[March, 1996] 17 Days Until Alaska: Or (People in Love Can Be Such Dorks)

Indeed.

3/18/96

17 days until Alaska. Before I talk about him, however, I have to mention something else that happened.

I saw Nisa a couple of days ago after not seeing her in over 4 years. I was a little worried about how we’d get along because I knew we both went through changes (mine a bit more radical). But I had a lovely time with her. I feel like no matter how much we drift apart, I will always come back to her friendship. The years we didn’t keep in touch I never felt really satisfied and thought about her once in a while. It was wonderful seeing her again, I slept over her house on Friday and we spent hours talking.

Nisa was my elementary school best friend. We did hit a rough patch in 6th grade and there was additional tension between our parents when her mother implied I was accepted into Hunter College High School because I was Jewish, and her daughter wasn’t because she was Muslim. Our religious differences never affected our friendship directly, though, but we did drift apart after graduating elementary school. Many of my happiest memories of childhood involve her and the various “imagination games” we would play together, using Barbies or random props around the house (I truly believe that laid the foundation for my becoming a writer). Unfortunately, I never saw her again after that one time as a high school senior. Who knows, maybe our paths will cross again one of these days.

The next day, when I called my mom at work, she told me Brad called the other night at 2:00AM. When I got home I gave him a call (I was worried wondering why he called). It turns out he just really wanted to talk to me (a feeling I frequently get myself, have right now, actually). We spoke for close to 4 hours, the last half hour of which was spent trying to get off the phone (it started when I mentioned how bad I am at ending letters and conversations. He always thinks of strange creative things to write/say and all I can manage is “take care”). But we finally did.

God, people in love can be such dorks.

Today he called again, at 6:30AM (he knows I get ready for school around this time). We only spoke for 15 minutes but it was the best way to wake up. He phoned for two reasons. The first was because he finished Lost Souls (the quickest he read a book—2 days) and loved it (I mailed him a copy).

The other reason was to thank me. See, I kept insisting that he has to write, and he hadn’t in a long time. Now he stated writing again and gives part of the credit to my “nagging” (my word, not his). I just need to make it through these 17 days and then bliss awaits. This could possibly be the best week of my life, I mean these last couple of months I’ve never been happier (I probably have been saying that a lot). Life has been too good. No, not too good because that’s almost like I don’t deserve this joy (and why shouldn’t I or anybody have the right to feel fulfilled—momentarily, anyway).

…

You guys, I’m going to be totally honest. I thought I might end up coming back from Alaska engaged. I mean, I was this guy’s muse, for god’s sake! And we had similar taste in books and music, as well as a penchant for rambling letters and phone conversations. What could possible stand in our way? The bulk of the 48 connected states separating New York and Alaska, you say? Way to be a buzzkill.

This will be my last entry in this notebook, and I think appropriately so (well, actually a better transition would have been to start a new journal after meeting Bradley but alas, at least I am finally completing one notebook. Ready to move on to the next one.

I must end with a quote and the one running through my head is from “Crazy” by Seal:

“Miracles will happen
as we dream…”

Yeah, life seemed pretty miraculous at that point in my life. Either I was about to set flight or crash and burn in a big way. Anybody care to take bets?

And so another journal comes to an end. For once, I was filled with so much happiness, my goth membership card should have surely been revoked.

The back cover of the notebook was covered with purple magic-markered stars and filled with slogans from U2’s Zoo TV tour I wrote in block letters including:
WORK IS THE BLACKMAIL OF SURVIVAL (this one had a thick border around it; me to my teenage self: “You don’t know the half of it.”)
REBELLION IS PACKAGED
RELIGION IS A CLUB
TALK TO STRANGERS
CONTRADICTION IS BALANCE
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG

And so I would be starting a new journal after trading in all that restless angst for infatuation and what was for me at the time the pinnacle of joy.
Yeah, let’s see how long that lasts.

[March, 1996] Alaska Bound

Just 3,352 miles separating us…

3/9/96

Big news: I’m going to Alaska to visit Bradley (no exclamation marks, only because I find them kind of cheesy). I don’t know how, but I miraculously managed to convince my parents to let me visit him over spring break. This will be the longest 25 days of my life. We spoke on Thursday and he’s psyched. I can’t wait either, these will probably be the best 10 days of my life. He’s moving out of his apartment a couple of days before I come into this three-floor cabin with no running water or electricity (it uses a wood stove). I doubt staying warm will be a problem.

First of all, I don’t blame you if you’re not excited for my 18-year-old self because of my pretentiousness around exclamation marks. Because, come on, if anything merits an exclamation mark, it’s an eminent visit to see the boy with whom I developed an intensely romantic correspondence while being separated by thousands of miles. That’s not big news. It’s big news! Not even, it’s BIG NEWS!!! 

I also don’t blame you if you’re not excited for my 18-year-old self because you think it’s a terrible idea to travel thousands of miles to a small Alaskan town to spend days in a isolated cabin with no running water or electricity with a boy I’ve known for a few short months.

Either way, the longest days of my life were about to be followed by the “probable” best days of my life. Emotional roller coaster much?

To this day, I’m baffled that I managed to convince my historically overprotective parents to let their teenage daughter fly across the country to visit a boy she met in person for maybe ten minutes. There was a lie involved, telling them that Bradley’s older brother would be staying at the house next door to Brad’s. You’d think having an additional male stranger in the picture would be cause for more alarm, but I suppose they chose to think of it as some sort of adult supervision. In reality, the brother wasn’t around at that point (possibly not even living in Alaska any longer) so it would just be the two of us. It was probably easier to convince my mother, because Mom was always a big-time romantic, and she saw how smitten I was, and understood that so much of my eminent happiness hinged on making this trip happen. I don’t know how she persuaded my father, though. She told me later on that Dad he allowed me to go in part because he was relieved to find out that I wasn’t a lesbian (Oh Dad…).

This trip to Alaska was a formative event in my life, but I could’ve sworn I only went for a week, not ten days. So I checked the dates on upcoming journal entries, and it was indeed ten days. There’s something odd knowing I’ve been remembering this trip all these years as being shorter than it was. It makes me wonder how many other things I remember incorrectly.

 

[March, 1996] Blah, Blah, I-Love-You, Blah

…

3/2/96

Bradley and I spoke on the phone for 6 ½ hours on Thursday night (early Friday morning). I called him at midnight and at 3:00 the stupid fax machine* disconnected us but he called me right back and we talked until I had to get ready for school. Right before we got off the phone I told him I loved him. He said, “I love you too” and then neither of us spoke for a few seconds.

[So this was a pretty big deal. I never said “I love you” to a boy before and I remember the feeling right before I said it. It was the same visceral sensation I had a few years prior when I dove off a 20 foot cliff into water: heart-pounding trepidation and a sense of plummeting mixed with exhilaration. Except it makes me cringe to remember it, because I said the words at the exact same time he started saying something else, so he didn’t hear me at first. He stopped talking and I had to repeat myself. Awkward much? At least I didn’t end up with a giant wedgie like I did when I jumped off the cliff. Small mercies, etc.]

It makes me so nervous to relive it (which I’ve done endlessly the past two days). But wow, 6 ½ hours. That’s longer than I’ve talked even with Anita. The conversation was great. He told me all these stories about himself (like the one I was the most curious about, how he ended up in Alaska) and I just loved listening to him talk. And he’s so funny, too, we were racking each other up the whole night. Of course there were the creepy “coincidences” too. The scariest one was that we both hate rap (and country) but love the song “Gangsta’s Paradise.” And we both use the exact same pen (Pilot Precise V5—we even both bought a box of them). Ah, it’s just too good. No, not good—phenomenal.

[It’s funny how similarities that seem like these massive or even creepy “coincidences” don’t have the same resonance in retrospect. I’ve met many people since then who don’t like rap or country but do like “Gangta’s Paradise.” It’s a genre-defying song and actually has a larger goth vibe than it does what might typically be considered rap. I’ve even heard it played at goth clubs a couple of times. And those Pilot pens? I’m sure at least one person reading this is a fan of them, too (or was, before electronic communication took over).

As for why Bradley ended up in Alaska, let’s just say there was trouble at home, he wasn’t doing well in school, and needed a fresh start. If that sets off any warning bells for you, it sure didn’t for me when I was 18.]

Yesterday was a strange day. I was emotionally… mm, shaken, I guess and I was also so exhausted from staying up all night so my mindstate was weird. It got better as the day progressed. I took an hour-long nap when my college class ended (on some couches in the building). Then I walked to the Village, I had some time to kill before going over to Mindy’s house.

[Placeholder for stuff about Mindy’s I deleted because it was a non-sequitor and not all that interesting.]

But back to those three little words. I do remember the disoriented feeling the next day, partly out of sleep deprivation and partly because I wasn’t 100% that I got the timing right on saying “I love you”—actually, I quite literally didn’t. But even from an emotional perspective, I questioned whether I may have rushed saying it, even though I felt it. He did say it back, but who’s to say he wasn’t being polite? It’s easier to subvert the “I love you, too” in person than it is over the phone, where non-verbal gestures like a hug or kiss can’t substitute verbal reciprocity. Until I had reason to believe otherwise, I’d have to believe he meant it.

 

 

 

* Oh, what a ’90s moment…

[February, 1996] A Deluge in a Paper Cup

2/25/96

Bradley and I have been emailing each other this past week. His eyes are blue and green and yellow (he doesn’t like using the word “hazel”). He is constantly amazing me. He is just too lovely. So romantic and articulate and intelligent. It’s all I can do to stop myself from calling him right now (it’s 8:00PM there). He mailed me the Polaroid with his last letter. Said the picture was mine, it always was, but he just didn’t know it then.

