It was March of 2004. Christina and I had been e-friends for almost a year by then and I finally decided I would make the 4+ hour drive to Cincinnati to visit her. Henry made sure I had directions (printed out from MapQuest—it was 2004! No GPS, no smartphones. Not like I would have used that shit anyway. I’m directionally stubborn like a man), snacks, water and an encouraging “You can do this!” hug and a kiss. Meanwhile, I made sure I had the Important Stuff: MUSIC.

Again, this was 2004, so I didn’t have any mp3 players that plugged into my car or even a CD player that played mp3 CDs. The horror! This was “old-school” 80-minute mix CDs days. I filled a blank CD with a bunch of music that I had recently (legally) acquired but hadn’t really had a chance to listen to yet. My all-time favorite Metric song was on that CD (“Siamese Cities”), some tracks from Open Hand, Murder By Death, Armsbendback, Acceptance and even a yacht rock throwback (Ambrosia).

Even though Henry printed out a play-by-play list of directions and a map and explicitly told me, “Just stay on 70 west forever,” I still managed to get navigationally fucked. Why? Because I’m a fucking idiot and can’t follow directions. I can fly to Australia on my own without a hitch, but drive across Ohio on my own? That’s a real map for disaster. I was about 2 1/2 hours into the trip when I saw an exit sign that corresponded with the exit in the directions. It was same exit number*, and it even said “Cleveland / Cincinnati” like the directions said, except it said “77 N” instead of “I-270.” I panicked and took it, figuring that maybe 77 and 270 were the same road. Because why couldn’t that be possible? ROADS ARE CONFUSING. Still, I had that nagging sensation in my chest telling me to stop driving before I got too far into the unknown. I didn’t have a cell phone back then so I couldn’t call Henry for help every 3 minutes like I do nowadays.

ex: Henry: Tell me what you’re near. Me: A black woman in tall boots.

[* I found out later that it was actually the reverse of the exit number I needed. Driving dyslexia will get you every time.]

I took the next exit I came upon and it landed me in Kimbolton, OH which I also could not find on my map because hey, let’s go to Kimbolton said no one ever. I spotted a BP gas station and pulled over to get help. It may have actually been the very first, original BP it was that rustic. Print-outs in hand, I went inside and ask the older fellow behind the counter if he could show me where I was. Two girls behind me began to laugh. Like, the rude kind of snorting laugh that you do when you’re making fun of someone. I turned around and said, “Yeah I know – I’m retarded. It’s ok, you can laugh.” And then to really illustrate my sarcasm, I let out a dry, staccato ha ha. Instead, they took this opportunity to fucking whisper about me behind my back. I couldn’t believe that they would treat me like shit even after I offered to let them cut ahead of me and pay for whatever crap they were buying. Trying to ignore the demonic voice of Bobcat Goldthwait in my head, telling me to fuck their shit up, I sucked in my breath and asked the old man employee if he could help me get back onto 70. He held my map up to the light, and said, “This map looks like it was printed off that there Internet.” Seriously, he said this. I checked my LiveJournal and that is exactly what I wrote in 2004 so it must be true. I told him that it was and he informed me that it was useless. USELESS.

BLAME HENRY, 2004 EDITION.

Anyhow, when he saw where my final destination was, he exclaimed, “Well, why did you even get off 70 west!?” This made the fucking lot lizards behind me laugh even harder. Omigod guys, I know, right? What a dumb ass I am. Because I drive through Ohio every fucking day. The one girl was wearing two-day-old black eye liner and Wet n Wild fuchsia lipstick, which she probably purchased from the same streetwalker store where she bought her clothes. Her sidekick was pregnant I think, and wearing a belly shirt. Totally classy. I was completely envious of the stains on her clothing and the growth on her lip.

Sighing, I asked the old fuck if he could just tell me how to get back onto 70 west. He looked at me like I asked him to help me count to five and said, “Well, you go 10 miles south!” Well, shit son! Problem is that I had NO IDEA which way was south. Of course, I couldn’t ask him to point me in the right direction, because that would have just given those whores more unnecessary ammo. I pretended to understand, gathered up my useless MapQuest print-outs, and turned to leave.

Except the quasi-pregnant girl was blocking the door. I politely said “Excuse me” and she totally looked the other way. Bitch, best not ignore me! At this point, I had accumulated approximately 25 and a half things to be angry about, and I began envisioning myself ripping her fucking greasy hair out of her ugly fucking head. Instead, the miniscule shard of rationality that I store in the back of my brain surfaced and reminded me that there were two of them, and only one of me. And if we’re sharing secrets, they were really rough looking. I didn’t want my last role in life being some hackneyed-toothed hillbilly’s punching bag, so I took the bitch way out and literally ducked and squeezed between her bloated gut and the door.

Then I went back to my car and indulged myself in a total crybaby sobfest.

