behavior they peddle. When you eat animal products, even when you haven't directly paid for it, you are not only perpetuating the disconnect between human animals and non-human animals, but you are maintaining the belief that it is okay for us to eat their bodies and bodily byproducts. Ironically while trying to oppose capitalism, you are only viewing omnivory from a capitalistic perspective: the implication being that unethical behavior is okay insofar as no one profits from it. The reality is that the world is bigger than even capitalism and that plenty of terrible things happen and are perpetrated every day without someone profiting from it.

- The selfish belief that in order for an animal's death to not "be in vain" or for the products of their deaths to not "go to waste", it must in some way benefit a human animal. The two excuses for freegan omnivory I hear the most are, "If that food goes to waste, the animal's death was in vain," and, "I'd rather see that food eaten than go to waste." The implications being that 1.) The benefit and sustenance of a human being justifies the means by which that discarded food was created, and 2.) that a human being eating it gives the animals' torture and subsequent death meaning of some sort. This is all bullshit, though, and most people are simply trying to simultaneously justify their selfish decisions and go as far as trying to give it some sort of nobility. If one is truly concerned about this food "going to waste", they should begin collecting it and donating it to those who are not necessarily in a position of privilege enough to decide what they can/cannot/will/will not eat. Of course, they won't do this, because they are usually only coming at the situation from a selfish, opportunistic perspective and are being disingenuous. The idea that their gluttonous collecting of food (usually more than they need) from a dumpster is somehow some selfless act is ridiculous and seriously self-absorbed. Besides, the ultimate point is that animal death and exploitation is never justified and therefore all food derived from them or parts of them is always a waste, even if it fills your selfish mouth.

- A word used suddenly by so-called vegans when they come across dumpstered doughnuts, bread, and vegetarian food and want to enjoy them for their taste but do not want to admit to being ethically fickle. I have met many, many people over the last three years throughout the "punk community" who go on and on about veganism, proclaiming themselves vegan, et cetera, who wind up suddenly being "freegan" only when the opportunity to eat free non-vegan food arises. These people aren't vegan, if for no other reason than the fact that they are eating animal products and therefore do not even live up to the term's definition. They are opportunistic hypocrites whose pseudo-social consciousness is still in an ethical purgatory that motivates their actions to only go as far as is convenient for them. I've also noticed that these people who bounce back and forth between being "vegan" and being "freegan" still buy a good majority of their food, thus contradicting any excuse they can muster for their consumption of free or dumpstered animal products.

The truth is that most freegans are still vegan (thankfully) and that being vegan whilst only using discarded foods as a resource is easy if you're living in an industrialized country. Your decisions are important even outside the realm of whether or not it directly benefits the capitalist structure. It doesn't work in every city or town, of course, but freeganism is a valid, important, and incredibly strong lifestyle to uphold and I respect it greatly. However, unfortunately, the punk rock elite that so often takes meaningful things movements and perverts them and their meanings far enough to find loopholes within their standards, has taken the grey area of what technically constitutes "freegan" food and turned it into a way to give meaning to and justify their otherwise unethical, hypocritical lifestyle choices. Is it ethical to eat meat if someone else bought it? Is it ethical to eat meat if it's left behind at a restaurant you're sitting in? Does wearing leather sneakers from your past or handed down to you change the fact that they are literally animal hide?

Eating animals and animal products is wrong and veganism at its core is not just a boycott. It's not just a political revolution, it's a social one; one that not only aims to end all animal exploitation and enterprise, but aims to reject the current societal attitudes towards animals that helps maintain them. We don't just want people to stop buying animal products; we want people to acknowledge the attitudes that have lead to the social comfort with eating animals; we want people to collectively overcome the disconnect we've created between us, the natural world, and the other living things on this planet.

Being evicted and having to face the task of relocating my three or four boxes of belongings to somewhere else, likely my grandmother's, while also trying to find a place that permitted both my ass and my dog's to sleep, came along on the same week I was supposed to be preparing for a trip to Chicago for their annual zine fest. Kara and I were lucky enough to nab a table before they sold out, which they did in under forty-eight hours. It's one of the biggest in the country and I was at first really excited, until it conflicted with the stressful obligation of figuring out my living situation. We had already paid for a table and I had already busted my ass for less than two weeks putting together my new zine, finishing just in time to make copies, cut, and fold all of them, and I had already blown $222 on two tickets for an overnight Amtrak to Illinois, which had skyrocketed from $89 each to $111 the week of. For the first time in a long time, literally running away from my problems didn't sound as fun as it used to. But I did it, anyway.

The night of, I rushed carrying as much shit as I could down three floors and hopping in a car to go back and forth between what would soon be my old residence to my grandmother's basement. I had no intentions of succumbing to her guest bedroom as my new indefinite sleep spot, but she was still my only option for a place of storage. I left behind anything I could fit into my pack and a few outfits I could fit in a bag. Everything else remains in the basement as I type this. By the time I was finished with that stress and out of breath, I needed to eat something. I ordered Chinese, which came mere minutes before Kara and her parents showed up to get me. I burned my mouth a bunch as I rushed my things together and stuffed Kara's cute, turquoise suitcase with zines. That thing got really heavy really fast. While waiting for the train, I made dark and sarcastic remarks about our train derailing and I could tell I was pissing Kara's mother off. I'm pretty sure she hates me and likely always has. When it showed up, we waved goodbye and settled into our seats. My laptop had developed a new problem where the battery no longer charged at all, so I could only use it if it was plugged in. The train zoomed through city after city, each resembling one another, lights twinkling amongst an abyss of darkness like dying fireflies floating on top of a dark sea. I watched a Werner Herzog documentary on the death penalty before going to sleep sore and uncomfortable. I fucking hate Amtrak; they're just barely a step up from a Greyhound bus.

Kara and I gave up on trying to sleep come morning and instead mostly just watched the tiny towns we were passing through, all homes to successful businesses and factories that none of us ever even think about in the middle of towns we've never heard of, racist graffiti scrawled on the walls under bridges, and the same remote clusters of the same fast food chains. We even passed by the Dum Dum factory! It was a seventeen-hour ride to Chicago and it was still morning when we finally got there. Kara had arranged for her aunt Kate to come pick us up. I had never met her, though I had spent a week in her empty house with Kara this last summer. We sat around inside, watching a brown security guard dog happily walk around until she called us. It was unbearably windy outside. We piled into her big, motherly, suburbanite car and I tried to introduce myself to her children. There were two twins, aged four, named Miranda and Rocket; the other was a seven-year old girl named Geneva. Miranda immediately grimaced at me and yelled, "I hate boyfriends and girlfriends!" and then told us she was going to, "Kill the whole world." Rocket was a lot nicer, albeit ridiculously fucking loud, mostly just letting out an endless drone of dissonant vocal notes. Kate was really nice. She's a barely middle-aged opera singer with the biting wit of Roseanne and the politics of every other liberal upper-middle-class woman whose had their tubes tied. I liked her instantly and she made me laugh a lot. Her husband Steve wasn't around. He does important and evil work for banks or something and was gone for a few weeks, traveling to places like Tokyo. Our first stop was a Whole Foods where I ran around like a kid in a candy store, swiping up all my favorite vegan food, none of which is sold anywhere in Schenectady.

Kara and I spent the rest of the evening talking to Kate about politics and folding zines. The folding was almost endless, even with two people doing it together. I'm surprised neither of us suffered any papercuts of fingertip calluses. We did finish, though. We were given the upstairs bedroom where the step daughter stays when she visits from Minnesota. It was a really comfortable bed. It was strange being so familiar with a house and not the people who lived in it. The entire day, Kate responded to insane children with sarcastic remarks and low-hanging eye lids, suffering the anguish of incidental single motherhood. I thought the kids were cute. Geneva started off really quiet and polite. She had really bad eczema all over and seemed really precocious as far as intelligence went for her age. Rocket and Miranda were really loud. Rocket had an obsession with Captain Jack Sparrow and kept making remarks about my "pirate beard". He also seemed to always have a huge booger cast over his left nostril at all times. Miranda drank entirely too much beet juice. It wasn't long, though, before my desires to eventually get a vasectomy were reaffirmed. Even with kids as cool as Kate's, parenting looked miserable.

