This is a list of rock music genres consisting of subgenres of popular music that have roots in 1940s’ and 1950s’ rock and roll, and which developed into a distinct identity as rock music in the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States.
As it turns out, I might not be any less jealous.. just better at controlling it and ignoring it or at least distracting myself by overloading – everything.
I found myself appreciative of her candid response. I knew damn well that I was not going to be picking her up from anyway, but yet, I ask – why one may ask and remind me of the basic definition of insanity, but still I persist.
Tonight, as I am trying to fall asleep, I think to myself… ‘He better not be touching her.’ and I realize that.. that it must be the full moon right? There should be something out of my control for me to blame my absurd emotions on. Oh yes, I started.. I don’t want anyone touching my dream lady because my body is preparing itself to have her baby.. that must be it.
That probably doesn’t make it any better than anything else. I have been day dreaming way too much today. I had sent her an email just as I was leaving work. As I was driving home my mind wandered to the ever circling question – does she even read them? That lead to a smile when I thought about my oh so casual trip up the stairs as I was walking and texting that day last week or so.
I was at Madd’s house doing laundry and I had intended on seeing the kid but she was asleep when I got there so I was already a bit disappointed. At some point I started texting my favorite person and as I was walking up stairs to grab something I received a quite unexpected but more than welcomed text that left we with the instant, ‘Well.. I guess she reads my emails…’ How can she possibly stand me? I mean, even I get tired of me at this point. I’m like fuckin’ Screetch – actually I hope not but I do feel like Erkle at times. So anyway – life is like that and I wish that she was holding me tonight.
Sometimes I tell myself that she doesn’t hold it against me because she knows how I feel. Maybe not for a specific person and maybe not a literal translation – but I’ve had some outlandish expectations for quite sometime and then ms. practical magic comes waltzing into my life with one blue eye and eye green eye and cracks the code to my heart as if it was never even encrypted. Then I follow down the path of enlightenment without question or hesitation. I hope that she knows that I would follow her anywhere and I am even more thankful that she is more than delicate with me. The more time that passes and the more things that happen, the more I am convinced that it was all because she really cared – and I don’t even know what that means yeah but I try my hardest to trust in something more powerful than myself and that everything has happened for a reason. It’s hard to believe that there is only two and a half months left in this decade. I have big plans for the 20s and it’s actually to just – wait and see what happens.
There are so many moments in time that I remember the exact conversation and remember just where I was – which direction I was facing and how it felt in that moment. A lot of times that moment felt like a punch in the stomach – probably because my stomach is incredibly affected by what I have learned is probably the release of brain chemicals – but I couldn’t tell you that in the moment. I either panic or melt. I prefer melt.
The earliest memory that I can remember at the moment was one that came back to cycle in my mind forever to come and it would feel different every time. I was with my grandma at Blanco State Park and we were camping relatively close to the public bathrooms. We were walking down the hill back to our camp site on the right side of the road when she said: “You know, if you keep dressing like that – eventually people are going to think you are interested in women. Are you?” I was so young that I honestly wasn’t lying to her when I got offended and said no, disgustedly – I would have responded the same way if she had asked if I was interested in boys – I am going to guess I was about 8 or 10 at the time. They had been struggling with ‘redirecting me’ lovingly but I don’t know that it is possible. My family has always adored me, I don’t think that they ever intended on being terrifying or offensive but in a way – they didn’t know better or thought it was the right thing.
Fast-forward to the day that my brother got bit by a copperhead at the state park in Edna, Texas. I can’t recall the name of the state park at the moment but we ate Thanksgiving there all of the time. It was the day before Thanksgiving in 2003 and my brother had already been driven to the hospital by my uncle (the one that I currently work with) and I had been tasked with collecting the snake to bring to the hospital – so my aunt and I were following behind with a dead snake in a bag. I used a shovel.