Sniffling like a bitch behind the wheel, I managed to find my way back to 70, and decided to take the exit for 70 east and just go the fuck home. I was scared and disoriented, not to mention BORED (driving alone is hard!) I took it out on my snack selection. At one point I even wailed out loud, “Soy Crisps don’t taste so good when I’m driving!”

Eventually, I focused on my music and it was a familial band of Texans called Eisley that got me to calm down. To this day, when I listen to Eisley, I think of that drive and laugh. And then promptly relax. I’m so picky with girl singers, so the fact that I still like Eisley 9 years later really speaks volumes. I can listen to those girls sing all day long. The video at the top of this post is one of my favorite songs ever from them.

Epilogue: A few weeks later, Christina took a Greyhound to Pittsburgh and then we drove back to Cincinnati together. We made a pitstop: A certain decrepit BP station in Kimbolton, Ohio. Those bitches weren’t there though. AND HOW LUCKY THEY WERE.

Janna and I took Chooch to the Mattress Factory when he was around 9 months old. There were acres of dangerously sharp metal installations just waiting to lacerate his precious motherfucking baby skin, but Janna watched out for both of us.

Thank god.

A few weeks ago, Chooch unearthed his very first Halloween costume in his closet, put it on and then surprised me with it. I almost died laughing, seeing his big head shoved through the small opening of a fabric ice cream. It pleased me because he was 6 months old that Halloween and it poured down rain so aside from a quick photo op at my grandma’s house, that costumes was totally wasted. I even considered putting it up on eBay a few times, or giving it to someone who has a baby, but now I’m really glad that I didn’t, because nothing is funnier than someone wearing something that they’re too big for.

One day, he wore it in the backseat of the car and waved to people at red lights.  He’s even considering wearing it for real next Halloween and I will fucking die if he does because I love this costume so much, so yes — PLEASE WEAR IT!

In the meantime, I wanted to do a little photo shoot with him wearing it. The weather was so amazingly warm this weekend, and I couldn’t stop picturing him eating an ice cream cone while wearing an ice cream cone. There’s an ice cream place right down the road from the abandoned building we use for some of our pictures, but we didn’t learn it was closed until we drove all the way out there (only like 30 minutes, but still — Henry’s frown is in full effect over things like this).  We figured McDonald’s was probably our best bet at that point, and remembered that there was one down the street from the closed-down ice cream shop we took pictures at last September.  Even better!

“But does McDonald’s have rainbow sprinkles? No, I don’t think they do. You’ll have to stop at a grocery store on the way and buy some, just in case,” I said, planning ahead.

Henry glared at me.

“What? There HAS to be rainbow sprinkles! I can’t do it without the sprinkles!” I cried. EVERYTHING IS IN THE DETAILS, OK?!

So that was another 25 minutes in the car with Henry who had almost completely shut down verbally by then. I even tried to calm him down by ironically holding his hand. He wasn’t amused.

Rainbow sprinkles procured and a vanilla cone in hand, we drove back to the Twist behind a partially disabled elderly man who cruised along at a pace of about 18 mph, melting the ice cream and our patience.

But we made it with the cone mostly intact! I jumped out of the car and poured the sprinkles on while Chooch stuffed himself in the costume cone.

I positioned him in front of the closed-down ice cream shop and handed him  the severely-dripping cone.

“Vanilla? REALLY? VANILLA? You knew I wanted CHOCOLATE!” he cried.

“Well, McDonald’s only has vanilla,” I muttered, but really — he was getting vanilla no matter where we went. It had to match his costume!

And the rest of it panned out smoothly! Henry and I didn’t even argue. We were only there about 5 minutes before I got what I needed and Henry got to finish Chooch’s cone.

This was right after 2 teenage girls walked by and giggled at Chooch. He was totally angry with me.

He even DANCED for me at the end. You know why? Because that little sucker got paid to do this. I have found that giving him a few bucks is a small price to pay for cooperation and amiability in front of the camera.

God, Henry is totally going to start asking for payment now too.

<3

I never thought I’d say this, but thank god for Flo Rida. Every time I hear “I Cry,” I shush anyone who might happen  to have the audacity to talk over it. I realize that he’s actually sampling a remake of the original song, but I fucking loved Brenda Russell’s “Piano In the Dark” so much as a kid, that even hearing the accelerated dance remix of the chorus sends waves of nostalgia over me. It brings back memories of rollerskating in my basement and at Spinning Wheels, eating grilled cheese in my grandparent’s kitchen (they ALWAYS had soft rock playing on their house sound system), riding around in my mom’s car.

And then I inevitably feel sad. But it’s that sadness that I thrive on, if that makes any sense. It’s that sadness that keeps in touch with my memories and my past, and as much as it hurts sometimes to have some old track by Alan Parsons Project finger the trigger, I kind of like it. (Don’t get me started on “Eye In the Sky.”)

