Good Times

It occurred to me this morning that it's been 18 years since I went to the first series of Lollapoolza concerts. Yes, I was a mere baby and yes, the parents' credit card was totally used.

I was reminded of this as I was setting up something on Pandora today. While clicking some buttons, I felt a sweeping memory come over me that I did not get to see Siouxsie and the Banshees that night. To that end, I get rubbed on this by one of my oldest and dearest friends who not only saw Lolla I, but he saw the first actual show in Tempe, AZ. He knows I still burn with envy about him seeing SB and has no problem reminding me of that whenever he gets the chance. He also has no problem starting a mosh pit at any given time, without regard to acceptableness, and knocking me tall tuckus to the ground in the process, still today.

This memory would have been trivial if it had not been for a conversation I recently had about my feelings of high school reunions and my decision to restrict my Facebook friendships to no more than three high school classmates and two have to be boys that I was interested in schtupping during those days of raging hormones and frequent mall trips. I am safe having them on the FaceCrack because they are both the big ‘mo (hidden from the masses) like all the other men I dated before Brandeis. What can I say; I am a sucker for a guy who likes clothes and bottom feeding as much as I do.

High school was both an incredible and agonizing time in my past. I was popular and I flittered between the prep school world and public. I was captain of the track team, graduated in the top 10% (a feat I am proud of because I found high school harder than any of my ivy league education.), and I had already attended more than one frat party before I was 16 years of age. The thing is though, I was bored. Bored fucking stiff. Think a San Francisco born PhD educated lesbian residing in some small town in Kansas where you have to drive thirty minutes to the nearest grocery store for jacked up prices. I was loath to teach my classmates one more time how to titrate up and down during an assay, shopping at Benetton went out with the condom ads in circa 1991, I was far too mature to care about things like prom, the OC, or curfews that others had, I was offended living in a staunch Republican county, and boarding in the backwoods of New Jersey was not for this big city girl. All I wanted was to wear black, tune in, turn on, and drop out.

To that end, I pretty much did. My last week of high school I let it be known that the previous four years were nothing more than fake friendships, false pretentions, and all of the events leading up to that week had made it possible for me to attend art school some day if I so desired because I truly had suffered. I suffered. Suffice to say, I did not walk in graduation that Friday night. Though the reasons for that had to do with a Jewish doctor and my refusal to back-down to AG Momma, I had no regrets then and now that I have never seen more than one of them since that week.

I was a wanna-be loner then and now. I understand this is common in true socialites and incredibly brilliant people. The phenomenon behind this syndrome suggests that we are so in, that we cannot relate to very many and therefore, we want to be so out. To this end, I spent my last three years in Boston doing the same to my myriad of Boston friends that I did to my New Jersey friends and telling untruths to both the new and old Boston friends about each other’s existence. I think for me then and now, I just wanted to be left alone. By dropping people without their consent and denying that I even knew them once, it made my space dark and peaceful. I needed that downtime during those years given the frenetic nature of my professional life in the early 2000s.

I think I am an enigma that way. I suppose the reason is mainly because I am like Cher’s character in Mermaids. I do not live in the same place for an extended period of time. Boston was the longest stint I’ve had in my adult life and I had six different addresses and three different states during the years that I count as my Boston life and one of those mailing addresses I owned almost the entire duration of that time period!

I am not much one for bringing my past with me. As such, I began erasing my previous Boston life six months ago. And the weeding continues. I would like to say that I hate this habit about myself. I’d also love to say it’s pathological or that it’s curable. It’s not though. I am a rolling stone who gathers no moss. I am a girl about town who has an incredible future waiting for her and the issue is that my future will involve my ability to be nimble and turn on corners like a dime. I am a woman who lives in the moment but when the curtain falls, I am onto the next casting call. I think for the most part, we are all like this to some extent. I am just more self-aware, purposeful in action, vivacious, and provocative when I bow.

The only thing for certain is that a little AG in your life will go a long way. At least I think she does after soul searching and figuring out what I learned from being anything but myself during those final years in Boston. Now that I have both the pouplar girl and the loner girl on the same path, I have figured out how to temper my social world with me burning desire to be a recluse. I am blazing forward and this time, I may take you all with me (instead of the usual of a very unpredictable select few)into the next chapter. As for the pimple faced friends of yore, they got each other. They do not need me to sign their yearbooks.