So the next conversation that is imprinted in my memory is when my aunt starts talking to me about being gay- at this point there was no denying it. I was in college, my first semester and everyone knew I was gay through I had not really brought a girl home yet – like to Christmas but that would come and they would do well. The conversation that we had that day in her car as we raced to the hospital to rescue my brother was her telling me that my life had just already been so hard and I was finally to the point that I was nearly out of my dad’s house. Everyone encouraged me to move out at that point because everyone was afraid of what would happen when he realized that his daughter was a lesbian – but nothing happened, thankfully. I acknowledged her concern and told her that I would be okay. She said that she just wanted me to be able to grow up and have the happy family that I have never gotten to have yet. She knows all too well what my siblings and I went through – and even at an extremely young age, I knew how to protect people from the trust – so I never even told them everything, I didn’t want to scare my grandma. The rest of my siblings have forgotten everything because they were so young, so my father and I are the only ones left suffering the burden of my childhood. No one hurt me, no one ever hurt me. I had a lot of people protecting me, but I watched my mom destroy my father over and over again and that alone has caused some damage.
I remember the moment that I almost fought my mom in my dad’s kitchen years before the above situation happened. My grandfather had just passed. I think I have talked about that before so I won’t relive the moment I almost got in my first fight and I feel like it would have been real. My dad knew it too and begged me to walk away – and I did.
When my brother was in the Edna hospital, I was standing with my grandma looking out the hospital window at my aunt, uncle and all the paramedics and probably entire hospital staff talking about what they were going to do. I must add that my brother had no insurance or even money to speak of. He had ran away from home to port aransas and he was still a minor. He wasn’t legally emancipated, he just left – so he had no legal guardian present, until they realized that I was 19, suddenly, I was his legal guardian. Back to the point about looking out that window, my grandma said, “Can you please go get George?” She was asking me to go get my grandpa, who had passed 3 years prior. My brother was on a hospital bed so doped up on morphine that he couldn’t speak to me and now my grandma wanted me to go get my late grandpa, I was about to lose it but instead I walked outside to the group huddled out there and just said, “Hey, Grandma just asked me to come out here and get Grandpa and this is becoming too much for me, can someone go do something?” That night was intense and not even part of this post but I will come back to that story some day.
Many years later, I met the woman that inspired this blog. It’s easy to say that I fell hard and quickly without even really realizing it. That’s when these moments stuck in my memory started to make me melt instead of panic. All of the previous moments were not that great but I will never forget them. The first moment that stands out in my mind was when she got to San Francisco, she called me and told me that her plane had landed. She told me that it was beautiful there and that we would live there one day. That was an immediate heart melt and that wasn’t normal for me. I reminded myself that maybe she meant something else, but I could careless – I heard what I wanted to and I was keeping it that way. I had already known that I had fallen in love with but I don’t know if I was ready to admit it to myself. It would be years before I would tell her – though I am sure I tried. I was in my old bedroom. I was standing on something at the foot of my bed looking out my window towards my backyard.
There are actually plenty of other things I remember quite clearly before that but there is something very specific about how these moments make me feel that differentiates them from others. There was a time that I read that Colorado had passed Same-Sex Marriage laws so I texted her and to my surprise she replied. I grew up believing that I would never get married because it just didn’t happen and of course, I planned to do what I want, but I had seen “If These Walls Could Talk II” and I knew that there were legal issues and everything else. I told my friends, I tried to educate people but at some point, I felt defeated and gave up.
Just a month before my youngest brother passed away. The supreme court passed the federal law allowing same-sex marriage. At the time I was a bit skeptical and I still am but since I was a bit caught up trying to help my dad figure out what to do to help my brother through his drug addiction – I hardly noticed. I was happy but just didn’t think it would last. After my brother died, everything seemed less permanent. I could feel myself detaching again. I had spent at least 5 years with little to no feelings but all you get with that is a wasted life. Thankfully, I had found my passion or desire… well I don’t have the appropriate word but there was a flame in my soul that would not burn out and I really needed that about then.
