#dear livejournal

Then Pasha showed up, and I was very happy to see him, and that was kind of a surprise, too—I hadn’t invited him, because he’s not on Facebook anymore and I don’t have his phone number; turned out Beagan invited him cuz she knew I’d want to see him. He & Beagan & I shared some crazy drunk-stoned nights back between like 2012-2015 or so, and I hadn’t seen him in a number of years. And then Lily and Joni showed up. They sat at the bar, not with our little group by the window and the arcade machines, they were doin’ their own things and couldn’t stay long, but it still meant a lot that they showed up. Lily and I talked about haunted asylums and our weird family histories, Joni hugged me and we talked about her comin’ to visit me in Door County sometime. Then Beagan arrived, with her mom, T., because when we were younger T. was sorta like a second mom to me. Minnie left, and T. didn’t stay too long, and then it was just me and Nolan and Beagan and Pasha, I was gettin’ tipsy but trying to drink my whiskey and ginger ales slowly because I knew the night was still young, I switched to water for a while before getting another round. I played some nostalgic songs on the jukebox (X & Ramones & The English Beat & Gogol Bordello & World/Inferno & Flogging Molly), some guy sittin’ at the bar started singing along when “Start Wearing Purple” came on and I sang along, too. I got briefly melancholy; more people had come into The Port at that point, and some of them were people I knew, or rather, used to know, one of them was someone on that list of people that I’ll always be a little in love with; and the music, oh the music, that didn’t help: two dozen other dirty lovers / must be a sucker for it / cry cry but I don’t need my mother / just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it and the night is never too long / not for me /  anyway / how is it for you so far away / how did you get so far away? And Beagan was texting Micah like: “Come on, bro, get your lazy stoner ass over here and say goodbye to Jess,” and I kept posting on Facebook like: “Come on, people, I’m still at The Port, come see me before I move 200 miles away!!!”

Then it was full night and we decided to pop over to Paddy O’s, so I could say goodbye to that place. M., who I used to know from the days when we both did karaoke a lot, was bartending; it was good to see her, too, even though we were never really close. I got a Guinness and a water, we sat at the table right next to the jukebox, and I played more songs, mostly ‘90s faves with some Talking Heads thrown in. Then Micah finally showed up, and that was the group for the rest of the night: me and Beagan and Micah and Pasha and Nolan, and it was perfect, honestly, as bummed as I was that more people didn’t show there was no group of people I would’ve rather been with, singing along to songs, laughing over inside jokes both old (cheers, love & zombies vs. drag queens & the catman & don’t be a starfucker) & new (leaf peepin’ & into his junks & hangin’ with the aardvarks & Tito PP). And standing outside smoking in the chill wind that blew up, and the neon and bustle of 7th avenue. There was another brief moment of sadness for me, and for Beagan, too, this time—she had to excuse herself to the bathroom, I just sighed into my stout—both having to do with reminders of old flames and just that haze of ye olde days that haunts Paddy O’s for both of us. But really, the night was perfect.

The next day, I got messages from a number of the people who’d initially said they’d be coming to my get-together, or had responded that they were interested. They all apologized for not being able to make it, and wished me good luck on my move, and said they hoped to see me again someday when I came back to southeast Wisco to visit. And of course, the reasons they didn’t show were all that something came up, some life-thing took precedence, which I totally understood. I mean, how many times have I not attended people’s important events because something came up? Dozens; hundreds, maybe. But it was still nice to hear from them. And Dean, who seemed genuinely sad that he hadn’t been able to make it, sent me a video he’d recorded just for me—him, playing on guitar/singing Morphine’s “Like Swimming,” because a couple months prior we’d had a discussion about how Morphine was one of the best bands, ever.

And then later that same day, I was texting with Havily, about all the things we’re gonna do together now that we’d both be living in Door County. Beach trips to go on, cafes and witchy shops to visit, drives down to the club in Green Bay for goth nights.

Thinking of:

June 2002. Chicago. I’m walking to Clarke’s to meet up with friends, getting bit to hell by mosquitoes. A car full of people drives past me and shouts: Freak! I kinda feel good about that, like maybe both my queerness and punkness are visible enough that I’m at least some kind of threat to the status quo.

