Bipolar Fury Nightmare Crone

I was trying to get this written yesterday and couldn’t finish in time, because I realized it was getting insanely long. So here it is, a day late…

November 30, 2019, was the 30^th anniversary of one of the biggest events of my life, both for what was lost and nearly lost, and then was regained afterward.

My best friend from Alabama and I decided to move to Rockford in May of 1989, because she had a job offer and I wanted to get the hell away from my family. We packed what we had and, along with my precious kitty cat, we moved into a very old, crappy, and extremely weird apartment on 7^th Street in the heart of downtown. Neither my roommate nor I were making much money, but rent was extremely cheap. We were only there for six months.

Now when I say “old, crappy, and extremely weird”, I mean it. Here’s the rundown:

• The place was built in 1902 as business offices, and it was three stories high, but with the 12 foot ceilings on each floor it was about as tall as a modern five story building

• The street level was a rather tacky women’s clothing shop, the owners of which also rented out the upper two levels as “two-bedroom apartments”, three units per level

• Our 3^rd floor apartment had been spliced together from what was likely three different offices – we actually had windows looking into the hallway and three front doors (two of them nailed shut) also with windows that once had nameplates on them, and the one we could use was locked with a skeleton key, I shit you not

• Bare lightbulbs hung down on long wires from the 12-foot ceilings, and the front windows overlooking the street were nearly floor to ceiling themselves, and I had a literal panic attack hanging curtains while fearing I would lean too far and fall to my death on the sidewalk

• There was a single tiny closet the size of a coffin in one of the bedrooms – which itself had no doors – so we ended up using the second bedroom as a walk-in closet, after buying four clothing racks

• The kitchen stove was literally made in the 1920s; the oven didn’t work at all and of course there was no replacement parts to be found, and eventually the stove stopped working too so we were reduced to using a plug-in wok

• There was no air conditioning at all, and barely functioning radiators which were likely as old as the stove, and only one heat controller per floor – in someone else’s apartment – so of course we spent the summer frying and the late fall freezing or boiling depending on a total stranger’s whim

• The water was so hard my cat wouldn’t drink it so we had to buy distilled water for her just so she wouldn’t dehydrate in the heat (fortunately the bathroom sink constantly dripped, and the little moron would lay underneath it getting soaked to keep cool)

• There was a skylight in the hallway, below which was an opening in the floor surrounded by railing, so that you could stand on the 3^rd level and look down into the 2^nd level

My roommate and I generally had no privacy with each other, due to lack of doors on everything except the bathroom. I slept on a mattress on the floor in the living room and she took the bedroom. We shared the tiny closet for winter coats, boots, and my art portfolio. The other big open room was sort of my art studio, and the corner of the living room opposite my mattress was lined with our four huge bookcases, literally hundreds of books, and her writing desk. We had no TV, because at the time neither of us cared for it and we listened only to our records or the radio.

My roommate’s new job was in an office across town, so she took the only car we had between us (which was hers anyway) and I stuck to whatever work I could find nearby or by taking a bus. I went through a few lousy choices, mostly fast food and hotel cleaning. Eventually, I wound up with two part-time jobs I could tolerate: doing commissioned photo retouching by hand (something I’d been doing for a couple years before the move, and was beginning to build a reputation for it), and a night job at a shop one block over so I could walk there easily.

The only really fun thing about the place was the fact that, directly across the street, was the Music Box, a store owned and operated by Ralph and Marilyn Nielsen. My roommate became quite close to them over the six months we lived there, and even took singing lessons from Ralph, then started attending their church (just her, I wasn’t into it). Upon occasion, we would run into their son Rick while at the shop. Yes, that Rick Nielsen. I’d been drawing comic books for Cheap Trick -- truly scandalous, racy, defamatory, and apparently hilarious as fuck to the band members -- since the year before, which got me and my roommate invited onto a tour bus and then backstage in Alabama, and I was pretty excited to keep on meeting the band, so I drew and wrote like mad during that same six months.

