Take me down to the Paradise City
While I was helping Jake pack last week, Guns n' Roses' "Paradise City" came on his stereo. It reminded me of this little piece of my personal history I recorded last fall, and I'm reprinting it below (Even if anyone's reading my Tumblr now, I'm almost certain no one was reading it in November.)
I'll always remember the first time I heard Appetite for Destruction. It was the summer after I graduated high school, and my friend Allan invited me and another friend of his, a girl from Federal Way or some other godforsaken burb on the south end, to a traveling carnival. Allan I loaded ourselves into his dad's pickup--an ancient vehicle, spotted with cement-gray primer and lacking seat belts, which were not legally mandated at the time.
We drove to the sticks, the outskirts of the outskirts. The roads were bordered by drainage ditches rather than sidewalks, and suburban kids like myself were made uncomfortably aware of the deep black night that sodium streetlamps mask in our own neighborhoods. It was just dusk when we pulled up to a squat row-housing development where Allan's friend Annie lived in a one-bedroom unit. I didn't know how she and Allan had met and never even thought to ask. If I had to guess I'd say their mothers were friends.
Annie's place was lined in faux-wood paneling (the same preprinted "knot" repeated itself on every panel) and had little furniture. Nothing in her living room looked as if it had ever been new. In the entryway, there was a picture of her holding a baby. I asked her who the baby was. It was her son. I asked her where her son was, and she vaguely replied that her mother had him, that her mother had him most of the time because Annie "couldn't handle him." I asked her where she worked, and she said she didn't. I asked her how she had her own place, then, and she said that she was on some kind of assistance program.
She was asking me questions in return; this wasn't an interrogation. It's just that my answers were comparatively dull and not worth recounting, a paint-by-numbers life. I finished school. I was going to the UW in the autumn. I would major in political science.
I had never met anyone my age who had a child. A girl who was in Allan's and my high-school class had had a baby, but I knew her only on sight, and her baby had died when he was three months old. (Interestingly, that girl had married the baby's father while pregnant, and they remained married after the death of their son. At our ten-year reunion, they showed off pictures of their three surviving children. My experience with teen pregnancy had scarcely been typical.)
Annie filled a thermos with Jack Daniels and juice, and the three of us headed out. She put her copy of Appetite for Destruction, which she said she was never without, into the truck's cassette player. The tinny stereo did the album no justice. No one minded because Annie was deliriously happy to be out of the house, listening to Guns n' Roses, and her delirium was infectious. She rewound "Paradise City," her favorite of favorites, over and over again till we all three knew every word.
By the time we pulled into a dirt parking lot overlooked by a staggeringly creaky Ferris wheel, opening the pickup's heavy doors to the sounds of half-delighted half-terrfied shrieking, we felt we must, in fact, be arriving in Paradise City. Our Jack-infused singing must have conjured it, the song was imbued with such power. I know now it was just like every other exurban carnival, but I was seventeen and it seemed to light up the heavens.
I don't remember specific festivities we engaged in, because Allan and I had to act as caretakers for an increasingly intoxicated Annie. She had commandeered her thermos and neither of us had the heart to wrest it from her. We ran into her baby's daddy and a seemingly endless string of other people who were pleased to snub her. She had gone to high school very nearby and was a known entity at the carnival. And I know this sounds naive, I know that by that age I should have known this, but I really didn't understand that she was so ostracized because of her baby. She was open and sweet with me. There was no evident reason for her to be widely disliked. A baby is just a baby.
It was like taking a charming puppy for a walk and having passersby spit on its fur. The spite on people's faces when they recognized Annie was incomprehensible, almost laughable. And the scowls that were aimed at her were transitive; they denigrated me as well. I didn't care; I was a stranger. Let them loathe me.
After we'd spent all we were willing to expend on ride tickets, nutritionally-devoid food, and rigged midway games, Annie was drunk and upset and ready for bed. Allan draped one of her arms around his shoulders, and I took her opposite arm and slung it around mine. This made it both easier and more trying for her to make it back to the car--Allan had a half-foot of height on us girls and none of us could match the others' strides.
