021026

The Historically Troubled Third Missive, How I Didn't Quit Smoking but I did Let It Bleed

(anxious DC3 intro, John Cale, Pole, Gas, Hashman Deejay, The Necks, Town & Country, Terre Thaemlitz, d. Tiffany, Anthony Naples, Theo Parrish, House of Doors, Royal Crown of Sweden, Rhythm & Sound, Thomas Brinkmann, BOREZ, DJ Rashad, DJ Technics, X, FACS)

I won’t belabor the amount of time and energy it took to arrive here, typing this out from the comfort of this chair. Instead I’ll tell you about this chair. The evening of July 27, 2025 I had enough confidence in my heart and enough strength in my injured leg to bike from the Puzzle Palace to the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive to attend a screening of Robert Altman’s “Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.” Its an emotionally complex story of a young woman’s return to her small town for an anniversary celebrated by the special club she was once part of. I will spare you the depth of this story for you to seek it out. It does focus on transgender identity, and the way women’s emotions and feelings are repressed by patriarchal dominance and societal norms. Like many Altman films, it was a) not universally praised and b) featured spectacular performances by many women. The characters themselves are not particularly likable, but they still draw the viewers empathy for the positions and lives they’ve found themselves in.

I enjoyed the film—it was my third time seeing it, as I am unapologetic in my appreciation of Robert Altman’s work. It was lovely to finally see it on a big screen, but I was preoccupied by the thought of this chair I noticed while en route to the theater. There is a particular stretch of a particular block in Berkeley, CA that I cruise through at least a few times a week, as it is part of my regular bicycle routine. The route is eight miles, sometimes 11, door to door that routes from my neighborhood through Berkeley, down to the water, where a breezy trail runs my bitchass into Emeryville and then loop back home. Its nice when my coffee is still waiting for me when I leave. I love the way my legs look in the mirror after riding, too. My butt is gaining definition too.

I started biking at the end of August, 2023. It was about a week before my then girlfriends birthday. Our relationship (at that point, eight years of knowing one another, and close to that of being enthralled with one another) was at its end. I have spent years delicately avoiding writing publicly about this, for a myriad of reasons, namely I still love them and did not wish for the relationship to end. But by August 22, 2023, sitting across from a friend in town, on tour, both of us feeling somewhat electric and charged by seeing one another. Smoking and gabbing behind the venue while the opener performed, she told me about the end of her relationship. A relationship she was convinced was being played for keeps by both parties. It was over, said friend explaining how she found her agency again, accepting the humility of it not working, and it needing to end.

The place I was in at the time, yes it was over. Details don’t need to be shared here, as it’s not just my story and I will not demonize this person whom I love. It was over, both of us steadfast in moving further out of tune. It took two more months to end it as there was massive avoidance at differing times and phones suddenly stop working. Smoke and mirrors, missed connections, different time zones, you know the kind. By October, I had been cycling forty miles a week, and had recently stopped smoking. I’ve stopped and relapsed repeatedly through my life, still do, but this time was different. What I was coughing and hacking was not just the expected “Cleansing” that comes from tobacco cessation. It was much more disruptive than that. More intense. I had to stop myself at times to regain my airflow and cough, hack, hurl the grief of this relationship. The sorrow of an end, a relationship I was definitely intending on keeping that I had to end in order to save myself.

Like any good lesbian, it didn’t end there. God bless these straights man, y’all just say “I don’t know (Geoff/Jen) is fucking nuts” and move on. Like any good lesbian long term break up, it went peacefully, quiet, occasional flares of texts arrived bitter, but not at all seeing one another. Then 2024 began and an onslaught of traumatic events, scares affecting us at time either respectively or collectively. Like any good lesbian, we were “not dating, for sure” but still quite enmeshed offering the other support through the grief. Boundaries frayed, communication splintered and at times intermittent. I also craved laughter, and no one can make me laugh the way this person can, selfish as that may be. My attachment and care taker tendencies bouncing all around while also feeling isolated by my heart break, which fuels contempt and storyline fever; not the best look. There’s also this other thing about being trans and feeling safe by a person whom saw you and affirmed you at every turn. I’m not smart enough to elaborate on that, but it is a truth I feel. Then just right over heeeeere we have the death of friends—the toll one pays for loving and knowing nothing but misfits, geniuses, and freaks—pushing me to reflect on what I need to move forward and show up in a way that honors what they stood for, what I learned from loving those people.

I had not seen this person I love, face to face, since May of 2025 when I finally asked for a period of No Contact three weeks ago. I opine that I don’t wish to live in a world where I do not have contact with this person, A tin can and twine like no other, when our connection is operable, yet I see no other healthy way forward. I am of the belief that the love I have for this relationship still has more to teach me, and I have more growth in my future from it.

