...however, was not like trying to thread a needle while sitting on a moving roller coaster without drawing blood. It was in fact, a lot more like just throwing caution to the wind and drawing blood – a lot of it.
So my mom flew out here on the day after her birthday, and for the first time in years I actually got to hand her a birthday present in person (instead of having to drop a card into a fucking post office mail box). She cried a lot and was mostly just happy to see me. I stayed at my sister’s place for almost two weeks and just spent time with family. It was nice to get away for a while...but I’m starting to feel that there is an increasing awkwardness every time I visit.
My sister has devoted her life to Christianity now – and my niece, who I love more than anything, has reached a very inquisitive age. She’s three years old now (going on four - what the fuck does that phrase even mean?), and has entered the stage of asking the question “why?” in response to every single answer she is given (including answers like, “I don’t know”). I can’t help but think about the following clip every time this vicious cycle begins:
Anyway...she is a very observant, active little person. All I’m waiting for is the day when she can start reading shit. This will, in turn, limit what I can wear when I go to visit my sister. Although I cannot let her become familiar with The Poacher Diaries album artwork, she will definitely be able to recognize the Integrity skull by the time she’s five. Any day now I’ll be subject to a conversation about Christianity just for being in the room and she will ask me if I believe in God. She isn’t my kid, and my sister and I have a very long history together...I feel like I’ll just fuck everything up if I have to be the one who introduces my own niece to the concept of Atheism and Agnosticism. Oh well...I wish I could tell my sister that she can’t protect her from everything forever.
My friend who attends UCLA invited me to watch his band play a punk show in Long Beach. It had been several years since I had been to a punk show...so I knew this would be interesting. I drove up to an old, dilapidated house in a slightly sketchy neighborhood. The Hickey Underworld, they called it. It kind of reminded me of a commune, but with more Circle Jerks patches. I walked up to the “front”, which was in the back, and paid my three dollars. THREE DOLLARS for five bands. A kid sitting by the door noticed my Starsixtynine hoodie and made an under-the-breath Lifetime appreesh comment. I smiled and later he would walk up to me and invite me to go with him to the liquor store across the street.
We walked and he told me about his life in Anaheim. He was a sweet dude. He bought a six pack of New Castle and we took it back to the house, where he offered me a free drink and then put the rest in the refrigerator.
“Do you live here or something?”
“Nah, man,” he said...and just walked outside.
Down the hatch in a few minutes, and I grabbed a second bottle. When I had to take a piss, I discovered a framed picture of a Thriller-era Michael Jackson, a Dr. Octavius action figure and an aluminum New Castle can, among other amazing things. GOD DAMN. Then an incredibly cute punk girl appeared with burritos. From that point on I was smitten for the rest of the night. Oh well...
My friend from UCLA showed up with the rest of his band, Until Your Heart Stops, and we all hung out. He introduced me to the other kids in the band and I began to feel like shit because for every five new people I meet, I forget the names of three other people I met in the same night. One of the bands played “Big Mouth” by Gorilla Biscuits and I moshed so hard I accidentally hit someone in the face with the back of my head.
Until Your Heart Stops played while kids from the bay area went off and an incredibly awkward picture of me was taken during their set. Later on the band Touche Amore played and The Hickey Underworld just about collapsed. Way to go, Long Beach.
Eventually we left and I followed my friend back to his place, where a typical UCLA college party was winding down. Gorgeous, yet air-headed college girls ran around drunk/stoned and played beer pong while a couple of random fights broke out in the street. Although it has dawned on me before, it suddenly occurred to me that I went to college for four years, and pretty much experienced the OPPOSITE of what everyone else does.
I drove back to my apartment and slept it off.
For those of you who don’t know, the San Diego-based hardcore band, Unbroken (’91 to ’95), reunited for three final shows in the month of May. One of them was in Chicago, IL during the Burning Fight (a retrospective look at the evolution of hardcore during the 90s) book release show. The other two were in Southern California - one at the Ché Cafe in San Diego, and the other at the Glasshouse in Pomona. I was lucky enough to attend the show at the Glasshouse.
The air was thick with tension all night long...wondering what songs they’d play...wondering how violent the crowd would be. When Unbroken finally took the stage, they opened their set with “Blanket.” After that, I went into another completely different state of mind. They ended their set with “Absentee Debate” and everything in between was just a blur of all things heavy. I remember seeing Nate Newton from Converge standing on the stage just before their set...and it just felt good to know that I was a part of something that important...even if I was only a very, very tiny part of it.
I drove back to my sister’s house and did not sleep it off.
