Trying to spend as much time there as possible, which I’m sure is hurting my heart more than helping. Henry keeps saying annoying things like, “You need to pull back a little” and “How about taking break?” and I’m like HOW ABOUT YOU FUCK YOURSELF.  I just can’t stay away knowing that one day it will be gone, and with it the hugest piece of my childhood, so this is kind of like a time capsule for me.

I was in the house alone the other night and it was extremely scary, which made me sad because I’ve never been scared there before. But at the same time, I was kind of hoping something would happen. Some kind of contact, or sign. I KNOW: when you want something to happen, it won’t.

Chooch asked, “What is this, like a really old cell phone or something?”

He made up a song about Satan, and the smile on his face. Um…

There are so many layers to what is happening right now, and this is just one. In a way, it feels like I’m losing my Pappap all over again.

In lighter news though, I found out today that someone in that house was a HUGE Gino Vannelli fan. So many Gino records! Sometimes I listen to “Living Inside Myself” when I want to make myself cry. Which is often, because I am fucked up and clearly thrive on salty wets.

My music obsession was definitely sculpted and honed in my grandparents’ house. I made my first mixtape there using a Fisher Price tape recorder; it had a lot of family conversations that I captured without permission and Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” which I recorded off the music video that was playing on the TV. I’d eat my grilled cheese at the kitchen counter to a soft rock soundtrack wafting out of a stereo kept tucked away in a cabinet behind me. My friend Amy and I played on the enclosed porch a lot, where I would often play a BRUCE WILLIS cassette that had his cover of “Under the Boardwalk” on it and my god was that song THE FUCKING SHIT.

But when I think about my romance with music in the 80s, the distinct memory of sitting on the floor of the game room, playing song after song on the jukebox,  always comes to mind.

SHE BOP!

LUCKY STAR!

SAY SAY SAY!

But the one that stands out the most is Phil Collins and Genesis. My love for Phil is unabashed. I’ve always been open about it too, even in high school when I went to see him at the Civic Arena and I gave no fucks about everyone knowing. I decided to torture myself the other night, so on my drive home I put on “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” and just fucking lost it, but it felt really good to get it all out. I was a little girl again, sitting on that game room floor, playing my favorite songs over and over again.

Seriously, this song is everything. Whatever that means.

There was also a jukebox in the other game room at their house, but that one played “old people” music and I didn’t like it.

Music is the best damn time capsule. Sometimes I find myself getting a little too dead on the inside and all it takes is one song to bring back the feels. My dad had a jukebox too, in his garage, but that one had of 90s jams on it. I used to play Toad the Wet Sprocket over and over while hitting a tennis ball off the garage door. But it never felt the same as that jukebox in the game room.

The good jukebox. Not the old people jukebox.

My mom is all, “Why don’t you guys take the jukebox?” and I’m like, “ARE YOU TRYING TO MURDER ME WITH MEMORIES?”

There’s no real point to this other than I love jukeboxes, I’m so goddamn tired, and I really fucking miss my Pappap.

Anyway. This song is relevant to my life right now because GET ME OUT OF HERE.

After years of not being inside of my Pappap’s house, I’ve been over there every day since Wednesday. My brother Corey and I were standing in one of the game rooms when we spotted this crazy ornamental box thing on a fireplace mantel.

“Oh my god, that looks like it belongs in your house!” Corey said.

I asked him if it would be weird if I took it and he was just like, no don’t be dumb. So I did. Because it calling to me. 

I started rooting through it later that night and it’s mostly full of old curlers, Bobby pins, matchbooks, receipts (mostly Sharon’s—things like dry cleaning, etc) but there was also a doctors appointment card in there with my birth dad’s name on it, which was kind of jarring to see.

We were over there again yesterday and uncovered a photo album in the living room. When I was little, I was OBSESSED with paging through tomes and tomes of photos.

I loved asking my grandma, “And who is this? And this?” But I had never seen this photo album before in my life. It appears that it belongs to my Aunt Sharon and it’s full of Polaroids from a party she must have had there in the 70s. At first, it made me feel so depressed, but then Corey admitted that seeing pictures of the house being so alive made him feel happy. And he’s right. The party years were over by the time I came onto the scene, but I used to hear stories about the epic parties held in that house, and it was pretty awesome to see pictures of Sharon looking so happy, hosting a party for her friends. There’s even a photo of her with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, and we never knew she ever smoked!

I feel like my grandparents must have been on vacation at this time because I have a hard time believing my grandma was OK with randoms traipsing through her master bathroom, lol.

Anyway, in one of the photos, that box is sitting on a table in the game room!!!!

I’ve never noticed this thing before in my life, and now it’s punching me in the face twice in 4 days.

My grandma used to babysit me when I was super little. My friend Amy’s grandparents lived next door, so she would always come over and we would spend a ton of time in that game room playing at the bar. One of the waitresses at Blue Flame had given me an order pad thing and we would use that to take each other’s bar orders, because that’s what 5-year-olds do when their playroom is essentially an adult’s playroom. We’d go back and forth between that and the slot machines.

And in high school, this is where L.A.M.E. had all of their “meetings” and where we would film a lot of our English class videos. Yet I don’t even recall seeing that box. It’s so bizarre to me!

So many puzzle pieces.

I got my hands on some old photo albums yesterday and some of them are filled with photos I’ve never seen before, like these EASTER BUNNY PHOTOS. Clearly, I’ve always had a soft spot for him/her.

I wish the Easter bunny at the local malls still looked like these ones!

GAH I JUST WANT TO HUG ALL THREE OF THESE FLOPPY-EARED FUCKERS!

I love how someone clearly didn’t like what I was wearing in one of these and took me back for a do-over after a wardrobe change.

In other news, I’ve only eaten bread and a sundae from Sarris in the last two days*, and I’m running on about 3 hours of sleep right now.

Ask me difficult questions!

*Lies. I also ate the mini KitKat that Glenn chucked at me earlier this morning. That’s how I know HE CARES.

Leaving work on Friday, I could barely contain myself inside the elevator. My co-worker Mitch was kind of side-eying me so I blurted out: I’M GOING TO SEE CARLY RAE JEPSEN TONIGHT!!!”

Pregnant pause.

“Wow,” Mitch laughed. “Was not expecting that!”

Even though I like a wide array of music, and am constantly dipping in and out of genres and decades, I don’t think it’s a surprise that most people likely associate me with heavier, “screamy” bands. And that’s fine, because I love that stuff. But I’m not one of those music snobs who thimbs her nose Top 40. (Although there are several artists, and I use that title very loosely, who I really honestly can’t stand and truly believe are ruining the face of pop music. COUGHMEGHANTRAINORCOUGH)

I have always unabashedly loved Britney Spears and have supported Lady Gaga from the beginning. I don’t even hate Justin Bieber. ANS I LOVE THAT FUCKING CAKE BY THE OCEAN SONG, OK??

However, pop music doesn’t usually tug on my heartstrings like my main bands do. It’s just something nice to listen to every now and then when I just need something on in the background.

And then came CRJ.

You guys. I wish I could put my finger on what it is about her that turns my heart into a clump of sweet sweet gummi bears.  Particularly her most recent album which I’m sorry to tell you, it is a motherfucking pop masterpiece. It makes me feel like I have roller skaters right the fuck back into my charmed childhood, before everything got shitty, when all that mattered was puffy-painted sweatshirts and side-ponies. She makes me feel pure, unadulterated happiness, and that right there brings real, genuine tears to my eyes.

You can make fun of me all you want. Constantly remind me that you “don’t get it.” Smirk at my excitement. I don’t really give a fuck. She’s not my guilty pleasure, because I feel zero ounces of guilt when I listen to her music. She is my PROUD pleasure.

