8:11 PM onward and upward...
I feel really out of character in the make-up section though. I'm looking through all these lipsticks and I'm comparing them. Doing the back-of-hand tests... I remember being thirteen/fourteen and harassing a friend for wearing make-up and shaving her legs. "Why?! What are you wearing lipstick for? Why do you shave your legs?" In this backward way. Like it's anti-feminist to wear cosmetics and have smooth legs. What a fucked-up communisty stance. Now I hate going without lipstick. I can live without everything else, but I must have my lipstick. And the fact that there is chocolate flavoured lipstick (okay, 'malt ball') and it is the best colour... I get very pre-pubescant in the excitement that generates in me. Goldmine baby. Fucking goldmine.
Walking along the highway in the rain. And I just remembered some people's condescending of me when I called that a highway. "Chaara, you have to see--- " Implying this 'get out more, small town kid. This ain't no highway, farmgirl.' stance. Like I just haven't seen the world, so naive. Fuck off. Think it just gave them the irresistable chance to allude to that. We are much more world-wise than you, child. I hate people who get like that. Just shut up, you pompous spazz.
Anyways, walking along the highway in the rain, I had this little narrative going in my head; "I'm going to fall in love with a drummer, with tattoos and guns and a roadtrippin' car, we're gonna move into a trailer park, make music, fuck like rabbits, and go on road trips constantly." ....This spawned from passing by the fully typically trashy trailer parks down by the river on my walk. Usually a class-snob-by-default like myself would look at these wretched landscapes and think "Never." But I can look and see some wild romance that I would love to get involved in, though it's not particularily an ambition of mine, it's something I realized I could totally enjoy if circumstances dictated it... "Kalifornia" romance. Or even "True Romance". Or "Love and a .45", only with better acting. And an actual plot. And I wouldn't be stupid. But I would like a polaroid camera. Yeah baby. Get yer gun.
I love it. At least there are people out there making movies that acknowledge the fact that poor white trash madly in love, armed, and on the run is very fucking romantic.
TRUE ROMANCE. That is the best film of the genre. I love that fucking movie so much. I remember when it first came out, I watched it every day for a week. Never lost it's power.
Andrea's mom has diabetes, so Andrea bought her some of the flavoured lipstick, like the stuff I use. Maybe, maybe, maybe, in time I could ween myself off real chocolate, and only get my fix through my lipstick. Though not as satisfying, perhaps I could experiment. Maybe these zits are caused by something else..?
Hope, hope.
In any damn case, it's getting on my nerves. I feel like the awkward zitty teen I never really wuz. Payback?
I'm not happy about it. Ignore. It'll go away.
Anyways, as per the usual highschool slut ostricization, the guys she got with were ten times the slut she wuz. But that wuz completely overlooked by the 'we will make your life Hell' committee, of course. And even I participated in her downfall. My yearbook for that year is filled with comments like "Danielle's a slut!" "I can't believe you were friends with that bitch Danielle!" Wow. How quickly these judgements are made. And I didn't do anything to protest. Hey, she asked for it, right? I wuz just jealous. Down with Danielle! Needless to say, I am so glad I wuz kicked out of that school, or I may have never escaped that mentality.
Danielle wuz a pure hedonist. And she wuz shunned, hated, chased out for that. Again, the assholes she scored with were two dollar whores compared to her harmless playing around. And everyone acted like those guys were victims. (Ultimately people simply loathe sexually assertive women.) This wuz over six years ago, and I still think about it? Because I don't know where Danielle is. And I still remember the last time I talked to her she told me she wuz either going to "move to Edmonton, or kill myself." These were her available options? Just cuz she fucked some guys? (Again, do I even have the right to be writing about this? I can feel the voices of the jury and judges of junior high as I type... And her imagined posse pushing me around, to keep me away from her.)
I had so much fun with Danielle. She wuz fucking crazy, in the most fun and wild way. I remember running down hallways, around the campus screaming hyper wild madness at every and any chance we got. We were nuts. I know we were pushed around verbally a lot by people freaked out by us, and by teachers who didn't know what the hell to do about these two teenage-sized psychotic toddlers, but considering how fucking nuts we were they were pretty light on us, I guess. Maybe they all knew that I would soon be booted out, and Danielle chased out. So their patience wuz stretched a little more generously, knowing we'd be gone soon... Who knows.
