#cy SUCKS at describing images

[the-arts-of-being]

HI POLUX

what does cy (character) look like? |/? (like the profile image?)

#the arts of being #asks #pollux codex #made it in the 'just geometry' style for clarity but added little emotes in his speech bubbles to show how anxious this lil guy is #description in alt text #id in alt text #cy SUCKS at describing images

[redwebpod]

Case #1: Lake City Quiet Pills

One person's Reddit post honoring their recently deceased friend triggers a series of findings including espionage, hacking, and potential military conspiracy.

[Image ID] A corkboard showing various pictures and notes pinned to it, as well as red string connecting various pins. Notable pictures and notes include what seem to be a photo of a potential suspect or one representing the person known as Milo, a sticky-note showing the coordinates (39.793135 x -77.204865) of where Milo’s ashes were scattered, the sticky note is layered over an image of where the coordinates show, a burnt piece of paper showing the back-end code for the website mentioned in the episode. There are several other notes that are blurry or partially shown that simply reference back to the episode. [End ID]

Trigger Warning(s): Mention of Murder (Assassination), Mention of Drug and Alcohol Use.

[ Episode ] [ Tweet ] [ Transcripts by AchieveZar, under the Read More ]

Transcript: 

Cast: Trevor Collins (TC), Alfredo Diaz (AD), Christian Young (CY)

[intro music plays]

TC: In 2009, a user on reddit submitted a post honoring their friend Milo, who had just passed away. Both Milo and this user were connected to a mysterious photo-hosting website. Curious internet sleuths started to dig deeper into this strange site, where they uncovered a globe-spanning web of intrigue and military conspiracy. Today, we will be discussing the mysterious website known as: LakeCityQuietPills. This is: The Red Web.

[intro music plays]

TC: Welcome, to the first episode of The Red Web, a podcast dedicated to internet conspiracies, mysteries, true crime, supernatural events, all sorts of things like that. I’m your host Trevor Collins, and with me, I’ve got Alfredo Diaz.

AD: This is just a podcast to terrify me, isn’t it.

TC and AD: [laughs]

TC: Yeah man! [sighs]

AD: I listened to that intro and I just— a slight shiver, down my, my body, I’ma be truthful to you right here, and I’m intrigued.

TC: It’s— It’s a deep one here. I wanted to start this show off with a bang. This one has many twists and turns, I’m really excited — You, you have no idea where this is gonna go ——

AD: No, not at all.

TC: —— But I’m really curious, as to what your thoughts are.

AD: It just is interesting, you know what I mean, uh, I think there’s a lot of factors that kind of like, suck me in.

TC: Mhm.

AD: The fact that it’s more recent, right, 2009 ——

TC: Mhm.

AD: —— Um, it, you know you have factors like Reddit in it, um, so things that I’m just, that I live daily?

TC: Yeah.

AD: So from there, I’m like, okay like, I’m, I’m invested, and, and there’s, what, a photo-hosting site? Like what the he— like, military conspiracy? Like, there’s so many little things that I have so many questions for.

TC: Yeah. Well let’s go ahead and just jump right into it, I think we’re gonna have to take a little bit of a different route on this one because, you know, we have a lot of pieces that all come together in the end. So let’s start at the very beginning. We have the user named [religionofpeace], now he was a moderator on reddit for the particular subreddit called “Jail Bait”. Now this was a very questionable subreddit that has since been banned, but he has a long comment history ranging from marijuana use, anti-socialism, to what kind of piano wire can kill somebody. He’s got a lot of pervy comments, he has a lot of comments on spam, and just calling things spam, and we have lots of comments— and he’s very active in the programming subreddit, which means he likely understood code based on some of the things that he was saying.

AD: So like, half of the reddit user base, pretty much.

TC: Pretty much.

AD: [laughs]

TC: I think I just described most individuals… [laughs]

AD: [groans] My goodness… this, ugh, yeah this sounds… deep, dark and twisted already.

TC: Yeah, uh, so. This user claimed to have military experience in security operations. He claimed to have served during WWII and most notably on D-Day. Now this goes all the way back, right, June 6th, 1944. So this is a looooong time that this man has been around. He’s claiming to have been 79 years old, there’s a few different comments that say that he’s essentially in his 70s. It isn’t exactly precise because some comments conflict with each other.

AD: This older man, he’s versed in reddit?

TC: Yeah, he’s out here typing away!

AD: Uh, you know, interesting, okay…

TC: Grandpa knows how to operate this website.

AD: Grandpa has more reddit posts than I do.

TC: [laughs] He, listen, I went to his profile. It’s out there. And in fact, to the day, it’s been about 11 years, maybe a few days either side the day of this podcast being released, was when his last post was made.

AD: Ooooh!

TC: Which was July 17th, 2009.

AD: It’s the anniversary.

TC: Mhmmmm. So we know a little bit about this man based on his… comment history, and, uh, and so notably he’s got a domain site that he likes to link to, called LakeCityQuietPills.com. When you go to the website, it says “That Old Guy’s Image Host”. It essentially is a website built for hosting images. It has a lot of users, a lot of images, and most of these images are pornographic in nature, and it was also shared on a website called DrunkenStepfather, which was another similar pornographic website.

AD: The, the the TERRIBLE, terrible name…

TC: What’s wrong with the name?

AD: [groans] DrunkenStepfather? There’s nothing good that comes from that!

TC: [laughs]

AD: No one ever said like, “Aw yeah man, you know I love my drunken stepfather, every time he drinks we play MarioKart and it’s fantastic!”

TC and AD: [laughs]

AD: Like, that never goes well!

TC: Yeah. So, thankfully he’s not directly associated with this website, this is just another similar website that started hosting him, which is probably where some of the users started to come from, but this is neither here nor there. We’ll come back to this website a little bit later but I wanted to provide some background on this guy, because at this point, he kind of went inactive. And on the very same day that he went inactive, on July 17th, 2009, another user made a post. This user was named [2-6]. We’ll just call him [2 6], and the title of the post was, “The End of [religionofpeace] — He Died Today”. And then within that post, he identifies [religionofpeace] as a man named Milo, and he goes on to talk about how miserable, mean and lonely this guy was, how he had very little belongings that were all being donated to various veteran causes, like the Salvation Army, he gave his cat away to his neighbor, and he planned to have Milo cremated and scattered in the wind, for he didn’t really have much of a religious affiliation. And so this is where we start to learn more about this [2 6] user as an individual and we start to look at his comment history.

AD: Mhm…

TC: So [2 6] was created on the very same day that [religionofpeace] made his last post, and of his five posts that he has, they’re all related to Milo, they’re all within that same thread, replying to people, discussing Milo’s nature. What’s strange is that he seems to have a lot of typos, he seems very defensive of Milo as a character despite him being a mean, grumpy old man. But within his comments he actually posted the coordinates to where he scattered Milo’s ashes, which ended up being at a present day Holiday Inn in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

AD: Classy.

TC: Classy. And beyond that, he also claims to have hosted “That Old Guy’s Image Host” over at LakeCityQuietPills.com. So now we have a direct connection, somebody who knows this character in person, knows this Milo guy, has been to his house, he’s seen his things, scattered his ashes and everything. And for some reason this post about Milo’s death hit the front page of Reddit, which made everybody start to go, “Who is this guy and why should we care? Why is this on the front page of reddit?”, right?

AD: Reddit sunk their teeth into it.

TC: Mhm.

AD: I mean to me this sounds like, I mean, you’ve watch The Office, this sounds like a Creed, uh, move here, where’s it’s just, uh, creating a new identity, you know what I mean—

TC: [laughs] Right…

AD: — where you can put, uh, you can dump all the, uh, [laughs] all the debt onto Milo —

TC: Right.

AD: — and [2 6] is born. Terrible, like, new name, but yeah, you know…

TC: It’s interesting, I’ve never seen a reddit user name, so short. I didn’t even know you could have a dash in your name. But this is, you know, ten, eleven years ago. Old men used to run the place!

AD: [laughs] I didn’t know— old man on reddit, doesn’t sound like a great guy, you know, he’s a part of a reddit forum that didn’t sound like a great place, uh, and then eventually got banned —

TC: Yeah…

AD: — the forum itself.

TC: He’s a grumpy dude, little bit of a perv, questionable motive in place here, and then somebody who’s associated with him who then got the attention of reddit, and of course, as usual when something mysterious shows up, reddit decides to dig a little deeper, and so they started to scour the internet with regards to this Milo and this [2 6]. And someone somewhere discovered that there was a, on a website called Fark that there was an account called [Angeltwo-six] that was registered on October 11th, 2001. So this goes back just about seven or eight years, and, uh, in the bio of that account it says, “Dispensing Lake City quiet pills to lousy bastards in need of permanent rest since 1968.” His email address is also linked up to the LakeCityQuietPills.com website, and on the Fark account that they had, they claimed to have military experience, just like [religionofpeace] aka Milo had.

AD: Was this also— was it also a “-6” in his username?

TC: It was spelled out, but there is a dash. So it’s [Angeltwo-six].

AD: Ooooooh… interesting.

TC: It’s very interesting. So, and it’s funny because people started to compare this reddit [2 6] in the year 2009 with this [Angeltwo-six] on this Fark website back in late 2001, and they started to realize that there’s a lot of spelling errors that they’re making, and, so they’re thinking that this might be the same person. Eight years apart, having very similar spelling and comma and quotation mark usage, it’s very intriguing. Which now, so now we know our players involved, let’s dive into LakeCityQuietPills, the website, and what redditors start to find out there.

AD: Tell me about this, because this sounds like a, a terrible place.

TC: I wanna know, what is, what does your gut check tell you about the name, LakeCityQuietPills, because —

AD: LakeCityQuietPills…[sigh] it really rides the line of like, you hear it, you go, “eh, I don’t care about it, it sounds boring” but then also the same time, if you give it like a second of a thought, you go, “this could be some, like, dark web shit”.

TC: Right, I mean, you have Lake City, which is a location in Iowa, you have quiet pills, which seems like a metaphor for something? We don’t really quite know yet, so let’s kind of table that for now. And then, we’re talking about lousy bastards in need of “permanent rest” is what this bio for this [Angeltwo-six] is talking about—

AD: OH MY GOODNESS, is this like a hit man web— oH MY GOODNESS!

TC: It might, ooooh! Who knows?

