 Her comics and essays have been featured on The Rumpest, The Weeklings, L.A. Review of Books, Truthout, S.F. Bay.ca, The Comics Journal, The Bay Citizen, Exo Jane and more. Please welcome Mary Naomi. Thank you. I've been thinking about my ex-boyfriend, Jason, wondering what became of him. Maybe it's true that he died in an awful car accident or maybe it's just a rumor, but I find it hard to believe that he just isn't anywhere at all. Sometimes when he appears in my dreams, I can't help but feel like he's haunting me, but I know it's naive of me to assume he'd even remember my name. I was 16 and in love for the first time. He was 21 with lots of experience in life and love. There was a lot going on at the time too. He was trying to launch a new career. I'm going to be an international model, he said. Four out of the six months of our relationship were spent with him in jail. The other two months weren't so great if you look at it from a distance. He cheated on me. I've never admitted to cheating on someone before and I've cheated on everybody, he told me. He was grumpy and he was always kind of hustling, vying for his next quick buck, but he was also beautiful. He scrutinized the world through passionate lenses. He always pulled himself up. He examined his faults and he desperately wanted to be a better person. I've never seen such a genuine attempt at self-improvement. He felt awful for the hurt he'd inflicted on people he'd care about. He wanted to make amends, he was reforming and then he went to jail. All those self-help books he asked me to send him, all those hours spent in AA even though he wasn't a drinker. All those letters he wrote me from jail, I saved each and every one, telling me how hard it was to stay good while surrounded by the criminally-minded. I remember this one guy when he was living in a house in Fairfax with a dozen other guys, I'm sorry, one night. He lived in this house in Fairfax with a dozen other guys and a coke dealer who was on the lease. Jason and this guy, Chris, lived in tents in the basement. Sweet, soft-spoken Chris, who later freaked out at a supermarket on LSD, went to prison, then spent the rest of his short life as a homeless schizophrenic before throwing himself under a bar train. That night, Jason had just admitted something to me. I don't remember if it was about the cheating or if it was some other dark secret, and I was in shock. We'd run out of words for each other and we were gonna sleep on it, but when he opened the door, the whole world changed. For one thing, the wall in front of us toppled before our eyes. We stood there slack-jawed, and once the dust cleared, we saw two of his roommates in the next room. I never figured out if they planned it that way. If they knew someone was coming home at that moment and had synchronized the demolition of that wall to the opening of the door. How could they? Regardless, the timing was impeccable. The boys were having an eviction party because the coke dealer had stolen everyone's rent money and they were all getting kicked out. All those lost young men with no place to go, no family, no money. The walls were spray-painted, then hammered into pulp. All the coke dealer's worldly possessions were destroyed. His recording equipment, his car, his keyboards, never fuck over people who've got nothing to lose. I remember following this one skin head around using my own can of spray paint to correct his spelling errors. Even as a 16-year-old high school dropout, I was meticulous about spelling. But come on, how can you miss spell fuck? It's embarrassing. Jason and I were already so drained when he walked through the door and it didn't take long before the same questions presented itself on everyone else's brow. I called dibs on sleeping in Pete's car, said the punk housemate. Didn't you throw his TV through the windshield? Asked the housemate who worked at Radio Shack. Yeah, that's how I'm getting into the back, said the punk. Damn, said Radio Shack. Jason gathered his things and loaded up his VW bus. We drove out to China Beach and parked by the side of the road, closed the makeshift curtains to keep out the glare of cops' flashlights and passed out, spooning under his stinky sheets. All the bad stuff was behind us, left in the burning rubble. The house burnt down that night. The next morning, we watched the sunrise with a Violent Femmes album in the tape deck. I screamed along to lyrics I didn't know yet. It's one of my happiest memories even though it happened a million years ago. I can't say I've regretted my decision not to be with Jason after he got out of jail despite so many years of missing him. I was young, but I was old enough to recognize that there'd been too much drama between us in too short a time. I couldn't let his felony conviction hold me back. I was only 16, I wanted to see the world. He ended up traveling the world long before I did. I didn't really start until I was in my late 20s which is a much different experience than it would've been as a teenager. For one thing, I'm safer as an adult. I have places to stay, money to pad me, should anything go horribly wrong. I'm also lonelier than I probably would've been back when I was fearless and could talk to anyone. I'm more reserved now. I'm less inclined to pry the life story out of a stranger, something I used to do all the time. It was one of the things that Jason used to love about me and now it's gone. But even though I'm a different person now, I know we could still appreciate each other no matter what we both become. It's this reason that I've searched for him through old phone numbers, mutual friends, and the internet. I even spent money on one of those internet searches. Got his last dozen known addresses hoping I was writing the right person. I hand wrote a dozen letters and sent them out into the world. Jason, is this you? Please write back. Be my friend again. I'm sorry I cut you loose. Most of the letters got returned to sender. Some of them didn't. One got written on and sent back in anonymous rage of a note warning me of Jason's wicked ways. A word of advice. Stay away from that bum. He uses people. He is a bad man. He'll take advantage of your good will. When I saw that angry scrawl, two pages of raw hurt, my heart sank. All that time he spent trying to make himself a better person. How can that all be gone? This next one's much shorter. Independence Day, 1988. I'd been a runaway for about a month and I was getting used to being on my own, becoming scrappy. I was less afraid of the present but more nervous about what the future might hold. I had new friends and I hitched a ride to the beach with them. It was so dark that when I lit my cigarette, the flame lived on in my eyes long after it had gone out. When I stepped into the sand, something magical happened. The sand lit up from below. Whoa. Oh, I've heard this, of this happening, said one of my new friends. Phosphorescent particles, blah, blah, blah. Men'splaining. Step. Step. Thank you.