Phi Beta Bitches (L)

Alessandra and Marty,
Envy can strike you in some funny places. I remember reading about the male cast of Lord of the Rings and how they became this fellowship of brothers and all got a tattoo together. I longed for that summer camp style bonding as a grown up. I fantasized myself one of the boys at the local pub sharing a laugh with my best buds. Then I read Liv Tyler's account of her time on location, it sounded lonely and isolated. I realized, I could mentally join the crew, but I'd still be a girl.

For as long as I can recall, I have wanted to be a boy, although I did not like being mistaken for one. When I was four, I insisted on being called "Tommy". Later, my greatest dream was to have the nickname "AJ" because it sounded cool. My best friend through most of grade school was Ward Shaw. I called him my "soul brother". I loved my actual brother, who was mostly nice to me and tried to shape me in his image. I played the trumpet, read X-Men comic books, and was a sniper in the Army of our back fields. My sister played the flute, spent an inordinate amount of time working on her tan, and was exceptionally mean to me. It was very clear to me at a young age that boys had more fun. This was also reinforced to me in my sexist white trash home where my brother didn't have to fold laundry because it was "squaw work", and instead got the superior job of burning the trash. I wanted to be one of my brother's posse so badly that I married his best friend.

Eventually, I learned a careful selective process of picking girlfriends can eliminate much of the cattiness I detested in women. I truly believe my friends are the best of the best of the female species and I get support, perspective and empathy from them that seems virtually unattainable from the boys in my life. I also learned that I like girly things, like long hair, high heels and fingernail polish. But I never quite lost the envy of the simple loyalty and companionship that a group of male friends seem to represent.

Then there was Alessandra and Marty. I think the thing that separates our little triumvirate from any other female friendships in my life is its traits of masculinity. Ours is the closest I will ever get to male bonding. I think we all individually have lived similar younger lives of preferring male company. You two are pool sharks, we were all once upon a time probably the winner of many a beer funnel contest (Marty, I'm sure you could still drink any man under the table), Al drives a Harley, my tongue could make a sailor blush, I could go on and on about how boyish we are. Who else could I have to my camp in late September in Maine when there's no heat except the burn from our alcohol and an outdoor campfire? More importantly, our personal relationships are more like men. We pick up our friendships' threads with no venom or blame when it drops. Marty understood when I was pregnant and bleeding (ok, we're a little female) and couldn't make her wedding. Al understood when I brought a girl and not my husband (no, not gay) to her wedding. We just don't get mad at each other and stop speaking, we just never stop. That camaraderie is lifelong and in our blood and we never ask the other to prove it. It's all the best of a fraternity with none of the dues. But I still kind of want to be a boy...

Swirls (Marty)

Leave in a car, on a boat, on a plane...get in and go, get on and go, get by and go. My head just swirls...where to? what for? why now? I love my friends. I love my husband. I feel the need for something...anything...but...swirl, swirl, swirl.

I think I get like this whenever I go too long without performing. Something about it stabilizes me, lets me concentrate on someone else's fictional life, see the good in my own, be graceful. The need to develop a character like me, not me. I am a hopeless character, let's face it...a wanderer by nature, if only in desire. I want to see to believe, hear to learn, feel to love...all of which I can do without restriction when I am on the stage. No judgments await...faults and charm are not mine but hers...she dances or floats or trips or ages or lies.....

and I am fine. My self returns. Be not me to be me. Dustin Hoffman once said he would perform in community theatre for the rest of his life if that is the only place he could play. Some people believe that you are your occupation...the one that pays the bills. But when people ask me what I do, I reply "I am an actor. It is what I do for my life, not my livelihood." The passionate understand me...

The Cougar Cometh (L)

Cougar refers to an older woman, usually in her 40s-60s[11] who sexually pursues younger men in their 20s or early 30s. (Wikipedia)
A woman in same age group who from little to no fault of her own resembles one. (Linda)

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Here’s where it starts. I’m 4, I have outrageously curly auburn hair, big brown eyes, skin that tans and a bit of a pudgy nose. I’m precocious in a way that adults like because they can get me to go on stage and read things, but secretly find irritating. I once told a man in a flea market who was “cussin’” to watch his language. I’m 9, people tell me I have beautiful brown eyes, I blush, inside, because no matter how I try I can’t blush that gentle pink flush that fair blondes achieve, making them look sweet. I want to be sweet. I read Heidi over and over again thinking somehow with one more read I’ll be kind and gentle and raising baby goats. I start telling my parents I love them every day before school, because that’s what sweet girls do. It’s about 2 weeks before “I hate you and wish you were dead” slips out of my mouth again. Because my life isn’t sweet, this is the phrase my parents have earned. But I want to twinkle and glide despite them.

My father is blind, this means that I get to hear people telling him all the time how pretty I am. This also means he can’t buy his own beer. From that fact many ugly things are born. My parents not having enough money to buy me braces is probably the fairest of them all. My teeth grow more crooked, my face grows longer while my eyes stay the same size. That’s the last I will hear about my big brown eyes. That's the last I will hear about how “pretty” I am.