In the morning, I awoke to Kate loudly singing her operatic vocal scales while playing along on the piano downstairs. She sounded exactly like the opera singers you see and hear caricatured on TV. The most I know about opera consists of a single episode of Hey Arnold!, though. Kate let us borrow two bags with wheels so we didn't have to lug around the suitcase full of zines, which would have become too heavy too fast. Chicago is really fucking big and incredibly spread out, so even with your own car you will wind up taking an hour to get to your destination. This goes especially for non-drivers coming from the suburbs. To get to the zine fest, we had to take a train and then walk over a mile to the art college that it was taking place at. It was taking up two floors: the bottom first floor and the top eighth floor. We were on the eighth floor. We though that sucked until we realized that the complimentary vegan pizza would be located in the next room over up there. Our table was set in front of a large window that overlooked the part of the city below us and the water a few blocks away. It was a really nice view. I was excited for the day. As the second floor, our morning rush probably started later than the first floor's. Kara immediately sold some zines because of her knack for putting together things that catch the eye. One girl bought a zine because she knew the proprietor of Bake and Destroy, the woman who threatened to sue Kara for having a zine that bears a similar title to her "copyrighted" name. It was a funny, small victory. Some ladies mentioned having already heard of Kara's zines and one even claimed to recognize the dead people zine Tie and I made, which was odd. It seemed every single person did a 180 to at least pick up Kara's zines, which I'll admit became very annoying. They would be almost three feet away, already completely passed by our table section, and then pulled back around as if with an invisible lasso.






The day zoomed by. The gothy woman sitting next to me texted the entire time with a fashionable projection of disinterest in her surroundings. She left early, in fact. The people on the other side of us, a couple who made homemade journals and comics, were two of the nicest people we'd ever been seated by. We had extra room after the woman left, which was great, and people were generally pretty interested in what we had to offer. Pigeon Life sold a heap of copies, which was great, and I got to talk to a lot of interesting people. Oddly, we met two people from the 518; one from Saratoga Springs and another from Burnt Hills, of all places. I started picking at the growth in my nostril and it began to bleed uncontrollably, so I had to stuff tissue into it for the second half of the festival. People kept asking if I'd been punched in the face. Sometime around lunch, complimentary pizza, including unique vegan slices (like lasagna and taco), were made available. It was awesome. By 6pm, we had collectively made well over $100. Afterward, we waited for the train back to the suburbs and got swept up by the beautiful pigeons that were congregating by the tracks. A lot of them had missing or messed up feet, which was sad, but they were some of the thickest, most beautiful examples of pigeon I'd ever seen. Their cooing added the perfect soundtrack to our view of the casting sun over the splotches of lights caused by the below traffic and street lamps. When we got back would begin what was going to be a two-week vacation from everything I knew was festering below my life's current Chicagoan apparel.


Days went by without anything going on, which was fine with me. I just wanted to lay in the comfortable bed and sit online for a change, blissfully pretending nothing was going on back at home. After the day of the zine fest, Chicago started experiencing unusually nice and temperate weather and it continued for the majority of our time there. Despite being March, it was nearing 90 degrees at one point. While we appreciated the comfort of it all, I couldn't help but feel fear knowing we were literally sitting back and watching a sign of impending environmental doom. It's one thing to read statistics about global climate change, but summer during March makes it abundantly clear just how real this shit is. We offered now and again to babysit the kids so Kate, a strong but clearly overwhelmed mother, could leave the house for extended periods of time. It wasn't long before the kids started driving me insane, but I still loved the general coziness of their home, their neighborhood, and the endless love I watched Kate shower them with, even in moments of utter insanity. Looking around at their big house and the way she was constantly giving them hugs and kisses, I couldn't stop thinking about how easily this could have been my upbringing. Had I just been born out of someone else's body, this could have all been mine. I was so happy that these children were blessed the way they were, but it made me so sad how mere chance can result in the life I've had with my own family.

One day, Kara and I went out and braved the long train rides over the city to stop by Quimby's, a cool independent bookstore that allows any submission from writers and especially zinesters, without the process of evaluation. You fill out an application, give them your zines, and if they sell, you get 40% of what is made off of them. So we figured, 'Why not?' and stopped by to drop some off before exploring the place's immense collection of books, magazines, and zines. It was great in there and I think we wound up hanging around the place for two hours. Afterward, we went and got some pizza at a place called Dimo's, who had catered the vegan slices at the zine fest. I liked the taco one I tried, so I went in with expectations in some serious pizza. So I got my half with fries and barbecue seitan. Unfortunately, because this was Chicago and they obviously must stay faithful to their local companies, the cheese they used was Teese, hands down the grossest vegan cheese we'd ever tried. We did it anyway, though. The pizza looked beautiful and smelled great, but the very little cheese they put on it ruined the entire thing. Teese has this tendency to be almost tasteless and it always has the consistency of pre-chewed gum. It was a big let-down.


Kara and I also got to go to a venue called Subterranean and see Andrew Jackson Jihad and Laura Stevenson and the Cans play. Because it wasn't the 518, the place served alcohol but was still all ages. The show sold out, but we had fortunately ordered tickets for will-call in advance. Lucky. The place was packed with obnoxious variations of punk kids and I kept trying to tell myself in my head, 'Calm down, dave, they're not like you and they have fun in their own ways.' I couldn't help but remain annoyed, though, by almost everything everyone did around me. A band I already kind of knew called Roar played first and were incredible. Laura rocked my world as she always does. Andrew Jackson Jihad played a long set of both acoustic and band songs and it was really awesome, though I was disappointed when the packed place actually began to, like, mosh around to them. It was a really fun show, but I think that now that they've blown up the way they have in the last couple of months, we may never get to experience the cozy shows we once did ever again. I've always loved them for their aggressive cynicism and abrasive outspokenness in their lyrics. Their one song where they say, "I like to eat red, red meat," and later say, "I support animal testing; I'd kill a kitten to save a human being," never really got to me. Granted, at first, I thought they were being satirical. But even after I figured out that they weren't, I let it slide. However, being in a crowd of people our age and hearing them scream in support of those sentences, as if animal testing was ever something people found particularly awesome or something, was just infuriating. Kara and I talked shit together for an hour on our way home. Hating things with Kara is the best.


We all went out one day for dinner at the Chicago Diner, one of our favorite vegan restaurants. It had remained one of our top priorities for returning to Chicago. Kate took us all out with the kids, who remained as stubborn as ever about eating, and Kara and I went all out on the food. Seitan wings, corn bread, a chocolate shake, a giant burger... I wanted to eat until I was comatose. I even told the kids to pass anything they didn't eat my way. Unfortunately, once again, we were afflicted with Teese for cheese, so the grilled cheese was inedible. I ate more that evening than I think I ever have in one sitting and I actually felt like I'd been in a fight with my own stomach by the time we returned to the car. Around that time, I had begun putting up PIGEON LIFE graffiti stickers. I was growing to really love those little kids, though Geneva, the one originally the cutest and quietest, had gradually revealed herself to be incredibly rude, domineering, and manipulative. Also a little crazy. We would stay up late with Kate and talk politics and personal stories while Current TV played the news, most of which was devastating to hear after months without that nonsense infecting my ears.





On St. Patrick's Day, we all went on an outing to the city and spent the entire day until sundown walking around Millenium Park. Even though the streets were flooded with douchebags in shameless slut-shaming t-shirts and women pranced around in self-deprecating outfits, I had a lot of fun. I kept giving money to homeless people because I couldn't imagine how bad it felt to sit on a sidewalk with a desperate sign while rich youths walked around spending more than they do on food in a month on alcohol in a single day. Kate bought some food for one of them, even. A nearby fountain's water was completely green and every couple in a mile radius wanted a picture in front of it. The park was gigantic and seemed to go on forever. We followed it all the way to the water. I carried Rocket and felt like a daddy for a moment. By the time we returned to the exit of the park, two giant towers that are usually shooting out water like a rectangular waterfall, were lit up into shifting hues of warm colors. Some sides were giant human faces barely moving or showing emotion. It was really amazing. The ride back took forever. It was unbelievable to witness firsthand that Chicago is so difficult to navigate due to its size, you're inevitably going to take up to an hour to get to just about anywhere, even if you drive. It was nice to come back to a home. It was even nicer to feel exhausted because I had been out all day. I was really enjoying myself, although the haunting reminder that it would all be over soon stayed with me at night. I was just so happy to be outside of the 518 and with my best friend.





( A lot more pictures. )

Our next stop would eventually be Buffalo for another zine festival.

A few months ago, I got an anonymous comment on Tumblr telling me that a response to someone's question on "how to go down on women" had really turned them on and lead to them daydreaming about me semi-often. Savahna, a girl who I had tried being friends with a few times in the past, only to wind up ignored and blatantly ditched time and time again before giving up on her, had also sent me a message telling me she had some responsibility for discovering Chance. I had forgotten she existed until the one non-anonymous message she sent me and decided to tell her something like, "I really wish we had made out at least once before you stopped talking to me." She responded with, "So I guess you know it was me who sent you that message, then?" She fessed up to sending me it and we briefly talked about how and why she stopped talking to me. I took a screen shot of it because it was cool to see such a babe say she wanted me at one point. When you're pathetic like me, you gotta take what you can get, and in my case it's more often than not words on my laptop's screen that will never cross over into reality. She said we should hang out sometime and even though I knew it wasn't likely to happen, I went with it on the off-chance that it would. I never had a reason to have a problem with Savahna, after all; it's not her fault that I'm not someone she wants to hang out with and I knew she was a worthwhile person from the few times we actually had hung out.