As my sister delves deeper into Christianity, the invitations to Sunday services seem to be increasing at a geometric rate. This time, it was Mother’s Day. I woke up at the crack of dawn, feeling like I had gotten the shit kicked out of me the night before, and got ready for church. When you read it, it just...doesn’t sound right, does it?
I really don’t belong in church. The things going on in my head when I’m sitting there are too fucked up and UN-holy for me to be spending any of my time there. However, I knew it would make my mom and my sister happy – especially because it was Mother’s Day...so I stayed on my best behavior.
My mom stayed for a few more days and flew back to El Paso on awkward notes. Unfortunately, my mom is incapable of staying out here and seeing my sister, her grand-daughter and I for a certain amount of time without going off-balance. The main thing that triggers this is the fact that she has to leave, and the only way she can deal with it is by avoiding everyone during the last few days. She becomes incredibly difficult to deal with and if she’s rubbed the wrong way she can slip into a “mini episode”. These “mini episodes” are potentially traumatizing for anyone who isn’t used to her illness. For me, it’s just something I kind of anticipate.
I returned to the apartment and sunk back into this long, drawn-out, horrific fail that I have been calling a “job search.” Apparently, statistics have shown that people with my degree find jobs where their starting salaries are as much as 60k to 70k a year. These statistics say nothing about how long it takes for them to find these jobs. The mere fact that I actually need a job like this still bothers me.
A 5.0 earthquake in Hawthorne and a visit to The Apple Pan later, my roommate and I walked around in the Westside Pavilion Mall and wondered why the fuck it took us so long to finally hang out there. Upon walking inside for a few minutes, I immediately realized it was my first time being there in roughly ten years.
The following weekend was Memorial Day weekend. With my incredibly active, event-filled life, you might be surprised that I had fucking nothing to do...so when my roommate hit me up and asked if I’d want to drive down to Orange County for Son of Man/Onlooker practice, I couldn’t resist. We jammed to some new material that I’ve been working on for a “third” Onlooker album, and worked on a new Son of Man intro that will hopefully rise to a level of heaviness strong enough to collapse an Egyptian temple.
After laying down some improvised mosh-ables, we picked up my roommate’s girlfriend from work and decided to play a long-overdue game of miniature golf. Although a terrific idea in principle, this ended up ruining my shit for a good week or so.
It was the first time I had been in game-mode in almost eight months. My roommate and I were neck and neck up until we finished the third hole. This is when a unanimous decision was suddenly made to wait for my roommate to run back to his car and get the digital camera. While his girlfriend and I stood there waiting to play the fourth hole...a girl appeared behind us, and I was completely floored.
She wore a pink hair band and her hair was – well...think Alley Sheedy in the last fifteen minutes of The Breakfast Club – but with her hair a tiny bit shorter, and a face way the fuck cuter. She wore a white, button-up cardigan and a pair of jeans that showed off what I have decided is the greatest ass I’ve ever seen...ever. A pair of chucks and I was smitten all over again. My roommate returned with the digital camera, but by then I was completely shitting myself.
The girl was with some douche bag, of course. No, really – he was a douche bag. My roommate and his girlfriend both concurred on this issue. They followed us around – hole after hole – for a good thirty minutes. All I know is that I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl for a week. I am such a piece of shit.
I finally came to after several days and my best friend asked me if I’d be down to get drunk if he drove all the way up to LA from Carlsbad. Once again, although it may be hard to believe, I didn’t have anything else going on, so I said, “fuck it,” and found directions to the nearest Benitos.
What can I say? We had an agenda.
By 12am I was eating some of LA’s finest rolled tacos and downing shots of Early Times. We decided to leave the rest of the night to chance once we made the decision to finish what was left of the bottle (based on the logic that there were “only two shots left, man”). My best friend took the time to bring his PlayStation 3 along with his entire Rock Band set up, all with the intention of throwing together a much anticipated online tour with another one of my inebriated best friends who currently resides in Amarillo, TX. However, once we discovered that we were incapable of executing the simple task of pressing three buttons to navigate our way through Joust, it was clear that the tour would have to be canceled on a rain check.
Then I walked into my bathroom and purposely un-ate some of LA’s finest rolled tacos, along with half a bag of my roommate’s salt n’ vinegar kettle chips.
This emotional roller coaster that I’ve been on seems to be approaching a point where there is no track...I can only hope the engineering interns who designed the theme park took enough physics courses to know what they were doing when they built the track I’m supposed to land on after I go airborne.
In the meantime, I’ll be trying to keep blood from the needle from getting on my new clothes. Maybe I’ll just swallow it.
“You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick.”