Interestingly, she has some major crossover appeal with others in my scene. Anytime there is a news post about her on Absolute Punk, the fan-girling is strong. She is a breath of fresh maple-scented air in a pop scene over-saturated with twerking and vulgar schticks and sexually explicit lyrics that you pray your nine-year-old doesn’t understand.

She is wholesome without being lame or cheesy.

She is a goddamn Canadian princess.

And I couldn’t get to Mr. Smalls fast enough!

Chooch and I have had our tickets since the moment they went on sale. I had a feeling it would sell out since Mr. Smalls isn’t very big, and it did.

After feeding us, Henry dropped Chooch and me off down the street so no one would see us getting out of Daddy’s car. We had about 20 minutes to kill before the doors opened, but the line kept growing so even though I was shivering in my too-light jacket, I was glad I didn’t have Henry drive around the block one more time.

Originally, I figured Chooch and I would snag a spot in the back, right where the bar is separated from the main floor, so that GOD FORBID Chooch could sit down on the floor between bands since his limbs are SO WEAK from being A NINE-YEAR-OLD. But then I saw that there was some prime real estate along the front of the stage, but over to the side a bit, so I dragged him over to there and at first he was like, “WHAT WHY” but then he saw that at least he could lean against the stage to take some of the weight off his WEARY BONES.

For fuck’s sake, Chooch.

We made small-talk with the burly security guy who was guarding the emergency exit/staff only door which leads back stage. Apparently, I was the cut-off for that side of the stage, because when some broad came over later and leaned past me to look toward the center of the stage, the guy was like, “You can’t stand there.” She explained that she was trying to see her two daughters that she left alone in front of the stage and he was like, “UNLESS YOU’RE GONNA BE WORKING HERE, MOVE.” Yeah boy!

Before the show even started, Chooch went to the bathroom twice. He’s obsessed with public restrooms. The first time was legit, he honestly had to pee, but the second time was because his gum made him sick and he supposedly went to the bathroom to puke.

Guys, I don’t know how much truth there is to this. Mostly because I tell Henry all the time that I was “SO SICK THAT I PUKED” and 99.99999% of the time, this might be a slight exaggeration.

Fairground Saints started promptly at 7:10. I would have guessed they were from Nashville—two guys, a girl, three acoustic guitars, and an alt-twang sound. They were pleasant-sounding, and the girl had one hell of a fucking voice, but it wasn’t really my thing. Chooch loved them because they covered Justin Bieber and he was so relieved that he had enough battery life left on his phone to get a video of it.

He’s clearly my kid.

The second band was Cardiknox and I definitely liked them a lot more because SYNTH. I love most anything involving synth. And the singer, Chooch’s new lady love, was really entertaining and high energy. She kept singling out one of the guys standing near us and it was adorable.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDYFrooFZhS/?taken-by=ohhonestlyconcerts

I thought Chooch for sure would have liked Cardiknox more but he was blinded by his love of Fairground Saints, especially after they not only liked his Instavid, but also went back and liked a picture of his cat, Drew. They have his heart now, probably forever.

Also, Chooch was starting to get super ornery by this point because it was getting more crowded and he claims the guy next to him kept pushing him into the stage but I was standing right there and I swear to god this never happened. That guy and his girlfriend were pretty mindful of the fact that a kid was standing behind them, and the girlfriend even slapped her hand over her mouth when she said “fuck,” and I was just like, “Please, if you knew the words that came out of this child’s mouth, you’d blush.”

Sometime during Cardiknox, two younger girls (they were definitely under 21 based on the Xs on their hands, and at first I thought they were middle-school aged but then I found them on Instagram afterward (NOT INTENTIONALLY! They came up when I was perusing the #gimmielovetour hashtag the next day) so now I guess they might be around 17 or 18…either way, the one girl who was right behind—I guess the security dude made a concession for her–and she was SO FUCKING IDIOTIC. Like, I get it — we’re all excited. We’re all screaming. I was screaming my fucking face off. But her scream was RIDICULOUS. Like one step down from a dog whistle. And right against my skull.

Then she would do these death metal growls and I kept slowly turning around to get a glimpse of her because for a while, I honestly couldn’t figure out exactly what was behind me.

Other than that, though, the show was AMAZE. When CRJ came out, I shed actual tears and started pushing Chooch excitedly. He was really excited too and had his phone out, ready to record her entrance.

She came out and immediately started singing “Run Away With Me” which is one of my favorites and oh, if only she had been performing at a roller rink — that’s the only way the night could have been any better. She sounded amazing, you guys, and she was such a joy to watch that I don’t think my eyes were dry for even a second of that show.

I’ve never really fan-girled over a pop star before, so this was new territory for me. But I was right there with all of the teen girls and gay guys, shrieking and thrusting out my arm in hopes that my fingers could even just slightly graze CRJ, even if it was just the sleeve of her shirt. AT LEAST IT WOULD BE SOMETHING. And also proof that she’s not a holograph.

BAE!

During “Tonight I’m Getting Over You,” I noticed that she had tears streaming down her face, and she continued silently crying for the next two songs. It was extremely intimate and touching so then this made me cry even harder because crying is like yawning for me: if I see someone crying in real life, I will start crying too without being able to stop it. IT’S MY BIGGEST CHARACTER FLAW. Seriously, it’s hard to maintain my misanthropic asshole persona when I’m fucking crying all of the time, ugh.

I’m crying again.

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There were grown men who looked dangerously close to flinging themselves off the balcony in sheer ecstasy during “Call Me Maybe.”

Chooch and I were desperate to get her to touch us! Before the show started, one of the stage guys came over and told the people next to us that they had to move their stuff off the stage. We were like, right on the side, where the stage winged out a little, and he said, “Carly walks out here and I don’t want her to slip.”

So of course we were all like OMG SHE’S GOING TO WALK OVER HERE AND BE STANDING LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF US?!?!

But that guy was a goddamn shit-sucking liar because she never came over that far. She never got any further than the guys who were two heads down from us, we were SO CLOSE yet SO FAR AWAY. But I swear to god there were multiple times when she came over and smiled RIGHT AT me and Chooch. Right at our dumb idiot faces.

I was goo. A pathetic wad of goo.

Meanwhile, Screamy behind me kept death-growling, “I LOVE YOU” which ricocheted off the back of my head, along with her phone which she kept shoving past my face in order to record CRJ’s every last movement. I mean, OK—so was I, but I had my phone at chest level so it wasn’t blocking anyone’s view!

That girl was seriously the only blemish on the whole entire night. Not even Chooch’s supposed “mental breakdown” toward the end of the show managed to put a damper on my spirits. (He was oddly preoccupied with the fact that he had a knot in his shoelace and it wasn’t until he finally untied it on the sidewalk after the show that he was finally able to exhale and go back to being normal. It’s always something with him.)

After the show, we went straight to the merch booth so I could buy a shirt and my record-snob son wanted E.MO.TION on vinyl. I’ve created a monster. It was after 11 by the time we made it outside of Mr. Smalls, and we were originally just going to leave, but then a group of older men started talking to us, asking Chooch if he got his record signed, etc. We said no, and they pointed out that there was a line forming outside of CRJ’s bus, which pretty much ended right where we were standing. It didn’t seem very long, and even though there was no guarantee that she would come out, I told Chooch I would absolutely die if I missed a chance to meet her. He wasn’t very pleased because he was cold and cranky and I like CRJ more than he does (seriously, if this was Christofer Drew’s bus, though…). I think he was also getting pissed that these guys kept talking to us while waiting for their Uber. The one man told us that he had literally flown in just for the show last minute and got there right as she started singing the second song. Then he showed us pictures of his twin grandkids and Chooch was like, “OK WOW GR8 BYE” but I thought these guys were very nice and I appreciated their flamboyance. It was a refreshing change from the usual too cool for school crowd I usually find myself immersed in at shows.

