Things have been touch and go lately...

[vmoney]

Touch and Go Music Festival. It began like any weekend. Y’know my friend from college was dropping in to visit and sleep on my couch. I hadn’t seen him in over 3 years or so and time seemed to be good to him. We grabbed some dinner on Friday and then went to watch !!! as the opener for what was to be a great line-up. We ran into a few of his friends from NYC who were already drunk. The !!! show was, in my humble opinion, the best fucking performance of the weekend. I mean the CocoRosie show I hear was awesome and Big Black was monumental, but !!! just got that blood flowing and that hard-on just stayed up. It was smart to start with them. So after the show, we decided to go with his NYC friends to this party under a Payless shoe store to see Bear Claw. In the first 10 minutes we’ve already lost his friends who were hot on some tail. We go to this show underneath the Payless and it’s crowded, hot and unbearably smoky. By this point, we are both kind of tired but not willing to give up the night just yet. We decide to go see the Monorchid show at The Note, but by the time we arrive the cover to get in is hefty enough we decide to go to Danny’s for a drink. Mind you, we’ve been walking within this 5 mile radius all night. From California and North Ave to Damen and Armitage to Augusta and California. My feet are tired and the reality of my day has begun to settle in. We get to Danny’s and place is jam packed. It’s kinda hot and there is no place to sit and rest. We end up sitting on some steps at the house next door making more plans with other people to meet up at the California Clipper. There we meet some more friends, have drinks, bull shit, go to an after hours place, The Continental and have more drinks. We leave, wasted and I keep forgetting where the hell I live. We walk back to my house to only have to break down my door because someone placed the chain on the door. Suffice it to say, the next morning while making coffee I look over at the door and realize we never even locked it or closed it properly. It was open all night. SSSssssss, ouch, I burned my hand on the coffee. Eventually, we finally leave my house, which mind you, has no hot water. The hot water heater was shut down because of a leak. The property management does not appear to be concerned about it, after all we are moving out in 2 weeks, but 2 weeks, no hot water? It was cold showers for both of us. We get some grub. I go back to my house to get changed and he goes looking for a hoodie. We meet up and go back to the show. We see Scratch Acid, Man or Astro Man, Big Black, Shellac and some more people from way back. It was surreal. I was standing around talking to these guys like we used to do back in the day. I mean it was as if nothing had really changed, but in reality so much had changed. The history was crowding our nostalgia. At one point I stepped back and looked at all 3 guys and noticed a few things. The receding hairline, the lollipop head and the wrinkles around the eyes. We have aged. It was strange to think 6 years ago, we were all living in the desert, eating burritos and waxing over our latest film projects. I kind of got a little sentimental as I watched the way they interacted with each other, one joke playing off another joke until you were just giddy from all the banter. It’s hard to find people who interest you any more. College was easy that way, people were always learning something new, it gave them depth. But, now in the twilight of my 20’s I find it very difficult to meet interesting people. Instead we sit around and discuss our health benefits, the jerks in our department, the bad dates we go on and our latest food regiment. I’ve become boring. After a few drinks, we had to part ways. They were going to some party, we were going to the GirlTalk show and some party. As we walked away, with merry intents to “Keep In Touch”, I looked back at them one more time and shrugged. I knew the past would never really allow that anyway. I tugged on the ends of my hair, how did we get here? Earlier as we did the whole, “what are you doing now?” speeches, G turned to me and said, “Vanessa, you the last bastion of art student, what happened?” I don’t know. I don’t know. It made me sad to think about it, and it makes me more sad to retell it, but if I don’t do something soon, my life will be reduced to a bevy of tax forms and paper cuts. I have to get out of this.

The rest of the weekend was fucking insane. Too much liquor and not enough food led to broken glasses, screaming at a cab driver and losing 2 phones and one camera. By the end, we were tired. I felt like I had been blind sided by a Mack truck. The last evening was a quiet dinner of sushi and water. We rented the Sarah Silvermen movie and kicked it on my couch. I don’t know exactly what we learned about ourselves, or what we learned about each other, but I do know what I saw: My life is passing me by. I’ve got time to right some wrongs, and I’ve got time to redirect my life but I can’t get back this weekend and I can’t get back the last 5 years. As my friend was leaving my house at 5:30am this morning he said, “So is this what happens when we hang out in our 30’s?” I am not totally sure what he meant, but I felt his sentiment. Hey Mike, let’s change that.”