AD: Aaaaaaah!

TC: You’re talking about “permanent rest”, you know like, what else is permanent rest other than death, right?

AD: This is what my gut instinct is telling me right now.

TC: Oooooh. So let’s dive into the website. So if you go to the website now, it says that the IP address cannot be resolved, can’t be found, it’s nowhere to be seen. The website was hosted on  June 18th, 2008 originally, and when reddit users started to investigate, it just looked like an image host. It just looked like there was plenty of pornographic images, all over the website, plenty of users, but then someone decided to look a little closer. They looked at the html code of the website and shared their findings via a post on the [wtf] subreddit. And within the html code of the website seemed to be these hidden messages in the source code. A lot of them were very cryptic, there’s a lot of misspellings, there’s a lot of acronyms, and there’s what appears to be job listings. Now I’ll read out one of these verbatim, so you can kind of get a feel for what this is… is talking about.

AD: Oh my god, it’s like, it’s like a secret underground, uh, craigslist.

TC: YEAH!

AD: You can hire people for some crazy shit.

TC: Male looking for hitman…

AD: Okay, okay, okay, ooooooh!

TC: I like that.

AD: This is, you know, you know what makes this terrifying?

TC: What’s up?

AD: — is that, I, I still don’t know the whole entire story and I’m, I’m sorry to stop it in its tracks for a second but like—

TC: Stop, stop it right now—

AD: Uh, whether this all ends up being just a, “lol lol lol lol lol, it wasn’t that big of a deal” or something like that, you know this exists, right, like the way, what I’m speculating here [sighs] it probably exists somewhere out there, and that’s terrifying.

TC: Absolutely. Movies are based on reality, mercs, mercenaries, who knows —

AD: Yeah man. Yeah —

TC: — The Craigslist of hitmen, is upon us.

AD: Again…

TC: Who knows how many are out there, but —

AD: This podcast was built to terrify me.

TC: [laughs]

AD: Continue…

TC: So I’m gonna try to read this verbatim, like I said, it’s a little cryptic, but I think this first one reads a little easier.

AD: Mhm.

TC: It says, “IMMEDIATE NEED. 8-10 CHINESE/KOREAN. FLUENT KOREAN, DIALECT ACCENT. DETAILS AFTER CONTACT. 12 WEEK HALF-PAY SEQUESTER ON REFUSAL.” Now there are several instances of lines like this that seem to look for individuals who can speak Spanish, Italian, they talk about different languages, various lines indicate how long these gigs are gonna be… It says for example, “NO EURO W/W” which is another thing that people started to theorize on, as to what that could mean. So some of these notes are really interesting and they definitely feel like, job listings.

AD: Right, yeah.

TC: And, on the surface, as you pointed out, they feel very much like someone seeking military contractors, mercenary work of some sort. You know, there’s acronyms, the talk about security, they reference various languages and locations internationally, and what I found was very interesting was right below these listings is a sentence, “Shade is maintaining the calendar and access to the filedump. Angel has the job postings for Europe and Asia. We aren’t sending anyone to ME. No one. Don’t ask for listings.”

AD: ME… Middle East?

TC: It might be. That seems to be... the most likely instance here because, you know, they abbreviate Europe to EU, they have the US in here, and so contextually, you would think the Middle East.

AD: Yeah.

TC: So as people started to dig deeper into this website they found more messages, and there’s one dated on 17 July 2009, which as you might remember is the same day that [2 6] posted about [religionofpeace]’s death on reddit, and that message says, “I am sorry to tell you that Old Milo died yesterday. He went quiet and calm, not like we all figured. I gave that fat mangy cat of his to the little girl next door. No services or nothin’, you know Milo. I’m taking his ashes back to where his farm was. Close to it, anyway. There’s a mall where his place was. So hoist a few for the old man, remember what he said, ‘keep the faith with the man who’s got your back’.” So this is where things start to wrap together where the reddit posts are continuing to lock in this website.

AD: It… it just seems like Milo’s a part of this community, and he’s, I mean, I guess, known enough to… have a post about him, right? Like...

TC: Mhm.

AD: To have some kind of announcement…

TC: Mhm…

AD: Yeah, no, and then sounds like, is that [2 6] then? Because…

TC: It sounds very much like [2 6], and I struggled to read it simply because they’re so many typos and weird word usage in there, but those line up exactly with what we know about [2 6] from his reddit posts. And as you remember, previously I mentioned that he had posted the coordinates to where he scattered Milo’s ashes, and in here, he reveals that he wanted to take him to where Milo’s old farm was.

AD: Right. Now, Milo, this is, like a confirmed, real person, correct?

TC: We aren’t sure yet.

AD: Ohhhh, okay… okay.

TC: I mean,  the details here and the fact that [2 6] has a different speaking manner, and the fact that he’s got this… pretty robust story and it seems that this post here on an, an otherwise anonymous message board, because it’s in the backend of this website, it would seem to indicate that he has no reason to lie. He’s talking to what would otherwise be private members of this website, so it seems to substantiate that there are now two confirmed individuals that know each other, one having passed away, the other one kind of, who had known him, was now handling his affairs…

AD: Right…

TC: And the story of the farm, sort of lines up with the coordinates that he’d posted earlier, because when the ashes were scattered, he talked about wanting to take it to the farm here in this post but then on reddit, he said, “I had to give it CLOSE to where I wanted to put it” because the land where the mall is was developed in early 2000 and the coordinates that he gives unfortunately go to a hotel. A Holiday Inn. However, that Holiday Inn, that land wasn’t developed until late 2015, which is after all of this stuff happened.

AD: Right.

TC: So it is very realistic, like, things are starting to line up.

AD: Mhm.

TC: It seems like an honest story that’s corroborated through a couple different places here now. So now he’s talked about his passing away, and there are more posts that happen throughout the rest of the year. On Sept. 30th, 2009, several months later, there’s a new post that says, “For those who have asked, I have bricked Milo’s iron key, the same day. All is well.” And so for more background on that, it seems like he’s talking to individuals now. There seems to be, individuals that know about these messages, and for those you who might not be aware, an iron key is actually an encrypted USB storage device, so it could be a key to something, or it could be holding secure footage and by bricking it, he essentially destroyed the device to the point where it is no longer… useful. Like a hard drive if you brick it, it essentially just becomes a hunk of metal. You can’t remove the data off of it, and you —

AD: [groans] Who is this man and what has he done?!

TC: It’s getting weird man! And he’s —

AD: [groans]

TC: — And he’s talking, saying “all is well”, so “calm down, I got the iron key, I bricked it”.

AD: So he typed that publicly on reddit?

TC: So this, this is all still on the backend —

AD: — of the site.

TC: — of LakeCityQuietPills, yeah.

AD: Crazy! And, and this —

TC: It’s crazy.

AD: — And this was months later, so…

TC: Mhm.

AD: I mean if reddit was going to town on this site, that must have been posted on reddit for the public to see and I guess…

TC: Well not yet.

AD: Oh okay.

TC: So we’re kind of, like, this is gonna be a very non-linear story.

AD: Got it.

TC: It’s very convoluted. So I’m gonna do my best to describe what’s happening. So right now, these are future revelations that redditors will have had.

AD: Oh my god… okay, okay.

TC: So these are things that redditors in the future will have looked back upon and I’m kind of like expanding upon these posts and eventually these two timelines will collide.

AD: Okay.

TC: So as of right now, these are entirely anonymous at the time of posting. The only people that know about these posts as they’re being made are these mysterious users of the website. But, you know, hindsight is 20/20, we’re kind of going through the backlog of these messages until eventually something, uh, something kind of sketchy starts to happen.

AD: Sketchier than what’s been already like, developed here… [laughs]

TC: I thought we were digging deep fast, it’s about to get deeper.

AD: What the hell, dude! Okay, okay.

TC: So now we’re into November, the same year. Almost at the end of the very same year that we kicked off in. And there’s another post that talks about Milo, and this is very riddled with typos to them int where I almost have to interpret a little bit? Of what’s happening.

AD: Okay, mhm.

TC: But he’s saying, “heads up, Milo’s will was, it cleared probation,” or “it cleared probate. Surprise, he’s loaded! Email Shade if we sent you out in 2005-2009. Shade will have checks cut for you, the amount is by how many times, not the pay total, and the share is $3-4K.” So now they’re talking about sending people out into the world, on jobs, they’ll have checks cut for you, Shade’s back in play, the secretary who was messing around with the calendar and the filedump…

AD: Yeah I mean yeah, now there’s like money involved, and I mean, this is already super suspicious.

TC: Mhm, yeah.

AD: And like I feel like as soon as you get money involved… uh, it crosses a certain threshold with the government perhaps? I don’t know, I could be out of my, like, realm with this, but…

TC: It’s just like, it’s continuing to build this very obvious, alright, there’s a secret message board on this website, way beyond, way beyond the pervy images that we discussed in the very beginning, we’re now talking about money, hitmen, countries, language, like, it’s all starting to build this picture and now, we start to get into what really kicks everything out of control. And so now we’re into January of 2010. And they’re talking about having a birthday party for the old man on the 19th. “The party starts at 1500, as usual. Send your RSVP to Shade, FYI we’re booking a room for three days for anyone coming out of the area, and an overnight for locals. So come hoist your Dutch for Milo.” So they’re basically talking about, hey, this is a big hurrah for Milo, it’s happening in seven days from now, so this was posted on January 12th, the party’s supposed to be on the 19th… Seems like, all fun and games, right? A celebration for an old passed away friend, right?

AD: This is the time for the government, this would have been the time, you know what I mean? This whole time I’m listening to this story, the government was also, they had the wires tapped, or whatnot, and then this is how they get them! They have this like, celebration, uh, of a sex party going down, this orgy…

TC: [laughs]

AD: And like the FBI just breaks into this whatever Holiday Inn as they’re celebrating this old man.

TC: We’ve got this Holiday Inn orgy of hitmen, you know, doing all sorts of weird things, we’ve got pictures of old 79 year old Milo, scattered about the place…

AD: [crosstalk] — a ton of money because they’re just loaded now!

TC: Ah man!

AD: It just, this sounds insane!

TC: Yeah.

AD: But okay, I think it’s very interesting too because like, you would think that something like this, they wouldn’t want to… contact each other more than they need to, they wouldn’t… and they definitely wouldn’t want to see each other’s faces, etcetera.

