Caterpillar stairway leads me to the basement so I can hide from the monsters called reality. Comfort in the dark corner with worn warped plywood Grandpop set up as my office years ago complete with a make shift desk to draw on and read comic books. 1002 Niagara Rd. The invisible dog Grandpop warned me about never came to me. Was he teasing or crazy? I’ll never know. I liked it there hiding from hippies of my dreams that were going to hurt me somehow. My dreams, visions and creativity flourished, as an 8-year-old’s should.
It was much less scary than the House on Haunted Hill, The House by the Cemetery, The House by the park, The Last House on the Left, The Last House on a Dead End Street, The House that Jack Built and my former house on Monitor rd where I lived with my paranoid schizophrenic mother. The House of Cockroaches. The neighbors called her cockroach lady. I was the Son of the Cockroach Lady.
It was (is) a small part of Camden NJ. A village they called it. Fairview Village. Nice enough to my childhood nightmarish recollections. It was a big wonderland filled with talking gray trees, shimmering golden green grass, and dirty shirtless white kids that called my name and eventually called me names.
Daddy gone, mommy in crazy hospital, I moved on Niagara Rd with Grandmom and Grandpop. I got fat and didn’t like school. Too many children. Too many rules. Too many teachers. I made fun of myself after being made fun of for being fat. I wore pants that were labeled Husky. Kids called me Husky. I went to the basement or sat in front of the TV and I would draw and draw and draw.
The neighborhood worsened as I got older. I got worse as the neighborhood got older. I escaped when I was 11-years-old.
Now I am back. I feel more afraid than I did as child. I took a walk yesterday to see the 2 houses I lived in and they were different, smaller, odd. The entire neighborhood shrunk in size, grew in population and crime. I was almost the scared scarred little white boy being stared at and made fun of once again. I wore levis instead of Huskys.
Back to the up all night and no sleep routine. It’s an old act I developed in high school or was it college? Not a stand-up comedy routine. Could be at this point because if I don’t laugh I’ll cry.
Cry. Soft whimpering cries. Loud screaming cries.
No dies. Not yet.
Tired wired eyes. I doze off then wake up. I wake up I doze off.
I tried to eat my worries last night and I couldn’t keep them down.
I’m hungry then I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. What can I do?
My body rejects my denial and forces me to think. Think. Think
I slept earlier yesterday after a panic attack. Anxiety attack. Anxiety went into cruise control and got into an accident with my insides and outsides. I was inside. Inside.
I slept yesterday. It was a dream. Not the sleep. It was dream to sleep. The day before I slept. Slept early. Awoke early.
Productive. Creative. Happy. Happy.
Today and last night and some other nights the pains in my face drove me to a painkiller. Kill the pain. Kill pain.
Kills pain. I can’t sleep. Can’t sleep. I dream of sleep. Dream sleep.
Remember the night owl I once was? I wanted to be? Proud to be?
No worries.
Worries. Problems. Dilemmas. Solutions.
Solutions. Think. Think man, think. A Solution. Solutions.
Solution? Not there yet. Not sure I’m anywhere yet. Had one or two or three or more. Solutions. Each solution is kicked out of the way by a bigger worry. Bigger problem. Bigger dilemma.
I cry. I laugh. I get outraged. I am sensitive. Sensitive artist. Bah.. Starving artist. Bah..
I go away for a minute. Two maybe three. Minutes. I am surrounded by love and sex and fantasies I make up as they float through my dreams.
I get home to an empty fridge and a coffee table cluttered with reminders of my worries. I scramble for solutions. I do what I can to solve the worries, problems and dilemmas.
Productive. Creative. Happy?
Not sure. Doubt. Hope. In between.
Go forward. Move ahead. Back to the taxi. Whip it.
Women. . . You can’t live with them . . . . Men are assholes that fucked women up. The messed them up for guys like me. Maybe guy like you.
We are all a result of our personal experiences in life. Most of us stick with what we experience in life early on and it seems we stop changing in at a certain age. Look around. You can usually tell how old someone is by what they wear, their hair styles, how they speak and their interests like music and television. You know the types. You can tell when someone grew up in the 80’s, 90’s etc.