It is many years before I will hear someone give a new label to my looks. “Sexy”. I am 21 with long dark curly hair and dark eyes. My legs are long and lean and I don’t like to hide them. I’m no remarkable beauty and I don’t have a trace of sweet in me. Sexy? It seems with these particular features I have two choices. I can roll with it or I can slap on some Birkenstocks and grow out my leg hair.

I roll with it for years and years, but after three babies and 35, sexy is a bit of a desperate stretch, unless you’re Susan Sarandon. I am not. I fumble for a new label. My hair always gives me away. I try cutting it shorter, it just gets bigger, my new label could be “crazy hair lady”. I keep my long curly hair.

After many months of peering at me appraisingly, my posh Brit neighbor finally reveals her greatest Pygmalion tool, the straightening iron. My God, I can finally brush my hair, it feels so soft, it is so flat! Oh, but look at all the split ends, time for a major cut and how about some side bangs? With my propensity toward scar hiding scarves and in my capris, I’m looking rather yuppyish. Suddenly, any inner sexy I might have left is a secret. I am disguised as a soccer mom. Strange men look at me more. Men like a challenge. I do not like strange men, but I like finally being noticed as something other than sexy. I can join book clubs and not get dirty looks from the women dressed like pilgrims. I like this, I’m playing a new role. I finally have a new mask.

I have to buy a new dress for my niece’s graduation. I pick out a form fitting one. What’s the point of not being fat if that’s a secret too? It is tight, sleeveless, patterned, an appropriate length. My new scar hiding necklace of many metals puts one in mind of Floridians who think they’re artistic. My straight conservative hair brushes the edges of the dress and necklace. There is an essence of left over sexy. I look like something, I step back from the mirror squinting, something I am not, yet…
Next year, I’ll be forty. The Cougar Cometh.



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Dear Mrs. Hottie McHotterson...

Please come to my 21st birthday bash; all of my friends from the football team will be there and I really would like to show you around campus. Do you think any of the other catwomen from Hottietown will be able to join you? I think they'd like my friends.

Anxiously awaiting your reply,

Cutie McCalendarboy

I want my mmmm...TV (Alessandra)

Television is the national drug and god forbid there should be an interruption in delivery so you miss American Idol or worse, pick up a book or something. It's galling that our money is spent on ads to inform people with antennas that tv is going completely digital (a year from now!) and that there's a taxpayer-funded stipend you can receive to convert your analog tv (does anyone have one of these? Even the Amish have gone digital by now) to accept the digital signal.  By comparison, if there had been as remotely as organized disaster plan for New Orleans, a city below water in hurricane alley, more people would be alive and still in their own houses.  Maybe the people of Ninth Ward need a reality show on Fox so that at the rest of us would a) know what's going on; and b) actually give a sh*t.

What It Means to Be from Maine (Alessandra)

Happy birthday dear Linda

Happy birthday to you

You look like a goddess 

and you write like one too

You're an excellent parent

and the foxiest of them all

now will you let me come back 

to the cottage next fall?

happy birthday! hope you get all you want and more 

love, A

Footloose and Baptist Free (L)

Yesterday was my niece's Baccalaureate. The question of the day seemed to be "What's a Baccalaureate?" When my kids asked it, the answer was simple "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to go to it." I was right. Turns out, a Baccalaureate is some sort church service, a sermon to the graduates! I'm sure Marty, graduating in the South, knew this. Hers was probably after church and everyone wore white gossamer dresses under their gowns and enjoyed apple pies and baskets of fried chicken at the church picnic where Jesus himself came down and said grace.

However, up here in Maine where "Jesum Crow" is the closest many get to Amen, the only information I had about Baccalaureate before last night was the recollection of my own, which consisted of three memories. It was in our high school's auditorium and the post party was at a graveyard in Rockland. (Now that I realize what it actually is, I wonder which northern heathen was responsible for cooking up the locale...) But my strongest memory of the evening was of conning Andy Grady into leaving the party and taking me to a convenience store for some unmemorable reason, where in my drunken stupor, I became obsessed with shoplifting a Little Debbie Brownie. I kept trying to slip it in my coat pocket, but was clearly lacking the skills required to actually achieve this, so the crinkly cellophane wrapper was alerting everyone to my many attempts. Andy was a good sport and kept whispering "I'll buy it for you, please stop!". To which I would reply a giggly "shhhhh" and crinkle crinkle slide down my coat's side, over and over again. In retrospect, I think that the clerk must have been working even harder than I was to pretend not to notice. Twenty-five cents was probably not worth the drama. Eventually, I realized my coat did not actually have pockets and put it in my pants. And that was my Baccalaureate evening.

Marking Time or Love's Sweet Revenge (L)

Tomorrow is C's and my anniversary. Eleven years. We have an anniversary book we sign to each other instead of cards that we can lose. We've been doing that for probably 5 years. It started out with entries like "I never thought I could feel this complete" and other lovely lines which I have since ripped off and turned into actual greeting cards. Then we started forgetting to bring it with us on our anniversary events, so sometimes the date would be a month later, then two months later, then 8 months. One year, I caught up and wrote for the previous year, but C refused to, no matter how I dogged him like a kid with a yearbook. Last year, with all the other flutters, neither of us bothered.

