Rene Capone

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

2011-08-31T02:48:00.000-07:00

This video is about my new painting, and about a new direction. I need to fall in love again with the possibility of art, the fabric of stories. My first Journey is into a Poem By Edward Lear, first published in 1918. It's a love story, and one of the best ones I've ever heard. When I read it or hear I think to myself, I'd like to be the cat on that boat ... we all would I suppose.

In progress ...

almost done ...

A brand new and unknown chapter

2011-08-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

Me, August 2011

I have not blogged in some time. After putting down my whole life story on these Internet pages I though it best to wait till I had a new chapter in my life before I started to write again. After all writing a blog about rising from the ashes of child abuse isn't exactly light reading. So I waited, finished my book and now it seems like something or someone has finally turned the pages in my own life to a new chapter. At the begging of August I was sitting back and waiting to see if SF can can give me anything worth staying for ...With in that stretch of time I almost moved to Florida. My very best friend Lian lives there and basically said I have room for you and want you to live with me. How many times in your life is someone going to ask you to live with them, so I really wanted to go. I even had started to sell my stuff in preparation but then suddenly I got an interview for a job working at an art gallery. Very sudden, very last minute. I really had decided to leave, but now here I sit in this art gallery wondering if there is something else left for me in San Francisco? Is there? I'm for the moment working in downtown SF at K. Imperial Fine Art. Fine art is something I'm good at talking about so for the most part I feel comfortable in the gallery. The down side is it is at times very quiet and there is no one around for long stretches of time. What I'm doing here and my purpose is not yet know to me. I decided I'll give it two months and then Id decide how I feel I'm at a point in my life where no matter my accomplishments nor the zip code of where live matter to me if not around people whom I love and know love me. I've really decided that I would like to have a relationship, someone to cuddle with, someone to laugh with and someone to stand up defiantly against the world with. I don't care where it is on earth that i have to go to do that, I'll go there.

Me and my best friend Lian Fitz

Things with my little monster of a book "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy" did pretty well. It was a thrill to be mailing it off to all those different cities and towns. The final book was marvelous to see come together. Jon Macy graciously painted the cover for me. The reviews were good I think the content and message are still worthy of a good push or two on my part. But when you expose your soul to world and stand vulnerable beyond all measure the last thing one wants to do it push a train up hill. I tried my very best and spent 4 years of my life making one serious book ... and I'm still very proud of it. 168 pages of drawing, it was honest and it was real. The press work after its completion and the live staged reading that followed took almost as much effort as did creating it. I read the whole book out loud on stage with ten actors and a huge projection screen of the books imagery page by page. It was magical. As far as selling my book and getting it out there all I can say is that I did what I could with what limited resources I had. I keep thinking to this day, If only I had all the money needed for real visible advertising and top of the line publishing. I think I could have gone farther, It could have gone all the way. But we live in a world where money controls the channels. But were still hoping and wishing to have a real publisher take interest in it. There is a powerful message in my book, the idea that "in all the greatest stories and in all the greatest books, someone always gets rescued." We need to be rescued sometimes, each and everyone of us.
Steve Surman at Broken Frontier review
Francois Peneaud at the Gay Comics List review

A Panel from the final version of "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy"

"Taming shape shifting monsters", 16"x20", watercolor on board

After the book reading I was very depressed. I felt like had ripped an alien from my chest so I decided I need to go back to making real artwork again. To me real artwork means paintings and drawings. Personal and honest. So I went back to working on new art pieces using the figure. I hope they mean as much to you as they do to me.

I've made about 5 new paintings in the past few months. I'm still interested in magic, beauty and conjuring up images that will inspire someone to persevere against all odds. I'm still shaken stories and the images in myth. They always find away into my artwork.

A new theme in my artwork is mental health. I decided to portray that by showing a person looking back over their own shoulder, as if to look back and wonder just where have they been. We're all trapped in our own minds for better or worse. In my own case I'd like to make that all for the better and never for the worse. My own travels with mental health I've been very honest about and I hope that somewhere, somehow it gives someone the idea to take charge of their own thoughts and emotions. There are many things is this world that you do not have control over. Your own actions and thoughts are the one thing that you do. A very good friend of mine said to me at dinner the other day "Feelings come an go and run their course unless you attach danger to them." I don't want my feelings to be dangerous anymore. My current artwork can be seen here

"Look back over your shoulder" 8"x10", watercolor on hot press paper

Finishing my book and new reflections on getting well

2011-02-28T21:54:00.000-08:00

I've used this blog to tell the story of my life, mostly because I wanted the abused child in me to find peace. I just wanted this blog to be about something more. It was about looking into the darkness and beating up your demons. Now I'm going to have to take this blog further by acknowledging that this is one demon that I can't beat up, We're going to have to sit down and compromise with it. So thats what I did over the past few months. I finished my book and with that I decided to co exist with my past in the most understanding and peaceful way I know how. I decided to be nice to myself.

A pannel from Hedgehog boy book three

My symptoms with post traumatic stress disorder are getting better and medication totally helps.
I've realized you really have to let it go, and must find away to do so before it hurts you. That's one of the things "Hedgehog Boy" is about, letting go. The final version of the book three is done and all three chapters together say, "Here, this is what I have to say."

Here is where you can find out about it. LEGNED OF HEDGEHOG BOY COMPLETED BOOK

Michael Johnstone took this photo of me and Flower for the back cover
... He's an amazing photographer from San Francisco.

photo by Michael Johnstone,

Flower Diamond, Frank the bear, and Rene, Feb. 2011

An Artist Thoughts About The Resession

2011-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

I would like to discuss the recession and tell you just what it feels like from an artists point of view. Make that rather an artist like me and a few others than can be put in that same boat with me.

Rene Capone 2010 on Isis Street San Francisco, CA

Back to the recession, I don't like it. I take it personally because I don't understand why I am not considered as worth as much as I was before. I have not changed, I work very hard, almost too hard and I still make gorgeous things. Why am I down graded? I do know the answer to this question by the way cause I did watch some news last year and I know no one has any money any more. The economic disaster! The one brewing in America since Regan sold out the US to the rich and the corporations. "Releasing the bull" as I think he called. What he really meant was, lets destroy the working class and make a two tier society, one that will eventually bring us back to the dark ages. I know it's a harsh thought. personally I like seeing a little be heading in Union Square might be a good thing. Scare some of the thieving lying wanna be sociopath types around here to mind their manners and we could use a few more manners here in San Francisco.

"Black Swan" 12"x12"x1", watercolor and color pencil on clay board

Back to recession. I don't like it, and it's dangerous for artist like me who's identity and dare I say self worth is accidentally wrapped up in being an artist. I say accidentally because even though I knew I was an artist I never knew I'd have an art carear or produce and sell the volume of work I did. The art career part was given to me by strangers whom disputed and contradicted everything that I was led to believe as a child. They told me the opposite of what child abuse taught me. By supporting my art, in essence they told me I did count and that I was worth something. This "something" was the at times the only thing that kept me from self destructing. As an abused child I can't help but wanna slip into the self destruction programing that's been hard wired in my brain during my developmental years. We just can't help ourselves. Almost all abused children do it. It's a cruel joke that we will one day ourselves finish the job that others started when we were young. So my art career stopped me from self destructing, and still does. Only now its hard to feel as if I'm not as good as I once was, or have no place still on peoples walls. It makes me feeling like tugging at some one's pant leg and saying

"Look I did what you taught me to, I don't know how to do anything else." "I made good artwork, I worked all day and night on it. Can I still count?

I know this is dramatic, but this is what the recession feels like to me. I wonder if there are other artists out there who have a similar experience? If you do please tell us.

"Between Swans and Bunnies" 22"x30", watercolor

My thoughts on being an artist tonight are clear.
We can materialize thin air and pigment into the recognizable image that guides and directs with a force of nature that can be described as nothing short of supernatural. We are the one's everyone turns to when all else fails to make sense. We are the reincarnated Shaman' s of the past put here to be found when questioning souls from the present need us most. I think thats worth something!

She had me "I'm gonna cut you" & Hedgehog Boy part two

2010-10-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Yea, me again. still here

It's rainy Sunday morning in San Francisco. I woke up early and convinced myself that this was the day I would finish my memoirs, this decision took a few cups of coffee and trip to one of the many donuts shops around my home to arrive at. For some evil reason there are Four doughnuts in a two block area around my apartment. Satan lives in one of theses Establishments for sure. Even though I try to stay clear of Satan I've realized that writing ones life story down for anyone to read is a very exhausting task and one that's requires coffee to finish. Truth is I'm scared to finish because I don't want my story to end. But, I am also very ready to move on to other unwritten chapters in my life. Maybe if finish this today, the next time I wake up early on a Sunday I can just be Rene and not have to think backwards.

Rene and Company 2010 Magnet SF, CA

The next logical thing for me to do after making book 1 was to make part two in the graphic novel series. This time it was allot more fun. Part one had a deep and beautiful sadness trapped in it, but part two was the road out of that sadness. I found my way out of that sadness in real life being inspired by my friends. So to mirror art in real life my character in the comic book brings his friends with him on his journey. But through the honesty in which they led their own lives that they shared with me, it gave me the courage to be myself, and I like that, so I put my friends in book two and in the sub title called it "You need friends."

"You need friends", comic panel from Legend of Hedgehog Boy

Then I meet a very special girl named Flower Frankenstein. What she did with her life and her name inspired me. She has a very unique super power, she holds a mirror up to the people around her and shows them the best possible version of themselves. If the person pays attention or not is not her problem, but I luckily payed attention to the mirror she but before me. I had meet Flower a few years back when she was the organizer of a street fair called "Sugar Valley." She modeled her efforts after the words of Harvey Milk and his model in the 1970's of the Castro street fair being a community event for artists in San Francisco. Since them it's become a corporate event. But, for a period of time Harvey was resurrected and got his way because of Flower. She used to pass out literature for incoming artist's to the event that had a little cartoon of Goofus & Gallant on the bottom. Goffus says "Sugar Valley sucks I'm gonna cut you." I always tell her she had me at "I'm gonna cut you."

I've been in love ever since. But that's not why I put her in part two of my book, I put her in part two because of what she did with her name. Her name and her life were already self made items. To me she already represented something magical. To this day no one really knows her real name, I hope I never do. While on a spiritual journey of sorts this girl just gets up and says, I've got to change my name, it didn't suit her anymore, Frankenstein was from the past. Her new name would be Flower Diamond. This to me was magical, and meant to me you could be who ever you wanted to be. So in honor of her I put her as a major character in my book and as a center piece featured her name change. She on top of the magic unicorn declares to all that from now on she will be "know as Flower Diamond." Frank the bear then turns to Hedgehog Boy and says, "See you can be who ever you want." In part two I also featured a few of my other friends, such as Adam Sandel, and David Faulik (aka Mrs. Vera). Both whom my pure force of will changed their lives to become who they wanted or needed to be. Very important messages for to me and for the fans of my art. The idea that you can no matter the circumstances of you life be whom ever you want to be. Conveying this message properly is one of the on going goals in all my artistic work.

"Flower Diamond", comic panel from Legend of Hedgehog Boy

Book Two debuted at Magnet in the Castro in January 2010. We did a live reading / performance with a cast of six and managed to pack around two hundred people into a space where the fire code says no more than sixty. I felt like a star, but not a failure because this time I had brought my friends with me and I was sober as the day is long. Me and my friends read the book in front a projection screen that showed the pages as we all read in character. Most people in the audience had a book in hand and it felt like a book club from grade school. It was one big magnificent group effort. Thought this experience I realized that I am a performer and this was only the beginning of things to come. Right then and there I saw the future and it is grand. Plus I started to make paintings again too, that's a good sign, I am an Artist after all.

Last year I applied for a grant, one that I thought could start to pave the way for what I saw the future of Hedgehog Boy being. It was a performance grant from the QCC in San Francisco. I got it. "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy" books one through three will be read live on stage to a 260 seat house called the "Rainbow Room" in San Francisco. June 18th 2011 will be the release my graphic novel in all three parts as well as the start of a new phase of my artistic career, I'm going to be a performer. We have a movie screen size projection screen to project my images on, microphone headsets like in a Janet Jackson video, five actors, yours truly and the stage direction of Adam Sandel. I think were in good hands and I cant wait. We have a message and it' s message thirty two years in the making. The message is "You can be who ever you want to be."

"First Sight" 24"x36", acrylic on canvas

"Yellow Cigarette" 16"x20", mixed media on canvas

The making of Hedgehog Boy the graphic novel

2010-10-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

Ghetto, hot: Rene October 2010

I started making "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy" in the year 2007 while still making other fine art, but slowly it took over and became and all time consuming event as set out to make the strangest graphic novel series ever made.

Front cover painting 20"x24" mixed media

The idea came into play while working with Dr. Fishman in San Francisco. In 2008 I started to have vivid and unpleasant flashbacks from my childhood. One of the things I would do to try and stop them or at least tame them was to make "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy." I would fictionalize my journey and turn myself into a character with layers of meaning in a dark and strange universe. My character would escape from a bad home as did I and them fashion himself after the first creature he see's on his journey, he stumbles upon "The worlds largest hedgehog" and the rest is history. It was a risk and a drastic departure from what I had done before. Surely anyone who was used to Rene making just pretty pictures was confused. I took my cues for stylization from some some books my friend had lent me. A sub genre of comic book from Japan called Yaio. This genre is best descried as this. "boy on boy graphic novels with pornographic elements and high drama love stories, made by women mostly for women in Japan." Could I have picked a more obscure source for inspiration? No!

Hedgehog Boy described:

Book One - Hedgehog Boy Falls in love with a boy named David, whom he lovingly calls "Kitty" after putting a cat on his head. The two runaway boys forge a bond in the need for companionship and the love of books. Their peace is shattered by a jealous villain who kidnaps Kitty as part of his his evil scheme to steal happiness. With Frank the teddy bear by his side Hedgehog Boy will find out the power with in himself as he sets out to save his boyfriend.

San Francisco artist Rene Capone tells the story of an abused child who rejects the role of victim and enters an alternate reality where he sets off on a dangerous adventure of revenge, self discovery, and ultimately love. Told in part from the artists own experiences, this is an unapologetically queer graphic novel with emotional depth and imagination. It unfolds like a love letter to any lost boy who needed a friend.

Page Sample from "The Legend of Hedgehog Boy"

"kitty" sketch for the character

For the final product I cut out almost all the elements of yaoi except for the love story and touches of story boarding from the japan born genre. What we are left with is a rather insane story about some kids who go nuts with dead animals on their heads. However the animals on their heads is not entirely my idea I took my cues for that from Native American folklore. All the animals on the heads that most of the characters wear in my graphic novel come from and the idea of animal identity. The Native Americans believed in the a spiritual archetype of an animal and in most of their myths these animals come lend guiding voice to the characters in the story. Native American tales are more about ordinary people, rather than gods and in their culture everything is animated from divinity. Ordinary places, people and animals become divine. To put it simply your daily commute to work could be seem as something magical and used for a vichale for story telling, provided your animal spirits showed up to tell you something important about yourself. Often people in Native American myths are not even named but are rather just given convenient tag names that sum up who they are based on the spirit of an animal. Examples,
"Rabbit boy", or "White Buffalo Woman". Within in these simply named characters the universal principles of the world are held with high respect and those universal principles come from the animal identity With that explanation hopefully you can see why I would choose "Hedgehog Boy" for a character and as an animal symbol. Now seeing how my father was an Indian, I felt I had every right to do this, and well it was also the coolest thing I could come up with. To me and hopefully to anyone else who's paying attention it's one long winded metaphor for any creature, child or person who chooses to endure rather than give up.

"Even Monsters Have To Sleep" 16"x20" acrylic

Along this time in my life I also became heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell's books "The power of myth" and "The Hero's Journey". I was dealing with my demons and like any self respecting abused child fell victum to the buring question "why"? Having these books gave me perspective and I leraned that it's story just like any other and although I do not know "why" I was abused I do know it means something profound to have tried to wrestle with these demons in the dark and come out with any amount of light. Sometimes emotional torture equals good art. I'ts not an equation I wanted to play out nor was it my goal in life but there it is and it's the truth. I risked everything to make my graphic novel. My health, my already questionable sanity, my job as a design assistant and my relationship to just about everyone around me as pushed bounderies and questioned everything in everyones life. See to make Hedgehog Boy, I had to become Hedgehog Boy.