I remember being with some other friends of mine, without Danielle. We were at a bus stop, and I wuz standing on the bench. I wuz screaming and lifting up my shirt at the passing cars, and this wuz totally normal fun-seeking behaviour to me, (with Danielle it would have been) till I looked over at the people I wuz with and they had these horrified looks on their faces, like, "Holy shit. What is she doing? She's lost control." And I just laughed and laughed, and kept lifting up my shirt at the passing cars. Those were good times!
But this is nostalgia... I'm just pissed cuz I can't shake the guilt. Where is she now? Would we be pleased to see eachother if we did ever connect again? Would it be weird, awkward? Or totally blank? Maybe we've seen eachother and not known it. But I am so overemphasizing. We were friends for less than a year, and I know I am so fucking far from who and what I wuz when I wuz in my first year of junior high. But I can't fucking help wondering what she's like now. What she's doing, where she is...
I think she would still be around here today if someone had just bought her Liz Phair's "Exile In Guyville".
Schools are spirit-breaking institutions. Meant for nothing else but that.
Made me think of a scene in Douglas Coupland's "Shampoo Planet" where Tyler is visiting his super-hippie father out in the backwoods. The dad says, "What's MTV? I'm not into these designer drugs..."
And (though I would say these rave kids have far more in common with the disco kids of the seventies than the hippies of the sixties, given the raver kids' terrible taste in music... ) it made me think of some TV thing I saw when I wuz a kid. (I mean really a kid. Like ten or so. Not this version of kid that I am right now. Still, thankfully. A decade later.) This whole 60's news special on "Flower Children". It scared me. They made these so-called flower children so frightening and sinister. Like a foreign army, threatening attack. They showed these images of strange colourfully dressed people dancing around in parks in large crowds and I wuz so confused by such fun and playful smiling sunshiney images juxtaposed with the "We are doomed. Gaurd your young. It may be too late" narrative playing over it all.
Does this mean that in, say, 20-30 years this generation's offspring will be moaning that they wish it wuz the nineties? Will they read about raves and Lollapalooza and think, "Fuck, that's where it's at, man. 2020 sucks. I wanna be Eddie Vedder. I wanna be Jewel."? Just as I sit here now, steadfast in my certainty that I'd be much happier in The Golden Age of Fucking and Drug-Ingestion that was the Summer of Love? I've heard nothing at all that would make me think that time wuz anything less than constant kick-ass wildness and bliss. What are the nineties but a decade of sheer painful longing for a bona fide re-living, piece by piece of the sixties.? That is my view of the nineties. Sitting around moping that we missed the sixties. And, how appropriate, Cat Stevens' "Oh Very Young" just came on my mp3 player... (So I'd want a recreation, with today's sweet technological advances. I want my mp3.)
"This is the end, my only friend. The end of our elaborate plans. Can you picture what we'll be? So limitless and free... "
-doors
We must make it our sworn duty to save the next generation of truth and love seeking youth from romanticizing this sad era! I wanted nude dancing in beautiful public parks. I wanted peyote visions. I wanted pagan sex. I wanted desert acid trips. I wanted multiple lovers. I wanted rock and fucking roll, always. Forever.
I got years of bedroom isolation and fantasizing. And who's fault is that? Is it too late? Why can't such fabulous eras stay? Why did it fade? And why do I cling to this fucking cliche'?
I wanted to end on a trailer park, gun toting, road trippin' romance note... Just watch "True Romance" for me. Love it then live it. I'll join you. "Here Romeo! Make my world as great..." Or "Natural Born Killers". Oh yes. With less to go wrong.
That quote came to me, further along my walk.
Perfect. _____________________________________________ "She's a diamond that wants to stay coal. I swang out wide with her, on Hell's iron gate. Anything that you wanted, you could have. She's a swan and a pistol, and she will follow you like this...." "I wuz stirring my brandy with a nail, boys. Stirrin' my brandy with a nail..." -Tom Waits