One evening, while Tia and I were shopping at Salvation Army, we ran into her. She looked incredible and actually went out of her way to stop and chat, which I took advantage of while keeping what I felt was a distance I created with my abrasive sense of humor and the way I counter ever compliment with something horrible and crude or veil things I'm saying in an ambiguous pseudo-sarcasm. She was with some friends and they gave us a ride home. A week went by and then another and aside from a few texts here and there and empty references to eventually hanging out, we never did and she always had an excuse for not being able to, the most popular being that she was now living with her boyfriend, Les. I noticed one day that we were no longer friends on Facebook, which was fine, but I messaged her anyway saying, "I wish you hung out with me at least once before deleting me from Facebook," because it was such a hilarious replay of every other attempt at some sort of friendship with Savahna. How quickly it was over just made me laugh, even though it was just as disappointing as every other time. Eventually, you can only chuckle to yourself at how futile attempts at human connections are. She claimed she hadn't deleted me and that it, "must have been Les," adding that he probably did it to get back at her for deleting someone on his friends list. I felt embarrassed by myself for even talking to someone so still in high school for a second, but still bothered texting her later and saying, "Ya know, it's okay if you deleted me. Just be honest about it." She maintained that she didn't and even said I could add her back.

In a hysterical turn of events, at the same exact time, I received a message from her boy friend saying,
"You are going to do me a favor. Stop contacting my girlfriend. She deleted you because I asked. Because I don't like you. Nuff said."
I responded simply by saying, "This is pathetic. Grow up, little boy." But not before I asked Savahna if I could call her. She said I couldn't because she was sitting right next to her boyfriend. So at the same time that he was typing to me a message without her knowledge, she was texting me without his. She told me he was lying and to ignore him. But after a few minutes of her finally coming out and saying outright that she wouldn't/couldn't hang out with me because of her boyfriend, saying stupid shit about how, "relationships are about compromise," I did, anyway. He said back,
"Ok Dave, no need to get upset, I wasn't being rude. I'm asking you as a man to respect another mans relationship, you reacting like this is no surprise. Pathetic is your self-hating attitude and fetish of little girls, mine included. Find your own. Grow up and talk to some one your own age, grown man."
I didn't really understand most of it, but I was really frustrated, regardless of how little respect I had for Savahna at that point for her own complicity in a controlling, patriarchal relationship, so I said,
"I'm not upset. You can ask Savahna, who I was talking to the entire time while you sent this to me: I thought this was funny. I'm asking you, as a man, to grow a pair and overcome your personal insecurities and total lack of trust in your partner far enough to let her make her own decisions, instead of being the type of pussy-ass boyfriend who makes their partner feel afraid to hang out with people their boyfriend happens to not like for no good reason. Age is irrelevant. What matters most is mentality and maturity, and you two have a 10th-grade level of them. I win, anyway. Because I know the things that Savahna has said to me. ;)"

In January, I finally finished Pigeon Life: A Discomfort Guide to Hitchhiking and Recreational Homelessness, a zine I had been working on for about a year at that point. Around the same time, Kara and I completed an alphabetized guide to what is vegan and not in fast food and diner chains across the country called Fast Food Vegan. In under three weeks, we had accumulated almost $200 from sales. It was so exciting to see such a demand for two zines that I think are really awesome and important. I know it might seem insignificant, but I'd like to believe that I can make little changes in the world and ignite individual revolutions within people through these two zines, showing in one that veganism does not mean starvation and loss of convenience and through the other that there are fun and practical alternatives to the way we're raised to operate within this system. The feedback has all been positive, too. Since then, a woman we met in Portland named Sage who runs a zine distro called Sweet Candy ordered nine copies of Pigeon Life for distribution. She's also carrying Kara's baking zines.


Chance hadn't gotten any better with the ear-scratching and had even begun to bite his paws a lot, even sometimes chewing on his back foot like a chicken wing. We tried to stop him as often as we could, but we'd still wake up to him destroying himself while unattended. I went out and found the most organic, gluten- and soy-free, holistic dog food I could and started spending $23 a bag. Preparing for the summer, I was hoping Kara's parents could take Chance in as their own, if only for a temporary period until I found a place of my own or with Tia or something. We took him on a second field trip to their house and he loved being outside in the nature. We also introduced him to the wonders of tennis balls. He sprinted away from us through trees like a doe at one point, but he would never run away from us. The time had finally come for us to try and introduce him to Boo, Kara's bunny, and see if they could get along. It was really the final test and deciding factor, since Kara's father already loved Chance to death and Chance already loved him to death back. When we first brought him into the bedroom, Boo was in her cage and didn't even realize he was in there. Then they came face to face and almost touched noses before she lunged at him a little and made him jump. I held him as tightly as I could and we tried to get them to meet again. They touched noses and everything seemed okay, but this time Boo jumped and got scared, hiding behind some boxes a few feet away for a couple minutes.

She was brought back outside to her litter box and just as Kara was trying to go out there, Chance squeezed past her and tried to bite Boo. Kara screamed louder than I'd ever heard before and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Luckily, her father came out of the other room, grabbed Boo Bunny in his arms, and we got Chance away. I don't think he was trying to hurt her, since she only had some missing hair on one of her ears and no open wounds or injuries, but it was official that they wouldn't be taking Chance in after that. Kara cried and cried and Boo was walking a little funny on one of her paws. Rabbits have sensitive hearts, so even though she was acting pretty normal while hiding under the bed, I was afraid she'd have a delayed heart attack and die or something. I felt so horrible. Of course, she was okay and by the end of the day long after Chance and I had gone back home, she was back to bunning, which is when a rabbit lays flat and stretched out, meaning they feel they are in no potential threat of having to run away from something. Neither of us could stop imagining the could-have-happeneds, though.

At that point, I had no idea what to do with Chance. I knew I was going to be gone for three weeks during March and we all had to be out of the house by April. I begged and pleaded to my grandmother to let me take the dog with me to her house, but she would not budge on the issue. She couldn't give me a reason why, just that I couldn't. Because it wasn't anyone else's problem, everyone tried to tell me to just get rid of him, as if he weren't a family member of mine, a best friend, or a living being that I had adopted and vowed to protect and take care of. I was too attached already and so was he. I hadn't chosen him as much as he had chosen me. I wasn't ready at all to take care of another life, but my responsibility over him came to me anyway. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have the heart or the lack of conscience to reject that responsibility. He was already so anxious all the time and we had eventually concluded that his scratching and biting was the result of animal stress. I didn't want him to feel any more abandoned that he probably already did. But there were no options whatsoever. By the end of April, none of us would really have anywhere to go. My only option was my grandmother's; Tia's only option was her older sister's, sharing a room with her mother on a floor; Chance's only option was our next door neighbors, who had been begging to take him since they met him. I was more concerned with what would happen to him than to me, but I had no time to even focus on any of these issues. I was set to leave for Chicago on train for a zine festival we had already invested tons of money into by the end of the first week of March. I was so stressed, I just wanted to lift the floorboards and hide under them with the roaches and squirrels. I hated that Yvonne took Chance in the first place without intending on taking care of him; I hated my grandmother and the rest of my non-existent family for not being reliable in a time of need most of my peers and friends would never have to deal with; I hated myself for letting my relationship with Chance get as far as it did; I was really beginning to hate my life in general.

Meanwhile, our landlady, the fucking bitch, was downstairs on the first floor, fixing up the place to rent out to new tenants, ones she likely hoped would be less picky than us and less privy to their rights as tenants than we were. One day, as I was walking out with Chance, she stood in the downstairs window and glared at me. We had a furious staring contest for about a minute before Chance pulled me away from it. By the time I was coming back up the porch, she rushed out and stood in the doorway with one hand on her hip and a shit-eating grin on her face, happily asking in her broken English, "So you move now?" I looked at her and coldly said, "Don't talk to me." She repeated gleefully that I had to move and I said, "FUCK OFF. Don't fucking talk to me." She acted outraged and immediately called Yvonne to tell on me like a little kid snitching. Two hours later, a cop was at our door for me. I didn't deny anything because I knew there was nothing illegal about telling someone to fuck off. He wrote down my name and told me that it was, "no way to talk to someone, especially my landlord." I said back to him, "Well, in all fairness, you haven't had to live with her." It was unbelievable. Code still hadn't come back to reinforce their threats and follow up on their last grim review of the building, so she had found new tenants for downstairs by mid-March and was already planning on getting new people into the upstairs once we were gone. I hated knowing she was still being allowed to give out shelter to people in this shit-hole and exploit their desperation and ignorance.