After about 20 minutes, Chooch pointed out that people at the front of the line were taking pictures. I asked the tall guy behind me if Carly was out of her bus and he said, “Yep, she’s up there now” and I started fucking sweating and hyperventilating.

The line moved up quickly and smoothly; everyone was very respectful of her time and space, no one asked for more than they were entitled, and she wasn’t straight-up mobbed. There apparently was already a VIP meet-and-greet before the show, so she totally didn’t have to be available for us, but she still came out and that made me evict a few people from my heart so she could have some cozier real estate.

By the time it was our turn, I was a nervous wreck and thoroughly coated her with my word-vomit.

“OMG I JUST LOVE YOU YOU WERE SO GREAT TONIGHT I CRIED SO MUCH!!!” and she just smiled graciously and said “Thank you” after each of my psycho declarations. Then Chooch very calmly and nonchalantly asked, “Can you sign my record?” like it wasn’t CARLY RAE JEPSEN standing before us all petite and perfect with her little hat on and OMG I WAS STANDING NEXT TO CARLY RAE JEPSEN ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME SHE WAS JUST IN THE LIVE TV PRODUCTION OF GREASE SINGING WITH BOYZ II MEN!??!?!

I really hate having my picture taken but there was no way I was missing this chance, because who knows if it will ever happen again, so I whispered, “Will you take a picture with us…?” and she was all, “Sure!” and I gave my phone to the tall guy behind us and only vaguely remember CRJ draping her arm over my shoulder because I was pretty much experiencing a blinding out-of-body moment and by the time we found Henry and scrambled into the car, my hands were shaking so bad that I almost dropped my phone while trying to show him our picture and he just mumbled, “You’re sad,” but then he was trying not to smile so I think on the inside he was like, “Holy shit my kids met CRJ!”

Not to be That Person, but I really did lose my fucking shit when she sang “Call Me Maybe.” I am overcome with beautiful memories and happy feelings every single time I hear this song. I’m reminded of the Summer Olympics, extreme laughing fits, ROSS’S BLACKBERRY…it’s just pure, unadulterated summer joy. So, try to belittle me for liking a “one hit wonder,” but it won’t work. My love for CRJ is real and I’ll own it forever. No shame, no guilt, no regrets.

Last Saturday, I planned a little get-together for the remaining members of my family that actually like each other. My only intent was for us to be together on the 20th anniversary of my Pappap’s death, rather than mope around alone, internalizing our sadness. And that’s just the thing—I didn’t WANT to be sat on that day. That’s not what my Pappap would have wanted. My hope was that we could go out to dinner, share stories, and laugh.

My brother Ryan was out of town last weekend, but Corey, our aunt Susie, and her husband Larry were all available. And Henry too. So we met up at Pan Asia for a three hour nostalgia feast. It was everything I hoped the evening would be: tons of laughter and good old-fashioned family bonding. It’s a fucking shame that my mom and aunt Sharon couldn’t be chill enough to join us.

Eventually, the subject of my birth dad Paul came up. His name was pretty much verboten throughout  my whole childhood, with my mom only letting tiny informational morsels slip out here and there. I knew these few things for certain: he was a multi-substance abuser, a woman-beater, he died from an accident caused from driving drunk, and I was better off without him in my life. Basically, Paul was a very touchy subject, and you better believe he was my secret weapon during my volatile teenage years when I was looking to get that TKO in screaming matches with my mom and step-dad. I was the motherfucking champion of the last word.

Thanks, dad.

(I actually started writing about my dad two years ago and never finished because it was exhausting and made me feel a certain sadness that I didn’t understand.)

Anyway, Susie and I were piggy-backing off each other, filling Corey in about my dad’s death. When we got to the part about the actual car wreck, Corey said, “Oh, so he was drunk-driving then?” At the same time I was saying yes, Susie was saying no. I stopped talking and let her finish.

“That’s the funny thing, the tests came back saying there was no alcohol in his system at all,” Susie said, unknowingly dealing me a Mortal Kombat round house to the gut right there at our corner table in Pan Asia.

“Oh….so drugs?” Corey asked.

“No, he was sober. We were all shocked.” And then to me, Susie asked, “You didn’t know that?”

Um, no. Because for my whole life it was beaten into my head that my dad was drunk-driving and deserved to die.

So every time someone would find out that my “real” dad was dead and offer their obligatory apology, I would just shrug it off and say, “Eh, he was drunk-driving, so…”

I know it’s 33 years later, but I can’t help but have that “This changes everything” feeling. But what’s changed, really? I’m not sure. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s still dead, and it doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know him—but it’s not even about that.

It’s about my relationship with my mom and how it proves once again that she has never respected me enough to be honest, like I was never anything more than just a dumb kid to toy with. One more Val grenade to add to the memoirs I’ve been writing in my head since grade school. I don’t think she would ever understand the damage she’s done to me.

I guess I thought I was OK until last Sunday when I totally lost my mind over it. This is part of my history too, not just my mom’s, and who even knows how many other times she’s changed my narrative on me. At the risk of sounding like a petulant bitch, this just isn’t fair. I wish I could sit down with her and have a normal, honest conversation that’s not bloated with delusion and maniacal laughter.

Aside from that, it was a really great evening! And it could have been worse, you know. Susie could have said, “Paul? Paul‘s not your dad!”  Hey, nothing would really surprise me at this point!

Secrets, secrets hurt someone.

  
I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, talking on the phone to my on-and-off again boyfriend Justin when my mom burst into my room and shrieked the words that would forever rattle in my brain with all the other loose screws. I spent the rest of the night filling my Composition book with orange-inked screams, denouncing God and making promises to the devil.  

Teenaged angst mixed with true tragedy is one volatile recipe, guys. Look out. 

  
That one moment in time completely changed the course of my life. I didn’t understand how my Pappap could suddenly be dead when I was just at his house earlier that evening, and he seemed fine. He was sitting on his Reserved For John spot on the couch, talking to someone on the phone about business as usual. 

  
He was alive, and then he wasn’t. 

 In his element: manning the grill during the copious cookouts and pool parties we had every summer. 

I credit my friends and teachers for helping me get through the aftermath. My friends Lisa and Christy, especially. And I don’t think it’s random that while so many other friends have come and gone, they’re still here. They walked with me through the deepest trauma of my life and made sure I didn’t sink. This day is making me think of so many things and I am so glad that I wasn’t alone then. 

  
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him, how he was taken from us abruptly, on a fluke, and I certainly don’t miss him any less than I did in 1996. But I think what I miss most about him, is his uncanny, effortless knack to hold our family together, like sane, stable mortar between our crazy, cracked bricks.   He was the greatest father figure to me. He was my goddamn hero.   

Penelope Ann Killer has mostly adjusted to our house. I mean, she plays and eats and poops like her crazy-ass sister Drew, but the moment I try to approach her, she’s on like HIGH ALERT. Sometimes she’ll let me pick her up but she hates it so I try not to even though she’s so FLUFFY AND ALL I WANT TO DO IS HOLD HER AND SQUEEZE HER.

However, every single night, she makes herself comfortable in my bed, usually right between Henry and me, and this is when we’re allowed to pet her. Come morning, though, we’re back to being on a stranger basis with her. So annoying.

Earlier today, I thrust my phone over the glass divider behind me and said, “Look how cute Penelope Ann Killer is!” to Glenn, who looked extremely unimpressed.

“That’s what you named her?” he asked.

“Uh yeah,” I said, like way to pay attention. It was even on our department’s Wiki page! “You know, like Penelope Ann Miller?”