For those who may not remember, when I met Bradley at the bookstore, all gothed out for my first outing to The Bank, I was, at first, suspicious when he came over to talk to me. Then he showed me a Polaroid of himself dressed up for Halloween, looking like he could be a cover boy for Goth Teen Beat (if such a magazine existed). I knew right then, we were on the same wavelength. He said he’d send me a copy of the photo, but to get the real thing was even better and meant so much more to me, along with the sentiment that accompanied it.

A note on Bradley’s word choices. I would tell my best friend Anita all about our conversations, and it would drive her crazy that he would describe things in a way she found to be unnecessarily complicated (i.e. instead of just saying his eyes are hazel, naming all of the colors in the irises). She’d make fun of him, saying, “Why does he have to call it ‘that wooden thing with four legs you can sit on’ instead of calling it a chair?!”).

…

This is the kind of love so many people dream of, but never experience. I feel so incredibly lucky, despite the thousands of miles. He always seems to answer questions or address doubts, before I even voice them. He knew where “try to catch the deluge in a paper cup” was from (“Don’t Dream It’s Over”, a Crowded House song I adore). I guess the most immediate question is when to tell him I love him. I’d rather do it in person or over the phone, though if I was feeling really chicken-y I’d write it in a letter (I’d never do it over e-mail, though). Part of me wants him to say it first, but as wonderful as that would be, I’d also feel a little like a coward for not being able to say it first.

That was my most immediate question, huh? Not how two teenagers are going to make it work while being separated indefinitely by thousands of miles? Not how long a relationship might be sustained through letters, phone calls and (at this time, a new technology) emails? Not how we’d ever get to see each other when neither of us had a real job? Naw, why worry about any of those pesky details when the big, pressing issue was when to tell him the three little words. (*Rolls eyes at my eighteen-year-old self*)

It’s sad that I’m writing so little about this, because it’s just about the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. But I’m so wrapped up in it, I don’t have time to stop and write everything down.

Oh, the arrogance. For me to presume this love I was experiencing was so epic and majestic that much of humanity never encountered a love on that plane. But maybe that’s something typical with first love/teenage love. We don’t want to think that this complex and mind-blowing patchwork of emotions is a typical part of the human condition. Just like we want to believe we’re snowflakes, unique and set apart from others, so must be our love. Or maybe I was being flooded with delusions of grandeur in addition to the obsessive desire that was proving me right, that confirmed my belief that falling in love was the greatest thing a person could feel.

It’s funny how we create these codes made up of our beliefs and interests, small details that make up who we are, and then get enormous satisfaction and affirmation when somebody is able to break through the code. Back then, I believed part of love was being able to decipher those small clues and cues, whether identifying a song lyric correctly or expressing a romantic notion when I anticipated and needed it most.

A word on email. It was still early days for electronic communication and I was a stubborn luddite, but I made an exception for Bradley because I couldn’t stand being at the mercy of the postal service (it took on average a week for a letter to travel across the miles that separated us) and worried about the mounting phone bill. At one point, Bradley said he felt like email was invented just for us. See, I wasn’t the only one being arrogant.

[February, 1996] “What if?” Territory

…

2/16/96

Ah yes. I would be one of his dinner guests.

He also told me how he left the bookstore and walked a couple of blocks to his destination then thought, “Why didn’t I get her number?” I said I wish he had. Then he found out he got a letter from me and tried to look me up but the number was unlisted. Frustrating. The distance will be, too. But we’ll see each other again and have a lovely adventure.

I discussed the prospect of spending the summer with him with Anita and she said she wouldn’t be upset because she knows he is just a once in a lifetime guy. This is so hard to believe. I slept 2 hours the other night and feel magnificent.

First off, as happy as I am for my 18-year-old in-love-self, I sure wish I wasn’t such a cornball about it. I wince to see how much I used words like “lovely” and “magnificent” at the time. Then again, I did always have a flair for the dramatic*, so I can’t blame myself for being so grandiose about the whole damn thing. But back to the entry.

Years prior, when I was cultivating a collection of pen pals, as a way to fill the pages and learn more about each other, we’d ask all kinds of hypothetical questions. One of my favorites was: if you could invite any two people (living or dead) to dinner, who would they be? For Bradley, to have a world full of geniuses, legendary figures, and all kinds of fascinating individuals, from humanity’s entire history to choose from, but name me as one of his choices was a hell of a compliment. Then again, at that point in time he would have been one of my guests, too.

And if we tread into “what if?” territory I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he did get my phone number that night at the bookstore. He was in town for another week and I was on Christmas break, so we would’ve been able to spend time face to face instead of over pen and paper and telephone lines. Would things have fizzled within days or become more passionate and immediate or something in between? Speculating is pointless, but I wonder what that parallel chain of events would’ve looked like.

As for the summer, the original plan was to go to Ireland with Anita. While my obsession with U2 had tapered off some at that point, we still had a desire to go abroad and see the beautiful country. We talked about visiting Windmill Lane Studios, where the band recorded some of their albums, and yes, perhaps taking a quick peek at their houses (nothing crazy; we had no intention to go climbing security fences or anything). Bradley’s existence made me reconsider that trip and think of heading west instead. Not that he and I had talked about my traveling to Alaska to see him, but our correspondence was building in intensity. It was inevitable that we’d discuss a way to meet in person sooner or later (and since impatience was my middle names, odds were it would be sooner). After all, I was sure we were destined to meet again and have a “lovely adventure.” Weren’t we?

 

 

*Alright, no point in using past tense there. I can still be a big ol’ drama queen today.

[February, 1996] Still Valentine’s Day

…

2/15/96

It’s still Valentine’s day in my mind because it’s 4:25AM and I’ve been up since noon. I can’t even write, I’m too busy thinking about Bradley. I spoke to him for about 3 hours just now. I called a little after 1:00AM and a half hour/40 minutes later he offered to call me back to pay for the rest of the call.

Oh yes, he is the one. I have never loved another male so calmly and confidently. If I had doubts about being in love before, I don’t now. I can’t even make sense of it, I can only blurt out little things like that he isn’t into sports or politics, he’s not religious, he’s incredibly eloquent. He’s just so wonderful. I’m afraid of delving into clichés to describe him. I might go further into this some time, probably won’t. It’s sitting too lovely inside me to be brought out on the page.

Well, I brought some of it out on the page anyway, with less-than-lovely (and needless) descriptions of phone-bill-cost-logistics. So there’s that.

After all those years of dabbling in crushes here and smooches there, I finally felt that great big love feeling I had been searching for. Circumstances weren’t ideal with his being in Alaska and my being in New York, but that added to the whole (tragic?) romance of it all. In some ways, the distance didn’t even bother me at first, because my brain was being flooded with dopamine, serotonin, and all the other chemicals that make up the happy love cocktail. Add to that letters and phone calls full of heady words and I was heading down, down, down into the rabbit hole of infatuation.

I mean, let’s face it, falling in love long distance can be pretty easy. You get to curate and present your best self in a packaged way that isn’t possible when you have regular face-to-face contact with somebody. And for a writer, doing so using words feels being given the same advantage on the page that physically attractive people get in real life. In this case, Bradley and I were both writers, so we used language to charm and beguile each other across the miles. Except that there were many, many miles. Over 3,000 of them, in fact. And building a verbal bridge across such a gap would only go so far. Eventually, the distance would have to be addressed and dealt with head on.

[February, 1996] Lost Souls

…

2/7/96

To my surprise/relief/whatever I think I might just be over Nathan. Was in the Village yesterday shopping/job hunting (might end up working in a store about 50 feet away from Record Runner actually). I didn’t stop in. I think I was afraid if something did happen I wouldn’t care anymore. Do I still? Now that there’s Bradley… not that much. It’s better if I stay away.

Damn, I am so tired. I bought the most wonderful book, Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. I’m only about 30 pages into it and already it’s one of the best books I ever read.

I can hear my parents arguing in the other room, about money. This college financial aid stuff is such a headache. I hate even thinking about it, I just want to be there already, in college, in Boston.

I don’t have the energy to write any more.

Blah blah blah boys blah blah now that I was smitten with a boy in Alaska I was over my crush on the record store manager blah blah.

Moving on to books. I’ve never been a big fan of vampires in general, but Poppy Z. Brite’s modern goth vampire novel really got under my skin. I don’t think I could have found anything more perfect to read as a still-newly-minted-but-quickly-becoming-thoroughly-immersed goth. It made New Orleans sound like a deliciously dark, romantic, magical place and the young vampires she described sounded just gorgeous and swoon-worthy. Plus, they listened to Bauhaus, how could I not love that? (Get it? The vampires, an icon of gothdom, were goths themselves. 18-year-old spooky mind=blown.)

As for financing college, that’s the real horror story. Things got pretty scary for a while. Dad was adamant that I apply to Ivy League schools and be pre-law or pre-med. I was interested in schools with solid liberal arts programs and wanted to focus on writing, preferably in a big city. The only Ivy I even briefly considered was Brown, but decided Providence would be too small a city for me, so I didn’t even apply there. Of the four schools I applied to, two were in Boston, which seemed like the perfect location: large enough to be bustling and diverse, but small enough that I’d find my way around easily; far enough that I’d get away from home, but not too far in case I got homesick. Getting there would be another story, though, because Dad didn’t want to pay for an education he thought would be useless instead of one that would set me up in a high-paying career as a doctor or lawyer (it just goes to show how old school he was that those were the only two professions that epitomized a lucrative career for him). Mom also worked, but her salary was low enough to just cover basic household expenses but high enough to prevent me from getting significant financial aid. It was a stressful time at home, with a lot of arguing. Apart from getting a crappy summer job and earning some pocket money, I didn’t see how I could really improve our financial situation. I just had to hope everything would work somehow work out and I’d be able to get the education I truly desired.

[January, 1996] A Letter from Alaska

…

1/31/96

I got a letter from Brad a couple of days ago. Anita called while I was reading it and I could barely speak. It was the most wonderful, most beautiful letter. He practically called me his soulmate in it. He said he knew he was probably being forward for a first letter but wrote the loveliest things.

