Riding in Vans with Boys

“There is no need to go on multiplying examples of an impulse that can produce no adequate examples- of a capacity that can’t be objectified without falsification. I’ve written in its defense, and in defense of our denunciation of it, because that is the dialectic of a vocation no less essential for being impossible. All I ask the haters- and I, too, am one- is that they strive to perfect their contempt, even consider bringing it to bear on poems, where it will be deepened, not dispelled, and where, by creating a place for possibility and present absences (like unheard melodies), it might come to resemble love.” Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry

There was a night in the middle of what I consider winter but everyone else probably gleefully describes as spring, when I was in Montreal and thankfully in a very comfortable room, when I felt fully warm and not just warm but excited, really, still so innocently excited about my life, the people in it, and punk. The night before I had seen Omegas, Torment, Mueco, Pox, and Sex Face at Katacombes and it had been a fucking insane, fantastic show. All the bands were great, none of my friends blacked out, and despite the language barrier I made some new friends (somehow still possible at thirty, a miracle unto itself). My boyfriend Kirk and I were sitting at our friend Mood’s house with my best friend Nikki, who had flown up from Miami to spend the weekend there. All of us have different backgrounds: Mood from a Muslim family in Canada, Kirk black and Jewish from LA, Nikki (Catholic-ish) and Columbian, and me (white atheist born in South Africa to communist parents). Despite being from different parts of the world and raised by very different people, here we were, sitting in a room drinking wine because we were friends, and we had become friends because of our interest in punk, or at least our interest in not being a part of the “rest of the world” and its interests. This sounds pedantic right? But it’s not, because I think as we get older and cynical, or as we get into punk and learn how to be critical, we forget the things that brought us here. We sat together in Mood’s room and drank wine and talked about healthy relationships, both sexual and emotional, and eventually left to the bar. Nothing too exciting, nothing wild, nothing scandalous...just three grown ups talking in a warm room.

I was incredibly thankful for that night, mostly just because it felt good to still have that thrill of intimacy with my friends. I think most of my close platonic relationships have been formed through playing music (when I say “punk” let’s extend that definition to mean DIY everything, playing music, setting up shows, touring, etc). To say nothing of the nuanced, incredibly complicated relationships I still maintain with people I’ve been intimate with (there’s some other posts about that) I think the things that I am most thankful about punk are my friends all over the country that I’ve made, some of them turning into life-long lasting friendships. There’s friends of mine who I see every year but we’ve never even lived on the same coast. That’s important to me. A lot of those relationships are with amazing, strong women, but a lot are also with men. Again, this sounds annoyingly chorus-to-choir right? But I read something on the internet the other day (I know…) that said that men didn’t belong in punk, and it made me consider my experiences with men. I thought about that night in Montreal, and about touring in bands with men, and about growing up before I got into punk. It’s a lot to consider.

First, I suppose I should say that as a woman I think we all understand the violence of adolescent. Growing up my dad and I were very close, but he moved far away when I was 13 and then we didn’t see much of each other. All my relationships with men from then on were sexual after that, and were neither fun nor probably healthy. Men scared me, they leered at me, and boys in school were worse. I was an awkward kid, I liked Lord of the Rings and had braces, but I also had boobs. None of those years were particularly fun for me (I’ve written about that before…) but I remember vividly when I started being happy, and finally having friends. It’s when I got into punk and had friends looking out for me (we looked out for each other) and people to hang out with (and avoid the Nazi skin heads together with!) and watch movies in bed and drink beer on the beach with...we weren’t dating, we didn’t date, we were just...friends. I ended up playing music and touring in bands with some of the people I met at 15. We made it through those terrible years together and began other terrible years but at least every year we could still talk together. When I went through a terrible break up almost a decade later at 25 I remember walking down the street in a town hours away from where we grew up and laying on my friends floor, my old bandmate, and both of us listening to the Radioactivity record and crying together. Platonic, lifelong friendships aren’t always sugar and spice, but having friends who you can count on to cry on their floor at 4am is meaningful to me. I doubt any of our parents still have friends like that, if they managed to keep their friends at all.

