THOSE WHO SUFFER LOVE
So I went to this MFA show opening at Cal State Long Beach tonight with my dad. Some guy whose name wasn't really Rasputin, but might have been Robert, was showing these giant linotypes of germs. And I was in there and some drunk photography student with sweaty palms shook my hand and kept taking my picture and this lesbian with these weird socks on told me she liked my Frieda Kahlo bracelet and I think they were both wearing the same sweater. And we went to the gallery next door with all the bad illustrators and the other lesbians and they had set it up to be what I think was supposed to be an art school prom and everyone was wearing corsages and ugly dresses and top hats they had a disco ball and a DJ who kept playing Murder City Devil Songs, and it made the crappy art work seem just a little better. And we talked to Darren outside and some guy who had drawn fish all over these leather slippers that he bought in Morroco and they showed us the Zine Vending Machine that they made, and this guy in a tuxedo jacket and an Agent Orange shirt, who was also drunk, spilled wine all over my shoes when he tried to get a coloring book out of the machine, and everywhere smelled like pot and wine and there were streamers everywhere and everybody was bored and stupid and pierced and tired and drunk. And I didn't make conversation because I didn't care, and I think for the first time, I just sort of looked around and realized that no one knew that I wasn't the same age that they were and wasn't taking the same classes they were and wasn't going to the same parties that they were and wasn't buying the same downgrade paint and funding the same drug habits that they were. And they all just looked like stupid kids, just like the way I'm a stupid kid, and I wondered if they knew what they were doing there either.
And we were driving back down Ocean, and it started to rain, and I just kept thinking about how many nights I've spent going to things like this and how they never really matter at all, but how this one, this one was different because I didn't feel like I was looking at different people. I just was what I was, and that was probably exactly the same as what they all were.
And I thought about that one opening in Costa Mesa in a warehouse and ripping my tights in the room where they built the big skate ramp and were playing all those 'films' and standing next to Gary Baseman and not caring and listening to my mom talk to Darren about how he didn't have a job and was doing too many drugs and listening to somebody's bad band and why they were going to Australia, and counting how many beer bottles were sitting behind the drum kit, and those kids who were fucking in the bathroom and how bad I had to pee and those girls who knocked the door down, and all those empty hallways and wondering where they went.
And I though about how, as we were going back down Pacific and it was still raining, how we passed Antone's and how Milena and Alix both said Antone's is for funerals and how I didn't understand what that meant and how everyone has this secret life that starts happening when they stop being with their friends and exist with their families, and they both lived lives where things like Antone's is for funerals made sense, and I lived one where my dad tells me all about how he's gonna go to Central Market down town next week to buy a sheep's head and arguing with him that we don't have any pots big enough to boil the skin off in and about the people's revolution and going to the May Ball in Cambridge with a girl he knew who was very short, as we drive home, and how I still smell like bad wine and my hands are still covered in spray paint because I made all those postcards with teeth and guts and steaks on them that everybody took because they weren't of peace signs or stars or hearts and how Jim told me that I'd do well in whatever I did and how funny that was, you know, considering. And I wondered how we could still be friends even with things like that.
But then I realized that they probably didn't even know that I went and did things like this, or what they were like, or how my parenst would stand around and know everybody and talk about what the space was like when they showed there, just like how I didn't know what their families did when I stopped being able to see them, and I didn't know what it was like to go out to football games and have a family that cared about each other and got together and went out and know people who had babies or got married or died or yelled or cried or felt happy for each other.
And I wondered if they'd look at me any differently, the same way people reading this would look at me differently, if they did know and they saw how much I didn't care and realized that some people probably worked up to this, and to me, it just happened and how it made me wonder what exactly I was working up to.
But I guess it doesn't even matter, because they won't ever know, and it probably wouldn't even matter if they did, since all I am is this voice that follows them around and sometimes says things that are funny, and usually just says things that aren't nice, and how they're probably just the same thing to me.
And then we came home and my nine year old sister was wearing a swimsuit and cat ears and smelled like cigarettes and was watching this documentary about penguins attacking seals and she didn't say hello, and I didn't care. And my dad went into his office and my mom asked me for my laundry and said something about somebody's MRI and I just made myself tome toast and the dog was whining and everybody was still miserable and angry and depressed and we still all hated our lives and jobs and schools and friends and couldn't stand to be around each other, and didn't care what each other thought. And I went back inside my bedroom and listened to songs I didn't like and thought about how much I hated going back to school and having to listen to people talk about how they went to the Town Center and saw Hellogoodbye at the Roxy and did I like their new shoes? because they bought them at Urban Outfitters, even though they were too expensive, but wanted to wear something pretty for their date with some boy who was probably gay anyway and was it true that I wasn't coming back and how sad that was because oh, ha, ha, I was so funny and I always made Mrs. Rodriguez look like an asshole, which she is, when I would be too busy thinking about where I put those new exacto knives and how the hell I was going to not fail whatever three classes I was failing so I could go over to some new school and see that, even in an institution built on being different and 'fostering creativity' like they put on the brochures, I would still stick out and still have to listen to people talk about things like that and how the only people I get along with don't even really exist, except for one who I still won't get to spend time with and how that isn't fair, and how I will still have to have arguments with people like Gena about not understanding anyone else, even though I might, and just don't really want to.
And I kept thinking about how I never slept and why that was, and about New Orleans and looking inside that dishwasher sitting in front of that family's house and how there were still dirty dishes in it, and how scary that was, and about how we were driving the other day and my mom yelled at some guy in some car and how I said that the passenger looked like this girl who I used to be friends with but was probably dead now, and how she got all angry and said What do you mean 'is probably dead' and then got even angrier when I said that she was mostly dead when I knew her so it probably would have been a blessing and my sister not understanding. And about that girl whose name I don't remember and how she used to go have sex with that twenty five year old guy in his van and what she did now and was she maybe dead too. And I thought about how Milena is going to Rhode Island all summer and why that made me sad and I thought about how all the sad songs always sounded like San Francisco, but I didn't know why, and about how I was probably never going to move out of Los Angeles and about how Gena had said that no one understands LA and about how funny it is that you can live somewhere your whole life and love it and understand it and how, to everyone else, it's this thing, and it's just, you know, a place and the people aren't just people, they're things too, and how you know that however well they get to know it and however long they stay there they'll never stop, at least in part, seeing it as a thing, the same way that they'll see you just from being from there.
And it's just all a little funny if you ask me, but I don't really know why.