We went to get our hair cut a few days later. It was something that we had actually planned and I believe that she asked me if I still wanted to go. At that point, I needed all of the distractions that I could get. Everywhere I looked, everyone was falling apart and no one knew what to do about it. Secretly, everyone blamed themselves. He was just here days prior. He lived out of state so that was abnormal but he came down here to get off Heroin and we all failed him. He was nice to me. We bonded over African soap and I made him some that I was never able to give him. He fought with my mom and went back early. My mom’s mother died while he was on his way back up. I know that didn’t help matters any. My mom lost her mother and her son in the same week and she was less than stable to start with. My dad was hanging on with a string trying to balance everything. I was watching everyone that I thought had things under control show me that no one really did at all.
But there she was, holding my hand, smiling at me and we went to Mink to get our haircut. She had hers cut link tank girl. I sat on that bench watching her pink locks fall to the ground; trying my best not to admire her too much because I just felt like – I was the only one that felt that way.
That was over four years ago and doesn’t have much to do with my next vague story but last night while I was at Madd’s house doing laundry, we started messaging a lot. I had missed her a lot but was trying to give her space so I was super excited. I was telling her about the smocked dressed that I would wear because I loved my grandma but it was really hard for me because I really wanted into dresses at all from an early age. I had been walking up the stairs to go grab something when I saw she messaged me, so I opened it to read it because at the time I thought that I could read and walk at the same time but I may have read the message and tripped a little as I went to go reread the message at least 3 times before I believed that it said what it did. After my heart melted and I took my last step onto even ground – my next through was – well… I guess she does check that email address. And at the moment of being mortified that lasted less than a second, I continued to wonder how she could ever put up with me. I am afraid to go back and look at my sent messages because I know how bad I am. I used to do it and knew it was the worst mistake. She must really love me and I really love her. No one understands so I keep it to myself but I think it’s important to know that my life is full of love and excitement its just muted by fear and well I think that’s it, fear of the unknown.
This song came on the radio this morning and before I knew it, I was thinking about the day that my sister had her first sisterly love talk with me.
We didn’t grow up together. I am the oldest and my father has a large family. I grew to resent my siblings at a young age because I was jealous and didn’t understand. My dad did his best to explain compassion and generosity to me but as a child that dealt with getting made fun of for being poor all my life only to transition into getting made fun of because I was a lesbian – it just didn’t seem fair that my dad helped kids that weren’t even his but that’s another long drawn out story – today, I just want to bring light to the fact that my sister spent about 10 years in foster-care until she aged out. This makes her view on family a lot stronger than mine – because I take everything for granted.
My sister moved in with me in July of 2013 because she had been living out of motels with her boyfriend while my parents struggled to take care of her kids for a few months. When she moved in with me – we were pretty close. She paid attention to things that a brother would never notice. She watched me fall in love with a girl and then she watched me fall apart with confusion. At the time, I had spent the last 5 years of my life protecting my heart and then I met her. Suddenly I forgot to play defense and it was over in no time – but my sister know what happened 5 years prior. She knew that I was not really interested in caring for anyone because I knew that they would just hurt me eventually, so she was shocked when I was quick to forget all of that just a month prior when I met her.
At this point a few months had passed. My sister knew lesbians better than I did by now just because she was a good listener – and a woman. There are not many people left that will try to tell me what to do or give me advice because they know that I will just do what I want to do anyway and this was no different but my sister tried her best to be the best sister possible and I feel like I pretty much called her a liar or suggested she was confused. Her facial expression said it all (Something like – well, I guess I will have to tell her I told you so later…) It was a sad defeated look. There are a few people in the world that absolutely hate when I get my heart ripped out and she is one of them.
She had been at Walmart that day with my oldest niece, which was about 5 at the time. They saw my love interest from afar and my niece yelled her name and wanted to chase her down – she was equally as excited about her.
