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razorsadness · 8 days ago

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maybe we’ll hug each other in a past life (part one of three)

So much to say, and where to begin. “Begin at the beginning, and when you come to the ending, then stop.” I guess I’ll begin with the Giant Paddy O’s Show on September 7th, as that was the first big event of these past two+ months, and I jotted down so many notes about it.

We were truly blessed that day; it was the first day in months when it was chilly enough to be leather jacket weather, which was perfect for the outfit I was gonna be rocking that night. I was vending at the White Lilac, a new venue in Kenosha (well, they’ve been open about a year now), and also performing on the stage there at the end of the night. The day before, I’d been told by one of the event organizers that I had to bring my own card table for vending, unless I wanted to use one of the small high-top bar tables at the venue. I have a card table I could’ve taken, but I really didn’t want to haul that around on top of all my merch, etc., so I was just like, fuck it, guess I’ll use a small table. But, blessing number two, when I walked in to the White Lilac and explained my situation, Kelly—the owner, who was also working the door alongside his wife that night—said: “No worries, we have an extra table you can use!” and pulled a long folding table out from under the stage. And right after that, he gave me a free bottle of water and a free basket of popcorn fresh from their popcorn machine. The little while after that was spent setting up my table and waving away the yellowjackets that flew in the open door and landed on my popcorn, then I went outside to have a cigarette before the first performer went on stage. That’s when Pookie and Dean showed up, and I was like: “Holy flashback to 2000-2004, Batman.” Dean said ‘hey’ to me but we didn’t talk much, he seemed anxious and wanted to stand off by himself chainsmoking, which hey, I get it. But Pookie, he came up and gave me a huge hug and said: “It’s so good to see you.”

Here’s a little summation of my friendship with Pookie: he is one of the few friends from that era of my life I had a totally platonic relationship with. Though actually it requires a more nuanced explanation than that. When I say “platonic relationship,” I don’t necessarily just mean people I never hooked up with, I mean people that there wasn’t even any flirtation or romantic/sexual spark with. And actually he and I did make out—once. It was at a Halloween party at Paddy O’s in 2003, and a bunch of us were out back in the beer garden, and Beagan and I started making out (because that is the kind of friendship we’ve always had), and Pookie and Beagan had made out before so they started making out, too, and we were all drunk and back then Pookie and I were both single and we were both makeout bandits, so we made out for a little while before stopping and just looking at each other like: “No.” Later, we talked about it, and we were both like: “No offense, I love you, man, and it’s not that you’re unattractive, but there was no there there, and I feel like if we ever made out again it would just make me feel weird and sad, so, let’s not?” And then we cheers’d each other and that was that, there was never any awkwardness between us afterwards, we just both knew we did not at all feel that way about one another. We had a great friendship, the kind where you can give each other a hard time in an affectionate way, but also have deep, meaningful conversations, and know that the other person always has your back. Like, we could talk shit to/about each other (he’d call me a dirty Mick and I’d call him a filthy Frog—though I have French ancestry too, he’s mostly French; we’d make fun of each other’s favorite music), but if anyone else seriously talked shit about one of us, or did something fucked up to one of us, and the other one found out? Heads would roll. He was one of the only guys that were part of the Paddy O’s crowd/Kenosha scene who a. believed me and b. cared when I started telling people that the King of Kenowhere had raped me. Yeah, we were great friends, but I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in at least a decade until that Saturday night—not because we’d had a falling out, just because life happened—and then he hugged me, and let me tell you, I hadn’t been hugged like that in such a long time. It was the biggest, warmest hug, full of love and 20+ years of friendship. He hugged me, and then we immediately went on to reminisce about ye olde days.

Back inside the White Lilac, the first act, Kenye, a glampunk poet/musician, went on. He performed songs about being bipolar, and about class war, and one called “Emily Dickinson Was Right,” and then he performed poems about heartbreak and ghosts (specifically about haunted places in southeastern Wisconsin). So clearly I have a lot in common with this fella! I went up to him after his set, to say I really liked his stuff, and to talk about ghosts. I told him some of my own stories of local haunted places, and mentioned that I’d also done a lot of research about haunted places in southeastern Wisconsin for a blog post when I was writer-in-residence a few years back. Kelly overheard us talking, and jumped in with his own spooky local story, and it was pretty neat, to be chatting about ghosts and haunted places with a couple likeminded folks.