Without punk, I doubt I would have as many relationships with men as I do. I would even argue that there aren’t many aspects of modern American life where men and women interact outside of dating or work (unless you play sports or have like, normal hobbies, which we fucking don’t ok?). Playing in bands with men helped me have positive relationships with men. We would cook dinner at each other’s houses before practice, we would support each other during good shows and bad, and we would laugh (but not too much) at the things we might end up doing after the shows. I have had plenty of terrible experiences with men in the punk scene, because there’s always going to be men that aren’t willing to learn from their behavior or learn about anything other than what they want. But after I was assaulted it wasn’t just my female friends that had my back, but a lot of my close male friends and former bandmates.

These weren't jocks, they were also awkward teenagers that didn’t want to be apart of mainstream America, so instead they got into music. I think it should go without saying that punk provides not just an alternative lifestyle choice for women (I highly doubt I would be getting an MFA in poetry at 30 if I never got into punk...but I sometimes wonder if I would have been a doctor by now) it also provides a space for boys to experiment with gender and sexuality. This, to me, is what makes punk a safe space. But I can’t speak for other people’s experiences, and I don’t want to. I just want to publicly thank all my close friends who have been such a positive force in my life. I can’t imagine where I would be if none of my male friends hadn’t asked me to be in bands with them, or if when I asked them to start one they had blown me off. I also can’t imagine that my boyfriend would be such an emotionally smart, considerate, wonderful partner to me had he never played in bands and had platonic relationships with other women. I still don’t fucking like my dad, but I have plenty of amazing male friends who I see being good partners and good dads and it makes me happy. It’s possible for all of us to be healthy and emotionally and socially responsible, if not always happy.

Some of my best memories continue to be driving somewhere in a van, usually with strangers, on our way to a show or a party. Men are scary...other people are scary...but I have been so lucky to have the privilege of trust with most of the people I meet through punk. I can’t imagine under any circumstance that I would get into a van with six people I don’t know, but with punks, there is an element of trust that the average person would never have. This makes it especially saddening when that trust is violated, as it too often is. And yes, it’s fucking annoying when you’re on tour as a woman and some good looking punk dude asks if you’re the merch girl. There is violence and shitty people and shitty attitudes (especially on the internet, hi). However, like the quote above, it’s possible to criticize something, or stand up for it, or push against its boundaries while still loving it. So let all our criticism be exact, and well worded, and fair, in order to make it better.

Notes From 30

“The enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one has reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you could never become a difference person; that even if time and faith were still left for you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.”* 

 There’s a thing on the internet right now where it takes pictures of you and tells you how you’ve changed over the past ten years...yeah. I don’t want to fuck with that. Every year around my birthday I spend enough time going through pictures and trying to figure out how I’ve changed. I’ve looked the same for so long...but there’s been subtle differences, it can’t just be a hair cut, right? The tattoos add up. My breasts got bigger (how). My shorts and dresses, shorter, as I got comfortable in my body. Usually the same boots, the same half grin, two dimples before I broke my jaw, then just one after. 

 The constant in most of my pictures, as I look at them now, almost 30, is the people in them. The same friend in front of a band, or playing in a band, or in a van. It’s usually Austin, Scott, or Adrien. Two friends I met at a funeral for another friend (I still remember your name Doug, even though I can’t remember most) who I ended up playing in a band with, after high school (we made it though). I had a drink with Austin the other day. Scott texted me. I called Adrien. We are still connected, by our memories and our lives, for better or worse. We grew up together. I am not sure, a hundred years ago, if we ever would have known each other. We certainly wouldn’t have had the experience of playing in a punk band together, and we wouldn’t be talking now, after I moved across the country (up the country?) to go to graduate school. I am grateful for these things. 

 I understand that turning 30 as a woman is kind of a “big deal.” Like we’ve reached some age where society usually at some point dictated something for us...but I’m pretty lucky to live in an age where that isn’t true. At 30 my mom was sailing a 36ft sail boat around the south pacific, about to finish a trip around the world, and was two years from having me (I was born in South Africa, toward the end of the trip). She raised me, with the privileged of the age we live in now, to focus on books and school and “doing my own thing” so that, over the past several years, I haven’t felt pressure about getting married or having kids. I understand that I’m lucky in that regard. I got an IUD a few years ago, which has worked great for me, and has helped me, during my various relationships to prevent becoming pregnant. I could never have been the kind of mother I wanted to be, and despite wanting to be a mother now, I doubt I’ll ever be financially stable enough (student debt, the horror!) to have a child before it’s “too late.” I’ll be 32 when my IUD expires, the same age my mom was when she had me. And I’ll probably get another one. A mix of privilege and luck. 