But at that point I had to flank Annie, to literally hold her up where others had been pushing her down, had to show some sort of solidarity against the curled lips, the rolled eyes, the exchanges of whispers through cupped hands. These gestures had followed her throughout the night. Sometimes she would see me watching them and acknowledge them, tell me the names of those who pointedly turned away, but for the most part we tried our damndest to pretend we didn't see. I did not feel the taint of embarrassment by our association, as I might have a few years prior. After three years of spending my lunch hour in the library in order to avoid facing my own classmates, I was an infuriated backer of any underdog.
Allan drove home with Annie between us. She alternated her head every few minutes, leaning first on Allan, then on me. It could have been restlessness or sheer pleasure in having two bodies to support her when she was so often alone.
As with the outbound trip, we listened to "Paradise City" again and again and again. Annie whispered the words this time, her voice hoarse and teary, and I whispered along with her.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Just an urchin livin' under the street.
I'm a hard case that's tough to beat.
I'm your charity case, buy me something to eat.
I'll pay you at another time.
Take it to the end of the line.
Rags to riches, or so they say.
You gotta keep pushin' for the fortune and fame.
You know it's all a gamble when it's just a game.
You treat it like a capital crime.
Everybody's doin' the time.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber;
Why I'm here I can't quite remember.
The Surgeon General says it's hazardous to breathe.
I'd have another cigarette, but I can't see.
Tell me who you're gonna believe.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
So far away.
So far away.
So far away.
So far away.
Captain America's been torn apart.
Now he's a court jester with a broken heart.
He said, "Turn me around and take me back to the start.
I must be losin' my mind." Are you blind?
I've seen it all a million times.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna go.
I wanna go.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna see.
How could it be?
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down.
Take me 'round.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna see.
How could it be?
Oh, take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna go.
I wanna go.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I never saw Annie again. Her baby is now older than she was on that night we spent at the carnival.
A few months later I was off to college and fell in with a crowd of metalheads from the eighth floor of my dorm. I copied their tapes onto blank cassettes that I bought in bulk. I bought my own music and shared that as well--we were all music communists, although the metalheads had little interest in my David Bowie and Peter Gabriel. One of the metalheads loaned me Appetite for Destruction. I still have the liner notes I made for my copy, the song titles penned in neat block letters.
Every time I listened to "Paradise City" I thought of Annie. I wonder where she is.
I'll always remember the first time I heard Appetite for Destruction. It was the summer after I graduated high school, and my friend Allan invited me and another friend of his, a girl from Federal Way or some other godforsaken burb on the south end, to a traveling carnival. Allan I loaded ourselves into his dad's pickup--an ancient vehicle, spotted with cement-gray primer and lacking seat belts, which were not legally mandated at the time.
We drove to the sticks, the outskirts of the outskirts. The roads were bordered by drainage ditches rather than sidewalks, and suburban kids like myself were made uncomfortably aware of the deep black night that sodium streetlamps mask in our own neighborhoods. It was just dusk when we pulled up to a squat row-housing development where Allan's friend Annie lived in a one-bedroom unit. I didn't know how she and Allan had met and never even thought to ask. If I had to guess I'd say their mothers were friends.
Annie's place was lined in faux-wood paneling (the same preprinted "knot" repeated itself on every panel) and had little furniture. Nothing in her living room looked as if it had ever been new. In the entryway, there was a picture of her holding a baby. I asked her who the baby was. It was her son. I asked her where her son was, and she vaguely replied that her mother had him, that her mother had him most of the time because Annie "couldn't handle him." I asked her where she worked, and she said she didn't. I asked her how she had her own place, then, and she said that she was on some kind of assistance program.
She was asking me questions in return; this wasn't an interrogation. It's just that my answers were comparatively dull and not worth recounting, a paint-by-numbers life. I finished school. I was going to the UW in the autumn. I would major in political science.
I had never met anyone my age who had a child. A girl who was in Allan's and my high-school class had had a baby, but I knew her only on sight, and her baby had died when he was three months old. (Interestingly, that girl had married the baby's father while pregnant, and they remained married after the death of their son. At our ten-year reunion, they showed off pictures of their three surviving children. My experience with teen pregnancy had scarcely been typical.)