Ahh…. The mysteries of the male and female relations. It’s never been solved but I have my theories and opinions.
In my dating experience and the older I get I find that I am less and less of a commodity and I gather more and more baggage. The same goes with the women I encounter or date. It’s been a while but I have been paying attention to other people’s relationships. So when I date a woman I am also dating her last boyfriend/husband/fiancé, the one before that and the one before that. Each experience she has changes her in some ways. This seems to go against what I said earlier about people staying in certain mentalities from early life. It’s been my observation that each man they date reaffirms her attitude from early life rather than changing it especially the women that have had traumatic experiences with men in childhood, teen years and early 20s.
So, the reason I was thinking about this is because my friend is having guy troubles. She’s been dating a guy that grew up in the same city neighborhood with the same friends and family dating the same type of girls his entire life. My friend grew up in a backwoods environment and transitioned to the center city life and has had different types and tries to let go of her past relationships when entering a new one. They are only a couple of months in and he didn’t realize how many male friends she had. I hung out with her last night and she let him know she was going out with a guy friend. He started to get jealous. She even called him while we were out to assure him it was cool. His jealousy got worse and worse.
Today she posted a photo of us on facebook and he freaked out with even more jealousy. She’s not used to this. Even in her wildest times of her youth she never cheated on a boyfriend. Apparently he has or he has experienced girls cheating on him.
It got me thinking about the line from when Harry Met Sally (yes I watched it several times and I’m proud) when Harry says “No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.” I found this to be fairly accurate for me personally until I hit my late 20s and early 30s. Sex became less important and friendships become more important.
I suspect that my friend’s boyfriend still has that mentality in his mid 40s. My friend is a pretty tough bitch sometimes and she won’t tolerate it. She’s still upset about it.
The other code I cracked a while ago that I don’t always follow or live up to is the “women are bitches” and “men are assholes” mentality many people seem to have. It’s pretty simple to me.
Women are attracted to confident men. In many cases men that appear to be confident are actually cocky. There’s huge difference between cocky and confident. Cockiness is fake. It’s a way of overcompensating for insecurities. These men are usually assholes and dickheads. Men that are nice and accessible appear to be weaker and unconfident and a lot of them are. A woman gets the cocky guy and he turns out to be an asshole. Then she is either a victim or a bitch.
Men are attracted to confident women. The louder and more aggressive women turn out to be bitches because of their insecurities. The nice accessible women appear to be weaker and too easy so he turns to the cocky woman and she turns out to be a bitch. It’s a vicious circle for some of us.
Due to my personal struggles and variety of women I’ve dated I have been an asshole, a nice guy and a confident man. I’ve had the most luck being nice and confident.
I’m not even going to address my thoughts on love. Let’s say, for now, that I have no opinions on love.
Is depression contagious? Are negative people really emotional and psychic “vampires” draining and infecting another person? I guess it depends on the people involved.
I’ve had many relationships with people that drain me emotionally. Some say I let it happen. Others believe that some people “feed” like vampires off of other people they perceive stronger or even anyone that will let them in.
I have always attracted people that drain me because I like people and I see qualities beyond what other’s see. In theory it’s a nice thing but in reality it’s a no win situation. I have found that despite my innate self-absorption, I am extremely sensitive to other people’s moods that surround me.
It’s been written about in psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and personal experiences books, novels, poems, studies and blogs for years. Self help books emphasize the importance of surrounding yourself with the people that have what you want. Experts suggest that if you hang out with people that are happy and successful you can develop their qualities. The 12 step programs have a saying “Stick with the winners”. That is quite the ironic statement. It implies I must judge people as winners and losers. It also holds some truth.
I have always had an attraction to people labeled as outcasts, freaks, misfits, weirdoes, creeps, and anyone different from the norm. As it turns out these people are all emotionally damaged on one level or another and can be a negative influence on my life. Being sensitive to the energy, vibes and emotions of people that surround me I tend to compare myself to them and sometimes take on their negative qualities.