“I don’t know who that is,” Glenn mumbled, nodding off at the sound of his own monotone.

“FROM KINDERGARTEN COP?!” I cried, because hello, is she not a household name in everyone’s wigwam?

“I’ve never seen that,” Glenn gurgled on his ennui-generated drool.

“OMFG, are you serious!?” I yelled incredulously. “Well, what about Adventures In Babysitting?”

“Nope.”

“She was Brenda, the best friend!”

“Didn’t see it.”

“DON’T YOU REMEMBER SHE RAN AWAY FROM HOME AND GOT STRANDED AT THE BUS STATION AND BROKE HER GLASSES?!”

He had pretty much dropped out of the conversation by then. I almost posted on Facebook the simple (YET COMPLICATED) statement that Glenn has not seen Kindergarten Cop but I was trembling with too much rage.

This prompted me for the next hour to share the jarring news with everyone who walked past my desk.

“Well, I can kind of see that,” Michele said, insinuating that he’s too old to understand the critically-acclaimed cinematic game changer of IT’S NOT A TUMAH.  And then Todd agreed with her and I was like, “STOP DEFENDING HIM! STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR GLENN BEING A LAME. GLENN IS A LAME AND WE ALL KNOW IT!”

Unbelievable.

Anyway, my whole point was that the credits of Kindergarten Cop marked the first time I ever saw the name Penelope spelled out and I distinctly remember laughing, “PENNYLOPE? What a dumb name!” and then shockingly, my mom corrected me instead of letting me go through life pronouncing it that way. Because that’s a thing my mom would do.

Because I lead such an exciting life, I stayed up late Friday night watching old Wildwood, NJ videos on YouTube.

There is something REALLY ENCHANTING and perverted about watching the home movies of strangers and I don’t give a fuck, I’ll do it until I die.

I would say about once a year, I go through heavy Wildwood withdrawals and I need to nourish myself with copious amounts of nostalgia, even if it’s another persons memories.

My family vacationed in Wildwood every summer. It’s one of the few spotty memories I have of my birth dad, and also some of the best memories I have of my mom.

My grandparents came too, every summer, and it was just the fucking cherry on top of the entire year. I can’t think about that beach and boardwalk without being flooded of the best memories and thoughts of my Pappap. Literally, the best memories of my whole life were made in fucking New Jersey, of all places.

I haven’t been back since 1991 and as much as I want to, I’m also terrified because I don’t want to see how much it’s changed.

I stupidly made the mistake about 10 years to look at the Morey’s Piers website and I felt like Morey himself had kicked me in the gut with a steel-tipped boot, that motherfucker.

ANYWAY. Before I wind up just straight up living in the rabbit hole, let me get to my point. One of the videos I watched on YouTube was a clip from a 1994 documentary and now I’m utterly obsessed (what else is new) and going to buy the entire film because how I can not have a chunk of cinema like this in my private collection:

I’m kind of sad that I only ever experienced Wildwood through the eyes of an innocent child, there only to ride some fucking dark rides and eat a goddamn hot dog at Hot Spot B. I never got in a fight with anyone there other than my step dad. And I didn’t even put him in the hospital!

Hi hey hello this is a live journal post from 9/2005 when I was a few weeks pregnant & craving meat, old political pins, & OJ Simpson stuff. 

****************

The Inseminator and I celebrated Labor Day by waking up ridiculously early and going to a flea market. He suggested it the night before so there was no struggle trying to get me to wake up; I likened it to Christmas morning.
As soon as we arrived, I already saw the first item for my wish list. Imagine a regal and proud black grandmother, donning her Sunday’s best and finest pearls, sitting pretty with her head tilted to the left. Now, surround this vision with a giant gilded frame and you have what I covet. 
“Why would you want a portrait of someone’s grandma?” Henry scoffed. “And look how big it is! Where would you even put it?”
I couldn’t help but picture it hanging above my bed, watching over me every night. Like a godmother. I was getting more and more attached by the minute and I couldn’t stop thinking about who she was. Was she even still alive? I bet she made a mean Sunday dinner. I imagined she was also in a gospel choir. It pains me that I’ll never get to eat her corn bread.
Henry dragged me along in spite of my warnings of, “Don’t jostle me; I’m pregnant.” We walked disinterestedly past table after table of rusted tools and crocheted doilies, until something finally snapped me out of my pout.
A stack of R.L. Stine books. And not those shitty Goosebumps books, either. I’m talking the real deal. Gems like “The Babysitter” (and the sequel too, I almost died), “Beach Party” and “The Dead Girlfriend.” I scooped up about eight of them (in preparation for my baby’s future) and held my hand out for Henry’s money. The man behind the table counted my change while a lit cigarette dangled from his lips and I kept leaning back further and further like I was competing in a stationary Limbo, trying to avoid the smoke. It’s amazing what a week of pregnancy will do.
As I happily tucked away the change in my purse, Henry disgustingly asked, “Why is it the only time you take out your wallet is to put my money in it?” It’s funny because it’s true! I love looking at the financial pain on his face. The way it’s been slowly chiseling lines into his flesh–ooh it makes me tingle. And then I realized that I was carrying a bag full of paperback books so I flung it at him and said, “You carry this; I’m pregnant.” 
Playing the pregnancy card rules. Why didn’t I think of this a long time ago?
Minutes after pleading with Henry to buy me this fabulous antique wooden chair with a ten foot tall back (“It can be my pregnancy chair! I’ll sit in it everyday!”), I stumbled upon a table that would change my life forever.
It was a table displaying a wide array of antique political pins. And I wanted. Wanted wanted wanted.
There was one in particular that I couldn’t pry my eyes from. It was the size of a quarter with small silver balls decorating the black velvet edge and the face of some dude was in the middle.
An elderly man came over to help me. I stubbed my finger into the glass case and said, “This one, please.” He pulled out my pin and when he placed it in my hand, I felt goosebumps (and not the lame R.L. Stine kind). 
“That’s from 1896, you know,” he said in between old man shakes. Ooh, the history–I could barely stand it.
“Wow…….who is it, anyway?”
The man laughed, which kind of made me mad, and said, “That’s Bryan. He ran against McKinley.”
I don’t doubt that my face had sprouted undulating question marks, but I still wanted it. “How much?” I asked. I figured I could learn all about this Bryan fellow after I bought it. Henry was standing off to the side, showing us his back. This is what he does when he doesn’t want me to see him laughing. 
“Fifty dollars” the old presidential snob laughed, as if he knew this was too much for me. Well, he was right–this time.
“Oh,” and I handed it back to him.
But don’t think my dreams have been thwarted. I’ve already imagined myself wearing a black beret, boasting that pin on the front for all to admire. I’ll be back. I’m going to collect political pins now. 
I walked away with my head down and Henry tried to cheer me up by reminding me that we could go look at the selection of junk indoors, and maybe I could find some cool necklaces. I wasn’t trying to hear it, but as we crossed the threshold to the building, I stopped abruptly and started sniffing with my head held high. That scent was unmistakable, wafting seductively around my head like a ghost trying to score some oral. This was pretty good considering it was 8:00 AM and the hot dogs weren’t even out yet.
“I want a hot dog. With relish.” I haven’t partook in meat for 10 years and now this dumb kid is trying to make me throw that all away? It hates me already, doesn’t it? “Man, I’ll take anything on a bun right about now,” I moaned.
Henry’s eyes were glazed with shock, but then he started laughing. Sometimes he’s just asking for my fist in his mouth. “Cravings, huh?” No shit, asshole, is that what that is? Thank god for Henry — not only is he a Professional Driver, he’s also a Professional Father. I can already hear it: “Well, when my ex-wife was pregnant…” or “When my original son was born…” Goodie, I can’t wait to have my pregnancy compared to his ex-wife’s. 