January or February 2003. Chicago. A bunch of us zinesters are huddled in some dank basement, taking turns sharing our Chicago stories over the airwaves on L.’s pirate radio show. In between segments we stand around; drinking, smoking, talking. I share my Guinness and cigarettes with B. and we argue (in a friendly way) over who’s the better band, the Ramones or The Clash. I’m team Clash, natch; he’s team Ramones. (These days, there’s no way I could choose. Comparing the two bands is like comparing Chucks to Doc Martens. Both are perfect, but they’re for different moods.)

June 2004. Pittsburgh. The Inferno. “I break a lot of things.” “Burn down city hall!” Corn syrup & drywall. Glow bowling. “I had weird dreams. What did you do last night?” Eighteen goddamn years ago. What the fuck.

May 2005. Kenosha. I’m out at the bar, hangin’ with some kids I’ve only just met. (I say ‘kids’ cuz they were in their early 20s, as was I.) All but one of us have names that start with J. I’m the only girl-type-person. J.P. is instantly smitten with me cuz we talk about the Dead Kennedys and what our fave DK songs are and he thinks it was so shocking and cool to meet a ‘girl’ who even has favorite DK songs. And I tell him about the time I met Jello Biafra. (Funny, these days I find Jello Biafra kind of laughably, eye-rollingly annoying.) After the bar, we all go to the diner. I cuddle up next to J.P. and he finger-fucks me under the table while I drink my coffee. (That was a time in my life when someone I’d just met finger-fucking me in a diner seemed normal.) After the diner, we all walk around latenight Kenowhere in the fog. We talk activism. We slap GWAR WAR PARTY stickers on light posts. I sing Ramones songs at the top of my lungs: I took the law / and threw it away / cuz there’s nothing wrong / it’s just for play.

June 2005. Somewhere west of Kenosha. My brand-new lover, F., takes me to his friend’s house out in the middle of nowhere. We all strip down to our undies and get in their swimming pool, and since we’re away from the city’s light pollution, the stars are visible. I lay on my back in that pool for a long time, just floating and watching constellations wheel across the night sky.

July 2008. My boyfriend and I go see The Dark Knight in the theater; he got free tickets cuz one of his best friends works there. I’m a little disturbed by how much I relate to The Joker. The next day, I have go to the bank to deposit a check; I go to the big, old branch downtown. They can’t deposit my check because their computer system has mysteriously stopped working. I leave the bank, and as I’m driving home, I see a guy rappelling down the side of a building. Once again, I’m disturbed, because it seems like The Dark Knight is happening in my city, in real time.

May 2009. Chicago. My Philly circus friends and some of their friends come to town. It’s the first time I’ve seen J. or M. since late 2007. Maggie and I perform with them and the rest of the Philly circus extended fam. There’s fire-breathing and sword-swallowing, human blockheads and weird music and genuine freaks. I do my clown thing, my accordion thing, my dancing-on-broken glass thing. I cut my feet to hell on the glass shards. D., a Chicago punk who helped us get the gig, is there. After the show, we go have a couple drinks with the out-of-towners at a nearby bar. I realize that, though I still care about J., I’m no longer in love with him, nor even really attracted to him. I also realize that I’m very attracted to M., and a little in love with him, and always kinda have been, but I’d never noticed because I was too focused on my attraction to J. I get the inkling that M. might be into me too, but never said anything, because… He hangs near me for most of the time we’re at the bar, keeps hugging me and talking about how good it is to see me. Sadly, I know that nothing will happen between us that night, as they aren’t even staying the night in Chicago. After the Philly freaks head on to their next gig, Maggie and I drop our stuff at her place, then hop on bikes and head to a punk party. I’m still serving full clownface, but no one at the party is freaked. I get stoned, I drink beer, a bunch of us start an impromptu pseudo mosh pit in the living room and dance to Naked Raygun. I meet a nervous folk punk boy, and he discovers I play accordion, and we briefly discuss starting a folk punk band. But mostly I hang out with D. He tells me that my act impressed him the most; that he thought it was super badass that my feet got all cut up and I just kept going. It’s pretty obvious he has a crush on me, and I think he’s hella cute, too, and we dance and flirt and get dangerously close to making out, until Maggie pulls me aside and tells me that D.’s girlfriend is psychotic, and that even though they have an ostensibly open relationship, she will probably try to hunt me down and fight me if I hook up with him. I decide it’s too much drama, so we steal a six pack of Peebers from the fridge, shove it in her side bag, and get on our bikes and ride back to her place. My clown make-up is smeared, my feet are shredded, my legs are sore, my heart is aching, and I feel fucking great.