As human beings we are all naturally attracted to people that have similar qualities to ourselves. Myself. I spent years relating mostly to mentally ill, emotionally disturbed, abused, socially abandoned people. In my estimate it was my way of relating to and understanding my natural Paranoid Schizophrenic mother. I know this about myself and I still act upon it.
As I’ve written and expressed many times in the past I have increasingly become a recluse in the last 3 years. It is getting to the point of agoraphobia. Some of my friends are sick of hearing about at this point. As much as I want to be alone and don’t want to leave the house when I am in a social situation whether it be a trip to a convenience store, visit with family or even my room mate I can be extremely social out of habit. Most of my life I’ve been social and extraverted.
The past 8 months I have lived with a fellow mentally ill friend. Other people have suggested that living with him could be bad for me. Since I am sensitive to other people’s energy and moods I find myself feeding off of him. When he is aggravated it aggravates me. When he is depressed I get depressed. When he is manic I get aggravated. We do have times when our moods are centered and we get along but over all I am uncomfortable living with someone when their moods affect me. It’s not anyone’s fault. He once reminded me that about 95% of his moods and whatever he is going through has nothing to do with me. I try and hold onto that and move on.
The three of them approached me months ago about performing along with my former partner, Ethan Urban (formerly known as the Julian Barrett), in the World Famous Crawlspace Brothers, a band that did acoustic songs about serial killers. It was a tough decision for me because I don’t have much of a steady income due to the little unemployment and my mental and physical disorders. Ethan needed to get off from job and couldn’t do it. They still wanted me.
I’ve been changing a lot through the years and I’ve become a recluse and slightly agoraphobic. My social outings and traveling have been limited for years now. I also was loosing interest in the serial killer thing as well. It was re-sparked when I re published my infamous Serial Killer Coloring Bookshttp://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/best-of-the-serial-killer-coloring-book/15707709 in one volume then I was interviewed by John Borowski for a film he was making about the serial killer culture.
Despite my renewed interest in the true crime subject I have sold most of my collectables in the past few months to survive. I lost any emotional attachments to the items anyway. It’s been a one day at a time living leading up to this weekend. May 28th, 2011. The Crime Scene.
Thanks to Matthew Aaron supporting my artistic efforts I am drawing fairly consistently for the first time in 10 years. We even worked together on a few drawings I did and I used one for the cover of my updated best of the Serial Killer Coloring Book.
Meanwhile, as the days go by, I am stressed and nervous about the travel and the event. I’m not worried about the performing. Never have been. It’s the surrounding events like flying, waiting, socializing and leaving the comforts of my home. The financial pressures have increased as well. I’m committed. I like the people I will be with for the event. I know there will be a lot of fun despite my fears, phobias, etc.
Now I am selling my art, my writings, my collectables and anything else I can do to raise money for all of the bills rushing on me after the weekend of killer fun.
Here’s some things I am selling. Buy. Make me a happy starving artist. Ha..
Email me at choppingmall@yahoo.com to make arrangements or with any questions.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys – many of whom were of African or Asian descent – between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders were particularly gruesome, involving rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.
RARE OTTIS TOOLE HAND WRITTEN LETTER INCLUDING HIS INFAMOUS BBQ SAUCE RECIPE HE CLAIMED TO USE IN EATING VICTIMS $85
Ottis Elwood Toole (March 5, 1947 – September 15, 1996) was an American serial killer and arsonist. He was an accomplice of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. Toole admitted to multiple counts of murder, rape, and cannibalism, and was the suspect in several unsolved murders. He recanted and restated a number of confessions. Toole was convicted of three counts of murder, and confessed to four more murder charges before dying in prison.
HARRISON GRAHAM ART $30
A mentally-retarded drug abuser, Harrison Graham was well-known in his Philadelphia ghettoneighborhood. Sometimes, he would amuse the local children with his “Cookie Monster” puppet; other times they found him digging graves — for dogs, he said — in nearby vacant lots. Apparently, no one suspected that his simple mind might hide a darker urge, compelling him toward homicide.