Codes Within Codes (aka Cody) went on next, and I got really into his stuff. It was like Radiohead meets the Chemical Brothers meets some heavier industrial bands. I was messaging with Yoni at the time, and was like: “Oh hey, check this guy’s stuff out,” and he did, and said he dug it, and might play it on his radio show at some point. Then I got my first beer of the night, a tallboy of Garage Beer. I’d never had it before, or even heard of it, but I liked the name and specifically chose it because it has a low ABV. Even with the low ABV, I sipped it slowly, because it was still early on in what was gonna be a long night, and I did not want to get blotto before my set. I sipped my beer, watched (d)VICES’s set. One of the people vending at the table next to mine was this gorgeous woman; I immediately got a teensy crush on her. She came over to look at my stuff, bought a copy of my mini art zine, and we chatted about various stuff, art and music and zines and the like. Somehow the topic of train hopping came up; it turns out we both used to do that. And then we were talking about our favorite cities and it turns out she has a New Orleans connection, too, and even knows some of the people I know there. Shit like this happens to me all the time—meeting new people and discovering they have connections with some of the same people and places I do—but every time it happens, I’m amazed all over again at how fucking small this world is. Also, she had a leopard print sweater tied around her waist, and I noticed that she had a leopard-spot tattoo on one of her arms. I was wearing a leopard print shirt, and I rolled up my sleeve to show her my leopard-spot tattoo. She said: “Leopard twins!” and we fist-bumped.

Then it was time for me to head over to Paddy O’s to see The Yates Kids. Oh, The Yates Kids. One of my longtime Kenocore favorites. (There’s a lot more I could say about that band, but I’ll get back to that later.) I’ve seen them at least a dozen times over the years, but it had been over nine years since I’d last seen them, and, other than the Bikini Kill concert in April 2023, I hadn’t seen any live punk show since pre-pandemic. So, needless to say, I was stoked. All the Paddy’s bands were playing on an outdoor stage, back in the beer garden, so first I walked in through the front door, and waited at the bar to get a drink. It was packed, so I had to wait a while, and while I waited, I noticed my friend Hank was standing at the bar next to me. He was standing next to a guy I vaguely recognized but couldn’t place. They were talking about feeling old, and I jumped in and said: “I know the feeling.” Hank said: “Oh yeah, you’re like the same age as us, huh?” And I said: “I think I’m a little bit younger than you are.” (Hank is 48, I’m only 42.) The other guy said: “Jesus, Hank, are you saying she’s an old man, too?” Then, turning to me: “You don’t look like an old man. You’re beautiful.” Hank said: “Hey, this is my friend High Life. High Life, this is Jessie.” High Life reached out to shake my hand, and said: “It’s great to meet you.” I said: “Oh, we’ve met before,” because at that point I’d realized who he was, but he was adamant that we had not met. “No way. I wouldn’t have forgotten you. You’re way too hot to forget.”

Let’s go back in time for a minute. Back in the days when I spent most of my time at Paddy O’s and The Port (or at least, most of the time I was in Kenosha), High Life was a regular at both bars, too. He was a sexy, fucked-up punk rock dude, and I was a fucked-up punk rock girl (and all the Kenosha punk dudes found me irresistible, ha ha), and when none of our other friends were around, we’d drink together, and flirt. Eventually, we ended up hanging out outside of the bars, one-on-one or at parties; we’d make out and do drugs together, and we fucked a couple times. It was never anything serious, but it was what we both needed (or at least what we wanted) at that point in our lives. Then I stopped hanging around those bars quite as much, and by the time I was back in that scene he’d gotten married and had a kid and stopped coming to the bars much at all for a while. We’d still run into each other at shows occasionally, but we never really talked, and before September 7, we hadn’t seen each other in over nine years. Still, I never forgot him. He was a good dude, despite his issues, and aside from the sex and drugs, we also shared great conversations. I’d sometimes think of him, and our brief symmetry, fondly, especially when I was nostalgic for my misspent youth of wild parties and brief flings. So yeah, as soon as Hank introduced us and I heard his name, I knew who High Life was. And even if that hadn’t rung any bells for me, I would’ve figured it out by the time I went out to the beer garden to see the band, because did I mention he’s one of the guitarists for the motherfucking Yates Kids? Yeah, he is.