"Once Upon A Time", two page graphic novel spread from "The Legend Of Hedgehog Boy"

To make the whole time of metal exploration and healing even more confusing I started to get some attention for my images and story telling telling. I couldn't just deal with these issues by myself in private, the universe had to give watching eyes! Visual Aid in San Francisco had gotten me a solo show at the San Francisco public library based the making of Hedgehog Boy and we geared up to do a public reading in the gallery space. I had made something very lovely and very much from the heart and I was very proud. Lawrence Hellman graciously did PR for me for the event. I'll never forget riding my bike to work one morning to pass a paper stand where I saw he had gotten me on the cover of the SF examiner. I feel of my bike on Folsum street while staring at the paper stand, forgetting to pedal. I was thrilled to however be on the cover of the examiner. That February I presented a my book at the SF public library and did a public reading. It was standing room only. I felt like a little star. The thing I left my home town to try and become. I'm a work in progress.

Hedgehog Boy!

Underground art star

2010-09-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

How did I become an underground international art star? Now, allot of people claim to be such a thing but very few can back it up, I'm honored that I actually can. So how did I do it, Well, it wasn't fucking easy. But as you can tell form the chapters in my life that nothing really has been. So, as it turns out I'm good at doing things the hard way. I've been been very excited to write this installment because it means I get to properly thank those of you out there that purchased my artwork, those of you who in essence made me what I am. This played a huge role in my life. This story/ blog of my life's journey will be ending in three more installments, I wrote this blog just so i could get to this chapter, to show you who I really am and so i could understand how to see my future. Here we go ...

With in San Francisco's 7x7 mile stretch of land something amazing happened to me. As I began to paint with a passion that I could only describe as a force of nature. The kind of force of nature you simply just give into, and people started to pay attention. I will post a bunch of those images in this bog entry. I moved into a little apartment in San Francisco's sunset district, oddly enough. this part of town is in the fog belt, but when I went to see it for the first time it was an unusually sunny day. You can image just how pissed of I was at mother nature when i realized the sunset was anything but sunny. But before I get to far into my artistic life in San Francisco, let me first show you what led me to leave N.Y.C. It is titled "Remorse" (pictured to the left) The only painting I ever made in two cities. I got the background abstraction from the shadows on the wall of my last hooking job. I looked up from the bed and and on the wall before me was this half circle spiked shape. Immediately I jumped from the bed and sketched it out in my sketch book. I layed back down and said "I think I'm leaving", and I didn't just mean the hour was up, I meant that I was going to leave to look for something better. I remember Amisted Mauphins "Tales of the city" on PBS when I was a teenager, it was more magic than one kid could handle on a TV mini series. I thought If I ever go anywhere else, it will be San Francisco. It was this shape that got me to realize it, that I needed to change my life. I just knew it was time to go, same way I knew I was to push myself out the basement window, I just knew. I also had to own up to the fact that the life style I was living was terribly unhealthy. It was so much being a prostitute, It was drugs and booze. By this point ion my life, you named, I did it. Or I was about to say "thank you" as someone handed me some mind altering substance. I'm not an addict, no that would be much to simple for me, I have to up the threat level, naturally. What I'm about to write is not an excuse, just a very matter of fact realization. I am pre - conditioned to want to destroy myself. This is nothing new, most abused children have been destroying themselves with substance abuse since humans were dumb enough to make street drugs. Because neurologically speaking it's familiar and oddly comforting to fallow through with the abuse you once knew. It's like a sick joke actually. If you really hate someone, Fuck em up in head enough as kid and they finish the job for you themselves when they become adults. Tragic, and because I'm one of these tragic cases I would even bring this no win equation with me everywhere I went for the next ten to twelve years. I even brought it with me to test out on myself in San Francisco. But that's where you come in, and that's what saved my life. That's what makes my story different and that's what this entire story is really about.

Suspension, 16"x20, watercolor

Every time I swayed too far into the direction of self destruction way of bad influences, bad relationships, or both combined with strange substances, BAM! someone would buy a painting from me, or ask me why I made something. Someone would want to interview me, wow. There and then I would think, OK, you have to keep it together right now, you have a responsibility to these people. In essence they were all people who believed in me or were willing to love me more than than I loved myself. Honest truth, It's the only reason I'm alive. Because according to the fates I was to have died a hooker drug addict in a sleaazyoid hag." The Divine is busy and usually doesn't give second chances.
But he didn't infact did give me second chances, and alot of them. He allowed me to in over just a ten year stretch of time produce and sell well over 200 paintings. Here in the US my work has been sprinked about in many states. California, New York, Texes, Ohio, MIssippi. Paintings and prints of mine have made it to Japan, Germany, New Zealand, The Netherlands, and Canada. Adam Sandel says Canada doesn't count though. What impresses me more , and what is closest to my heart are the kids who saw my work when they were young and kept in contact with me to let me know they made it in their lives. To all of you THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Because of what you did for me I was forced to have to try and love myself. It took a long time, but I think I do now, and I wont hurt myself anymore.
However I do need to point out that because of you, I desperately need to be loved ... see I'm allot like Judy Garland, complete with fluctuating weight and all. Only I don't wanna go out like Judy.

Any Givem Momnet, 40'x36, acrylic on canvas

So I knew I had to leave N.Y.C before it killed me or crushed my soul or both. A boy I was dating at the time, had moved to San Francisco, and I had come to visit, I knew immediately I was suppose to live here. His name was Andrew Goebel, and he is the only person I know who's life makes mine look like a mild explosion as apposed to a burning forest fire. What can I say I've always attracted extreme people. We meet in N.Y.C at a sex party, actually I'll admit it, it was a sex party that I was throwing. The moment we met, we both knew we were in trouble. He was everything I was, but just a little bit more and allot more spicy about it too. We were not gonna be good for each other, but we did it anyway. Andrew was sweet enough to buy me a plane ticket to SF. Because he knew i had to escape New York. I could write and entire book on Andrew Goebel, but I'm going to let him do that himself. I just hope he finds the courage to be what and who he really is instead of being who he thinks people want him to be. Big difference.

If you believe in magic, 40'x36, acrylic on canvas

Now once in San Francisco I started to magically and accidentally have an art career. The one thing every artist wants so bad but no one earth could tell them how to get, not even in college. Strange huh? Perhaps I had this cause I just always thought someones got to do it, and it might as well be me. I also had a force of nature inside me that made me make art my entire reason for living. I still have that force of nature with in me, it's just slowed down because I want to have time for actual better living now, and not just the idea of it. In my twenties I was working while others were playing, I was tireless and night after night i was there in my sunset apartment making artwork, artwork that had a purpose. I had something to prove. I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to show the world I could be more than just some winy abused gay kid. I wanted to make art so beautiful that it would cancel out anything bad that ever happened to me, or happened to anyone for that matter.

current, 22"x30", watercolor

I still believe in that mission but now it's mixed with story and myth and empowering those who don't believe they have a voice of their own. See I just cant help myself, I need to believe in something. I need to believe in something so bad, I'll even make up my own mythology to do it. Example. Hedgehog Boy. Truthfully it's terribly self serving going around trying to inspire. I do it cause it makes me feel good. Now some of me having an art career had to do with getting good press in such of the moment magazines like XY and Blue magazine out of Australia. (See these articles on Scribd here) These were alternative press media that really went out of their way to show case the arts. There was and still is the Internet that allowed me to communicate with people who liked what I did and what they saw in an honest no BS kind of a way. A way that can side step the art gallery process. Truth is no one wants to go to art gallery, they want to go see an artist. Personally I hate art shows. Me having an art carear also has allot to do with me meeting such magnetic character's in my life such as Adam Sandel, who took it upon himself to get me on the cover of the arts section of the Bay Area Reporter during open studio's. Awesome! He has become a life long friend, in fact he is the one responsible for me getting involved in the power of myth. In a book store on church street in San Francisco he told me to "Buy this book" He's very bossy that Adam Sandel, but he was right. It was Joseph Campbell's "The hero' Journey." Absolutely, it changed how I saw everything.

Next chapter: More art & Hedgehog Boy and strange tales of being an international broke art star, & whas next

Chrysalis, 22"x30", watercolor

All that I really know, 22"x30"

The lighter Side of Prositution

2010-09-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

I've been dying to write this chapter since I knew I was going to start this blog. So here we go, buckle up, this is gonna be good. I've given you the darker side of prostituting, now please allow me to give you the lighter side ...

Rene, San Francisco, CA, I need a hair cut

With in the game of "hooking" and with a certain type of client with whom I developed a very odd part of my personality. This personality is in part where Frank the Bear comes from in my graphic novels. In stead of sexually engaging this person I would walk around their house going through all their books and possessions that were within arms reach, talking a mile a minute, being annoying and as cute as humanly possible until an hour was up. Brilliant and no sex, there was no time left to do the deed. I had figured out a way of hooking with out using the hook.

The bizarre part of my personalty trait would usually start at the left end of a book shelf, keep in mind that people who hire hookers usually have very large book shelves. I'd go right for the travel section. A good place to start if one is going to rip though ones book selection. It would sort of sound something like this ...

(boy picks up book)

"Oh look, a book on Russia"

"Ever been there? (boy not pausing for answer)

"I hear It's cold" (boy drops book on floor) THUD!

(boy picks up book)

"OH look Italy, I've always wanted to go there, cause guess what my last name is?"

(boy dose not wait for answer)

"Capone, can you believe it, maybe I'll finally get some respect."

(boy drops book on floor) THUD!

(boy picks up book)

"Wow Hitler, you got a book on Hitler, I've always wondered about him, you know I heard he was gay, see you just never know." "Ever read Mein Kampf ?

(boy dose not wait for answer)

"Me either" (boy drops book on floor) THUD!

(boy picks up book)

"Oh here we go, History of Art, you know I love that shit." "You know I hear Picasso was a real asshole"

(boy drops book on floor) THUD!

Uh-huh, terribly annoying and funny, well funny for me anyway. So imagine that goes on for about an hour, and this poor person standing before me that was looking for hot sex has just been shocked, can't tell if making fun of him or not, and most certainly has lost his erection by now. Fear not this personalty trait in me only comes out when I'm nervous or in a really good mood. If you just cant stand it, a good back hand to back of the head works wonders. Then if I can get away with it, I'll kill you. If I can't get away with it, well then we'll both just have to wait till I can. Can you stomach it? Be brave.

A funny story about hooking, and most ex-hookers can confirm this fact. Most top forty hits are at some point in a hookers carear ruined by bad association with bizarre clients and hooking tales of woe .... There was a man who had prostate cancer and so had rented an apartment next to Sloan Ketrink in N.Y.C, It a big cancer institute in New York. That's not funny at all in fact its down right sad. But what is funny is that every time I went to see this man he would play Savage Gardens "Truly Madly Deeply", the CD single on repeat for an hour." He then would try convince me to give him a prostate massage. Somehow the title to the song and the words were lost upon this mans frame of reference. But to me, Oh I was fucking dying on the inside with laughter. "Truly Madly, DEEPLY" Are you fucking kidding me?

Now giving a prostate massage is not my forte nor sexual calling in life. So no, I was not gonna give this man a prostate massage. After the third time I went to go see this him, I would have hoped that message was clear, I'm was not gonna give him his prostate massage. But it never seemed to sink in, So every time I went to see him, and I saw him about six or seven times, Savage Gardens "Truly Madly Deeply" softly played in the background on repeat while he tried to convince me to give him a prostate massage. The sound track and scenario was always the same. At least I knew what to expect. I'm happy to report that i stuck to my guns and that no prostates were messaged. However every time I hear "Truly Madly Deeply" in a shop or in the supermarket radio, I want to pull a number 2 pencil from my nap sack, sharpen it right there and then and repeatedly stab it into both ear drums. Here's to having a perfectly good song ruined forever in my head. *Cheers*

Me, still thinking I need a hair cut.

The dark side of prostitution

2010-09-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Salt", acrylic on canvas 16"x20"

After freshman year those brave enough and stupid enough to pick fine art as a major. We took our rightful spot as the school crazies. On the top floor of a building at 14th street and Journal Square. A most excellent location. There was the fine art department. A place that time and technology seemed to have left behind the only traces of modern tech in the fine art floor where items brought in by way of scavenger hunt. Your occasional projector or video camera. Other than that it was all Sweat and tears, pencil & paper, brush & canvas, and a whole lot of guts. I naturally excelled in painting and drawing. In the art hall I learned two important things, the first being a phrase pertaining to imagery and meaning, and is one of the most important sentence I ever heard. "good artist barrow, excellent artist steal." The second thing I learned that Ritalin can keep the focus on the ties between a piece of art and people with in it's proximity, a concept that one has to be on drugs to begin with to understand. But, when making art it's important to focus, so my painting teacher passed out Ritalin. But not passed out just to anybody, it was kind of a honor to be given the pill. It was around this time however I decided I hated reality so much that I started to fall into drug use, my drugs of choice were ecstasy and marijuana. I loved ecstasy, I took it every weekend, in multiple doses for over year. I liked it so much that I would take it and go to class. A very bad sign.

So at this point in my story, this boy was still fighting poverty and himself and all the demons of his past. This was a place for all intense purposes I didn't belong. The economic divide insures this, but for any young person out there realizing that there is just no money. The one thing the economic divide does not count on is you being talented or being smart enough to communicate with that talent. So that's the loop hole, if you can find it. I'm here, I'm committed to being an artist but I was fighting the economic divide and the demons within myself. So I've told you about making porn now I have to tell you about a somewhat dark part of my past. Prostitution. Now I know some of you have just gasped in horror, but as I wrote before, please try and remember where I come from. If you dont know then read the beggining of this blog and find out

I just couldn't make enough money to survive. Working at the coffee house helped and kept me up with caffeine to do my school work but I had to pay rent too, how could I pay rent, go to school, and work at a coffee house all at the same time. Almost impossible. So the next logical step after making porn was to become the thing that once said is always fallowed by a gasp from somebody. A hooker!, and let me tell you it's not like in "Pretty Woman" at all. Oh I wish it was, in fact lets just pretend I'm still a hooker and I'll go outside and wait at the buss stop for you to show up in your fancy car and the rest will be history. I will even sing prince's "kiss" in your bath tub full of bubble mate soap ten times worse than Julia Roberts ever could, try me.

So in NYC i became a call boy. I found an agency with an office down by the piers off Christopher Street. To start I needed a beeper and a credit card sliding machine. The romantic era of prostitution, a good friend of mine calls this the era of the "beeper boy." The beeper would go off and you would have to call into the the office. This meant that you had an assignment or "job." From the home office of the beeper you would then be dispatched to whom ever the client was. It all seems pretty silly now but it meant you had to do no work to get a paying customer, and I wanted nothing to do with the hustle. From the beeper I would then go to apartments on the upper east side and more often than not to penthouse suites at the top of hotels. I didn't even know hotels had penthouse suites till I became a hooker, honestly I didn't. This hooker secret would be one that would fallow me even to San Francisco. Yes, Even in SF I did this line of work before I started to sell paintings.

At first I was kind of like a fabulous secret, at first anyway... and a fancy one. I went to allot of very nice apartment buildings and more often than not these men weren't so bad looking. I guess if your the upper crust of society pretending to be strait you have to be pretty somewhat attractive looking to pull off that big of a lie long term. So in short I got fucked by allot of woman's husbands. If you were a closeted man in the upper east side with allot of disposable income with a thing for girlish looking boys then I was the hooker for you! Mostly this meant they were all sick fucks. Which makes me think half the world is full of sick fucks. I didn't come cheap, I was $450 dollars an hour. Where the hell do people get money like that to throw around? I can't believe that people have that much cash to spare. That's why when I hear men in white collars complaining about cash flow and the economy etc, etc. I don't believe one syllable of their compliant.

