Memphisted, part one.
We woke up really early the morning after Plan-It-X Fest ended. It would be the last Plan-It-X Fest until 2014, too, unfortunately. We had to skip over some plans we originally wanted to follow through on, but Shea had started helping book and run shows at a local art space in his city of Memphis and actually had to be there that night to put on a show for Boogdish. So we rushed right on out. Almost immediately, we discovered that The Taxpayers' new album, "God, Forgive These Bastards", would not eject from his CD player. We could only assume the heat of the car had caused the DIY painted CD to get stuck, but either way we were now stuck with the same album on repeat for the next seven to eight hours. Honestly, none of us were complaining: it was something of a folk-punk masterpiece and we were totally ready to listen to it on repeat and incidentally learn all the words to the songs. I wonder how many times in a row we actually listened to it. We had a little over 400 miles to drive and it wouldn't have started right without us getting lost first, which we gracefully corrected a half hour or so later. Then we were on, soaring through middle-of-nowhere towns and anti-abortion signs. The ride was pretty uneventful and I felt bad that Shea was rushing all the way back home across three states for a show no one was expecting to go very well. Kara and I were excited to be in Memphis again, though, and Zach would be there to meet us since he was hitching a ride with Boogdish.
I forget which small Indiana town this was (I can't even locate this shop on Google), but not only was it littered with giant anti-abortion signs, it had a store dedicated to guns and clocks.
We pulled into the parking lot of Crosstown Arts, which has a giant structure composed of spinning bike wheels outside of it, almost exactly on time, maybe even right at 8pm. No one was there except the owner and some of the performers. The place was perfect. Shows happened downstairs in a huge space, white and all lit up, with tons of cushy chairs on wheels, long tables, and a great PA system. Not only that, but it was air-conditioned and the bathrooms even had bowls of mints in them. It was a DIY promoter's dream come true. Unfortunately, despite all that, no one would come out to the show. I played Bananagrams with Kara, Greg, and Zach, and eventually some stranger, and read a little at the table. I tried to stand up with the four or five people there (not counting the people who had to be) and support the first opener, a local positive rapper who brought no one out to the show and left as soon as his set was over. Boogdish was hilarious and his music was spastic and electronic. I had never heard him before that night and was instantly in love. He dedicated a song about beards to me. The show as a failure and reminded me too much of an Albany show. Shea looked so bummed out. Fortunately, at least there wasn't any overhead to pay. We all hung out the rest of the night and ate at this awesome place Kara and I loved last time called RP Trax, a bar and burrito joint with renowned barbecue tofu and a packed electric jukebox. Between Zach and Boogdish, we were all laughing until our guts hurt. They were like a comedy team. Zach ate twelve slices of lemon somehow. That night, everyone slept over at Greg's place. Kara and I got the pull-out bed that we slept on the last time we were in Memphis. It was a fun night. Kara would have to head back to Schenectady two days after, though, to follow up with doctor appointments regarding some uterine problems she had been having. Her leaving scared the shit out of me and left me totally confused as to what to do with my summer.
The cool bike tire structure outside of Crosstown Arts.
Pictures from the Boogdish show: The picture of the pathetic "crowd" was taken by me; the picture of Boogdish and of me were taken by Greg.