But, as usual, I was out of control of my own living situation and horrible people would continue to prosper inconsequentially. I told my grandmother I would absolutely not be coming to her house unless she accepted Chance, too, and she stuck with her decision. I started thinking about squatting abandoned houses and keeping Chance by my side the entire time, but my conscience knew that that wasn't any better a decision than getting rid of him. I had no idea what to do.

If you're in or around the Albany area on Easter, come out to this show I'm putting on with one of my favorite bands, Mixtapes. Or don't. Click the flyer to go to the Facebook event page for all the info and to RSVP.


^ This is why I don't like putting on shows in my city.

A picture Kara and I took of ourselves for our "Meet Your Zine Maker" spot on the Brooklyn Zine Fest site.

One day, outside of my house, I had to witness a man punch a short woman--the mother of his child, who was in a stroller--in the face, knocking her to the ground. It was really depressing. Witnessing her powerlessness; acknowledging my own in my inability to help or protect her or give him what he deserves for his cowardice. It was one of those moments that truly made me hate living on the street that I do. People were out and witnessed it along with me, but they hardly responded. It's commonplace in areas like this. If the low income population of this country is a culture all its own, it's one that accepts male-on-female domestic abuse. At the same time, he loudly denied his fatherhood. My street is like an episode of Maury.

Meanwhile, on the inside of where I lived, things were dissolving more and more. Even though Ronnie and Cici had moved out during the summer, they were still constant fixtures in our household. Simple, second-nature things like closing a microwave door or flushing the shit they just took were disregarded with ease by them. I know it's not that big a deal, but I probably couldn't go to the bathroom without flushing even if I tried; it's just one of those reflex things at this point in my life... like closing the microwave door or turning the stove off or pushing a drawer back in when I'm done sifting through it. Yet they both are seemingly incapable of these things. It's amazing that they've kept themselves alive this long without dying from something stupid that could warrant a Darwin Award. Yvonne's ex-boyfriend had tried to choke her one night, so she called Ronnie to deal with it and invited the guy over. I refuse to believe she expected or wanted Ronnie to just, "talk to him," but that's what she insisted after shit got crazy. Ronnie went after the guy like a robot. I heard the loudest banging I've ever heard below me and it got brought right outside, in the middle of the street outside my window. Yvonne, a neighbor friend, and Cici were all trying to hold him back as he repeated things like a machine in a voice deeper than his own as if he were possessed by the spirit of some dead rapper: "You is a enemy! You is a enemy! No one hits moms! No one hits moms!" It was like a switch went off in his head and it was quite scary and disturbing to witness just how imbalanced he is in addition to stupid. There are specks of blood on our porch to this day.

After that night, I became a little more concerned about my own safety in my home. Considering the loud argument Yvonne and I had just a week or two before, I couldn't help but think about what if she told him something I said to her? What would happen to me? I'm usually confident in fights, but I'm nowhere near as insane, stupid, and oblivious to consequence as he is. Every time I heard loud banging below me--which was every time he and Cici came over--I suspected a little bit that it might be him finally coming to beat the shit out of me. It scares me that he has custody over the daughter he already has, who is mostly taken care of by Yvonne when he is scheduled to have her. It's even scarier that he has another baby on the way with a girl who was originally just a one night stand. He went and got married to Cici in the eyes of the state. I couldn't help but think about how gay people still can't get married, but low-lifes like them can.

Our upstairs toilet stopped working for about three weeks. Whenever you'd flush it, it would rise as high as it could go and then slowly flush with such little force that only the water itself would go away, leaving behind whatever you put in there. Then it would gurgle for a few minutes like a sick stomach. The shower faucet got more discombobulated with which tiny hole shot water where. When you turn the bath on, it's only a few seconds before the shower comes on on its own. Then a loud rumbling sounds emits from the wall that it's connected to. I had luckily been given a tiny portable heater by Yvonne, so the ten-degree nights were easier to get through for the most part. The nights I endured before then were so unbearably cold that I could hardly type as I shivered viciously. Due to losing most of my chance of electricity in my own room since the faulty wiring zapped and killed my power strip, erased my entire iPod in a single second, and killed my laptop's battery to the point that it no longer charges and I cannot use it unless it's plugged in, I had to be picky and risky with what things I did try to use. I assumed the brown extension cord I had been using wasn't the problem and at first blamed the power strip. I had two outlets; one was for my laptop, the other was for my clock/iPod home, which I need for sleep to drown out the thoughts that try to suffocate me with my own pillow after I put my head down for the night (or morning). Eventually, that wire started making crackling sounds, too. Fortunately, nothing more serious happened past that, though I feared an electrical fire every single night. The roaches persisted, of course, and making food in our own kitchen became something we just didn't even do anymore. Even though Code had come, yelled at our landlady, and failed her on all three floors, even giving her a paper saying if this and that weren't corrected by their next audit she'd lose the property or even go to jail... they never came back. As I type this, about two months have gone by and they just haven't come back. They were really our only hope of getting our landlady to finally fix up our house to basic human health and safety conditions.

Besides all the superficial stuff, one of the worst situations that had gotten worse and worse was the relationship between Tia and her mother. Tia went over a month without properly being brought grocery shopping like she usually is with her absent father's food stamps. Meanwhile, Yvonne had been taking Ronnie and Cici out for grocery shopping, even though they both have other resources all to themselves. Tia doesn't. Tia had since applied to probably around fifty different places of employment. As I type this, she still hasn't gotten a job. She was desperate and sincerely trying, despite knowing the hell she would be entering with wage slavery. Every now and then, Yvonne, who had been gone and at her new boyfriend's for the most part, would poke her head into Tia's room and throw $20 her way; Tia had become a bill, personified, and paid just as begrudgingly. I was constantly donating my own food to her even though I hardly had enough for myself and she all too often was subsisting entirely on sandwiches and potato chips. I became more and more infuriated by the day, watching one of the most important people in my life get upstaged by her older, incompetent sibling. Even calling her mother for a doctor's appointment lead to blatant guilt trips; her mother would make it perfectly clear how annoyed she was by the prospect of having to bring her daughter somewhere, even if it was grocery shopping or for a doctor's appointment. "This is getting ridiculous," she'd say to her on the phone after a long sigh. Tia would then wind up not going to the doctor at all to spare her mother the inconvenience. It hurt to sit back and watch, especially since there was nothing I could do. We were both powerless, with little to no family and no hope for a comfortable future; a future and present everyone else we knew already had just because they were fortunate and privileged enough to be born into such a situation. We were together on being alone and neither of us knew what to do with ourselves. I made sure to keep my distance and cut off almost all communication with the woman. Neglecting a new dog is one thing, but disregarding your own daughter?

One day, a fist fight was happening at the end of our dead-end street between some younger males. It was the fairest fight I'd seen on the block thus far, with no one jumping in and a respectable crowd circled around them. The entire neighborhood came out to watch it from their porches and from the middle of the street. That's what it's like in That Ghetto University; everyone has accepted the nosiness of their neighbor and couldn't care less to begin with who was watching them. The funny part was when little kids started wanting to watch, too, growing up so quickly to love the violent turmoil that perpetually festers amongst their neighbors. The mother yells to them, "Don't you dare go up the street! You stay right in the middle of the street and watch!" Oh, urban parenting.

Through the reality TV program that my tiny bedroom window to the outside world became, I overheard that our next door neighbor, Yo Steve (as I called him, since someone is outside every single day, screaming, "Yo, STEVE!"), had been arrested. He had been in a crack house during a raid. When I went outside, his wife, a morbidly obese white woman with a wandering eye and a loud voice, shared the story with me again. I acted as though I didn't already hear it through my window. She also had suspicions that their downstairs neighbors had snitched on Steve and told me she was going to have people from a local gang called ABCG take care of it. She said she had already tried to stab the girl, but only wound up cutting her own hand, which she showed me. According to her, Steve wouldn't be out of jail for a while, being imprisoned on $25,000 bail. A day or two later, she caught me outside and updated me.
"I fuckin' took care of it myself!"
"Really? What happened?"
"I'm surprised you didn't hear anything last night! I stabbed the fuck outta him!"