TC: Right.

AC: But, I don’t know, they just have it, so it’s just like, “Hey! Just come down and hang out, it’s a birthday party!” No big deal!

TC: Right! You’d think like, “What’s the password? Are we wearing masks, and are we doing anything kinky?” Right?

AD: Yeah.

TC: So the day before, let’s just like, orgy aside…

AD: [laughs]

TC: The day before the event, it’s the eve of the birthday party, details, another message comes through. They’re planning the birthday party, and he says, “We’ve got 38 rooms in the Marriott on 46. Shade has the keycards for locals. You pick them up at the party.”

AD: THIRTY. EIGHT. ROOMS.

TC: Thirty-eight rooms.

AD: That is insane!

TC: That is a lot of people. Big orgy.

AD: Oh… man, that’s crazy. [mutters] The clean up job on that must be insane!

TC: [laughs] That’s why you gotta go to the hotel, man, who knows, you don’t have to look the cleaner in the eye.

AD: [laughs] Put the card down, you know, for incidentals.

TC: So here’s this. They say, “Give your travel name to the desk and that’s it. There’s no ID needed, since we’re covering the bill. Keep the room service under $500, and the phones are not secure.”

AD: Damn. First and foremost, room service under $500 for what, like, three days?

TC: What did they say, three days?

AD: Holy hell! They, they ballin’ out!

TC: Jeez, yeah.

AD: The profits are high with this organization, you know what I mean? Buy the stocks right now! They’re successful.

TC: [laughs] “Only buy 20 bottles of champagne, okay? Keep it a little bit less than that, don’t go too crazy...“

AD: That’s, that’s insane, and especially for 38 rooms, right? Like…

TC: Right.

AD: Like what is, what is, hold on, let me just calculate real quick, wait.

TC: This is a full, full blown convention.

AD: Thirty eight rooms times…

TC: Yeah.

AD: $500… $19,000!

TC: Oh just a drop in the bucket, for Milo! [laughs]

AD: Okay. [laughs] Inter— yeah. For Milo, loaded, dead, loaded.

TC: Alright.

AD: Okay. So weird dude...

TC: Keep notes from this message. They’re discussing how the phones aren’t secure. They’re discussing how they have a travel name. They’re discussing how they’re picking up keycards and stuff from Shade. Shade’s back in the business, being shady. I don’t know what’s going on here, but the next message, and I’ll gloss over this one for a little bit because we will come back to it, but the next message on the website is on February 2nd, 2010, and it says, “Party Bills. Here’s the final for the party.” It breaks down all of the expenses incurred across this so-called party. “Hotel Rooms - $48,341. Limo - $6,080.”  There’s a bus, a bar bill, food, dancers, miscellaneous tips, miscellaneous expenses, and a weird one, but it says, “Med. supplies” which I can only imagine says —

AD: Drugs.

TC: — medical supplies.

AD: Drugs.

TC: Drugs.

AD: Yeah…

TC: Yeah, it’s fair enough.

AD: Yeah…

TC: And it says, “Fat Tommy and Stu are okay too.” I don’t know who these guys are but we have Fat Tommy and Stu. Now they’re in play.

AD: [sighs] Okay, okay. Fat Tommy, and Stu…

TC: We have a total, if you wanna guess, what this full-blown orgy convention might have totaled, what do you think? You know the rooms are $48 grand…

AD: [groans]

TC: We have a limo, a bus, a bar, some dancers, some food…

AD: I’m, I’m gonna say, six figures, may— um, maybe like $110k?

TC: You’re very close.

AD: Oh!

TC: This is a $94,080 endeavor, and it ends with, “You all did Dutch Milo proud. Thank you.”

AD: And this is all, again, still posted —

TC: Mhm!

AD: — uh, through the secret forums of this website.

TC: Right! They’re all on the backend. And nowadays, here in 2020, this isn’t so much of a hacker tactic, you could right click on any webpage and say “inspect” and it will pull up the code for the website, where you can scroll to your heart’s content and see key words and other various… hooplah… doesn’t really —

AD: Yeah, I’ve, uh, accidentally done that fifty times…

TC and AD: [laughs]

AD: You know, “oh shit? What is this? Did I break my web browser?”

TC: [laughs] So yeah! This is where we’re at. We’ve got all these messages, uh, you know, we end with what the bill is, and this is where the redditors start to come into play. This is where the redditors collide with this mystery of [religionofpeace] hitting the front page, they dig into his history, they notice this website being posted a lot, and that’s where we get all this information from. These redditors investigated this website, started to look at the code, and they noticed that there were these hidden messages. And they started sharing it across reddit, you know, the hive mind of reddit trying to figure out what the hell is going on here —

AD: Yeah.

TC: — what are these cryptic messages, is this truly a party or is there something else going on… Because there’s what appears to be mercenary work listings right next to the celebration of an old friend. So while trying to understand all of this it became very public very quickly, and upon making it public, they noticed that the code, it was just English, right, that this English then became encrypted ciphers.

AD: Ohhhhh… yep. ‘Cause they… yeah, they knew everyone was catching on.

TD: Yeah. Someone noticed that they were caught, and so then, of course, reddit’s like, alright, simple enough, let’s get to work on deciphering this. Boom, encrypted again.

AD: [gasp]

TD: So this kind of became like a back and forth.

AD: OOOOOOH, what a challenge!

TD: But then the website took the ultimate reply and went offline.

AD: Yeah.

TD: The website has been offline ever since, and so these screenshots that I’m reading from are about 11 years old at this point, because that’s all we had and the website’s down. And people have started to analyze some of the acronyms that were going into play. You know, I think one of the most prevalent ones was in every listing, it essentially said, “NO EU W/W” and I think the most prominent definition for what that acronym could say is, “wants/warrants” or “wet/work”. Which would basically mean, “wet/work” being murder —

AD: Yeah…

TC: — in the line of a mercenary.

AD: Yep.

TC: Um, but what makes more sense to me in context would be, “wants or warrants”. You know, “no european wants or warrants”. Essentially if we’re going to do a job in Europe, I don’t want you landing and immediately being apprehended or having the police looking out for your likeness. And then there’s other things, you know, we kind of talked about what ME could be and a lot of people thought that that could mean the Middle East and, uh, throughout there’s a bunch of other acronyms that could be related back to military, based on their context. There’s “nonconUS” which is all one word, which simply could be, “non-continental US”... you have “SEC” which could be “security”, you have the Fed listed in there which, obviously is the federal government, and a bunch of other acronyms, all harkening to the UK Navy or the US Navy. It’s very interesting. So the website’s taken down, and this is essentially the end of the road. The case… goes cold at this point. Or that’s what we think.

AD: Oh thank GOD, I was about to say if you left me like this Trevor, my goodness [laughs] It would be the biggest blue ball mystery I’ve ever had in YEARS!

TC: [laughs] And that’s our show!

AD: [laughs] And that’s it! Just, the site’s down! You know what, like, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy that like, imagine like being in that moment, right? Like, I’m not one to be a, you know, I’m not one that’s like in the reddit community or anything like that, I’m not posting on the forums, I used to do things like that, just no time for it nowadays.

TC: Mhm.

AD: But just imagine being in the thick of it right?

TC: Right.

AD: Where it’s just uncovering these things with other people and then all of a sudden… it turns into like this cipher and then you go, “Oh my goodness, like, it’s reacting to us, and, and let’s try and crack this now.”

TC: Yeah.

AD: And I’m assuming, when the cipher changed, uh, and they were trying, I think you said they cracked it, right?

TC: Well they were at least working on cracking it, yeah.

AD: Yeah, they were working on cracking it, then it changed again, then the site went down… I’m assuming it was a, like an info dump of like, “this is where we’re migrating to now, we’ve been exposed here” —

TC: Right.

AD: “So we’ll continue work elsewhere.”

TC: Right.

AD: — is my assumption of what happened, but… thank goodness there’s still more to this story.

TC: And what’s really fascinating to me, is that I mean the hivemind of reddit and other websites like it, it’s just, insurmountable. There’s so many people going after this mystery and I can’t imagine, like you’re saying all these people are hungry for conspiracy or mystery, you’re a young person on the internet, you stumble across something that is in the zeitgeist. You’re like “What is this [religionofpeace] thing?” And it actually has, like, you’re grabbing traction, you’re developing a story. You find this website, you find these hidden messages, just like you’re saying… What was really blowing me away, was that a couple of very astute users started to look at the dates of these posts and tried to line things up. And that’s where we come to January 19th, 2010, the same day that we’re talking about Milo’s birthday party? The same convention of orgies or whatever?

AD: Mhm.

TC: — is the same day that a very complex assassination took place at a hotel in Dubai. And that was the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh. And I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, but for those who don’t know who that is, Al-Mabhouh co-founded the military wing of Hamas, and Hamas was a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist militant organization. It’s classified as a terrorist organization among many countries, and many continents, such as Israel, the United States, Europe, Japan, United Kingdom, and Australia. And, looking into this assassination, he could be seen to be traveling alone. His movement was tracked on various security cameras, and through the cameras we can see that his path crossed with many individuals, leading us to have at least twenty-nine suspects on this case, involved with his assassination. Twenty-six of whom, had passports that were either forged or stolen from various European countries.

AD: [GASP]

TC: And essentially, what these cameras show, is that these suspects waited for Al-Mabhouh to leave his room, go about his business in Dubai, whatever that might be, they gained access to his room, and then they waited for his return to execute the hit. And what’s fascinating here is that the date and the time of both this assassination and Milo’s supposed birthday party, line up exactly.

AD: GAAAAAH.

TC: Even further, and we’re still going…

AD: Whaaaaat?

TC: It turns out that several of the suspects were given credit cards that were traced back to an area known as Storm Lake, Ohio, which is a fifteen minute drive, one county over, from Lake City, which is the namesake for the website LakeCityQuietPills. It’s nuts. So there’s another interesting aspect here that lends some more credence to the connection between this assassination and LakeCityQuietPills. So, if you remember back when we discussed [Angeltwo-six]’s bio, on the Fark website —

AD: Yep.

TC: — the main components were Lake City, quiet pills, and “permanent rest”. Well, many people theorized that these “quiet pills” refer to bullets, specifically, bullets manufactured at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, which is the largest producer of small-arms ammunition in the United States, or at least for the United States Armed Forces.

AD: Ooooooh!