In early August 1987, Graham quarreled with his landlord’s nephew, afterward evacuating his apartment, nailing the door shut out of spite. Police were summoned on the afternoon of August 9, when neighbors filed complaints of a pervasive stench that emanated from the room. Inside, patrolmen found two strangled women’s bodies, three more skeletons beneath a mound of garbage on the floor, another tied up in the closet.
Graham had been living in the squalid hole since 1983, and he had not been idle. Officers began to search the neighborhood for Graham, house by house, while newsmen noted that the suspect’s dwelling stood a mere three miles from Gary Heidnik’s “house of horrors,” where another ghoulish scene had been discovered five months earlier. The roof of Graham’s building yielded skeletal remains of victim number seven, but initial warrants simply charged the missing suspect with abuse of corpses. Murder was not proven until August 11, when a medical examiner reported that the freshest victims had been strangled some time in the past ten days.
On August 14, another skull and partial skeleton were excavated from the dirt floor of a row house three doors down from Graham’s building. He surrendered two days later and confessed to seven murders since the winter months of 1986. According to his statement, Graham picked up female addicts on the street, enticing them with offers of a fix, and brought them home where they were murdered after sex. On August 26, psychiatrists declared that he was competent for trial.
In April 1988, dispensing with his right to trial by jury, Graham laid his case before a solitary judge. Convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder and seven counts of abusing a corpse, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, followed by six electrocutions. The unusual sentence — hailed by Graham’s lawyer as “compassionate and brilliant” — theoretically assures that he will never be paroled.
WILLIAM HEIRENS THE LIPSTICK KILLER SIGNED REJECTION LETTER $35
William George Heirens (born November 15, 1928[1]) is a convicted American serial killer who confessed to three murders in 1946. Heirens has been called The Lipstick Killer due to a notorious message scrawled in lipstick at a crime scene. He is reputedly the world’s longest serving prisoner, having thus far spent 64 years in prison.[2]
He is currently incarcerated at the Dixon Correctional Center medium security prison in Dixon, Illinois (Inmate No. C-06103). Though he remains imprisoned, Heirens has recanted his confession, and claimed to be a victim of coercive interrogation and police brutality.[3]
Rollings later confessed to raping several of his victims, committing an additional 1989 triple homicide in Shreveport, Louisiana, and attempting to murder his father in May 1990. In total, Rolling confessed to killing eight people.[1] He was executed by lethal injection in 2006.
It’s been a while since I wrote anything personal or what’s going on in my life and posted it. So many changes and so many things staying the same.
I’ve been a shut in. I’ve been anti-social. I’ve been out of my mind with my Bipolar. I’ve had the face pain from the Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN) on and off. My anxiety Disorder has been acting up. My thoughts and feelings about life in general have fluctuated so much that it’s been rough to focus and complete anything. I have so many writings started and then I get distracted from my ailments. So, I’ve been pretty much working on various novels I’ve been working on forever and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ha.
It might sound funny but that’s what’s been getting me through the past month or so. I’ve been watching the series from season 1 on. Honestly it is a fantastic show. Well, it was a fantastic show. Underneath the goofiness, the vampires and demons etc., there is depth to the characters that I’ve been able to relate to and I’ve been opening up my feelings about life to myself.
I’ve been so disconnected for a long time that my emotions and relationships with people have died. I literally stopped caring about anyone or anything. My memories started cooperating. I started losing memories. My entire life experiences became a distant fog.
The final blow was when I started training for a job after 6 months of unemployment and I blew it on the second day. My TN acted up and I was up all night and took my pain meds. I woke up 2 hours after I was supposed to be there. Since I was 14 or 15 I have always had a job. I’ve even had my own businesses. It was a real blow to me that my illnesses might be severe enough to keep me from holding a steady job. I fell deeper into my denial fog.
When I started watching Buffy I started to relive personal experiences that I’ve repressed and didn’t want to deal with. Lost loves, lost relatives, lost jobs, etc. It still seems corny that a cult TV series would start bringing me back to life but it did.
A few days ago my Aunt died. She was the one that helped me stop drinking and got me into “recovery”. I stopped going and believing in the 12 steps months ago and now that she’s gone it brought up everything. I remembered everyone that I’ve lost. I am questioning my part in life. In other people’s lives. In the 12 step program itself.
