Sleepy hours spent curled up with the male best friend on this side of the pond, talking smack and history, musing through my narcotic Soma daze. Relaxation bringing release.
Somehow, a few months ago, I just stopped being afraid anymore: afraid of all the little things that used to get to me, like socialising with strangers and telling people how I really feel. I suddenly find excusing myself from a conversation to be an ease instead of ravaging me with guilt. I don\’t have to try anymore, because I just am. Like everyone else around me, I just am.
The funny thing is, I\’ve been here all this time — all these years, I was right here, and they saw me and I saw them, but we never bothered to talk because I was too inhibited to start a conversation and they never bothered to try. Now I\’m getting hit with the one-two punch of, \”So, how do you know our mutual friend?\” from all sides, and after the first query I simply became quite rude about the whole thing. I just laughed and said, \”Well, shit, I\’ve known the Chief for years; I\’ve known him longer than you have, even, and I\’ve seen you around at nights off and on for the past two years, so how come you\’re only just now talking to me?\”
But I know why it is they\’re only just now talking to me. Before, I was living in a two-person world even when out in public. When you\’re a girl, and you\’re out with a guy, other guys just don\’t approach you unless they already know you. That\’s something I always knew while dating (anyone), and something I have always resented: that by having a satellite, I get lost in a separate universe with a gravitational pull that actually pushes everyone else away.
How often do people in monogamous two-person relationships manage to make new outside friendships that aren\’t other couples? In my experience, rarely, and so in my opinion, I missed out. Three\’s a crowd. And trying to have a night out without Dr Maude was always nigh near impossible.
Now that I\’m out and about again, I\’m suddenly seen as freshmeat. Grist for the rumour mill. Oh, she must be boinking so-and-so. She\’s so-and-so\’s little groupie. She\’s back in baby\’s arms. All that jazz. All that fucking shit that I don\’t need. But now that they think I\’m important, they feel the need to talk to me. Fuck them. I\’ve always been important (to our friend). I\’ve always been there (here). I\’ve never not been in his life while I\’ve known him, even when I was in Australia. But now, because I\’m not in a binded relationship, they feel they have to talk to me and welcome me into the fold. Fuck that. I\’ve always been in the fold. Where the hell have they been?
* * *
Then there\’s that other thing about being a girl. It\’s one thing to be a girl in a man\’s world, and it\’s another entirely to be a girl in a geekboy record collector\’s world. In the minds of many in this stagnating storage bin of dusty vinyl, I\’m considered a rare specimen: a solo operator. They think that as a girl, when I show up to a friend\’s dj nights, if the dj is a girl I am showing up because I\’m her friend and showing her support. If the dj is a guy, they think I\’m showing up because I\’m a groupie. A groupie. Rarely does it occur to them that I might be showing up also because I\’m actually interested in the music, that I might actually like music myself even if I don\’t dj. Because girls, as everyone in this world seems to know, if they don\’t dj, pretty much only every show up at nights when their significant others come out. All other girls are anomalies and must be approached with caution and extreme scepticism. Their loyalty must be questioned. Their roots, motives, and interests examined and debated. Don\’t bother talking music to them, but instead, around them.
Sure, go ahead, talk music AROUND me and then feel your head spin when I ask you about your \”Frankie Teardrop\” connection, asshole. Talk to the boy next to me about your deepest secret fantasies regarding metal bands and then wait for me to bust a nut laughing when you think Celtic Frost is an obscure reference.
Go ahead and treat me like a fucking accessory, like a fucking groupie, because if that\’s all you can imagine me as from the get-go, that\’s all I want to be to you and people like you. Then feel free to apologize afterward and tell me how individual I am and how interesting and everything else you want to say — feel completely fucking free to treat me like your new best friend, the greatest new find of all the fake diamonds in the rough city streets, treat me like a rising scene queen on her shakey platform heels — go right ahead and maybe even go so far as to say you underestimated me. Yup, feel free. Because I know that underneath all this newly grown respect, you still think of me on my back, sucking dick, another empty headed crotch riding her way through the food chain.
I\’ll play nice, but I know how you really feel: your first instinct with a woman is to think of her as a sex object, as an accessory, as the ride instead of being along for the ride. Groupies. We can\’t possibly actually like music on our own, no, couldn\’t be. We\’re just groupies. Just vag looking for someone to spin our tiny records. Well, baby, lemme tell you where you can shove your stylus; I know you\’ve had your head buried up there all your life but I think this arm might be a better fit. Just remember: real djs don\’t share needles.
God, I\’m not bitter. It\’s just that I had a bitter wine in lieu of dinner last night. No, not even that. It\’s just that I spent an evening being exposed to more irony and whine than even I can tolerate. And if you got that punny reference, shame on you! Shame!
