Started writing this one in July. Better late than never, I guess?

Last weekend Huzzban and I had our first proper Athens night out in well over a year. There was an all-day show at Southern Brewing, with something like ten different acts playing to benefit some charity or other (sorry, I can't remember what day it is or what I had for lunch today so six days ago is a veritable *lifetime*). Drivin n Cryin was headlining, and we both had to work so we missed the bulk of the day anyway, but mainly we were very excited to see John Moreland again. (Goddamn I wish I knew how to hyperlink. It's late and I'm tired and I am relearning how to do this on an Apple computer, so apologies. But go ahead and DuckDuckGo that shit. You're welcome.) 

The weather was alternately sunny and stormy, with heat being fairly constant. Hello, Georgia summer! Huzzban had to work at the Cheese Shop all day, so I picked him up after. we got a ride from a dear friend who answered my call on The Facepage because I knew there would be no parking and we were already going to be arriving so late. Since the pandemic it is virtually impossible to get a ride share in this town, and we were incredibly grateful for the assist. We arrived in the middle of Lera Lynn's set. I had not heard her stuff in years, and it was really enjoyable. We found our friends (or rather, they found us) pretty quickly, and after her set was over we went in to get some beers. We planted ourselves front and center for John Moreland's set and stood in the blazing sun between a very young and handsy teenaged couple and a somewhat inebriated woman who was closer to our age and definitely a JM fan. I was crying ten seconds into the first song, partially from relief and the return of familiarity and a small slice of normalcy, and partially because his songs are just so bloody sad. It was fantastic, and I only had to tell the teenagers to stop talking once. I did not have the heart to tell the drunk woman to stop singing the words, out loud and off key, just after JM did. in another circumstance I would likely have been much more annoyed, but I was so happy to be there that I really didn't care.

After the JM set it started pouring again, this time with some thunder, so everybody huddled inside again while we waited for it to blow over. When it did we all went back outside. D n C was great. you could tell they were also just happy to be back in front of people. I honestly don't know their music that well, outside of a couple of hits, but I had a blast. There were giant balloons being batted about (fairly healthy hippie contingent in their fan base), and there were special guests. Mike Mills has a voice that will always make me feel like it's a gorgeous, sunny, fall day in Illinois, even when it's a rainy, sweaty night in Athens, and for that I am grateful. Ran into another local music legend (not the internationally famous one with the recognizable face, but another guy who has not only played on but produced some of the best records in our collection (and likely yours). I hadn't seen him in ages, and as with many other folks in this town who know everyone, I wasn't sure if he would know me, but he did. we talked for probably 20 minutes, which is probably 18 minutes longer than we had ever consecutively spoken before. We were laughing about some drama that happened 20 years ago while he was recording some friends of mine, and then he told me about a fabulous punk rock couple in town who, unbeknownst to me, had been on a show called "Wife Swappers" or some such nonsense, where the Punk Rock wife moved in with a yuppie dad and his kid(s) and the mother from that family moved in with Punk Rock Husband and their young daughter and a TV crew captured the results. everyone was apparently paid very well. I was not able to find this on the internet, but boy howdy would I love to see it. When Mills got up to do a song, this guy looked at me and said "we are so incredibly lucky to live here." Which is all the more fantastic because I was thinking to myself "Dude, you were in -----." I am not going to say his name here because A) I don't want to appear to be a name dropper; and B) I don't want to call him out publicly for the next thing he said, which was "I'm sorry if I am talking a lot, but I just smoked some pot a couple of minutes ago and it really hit me." 

