Attachment: One Memory

Although I was born in 1978 and the year is now 2004, at this moment I’m 18. School just got out and my friends and I are trying to pile ten people into a Ford T-Bird. We’re off to the smoke shop and then to the skate park to get high.

The sun is shining, the air is warm and autumnish, and the music is “blaring” as loud as the tiny, stock speakers on the T-Bird can push it out. I don’t really mind the fact that I’ve got two girls on my lap and I’m a little squished, because all of our energy is devoted to laughing and watching for cops.

Time freezes and a snapshot of that moment of life is seared into my brain. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the smoke, the emotions are all processed, packaged, and sealed and then buried in my brain. Only one little keyhole exists to open it back up when the correct key is used. And now the key is playing on my CD player.

“Until I fall away, I won’t keep you waiting long. Until I fall away, I don’t know what to do any more. Until I fall away… When there’s no good answers, and no new questions. Another personal disaster-there’s no where to go but down.”

I’m still 18 but now I’m driving home from work in the Edgemobile, drunk and stoned. It’s almost midnight in the middle of May and I just spent eight hours washing semis. The stars are bright, but the moon is brighter, and all of existence seems to be mocking me as I drive impaired and lovesick back home so I can get fucked up even more and lament the fact that I haven’t the balls to ask my best friend out.

^Me on my Edgemobile. And yes, those are all bumper stickers.^
(425 on that side alone)

If emotions were vegetables, I was a salad. I couldn’t think straight, and not because of the drugs and chemicals in my system. Then I turned on whatever CD happened to be in my CD player at the time, and I was suddenly reminded that I’m not alone. Others have felt this. Others feel this. Maybe someday this can be turned into a nice song too.

“Well I’ve lost my mind on what I’d find. And all of the pressure that I left behind, on Allison Road. Fools in the rain and if the sun gets through, fire’s in the heaven of the eyes I knew, on Allison Road…Now I can’t hide, on Allison Road…So why not drive, on Allison Road? I know I wanna love her but I can’t decide, on Allison Road. And I didn’t know I was lost at the time, eyes in the sun the road wasn’t wide. And I went looking for an exit sign, all I wanted to find tonight”

Still 18, but now I’m in my room. The aluminum foil that I used as wallpaper on the entire interior of my bedroom was casting strange reflections from all the different lights in there; it was exactly the effect I had intended.

My mind and body were reeling from the ass-kicking that the LSD and cocaine were giving them. Tears wouldn’t stop falling from my eyes and I didn’t even remember why they started. Laying on my bed I was paralyzed by some unknown source and in an effort to rebel against that force I peeled back some of the foil on my wall. I slowly and carefully raised a finger and wrote a “Help” sign on the wall with the blood that was oozing out of the self-inflicted wounds all over my arms and chest.

Suddenly the room seemed to get warmer. Something was clearing the air like an industrial-sized fan in an airplane bathroom. My CD player had shuffled to a new song. It sounded like something from Mardi Gras or a Louisiana bayou, and worked wonders for plugging my tear ducts.

“Where she’s leaving today I don’t know, so far away. I’m feeling so blue and it shows in every single way. Once that girl she was mine for such a short time. We used to spend every night, now all I do is cry. Well they say that you can’t miss something that you’ve never had, so tell me why I could feel so bad.”

In case you aren’t aware, all the song lyrics in italics on here are from Gin Blossoms songs. I know, it’s crazy that someone like me who likes Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, Killswitch Engage, and the like could actually listen to the Gin Blossoms on purpose. But after not hearing them in years, I bought their “greatest hits” CD today.

It’s a little strange how many memories I have attached to their music. Even stranger is how almost all of them involve being fucked up. But perhaps the strangest thing is that I don’t “miss” where I was when those memories were formed. It’s like I can appreciate them for being what they are, simple mental records of events past.

As I was coming home from Best Buy, I thought to myself, “This would make really good road trip music.” It’s a good thing I’ve got a couple road trips coming up to use it on.