 So these are the things I’m grateful for. My friends and my mom and I recognize that a lot of my agency is a product of privileges most people aren’t afforded. But I’m also grateful for a sense of understanding and sympathy that I have now at thirty that I didn’t have when I was starting my twenties. I know what I like, and who I am, but I don’t find the opposites threatening to me. I don’t view things I don’t know as “the other” and I have come to understand that everyone, mostly, has something to offer. As a young punk kid I thought the teller of the bank was my enemy, now I realize she just made different choices than me. I’m happy with the choices I’ve made, and I don’t resent regular everyday people for theirs (cue Pulp’s “Common People” please). 

 “Sure, we’re poor in some surface, dirty clothes way. But I stake faith in our instincts and intuition, our abilities and the strength of our friendships. If this isn’t progress or wisdom, at least it’s survival.”**

 There’s friends who aren’t around. People who committed suicide...or just got married or had kids and took different directions in life. I haven’t really grown up yet. I understand both choices. I don’t look on other people with disdain like I did at nineteen. I try to be understanding. I try to have sympathy even when I don’t understand. I’m incredibly proud of turning thirty this year, for feeling like a smarter person. And also, happy that I’m still connected to my friends. When Travis killed himself a few months ago I ended up at a punk show, crying and getting drunk, and then spent all night in bed with my friends, crying and laughing. The simple pleasure of a band, and a shoulder to cry on. I still find comfort in these things. 

 *Dostoevsky “Notes From Underground”
**`Travis Fristoe America #12

The Future is a Slow Panic

"things are still the same, they're still not ok
we're clocked on and strung out on the day to day.
there's more to life than love and comfort,
there's more to life than books you know. 
don't give up on the big fear-
the one that brought you here.
the future is a slow panic, 
a necromantic, pedantic, reaganomic legacy
that still pits the organic vs. the machines.
so don't give up on nihilism.
there's more to life than love and comfort
college won't get you off the hook.
there's more to life than self-satisfaction,
there's more to life than books (yes, much more).
you were right when you were angry and scared,
don't second guess your fears-
it's still you and me against the coming years."

             I spent a few days alone in my apartment. Thinking I'd be out of town, it felt a little like a treat to stay inside and look through books, listen to records I'd forgotten about, and drink wine in the bathtub. I found the Scenery zine (#14) Fire as a Metaphor and read it this evening, with no plans and a that creeping feeling of nostalgia (dangerous, I know). The last time I read it was probably a year or two ago, but I remember reading it at 19, before I ever lived in Gainesville, and it striking a powerful chord with me because of it's topics of gentrification and where the punk community intersects with classism and economics (the zine is an illustration of an academic paper about those things). Reading it later, after I'd moved to Gainesville, it meant something different, since I'd heard most of the bands it referenced and met some of the people. Recently I went to a wedding with some friends and we ended up hanging out with Mike Taylor (the artist, look him up!) and trying to sneak into pools long after they were closed. The lyrics above, from the back of the zine, are from a True Feedback Story song, a band I'd listened to long before I moved to Gainesville, before I even met Travis Fristoe, long before he'd end up writing me my letter of recommendation to an MFA program I didn't get accepted to (no fault to him). The zine reads so differently to me now, so many years later. Reading about the intersections of NW 3rd ave & 8th St (hey I went to a party there the other night) and Pleasant St. (oh I lived at that one shitty house over there for years). Just like the stories and the people intersecting in the zine, my stories have intersected with those people, those places, and this town. 
            Living in Gainesville I spend a lot of time thinking about it. Thinking hard about it. Why do I live here? The original pull that brought me here- punk music and a good job, still seems pretty worth it. It also has a funny way of bringing people together- like that the person I traded mix tapes with in college works with me at the bar. My bandmates from the early 2000s still play in bands I can sing along to. I can walk into a crowded room, bar, show, anywhere, and know someone and feel mostly at ease. I like my stories; separated into our two seasons: summer and winter.

