An Open Letter to J Mascis

I wish I could say it was me and not you, or it was you and not me, but it is both of us J. This is not the ‘90s anymore, god those were times weren’t they. Those were times.

I remember vividly riding my skateboard around Denver with a tape of Green Mind playing through my headphones. And I remember driving around my old hometown of Virginia Beach greeting all the ghosts, which drove me away originally, with Sludgefeast as my soundtrack.

I’m waiting… Please come back

I remember Europe with freak scene on every mixtape I made. And when my heart was broken I wrote and re-wrote in my notebook your words to Thumb.

There never really is a good time

There’s always nothin’ much to say

I’m pretty good, not doing bad

If I’m getting’ up most everyday

I bought fossils three times because I kept wearing out the tape. I am sorry that my ex-girlfriend destroyed the Little Fury Things vinyl I owned. Believe me, I am just as upset about that as anybody.

Then there was the last time J; The Boathouse, Norfolk, VA. We had made it through the early nineties intact. It seems. Do you remember Mike smoking a whole pack of cigarettes on stage? Crazy. Remember your eight-minute guitar solo on Start Choppin’? You were, and are, the only person with whom I would sit through an eight-minute guitar solo without rolling my eyes J.

Those were our days J. We owned them. That was ten years ago now. I still love you. I still have that issue of Spin with you on the cover. I still pull it out and read it. I still make castles out of my mashed potatoes. However; I’ve given up the plastic dinosaurs.

Look, my point is that it is now 2005. I bet your upcoming concert is going to rock. I would get all sweaty and passionate, that is, if I were going to be there. Like I have said, I still love you, but I love you in 1995. I don’t want to see you go through the motions pretending to still feel that nineties angst, but really just cashing in.

No, no, no…. Look.

Don’t get upset.

Look, I didn’t even mention how you are playing at the Clear Channel bat-cave, The Quest.

If you were still involved, if you still cared, you’d be touching the kids from the stage of the Triple Rock or First Ave, but hey, I’m not blaming you. You’re not getting any younger. You have bills to pay. All I am saying is I’ll be home thinking of you, but I can’t be with you anymore J.

Here is where our paths split. Keep you chin up, we’ll always have The Boathouse and we’ll always have Keep The Glove.

The song of Carolann

Carolann’s roots are showing. Her bottle blond is three weeks old. She presently has her hair in a ponytail that tickles the base of her neck when she tilts her head back to empty a bit more of the Boone’s Farm strawberry wine down her raw throat. It is three in the afternoon on a Tuesday and she is in her black Mazda Protégé 5, which is parked on 42^nd Ave. North where it intersects the parkway.

She parked here this morning waiting for a man. She is playing amateur detective. Joe Lee left her house in the waning moments of a 72-hour marathon of fucking, drinking, smoking, and snorting.

Carolann had been spurned; disrespected as woman the way she saw it. Carolann is not a woman who takes insult easily.

She knew Joe Lee passed this way often and she hoped to find out what he does during the day. She hoped to find demons to hold above him. She hoped to prove she is, in fact, better than him, despite what he shouted towards her on a hazy weekend morning.

The dark circles under her gray eyes have been permanent badges since the first night she snorted crystal meth. She went to drug counseling once, a year into her addiction. She heard herself say, “The first time is so fucking good, it is orgasmic. I felt myself wet all over. Every time I’ve done meth since I’ve been trying to reach that height again.”

This was a lucidity and deepness of thought she reached then, but never before and not since.

The late afternoon sun beared down and her skin cooked; ashen, wrinkled, and used. Her twenty-five year old body looked like a forty-five year old trailer park grandmother’s.

Space

There was a night full of stars and consequences. The Hale-Bopp comet shone faintly above our heads as we wrestled each other out of our clothes. The grass was damp and we lay naked looking at the comet. Speaking nothing between us, we were afraid of the promises we couldn’t make. We made an unspoken promise to not make promises.