I remember my sister telling me that she and her husband no longer bought cards, that they would just go into a store and hand each other a card to read. I thought "how horrible!" and was later part of the inspiration for the anniversary journal. But now I understand. How many times can you write the same good things over and over, but avoiding the bad? True sincere anniversary cards would be too depressing for this stage in life, they'd say things like,

Pg. 1. Don't worry.
Pg. 3. I don't hate you every day.

Or

Pg. 1. I just wanted to thank you.
Pg. 3. For not divorcing me yet.

Or

Pg. 1. Turns out
Pg. 3. I didn't love you too much

But, there could be some nice ones too! Like,

Pg. 1. I can't believe my luck
Pg. 3. That you're not bald yet!

or

Pg. 1. You're hard to love
Pg. 3. But easy to f**k

Eye Candy, Brain Decay (L)

Last week, our MTV had no sound. It was bed time and Tila Tequila's "Shot at Love" was on. If you don't know this show, it proves that a.) you have a life, or b.) you are not a horny teenage male. So that's what is on, mindless, soundless, eye-candy TV with a target audience of boys who LOO-OOOVE to see girls kiss. As my finger was hovering above the caption button on the remote (so that I could actually read this quality television), I thought, this is how Alzheimer's begins...

Not the Mama (Marty)

OK...let me preface this by saying, Linda, that this is NOT in response to your post on babies. I swear to you that I was working on this very post the night that I wrote the one on soundtracks, when I was working at the auditorium with so much free time, and had saved it as a draft. It is pure coincidence that both our minds went to the same subject, which just goes to show why our friendship has remained over the miles...

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You'd think I'd be used to it. You'd think I would have developed the perfect answer to put people at ease. And yet, I am almost always surprised at the look I get with my answer to the question "So, do you have kids?" I almost pity the position they've put themselves in; I can just see the mind scrambling to formulate a follow up question that won't insult or enrage or crumple me. Most people, bless their hearts, just cannot fathom a childless marriage of twelve years, much less one that is deliberately so. They flounder, they scramble, they blush, they tell me "Well that's ok too!" all the while thinking "Where are the horns?" and "That bitch is wack." Once, when we offered to babysit for a newly second-childed couple (now *former* friends), the wife told her husband that she would not feel comfortable with me watching her children "because she is not a mom." Um....WHAT?

What girl code did I break? What rules did I not follow? How did I go from exercising my option not to procreate to being incapable of taking care of a child for a few hours? I secretly wished her to be hit by a dungpod ejected from an overhead 747, but so far my wish has gone unanswered.

I remember being a young woman and talking to my mom about kids. Even then, I did not feel the pull of the mama gene. She smirked her more-years-of-wisdom smile and said "Well, you'll probably feel differently in a few years." Well Mom, I waited. And I tried to be open-minded, and not be one of those people who said "Oh, I'll NEVER have children!" that wind up having seven. Even when I met the man I would marry, I told him I didn't have the Mama gene, but that I was open to the fact that my mind would change. He, thankfully, was cool with it. But that's not the way it went.....38 now, and still no Mama gene. Which begs the question.......what is wrong with me?

The way I grew up just did not lend itself to any common (much less ideal) meaning of the word "family." Adopted, then with divorced parents, splitting up my siblings and myself, then generally ignored til college...where would I have gotten the inkling that having children was the end-all be-all of being a woman? I mean I LOVE my friends' children and my nephews. I play with them when I can (in the good, get in the dirt make mudpies kind of way), try to let them know (when they're pre-teen and tween) that if they want an adult to talk to, they can call me. I let them know that when they're old enough to run away they can run away to my house (cause at least then we'll all know where they are). And I completely respect all the women out there that chose children; I know it's a special bond that I'll never understand, and I can live with that. So....why am I the one with the horns?

Final answer? There is nothing wrong with me. So stop telling me, and your other mama friends, that there is.

Marty

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Miss Marty,

You know Marty, before I had kids I was so following my inner compass toward procreating that I couldn’t imagine someone could actually not have that compass inside of them. I heard you saying you didn’t want kids and I didn’t think “oh, she’ll change her mind” but I did think maybe there was some wound from your childhood that could heal over time and your life would take you in a different direction than you imagined. Of course my then boyfriend, now husband, was claiming the same lack of reproducing gene, and I was hoping he'd change his mind! I’ll admit it was hard not to imagine you with an entire brood of boys, because you are so much damn fun!

But since having my own brood, I’ve quickly changed my way of thinking. Having children changes your life in ways you can’t imagine before you have them, of course some are rewarding and magical and amazing (see my post before yours), but many are grinding, draining, and altering in ways that can make you feel that your soul is being sucked out of you (see the lack of Alessandra’s posts); or if you are stemming that vampire drain, that you are selfish and are failing your children. It’s a huge thing, you are creating real live people who could be angels or could be monsters and whether you were the wind beneath their wings or fire beneath their scales, you are still their maker and all fingers will be pointed at you! And it’s not something you can quit or take a vacation from. Really, someone who has kids that are over the age of 2 and seem amazed that you don’t want kids, it’s really because they want you to join them in their world because why should you get to be free? (Although, I do ask people still sometimes, but it's because I’m nosy.)