Winter: climbing on the roof of Wayward Council (RIP), looking down through the skylight at my friends going wild for a show. Innumerable punk bands, fireworks, too much beer, fingerless gloves and  biking home to houses I could see the ground through the floorboards. Biking sometimes not home but just to a friends bed, crawling in just for any sort of animal warmth, knowing who's doors were always unlocked. The first time I did XTC and waking my friend up to talk about punk music until I felt better. The block, rows of punk houses, at least Josh Rey still lives there. 

Summer: sneaking into apartment complex pools. Swimming at night, alone, the cops showing up and not even caring, but usually swimming at night, with too many people, and the cops still not caring. Biking down SW 2nd ave to the Junkyard at 3am when the show is still going on, at least for a few hours, somehow everyone is there, not surprised to find each other at a punk show on a Tuesday night. The whole town being at the junkyard on some nights. The whole town being at Wayward Council some nights. The brick falling on my head during Crazy Spirit and watching the rest of their set anyway, blood pouring through my hair. Sitting on a porch, quietly, watching people pass by on bikes. Finding random parties and walking in and making friends with everyone there. Summer storms coming through at the worst times, every day. The rain and the thunder and the heavy oak trees, weighing everyone down until the weather breaks along with the tension. 

            I could write so many stories about living in Gainesville. I know a lot of people have. I try not to romanticize it too much, I know that way lies only danger. Still...I can appreciate how other people's stories about Gainesville have intersected with mine, and how the Ark, Wayward Council, and the Junkyard (we still have the 911 house at least) will eventually get replaced with other stories, other characters, and other nostalgia.     
            Summer in Gainesville isn't just oppressively hot. It's also when the students from the university are gone (most of them, thankfully) and the town sometimes becomes unbearably small. There's swimming, at least. Biking across town at night can be beautiful without traffic, and the late evenings are cool, bright, and quiet. The town sort of feels like ours, just for a little bit. There's also an anxiousness that comes from your friends leaving in August, moving to New York or Portland, Austin or San Diego. Everyone eventually leaves, the stories disconnect. And another year I stay behind, biking down the same streets, singing familiar songs. 

Nights At Home

"The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. His life happened, he said, when he sat staring at a blank wall, thinking about dinner...I almost believed him when he said such things. He said we do this all the time, all of us, we become ourselves beneath the running thoughts and dim images, wondering idly when we'll die. This is how we live and think whether we know it or not. These are the unsorted thoughts we have looking out the train window, small dull smears of meditative panic."*
                   I did read the new Roberto Bolano book** like I said I would. I never got around to writing about it...maybe I couldn't make the time but also the story didn't leave me with much except the image of the German tourist walking down the beach during a cloudy day, lost within his own vacation. This summer has felt like that, a little at least, to me. Rain for weeks on end, waking up to darkness and going back to sleep until the afternoon, going to work with wet shoes, coming home with damp hair. I didn't leave town enough maybe. I visited my mom in NC and we kayaked around a lake, a mountain storm has just passed and the water split dark and glassy under us, and I felt happy, to be thinking about nothing in the middle of all those mountain colors. I came home and finished my summer class and kept working. I should have stayed up there longer.
                   A few of us went to the beach the other day and that might be the last time in the ocean until spring. The water will stay warm a little longer but I doubt I'll have the time. On our way home the rain was so bad Adrien couldn't see the road. Everything in front of us just looked white, and I worried that if we died on our way home, somewhere in between Gainesville and Palatka, that I had totally wasted not just my summer but the last four or so years of my life. I keep hearing all these internet-worthy catch phrases about "doing what you love before it's too late" but I think there's something to be said for doing what you need to do too. Also, even at 26, I'm still unsure of what I really love. I like that I'm unsure. As far as I'm concerned, I've got fucking options. I'm just going to keep walking the fence until then, a little bit of staring out into the ocean and a lot of working my ass off until four in the morning. I'm not sure I have or even deserve the luxury of doing exactly what I want, and I know for a fact that most people never even get a chance. 
                   Of a few things I am at least certain. Not the future, not my next step, but at least the little things that make me happy. Don DeLillo is right, staring out the windows of trains at passing landscapes is absolutely one of them. Punk music still makes me inexplicably happy; I can still walk into a room of people I don't know, in a terrible mood, drunk or getting there, hungover or totally sober, and suddenly there is music and I feel better. Sometimes better than better! Sometimes even excited, or I start thinking, "hey, the world isn't so bad, I should fall in love! I should write a book! I should write more songs, I could write NEW songs!" And along down that line of thinking until the spell wears off. I also like sitting in my room tonight, with the windows open, finally signaling that the long, terribly humid summer might finally be over, and I can put on a record and go through my books, and think about my life and it's not so bad.