June 2009. Milwaukee. The hottest night of the Last Summer Ever. I’ve written about it before but—wandering the city with my bestest pals. Burgers & junk bands & karaoke bars & drink, drank, punk. And we were never all together like that, ever again, and now they’re all out of my life.

June 2012. Chicago. Hanging out with A. at Delilah’s, Punk Rock Monday, and “What Do I Get” comes on and my heart breaks because I know we’ll never be able to be together the way we want to be. After leaving the bar, we walk around by the river, watch the lights of the city bend and stretch on the water, and I get bit to hell by mosquitoes and I already miss Chicago even though I’m in it and I already miss A. even though I’m standing right next to him.

A few days ago, I was ready to start in earnest on my W/IFS zine, and I went to open the extensive notes I’d already written for it. But they were gone. And not just in the recently deleted folder—no, the file was there, with the title in it—but nothing else. I immediately created another file to try and recreate what I could remember, and I was kinda bummed, but it was also kinda funny. See, when Maggie and I were working on our split zine about the odyssey on which we traveled halfway across the country and met the Friendship Society for the first time, we were both having problems with our laptops, and both of us lost huge chunks of what we’d written, twice, before we were finally able to complete it. So this happening now, almost exactly seventeen years later, when I was going to be writing about some of the same stuff… Well, it coulda just been Mercury retrograde, but it felt a little like Jack being a trickster, his spirit fucking with me, as if to say: you’d do better living more, and commemorating less.

But then the next morning, when I went to open my new note to add more to it…the first note had also reappeared, in full. Very funny, Mr. T’Cloth.

A few days ago I went digging through my zine collection, to find some W/IFS-related stuff for research, but I also found a bunch of other old favorite zines I haven’t looked at in years. Despite losing a huge chunk of my zine collection to the basement flooding at my old house four years ago, I still have a massive collection of zines, going back 25+ years. I’m tired of them being buried in boxes and bags, and we have these built-in shelves in our basement, so I’ve decided I’m going to make some DIY magazine holders out of cardboard scraps and actually display them where they’re easy to find.

I came across my copies of Songs About Ghosts, and remembered the time I was sitting at Paddy O’s reading it. See, in one of the stories in issue 1 of that zine, Jasmine requested of the reader that they read it in a public place. And I had it with me on NYE (my birthday) 2003, and I sat at a table in the back reading it while I waited for my friends to arrive. And this guy walking by stopped and asked what I was reading, and I said: “Songs About Ghosts.” Fast forward to 2016, I posted a picture of that zine on my Instagram, and C.M. said: Oh shit, that was YOU! Turned out he was the guy who’d asked me what I was reading, and he told me he’d been so amazed to see this person reading in a crowded bar on New Year’s Eve that he had to say something, and then when I said the title was Songs About Ghosts that stuck with him even more, and he ended up doing an art piece inspired by that moment… He showed me the drawing, and there I was, reading, with all this surreal imagery swirling around me, and he even remembered what I’d been wearing—my red Dickies dress (my rocknroll nurse dress, my lucky dress) and black and white striped stockings. And he said: “It turns out you’ve been hanging out in my head for years,” and ugh. I no longer really have feelings for him, haven’t even really talked to him in a couple years now, but I can still remember how bad I had it for him in 2016. I just…he made me feel seen, and appreciated, at a time when P. didn’t, and it’s hard not to crush on someone who makes you feel so seen.

I’m feeling a bit of the old summer sadness, and thinking a lot about endings. Summer makes me sad in that it never matches up to my expectations of it; I never get to do all I want in any given summer. And just as it officially starts, it also starts to end. And I’m thinking of that kind of ending, as well as another kind—the kind of endings you don’t even recognize as such until after the fact.