So I knew that looking up “Piano in the Dark” on YouTube was probably opening a can of worms, and I resisted for weeks and weeks until finally, the other night, I succumbed. And it felt exactly how I suspected: like my heart was being strangulated with neon legwarmers and jelly bracelets. The fucking 80s make me so happy-sad!

Henry and I were in bed the other night when Flo Rida’s version came on. I admitted that I had made it my ring tone (actually, the Bingo Player’s version, because it’s all of the chorus, none of Flo Rida’s lame rhymes). And that’s how I found out that Henry didn’t know any of this was borrowed from Brenda Russell’s seminal 1988 hit! So I of course had to play it for him, which resulted in  very blase, “Oh yeah, I kind of remember that song” response right before he rolled over and fell asleep, leaving me to lay there alone in ear worm hell.

Meanwhile, I have been listening to it pretty constantly all week (I even found a live version that features JAMES INGRAM AND MICHAEL MCDONALD ON BACKUP, WHUTTTTT??

), feeling all wistful about my ponytailed childhood and even at one point veering precariously down Taylor Dayne lane.

Don’t worry, I reeled myself back in.

So now I’m passing on the torture to you.

Even when it’s not playing, I hear it. Maybe it appeals to me because I too play the tambourine and fling playing cards across the floor at random.

A little blast from the past. Henry likes his weeners like he likes his broads: short n’ fat.

This morning, as soon as I woke up, I got in one of my bi-polar cleaning snits. Every room of this house was making me freak out and kick things, and then I called Henry and took it out on him too. When I came home from taking Chooch to school, I sat down and put on Gary Numan’s Exile album in an effort to calm myself down. And then all the memories came flooding back.

It was October of 1999. I desperately needed to find a new place to live after getting (wrongfully) evicted from my current apartment. (That’s a whole different story.) My dad had found this great duplex in Brookline and I was waiting impatiently for the landlord to call me back after I filled out the application. Renting this house was all I could think about; back then, it was a great space—HUGE for one person. Granted, this was before a boyfriend, cats and a kid would shit all over its value. (In some cases, literally.)

During this time, I was going through a heavy Gary Numan phase. Not so much Tubeway Army-era, but his more current, sludge-y Goth work. One night, in my apartment, I had fallen asleep on the couch* listening to his Exile (Extended) album on repeat and had one of the most vivid nightmares of my life, of which I still have flashbacks even to this day.

(*When I lived in that apartment, I slept on the couch every night because some old bitch always had her TV blaring 24:7 on the other side of my bedroom wall and no matter where I moved my bed, I could hear it and it was slowly making me want to take a pickaxe to her face. I even complained to the landlady about this, but that bitch was in bed with all the other old ass people living in that complex, which led to my eventual eviction.)

In the dream, I was rollerskating down highways at night, frantically trying to get to the house in Brookline. I was totally out of control, skating over medians and down cobblestone hills, unable to stop. But finally, I made it to the street. In the dream, the house had an enclosed front porch (in real life, my house does not have a front porch); I let myself in and had to squeeze my way around bikes, toys, stacked furniture, debris in various stages of decomposition. Clearly, someone was still someone living there.

Squatting down in a corner was a little girl with black hair, dressed in a nightgown. She said, “You can’t go in there, Erin.”

I asked her how she knew my name.

“Marcy told me,” she said in a monotone, and then her eyes flashed red and I woke up totally freaked the fuck out. (Marcy is my evil cat, if you didn’t already know.)

Thirteen years later and I can’t wait to get the fuck out of the house I had to rent. Thirteen years is way too long to have been renting the same place.  In my dream, I was told I couldn’t go in there, and now I feel like I can’t get out. I’m so unhappy here.

Morocco 1993. I was so excited to ride a camel. Pretty sure my Aunt Sharon intentionally cut off my head, making this probably the prettiest picture of me ever.

My history with camels suck.

I was looking for a picture of myself when I dressed as a clown for my third Halloween, and ended up finding this picture, too. I have something like three photos in total of my birth dad who died right before my third birthday, and of course there’d be a clown in one.

Now I’m all sad.

(Originally posted during the winter of 2008, what what.)

The first time I was there was the summer of 2000.

There’s this Quaker cemetery out in Perryopolis. Supposed to be haunted or some shit. We should go –  it was one of those glimmering moments of spontaneity that, on a boring summer’s night, sounded a lot more interesting that the usual routine of getting drunk on my porch. I was a little wary that the person hatching this plan was my friend Justin, who had a bad track record of insisting he knew the exact coordinates of various haunted hot spots (13 Bends was the bane of my existence back then because of him), and then like a bad record on repeat, we’d inevitably wind up lost with the gas tank on E and a few empty bags of Corn Nuts.

Our friend Keri wanted to accompany us, so I felt a little better because she was always the responsible one. If you were going to get lost, break down, get a condom lodged inside of you, Keri was the girl you’d want with you. She also didn’t scare easily, so I quietly planned to wedge myself between the two of them once (if) we arrived.