Up the street from me, on the crumbling adjacent block called Hildebrandt, right at the end near the other dead-end was a house that I had previously been paying attention to because there is an older black dog that is neglected there. I called Animal Protective about it, but they never came or followed back up with me. One day, I saw a cute little black puppy tied up to the front porch, all by himself. A woman came out, but quickly started complaining out loud, "Oh, hell nah. You betta do somethin' with this dog. He's lickin' all up on my new clothes!" A week or two later, long after I'd forgotten about the pup, it was one of the coldest nights of the year. During the day while walking Chance, I noticed the puppy tied up to a fence on the side of the house by a children's jumprope that allowed him no more than two feet of movement. Next to him were two empty containers, presumably at one point containing food and/or water, though there was no evidence of it. He or she sat and yelped nonstop throughout the day and, by night, during a light flurry and after the temperate had fallen further, they continued. No one ever came out to let them in. The next day, I called Animal Protective again. On a block like mine, you're better off not trying to take care of something like this on your own, after all. Although they do not care about their animals, they take away a lot of insult if you bring it up to them. I assumed they'd ignore me, though the woman I spoke to was very friendly on the phone. By nighttime, I hadn't heard anything back, though I had noticed the yelping had ceased. It was around 9:30pm when I got a call back from her.
"Hello, david?"
"Yes? Who's this?"
"This is animal control. I just wanted to let you know that we went to the house, saw the puppy shivering without food or water, tied up by a jumprope, and... he's got a new home where he will be loved!"
She told me she went to the house and had knocked as hard as she could before someone finally answered the door and angrily said, "There's a doorbell!" She had tried that, too, but no one had answered. She said she told the owner, "Take this dog inside right now." He responded, "I will." She said she shot back, "No, right now!" He claimed to her that he had just let the dog out, to which she told him she had already gotten calls disproving that claim. As he knelt down to untie the puppy, he looked up, she told me, and asked her, "Do you wanna take him?" She immediately said yes and, by the time she had called me, the puppy already had a new forever home.
"You saved that dog's life."
It was the best thing I'd done with myself in weeks and the best news I'd heard in months.

As my sleeping became more and more impossible; each day starting with the rising of the sun with endless sirens, overhead helicopters, people screaming entire conversations to each other outside my window, the terrifying rumbling and banging downstairs from me caused by whomever, the incessant blasting and reverberation of terribly repetitive R'n'B bass lines right below me, and the yelping dog at the corner (one who had a home). I have this problem where I sleep an extra hour for every time my sleep is disrupted. So I was sleeping later and later, if not waking up before my time and suffering a headache the rest of the evening.

It was time to say goodbye to this. I had nowhere else to go, but I needed to get out of this household. Maybe if it wasn't $200 a month, I could stay, but I could no longer justify paying to live somewhere where none of my needs were met, my health and safety were at constant risk, and I was constantly disrespected and disregarded. On the 1st of February, I told Yvonne I'd be out by the beginning of the next month. She said, "I hope it doesn't have anything to do with me!" I lied and told her it didn't just to avoid further conversation about it. I think she still knew it was partly because of her.

By the beginning of March, there was no turning back. We had been evicted, anyway. Code still hadn't come back, so the landlady and her family were already fixing up the downstairs apartment to try and rent out to someone new and desperate. Since they were encountering no further consequences for their inhumanity and landlord absentia, they likely figured they'd kick us out and replace us with people too desperate or unaware of their rights to complain about all the things they wouldn't help with. It was scary that I couldn't change my mind even if I wanted to. I packed most of my belongings, which fit into three tiny boxes. I was leaving the rest behind.

Where would I go? Is it worth even trying to find somewhere else to live? Am I destined to not have a real home of my own for the rest of my life? What would I do with Chance?!

Two photos I took.

A few months ago, I found some girl on OKCupid named Michelle who had a bunch in common with me. Most importantly, she liked the rest music and film and was vegan. Oh, and she was a total cutie. So I messaged her, as I've done several girls already at this point, even though I was pretty sure she'd just ignore it like the rest do. A week or so later, she actually messaged me back and said that she kind of already knew who I was (of course). As usual, she had already "heard things" and, as usual, she already had a boyfriend. I still wanted to meet her, though; there's no such thing as too many attractive vegan friends. We ended up meeting each other one day and I took us out for pizza. We connected almost instantly and I was totally amazed that we hadn't already met. Considering how much we had in common, it seemed forces would have already gravitated us toward each other in this dead area code. We were both sufferers of mental illness; we were both on medication for it; we were both snobby film fanatics; we were both politically minded. The only thing that sucked was that she was all about pot. She was actually currently dating a kid I went to high school with who I coincidentally have several girls in common with.

After pizza, we went to the Social Justice Center for an acoustic show headlined by Evan Greer and Ryan Harvey. I was on the fence about both, but she liked them and it was cheap. I was afraid the crowd would suck and that they would be praising the so-called "Occupy movement" up and down, but they actually were pretty critical of it, which was a pleasant surprise. Her boyfriend was there and he immediately put his arm around her like a territorial animal. We exchanged beard rubs because we hadn't seen each other in so long. Last I knew of him, he had passed out drunk with Tara while I was still going crazy over her. The show was really good and I found myself way more into Evan than the last time I saw him. The show was also donating proceeds to Occupy Albany. I couldn't imagine what that could even mean; were they going to use it so the pseudo-political miscreants in tents there (the four or five of them, at least) could afford weed? Meeting Michelle was really exciting. It had been a really long time since I had met someone in my area that I was genuinely excited to meet. I felt nervous around her and was worried about all of the nonsense that comes out of my mouth without warning.

The crush I developed on her was a quick one. We hung out a few times after that. Two times in one week, in fact. She lived in Latham, so she had to come to me in her car, a middle class mom mobile ironically clad with a stupid Against Me! bumper sticker. She talked a lot and could have really long, serious conversations about past traumas and politics and just as easily say something hilarious. She also had a cute rodent-like smile. I had started following her on Tumblr and read through her short stories and poetry. They were all incredible; eloquent, insightful, empathetic, tortured. That was another thing we had in common that really surprised me: she was a writer. I don't know any other self-proclaimed writers. The second time we hung out, she took me to her old neighborhood in Latham, some chiseled, anonymous suburban nook, and wanted to walk around. So we did, way past sunset, and found ourselves walking through peoples' backyards to try and get into the wooded areas behind them, criticizing the obnoxious and over-priced Christmas decorations, and trying to open the front door to a church and actually getting into it enough to sit on a bench inside right before the second doors that were locked. We just talked and talked and talked.

We went to Red Robin for dinner and I told her I had a crush on her. I'd decided a while ago that I'd just cut to the chase more often instead of doing the whole highschool boy crush secret thing. It's more suffocating than just getting it out there and experiencing the awkward rejection like a shot at the doctor's. Her response reciprocated most of those feelings, though it was clear she wouldn't be breaking up with Jared any time soon. The best part of meeting her is that she loves the movie theaters and slow, boring art films. We've gone out to The Spectrum twice together for films and it was just such a great experience. When we went out to see Shame, I realized that it was the first time I'd gone out for a movie since I came home. It was a sad revelation. She came over to my house one night and we watched The United States of Leland. She had mentioned cuddling with me at some point a few days before that and I was a bit taken aback. She claimed that Jared wouldn't mind if she cuddled with a female friend, so he shouldn't mind if she cuddled with me. It sounded like nice logic, but I knew that wasn't how the traditional male mind works. When she came over, I told her I didn't feel comfortable with it. A half hour later, I was cuddling with her and holding her hand as Chance laid next to us, always a bit jealous when I'm near anyone else than him. I figured to myself that if cuddling with girls who have boyfriends is the best I can get, I might as well embrace it.

We've hung out several times since then. Most recently, she hasn't tried to get a hold of me in a few weeks and has been lax in responding to anything I send her. In fact, the last attempt or two I made to hang out with her, she was unusually difficult about it. I suspect she's either done with me or going through something terrible. All I know from the Internet is she's talking about weed more often. I'll never understand people who deal with depression by doing a drug and/or drinking a liquid that is categorized as a depressant.

Grace was in town for a minute, so I jumped at the opportunity to see her. Seeing her was great as always, though it was mere minutes before I realized that time and distance separating us has no bearing whatsoever on how infatuated with her I remain. We ate at Bombers and she was nice enough to buy. My brother and his girlfriend walked in. I wish he choked on a piece of tofu.

One night at Bombers, while out with Kara and Tia, I saw my old friend Gary with his girlfriend Michelle and his two kids. I'll never settle with the concept of Gary having children, but he appears to be a halfway decent father, to my surprise. It was nice catching up. He's really my only connection to my younger years at this point other than Jess (who is his ex-girlfriend). His daughter is still young, but she is so far behind in the category of language. I could not understand a single string of syllables that came out of her mouth. I looked up at Gary and Michelle for translation, but they both shrugged. I went to his house a few days later to hang out while Michelle and the little girl went to the laundromat for the day. Hanging out with Gary was cool, although I cannot for the life of me imagine quitting life the way he has by having two kids. I couldn't tell if he was happy or not. He brought up names from the past and showed me stupid shit on YouTube. He's the same old Gary I've always known, just with two human lives that he is responsible for.