"Tempting Movements" oil on paper

I learned allot about people while doing the walk of shame, but I couldn't have learned it any other way. I learned this one very important lesson. Most people just want someone to listen to them and to love them. Sometimes this was a very sad realization in the penthouse of some hotel on fifth avenue, or some guys place on Folsum Street on SOMA. I also learned there is a certain type of person who takes great pleasure in domination and the idea of control. This is one of the things that led me to want stop hooking. Also I wanted my sexuality to have to come about through intimacy and hopefully love, and not just money.

True Story ... There once was this one client I was sent to in Jersey, a real hardcore Italian type. Awful gawdy interiors too, complete with bad gold lion statues at the foot of his bed. He was big muscular and a little scary, and he knew it. If I said no to him that meant yes, and this escalated with him tying my hands behind my back and well you get the picture ... It certainly wasn't complete rape, I mean I know why these big guys have a boy who looks like me show up, its what i signed up for and I'm not stupid. It's not that I'm even apposed to having sex that way. What bothered me about it was that it was a physiological space where I was excluded from the equation, I didn't have a say in what happened to me and I hate that. I just hate being discounted or not acknowledged. This man gave me an extra 100 dollars and although that made it possible to pay rent, it didn't make me any more comfortable. Now that's the darker side of prostitution.

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome

2010-09-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

My on going blog goal was to matter of fact, tell you the story of my life in linear fashion because i felt if I didn't i couldn't find the next chapter in my life. From point A to point B was how I saw it. That has changed in the course of writing this, It had changed because I as much as I want to tell my story I want to also heal. I want to put a big slab of neosporran on the emotional wounds that start at the base of my neck and rip down through my torso and into my stomach. These emotional wounds make unnecessarily tense and un - comfortable. So my goal for the remainder of his tale of my life is to heal. Bridge the past with the present and that means hopefully being able to see my future ... and I think I almost can.

My reason for wanting to bridge the past and the present in part from the realization that I have been living with Post Traumatic Stress disorder since I was a child. I was told by my physciatrist that its the one and only physcuatric condition that wont go away on it's own and gets worse with age if left untreated. I think to my self gosh so many people must have PTS. He leaned in and took of his classes to make a point, he said "Even the hard core crazies walking around downtown yelling at traffic, Nine tines our of ten it will go away, But PTS is neurologically burned into your brain chemistry and there fore your neurological response." So I've been taking some medication over the past few months and I have to tell you something remarkable has happened. Well, first off he told me I had to play the tape in my head past any point of trauma, to try and see a future. Bridge the past with t he future. Luckily I have this blog / book as a tool to do so. More importantly I learned what I always had thought was true but could never know what to do with it without the help of medication. The tension in my body and sense of fear in my head are not my own, and it's starting to fade. It's enough to make me wanna cry. That sense of shame in being an abused child is to starting to fade, and that is the best gift the universe could give me right now.

"Personification of Shame", 11"x14", watercolor

One of the saddest and most awful by products pf being an abused child is "Shame." If i had to explain shame I would do by personifying that demon bitch as fallows; "Shame is a nasty kid in a red waggon that one must pull behind them as the go about their adventures and path ways. He is not your friend and he not your own kin or blood. He is a learned response and all ties to him must be cut. Those Ties for me are finally being cut, and with out shame, I must tell you I'm a ridiculously happy person. I'm all for heroics laughter and not much else. Pictured to the left is what I think Shame would look like. Picture that sitting in a red waggon behind you and you get the picture.

There is one last thing I'd like to share with you about my mission to rid myself of PTS and that is the impact of human touch. Since the time I started to take medication for PTS and me trying to change my patterns of thinking I accidentally learned what it feels like to have all the tension in my body melt away by the tight embrace of another. It was something I was totally not aware could happen. Is this part of what love is and does it happen all the time? Sadly this person responsible for that tight embrace can not be more than that right now. But the idea that was planted in my head, I will gladly accept. With this new empowering knowledge I may finally be able to do what I set out to do do at the beginning of this book to do and that is to finally know what it feels like to be loved. I could meet that one person who desired to do that for me, to hold me tight enough that all the learned tension in my head and body would dissipate, then I would give them all that I am. My body and my heart. But then hopefully they had the skills in the bedroom to back it up or I'd have to dump them. Just kidding, I just couldn't end this chapter on such a sappy note. But it is true, I want to be in love.

My character "Zebra Boy" having to drag the red waggon carrying

"Shame" behind him. If i ever make a new comic book it will be "Zebra Boy"

Ongoing blog goal

2010-09-23T21:29:00.000-07:00

My on going blog goal was to matter of faculty tell you the story of my life in linear fashion because i felt if i didn't i couldn't find the next chapter in my life. From point A to point B was how I saw it. That has changed in the course of writing this, It had changed because I as much as I want to tell my story I want to also heal. I want to put a big slab of neosporran on the emotional wounds that start at the base of my neck and rip down through my torso and into my stomach. These emotional wounds make unnecessarily tense and un - comfortable. So my goal for the remainder of his tale of my life is to heal, and that means to be able to see my future ... and I think I almost can.

"It's ok if your sad, I'll still be your friend"

Where I left you last in my story was at art school, and it was fabulous. After freshman year those stupid enough and brave enough to pick fine art as a major got to go to the sixth floor of a building at Fourteenth street and Journal Square. There at the top of the building we took our right full place as the school crazies. We were in a major and a wing of the school that time had forgotten about. It was terribly romantic.
The only modern things in the Fine Art floor were items that kids would bring in by way of scavenger hunt, your occasional projector or video camera. Other than that this was the real thing, paint brushes, paper, pencils and guts, not much else. This is where I learned to fallow my own vision down to the end, even if it was going to kill me, I was gonna be an artist cause the way I saw it, someone had to do it.
I learned two things in the art wing, one being the phrase relating to imagery and point of view. One of the best sentences on earth ... "Bad artists barrow, good artists Steal." I also learned that Ritalin helped one concentrate and not loose the artistic ties between individuals and the physical art with in a confined space. A concept you have to be on drugs to understand to begin with. So my painting instructor passed out some pills, not to everyone, just to a select few, it was kind of an honor really. Naturally I excelled in painting and drawing, and learned patience for the muse. Shes a picky girl, but when she comes, she comes on strong. now around this time I also developed a liking for drugs. I hated reality so much, I just wanted to be on drugs all the time. My drugs of choice at the time were marijuana and ecstasy. I took so much ecstasy it a wonder my brain even produces dopamine. But fear not, it still does, and plenty of it. Me and ecstasy got along so well, I would do it and go to class. not a good sign.

"May the wind ..."

This was still a place for all intense purposes I didn't belong. The economic divide insures this. But for any poor kid out there reading this, there is one thing the economic divide dose not count on you being talented or having the ability to communicate through that talent. That's loop hole, if you can find it. The economic divide is very real and make no mistake its not some accident in the stages of economics, it is intent fully placed there by very rich people to keep you form aspiring to greatness, to keep you from desiring to be more. It is there to hold you down. Think about it, heaven forbid you started to think for yourself and ask tough questions about fairness and human rights. Because if you did that you might stop working and struggling so hard. Working hard to directly and indirectly produce goods and services. and lets not forget, pay taxes. The economic divide is made very wide so you think you may never jump across, so wide that you wont even try. It's real for sure, but it's also smoke and mirrors. It is nothing more than a mud puddle that you can dance around. The system of value in which we rest our beliefs in so readily is crumbling. Money, the system of attaching numeric value to printed pieces of paper for rightfully services and needs will come to and end when the people of the world wake up and realize that no nation can back up the numeric value of cash. Soon it will gone and the human race will have to act and live in civil harmony and its something I hope i live to see come about in a peaceful way. Now that's good stuff right there, that's the kind of talk that clears out a town. So there I was in NYC the most expensive place on earth with no money or real access to money, now this is where I tell you about a dark spot in my past prostitution. Now I know some of you just gasped in horror, but as I've written before, try and remember where I come from. It's all here in the beginning of this blog.

Birthday Blog / Leaving Los Angeles

2010-09-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday today, and I'm sitting LAX airport waiting to return home to San Francisco. Happen to be here early for an afternoon flight, so I got me a big coffee and a poppy seed muffin and decided as my birthday present to myself I would bang out the rest of this memoir of my strange and unusual life. By the way the poppy seed muffin is truly the mightiest of all muffins on earth.

I came down to LA wearing my best superman shirt to go to a casting call for "Work of Art" on bravo TV network. Four hours of waiting in line to get to talk with a casting agent for five minutes. I dazzled them and was very forth coming about who I am and what I think my work represented to people. My mission I told them, and this is something I've only started really get a good grasp on, is through metaphor and story "Speak to the those who do not believe they have a voice of their own." Sure that's altruistic but it's also fantastic. The casting director even told me "That's not where the money is." I told him I didn't care. I did my best and I know my art work left them stunned, but I did not get called back, I was not picked. But, I think I know why ... because I'm fucking dangerous.

Me and my new friend Karen Aansorge in line
getting sunburned for arts sake. Sana Monica, CA

Picture this, me escalating a fire storm of abused, disabled, and dis enfranchised people to stand up for themselves and fight. Be it metaphorically speaking or matter of fact is not something a TV network wants to be responsible for, and that's just what I would have done. Perhaps if I were in it just for me or in it just for the Benjamin's I would have had a better chance. That night on the radio while driving the rental car through West Hollywood I heard a song on the radio and the chorus was, "It's all about the Benjamin's" As I listened to this vapid song, I watched groups of emotionless vem-bot on the Sana Monica strip move across an intersection with countless eyebrow violations and an eagerness to get sloppy drunk for the sake of drowning out reality. The walking per suit of money overriding all human instinct and emotional clairvoyance, this sad realization made me have the overwhelming urge to wanna run them over. Spare them of their useless and wasted lives. Thank god I live in San Francisco!

I don't need to to be on Bravo to be who I am. In fact it might not have worked out anyway even I had been picked cause I kind of like things on my own terms. I'm a San Francisco celebrity god dammit. I have sold over 100 paintings in my life, have art work in five different countries, twelve different states and currently have six google pages about me. Some one in New Zealand just asked me to make a self portrait of myself for them, oh my my god, how cool is that. So I may not live in a fancy place or be able to go out for Chinese food as much I'd like but my art career is amazing, and I'm a hot mess.

Art school is fierce (part 2)

2010-08-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

Like I said before it was survival of the fittest. Picture this ... One tall building in downtown N.YC. approximately 3,000 little art student hopefuls trying to get to a 9 am class on various floors of this twenty story building and only two elevators. It often came down to throwing ones self on the packed elevator, portfolio and all. This did make riding the elevator to class a little stress full ... but some of were on a mission, an art mission. To be the best damn artist that each of us could be so help us god! I was not alone in my militant art boot camp thinking, and it was so nice be surrounded by like minded individuals who believed. We knew art was not to be taken litely. They understood the power of communication, and the mystery that the artist held within himself. Oh, it was heaven to know I was not alone.

The first year of art school, they call "foundation year." It was hell. We weren't even allowed to think in color till after Christmas, this was strict rule. Our classes, just to name a few were, 2D design, 3D design, Drawing Fundamentals, Digital Design, English basics, Art History, and guess what, no gym class. Those teachers worked us to death. The sheer volume of work was shocking. But it was for a reason, the strong survived and by the end of the fall semester we know who was for real and who thought art school was just gonna be fun and games. By the time the spring semester rolled we could finally pick up a colored pencil and that's when things would get really interesting.

My favorite teacher was the instructor for the drawing fundamentals class. (find name & insert here) She was an very well established abstract painter, recently gone figure. I liked her because mostly she did what ever she wanted with complete disregard for the Parsons syllabus. But she always backed up all her teaching in the context of American culture and art history, so that all one could do was listen to her ramble off with complete amazement. The first day of class she walks in and yells out "Alright who here is from Jersey." A raise of hands later comes her condescending "So they came from Jersey, they always come from Jersey." She like allot people in N.Y.C were rather extreme looking. Jet black died page boy hair cut, pale white skin, a whole lot of red lipstick and an un-lit cigarette in her right hand used like a weapon and a pointer. She was fabulous. During breaks she used to sneak into the stairwell with the students to suck down a few Marlboro's before teaching would resume. Once back in class she'd complain, in a smokers cough where her lungs would fly out of her mouth before her voice. Shed go on about N.Y.C becoming so god damn smoke free and how she couldn't stand it. Back in the good old days she'd say "I'd have a cigarette dangling on everyone of your desks, and go around in circle stopping at each desk for a puff." "Can't do that anymore, so I gotta go in the damn stair well like criminal!" God she was funny. I adored funny people even back then. The icing on the cake was her Atkins diet, which she loathed. Two hard boiled eggs and a can of tuna. You'd think she was being tortured. Of course she always wore all black so you might have though she were going to a funeral after class. Turns out it was standard issue for all artistic eccentrics in New York City. Like an unspoken uniform. All black, all the time.

Below are some images of work of I made during the first three years of college, They are not where I would ultimately end up artistically, but they do show how art school shapes what ever talent you might already have and god willing if you have it in you, and by that I mean you might actually have anything important to say, you would be prepared to unleash it with authority. That's what Parsons School of design gave me, a sense of authority. You need to have a authority, other wise who would give a damn.
Allot of these images below I sold to a few collectors in Sweden, and the rest two a hand full of people in the U.S. From the starting gate I was incredibly blessed by a few magazine articles about my artwork in a publications such as "XY" magazine out of California, and "Joey" in NYC. The ultimate was when in 1999 when I was asked by Staffan Hildebrand the Swedish film maker to be involved with Ericson communication in Stockholm Sweden to present my artwork at an international conference on "Technology and world trends." To this day I have no clue what I was doing there, but I had never been on a plane prior to be asked to attend. So I felt pretty damn Special. They all spoke English too, so whew! what a relief. Through the conference in Sweden and the magazine interest in the states, I made allot of contacts with people who went out of their way to find me and ask to purchase my work. This was a big deal cause I was broke and sometimes literally starting. Instant noddles from china town really loose their appeal after awhile. I was determined to stay in school and make it work. During the week I worked at a local coffee house in the nights and made porn on weekends. When someone bought a painting from me, I considered it to be an honor and a blessing ... and I still do. Back then to me it meant I could eat what ever I wanted and maybe buy a new shirt or something. I didn't keep the best of records back then, but If anyone reading this owners any of these pieces, please take care of them, one day the museum of modern art will come knocking and I'm counting on you to show them my development as an artist.

"Screaming at Signals" oil on paper, 30"x16"

"Angelina X3" Oil on board, 18"x24"

"Even Grandma had a helmet", 20"x24", oil and acrylic,
with an overlaying layer of plastic with painted on shapes

"Untitled", oil on canvas, 36"x24"

"Understanding childhood", oil on paper, 24"x36"

"Self Portrait" 20"x24", oil on canvas

Art school is Fierce ... Part One

2010-08-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Self portrait oil on canvas 9"x12"

So there I was skinny, broke, and so god damn happy. I had managed to get to N..Y.C, Wow! I couldn't believe it. This was more than I could have ever hoped for. I was there cause I was deemed talented by someone important in a office, and this was such a needed ego boost. Now I'm sure some of you reading this are thinking the last thing this kid needs is more ego. You'd be wrong, especially back in the year of 1998. I so needed for art to believe in me, and in I would and still do believe in the power of art. For every moment I held my head up high there were at least twice as many nights filled with self doubt and displaced shame. One of the sad and terribly unfair by products of an abusive childhood is an awful displaced sense of shame. Shame about who you are, who you were and who you want to be. Mine was particularly heavy especially as an artist who primarily uses himself and his experience as a veichile to inspire and communicate. In the early days it was as if for every step taken creatively there were two steps back. But I plugged on through ... and in foundation year of art school thankfully you truly are too busy to think, and foundation year at Pasons School Of Design was like boot camp in the army. Only the strong would survive. They worked us to death. No one slept till Christmas. But there was a method to their madness, by the time Spring Semester rolled around half the freshman class would have either quit, been kicked out or just simply gone missing in action. Missing in action was my favorite because that meant I got my own dorm room. I technically had been given a double with some kid from India. He was a bit of a rich trust fund baby brat who drank too much and got sucked heavy into the night life party scene. We must make the distinction that the night life party scene is much different than the survival underground that I was involved in. My roommate would and get me to go out but i honestly just had to much homework to do, Homework that one could not fake, because it was physical and had to be presented to the art teacher the next class. Oh and these were no simple assignments, for example, "Design and execute a portrait using 1800's crosshatching style." No matter how good you were, you couldn't fake this shit. My roommates desired discipline was fashion, which Parsons was very well known for at the time, well he never made it. He and his girl friend both dropped out before Christmas that year. That meant I got my own room. The first thing I did was take his dresser and position it conjunction with mine so that I could make a loft bed. In between the two dressers I balanced my single mattress and bed frame and hoped for the best. I was very proud of myself. Ultimately this would prove to be incredibly dangerous and life threatening on one lovely spring afternoon. Diego and I meet at my dorm room to do what most horny gay boys do during breaks at school. While getting it on all fours, screaming my head off ... the bed started to rock. Being that it was a make sift rigged loft bed half of it came crashing down towards the window. Towards that window on a steady mattress decline I started to slide, naked with nothing but a slippery sheet to make matters worse. That afternoon I almost slid out my own damn window. I lived on the 16th floor. The screams switched from sexual abandon to "Oh god I really am gonna die!" Diego grabbed my legs and stopped me just as my sholders went past the window frame. We remained still and silent for a minute and then laughed hysterically. Then we put the bed back on the ground where it belonged and continued doing what boys do best. If It could be said that I had nine lives, I would have used up one that day. If Diego hadn't have grabbed me I would have flown naked through the air sixteen stories down onto 6th Street. People shoping for shoes down below would have had a much differernt experience than planned.