*Don DeLillo, Point Omega
** the new Roberto Bolano book is Third Reich

                   

thoughts not worth thinking

"This was the interior work of his current life. He thought about himself and then cursed himself- his thoughts were not worth thinking. He was negligible and deserved no pity. He wanted only to help the people he loved, right? But he wasn't doing that, either. He was growing harder to penetrate. A half-dozen inexplicable injustices and you're a cynic. Ten premature deaths and you went crazy or barren. You couldn't care the same way each time; a certain point it was just absurd. The words dead inside presented themselves to him occasionally, but was that it, was that him? He cared, and deeply, about so many things, didn't he?"

I went to a show to see a band I like a lot. I think everyone else would like them too, but they've become an example of A while everyone else wants so badly to like B. The shortsightedness of friends irritates me. I feel like a fence walker and then I start acting like I'm living off lemons and salt, too sour for my own good. I ride my bike home in moonlight, cruising under big oak trees at three in the morning and I started getting worked up over snobbery, weighed down by wanting everyone just to lighten up a little. If I expressed these thoughts I'd sound like an insane person to rational society, "YOU LIKE JAPANESE HARDCORE BUT YOU CAN'T APPRECIATE CURRENT AMERICAN HARDCORE? IDIOTS! POSERS!" you know, the kind of person people don't make eye contact with on street corners. I know I have friends out there who know what I'm saying. They'd say, don't spend so much time thinking about other people. I wish I could stop too. Dan's been my partner in suffering lately, and he told me pretty simply, "you can't change how people act, only how you react to them." I know. I've gotten better and I still have a lot of work to do. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed I drink to the point of oblivion, or sometimes I stay at home for hours, reading comic books or currently- listening to American Gods on tape. The rest of the time? I can honestly say I know how to enjoy myself. I like being alone, I also like going out, but I like walking both sides of the line (the one I refuse to draw in the sand).

I bought a movie the other day at Video Rodeo because I used to watch it A LOT and I can't rent movies from there anymore anyway (a rough estimate of how much I owe them is more than I'll make in tips tonight). I watched it last night with red wine and a good friend and I felt a little embaressed at how sad the movie was. I remembered, with an air of real dissappointment in myself, that I used to love movies like this. I stopped because every time I loved something like a movie, or a really great record, I'd want to talk about it, and no one would pay any attention. So I gave up. I started watching romantic comedies (which I do genuinely like) and action movies and the jokes I could make about that were better than the actual comments I'd make about "better" movies et. all. Somewhere along the line I really started liking all the crappy blockbuster movies I watched and cared less and less about the good ones, especially if I had to listen to anyone talk about them. Currently, everyone keeps getting me to go see Melancholia at the Hippodrome, but I'd really rather go see Shark Night in 3D. I don't know how that shift happened exactly, but I like my tastes now. Just last night though, I got reminded of that itching feeling, that intense discomfort to tell everyone about the movie, how they just have to see it, really watch it, and really pay attention. I feel like that way still when I read books, even mainstream comics like Grant Morrison's Superman, and especially things like the first chapter of the new Eggers' book- I can't just enjoy it, I need everyone else to see it too.

Maybe at the bar tonight I can shift conversations away from Tim Tebow and more toward Alejandro Inarritu, but if I can't, hey, I'll put on ESPN with the sound off and turn up Sisters of Mercy on the stereo. Lead a horse to water, and all that.