Now, I have the opposite approach, I secretly hope all of my friends without children (with the exception of those who really want them) never have them, thus they will always be interested in my children and also available to me for playing. That woman was an idiot because seriously, the best babysitters in the world don’t have kids; and so they are still engaged in them, fascinated by them and willing to get on the floor and play with them, and most importantly actually watch them. We moms, we’ve developed a muscle that childfree people don’t have which enables you to seem as though you are hearing and seeing the child before you when in actuality you aren’t. Did Mary Poppins look as though she had stretch marks?

I think though the thing that has convinced me the most that having kids isn’t for everyone, is seeing people who really shouldn’t have had kids. You see them "with" their children and you know they either had kids so that they could check that box off, or because they didn’t ever stop to consider that it’s not a necessary requirement for life.

Marty, I would trust my whole pack to you, you know I was willing to send my baby girl down to you for weeks alone. You have legendary status in my house and you’ve spent less than a total day with my kids. I worked in daycare for a couple years before having kids and I think that the only way in which I am better with kids now is that I’m less self conscious reading stories aloud. But you know, somehow Marty, I don’t think that’s a problem with you…

So, say it proud and say it loud, “I don’t want to be nobody’s baby mama!”

Forever your girl,


Holly

The Smallest of Thieves (L)

Alessandra—I found this from an email I had sent you in response to the wondrous occasion of your baby S (now better known as “the boss”) 3 years ago. I thought I’d post it in honor of your most recent boss who is keeping you from writing long and reflective pieces on Lynard Skynard.


Edited from 2005 original

One of the weirdest experiences of life is having a newborn baby those first few days in the hospital. What a surreal feeling to be intimately bonded with this little stranger that has been growing inside of you. It’s a million times giddier than the experience after you're married and you refer to each other as wife and husband, and giggle thinking someone will correct you.

That feeling of calling for the nurse, saying, "I want my baby" with utter confidence when you really feel like you’ve just been handed the keys to a kingdom and no one has yet discovered that you’re really just a pauper. And the marvel when moments later they appear with this little thing that is yours, that is part of you, but hours ago, before they were born, you wouldn’t have been able to pick them out of a line up. That feeling of "Oh, there you are! That's who you are!" without actual recognition. It’s like having amnesia with your soul mate, and then having to and getting to know them all over again.

Sometimes when I'm doing G’s (my first’s) hair in the morning and her bare back is to me, I will touch her arms. They have these tiny bumps on them just like Chris’. I run my hands over their sandy surface as I stare at her back with its little dark hairs at the bottom, just breathing in the perfection of her imperfections and the beauty of her completeness as this little person. Yet it is still unfathomable that she is this grown, this absolute seven year old. I am still in awe that I made her, we made her—that once she was in me and now is growing out of me, but still is somehow half me. It's still a miracle when I have the time to slow it down enough to see it.

L

Soundtracks -- Part Deux (Marty)

Ladies --

I have pictured my entire life as a movie, and all of my big scenes have a soundtrack.
The Dance (Recital) Years. Lee Ann and I would hop around our living room making up dances to Madonna and Billy Joel, mostly because that's what was around the house. Our friends (and I'm sure yours too) would always give us 45s as birthday presents, so we had plenty of those around. Dan Fogelberg, Commodores, Eagles, Steely Dan, Lionel Richie, Madonna, you name it. It was a sad day when all of our old 45s were stolen out of a storage space my father was renting before moving into his new home, years ago. I can't listen to "Borderline" without doing my sister's choreographed dance in my head, if not in actuality.

And now, for your viewing pleasure.....--> my 80s hair.


The High School Years. Now bear in mind that it is *not* my fault that I was a teenager in the 80s. I glam-banded it up with the best of them. Mid-high school White Lion and Cinderella were frequently heard bellowing from my silver Rabbit convertible; there was rarely any doubt as to who was coming down the country road. Beach trips in this car became frequent after I turned 17, and by then I was dating a DJ far too old for me (thanks Mom and Dad) who turned me on to a lot of dance mixes, including Beastie Boys, Taylor Dayne, Bananarama, Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam, and of course...the sexiest man in purple platforms, Prince. My church youth group (I really loved being raised Episcopalian) took us to SEE PRINCE in a city TWO HOURS FROM HOME when I was 14...this a year before they took us to New York City for a week when I was 15, where I bought a pack of Newports in Yankee Stadium and then teetered around all highed up for an hour trying to find our seats. Newsflash: Newports will put even an avid drug user on his ass. But I digress...so Prince was my first live concert, and holy GLORY was it fantastic! I can listen to any Prince album at any time, but I have a special place in my heart for Purple Rain. Watching him stroke his guitar into ejaculation...words cannot describe. By the time for Governor's School came around, the summer before my senior year, I was ready for something different, and I got it in spades. All of the artsy/theatrical/vocalist/musical kids I hung out with that summer had something different going on...Berlin, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Talking Heads were the music of that summer. I introduced many of them to Heart, still one of my favorites. Every time I go back to Old Salem I make sure to have a Berlin CD in the car. If you measure the age of a friendship by if you keep in touch, then my two oldest friends are from that summer. David is in LA writing screenplays (and we have had a long understanding between us that when his first film is optioned, there will be a small part in it for me...) and Judi is here in Raleigh, fighting through her recent separation from her husband of 12 years. My life and my music collection (thanks for all the mixed tapes David!) would not be the same without these two people...thank God for Governor's School.