"If your good at something, never do it for free"

2010-08-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

The First time, I ever took my clothes off for money I was Eighteen. There was an add in the back of the local "hip"Albany news rag. Something to the effect of "males wanted for easy video work, some nudity may be required" Turns out allot of nudity was required. Basically, the first time was just me jacking off in a bed and it was video taped. It was explained to me that some rich couple hired the video man to do this work to spice up their sex life. What ever, I didn't really care. Pretty easy money right, I would have done it alone anyway. At Eighteen years old everything male on earth jacks off at least three times a day anyway. I remember the first time because I had meet Gillian for dinner in Albany right before. at this gross chicken sandwich place i was fond of. You could get a chicken sandwich, plus fries and a can of soda of your choosing for $4.99. Dinning experience made complete by a giant red painted chicken on the wall that was very happy to see you. I told Gillian what I was about to do. If I remember correctly she rolled her eyes, and asked if I was gonna drink the rest of my coke. Gillian snatched my coke I ran off to the hotel by the freeway. The shoot was at a Motel 6, not so fancy and a little run down. I left my first phonographic experience feeling pretty good. $200, rub one out and that was it. I never saw the images or knew what happened with the video. I meet Gillian a few hours later at Liz and Gina's apartment on Lark Street. I bought us an eighth of weed from some dealer who delivered and we all smoked pot till we all passed out. That was my first time.

When I moved to N.Y.C it became allot more serious ... and before I go sharing all of this with you. Try and remember where I had come from, and before you judge me try and see it through my eyes. I did it all for the wrong reasons. I wanted to be loved, or at very least liked. The idea that I would take my clothes off and people would be nice to me, was that well, amazing at first. But that feeling is fleeting and doesn't last very long. The truth is I didn't know how to be loved, and this small glimmer of what it must be like to be loved was addictive. I also did it because this was N.Y.C and I was broke. In the dorm rooms at Parson's, I didn't have a cent to my name. Most of my meals were from boxes of microwavable food my mother and Mr. Honicki would send me. As nice at that was, and I certainly did appreciate it, that wasn't gonna cover living expenses in New York City. In fact I would usually cry when I would get a box of food in the post from my mom. Because that meant she hadn't forgotten about me. I saw my mother more and more through out high school and slowly we bonded again. It wasn't easy given our past but her sense of humour, the one that she seemingly genetically passed on to me helped out allot. During breaks at college I would take the Amtrack train north to go see my mom. We had a good relationship. The foundation was rocky but we tried to build upon it. I even took my first Boyfriend home to meet her.

My first real boyfriends name was Diego. They say, and I don't know who "they" are but they say "you never forget your first love" and it's true. Diego Lopez was from Puerto Rico. Tall and handsome with black hair and deadly eyes. Loving, loyal and so god damn sexy. He was more than enough and I fucked it up because as he put it, "I didn't know how to be loved" and he was right I didn't. I meet Diego in the cafeteria at Parsons. He just walked right up to me and said "Hi" and we become lovers instantly. We would walk around the east and west village for hours, just holding hands and talking. He was perfect and a I did love him ... and how could I not, even the elements begged us to be in love. We saw the first snow fall that N.Y.C had seen in ten years together, holding hands in the street on Christmas eve. It was perfect. Strait up, no excuses, I lost Diego because N.Y.C and its sexual underground became a drug to me. It was never enough, I wanted to be wanted so bad that I would let it seep into my everyday life with photo shoots, porn movies and sex parties. I would like to say that "I' am sorry" and that it was all my fault our relationship ended. If I had known then what I know now, we would have had a chance. Because in all that mess of my life I learned that lust is fleeting and that I don't need everyone to want me "that way". I just need need one person.

I meet and had brief affair with another boy from the cafeteria at Parsons, hmm ... maybe I should go back there and sit around and see what happens. This boy would play Moressey songs on his guitar late at night. I would encourage this cause he was dreamy and this was too good to be true ... and It was. He dumped me for a dumb jock football type player type. Later in life Derek would become the guitarist to a very famous rock band with a stage name that I can't remember. This rock band had it's roots partially in San Francisco where I write this now. It's funny what a small wold it is because everyone I know in San Francisco has a story of Miss Annnamatronic. The only "Foe queen" to ever throw down the "Miss. Tyranny shack" second place crown off her head onto the stage floor and walk off throwing a epic hissy fit. But that's a whole different story and I wasn't there. On one of Derek and I first real dates, (dates other than coffee) we meet at restaurant in Chelsea. I liked him so much I kept saying to myself, "For once in your life be ccol René, don't snort when you laugh and don't ramble on about stupid things nobody cares about." The universe was stacked against me that night!! Without really looking at the menu, I had the audacity to just point for the waiter. See, I didn't want my date to know I couldn't read the menu. When my pasta dish came, I screamed! In it were these bizarre little things with tentacles and eyes. "Baby Octopus" Derrek explained to me. We'll, I'd never seen such disgusting things before in my life. So at this point I went against my own. "Just be cool" advice and carried on at length about how they looked like aliens, and what a coincidence we were going to see Aliens 4 after dinner. Derrek ate them for me, I think just get me to shut up. we ended up having a pretty good time despite my tragic un-coolness. On the way back from the movie theatre he stopped in front of an all night deli and said "Should I buy the condoms, or do you want to?' I write that here because It was so smooth on so many levels. I'm continually impressed by that even all theses years later. The next time I would see him was at school, I brough him flowers. I could tell bt the look on his face that it wasn't the cool thing to do.

I did so many photo sessions in NYC that i cant really tell you how many, but allot. Some very professional and other not so professional. It was the golden age of the Internet and everyone and their mother though they could open a charge per view porn website, and they did. Out there there are allot grainy bad photos of me on drugs having sex in Harlem in badly decorated living rooms that no one should ever see. I hope they never wee the light of day. I was in every gay nude magazine N.Y.C produced, and most of them twice They had dumb names like Playguy and Freshmen, Intouch. They are actually somewhat embarrassing. My first move was titled "Undressed for Success." There would be many others in NYC and in San Francisco, but this ones special because if you ever run by it, you will see me making a most horrifying face and noise as my fellow actor proceeds to slurp up his own jizz off an ironing board that i just finished fucking him on. Funny stuff. Now, for all the gross people I meet I did meet a few that really stuck out as more than just your run of the mill porn meeting. There were two people in New Jersey that I bonded with in a surreal and almost other worldly way. As if we had meet before. I can write that now because I'm old enough to know that those meetings are rare, and you should pay attention. For over a two year period I worked with Chance and his company. Back then it was called club2001. Avery stupid name I might add as the year 2001 would eventually come and go. Regardless, I spent allot of time with Chance and his friend whom I will call Mr.U because I know he likes to remain in the shadows. Chance was a big porn start having just made a movie called An American in Prague, for Bell Ami. We became friends, and I got see he was normal just like everyone else. He taught me to water ski. Chance even made me my first website with images of my artwork. They hired me to do big murals on their walls of a warehouse in Hackensack N.J. See for all my whoring around I always went to class and I always made my artwork my first priority. How I found time I'll never know, but my artwork was always the most important thing to me. I was gonna be an artist come hell or high water. Mr. U and Chance took notice of my art and had a respect for it. Mr.U helped me take slides of the work I made in college and even purchased a few of my original pieces. He and I would talk at great length about unseen forces in the world and how only through Shaman ritual and thinking could one really see the true nature if things. Mr. U was special. Meeting him and Chance was the exception to the rule of the people in the land of "skin." I have allot respect for them both and hope to see them again one day. Perhaps in N.Y.C very soon.

Me painting the walls of IX TECH, In New Jersey.

It would take me many years to figure out that all these photographers and porno boys that wanted to fuck my brains out, that although it sure was fun it had nothing to do with being wanted or loved.
I'm not proud but I will say I'm thankful for it, because with out it I would have gone hungry. More importantly I would have never learned that you can be desired everyone and it will mean nothing, but to be truly by loved by someone that is something different entirely and way more valuable. I still think I have it in me. I can be that one person for someone. They may have to hit me on the head and say "Hey stupid I love you!" but nothing worth doing is ever easy.

I'll add some more images at the end, cause I know its the only way to get anyone to read theses days. But just maybe you will read the rest of my story in this blog too ... There is way more to me than just these photos. Stick around, I'll show you.

Uphill climb to college

2010-08-11T21:26:00.000-07:00

In high school I was very much a loaner, but i did make a few friends other than Gillian, and one of them was the high school art teacher. Steve Honicki. I want to take a special moment to acknowledge him because I 'm certain with out his pushing me I would have never thought I could go to college. How does a boy from a trailer park go to college. They don't, it's too expensive and the system is designed to exclude the poor. There was one loop hole, talent. If you were really good at something, just maybe one could get a scholarship. This was a concept that was hard for me to understand, and still is because it makes me think if your really good at something that you will count and be taken care of. I wish that was true. But for the sake of keeping hope alive, I will just give you one perspective. Before I made it to college, I was gonna be the best fucking artist that ever came out of out Niskayuna High school or help me god ... I'd burn the fucking building down. I think I did it, but not with out the help of Steve Honicki.

I'll never forget the time I walked up to and asked him "Your gay right?" It was different time, you just didn't walk up to people and say that. He politely dragged me into the next room away from listening ears. He asked why I would think that, I told him, "his shoes." He was wearing Doc Martins, the black kind with the yellow stitching, Only queers wore those shoes. It was rude, but i was right. We became very good friends after that, although at first it was a very mentor & student relationship. But that's what I needed. Mr. Honicki gave me one of the most amazing gifts anyone has ever given me. A safe place to be who I was. Away from the the rest of the school, for next four years me and cast of delinquent children would take over the art hall everyday. A secluded section of the high school complete with its own art gallery and sectioned classrooms. I had a knack for attracting the dysfunctional, dangerously beautiful, and general unruly problem children with in a five mile area. If you didn't fit in, you came to the art hall, where I was more than happy to see you. Angelina, Brendon and so many more would take over empty rooms, play loud music, laugh, make fabulous art and take up radical stances against the world. We listened to Tori Amos, Nine inch nails, had body piercings, wore make up and had general bad attitudes. We were fierce. Special thanks to all the kids who made the Niskauyna art hall such a unique place.

Steve & Rene

Mr. Honicki looked the other way most of time. That was a very special for him to trust that for all our craziness, that we were discovering ourselves. Most importantly for me, I was discovering my voice as an artist. Sometimes being a teacher isn't so much as instructing but giving permission for young people to find themselves. That's a very special teacher. Steve fallowed me around Junior and senior year like wax to a crayon demanding I fill out college forms. I only filled out one, I had no second choice. Parsons school of Design in N.Y.C. He took slides of my artwork and made sure I completed the assignments for possible enrollment. The price tag, over $32,000 a year. I had resigned myself that this was impossible. Mr. Honicki knew otherwise. Because of his persistence, guidance and the occasional shove, I got myself an interview at Parsons school of design for possible scholarship. They didn't give that many of them, and it was an honour to get a time slot. We were six hours away by bus. So, Grandma and Steve, separately prepared me to get on a bus with my portfolio. I went down to N.Y.C with all my hopes and dreams in one black portfolio case that was almost the same size as me. Crying and scared to death, feeling like my entire life depended on this one interview, I made my way from Port Authority in midtown all the way to downtown twelfth Street. Stupidly, I walked most of the way so I could see the city, my boots were a little too big and my portfolio packed with everything I had made since arriving at my grandmother house, so my feet hurt by the time I arrived. Before my appointment I collected myself and stood there like I had a purpose, that was hard because my entire life before that point I was led to believe I was nobody. But I wanted to be somebody so bad! I left N.Y.C on a bus that night emotionally exhausted and not really sure what had happened. A letter came in the mail about a two week later, I had received a three year scholarship to the most expensive art school in the united states. That meant it was possible, I could take out bogus students loans for the last year, I had a chance. This scrawny little faggot from a trailer park in upstate N.Y, had a chance.

I went away to college, this meant having to say goodbye to Gillian and all the other lovely lesbians that had come into my my life as a teenager. I used to joke that I was raised my lesbians in woods. For a short period of time I may have actually become a lesbian. Among the most important and unforgettable were Gina and Liz in Albany, N.Y. At their apartment is where I spent almost every weekend hanging out and working at the local bagel shop in the mornings. Never for a second did I want to have to say goodbye, but I had to fallow my destiny. Truthfully, I don't think I ever had so much fun in my life then getting stoned out my mind with you both and singing Melissa Etheridge songs at the top of our lungs. To this day I can still sing "Bring me some water" ... backwards ... and in my sleep. Oh, and our acid party's were legendary! Fifteen to twenty skater boys and hipster chicks all cramped into a small two bedroom apt on hardcore physcadelic drugs. We had so much fun. Even when that chick threw herself in the laundry closet and claimed to be falling down a mine shaft. Gina, Liz and I were cool as calm, even if we were all on three hits of acid ourselves. I recall one of us said, "Bitch, get out of my hamper and back in the party" ... I loved you girls. Thanks for the memories. Oh and Gina, I'm sorry about the time I fucked some boy on your bed and forgot to get rid of the condom.

Below are some of the images I made that would get me into Parsons. Looking at them now, I'm kind of amazed. It feels like just yesterday and yet looks like a million years ago. There was an honesty in these images, and a real truth about who I was as a person. As an artist, I couldn't have asked for more. Frank the bear would approve ...

Seventh Vision, 20"x30", pencil on paper

Romeo's Dream, 16"x20", Ink and pencil on paper

Golden Gate Bridge, 18"x20", mixed media on paper

Fenced, 20"x30", watercolor on paper

Dreaming of Marshmallow's, 22"x30", mixed media on paper

Bridge, 18"24", mixed media on paper

Vulnerable, 22"x30", mixed media on paper

Electric Blue kiss, 18"x24", mixed media on paper

high school and meeting my first soul mate

2010-08-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

After two months in the loony bin I had gotten pretty comfortable with all the crazies around me. I even started to like allot of them. In that mental institution of what ever the fuck they do, I learned one thing. There are allot of people in this world far more crazy than I. This stay at the nut house was unusually long because as I've written before, simply no one would come get me. My mother would have but by law was forbiden to see me. The one person who would have picked me up could not come get me.