TC: And so, once again, if permanent rest refers to death...

AD: [groans] Yeah…

TC: It’s like, okay, so we’re talking about bullets, we’re talking about permanent rest for lousy bastards, hitman sort of situation… it really starts to help lend credence to the combination of these two events.

AD: Yeah. It starts really leaning into it, and it’s just like, oh man, it’s one of those things where it’s just like, is everything starting to add up because we’re looking for stuff, you know?

TC: Right.

AD: Like a little piece there, a little piece here, just looking for anything that we could tie into this narrative that we’re piecing together? But, oooooh, I don’t know man, my mind is down the rabbit hole at this point.

TC: Yeah, it’s like, can you, are we reading too far into it, are we lining up only a few nuggets of information, and then are we reading really far between the lines? It’s really hard to say on this one. And so a little more about this ammunition plant, it’s actually in Missouri, not necessarily the original destination that we were all talking about, which is a little bit north in Lake City, Iowa. So I’m not sure if there’s a direct connection there, but they are close by state-wise, so…

AD: Yeah.

TC: But there is a little disconnect, when it comes to that piece.

AD: Oh, okay, so, oh my goodness, alright, alright, so there’s this whole get-together, ahhhh, you know, we’re over here joking, “ha ha ha ha ha, it’s a secret orgy”, and then there’s this assassination that happens elsewhere.

TC: Yeah. In a hotel…

AD: In a hotel, and I go “ehhhhhhh, you know, timing”, but then the number of people he comes across, the fake passports, and then the fake credit cards that tie to Iowa, it’s like, that’s hard to dispute, man.

TC: It’s very unfortunate timing if they were in fact simply throwing a very expensive birthday party.

AD: [laughs]

TC: And upon looking a little closer, some of these credit cards were traced back to being from a company called Payoneer which is a specific type of pre-paid credit card. And the CEO of that company, named Yuval Tal, was rumored to have direct ties to Israeli intelligence. And that plays right into the relationship that we have kind of started to see between Al-Mabhouh and Hamas, and Israel, having labeled them as a terrorist group. Some background, Al-Mabhouh actually claims credit for several attacks on Israeli soldiers in the past leading up to this point. Now we have a clear motive, right, you know this CEO could have supplied these pre-paid credit cards to these mercenaries in order to fund their endeavor to, to make this happen. But we don’t know. That’s… essentially as far as this goes, you know. There’s eleven suspects that have their photos public right now, released by Interpol, but as of right now, there’s no one convicted, and in February 2010, the chief of Dubai police actually stated publicly that this assassination was most likely ordered by Mossad, which is Israel’s intelligence force, and it was discovered that Israel had forged British, Australian and Irish passports, which correlates back to several of the suspects having forged or fraudulent passports, and so now there’s so much connected tissue bringing in this website, with this date... [sigh] It’s, it’s, it’s just blowing my mind how reddit essentially, potentially, stumbled backwards into, like, by looking at one person in particular they ended up stumbling into his website, which stumbled into posts, which stumbled into the planning of this potential assassination. It gets very wild.

AD: Yeah. I mean, to me this sounds like this was… right, kind of like this mercenary group on, on a backend, kind of like, website, and then from there they did whatever essentially they wanted to do, whether it would be killings, or kidnapping, or selling of uh, people, or whatnot, and uh, you know, who’s to say, but good or bad, they were hired to do this one thing, and that’s what went down.

TC: Mhm. And that brings us back to that February 2nd post, you know, going back into a linear timeline, where this is happening in real time, this assassination and birthday party, whether they’re the same or not, happened on January 19th, 2010. Several days later that’s when they go back to their website and they post those party bills, and say, “You did Milo proud. Thank you.” And that’s once again where we hear about new players involved, like Fat Tommy and Stu, maybe we get a little more understanding on what medical supplies could mean? Considering the post says they are okay?

AD: Right.

TC: Like something could have happened, there could have been a scuffle, you know maybe they were the ones that did the deed and got a little banged up from it, and once again in real time, this is the point that the website became discovered, encrypted, and then went down. And so this is where the trail ends, with no more details left to be uncovered, at least at this point and time.

AD: Right. I mean going back to Milo for a second, he was, you know, in the military, he had, what, experience? With like coding and stuff?

TC: We were pretty certain that he had a background in programming of some sort based on some of his post history, there’s comments, a lot of comments actually, in the programming subreddit, instances where he pulls code from the backend of a website to highlight certain keywords, just as part of the discussion. So it’s, we’re pretty certain that he has a rudimentary understanding, yeah.

AD: So I mean yeah, I mean, again to me this sounds like this is someone that was in the military, you know, and then, uh [laughs] grew, uh, grew to be older, and, and with his connections and whatnot, you know, eventually one day decided to, to do something, with his, uh, skills and uh… ability? If that’s how you want to put it, and uh…

TC: Yeah.

AD: — you know, connected with other people, because, I mean at that point he probably had a handful of different connections, right?

TC: Mhm.

AD: And formed this thing, yeah I know, that’s, that’s, pretty wild. Did they interview any of the suspects?

TC: I don’t have any of that information. I don’t know much about what the suspects have to say on the situation, but that would be interesting if that is out there. Christian, do we know if there’s anything from the suspects at this point?

CY: They had, they’d interviewed two suspects I believe in India, um, but they were only suspected of I think aiding? I don’t think they were, they had direct ties to the actual assassination. And from what I remember, I think those two suspects kind of didn’t really say anything.

TC: Yeah, so I guess, you know, a couple of the suspects as Christian mentioned — He’s, by the way, one of our producers on the show who does a lot of the legwork, he develops the outline and the timeline for a lot of these mysteries that we’re gonna cover, so, you’ll hear from him every now and then as we have questions that we can’t answer, but yeah, I guess we’ve got a couple of suspects in India that were interviewed, but no extra information came out of them. Which then leads us kind of to just the theories. And as always you’ve got the main two theories that we’re probably always going to have: people think that this is just an alternate reality game, like an ARG; or that it’s simply a hoax. However, in this certain instance, it’s pretty doubtful that this is a hoax, because this is a very long play. If you remember, [Angeltwo-six] was an account made on Fark, a separate website, in 2001, so why would they have any reason to make another account, almost eight years later, with the very same kind of way of speaking, the same typos, the same… it’s a very long play to have.

AD: Man, ain’t nobody got that much patience, you know what I’m sayin’?

TC: That’s true.

AD: Like, that’s insane.

TC: That’s, that’s, that’s super true. Like no one’s got the patience for a hoax like that, and I think the real giveaway for that not being a hoax is as soon as this hit reddit, boom, encrypted, right?

AD: Yeah. I don’t know, I just feel like if it was a hoax, you would want to play around, right? Because if it’s a hoax that you’re trying to like, piece and put together, I would assume you want kind of like, eyes, right? Or “fame” behind it.

TC: Mhm.

AD: And so, if reddit was to discover it, I would guess that you’d want to play around with it a little more.

TC: Right.

AD: As opposed to kind of just like, locking it down right away and go “moving on”, right? Because that’s just such a long play to just go, “okay bye!”

TC: Right! And it, it’s been eleven years, right?

AD: Yeah.

TC: Like, this podcast coming out in July 2020, this story kind of going quiet or kind of kicking off in July, where that’s where [religionofpeace] passed away unfortunately, and all that. But uh, for it to go so cold for so long is usually indicative of it not being a hoax or having some sort of other motivations like you’re saying. And so that leaves us with the pretty obvious, as we were discussing, is this is military contractor message board or some sort of contract assassin hiring board, something like that, considering it could be just coincidence that this assassination happened, but based on the language, some of the acronyms they were using, and the context of what appeared to be job listings, ehhhhh, it definitely feels like some international intrigue happening here.

AD: Right? Because you have those listings that you’ve, that have been there for a long time, way before this whole assassination thing happened, and then there was also on the backend of the site, this whole thing about the party that happened before the assassination.

TC: Right.

AD: So it’s not like all these things were pieced together after that, you know?

TC: Mhm.

AD: Again, could be… a huge coincidence, but my god, that’s…

TC: The way it lines up is just… it’s very interesting. And the fact that they have a lot of suspects but can’t pin it down… just makes it all the more intriguing, you know?

AD: Yeah. It all started because this old reddit creepy guy —

TC: [laughs]

AD: — was posting on the forums…

TC: His, his account is still perfect accessible if you wanted to look it up and see what he got up to, it was —

AD: No, no—

TC: —very interesting how he, there were so many posts where he just goes off the handle about spam, and insulting people, as if they’re spambots. “Spam, this is spam, die spam, stoooop”. Like, it’s just, exacerbated old man yelling at spambots.

AD: Yeah���

TC: Which is really interesting to me.

AD: The, uh, cyber equivalent of “get off my lawn”.

TC: Pretty much. Yeah. There’s a couple other theories that, that I think are interesting, where they discuss [2 6] and Milo simply just being titles, not necessarily individuals but a role. Because if you take a look at [2 6] it has some context in both the US Navy and also the UK, the British Navy.

AD: Right.

TC: In the US, it’s kind of slang for, “It’s going to take two surgeons six hours to remove ten inches of boot from your ass,” which is essentially just a motivator, like pick up your own weight, let’s go, let’s get going, right? 2-6. And in the British Navy, there’s a phrase called 2-6 Heave, which is simply a rallying cry to coordinate sailors who are on a navy vessel. Someone would cry 2-6, the team would then say “heave” all collectively while they pull at the same time. Just, coordinating, essentially, a large navy team. And I think that that’s very interesting considering [Angeltwo-six] seemed to be the coordinator on this website, whereas the slang 2-6 in the British version is coordinating a team on a vessel. And then Milo seems to, it possibly stands for “Military Intelligence Liaison Officer”. Now it’s not necessarily what it’s always called, usually like, military liaison officer, or something of that nature, but if they wanted to turn MLO or anything like that into a name, Milo’s the closest. And, uh, that type of title has existed for a while, also in the United Kingdom. So this title of military intelligence liaison officer kind of refers to a group or an individual who is a trained intelligence officer that has a broad background, that could be deployed in various missions and various needs across the globe, whether it be a potential peacekeeping operation or anything like that. And so this role clearly fits Milo, he seems to be the guy who’s a head of the website, he’s got all this, over 40 years of military experience. He actually, uh, is known for having gotten [2 6] into this job, because [2 6] has admitted that coming out of the military himself, that Milo was there, offering him a position, and once again [2 6] seems to be this coordinator position for the roles, and then we have these other people that we don’t really know about in any other way, like Shade, who seems to also be a coordinator of the money, the calendar, and whatever this filedump is. And that leaves us with the last theory, which seems to have the most connected tissue but the least resolve, which is the assassination, how all this came down, all the timelines lined up, how the credit cards coming back to Storm Lake via this company called MetaBank, we have Payoneer, who has Israeli connections potentially, which then has connections with Al-Mabhouh… it’s very interesting and my gut wants to say that this assassination is in place but I think it relies on a, probably too thin of a solution which is, too thin of evidence, which is simply having the same date. And I think Christian has some more information regarding the suspects that were interviewed…

CY: Soooo I was a little wrong. There were two initial suspects, two Palestinians named, I’m gonna butcher these names, Ahmad Hasnin, an intelligence operative of the Palestinian authority, and Anwar… Shekhaiber? I have no idea how to say that, um, but they were arrested in Jordan and then sent to Dubai, and they were suspected accomplices, um. People thought that, the, the primary suspicion was that they were giving logical assistance, um, such as providing car rentals and hotel bookings. But —

TC: Gotcha!