Amy visited town for the first time in what seemed like years. I don't blame her at all for avoiding coming back here at all costs. We hung out and picked up right where we left off like we always do. I'm glad that time will not cause our friendship to grow stale and dusty. Since I first met her, I've watched her blossom into a better and better person. Since going to college for law, she's slowly become more and more politically conscious and I can see a young anarchist deep within her just clawing its way out. With a degree in law and the fierceness that she has already always possessed, she could be a real asset to positive change in this world. She's the only person I've ever met who had a plan before going to college, went to college for it, and loves every second of it. She's just so together in ways that I am not used to seeing in my generation. I can't even speak harshly of her decision to go to college because she's not only going for something necessary, but totally in love with what she's going for.

One night, Jess came over and hung out. I sewed while she did some other stuff and talked. It was one of this winter's coldest nights and, in a room without any heat, we were both shaky. We ended up getting underneath covers together and wound up cuddling the night away. We fell asleep together, which was nice, but it didn't go anywhere else. She makes suggestive comments sometimes--at least, I think she does--but she didn't seem too cool with the fact that I jokingly grabbed her boob that night.

I eventually put the final in the coffin as far as my friendship with Bianca goes about a month or so ago: I deleted her from my Facebook friends. When you delete someone from your Facebook, you are literally stating to that person, "You mean less than the people I have added on here who I don't even see in real life." Despite several attempts to reconcile things with her and interrogating her on why she seemed to care so little about her friendship with me and Tia, she hadn't put in even an inch of effort to salvage the little respect I had left for her. The final straw was when Tia and I had finally found an affordable living situation for ourselves. Jess's mother owned a two-flat house a few blocks away and the upstairs tenants had finally been evicted. We were top candidates for nabbing the place, a three-bedroom for $500 a month, all utilities included, even cable and Internet. The only problem was that Tia still hadn't found a job despite applying anywhere and everywhere over the last couple of months and I obviously couldn't afford to pay the whole rent. Our only option was Bianca, since she had a steady income and was straightedge/vegan. The night I begrudgingly asked her about it, she seemed really enthusiastic and even a bit excited about it. The next day, she had some poor excuse about, "not being able to afford it," and something about her, "parents not thinking it's a good idea." Split between two people, it'd only be $250, which is substantially less than anywhere else she will ever find in our area code, and once Tia found a job, it'd only be something like $166 each.

My suspicion is that she plans on living with her parents forever. I didn't even bother arguing it. And after another week or two without seeing or hearing from her, I deleted her. I am so unbelievably disappointed in that girl and the worst part about her deciding to bow out of our lives is that neither of us have any idea why. She's visited Tia once or twice since then and I made snide remarks to and towards her both times. She'll never again have friends like us. And even though Tia will allow her to remain an acquaintance in her life, I certainly will not. I hope she regrets taking me and us for granted. I hope college where she isn't able to do art, a boring job, and a boyfriend she has nothing in common with is enough to make her happy before she dies as sad and lonely a life as her mother will.


Kara's sexy knees.


We found this on the sidewalk. Someone didn't answer.


The best person in the world.

I just finished and released my newest personal zine in my Discomfort series. I am very proud of it. If at all interested, click the image to head over to my Etsy shop and buy a copy for $2.

This is my fourth personal zine, created February/March of 2012.
100% handmade, black+white, sixty-four pages, pocket-size, bound with a rubber band.

(Non-fiction/personal zine.)
Some of it is adapted from my online blog. Lots of words with tons of photography and drawings. Hitchhiking, lots of New York City stories, and a first-person experience with the seedy underbelly of so-called resources for the homeless. Stories of love, loss, and running away from my problems in a literal sense. Plus my second visit to Philadelphia, PA.

In August of 2009, I was getting more and more into hitchhiking and using it as a means to literally run away from my problems. After a girl I had an "it's complicated" relationship with decided to leave me, I had a nervous breakdown and ran away to New York City with $30 in my pocket, subsequently winding up stuck there and eventually desperate to get home. This is that story, as well as my home hell during that time, a second bout with New York City transience, and a trip to Philadelphia.



I booked Ghost Mice, one of my favorite bands of all time, a show in Albany on March 27th. If you're in or around the area, please come out to it! Click the flyer for the Facebook event page.

I put on a little local show around Thanksgiving that I dubbed "Skanksgiving" in some attempt at being clever (I later discovered another show in some other city with the name, gosh darn it). I had booked a date at the Social Justice Center for a touring band called Still Rings True that wound up canceling to play for someone else in Albany, all without notifying me, and I figured I might as well take advantage of having a place booked for music. I mostly just wanted to hear Heroes and Martyrs play new songs that I had missed out on while traveling and have a reason to leave my house for the night. I ended up just making the lineup all locals and it was a pretty fun night, though it was still one of those Albany shows that make me never want to try and book a show here ever again. It was my first show there all on my own, without Kat babysitting me and with me unlocking and relocking doors on my ways in and out with my own keys. I was so afraid in the back of my mind that, with my lack of luck, something terrible would happen like the cops being called or a fire. About twenty or so kids came out and all but two people paid the $3-5 suggested donation, most people opting to not be cheapskates and actually paying the full five. I was really surprised that two people actually refused to pay a measly $3 for a goddamn local DIY concert. When they walked in, a band was already playing, so I said into their ears that we were asking for a donation. They both looked at each other, mouthed something, and then laughed.

Drew and the Grand Spectacular, an indie-punk-ska band composed of some college music theory major dorks that I'd been wanting to book since I got back home opened the show and were totally awesome. The leader of the group, Drew, was a really cool kid and was originally from Long Island, explaining his talent, which was unusual to this area code. They had a huge band with lots of instruments and played one Bomb the Music Industry! cover and one Los Campesinos! cover, apparently fans of bands whose names are exclaimed. They wound up doing the coolest thing I'd ever seen a band do with crowd participation: initiated a pillow fight. They had brought a pile of pillows and everything for the occasion and people actually played along. I'm pretty sure even the few kids there who were bummed out that they couldn't get high or drunk even loved it. Jon, the lead singer of Nine Votes Short, showed up and we found him by the merch table, crouched down near an outlet with a hair dryer, blowing on the gel in his hair to sculpt his mohawk. Kara and I couldn't help but laugh and I eventually told him he wasn't allowed to be that corny at my show. Later on, he mentioned in passing around me that the rest of his band were probably out getting wasted, so I had to break the news to him that they'd be kicked out of the place if they showed up visibly intoxicated or brought drugs into the place. He told me that Kevin had never played a show sober before, which was depressing to hear.

When they returned, I saw Kevin standing outside looking distraught. I assumed it was because Jon had just broken the "news" to him, although it's always been stated that the venue and my shows are 100% all ages and drug- and alcohol-free; it's not just my rule, it's the space's rule. I went out and actually felt compelled to apologize and explain myself. Even though he looked devastated as he shuffled his shoes beneath him and kept looking down, he told me it wasn't a big deal. However, he then said, "I've never played a show sober before. I do a lot of drugs. When I'm not on drugs, I'm just not myself. I just feel bland." I had no idea how to respond to such a heartbreaking statement, so I gave him my best pouty lip and apologized again. They put on a good show, despite their bassist not having the superpowers that drugs normally give him and Heroes and Martyrs played even better. Their new songs and Power Rangers cover were incredible. The Knee Benders, a local ska band that hopped on last second, were really great, too, despite having another person who needed alcohol that night to fully enjoy himself. They don't look the part of a ska band one bit, but play really great songs, even doing a dead-on Streetlight Manifesto cover. I was able to pay all the bands that night, thankfully.

By the time the show ended and I had finished cleaning up, we had missed the last bus back to Schenectady. Luckily, a kid from Long Island who knew Drew was kind enough to offer me, Kara, Tia, and Grace a ride back to Schenectady in his soccer mom van. I couldn't thank him enough and the conversations on the way back were great. Him and Drew were both really open-minded and well-spoken. I enjoyed myself a lot that night, but the subtle reminders of how uniquely dead my city is pegged me like stones: the way the youths here aren't willing to pay $3 for a local show to support any hope of a DIY scene ever existing; the way everyone, young and old, cannot seem to enjoy anything without the assistance of drugs and alcohol; the way I can't be out past midnight unless I want to sacrifice my way back home; the way kids don't come out to shows here anyway unless it's a hardcore fashion show.




