inbetween days

I was driving to work the other day and a Cure song came on the radio. I usually listen to the student station that plays “alternative” music. I’m not a big fan of the more recent stuff that they play, but they do play some golden oldies from the eighties from time to time. I hate to admit it, but I am a bit of a snob when it comes to music. I’ve listened to alternative or underground music for the last twenty-plus years, other then listening to reggae or pow wow music and the occasional rap artist. My son got me into Kanye West recently, but I don’t usually stray too far a field.
To a certain extent, I consider the Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges as the godfathers of the genre, although there are probably other influences I haven’t fully experienced. The Kinks, Graham Parker, Patti Smith, Can, the New York Dolls and many others paved new ground in the seventies musically and philosophically. I listened to some of the first wave of punk bands—the Ramones, Generation X, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Sex Pistols—even some of the post-punk bands—Killing Joke, Joy Division, Public Image Limited.
However, the touchstones of my set were American Hardcore and British Post-New Wave bands. Our musical heroes were groups like Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys. We also listened to New Order, the Smiths, the Cure, U2, the Cult and similar bands. The latter were usually what our girlfriends and female friends listened to and we grudgingly did as well. My male friends and I usually referred to the Post-New Wave stuff as “girlfriend music”—stuff that your girlfriend listens to.
As time has passed, I like the latter group more and more and whenever I hear this music, it reminds me of people or places from my youth. For whatever reason, this music always reminds me of L. Rice, H. Griffin, M. Boyd, T. Boyer and A. Mosley—ex-girlfriends and near misses from my high school years. Ironically, that music links me to these ghosts of my past. I still listen to the Hardcore—it still serves as a catharsis and holds good memories as well—but the other stuff is painfully bittersweet.
Looking at the names--it’s funny to see how listing the first initial only and the last name takes some of their power away. There are probably dozens if not hundreds of women out there with the same exact names—but listing them this way reduces some of the emotions. Listing them with the full first name and first initial of their last name is a little bit more dangerous--Lisa R., Heather G., Michelle B., Theresa B., Andrea M. Now there are possibly thousands of people with similar names, but listing it this way hits a little closer to the bone. Listing the full first and last names is completely out of the question.
Some of them took me for a wild ride—A. Mosley was a freshman in community college and ended up moving out of her mom’s house while we were dating. It also turned out that our fathers were old buddies from the neighborhood—they both grew up down the street from St. Stanislaus Parish on the outskirts of Poletown in Detroit. A. Mosley didn’t remember her father-he had moved out on them when she was still a child, so she embarked on a journey to find and reacquaint herself with him. M. Boyd broke my heart when she asked a dumb jock to the Homecoming Dance only to be denied. She dated one of my best friends after that—when she came around, I was no longer interested. I was on the football team (despite not being a “jock”), so I kept hearing about it from the other side. Others dealt with quite a bit from me—my parental issues, my neediness, my lack of self-esteem, and my overriding teenage angst. I created more than my fair share of drama for no apparent reason and this doomed most of the relationships from the start.
There were good times, too—cuddling beside a fire, going to concerts, underage drinking, heavy petting, sneaking around town to avoid parents, sneaking out of class to make out, trips with their families, long walks, longer talks on the phone, letters and poems. Oh, and making out. I can’t say enough about that, I can still remember my first kiss . . . which didn’t come until I was fifteen. I was/am a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to most things.
Lisa R. was dropping me off at my house after an afternoon of chatting and hanging out at her house . . . I wanted to kiss her and she leaned toward me—come to think of it, I think I even asked her first if I could kiss her first. No skills. She said yes, of course, and the world starting spinning. I couldn’t stop smiling when I walked into the house so my mom asked me if I was high. I guess I was, in a way.
I remember the first time I saw most of them, or at least the first time I noticed them. Lisa R. hung out with the New Wave crowd, had her hair all teased up to one side and wore a black leather jacket. She was short—maybe 4’11” at the most—and had what I thought was a beautiful face. Her friends Holly and Kim had just transferred back from Chippewa Valley and the former showed up with half her head shaved. Their crowd was into the Cure, INXS, and a slew of British bands. Not really sure what happened to her—think she married some roofer, I used to run into her older brother at M.S.U. while he was in medical school.