The Quaker Cemetery was (supposedly) around 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, but the trip didn’t take long in my Eagle Talon considering my propensity for driving it like a dragster. As we approached the town of Perryopolis, I silently hoped that we would be unable to find the cemetery in the dark, of that it didn’t exist, or that the Earth opened up to engulf it every night after midnight. Maybe there would be a fence too dangerous to scale, Hounds of Hell snarling and tied to posts at the entrance, an exorbitant after hours admission fee implemented by Satan.

The area was rural. We coasted past a few farms and even fewer houses. The uneven asphalt was littered with loose pebbles and sticks, which clinked and snapped under the tires; the streetlights did little to alleviate my uneasiness. Unfortunately, Justin must have polished his navigational bearings, because after having me make a few turns, he told me to pull over.

“This is it,” he said, leaning in between the front seats and looking out my window. We kind of just sat there, real still, not speaking, until Keri finally went for the door handle. We all filed out and crossed the dark, quiet street. It was too dark to see the cemetery from where we stood, and after hesitating to see who would step up to take the lead, we finally took the plunge in tandem and began climbing the slight hill before us.

Halfway up the slope, we could make out a wrought iron fence, the kind you would expect to wreathe an old, small town cemetery. My eyes searched for the tombstones, the meat of the graveyard. That’s when I saw it, my first glimpse of the old stone house in the middle of the small plot of land. Suddenly, it wasn’t what lay beneath the ground that frightened me.

“I don’t like the looks of that place,” I whispered hoarsely to Keri and Justin.

“What the fuck is it, a church?” Justin asked no one in particular, squinting his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“I’m not climbing no fucking fence,” Keri spat, arms crossed. She was always the kill joy of the group. Me, I’d go along with just about anything, no matter how terrified I was, mainly because my adrenaline would overtake my common sense every single time. (And I would always do what the boys told me.) But Keri, she’d get so far and then stop. Or conveniently conjure up a head ache. That girl has headaches like Michelle Duggar has babies.

Just then, the dull roar of an engine resounded from further down the road. We all turned to look. Headlights eventually appeared over the crest in the curving road and the car began to decelerate. We continued to watch as it approached the base of the hill and slowed to a complete stop several yards away from my car, parked along the shoulder.

“Is it a cop?” Keri whispered.

The driver flashed the headlights. We were stapled to the soft ground under our feet. The driver blew the horn. We jumped. The driver laid on the horn, sending an atmosphere-rippling siren through the once-quiet night. All three of us screamed and turned to run back to my car. We shoved each other ruthlessly, none of us wanting to be in the back.

My car was parked directly across the base of the hill. The rogue car still idled in the same position a few yards away on the opposite side of the road, continuing to blare the chilling horn. We made it to my car, slamming into the side of it, hugging it like it was the most cuddly home base of all time. I fumbled for my keys and dropped them on the road as I tried frantically to sort through the menagerie of plush over-sized key chains. Keri and Justin were swearing and screaming at me. I was crying.

The bully car continued to intimidate us with the horn-blaring while I unlocked my door and reached across the inside to unlock the passenger door. Keri and Justin both tried to get in my uterus-sized two-door Talon at once, prolonging their success. Once they were in, I gunned it, not even bothering to steal a look at the driver of the opposing car as we squealed past it.

We drove in silence until the poorly-lit country roads spilled us out onto the highway where we took refuge among the traffic.

Only then did anyone dare speak.

“I don’t know what you guys were so scared for. It was probably just some teenager having some fun, trying to scare us,” Justin said, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.

*****

The weather was unseasonably spring-like on Sunday, so Henry, Chooch and I piled into the car and drove south to take some pictures and enjoy the rare opportunity to drive with the windows down. Our plan was to go out to Uniontown, a small town at the base of the mountains, and get some nice country photographs.

We took Rt. 51, which leads straight from Pittsburgh to Uniontown. It also passes through Perryopolis on the way.

“Hey, there’s this old Quaker Cemetery out here. We should try to find it,” I casually suggested, recognizing that the right hand turn into farm country was coming up. What better way to spend a beautiful Sunday with the kid and manservant? Field trip to the haunted cemetery! C’mon boy, let’s get our desecratin’ on, I should have hollered to Chooch.

Henry found it without mishap (evidently the road it’s on is called Quaker Cemetery Road, so Henry figured it was a safe bet we were on the right road). When I reached the crest of the small hill, I spotted the stone house with it’s corrugated tin roof, ominously gaping front door and windows that stared out like empty eye sockets.