My angel did come get me in the disguise of my grandma Janet. Janet Patterson, my moms mother. She lived the small town in Niskayuna, N.Y. A quiet proper town with big trees and nice streets. Grandmas house was on a little dead end lane called Winnie road, yep just like the bear. Grandma scooped me up and took me home with her to Niskauna. I remember feeling like I was in a pinball machine. I had sort of checked out of caring where or how I ended up anywhere. Lucky for me Grandma did care, and she took me in long after her lease with raising children was over. She didn't have to, she wasn't required to, and this meant finally I was within four walls and a door where someone actually wanted me. Upon arrival I was still catatonic, confused, and terribly sad. It was like I had gone down into a deep dark tunnel and the only thing that would bring me back was time. Grandma knew this and I think did her best to give it to me. But when you pick up a stray mutt from the pound you're bound to run into some behavioral issues. I'm pretty sure that for the next four years I put my grandma through hell. Mood swings, er rational associations. Add that to piercing my nose in the bathroom with a safety pin and dying my hair black, grandma was thrown into the world of an adolescent boy rebelling against the world. She put up with all of it, and very dignified. I'm so thankfully she did. If not for her I would have never come out of that dark tunnel. My moms dog from the junkyard fun days came to live with us too. "Abby" the most loving dog in the entire world. She knew everything. She was in pretty rough shape too when she got there. Grandma went and rescued her from a cannel before I got there. Abby would howl at the five o'clock siren like clock work, even preparing long before it would go off by walking to the end of the drive way and positioning herself just right. Abby hung on to life till I went away to college and then past away.

Abby & Me

Grandma enrolled me in high school, encouraged me to try and join groups, to try and talk to people. She knew it was the only chance and moment I would ever have to try and undo the behavioral patterns that my prior environment had fostered. I didn't realize it then but she was basically telling me to try and become a normal person. I found my place not in high school but in city of Albany that summer at art class summer intensives for young people. That meant I got to walk around a big college campus and use art supplies. Wow, what a great adventure. During breaks in classes I would walk around the city of Albany's streets. There was one street in particular filled with cool old brownstone apartments, shops, restaurants, and my personal favorite ... hip coffee houses where the waiters had funky hair and nose rings. To me it was like I had found life. In those summer art classes I really understood the magic making art. This mysterious thing that frankly only so many people can do well. I had it, I could really do something. I thought maybe I could really be someone. Someone people cared about. Someone where I could forget growing up. This is a dream I continue to chase.

Gillian Fitz, you god damn bull dyke, Well at least she was back then. She was the reason I survived being so "different" in a small town. Allow me tell you the story of meeting my first soul mate. I had gone out with some friends after school. We didn't go far, we actually were one street over practically just behind my grandmother house. I was told we were off to see Gillian. I was scared of meeting new people, its never been one of my strong points. So upon entering her quaint English decorated home I was greeted by a punked out very boyish girl with arm muscles the size of my waist. She spit on me, lunged and threw herself on top of me and tried to beat me up. We were in love.

Gillian and I started to spend allot of time together, after all she was just through the small patch of woods behind my house. I was a little scared of her at first, trying to beat me up all. But we both unpokenly knew we more alike than our outward appearances would suggest and together very powerful. We both were different than everyone else in ways we could not hide. Lets face I looked like nelly girly boy from day one, and she looked and acted like a boy. Together instead of trying to hide we threw down the rainbow flag and said fuck it. "Were not going anywhere." She was and still is the toughest boy I've ever meet.

Together Gillian and I did awful things, and some good things. We drank it, snorted it, pill popped it down and remarkably made it through the adolescence party scene with only a few scratches. And oh did we party. We got so drunk and stoned all the time. The worst being the special night were we lost our verginity to eahother. Not my fault blame Jack Daniels. The next morning she looks at me says, "Are you still gay?" I said "pretty sure, yep still gay." Then flyes out of her mouth at the breakfast table a short while later, "Hey Rene, ever hear of foreplay?" I spit out my coffee laughing in shame. In the good category though, we were part of a team of kids who started the Gay and lesbian support group in out local high school. She always practiced her guitar and I always drew pictures. Both our scars were on the inside. Gillian's ran deeper than mine though, she was afflicted by a rare childhood disease that allows tumours to grow on her bones. There were surgery's, casts and pain pills. She was a strong boy though and never once did she complain. Never ever once. She didn't have to, I could practically read her mind anyway. See we grew up wave of hormonal puberty, and being outcasts, we mostly just had each other for support. Together we came out, and together we ventured on that dangerous journey to the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Albany for their weekly teen support group. What a thing to do, It's so funny now to remember the feeling of "danger" in the air on that first trip. There we meet people that would shape our lives for better or worse. Mostly all for the better.

Gillian in San Francisco 2002

As high school went through sophomore and junior years the path between Gillian and my house grew more and more visible with our trotting back and forth. every night I would sneak out my window and go check on her. She was usually up to no good. But I was looking to get up to no good so it worked out well. Through the branches in that small patch of forest you would have seen two fragile kids being as tough as humanly possible, smoking Marlboro cigarettes, wearing doc martins and swearing about how were were gonna make the world a different place. I think if I'm allowed to believe in a higher power for just one moment, God sent me Gillian to make up for what happened to me in my childhood. She was for all intense purposes my brother. What are the chances of living right next to each other, in all the towns and places in the world, what are the chances of two people who needed each other so badly to be able to find one another in their own backyards. I'm certain there was divine intervention. Gillian is now Lian. He lives his life in Florida with his lovely, extremely lovely girlfriend. Hoping to visit them soon. As soon as I can.

A Fugitve from the law / Onward to the mental hospital

2010-08-10T02:03:00.000-07:00

Rene: age fifteen.

I woke up under a free way bridge with noise of cars over my head. I was cold, confused, and felt lost in a way that words can not express. But something inside me said to get up, so i did. It was November in upstate N.Y and freezing at night. With the change in my back pocket I went back to the rest stop back a few miles down the freeway. Pay phone on the brick wall off the bathroom rest stop. I call my mother. She had just moved back from down south, and was living in one of the small towns along side the Hudson river. I told her that I had run away and that she had to come get me. Not knowing where I really was I told her to meet at the high school in Glens Falls. From there I wrapped my flannel shirt round me tight as i could and walked on down the freeway back to town. Along the way strange men in cars once again offered my money and rides. I said "No." I may have been emotionally broken and checked out but I still knew well enough that the last thing they wanted to do was help me. I was a smart kid ... living in a world where the threat of danger from those around you is very real , it teaches a kid a thing a two about people and I learned to smell motive from a mile away. There was no genuine good intent in any of those strange men's cars.

It been over a year and a half since I had seen my mother. So much had changed. I wasn't a boy anymore, my voice had started to deepen, and I started to shave. With the onset of puberty my world had become an even more cruel and terrifying place than I could have ever imagined. Shaking desperately needing to be touched, I walked towards my mother car. She hugged me but I was lost in my own head that I don't think I even felt her arms around me. She tried to comfort me, but words didn't register in my mind. I just remember being put in the car and the street lights running past my eyes like prolonged flashes of light. It was at this point in my life I started to go catatonic. I could not speak, only stare, with my eyes full of questions that no one could answer. I would remain this way in my own head for many months to fallow, trapped. Mom took me back to her little apartment, up a big flight of steps and made me a grilled cheese sandwich. Finally feeling safe I went to sleep on fold able bed she had in her living room.

The next morning I was still tired. My emotions on high alert for that long had left my soul a little vacant for a period of time. To me the whole experience had been surreal. I knew I had done something irreversible. Life changing. However to me it was almost like someone else had done it for me. I was so small, shy and weak, that surely the boy I saw in the bathroom mirror could not have escaped through a basement window ... but there he was. All 89 lbs. of him. I stared into my own eyes while I brushed my teeth, trying to figure out who I was. All I did know was I had done what I had to to survive.

I was relieved to be looking at my mom, finally I could look at someone who didn't want to hurt me, or call me names. How ever relieved I felt there was a deep feeling of mistrust looming in the background in my head. Something to the effect of wanting to ask, "Why? Why did this happen to me,why didn't you take care of me?" She gave me cereal, and I stared at her trying to talk, but not much came out of my mouth, just words from every other sentence that I said in my head instead of out loud. Sentences that my body couldn't manage to get out of my mouth. Mom, was scared. I think seeing me in the condition the world she had left me in had left her speechless. Her eyes said "I'm sorry" They still do to this day every time she looks at me.
Three days go by and police show up at my mothers apartment. We had called Tom to tell him she had me, but the police officers somehow did not know this fact. My mother was arrested and charged with kidnapping. Crazy I know. As for me, I wes sent to ghetto mental hospital. Tom always had a way of using her children against her. He got her one last time by pressing kidnapping charges against her.

Allot was wrong I was skitzophrenic, had post traumatic stress disorder ... and the last but not least I was I was gay! Being good at drawing had gotten me into trouble you see, and this was the reak reason I was sent away. During the onset of puberty I had decided I liked boys. So on paper I would try and draw out all the ways I thought boys could roll around with one another. This piece of valuable evidence was placed for safe keeping under my bed. I was pretty good with a pencil so I'm sure it was terribly obvious that it was some kids gay sex fantasy. Tom and his wife had found this piece of artwork and being born again Christians in the early 90's, this was a good enough to lock me away into state custody and keep me in the county of Syracuse for being mentally ill. I spent Christmas there that year with a group of kids that no one else wanted either. I don't know how to explain this but in there I felt like I was with people that I could understand. Sadness and pain was written all over them and easy for me to see. The girl in the next room over, she used to play her radio late at night for me to hear. She pushed it up against the wall outlet just next to my bed, we feel asleep listening to Sting sing "Fields of Gold." I missed my brother and sister so much.

I was Fifteen years old, alone and felt like fugitive from the law. However, at least now no one would hit me. Bruise me for opening my mouth or make fun me till I cried. There no one would call me a sissy or a ninny and go out of there way to make sure I felt unwelcome. I may have been in a nut house but I had gotten away from a home that I would consider far more insane to any mental hospital.

This has been very hard to write, I think I might cry. I better go to bed, but maybe I'll have some Cheerios before I do.

Baby Jessica & Rene

Sorry I left me under a bridge, I'll continue my story in just a moment

2010-08-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

Sorry to leave you at such a strange moment in my life story. I know to readers leaving me shivering under a bridge was probably not the best of things to do. After all I want my story to inspire. I promise it gets better, just hang on . . . please accept my apology.

Very dramatic events seemed to explode just as i was building up momentum in writing my life story. The whole experience was depressing and brought me down to the point that I started to think once again, "Whats the point?" This thing your writing doesn't matter. Doesn't do a damn thing to change the world. I also couldn't decide wither or not to discuss current events in this blog. My original intent was to try and keep this linear and in order of the years of my life, I've already broken that rule, but I've decided that I don't want to play the blame game in the present. So I will just say, that someone I cared for beyond measurable amounts treated me and my life a disposable resource and made us "just palls"and went off to screw some boy in Santa Cruz. All very conveniently after he got what he needed, and it just hurt. Took many days to clear up, and at one point I had to dramatically block a hallway in my apartment building demanding to get my keys back. That hallway was subjected to allot of aw full cruel statements, but i did get my keys back. Among some of my favorites statement were:

"There are other things in the universe that what ever emotional idea pops in your head."

"Your having an episode. look at you, now I have to raise my voice." (screaming) Look at you! Pacing around, your having a mental episode."

"Do you think anyone would actually wanna be with you?"

I just want to interrupt here to say if your going to take cheap shots at someones mental condition, at least get it right. If i were having an episode I would have been talking to thin air or having a debate with a toaster in the kitchen. My response to these statements are as fallows.
1. "Not really, that's all anyone is"
2. "No, I'm not, I'm way too medicated"
3. "Yes"

To this person I would like to say I really did think you were special. I hope you become all that you want to be. I'm sorry that I won't be able to see it first hand. You saw me at my best and my worst and I thank you for all of that. I'll miss laughing with you.

Escape and the freeway North

2010-07-24T08:18:00.001-07:00

About half a year passes after my suicide attempt. I enter freshman year of high school, and I turn fifteen years old. There is not much to speak of as I was mostly dead on the inside. I discover the Beatles and shoplift a greatest hits collection from the local JC Penny department store. I think somewhere around the time I heard "A day in the Life" something remarkable happens and I start to think for myself. I start thinking allot about what it means to be alive, wondering what the point to life was, and if other people were just as afraid to go home after school as I was. There is one more altercation with Tom that I will never forget, it's worth mentioning because having started to be able to think for myself, I fully knew that there was something wrong in the world around me, and it wasn't my fault.

On the way to church, just before Toms weekly meeting with God. He shoved a muffin in my mouth and down my throat, the whole damn thing at once on the side of the road. Pulled over on the side of the road, he physically held my arms and shoved a pastry so hard in throat that I feel down on my knees coughing and gasping for air. I really almost choked to death that morning. This was my punishment for buying myself a muffin at the grocery store. If I got to have one, everyone else should as well. I think this was a very cruel lesson in sharing. Well, you know what, I was hungry and I had the money. It was mine. It was my money and if wanted to buy a fucking muffin with I will. Besides both Jeremy and Jessica knew they could have some, we were just those kind of kids. He didn't even give me a chance to share. This memory really sticks with me as I remember not being able to breath and it triggering a very severe asthma attack, that lasted through church until we returned home.
Tom walked right into church, all jolly to see the gang of born agains. His adopted son fallowing behind wheezing and coughing behind him. It got so bad that my gasping for air was beginning to interrupt Sunday mass so I had to go wait in the parking lot by the truck. My inhaler was back home so, I crouched over with my hands on my knees and tried to remain calm, just like my mom had taught me to do so many years ago.

When we arrived home I ran to my room, used my inhaler and my lungs started to calm down. As the day grew on it just became one of those hate filled days when the entire family would just want to hide in their rooms. Toms new girlfriend name Renee came over with the brat child little Jeremy for a visit. Little Jeremy used to lick all the sticks of butter in the kitchen. Strange habit. Having started to think for myself I started to see the world around me in strict Black and white, good and bad. Like a game of checkers and I could see how game was played out or was continuing to to unfold. The side affect to my expanding though was me developing a knack for questioning things. Or worse, speaking up without being asked. I gloriously tested out my new talent in front of Renee that afternoon in the kitchen. I raised a question of what ever happened to my mother, this house and why no one ever talked with Renee about it. Now I admit to saying this right in front of his girl friend at a very inappropriate moment of my choosing, but I feel like the bastard had it coming. He did after all choke me with a muffin. Maybe I'm just like my mother? Before I could continue my small but thoughtful speech he rushed over to me grabbing at my bicep with both fat hands. Aggressively he then turned the skin in opposite directions. It hurt immensely, but I did not scream. I just put my face two inches from his head and stared into his eyes. eventually he let go but my entire upper arm was purple and black for weeks. It was my right arm, so writing or drawing was challenging.

In that ugly cold and damp basement a sad lonely boy started to gain courage. One stormy night in November I looked up at the small window that was encased between the earth and the cement wall of the house and thought, "What if I just leave" The window was more like a mini enclosure about the height of a computer screen and half a torso long. On the outside of that enclosure was a small glass pane. I crawled on my belly in between the cement and earth and pushed that fucking window as hard as I could. It snapped open and I wiggled my way out onto the grass. Standing up and I wiped the cobwebs off my face, looked back once and ran for my life. I ran so hard and so fast, it didn't matter what direction. I had nothing with me but a pocket full of change and an inhaler. It was cloudy and stormy and some what drizzly. A very dramatic evening for a runaway. What can I say I had timing. Running past everything I knew as if to say good bye, I ran past the park, the school, the library, and all the streets I used to wander after school trying to prolong my walk home. I passed it all and made my way up to the free way that ran through upstate N.Y.

That night I walked along the freeway passing exit after exit and past a few rest stop areas. While passing through the rest stop areas I was stopped by three different men in cars who all wanted to either take where I needed to go or pay me money for something I didn't yet fully understand. I said "no", to even the most persistent of strange men in cars and kept on up the freeway until I reached a bridge over pass. There I crawled past the over grown grass and under the small cement bridge. Once under the freeway I cried myself sick and dozed off to sleep.

