In 1997, Conor Shenk introduced me to Japanese Rock.
In 1998, I found Renaud Martin in a Japanese Rock chat room, in a discussion about the Cure.
Renaud Martin introduced me to Clan of Xymox, The Legendary Pink Dots, and Einsürzende Neubauten.
In 1999, I read Venus in Furs.
In 2001, I went to see a band called Venus in Furs, in Fargo. I fell instantly for Tom Haugen, a member of the band, and gave him my phone number. A couple of days later, he called, and amongst other conversation topics, he asked me to tell him about the posters on my wall. One, of Nick Cave, sparked the query, "Is he smoking? Is he handsome?" (the answer being yes, to both) which remains a favourite quote to this day (another great one of Tom's, out of context: "Thanks for the pants news!")
Tom introduced me to 16 Horsepower, to the New Yorker, to ecstasy, and deepened my interest in Tom Waits. We shared a love of Einstürzende Neubauten, of literature, of arguing--he was the first to accuse me of arguing in "lawyer speak". He was a terrible, and incredible boyfriend. Passionate, literate, astoundingly beautiful in vocabulary, both in conversation and writing ("Your scent lingers to function as an invisible periapt, I never wish it to disseminate." He also wrote the phrase which seems to continue to curse me, "You emanate permanence, a permanence I have brazenly taken for granted.") He was also a petulant addict who I was fairly positive would end up dead one way or another before his 21st birthday (he was 19 at the time). He has since proved me wrong, and continues to be a close friend, recently giving me yet another couple of quotes for the book; "You're the perfect woman, though I would prefer you were a little more domesticated," and "You're autonomous as fuck."
In my head, this is an example of the timeline of my development. When I seek to remember dates, events of import, places I've been, I rifle through the catalog in my brain, and this is how the continuum is set up, and it is largely based around people I've been involved with romantically. Yesterday, I was accused of having my identity being completely tied up in my relationships, or more to the point, identifying myself solely through these relationships. There is truth to this, and it makes me feel defensive, so I find myself writing this here in order to sort out the facts. Mostly, I find that while it may not be the conventional way to store information, there's also nothing unhealthy about it. I'm not identifying myself through these relationships as much as I'm noting how one event/symbol/life lesson feeds into the next, and that, frankly, I'm a terrific romantic in all areas of my life, behaving very religiously toward all things I find dear. I don't discard any memory, and I take life's winding road and all the treasures along its way very, very seriously in regard to that. What is more serious than love? Were it not so serious, the great canon of word and song would be reduced to a mere trifle.
June 2010, I met Jorge Castro. As we ordered our respective whiskeys, moments after meeting (I saw him at a party across the street, waggled my finger at him for being a man who trims his glorious chest hair, then told him he was to come to the Herkimer to have a drink with me), we found out we shared a birthday (though he's three years my junior).
Jorge's half-Mexican, muscular, hairy looks paired with his drunk, tattooed, stoner ways were made only more impossibly attractive to me with a gentle North Carolinian twang in his voice. Already a year and a half deep into one serious bender post-Dan Kane heartbreak, I jumped headlong into even more chaos revelry with Jorge, made all the worse by the fact that despite him only being interested in getting laid, he was also a kind gentleman (Southern breeding will do that to you), so the bond had some knotty ties I had considerable difficulties disentangling myself from--a fact those of you following these writings will recall as the point this blog started from, excepting a one-off blog in the 2007 Dan-times. One such bond with Jorge had me immersing myself full-time in Kings of Leon, who made me feel a closeness to the things Jorge had to offer but wasn't offering me, without being as obsessive as I really was toward him at the time. Tattooed, chaotic, hairy southern boys who drink too much = a downright Pavlovian response. Somewhere in this, catching Sex on Fire or Use Somebody on the radio at least three times a day, in this summer of Leon, I consciously decided to seek out a lad who looked like Nathan Followill. And lo, not even a week after this, in the middle of August, 2010, there was Andy.
So, Andy, if I didn't think this way, if things were not catalogued on this romantic continuum, where one experience feeds into the next, almost seamlessly, and most definitely beautifully, I more than likely would not have stared at you for two and a half hours, so frightened by your beauty my normally forward, cocky self could find no footing. I would not have seen you again two weeks later (because I wouldn't have noticed you two weeks before), and I would not have drank enough Canadian to bolster my faltering ego, I would not have allowed myself to just jump in with you and really let a series of failsafes falter.
And if those things hadn't happened, I wouldn't have now learned that a feeling of cosmic certainty must not mean shit, nor would I have spent a year hoping you'd just chill the fuck out and allow yourself to love me the way I know you can instead of whine about the terror of having someone love you that knows you're the one, and I certainly wouldn't be listening to Kings of Leon right now, a sweet feeling of bitter irony in my gut.
I love(d) you as best I could, and you failed me, and failed us over and over again in your entitled (yes, there's that word again) way, in your stupid belief that an emotionally, intellectually fulfilling relationship that functions happily is best kicked to the curb because you are incapable of looking at what you have in any real way, choosing instead to focus on the deficits. You are truly playing a very dangerous game with love, with me, and the simple fact that you'd do this, still in love with me, still wanting to do things with me, to enjoy things that we enjoy, but feeling you somehow deserve more, that there's some reality out there, outside of us... Well, fuck you.
Fuck you.
4 years ago