After the show we were nowhere near wanting to go home, so Huzzban and I are our friend P went to Waffle House. Not the nearest Waffle House, mind you, because P has knowledge and opinions about the quality of various Waffle Houses in town, and also we knew it would be packed with people getting out of the show. So we drove to the WH on the opposite side of town, and holy cow did it deliver. The guy working the grill was totally pro and loudly bragging about it. Our server was obviously brand new, but none of us cared because we were thrilled just to be in a damned WH in the first place. There was an older couple there who obviously owned the nicest car in the parking lot, a gorgeous, mint-condition vintage convertible that we had admired when we parked next to it. They were dressed to the proverbial nines, as if they had just come from a symphony or a charity fundraiser at a Country Club fancier than any of the ones in town. At the table behind P and Huzzban was a family of five with a little girl who was not older than three. Were it not 11pm I would have assumed they had just come from church. At the table behind me was a guy who was not wearing any shoes, slowly removing his soaking wet socks. He had a large backpack with him and was likely homeless. While we looked over the menu, he went, shoeless, to the rest room to dry his socks under the hand dryer. We knew this because that's what he was yelling back at the Grill Master, who was yelling across the counter to him that he needed to put his shoes on if he wanted to stay. All of this to say that it was a standard weekend night at the Waffle House. Our drinks hadn't arrived by the time the food started coming out. Not even water, which our server noticed right after she apologized for dropping my a la carte egg off of the plate and onto the table in front of me. Again, I did not care. We were just so happy to be there, to be anywhere. After all was said and done we were home and in bed before 12:30. It was a perfect and perfectly Athens night.

This was started well over a month ago, so things have changed pretty drastically since, but

Hung out with friends last night, outside, in their yard, not masked. it felt like normal for a little while, which is a welcome change. today I am going to an outdoor concert to sling cheese plates, so it's a work/play situation. Little bits and bobs of normal are starting to populate our days. It's mostly a welcome respite but the anxiety creeps in at the oddest moments. And forget about normal when it comes to masks. I am so used to wearing one (I have been working in very crowded public places for the entirety of this shit show) that I sometimes put it on as soon as I get in the car, alone. Or I absentmindedly put it on when I get out of the car to walk to the house. it's become such a habit and there's still so much uncertainty (no thanks to our government for a complete lack of leadership and guidance on this FFS) that it's hard to know what to do in every circumstance. I still wear one when I go into places where there are kids, because vaccines aren't available for them yet and I am trying not to be insensitive or cocky. just spoke to a friend the other day whose wife lost both of her parents  to Covid in a matter of two weeks because they were so twisted by Fox News that they refused to get vaccines despite being in their seventies and fully eligible for months. I wonder when the class action lawsuits will start. Also finally saw a nurse friend who is forever changed from having worked through this whole thing in a Covid ward. She definitely has PTSD. She said she had never been in a situation with a death rate so high among patients under her care. I know I am not back to full normal, but whatever I am dealing with is nothing like that, thank the gods. Still feel very gaslit in certain company, of course, but I try to avoid that company as much as possible. Mostly I just feel relief.

I was standing in the wine aisle, checking tags and doing the front-and-face boogie. Theresa, the older of the two clerks, was explaining the different scratch-offs to an impatient young woman while baby-faced Megan set out the greasy, noxious, awful excuse for pizza they call Hunt Br0thers, which has invaded all of the gas stations and convenience stores in Georgia and the surrounding states.

A couple of Mexican guys were scouting the snack aisle while their friend gassed up a big, beat up, white F250 full of tools and equipment outside. Basically it was the same as every second Monday had been for the last 13 months, me the only person in the store with a mask and buttons on my shirt, everybody else going about their business but definitely taking note of me like I was a cop in a biker bar.

I went in the cooler to count the beer back stock. Had to jam a flat box in it so I didn't get locked in. Theresa said the handle finally broke all the way and she didn't know when Sam was going to fix it. Megan said the guy from United got stuck in there for fifteen minutes the other day and he was hoppin' mad. She thought it was hilarious. Goddamn Northeast guy took two more of my spaces on the shelf and my driver still hadn't picked up the NA that should never have been delivered. When I came out, I started heading to the front to talk to Theresa about the Northeast guy. All of a sudden another guy comes in, loud and fast.

"And you better tell your uh-MEE-go, to come and get his pavers, too. He knows what he did. There ain't nothing to be done now- I got somebody else to finish the job. But he owes me." 