Blending the present with the past and suicide

2010-07-20T09:42:00.000-07:00

I think it might be a good idea to blend some of the present with the bast, not too much but the sake of telling it from another angle. So far what I have written from the past with linear narrative, as if I were still there. I did the same when I broke down and started growling and crying in Dr. Fishman's office. But to tell this part of the story, I want tell it from my present voice and not that of a hurt child. It's very important because whom ever is reading this, and I thank you for doing so, the last thing I want to do is sink you down into a pit of sorrow. The point of writing this is to remind you and myself that life is out there and worth searching for. That's one of the little piece of knowledge I took from the Doctor Fishman in San Francisco. I knew it, but had forgotten. Together we visualized and went back into my head, and found that shivering crying kid, and got him out before he tried to end his own life. An important step. I said to doctor Fishman, It's like "trying to approach a gremlin." We laughed.

What I want to tell you is disturbing, and I can write disturbing with a distance on it now. I also learned that from doctor Fishman, I had to look at my childhood and my life through a third perspective. I'm trying to do that here because what I want to tell you should never happen to any child anywhere. I wanted to Die ... and this is why ...

My suicide story starts with great joy. My mother had done the unthinkable, one Sunday afternoon, she didn't let us go back Tom's house in Glen Falls, She kept us and we got an apartment in Schenectady, NY. Mom had managed to save up enough money, and I think just said fuck the system she wasn't given her children back. Jeremy, Jessica and I were saved. Her boyfriend situation had also changed. She no longer dated Herman, but now was with Southern man from Mississippi. His name I can't recall. This was it, this was real, we were gonna be a family ... and we were. But only for about Eight months. Short, sweet and with an abrupt and that would basically destroy any foundation for ever being a family again. After x-mas, we had to go back to Toms house. The most depressing and saddest holiday of my life. How can you have x-mas like that?

I don't know why we were returned, I think it was a combination of not being able to afford to raise three kids on a shop keepers salary at the mall and the constant court battles that Tom would drag her into almost monthly. We were used as a weapon against her. She did shoot him after all, he wanted revenge. What better way to harm a woman than to do it with the one thing she risked her life for. She cracked she couldn't handle it. We would go back to Tom's house a week after x-mas. We are returned to the man who's head she almost blew off with a shot gun. Could we handle being abandoned again? Of all the cruel fates. I still remember the ride back in the back of a pick up truck full of stuff from our brief family experience. It was windy and seemed to go on in slow motion. Three kids lives had been saved a ruined all with in the span of eight months. Our entire lives were consumed in depression.

While working with doctor Fishman I had to come to terms with the fact that I was severely pissed at my mother, I never got to ask why? All I want is to know why did you leave me in a place where you know people were going to hurt me? I'll never get an answer, the emotional impact of this on my mother life is forever told in her eyes and I can see it every time I look at her. She feels so guilty that she can't handle talking about it, trauma has left her stunned and catatonic. I believe the events in her head at that moment are so complicated she will never be able to verbally express it. But, it's OK, I decided i had to let it go. Sure it's a real and valid question. But I'd rather have a mother than a grudge and a constant question. My mother lost all contact with her children after we were dropped off. I would be the only one to reconnect with her in later years. She moved out to California about four years ago to be closer to me. She lives three hours north of San Francisco.

I still wanna tell this with distance as the thing I became frightens me. In this old ugly basement room I was living like a mouse to not be noticed or seen to avoid the ridicule from Tom's parents. Marie, Tom's mother, had taken up the lovely habit of yelling out Ninny! every single time she saw me and making an old Italian sign language gesture that translates into "fuck you and go away". It starts at the bottom on the neck with a swooping gesture of the hand. Very mean, and I've decided that when she dies from being an over weight Jabba The Hut bitch, I'm gonna do it on her grave. Tom around this time had started dating a woman named Rene who had a brat child named Jeremy. That's just weird and I don't even have time to think about why that would be OK in his head.

above: A scene from "Hedgehog Boy" book 1 where I refrence my suicide atempt

I was obviously an abused child from anyone looking outside in. I don't understand why it was never made a priority by child custody protective services to do anything. I saw one of those counselors weekly, even had one of their home numbers in my pocket. In their defense I think I may have been hard to understand, normal sentance flow was hard for me and being a schizophrenic child that means leaving allot of sentences out that only happen in your head. But i tried, I told people what my life was like, and nothing ever changed. It's hard to explain the deep feeling of wanting all life around you stop. That you would harm yourself to get that result, but that's what a child would think. The option to do much else isn't present. One night during diner after hearing Tom's father call me a faggot, queer and ripping me apart down to my every gesture. I cracked. Stood up, grabbed my dinner plate held it up in slow motion and sent it flying to wall with a glorious mess and splat. Looked left, walked left and went right out the back door. That sounded slightly heroic but it was not because once out the back door I was on a mission to die. Wandering around the park and down the street was crying and yelling. eventually about a few miles from home I went to the paths in the forest that would eventually take one up to the local mall. Along the way I found some broken pieces from an old glass coke bottle on the path. I Picked up the glass to execute my mission and began to cut and hack away at my my fore arms around the wrist. Watching TV you learn a few things. But luckily I didn't know how to preform such an awful task, all I was doing was making a bloody mess. You cut up, not a cross, but i didn't know that. There I was fourteen years old on a path in the woods trying to die. Only I wouldn't die. Frustrated I went up to the mall and called that school counselor lady who's number I had in my pocket. I had enough change to use the pay phone once. Twenty cents back then. She wasn't home, I left a message with some voice that she never got ... I'm not sure what I expected. I just wanted someone to help me. I was bleeding, I walked home, went to my room and went to bed. No one asked, no one knew.

It's hard for me to believe that I though life wasn't worth living. Because of my past I can tell you I wanna be here really bad. So damn Bad, and I want to live. I wan't to live forever. There is Springsteen lyric that I always associate with these thoughts, and I'm proud to write it in all its fantastic glory. "It ain't no sin to be glad your alive." Gotta love the Boss!

visitation rights/ monster trucks and learning to masturbate

2010-07-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

Rene in San Francisco, Isis Street

In the haunted house, life continued. Naturally there was a deep profound sense of sadness that just ached through the walls of this house. With all the needs of the children just sort of hung up to tended to later. The signs were everywhere, especially on our faces. It was in our uncut over grown hair and our unwashed, hand me down clothes given to us by some other family at a local church. We were a burden, and we knew it. Financially and mentally we knew we were unwanted by the care takers around us. I remember we all got lice and no one even bothered to take care of it for weeks. People at school were afraid to be near us because of the scratching. Even at Toms newly found hobby, Church, the other children didn't want to be near us. We were outcasts every where we went. I quess getting shot in the head by your wife is a real wake up call. Bang! The kind that says "What ever your doing isn't working, perhaps you should try something else." Tom must have heard this internal thought as the voice of god, so we became born again Christians. I remember Toms speech to the entire congregation one Sunday, There were tears and redemption for his soul and something about being drunk at his daughters birthday, but never a mention of what he used to do to us. Not one sentence about asking for forgiveness for placing fear, blame, and shame into his adopted children's hearts. But religion is awfully self serving, It must be OK to omit what ever you can't face about yourself, and get to it later. Gosh, it doesn't sound so bad when you explain it that way. Maybe I'll take some of that. After the man got shot in head I'm sure he must have had times when he tried to be a parent, but if he did it didnt last long and didn't leave much of an impression. We would go to bible study or be dropped off a camp of some sort. He took us all swimming on the occasional Sunday at a local pool, Jacques would usually stay behind with one of his grandparents, he was only about six years old by then. What I remember about the family swimming trips were the times when that I was deeply embarrassed about the bruises on my body from when Tom had beat me in my room. Down in the basement. Thinking of it now I haven't a clue even why I had those particular bruises. Logic would lead me believe there is a reason, did i do something wrong? But in reality he beat me and hurt me and there is no damn reason in the world to that to a child, even if I had done something wrong. His physical altercations with us lessened after the shooting and as we grew. Taking it's place was a blanket of emotional cruelty that his parents would lay down as if god himself had tought them to sew it himself. In the creepy house on Thompson Ave life got ugly.

Me and my baby sister Jessica

The exception to the outcast rule was Jacques. He looked presentable to the world. His grandmother and grandfather had begun to stay with us Monday through Friday, alternating weeks. Mostly there were there to take care of Jacques. They were not there to care of me nor Jeremy in the slightest. Primarily Jeremy and I were ignored for most hours of the day. Any attention we received from them was something negative about the environment for Jacques and how we were some how responsible. Jessica was given Tom's sister Susan as some sort of a female roll model to replace my mother, Jessica didn't like her and would often come to me holding Timmy's head to tell me she thought she was scary. Jessica was right she was scary, overbearing and very simple minded. This translated in an extended into adulthood as "school girl" kind of behavior. Jessica was smarter than her for sure and she was ten. I think my baby sister spent allot of time alone in her room, and I feel awful about that now. Boy's don't often spend enough time with their sisters. I did record the entire Madonna "Like a prayer" album for her though, with two cassette players ghetto rigged speaker to speaker. One on play the other pressed on record. I loved you Jessica, and would have recorded that album thousands times over if it would have eased your sadness. I tried to play with Jacques. I did love to play superhero smack down with my action figures and so did he. I was probably around twelve or thirteen at that point. He would even show up in my room on occasion with a little pile of toys. He could be sweet when he wanted to be, but Jacques would abruptly shift gears athte drop of a hat. Suddenly deciding to change the rules of some game or circumstance. If he did not get his way, or what he wanted, he would yell, scream and fake cry for grandma or grandpa. He had learned rather quickly that if did this they would come running and the end result was would get in trouble when Tom came home from work. If he screamed loud enough and made a fuss we might even get smacked around a little, and he knew it. It's scary to me that the environment that Jacques grew up in forced him to develop such awful social behavior patterns, he was seven years old and had us walking on eggshells. I feel so bad having to write about Jacques in this manner but it's true. The grandparents were there to take care of Tom's first born son. Jacques would not even wipe his own behind into the ages of eight and nine, his grandfather did it. It's begging to read like I don't like Jacques, and that's not true. I just don't know any other side to him, and he was not old enough to develop one to share with anyone. I hope that he found his way and his voice. He was just as much as a victim of abuse as we all were.

We were never cared for by anyone, we took care of each other Jeremy and I. My emotional state of mind was really bad, and honestly I was one mentally fucked up kid. I had crafted an entire universe for myself complete with maps of the land and spec drawings for ideal gadgets and vehicles to get around in. I had envisioned myself as some child crusader exploring new worlds, in a sort of OCD kind of way. Mostly this just meant wandering around for hours in the vast cemetery behind our house. It's sad, but I think it's the only way I could survive in such a dark and traumatizing environment. I still have a fondness for cemeteries.

Mom was gone for a stretch of time. She did spend some time in jail, I'm not sure exactly how long, but it was very short for the circumstances. When she resurfaced by way of court order she got visitation rights to see her children. Rejoice! It saved me from slipping away from reality, ever other weekend. My mom was still fun, she had a very attractive and young boyfriend named Herman. The court let Jessica, Jeremy and I go to see mom at his house. He live in a double wide trailer literally held together with duck tape with his mother. Make shift and proud in front of a metal scrap yard. Piles of junked up half put together cars everywhere with a dark evergreen pine filled forest behind the junk yard. Jeremy was very very happy with all the tools and gadgets and things everywhere. Herman had his own trailer on the property as well. But we stayed in the double wide because it was more fun. Games, TV, and Abby my moms new dog were in the double wide. Abby was a gorgeous dark lab / Shepard mix with deep soulful eyes. Abby had taken to a romance with Herman's dog, Shep, a macho fun loving German Shepard. This was kind of like a metaphor for my mothers romance. They were hot junkyard dogs in a wild romance. It was hot dirty and as i remember allot of fun. My moms raced small monster trucks with Herman on the weekends at the "Glad Rag Sand Drags" complete with jump pit filled with mud. On weekends, there were lots of parties, cool tough dudes and serious hard core bikers you don't fuck with. All these people that most would label as deviants of society were amazingly nice to us. My mom had earned the name "Broom Hilda"in the pit as she raced her way up to second place in the weekly competitions. She had a trophy and everything. The four of us were weekend hells angels and that's no joke, these leather wearing people were serious work hard party harder types. Jeremy watched the men work on engines and Jessica was in there too. Mom had given her a four wheel motorized plastic jeep for kids. On nights when the mud pit was covered up strait forward racing the track owners would let Jessica race down the sand pit in her little jeep. She clocked in at ten minutes and change to reach the end of the pit road. Go Jessy! I played in the piles of old monster truck tires that were in the sand around the race track pretending to be some sort of magic hero of some sort. Sure this was all reckless, not safe, and probably illegal in most places, But i promise you we were loved.

Three kids and a truck! Hot

René painting. Photo by Steve Honicki

During this period of our lives constant Court battles raged between Tom and my mother for custody of us kids. So continued the back and forth weekend trips to see mom. It was grueling. I would want to die every time Sunday night would approach because I knew we would all have to go back to Thompson Ave. Five o'clock would approach I would get more and more quiet and slip back into the universe I had created to survive. My mom would panic not knowing what to do watching me slip away back into my own head every other weekend. Back at Tom's house there was waiting for me, a cold basement room with one tiny window, two very fat old people who then began to verbally make fun of me to the point of tears, daily, and Tom, a bastard who had hit me but thankfully with night school and his day job was not around much. It was faggot this and faggot that, allot of references to me being a girl, and allot of other cruel language about being dumb. I wasn't dumb! I couldn't multiply, spell or write sentences very well, but I wasn't dumb. School never did much for me because honestly I was so emotionally scared from my life that when I was at school I just saw it as a safe place to zone out into fantasy land. I was just so lost in my head because of the way my life had unfolded and I couldn't find my way out. Like a scene from a movie, an endless hallway with lots of doors opening and closing. That's where I was, lost.

Toms parents may have called me faggot and queer, but down south I was all boy! At around age thirteen I figured out it grew real big and felt good. No one had told me of the birds and the bees at that point. Health class would a year later, but that be too late obviously. I was OK with it, it was fun, I had been playing with my new attached friend on a semi regular bases. Then all of a sudden, BAM! all this goo came out and i was just terrified. No one told that was going to happen, I remember thinking, what if i need that, how do i get it back in? I was so scared I had hurt myself that i actually contemplated waking up Tom and asking him to take me to the hospital. But, that for sure would be a bad idea. So I mustered up all the courage I could and did it again. Rationalizing that if it happened again and I didn't die, it was OK. I didn't die. So to be sure, i did it a third time, and that's how I learned to masturbate.

After the Shooting

2010-07-16T18:55:00.000-07:00

The days after the shooting I remember as being very surreal. It was front page news, and eveyone at the school yard was a buzz with the Thompson Ave gun fight. The following morning, we were all given back to Tom by police officials. His immediately family surrounding him like a blanket that reached out to kill any remaining magic in our childhood spirits. Stacey, his rather homely and childish sister then in her early 30's. His hugely obese mother Marie, with an attitude problem larger than the sun and so fitting that her fat ass could block out the sun. Finally his Father Sam, who all in all when I look back wasn't always so bad. He was trapped in a marriage with woman he had grown to despise. I actually felt bad for him, and out of all the people there, he would still make attempts to engage me. I can imagine just how difficult that might have been for him as with every day spent in reality my mind would slip twice as far into a world of make believe. By this time I was certainly in throws of a full on skitzophrenic episode that lasted for years and engulfed me to the point I assumed I was normal. The morning we were given over to the Capone family, I remember looking at the huge neck brace and the tons of gauze wrapped around his head and thinking "hmmmmm, I guess that's what happens when you get shot in the head." It wasn't like in the GI Joe cartoons on TV, but this was real. He could not turn his head with out moving his whole body. Technically he was our guardian having adopted us when we were much younger, so by law we had to be placed with him and his Family. To me it was like being fed to sharks.

None of the children were in the house durring the shooting. Mom had the forsight to keep ua all at a friends house that night. This does beg the question of wiether this was a pre planned shooting. After all a deer riffle is real hard to hide and pull out casually. Regardless I love my mother, and am proud of her. To this day she even takes all my jokes about hiding loaded weopons from her while were out on the town with a chuckle and a smile, and I love her for it. At very least i can say to people "Don't fuck with me, or my mom will shoot you." Tom Capone deserved to be shot as far as im concerened. Anyone who can beat a child and hold his hands in fire had it coming.