College...oh boy oh boy oh boy. Literally. I met the first great love of my life about two minutes after arriving on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. A sweet Italian boy from Rochester with a penchant for Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and Miller Genuine Draft. We went to Aerosmith, Skid Row, and Bon Jovi concerts (clearly still the 80s), and listened to Winger and Poison (when we thought noone was listening) and lots of Eagles. I remember that Ozzy and Lita Ford duet "Close Your Eyes" making a regular appearance as well. After our horrible breakup three years later, I found another sweet boy whose tastes were remarkably different; hence I was introduced to the Allman Brothers, Robert Cray, Van Morrison, Public Enemy, Dire Straits, Sting, and tons of others that are today some of my very favorites. I float into the past every time I hear "Into the Mystic" or "Little Martha." My college roommate of three years had this mad crush on (read: wanted to be) Stevie Nicks, and so I fell in love with a lot of her solo stuff as well. But the roomie went by the wayside several years later when I learned she had tried to sabotage many of my college relationships; I have no friends from that time except that the second boy (now married and living in California after getting out of the Peace Corps) and I still email occasionally.

Which brings us back to Do. Wow...I just had no idea what to expect when I moved to New Jersey. By way of illustration -- take a hard-boiled egg and shove it into an olive jar. That's kinda what happened to me when I moved to NJ. Southern through and through and having never lived outside of North Carolina for more than six weeks, I was in for a rude -- and I do mean, RUDE -- awakening. Enough said about that. Melissa Etheridge, Gin Blossoms, Concrete Blonde, Counting Crows, Something Fierce, Edwin McCain...I found all of these in my three-year-three-month stint in the Garden State. I absolutely FELL IN LOVE with the Grunge period and these are still bands in my car player most often...Nirvana (I was among the heartbroken millions when Kurt died in April of 1994), Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, you name it I love it. But by far, my favorite New Jersey discovery is my two next-to-oldest friends, the women without whose opinion no big decisions are made: the esteemed and beautiful Alessandra, and the honorable and lovely Linda. Funny, Linda, that you mention that your soundtrack with Alessandra is a bit blank...I really don't hear music in my head when I think of you, except what you goad out of me around the fire (which, as we know, was years later). I know we had that unfortunate Hootie and the Blowfish thing, but in my defense, I was enamored with them because my sister had seen them perform in a bar in Sylva, NC (the very western part of the mountains) before they were famous, and she famously jumped up on stage after their first set to hug Darius Rutger and to let him know what the band's flaws were...it was the closest I had ever come at that point to knowing someone who knew someone famous. Thankfully Seema talked me out of stalking Dean Cain, but again I digress...OH! Actually, there was the summer Marion and I came up to see you and rented that convertible in Boston, and we drove around all week listening to Liz Phair's "WhiteChocolateSpaceEgg" and another album of hers that escapes naming right now. I do remember you and Chris in the back seat (I'm sure you only had Gwenyvere, and she may have been with your sister) singing right along with us to "Johnny Feelgood." Or maybe just you. But I completely disagree with Alessandra on "Achy Breaky"...that was *not* the most repeated song we had to suffer through at the pool table while you were getting your dance freak on; "My Maria" is the one that totally sticks in my head, although I concede that my year bartending in that country bar in North Raleigh in '96-97 could be what stuck that song in my head. Alessandra and I, however, have much in the way of a soundtrack for the Princeton years. Many evenings out in the field behind the florist with tikis, beer and boombox rang with the Neville Brothers "Yellow Moon." Our pool sharkin' nights were generally filled with any Lynyrd Skynyrd or Allman Brothers on the juke, specifially "Midnight Rider" and "Sweet Home Alabama." Alessandra, I think you thought it my anthem for being from the south, but Alabama is a world away from North Carolina. I loved the gesture nonetheless. Our pool sharkin' days almost came to an end one night in the Gables, when an unfortunately toothless man angrily banged his cue across the table to rattle us, just before Al sank the game-winning 8-ball shot. I think after we were followed to the car that night, we decided the Gables was not for the faint of heart...and we never went back. That may coincide with the Weekend of Bacon...but, once again, I digress...