And speaking of cravings, gone are the days of sour cream love. I ate so much of it that when we went grocery shopping over the weekend, I almost heaved in the middle of the dairy section. Then this morning, I had a fleeting memory of my sour cream and cracker meals from last week and started dry heaving into my soaped-up hands. Oh god, here it comes again.
I was starting to get angry and was just about to throw a tantrum when the perfect distraction, as if sent by god himself, manifested to my right.
“Oooh! Toys!” There was an entire section filled with stuff like Thomas the Tank Engine (in eighth grade, I signed everyone’s yearbook with my Thomas stamp–I was really into it) and old McDonald’s glasses. This corner had it all. Everything but OJ Simpson stuff, which is what I was really in the mood for. They had Pogs there, which made me think about my OJ Simpson trial Pogs. I even had this really elegant brass (or something like it) slammer that had a picture of Simpson’s face engraved in it, with “Innocent” across the top. I cherished that slammer, and then some jerk in my homeroom stole it from me because it made him “sick.” 
After a hyper Chinese woman held me captive in front of her table for 20 minutes, tempting me with hermit crabs (I just bought another one the day before; I named him Dijon and he and Tabasco are getting along just fine) and bamboo shoots (“They’re good for your mind“), my heroic boyfriend came back and saved me (after ditching me to begin with) and we left to get breakfast.
“Is that good?” I asked as Henry shoveled sausage links into his gyrating mouth.
“What, my sausage? Yes.”
“I bet.” And I went back to silently eating my non-meat, non-taste breakfast.

I was joking the other day at work about how trouble follows me everywhere I go in that department, and why when I am clearly such a sweet, innocent, demure human being!? And it got me thinking about other jobs I had, where I was a holy terror on purpose and gave no fucks about it, because what was the worst that was going to happen? I was going to quit after three days and my mom would still pay my rent.

Rinse and repeat.

But if I had to pick a place that got the best version of Asshole Erin, it was definitely Echostar.

PICTURE IT: The year was 1998. I had recently lost the only steady job I ever had, as a telemarketer for Olan Mills Portrait Studio—which, coincidentally, is how I met the guy who got me to take the only bus ride of my life, which I mentioned last week. Joey was one of my cold calls (as opposed to those on the coveted and golden PAST CUSTOMER LIST) and after letting me pant my way through the whole portrait package spiel, he laughed and said, “Well, that sounds really great, except I don’t need it because I’m a photographer.” Turns out, he was in Pittsburgh going to the Art Institute for photography, and we REALLY HIT IT OFF over the phone. Like, instant connection. This is how people used to hook up back in the day! Over the phone, on sales calls. Anyway, my supervisor was starting to catch wind that I was no longer trying to make a sale, or at least, not the kind of sale I was being paid to make, so I quickly gave him my number and then we proceeded to stay up all night on the phone when I got home that evening and before I knew it, we were making wedding plans, moving to Montana, and buying a sheepdog. I mean, until I actually met him and then it was “……” But I still got on a bus with him and went to his place on the Southside, because I’m fucking smart.

OK OK, so our Olan Mills telemarketing branch got shut down (thanks, Internet) and my mom was started to put pressure on me to find something else.

There was another telemarketing job after that, where I sold a credit card terminal to a tattoo shop and then got a free (and shitty) tattoo out of it, because back then I had A Personality and it was impossible for me to not make friends over the phone. Now I won’t even ANSWER the phone. So by this point, I had myself pigeon-holed to the telemarketing industry. It was apparently the only skill I had attained somehow. That’s a little known fact about dropping out of high school: you’re spilled out into this holding cell while everyone else is running off to college like normal, functioning humans, and you’re given two options: drugs or telemarketing. I had a mild interest in drugs back then, but then my friend Brian got me a job at Olan Mills and totally ruined that plan.

After quitting the credit card terminal place, I applied at Echostar (Dish Network), which had just opened a huge call center in McKeesport and it was like A Really Big Deal for us people who weren’t qualified to do anything much greater than bag groceries. It was so new that the call center wasn’t even finished, so the training classes were being held in this really old joint called the Peoples Building, and it was such a shady area that we had to have security guards escort us from the building to the parking garage every night. (Evening classes, ya’ll.)

What I will always remember the most about this job is that I started on the Monday directly after returning from Philly, where I had attended the Dracula’s Ball with my friend Cinn. I almost didn’t show up for my first class at all because my eyebrow piercing had become so infected from all the glitter I was wearing that evening, plus the fact that the new hoop was shoved in forcefully by some guy who looked like the guy Happy Gilmore shot with a nail gun to the point where I PASSED OUT IN HIS SHOP and woke up on a couch with him standing above me, holding a paper towel saturated with my blood, saying, “Wow, look how much you bled!” So all of these factors led to an eventual infection which caused my eyelid to swell up and I had to walk into this class room with my hair covering one side of my face, looking like I was trying to hide a black eye. But then I was like “Fuck it” and just started flaunting it and that was how I made a bunch of friends in that class on my very first day, by being the youngest person in the class who had a gross piercing story to share as an introduction.

(I ended up going to the emergency room right after class that night, where a doctor had to cut the ring out of my face while a nurse watched on and said, “This is exactly why I told my daughter she’s never getting pierced.”)

At the start of this first class, our trainer Mike had us go around the room and say our name with a descriptive adjective that started with the same letter. I fucking love these things because I’m a nerd, so when it was my turn, I shot out of my seat and cried, “EFFERVESCENT ERIN!” Everyone in the class laughed at  my enthusiasm, and that was basically the start of Mike’s infinite disdain for me.

There were lots of tests and POP QUIZZES.

The class was a month long. We had to learn all about the company, customer service, operating the company’s computer system, and all of the various cable packages they offered. It was kind of like telemarketing and support combined: we had to help customers with issues they might be experiencing with their service while trying to upsale them at the same time. I was kind of torn, because I used TCI for my digital cable and I was obsessed with it. (This was pre-Comcast.) I loved TCI so much that I turned down a pretty nice apartment when I found out that the cable used in that area was ADELPHIA.

P-U.

I sincerely wish I had stayed in touch with these people. They were fucking nuts.

So my heart was never really in this job from the get-go. (I mean, how much of a heart could one really put into this sort of job, anyway?) Class quickly became less of learning and more of an opportunity to hide behind computer terminals while passing notes and giggling with my new friends, Bobbie (a girl), Roniece, and Letecia.

These girls though. They were the only reason I kept coming back to that class, night after night. One time, I arrived in tears because my pet frog Hubert had died that day. They helped me eulogize him on our break, and it was the sweetest thing that I will never forget. THEY WERE MY RIDE OR DIES, obviously, except that no one said that in 1998.

We were totally the bad kids, and very quickly we became A Class Divided: there was us and a handful of the other younger people plus some of the soccer moms (surprisingly) and then there were the Others, made up of the older women and the people who were surprisingly actually there to learn. They would get so fucking irate every time Mike would have to stop class to chastise one of us. It got really bad too, and if us Bad Kids wound up in the same place as some of the Others during our dinner break, they would get so ruffled and tight-lipped, like we had just sleazily oozed over the threshold, flicking our switchblades open and closed, popping our gum, and making cunnilingus Vs with our fingers.

It was like being in college after all! Lol, j/k.

One of the girls in our group got bitched at by Mike because he found out that she was sneaking out onto the fire escape to smoke. So then he had to have the building manager come up and lock the door to the fire escape, which made us scream dramatically about, “BUT WHAT IF THERE IS A FIIIIIIIRRRREEEEE?!” while cracking up behind his back.