*Dave Eggers, Chapter One (from his forthcoming novel, title unknown, release date unknown. Chapter One can be found in McSweeney's quarterly no. 38)

Secret Story

"So now you're wondering what I mean by the secret story? asked my friend. Well the secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie."*

I. Your hands shake when you hold the microphone. You don't trust your voice. You know all your friends are watching, but you can't help the shaky attempt at harmony that follows. Karaoke terrifies you. The words go across the screen, but they're hard to read, uncertain like everything else. You've been told you can do this. You try one more time. You don't recognize your voice when it comes out of the speakers, singing a song you didn't write.

II. I work for ten hours and cut a few corners to get out early. I have to get to the show before the second bands starts. I show up and nothing's started. No one's even talking. I go across the street and have a few beers with the people I rushed over with. One does karaoke and the other buys beers. I wish I had the nerve to sing a song but I can't stand the anticipation of waiting to hear my name called. The song ends. We finish the beers. Across the street the show starts without anyone noticing, but we're there just in time to stand around.

III. You figure out how to play guitar, you think, this is easier than singing. There is a comfort in the rhythm, not like the awkward cadence and meter of your voice. You practice to Ramone's songs in your room. There will be late nights, but there will be some progress. You "figure it out." There will be pedals, cords, and equipment. Your friends like it.

IV. The band at the show makes me want to go home and work on things I started months ago. I have to finish this or that project, I have to do something after watching them. The two people playing sounded great together. Proof that something can be done. I know I nodded my head, moved my feet around, but the whole time I was thinking "I have to get home, I can finish that sentence now." I get a record, I literally ask for the one "with the weird slow songs on it" and I balance it across my handle bars. I begin a story in my head while I bike home, "your hands shake when you hold the microphone..."

V. You make it to the show in a town you've only read about. Your friends aren't there. You are singing in a band for the first time and your hands still shake when you hold the microphone. You hold the guitar close like you could be dancing. Everyone stands in a weak half moon in front of you, but they tap their black shoes when your voice comes out awkward, then clear. You have no idea if anyone really liked it, but you get a few smiles, and someone buys a record. You see them biking off alone one by one and you go back to your van. You sit in the dark and tell yourself you're not alone.

*Roberto Bolaño, Dentist

friends in low places

"He waged the sad war of daily humiliation." *

Well, I forgot to annotate my last post. I also forgot to post anything for several days (weeks?) but I could tell you exactly what happened. We drank a lot for a few days, we enjoyed everything, especially ourselves, and then I felt guilty for a few days and read comic books in my room for twelve hours on end, and then I worked forty hours, and then I did everything again. At least three times. These little cycles of happiness and defeat are getting to me, but everyone assures me it's just really the weather.

Two other important things happened while I was mentally hibernating. Someone flew a plane into the capitol building in Austin, Texas, and Max Parker and I had a conversation about politics. I know I used to be really, really angry. I still am, about a few things. I wonder if my comfortable lifestyle (drinking with punks really dampens your feelings of isolation sometimes) just diminished some of my old passions or if it's just something that happens with time (arguing with punks really dampens your feelings of outrage sometime). One event, one action, can change your whole perspective. I think Andrew Joseph expected his action to propel others to theirs, and after my conversation with Max I'm wondering what exactly I'm capable of pressing others to do. Maybe this blog isn't the right endeavor though, maybe I just can't get used to writing about punk rock on the internet. Maybe if I had the motivation, the balls, or the fucking time, I'd be able to finish that zine...write that column...etc etc. It's pathetic, how we loose our motivation and our passion, and I don't want to waste another year without either.

On to happier times. I got off work for the house show at the Axe Manor, where Cough and Volcanic Slut played. Someone pulled the electric meter off the wall and the power went off, and everyone had a lot of fun. I remember Fiz said something to me before he moved about how we all used to be in love with our friends, and he wondered what happened to that feeling. I can absolutely say I'm in love with most of my friends right now. It makes drinking less harder but staying away from the bars easier. I'll take what I can get. Here's a video, to hell with the rest.

I'll write more, I promise, if nothing else, I'll write more.

*One Hundred Years of Solitude pg 249

The Secret Life of Punks

"Once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle. But even then she did not give resignation a chance."*

I have a very similar story for you, just like last weeks. Friday night I thought I'd stay in, maybe just have a few cups of wine with my friend Megan...and wound up at a keg party until who knows when because I barely remember walking home. I had a very confusing morning, so confusing in fact that it has now taken its place in my vocabulary along with Chaos Fuck Night to become Confusing Day, and it's how you feel when you don't remember exactly what you did and you don't want to think too hard because you know it wasn't good. Max saw me kissing someone. Details will be withheld.