I wasn’t scared this time, finding bravery in the sunlight, and I marched right through the cemetery archway and started taking pictures. Probably, if I was someone other than myself, the first thing I’d do, I’d go straight inside that stone shack and start poking around there, too. But I was cautious. I let Henry go inside first while I admired the various hues of beer bottle shards as they sparkled in the sun. The shards wrapped around the front of the house, like a moat in front of an alcoholic’s castle. I was sad that no one ever invites me to party in creepy cemetery houses.

Henry went inside first, getting some shots of the interior. I asked him if he felt scared when he was in there and he gave me that “don’t be an asshole” sneer. Still, I lingered near the door while Henry and Chooch retreated somewhere in the back, behind the house. I thought I heard shuffling coming from inside the house, but I shook the idea out of my mind and went in.

The inside was sheltered by a roof made up of thin wooden slats. It looked unstable, like I could be buried under it at any given moment. The walls were mostly blue and covered in graffiti. I tried to read it all, as much as I could before my bravery reserve was drained, but there was nothing very interesting. No Hail Satans or Human Sacrifice FTW!s to be found; just an abundance of generic “_____ was here”s and ambiguous initials.

Each end of the room had a fireplace. Henry said later that he had wanted to get all up in it and see what was going on in the chimney’s guts, but he never said why he didn’t follow through. Because he was scared, that’s why. I can only imagine how much clenching he had to do to keep from shitting his pants when he was in there alone.

Still afraid of the being impaled by a collapsing slat of wood, I started to walk out. Henry completely doesn’t believe me, and probably no one else will either, but as I started to step through the doorway, I heard a chorus of whispering coming from the left corner of the room. I SWEAR TO GOD. I swore to God when I was telling Henry about it too and he was like, “You can’t swear to something you don’t believe in” so I changed my pledge of honesty to Satan instead and Henry started in on that bullshit about how you can’t believe in one and not the other and I was like, “Shut up, stop acting like you’re religious” and he said if there was no God and just Satan, then the world would be way worse than it is now and I said, “No, Satan’s just lazy is all” and that’s about as deep as the two of us get into theological debates. Our next one is scheduled for 2030. As if Henry will still be living then.

After the whole whispering episode, I was pretty much in a huge hurry to leave. If you buy into legends and ghost stories, it’s said that the meeting house was where witches were taken to be killed. I really hope the whispering I heard belonged to Glinda.

Later that day, I was reading a website about the cemetery and it says, “There are also stories of certain graves being cursed, meaning that if you stand at them, or read the writing on the head stone, you could have bad luck or die.”

Awesome. Nice knowing you, Chooch.

2007

2008

2009

2011

2012 :(

I have to go back and try to get some souvenir wood.

This band got me through the weekend. If this show was tonight and not November 27th, I would feel a lot better.

———-

Eight years ago, someone close to me was killed. Not close as in we were good friends, but  close in that our jobs required us to see each other’s faces for 8 hours a day. His death has always bothered me because mere days before it happened, I had found myself in a screaming match with his dad – my boss. A screaming match about him, which ultimately led to me and my co-worker Carol storming out and never looking back.

I walked into that job in 2000 with all the naïve confidence and self-esteem of a 20-year-old girl and all I took with me 4 years later was a trauma-derived stutter and a crippling fear of offices which would leave me unemployed for nearly 3 years—the beginning of an avalanche of financial duress which we are still trying to clean up.

(And Henry. I got Henry out of the deal.)

I know his death wasn’t my fault, that’s not really what this is about. And I kind of feel too mixed up and sad and tired to try and explain, because explaining means going into the whole story. And the whole story is a saga, really, which I’m technically not permitted to share, a stipulation of the settlement I was awarded after a mediation with the EEOC.

But, maybe someday.

Eight years later, I still have nightmares about what happened. The flashbacks to the phone call. He’s still alive in my dreams. I still think I see him sometimes when I’m out. (This just happened on Saturday. That “Oh shit, it’s—-wait. No, he’s dead” heart-clutching moment.) And that is how I ended up standing awkwardly in a Jewish cemetery yesterday morning, looking for a closure which may or may not exist.

I had wanted to do this back in 2004, but I just wasn’t ready. But I needed to see it yesterday. Chooch—had he been born a day earlier, would have shared his birthday with this man’s death day—helped me lay down wildflowers along the gravestone. Chooch kept asking me questions that I wasn’t ready to answer.

I couldn’t stop staring at his picture etched into the marble.

We went to see Speck and Don at the pet cemetery after that, and that’s where I really cried, which is what I have needed to do for weeks now. Smiling (and laughing like a crazy person) through the sadness only gets us so far before we eventually have to deal with it.

March, 2009. God, I miss that hoodie. I mean, those days. (?)

This is in my Top 10 all time favorite songs, easily; I still get chills when I hear it. Henry suffered through many nights of me crying inconsolably every time COLD played this song live. There were times when I considered not going to their concerts because I wasn’t sure if I was emotionally stable enough to handle it. I can’t explain it! Most people would just write them off as a nu-metal band and be done with it, but ever since the very first time I saw them in 2000, playing on the smallest stage to a crowd of about 50 at Pittsburgh’s X-Fest, I had the air ripped right out of my lungs and they have been like an aural security blanket to me ever since — every so often I just really need to revisit their music to feel like myself again.