There is one moment that stands out the most for me though, and that was the day we were learning how to add notes to customers’ accounts. The company was smart enough to make sure we were on a training server, so all of the customers were Jane and John Does. Trainer Mike was having each one of us take turns going into the fake accounts and adding notes based on the scenarios he read to us, so after the note was “published,” it would show up on everyone’s computer. I quickly realized that if I skipped ahead, I could add fake notes and then everyone else would see them by the time we made it to that particular account.

I quickly alerted my homegirls about this and we all giddily forged ahead and began adding childish notes, the only one I for sure remember was “Our trainer sucks ass.” NOT SAYING THAT WAS MINE.

But it was mine.

Needless to say, when the rest of the class, and Mike, stumbled upon these, there was a major uproar. The people on our side laughed and appreciated the effort of our antics, while the nerdy ones were appalled at our juvenile behavior and began clucking and whatever else old bitches do when they’re mad at the Youth of Today.

Mike was furious. I mean, this was his breaking point. You could practically see his pupils turning into boiling point thermostats, the veins popping out of his forehead like someone REALLY WAIST DEEP in some late night viewing of The Erotic Network, the LARGE FONT letters queuing up in his brain before exploding out into a “I DON’T GET PAID ENOUGH TO DEAL WITH THIS MOTHERFUCKING BULLSHIT” rant.

When Mike eventually regained his composure—kind of—he pounded his fist against his desk and demanded that whomever did this, speak up.

Of course none of us did. And he definitely could narrow down the suspect pool to three. But Bobbie, Roniece and I just hunkered down lower, our faces red from stifled laughter.

Then he started threatening us.

“If no one comes forward, then the whole class will suffer!” he roared, and this made the Other Half of the class pivot in their seats, thrusting their fingers at the three of us, screaming about life’s injustices and their inability to get a good Echostar education thanks to our disruptive behavior and basic tomfoolery. Still, we wouldn’t take the blame.

(This morning, I was actually telling Henry this story, and through tears of laughter I said, “Can you believe those bitches were so upset over that? What losers.”

“Yeah, imagine being concerned about your job,” Henry dryly replied.)

Mike then told us that the CEO of the company, Charlie Something-Or-Other, was coming to town to deal with this, that the fucking CEO OF THE COMPANY was flying in from COLORADO just to YELL AT OUR WHOLE CLASS.

Like, OK sure, Mike. We all knew he was coming in because the grand opening of the Pittsburgh location was that weekend. But still we were sure surprised the next night when fucking Charlie himself made a guest appearance in our dumb classroom, and proceeded to lecture us about respecting Mike, how he puts a great deal of effort into employing the BEST TRAINERS to provide the rest of us with the knowledge we need to succeed within the company. Mike stood to his right, hands clasped behind his back, looking smugger than a motherfucker grading Echostar tests.

It was fucking surreal. I loved/hated every moment of it. I think we were simultaneously proud that our actions warranted such a dramatic response, but also stunned that we didn’t get fired when we probably should have.

Hilariously, that one lady back there in the pink turtleneck was the wife of some dude who worked at my family’s drywall company, so she would go home and tell him about all the shit-stirring I did, and he in turn would go to work and tell my mom. The phone calls I got from my mom was fantastic. “What are you doing over there?!” she would cry. “Please don’t embarrass me!” But that dude’s wife was actually cool as shit; she was on our side and thought the whole situation was hysterical. When the “Goody-Goodies” started to rally against us, she gave me a big pep talk outside on the sidewalk and told me that they were just angry old women who had no joy in their lives and to not let them get me down. I mean, these broads went full-throttle Mean Girls on us, which was stupid because we weren’t directing any of our antics against them. We were just a bunch of goofy idiots who were bored at studying the various remote controls that came with the satellite dishes. I was nineteen — of course I didn’t take this job seriously!

But you know, looking back on it — wow I was a fucking douche bag.

This was my life for a whole month.

Somehow, we all managed to make it to the end of the month-long training course, but the real victory is that we all PASSED THE TEST. It was time for us to move to the newly-built call center and begin our live training, head-sets and all. But first, we decided amongst ourselves that we should celebrate during our last class.

Even Trainer Mike was on board with having a party, but he was definitely partying for much different reasons.

I volunteered to get a cake, which was no skin off my back because all I had to do was call Mommy and tell her to deal with it.

“What do you want it to say?” she asked.

“I don’t know….;this class sucks’,” I joked. Then we went on to talk about other things, probably me whining about all the things I wanted her to buy me.

The next day, and I remember this vividly because it was a bad day, I had to leave my apartment to go to the mall and pick up the cookie cake. But first, I realized that I forgot my car keys, and how I realized this was that I was unable to open my car door with the CORDLESS PHONE that I left the house with instead of my key chains. And then I couldn’t open the apartment door because my apartment key was on the keychain so I had to call my mom (on the cordless!) to come and open my door with the spare key she had. Even back then, I was a spaz about being late. I have ALWAYS been a spaz about being late.

(Hey 1998 Erin, never change.)

By the time I had my keychain, I was in pedal-to-the-metal mode and floored it to the mall, where I said, “Nah!” when the Original Cookie people asked if I wanted to see the cookie cake before they put it in the bag. Then, several feet away from the stupid Peoples Building, I merged into the right lane and didn’t see that there was a car in my blind spot so then I had to pull over and deal with THAT nonsense.

And so I was late. And in a really shitty mood. Which didn’t get much better when Bobbie lifted the lid of the cookie cake to reveal that it boasted a delicious declaration of This Class Sucks.

“Fucccccck,” I whispered. “I thought my mom knew I was joking!” And then I played back our conversation and realized I never told her what I actually wanted the stupid fucking cake to say.

I was nearly about to cry because everything kept happening! But then I was like, “Fuck it, I’m probably going to quit this job anyway, so who cares.” And it turns out, Mike definitely didn’t care! He came over, swiped off the “cl” with one swift motion of his finger, and then started cracking up.

I guess we kind of made up that day, over pizza and unfortunate cake sentiments. But honestly, I think he was just really fucking giddy about never having to deal with us hooligans again.

I mean, look at how innocent I was! This was also when I was going through a heavy goth phase, in that I spent most of my free time in a goth chatroom, listened to goth music, and had goth Internet friends. I never went full-fledged goth, but LOOK AT HOW PALE I WAS. So I would go to my training class every night and teach all of my new, normal friends things about Dracula’s Ball, Sisters of Mercy, and Darkchat. Their response was always, “Giiiiiiirl.….” paired with the raised eyebrow of skepticism.

I did end up quitting right after we “graduated.” It just wasn’t for me. I saw Bobbie once afterward, when we met at Nigro’s, a lounge down the street from Echostar. And the next summer, I hung out with Roniece and it will forever be known as The Night I Died On The Street In Front of a Strip Club In Braddock; but earlier that evening, Roniece’s grandma saved my friend Keri from possibly dying from a bee sting, so the day was clearly full of second chances. I kept in touch with Leticia the longest out of all of them, and dragged her to the Denis Theater twice to see “white people movies” which she bitched about on the way there and then gushed over the way home. (“Shakespeare In Love” and “American Beauty” lol.) I even visited her a few years later when she had a baby. But eventually, I lost touch with her too. I wish I could remember their last names so I could Facebook-stalk them.

Anyway, the moral to this story is that I am not even close to being a troublemaker at my current job, even though Todd thinks I’m a “bully.” So there.

(I think I actually am kind of a bully though.)

Ever since The Devastating Trolley News, I’ve been thinking about all of the find memories I’ve accumulated over the years. So for Flashback Friday, let’s sit down together and talk about the time I accidentally caught feelings for my regular trolley driver back when i worked late shift.