I have not been able to stop thinking about him. It’s scary because all I have to go on is the brief moment in B. Dalton’s and this letter. Anita said it seems too good to be true, echoing my thoughts. But I knew it would happen in an unusual way. What would happen? It could be too soon to say it. I don’t know him well enough but there’s a part that’s instinctual (if that’s a real word). I’m scared to put all my trust in him so soon (and there is the 4000 mile distance) but Bradley could be the one. Strange to say this after the whole Nathan ordeal (which isn’t even over). But I’m saying it. I feel a very special connection.

I admit there were many false starts in my brief romantic life prior to this. Most could be chalked up to unrequited crushes or random encounters. And for all I knew, this could be no different. And yet it was different. I think I knew it, deep down, the moment he approached me in that bookstore.

I remember opening the letter in the elevator. The envelope was handmade (as was mine when I wrote to him; I was fond of making my own envelopes from oversized music and fashion magazine pages). The letter was a single sheet densely packed with jagged handwriting on both sides. There was a wrapped stick of clove gum in the folds.

I still have that letter, in a box upstairs, surrounded by other boxes that will remain unopened for a long time. I could excerpt it, but I won’t. Because even though I’m laying my diaries bare here, some things need to stay private. And also, it’s not the words so much as the feelings it evoked.

Those feelings were a blend of terror and elation, with a dusting of wonder, certainty and hesitation. Because a ten-minute meeting and two-page letter do not a soul mate make. Or do they?

David Letterman had a recurring skit on his show called, “Is This Anything?” He’d reveal random acts, like a woman hula-hooping several hoops or a pumpkin being dropped off the roof of a building. At the end of the segment, Dave would either proclaim the act to me nothing or something. That day, when I got Brad’s first letter, I thought of the Letterman’s skit and asked myself the question. I knew it was too soon to put a name on it, but I knew, this was something.

I bet that letter still smells of clove.

 

[January, 1996] You Caught Me at a Bad Time

Yeah, having a secret crush is nowhere near this cute.

[A little set-up for this one. A couple of months prior, I decided to tell Nathan, a record store employee, that I had a crush on him… on national television. It never happened, but I continued to toy with the idea of telling him, anyway (as well as confessing I was the one who nearly brought him in front of a studio audience to reveal my feelings). Eventually, common sense lost out and I went to Record Rabbit to tell Nathan the truth. Here’s what happened.]

1/24/96

Bought the new Tori album yesterday (kind of aimless but it will grow on me). The lovely goth boy at Tower sold it to me (still wore that same Bauhaus shirt, even though it was a month later). Seems a bit dead at heart but I’d be thrilled to see him at The Bank.

Ok, main story. Under the circumstances, it went as best as it could have gone. Luckily the store was nearly empty and he was the only one in the front. He said hi, how are you, the usual. Then I started looking around the store. Again it was really awkward.

I was incredibly nervous but knew I had to do it. So I went up to the counter with a couple of postcards and said “you probably suspected it, but I was the one who called the show.” He looked puzzled for a second. “The talk show.”

Then he said “that was you? That was you? Aw.” (like the way one would say “aw, how sweet”). “That was really you?”

I replied “how else would I know about it?” and he realized it was me.

He said “I thought it was a joke.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“That is just the biggest compliment…”

I told him I knew about the girlfriend and he said “you caught me at a bad time” (I think he may have said that a couple of times). Those words made this whole ordeal worth it. It means there’s hope (damn the girlfriend). It also means there is no closure. But after I confessed, we started talking about the Cure and things were back to “normal.”

He was just so sweet about the whole thing. It’s not over, either. I still have a chance. Eight months, it will never end (ah, melodrama).

I think I what I love most about this entry is how I refer to it as an “ordeal” as if it was something that I was being put through instead of orchestrating it myself from start to finish. All that melodrama was my sole doing, the “torment” self-inflicted.

For all my wackiness and emotional grandiosity, and for all my foolishness thinking I still had a chance with Nathan, I was right about one thing. It wasn’t over. Our paths would cross again, more than once in the coming years, in a couple of unexpected ways.

In the meantime, I’d have other boys to occupy my obsessive soul, some more “dead at heart” than others.

…

Speaking of obsessive (when aren’t I?) after Tori Amos’s third album, Boys for Pele, my passion for her music was beginning to wane a bit. Part of it had to do with the fact I was developing a taste for darker bands, which were predominantly fronted by broody men (Bauhaus, Christian Death, Rosetta Stone, Nosferatu, etc.). Another part of it was that her music was becoming gradually less personal to me. The first two albums shot a bullseye into my heart, with numerous songs that spoke directly to me, but this one veered to the outer edges of the target. And it was so long I could rarely make it through the entire thing, especially because I owned it on cassette and it wasn’t as easy to skip the songs I didn’t like. It did grow on me, though, and “Putting the Damage On” was my anthem for at least one major heartache.

Unfortunately, my freshman year at college would do further damage to my Tori love. But we’re not there yet.

[January, 1996] Unhappy Birthday

Image by © Solus-Veer/Corbis

1/22/96

Brad still hasn’t written. I figure I’ll give him until the end of the month and then I’ll send the tape back with a “hope you got my letter” note. Katie mailed my postcard to Tim (w/the Smiths quote “You’re evil and you lie and if you should ever die I may feel slightly sad but I won’t cry”). I hate Tim. Very much. Suicide is really the only acceptable excuse. So Tim is dead. Or else I would have heard from him.

I feel restless. I’ve been that way a lot lately (lately meaning the last few years). I’m sitting next to Jim, who’s pissed that I never mentioned him in my journal. There, now he can’t complain. I’m going to go off and try to be creative now.

Wow, crabby much?

Let me explain the Tim situation. It’s probably not going to make me look like a less horrible person but a girl can try. Tim was a pen pal with great music taste, depressive tendencies and something of a muse to me. And of course I had a crush on him, because who had two thumbs and a weakness for gloomy goth boys in need of saving? This gal. (Still have the thumbs but grew out of the other thing, to an extent.) Tim and I traded letters and mix tapes and phone calls, and then he got a girlfriend and wasn’t so depressed anymore. Then I briefly visited him and we resumed our correspondence—and then he fell off the radar.

Which happens. I lost touch with pen pals all the time. At one point, in my mid-teens, I had as many as fifteen at a time, but then I started going to concerts and parties and the Village and had less time for letters. Had a boyfriend been thrown into the mix, I’m sure I’d barely have any pen pals left. But I thought the friendship Tim and I had was special. So I was particularly stung when months went by with no word from him. Especially when I traveled hundreds of miles to visit him. And then I became angry. Not that it’s any excuse for what I did next.

I decided to send Tim an anonymous postcard for his birthday, quoting “Unhappy Birthday” by The Smiths. I don’t think I went as all-out creepy as to make it look like a ransom note, I think I typed the lyrics (which I’d gauge as only medium creepy). But then I had a pen pal who lived in another state mail the postcard so Tim wouldn’t suspect it came from me in NYC (which probably takes us back up to all-out creepy). Who knows, maybe Katie never mailed the thing and Tim never received my ill wishes. Or maybe he did and laughed it off, since he was used to mean-spiritedness from living in a backwoods, small-minded town.

Either way, I feel terrible about it to this day and even worse that I would be so flippant about suicide and his possible death. But he has a profile on Facebook, so at least I can rest easy knowing he wasn’t driven to off himself by an anonymous nasty postcard. And who knows, maybe my crush on Tim was obvious and made him uncomfortable. Maybe after the visit he had enough of me, or maybe his girlfriend wasn’t cool with the correspondence (Because he kinda had a crush on me too? Haha, yeah, right.). Whatever the reason, I like to think I’m a bit more easygoing about that sort of thing nowadays. Or at least less vindictive (and yes, creepy).       

At least I wasn’t feeling such vitriol towards Brad (with whom I had the meet-cute encounter the day after my 18th birthday). There was plenty of time to set unrealistic expectations and end up disappointed on that front…

[January, 1996] Fangs, But No Fangs

1/15/96

So I finally saw the Joel-Peter Witkin exhibit at the Guggenheim (this was Saturday, with Anita). It blew my mind. Very twisted, very dark. Brilliant. How these could be photos is baffling. There’s some collage work but the rest is just sick, fabulous imagination.

Also finally bought a Rosetta Stone CD, The Tyranny of Inaction. Great album.

Went online for the first time at Anita’s. The Industrial/Goth chat room was a bit dull at first, but got better. Was Instant Messaged by this cool guy in AZ, OrpheusBlack. There sure are a lot of people into Marilyn Manson and NIN. Not nearly enough Bauhaus fans, at least from when I was on. It was fun, but something I could definitely live without. I prefer letters.

…

I’m listening to Christian Death at the moment. They have grown on me a lot. I told Anita to tell me if I ever start to annoy her w/this whole Gothic thing, the way Claudia did with Punk. I depend on her to keep me grounded, like when I told Anita to make fun of me for wanting fangs (which I do).

Today I went to Didi’s. Played Monopoly with her, Leon and James. They said they’d go to The Bank with me the next time they come back from college (Leon in March, James in May). I must go back soon. Maybe I can beg Anita (doubt it). I’ll find a way. I always do.

Entered my portfolio in the Scholastic Writing contest (the same one I won last year for Short Story). This is the big one, $5,000. I’m hopeful.

Had a dream the other night about asking Nathan back on Sally Jessy (as if I would learn). In the dream he had a girlfriend. I’m basically over it, but not completely, not until that absolutely final time I go there.

So, to summarize my18-year-old self: getting fangs = good idea/The Internet = bad idea.

Man oh man oh man. So much to mock, I don’t even know where to begin. I remember how much I loved that Joel-Peter Witkin show, which to date is one of the best museum outings I ever had. I also remember there was a little girl there, which I found troubling. Five years old is too young to be looking at photos of cadavers, amputees and hermaphrodites (call me old fashioned, but six should be the minimum age for that sort of thing).