Now, I was in Memphis for about two weeks and kept almost zero notes, so I'm not really sure how to write this entry. The second day in Memphis I can remember pretty well. Shea and Dana took Kara and I out for pizza at Mellow Mushroom, which was seriously one of the things I was looking forward to the most while there. Mellow Mushroom is my favorite pizza chain and quite possibly my favorite pizza in general; unfortunately, it does not exist anywhere in the north-east. Just like the last time I was there, our waiter had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about the vegan cheese. When I watched him ask the guy behind the counter making pizzas, that guy laughed. A waitress even walked by after we got our pizza and, being an acquaintance of Shea's, leaned over to look at our pizza and go, "Is that a vegan pizza?" and make a disgusted face. It was so annoying. Our waiter also never came back to fill us in on whether or not we could get garlic bread veganized. I complained to the manager and he was very apologetic, even confused at the reaction to vegan pizza because, as he said, "it's a very good seller." He wound up just writing me a note for a free medium pizza the next time I come there that I wouldn't even be able to redeem before I left for Oregon. Before we had left, Zach was acting very upset, laying on the bean bag chair with a cloth over his face. When we got back, he was still acting kind of weird, mostly because he had self-medicated with alcohol. We all sat in the living room and talked about this and that. It was the first "real" conversation I'd ever had with the guy. I was excited we were getting closer with him since he was such an awesome dude, but it was weird to just dive into that sort of talk with someone I hardly knew and someone I knew to know people who also knew me. When the subject of self-medicating and straightedge came up, I was forced to be honest and speak down about it, which lead to him crying uncontrollably. I felt bad and it was awkward, for a lack of a better word, to sit there during it. Thankfully, it quickly passed and we were able to move onto better conversations about rape in the punk scene and how his non-white girlfriend thinks I'm an asshole who's wrong about everything and follows me on Tumblr just because she hates me so much. I really enjoyed those conversations and I told him to tell his girlfriend to message me about her problems with my opinions. However, she never did. Zach eventually left. It was so much fun hanging out with him. He's a big, hairy, lovable guy with a genuine personality that matches his genuine smile. He's seriously one of the greatest people I've met during my travels so far and I hope I see him more and more as the years progress. We all drove him out to the Megabus stop a few nights later so he could head back to Florida. He almost vomited smelling some really old hummus. A horse-drawn carriage lit up and with a pug dog in the passenger seat passed by us. We waved him goodbye repeatedly before we left.
Kara eventually left on a bus all by herself, too. The day she left was really sad. It was then that I knew my summer without her was about to begin. I wasn't even sure how long I would let it go on, but even another week in Memphis without her to enjoy it with me scared the shit out of me. Watching her leave on a scary Greyhound bus sucked and had she not texted me the entire ride back, I probably wouldn't have been able to function due to being too consumed by paranoia.
In the meantime, I got permission to stay at Greg's on his couch for the duration of my time there. I was looking forward to getting to know him better, but his roommate didn't seem too inviting. In fact, the day I finally worked up the nerve to introduce myself, he avoided eye contact as he walked sluggishly like a zombie to the kitchen and mumbled, "Steven," before returning to his upstairs chambers. He made being there somewhat uncomfortable, especially when Greg told us he complained about Kara and I stinking up the living room and even went as far as referring to me as a "freeloader". Greg worked right across the street from his apartment with Dana at Buster's, one of the country's biggest liquor stores. He worked pretty often, leaving me alone to sleep or sit online in the air-conditioned apartment while Steven stomped in and out of his room with his eye lids hanging halfway down and his shoulders slumped. He seemed really dead inside and it was both sad and discomforting to watch. What was worse was watching Greg try to communicate with him. Greg was moderately flamboyant and flirted with me incessantly. I didn't mind, though. He was divilishly handsome with a model's smile and serial killer eyes when he wanted to. His favorite band was Deftones and he was ridiculously funny and intelligent. His photography was stunning and the way he went about taking pictures of people without them knowing was creepy but added to how genuine the portraits came out. We were able to stay up late together thanks to his insomnia and have long, digressive conversations in between repeated games of Rock Band, which I happily played drums on while he did vocals. It wasn't long before a routine had formed of eating ice cream, playing Rock Band, and watching How I Met Your Mother before he would make a final attempt at getting me into bed before he went to sleep. He constantly looked like he was in deep contemplation and even when I tried to pry open his head I couldn't help but feel like I had only gotten one scoop of what was actually in there. I could also sense an intense melancholy about him at times, most likely due to loneliness and being stuck in a wage slavery he was too aware he was trapped in. His cat, Alana, acted like she was in heat the entire time even though she wasn't. She was a crazy cat and it was hard to get her to stay still long enough to really be affectionate with her. It wasn't hard for Greg, however. He sometimes would play fetch with her using glass bottle caps. He told me more than once that Kara and I reminded him of otters and how they hold hands so as not to float away from each other. It wouldn't be until my final days there that Steven would seemingly accept my presence there. I could be reading it wrong, but there was one day that he came home from work and said something to me. "It's too fucking hot out there." Greg said it was his way of trying to talk to me, even though it was the first and only attempt.
