I wasn’t going to say anything.
I was going to beat the allegations by not responding.
I was going to let people believe whatever fucked up shit they believed about me.
People say let bygones be bygones.
Let sleeping dogs lie.
But when I heard just how far the fucked up game of telephone had gone, that Rachelle Toarmino believed that I had written “rape fantasies about her friends,” I almost lost my shit.
2017 could have been the worst year of my life. The year I was most hostile.
The year I bucked my antipsychotics and started a war with a social scene that either saw me and ignored me, or saw me as evil. Neither are ideal and none build confidence.
I don’t need validation.
I don’t need you to like me,
I just need you not to hate me,
to stop demonizing me.
In my war with alt lit, something that lasted from 2017–2019, I wrote a lot of controversial work.
One of these works was a work in which I start a fight with Lucy K Shaw’s husband, Oscar Bruno D’artois. I’m no longer mad about this guy's success or jealous of him, but at the time I was burning with envy. To me he represented a social scene that gatekept the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Spoiled rotten by the insiders' acceptance and never really making work that was thought provoking or challenging. At the time I thought art should be dangerous and so I made a lot of it—a lot of dangerous art. That story was made public, I wrote it, wrote it about Lucy, Sarah, and Oscar and tagged every other alt lit feature in it that I mention.
Here’s a link to that story: https://heavyathletics.us/UNWELCOME-EVERYWHERE
Tho it starts with a belligerent anger and destructive impulse, it ends with the main character being punished for his egotism, wrath, and envy. Even in the compromised state—totally psychotic, I was still aware enough as a human being to choose not to condone the behavior.
I was never going to meet Oscar and I was never going to beat him up. Not just because I physically couldn’t but because as much conviction is in the beginning of the piece, by the end of writing it I had lost the interest. Thru the work transforming my worst and most petty indignities into a piece of art that I believe wasn’t just a result of being a spiritually bankrupt shitstarter but ended up being illuminating to people who have ever felt counted out or alien to the most popular in a social scene. We’d all faced that anger, that rejection. Some just cope with it better than others.
Rachelle, I think, has combined this controversy with another controversy that happened that year, the release of a dream report I titled “I Rape In Lucid Dreams,” which did not mention anyone in particular known by that scene. This was a collection of dreams I had where I raped. These were selected in part to piss off the longhouse, the feminists, and the libtards but it was also in part made for the purpose of making interesting art and exploring a theme that had been in my dreams since I was sixteen. I’m sure there’s a Jungian goldmine to be mined from this dream content and I thought, I’m already being ignored and iced out, what do I have to lose?
Published that in the same year, a lot later.
Now, I don’t think I’m innocent, only that I’ve improved much since then. I’m a spiritually advanced person at this point in my life. Impatience, rejection, seething hatred, envy, wrath, vanity, lust, and the sin of pride are all being managed, thanks to the heavy medication, my own reflection on my worst years, and the miracle of finding God. Like I said, you don’t have to like me, I just need you to stop spreading rumors and hating me. I wouldn’t say anything but it’s sad to see how bad the game of telephone has gotten. The information is inaccurate. People are feeling as if I’ve written about them in a rape fantasy when all I really did was shit talk their husband out of the very real inverse need: the need for friendship.
I tried scraping Lucy’s email from her website and I think I failed so I had my friend Biz send the podcast I had recorded with Sean Thor Conroe which covered some of the logic behind those years. I didn’t send it to harass them, I sent it to them to give them some idea of just how important their lives and art were to me. That despite the past, everything underlying my actions was this deep, granted, needy, love that I had for them and their art. I wanted so badly to be their friend. That’s why I had Biz send the recording to them.
I didn’t think it would just erase all of the history and everything would be okay but that it would create the groundwork from which healing may be possible.
They’re fair to be suspicious as a result of the effects of the command hallucinations that I obeyed in 2015, God telling me to send strange and accusatory messages to them, but the heinous social violence Rachelle is accusing me of is fucked up. I know you want to protect yr friends but because yr information is so bad, you’re unintentionally slandering me. If you want to get to the bottom of that issue, the solution is not to block everyone preemptively and “alert the community.” You should instead show a commitment to truth and justice by engaging with the very person who has been so starkly accused.
I think maybe it’s a good thing this has surfaced because if you believe this, it’s possible there’s many others who have been lied to and confused about the events that lead to the ostracization, harassment, and alienation.
Rachelle, what I would ask from you is to unblock me and my friend, talk to us about what you feel is going on, and ultimately publicly apologize/retract your statement that I “wrote about your friends in a rape fantasy.” This I think has done enough damage today. I can only imagine what would have happened if I had not been informed that your vein of the internet thinks this. I would be blissfully unaware and most hated at the time I’m blossoming most as a person. As pissed as I am to hear this rumor/accusation spread so far for so long I am most interested in turning things around for the best possible outcome. Maybe healing. Maybe reintegration into a community that has snubbed me for so long for so many reasons. Most of them are the results of mental illness and extreme isolation.
I make this statement to turn around the worst for the potential of the best possible outcome.
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Little Tank is on X @xlittletankx