Rosetta Stone = Sisters of Mercy rip-off band with some catchy songs that you probably don’t know about unless you were a goth in the ‘90s-‘00s.

…

Going online! Oh my. It figures my sole purpose would be to find gloomy kids around the world to chat about Peter Murphy, Siouxsie Sioux and the other main players in my counter-culture obsession. But then again, there were no other goths at my high school, my best friend was going the Brit-Pop/Indie route, and I was dying (no goth pun intended) to share this interest with others. Because somewhere out there were people who also wanted to get fangs and could recommend more broody music to listen to.

I was a luddite for the longest time. I was one of the people who believed the Internet was a fad or just for uber-tech geeks and wouldn’t really take off. Just call me Little Miss Lack-of-Foresight. I was also adamant that I would not forgo letter-writing for emails and yet in the last decade, I have hand-written and mailed exactly one letter that was longer than a greeting card. Maybe two. And living without the Internet today? Yeah, I think I could go longer without food.

Now let me explain the fangs thing. It wasn’t about vampires so much. I appreciated their aesthetic but I didn’t actually want to be one, nor did I have any kind of bloodlust. Plainly put, I just thought fangs looked really neat. And I thought it would be cool to have some bonded to my teeth. Of course, it was above and beyond ridiculous (I mean, I can only imagine showing up to a job interview with FANGS. Oy.). Let’s just file that in the Thank-GOD-I-Didn’t-Indulge-THAT-Dumb-Teenage-Whim folder.

Also, I have no doubt that annoyed Anita with my goth fixation as much as Claudia annoyed me with her punk phase. Probably more. But it would be a long time before I outgrew that phase (and by “a long time” I mean “never completely”).

 

[January, 1996] Spider and the Fly

Oh, 90s goth bands…

1/5/96

Technically it’s the 6^th, it’s 1:40AM. Actually, I did go to the Limelight yesterday. London After Midnight were excellent. And Voltaire and Sunshine Blind were good too. I can’t put all this down. Yes, London After Midnight. Their song “Spider and the Fly” has been haunting me since the show…

I don’t remember how I ended up at the London After Midnight show after Mom was “dead set against it” but it probably involved staying over Claudia’s house and neglecting to tell my parents where I would really be that night (most likely, since they didn’t want me out so late on a Thursday night).

I probably used a similar excuse to see Morgan a day or two before that. Of course, I couldn’t write about that in my journal in case my parents discovered the truth, but the song I mentioned was probably intentional. I searched the lyrics for a clue and wouldn’t you know it, I found one. Here’s an excerpt:

 

Come over here and let me tell you something
nothing ever comes of nothing
we pay a price for all our choices made

come along now and take my hand
I’ll lead you to a promised land
the morning after it may never come again
never be the same…

Morgan’s friend lived way out in Queens and it took several subway and buses to get me there (if you’re not familiar with NYC, there’s a lot of sprawl and it can take 90 minutes or longer to get from one borough to another). There was a lot of snow on the ground and I was nervous about traveling so far out to see a boy I hardly knew, but I made it there without incident. Besides, it wasn’t the first time I traveled a long distance to see a boy and it sure wouldn’t be the last (heavy-handed foreshadowing much?).

The friend he was staying with was a petite goth girl with a short black bob and disturbed eyes. I don’t even remember her real name, so let’s just call her Kathy. The three of us spent some time in Kathy’s attic room, listening to CDs. We listened to more the more ethereal/darkwave/coldwave side of the goth music spectrum. I remember it was the first time I heard This Mortal Coil and Lycia. Very slow, beautifully dreary, atmospheric.

Morgan looked different without the make-up but still attractive. Pale, light eyes, pointy nose and chin.

The three of us didn’t talk much. Kathy closed her eyes while the music played and Morgan and I got a bit, um, handsy. After a little while, Kathy went downstairs, leaving the two of us alone for a while.

If you’re immune to human stimulus and you know it, clap your hands…

Morgan and I fooled around for a little while and I swear at one point he told me he was “immune to human stimulus.” It was odd to hear at the time, but deliciously hilarious to remember now. It also provided a lot of fodder for my subsequent poetry and prose (I might’ve incorporated Morgan into a serial killer character in one of my stories).

Kathy must’ve come back up and seen us… partially clothed. Morgan went downstairs to talk to her and when he came back up, he said that she was upset. I took that as my cue to leave. I don’t know what the story was between them, I could only guess.

I do know that at the London After Midnight show, when I saw the two of them inside the club, Kathy stared daggers at me and pulled Morgan away in the opposite direction. I didn’t speak to him at all that night and didn’t know anyone else at the concert. I tried to focus on the music and did enjoy a lot of the show, but I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t entirely shake off the rejection of being shunned like that by the two of them.

Kind of appropriate that one of the albums we listened to that day in Kathy’s room was called A Day in the Stark Corner.

[January, 1996] Black Lipstick

The goth goddess that is Siouxsie Sioux

1/1/96

I’m floating. Barely slept (less than 6 hours), tossed and turned. I was back at the Bank yesterday by my lonesome. It was packed, took me a half hour just to get inside. Didn’t take me too long to get dancing, though (I would have gone out when they played “The Blood” but it was too soon). “Christine” is what did it (I actually had woken up that day to a different Siouxsie song, “Israel,” which they played later on). I really got into the dancing (esp. during “…zombified,” “reptile,” “this is heresy” and some really good Skinny Puppy song).

[Maybe it was a little weird for me to spend New Year’s Eve at a goth club on my own, but after the super-fun time I had their on my birthday, it was my happy place, so it didn’t matter that I couldn’t wrangle any of my friends—none of whom were goth—to go with me.]

I’m getting to the good part.

I was standing outside the Gothic room [not to be mistaken with the main room which played post-punk, industrial but also goth music] when a guy that I had been watching walked by me with a girl (he had dark wavy jaw-length hair and wore a velvet cape and lots of eye make-up and lipstick — black).

[Apart from the hair, that actually sounds a lot like my look at the club the previous week.]

He looked at me as he entered the room and we made eye contact again when he turned around. About a minute later he left the room. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder.

I looked to my right and he was standing next to me. He asked what my name was (his is Morgan) and we started talking.

He said, “So you noticed me?”

I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Well, I noticed you too.”

[I am 1000% sure my little black heart did flip-flops when he said that.]

It was pretty loud where we were standing so we had to lean in really close and talk right in each other’s ears. It was nice just standing in the semi-darkness, chatting.

We were having some trouble hearing each other, so Morgan suggested we go upstairs. We did, it was actually more of a large balcony with a bar and some chairs. We were at one end of the railing watching the people and he asked how late I was staying. I said 4:00 (at this point it was about a quarter to) and he said that was unfortunate.

I didn’t know how late The Bank was open but he was under the impression that since it was New Year’s it was open until 5:00 or 6:00. So I offered to call to see if I could get picked up later. Well, I ran into a problem at the coat check (it took forever to find mine) and they told me down there they were open ‘til 4:00. I went back upstairs and we asked a bartender who said the same thing.

[“ran into a problem” is an understatement. At the time, I owned a black wool peacoat. Somehow, mine got misplaced, so I had to actually go and search through the racks myself. Imagine the coat check of a goth club on its busiest day of the year. The racks had HUNDREDS of black coats. 80% of which were peacoats. All I wanted to do was get back to the cute goth boy waiting upstairs for me.]

…

So then we went down this back staircase to this shady area on the floor not too far from the door. Though it was kind of brief, it didn’t take me long to discern that Morgan does not have a tongue piercing.

[My “coy” way of saying we had a brief make-out session.]

At one point he said something really interesting. Don’t remember the exact wording. Something like,

“You may not understand this. But save me.”

There were a few things I could have said in reply, but instead I just kissed his neck.

[Oh, how much bad poetry was inspired by the brief interlude with this guy…]

We talked about when we would meet and he gave me his number (he lives in Pennsylvania but is staying at his friend’s house in Queens).

I called him today and he wanted me to come over, but Mom was dead set against it. He told me I should come to the London After Midnight show at the Limelight on Thursday but that’s not possible, unfortunately. That’s all I’m going to write for now.

It was my first hook-up with a goth boy and I couldn’t have asked for it to be any more gothtastic. It had all the necessary elements: Noticing each other in a dark goth club? Check. Boy wearing lots of black make-up and a velvet cape? Check. Smooching in dark corner of said night club? Check. Boy says something insanely melodramatic like “save me” to girl, which girl finds strange and thrilling and romantic? Check and double check.

Another thing I learned that night is that smeared black lipstick takes forever to wash off. I must’ve come out of that club looking like a crazy hybrid of Marilyn Manson and Ronald McDonald. If my parents noticed anything unusual about my smudged appearance when they picked me up, I’m sure glad they didn’t say anything.

[December, 1995] Oh My Goth (Epic Birthday Weekend, Part 2)

[Background: the day after my 18th birthday, I went to my first goth club, The Bank. Imagine how excited a little kid is to visit Disney World for the first time and then multiply that by ten and make it spooky and that’s how I felt going to this club.]

You can have the real deal, I’ll take the impostors.

12/26/95

Alright, I’ll finally write about The Bank. It’s smaller than I expected it to be, which was nice because I kept seeing a lot of the same people. And, oh these beautiful people. I have never been attracted to Robert Smith, but I saw all these boys with Robert Smith hair and couldn’t help but be drawn to them. In fact there was this one beautiful male with that hair, eyeliner and a Sisters T-shirt and a skirt. I asked him to dance but he said, “I would but my girlfriend would kill me!” I didn’t mind, though. At one point—during “This Corrosion”—I was dancing next to him and this other guy in a velvet shirt with fishnet sleeves and slicked back hair who Anita thought looked like Dave Navarro. Both were just gorgeous and I kept accidentally (really) brushing against them… I was ready to die.