My sister noticed that she was with a guy and as she gently put it to me, ‘she was sure they were more than just friends.’ I didn’t believe her and told her that she had to be wrong or misunderstood. We were no longer dating and hadn’t been for quite some time but I was still holding my breathe for the next moment I would get to spend with her and my sister was watching from a distance. At the time I had no idea. I couldn’t reference a time frame but it had to be within a few months of meeting her. By December, I had dug myself into an internet hole called craigslist and shot myself in the foot – but I learned a valuable lesson that day – well many. The first one is – Don’t get mad and leave work when your rebound tells you that you can’t be her side chick anymore. AND Don’t get overly excited when you see photos of someone that you are pining over and instantly message them without reading the actual post – because it might just surprise you. And you might wish you had just stayed at work with the other problem that you created. That was December 17, 2014. Next I will go see what I wrote about that.
Prior to that she was at Walmart buying a bike – and my little niece that loved her saw her and my sister started playing defense all around. Kid – don’t interrupt them right now. Sis – there’s something you need to know. At least the 5 year old listened. My dumb ass didn’t think twice about it and told said lady that they saw her at Walmart that day – excitedly – when she mentioned the bike… I may never learn.
Anyway – here is some damn song that made me think about that crap this morning.
It finally happened, somehow active shooter emergencies have made their way into my nightmares and to make it even worse, my grandma was involved. As far as I can remember – no one was hurt.
For some reason, there were several women from my family with me and we were sitting in bleachers that resembled a hockey stadium. We were pretty high up in the stadium and there was a barrier in front of us that was high enough to duck behind.
There was some sort of car theft involved and then someone came up to where we were and started shooting a semi automatic rifle into the stands. When we realized what was going on we got my grandma down and I braced myself on top of her, I clenched my teeth and held my breath and with every sound of the gun I expected to be hit.
I don’t remember the ending but as I ducked down there, I wondered when someone would come save us. Why didn’t anyone else have a gun? We were outside and could see where the car had been stolen from. In my dream, I knew the owner of the truck – maybe it was blue, but at this point, I can not recall.
To dream that someone is shooting you with a gun suggests that you are experiencing some confrontation in your waking life. You may be feeling victimized in some situation. If you dream that someone is shooting you in the back, then it means that you are involved with some questionable people who may be harmful to your well-being. It also implies that you are too trusting of others.
To dream that something of yours have been stolen indicates that you are experiencing an identity crisis or are suffering from some sort of loss in your life. Alternatively, the dream means that someone has stolen your success or has taken credit for something you did. Perhaps you feel that you have been treated unfairly.
To see your grandmother in your dream represents nurturance, protection, and unconditional love. Consider the qualities and characteristics that exist in your own grandmother. She may also be the archetypal symbol of the wise old woman.
This weekend, I decided to try to remove myself from the situation. I went up and cuddled with my favorite toddler. We went to eat and since I lost my debit card weeks ago and never replaced it, I got away without paying for everything. We dropped the sleeping baby off with a friend and went to 6th street. The drinks were too nasty and expensive to actually get drunk but we did have a 19 year old with us so we went to all the shittiest places that would let us in and I even got patted down to go in a club.
I didn’t distract myself well enough – if she doesn’t want to hear from me then I am sure that I was significantly annoying.
I also visited Zoo Keepers Exotic Pets but the distraction didn’t last long but I did see a sloth.
As I drove back home from Austin, I couldn’t get Tom Petty out of my head – it’s true. I am tired of my magnificent town again. Do you know what it is like to be terrified to park next to any black cars? It’s rough.
I haven’t talked to my mom in ten days and I can only hope so hard that I will it into existent that she is doing what she needs to do to finally be able to support herself, again – not that she had ever done it well for long. That’s why she has so many last names. There was a time in my life that I was embarrassed that my mom had 4 kids but as I get older, I realize that I am sure that it wasn’t an easy decision to make. She grew up Catholic but I can’t imagine that ever affected her future decisions – but it could be why I have 3 siblings.
Now that there are three of us left and I pretty much take care of my brother (though many people have strong opinions about that) and my sister’s husband thing would never allow her to come stay with them, she still has no one to help her. My dad would if he could because he is one of the most giving people I know – but he has tried many times and he is too old to take the mental and physical abuse that she puts him though.