I first saw Heather G. in the sixth grade, first day of school. She had gone to elementary school in northern Michigan, just south of the Mackinac Bridge, even though her parents were both alumni of Fitzgerald H.S. Her red curly red hair made her stand out immediately, but she was quiet and didn’t say much to anyone. But what a stunning smile. A sense of fashion—I would learn later that she was a big Duran Duran fan, as well as listening to more obscure music like Love & Rockets, Japan, etc . . . She would flinch to see my use of a split infinitive in the previous sentence—she would end up going to grad school at Yale.
Michelle B. was in my class in the seventh grade—we flirted and talked quite a bit—a brunette with an easy smile and eyes that seemed to light up. She liked Adam and the Ants for some reason and I think I checked them out based on her comments. We were in quite a few classes, ran track together through the years, and remained friends even though she decried my love for the band Husker Du. She stayed close to home, went to Wayne State or something like that, hooked up with the Punk Rock/New Wave crowd in Detroit.
Theresa B. worked at the same McDonald’s I did—our very first jobs—right across from the Abrams Tank Plant in Centerline, just north of 11 Mile. I was working and she came in to check the schedule—she had long dyed bangs, which went down past her chin—the rest of her hair was cut pretty close. She was smiling and laughing . . . it seems they all were. I don’t remember ever falling for a girl who scowled all of the time.
Theresa B. went to a Catholic school—St. Clement’s which was right down from the McD’s—she lived just north of 7 Mile, not too far from my house in Warren. I got a job there because it was roughly half-way between Warren and Sterling Heights—my family would end up moving to the latter two months later. Theresa B. introduced me to the Hardcore scene in Detroit—took me to my first shows at the Greystone Theater. We saw the Butthole Surfers, MDC, and a bunch of no-name bands whist slamming Red White & Blues and fumbling around my clumsiness.
I also met Andrea M. at a McDonald’s, just south of 13 Mile, while hanging out with the Sterling Heights crew I had met while working at Wendy’s over on 15 Mile & Van Dyke. I went to the “other” school—Stevenson, whereas most of my friends went to Sterling Heights High. Andrea M. walked in with a friend of a friend—another girl from Chippewa Valley whose name escapes me. I saw her as I walked in—pretty face, strawberry blonde hair, very petite . . . and that smile . . . we all ended watching “Night of the Living Dead”—the punk rock version, of course. Andrea M. and I started talking and next thing I know we’re frenching on the couch . . .
Somehow I almost ended up getting in a fight some “longhairs” with this dude I just met—Dominic Augstini—a former member of the Sterling Skins. The Sterling Skins were supposedly non-racist skinheads that had been around since the early eighties. 14 Mile was the boundary between Warren and Sterling Heights, and we were on Schoenherr, so just east of us was Fraser—the one time I counted, I think there were kids from twelve different high schools working at my McD’s. The Detroit suburbs are heavily populated and various school districts and cities butt up against one another. The population of the suburbs exceeds that of the city itself nowadays.
I spent my formative years, ages seven to sixteen, a block from 8 Mile and my parents decided to move half-way through my junior year in high school. At first, I wasn’t too happy about the move, but in hindsight, it offered me a different view of life. Our house in Sterling Heights was in a cul-de-sac, which was right next to 16 Mile Rd., just down the way from Freedom Park. I think it helped me to broaden my horizons and it prepared me for college—it was a relatively easy transition for me.
I don’t regret having grown up in the neighborhood that I did, however. If anything, maybe I would have enjoyed getting into skateboarding at an earlier age, but parks had started closing down all over the country by the early eighties. As far as the girls, the women who populated my life . . . I don’t really regret anything that I didn’t do. I wish I hadn’t been so immature, but that’s all a part of growing up. I wish I had been more—I was so afraid of failing or even trying that I never fully engaged myself in anything that I did.
It has taken me most of the twenty years since then to really become comfortable in my own skin. I do not miss the person that I was and often think that I could have been more or done more with my life, but hindsight is overrated. I am basically a good person and I certainly was back then as well—I didn’t use or abuse anyone along the way. Well, not until college at least. But that’s another story altogether . . . and another soundtrack as well.