[Let’s talk about this Robert Smith thing. I’ve never had a thing for the Cure frontman for several reasons. Firstly, he has a cleft chin, which I refer to as a “butt chin” and have always found unattractive on a man. Second of all, while Robert Smith generally does well ok the eye make-up,  the lipstick is usually a smeary mess (in an interview, Smith once admitted this was because he has no upper lip but I still think it’s because he puts lipstick on with his feet). Then there’s the hair: while in looked cute in his younger years, it grew like some kind of evil Chia pet into a tangled, dreadlocked mess that would look more appropriate in a Derelicte fashion show. And while we’re on the topic of youth, unlike some other gloomy singers like Morrissey and Peter Murphy, who have aged gracefully, Robert Smith has held fast to the same aesthetic for over 30 years and it’s just not doing him any favors anymore. However, back in my heyday I came across many cute spooky boys who adopted elements of Smiths look to much greater effect. Pale face, eyeliner, big spiky hair? Yes, please! Unless your first name is Robert and your last name is Smith.] 

There were two places where music was played—the main room and this side room (the catacombs), which played more of the gothic stuff. The music was excellent. It took me a little while to really get dancing, “Juke Joint Jezebel” was what really got me into it. I kept going back and forth between the two rooms, both had great stuff (a lot of Cure).

[I don’t know if it’s odd to be super-persnickety about the first song you dance to at a club, but I was like that during my entire clubbing tenure. I don’t know why that very first song mattered so much, but I treated it the way we’re taught to treat virginity: it had to be one I loved. Once I broke the musical seal, I was far less picky about what I’d dance to, especially if alcohol was involved (again, some might draw parallels to virginity here, but I’ll won’t).  In any case, I popped my goth club cherry to KMFDM. Could’ve been better, could’ve been worse. Just like… you know.]

As you can see, Robert Smith’s is not a look that stands the test of time.

Well after the Robert Smith guy declined my offer to dance I went into the catacomb and asked another guy who I had been watching (tall, lots of black eyeliner, black lipstick). This one did dance with me. Afterwards, we started talking and ended up hanging out the whole evening Unfortunately all we did was talk, though I did give him a hug before we left. He seemed really shy. A shame, too, because he had his lip and tongue pierced. *sigh* His name was Dylan and he was moving to San Francisco (!) in a week (what is my problem?! Can’t I meet someone who’ll be in the state for a while?!). He was kind of bummed because this was going to be his last night at the Bank and it was the best time he ever had there (that’s what he said! He was pretty sweet). We didn’t exchange addresses or anything but it was still a cool night.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of the people but the ones I talked to were nice. It was great to see all these goths in a small area. There were a small group of these guys dressed like vampires (white shirts, capes, etc.) that I got a kick out of. It’s the sort of place I wish I could go back to every week. Well, at least there’s New Years (I’ll probably go back then, Mephisto Walz will be playing).

Spoiler alert: my gothy future includes going clubbing up to three (maybe even four?) times a week.   

Yeah, it was bittersweet meeting two cool (and attractive) guys in one night, both of whom were passing through before living on the other side of the country. But apart from that, I was on a high from finally being among my people, dancing to great dark tunes, and feeling completely at home in the “gloomy” surroundings. To say I was elated would be an understatement. And also going against basic goth principles, but oh well. Who says you can’t be a happy goth?

[December, 1995] Epic Birthday Weekend, Part 1

 

RIP, B. Dalton

12/24/95

I had the best time last night. I had more fun at The Bank than at any concert I ever attended. But before I talk about that, I must recount what happened when Anita and I were in B. Dalton earlier on.

[The Bank was one of NYC’s main goth clubs. There will be many many many mentions of The Bank in future diary entries, so remember it has nothing to do with financial institutions. 

A word on B. Dalton. Located on the busy corner of 6th Avenue and 8th Street, even though it was a chain, the bookstore had it’s useful role in the Village landscape, at least to me and Anita. They had a decent magazine section upstairs and we could just hang out upstairs and read without getting hassled by anybody. That night, we were both in full goth garb, heavy eyeliner, all of it, and had some time to kill before meeting a friend for dinner, so we stopped by there.]

The two of us were just sitting there on the floor reading magazines when this guy comes up to us and introduces himself (his name was Brad). Brad was pretty attractive and at first I thought he was trying to pick me up (he was talking to both of us but standing nearer to me. Plus I was flirting—sorta). Then he says he’s from Alaska and to prove that people over there also dress up like that [gothy] he takes a Polaroid out and hands it to me. The photo was him in full goth make-up and clothing (the make-up was gorgeous. Tons of black eyeliner coming in streaks of lightning from his eyes). He looked amazing. Then he asked if he gave us his address would we write to him. I enthusiastically said “of course!” and he handed me a slip of paper with his name (in parenthases he had written “guy from bookstore” and Anita and I did wonder how long he observed us before he came over).

Actually, he’s from New York but goes to school in Homer, AK (!). He wants to be a screenwriter. I asked what he listens to and he took a tape out of his Walkman that said “this is just goth enough” and showed me the case (it was a mix). Then he said I could listen to it and mail it back to him. Then before he went he said if I really liked it, I could just keep it and make Anita a copy. I told him it was really hard for me to give the picture back and he said he’d make me a color photocopy of it.

This was just such an incredible thing to have happened, especially in New York. Brad said that living in Alaska for a year changed him, that a year ago he wouldn’t have been able to approach us like that. Well, my evening was made, and before we even got to The Bank.

…

[Talk about meeting cute. For a girl who grew up on a steady diet of fantastical tales of modern romance, having something like this happen was a dangerous affirmation on two fronts. First, it made me believe that if something like this could happen, that all of those movies I watched, all the love stories I absorbed and fell in love with myself, were real. Second, it made me believe that the rest of my life could be like a movie: well-scripted, perfectly-timed and plotted, and (most importantly, but of course) romantic. It’s dangerous for something like this to happen to someone so young and prone to flights of fancy, but also tremendously wonderful. I’d pay the price with many doses of reality later on.]

But before that, a few words on my birthday. It’s the best one I can remember. I love being 18. On Friday my parents took me to Atlantic City where I was able to sneak into a casino (the Showboat) and gamble for hours at this computer that had 10 different games. I lost but it was still fun. In the evening we had a lovely dinner at Nino’s, where I got a bit drunk on Margaritas and Frangelico. It was a great day. Yesterday was cooler, though!

Gotta love completely over the top casino decor.

[I realize my family is unlike other families in that gambling was one of the few things my parents and I had in common and a deep passion (the few other things the three of us loved being ABBA, unagi sushi, and the movie Ishtar—yes really). Never mind that the legal gambling and drinking age was 21, my parents thought 18 was a more appropriate age to start really partaking in vices, and I thank them for it. In the years that followed, no matter how badly we fought, Mom, Dad and I could always guarantee a peaceful, fun day if it was spent in a casino.]

OK, The Bank. We got there early. First, Dava and I went to a deli for a while. We came back and were told it would be another half hour before it opened. But they did let us come inside to wait instead of making us stay out in the cold. And a guy who worked there asked if we had passes and we said no, but he told us he’d give us pass price anyway (let us pay $7 instead of $12).

I’m not in the mood to finish this write [sic] now, but I will eventually.

Aren’t you so glad I took the time to write about the very beginning (and boring) part of the story of going to my first goth club in those last few sentences? And then stopped? I debated leaving that part out, but I couldn’t deprive you, dear reader, of not knowing what happened in that suspenseful half hour when we reached the club early (which is nothing!). But “fun” fact: the deli we waited in was Katz’s, a New York institution and the setting for the “I’ll have what she’s having” orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally… 

Anyway, that night. That entire weekend. Possibly the best in my life up to that point. Meeting Brad set the tone for what would be a year filled with tremendous surprises. I don’t want to spoil any of them here, but I will say I still have that piece of paper he gave me scrawled with his name and number and “guy from bookstore.” 

[November, 1995] Secret Crushes Revealed! Part 2

…

[12/7/95 continued]

I got home and listened to the message Mr. Laurie left:

“Damiella, we have a problem. I spoke to Nathan and now he says he can’t do the show…” Major blow.

Called the show this morning to find out why. Two reasons:

1) He couldn’t get off work (probably the excuse he gave to strengthen:

2) He’s “sort of seeing someone” and at first she had no problem with him being on the show but then it started to bother her. Of course Nathan still wanted to know who it was but could not be told. This is the most interesting part. At one point Mr. Laurie put him on hold and got back early hearing him say to another man: “What about that girl who comes into store? The one who just dyed her hair black…?” So at least he did suspect me, no not at least, I’ve been hinting.

For some reason I was really upset. It was probably—yeah, “probably”—the “sort of seeing someone” part. I left school at 10:00 and began walking to the Village, listening to the Cure’s 17 Seconds and feeling very numb in the unhappiest way. But I made it to Barnes & Noble on Astor Place and spent 4 ½ hours there (skipping Poets House and Sociology) trying to cheer myself up by reading Dave Barry books (it made me laugh as I read it, but when I stopped I barely felt better).

I still remember this quite well. Hunter College High School was on the Upper East Side, and Astor Place all the way downtown, so that was a good 4+ mile walk. I know for a fact that I was wearing one of my pairs of Doc Marten combat boots, because I think I might have written a poem incorporating my footwear into the disappointment. Maybe that makes up for my skipping out on my volunteer shift at the poetry library Poets House? Maybe not. 

And being the good goth that I was, of course The Cure was my soundtrack. I must have listened to that album four or five times consecutively, on my Walkman (it wasn’t until college that I upgraded that particular cassette to CD). And even though The Cure’s fourth album, Pornography, is widely held as their most depressing, it was Seventeen Seconds that resonated with me more, because of the lyrics to “M” which begin:

Hello image
Sing me a line from your favorite song
Twist and turn
But you’re trapped in the light
All the directions were wrong

You’ll fall in love with somebody else
Tonight

Preach it, Reverend Smith.