He hasn’t spoken to her since I sent her to GA with a one way plane ticket to live with a childhood friend that agreed to take her in after whatever abuse story she told him. There was a point my dad was worried that one of my mom’s drunk friends would believe her and come to retaliate. I am sure that he has PTSD from all that she has put him through. I am the only one of us that she has never physically assaulted but the one time she came close it absolutely terrified my dad.
We were in the kitchen that I grew up in. It was just over 20 years ago right after my grandfather passed away on June 30. She was in town for some child support hearing. I had ran out of gas coming from somewhere. My dad showed up to help me and she was with him. I know at that point I was extremely standoffish but there is no telling what out dynamic was. That was when my siblings were in foster-care and I was too young and far away to do a thing about it. They were in MO. My brother and I were allowed to call them once in a while. I feel like I just talked about that.
I really held a grudge and I didn’t know what had really happened or why they went. In the end, some people say that my sister came out to a psychiatrist saying that she lied about mom pushing her down the stairs. It was a steep wooden staircase to a basement, I can’t imagine that professionals couldn’t tell the damn difference. My sister says that she aged out of the system and that she threw a fit until my brother who was 12 months younger was allowed to go with her.
Back to the original point, the time I nearly fought my mom may have been the day after they put gas in my car. I was still living at home – was about to start my freshman year in high school. It was about the time that I started to get a little taller than my mom and though she was a gymnast that nearly went to the Olympics – I was in much better shape than per alcoholic 35 year old self. I was making waffles or something at the toaster and she said something that she knew would piss me off about my grandmother and everyone in the room knew exactly how I felt about that. It was the only time I had seriously bucked up to someone and I was about her fight her right there in the kitchen. My dad quickly begged me to ignore her with fear in her voice somehow reminding me that I was better than that.
I walked away and went to my room but I never forgot the day that I nearly beat my mom’s ass and I think my dad knew it. No one else in my family will hit her back and you bet she has physically abused every one of them. Brian only after her was an adult because my dad protected us well.
It’s true what they say about support systems. Though I often feel like an outsider as an adult – mainly because I think they judge Brian and I for my mom’s mental illness. They would probably rather our last name vanish with our generation than either of us pass on our last name – but who cares – not me. There is a lesbianesque story in there somewhere but I am not ready to tell it and I know better than to say such a think to such a person but yesterday I was having a conversation and I so badly wanted to say things that I found myself looking at myself in the proverbial mirror thinking what in the actual fuck.
Now for some music because I have lost my train of thought. Some really great things happened today and I almost wanted to tell her about the pizza that I was afraid someone threw away out of the freeze. I will tell one last story before I move on to songs that I listen too way too often.
Chronologically It’s some year long ago. I am sure there is arecord of the event but until then – it was around 2014 or 15 or some year. I call up the local pizza place where I happen to admire a pizza artist manager. She answers the phone to take my order and she may be away of such admiring so she doesn’t ask my name, possibly because I had invented a code pizza since I too am forever 14.
I go to pick it up and she doesn’t let me pay for it so as I float on cloud nine for a few days or however long. The uneaten pieces of my birthday pizza (I forgot that important part of the story it was on my birthday) stayed in my bachelor-like fridge for way too long. A friend of mine – who was too aware of the whole pizza love – was cleaning out the friend and told me to just put a piece in the freezer – so I did.
It stayed there for years to come until I had to move. I really didn’t want to move and I tried everything to find a way to stay but one by one every reason disappeared and I gave in. There was one big reason that I didn’t want to leave and the pizza in the fridge wasn’t it at all but it symbolized something to me that I thought a slice of pizza in the fridge that could contain biological warfare at this point would do something about. Eventually I moved that pizza into a deep freezer in the garage of the house I was staying in. No idea when, how I did such a thing without anyone noticing because if I have ever been called a hoarder – this one was not going to slide by anyone. I have now confessed to said pizza because I thought it was missing and promptly asked everyone about it not thinking about having to explain my question.
What I think makes the story worth mentioning is that sometime last year this classic pizza shop ended up closing its doors abruptly, so I do not think that many people had the chance to get their final slice. It is not edible by any means and my dad laughed and no one actually asked – probably because anyone that knows me know exactly why I have the last piece of Valentino’s pizza in my freezer.
