#I havent drawn them together since january

[vamytas]

18th May ‘94

     Molly,

Thanks for your exhibition prints. I’ve sold a few off the counter, the deer ones are popular. Still find it funny that people opt for the cuter kind, even if the forest frolickers are dead, although when one woman came in to buy a wallet for her husband and I told her the deer was a taxidermy she didn’t seem as eager to look around much more! Shame, that. Tried to tell her half the cost went to the RSPCA but she didn’t buy it. I’ll see if Alex wants one. Have you sent some to Tommy? He’d like the mouse driving the car (that’s him, right...?)

I would say ‘same old’ here if it was true but it’s not. The bloke I work with, Rob, the one who thought it would be a grand idea to throw Alex’s surprise birthday bash, he hasn’t shown up for work in a couple days and he won’t pick up his phone. I could joke that it was Alex’s doing but at this point with the way he’s become such a recluse I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe they eloped? Not that they have any reason to, didn’t catch on to anything like that. Not that you’d care, obviously (ha ha). I shouldn’t joke about it, though. Rob’s somewhere we don’t know...or at least I don’t know. Thank god Alex is responding even if it’s minimal. I asked him if he knew anything and  he said he didn’t. At the moment it’s a mystery to us but I’m not sure if Rob’s family have managed to get in contact, or if he has any family to worry over him, there’s a lot of characters like that around here.

Don’t be a stranger, even if you have all the critics climbing all over eachother just to glance at your face. Are you really going to try and pull the Banksy thing?

    Much love,

    Seb

P.S. Have you installed your dial-up yet? Data’s quicker to send than paper.

21 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Beep, beep ... nnNNRRHH

Happy to see you’ve joined the legion of the world wide web! I know a lot of people complain about the noise but it doesn’t sound much different to what we used to listen to. You haven’t sold your original 20 Jazz Funk Greats, have you? Not sure it would even rake in much with what we drew all over the back, unless you or Alex get put in the Tate. With the way you’re going I wouldn’t say it’s a far way off! Also need more of those prints! Running low. You’re a popular girl here :) -- that’s called a smiley.

As for the Earnshaw Update: he’s as much a hermit as your sister used to be when she started getting into The Cure. I don’t know what instigated it but he’s only been reachable by phone since his birthday, and only at night. I’ve tried dropping in but his door’s been shut tight and I don’t know where he keeps the emergency key. You should try talking to him (I can resend his address if you’ve lost it, he hasn’t got internet yet). That’s if I can’t tide him over by telling him you’ve got a gift, next time he picks up... if he does. Sorry, that sounds very doom and gloom. I really am worried about him, if only because he hasn’t been in this kind of stasis since... well.

Please get back to me as soon as you can.

Much love,

Seb

23 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: He’s alive!

Did you send that print to him? I came by his place tonight and he answered after the first knock! Smiling as ever. He felt colder than a Yorkshire winter, though, and pale. I told him I could help with the gas bill if he needed it but he waved me off. We went out to one of those clubs where everyone is in fishnets and knock-off McQueen, which is nothing new, but they were playing that new MTV gothic stuff, the kind he said he hated -- could be broadening his horizons. I lost him for a bit but he found his way back, he’s somehow easy to distinguish from the crowd now (for me that is, imagine it’s always been the case with you, ha ha!)

He also told me that Rob went on a spontaneous break to Rome. Rob in Rome! And that I’d be getting a “confirmation of assumin’ such responsibilties required of a leather shoppe owner, as well as the salary”. Alex and him were closer than I thought.

It’s all looking up here. What’s happening with you? Apart from the Guardian editorial, you don’t tell me much apart from work!

Much love,

Seb

27 May 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Concerned again.

I don’t mean to ignore the other topics covered in our ditties but Al has gone Weird. I know he always has been, in that ‘cool cousin’ kind of way but now he’s just... I don’t know. He’s practically nocturnal. There’s more and more stuff popping up in his wardrobe that he used to say was a ‘fuckin’ disgrace of shite taste’ -- the chokers! There must be about ten discarded around his whole place. I’ve seen some of his paintings too and they’re dark, as in David Lynch meets Goya’s black paintings, I mean they’re good -- really good -- but it just seems excessive.

Worst of all, he keeps mentioning Ricky. Since the accident he’s been fairly healthy with talking about it but now it seems like he’s got this growing obsession with ‘what it all meant, his death’, I don’t even know what Alex meant by that.Then he’ll ask me where I think Ricky is now and honestly I don’t know, I don’t like to think about it. I just keep saying ‘somewhere warm’  because it seems like Alex needs the comfort. I don’t know if what happened to Ricky got to him more than he let on before, or if he was too preoccupied at the time with making sure I didn’t do anything drastic. Was I that needy?