This would make a pretty cool postage stamp, actually.

The truth is, things worked out the best possible way they could. I think my dream on Monday night contributed to the sadness. I dreamt that Nathan showed me these two Joy Division stamps but the photos were the most heartbreaking things and just as I needed to be consoled for being so upset by them (I don’t know why the stamps upset me so much. The melancholy photos, Ian’s suicide, etc. It made sense then) he got up and left. But not just because he needed to do something, he made a point of leaving me (on purpose). Then the next day I remember waiting for him to come back to me, and I knew I was waiting in vain, but hoped anyway. It was the saddest dream I ever had and as I was walking in the Village, every once in a while I would get that same feeling, that maybe I’ll run into him, knowing that I wouldn’t.

I used to be really into dream interpretation and even owned a dream dictionary back in the day, but (un)surprisingly, there was no entry explaining the meaning of dreams about Joy Division stamps. Go figure. 

Sadness over not being on a cheesy talk show aside, I have no idea why I would have wanted to run into Nathan that day, except to see his face full of wistfulness as he realized that he wanted to be with me instead of Miss “Sort-of-Seeing-Someone.” Ok yeah, I guess that’s a reason. 

But I was trying to talk about the good of this. The obvious great thing is that I wasn’t rejected on national television. And I know he’s “sort of seeing someone.” And the very best thing is that he still doesn’t know who it is. I hope this curiosity really eats away at him. I’m going to stop by the store on Wednesday (at this point it would seem suspicious if I didn’t) and do the best acting job of my life. When he asks (if) I will of course deny, but be sure to get in something like, “but if it was me, I wouldn’t tell you” (something less obvious, though).

Let’s see, I was already a prime suspect considering what that show producer overheard. Throw in my bad acting plus my lack of any tact or subtlety? What could possibly go wrong! 

I can’t say this is heartbreak, because I don’t feel any actual serious pain (like when I listen to “Lovesong”). It’s more as if my heart was shot with novacaine. It’s just numb. But I’m numb in a really bad way. At least I haven’t ruined the whole thing for myself and there is still hope. But there’s also the terrible numbness.

I also can’t say this was heartbreak, because that usually requires more of a relationship with the other person than buying Cure postcards in their place of business once or twice a month and chitchatting about music. I wish I could tell my teenage self to pretend that it is ruined, to stop having hope something romantic would happen with Nathan. I wish I could also give my younger self a mild spoiler and let her know that something far more magical and romantic was right around the corner…

[December, 1995] Secret Crushes Revealed! Part 1

12/7/95

I really, desperately, need to be studying for my Calculus Test tomorrow, but these past few days have been so so strange…

Oh Sally… oh, über-90’s-looking velvet choker…

It was probably more than a month ago that I called the Sally Jesse Raphael Show (the topic was revealing secret crushes). I left my name and number and pretty much forgot about it.

On Monday they called me back. I spoke with one of the producers and told him the Nathan story. He loved it, especially the part about how at first I didn’t find him at all attractive, but as I kept seeing how sweet he was, I liked him more and more. I asked what my chances were and Mr. Laurie said “pretty good” (for being on the show). I gave him the number to Record Rabbit and the next day Mr. Laurie called back (in the morning I was at school) and spoke to my father. He asked my dad if he wanted to attend the taping of the show and he said “of course” (not even knowing or asking what the topic was). Later that night I don’t him he couldn’t go, but assumed (since I came home too late to speak with him) that I’d be on the show.

I finally got through at about 3:30 the next afternoon and was told Nathan was so excited. That he asked “who is it?” and “what does she look like?” (Duh—of course they couldn’t tell him). So it was on.

I gave my address (a car would be picking me & Anita up) and was told to call the next morning to confirm everything.

Just before Anita and I left the Village, I called home and Dad told me the show (my being on it) was “in jeopardy.” 

Oy vey, where do I even begin? 

For one thing, it should be obvious that I watched way too many talk shows back in the day. Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, Montel Williams… I wasn’t even above watching Jerry Springer from time to time. It depended more on the topic than the host, though Jerry really was did go over the top more than the others and there were only so many times I could see dumb girls yelling at each other over an even dumber guy and trying to pull each other’s cheap extensions out. The other shows usually attempted to have at least a teeny tiny grain of integrity and once in a while actually were actually helpful, like finding runaway kids or showcasing drug and alcohol horror stories to show the nefarious power of addition. 

My favorites were episodes involving makeovers, reuniting lost loves, and of course revealing secret crushes. Sick days and long weekends—when I could binge on a full day of watching those trashy shows—were the best. I mean, I knew it was brain junk food and I tried to balance it out by watching foreign/indie films and reading tons of books and [insert pretentious activity here] but I won’t deny my deep and utter fixation on talk shows for a period of my teenage life. It’s probably why I don’t watch most reality TV today: between those shows and MTV’s The Real World, I got my fill of that “real life” drama back in the ’90s.

After asking out a couple of (popular—what the hell was I thinking?) guys (with no success) I guess I was building up too much of a healthy ego and felt the need to up the ante when it came to rejection. Why get turned down in private by a guy you like when you could do so in front of a studio audience?

I had no illusions that Nathan saw me in a romantic light, but here’s the great thing about those particular shows: if the person revealing their crush was turned down, they always got an enormous amount of sympathy from the studio audience and host for their honesty and stupidity bravery. Always. So I figured, I might not win the object of my (inflated and unrealistic) affection, but I did have a shot of getting some heartfelt “awwwwws” from the crowd and Sally Jesse herself. The whole embarrassing-myself-on-national-television aspect never really factored into it.

[December, 1995] Bad Omens, Soggy Hopes

…

12/3/95

In an attempt to expand my creativity (and use up paper in this thing to start writing in this other notebook I got), I’m going to write down the exercises I do from Rivers of Writing, this manuscript I took home. Here goes…

Hear: The ringing in your ears after a loud show, chimes from anywhere, the wind howling and pounding against the window…

Touch: The hard plastic of CD cases slipping through your fingers as you flip through, the shiny surface of a postcard, the raised letters of a typed page…

Smell: The incense on the corner of 6^th Ave and 8^th St, hazelnut coffee, the rain on the asphalt…

Taste: Mocha frappachino, melted cheese on eggs, salty mushy fries…

See: My silver satin skirt, glittery purple lipstick, a clean snow-covered city…

Wednesday it snowed, a gorgeous powdery snow that clung to everything and made living in such a dirty city euphoric and lovely. I grabbed my camera, all set to capture the postcard-ready scenery and daydreamed about the romantic possibilities of the lush crisp weather. Perhaps I should have heeded the bad omen of a snowball sailing hard into my right eye. No. I would quickly heal and assume prettiness when casually visiting my love (though he doesn’t know it) that afternoon. Besides, my camera was hungry for the images of a tranquil early winter. Then all the snow melted from the trees. My purposes of going downtown had whittled away to basically one: yes, him. But a busy store prevented much interaction so I was stuck with soggy hopes, praying I don’t come to despise the snow.

The writing exercise obviously called for descriptors for the five senses and then a paragraph expanding on one of them. I actually wish I did more of this kind of exercise to offer a more concise and interesting snapshot of my life-at-that-moment than my usual teenage blathering (I’ve edited some of the more redundant entries out of this blog).

So yeah, I was haunting Record Rabbit, and while I guess visiting a record store two-to-three times a month does not technically constitute stalking, the care and plotting that went into each visit was maybe a wee bit frightening in retrospect. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Anita, my best friend at the time, to hear me go on and on about him. It’s one thing to share a mutual obsession (U2, in our earlier teen years) but another to be on the receiving end of the minutiae associated with someone else’s fixation. Sometimes I had to have Anita stop from paying a visit too soon (like more than once a week) for fear of appearing suspicious to Nathan. I was sensitive about saturating him with my presence, so I didn’t hound him with phone calls or leave notes or do anything super-creepy (though I confess I did sometimes call him when I knew he wouldn’t be home to hear his answering machine message, which is utterly bizarre because it wasn’t even his voice but a recorded clip from a Charlie Brown cartoon). This made it all the more disappointing if I timed that biweekly visit poorly and didn’t get to talk to him much or at all.

Being as impatient as I was am, more decisive action would have to be taken soon. A plot was about to be hatched… 

[November, 1995] The Transformation is Complete

11/27/95

Just called Anita for about 30 seconds (well that’s how long we spoke) so she could talk me out of going to Record Rabbit tomorrow. As of today it’s been 12 days since my last visit (I really wanted to go last week but Anita’s right about making him wait). I think my feelings for him were even starting to slowly recede and then all of a sudden they came back. I try not to let it overwhelm me and I look for distractions where I can.

I finally met my penpal (well since we’ve spoken on the phone too I guess he’s more of a friend) Arthur and he was really nice (gave me a friendly hug). Wide Awake in America/The Joshua Tree. I’m leaning more toward The Joshua Tree.

..

Dyed my hair black. Blue-Black actually. Very different. I love it. Had it done in a salon and it looks great.

Dave (Dolan, the only Dave I talk about—I think) called tonight. It was good to hear from him.  Spoke to Darby this past weekend too and we had a nice chat. An odd friendship the two of us have, though we were much less obnoxious to each other during this last conversation.

I want to be in college already. I want to be out of here.

I want to sleep. I think I should try for some now because I am in a very bad mood suddenly.

I can’t wait until I’m done writing in this notebook because I got a nicer smaller one that I’ll start as my next journal (yes I guess I’m back to keeping journals. At least I’ve begun to put down things other than why life sucks for me, why I’m upset or other angsty teenage bullshit).

God I hope I don’t have trouble falling asleep.