Alana the Cat.
Shea and Dana worked, too, but both of them made sure to keep me busy every chance they got. I have no idea how two of the coolest kids I've ever met stood me for as long and for as often as they did during those two weeks. Shea is one of the smartest and most hilarious people I've ever met and Dana is just as quick-witted with her Southern accent and beautiful crooked smile. Of course, I got to hit up Imagine, one of my favorite vegan restaurants, while there. I did so twice, even. It was nice that they remembered me and Kara. I went there for breakfast one morning and it was incredible, especially since they had a warm, glazed doughnut to add to the mix. Some nights, we just sat around. Dana watched a lot of Dr. Who and I can't say I'm glad that I got to find out just how terrible it is because now I think of people I know who watch it a little differently. It's like Power Rangers bad guys meets Sherlock Holmes sleuthing, packaged for the low-brow sensibilities of the average SyFy Channel viewer, most appropriately played before or after a straight-to-TV, low-budget monster movie. I also got to find out how much I love chocolate-covered coffee beans thanks to Dana and the fact that she works at a Whole Foods. I helped Shea with a show or two at Crosstown Arts. It was depressing to see a great space and opportunity for DIY, all-ages shows go to waste and be ignored by the city's youth. Shea told me a lot of kids were bummed at the prospect of it being a sober space, which was something I'd experienced myself putting on my shows in Albany. What was even more depressing was that it took a hardcore show with free pizza and free admission to get just thirty kids out to a night of music. It was fun sitting at those shows with him, though, even though at times it looked like he'd cry at any minute. I knew that feeling all too well: the one where your heart knows DIY can't survive in certain places no matter how hard you try. I finished Chris Clavin's book, Free Pizza For Life. It was a great collection of stories, but by no means a good book if you paid attention to the plethora of misspelled or missing words, grammatical errors, and parts that should have been cut. I still loved it, though.
I talked to Kara almost every night. Unfortunately, I finally reached the point where I asked what was going on between us. I found out that nothing about how she felt for me had changed. Despite how she had been acting with me physically, holding my hand and sleeping with me and us going on a trip together, she still didn't love me and still didn't want to be with me. Apparently, she had been doing that because she wanted me to stay friends with her. It was hard to process knowing that, but I tried to force myself to have a halfway enjoyable summer... by myself for the first time. Even when I'm around others, I feel incredibly alone without Kara there by my side. I felt guilty enjoying moments without her. Moments meant less without her, even. It's like missing taste buds during dinner or being colorblind while staring at art. So I tried to find the guts to do something on my own. I didn't want to just let my summer die like that, no matter how much I wanted to crawl under a couch and rot away. If I was going to have to relearn what it was like to travel on my own, I had to relearn quick. There was no way I wanted to waste a summer being the sad boy who stays in bed all day because he loves a girl who's too good for him. I had known that version of myself too many times before. Besides, I had no home to go back to in Schenectady. So I kept talking to a girl I had met from Tumblr named Indica. I talked to her on the phone a few times at night while there. Not only did she want me to come and visit her, but she told me she was going to be moving into a flat or house with some other straightedge vegans from the Internet in August, offering me a place to live if I wanted to. The prospect of a life without Kara was terrifying, but I knew I needed to try something for myself; after all, I had no special someone, no home, and no family to go back to in the 518. I had absolutely no excuse to return. Taking a chance that I knew deep down was foolish with a girl I knew deep down was trouble was all I had and it seemed better than wallowing in sadness for the rest of the summer, sleeping on the streets of one of the scariest cities I've ever been to. So one day, Shea took me to the Greyhound station at the far end of the city near mostly abandoned buildings and long tangles of highway and I bought a one-way ticket to Portland, OR that would depart about a week later so I could grab the advance price of $99. Fortunately for me, I had saved up just over $400 from zine sales online to throw away on long-distance bus rides. Hitchhiking by myself was an idea, but not for long; I knew I wasn't ready for that yet. Until then, Shea still had things around the city to show me and would make sure to do so before I left town. I tried to maintain hope for a summer equally as unforgettable as the last three I'd had with Kara, but it was hard to muster hope when Kara had always been the very symbol of it in my otherwise hopeless world.
