[LEMONS] 5.31.2002
7 Songs And A Confession #7
Remember, not forever, just for now. (Enjoy the links.)- The Vaselines - Son of a Gun
- DJ Shadow - Fixed Income
- Neil Young - Heart of Gold
- Big Black - The Model
- REM - Gardening at Night (Georgia's changing every month)
- Elliot Smith - Son of Sam
- minutemen - do you want new wave or do you want the truth
And when I was in high school, I wandered into Wax and Facts one day with a few extra bucks, and decided I was going to splurge on this cool Chronic Town poster on the wall that had been hanging there forever. This was pre-Alternative Music Explosion, pre-Little 5 Points Gentrification Boutiqulation (it's odd to see Virginia-Highlands held up as a model for gentrification. I rememeber when it was funky and borderline dangerous.), and pre-Everybody Hurts. But Post-Document. Enough for the poster to cost a few dimes. It seemed ancient to me then, although it couldn't have been more than six or seven years old, at the very most. Today, a Nevermind poster would be (relatively) older. Mind-boggling. It came with me everywhere I moved for several years. Something like 24 places over seven or eight years (I was an air-conditioned gypsy for ages. The place I live now is the first where I've stayed more than a year since 1991. I could even make a case for 89). It endured rips and tears and the riotous calamity of my early 20s, when sometimes plates would be thrown against the wall for no other reason than to see if they'd break. It became a testament to scotch tape, wrinkled and personified. I treasured it. It was among my favorite possessions I've ever owned. I accidentally left it behind, when I fled Colorado for South Carolina one day in a rash and somewhat alcohol-induced moment of clarity, tacked to the wall of room in a subsidized low-income housing apartment where I lived in a sprawl of dirty clothes with my cousin, Texas junkies, a giant handmade wooden chair we built from 2x4s, and assorted couch floppers next door to a slew of Senegalize where ten people lived in a three bedroom joint with no furniture.
Alas.
Which is not my confession. My confession is this. I didn't know my first roommate in college, John, before I moved in with him. Never met the guy until I carted a load of junk into my dorm room and saw him sitting on the bed. He seemed like an alright guy at first, but I was dead wrong. He was a real son of a bitch. I'd had roommates in high school, and was already experienced at living with others at 18. But my freshman roommate, who came from a Park Avenue address in the double digits, did not. He was completely inconsiderate. He came in late and loud (sure I came in late, but quiet). He was a slob, worse than me even. He played loud music all he time, his favorite album being, no shit, the soundtrack to Grease. Grease! He was constantly on the phone. He never failed to complain about the South (hey, 'm with ya, pal. but i'm a native. i get to. you don't.) He was constantly sarcastic, never failing to belittle me. One day, when my friend Jack was over, and we were talking to John, who was laying in his bed. He was, as usual, bitching about something, when in mid-sentence he reached up over his head and mindlessly grabbed onto a small tear in the poster. Then, without even glancing up, he began to pull, r-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-p.
"What?!? The Fuck. Are you doing?!?"
"Oh. Hey. Sorry. Look it's old it was already torn, right? Hey, I'l tape it." But he didn't. I did, from behind with masking tape. I told myself that it gave the poster more class. Despite that, I fumed. That was it. The last straw. John had to go. I allowed Jack--who lived in Atlanta but wasn't going to school or working and lived with his parents--to essentially move in. If John came in late, I came in later. And louder. I played punk and metal, which he detested. I completely ceased to perform any sanitary functions. I began to urinate in the sink. I slept naked. I set the alarm to go off early in the morning, and then would go and crash in friends' rooms. All of this I did with the casual, ignorant, apologetic, air of the Alabama cracker he had cast me as before we ever met. "Oh. Hey. Sorry. You want me to clean up them there doctor pepper cans? Round home we just usually let 'em lie till the flies lose interest." He moved out about a month later.
- l i n k -