Princeton 'til now...and In the Way Back Machine. My first year back in NC I bartended at several clubs, one of which was a dance club. The 'tenders danced on the bars ala Coyote Ugly, and I refer to that as The Dance (Club) Year. A return to dance mixes and staying up all night took thirty pounds off me and introduced me to those cheesy-turned-danceable mixes from Cher, Celine Dion, and such that were so popular at that time. There was still some sexy groove music coming down, and ten years later, Prince was still putting out tunes so hot your inhibitions melted. "Gett Off" always got me up on the bar to shake it, and my hotness (believe me, I'm laughing) got the attention of one short froggy patron...now famous for being the man that got me to say "yes" and actually follow through. Down the aisle. On the beach. In St. Croix. My soundtrack with him is limitless...the Toadies produced "our song" which, if you listen to it, will make you go "um, what?" He (being a teenager in the 70s), introduced me to Kiss (a band which I had managed to stay away from all those years until I fell in love with a live show) AC/DC and Boston. He famously got up onstage with our reception band (the first time I ever heard him sing with a band) and belted out "Brick House" to me. Everyone was stunned. As the years went on and we began to sing together (in our living room with the ultimate karaoke hookup) we have rediscovered some old favorites together -- Charlie Daniels Band (sung at the top of our lungs in a rain storm with the top down driving back from the beach) Elton John, Styx, Billy Joel, Journey, and new singing favorites, for me Melissa Etheridge, Concrete Blonde, Shinedown, and Pearl Jam (which I totally rock out...Marion says I should start an all female cover band and call it Gearl Jam). My darling husband has been singing with a Grateful Dead cover band they cleverly named "Better Off Dead" and so I've had a complete inundation of Dead music...another band I never really got into before my husband began to sing it.

Despite my general aversion to country music, lately I listen to Sugarland (because I have loved Jennifer Nettles since I first saw her perform in Black Mountain and I think she is some kind of sexy). Jimmy Buffet really has me going lately; I'm hooked ever since we went to Florida and have been at the beach in South Carolina lately. India Arie's debut album I know by heart. Edwin McCain does a cover of Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet" on The Austin Sessions that amazes. Chris Isaak's "Heart Shaped World" is an achingly beautiful album, and is best heard driving with the top down under a full moon on a magnolia-blossom and wisteria scented two-lane country road. Alessandra-- need some good old Lousiana bluesrock? You HAVE to listen to Marc Broussard's "Carencro." Concrete Blonde's "Live in Brazil" is brilliant. "Take Me Home" begins: "Pick up the phone, I know you're there, it's almost closing time./And we can toss down one more shot before last call./Are you ok? I swear to God I've got to get out of this house/I miss the days when I'd just not come home at all./So don't you cry it'll give you lines around your eyes./ You've got to try not to live so much of life alone./And if you see me getting crazy at the bottom of the bottle/ take me home, take me home, take me home." It makes me think of you both and my fantasy that one day we'll all live close enough together to make last call on a regular basis. Once a dreamer, always a dreamer....but let the music play.

Marty

Soundtracks (L)

Alessandra,
Most of the time periods of my life have soundtracks to them, but oddly when I think of my times with you I hear nothing except a reverb chorus of "Rehab" and the sound of sloshing wine. Well, of course there is "Bobby McGee," the only song we all know the words to sing around a fire. But it surprises me since you were the first girl I knew in a band, you were also the first girl I knew who drove a motorcycle, but still no music--not even the rumble of a Harley.

Maybe it's because our salad days together were in the 90s. Do we really want a soundtrack from the 90s? I mean, how sad would it have been to fall in love and have your song be by Hootie and the Blowfish? (Deep breath Marty.) The Cranberries’ "Linger" reminds me of you because you lived in Cranberry. Damn, now that song is in my head!

Maybe it's just New Jersey in general, most of my soundtracks were generated in Maine. Probably my earliest was of summers, coming from Tennessee to Maine, and walking into my cousins’ house and watching whatever shirtless jean clad teenage boys were about walk by me, their heads thrown back, singing "Sgt. Pepper," then "Everybody Wants You," but mostly a steady stream of Zeppelin and AC/DC, fueled by 102.9 WBLM, classic rock baby.

Puppy love at 14, first year permanently in Maine, starting things off by falling so deep into Air Supply's "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" on my cottage bed surrounded by the black fall night, I needed Ozzy's majestic declaration of "I AM IRON MAN!" every morning on the bus to snap some sense into me. You ain’t gonna get a Mainer boy with Air Supply after all.

Next came my brother’s influence as we moved that first Maine winter into the Spofford house in Waldoboro, afternoons filled with Bread and late night frost bite truck rides brought to you by Squeeze. But I discovered The Police’s Synchronicity all on my own.

I think a lot of my soundtracks were provided by friends who had more money to blow than I did, and my friend Su had quite a record collection. Soundtracks with her have the most songs and get the most replay, probably because the years with her were truly the halcyon days of my youth. Su's and my soundtracks come in two Volumes.

Volume 1, Su and Linda: We painted my room in Warren, and our hair, teal blue (with a black lightening bolt across the wall), as we wore out my brother’s David Bowie Changes One album, and we were hooked. Nobody, nobody could dance and lip sync to Prince’s Purple Rain like us. After she died, I had a dream of Su and me being lowered into an empty room by poles, side by side and dancing a slow lovely lament to “When Dove’s Cry.”