June 2013

Since I’m a Regular Trolley Passenger now (thanks for nothing, Henry), I have become quite chummy with the trolley driver, who looks like HOLY FUCK Bob Ross is alive and living in the mountains! He says things to me like, “Here we are again, huh? Vicious cycle!” (Monday Greeting©) and “Happy Almost-Hump Day, huh?!” (Tuesday Greeting©, although sometimes he jumps the gun and lets this one fly on Mondays) and I’ll let you wonder wildly about the rest. I’m not the only one to whom he’s so salacious with his salutations: this man loves, and I mean loves to a point of compulsion, to beep his trolley horn at all his PAT Transit buddies.

He beeps at buses, he beeps at other trolleys, he beeps at fare booth broads trying to enjoy their cigarettes, he beeps at construction people digging up roads. I mean, the entire trip to work is everyday is soundtracked by BEEEEEEEEP! BEEPBEEPBEEP!! BEEP BE-BE-BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP! It was kind of cute at first, until the time we were going through a tunnel and two buses and one trolley passed us, throwing him into beeping conniptions. It was like a full minute of the most obnoxious, we-are-inside-a-tunnel-you-motherfucker horn blaring that I have ever had to witness. It was kind of like being stuffed in a metal tube and thrown into a deep vat of hipsters screaming about Arcade Fire becoming popular, where the degree of screaming becomes more urgent and shrill the further down you tumble until you finally land in a junkyard of unlimited Fran Dreschers laughing to Jeff Foxworthy jokes. I could still hear it, faintly, an hour later when I was at work. Totally ruined my afternoon.

The one day, he saw one of his buddies in a parking lot, operating some sort of crane, so he was straight beepin’ his proverbial trolley dick, but the guy did not reciprocate the love. I’m 99.9% sure that this was intentional, so Bob Ross: New Career rolled the trolley to a halt and laid on the horn again. This time, the crane-operator doled out the most sarcastic hand-wave I’ve ever seen, and I could almost hear him screaming, “OK! I GET IT! MOTHERFUCKING HELLO! BLOW IT OUTCHER ASS!” Henry said that he was pretty sure that the horns on trolleys and buses were meant to be used as a warning, not a Salute Buzzer. The other day, I couldn’t imagine who Bob Ross of PAT Transit was beeping at, when suddenly I saw a squirrel dash across the tracks. So I guess he does occasionally use the horn as the warning siren it’s intended to be. Good for him. Super nice guy though, for real.

August 2013

This morning, without realizing it, I began to think about my trolley driver. Not like think thinking, nothing racy or scandalous, just a casual thought popped into my head.

The last time I saw him was Thursday of last week. As I slapped my ConnectCard against the orange pad on the fare machine, he cheerfully boomed, “An hour and forty minutes, then I’m done!” I already know that Thursdays are his Fridays (I’m learning a lot about him from the quick sentences he’s able to push onto me as I step onto the trolley everyday at 12:47PM) so I figured he meant that in that amount of time, he would be done for the week. I smiled and mustered up enough faux-enthusiasm for the “yay” that has become my signature response to his jubilant greetings.

Yesterday, I had a different driver. He wasn’t mean like the guy who yelled at me once for trying to insert a flimsy, laundered dollar bill into the fare machine, but he was no Resurrected Bob Ross, either. We feigned polite smiles at each other and then I took my usual seat in the back, where I read a book the rest of the way into town.

It wasn’t until this morning that I thought about it, the different trolley driver and what my regular trolley driver said to me last week. An hour and forty minutes. What if he was counting down to his retirement? What if that was my last ride with the out-of-place mountain man and his unruly facial mane? What if I never had the same driver again, no one to act happy to see me everyday at 12:47 on the dot, no one to make me feel like I was more special than the other commuters who just got a generic “hello” or “how’s it going?” and nothing fancy and personal like the time I went back to riding the tolley after Henry had spoiled me with two entire weeks of having a personal chaffeur and the trolley driver, his face all lit up around his gnarly gray cheek-shrubbery, cried, “HEY! HOW YOU BEEN?! I thought maybe you bought yourself a motorcycle so you could ride to work in style!” And I was mostly embarrassed, but also a little smug that he was paying attention to me and not the hoodrat in booty shorts who had walked on right before me.

And what if now he was retired and I would never get to say goodbye and wish him luck? And why do I even care? Other than it has been nice to be greeted by a friendly, now-familiar face every day when I step onto that awful trolley and begin my daily descent into the depths of Hell.

Yesterday, the new-to-me trolley driver didn’t happily honk his horn once. It was the quietest commute to work I’ve ever had.

****

Today, I was trudging along Potomac Avenue toward the trolley platform when a gruff, yet amiable, voice yelled, “Hello! Hey! Hello!” I lifted my sunglasses onto the top of my head and scanned the line of cars stopped at the red light. And then I saw him looking out of the backseat window of a black Blazer. My trolley driver!

I waved back and yelled an uncertain hello, because what do you say to your trolley driver when you run into him out in public, as a civilian, without the trolley intertubed around him? It seemed so weird and unnatural, seeing him without his forearm resting on the steering wheel of his long, publicly-sponsored carriage.

“I’m on vacation!” he yelled, his untamed mountain ‘fro looking even more carefree than usual, like stationary storm clouds suctioned to his pate.

“Oh really?” I called back and immediately felt stupid. That is the most worthless answer ever and I do it all the time, and all it does is force people to say “yeah” and what a fucking waste of time I just perpetuated.

“Yeah, look at me!” he cried, waving his hands over his body to illustrate that he was free, oh-so-free of his PAT Transit-mandated polyester-blend. His vacation wardrobe consisted of a denim vest with nothing underneath. It was at least buttoned, though. His arms were covered in tattoos, and I suddenly felt kind of perverse and voyeuristic to be seeing him in anything other than his brown Port Authority uniform, so I looked away real quick, focused on the nondescript broad behind the wheel instead. “I’ll be back in two weeks! On…” he paused for a second to think. “…the 27th! You gonna be there?”

I nodded and smiled. “I’ll be there,” I said weakly, swallowing a grimace. Yeah, of course I’ll be there. It doesn’t seem like I’ll be not taking the trolley any time in the near future.

The light turned green and we said goodbye. I continued walking to the platform, happy to know that he was returning on the 27th and I could go back to being the kind of person that a stranger is excited to see. Maybe I should use this time to put more words into my Things to Say to the Trolley Driver repertoire, other than “yay” “hi” and “I know right” (usually my response when he says something about the weather). I even called Henry to giddily brag about my encounter, to which he responded, “You’re so weird.” I think that, after 12 years, Henry still has hopes that I’m calling to tell him something amazing.

As I sat on the trolley, driven by yet another foreign-to-me face bare of any significant hair design, I wondered why my trolley driver was sitting in the backseat of the Blazer when the passenger seat was empty.

I guess when your job is to cart people around all fucking day long, sitting in the backseat might actually be your vacation.

September 2013

My commute to work has definitely gotten noisier since Trolley Driver came back from vacation last week, though the first two days were pretty quiet. So quiet, that I began to wonder if perhaps he was scolded for too generously doling out honks. Then one day, he began hyper-beeping and I thought, “OK, maybe the horn was just broke for awhile.” But then I realized he was beeping at a truck who had ignored the trolley crossing sign and nearly got T-boned by us. That was pretty damn exciting.

But by the end of the week, he was back on track, so to speak.

Please, enjoy a video I compiled of my shitty trolley ride to work:

That last part is only a tiny snippet at the maniacal beeping that goes on. For instance, there is some work being done on the tracks right after the stop I get on at, so there have been clumps of port authority workers doing their thing. As Trolley Driver passes them, he beeps—once for every single person. And then he slows to a halt and begins to jovially chide the guys in their fluorescent yellow and orange vests and they look like they’re so fucking exhausted of this charade. Man, I really love Trolley Driver!