I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what to suggest either. Sorry to end on such a downer of a note.

Love,

Seb 

1 June 1994 

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: Dire.

I don’t know him anymore, Molly. When we don’t go out he just wants to talk about Ricky with me, like I’m a proxy for some kind of loss he’s going through. But I don’t know what loss that is -- you? It’s the only comparison I can think of. I feel like the kid stuck between two divorced parents with you two sometimes. Except he avoids talking about you all together and if I do bring you up, like how you were moving back to London, he just looks down, rubs his beard... a new habit. 

(Beard, yeah. I forgot to tell you because it was a really gradual transition at the time that I didn’t notice, but he has this Jesus thing going for him. Before, I didn’t think much of it but now it’s like an inherent look he should have been born with, innate? I could never imagine him looking like it but now it’s hard to imagine him looking any different.)

Anyway, beards aside. He’s getting... creepy. When we’re not drinking he just wants to postulate on death and ‘what comes after’, he’s a right fucking misery to be around. Although I haven’t seen him drink much at all, do you think he’s on drugs or something? It’s the only conclusion I can come up with, and I don’t have anyone else to ask about this because they’re all in the same scene he is.

Please reply soon.

Seb

2 June 1994

To: MissMolly

From: S.M.

Subj: -

Okay there are some things I’ve witheld for a long time because I didn’t want to cause you any unnecessary pain. As much as I know you say you’re fine it’s never a gift to hear these things but I feel it has a lot to do with how Alex is now.

After we moved to SF he started seeing this woman who I didn’t see much of myself,,  she set me on edge but I can understand how he was drawn to her because I think it was mainly a sex thing to get over you. I told yu before that he was a catastrophic mess after you left and things got better but when I say catastrophic mess I really mean it, I won’t state examples because I dont mean to make you feel guilty Molly but it’s the truth and I don’t know what to do anymore.

I didnt want to make uyo worry  because i know you;re already dealing with enough already, and i didnt want this matter in particular to be especially distressing for you. But I think alex and this woman were into heavy stuff  - not drugs but maybe that too. We went out while he was with this girl, in January, I think? it was to one of those fetish clubs, wasn’t my thing. But he left me there alone without telling me he was leaving, hhe left with the girl and didn’t even leave me  a voicemail. I got home fine, couldn’t sleep though. But then  I went over to check on him in the morning and his back was covered in gashes and blood. he didnt wake up but he was breathing. i didn’t know what to do,  i pretended i never walked in and he called me soon after to apologise for the night but i  wouldnt say anything about his back because i thought it was a bdsm thing but with the way hes acting now i dont know if he was being abused? I dont know the telltale signs, just that he’d follow this woman around like she had him on a leash.

There are still parts of him I recognise but there’s something about him which feels out of touch, like he’s not the same person but trying to be.  I dont know how to put it, maybe I’ve been away from someone who can actually talk about these problems for too long

The thing is I havent seen him with this woman in a while, since his birthday I’d say. Despite it he seems a lot happier now than when he was with her (apart from the Ricky fixation) but he’s gone full blown Byronic Bohemian.  He’s invited me out almost every day in the past week and since this was an improvement from locking himself inside, I tried to go as much as I could. Each time I’d lose him for a while because he’d gone off with a girl . He thinks he’s being discreet but I’m not much of a dancer for these places so all there’s left to do is watch. Sometimes he goes home with them and offers to pay me for a taxi, which is a step up from leaving me stranded, I’ll give him that.

I know I shouldn’t have but I looked through his art yesterday (his emergency key is in a broken light on a wall outside his door), not his stuff under the bed but in his wardrobe. There’s five entire sketchbooks of you, some of the drawings are so beautiful, he still remembers how you look exactly but in others they just seem... off? Not that they don’t look like you because they do, even if it’s a few strokes, but for someone who knows you they just look like he;s trying to put through what he is now onto you?  I don’t know. that doesnt make sense.Then there are some Ricky drawings in there too but  I don’t want to talk about them.  he writes stuff around you and Ricky, dates and places and random lines like ‘snake chokes on its own tail’ and ‘saw him around Seb’s’.  I  think he’s scared of losing parts of himself and not being able to get them back.

