This short comic is something that I’ll post from time to time if I want to get some traffic going to my profile. It’s gotten nearly a million views at one point, a few hundred thousand another time. The thing about my comics is that they’re rarely altered from a storytelling standpoint. Some, I mean, a small fraction, are biographical or willed fiction. Most are translated as best as I can, with my skill level as an illustrator, from dreams. And this one is no different.
In 2024, I moved to Texas with a fella I met on the internet nearly a decade prior. We had good drunk conversations throughout the years. October of 2022, he says I should move in because he needed a roommate. In summer of 2023, he offers again, as we were talking about how ghetto my spot-at-the-time was. And goddamn was it ghetto.
My “hometown”, Rapid City, was and currently is, in an active gentrification process. New apartment builds continue to get approved and constructed, but none of them seem to pay attention to a certain income bracket. Instead, they set their sights on the Airforce base, they set their sights on the medical professionals working at Monument health, or the graduates from our tech schools.
Prices go up, two-bedroom apartments go for 2k plus – to live in a town that’s not worth 2k rent. The pool of affordable or low-income housing stays stagnant or shrinks, as the poor-population slowly expands. It’s not a great setup, and the city shows its policies with its homeless population, a sizeable chunk of baked dark brown Natives, spread out in the parks, in full view of tourist eyes.
It’s hard getting started in a world that rewards being extremely poor or properly educated. At least that’s the way it feels to me. If I were broke enough, I’d get help from social programs, and if I made enough, I would be good on my own. Instead, I’m stuck in this middle world where just being seen at an urgent care, with no medical treatment, will put me in the red for weeks.
So, my buddy asks me to move in with him. He says he got into a fight. Got his ribs broken by one of his roommate’s ex-boyfriends. Apparently, the guy broke into the house and started throwing fists. His roommates weren’t great people and refused to pay rent for the last three months.
A part of what I was invited to do, was to be a human pitbull.
He was offering a place without a credit check. Flat rent. He had an available garage, converted some ten years before. He played bass in a few bands back in the day and wanted a spot to rehearse, so that was what the garage became. Sound dampened, carpeted, with my own entrance.
From 29 to 32, I lived a transient life, and for the first time in forever, I knew where I’d be staying, I knew I’d have a spot next month, and the next, and the next.
Down in Texas, at least for the first month, I was able to rest, and resting meant a lot of boozing.
I don’t drink like I used to because my hangovers got bad. The old days where I could ride out the shivers, shits, and dehydration are gone. Hangovers aren’t a body problem anymore; it’s a psychological problem. It’s a spiritual problem.
When that hangxiety comes, something in me asks to go to church. It asks to go to mosque. It asks to be comforted by a preacher. It asks to pray and be prayed for. It’s terrified and the dreams reflect it.
I remember when this dream came, when these images came, it was after my first month in Texas. Early March. I sat outside, in the backyard, wearing a hoodie in the Texas sun. I wanted to sweat, wanted to purge, because I poisoned my body with liquor for at least three weeks and I couldn’t do it anymore.
“I see a cross, massive cross, flying over this blood red dusty demolished city. It looks like a cross, but it feels like a bird of prey. I’m in a dark room. I see these fucked up ghosts or demons. They tell me to be quiet, because if it hears me talk or think, it’ll find and kill me. Just processing what they said to me was enough to alert the cross. It let out a beam that leveled the buildings.”
I think there’s a such thing as a good hangover. And a good hangover is not no-hangover. A good hangover is a challenging hangover. A good hangover will have you questioning your life and your path forward. A good hangover will remind you that we’re also, to some degree, spiritual beings.
A good hangover will make you pray.
(Instead of going to church, I went to an AA meeting.)
Behold A Red Horse 