Drew and the Grand Spectacular pillow fight!


In December, I had been getting more and more popular over Tumblr and reached over 2,000 followers somehow. So, as always, lots of anonymous comments and questions poured in regularly; some with legitimate questions, some that were hostile and insulting, and some that were secret admirers. One of these secret admirers, after months of me trying to persuade some of them to come out and tell me who they are, actually did. She was a girl named Chelsea who lived in New York City. I recalled her Tumblr because I had mistaken her URL for something offensive for a while ("therapist" mistaken for "the rapist") and she had sent me a few things in my Ask box publicly a few times. When she finally came out from behind her veil of online anonymity, I was then able to put a face with the comment she had made about wanting to love me for a night or two and thinking I was a beautiful creature or something along those lines. She was thin and pretty and dressed chaotic but accessible like a suburban hippie girl. She wore glasses that looked adorable resting on top of her pointy nose. I was honestly shocked that someone so attractive had been the one who sent me those messages. With almost no hesitation, I decided to be reckless in the name of potential affection from a stranger and made plans with her to visit. After talking on the phone, we had started referring to it as a "steamy rendezvous". She had a reserved voice, but I think she was just nervous talking to me on the phone. I was, too, but I talk more when I'm nervous. Like some love affair movie cliche, we would be meeting and immediately relocating to a cheap Howard Johnson hotel in Newark, New Jersey.

She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology and told me she didn't have a good relationship with her roommate back at her dorm, so I offered to pay for the hotel like a gentleman. I was surprised when she seemed okay with the idea and even more surprised that I found the courage to suggest it in the first place. Because a "cheap hotel" doesn't exist anywhere in the city, we ended up having to find a NJ Transit bus to one I could afford. I Xed the squares on my calendar the week leading up to the weekend we would meet, anticipating the simple mystery in how the evening would play out with her. Plenty of cinematic possibilities played on a reel in my head, but my cynicism and low self-esteem kept my expectations to a minimum of next to nothing. The night before, I didn't (or couldn't) sleep. I ate Chinese food across the street from the bus station in Albany and slept with my headphones on the entire ride there. When I got off, the sun had already set and there was a cool breeze in the air that smelled toxic. The blinding electricity of the city shooed me to the outside of a drugstore where I laid down on my bookbag, watching couples who looked like extras in a boring film walk by. Chelsea took a little over a half hour to show up. I guided her over the phone and saw her in a crowd of fifty crossing in her cute dress. She had thin lips and a tiny smile that revealed even tinier teeth. The shape of her face was model-esque and beautiful. Her skin was nearly perfect and the way her long, dirty blonde hair hung over her shoulders and cute little ears made her look practically angelic. I nervously shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets and mustered chaotic conversation while worrying about how ugly she probably thought I was, almost feeling bad for her and what she had potentially gotten herself into. I kept telling myself, though, to not once mention being insecure or bringing up anything negative unless it was required by the honest answer to a question she asked.

We walked a few blocks away to Port Authority and, literally taking pointers from episodes of Tough Love Miami I'd watched recently, tried to act as confidently and calmly as possible. We hooked arms as we walked and I could feel my body overheating in my hoodie from the anxiety of the whole situation. She talked a lot in a fast and free-form manner. The weeks leading up to this meeting, I had asked her to tell me her "life story". And she did, quite literally. After I asked her that, being genuine but not expecting her to even graze the surface of her actual life, she proceeded to send me message after message after message, telling me every detail of her life from birth to the present, even digressing into relevant stories about the people in her life who had impacted her. She had put so much on the table so quickly, but I guess the Internet makes things like that easier for us nowadays. Knowing her life story helped me feel comfortable around her instantly, like I had a key to a part of her that not many others had, or at least hadn't gotten a hold of so quickly. It made me feel like I had some sort of upper hand. She moved with a graceful confidence without making it appear as though she was doing anything out of the ordinary or serious. I envied her ability to do that, as I tensed up while desperately trying to figure out where the hell to catch our bus to Jersey. We slipped to the very back of the bus and sat close together. I gave her the window seat and the lights went off. I took the initiative and held her hand. Thankfully, she grasped right back as if she had been waiting for something like that to happen and we began to snuggle really closely as the indistinct dots of light and silhouettes of wasted fields and swamps passed us outside. She said a lot of nice things to me and repeated several times that I was "perfect", which was totally weird to me. The concept of someone using such an intense adjective for me in real life, in person, and also being someone I was attracted to was something I hadn't experienced in a really long time. The ride continued and we talked about anything and everything we could think of. I honestly began to feel as though we were connecting on some level and the the way the situation itself shook up my heart like it was a bead in a rattle made of ribs slowly began to calm. I jokingly told her that I was going to be her boyfriend for the night and she accepted.

The bus dropped us off somewhere dark. I could see our hotel across the way, so we got off. Then we noticed that, while I had seen it across the way and it was very close, it was separated from us by several lanes of highway, a New Jersey moat, and a barbed wire fence. First thing we had to do was climb over some concrete barrier and hold hands as we ran across at least five lanes of traffic right near a row of tollbooths. We walked along the moat and fence, hoping we'd eventually get to some exit that would wrap right into where our hotel was. But we ended up walking and walking and walking. We turned and found ourselves walking down a small hill of rocks to a shady area next to the train tracks, underneath a web of overhead highway roads. We had to jump over a narrow, muddy stream and found ourselves both laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. As we walked along brightly illuminated shipping crates, hoping the muddy lot would take us to whatever road the hotel was on, we ended up turning to each other and suddenly kissing. I'm not sure who went in for it first. Perhaps we both did. It was really nice, though. Eventually, a security guard in a truck pulled up to us and said we couldn't be walking through there. He said we were pretty far from the hotel we were looking for, but we had to turn around and go the other way. We walked along a fence that had ominous warning signs posted on it until we found a road. We walked it until we we ended up in some industrial part of Newark that looked practically dystopian the way the streetlights dimmed over moist concrete and light fog around anonymous factories and stray kittens, creepy cars riding by every now and then but most of the sound of the neighborhood being a distant hiss.



We sat on a guardrail outside of some nameless building and used her phone to GPS how far away we were from the Howard Johnson. It said we were a little over three miles away, which was odd and unacceptable at that point. It was getting later and later and the longer we went walking around in the cold, ugly night, the worse I felt about her giving me a chance and putting up with such lack of preparation and convenience. I knew I wasn't worth all this trouble. We called a cab. Then we called another. A few passed us that ignored my waves and we didn't get picked up by one of the two I called until almost an hour later, as we sat on cold steel and talked about things. It was such a relief when a cab finally showed up and all I could think was how badly I hoped I didn't blow it by stealing any kind of magic that I suspected might have been in the air at one point since we met up. The hotel was nice for how cheap it was, even though it was surrounded by literally nothing. We got our room and then ate a simple dinner at some little restaurant inside. The Mexican guy working there with the broken English and heavy accent asked if we were from America, ironically. He said I looked like I was from Israel. Afterward, we rested on one of the two beds in our room and cuddled. I tried to use the Internet for a few minutes while she doodled on a piece of paper. She drew a lot of trippy designs and a snail. She let me look through the notebooks she had brought with her and I was impressed with her manic-depressive journal entries, cynical short stories that all ended with tragically realistic conclusions, and strange doodles. In college, she was majoring in print-making, so a lot of what she drew were symmetrical designs and patterns you would see on expensive rugs or dresses.



She expressed a lot of guilt and regret in attending school for something that wasn't exactly in line with her true passion for art and only held the potential for a corporate job that contributed more products to consume. A lot of her stories, maybe a little more than half, started out with her getting high, trying to get high, or hanging out with someone who she planned on scoring alcohol or weed off of. She had also met several guys from OKCupid. Even though she mentioned a lot of males, she had only slept with five people in her life. As she talked about her life and her internal conflicts, I gazed at her. The light of the lamp on the bedside table traced the outline of her pretty face. She was wearing magenta tights under her dress and skater sneakers, which she kicked off while on the bed. I had been wearing a sweater underneath my hoodie since we first met up and I was caked in sweat when I took it off. I hated the way I smelled and feared she would, too. She smelled like candy, of course. We brushed our teeth in the bathroom together. I hoped that she was doing it for the same reason I was, which was because I wanted my potential kisses to taste good.

