One night at an exhibition at Brooklyn Art Cave, my friend Jonah came up to me and said there was a couple there who spoke Russian. He offered to introduce us. Two people approached—Romualdas and Liza. Long black coats, calm faces. There was something contained and dense about them. Romualdas spoke little.

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I asked him to repeat his name—it sounded unfamiliar. He said he was Lithuanian, and that his name was German, meaning “bloody lord.” I nodded. That was enough.

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Janhvi was there as well—my friend, a painter, American of Indian descent from Gujarat, twenty-three, recently graduated from CUNY. Wild. A level of freedom that most people could not handle. Many were drawn to her, but very few could stay close.

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I had been visiting her before that. We painted together. I helped her—how to hang work, how to think spatially, to see paintings not as isolated pieces but as an environment. She lived two buildings away from Unruly Collective and would come by. Her apartment was its own world—she had sued her landlord and was living there without paying rent.

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After the show, Romualdas, Liza, and I took the subway, rode to their stop, and parted. I went back. Somewhere between words, the idea of doing a performance together remained.

Later, they came to Unruly looking for a room. The price was too high. I asked Janhvi if she could take them in. She agreed. They paid and moved in. Not long after, Liza left. We did not understand why at first. Later it became clear that Romualdas had caught Janhvi’s attention.

Around the same time, I ran out of money. I needed a thousand dollars and had no way to get it. For two years I had managed—selling, borrowing, finding paths to continue working. This time there was nothing. A full stop.

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I stepped outside Unruly. Two buildings down, Romualdas was sitting on the stoop, smoking. We connected immediately. He offered me a place with them. I called Janhvi. She said yes.

I moved everything. Paintings, boxes, fragments of what had been before. Romualdas helped carry it all. We stacked it into one of the rooms. That is how the three of us began living together.

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The apartment was on the second floor, with access to the roof. We would go up and look out over Cooper Street. From there you could see Unruly and the sky. We had no money, but we had space. We stood on that roof as if nothing pressed against us.

One day we pulled a tarot card—the Chariot. It felt like a signal. Something shifted. The rules loosened.

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The day I finished moving in, I lay on the roof and looked at the sky. I realized how happy I was. Janhvi was always in motion—painting, shouting, writing, singing, dancing on the roof, filming videos, collecting objects from the street—masks, fragments—and turning them into clothing and installations. Janhvi played a broken accordion she had found somewhere. The walls filled with her work. She showered four times a day. Her state moved quickly—from euphoria to tears to accusation.

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Romualdas and I slept on the floor in separate rooms. There was no air conditioning. In summer, the apartment turned into heat. Light came through the roof windows, waking us early.

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He could lie on the floor for hours, blasting music, smoking continuously, drinking beer. I painted, rearranged, tried to understand the rhythm inside that environment.

At some point, we decided to fix the state. We took acid. Painted our faces with acrylic. I chose blue—spirals pulling inward. Romualdas chose black—sharp, Nordic runes. He went up to the roof. Janhvi and I stayed below.

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After a while, we heard noise—impacts, scraping. I went up.

Lines were tearing across the surface—red, yellow, black. It looked as if the roof could not contain the pressure. He had painted a massive portal. I asked if I understood. He nodded. He was already inside it.I took white paint. We began working together.

He pushed inward—black lines, density, rupture. I responded with space, white growth, pauses. He scratched the surface with his nails, tearing through layers. The movement was sharp, almost animal. We did not speak. Janhvi came up, looked at us, said his eyes were demonic, and went back down. We continued.

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By morning, the surface had settled. The roof no longer looked torn apart. Everything had come together. We stopped without discussion. His nails were worn down. The mural was complete. Balance.

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We did not choose it. We moved inside it.

That edge was not mine. I do not move toward extremes.

Something had passed through two people—through him as rupture, through black; through me as growth, through white. I do not see a human as divided into two opposing parts. That is only a surface layer. Staying there means fighting yourself.

Liza had left at the right moment.

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In her place, Romualdas suggested something else—to go upstate and work at a summer camp with Russian kids. Two months. Housing, food, pay.

A few months later, Janhvi’s house burned down.

By then, Romualdas and I were already gone.