I’m not proud of this, but I did play my parents to get the black hair. I initially asked my mom if I could dye it black and she said no. But it was my father took me to the salon for a trim. As soon as we got there I begged and begged him to let me color it and he finally relented. Prior to that I had waist-length dirty blond hair, so it was a dramatic change. When Mom first saw me, she sarcastically asked, “where is my daughter?” but didn’t make a fuss beyond that.

All things considered, actually a pretty good album. I gave it a bad rap back in the day.

As for the pen pal, Arthur, I didn’t keep in touch with him much after meeting. Deep down I’m sure I was hoping there’d be a romantic connection, despite my crush on Nathan, but there wasn’t. I’d bet money that my mopiness at the time was due at least in part to that lack of spark. And the U2 albums is more teenage code. I think I was ranking him by how much I liked the album I was comparing him to. My favorite was Achtung Baby, followed by either Boy or Zooropa, so any guy classified as one of those three would have been a top crush contender. However, The Joshua Tree was somewhere in the middle and Wide Awake in America below that, so I probably was only mildly attracted to him. It could have been worse, he could have been October (my least favorite U2 album at the time).

The mentions of the other friends and sudden depression could have been the usual insecurity and mood swings I had at the time, or a symptom of some family conflict I didn’t want to put to paper. There was often parental drama in the background of my teen years, though I very rarely wrote about it. In any event, the black hair signaled another change in me, one that fit with the darker music I was listening to. Much as I may have hemmed and hawed being goth up until then, now it was undeniable.

[November, 1995] Nathan for The Cure

…

11/11/95

Ever since the summer I’ve been very interested in Nathan. I talk about him so much to my friends that I was really surprised he wasn’t mentioned more in my journal. From everything I’ve seen (and heard), so far he seems like a lovely person. According to him (and this wasn’t even bragging) he has the best Cure collection in the world (700+ records at one time. Now down to 500+ records).

His new obsession was (is?) Belly, but he got to know the band pretty well (backstage, all-access) and the challenge wore off. I visit him at Record Rabbit every week or two. The nice part is I’ve actually made some progress with the man. He gave me his number a while back (in case I got any ideas for his Belly ‘zine “Dusted,” though Anita believes that was just an excuse) and we’ve spoken once. I enjoyed talking to him and always look forward to my visits to the store.

Last time I was there was Wednesday. It was the first time he asked me personal questions (about school and such). By now, he must know I like him and if he does, he appears not to mind. Every couple of weeks I feel stuck and wonder how to take things further and what should be my next step. But then I’ll go back to Record Rabbit, have another pleasant chat with Nathan and I’ll be just fine with taking things slow. I do want to be friends with him at least, so I’m going to try hard not to f@$k things up.

I did want to develop a friendship with Nathan, but in the process I was of course developing a crush on him, too. I mean, he worked in a record store, was an obsessed  fan with good music taste, wore lots of black clothes like me, and was reasonably cute. There was also the Sassy magazine connection, which felt like it might be some kind of hint from the universe (it wasn’t). Other than the (10 year?) age difference and the fact that he never expressed any romantic interest in me, there was no reason not to like him, right?

There were three tricky aspects to the Nathan situation:

1. Since I knew where he worked, it was necessary to space out my visits so as not to come across as stalker-y. I tried to limit them to no more than a couple of times a month and sometimes wasn’t there, which was always a buzzkill (you’d think I’d be resourceful enough to figure out his work schedule after a while, but I wouldn’t know if for a long time). 

2. Record Rabbit was a store aimed at collectors, so most of its stock was rare and more expensive than the records and CDs I usually bought. In fact, the most I ever spent on a single piece of music was at that store ($40 for a 10″ promotional single of U2’s lemon printed on yellow vinyl; hopefully, it’s still in a box of leftover collectibles at Mom’s place). I could get away with not buying anything once in a while, but I didn’t want to be a deadbeat, so most of the time I made sure to get something small. Luckily, they did have odds and ends, so my collection of Cure postcards expanded exponentially during that time.

3. Nathan was an all around chatty and congenial guy and when he spoke with someone he gave them their full attention. It could be easy to mistake his sociable nature for flirtation, especially when getting him to talk about topics he was passionate about, like the Cure. And it was that level of passion that made him attractive to me, even if was aimed at collecting music memorabilia. As a teenager, few things were more important than music, so being around someone rooted so deeply in it intrigued me and maybe made me wonder if I was looking at a potential future version of myself (spoiler alert: I wasn’t).

I love that I write about “taking things slow” as if there was an actual courtship in progress or I could orchestrate one if I so chose. I think I truly believed that something could happen if I was careful and strategic. And my strategy was benign to start with, but would get a little more crazy down the line…

[September, 1995] Senior Year Snapshot

9/27/95

It’s David Dolan’s birthday today. I got his gift on Friday but don’t know when I’ll be able to give it to him. I’ve been keeping in touch with the mad boy for about a month and a half. He’s so cool and sweet, one of those people I’d hate to lose as a bud.

I realize I haven’t even talked about my classes. Photo is a blast. Very complicated but I’m liking it lots. Lit is ok. Want to read Kerouac already. Calculus sucks flat out. Volleyball brings out the spaz in me. Sociology at the college is fine. My project at Childers-Craine is nice. It’s mostly reading manuscripts (or parts of ‘em) and evaluating them.

Once a bookworm, always a bookworm.

I know, I know. There are so many things wrong with those two paragraphs. I’ll overlook the affectations and poor language choices if you will.

David Dolan was my neighbor in the freak hallway my junior year and graduated the year before. An actor who had bit parts on a couple of major movies in the 90’s and a starring role in a cable show, he was unpretentious and goofy and prone to getting in trouble. We were never super-close, but I always had fun with him and he was one of the few male friends I had who I managed not to have a crush on. Sure, there was probably part of me that was a bit dazzled by his cultish celeb status, but I don’t think I ever talked to him about what it was like making movies or television shows. I remember bumming around the east village with him and meeting his girlfriend, who went on to have a small but recurring role in what is now one of my favorite shows of all time and is still actin today. I don’t remember what I got him for his birthday but I do remember that he introduced me to the Armistead Maupin Tales of the City books, which I adored.

ICY projects were internships that we got class credit for. Since I was planning to be an English/Writing major in college, I wanted to give my time to a publisher or literary agent. I was offered a position with Bantam and also Childers-Craine Literary Agency (which was really one woman). Even though Bantam, a division of Random House, may have looked better on my resume and helped me find work more easily in the future, I was more interested in reading manuscripts than doing menial admin/gofer work, which the publishing houses mostly used interns for (and which I ended up doing plenty of when I worked in publishing years later, anyway).

It was rather remarkable how much responsibility I was given at the agency, taking a first pass at most of the work that was sent in. That’s right, folks, a teenager was rejecting dozens of queries from aspiring writers every week. Years later, when I went on to write my own novel and submit it to agents, I have no doubt that plenty of interns were responsible for the rejection letters I received.

As for the rest of it, Calculus would torture me for months to come, but the rest of my curriculum more than made up for it. As much as I grumble about how terrible life at Hunter sometimes was, my senior year was off to a mostly great start.

(Oh, and I did finally try reading Kerouac’s On the Road earlier this year, but couldn’t get more than 100 pages into it and couldn’t get more than 15 minutes past the film adaptation. I respect the nonconformist, hedonistic spirit of the Beat Generation, but something about Kerouac’s style and storytelling simultaneously grates on me and leaves me thoroughly bored. Oh well, there’s always Ginsberg’s “Howl.”) 

 

[August, 1995] Bite Me

8/10/95

I sure suck for neglecting this thing so much. It sort of makes sense, though, because if my life is proceeding in a cool way and I’m doing a lot, keeping busy, etc. I should not have a shitload of free time to write down what I do/think/feel. And the more time I do have to write things down, then obviously the less interesting my life is and the more boring what I write is going to be. Sheesh. Still, I do have some stuff to talk about.

If you’re looking for a bleak mode of travel, you found it!

My visit with Tim, for one thing. Of course now that I’ve told the story so many times—to friends and penpals—I will be reduced to a brief summary. Oh well. It was cool, we got along (his friends Lana, Leslie and Lanie—the latter being the girlfriend—were also really nice). I love his stereo, Disintegration sounds too gorgeous on it. We saw the Cure Picture Show (lovely video). Greyhound busses were the transportation. Was hit on during both rides (by an attractive 30-year-old going there and an unattractive 16-year-old coming home). I’m tired. Will end with a quote.

“You tore the make-up from my face
With every acid word you ever knew
Now every line and crack exposed
Exploited fully with each scar shone through.” –Moist

This was a strange and frustrating trip. I don’t know what I expected from Tim (some background on Tim here and here), knowing he had a girlfriend. In retrospect, it must have been odd for this girl from New York to offer to visit him several hours away, for 24 hours. Maybe he accepted the offer out of politeness, maybe out of boredom, or curiosity, or a combination of all the above. In any case, the visit itself was lackluster. All I remember of the town itself was a diner and a record store. All I remember about his house is the sloping roof of his dark room and his amazing stereo system. The details that stand out about Tim in person are that he was nicer and less angry than in his letters, he had attractive bright blue eyes but an unattractive receding chin.

 The two parts of the trip that stick with me to this day are: 1. The 30-year-old who flirted with me on the ride there. 2. The mosquito bites I got from sleeping in Tim’s room. 

To expand on that… 

1. To this day, I don’t think I had ever been flirted with quite as aggressively as I was on that outgoing bus ride. The guy was nearly twice my age but believed me when I told him I was in my early 20’s. He was cute in an average way: brown eyes and hair, slightly receding hairline, slender. I was nervous about travelling hundreds of miles by myself and was initially suspicious of this guy, but his friendly charm put me at ease a little bit, though I never fully let down my guard. He was on his way to Reno to start a new job and was afraid of flying, so he decided to travel cross-country via Greyhound Bus. I warmed up to him during the 3-4 hour trip, letting him hold my hand and even kiss me goodbye. He gave me his number in Reno and his calling card number so that I didn’t have to spend money calling him long distance. I thought it was remarkable that he trusted me not to make any other calls using his card, but I never used either number.