Being on a bed with a pretty girl is like being an astronaut on another planet for me, at this point as foreign a territory as any of the unfamiliar cities I've traveled to, but more scary. It feels like gravity no longer exists as I bounce on tippy toes around every word and accidentally shared touch. The hotel room became practically obscured in my peripheral vision as I focused all of my senses on her, trying desperately to decode radio signals that may or may not have even been being transmitted. She liked to run her fingers through my beard, which she couldn't compliment enough. We ended up making out with lots of tongue and biting of the lips. I instantly felt intoxicated. Hands explored as I tried to decipher the language of her hips. I pulled off her tights and saw that she had a really nice, full butt, despite being so thin everywhere else. Her breasts were perfect for cupping with your hand. We took our time, I'm not sure if on the same wavelength just yet. I touched her everywhere I could, my finger acting like a metal detector. On one of her thighs was one big cluster of around twenty brown beauty marks, totally out of place on her otherwise pale complexion, just in one spot like their own galaxy. I gave her a back rub and enjoyed the feeling of pushing my thumbs into the space between her shoulder blades. She had on tiny pink underwear and had little stubble from not shaving her legs. She mentioned it as if I'd care. As she laid on her stomach, I went inside of her. She got really wet almost instantly and I mostly just wanted to do things to her and see her feel good. Giving a woman pleasure is really rewarding, like giving money to a homeless person or something, or finishing a really great painting.

After the lights went off, things got a lot hotter. She said she was really insecure about her vagina because it was "deformed", but I could not tell what she was talking about. I went down on her and licked up the backs of her legs. Her flat tummy and tight waist felt so good clamped between my strong hands. Her nipples were perfect and small like all the other corners of her majestic body. She went down on me and gave me a really unrestrained blowjob. It had been so long since I had felt the back of someone's throat like that. Sex began organically and on the far bottom corner of the bed with her head almost hanging off just because that's where her body wound up in the chaotic dance that foreplay choreographs. I was inside of her for only a few thrusts before she was the bigger person and reminded us that we should probably use a condom. Luckily, I had preemptively purchased some Magnums before I got on the bus in Albany. I felt like a presumptuous douchebag when I got them, but figured it'd be better to be safe than sorry. God, was I glad I did. We had sex for about forty minutes, moving around sporadically and switching who was on top and bottom, fiercely kissing like it was the end of the world. I'm glad it was dark because I may have smiled continuously and uncontrollably throughout it. I also took off my shirt, which is one of my biggest insecurities. She had the heat on, so we were both perspiring like crazy. I loved the aroma of our fuming bodies and the feeling of her glossy, soft flesh against my hair chest. I rode her from behind as she laid flat on her stomach until I came. I didn't stop after, though, because I wanted to make sure she had gotten off. I'm not sure if she did, but she seemed exhausted and her thighs had been trembling a bit. When she got off me, I threw the condom away and held her. We stuck to each other like wallpaper. It was a really good night. It was great to feel like I wasn't such a monster for a change. I think we both fell asleep simultaneously.


Chelsea's hand print on the headboard.

The next morning, we had to check out around noon. We woke up like nothing had happened and started getting ready to wait for the bus back. We weren't exactly sure how the hell to get back where we came from, since getting there was so difficult the night before. So I tried cabs, none of which came to get us. It was over two hours before we finally got picked up from outside the hotel, after trying to walk up a road to nowhere and considering crossing the highway from the woods. I was getting frustrated with being trapped there, though Chelsea peacefully remained calm and crafted a daisy crown out of twigs and flowers she had just pulled from the wooded area we brushed through. Employees told us conflicting things about potential rides and we ended up paying, like, $20 just to basically go over the highway, which required some crazy twists and turns due to the notorious insanity that is the New Jersey highway system. When we got to where we thought our bus came, it was over an hour before we realized that it wasn't. We walked down the way to another stop and waited for another two hours for it to show up. Chelsea showed me music and we occasionally did cute things like hold hands or kiss, though I mostly just wanted to run my hands through her hair. I could tell she was getting frustrated, too, though she exhibited it way better than I ever could have. When we got to New York later that evening, she sat outside of Macy's with me until my bus came, which was about an hour after we got there. I was really hungry and it was kind of chilly out as we sat on the ground. She walked me to the bus and bid me farewell.





We have maintained contact since that night and I hope I'll get to visit her again soon. She wasn't disappointed and still maintains that I'm perfect. She sends me things on Tumblr every now and then, telling me how I make her want to be a better person. The other night, she sent me a picture of herself flashing her breasts with the note, "My nakedness misses you." She also told me in a Facebook message, "Vegans really DO do it better!" She mentioned recently that, whenever she isn't thinking about this boy in Jersey she has a thing for, that she, "is probably in love with me." She makes me feel really good about myself and says things to me that I haven't really heard since high school from the opposite sex. She was the fourteenth or fifteenth person I've ever had sex with (Kara debates those numbers and I now believe I may honestly be forgetting someone when I try to put together the chronological list). I was broke the rest of the month just from that one night stand, but it was well worth it. The week after that, I did feel a little better, but it quickly wore off after a couple nights of sleeping alone and masturbating to online pornography.

I leave you with a drawing I did of a horse wearing a sweater:

Yesterday was my 24th birthday. As far as I'm concerned, I now have six more years on this planet before I take my own life. It got me thinking, though, about those moments in life that meant the most to me so far. My life has been composed of a lot of ugliness and stress, but the last couple of years have honestly been the best years of my entire life, which says a lot. I feel like I've grown and experienced more since August 2008 than I have in the entire time before that.

What are the best things I've done so far? My greatest hits?

- Dropping out of high school.
- Opening up for Mindless Self Indulgence to a sold-out crowd with my now defunct band.
- Deciding to give pills for my depression a chance.
- Going vegan.
- Growing a beard.
- Hitchhiking for the first time (to Syracuse).
- Having sex with Tara Rule.
- Meeting and getting as close as I have with Kara Comegys.
- Hitchhiking around and across the country over the last two years.
- Hopping my first train.
- Publishing my first zine and every zine since it.
- Booking some of my favorite bands all by myself (Deerhoof, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Ghost Mice, Mixtapes, The Emotron, Bubblegum Octopus, Prayers For Atheists).
- Finally visiting Portland.
- Wearing a "Kill Cops" shirt to court.
- Meeting Tia McClelland.
- Ending my relationship with my brothers and parents.

My birthday was just another day, though. Part of me was indifferent to it; part of me was a tad upset at how old I am and how difficult certain things that used to come easy to me in my youth have become; part of me felt pathetic that I wasn't doing anything special on the anniversary of my first breath. The day before, Kara came over and woke me up with nice back-rubs by her magic hands and some serious cuddling. The dream she interrupted was one of Burgundy so vivid that I actually woke up with an aching heart. She brought me a homemade vegan French toast flavored cake. When she asked me what kind of cake I wanted, I immediately said, "French toast flavored!" I honestly didn't think she'd do it, but she did, because she can apparently do anything. She also got me a "Free Pizza For Life!" Ghost Mice t-shirt and made me an adorable card with a bear holding a beehive on it, a corny pun on the inside script. The cake was the best cake I'd ever eaten in my entire life, no exaggeration.



I spent the rest of the day sitting online in Tia's room. The electricity in my room for the most part is now gone. The other day, where my power strip plugged into the extension cord started making loud crackling sounds and flickering in and out of power. It was pretty scary. Eventually, nothing would work. Because I have no working outlets in my room, I had only that power strip and the extension cord that went out through my door to an outlet outside to power my TV and stuff. It's one thing after another in this fucking house, though. Nothing new. Kara was at Planned Parenthood for over two hours. We went downtown to the Moon and River Cafe together and ate California sandwiches while playing Uno and Sorry, local musicians playing pleasant banjo-driven tunes in the background. It was a nice night, but I'm always desiring more out of my own consciousness that my city can provide. Kara and I had a very long, passionate night together. I slept that night with dreams of being shot. A bullet passed through my shoulder and left waist and grazed my left arm.

The actual day of my birthday came and went like no big deal. Kara had to leave to bake and I spent most of my time sitting online and responding to anonymous political questions on Tumblr. I went out for pizza at Little Anthony's with Tia. I felt pathetic not having a single other friend to join us. The bus ride was terrible. The angry black men driver tried to tell me I didn't ask for an all-day pass, even though I did. We ended up having to wait over a half hour for the 1 to show up and bring us the five minutes away to the pizza place. We watched two movies that night and that was it. I was twenty-four and celebrated my birthday by buying myself a pizza. Perhaps I'm asking too much or childishly forgetting the irrelevance in my own aging, but I feel like I should have done something special: had a party with tons of friends and a root beer keg, staying up late and getting a blowjob from two girls at once before falling asleep. Or something. But that's not what life is like as you get older, I guess. A lot of people wished my a happy birthday online, of course, and some of them made me laugh, but the Internet attention I get is not real and therefore not even close to important. A really beautiful girl who admires me from Brooklyn e-mailed me a wonderful picture of her beautiful body. That was nice. I had a dream about being shot again.