CY: — both of them, from what I’m reading, didn’t really say much when they were interrogated? And then —

AD: ‘Course not!

CY: — there was another suspect on June 4th, so about… five months after the assassination, there was a man arrested in, uh, Warsaw Airport with a fake passport with the name “Uri Brodsky” who’s wanted by German authorities, and [they] found out that Brodsky’s real name is Alexander Verin and he was suspected of illegally obtaining a German passport for another person, that name’s Michael Bodenheimer, who is a suspect in the assassination.

TC: Whoa!

CY: And then last but not least, there was a, uh, another suspect. Dubai’s police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim (once again, apologizes for butchering the names), he claimed that on October 11th, 2010, he claimed that a western country had arrested a top suspect of the assassination, about two months prior, but did not give any further details beyond that, so people are kinda… unsure about whether or not anything like that actually happened.

TC: Aw man, how deep does, does this web go —

AD: [laughs] Around and around and around we go...

TC: — on this particular… I knew I wanted to start this show off with a bang, but, this is… just deep and intricate, people knowing people knowing companies knowing countries? For example, you know how I talked about Yuval Tal, he was the CEO of Payoneer, the pre-paid credit card company, you know, they were owned by three venture capital firms, which also all had ties to Israel, and so it’s very much like, money laundering, except with blame, like.  This guy over here is forging passports for that individual to then hand those off to so-and-so elsewhere, and that person would go over and he might do this, and then you have somebody in India whose, or was it Israel, Christian?

CY: There were the two Palestinians —

TC: Okay —

CY: —- who were arrested in Jordan and then sent to Dubai and then there was the man who was arrested in Warsaw —

TC: Warsaw…

CY: — and he was wanted by German authorities.

TC: Gotcha.

CY: We’ve got, Palestine, Jordan, Dubai, Germany, and Poland. And then an unnamed western country.

TC: So many, like, six degrees from the, the, from the event. I’ll give you the information and the intelligence, you provide that to so-and-so — It must be that this huge network, this huge network —

AD: Hundred percent. Hundred percent.

TC: — they had thirty-eight rooms, right?

AD: Hundred percent.

TC: Man. That’s interesting. That’s really interesting. And I wonder if this kind of thing is known about, which is why it never resolved. You think maybe some of the countries in play kind of green-lit this as some sort of covert operation to stay entirely off the books, so that way country tensions wouldn’t rise ‘cause they could be like, “well, we didn’t do it, it was just a group of mercenaries from who-knows-where!”

AD: Yeah. I wouldn’t be surprised that there’s like different countries involved and they’re like, “hey, so, you know we helped coordinate this”, or they find, you know, they found out that someone did this, and they went, “well you’re kind of doing us a favor so, it’s no —“ You know...

TC: Mhm.

AD: Yeah, sure, it was like, an operation that had happened on our grounds that we didn’t greenlight but, it’s a bad person, you kinda just did us a solid one. [groans] It’s crazy, dude. This is —

TC: It’s nuts.

AD: — this is wild.

TC: You just never know what you’re gonna find on the internet and really, that’s what this whole podcast is about! You know, obviously we’re going to cover true crime, supernatural, I want to get into some scary stories down the way, but the bread and butter here I think, for unsolved mysteries, is on the internet. It’s the new frontier for mysteries.

AD: I think it’s a solid point, you know, and uh, just, uh, make sure to put it out there, we’re not investigative journalists, we’re not going to crack the case or anything like that…

TC: Oh no no no —

AD: But we definitely will outline everything there is to know, all the theories involved, and make it so it’s super easy to follow, so that way you can kind of like, dive in with us and get immersed with all of this.

TC: Yeah, for sure! And uh, you know, and that’s it! That’s the end of the first episode, starting out with a banger, lot of twists and turns… You know, we don’t know what’s going on here, maybe they’re still in play, these LakeCityQuietPill boys…

AD: —‘s weird. [laughs]

TC: It was weird. It was very weird.

AD: They’re all gonna be weird.

TC: It was very weird to keep it straight mentally as I was like, studying this with Christian, is, it’s just a lot going on, but if you guys like the show, feel free to let people know, rate it 5 stars or whatever you listen to podcasts, maybe it’s a thumbs up, and uh, we would really appreciate it, but word of mouth? That’s the best way to get podcasts out there. And if you want to follow us on twitter (@redwebpod), we’re gonna upload images and other ancillary content that will support each episode, so screenshots of websites we’re referring to, maybe small clippets, if there are security cam footage pieces like that… anything that might help build out the visual of what we’re describing here and give you a better idea of the mystery involved. But otherwise, we will see you guys next Monday for another mystery!

[outro music plays]

#red web podcast #achievement hunter #trevor collins #alfredo diaz #true crime #internet mystery #mystery #podcast #conspiracy #lake city quiet pills

[thirteen-beaxhes]

‘Everything is Red” - Chapter 1: Oceanside Motel

Summary:

“Cyrus Goodman and TJ Kippen weren’t desperate by any means, they just happened to find comfort in old, run-down motels where people wouldn’t dare come looking for them. There was no particular reason for this - or so they would tell you. Faded motels just had a certain charm about them, Cyrus would say with one of his naturally bright smiles.”

~

The fall of 2006 finds TJ and Cyrus on the run from the law, seeking the highs associated with risk wherever they can and maybe even learning a thing or two about love and the inevitability of fate.

Warnings for this chapter:

~Depictions of violence, death and crime (not graphic)