Frank the bear sewing himself up in the woods

We didn't see mom for a many many weeks. I know she was in jail for a period of time, but no one has ever given me the details. But sadly her act of bravery and defiance would her ultimate mistake and I know one that will haunt her for the rest of her days. She couldn't be there anymore. With the pull of that trigger she was gone. For me that meant I was now going to be fighting for my life in a place where the authority figures despised me and wanted me to suffer. I was Linda's bastard first born child. A nelly little boy stuck down in a world where I was not welcome or even biologically recognized. For my little sister who had been so close to her mom, that meant suddenly she didn't have a mom and would have to settle for a life time of substitutes. For Jeremy I think it meant a sense of deep confusion. He could easier earn the reprect of the Capone family because he was a macho boy. This was an old fashioned italian family after all. I can't tell you why, but I know that through the connections that siblings have that his sense of wright and wrong vanished in those days. He simply was unsure of the order of the universe. I recall being told by Tom that Jeremy used to run in his sleep. Literally run around the house, even up and down the stairs. He would have to be caught and put back to bed. For Jacque I think it meant more attention. He craved attention more than anything being the youngest child and now with two grandparents to dote on him as a victim of thier first borns sons bad marriage, it must have felt good. This would be something he would certainly take way to far in his youth to the point where he would not wipe his own behind or walk down the stairs without the help of his grandfather. All that sounds disturbing but god only knows what goes through a childs mind when you your mom shoots your real dad in the head. I feel bad for Jacque, and I feel bad for not knowing what really happened in his life. Saddest of all is Jessica, because I remember her clinging to her dolls for comfort and how she became more and more quiet. I wanted nothing more than to save her, but didn't know how. All I could do was make sure Timmys head stayed on. and I was determined no matter what, that dolls head was gonna stay put.

The Haunted House

2010-07-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

Four children and two adults move into 21 Thompson Ave, Glens Falls, NY. It was not the nicest house on the block, but it also was not the worst. A strait shot down the street and you could be at school in about ten minutes. Twenty five minutes and a walk through the park and you could make it to the local mall. The library was with in walking distance too, and this would be a most important place as it had lots of books about Aliens, Bigfoot and the Lockness monster. I loved all books about these threes subjects and would often check out the same books over and over again just so I could look at he pictures. Our surroundings were almost magical but there was evil in that house on Thompson Ave. There is just no other way to put it, no matter how good the layout of the land, there was just strait up evil.

The house itself was kind of make-shift rigged ghetto style ... in a suburban neighborhood. It had two story's. My god was that something. To children who only knew of single level gunshot trailer set ups, a staircase seemed just magical. Upstairs my little sister Jessica had her own room, as did Jacques. My mother, Linda and Tom had the room upstairs with the water bed. This room was at the peak of the house with a single window that over looked a three street intersection. Jeremy and I were given the basement. A basement is fine in mid July in a climate like upstate N.Y. However its not so nice in mid Febuary. When my mother was still with us we had a space heater and that made all the difference, but after she had gone, we could see our own breath in the winter months. A child with chronic asthma has no place in a basement with no heat as cold weather makes the lungs contract. I remember many times laying in bed wheezing with some sort of a chest cold, the various inhalers around me doing close to nothing, and I just lay there wheezing thinking to myself "someone will take care of me." It's probably there that I learned the most important and depressing lesson of my life. No one is going to take care of you, only you can do that. It's harsh and its cruel, but it's true.

Rene; age twenty something falling off a bed.

My memories of this house are split up into two time periods. One with my mother present, and the other with her missing. Oh this is so hard to wright because a brain split up into episodes of emotional trauma is fractured and hazy in spots with only severe jagged memories splintering out as if from broken beams. I want so badly to be able to write everything down in some definitive factual format, but I have no way of doing that as I am just me. So I will write what I remember even if it's all fractured. Hopefully in the broken pieces we will find some truth. Allot happens is a short period of time in adolescence. We moved into the house I was a boy, when I crawled out the window on my belly I was a young man. Not a very smart or wise young man, but some sort of a man regardless. I remember school, and art classes, that's the only thing I ever payed attention too. To this day can not multiply or divide and my knowledge of spelling and grammar are atrocious. The most fondest memory I remember from this stage in my life is the time I drew cat woman in art class. My art teacher put it on display in the hallway. It was stolen in one day. I felt like a star. That's probably when I decided I needed to be an artist, it was the one thing that no one could explain or make sense of in the realm of the practical and people wanted to steal what you made, I was hooked!

I remember my first "boyfriend" Kevin. He was damn hot. I couldn't believe he was even talking to me. He told me to "hop" the back of his bike after school one day, so I did. We often would go put smoke bombs in the trucks of the graveyards ground keepers, just for fun. Sure it was technically vandalism, but he was dreamy and I thought it was pretty funny too. We would laugh and watch as the big fat men got all frantic while purple smoke would fill up their cabins and engulf their trucks. Then we would go make out as his house and set bobby traps traps for his mom. What a date. I need to meet another Kevin. Truth is I think I've probably been dating the same person since i was 12 years old, Oh well.

Tom and my mothers marriage continued down its path of ruin. Not even the excitement of a new home and a new community could bring calm to a dangerous storm. I honestly don't remember much of Tom, I think I was too lost in the world of make believe to pay attention. I also was rightfully so a little afraid of him. He looked and sounded kind of like a giant bull frog. Mommy did something bad to that bull frog, but I know he deserved it. My mother may be allot of things and killer is not one of them. What ever she did was for self defense or pay pack, either way I see it as the same thing. Maybe that makes me a monster? She shot Tom in the head with a deer rifle one evening in our living room. She did't want to be hurt anymore and he would hurt her or threaten to hurt her regularly. My Mom told me recently that she had me and my siblings out of the house for one reason, she knew we had figured out to call the police, because she said I did it all the time. She had been pushed to that point of no return. Either she stood up to him, or she was wind up dead. A woman can only take being hit so long. When I think of it now I'm proud that my mom shot that sun of a bitch. He hurt us allot as children and nothing can make that ok, justifable or in anyway forgetable. This make my mom a little dangerous too, and well I think thats hot. Just dont piss her off, smack her around or beat her children and you might just make it through the night. However at the time this event scared all us kids physiologically more than any physical beating or injury could. Jeremy and I used to go looking for the bullet hole in the wall almost everyday. It was next to the front door above the TV. Eventually it was covered by wood putty or spackle and we stopped looking for it.

The house on Thompson Ave became haunted after this. Either that or the spirits inside the gravestone cutters house had been there all along and figured after the violence and hurt we had managed to collect within these walls left us primed and ready to hear their plea for attention. Very Strange things began to happen. Lights would often flicker on and off for no reason, the TV channel would just go crazy randomly. The shower oddly enough would turn on with out any knobs being touched by human hands. Objects in my room would be in entirely different places then I would have left them in. The scariest of all was what happened at night in the basement. There were two rooms under the ground. one was mine the one farthest from the street was Jeremy's. The door separating the two would open and close at will and it was not the wind because this door was much too heavy. Someone or something would then tap me, and rather aggressively at my arm or my leg, what ever limb was more exposed. I would wake up, wail and scream turn on the lights and just sit there awake for hours stunned and terrified. This would happen over and over for years. I don't know what it wanted, or maybe it didn't know what i wanted, but we were well aware of each others presence. Ghosts are real and that's how I know. Timmy the doll's head still fell off weekly, I began to use super glue and string to hold it together.

pictured below: "Frank the bear" in a new drawing

"Scared Bear", 12.5"x19", mixed media on paper, 2010. (available)

The simple truth about Rene Capone's mental condition.

2010-07-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm having to convince myself once again that if you cant write, write it for the people that love you, so here you go, who ever you may be out there. Rene and his troops are recovering from just how difficult it was to write the beginning of these blog pages. We were not counting on it hurting us so much. writing these pages is like opening up pandoras box. We tried to keep it cool and just paint and draw, but we did go a little trigger happy and place bombs around the permiter of my neighbors apartments. I have Four neighbors technically we were busy.

Sorry, I hate complaining nagging women. I live in-between to older leasbians, the problem with this that is times of stress, I hear voices. (We will talk a whole lot more about that later) Long story short, we though it out and since we could't figure out who voices were who's, we back peddled and decided not kill everyone, see wasn't that nice of me! I also think I slipped into a severe state of mental illness for couple of days where I could't sleep very well. I tried to function but couldn't handle the loudness or stress of the modern world. I became so lost in my own head I forgot to go the one event I had been dying to get to all year, "The Super Hero Street Fair", I paid for my booth space, planned out what to do and I was too busy feeling abandoned and lost that I forgot to go. I woke up on Friday realized it was the 10th, the day of the fair and I truly felt like a failure. Why couldn't the voices have told me to get ready the day before? See thats how you know they are not real. They never actually help you with practical matters, just tell you what to fear and doubt about yourself.

I wish O could have asked for help over the past week, but i don't know who to ask, because I'm afraid I'll be judged or labeled. Or worse they will think "can't you just stop the voices." No, you can't, I wish it was that easy. The voices never shut up, at best they just fade away to a soft whisper with the propper environment. I need love, encouragement, and sense of balance and peace, complete with lots of girly sexuality for this to happen. However the world that I am forced to inhabit to survive in a capitalist society will probably make that never possible. I need to live a beautiful place where humans are not time cards, their talents cared for like precious metals waiting to be oared from the ground. We all have clocks, bills, schedules and a other people to please so we get enough money to have more bills and schedules ... all of that is like a ticking time bomb in my head, and a ticking time bomb in the head or schizophrenic with personality disorder is not a good thing. Now don't let me scare you off, I'm really very tame and mild and into things being pretty and lovely, its just underneath all that it's like the second coming of Genghis Khan. But like in an angry gay kind of away. Kind of like Frank the Bear! Frank the bear is a fictional chartacter from my series of graphic novels that i made 2008-2010. Pictured Below Frank serves up some sassy dialog to Hedgehog Boy.

"My aren't we looking severe today" says Frank the Bear

If i could even communicate how many hours and minutes of my life that I've spent I fighting with voices that are in my head you would be shocked and frightened. They have ruined relationships with boyfriends, family and friends, (oh yes these voices love to talk shit about people) and they are good at it. Intact they are talking shit about me right now, telling why this is no good and that nobody cares, why should you feel sorry for yourself, your not special, they are convincing and cruel. Thousands upon thousands of hours spent trying to ignore and calm voices that I know in the back of my mind are not real and yet they sound so real that you'd swear they were coming from the sky around you.
Paying attention to these voices gets one lost in the void between reality and creativity. Sadly there is nothing there but waisted space and dead air. Sometimes the voices shift and get soft and can be very loving. I like them that way best of all.

The voices I hear are a left over by product where I've been and where I come from. These are the voices that told me to get up when i got knocked down by my step father. These are voices that told me to get better when no one in Toms family would take me to the doctor. These are the same voices that told me not believe the kids at school who would tell I was an ugly girly boy. The very voices that probably saved my life when I ran away from home at Fourteen; these voices turn on me. Schizophrenia evolves and morphes into what your brain might actually need. For me at first it was love and someone to watch over me for someone else it could be the damn weather channel, if thats what they need to get through the day. Schizophrenia isn't really a bad thing, it just can evolve into something dangerous if left unwatched. Worse case sinserio: The voices over take me and I start yelling stuff and pushing a cart around downtown San Francisco. Just yelling out random nonsense. There is hope though, during the duration of time that i have written this the voices have calmed and one of them even said some amazingly nice and enduring things about me. I hope it's true. I think its honesty and the truth that calm the voices. So I just need to find the courage to fallow the truth. Maybe my head is giving what I need after all. Its certainly not going about it in an easy way, but thats o.k, I'm not sure I'd understand the easy way. I think we can pick up where we left of now, yes, were ok ... I'm gonna go to the doctor and start taking meds again, It's probably better that way.

Side note #1: A good thing to check for anyone thinking they might be skitzo, is are the voices always the same? Have they ever helped you no one else would ? Mine have never aged or changed, its the same three voices that ive always heard. Two female, and one sort of annoying guy who sounds like he's on the news hour of your local broad casting station. If these voices change your not skizo your just looking for for attention.

Side note #1: Rene's practical advice for any young skizophrebtic, If the voices start to nag you, yell at them! Yell out. "You crazy bitch leave me alone" You'll feel better and they will be shocked! Don't worry if anyone can hear you, by this point they already think your crazy anyway. But remember your not, your just to smart for your own good. If you find yourself getting lost inbetween what is real and what they are saying to you. find a friend who can help you get back on your path.

Our family limped on

2010-07-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

My mother gave birth to one more child while in the trailer park, Jacques. After Jacques was born her marital problems with Tom escalated. Most of the memories that remain from this time period are very choppy and loud. Jacques was a screaming baby from morning till night, and this is no choppy memory. Red faced with snot running out his nose till he was at least two or three. Tom had given Linda one beautiful little girl and one never ending screaming baby boy. He had ear infections and had to have tubes put in his ears. This was though to help end the screaming. But as I remember Jacques still let it out daily, and his presence was diffiently felt. Everyone on the street could have heard this child. It started to get very difficult for my mom, I think it took a tole on my mother and probably made any attempts to save a failing marriage almost impossible. It was after all Toms baby.
Now I'm not for one second saying Jacques is in anyway shape or form is responsible for their marriage destructing, I'm just saying as a child looking in, it looked like one too many pieces of broken stones that don't add up to a pile. I really wish i could recount a pleasant memory of Jacques, but the truth is I can't. Jacques grew up in the thick of domestic hell and I'm certain his physique is severely damaged. Perhaps all his screaming was really a warning that no one could understand. There are two fond memories from this period in my life, dressing up as an Indian for Halloween, and getting happy meals My mom at McDonald's. It was back when the kids meal still came in a cool box with the McDonnell's handle at the top. The featured toy was the Muppet babies. Between Jeremy, Jessica and I we had all the baby Muppet toys. My favorite, naturally was Kermit. There were allot of fights, between Tom and my mother and I believe a very difficult time for both of them. Raising kids, trying to find work to pay the bills. Attempting to find time for one another. It sounds impossible. We could carry on in this line of thought but I'm just going to skip ahead in this story. There were other incidents with belts, beatings and bizarre over heard fights, but let's move forward ... I don't want to spend anymore time in that trailer then necessary. We have a Hunted House to move into.

mural of my childhood memory , Hackensack New Jersey

Our Family limped on, and Tom had somehow convinced my mothers, mother, Grandma Janet to give him a loan to buy a house. Grandma Janet was cool, especially when I was younger because she always encouraged me to be inquisitive. I didn't see her tons, but I always remember the times I did. She took great care in coloring my He-Man coloring books with me. It was my first art lesson as I recall. We started blending crayons to make shadows and different colors, and she took time to explain to me what I was doing. She must have seen something special in the way I held a crayon. To this day she is the only person I know who can stare at a painting longer than me, and see something I had missed. Grandma Janet gave Tom some sort of huge loan. Basically she bought us a house, cause he never even managed to pay off the interest of that loan. Later in life she decided she would have to let that battle go of for sanity's sake. The house was bizarrely built, a chipped paint fixer upper in a town hovering in over upstate N.Y called Glens Falls. The house was a two stories with basement converted rooms and and three bedrooms up stairs. It looked out of place and freakishly large with its wrap around porch. Most unsettling about this house was it's history. The weather beaten house was gate keeper and guard to a huge grave yard that hovered behind it ominously. To the right, an empty plot of land that the grave maker used to dispose of old grave stones. It's prior owner was the grave yards grounds keeper and family. Looking back now it seems like a poetic setting to drop down a broken family in and hope for the best, but perhaps that my sick sense of humor leaking in. The basement of this house haunts my memories, pictured above is a large mural I painted of what i remember it to feel like in that basement. It's an image I've worked with many times in my art career.

painful memeory

2010-06-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

This is going to hurt, but here we go. I'm going to recount one of the most awful memories I have, It is also the catalyst for me to get professional help to quiet the screaming child trapped inside my head. Night has fallen in the trailer park wonderland. In the three bedroom stationary mobile home, my brother and I share the back room, my baby sister has her own room next to ours, my mother and then stepfather the room closest to the living-room. If you have never been in a trailer they are very claustrophobic laid out in single line with a small hallway down one side. They are dark, stuffy and scary at night. It is late July or August. Upstate N.Y is humid hot and sticky in the dead of summer. We are all sent to bed after dinner. It is so hot we all sleep in our underwear, common practice for children, but still we could not sleep and were much to poor for air conditioning. I don't remember anything being particularly wrong, I just know it was earlier than usual ... the sun went down, no one could sleep.