2. Todd had a screen on his bedroom window, but there must have been a massive hole in it, because I was eaten alive by insects while I slept. When I got home the next day, I counted the mosquito bites in the shower and I swear there were over 60. I was itchy and uncomfortable for a good week.

For all the effort and frustration, was the trip worth it? For anecdotal purposes, I guess so. Kind of.

 

[July, 1995] Sassy Magazine and The Cure

The Cure, before Robert Smith became a caricature of himself.

7/26/95

A crazy story that is the sum of its parts (two of them). Anita and I go to Record Rabbit frequently. There is this very nice guy who works there. His name is Nathan and he is obsessed with The Cure. He’s very nice and we sometimes chat. He recently came back from Belgium where he saw his 41^st and 42^nd Cure shows.

Then there is this article I read in Sassy years ago about a guy obsessed with (duh) The Cure. I remember this story so well because I kept thinking “wow, could I ever get like that?” and then when I went through my U2 phase I did get like that so I thought of the article more. Well tonight I dug out the magazine while on the phone with Anita and what do you know: Nathan Greenblatt is the name of the Cure fan. My mind was reeling. I was blown away.

It didn’t take much to blow my mind back then. A well-placed coincidence could do it. Before we get to the musical addiction side of things, let’s talk Sassy.

The best teen magazine that ever was.

For those unfamiliar, Sassy was a magazine for young women helmed by Jane Pratt, an editor-in-chief who always gave off the vibe of being your smart older sister. She later went on to start Jane magazine and currently runs xoJane.com, both also great, but Sassy was where it all began.

Back in the 90s, I read a number of teen magazines, including YM and Seventeen, and there was always a cookie-cutter aspect to them, encouraging you to look and dress and be a certain way. Sassy did not have the homogeneity of  these other publications, and not only showed more diversity in the types of models and content it featured, but dealt with teen issues in a no-nonsense way and promoted self-acceptance, instead of setting unattainable glossy standards. It’s the only magazine aimed at my demographic I read back then that didn’t make me feel bad about myself.

From time to time, I came across a story in the magazine that particularly resonated with me. The one about obsessed fans was such a piece.

There was always something about that kind of music fanaticism I found utterly fascinating. The idea of devoting your time and disposable income to dedicate yourself to a particular singer or band was insane, the stuff that restraining orders are made of. And yet, it’s the kind of madness I could buy into. There was something strangely admirable, like being a monk or disciple, except instead of Buddha or God, you had Bono or Trent Reznor or Robert Smith or another dubious object of worship. And I think that’s what it came down to, that level of infatuation, that passion that bordered on the mentally deranged stemmed from music being the closest thing many of us had to religion.  Song lyrics were our scriptures and concert halls our churches.

Meeting someone like Nathan was like meeting a true disciple. As extreme as my own musical obsession(s) may have been, this guy was even more devoted and hardcore. So, coincidence or no, I felt an immediate connection to him and truly believed fate had crossed our paths for a reason.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he was also pretty cute…

[July, 1995] Phone Stalking Trent Reznor (and Others)

7/9/95

“But you were so different
You had to say no
When those empty fools
Tried to change you and claim you
for the lair of their ordinary world.” – Morrissey

Well this log isn’t the only thing I’ve been ignoring (try all of my writing, except for letters). I did start one story but we’ll see how it goes. But this just makes me feel guilty so I will talk about happier things. For example:

I like to think this is exactly how Trent looked during our phone call…

I SPOKE TO TRENT REZNOR.

The story will be told without exclamation points. His number was listed in a ‘zine so I dialed it on my Dad’s cellular phone. This woman picked up and I asked for Trent. She called out,

“Trent it’s for you.”

And he came on the phone saying something like “Trent here. Hello,” in this booming voice.

I began breathlessly talking about how I got his number from a ‘zine and that I didn’t call him to tell him how cool he was or how much I loved his music, but to talk about Clive Barker.

He said something like “can you call back tomorrow?” and the line was silent. He probably hung up but the battery on the cellular phone was running out so that could have been it too.

I called again tonight and (to my immense surprise) got the machine. Of course I did not leave a message.

Okay on to other things. Two words: OPERATION BLANKENSHIP. Silly name yes, but the gears are turning and it should proceed rather smoothly (oh let’s hope let’s hope). No exclamation points there either, I’m not in the mood for them and besides I’m writing in obscure terms.

So I called Tim last night. Very cool chat as usual.

Saw a free concert They Might Be Giants gave in Prospect Park. How fun was it. The conga we all did (at the band’s insistance) was a blast. Also saw Adrian there and we stood listening to the last part of the show occasionally talking or having strangers come up to him, commenting on his appearance.

Gotta go call Anita now.

It figures that my first dropped call on a “cellular phone” would also be during the one and only time I got to speak with Trent Reznor. Except that it’s more likely Trent hung up on me. Which is only slightly less embarrassing than the time I interrupted Conan O’Brian talking on a pay phone to get his autograph (also some time in the mid-90s; Anita said he was visibly annoyed). 

… but this is probably closer to how he looked when I called him.

So, wow. Where to even begin. I do remember the ‘zine that regularly posted phone numbers for celebrities. It was called Popsmear and I’m sure was responsible for pissing off quite a few stars (if I remember correctly, the ‘zine published angry letters from the celebs themselves occasionally). Usually it was just people like Lisa Loeb or Juliana Hatfield, so there was no urge for me to pick up the phone. Until I say Trent’s listed. Then I just couldn’t resist, especially when I saw it was a New Orleans area code, where he lived at the time.

I still didn’t think it would actually be Mr. Nine Inch Nails himself until I heard his voice on the line. It had an understated aggression to it, unless it was mere irritability at having a strange teenage girl from Brooklyn calling him up to randomly chat about an author we both liked. I can’t really blame him. What did I expect, that he’d drop everything to discuss the Books of Blood with me and then fall in love with me over the phone and eventually marry me? Um…  

As for “Operation Blankenship”… I left out a few of the journal entries mentioning him, but I was still crushing on my broody penpal Tim Wunderlich and we were having more frequent phone chats. I was determined to visit him in the obscure town he lived in surrounded by closed-minded folks and finally meet him in person. I don’t know what kind of elaborate plot I was concocting to get parental permission to take a bus out to see him, but I would find a way to make it happen.

Dreamy.

And I still remember doing the conga at that They Might Be Giants show, and was actually recounting that story to someone the other week. I was never a big TMBG fan, but they were a fun band to see live. I don’t remember Adrian being there, though. Undoubtedly I felt really cool hanging out with a punk, especially one that I had smooched. That actually may have been the last time I saw him. 

(Years later, when I watched Spike Lee’s film Summer of Sam, Adrian Brody’s punk character reminded me so much of that cute punk boy I peripherally knew in high school. Which is why I call him Adrian in this blog. So you can stop losing sleep over that one.)

[June, 1995] Carnival and Catherine Wheel

6/8/95

Wow, I almost felt like I was starting a letter (I must comment on how annoyed I am that I haven’t gotten any real letters in a while. I just know I’ll get about 8 in the same day). But now isn’t the time to be sarcastic because it was a beautiful day. Carnival was great even though all I did was sit there and talk and sign people’s yearbooks and sit there trying not to melt under the sun. It was great.

There is a strong possibility that I first owned this album on cassette.

Then (w/Anita) on to Tower Records in the village to see a free concert by Catherine Wheel. Very good they were*, bought the album then & there (I love the single “Waydown” so much, I wouldn’t mind if it was that song over and over). Got yet another set list which was signed by all the band members this time (very nice people, a British band).

For anyone joining the game late, I was a big penpal nerd in the ’90s and continued to be so in my later high school years (I’ll spare you additional gushing about how superior paper letters were to electronic correspondence—this time!—and direct you to this earlier blog post for more background). Inevitably, no matter how I tried to space out my letter-writing, I’d usually get responses in bulk, despite the letters coming from all over the world.

Carnival was an annual event that I imagine most schools have a version of (booths with games, food, etc.) so I’ll spare you details, but mostly because that particular year I didn’t do much more than “sit there” and call it “great” (can’t you tell I was an aspiring writer from that vivid description alone?).

Before delving into the show itself, a note for the younger readers: once upon a time there were these places called “record stores” where they sold music in physical form, on vinyl, cassette and these small plastic discs called CDs. Some of these larger shops, like Tower Records, hosted musical artists from time to time to do in-store signings, and sometimes the bands would also perform a 20-minute mini-concert to promote their latest album. 

Anita and I had a previous adventure in New Jersey seeing Sponge at a different Tower Records, but it was nice to be able to attend another in-store closer to home.

Somehow this photo of Catherine Wheel manages to look both extremely spontaneous and also staged.

To this day, Catherine Wheel is one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. For those unfamiliar, their sound is a shoegaze/rock mix with a dash of dirty guitars (I initially wrote “grunge” but couldn’t live myself for labeling them that way). They also sounded better in person than they did on any of their albums (one of the few bands I could say the same for is Pearl Jam).

Catherine Wheel had some brief MTV success with the single for “Waydown” but never made it really big like—Radiohead big. (Fun fact: lead singer Rob Dickinson is the cousin of Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson.)

It’s a shame they weren’t able to find a wider audience, because I think they put out of lot of solid music and put on great concerts. And while it was nice to see them perform at smaller venues, they deserved more wide-spread attention and success than they ever received. The album I bought referenced in this entry, Happy Days, is pretty good, but Chrome and Adam and Eve are even better and some of the most underrated music to come out of the 1990s.

* No idea why I decided to sound like Yoda there.