I stop back in the wine aisle. I can see over the top of the Chardonnay that it's a white guy, mid-forties, tan. He's probably five foot eight, not big, but confident. He is wearing dark sunglasses and he's yelling in the direction of the two Mexican guys. I can't see the guys' faces, but they don't say anything. One is by the door and the other one is giving his money to Megan for the pizza. 

"That's right, he says, even louder. He knows what he did. He started a job two months ago that was supposed to be a two week job." 

Megan, smiling sweetly, gives the Mexican guy his change and he heads for the door. The guy keeps on, talking real loud to nobody, everybody. The Mexican guys leave without acknowledging him. There are two other people shopping, plus me, Megan, and Theresa. "He knows what he did. He left us. Tore up the whole yard with and left it." Megan is nodding slowly, sympathetically. "I know he's busy. Hell, they're WORKING all over the place. I see them trucks. But word gets around fast. if you don't do the job that'll stop. SOMEbody's gonna find him at the bottom of the lake." 

The two customers check out wordlessly at Theresa's register. Other customers are coming in, nobody saying anything but every one of them looking to Theresa to see what's up while this guy continues to honk his grievances. She keeps right on, stocking cigarettes in the rack above the register, smiling stiffly and giving a small nod to each new face, not even looking at the guy. He finally sputters out.

"Do you feel better now, hon?" Megan asks, matter-of factly, after a few seconds of quiet. Everyone else in the store is tense, and nobody knows what to do. The fact that Megan is the mother of two small children is not lost on me in this moment.

He doesn't reply but as he turns to leave he realizes that the guys are still out there at the pump. His hand is on the door and he draws back. "See now I gotta wait because I don't wanna get into it with them." She nods again, going back to the pizza station. I am smirking, thankful for my mask, and Theresa and I lock eyes for a split second, hers rolling almost imperceptibly. He stands there, awkwardly, while the Mexican guys eat and talk and laugh with each other, truck doors open. They are not in a hurry. It takes me almost ten minutes longer to finish putting the order together, and only then does the F250 pull out of the lot. Loud guy storms out, mad all over again, and as I am backing my car out he peels loudly out onto the road and speeds toward town. I feel like the girls at the gas station haven't heard the last of this.

 Huzzban stirs when I get up to close the sliding door against the coming storm. I would rather leave it open, but the shade is big and heavy, and when it's blowing hard it clangs against the wall and there's no sleeping through that. He rolls over and asks, sleepily, "Do we need to bring Lem in?"

Lem is the name we have given our Meyer Lemon plant. It was given to us as a wedding gift by some dear friends, and we have been through a lot together. We have moved it across the country three times (GA-VT-IL-GA), and only found out at the last minute on the Vermont to Chicago leg of this tour that we were not allowed to put live plants in the moving truck, so we had to leave behind the pot and almost all of the foliage and jam it into what little space remained in the trunk of our Honda Civic. It has stood in for a Christmas tree when we didn't have room for one, gotten infested with god-knows-what in our previous house (again I had to repot and it remove all of it's leaves and most of it's branches), and yet it still comes back, even bearing fruit again last year. Lem is happy in Georgia, but he still has to be protected from the elements for a couple of months each year. During that time, he lives in the corner of our walk-in shower, getting hand-pollinated and, as weather allows, scooted in and out to the patio. You have noticed that I switched pronouns on Lem, right? We decided it was a he when we gave it the name Lem, short for lemon but also as an homage to Officer Curtis "Lem" Lemansky from The Shield. Yes, we're weird. but if you've been here before this is no surprise to you. 

Anyway the answer was yes, Lem needed to come in. There are only a few lemons developing after a very promising number of blossoms -I'm talking 30 to 40 minimum- and I am not taking any chances on losing those to wind damage. So he jumped out of bed, and I slid the doors open, and he carefully steered all of the branches through the opening and toward the bathroom. Looking outside, I realized that I had also left a couple of small tomato plants out there. I have them in pots while we wait for the weather to make up it's mind. they won't go in the ground for at least another week or two. I grab them and hand them off, and proceed to close the doors and shade. From the other room, a clank as one of the pots goes sideways onto the tile. 

"Sorry," mutters huzzban.

  "Did you just apologize to the tomato plant?"

