The ironic thing about the party we played was that we were playing in a church. The birthday girl, Mia, lives in this huge house with her folks, and her father holds some sort of prayer group or ~something~ in their giant, ballroom-sized basement. God Says Fuck You played under a banner that said, "Praise The Lord!" It was too ripe. This girl's house was intimidating me, though. She could have fit several of my house in the parts I saw, and I didn't even get to see the top floor. Mia was a nice girl, very apologetic that the acoustics in her basement weren't what one would wish if one actually wanted to hear us play without having one's ears bleed. Seriously, we were cranked to the lowest volume possible while still being heard over the drums, and the echoes were killing everyone else. She needed to carpet the floor.
Anyway, I have no idea why she hired us to play, considering the fact that all her friends were of the Abercrombie and Fitch (sp? I buy my clothes at Kmart so I don't know.) set, and the closest thing to punk they listened to was Limp Bizkit. Jesus. They were all hopped-up on either Ecstasy, pot, LSD, or a wide range of hard liquor that had been snuck in hidden in Ginger Ale bottles. I had to pry Nikki away from the Jim Beam so that he wouldn't be too sloshed to remember the lyrics – he forgot half of I Hate Straight Edge anyway. We were eating and drinking while we were waiting for the PA to arrive (the guy loaning it to us was an idiot), and Mia offered to pay us even if we didn't play. We refused, of course. We ended up playing, and she offered to pay us whatever we asked....at this point, we were too apathetic to demand more than a hundred. It was late, we had to drive all the way back from Rockville, and my legs were hurting from standing on hard floors for hours.
Marie was being moody and pissing me off. She's contemplating getting an abortion. At this point, she's gonna have to go up to DC to get it, because VA only allows first trimester abortions. I guess she's finding out the hard way that being pregnant is often synonymous with being miserable. I heard from Joe that she doesn't take care of herself at all, and she's eating nothing but candy. That kid's gonna be born without arms if she decides to have it, or something. She's too damn skinny as it is.
She was riding with me, with Dirk sitting in the back with all the equipment on his lap. She wanted Dirk to move over to my side (which has much less leg room) so that she could put her seat all the way back. She started pouting when we ignored her. It was a very quiet drive back, and I started singing to myself since Dirk was asleep and Marie was hunched over in her seat pretending to be asleep. I don't care if it irritates other people. I like to sing and I happen to be very good at singing Springsteen songs. Unfortunately, I only know a few by heart, like "Thunder Road," "Candy's Room," and "The River".
So, I was singing "The River" when I realized just how much I might be offending Marie with the song. I think I was smack dab in the middle of the verse that goes, "Then I got Mary pregnant / And man, that was all she wrote / And for my 19th birthday / I got a Union card and a wedding coat / We went down to the courthouse / And the judge put it all to rest / No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle / No flowers, no wedding dress," when I realized my faux pas. Then I decided I didn't give a shit if the parallels between the song and her life bothered her, since she's obviously an idiot if she thinks its gonna be flowers and roses if she keeps the kid. I kept right on singing.
"I got a job working construction/ At the Jonestown company/ But lately, there ain't been much work/ On account of the economy/ And all them dreams (things?) that seemed so important/ Well, mister, they vanished right into the air/ Now I just act like I don't remember/ Mary acts like she don't care"
"But I remember us riding in my brother's car/ Her body tanned and wet down at the reservoir/ At night on them banks I'd lie awake/ And pull her close just to hear each breath she'd take/ And those memories come back to haunt me/ They haunt me like a curse/ Is a dream a lie if it don't come true/ Or is it something worse/ That sends me down to the River/ Though I know the River is dry/ That sends me down to the River tonight?"
I'm not even going to pretend to be certain that those are the words. I don't have the lyric sheet right in front of me as I type this. Lyric sheet or not, though, those are powerful words. I finished the song and asked Marie, sweetly, "Are you alright? Do you need the temperature changed?" Because she'd quit sitting hunched over and was now watching me from the corner of her eye.
I can't bond with her no matter how hard I try. She's too alien to me, really. I have no way of understanding why she's pulling the shit that she is, or how she could think that treating people the way she does is okay. I mean, she expects the whole band to bow down to her because she's pregnant. I'm sorry, but the fact that she's breeding just disgusts me; I have no urge to give her preferential treatment. And she constantly sings fucking Tori Amos songs. I am neutral towards Tori Amos, most of the time. I don't listen to her because she's female (I can't stand most female singing voices -- higher registers grate on my nerves), but it irritates the shit out of me to hear Marie constantly belting out her stuff. I mean, when I'm driving along with my newest fav punk mix in my stereo, I do not want to hear some screechy little bitch whining, "I never was a cornflake girl."
I got moved to another office, thank goodness. I'm working with a girl named Jazmine who's a vegetarian like Dirk (except moreso, because Dirk makes exceptions and this girl doesn't). She's really likeable, which will be the first time I've been able to say that about a co-worker since I met Tish.
We have two shows scheduled for December – one's definite and one's tentative. I'm excited about that. Aaron's got his court date that same month – he originally wanted to take a week off from the band to deal with all the shit he's under, but he ended up deciding against it. I don't understand him, I truly don't.
Dirk and I are supposed to go see the Sixth Element tonight. I'm looking forward to it, especially because I already know the ending. We were supposed to go last night, but Dirk got home too late from Jason's house (because the clocks at Jason's house are wrong, which he's used as an excuse so many times that I think he ought to be able to calculate the difference between Jason time and Real Time by now) so I had a big ‘ol fit, followed by Dirk's big ‘ol fit, followed by make-up sex, ice cream, and a short nap. Somewhere amongst all that chaos, we decided to reschedule seeing the movie for tonight.
I wanted to see Sleepy Hollow, but I made too many appreciative noises about Johnny Depp, so Dirk deep-sixed the idea. I wasn't much for it anyway.
How am I? Not so good. I've been depressed for no good reason this past week. I think part of it is the fact that my dreams have been taking up so much of my energy that I wake up exhausted every morning. I had one dream where I was using my mental powers to levitate, and I could actually feel the pressure building up behind my eyes from the effort of concentrating so hard. I have this feeling of things collapsing, though I have yet to pinpoint anything that's actually wrong. Maybe I need a drink. I didn't drink anything at that party because I knew I was designated driver (as usual), and drinking alone just isn't very thrilling when you have to go to all the effort of actually mixing drinks because your stomach punishes you every time you pour straight anything into it. I don't like the idea of having to drink to relax anyway.....but what do you do when you don't even relax in your sleep?
It's not all bad, obviously. Thanksgiving's in just a couple of days, and I managed to weasel my way out of going over to Dirk's house and eating. His mother can't cook worth a damn. I seriously owe people mail, and I'm going to start working on that tomorrow. I just today got to the point where I could look at the computer for a long period of time without falling asleep and I wasted all of this time writing an entry (which would be why I don't update very often).