Please talk to him  Molly , you know his number and email . I know you think you’ll do him more harm than good but I don’t know what to say, if I point out how he’s acting weird he just resorts to deflective humour ‘it’s all part of being a la Americana now’. But I’m worried if I push it he’ll get angry. Sometimes I don’t feel safe with him and I don’t know why. Please reach him, I miss him, nothing’s right with Alex like this. I’m getting homesick because there’s nothing here that seems real anymore, everything feels like I’m watching it through a TV screen and it’s muted, or the music’s too loud to hear what people are really saying. I don’t want to leave Alex alone but I feel like I’m in a coma here.

Do you think I could stay with you for a while?

Love always,

Seb

#▏🌹 ▪ VANITAS. #▏▪ HEADCANON. #[IDK WHAT TO tag this as rn . . #its long .. . longest thing ive written on this blog and its not from alexs perspectiv.e.. #I DONT HAVE much to comment abt it im tired. .. #just a biffle's view of alexs days after his Death . .]

[stellar-stag]

Wow it’s been a while since I did a personal update here huh

I’ve honestly transitioned a lot of my venting/personal stuff to twitter

(I promise I havent abandoned you for my furry friends)

(I kinda have)

(I totally have)

(sorry)

But I feel like the last couple months have been a whirlwind for me, so I may as well keep y’all in the loop. I’m gonna sort these by topic.

First off, I had some issues with my romantic feelings. There’s a guy, a very very good friend, who is just fantastic in so many ways. Friendly and kind and supportive, progressive and enthusiastic, and shares so many of my interests. Seems natural that I would fall for him, right?

Well I did, and it resulted in a lot of emotional duress.

He has a girlfriend, and I knew this going in, but I didn’t fight my attachment. In the process of admitting my feelings to him and working through everything, I learned a lot about myself and got some practice in controlling my emotional state and how I react to things. But I also relied on him as an emotional crutch and used him for validation, especially during some particularly low emotional points, which is unfair to him. It is only because he is immensely understanding that we remain close friends, and this could have easily resulted in disaster.

But through this process I have grown, and identified a new issue blocking me from being of completely sound mind: Low self-esteem and reliance on others for validation. During my more anxious periods, I would slip into joking self-deprecation, and somewhere along the way it stopped being so joking. But surely, now that I’m taking meds for anxiety it would stop, right? Well, no. Turns out, even if I stopped consciously having thoughts of “Wow, I’m so bad at this”, I didn’t automatically gain appreciation or acceptance of myself. This manifests in a particularly dangerous manner when guys who are attractive are nice to me. 

I end up conflating kindness with romantic intent, and decide that obviously, if someone doesn’t have romantic interest in me, I must be irreparably flawed in some way. This is bullshit, and I consciously understand that, but my subconscious doesn’t play by the rules. So I end up in a self-loathing spiral that only manifests in periods of intense romantic desire, and a month later I’m exhausted, bruised, and have run the risk of alienating those around me who care about me.

So how to fix it? I suppose I’ll need to work on drawing validation from within, so that rejection feels less of a condemnation of my character and everything I am. It won’t be simple, to be sure, but understanding the issue is the key to overcoming it. 

Here’s hoping.

Secondly: I started working out! As of today, March 24th, I have been to the gym 12 times this month (half the days, holy shit) and thats because I, last week, decided to go from 3 workouts a week to 5, solely because I wanted to. If you told me a year ago that I would, of sound mind and body and my own volition, wake up every weekday at 5:45am to go workout for an hour, and enjoy the experience, I would have called you a liar. 

But I am, and I do. I think it’s benefitting my mental health and self confidence, and I’m thankful that I’m in a place where its even an option. This is only possible due to a coalition of so many factors: A free gym in my office and a natural predilection to waking up early to remove barriers, I started taking Vyvanse in January to aid in my attention issues (not sure if I have ADD/ADHD or what, but it’s helping me remained focused in all aspects of my life and for that I am grateful). And, of course, two people who aided in the impetus for beginning and making it a habit: My dad, for giving me crippling self-worth issues my entire life and then visiting in February and criticizing my health and weight (because I was sweating after walking up a hill, which more and more I realize is not actually an indicator of my exertion! I am just a person who sweats easily, and its more a function of temperature and endocrine system than anything else) and giving me the sheer spite to begin working out, and the guy I was crushing on (who is intensely into working out, and I wanted to impress him. Yeah, I was hella thirsty. Sue me). 