But dancing never possessed you quite the way it can with Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony.” And that was just the tip of the iceberg; Su had every single album, bootleg or legal, of Billy’s. I nearly matched Su’s obsessive love of Billy, button for button, with my love of Duran Duran. In fact, when our friendship had taken a little break, it was the DD’s that got us back together. On the bus home one day, Su told me, “I taped the new Reflex video for you,” and I was like, “You had me at Reflex” and off we got at her house to begin a new phase of our love. But I’m getting ahead of myself, that song really belongs to Volume 2.

Cheering basketball bus: Violent Femmes, it took about 40 voices screaming, “How can I get just one SHOE?" then "DUCK” over the real words to keep the coaches from catching on and beginning the ban. Meatloaf, damn I can still do both parts of “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” (Hey, I never claimed to be original in my soundtracks.) L-O-L-A, Lola, live version The Kinks, I wore out Kathy’s trailer phone calling that one in on the radio so I could tape it. I don’t want to admit it, but the voices screaming “WHOOAAA Living on a Prayer!” are too loud, so there it is.

First love: I had such tidal waves of butterflies to the tune of Madonna’s “Crazy for You” that I still catch my breath when I see Vision Quest… Getting a little rocked to “Rock Me Amadeus,” now how was it that I didn’t know he was gay?? Lying on my bed at the Faler House in Warren, listening to “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” over and over, my love for him was as heavy as that ship. Same bed, singing “I Want You to Want Me” to him when I was plowed on Vodka and Pepsi-free--his eyes locked on mine as he said, “You seem happy like you used to, with Su and Angie.” Uh-oh, can you see what’s coming? Yup, late nights with Marillion, the one hit wonder of Wale’s “Kayleigh” playing over and over, as I cry my eyes out for that boy.

Volume 2, Su and Linda: Mending my broken heart with the “Reflex” overture, Su and I are ready for Volume 2 and a smattering of new boys for the summer. We start off with a little Cure “Boys Don’t Cry”, Morrisey’s “Every Day is like Sunday,” mixed in with Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s and New Order’s “Temptation,” Su’s favorite as she really did have green/blue/gray eyes.

That following spring, Su fell for a boy with a sweet little edge of punk to him, and I soon followed suit with his best friend to the tune of Lisa Lisa’s “Head to Toe” with a little word change to celebrate, “Today started with a little kiss, on Robert’s couch” (Oh, oh my, you can't take the girl out of teenage girl no matter how much black you wear)... Fortunately, we moved on to the Sex Pistols, Generation X, and the Repo Man soundtrack. Hearing Sid Vicious warbling “I Did It My Way” and Burning Sensations’ “Pablo Picasso was Never Called an Asshole” could get me all tingly for years to come.

But I also remained faithful to David Bowie. My boy and I would spend late summer nights holed up in his bedroom’s loft, sneaking in, walking on his feet so his parents would only hear one set of footsteps, to spend hours lying on his mattress listening to Bowie’s Never Let Me Down loop on his tape player. I could practically fall into a sex induced coma just hearing one song from that album. That fall he and I went to “The Glass Spider Tour,” and it was fantastic. (I realized years later when I bought the CD that without the sex to accompany it, the album is quite a let down, but the concert remains pretty amazing.)

Our break up found me lying in my friend’s darkened dorm room with cigarettes, Diet Coke, and Pink Floyd.

College then gets a little lighter with some “Funky Cold Medina”, “Baby Got Back”, “No Hippy Chicks,” and “Gonna Make You Sweat.” Here is where I should probably admit to having a soft spot for dance music because “Groove is in the Heart” and you know I liked to get my freak on. But not sure if they qualify as being the soundtrack to my college experience, more like the soundtrack to certain drunken moments.

The air of college, especially those first two years in Corbett Hall, are filled more with the Steve Miller Band, Elvis Costello, Sinead O'Connor, INXS and here is where my lifelong journey with U2 and R.E.M begins, it was “The End Of The World As We Know It”, but just the beginning for me.

I left the Indigo Girls and 10,000 Maniacs behind on the smoke filled plane to Scotland for a semester, crying like the silly depressed girl I was for the boy I was leaving behind. If I could go back in time, I'd slap those headphones off and shout, "You'll be stuck with him for at least 20 more years, better live it up, girlie!" Scotland is filled with the Cure and dance tunes that were in America two years prior--but the best music was my professor reciting Yeats with his thick Scottish brogue.

Chris has been a sidebar in all of my Soundtracks since I saw him walking into school wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt. He was my brother’s destination the night of the Squeeze freeze. We walked into his house and watched him play his electric guitar airbrushed with Greta Garbo and despite my splitting headache I began my love, well okay, lust, of musicians.

Then as I sat at home that first college Christmas break entranced by INXS’ “Need You Tonight” video, wanting the drummer so badly I thought I would burst, in walks Chris, home with my brother on break from Bowdoin dressed head to toe in black with his buckled boots and shy smile, giving me something real to burst upon.

