Jan 01 - Death Becomes Her
Like most things, I found out about Anita's death on Myspace. I was upstairs in my little annex space in the attic of the Cuntree Club, in Brookline, Massachusetts, obsessing over boy-messages and any possible innuendo, hoping to hear from that dreamboat across the city. Modern Machines were finishing their downstairs, an emergency anti-show set up as an alternative to one going on in Cambridge - a member of one of the bands was an outed rapist. This was a feminist collective, after all. When I read Jaime's bulletin about Anita's services and a get-together for friends afterwards, I somehow floated down the two flights of stairs and crossed the house and the mass of people sitting in the kitchen.
I needed water. I wasn't doing so hot. Someone asked what was wrong and my insides exploded, a jumble of person inside a shivering skinshell.
Anita's dead, I said, we all knew it was bound to happen, but somehow it's still a shock. My knees gave and my throat burst open, my soul rushing to meet hers, pick up my little friend and say, Hello, I've missed you, goodbye. I went upstairs, all the while wailing, past the partiers, the bands, the broken banister, doorless bathroom, up the narrow impermanent stairs into the attic and sat on Kyle The Girl's wood chest by the window sill.
Kyle followed, and Jen Millis, and the other girls. There was nothing to say. Eventually everyone left but Kyle, who kept a hand on my knee a few moments longer, drunk, saying, life sure does suck, huh. I went to sleep in my little nook and in the morning there was a note from Kyle on top of me, a drawing of a monster and Sometimes Friendship Is All We Can Give. I still have it somewhere, in my current attic room, in a folder with all the things I've gotten too lazy to transfer to wall after wall of new house.
A couple days later I was fired from my landscaping job for not showing up and calling in with a cryptic Family Emergency. I wandered around Boston, empty, drunk on Sparks and the continual loss of friends. I bought a pair of sneakers at the thrift store. Drank iced coffee and energy drinks and more Sparks. Hung out in my friends' record store, sat on the couch and read zines, made horrible jokes. Panicked.
I needed to leave town, head to New Mexico to see my friends who were still living. After Devon came home from Olympia and shot himself, everyone seemed a bit edgier, a bit darker under that wide sky. Mainly it was the internet, as usual, that gave me those feelings. The cryptic survey bulletins, the empty cries for help, the lack of shows. When Anita died, although it was something we all expected in the back of our throats, I was worried about what could happen. That feeling rarely escapes me, the fear that whatever happens might be the trigger, the final gust of wind into the bush to pull it from its roots and send it tumbling down the road, all my friends crazy and heavy-eyed and careless, killing themselves, a sad sort of rampage. Whenever someone is late or doesn't return a call, my gut reaction is that they must have died, and I ought to call some people this time before finding out once again via the internet. Luckily, usually it is just tardiness and I am insane.
My birthday was coming up. I wanted to have a show. I asked a few friends if they would like to play. A touring band or two got added. We had a barbeque and I wore my party dress and drank and set off fireworks and flashed the trolley-train as it flickered past, and flickered past again. Somewhere people collected money, and sold beer, and donated what they had and in the end I was given a birthday present of a could hundred dollars to go to New Mexico to see the gang, to sit at the Cross of the Martyrs with Shane and Sue, eat a burrito and go hiking by the shooting range with Jason. Ride bikes into fairy territory, through the mine of giants, to a party on a hill in the desert overlooking the stars, the dreamboat somewhere near but not close. I knocked over amps at parties of old friends, ate the food of strangers. Worked at my old bikeshop job until I made enough money to make it to LA, and spent 6/6/06 in the pool behind a mansion while robbers talked to my friends and I through the hedges and we giggled with champagne while helicopters flew overhead and shewn their spotlights down on us.
It wasn't a great moment in my life, but no one else died, we all survived. I picked up a gig driving someone's painting across country and didn't need that landscape job anymore. Mainly I was put back together, piece by piece and state-by-state, friends pushing things into place.
Special thanks to the Cuntree Club, the Noyes brothers, and Mercedes Allen.
I needed water. I wasn't doing so hot. Someone asked what was wrong and my insides exploded, a jumble of person inside a shivering skinshell.
Anita's dead, I said, we all knew it was bound to happen, but somehow it's still a shock. My knees gave and my throat burst open, my soul rushing to meet hers, pick up my little friend and say, Hello, I've missed you, goodbye. I went upstairs, all the while wailing, past the partiers, the bands, the broken banister, doorless bathroom, up the narrow impermanent stairs into the attic and sat on Kyle The Girl's wood chest by the window sill.
Kyle followed, and Jen Millis, and the other girls. There was nothing to say. Eventually everyone left but Kyle, who kept a hand on my knee a few moments longer, drunk, saying, life sure does suck, huh. I went to sleep in my little nook and in the morning there was a note from Kyle on top of me, a drawing of a monster and Sometimes Friendship Is All We Can Give. I still have it somewhere, in my current attic room, in a folder with all the things I've gotten too lazy to transfer to wall after wall of new house.
A couple days later I was fired from my landscaping job for not showing up and calling in with a cryptic Family Emergency. I wandered around Boston, empty, drunk on Sparks and the continual loss of friends. I bought a pair of sneakers at the thrift store. Drank iced coffee and energy drinks and more Sparks. Hung out in my friends' record store, sat on the couch and read zines, made horrible jokes. Panicked.
I needed to leave town, head to New Mexico to see my friends who were still living. After Devon came home from Olympia and shot himself, everyone seemed a bit edgier, a bit darker under that wide sky. Mainly it was the internet, as usual, that gave me those feelings. The cryptic survey bulletins, the empty cries for help, the lack of shows. When Anita died, although it was something we all expected in the back of our throats, I was worried about what could happen. That feeling rarely escapes me, the fear that whatever happens might be the trigger, the final gust of wind into the bush to pull it from its roots and send it tumbling down the road, all my friends crazy and heavy-eyed and careless, killing themselves, a sad sort of rampage. Whenever someone is late or doesn't return a call, my gut reaction is that they must have died, and I ought to call some people this time before finding out once again via the internet. Luckily, usually it is just tardiness and I am insane.
My birthday was coming up. I wanted to have a show. I asked a few friends if they would like to play. A touring band or two got added. We had a barbeque and I wore my party dress and drank and set off fireworks and flashed the trolley-train as it flickered past, and flickered past again. Somewhere people collected money, and sold beer, and donated what they had and in the end I was given a birthday present of a could hundred dollars to go to New Mexico to see the gang, to sit at the Cross of the Martyrs with Shane and Sue, eat a burrito and go hiking by the shooting range with Jason. Ride bikes into fairy territory, through the mine of giants, to a party on a hill in the desert overlooking the stars, the dreamboat somewhere near but not close. I knocked over amps at parties of old friends, ate the food of strangers. Worked at my old bikeshop job until I made enough money to make it to LA, and spent 6/6/06 in the pool behind a mansion while robbers talked to my friends and I through the hedges and we giggled with champagne while helicopters flew overhead and shewn their spotlights down on us.
It wasn't a great moment in my life, but no one else died, we all survived. I picked up a gig driving someone's painting across country and didn't need that landscape job anymore. Mainly I was put back together, piece by piece and state-by-state, friends pushing things into place.
Special thanks to the Cuntree Club, the Noyes brothers, and Mercedes Allen.