Saturday, the punctuation of work, with its hangover and new title (see above) but I think I crawled into bed feeling pretty good about myself, since with the exception of Friday I'd been pretty well behaved all week. I started volunteering with the horses (and children? and children) and I got my 2nd job, so now I have a good reason to wake up early and a better reason to stay sober some of the time.

Sunday I got drunk in honor of the super bowl. I never liked football and I feel like I've somehow let down the little punk rock 17 year old inside me, but truthfully I've started to enjoy it, and everyone at the party seemed to enjoy it too. I watched the Saints win, doing poppers and eating fried gator, and I wasn't sure if it was exactly the best thing I could be doing at the time, but I did have all my friends with me, and I did have someone to walk home with. Nick and I are actually working on a comic about it together, so hopefully I'll have that to show off soon. Our comic is called the Secret Life of Punks, after the UK compilation, and it's probably going to be a lot like this blog, sorry world.

It's been a good week, but don't worry, it's Friday, and every thing's sure to start getting interesting soon.

Chaos fuck day / Chaos fuck nights

"Gentlemen...we are a very special breed...we possess a vast capacity for reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity...a keen perception of those connections between ideas which awaken amusement and pleasure, and an hysterical willingness to fuck up!"*

I could do this one or two ways, the first to tell you exactly what I did and how awful I felt in the morning (both emotionally and physically) or I could just expound upon my shortcomings and antics in a philosophical manner, lean dangerously close to sentimentality, and still feel uneasy about the whole thing. Listen, I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. It was a long weekend.
Everything started ok, I was so ready for my Black Metal Master Cleanse that I set myself on the dangerous course of Drinking Binge 2010 (my first, this year). I got off work Friday, had a couple of beers, finished the Kingsolver book (it was great, seriously) but then around 10:30 I started drinking again, this time with real intent, and ended up doing a drug that I can't talk about on the off chance that my mom will ever, ever read this blog (yes it was that bad, or funny, depending on your perspective). I am sure that I had fun, and while I would never be embarrassed about dancing (on stage) to 2 Live Crew, I am about hitting on someone I've had a crush on for a couple weeks (still went home alone, don't worry Mom).
I ended up walking home with Adrien and Alexis (Anna said she heard us outside her house on 6th place, me in the street screaming about boys) and then getting into bed with my friend Max Parker. Max and I are just friends, so it seemed like the safest place to be at 4 in the morning, high on my secret drug and after drinking an orange Four Loco (gross). Max told me in the morning that I wouldn't leave the bed, let alone his room, and we stayed up talking until 7 in the morning about punk rock, which is actually really sweet, and made the rest of the night seem worth it. In fact, being so scared and freaked out seems worth it just to have my friends calm me down at the end of it, I don't know if that counts in a if-a-tree-doesn't-do-drugs-in-the-forest kind of way but it seemed nice to me in the morning. No apologies no hangovers, that ought to be my new motto, and I swear I'm halfway there.
Saturday I worked, stayed sober, and crawled into bed around 5 in the morning after getting stoned and reading several chapters of Moby Dick. Max and Robbie wanted to have Chaos Fuck Day, sponsored by the band Screaming Noise, but it had to wait for Sunday, when I really harnessed my self loathing and misanthropy into a singular idea, complete with catch phrase.
Sunday I started drinking by 4. I can safely say I was drunk by the time I went to Gator Beverage at 8, bought more beer (and poppers from next door), and went into my work to get shots. Our little troop of fuck ups went to Wayward Council, I think I dismissed the show in the interest of tuning out of reality, ate a weed cookie, and walked home (at some hour, unremembered by me).
Monday, I felt so hungover all day that I had to drink 3 beers at work just to make it until 2:30am, which is exactly when I passed out, fully clothed, before sleeping for 12 hours.