"Yes, yes I did."

So I guess we'll have to think up names for those now. 

I am guessing that I intended to edit this somehow. I have no idea why I wouldn't have just posted it otherwise. Maybe I was planning to add the story about running Jello Biafra for Chinese takeout with four other people in a Ford Tempo? I don't know. anyway, it's not polished but it's entertaining enough. Original draft date included because why not?

(1/14/14 4:44PM)

I found some old notebooks.

I've had a lot of this stuff laying around for a long time. Half-full notebooks, over-stuffed journals, bar napkins and bits of paper with random phrases written on them. I'm not even really sure what my intention was in keeping all . Basically most of it is way too personal and/or poorly written for me to ever want to publish anywhere, but I did run across a couple of stories - not fiction stories, mind you, but hastily scrawled recollections that I think are worth sharing. I figure now is as good a time as any to start.The following story takes place at SXSW, sometime in the middle 90s.

The smoke was killing me, mostly because there was no room for either me or the air in the club to move. I'd been jammed in the same space for over 30 min. basically since the doors had opened. I had to pee very badly, but couldn't possibly give up my spot. I was front and center, less than 5 feet from the stage. Golden Smog was an ever-rotating lineup of incredible musicians from several of my favorite bands: The Replacements, The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Soul Asylum, Big Star... Mike would know the rest. He was like that. I had conned both of my roommates and my then boyfriend (Mike) into driving the fifteen-plus hours from Champaign, Illinois to Austin, Texas only three days ago. We had already seen eight or 10 great bands in the past 24 hours, but this was clearly the highlight.

So I'm standing there holding our place while Pat is off getting beer, Trish is in the bathroom, and Mike is getting T-shirts. I looked to my left and I noticed that Dave Pirner was just a few feet away chatting up a girl about my age who, based on their conversation,was apparently unaware that he was a musician, much less that he actually used to be in Golden Smog. I figured she just dug his dreadlocks. Anyway, his former bandmate Dave was in the lineup that night. I silently hoped he might join them onstage. His ubiquitous (at the time) star-fucker girlfriend Winona Ryder was nowhere to be seen. I thought perhaps she was once again stalking the Next Big Thing. In fact, that guy's show was in full swing at a much larger club on sixth street at that moment, so it was a definite possibility.

*After what seems like a lifetime, the lights finally go down. Through considerable amount of secondhand smoke and the torpor of nearly two full days in the car, followed by whore's bath in a truckstop restroom north of Dallas, all the while subsisting on the limited vegetarian options at our nation's finest fast food establishments ("Who order a cheeseburger with no meat?" The manager of the McDonald's somewhere in Arkansas had demanded with barely contained rage), I somehow manage to muster not only enthusiasm, but genuine elation. There is a feeling that I get at certain rock shows– one that I cannot and will not attempt to explain to people who have only a passing interest in music. It's the feeling that I suppose sports fans get during the national anthem at the Super Bowl or the World Series. It is an indescribable, spine tingling, ass-clenching, butterflies-in-your-stomach, I'm either going to vomit or have an orgasm thrill that a music fan experiences at certain moments. Fortunately for me it isn't seasonal, nor does it depend on a win or a loss or a region. I cheer for my guys from Minneapolis to Denton, Texas, regardless of my Chicago origins or my current Athens Georgia roots. Moments of greatness, of true, profound, musical bliss are all over the place – you can't rely on the instant replay or tonight's Scores and Highlights at 10. The records can and often are truly great, but even live recordings don't compare. You just have to be there. And tonight, I am.

Mere moments later, Jeff Tweedy emerges from backstage, followed by Dave, Gary, and the rest of the band. Again- you'll have to ask Mike. I am giddy. I'm exhausted. I am sweaty, and I may not have enough money to eat for the next two days, but I made it, and this is the moment when I realize why I do this: the band wordlessly launches into "Red-Headed Stepchild", and no sooner do my roommates and my boyfriend return to my side, clinking beers and beginning to sing along, when the 6 inches directly in front of me is suddenly occupied by a point he, bony, gyrating redhead who stands almost exactly a head taller than me. *

It took me a moment to even process, but then I couldn't see anything and this woman was flailing around spilling my beer and practically burning me with her cigarette. I looked to my right, at my roommates, who were so caught up in the show that they didn't notice even though she was spilling their beers, too. When I looked left, my boyfriend was rolling his eyes and glaring at her. He tried to make room for me in front of him, but it was no use. Then Mike leans over and goes

"Is that Tabitha Soren?"

