an experimental non non non non fiction post subtitled YOU ASK FOR WATER AND THEY GIVE YOU GASOLINE

hey thanks for helping me the only way you knew how, but I can’t stop telling every one I know. If you have the time and patience here is a letter I sent a new pen pal who lives in the Ukraine… Its a happy story but I can’t stop crying. Like all the good ones you know?

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Thanks, and I had the best gift of all, I don’t know if I told you this, cause I tell everybody slightly different stories but my first friend in the city when I went to art school was {REDACTED} he was a few years older and wiser than me and he was the only one who could talk to me in the begining, I never left my room just drank whiskey and listened to sad songs cause I was far away from everyone who cared about me. He was soooo smart and sooo friendly I didn’t really believe in him, he some how knew more about music than me. I was the only kid in highschool besides my sister and 2 best friends who listened to anything made before 1985, I got it all for free cause I would bring in granola bars and bananas and eat them in the library cause no one else would talk to me and I saved up my lunch money and every friday I would buy a used cd! I listened to it on infinite repeat all week then bought the next album by whatever band I was into that month. But this kid knew it all he even taught me how to play the Velvet Underground Sweet Jane on his dime store guitar (which was and still is my favorite song of all time) and we sang it together at the talent show and everybody noticed me for the first time.
He never spoke a word of it to me but the entire time his mother was dying of cancer, and when she finaly left this world he broke down and went schizophrenic, he jumped off bridges and drank paint thinner (he was a weird primitve painter) and when he wasn’t locked up in pysch wards he was painting amazing huge murals everywhere and writing his own songs for the first time. They were beautiful and we would walk all over town (he didn’t like wearing shoes so he went bare foot everywhere) and he would teach me the new song of the week and by the weekend I knew every line and we would harmonize all the choruses. They were sad songs about hated people and monster that no one could love, cause he loved everyone and no one would love him but me and we couldn’t have sex cause we were not gay. So we got on each other nerves cause he was faster than me at everything, he got restraining orders against him because every woman who would talk to him would end up painted huge and beautiful or he would write 20 minute songs for them and play them outside there house at midnite every nite for a week.
I kinda understood what he was going through, but one night he tried to strangle my best oldest friend and then wouldn’t stop speaking in different voices about the devil and how no one but me could understand him and that every one else was satan and trying to drive us apart so I cut off all contact with him for 4 years, he would call me all the time, would email me every day then one day it stopped and I was both guilty and relieved… then time passed and I got more and more guilty and I couldn’t stop asking mutual acquaintances if they had seen him, the women who filed restraining orders eventually realized he was just painfully lonely and they talked him through everything, every day if necessary and they even posed for him and bought his cds that he drew all over with weird cryptic figures. We were all worried and guilty over it because he taught us all what a real artist looks like. They may seem insane at first but thats because they just have a different way of doing things, but they want what every one wants, friends and lovers and fans because every one is special at something and we all deserve our 15 minutes of fame for fucks sake, he taught me how to talk to people I didn’t know, cause every one eventually came to his side, and if he could do it, I could do it because he showed me how and I never forget anything important.