Now for some music that tugs at my soul.
Fuel
This was the first song that I loved off the album but never understood it the way I do now.
As Is
I really appreciate the passion the live version.
Two Little Girls
Loom
Pixie
I don’t think war is noble And I don’t like to think love is like war But I got a big hot cherry bomb And I want to slip it through the mail slot Of your front door You can’t leave me here I got your back now You’d better have mine ‘Cause you say the coast is clear But you say that all the time So many sheep I quit counting Sleepless and embarrassed About the way that I feel Trying to make mole hills out of mountains Building base camp at the bottom Of a really big deal
Ani DiFranco – Independence Day off Little Plastic Castle released in 1998
Independence Day
You can’t leave me here I got your back now You’d better have mine ‘Cause you say the coast is clear But you say that all the time
I could never vocalize how this song makes me feel.
I don’t want to be afraid.
Photos from Bella Concert Hall in Calgary by Josh Platt
My favorite album of all times has been Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails for as long as I can remember. Today I looked up the release date and – well there is no and but it was released October 20, 1989. I have heard all of the songs way too many times and feel quite connected to most of them. The Fragile is also on my list. There’s so much that I could say about life and fear but I just don’t know how to put it into words right now.
Five years ago, today, I saw Nine Inch Nails with Sound Garden – both for the first time. I don’t really remember what was going on at that time but I knew that she was going to be there with C and I was terrified of seeing them. Maybe I was still worried about my heart breaking into millions of pieces. I know it was before I decided that as long as she is in my life, I am happy with the rest. I am not the most open minded lesbian in the world, but I give it my best. Texas has made its way into my inner core at times. In the weeks leading up to the show, I convinced myself that it would be near impossible to accidentally run into one person in the mix of all of those people. In the end, I was only really worried about one of them. I made it through the whole show, made it outside of the venue and much to my dismay, some woman that came with my friend decides that we need a shuttle back to our car. If I know me, I am sure that I threw some sort of fit about having to stand in line to wait to right a bus or something back to our car that was in the closest lot possible. The trolley finally stopped and I made it clear that there was no way in hell that I was getting on that small thing with a bunch of sweaty people and told them I was going to walk – wouldn’t you know that it was at that very moment that I would turn around to be face to face with the one person I was not going to see at the show. Thankfully, he had no idea that he hated me yet and that wouldn’t be the first time that I would see the woman that I fell in love with so many years ago in public with her boyfriend and have to turn and walk away like I didn’t. It’s not a pain that I can describe to many. No one should mix shame with guilt after a shot of excitement. I used to think that I would have reacted differently in such a situation. Society taught me that I should be angry and want to fight, but somewhere along my journey, I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was cause her pain and if I were to react in any other way – I am sure that it would, so I just do my best not to react – but now I look like an insensitive asshole.
The day before I somehow ended up hanging out with and then suddenly in a relationship with Madd – I got drunk and sent her a text. My drunk ass asked if she remembered when I had said something, just a line from this song, clearly struggling with my emotions and showing the world that I am a light weight when it comes to drinking. She simply replied with no and that was enough to leave me mortified. It wasn’t much later that she explained that she just didn’t remember – I don’t know how I can embarrass myself so much in front of one woman that I feel so connected to. I am sure that it’s some defense mechanism, I am the worst with those. I am scared of the world and trust fully with my heart and trust no one with my brain. It leads to complex days for all parties involved.
I am not sure how the next day is probably the day that I ended up in the sandwich shop over-tipping and showing that none of us were tough enough to eat jalapeno poppers. What if they were poisoned? It’s all coming together now. This is what I mean, I am so sick of my competitive, jealous nature. It runs everything in my life and I think that just by recognizing that its present, I can fight it, but it still seems to be a struggle. Sometimes I just need to be able to turn my imagination off and stop thinking for once. Today, I decided I might need a harder job. I have found the down side to doing a cushy job that pays moderately well – too much time to think. I never had time to think about anything but work at my last job.