But guess what!? There is some stupid broad who is sometimes waiting on one of the platforms downtown and he will idle there with the door open, having a conversation with her, even though she’s not getting on the trolley. This has happened numerous times since I’ve been a regular on this particular trolley, and usually the passengers will start to get vocal because hello, we have places to go! So then they say goodbye and he jingles his little trolley bell (and I don’t mean his weener, but maybe I do) and gives one last little TOOTTOOT before continuing on his way.
This happened yesterday and I realized THAT I AM JEALOUS OF THIS BROAD. Does he like her more than me!?!?

Henry pointed out that he* would probably do the same thing to me if he saw me standing on a different trolley platform. I guess he’s right. I mean, he did shout at me from the backseat of a car while he was on vacation.

*(Trolley Driver, not Henry. God, Henry would probably do a rain dance just so he could splash me upon passing.)

“It’s a Trolley Triangle,” was Henry’s response when I texted him the picture of The Platform Harlot.

I NEED TO MAKE HIM LIKE ME MORE THAN HER. Should I (have Henry) bake him cookies?! Buy him an airhorn? Get him a Best Beepin’ Trolley Driver mug? Ugh, I’ll think of something.
You know I’m going to be obsessing over this now. I should probably find out his name at some point.

One of the first, if not the first, music videos I ever saw was for David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” My dad was really into recording (see also: taping) Friday Night Videos back in the early 80s, pre-MTV.

I still have one of his VHS tapes of homemade music video compilations; it’s labeled with a piece of masking tape and I refuse to pitch it.

“Let’s Dance” is on there.

Even as a super young kid, when I saw this video, I knew this guy was cool as fuck.

And then obviously “Labyrinth” happened. I watched that movie for the first time in third grade, at my friend Elisabeth Holtz’s house, sitting on the floor making shitty beaded jewelry and thinking, “I would not mind one bit if David Bowie kidnapped my little brother.” Legend.

In high school, I “borrowed” one of my dad’s Bowie CDs because I wanted to put “Changes” on a mix tape I was making, and then I conveniently “forgot” to put it back. That ignited a nice little fight. My dad and I were almost constantly feuding during my teen years so it was no big thing to me at all, but looking back on it now, it was pretty ironic that he was the one who introduced me to David Bowie and then there we were all those years later, fighting because of him.

I ended up just going out and buying my own Bowie CDs after that.

(With my mom’s money, haha!)

Waking up to the news of Bowie’s death this morning took my breath away. I woke up Chooch and said, “Something terrible happened…

David Bowie died.” And that’s when I realized I was crying.

Chooch shot up from his bed like Nosferatu from a coffin, and cried, “WHAT?! How!?” I told him it was cancer, and he went on a tear, motherfucking cancer up and down.

“Now there won’t ever be a sequel to ‘Labyrinth’,” he added somberly.

This feels like one of those universal deaths, the kinds that suck so hard and touch people on such a worldwide level, that we all kind of come together for a moment. It’s comforting. Especially when I open Facebook and see people mourning the same loss as me, when I didn’t really think we had much in common. David Bowie is the glittery, otherworldly, sonic thread that connects us. And there will never be another like him.

Thank you, David Bowie.

HELLO FROM 2016! I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve! Ours was low-key because I just can’t care about this particular holiday and usually I wind up with some awful end-of-the-year stomach bug so I associate NYE with toilet-hugging along with pretty much everyone else, except that I don’t have any amazing party stories to tell afterward.  Luckily, I wasn’t sick for this one, so Janna came over. The night before, she asked me what she could bring and I said “Your sports bra, because we’re going to be kpopping.” She was like “Lol OK” and I was like BUT I’M SERIOUS?!

Anyway, we watched the Pens game (we won!) and then, true to my word, I made her and Chooch do some of my favorite KpopX routines.

Henry yelling at Chooch.

Chooch making the face I hate.

Um…then we watched our least favorite YouTuber Gracie (of #cookiepizza fame) open her Christmas presents, which she would then fling to the side because she is a fucking spoiled brat. Seriously, I just can’t with that family. I mean, I’m sure I would have a gigantic head too if toy companies were just sending me boxes of things for no reason other than I somehow have amassed 500,000 YouTube subscribers for WHAT?

I’m not sure I would ever be comfortable with that.

Then we had animal mask fun!
  

I had to make Henry disinfect all of the masks first because Chooch and some of the neighbor kids have been wearing them and no just no.

It was a nice, casual, stress-free way to end a year that I didn’t hate. In fact, if Marcy hadn’t died in 2015, I might have actually been able to say that it was an almost-perfect year. But, as it is, 2015 will forever be branded in my mind as The Year We Lost Marcy. I’ll never get over it, and that’s OK.

Let’s focus on the good!

• Wendy had a baby!!
• SO.MANY.SHOWS. I promised myself that if I ever got to go back to working normal, daylight hours, I would make up for lost time by going to as many shows as possible. There were a lot that I went to this past year that I was only moderately interested in, but I still went because I COULD. What a liberating feeling. And there were many that I went to alone, which an older version of me never would have considered. But let me share with you a story of DELUXE REGRET that forever changed how I feel about saying, “I’ll just go see them next time.” It was the year 2012 and there was a little singer known as THE WEEKND who I was apeshit crazy for. He was playing a show at Mr. Small’s on a Monday night, but it was a late show and Henry didn’t want to go. The idea of going alone never occurred to me, so I passed on it, figuring I would catch him the next time he was in town. You probably know that The Weeknd practically blew up sometime after that and never again will I have the chance to see him perform in a small venue like Mr. Small’s. I blew it. So yeah, out of all the shows I went to in 2015, I think about 7 of them I went to alone. No regrets.
  • Off the top of my head, my favorites were the Kurt Travis house show, Emarosa acoustic, RIOT FEST.
    • Seriously, I will never be able to explain how many feels I have for Riot Fest. MY HEART IS IN CHICAGO.
• Our summer vacation and finally meeting Octavia!
• CHRONICA2015!!!
• Taking these pictures of Henry & Chooch. <3
• Reconnecting with my old friend Alisha, even though she lives in Arkansas now. :(
• Memorializing Marcy with friends and in ink. I’ll miss her forever, but these two things helped a lot.
• Oh my god, this whole entire thing with Bradley of Emarosa. I still think about it and get all flustered. This band is my everything.

I don’t really have any resolutions for 2016, but I do know that I would like things to continue moving along as they have been. I plan to fill 2016 with more music, more parties, and more poorly-planned vacations with my BAES, Henry and Chooch. I just want to have fun, become a KpopX instructor, and be happy. AND I HOPE THAT YOU WILL HAVE FUN AND BE HAPPY TOO! (Becoming a KpopX instructor is optional.)

Oh, and I want to go to Bledfest. Henry promised. That was my Xmas present: a promise for Bledfest.

Today, we’re going to Cleveland with Henry’s son Robbie and his girlfriend Nikki for the Craig Owens solo show at the Grog Shop. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen Craig solo and I’m excited but super nervous because he’s always been one of The Big Ones in my life, you know? Some of his words are tattooed on my arm, so to say that I think highly of him is kind of an understatement:

My all-time favorite Craig Owens experience was back in 2009 when Alisha and I went to see him, also at the Grog Shop. That was such a fun day and one of my favorite memories of Alisha, so today is making me miss her tons!

I love his solo work, but I will always love him in Chiodos the best. Chiodos was like the gateway drug into me becoming a scene kid back in 2006, so I’m sure Henry has mixed feelings about Craig too, haha. I just pointed this out to him and he did that laugh-without-mirth thing that he does when he wants everyone to know that he hates his life and nothing is amusing.

This is what I live for.