~Gun usage

ALL LINKS ( AO3+PROLOGUE) IN THE REBLOG

~~~~~~

As the night drew on slowly, the dark blue sky gradually fading into a pitch black, Cyrus tried his best to focus his attention on the stars, taking solace in their beauty. It's something he had always done when he felt overwhelmed, and that moment was no different. He looked out of the small car window, counting the stars, as if that would ease his state of mind. He had opened the window, the cold night wind against his face both comforting and centring him. If he kept his eyes focused on the sky outside, he could make himself forget everything that had just happened. God knew he needed it at that moment.

“Cyrus, babe. Are you awake?” TJ asked, taking the opportunity of an empty road ahead to look at the other man.

Cyrus gave no indication of having heard him, keeping his arms crossed and eyes trained outside. He shut his eyes forcibly, attempting to block out TJ’s voice. He was the one person Cyrus did not want to interact with at the moment.

TJ saw Cyrus’ reaction and sighed, running his hand through his hair in exhaustion. He turned back towards the road with a sigh. With one hand on the steering wheel, he pulled out the bag of chips they had got from the vending machine at Palace Motel and held it out to Cyrus.

“Come on, at least eat something.”

Still silence. TJ took a deep breath, trying to keep a cool head and said, “Please just take it. I have another packet for myself. We should be reaching in another hour or two, okay?”

Without saying a word, Cyrus reached over and took the chip packet, cringing a bit at the noise it made on opening. With all the panic and adrenaline, he hadn't realised how hungry he actually was. That is, until, the saltiness of the chips melting in his mouth made him have to hold back a sigh of happiness. While he was still absolutely furious with TJ, he appreciated the thought.

TJ just looked at Cyrus, his heart twisting a bit, knowing that he had really screwed up. Cyrus really was mad at him - for very good reason. Back in the motel, TJ hadn't thought about what he was doing until he had done it, until the body had hit the floor. But he steadied his breathing and tried to focus on the road ahead, reassuring himself that he had to do it. He was just protecting them. He didn't have much of a choice. And Cyrus knew that.

He did, right?

*

For its promising name, you would expect Oceanside Motel to have a view of the sea, maybe even access to a beach. At the very least, you’d expect it to actually be beside an ocean. However, the motel to which TJ and Cyrus arrived was far from that image. The waterbody next to the motel was more like a dirty pond with stagnant, dead water. Any life form would have quit it in days. But it would have to do. It was just a temporary stop, a refuge for the night. It would be just another place the next morning.

“What’s our story this time? College students doing a road trip? Backpacking friends? A travelling couple?” asked TJ as the car pulled to a stop before the motel.

“Surprise me. It’s something you’re good at,” Cyrus muttered angrily, not even trying to conceal his feelings.

As Cyrus pulled out one of their many IDs from the bag, TJ grabbed his arm, forcing Cyrus to look at him properly for the first time since they shook off the cops.

“We’re gonna have to act as if we can actually stand each other. Do you think you can do that?” TJ asked, his voice gentle, but hints of annoyance were starting to show.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Cyrus said flashing a fake smile at TJ as he pulled his arm away. “I’m a great actor.” With that, Cyrus got out of the car, leaving behind TJ who took a deep breath, resting his head on the back of the car seat in growing frustration. He ran his hand through his hair in an effort to compose himself, before opening the car door and catching up with Cyrus, putting his arm around his shoulder.

They walked up to the main desk, where a middle-aged woman smiled warmly at them and checked them in. All the while they spoke, TJ had his arm around Cyrus’ shoulders, just smiling as Cyrus did all the talking.

“What brings you lovely men to Oceanside Motel so late in the night?” she asked with no suspicion in her voice, just natural curiosity.

“Oh, it’s a funny story, actually. We were supposed to travel further, but someone here decided that burgers and fries would be a good idea to spend 2 hours on,” Cyrus said with a laugh, bumping TJ in the chest.

The woman laughed along, turning back to reach for the keys to their room. “Well, I do hope you enjoy your stay here. It isn’t much, but I try my best.”

“Well, with someone as amazing as you, I’m sure we’re in good hands,” Cyrus said, winking at the woman as he took the keys from her.

“Thank you,” Cyrus and TJ said as they left the blushing woman to head to their room, their smiles and happy demeanour fading to exhaustion and frustration with each step.

They opened the door to their room, Cyrus dumping his bag on the counter as he collapsed onto the chair near the television. TJ sat on the bed, staring at Cyrus, expecting him to say something. But Cyrus had no intentions of initiating a conversation.

Eventually, he groaned and, head in his hands, TJ said, “Cyrus. You can't do this forever.”

“What are you talking about?” Cyrus replied, his voice curt.

“What is it? Why are you acting like this?”

“Oh, really? Like you don't know why I'm angry right now.”

TJ sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Look, I know what I did was rash and impulsive.”

“We could have gotten away without having to kill him!”

“How do you know that?” TJ said while standing up, his voice growing louder and louder. “He saw us, yeah? What if he described us to the cops?”

“Well, they very nearly got us anyway,” Cyrus said, his voice growing in volume too. He, too, got up and starting moving towards TJ.

“I had to do it. You know I had to.”

“No, you didn't. But of course, you did it anyway, because you’re impulsive and you don't think anything through. In fact, if you ever did, I’m pretty sure it’d kill you.”

“I did it for us, okay? Do you think I wanted to kill him? But I had to do it. I was protecting us!” TJ yelled back, turning away from Cyrus, hand on his forehead.

Cyrus scoffed at that, taking another step towards TJ. “Protecting us?”

TJ’s head lifted, turning to Cyrus, shocked into silence by Cyrus’ tone. Cyrus took another step towards him, his voice quiet, his eyes narrowed.

“Like you did when we were 17?”

*

6 years ago

“Honestly, at this point, you should get a medal for somehow managing to sneak out of the house every night,” Cyrus whispered, laughing quietly as TJ jumped out of his window to the ground.

“Well, years of practice manage to make it easier,” TJ whispered back, jogging up to Cyrus and pulling him in for a quick kiss. With only streetlights illuminating their surroundings, Cyrus’ face was lit by a soft glow, his smile warming TJ’s heart. A very welcome warmth that TJ could very much use more of.

“Shall we?” TJ asked, holding out his elbow to Cyrus.

“We shall,” Cyrus replied, grabbing onto it, leaning in first to give TJ a kiss on the cheek.

As they walked down the silent streets, the cold night air on their faces felt like a comfort, a reprieve from their lives. Their hands were entwined as they talked about nothing in particular. After a while, Cyrus looked up at TJ, curious.

“How’s Amber doing? Heard she was having a rough time after the thing with her and Andi,” Cyrus asked, stopping.

“She’s holding up as well as you’d expect,” TJ replied, looking down as he spoke. He could still hear Amber’s quiet, muffled sobs as he had crawled out of the window to meet Cyrus. He had even gone to her room to check on her, saying he could tell Cyrus to come the next day, but Amber wouldn’t have any of it.

“Go out there and meet your boyfriend, you idiot,” Amber had whispered in a broken voice. “Besides, I should probably get it together and sleep. Wouldn’t want dad hearing me now, would I?” she said with a hollow laugh and a quiet sniffle as she pushed TJ out of her room.

“Shit,” Cyrus whispered. “That sucks.”

“Yeah,” TJ said with a sigh. “How’s Andi?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t let me or Buffy in. Pretty sure she’s crafting herself to death.”

“God.”

“Yeah.”

They walked in silence for a while, the conversation having hit a low. Cyrus looked ahead, spotting a 7/11 ahead of them. He grabbed TJ’s hand tighter, his face breaking out in a big smile as he pulled him forward.

“Cy, baby,” TJ said, laughing at his sudden enthusiasm. “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” Cyrus whined, looking back at TJ as he dragged him along. “I’m in the mood for slushies.”

“And where do you have the money for it?”

Cyrus just reached into his pocket pulling out a wallet, a smirk on his face. TJ’s face, however, fell as concern came over his eyes.

“Cyrus, where did you..?”

“I’ve been saving up,” Cyrus cut in, reassuring TJ. “And maybe, I did take some from my mum.”

“Cyrus!”

“What? It isn’t so much that she’d notice,” Cyrus defended. “Not that she notices anything I do,” he added in a low mutter, almost inaudible to TJ.

TJ rolled his eyes, still unconvinced. Cyrus sighed, wrapping his arms around TJ’s neck.

“Come on. Let’s just not think about our shitty home lives and let me just enjoy a slushy and some time with my boyfriend,” he said, leaning in to give TJ a quick peck on the lips.

TJ eventually smiled, leaning in for another kiss, before grabbing Cyrus’ hand and walking into the 7/11.

10 minutes later, armed with two slushies, Cyrus and TJ walked out of the store, laughing as they continued down the street, away from the busier part of their neighbourhood. As they strolled down the street, TJ pulled Cyrus back by the hand, pulling him in for a kiss under the streetlights. Cyrus smiled into it, sighing contentedly as he wrapped his arms around TJ’s neck. Everything was perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

“Well, well, well. Isn’t this touching?”

The voice cut through the dimly lit street, causing the two to pull away from each other. Cyrus felt his heart drop into a pit in his stomach, extremely familiar with the voice that had just spoken. TJ looked at Cyrus in concern, turning to face the direction where the voice had come from.

“Who’s there? Who is it?” TJ asked, stepping forward.

“Ouch, Cyrus. Not even a mention? I’m hurt. Especially after everything we’d been through,” the voice said, coming closer. A boy roughly TJ’s height walked into the light. He had dark hair and brown eyes, a smirk on his face. And in his hand was a pistol.

“What do you want, Lester?” Cyrus said, trying to seem strong, but his voice was shaky and small. He kept his eyesight down, desperately trying to avoid looking the other boy in the eyes.

“Oh, nothing,” Lester said, walking closer to the pair, twirling the pistol in his hand. TJ looked down at Cyrus, shocked to see him so tense and almost frightened. He reached out to hold Cyrus’ hand, but Cyrus pushed it away, stepping behind TJ. TJ was all the more concerned, but now, looking back and forth between Cyrus’ terrified eyes and Lester’s sly and cunning smirk, he felt something else.

Rage. Burning rage.

“What do you want with us?” TJ asked, his voice tight as he tried to control his boiling anger, trying to keep a calm appearance for Cyrus’ sake.

Lester laughed mockingly, the sound grating against TJ’s ears like nails on a chalkboard. He tried to keep his breathing even, stepping in front of Cyrus towards Lester.

“I just wanted to see Cyrus,” Lester said, his eyes gleaming. “Is that so wrong?” he asked, pouting.

“What if I don’t want to see you?” Cyrus asked, his voice still shaky as he looked up at Lester for the first time, immediately regretting that decision when he saw the satisfied look on his face.

“Now, you know that isn’t true Cy,” Lester said, laughing. “Cuz if it was, you two would have walked away from me by now.”

Cyrus scoffed weakly. Making a decision, he grabbed TJ’s hand and said, “You’re right. That’s what we’re gonna do. Come on, TJ,” he said, pulling TJ in the opposite direction.

However, as soon as they turned to walk away, they heard the unmistakable cocking of a gun and froze. Slowly, TJ turned around, followed by Cyrus to see that Lester was holding up the pistol. And his aim was straight at TJ’s head.

“I wouldn’t move if I were you,” Lester sneered, his grip tightening on the trigger.

TJ was shocked into immobility, staring right into the barrel. Cyrus, however, was outraged.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Lester? What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Oh Cyrus,” Lester laughed bitterly. “I’ve missed you. You know, when we were together, I did nothing but love you. And you just left me like trash.”

“Whatever it was, that wasn’t love,” Cyrus said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “You were horrible to me.”

Lester sighed, pointing forward with the pistol. “You know, that was always your problem. Seeing the worst in everything I did. I was the bad guy. When all I wanted was for you to be mine, what was best for you. But you left me, after everything I did for you. And all for him,” Lester said, so close he pushed the barrel of the gun into TJ’s forehead. Cyrus held his breath, trying to be brave, but his heart was beating erratically at the uncertainty of the situation.

Lester laughed at Cyrus’ terrified expression. “Can’t believe you’re still so weak. Oh well, this ought to toughen you up,” he said, holding the gun up to TJ’s head much to Cyrus’ dismay. Lester took one last look at Cyrus.

“Cuz you see, Cyrus? I’m the only person who can ever truly get into your head.”

That sentence hit Cyrus hard as tears stood still in his eyes. Because it was true. Even after all those months, after everything that had happened, Lester still had Cyrus’ mind and heart in his hand, controlling it as he saw fit, still making Cyrus doubt everything. So he just closed his eyes, flinching away from the inevitable as he heard the ‘click’ of the gun. He was prepared for what was going to happen, for Lester to scare them and walk away, leaving their relationship in pieces around him.

But he could never have predicted what actually happened.

It all felt like a blur, but it also felt like time had come to a standstill. All Cyrus knew was that one second, Lester had his gun to TJ’s head, his mocking laugh echoing in Cyrus’ ears, and the next, there was a gunshot and he was on the ground, motionless. And TJ stood over him, gun in his hand, his finger still on the trigger.

Cyrus’ eyes went wide as his heart rate accelerated, his breathing growing shallow. Cyrus’ hand went involuntarily to his throat, his surroundings growing exceedingly dull. He stepped back a few steps, stumbling over his own feet, as he desperately tried to tear his eyes away. But he couldn’t.

“What did you do?” Cyrus wanted to scream, but the words were stuck in his throat and no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t produce a sound.

TJ’s breathing was growing heavy, still clutching the gun in his hand as he looked around, trying to see if anyone had seen them. Luckily, the streets seemed deserted, and in their neighbourhood, gunshot noises were as common as crickets chirping. He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wild. Finally, he turned around to look at Cyrus, and Cyrus, still in shock, looked back at him.

“Cyrus,” TJ whispered, his voice shaky and anxious. “Cyrus, we have to do something. We can’t leave him here,” he said, gesturing down, his mannerisms conveying desperation.

“No, no,” Cyrus whispered, moving away from TJ, shaking his head. The world seemed to sway and tilt around him, his feet unsteady.

“Cyrus,” TJ said, grabbing Cyrus’ shoulders, forcing him to look at him. “I know you’re scared and in shock. I am too, believe me. But we can’t stay here. If they find us,” TJ started, his voice cracking, as he brought up a hand to wipe his mouth, fear evident in his eyes.

Cyrus gulped, his mouth dry, as he tried to get his thoughts to just stop. He looked at Lester’s body for the first time, and suddenly, it was as if he was on autopilot. He took the gun from TJ’s hand, wiping it of prints with his shirt, and dumped it in a dumpster in the nearby alleyway.

“Cyrus, what are you-” TJ started to ask confused, but Cyrus interrupted him.

“Help me carry him into the alley,” he said, his voice monotone, as if it wasn’t really him talking. TJ just looked at him and complied. The two of them carried Lester and placed him in the alley, hoping that when someone did find him, they would assume gang violence. A plausible enough situation for Lester, Cyrus thought bitterly. All the while as they cleaned up any evidence of them being there, Cyrus felt as if it wasn’t him doing all those things. It was as if he was above everything, watching himself clean up the slushy cups and remove fingerprints. He didn’t remember walking back to his house with TJ, the silence between them tense. He didn’t remember hugging TJ as tight as he could before he quietly crept into his house so as to not wake and anger his mother. He didn’t remember any of it and hoped that it meant that maybe, just maybe, it was all just a bad dream.

The only remnants of TJ and Cyrus on that street were the spilt liquid from their Blue Raspberry slushies, now tinged purple.

*

TJ was stunned into silence, taken aback at Cyrus’ words. The look of hurt on his face as the memories of 6 years ago came flooding back almost made Cyrus feel bad about bringing it up. Almost.

“I had no other choice. I was protecting us,” TJ said, his voice tense and low. His hands were balled into fists as he looked at Cyrus.

“And look where we are now,” Cyrus said, gesturing to their surroundings.

“He was an asshole, not just at that time. Even before that. He hurt you, Cy,” TJ said, his words tremulous.

“You don’t think I know that, better than anyone?” Cyrus said, stepping towards TJ. “But that doesn’t mean he deserved to die!” he said, dangerously close to yelling.

TJ looked out the window in alarm, before turning back towards Cyrus. “He was ready to shoot us that night!”

“He wouldn’t have done anything. It was just to scare us.”

“You don’t know that, do you?”

Cyrus tried to say something back, but he couldn’t find the words. Because the truth was, a part of Cyrus knew that it was very possible Lester would have hurt them that night. That one way or the other, all three of them wouldn’t have walked away from that street.

TJ took his silence as confirmation, “I knew it,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Cyrus turned around, his hand pressed to his forehead as he sank into the chair, a pounding headache making its presence known behind his temples.

“It still doesn’t justify what happened,” Cyrus said, barely audible.

“You don’t think I know that?” TJ asked, turning to Cyrus, now exasperated. “But what else could I have done? Just let him shoot me? Or worse, let him shoot you?”

“Well, we could have started with walking away from him!” Cyrus said, no longer in the mood to continue the argument. All he wanted to do was go to sleep, and preferably not look at or talk to TJ for the next 3 days.

“You know, sometimes,” TJ said, narrowing his eyes. “I can’t bear to be in the same room as you.”

Two can play that game, Cyrus thought to himself, looking up at TJ, his vision red. “Well, sometimes, I wish I never sneaked out of the house to meet you that night.”

TJ took a step closer, his breathing heavy, his fists balled. “Sometimes, you’re so whiny and annoying it drives me crazy,” he said, his words growing louder and louder.

“And sometimes, I can’t tell the difference between you and Lester!” Cyrus yelled.

TJ was taken aback, and he staggered backwards, his eyes wide in shock. Cyrus covered his mouth with his hand, tears in his eyes. He hadn’t meant that at all, aiming to just hurt TJ. But he had gone too far. Way too far. And now he couldn’t take it back.

Suddenly, a knock on the door made the two jump, Cyrus looking in horror at the door. Had someone heard what they had said?

TJ walked up to the door, slowly opening it. Cyrus came behind him, his heart in his throat.

“Hi. I just heard some yelling. Is everything okay?” It was the lady from the main desk, concern written all over her face. She gave no indication that she had heard anything that had just been said. He let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“No, no. Everything’s fine,” TJ said, resting against the doorframe. “Just regular arguments, you know?”

“Oh yeah, I understand. Lovers’ spat, eh?” the woman said, laughing awkwardly.

“Something like that,” Cyrus said, giving a stiff chuckle.

After a moment of awkward silence, the lady clapped her hands together. “Anyway, thank god everything’s okay! I’ll leave you be now,” the lady said, giving a warm smile before walking away, TJ closing the door after she left.

After the lady had gone, the room fell back into a tense silence. Cyrus couldn’t bear to look TJ in the eyes, afraid of what he would see. Instead, he just walked over to the bed, taking a blanket and pillow, and moved to the chair, all in dead silence.

“Cyrus. I-” TJ started, his voice softer than before.

“Good night, TJ,” Cyrus said, his voice just a shaky whisper as he propped up the pillow on the chair and wrapped the blanket around him, closing his eyes to try and sleep. TJ looked like he wanted to say something more, but decided against it, simply nodding and getting into bed, turning off the lamp beside him.

A few minutes later, Cyrus opened his eyes. Seeing TJ fast asleep, he reached across to his bag, pulling out his camera. In the dim light of his lamp, he took a picture of TJ, wincing a bit at the noise the camera made. But after a few moments of no reaction, Cyrus was sure that TJ was fast asleep.

“I didn’t mean it,” Cyrus whispered, hoping against hope that TJ had heard him. But he couldn’t have. He sighed, putting away the camera, and tugged the blanket around him, shutting his eyes.

All he wanted right now was some rest.