He was referring to the annoying, omnipresent, and boringly self-important MTV newscaster (a job title that I still can't describe without smirking) who passed for an "informed journalist" for Gen X. I didn't know. In fact, I had no idea what her face looked like, only that she had no rhythm and had perhaps forgotten to apply deodorant that day. I leaned over to my roommates to ask. They nodded in affirmation, Trish looking immediately back at the show while Tom's gaze took in all of TS. He didn't know or care about Soul Asylum, so he was way more interested in TS than Dave Pirner. I stuck my right elbow out in front of me, unmoving but aggressively jabbing her right between her shoulder blade and her spine with each awkward thrust of her bony hips. I started to really enjoy myself. I started dancing, too, and singing along more loudly on "Pecan Pie" than I ever would under normal circumstances. I noticed that Pirner was looking at me and my jutting elbow and laughing.

When she saw him smiling in our direction, TS of course took it as an invitation to join him, and soon I had a clear view of the stage again. After the set was over we waited by the stage so Mike could get his poster autographed. (He was that kind of guy, which is ultimately why I think it didn't work out for us). As we were leaving the club, I saw Pirner at the bar looking bored while Tabitha Soren babbled in his ear. He noticed me looking at them and rolled his eyes a little, grinning at me and shaking his head. I raise my beer to him and thanks, drained it, and moved on to the next club.

Okay now I am cracking up. I had let this thing so dormant for a long time, but apparently at some point in the mid teens I was still planning to get back to it, so I left myself (sometimes insanely cryptic) notes. At the time I obviously thought that whatever had happened was memorable enough that I would write an entire post around one phrase, like this one from December 20th, 2014:

12/20/14 4:42

Champagne Larry

This is literally all I wrote. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... ahhhh. Such confidence.

Another unpublished blast from the past:

March 22nd, 2015

Pouring wine at a public tasting in a suburb so far West it might as well be Iowa. Rich people who don't want to live near poor people unless they're white. A guy who wishes he looked more like a rock star and less like old, fat Gene Simmons (or Ron Jeremy without the meaningful accoutrement) comes up and starts talking at me. His wife is hot. She looks like she stepped out of an 80's hair metal video. She is also obviously cool. I have no idea why she is with him but I am also painfully aware that I was this person in a relationship at one point in my life so I smile and chat her up like he isn't there. (I am not bragging about being hot, but I am comfortable enough saying that I was attractive and a good person and it must have been obvious to people on several occasions in my not-nearly-distant-enough past that I was with The Wrong Guy.) Anyway, somehow it came up that I was a vegetarian (I am excellent at code-switching by now, but sometimes when I am tired I let details of my real self slip out), and he immediately got loud and aggressive, telling me that he loved meat and that animals were made to be eaten, going hard into details about "bloody, barely cooked" meat and then making noises like a dying animal. 

Dude, I am from the South Side. I have heard all of this. Also I am married to a meat-eater. Fuck. Off. 

I just gave him shark eyes and asked if he was finished and would like to taste the next wine. He blabbered some Republican talking points at me. I continued to treat him (but more obviously now, because we had an audience) like a toddler who needed to be distracted so as not to force the whole family to leave a nice restaurant. Eventually he gave up and, pouting, moved on to the next table. The thing is I know I will see him at the next one of these, and the one after that. And he will not remember me, but I will remember him. And next time I won't let the mask slip. 

Here's a draft from 2016 that still rings true:

It's not even that I don't recognize myself. It's that I recognize that this is exactly who I was afraid I would become. Fuck this cell phone, this computer, this lifestyle. I hate being so connected to people I don't like and so disconnected from people that I do.

Something has to give.