This gutted, abandoned hotel sat across the street from the Greyhound station.
Some sleeping kitties at the House of Mews.
Dana and Shea: the only couple I like.
I forget which small Indiana town this was (I can't even locate this shop on Google), but not only was it littered with giant anti-abortion signs, it had a store dedicated to guns and clocks.
We pulled into the parking lot of Crosstown Arts, which has a giant structure composed of spinning bike wheels outside of it, almost exactly on time, maybe even right at 8pm. No one was there except the owner and some of the performers. The place was perfect. Shows happened downstairs in a huge space, white and all lit up, with tons of cushy chairs on wheels, long tables, and a great PA system. Not only that, but it was air-conditioned and the bathrooms even had bowls of mints in them. It was a DIY promoter's dream come true. Unfortunately, despite all that, no one would come out to the show. I played Bananagrams with Kara, Greg, and Zach, and eventually some stranger, and read a little at the table. I tried to stand up with the four or five people there (not counting the people who had to be) and support the first opener, a local positive rapper who brought no one out to the show and left as soon as his set was over. Boogdish was hilarious and his music was spastic and electronic. I had never heard him before that night and was instantly in love. He dedicated a song about beards to me. The show as a failure and reminded me too much of an Albany show. Shea looked so bummed out. Fortunately, at least there wasn't any overhead to pay. We all hung out the rest of the night and ate at this awesome place Kara and I loved last time called RP Trax, a bar and burrito joint with renowned barbecue tofu and a packed electric jukebox. Between Zach and Boogdish, we were all laughing until our guts hurt. They were like a comedy team. Zach ate twelve slices of lemon somehow. That night, everyone slept over at Greg's place. Kara and I got the pull-out bed that we slept on the last time we were in Memphis. It was a fun night. Kara would have to head back to Schenectady two days after, though, to follow up with doctor appointments regarding some uterine problems she had been having. Her leaving scared the shit out of me and left me totally confused as to what to do with my summer.
The cool bike tire structure outside of Crosstown Arts.
Pictures from the Boogdish show: The picture of the pathetic "crowd" was taken by me; the picture of Boogdish and of me were taken by Greg.
Now, I was in Memphis for about two weeks and kept almost zero notes, so I'm not really sure how to write this entry. The second day in Memphis I can remember pretty well. Shea and Dana took Kara and I out for pizza at Mellow Mushroom, which was seriously one of the things I was looking forward to the most while there. Mellow Mushroom is my favorite pizza chain and quite possibly my favorite pizza in general; unfortunately, it does not exist anywhere in the north-east. Just like the last time I was there, our waiter had no idea what I was talking about when I asked about the vegan cheese. When I watched him ask the guy behind the counter making pizzas, that guy laughed. A waitress even walked by after we got our pizza and, being an acquaintance of Shea's, leaned over to look at our pizza and go, "Is that a vegan pizza?" and make a disgusted face. It was so annoying. Our waiter also never came back to fill us in on whether or not we could get garlic bread veganized. I complained to the manager and he was very apologetic, even confused at the reaction to vegan pizza because, as he said, "it's a very good seller." He wound up just writing me a note for a free medium pizza the next time I come there that I wouldn't even be able to redeem before I left for Oregon. Before we had left, Zach was acting very upset, laying on the bean bag chair with a cloth over his face. When we got back, he was still acting kind of weird, mostly because he had self-medicated with alcohol. We all sat in the living room and talked about this and that. It was the first "real" conversation I'd ever had with the guy. I was excited we were getting closer with him since he was such an awesome dude, but it was weird to just dive into that sort of talk with someone I hardly knew and someone I knew to know people who also knew me. When the subject of self-medicating and straightedge came up, I was forced to be honest and speak down about it, which lead to him crying uncontrollably. I felt bad and it was awkward, for a lack of a better word, to sit there during it. Thankfully, it quickly passed and we were able to move onto better conversations about rape in the punk scene and how his non-white girlfriend thinks I'm an asshole who's wrong about everything and follows me on Tumblr just because she hates me so much. I really enjoyed those conversations and I told him to tell his girlfriend to message me about her problems with my opinions. However, she never did. Zach eventually left. It was so much fun hanging out with him. He's a big, hairy, lovable guy with a genuine personality that matches his genuine smile. He's seriously one of the greatest people I've met during my travels so far and I hope I see him more and more as the years progress. We all drove him out to the Megabus stop a few nights later so he could head back to Florida. He almost vomited smelling some really old hummus. A horse-drawn carriage lit up and with a pug dog in the passenger seat passed by us. We waved him goodbye repeatedly before we left.