~~~~~~

Hey guys, Smriti here. Hope you guys liked this chapter! (It was hard making Lester so bad but i had to do it)

Let me and Sarah know what you think!

#andi mack #tyrus #tyrus fanfic #my fic #everything is red #cyrus goodman #tj kippen #lester #tj x cyrus #tyrus fanfiction #tyrus au #guysssss #sarah deserves all the love in the world #i will scream it from the rooftops

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2011-2015), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 16 inches (all photos by Charles Benton and courtesy Brennan & Griffin)

Peter Acheson, who lives in upstate New York, uses his living room as his winter studio. The “hearth,” which we sit around, is an old bookcase/hutch. He uses it as a provisional viewing station for paintings — propping them up and rotating them on the shelves and along the floor — as we talk. It’s also where he keeps the sound system and a stack of CDs. The Stones or Dylan are usually on deck.  A paint-splattered tarpaulin lies in front of the bookcase, and chairs are pushed to the edges of the room. Jars of acrylic paint and yogurt containers filled with brushes are right on the floor; this is where he works.

It’s a painting and rock ’n’ roll den, where art is the total, almost devotional focus; Acheson does not care about trading niceties or being ingratiating. He would rather propose and debate philosophical ideas. But he’s been quoting poetry all day, ever since he met me in a café in Hudson, where he was holding a copy of Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation. We read Guillaume IX of Poitier’s “In the Great Sweetness of Spring” together, and one passage in particular became a point of reference: “Our love moves in this way: / like a branch of the hawthorn tree / …I want my God to let me live / to have my hands beneath her cloak again…”

Peter Acheson (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

A similar combination of rawness and sensitivity is what gives Acheson’s work its potency and range. His paintings are ravaged, earthy, and acutely considered, all at once. They employ a host of painterly gestures, mark-making, and collaged interruptions to the surfaces. He often paints on rough panels, burlap, and wood scraps, and attaches found elements like seashells and animal bones. He makes delicate, scribbly line drawings on paper, à la Henri Michaux. He also makes paintings with mysterious pictographic forms, bands of color, and dense layers of impasto paint. He frequently scrawls the names of his artist-heroes, or lines from poems,  across the paintings. They are abstract odes to felt experience.

Peter Acheson was born in Washington, DC in 1954 and received his BFA from Yale in 1976. He was an early member of the Williamsburg art scene in the 1980s, and now lives and works in Ghent, New York. His work has been exhibited at Novella Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson; the Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; and Baumgartner Gallery, New York. In the winter and spring of 2017, he was the subject of two solo exhibitions, at Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, New York, and at Brennan & Griffin, New York.

 *   *   *

Jennifer Samet: Do you have childhood memories that factor into your paintings?

Peter Acheson: I have this memory from when I was about four years old. I was on a tiny beach in Cape Cod, digging my feet in the sand at the waterline. I got my legs fully buried under the lapping water, and felt something under my toes.  I kept trying to reach it but it was way down at the bottom of a hole. Finally I pulled it out and saw that it was a small toy truck.  It was metal and old, probably something from the 1940s. It was so corroded that the original shape of the truck was obscured into a pitted, abstract mass. To my eyes as a child, it was highly mysterious.

I was overwhelmed by the sense of discovery and wonder of excavation. I think about that still, because at certain moments I have felt a shudder of recognition — that same feeling of wonder and discovery. I have felt it with images in my own paintings that seemed to spring from a buried place outside of myself. And I’ve had it when looking at other art and objects. It was strong when I saw Cy Twombly’s plaster sculpture, which can be just on the other side of recognizability, as if they are weathered or eroded. They are like manmade things that are returning to nature. Everything has been softened. That is a quality I am looking for.

Myron Stout’s paintings can look like some kind of goddess sculpture from pre-dynastic Greece that’s been buried in the Mediterranean for one thousand years, and excavated. Is it a creature with two horns, or is it a seashell? That sort of mystery is what art taps into.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on board, 17.5 x 21.25 inches

JS: You studied at Yale in the 1970s. How did it impact your development as a painter?

PA: Yale was very much a problem-solving environment. Al Held was the dominant force and the graduate critiques would also include William Bailey, Bernard Chaet, and Lester Johnson. They would say things like, “He has to turn the figure three quarters of the way around, or “The foreshortening on the arm isn’t long enough.” There was a dissection of the painting as if it was a math problem to be solved. That affected my thinking about painting; I used to think like that.

