This isn’t so much a post reminiscing on my punk rock past as it is a thinly veiled and shortish dissertation on how our pasts can dictate our futures. Sometimes the ideas that we have about life when we’re thirteen years old (the exact age I decided against marriage and children) are the best ones we’ve ever had. We formed them before other things got in the way, but then we left them fledgling in their infancy, searching for sustenance, overshadowed by social constructs that weren’t even really ours. It’s not such a bad idea to revisit them and refine them to our adult lives. We’re older now. We’ve learned how to keep a few other things alive at this point ~ so why not try going one step further and bringing something back from the dead? These arcane notions from adolescence may just reveal the most accurate representations of who we truly are.

My friends are getting divorced. Lots of them. I suppose we’re at that age. Ironically, most of us who aren’t getting divorced are still stupidly wondering why we never got married. I’m not among those. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of stupid ponders, that’s just not one of them. I was engaged twice. They’ll both probably read this– and that’s cool. Out of the three of us, I’m fairly certain that not one of us believes marriage to be a practical avenue of contentment ~ perhaps not entirely tortuous either ~ but not necessarily The way.  If it works for you, I’m all for it. Really, I am. I know that sounds like bullshit but I mean it.

I struggle to make sense of it. I file through the records….Blitz “Killing Dream”, Husker Du “Candy Apple Grey”, and Buzzcocks “Love Bites”. I bought these records when I was younger and searching, searching for answers as to why I didn’t want things to be the way I was taught they should always be. Eventually I land on a Pretenders track, “Show Me”. I write prose to a person that’s not singular, but a representation of my thoughts and conversations with many. It’s hard to make someone believe that you believe in love without ownership, restrictions, and commitment while still being out-of- control-can’t stop thinking about them in love with them. It’s hard for people to remember that a global community exists outside of their daily commute, that they’re not indebted to their parents’ beliefs, that they’re allowed to make amendments to a system that’s broken instead of suffer by it. It’s like government. It doesn’t’t make sense to most people, doesn’t add up. But unlike government, it can actually work. And it’s liberating when it does. Enjoy the questions– don’t worry about the answers– “Welcome To The Human Race” by clicking below.

Show Me

 

State Lines

 

I’m not scared of the sex that we’re capable of

But you might be

Because of the highways in between us

 

You laugh when I say that Interstates are just numbers

Like our ages made up by our Mothers

So why care about one and not the other?

 

You counted them up in your head one day

There’s just three, you said

They’re almost all in California

So I say I’ll start in Nevada–

Two down and one to go

 

I don’t know why you don’t laugh at this

You almost always do

Later, you tell me it’s so that you don’t cry—the habitual laughing

Because every time you look at me, you miss me

 

I think about this for a very long time

Well, maybe forty-five seconds or so

But that seems like a long time when you’re lying in bed with the lights out—

Staring at someone without really seeing them

 

So I ask if you miss me now—since you can’t see my face so well

And you say yes—sadly, it still works in the dark

You don’t know this but I’m searching frantically in my head now

Trying to find a way—a way for you to never have to look at me again

Because I don’t like the hurt that missing brings to you

 

I feel a bit guilty now because missing doesn’t hurt me

It fills me up in a good way

It’s my foreplay—except without you there

Then when you show up, or I show up

It’s like every state line was your tongue hitting just the right spot

 

I don’t mind State Lines like you do

And I’d be fine with the secrets that you keep from me

If you weren’t keeping them from yourself too

You close your eyes and buzz when we cross them

Letting the warm hum cancel out the rivets of passage

 

They don’t exist, you say

They do, I disappoint you

But they don’t mean anything to us—like our ages, I say

You keep saying  that you’re old now and I tsk-tsk your verbiage

Then you say it’s all or nothing!  and I laugh

Because this is what still makes you so very young

And for a moment I wish that I still said things like that

 

When I ask about your date, you’re embarrassed

It’s ok—I kiss you – we can talk about it

But, I love you—your eyes are wet now

I love you too, I say- so talk to me

 

 

“She was beautiful, but nervous

She was scared of you”

“But she didn’t meet me”

“She was scared of the idea of you”

“I bet I’d like her, because you like her”

“You probably would…”

 

Then our talk was over

 

These are baby steps, I remind you

Crawl before you walk

Forget all that you’ve been taught

Do what comes naturally

Because ownership is not natural, I emphasize

 

You ask what number we’re on now

I look at you and adore you so much in that moment and I tell you that it’s two

But we’re still in California and you scowl

When you say you hate this state I remind you that I’m not so fond of it myself

 

I also remind of you of that time on the border, the international one, not the state one

We fantasized about owning part of it just to open it up

I put my head on your shoulder and you told me about your granddaddy

You missed running through the pines with him

You missed the dogs

You missed it all there—so you went back—everyone does eventually

 

She was smart too—you’re back on your date again

And she kissed ok enough

But not like us—not like how we knew it would work before we even did it

I don’t think I’ll see her again, you say

I ask why- you don’t give a real answer- but you give the only one you know is true

 

“I wouldn’t cross State Lines for her”