Annie filled a thermos with Jack Daniels and juice, and the three of us headed out. She put her copy of Appetite for Destruction, which she said she was never without, into the truck's cassette player. The tinny stereo did the album no justice. No one minded because Annie was deliriously happy to be out of the house, listening to Guns n' Roses, and her delirium was infectious. She rewound "Paradise City," her favorite of favorites, over and over again till we all three knew every word.
By the time we pulled into a dirt parking lot overlooked by a staggeringly creaky Ferris wheel, opening the pickup's heavy doors to the sounds of half-delighted half-terrfied shrieking, we felt we must, in fact, be arriving in Paradise City. Our Jack-infused singing must have conjured it, the song was imbued with such power. I know now it was just like every other exurban carnival, but I was seventeen and it seemed to light up the heavens.
I don't remember specific festivities we engaged in, because Allan and I had to act as caretakers for an increasingly intoxicated Annie. She had commandeered her thermos and neither of us had the heart to wrest it from her. We ran into her baby's daddy and a seemingly endless string of other people who were pleased to snub her. She had gone to high school very nearby and was a known entity at the carnival. And I know this sounds naive, I know that by that age I should have known this, but I really didn't understand that she was so ostracized because of her baby. She was open and sweet with me. There was no evident reason for her to be widely disliked. A baby is just a baby.
It was like taking a charming puppy for a walk and having passersby spit on its fur. The spite on people's faces when they recognized Annie was incomprehensible, almost laughable. And the scowls that were aimed at her were transitive; they denigrated me as well. I didn't care; I was a stranger. Let them loathe me.
After we'd spent all we were willing to expend on ride tickets, nutritionally-devoid food, and rigged midway games, Annie was drunk and upset and ready for bed. Allan draped one of her arms around his shoulders, and I took her opposite arm and slung it around mine. This made it both easier and more trying for her to make it back to the car--Allan had a half-foot of height on us girls and none of us could match the others' strides.
But at that point I had to flank Annie, to literally hold her up where others had been pushing her down, had to show some sort of solidarity against the curled lips, the rolled eyes, the exchanges of whispers through cupped hands. These gestures had followed her throughout the night. Sometimes she would see me watching them and acknowledge them, tell me the names of those who pointedly turned away, but for the most part we tried our damndest to pretend we didn't see. I did not feel the taint of embarrassment by our association, as I might have a few years prior. After three years of spending my lunch hour in the library in order to avoid facing my own classmates, I was an infuriated backer of any underdog.
Allan drove home with Annie between us. She alternated her head every few minutes, leaning first on Allan, then on me. It could have been restlessness or sheer pleasure in having two bodies to support her when she was so often alone.
As with the outbound trip, we listened to "Paradise City" again and again and again. Annie whispered the words this time, her voice hoarse and teary, and I whispered along with her.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Just an urchin livin' under the street.
I'm a hard case that's tough to beat.
I'm your charity case, buy me something to eat.
I'll pay you at another time.
Take it to the end of the line.
Rags to riches, or so they say.
You gotta keep pushin' for the fortune and fame.
You know it's all a gamble when it's just a game.
You treat it like a capital crime.
Everybody's doin' the time.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber;
Why I'm here I can't quite remember.
The Surgeon General says it's hazardous to breathe.
I'd have another cigarette, but I can't see.
Tell me who you're gonna believe.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
So far away.
So far away.
So far away.
So far away.
Captain America's been torn apart.
Now he's a court jester with a broken heart.
He said, "Turn me around and take me back to the start.
I must be losin' my mind." Are you blind?
I've seen it all a million times.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna go.
I wanna go.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna see.
How could it be?
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
Take me down.
Take me 'round.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna see.
How could it be?
Oh, take me home.
Take me down to the Paradise City
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I wanna go.
I wanna go.
Oh, won't you please take me home?
I never saw Annie again. Her baby is now older than she was on that night we spent at the carnival.
A few months later I was off to college and fell in with a crowd of metalheads from the eighth floor of my dorm. I copied their tapes onto blank cassettes that I bought in bulk. I bought my own music and shared that as well--we were all music communists, although the metalheads had little interest in my David Bowie and Peter Gabriel. One of the metalheads loaned me Appetite for Destruction. I still have the liner notes I made for my copy, the song titles penned in neat block letters.
Every time I listened to "Paradise City" I thought of Annie. I wonder where she is.