Judy Pfaff and Joseph Santore were also there, and everybody talked about how “You’ve gotta make space.” I bought into it for a while, and when I got out of college, I was trying to make overlapping planes. They never looked spatial enough to me. Then I would sort of get confused by Minimalism.

Now, I don’t care about space; I’m interested in place. I want the painting to be an extremely specific event. It is as if you were walking in the woods and you saw a tree with rotting mushrooms growing out of it. You’re interested in it; you’re drawn to it; you’re looking at it thinking, “God, that’s so beautiful.” Then you look up and you see silhouettes of pine trees against the blue sky. It’s a completely different event, but it is the same world.

In several paintings, I have incorporated text from the poem “The Deer Fence,” by the Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei. It is one of the most famous poems in the Classical Chinese canon. “Empty mountain / no one to be seen / but hear — human sounds / returning sunlight enters the dark woods  / shining again on green moss.”  It is nineteen Chinese characters, but English speakers have translated the poem in a wide variety of ways. Eliot Weinberger wrote about this in his book 19 Ways of looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated (1995). I love that idea: how did all that variety get built into it?

Peter Acheson, “Untitled” (2012), acrylic and collage on canvas, 12 x 9 inches

JS: Your exhibition in Chatham incorporated different painting approaches, and work from different periods, installed in little groupings. Why is variation important to you?

PA: When your vocabulary is dispersed enough, you can go from one painting to a totally different one. I am hardly ever stuck on one. It is a formal strategy that I devised for myself: you make fifteen different things, and hopefully they will circumscribe a circle that you could loosely describe as yourself.

I think of it as a polytheistic aesthetic, and it’s my response to the stress of having to find one style that suited me. You and I and each of us are like the cast of Hamlet — a play with many actors. Our psyche incorporates all of those characters. James Hillman is the psychoanalyst writer of the polytheistic soul. He said the Greeks had it right. You have to have your God of War. And when you are in command, you better have your Zeus; you can’t be Eros. All these characters are necessary.

I am not interested in being a reductive formal artist. I grew up in a reductive formal environment. I went to private school, and a private college. I was expected to achieve, to be good. I grew up with Chris Martin; we were best friends since childhood in Washington, DC, and we talk about this all the time.  The expectations on us were so high that we just want to fail.

I was told, “You are an Acheson.” So doing what I am doing is tremendous freedom. Once I sent Chris a text message saying, “I made a really bad painting today and I love it.” He sent me back a text saying, “Irrevocably bad, irredeemably bad, terribly bad, awfully bad…!” I have gotten out from under that WASP work ethic. I don’t want to harsh painting’s mellow by getting all formalist on it.

When my youngest daughter was seven, she saw me painting in the house and would ask if she could paint too. At the end of the evening, there would be five paintings by her and one of mine. All of hers were much better and I thought about why that was.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Clearing)” (2010), oil and acrylic on canvas, 11 x 14 inches

When I was about seven years old, I was sent to private school and had to start wearing a tie, get my hair cut, shine my shoes. I was being told, “Peter, it’s time to grow up.” I had to leave my seven-year-old imaginative inner feminine behind. My daughter Izzy came along years later and demonstrated what that was, right in front of me. I come to the canvas with all this baggage. In that period, from about 2004-07, I tried to unpack that baggage, to get more childlike and open.

JS: Does being open mean not making many painting decisions in advance?

PA: I don’t want intention to be the driving thing. It’s more about an aesthetic response. It is similar to the response of going outside and saying, “Wow, what a beautiful day.” You didn’t conceive it. You didn’t invent the trees or the sky or the car or whatever. You just go, “Fuck, what beautiful light right now.”

That is the state I want to present to the viewer. It doesn’t matter what the content is. It could be a mud puddle; it could be a bright red tractor in the rain; it could be your girlfriend’s face; it could be a cat.

Hillman discusses how the word “aesthetic” is related to the Greek word “aisthesis,” which means “to breathe in” — a sudden intake of breath. He said when something causes you to suck in your breath, that’s aesthetics. That is what I work for.

JS: You often write the names of other artists right on your paintings. It’s like announcing your influences. I was thinking about how you like Julian Schnabel, who seems to be an artist unafraid of taking from other artists. Can you talk about that, and some of your other artist heroes?

Peter Acheson, “Eva Hesse” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 12 x 28 inches

PA: Yes, Schnabel is a big, grandiose, open-hearted, wear-it-on-your-sleeve artist, and I love that about him. His work is saying, in effect, “I am just making a love letter to Twombly.” They are big acts of erotic interest — in Van Gogh with the Roses, in Twombly with the blobs of paint. The great thing about Schnabel is that it is an act. It is painting as a performance art, like a band up on stage. What is the act? How well does your band play? Schnabel’s whole act is making the movies, being the director, wearing the bathrobe.

In his autobiography C.V.J. (1957), Schnabel talks about the work of a painter as “a bouquet of mistakes.” That is poetry — because we are all going to make mistakes. But, what if you made the mistakes on a twenty-foot scale and they ended up being beautiful?

I am proceeding by means of granting myself more and more permission. It is like, “I just visited [Forrest] Bess in my studio today; we hung out.” Or, it’s a fantasy of being in Raoul de Keyser’s studio and he asks me, “Hey, do you want to study with me for a while?” I say, “Fuck, yeah; you’re one of my heroes.” So I paint like de Keyser for a while.

Peter Acheson, “Palermo in…” (2015), oil, acrylic and collage on panel, 18 x 24 inches

Blinky Palermo’s painting series “Times of the Day” (1974-76) at Dia:Beacon is another thing I am influenced by right now. The paintings are so specific.

JS: You mentioned allowing oneself to make mistakes. Can you talk about the idea of failed paintings and how that is part of your process? Also, you mentioned big paintings, but you tend to work on a medium to small scale. Why is that?

PA: I am interested in the idea of making a painting that fails. Sometimes I will be making a painting and say to myself, “This painting is just failing.” Then I’ll look at it for a long time, and sometimes realize the painting is not actually failing.

I’ve made big paintings before, but I am no longer interested in impressing anyone. I want to draw your attention. My heroes are artists like Myron Stout, Forrest Bess, Gandy Brodie, and Jan Müller, who work on a dense, small scale.  You always are walking up to the painting. You’re drawn in.

It is like the way you would look at a rose bush. It draws you in and rewards close looking with the feeling of general erotic attraction. Hillman says that it is not a question of whether it’s good or bad. It is a question of whether you are interested in it. The Latin root of interest is inter esse, which means “to be between.” There is an energy; it’s not just the painting; it’s not just you. It makes you think, “I am interested in this.”

JS: Your work often becomes object-like; you collage pieces of wood or other scraps onto the surface, and sometimes use irregularly shaped panels. How does that impact the work?

PA: I want to proceed by means of violations and defacements. Often, I am trying to violate the abstract painting language. So I will glue scraps of wood onto the work. I tend to save things and have a shop in my studio, so this stuff is around. I love paintings, but I like using objects to challenge their painting-ness.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Thornton Dial)” (2012), oil, acrylic and collage on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I have been in the position before, when I was painting only with oil on canvas   and I always had this feeling, “The world doesn’t look like this.” The world has got all this shit in it: thin people, fat people, babies. My sneaker has a hole in it, my car has a flat tire. How do you get all that experience — experiences like watching your wife give birth — into your work?

I want my wobbly, uneven life in the work. An artist with a solid base under him or her can make a work that is, as Schnabel said, “a bouquet of mistakes.” It’s like — I broke up with the wrong woman; I was in love with the wrong woman; I was a fool. The fool can make the painting. Why edit the fool out? Why edit out the bad luck? Why edit out the heartbreak? Why edit out the joy and the ecstatic?

JS: Despite the fact that you talk about incorporating failure, I feel that each one of your paintings in the show at Chatham is so beautifully considered, and has a sense of quality. Do you think about “quality”? 

PA: Yes, and I love this question. In the early 1960s, the Beat poets, especially Allen Ginsberg, were criticized for not caring about quality, for just getting drunk and saying whatever they wanted to. Gary Snyder was asked about this in an interview. He said, “I worship at the lotus feet of Quality.”

I agree; I want quality like the experience of seeing a hummingbird on a flower.  The particularity of that event, the quality of the flower, the bird, its energy, and the fact that it even exists, puts you in a divine state of grace.  You are hooked on the quality of the experience. It is like looking at a lichen-covered rock on the North Peak in the Catskills, seeing an owl feather, or experiencing an autumn day. It is a natural event but it’s stunningly beautiful in its particularity.  I don’t want the work to be general. I want it to be extremely specific. The quality is tied to the particular attributes of a place. It’s not space, it’s not casual, it’s not sloppy. I am asking the painting to speak back to me, and until it’s speaking back to me, I will keep working on it. You know when a painting is done when you fall in love.

JS: Tell me more about the connection between love and painting.

PA: Several years ago, I was dating a woman artist who was such a muse.  I was in love and it was just fantastic. For six months I went around feeling like I could not fail because all I had to do was work on the paintings, and let that energy be there. The muse energy was bigger than me, and I was spreading it out over all these canvases. I was making the paintings that the art dealer Kevin Rita calls my “vibratory paintings” using the side of the brush. I could make formal decisions, but the general approach was just ecstatic. Then I would go back into the paintings and tighten them up.

Peter Acheson, “Untitled (Reef)” (2016), oil and acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

I think about Eros and love. The equation is that you start with beauty — beauty in the world, beauty in a person, or beauty in a painting. Beauty creates desire. It creates an attraction, which, in a human being, translates as desire. It is not mere wanting.  You can solve wanting by going to the mall. Desire is unattainable. Robert Bly says, “I desire to be as great a poet as Shakespeare.” It’s not going to happen, but the desire for that makes life sweet.

Hillman says, “Desire creates the growth of the wings of imagination.” To me, that makes a lot more sense than sitting around figuring out a problem. There is a Rainer Maria Rilke poem called “Remembering,” which is about this. It is about looking for something that will, in Rilke’s phrase, “infinitely increase your life.” I think about the idea that there is a painting in your future, either as the viewer or the maker, that will “infinitely increase your life.” You haven’t found it yet, but you better get busy.

The key is that you might not find it. It is in the looking, the working hard enough. I am in a hurry to find that painting. I may not find it, but the journey towards trying to find it will be fucking awesome.

The post Beer with a Painter: Peter Acheson appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2pvxcDZ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic