Rechargeable Memories

And now, for real, here's the story I promised you two weeks ago:

"Rechargeable Memories"

As carcinogenic dust from the World Trade Center's collapse settled all over New York City – into our water supply, our lungs, our politics – I blew up a long-distance relationship by sleeping with my roommate.

She was a chirpy small-town girl who slept down the hall from me, while the woman I loved slept on the other side of the planet. After watching the Twin Towers fall from my rooftop, spending that day not knowing if my brother was even alive until he came through the front door after sundown covered in ashes, I was in shock. The next day the three of us were electric with ambient stress; we bought buckets of paint and slathered every wall in the house a different color.

The day after that, my roommate and I went out and got drunk at a local bar. She laughed hard at some dumb joke I made and touched my leg to steady herself on her wobbly bar stool. Our eyes locked and uh oh. We fast-walked home and went at it with abandon, two terrified animals humping and squelching in defiance of a looming doom.

How else to process the moment's tectonic psychic shift? The economic turmoil bringing New York City to its knees, the war machine America was already spinning up to do big business?

++++

My brother and I lived together in a crumbly house in Brooklyn (later joined by the roommate) where we wrote comic projects together, not professionally but very passionately. But we also each had our own "baby" project that was our alone. His baby was about a taxi service for folks who've just died, while mine was about a Brooklyn husband/wife team who exorcised and sold haunted properties across New York City.

On September 12th of that year, my brother and I sat in our once-calm comics studio upstairs. The ideas papering the walls didn't even matter when you could see the smoking hole where the towers stood the day before, and smell that horrible gasoline/plastic/human barbecue stench from the attack site. We were paralyzed by it. Instead of talking about stories, we talked about this new reality: what could our function possibly be in this world gone crazy, in a nation focused only on bloody retribution? I remember taking a breath and thinking out loud:

ME: My function in this life is to be a storyteller; my power is imagination. I'm not here to report on the world that is, I'm here to see through this place into the land beyond, and bring that vision back here.

Imagination as navigation, storyteller as possiblity-explorer. That's a candle I still burn, daily.

++++

With all the changes in New York City – increased security, PTSD, budget cuts, price hikes – my supervisor Margaret delivered a weekly reminder to our team that permalancer jobs can always end at any moment. She'd say:

MARGARET: Save your money. The axe always finds the neck.

And in my heart, I was done with that. The grind. The fight. I didn't need this, I was needed to captain my ship that I knew was my true purpose here in this world.

++++

Once the news deemed it safe to fly again, my also-rattled mother asked me to come down to South Florida for a visit. Leaving the Roommate With Benefits and my brother behind, I took a long weekend and went down.

My mom drove me around Miami Beach with the windows open, smelling the salty ocean breeze, drinking cafe cubanos until I ground my teeth and laughed nervously at everything. I stared out the window at the post-revitalized South Beach, tiny original Art Deco buildings crowded on all sides by gleaming luxury towers of green glass, mediterranean pavestones and fountains. She explained:

MOM: They're slowly turning Miami Beach into Las Vegas.

Mom worked in real estate as a mortgage originator, and she was mad all the time about it, though I wouldn't understand the doomsday effects until years later:

MOM [definitely ranting]: Everyone down here is crooked! They'll give mortgages to anyone, no matter how little they make, whether they can afford to pay them back or not! The banks just want people to fail, so they can foreclose on them and resell their homes! It's evil!

As she spoke, the city flow past my window like a river. I thought about all the changes in Miami, in our economy, and the foundational effects the banks and 9/11 were having... and I started to see that exorcist/realtor couple from my "baby" comic project based here. Tropical versions of them showing the place I grew up: NYC neurotic/Aspergers Jude Tobin in vintage suits giving way to the greasy, drugged-out Miami Jude Tobin free-balling in shorts and flip-flops.

++++

Even back then, when I imagined Red Light Properties, I wanted to draw this comic myself. The problem with that was my artwork: it was not up to the task. My work was sloppy, cartoonish, without a practiced grasp of visual storytelling.

At my job, Margaret had nicknamed me "The Logo King": my special role on the team was recreating low-res logo JPEGs yanked off clients' sites in the vector art application CorelDraw. I was fast and my work precise, so Margaret purchased a Wacom Intuous tablet for me to use on-site. And I got even faster.

This is how I started to draw digitally, at my second-shift temp job from 6pm to 2am. I drew all night every night, which left my days were free.

++++

While everyone I knew worked, I wandered the city, ate in all its hole-in-the-wall restaurants, watched all sort of indie and revival cinema. One day I was at the Angelika before work to catch a new animated film called Waking Life by Richard Linklater. The film used "rotoscoping": Linklater shot a stream-0f-consciousness film and a team of animators digitally traced, painted and embellished the film until it was a feature-length animation.

I sat alone in this theater with my jaw hanging open, my eyes falling out of my head and throwing sparking like broken lightbulbs. All I could think about was my "Logo King" work, and how the same technique could be applied to figures to make comics. This was how I could transcend my lack of craft, lack of art school foundation and actually execute my vision. I could write, shoot and draw any story I could imagine!

That night on my way out of work, I slipped the team's Wacom tablet into my bag and took it home with me for the night. I brewed a pot of coffee, plugged the tablet into my Macintosh Quadra and dove straight in, producing the first drawings of my life that I was objectively happy with. I was working so intently when I looked up, the sun had fully risen and I'd never even touched my coffee.

++++

That Waking Life moment was the reason I moved to Florida following 9/11: to explore that rotoscoping practice using Adobe Illustrator, building technique and style to produce my own comics work. I knew it would take time, but once I was ready, the project waiting for me was RED LIGHT PROPERTIES.

It didn't take long before I was living in Miami Beach again, but this time my Roommate With Benefits moved down with me. Our plan was to live separately: she had a friend from California she planned to live with, but that girl flaked on her hours after she signed their lease. And in a moment of my purest stupidity, I offered to share the apartment with her, continuing to be RWBs.

I spent every day drawing and drawing and drawing by my corner picture window just two blocks from the ocean, learning to build scenes with vector portraits and digital collage, taking smoke breaks under the giant avocado tree outside.

But my savings began to dwindle as they inevitably do, and I needed to find a way to stop the bleeding. Which came with a big complication: I didn't have a car. I rode my bike all over Miami Beach, but it was too far, hot and dangerous to ride a bicycle across a causeway to the mainland.

Instead I printed up postcards for a business I called Rechargeable Memories, where I offered clients digital portraits in whatever setting or genre or style they wanted, using photos they supplied to make to create unique creative portraits.

It's still cool idea, and I did start finding clients. I rode my bike up and down Miami Beach all day every day to take meetings. I'd arrive sunburnt, soaked with sweat and usually having forgotten some important adapter that let my Macbook talk to their PCs.

One day – after a meeting with a golf pro turned rich kids' coach – I biked home to find my Roommate With Benefits sitting on the stoop waiting for me:

RWB: You're home. And so sweaty! Please go take a shower. [as I'm walking inside] How was your meeting with the golf teacher?

ME: He says my drawing makes him look old. But it's from his photo and he is old.

RWB: Ah.

ME: Ah?

RWP: Ah, I think... that we should break up.

ME: Break up? Were we... serious?

RWB: No! God, no. What I mean is... you should move out. [this time with feeling] I would like you to move out. Please.

Then she reminded me that the lease was in her name.

++++

I took stock of my situation: savings depleted, perma-sunburnt and perma-stoned, taking my fledgling stab at the freelancer life by running my illustration/digital portrait career from a bicycle.

Life at home was getting tenser by the day, RWB was bored of waiting for my shit to get together so I could move out. But I couldn't move into any place without money, and my client base on the Beach was small and stingy. My hustle-to-reward ratio was way off. That afternoon, I sat on the front steps smoking a bowl with my semi-retired stripper neighbor Dorelée when my cellphone rang in my apartment.

It was my father. He always called moments after I got high:

FATHER: Are you still farting around the Beach without a car?

ME [exhaling]: I... am still [trying not to cough] farting around the Beach without a car.

FATHER: Can't you just buy one?

ME: I don't have enough money to buy a car.

FATHER: Well, you can't live in Florida without a car. I helped your aunt buy a new car, why don't you go get her old one? I can't say what condition it's in, but... the price is right.

ME: Seriously? Yeah... where is it?

FATHER: Virginia. Your cousin Malka's got the keys.

++++

Which is how I found myself driving alone in a one-way rental Ford Topaz through rural Florida at 4am, trying to reach Norfolk before sunset. I drove most of the way in a meditative silence, re-examining the global and romantic catastrophes that brought me to this moment, haunted by a real love I'd discarded for animal comfort.

By the time I reached my cousin's place, I was hopped up on gas station coffee, Drake's Yodels and thirteen hours of beating self-abuse.

My youngest cousin Malka opened the door, took one look at me, enveloped me in a big hug. She had a husband in the Navy, a house on a lake that they owned, and she spent her days working on her PhD dissertation. I had a laptop, a cat, a bicycle and a Roommate With Benefits who wanted me the fuck out. Here I was on her doorstep for handouts.

Burying my face in her hair, I choked back hot tears before they escaped, but she heard them.

++++

My aunt's old car was 1993 Chevrolet Cavalier. It was parked on Malka's lawn, where it sat untouched for months, through sun, snow and rain. I followed her inside and up to her attic office where she fetched the car keys from her desk:

MALKA: I can't promise you it's even going to start. You should've called me first so I could test it before you came up all this way.

ME: I'm kind of in the middle of a... situation. It was the right moment for me to get away. The timing of this felt... cosmic.

MALKA: Right... cosmic. [laughs] You're such a stoner.

Back down on the lawn, we opened the car. The seal around the door puckered and the Cavalier exhaled like a tomb: mildewed upholstery, funky humid air (I later found a hunk of moldy cheese under the seat), rotten foam crumbled off the steering wheel grip, weeds sprouted up from beneath the floormats.