Ok, time to assess. I had fun with my friends (good) and also did a lot of weird drugs (also good, in my book) but I also drank so much that I barely remember it (that's the part I'm trying to avoid). I think what went wrong is that I got so fucked up on Friday, that I felt like I had something to hide and/or bury deep into the fantasy world of drinking and it sent me into some kind of problem spiral for the rest of the weekend, which has lasted until today. I ought to be editing this post over the next several hours so that I can connect more dots, and erase some inaccuracies. Chaos fuck day gives way to pathetic mornings, that's what we learned this weekend.
As of tomorrow, it ends. I somehow managed in the course of this weekend to get a 2nd job (stoked, and needed) and also to sign up for a volunteer program helping special needs children ride horses. My days will start filling up, and my nights will become less empty.

*from Maakies w/ Drinky Crow by Tony Millionaire

Life of Crime

"And then he lost his memory, as during the times of forgetfulness, and he recovered it on a strange dawn and in a room that was completely foreign."*

I groaned to myself a little when I woke up in Athens, Georgia, without my pants on the kitchen floor. I know I didn't do anything bad, or otherwise inappropriate, but I certainly lost some hours on Monday night. I remember the show, which wasn't as good as Friday's but still worth the drive, and I remember thinking I had to drink as much as I could before the bar closed at 2, but being handed more beer at Jill's house. I think I would have liked to remain coherent but everyone assured me I was funny. The car ride home was miserable, I curled up in a ball in the back seat under my leather jacket and felt kind of awful for six hours. Back in Gainesville I tried going to the Chronic Youth/Diet Cokeheads show at the Atlantic but couldn't get past two drinks and walked home, cold, tired and sad.

Today I had a margarita and a PBR, convinced myself everything could get better, and walked Kaysie home from the Top.

*One Hundred Years of Solitude pg. 69

Annihilation Times

"[He] did not know at what moment or because of what adverse forces his plan had become enveloped in a web of pretexts, disappointments, and evasions until it turned into nothing but an illusion."*

At work tonight I drank a frozen Tequila sunrise, despite the room temperature of 63 degrees, and contemplated my failures from the past few days. I'm not sure if they can really be considered "failures," since I've been having a Really Good Time, but I've certainly been drinking too much. On one hand, a few people around me have been acting considerably worse than me, so maybe I should be evaluating myself on a curve and be sort of proud of the fact that I wasn't the kid passed out next to the barrel fire (and subsequently pouring beer on his burns), or the kid running into a bands' equipment at a show, or one of the several people trying to pick fights about meaningless aesthetics. On the other hand, I stayed up until 4:30am when I knew I had to work at 10 the next day, and last night I stayed up past sunrise and wasted my day feeling sorry for myself. How do I measure this kind of bullshit?

Thursday night I didn't end up working, which was good since I had drank a quart of Miller High Life in the early evening. At the bar I ended up doing shots (this is where the trouble starts, maybe? Can anyone notice a pattern?) and having two more beers, then moving over to the Top where I had another draft beer and another shot. I'm happy I left the bar, because it seems like even when I'm drunk and maybe even acting stupid, it seems to be a lot more fun when it's with my friends in their houses or in their backyards. I wound up at 6th place, complete with more beer and poppers (again, theme for the week). I got in an argument with someone named Burnout over a cigarette and stayed up too late staring into the fire thinking about the inevitable cold walk home, and the cold empty bed waiting for me at the end. I think I was very close to "acting stupid" but I didn't quite cross the line. Luckily, I got myself home and then to work 5 hours later.

Yesterday I worked for 9 hours, then went to the Junkyard to see Brain Killer, Scapegoat, Mauser, and Religious as Fuck. I know I went there with 4 beers, which is one past my limit, but I also had a Margarita before I left and bought more beers afterward. All the bands were really fucking amazing, and a lot of my friends were in town. I think I maybe I stayed up a little too late, but after the show we had a really good time annihilating Adrien's kitchen by smashing the ceiling lights over each other's heads and basically just laughing and hurting ourselves but in a kind of benign way. Once again, we did poppers and got other people to do them with us, and I think this morning I sort of swore I'd never do them again but I know that's a flat out lie.

The show and subsequent hang out were everything that I like about my friends and how we interact, and reminded me why I don't really like bars. I keep wondering though if I would have been able to talk to more people or have better conversations sober, and that's the thought that's really driving my little experiment. In any case, failure or not, it's been a really good weekend.

*One Hundred Years of Solitude pg. 13