But this song. It was never one of their hits (see: “Just Got Wicked” and “No One.” Ignore: “Stupid Girl.”), and it never even really stuck out to me when I’d play their CD, but then I heard Scooter Ward sing the words live at Nick’s Fat City that same summer of 2000, and I remember looking at my friend Shawn and mouthing the words, “I think I might die.”

2:47 – 3:21 is where I usually hold my breath.

“Gave all the vampires back to God [that day]” is the tag line on the checks for my checking account (“Whoa, Wolfman’s got nards” is on the ones I share with Henry – props if you get that reference without asking the good neighbor Google). I have always been utterly fascinated with that line, and Scooter Ward, who happens to be one of the nicest, modest and sharing frontmen I have ever encountered. Twelve years ago, he gave me a Starburst outside of a venue in Hershey, PA and I still have it; I keep it in the freezer every summer so it won’t melt. Scooter Ward is the absolute antithesis of Jonny Craig – he bleeds on that stage.

And besides, how could I not love a band that used to take the stage to the Halloween theme, their guitarist Terry Balsamo behind a Michael Myers mask?

No joke, I went in the kitchen and hugged Henry while playing this song a few minutes ago. Now I’m going to listen to it 87 more times before passing out in a Puddle of Mud. Just kidding — tears.

Here is some shit from an old notebook-cum-scrapbook from 1996.

I have no memory of a Steve that I loved. If we went to high school together and you know of this Steve who inspired such block-lettered proclamations, please enlighten me. (Or if you ARE Steve, then heyyyyy buddy, hit a bitch up.)

I REALLY liked Bone Thugs n Harmony.

And Luniz. (My mom had 5 on it, apparently.)

Lisa and I pretty much kept the Pleasant Hills Denny’s in business. I ate a lifetime worth of caesar salads there and have absolutely no taste for them now. Lisa probably looked so sad because we weren’t currently listening to one of my famous sex song- and rap-laden mix tapes. I get it, Lisa.

God, I simultaneously hate and miss those days.

Prologue:

Sometime in high school, I made the implausible leap from gangsta rap-lovin’ yo-girl to a classic rock hussy. One particular band I had an intense liking for was .38 Special, of all bands. I would listen to the classic rock station all day with a blank tape on the ready, waiting for “Caught Up In You” to come on so I could dive into some frenzied finger-stubbing “record” action.

My friend Lisa, who was into more alternative music, was probably the happiest of all my friends when I retired my gritty urban flava mix tapes in favor for music that didn’t scare, offend and irritate her. So in 1997, when I asked her to go see .38 Special with me, she was more than happy to agree.

I’m sure it didn’t hurt that my mom was buying the tickets for us.

The day of the show, my boyfriend Psycho Mike came to my house. He didn’t want me to go to the concert and thought that starting a fight with me would suddenly make my head clear so I could understand the error of my ways.

“You’re going to end up fucking some drunk guy!” he yelled, his eyes getting that crazy glint to them, like the time he told me he was going to poke out my eyes and shove them up my vagina. “Maybe even more than one!”

Yes, Mike. You’re right. Foiled again!

He left in a huff. Soon Lisa had arrived and we left for the Rostraver Ice Garden. Not surprisingly, we were the clear winners in the “Youngest Concert-Goers” category, and probably the only one who didn’t have the Harley-Davidson logo somewhere on their person.

During Molly Hatchet and another opening band that Lisa totally loved but I can’t remember anything about other than their wildly crimped and Aqua Netted manes, we took in the sheer fury of shaking mullets, over-sized tie-dyed shirts, and leather-vested bikers showing off prison-quality ink on their forearms. I loved every second of it. It was fun and the energy of the crowd was contagious.

During the bands, we made friends with a completely blitzed cradle robber named Nelson and his slightly sober and calmer sidekick Nick.

Sadly, if I were to revenge-cheat on Psycho Mike, Nelson and Nick were probably the cream of the crop from that crowd. I think Nelson sloshed his beer on Lisa.

Goddammit I loved that shirt. It was metallic! I didn’t love that hair though. I remember I had gotten a horrible hair cut at Fantastic Sam’s of all places (the only time I ever deviated from the fluffy salons I usually go to and immediately learned why I pay so much to get my hair done – so it will look GOOD) and spent the next month and a half pulling what was left of my hair back into ponytails.

Side bar: A few years ago, I was riding in the car with Henry, my mom and Corey after a night of haunted houses. “Caught Up In You” came on the radio and I shouted, “Yes! I love this song!” My mom, ever so casually, goes, “Huh. This is the song that was on the radio when I was driving to the hospital after your father wrecked.” You know, the wreck that killed him when I was three-years-old, no biggie.