Kara eventually left on a bus all by herself, too. The day she left was really sad. It was then that I knew my summer without her was about to begin. I wasn't even sure how long I would let it go on, but even another week in Memphis without her to enjoy it with me scared the shit out of me. Watching her leave on a scary Greyhound bus sucked and had she not texted me the entire ride back, I probably wouldn't have been able to function due to being too consumed by paranoia.
In the meantime, I got permission to stay at Greg's on his couch for the duration of my time there. I was looking forward to getting to know him better, but his roommate didn't seem too inviting. In fact, the day I finally worked up the nerve to introduce myself, he avoided eye contact as he walked sluggishly like a zombie to the kitchen and mumbled, "Steven," before returning to his upstairs chambers. He made being there somewhat uncomfortable, especially when Greg told us he complained about Kara and I stinking up the living room and even went as far as referring to me as a "freeloader". Greg worked right across the street from his apartment with Dana at Buster's, one of the country's biggest liquor stores. He worked pretty often, leaving me alone to sleep or sit online in the air-conditioned apartment while Steven stomped in and out of his room with his eye lids hanging halfway down and his shoulders slumped. He seemed really dead inside and it was both sad and discomforting to watch. What was worse was watching Greg try to communicate with him. Greg was moderately flamboyant and flirted with me incessantly. I didn't mind, though. He was divilishly handsome with a model's smile and serial killer eyes when he wanted to. His favorite band was Deftones and he was ridiculously funny and intelligent. His photography was stunning and the way he went about taking pictures of people without them knowing was creepy but added to how genuine the portraits came out. We were able to stay up late together thanks to his insomnia and have long, digressive conversations in between repeated games of Rock Band, which I happily played drums on while he did vocals. It wasn't long before a routine had formed of eating ice cream, playing Rock Band, and watching How I Met Your Mother before he would make a final attempt at getting me into bed before he went to sleep. He constantly looked like he was in deep contemplation and even when I tried to pry open his head I couldn't help but feel like I had only gotten one scoop of what was actually in there. I could also sense an intense melancholy about him at times, most likely due to loneliness and being stuck in a wage slavery he was too aware he was trapped in. His cat, Alana, acted like she was in heat the entire time even though she wasn't. She was a crazy cat and it was hard to get her to stay still long enough to really be affectionate with her. It wasn't hard for Greg, however. He sometimes would play fetch with her using glass bottle caps. He told me more than once that Kara and I reminded him of otters and how they hold hands so as not to float away from each other. It wouldn't be until my final days there that Steven would seemingly accept my presence there. I could be reading it wrong, but there was one day that he came home from work and said something to me. "It's too fucking hot out there." Greg said it was his way of trying to talk to me, even though it was the first and only attempt.
Alana the Cat.