It’s tough to lose someone again. Someone I love and had such a strong impact on my life. It’s been really painful lately both emotionally and physically. It’s also been a good thing because it makes me feel human again. Although I can give a good appearance most of the time, overall, I have been out of my mind and almost completely numb. I’ve been repressing my fear, doubts, pains, my very existence. I was beyond hopeless in my mind.
I finally feel human again. Just by letting go emotionally I came out of hiding. Vicariously living in this TV show I actually woke up from my fog. Memories, feelings and motivation are surging through me now. I feel like I have a chance at life again.
I’m going to go finish watching Buffy save the world again and get another recharge. Ha.
I’m a controlled mess. I’m a bomb about to blow yet I have the combination to diffuse. Controlled mess. I stare at the empty walls of my confused living room and it looks away. I dwell in my creative constipated exploding head and my heart pounds. Aches serge through my face. An electrical current. Powerful yet it’s nothing compared to my damaged emotions. When the lightning strikes all I am left with is a limp tired soul determined to grow up and destined to cure my “self imposed mediocrity”.
I’m a controlled mess. I toss and turn on the couch, the floor, the bed and even the toilet in a state of high-wired corrosive depression. My dreams and ideas of conquering the world while my body and mind is melting into the present. I’m infected. I’m a controlled mess.
Fighting myself is a losing battle sometimes so I stop fighting and go with it. Go with the pain, anguish, and let go. I’m a controlled mess. It works for a time and I fight again and I almost win then I let go. No winners or losers just a controlled mess. Settling for the best is the worst I could do. I do.
Keep me at arms length as I keep you at bay at a distance of mental crookedness. Don’t love me. Don’t even like me. Not until I do. Not until I understand me and what’s going on. What’s going on? I’m a controlled mess.
I know the facts. I’ve examined them and read about them and researched them. I know the feelings as they repeat my truth and my lies. Life changes. People change. You change. I change. Can you spare some change for a tired old man with dreams of . . . .? Something. Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. Maybe I told you too much. I’m a controlled mess.
Posted by richhillenjr 
The Son of the Cockroach Lady
February 1, 2012Caterpillar stairway leads me to the basement so I can hide from the monsters called reality. Comfort in the dark corner with worn warped plywood Grandpop set up as my office years ago complete with a make shift desk to draw on and read comic books. 1002 Niagara Rd. The invisible dog Grandpop warned me about never came to me. Was he teasing or crazy? I’ll never know. I liked it there hiding from hippies of my dreams that were going to hurt me somehow. My dreams, visions and creativity flourished, as an 8-year-old’s should.
It was much less scary than the House on Haunted Hill, The House by the Cemetery, The House by the park, The Last House on the Left, The Last House on a Dead End Street, The House that Jack Built and my former house on Monitor rd where I lived with my paranoid schizophrenic mother. The House of Cockroaches. The neighbors called her cockroach lady. I was the Son of the Cockroach Lady.
It was (is) a small part of Camden NJ. A village they called it. Fairview Village. Nice enough to my childhood nightmarish recollections. It was a big wonderland filled with talking gray trees, shimmering golden green grass, and dirty shirtless white kids that called my name and eventually called me names.
Daddy gone, mommy in crazy hospital, I moved on Niagara Rd with Grandmom and Grandpop. I got fat and didn’t like school. Too many children. Too many rules. Too many teachers. I made fun of myself after being made fun of for being fat. I wore pants that were labeled Husky. Kids called me Husky. I went to the basement or sat in front of the TV and I would draw and draw and draw.
The neighborhood worsened as I got older. I got worse as the neighborhood got older. I escaped when I was 11-years-old.
Now I am back. I feel more afraid than I did as child. I took a walk yesterday to see the 2 houses I lived in and they were different, smaller, odd. The entire neighborhood shrunk in size, grew in population and crime. I was almost the scared scarred little white boy being stared at and made fun of once again. I wore levis instead of Huskys.
Monitor Road House -in the middle
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