Regardless of the reasoning, I found that (once I cut cardio because seriously, fuck cardio), I enjoy working out in the mornings. It’s calming to wake up by exertion and then cool down slowly at my desk before other people even wake up. It’s given rise to a ritual of sorts where I get to my desk, deal with my emails, make breakfast and tea, all before anyone shows up, so that I can really hit the ground running. And more than that, I don’t have a goal in mind. I’m doing this because I know it’s good for me and I want to be healthy, and I enjoy the exertion and following “good” tiredness. If I was trying to lose weight or trim  fat, or stuck only to cardio, I would have given up by now. But its a habit, and I love it, and I’m sleeping better, eating better, and feeling better.

Again, this is only possible because of an alignment of several factors, but I’m thankful for it, and I’m glad I got out of the mindset that “workouts must suck but people do them because they wanna lose weight”. You don’t gotta do anything you don’t want to do, and I wish I had realized that sooner. Im feeling way better about my body, even, because despite the fact that I haven’t lost weight or gotten trimmer from working out, I know I’m eating (pretty) well and working out, and that my body does everything I need it to. I can take pride in the callouses on my hands and the soreness of my body, because they’re proof of dedication, exertion, and effort, and those are way better things to feel good about than shape and size, anyways. If people think I’m unhealthy because I have fat, they can suck it.

Thirdly, I’ve begun looking for a condo to buy! Housing in the bay area is STUPID EXPENSIVE (and yes everyone knows this, and I know this, but it bears repeating). But I can put a down payment on a one bedroom in a good location, and I’m prequalified for a loan, and I just need to keep waiting and pouncing on leads. I think I’ll be happier living by myself with a kitchen to myself, and still going out to social events to prevent becoming a hermit. Plus, with this setup I can maybe bring dudes back and not have to show them the pigsty that is our living room or the shoebox that is my bedroom. I was terrified at the start of this process, but my mom and the realtor have been awesome about taking this step by step and ensuring nothing is confusing or surprising, which is sweet.

Fourthly, possibly because I’ve been taking Vyvanse but also possibly because I’ve finally begun understanding what the hell I’ve been doing, I’ve really hit my groove at work. The project I’m working on is complex but interesting, challenging but well understood, and I don’t feel alone but still get to feel a sense of ownership. It’s not the most fulfilling thing ever (I don’t know that working on payments platforms for a corporation ever will be) but I enjoy work, I don’t loathe going to work, and despite the fact that I was sick as a dog all this week, I came in everyday (after working out) to work full productive days, and I was happy at the end of each of them, more or less. Its not perfect but its head and shoulders above what most people get from their jobs, and I’m immensely fortunate to be in this position.

Fifthly, this is more a continuation of already known things, but I’m making cool friends in the furry fandom. I’ve made good friends, some who I hope I will keep as friends for the rest of my life, and I’ve already made plans to go to Reno in June and Disneyworld in November to hang out and have fun with them. As nerve wracking as being an adult is sometimes, the freedom is something I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

Sixthly, I’ve been taking a creative writing workshop in SF! It finished last weekend and I’m happy to not need to commute each week anymore, but I learned a lot about reading like a writer and choices you can make as a writer to achieve desired effects. The workshop focuses on narrators and how who is telling the story tells it, and the model they use for exercises is SO HELPFUL. We would read an excerpt of something, discuss how the narrator/choices/tense/mood all work together, and then we would write something in a similar format about whatever we wanted. Lemme tell yall, that is so much more helpful to me as a student than just prompts. Having a guide to format is like drawing from references, its helpful and and great for learning and gives you the tools to make your own things later on. I highly recommend it, and I can’t wait to get back to my book. 

Got a lot of art to make first, though. I’ve definitely improved a lot in artistic skill and confidence, and I’m loving finding niche styles that I like and mimicking them. The stained glass pic I posted yesterday is proof of that, I feel. Its drawn from Mucha and various real life stained glass windows and a bit from Kingdom Hearts, but I took these and the tools at my disposal and wove it into something that feels complete. I figured out how to apply a cloudy “glass” texture, glows, stabilization, symmetry tools, pattern design, and more all through the process, and I know theres so much room to iterate and grow, in shading and coloring and proportion. But even knowing I have room to grow, I’m proud of what I put out and I put a lot of my heart into that piece (yes, its a birthday gift for workout boy. Shut up). I think I’m going to accept commissions for pictures in this style, even. It’s great fun.

So yeah, the last couple of months have been intense. I’ve had ups and downs, but I’ve learned and grown a lot, and I think I’m in a really good place in my life right now, and I hope that every one of you achieves a similar level of peace.

#ramblings of a gay man #long post #life update #wrote almost 2k words about myself #vanity thy name is george