Shea and Dana worked, too, but both of them made sure to keep me busy every chance they got. I have no idea how two of the coolest kids I've ever met stood me for as long and for as often as they did during those two weeks. Shea is one of the smartest and most hilarious people I've ever met and Dana is just as quick-witted with her Southern accent and beautiful crooked smile. Of course, I got to hit up Imagine, one of my favorite vegan restaurants, while there. I did so twice, even. It was nice that they remembered me and Kara. I went there for breakfast one morning and it was incredible, especially since they had a warm, glazed doughnut to add to the mix. Some nights, we just sat around. Dana watched a lot of Dr. Who and I can't say I'm glad that I got to find out just how terrible it is because now I think of people I know who watch it a little differently. It's like Power Rangers bad guys meets Sherlock Holmes sleuthing, packaged for the low-brow sensibilities of the average SyFy Channel viewer, most appropriately played before or after a straight-to-TV, low-budget monster movie. I also got to find out how much I love chocolate-covered coffee beans thanks to Dana and the fact that she works at a Whole Foods. I helped Shea with a show or two at Crosstown Arts. It was depressing to see a great space and opportunity for DIY, all-ages shows go to waste and be ignored by the city's youth. Shea told me a lot of kids were bummed at the prospect of it being a sober space, which was something I'd experienced myself putting on my shows in Albany. What was even more depressing was that it took a hardcore show with free pizza and free admission to get just thirty kids out to a night of music. It was fun sitting at those shows with him, though, even though at times it looked like he'd cry at any minute. I knew that feeling all too well: the one where your heart knows DIY can't survive in certain places no matter how hard you try. I finished Chris Clavin's book, Free Pizza For Life. It was a great collection of stories, but by no means a good book if you paid attention to the plethora of misspelled or missing words, grammatical errors, and parts that should have been cut. I still loved it, though.
I talked to Kara almost every night. Unfortunately, I finally reached the point where I asked what was going on between us. I found out that nothing about how she felt for me had changed. Despite how she had been acting with me physically, holding my hand and sleeping with me and us going on a trip together, she still didn't love me and still didn't want to be with me. Apparently, she had been doing that because she wanted me to stay friends with her. It was hard to process knowing that, but I tried to force myself to have a halfway enjoyable summer... by myself for the first time. Even when I'm around others, I feel incredibly alone without Kara there by my side. I felt guilty enjoying moments without her. Moments meant less without her, even. It's like missing taste buds during dinner or being colorblind while staring at art. So I tried to find the guts to do something on my own. I didn't want to just let my summer die like that, no matter how much I wanted to crawl under a couch and rot away. If I was going to have to relearn what it was like to travel on my own, I had to relearn quick. There was no way I wanted to waste a summer being the sad boy who stays in bed all day because he loves a girl who's too good for him. I had known that version of myself too many times before. Besides, I had no home to go back to in Schenectady. So I kept talking to a girl I had met from Tumblr named Indica. I talked to her on the phone a few times at night while there. Not only did she want me to come and visit her, but she told me she was going to be moving into a flat or house with some other straightedge vegans from the Internet in August, offering me a place to live if I wanted to. The prospect of a life without Kara was terrifying, but I knew I needed to try something for myself; after all, I had no special someone, no home, and no family to go back to in the 518. I had absolutely no excuse to return. Taking a chance that I knew deep down was foolish with a girl I knew deep down was trouble was all I had and it seemed better than wallowing in sadness for the rest of the summer, sleeping on the streets of one of the scariest cities I've ever been to. So one day, Shea took me to the Greyhound station at the far end of the city near mostly abandoned buildings and long tangles of highway and I bought a one-way ticket to Portland, OR that would depart about a week later so I could grab the advance price of $99. Fortunately for me, I had saved up just over $400 from zine sales online to throw away on long-distance bus rides. Hitchhiking by myself was an idea, but not for long; I knew I wasn't ready for that yet. Until then, Shea still had things around the city to show me and would make sure to do so before I left town. I tried to maintain hope for a summer equally as unforgettable as the last three I'd had with Kara, but it was hard to muster hope when Kara had always been the very symbol of it in my otherwise hopeless world.
This gutted, abandoned hotel sat across the street from the Greyhound station.
Some sleeping kitties at the House of Mews.
Dana and Shea: the only couple I like.