* * *
I can\’t transcribe for shit, but this was me in high school. I hope that I\’ve grown up since then. I still appreciate devotion, but single-minded devotion to any one thing — even if it is the language of hip, the style of cool, the slavish record collecting and professed worship of the finer things in life — is no better than devoting yourself to the way of the mall, the way of Christianity, the way of any other thing that you (we) propose to hate with such passion. I don\’t understand why we don\’t see that any kind of devotion is a form of worship, and any form of worship is turning a blind eye to the rest of what is out there. Anyway… I get so tired of dealing with the single-minded crap. I want to meet more people who have greater diversity in tastes and outlooks. We all claim to love diversity in ways, lives, and thinking, but we so rarely embrace it, and more openly talk shit about it when \”among friends\”. We\’re all just hypocrites, really, thinking that our opinions matter more and our tastes are better because they\’re ours. And that\’s just about the shittiest thing I\’ve heard since I came home from Baltimore with explosive diarrhea last week.
That Girl
by Tender Trap
she would never believe
what she was taught in school
all their history
and their geography
better to read Patti Smith
and Simone de Beauvoir
to know how things are
that girl, that girl
has a second degree
in the language of cool
that girl, that girl
had a copy of \’her jazz\’
while she was at school
that girl
she likes to play suzy quatro
while she sits and reads
bought it at woolworth\’s
for ???
she knows the record was made
long before she was born
but it ???
??? good
that girl, that girl
knows all there is to know
about record sleeve art
that girl, that girl
thinks ??? a hero
??? hot
her record collection
separates women from men
sometimes she lets them mingle
then breaks it up again
that girl, that girl
knows all there is to know
about record sleeve art
that girl, that girl
thinks Travis are boring
and Le Tigre are smart
that girl
* * *
But actually, last night was a really good night, and aside from my way of grabbing ahold of small things that bug me (such as above) and ripping them to shreds, I had a really good time. I needed to get away from Dr Maude and the kid for awhile, and I needed to not be in a smoke-filled venue for a change while doing that. I think my lungs are collapsing.
The Chief and I went back to his like the old fogeys that we are, thinking it was hellaciously late and ready to crawl into bed and pass out…but it wasn\’t even nine pm yet. We curled up and talked for a few hours, instead. Good talking. Goddamn, I don\’t know how I managed to be in a relationship (with Dr Maude) for so long with someone I ended up not being able to talk with…not because I didn\’t want to, but because he just never seemed interested. It was painful, in so many ways. So it\’s really good now to be surrounded by (so many) friends and be filled constantly with conversation, laughter, and just general life. It seems pretty normal, in ways I never had before, and I really, really like it. I still very much consider myself a loner (\”She\’s the Artful Dodger, eh?\” as the Chief kept saying last night), but a lone wolf backed by a pack when I need them. It feels better. I feel better, about a lot of things.
Last night the Chief said to me that he was never sure why Dr Maude and I had been together in the first place. What was there that had brought us together? We got along, was all. We got along really well, really damn well, and it was incredibly comfortable right from the start. As Dr Maude says, we shared a certain gestalt. Unfortunately, I came to realize that though we shared a gestalt, we didn\’t necessarily have the same individual elements that make the whole — while we both may have added up to the same thing (at least for the first few years), we didn\’t really share exact individual interests or anything of that sort. Same ideas, different specifics. And over the years, our ideas — at least in my point of view — changed in different directions. So that\’s why Dr Maude and I were together. And it did work, at least for awhile, and when it worked it was good. It just doesn\’t work anymore.
* * *
Now I want to objectify someone. I\’ve known the Chief longer than I have Dr Maude — it\’s been almost three and a half years. I love the man, and he loves me. We have a friendship that no adjective I can think of is really adequate for as a descriptor. When we first met, we started out as lovers, but his friendship meant and means more to me than few lovers have. Knowing him has really changed my life in many ways, and he knows that. He brought up an interesting point last night and phrased it in a way that I had never considered before, but I think he\’s right: he\’s my muse. I can\’t remember how I reacted when he said that but I hope I laughed, because he\’s so brilliantly, fabulously right. But I\’m so used to being someone else\’s muse and fucking hating being told I\’m someone\’s muse, that to have the table turned was incredible. I\’ve had art, politics, life situations and the like inspire me before, but any one person that I\’m personally friends with, on a consistent basis, inspire me to create? I think only the Chief has ever done that for me. Next, he\’ll have to lay naked on some white sheets and play around with some fig leaves. Oh, wait… that\’s another thing entirely.