Though there would be boys and songs to follow for years before he became the only one, nothing can quite compete with his staring at me over the cabin's lamplight as he sang “World Leader Pretend.” Damn! Those green eyes! F___er still uses them to glare at me about the dishes, sheer abuse…

Chris's and my soundtracks are so intertwined at times it’s hard to separate them. I guess it’s the intersection that gives us our playlist, since we never danced a song or had a moment where it all began to have the music of it in the background. It was a collection of sounds and times and moments through years. But I think that’s a whole other post, I’ll just give R.E.M and the Cure top billing with emphasis on "Just Like Heaven".

As I wrote this, I realized that the Soundtracks have slowed down and wondered if they are for being young and dreaming, when your life isn’t part of a half written plot. But then I remembered four years ago, driving S around all of North Union’s back roads to get him to nap listening over and over to U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb and R.E.M’s Around the Sun, and suddenly realized that time period, those roads, have a Soundtrack, so maybe it’s more about having the time to hit replay. Or making the time. I watch Chris with his earphones and IPOD as he mows the lawn, does the dishes, goes for a run, or sometimes just wants to tune out the noise. I see him sitting in our driveway in his car until the end of a new song he’s just downloaded, and I think, I’ll always have a new book and he’ll always have a new Soundtrack. Life, as we progress, does make it hard to have it all.

Horarable Mentions

High School: The Big Chill

21: (Gilberts) Bonnie Raitt, (Dreyden Terrace) Sister's of Mercy

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L
You're right there...I think the soundtrack to our times was the sounds of the Canal path [in Princeton] the chirping and whirring of the birds and our conversation, and of course the truckers' horns on Washington Rd. You know, in summer, in those leotard things. But also, and I must say it, there was that Country Music Phase that you went thru, and you'll notice the singular pronoun there since at no time did I ever voluntarily pay to hear "Achy Breaky Heart" or "I've Got Friends in Low Places" and I am talking about the line dance evenings at that hotel (motel?) on Rt 1 and of course The Yellow Rose.

Alessandra

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Alessandra,
Ahh, I did think of it, although, it wasn't Maine and technically it was a Country Line Dancing Phase, not a Country Music Phase. To imply that because I liked a little "two stepping", I would have ever voluntarily listened to "Achy Breaky Heart" is like saying because you like to ride, you aspire to a Honda Goldwing!!

I did spend many a night at Oakley's and Colorado Cafe and any other place Sara and I could scour up, after they closed down the Yellow Rose. Having a love for dancing can bring about some unlikely outlets for it in your life. (See: Cheerleading.) Although CLD in New Jersey differs from cheering in that everyone was masquerading, not just me. I remember parking lots full of trucks with confederate flags on the window behind empty gun racks. I wanted to go into the bar and shout "you're pretty far north of the Mason Dixon Line boys!"

I actually probably had more legitimate claim to the world of country than most in NJ as I was born in Nashville, Tennessee and raised in spitting distance, and my father being a country music songwriter and all. (Not to mention that we grew up with a defunct refrigerator on our porch, country style.) But being as I was currently working at an Ivy League academic press at the time of my short skirt-cowboy-boot-and-hat wearing phase of my "tush pushing" life, I'd say I was right on par with the rest. (How about you? Do you think mentioning Princeton may have gotten you booted from the Merry-Go-Round?)

S, Me, M.
Sadly, the only picture taken during the Line Dancing Phase. Oakley's Halloween night. Three Blind Mice!




Echoes. Taken less than two years ago, you can see how I clung to the hat and short skirt, until my fingers were pried off

My two favorite things about CLD were that no one, NO ONE, ever talked about what they actually did for a living, it would dispel the magic and we would suddenly all find ourselves in the middle of a dirty dance floor with a strip mall down the road, wearing outrageous castoffs of Dolly Parton and John Wayne.

But my favorite CLD feature was that it knows no age limit. It was the one place where I saw 20 year olds mingling with 70 year olds--which gives me dancing hope for the future as I seem to be getting older and older every year.

You make it sound like we were walking down the canal in just leotards, I assume you just mean the leotards as shirts phase that made our breasteses look as young and firm as they once were...
L





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Linda
No no no you paid good money on your crappy academic salary to hear "Achy Breaky Heart" and no amount of twisted semantics is going to get you out of that one. Mmmm...Manville was one of those Towns That Time Forgot, and they can be found pretty far from the Mason Dixon Line, and altho the residents of said towns may have embraced modern technology, such as the aforementioned pickup trucks, they may not be aware that the Civil War is actually over. They may not talk like they got a mouthful of tabacky but they're still as shitkicker as anything under any Tennessee rock. Ah the parking lot of the Yellow Rose, pickups, piss-cheap beer, broken glass and broken dreams.

But it's wierd that you chose to write about soundtracks because I just ordered some of CDs of music I used to listen to a long time ago [Killing Joke, Gang of Four], that I realized I really miss. I hate the fact that I have to buy it twice since I've already got it on vinyl, but I'm too lazy to play my records and now I can put it on the pod.

On another, sad note, I got my hair cut (at this chichi place in ny but that's another post) and it's a lot shorter and loads more stylish and no one has noticed. How more invisible could I be. Sigh.

Excuse me have to go. The boss is throwing all her crayons on the floor.

PS You *are* getting older each year. By at least one year.

Alessandra