It’d been 3 or four days since I’d had any real sleep.
I was homeless and couch surfing in the middle of summer 2013. I was paranoid, alone, and wearing out my welcomes casual acquaintance by casual acquaintance. I’d started to feel increasingly more tormented.
One balmy midwestern night I sat vacantly staring at some paperwork for a new job I’d somehow managed to acquire. In my present state of mine I was very much unsure that I’d be able to perform the job asked of me with even a hint of alacrity.
I was scared.
I was house sitting for 2 nights and had helped myself to a rather expensive bottle of wine. It went down quickly and as I approached the last couple of sips I grew frustrated and agitated that the whole bottle had barely provided me with anything a drunk like me might have associate with a buzz of any kind.
I held the wine glass in my finger tips rolling the stem back and fourth anticipating the rage I could feel bubbling up to the surface. Though right at the point I expected to explode, something happened. Like the anger slipped on a wet spot on its way up, tripping a little and losing all its momentum. Instead of hurling the glass as the wall I just let my fingers go loose, sloshing the deep purple liquid onto the blank side of an employee manual.
That’s when I saw it. The monster.
Just it’s shape at first. None of its features. But it was there.
Frantically I went about making this creature whole, so I could look it in the eyes and tell it with all my spite and malice to sincerely go fuck itself .
There was nothing in the way of art supplies in the house I was occupying so I had to improvise. I dropped and smeared candle wax, I ripped napkins and dipped them in flour and water molding the shapes of eyes and fangs. I scribbled the words that were swirling around my brain at colossal speeds. I punched myself in the face and bled down onto the paper(this was before I even knew who Dave Choe was). I ripped apart dried flowers I’d found in a neglected vase and attached them to the paper. I cried and i yelled until I sat silently looking at my oppressor. It had a face now.
I had taken the evil that was inside me and relocated it to a piece of paper then trapped it behind the glass of a picture frame.
I’d won, and now I would sleep.