When I went crazy and ended up locked away I met all sorts of {REDACTED} and they were all beautiful souls trapped in a world that didn’t understand them, but they were all AMAZING at something and taught me how to be sane when you need to be and crazy good at what you love and how to negotiate the two different worlds (I learned sooooo much more from the older lady patients than I ever could from the doctors) and because I saw him partially destroyed by the system designed to help him I was very wary of the ‘good’ doctors recommendations for lithium. He taught me how to sing to strangers so I sang my way out and the second I was out the guilt doubled, how could I abandon the man who taught me everything… how could I, the dude who can talk to anyone, cut off the man who gave me artistic wings and told me every day that I could do anything if I had the energy and right tools. I wanted to kill myself over it cause I thought he had finally done it for good and I would never be able to sing with him again (the thing that made me feel best…) cause I was trying to raise him on everything, phone calls, emails, hand written letters . I couldn’t stop crying at all the sad songs I listened to before he taught me how to talk to strangers. Today after I heard good news at the gallery (he LOVED IT, told me to bring in 4 times the work in 1 month which I’m pretty sure means he understood what I was trying to say but he needs to understand more before he can figure out how to fucking sell it to rich morons, “thats his job not mine” he told me!!!!) and it was hell trying to find him I was listening to billie holiday sing about remembering georgia and all the terrible boy friend she ever had and Boston is going through a heat breaking record and the air conditioning in my truck is shot and I can’t stop crying or sweating or smoking the entire time, it took 4 hours because I couldn’t stop crying because I didn’t know if he was alive or dead and couldn’t see all the poorly placed road signs. I assumed that whatever his fate ended up I would arrive at soon enough. We are all gonna die sooner rather than later and I don’t want to die, I have tooooooooooooooo many things to do, people don’t know the things {REDACTED} taught me yet, they think I pay the people in my pictures or I stage everything cause every where there is disrespect (something you taught me) and NOBODY SEES ANYTHING (something I learned on my own) and I was crying for his mother who set the ball in motion, and I was crying for my own mother cause she will too die someday, and I was crying for {REDACTED} cause I cut him off when he needed me the most and he could be dead, anyone could be… and I could die any minute and my work wouldn’t be done and no one would know how special they are cause I’m the only person I know who does it the way that I do (diane arbus taught me that) and it was sooooo fucking hot that I was stopping every few miles to buy or steal water cause between the crying and sweating I was losing gallons a minute and I had terrible pains all through my body (I had also not eaten anything for 48 hours) and I finaly showed up at his house and I rang the door bell and I screamed his name and I looked around back and found a still burning cigarette (he learned to smoke cause I couldn’t stop) and I was just about to break down and cry for the millionth time when his brother found me, I hugged him and asked if {REDACTED} was buried or still walking around and singing and he said he was taking a shower and he wanted to see me…. I couldn’t hug that guy enough, I was crying with joy for the first time in years and when the man himself {REDACTED} came out I tackled him to the ground and kissed him all over cause he was me in a few years and if he could still be living then we all have a chance no matter how damaged we are. He had some how had a stroke (brain lost blood for a second, could happn to any one at anytime, like a act of god, like a ligheting stike or tornado or tsunami) Everthing I ever wanted had come true and I was I was let go at an execution for everything true and beautiuful that had ever existed, it was like I was kicked out of eden or heaven and was told I didn’t have to spend eternity in hell. If he was still walking around, and boy could he sing every song we ever did, and it was the most perfect version of all time, everything we sang together was the perfect version we sang sweet jane and when it goes, any one who ever had a heart wouldn’t turn around and break it, I was sent to heaven and I didn’t leave his home…. I can’t say this enuff I could have died today and I didn’t and you too could die but you didn’t and every breath is precious and if you treat it like it could be your last than you are an artist it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do it as good as is you can because we get better everyday and the world as a whole has been getting better every day since that first darwinian warm pool somewhere and there is no god but we invented him because we felt sooooo alone at nite and because {REDACTED} wasn’t done with life I didn’t have to be and my life could have some meaning in a lonely lonely universe. I can’t stop crying now but it feels so good, like spring rain that you know will feed you all summer and the summer after that and all the way down through history because we are weak alone but get 2 of us humans around a camp fire and we are so strong we could change the world if only they understood out dialect or language….. I can’t type enough about today cause I don’t even give a fuck about the gallery because that will come and go but if {REDACTED} is still alive and being beautiful then I can do the same thing cause he taught me how.
If you made it this far I thank you, cause I HAD TO TELL SOMEBODY and I like writing to people I will never meet in person because its safer that way there is no way you can really hurt me like the way they hurt {REDACTED} because he went through hell 100 times over and is still standing and will tell you all about it if only you have the time and patience to listen… LONG LIVE {REDACTED}