We were told not to come out of our rooms. My mother and Tom were up making sniffle noises all night, and I really had to use the bathroom. It was only two doors away but I was trying to be a good boy and do as I was told. At some time in the night they decided to go for a walk. So I heard my chance to do what I needed to do without getting in trouble, or being seen. During my travels out of bed I made two mistakes, I turned on the bathroom light, the second, I went into the kitchen, probably for a snack or something to drink. After all I'm eight or nine years old and there might be cookies out there somewhere. To get to the kitchen in a trailer one must pass through the living-room. In the living room I see the drugs but at the time, I hadn't a clue what drugs were so I didn't even give it any attention, I was on a cookie mission. After my mission was completed I return to my bed safely. I try to go to sleep. All of this is picture detailed in my mind, after all I am an artist. I am then woken up by Tom, this chubby balding push over of man had become a screaming large angry bull with sudden purpose. Something he would severely lack under normal circumstances. With words sounding to quick to really hear, we hear something to the effect of "what the hell did I tell you kids." Me and my brother are marched out only wearing our underwear to the area in the trailer between the kitchen and the living room. It's dark, I can't see very well with out my glasses and the only light on is above the gas stove in the kitchen. I cant recall the actual words as they were with out a doubt cocaine fueled rage. It was basically a question & interrogation session as to which one of use got out of bed that escalated to a scene from a horror movie. I had been caught. Now if anyone were to ask if I had gotten out of bed with out it seemingly like if I aswered wrong I would killed, I would have said "yes". "It was me, I did it, I really had to use the bathroom." But I was terrified and I didn't. Neither me or my brother say a word. We stare at each-other with dread. We had been hit by this jack ass before, but this was different. Children so close to each-other have an almost physic way of communicating, looking at Jeremy, we both just sort of thought he was just gonna hit us till he felt like a man, we could handle that. Jeremy knew If I confessed it would twice as hard of a spanking for me, If I started to open my mouth to talk, Jeremy would look at me sternly like i was an idiot. So we both stood silent. He is still twice my size and very protective of me at this point in our lives. He might have actually been my older brother now that i think about it.
Tom began to hit us. Just on the behind one right after the other, wanting a confession from someone. Back and forth and we still both said nothing, it started to get very painful. Eventually off comes the belt and then I can't tell you how many times he spanked our asses but it was somewhere between 8-10 smacks. We were stubborn kids after all.

My mom then very dramatically turns on a lamp near the couch, the kind with a noisy ball chain cord. Finally the living room is revealed in light and I can see where I am. She had been sitting on the couch the entire time, her children are being beaten in front of her. I have to imagine for my own sanity's sake that she is too shocked to know what to do, because I yell out "Why are you letting him do this to us" and she does not answer me. What then happens is so horrid and confusing to me, my brain starts to shut down even to think of it . Tom grabs me as I'm pulling up my underwear, I had put them on backwards by mistake. He pulls me over to the stove, turns on the burner and shoves my hand into the fire. I scream, and my moms gets up and yells out that "this has gone on long enough." I don't remember anything else. My hand was burned, but I was young and healing possible. Im told by my mother just recently Tom did the smae thing to Jereny. I don't think my brain ever came back from wherever it went to deal with such events. To this day I'll never know if my sister had to witness any of this ... I hope she slept through it. I'm afraid she may have because around this time her doll Timmy's head started to fall off weekly, and she would bring it to me every time to put it back in. Timmy head feel off for years and I think sometimes she would rip his head just so I could fix it and tell here everything was OK. I used glue, tape, thread, staples, and for the next six years and the two more homes we would reside, Timmy's head feel off a whole alot. More that any dolls head should ever fall off.
I wish i could write after that things got better, but they didn't. They got worse.
This was vivid memory I had at work daily and that led me to Dr. Fisherman's office in San Francisco, there I told someone for the first time the story of my childhood. He had no room in his practice for another patient and was just meeting me to give me a referral. His insurance set up didn't match mine, but he found room to squeeze me, and he even changed how he accepted insurance. I think he knew the effort it took to enter his office and to cry in his room with story was one that was not gonna happen again, and he didn't let me go anywhere else. The memories I was having were so awful that I could not function, I was just a sobbing mess everyday. Cause for all my accomplishment, after how far I had climbed, no matter how much art I made and sold, striving to be better, stronger, and vowing to make something of my life, I realized I was just a whimpering mess of a child. My past had shown up to kick my ass. But with help. allot of help! I learned I was something more than a whimpering child. I was Hedgehog Boy!

The entries that fallow will be a recounting of what i learned through Dr. Fisherman and the events my mind had decided I was gonna have to face or literally be on the verge of insanity.

The last name I'll take, the rest I'm giving back.

2010-06-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

You know when you watch TV and you see families being affectionate, loving and encouraging. Well that's how I knew something was wrong, and what I saw on TV looked a whole lot better than what I knew. I wanted a family like the ones on TV. Being loved looked pretty good while sitting on the living room floor of a trailer. We're going to jump ahead a few years for the sake of getting this ball rolling. Besides I kind of feel like making someone cry today. So let's move ahead. By now our family has grown, we are living in a new trailer park development in upstate NY, there was lots of grass around it as I remember. This would be a big jump up from the old run down trailer park that me, my brother and then single mom had come from. The last great memory I have of the old trailer park was the boy down the street I used to Play football with, I got my two front baby teeth knocked out in a rather a aggressive football game, but I didn't care I was just was happy to be playing with the tough boy down the street. We never found my teeth in his front lawn, but Mom and I sat down after the incident and wrote the tooth fairy a very long winded explanation of where she might find the missing teeth and stuck it under my pillow. To my my complete amazement the tooth fairy came and that morning I found she had left me seventy five cents. I think the tooth fairy must have took pity on me and my football story because there was an extra two dimes and a nickel under my pillow the next morning too. A quarter for each and tooth! and extra for physical trama. See, my mom was special when I was little. Fast forward, I'm around the age of eight and my brother Jeremy seven. The new trailer was white and there were corn fields to the right. A forest attached at the end of the corn fields and made a sort of thin panhandle between the massive corn fields and this shining new trailer park. In this this thin panhandle of forest all the children there had made winding paths that ran to and from the trailer park like swiss cheese, although I think it was done accidentally just by running back and forth. We were just children not architects.


Me after getting my two front teeth knocked out

A lot of one childhood is blurry, and fragmented. Mine is especially fragmented because I made myself forget. I made myself forget so well that it would take approx. eighteen years to remember. Now when I say forget I don't mean literally, It's just that I looked in the other direction so hard that one day it would all come back to haunt me. I still catch bits and pieces of truth here and there from my past as I try to function as a normal person in day to day life. That's not fun. So, I can tell you what i do remember... and not all of it was terrible. I had a baby sister named Jessica. She was I believe five years old in these memories and so adorable. Long curly brown hair and a face like a cherub angel. She also had taken to being a bag lady because my mom had gotten her a plastic shopping cart with wheels for X-mas. From morning till night all her toys would be placed in bags and the cart pushed from place to place with her homemade cabbage patch doll in the front compartment for safekeeping. Timmy! Timmy and I would have a very special and symbolic relationship for the next five years, but more on that later. Timmy, the toy cart and Jessica would often be seen at the end of the street with my mother. There to pick my brother and me up from where the school bus would let us out. I loved my baby sister so much!

Rene & Jeremy

Jeremy, my brother was fun. One of my fondest memories of Jeremy and I decided to make a toaster oven out of single tape cassette player. Mostly I supervised. This was also when I learned you could electrocute yourself if you stuck your fingers in the light socket while your brother was making your mothers tape deck into a transformer. He ripped the damn thing apart and put it back together inside out. We then decided to make toast on it. Basically I think we caused an electrical fire by catching two pieces of bread on fire, but we felt smart. My mother walked in just as the toast was finished. We were very proud. I think my mom had a good sense of humor. She wasn't mad I think mostly just confused.

My other fond memory is a little later and it is that of the massive fort / general store Jeremy and I had erected in the back yard with plywood and cinder blocks. Naturally we brought Jessie outside to show her. I had made my first real sale, I sold the kid down the street two boxes of "nerds" candy. Sadly I sold them for as much as i bought them for, but I didn't understand the whole store concept yet. But wow were we special! Look at us in our magic store fort. Then, Boom!! The whole thing collapses with three children inside, My mother picking through the rubble to find us. Then all I remember is three kids laying in the living room with ice lined wash clothes over their foreheads and slight concussions. My mom was the only one upset by all of this ... we had a good time and had already started planning our next fort. She forbid us to let Jessica inside. See she wasn't dumb, she knew we would do it anyway and the only logical thing to say was ..."Don't bring your little sister inside."

Only Jeremy would plan out a fort with stacked bricks & cinder blocks, fearless.

We all had different fathers. but this never mattered to us. Only Jessica's father would turn out to be somewhat of a monster. He gave my mother one more child, a constantly screaming baby named Jacques. Tom was not good looking nor interesting like any of my mom's other boyfriends. I can't really understand what brought them together, I can however imagine it had something to do with acceptance and security, two things a single mom might need real bad. As far as I'm concerned the only good thing Tom ever gave me was his last name, Capone. The last name I'll take, the rest I'm giving back.

Wheezing is funny

2010-06-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

Most of what I remember from my early childhood is in quick colored flashes. Sort of like commercials between the "Super Friends" cartoons. Superman's cape blurs into images of my little brother Jeremy who was just a year younger than me, but at this young stage in our lives literally twice my size. He was a 7 pound baby with the a head like a watermelon. I think God was making up for how easy it was to give birth to me with "monster baby", like Godzilla crawling through the birth canal. Jeremy's father was named René and that is where I got my name, I believe she met him before i was born and well i needed a name and a dad. I wish i could say i remember him but the truth is I don't. But I'd like to say to him thx for taking care of my mom, giving a cool name that was hell to have as girly looking boy in gym class but thats another story. Seriously THX. My mother and René split up and parted ways somewhere in young adolescence. I don't have any memory of that either. Between the colors of the Super Friends costumes on TV all I really remember is dressing up like a giant bug for Halloween, my breathing problems, and having a giant for a little brother.

Jeremy the HULK

Jeremy's size was particularly helpful on the playground in early grade school. I was always being teased for being so tiny and having the name René. It was so great to yell and have Jeremy come over and swat those brats. We may have gone too far when we tied that kid to the bumper of a car in the school parking lot, but I was pissed and could tie a pretty good knot at that point. Jeremy was strong enough to actually drag him there and hold him down long enough for me to tie the jump rope around the rear bumper and then around our victim's chest. Then we just walked away. That kid could still be there for all I know. Thanks Jeremy!

I may not remember René but I do remember René's mother "Grandma Grace." She had in her house this amazing set of wooden Lincoln logs that Jeremy and I would play with for hours. I also remember aunt Carol, cause she was funny and had pretty black hair. I also have an Aunt named Noel but i don't remember her until I would be reintroduced to her again later in life (Fear not Noel your damn special) What i find most remarkable about these three women is that never ever once was i told that i was not part of their family and to this day they still make me feel like I'm a part of their family. Looking ahead into the future there would be many years where it seemed like the entire world was crashing in on me with no escape form the physical and mental cruelty that me and my siblings and I would endure...and then Grandma Grace would have mailed me a birthday card or an Easter card. To a child living in the world full of real danger to get a little card signed with "Love Grandma" was a powerful thing, kind of like hope. Grandma Grace passed away a few years ago. I'm so thankful to have see her healthy and happy the year prior.

Early childhood, I mostly just remember being sick a lot, not sick with a cold or a flu, but always having life threatening asthma attacks and severe allergies to all plant life and living creatures. My asthma condition sent me to the the hospital with my mom more often than not. She was really great about it though, she never got mad or flipped out, it happened so often that it got to a point that we started to laugh about it. Now wheezing and starting to die from lack of oxygen is not funny but somehow my mom made it funny. Sort of in a black comedy "here we go again" kind of way. That is the one thing I learned from my mother, to laugh in the face of danger and mock reality. She was and still is to this day very good it. It's usually highly inappropriate, but I've always been a fan of that.

Mom & Mom

Somewhere around the age of six I distinctively remember having to go to the hospital with my mom on the eve before Easter with a very severe asthma attack. During the duration of the car ride I had figured out the Easter bunny was her and we arrived with us both laughing and me wheezing in between laughs so hard that I could not get out of the car. We were in a beat up Ford Gremlin, it looked like a space craft from the Jetson's. Despite all her flaws and maybe a few mistakes. She was a good mom, she made me laugh. Sure we lived in a trailer park, but what did we care, Me and my brother were five and six years old and we had action figures to play with. For me and my brother she would make giant red heart cakes on Valentine's Day and giant Bugs Bunny cakes for us on our birthdays ... and best of all, we got to eat them for breakfast.

Me & and my bugs bunny cake, Thanks Mom!

"I'm not going anywhere mother fucker"

2010-06-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

I was born September, that makes me a Virgo. I don't really know if that matters but we're gonna write it anyway. I was born almost four months premature. I was 18" long and weighed in at 4 lb.. 2 oz. It says so on the back of this photo. I had no eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails and most shockingly small lungs with terrible azthma. They just had not developed in time, and I was pretty early out the door. My mom's name is Linda and she had just turned 18 two months prior. She was a child. "Babies having babies." I don't know who my father is. All I know is that he is from the Cauyugan Indian tribe in upstate NY. I like to joke my mom went on the indian reservation for some cheap cigarettes and she went home with me instead.

The story I know of my father is short and sad, he was to meet my mother one night so they could run away together and he never showed up, he left her there pregnant with me. Thats not he kind of person I want to meet even if I could.

When I came out I didnt have fully developed lungs, So I was put in the magic incubator , its like a microwave for babies. I'd like think its the first of many times in my life that I would test out just how stubborn I really could be, something that I would learn to love about myself later in life. But this was special because it was the first time in theory I said ..."I don't really care if this is inconvenient for any of you, but I'm not going anywhere mother fucker."

The True Story of Hedgehog Boy / a.ka René Capone

2010-06-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

Just to write my name down looks funny to me, It's not really normal looking, it looks like two opposing forces coliding in some never ending battle to figure out just who and what i am. I can't tell you who I will end up, but i can tell you with certainty I know my life means something. Something big, bold and unsettling. On good days I think i represent an abused child's relentless determination to count and be better than what the world gave him. On bad days I think I represent mental illness and a deep sadness in the face of a world that does not care for its children. Then there are the fun days where I feel like I'm the ebassador from the island of misfit toys and a very unpleasant example of all that can go wrong in a childs mind that manafests itself in adulthood.

Often i think the simple fact I'm alive is a miracle. There are a handful of people without whose guidance I may never have made it to this point. Most people know I'm an artist of some recognition and a survivor of severe child abuse. However, I've never been able to tell my story, except through the cryptic paintings I've made over the years. Finally at this point I think I've earned the right, paid my dues and healed enough that i finally can. I heard in a recent movie that if you can't write for yourself, you should do it for the people that love you. So I'm going to write this for the people who were brave enough to love me, even if i myself didn't really always understand what that meant.

I hope one day to know with out doubt what it means to be loved ... but the sad truth about being an abused child is you don't really understand. I bet most spend their entire lives trying to figure it out. While living in NYC, someone whom I remember as being very special and magical said to me (in response to a heated relationship conversation) "It's not your fault ... you don't know how to be loved." Never will I forget that, and never do I want it to be true. He was right, but its not the way I'm going to end up. So here it goes the story of my life ... and yea it's gonna worth reading.