Godamn, the chair. Wait the bike. The bike itself was this reactionary move. “Fuck it you don’t wanna [Redacted] [redacted] or [REDACTED] fine, I am getting on the bike and pushing this shit.” As I shifted with my relationship ending, moving through the first waves of grief, grief that would take on many forms and arrive in different ways over the next two years, I was also working as a peer counselor at a mental health non profit. This work informed and inspired an emphasis on focused healing. Thus the bike shifted as a means to process further—process each shift, process my own well being, process the grief of death and heartache. As my job began to hand out pink slips, 67% of its state funding eliminated last year, leading to a mass layoff of counselors, I suffered a leg injury. As my job rounded out to nil, I was hobbling either on crutches, or light steps, gentle foot work to not activate what was neither a fracture, or break, or sprain. Something else, but still $125.00 for “Steph, the body is a mystery. Keep it on ice.” As such the bike laid round the house for four to six weeks, until I found the ability to bike to this movie, biking past this chair.

Watching “Come Back to The Five and Dime,” all I could think on were the logistics I needed should this chair be available. It is thick, cumbersome, and comes with an ottoman. “Okay, if the fabric is in good shape, I’ll bike back to the crib, get the wagon and scoop it.” Never mind measuring the thing to see if it even fits. Will anyone be home to help me in case my leg gives out? What if its too heavy?” Never mind Cher, or Karen Black, or Kathy Bates, all leaving it out there, THIS CHAIR IS GONNA FIX EVERYTHING.

Bike back, breezy, downhill, leg is feeling okay; reach said street and sure enough the chair is still there. I hobble off, a little twang a pain, and examine the chair. Light enough for me to pick up on my own. Fabric looks clean enough. Don’t see traces of bugs. So help me if I get bedbugs again. Bike back to the crib, grab the wagon and this would be the moment another would scoop it. Takes some angling, but it fits riiiiiight into the wagon. My leg is now worn down, and I wonder how this will get into the house, but with some fortitude, I get it in, and rearrange my room. Now, I write from the comfort of this chair, looking at the below POV of my bed. This blessed block in Berkeley would, a month after scoring said char, bestow a Gozney Roccbox pizza oven upon me, in fine working condition. As I examined it in awe, a resident stepped outside assuring me “It works fine, all the parts are there, I simply upgraded and didn’t want to sell that one.” Thank you, kind resident of Berkeley, California.

Today I am here writing, a month after the last time I sat comfortably nested in the big arms of this luxurious seat (the joke is it’s a cuck chair, but so far all I’ve done is rip a bong to “Black Sabbath Vol. 4) and banged some drivel out to justify sharing a mix. I was confident that by completing the unenviable task of a no contact letter, the frozen bank of task paralysis would crack apart, floe, and out would come paintings, mixes, writings, bread, cover letters(!) all majestic, magnificent and perfectly flawed as is part of my charm.

Instead, I froze in the paralysis of grief, and when not in that hell I was consumed by intrusive thoughts of failure, losing everything, death, the awful and unhelpful thought that I have maybe ten years of living left. Not helpful because a) I have no control over anything b) my friend reminded me that I’m focusing on distinct passings that happened at an early age for family members and c) really, okay I die in ten years. Fine. I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore. I don’t have to sweat money, or body dysmorphia, I don’t have to worry about my teeth falling out, and I really don’t have to worry about what the rest of you louts thought of me.

Regardless, an intrusive thought is a setback. “Technical Difficulties” are a setback. Setback after setback trying to put a mix down that wouldn’t crash, skip, or fade uncontrollably. (There’s one obvious skip, and as always my hamhocks are heavy on fades and she sure loves the echo and loop presets.) Every bit of paint on canvas looking like utter trash, and fingers unable to type—ideas of a wrecking ball, promised in the past, float in clouds, neighboring recipes aching to be tested. Not all was lost, thankfully— the leg is improving (the story around that ordeal is absurd and lengthy, and maybe for another time.) I’m slowly eking out something that looks like a letter to (a) potential employer(s.) I still pedal, I still dance, I still cry a lot. Oh yeah, I inadvertently stopped drinking 7 months ago, save for the extremely occasional toast. The last night of the Destroyer tour, after weeks of not touch a drop, affirmed that this boozing thing is a young shitkickers game, and I don’t have the chops I once had. Thank goodness.

I feel incapable of opening up to anyone, let alone trust a stranger. I do not feel confident I could love someone the way I once did. I do not feel that connection is something within reach at the time being, and I must be okay with that. My shrink reminds me I am a chrysalis at the moment. “You’re goo.” They also called me “a poem” and I’m still figuring that out. I’m stuck on this however, posed by one Theo Parrish, (whom I guess I’m going to spill about next): if what feels like a paralysis, is simply “me interrupted” then what do I look like uninterrupted? Our time is up for now, would you like a card?

(pov of from said chair. Not pictured: chair.)

Things that saved me this past month: friendships old and new; Thomas Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket"; “Rammellzee: Racing for Thunder”; Crones; Hen House’s second Ambient Salon; Spacey Lacey, Cube and Cigarette Mom at El Rio; Loidis at underground SF; Inverts; Circuit; “Blazing Saddles”; “The Seven Samurai"; “The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg”; “No Other Choice”; SCTV; The boys at Lloyds; False Aralia dj set; biscuit, adder, frankie and skolz as always.

Fuck ICE, Fuck 12, Free Gaza, end the war on poverty, RIP and free all the guys n dolls.

Best,
Steph
Oakland, CA
Feb 10, 2026