Thirteen years later, I had just come home from seeing the Used in Cleveland; it was 3:00 in the morning and I was about to pass out on the couch when I noticed I had a voicemail from Lisa, who was living in Colorado at the time. The message on my phone started out with her humming something vaguely discernible before belting out “So caught up in you, little girl!” She went on to sing for a few more seconds before stopping to add, “So I’m at a supermarket right now and this song came on; I had to call and sing it to you.”

Not going to lie, that kind of meant the world to me.

***

NOW:

Lisa texted me late Friday night and said, “Did you know .38 Special is playing at the Rib Fest this Sunday night for FREE!?” No, I did not know this! And just like that, I now had plans for Sunday night. You’ll never get me to go to something like this unless some relic of the 1980s music scene is going to be spitting forth free jams, like Eddie Money (where I got busted for videotaping, are you kidding me) and Bad Company.

BAD COMPANY!

[A few summers ago, my old neighbor Robin (she’s since moved and life in Brookline just hasn’t been the same) was slinking around her front yard in one of her standard terry cloth tube clothes, to the tune of Bad Company’s Greatest Hits. That was a good day.]

Since Lisa’s husband Matt was going too (an attendance for which he said she owed him), Henry said he would go too so his mom came over to babysit and we actually had one of those date things. Lisa’s friends Carrie and Wes met us down there too, so we had a legit posse which made me feel safe against all of the Steelers propaganda. (It was at Heinz Field, probably the closest I’ll ever get to that place considering my extreme dislike of football.)

At one point, I realized I had meat sweats, which was impressive considering I don’t eat meat.

But if anything was going to convert me, it was going to be the goddamn Rib Fest.

OMG, it smelled so good.

OMG and so many trophies! How can you argue with trophies?!

And then Henry spend $5 on a black cherry old-fashioned soda for me, can you even believe it? I only had to beg him for 10 minutes and then point out all of the other men who supplied their ladies with flavored wets in a tin cup.

Wow, it really was a date, you guys.

And since Henry was surrounded by barbequed flesh, about to see an age-appropriate band, he couldn’t even PRETEND to frown.

Pork samples keep my man placated.

The King of Meat! He was my favorite person there, even after he creepily demanded that Lisa take his picture with me after this. I was like, “Oh no, I couldn’t possibly—” but then his meat-hand was around my waist and I was all, “Oh! Ok…”

He made me feel like my cleavage was on point, so I made Henry go back and patronize his booth for some mac n cheese and cornbread.

I just don’t eat enough cornbread, and that’s a goddamn shame.

We soon realized that .38 Special wasn’t coming on until 9:00, two hours later than we thought. So we walked down to Rivertown, where Lisa, Matt, Henry and our waiter Mike held my hand as I took babysteps into beer-liking.

In my 33 years, I have not once been able to drink beer without clamping shut my nose. But a co-worker suggested Summer Shandy, which I just had Saturday night (along with a Lemon Berry Shandy), and while it took me 2.5 hours to drink it, I DRANK IT GODDAMMIT. And it was not too bad.

Mike kept pushing me to get the Woodchuck Fall, but hard cider is always my fall-back when I go to bars and all my normal friends are drinking beer like it’s water. So I got some Belgian white thing which wasn’t very bad but I still had to drink it slowly, and then I eventually just gave it to Henry (after drinking more than a third of it!!).

With Matt and Henry shaking their heads in the background, Lisa let me try her IPA; my tastebuds promptly curled up and died, reanimated and gnawed off the back of my throat.

(I am open to your beer-sampling suggestions, my friends. Just remember that I have a very weak and girly ale palate.)

Since I’m not a beer-drinker, that was enough to get me a little buzzed, so I was even more stoked for .38 Special. Plus, this enabled me to better fit in with my beer-breath brethren.

“We’re going to see .38 Special now, aren’t you jealous?” Lisa said mockingly to Mike the Waiter.

“Actually, I kind of am!” Mike said. “‘I Want You To Want Me’, right?” he offered as proof that he knew who we were talking about.

No, Mike. That’s Cheap Trick.

.38 SPECIAL!!! Oh my god, it was so much fun! The crowd was a perfect cross-section of middle-aged couples reliving their youth, from aging biker-babes now with literal saddle bags to 50-year-old men in polo shirts and khaki shorts clinging to their yuppie-youth. Before the show started, Lisa and I were talking about the last time we them in 1998, and how long ago that was.

“The last time I saw them was in 1980,” Henry said dourly, and we all got a good laugh at his age. Oh god, I hope he wore a Confederate flag belt buckle with his bitchin’ Adidas shirt.

(To give you some perspective, Lisa and I would have been 1.)

Lisa and I were so amped for the first 30-45 minutes, even during the medley of songs we didn’t know. Three songs in, I turned to her and shouted, “I don’t remember there being two singers!”