ME: Is this is a... Chevy Terrarium?

MALKA: At least you can take a piece of genuine Virginia biome home with you.

The engine did turn over after a half-dozen tries, and once it did, the Cavalier showed me her will to live. The gears didn't grind. I filled a trash bag with takeout containers, pulled weeds and moist dead leaves that collected under the hood. And suddenly, there she was:

ME [beaming]: That's... my car.

And just like that, my future had wheels.

MALKA: You still need to get this old bitch serviced out before you drive home.

++++

Thankfully, an oil change and a tire patch was all she needed... covered by my tiny sliver of available credit card balance. Energized, I was ready to turn around and jet home to Florida. Ready to channel the Cavalier's cosmic luck into growing Rechargeable Memories into a proper business so I could move into my own place and never look back.

MALKA: Wait, you're leaving...? You just got here! Hang out with me, at least for the day! Got a decent night's sleep and leave in the morning.

I screwed up my face thinking about it, not convinced.

MALKA: Bitch, I'll make you blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

Sold.

We drove around Norfolk's foresty streets, road-testing the Cavalier as Malka showed me around town. We picked up massive honey-baked ham sandwiches from a family restaurant drive-through and ate them in the parking lot, walked the saddest deserted 1980s mall where the only store still open sold electric pianos. Even though it was mid-summer, the mall hadn't taken down their Christmas decorations.

Then Malka guided me across town to an isolated strip mall:

MALKA: Welcome to my church.

The strip mall was comprised of three separate thrift shops, named respectively "The Lamb of God Community Thrift", "Neighbors Helping Neighbors Second Hand & Curios", and "He Walks With Me Resale Store".

++++

In "The Lamb of God", I found a frayed wicker basket tucked behind a shelf piled high with chipped china. Inside was a stack of cassette tapes, including Black Sabbath's first three albums: Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master of Reality.

ME: The Cavalier has a tape deck, doesn't it?

MALKA [nodding]: Mom's Barry Manilow Live tape might still in it, though.

My eyes lit up. About driving home to Black Sabbath, not Barry Manilow.

++++

In the "Neighbors Helping Neighbors" shop, there was a life-sized linen-wrapped mannequin. Not the department store type, more an antique from an old tailor's shop, an abstract humanoid nightmare, faceless and lanky, no fingers. But its torso was cloaked in a long black minister's coat, so old it had no manufacturer's label. This coat was hand-made for someone once upon a time, and it fit me like a glove.

On the blue paper price tag, someone had scrawled $3.50 in Sharpie. When the nice lady at the cash register rang me up, she squinted her blue eyes at me:

THRIFT SHOP CASHIER: It's your lucky day, hon. Blue tags are 75% off!

++++

I strutted into the "He Walks With Me Resale" in my 87¢ minister's coat, catching side-eye from a group of old biddies inspecting macramé teapot cozies. I looked like no kind of old-timey minister. But behind them, poking out from a hanging rack of t-shirts, a striped pattern whispered to me like a cat:

STRIPED PATTERN: pssst pssssst!

It was a "pocket tee" T-shirt with all-over pink and blue stripes. Those colors laying against each other – like cyan and magenta – make my eyes wiggle, create a third-color distortion I've always loved in album covers and graphic design. I loved it instantly, gave it a quick sniff check – clean! – and took it straight to the counter. Our shopping excursion was now complete.

++++

The rest of my visit with Malka was quiet: her husband was away at sea (this was the year following 9/11 where Navy ships were deployed in the Gulf but saw no combat). We sat together on her back porch barefoot, watching ducks on the grassy lake, drinking tequila and eating potato chips until the sun slowly sank behind the forest and the mosquitos came out in full force.

We talked about life — as cousins but really for the first time as young adults – with some perspective on failure but still ahead of the narrowing tunnel of possibility that diminishes all our futures.

In the morning, we woke up before dawn and she did make me the promised blueberry pancakes before I hit the road.

I drove out of Norfolk listening to Black Sabbath's "The Wizard" in the fog, wearing my soon-to-be-essential striped shirt, rolling home on new wheels into my future.

++++

Back in Miami, I never did get Rechargeable Memories off the ground, but I did move out, and wrote and drew my ass off. I did move back to New York about six months later, where I began to freelance for real.

That striped pocket tee from the "He Walks With Me Resale Shop" became RED LIGHT PROPERTIES protagonist Jude Tobin's "lucky shirt" – his superhero costume such as it is – which I first drew (badly) for a rejected NYFA grant application:

I used that shirt to model the character during the original production of the series, while I lived in Brazil 2009-2012, and later in NYC in 2013.

It's 2024 still with me, still charged and ready:

As you know by now, I will be returning to RLP in the spring, after the UNFINISHED BUSINESS hardcovers ship. The comics will be serialized first right here... to this very newsletter you're already subscribed to.

Atê a prómixa,