Not everything I drew was for the band, but they certainly inspired a lot. I honestly created more artwork in that short six months than I had in my whole life before that time. Most of what I drew was a comic strip co-written by my roommate, lots of mythological beings and fairy tale creatures, and I began general designs for a tarot deck of my own. I drew so many things I was proud of that I had a lot of my own work pinned to the walls as decoration, along with actual posters. One poster was a particularly gorgeous Boris Vallejo print called “The Sun and the Moon”, which felt like a holy image, like I was seeing my actual god and goddess, and which became a significant point later in this tale.

You see, the building was very old. And had very old wiring. And no alarm system or sprinklers. And you can see where this is heading...
 

The doctor was worse than them, in her own way. I rarely call people a "space case", because I myself have been one on thousands of occasions. But I honest to fucking gods wonder if she's always high, because she can't look me in the eye at all. It's more like her own eyes just wander around my face trying to catch the words coming out of my mouth and never quite getting enough of them to understand WTF I'm saying.

First she misunderstood which hand was getting injections. Then when she started to work on the RIGHT hand, misunderstood that I was getting the ulnar nerve done. Then she -- wait for it -- LEFT THE ROOM TO GET MY CHART because it wasn't there. Then finally she said "shingles neuralgia isn't treatable like this and there's really nothing you can do for it, or any kind of nerve that's already going numb, and even surgery might be pointless."

Mother. Fucking. UNBELIEVABLE. Bullshit. So my appointment was pointless. And the doctor is also pointless.

She ordered physical therapy for me, but I'll bite my own numb fingers right down to the bone before I'll go back to that place. I asked them to fax the EMG results from last week to my regular doctor who treated my shingles (and the horribly burned skin after the insane one gave me lidocaine patches), and she can find me a different PT clinic, probably the one five minutes from home that my husband is using.

Ultimately, the fact still remains that I may never get back full use of my hands so, yes, I'm still somewhat depressed. Honestly though, that feeling is being overwhelmed by my EXTREME ANGER. It's kind of like I'm balancing on a tightrope over a black hole, but a familiar one that I've beaten enough times that it ought to be fucking afraid of ME instead.

Today I am writing a memorial speech for a man I never met, who virtually no one has heard of even though he was published around the world for decades, and who I didn't even know had died in May this year. I will also never read the speech aloud, so I guess it's just a memorial blog post.

But first, a brief explanation of how I learned of his passing, because of the ridiculously roundabout way it happened.

Minutes before making this sad discovery, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed and found a retweet by yet another comic artist – Josh Lesnick – of a new meme going around, wherein you must forget whatever zodiac sign you are and choose what "Garfield" comic was published the day you were born.

Immediately I knew I was out of the running for that meme, since I was already out of high school by the time it started. Even Josh couldn't completely use the meme because, as he said, it was still a brand new only-once-a-week strip called "Jon" when he was born. This was actually something I didn't know, but I DID know that the artist, Jim Davis, had worked alongside Tom K. Ryan on "Tumbleweeds" before he struck out on his own with the fat cat. So maybe I could be extra-clever (lol) and use whatever "Tumbleweeds" was published on my birthday.

Mildly curious now, I went to Wikipedia and searched for "Garfield" trivia and learned a few things I hadn't known before. None of which are terribly important to me or this post.

Naturally, I clicked the link through for "Tumbleweeds"... And was instantly crushed. There was the dreaded "second date", meaning he was now dead. Mind you, he was 92. But it was still a blow because our heroes seem to live forever, we sort of encase them in amber in our hearts, and it doesn't matter how far past the death we first read of their passing – it's like it just happened. And in a way, it mostly had just happened, being only three months prior to my discovery. (Plus, the comic was started when I was a year old, so that meme was useless in any context. Bluh.)

Also yes, the man was an actual hero to me, which is why the memorial is important.

I still haven't cried, but honestly... there are not many people whose death has caused that. I either didn't know them well enough, or knew them faaaar too well to ever waste my tears. The ones I truly cry over mean a great deal to me in ways that have nothing to do with having met them, or in some cases never even exchanging words with them. Tom was someone I HAD exchanged words with, and this is why he means so much to me.

Some history now.