Long ago a cold winter struck and things fell apart all over the welfare city. People lit fires in barrels and shivered after sticking their toes into the bitter transition from the 20th to the 21st century. Building roofs toppled under ice, power lines went down, clubs disbanded, bands broke up, tires flew from moving cars, and it snowed. It snowed a torrent, it snowed a cavalcade. It snowed an Eskimo paradise. And it snowed a tragedy. And it snowed a miracle. It snowed frostbite on hearts and froze cracks into the old stone face of reality himself.
It was in this frigid season I met E. I had blue-green hair, pneumonia and holes in my shoes and she was fresh out of the mental ward of the local hospital. Come to think of it, I am the only member of my circle who has not spent some time in the hospital with mental issues. Whether that is typical or something to do with this place I do not know. When you think about it, how many "sane" people do you really know? But I digress.
A few months before I had shelved an industrial music project with Mr Thin and saw the final nail fall in the coffin of my relationship with Vicki the techno-goth girl. I was dating a lot, going to concerts to scope out a new band and stay connected. I was in the middle of college, working 3 jobs to pay for school and not sleeping much, getting by on determination, chaos, and assorted street medicine. I was a throw-away like most kids in this city in their late teens and early twenties, a ghost artist finding my rhythm in life.
E had just got out of the mental hospital and was on heavy-duty anti-psychotic medicine. She had a breakdown and split with her ex, coming away with a diagnosis of "obsessive compulsive with borderline personality disorder and psychosis."
E had lived an impressive story. She is writing a book about her life, but progress has been limited by her disease lately. Her family was criminals and circus performers on one side and mad entrepreneurs on the other. The criminals have their own interesting origins. For example her grandfather escaped prison in the 60s, and her mother was born in the car as her grandparents drove across the country, robbing convenience stores along the way. But we will get to those another time.
At age 19 E had a mohawk and a motorcycle and drove cross-country to settle in California. She lived in San Francisco a block from Haight-Ashbury, in Chicago, Minnesota, the Columbus, OH ghetto, in Okinawa and the Caimen Islands. She had been married 3 times, twice on purpose and once by accident. She had been banned for life from the toughest bar in town here and does not remember why. She was a great artist in many mediums, and worked as a professional make-up artist, transforming faces in endless ways.
We met at one of her ex-husband's shows and found we knew many of the same people. She gave me her telephone number and I called her to hang out. On our first date we went to see "Psycho." E and I got along well, we liked many of the same things and made one another laugh. We had something special for a long time, and together we lived through many adventures.
We are together still and she is dying. We have both changed with time and circumstance and are not as close as we used to be in many ways. But that is a tale for another time. We get by and enjoy what we can. The past is a story. The future is a mystery. How are things with you? |
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and here I thought you avoided my request.
