Rock it, bitches (part 1)
November 13, 2008
When my parents first visited me in the dorms, they were unprepared for the hellish spectacle that awaited. As a child, I’d always considered the Catholic blandishments of the film “The Sentinel” some strong-ass meat. After a couple years in the dorms, public sexual congress between bleached blond tobacco family druids and closely shaven Apocalypse Now extras was nothing to raise an eyebrow about. I did have to attempt to explain the drunk naked girl sweeping her vomit up in the hallway just across from my room. “Pledge week”, I offered. They were strangely satisfied.
I never had a clear idea if I was living in a dorm room or a Piranesi carceri, but almost miraculously, through the munificence of North Carolina’s Outlaws biker gang, my parent’s departure coincided with a flood of cheap blotter acid in the dorms. I was unaware of this development until the guitarist for my band informed me we were about to make historic inroads on the structure of local music. Unfortunately our bassist was on tour with the university jazz band, and ultimately would not recoup his investment in the future. We ate his share of the four way hit as a kind of tribute .
I didn’t know that time had folded until I decided I needed a carbonated beverage of any description to wash the terrible dryness from my throat, and we advanced on the vending machine in the dorm lobby. I fidgeted briefly with the change in my pocket, and tentatively moved my forearm toward the machine. The machine gave me my selection without my having touched it. My wife says this is common. As it turned out , it was a harbinger of another fucked-up day in the dorms.
Music hadn’t gotten me laid much, at that point, and I was counting on some sonic breakthrough that would make me a sort of pussy lord, or , at the very least get me a 30k job with the local recording industry, so I could caution young rockers against the perils of drugs and whores; then see what bonus was left over for me. But ultimately, music took a twelve-string Rickenbacker and shoved it up my ass sideways.
My early efforts were based on the philosphical infallibilty of Neil Young and gradually shifted to the disturbing subtleties of Albert Goldman, leading directly to this lyric:
Good morning flower In the sparkling clear syringe
My veins have grown a rose. I push it back to its bed beneath my skin.
And now I stand in God’s applause.
Nice, if I’d ever done heroin.
I’m guessing either a chemistry or English major.
I took a lot of English courses, but wound up a history major. I wish I’d studied art. I could have made a fortune.
Yeah, art with a business minor.
I wonder how much graphic designers make these days. I used to look through the Graphis Annuals at Duke’s Lilly Library, and was amazed at the number of fine artists employed by the advertising industry. They can’t all be rich, can they?
I kid, actually. I only know of one artist who got a living out of it, but it was never a steady thing. He sculpted stuff out of foam blocks for movies.
I don’t know about artists, but my erstwhile brother in law is a graphic designer with a big reputation. His act for about the last ten years has been to work for six months or so and travel for the rest of the year. He makes excellent bucks. After three wives and three daughters (now all grown) he’s learned how to travel often and light. I didn’t mean that as it might have sounded with respect to the girls as he has been an excellent father in all respects.
Here’s a reminiscence from my wasted college days. Sounds similar:
http://tinyurl.com/6b9dfl
Moe: Your peer group was definitely cast more in the pioneer mold. The Donner party, almost.
My mates seem a lot wimpier by comparison, but probably were exposed to a similar bath of psychoactive compounds. I never witnessed any willful grossout competitions, just drug induced feats of calamitous stupidity. They no more attached to the idiots in question than their bloody and torn clothing after they were released from the hospital. So it’s likely some of those guys are rich, too.
I finally remembered one of the incidents. A friend of mine and his girlfriend had been somewhere huffing hit after hit of the newer, more potent form of pot (the powdery blue shrink-wrapped buds that were a gateway to instant psychosis) that started to hit campus in the mid-eighties. They were walking to their apartment when they noticed a shopping cart at the top of a long hill. Pushed it. Climbed in.
The fact they weren’t killed or handicapped forever is almost enough to make you believe in the form of providence that watches out exclusively for dumbasses. But oh, did they ever have some scrapes.
I lived in a 4 story cement block dorm that had an elevator. Once in the dead of winter in Minnesota, a guy living on the 3rd floor (ood floors for men, even for women) stripped down to a pair of boxer shorts that had been dipped in gasoline. He had rubbed his body with vaseline first, put on the boxer shorts, rode the elevator down to the first floor, set his shorts on fire, ran around the outside of the dorm in the snow with flaming shorts, got back in the elevator and rode it up. That was entertainment for a night. Some of us weren’t even drunk or stoned at the time, but wished we had been.