She just shrugged.

Henry even made physical contact with me numerous times, like we were a real couple or something. It was amazing, but then I realized he probably felt more comfortable doing so at a show where he was part of his own generation.

Then a mid-40s drunk couple drunkenly pushed past us and began drunkenly dancing and copulating through their Coors Light-sloshed boat clothes. I guess Southern Rock is the next best thing when there’s no yacht rock shows going on in town. The woman was unattractive, squat like a troll, and dressed like a nondescript mom. The man had on a white polo and jean shorts and looked like he probably worked for an insurance company or sold swimming pools. They were extremely amusing to watch as they staggeredly gyrated against each others’ clothed genitals, and the woman kept doing these washed-up stripper body rolls which was vomit-inducing in and of itself, but when she dragged one sultry hand down the man’s back, across his ass and then IN BETWEEN HIS LEGS, I had to look away. The look in her eyes was crying out, “PORN DIRECTORS! LOOK AT ME! OVER HERE!” and I felt sleaz(ier) by association.

I started to record this lascivious display, but then they moved on, becoming engulfed by the crowd. I thought it was because she caught me taping them with my phone, but I think they just felt it was time to unleash their classic rock burlesque show on fresh eyes.

This sums up the set list:

WOOOOO ROCKIN’ INTO THE NIGHT!

WAIT, THIS ISN’T STILL ROCKIN’ INTO THE NIGHT? OH, THIS IS ROUGH-HOUSING? WHY DOES IT SOUND JUST LIKE ROCKIN’ INTO THE NIGHT?

WOOOOO I HAVEN’T RECOGNIZED THE LAST 4 SONGS THEY JUST PLAYED!

YESSSS, FANTASY GIRL!!!

OMG, PLAY CAUGHT UP IN YOU, ALREADY.

I DON’T KNOW THIS SONG. That’s because it’s Lynyrd Skynyrd. I STILL DON’T KNOW THIS SONG.

OMFG CAUGHT UP IN YOU!

I WONDER WHICH OF THESE SONGS HENRY LOST HIS VIRGINITY TO?!!?

OMFG HOLD ON LOOSELY!

I also learned that Henry knows A LOT about .38 Special and was answering all sorts of questions for us. Like when there was this somber moment in between songs while the one singer was talking about his brother and then we realized, “Wait…his brother was Ronnie Van Zant?!?” and Henry was like, “Um, yeah!” And then when they sang, “Second Chance” and Lisa and I exchanged confused looks and shouted to Henry, “Wait, this is .38 SPECIAL!?” He said yes, but we didn’t believe him. Lisa was even trying to Shazam it at one point, when Henry sighed and showed us his phone. If GOOGLE says it’s so…

I always thought it was a Steve Perry song. I guess I shouldn’t have made fun of the 21-year-old girl in front of me who said, “And ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’!” when John Burnett from KDKA got on stage and rattled off a number of their big hits when introducing the band.

(I’m still dwelling on this a day later. “But it doesn’t even SOUND like them!” I cried just now to Henry. “That’s because it was sung by their keyboardist!” he shouted irritably, ready to close this chapter.)

Then we were subjected to a five-minute drum solo in a song that was written for the Super Troopers soundtrack, and Lisa and I both started to taper off. But they hadn’t played “Hold On Loosely” or “Caught Up In You” yet, so I remained firmly planted in my spot.

Does a song on the Super Troopers soundtrack (appropriately named “Trooper with an Attitude”) really need a drum solo?

Of course, they saved their two biggest songs for the end. When they sang, “Caught Up In You,” I thought I was going to die. Memories of driving around, waiting for the classic rock radio station to fulfill my request.

(I used to call CONSTANTLY asking for it; one time they played “Hold On Loosely” and I was supremely disappointed, but let’s face it, that song is pretty fucking great too.)

Lisa whipped out her hair brush and serenaded me and all of a sudden I was 18 again, with a 47-year-old man pressed up against me. Yep, sounds about right.

The company was quality, the music was fun and nostalgic, and the people-watching was prime. I really needed that night. After Henry came back from taking his babysitting mom home, he admitted on his accord that he had a lot of fun, and even THANKED me for forcing him to go.

You guys: HENRY HAD FUN.

I mean, of course he did. He was surrounded by smoked meat, Southern Rock, and had a girlfriend who was STILL younger (and with better, less reptilian skin) than most of the other women around that stage. What could have possibly been bad about that? Clearly, we need to add .38 Special to the imaginary set list for our Never-Wedding.

Henry’s heyday, reflected upon his eyeglasses. I get the biggest kick out of seeing him in his own scene.

***

I wondered out loud why it was taking Henry forever to wake up this morning.

Chooch said, “Um, he’s probably TIRED. He was with you for a LONG TIME last night, probably somewhere he didn’t want to be.”

For once, son, you are wrong!