So there I was, feeling really fucking awkward, because he was sorta hitting on me (which, don’t get me wrong, was great—he’s still a cutie and I don’t get hit on so much these days) yet insisting that we’d never met. It’s not that I was upset that he’d forgotten me—our little thing ended 20+ years ago, and as I said I hadn’t even seen him in nearly a decade, and we’re older and look different and I hadn’t even recognized him at first, and not everyone’s memory works the same way mine does—it’s just. What was I supposed to say: “We’ve definitely met. We used to fuck! We’ve shot up together!”? I was not going to do that. What I said was: “Oh, y’know, it was like twenty years ago, back when everyone was at this bar every night. No worries.” He said: “I really think I’d remember you. But we’ll talk more later, okay? I gotta get out to the stage.” He headed outside (Hank had already wandered off, to talk to another friend of his); I got my drink (whiskey & ginger ale), then I headed towards the beer garden, too. On my way, I saw Lily. She gave me a hug and said she had a gift for me. I asked her to bring it over to the White Lilac later, so I could stash it in my suitcase rather than trying to carry it around; she said she would. Then I saw Honey, who said: “I just texted you YATES KIDS NOW!!! because I knew you wanted to see them tonight.” “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m way ahead of you on that one, babe.”

Outside, I made my way through the crowd and got a spot near enough to the stage I could see the band, but far enough away I wouldn’t be bumped into by anyone in the slam pit. Then The Yates Kids played, and it was awesome, just what I needed. I danced my ass off and sang along to all the songs I knew, which was most of ‘em, and I watched everyone in the pit and was happy that there was a pit and that it was mostly women and old punks. Joni, who was also there dancing and singing along, came up and gave me a big hug and then went back to dancing, and I sipped my drink and looked around at all the familiar faces. There were also some faces who notably were not there, and I don’t just mean the dead punks—I mean a couple of dudes who were part of the Kenocore scene who have now been kicked out of bands and banned from most events because word got out they were rapists and abusers. It’s been really heartening to see, actually. The tide is turning—people are less likely to tolerate that type of shit these days, at least as far as I can tell—and what’s been especially heartening is that most of the people making sure these fuckers don’t show their faces have been other (cis, straight, white) men. Back when the King of Kenowhere raped me, well…

Granted, it took me a while to tell anyone (other than Jenny) what had really happened, but… Okay, so. K.K. had a reputation for being a heartbreaker/womanizer type. There were a lot of girls and women in southeastern Wisconsin who “hooked up with” or dated him, and then weeks or months later were like: “Fuck that guy.” I was not the first, nor was I the last. The guys in the scene—his bandmates, other dudes that ran in the punk scene or just hung out at the same bars—they just assumed he’d broken our hearts and moved on to the next girl, and that’s why we hated him. But a while after he raped me, I started talking to the other women that hated him, and discovered that no, he hadn’t broken our hearts. He’d either raped us or emotionally/physically abused us, or some combination thereof. We kinda became a whisper network; we spread little bits of what had happened to all of us in a way that wouldn’t “out” any of us individually, to try and warn other girls away from him before he got his hooks in. (He was really good at turning the charm on so you wouldn’t notice all the red flags, and if you did happen to notice one of the red flags? Well, he’d tell you some sob story about his life that made you think: “Poor little sad baby boy, I will take care of him in a way no other girl ever has, I can fix him, and he will understand me.” And now I’m thinking of Kathleen Hanna’s “True Love:” And then she met this boy (the anti-hero) who had these beautiful sad eyes and looked like a lost and abused little child and he said, “I am wild like you, I am fun loving like you and understand what has happened to you, I will love you.”) I’ll never know for sure, but I can only hope that our whisper network kept at least some women from being hurt by him. But yeah, the guys just never knew. Or didn’t want to know. And when I finally tried to tell some of them what had really gone down, most of them responded with: “Oh. That sucks.” And that was that. They didn’t kick him out of their bands or kick him out of bars or beat his ass or even seem all that concerned about what had happened to me and all those other women.

So, yeah. It’s just heartening to see that the women in that scene are now being believed, and the men are now keeping the creeps and abusers and rapists out as much as possible. (Thankfully, K.K. was also not there, nor were any of the guys who brushed off what he did to me.)

After The Yates Kids’ set, I walked back across the street to the White Lilac. I stopped outside, in the purple lilac dusk, first, to have a cigarette. Micah walked over at that point, and we talked for a while. Micah is the guy who sets up the whole Giant Paddy O’s show every year; that night he was also performing not one but three sets—one solo and two with different bands. Oh, and he’s my best Beagan’s ex. We’ve messaged each other a bit since they broke up, but I hadn’t actually seen him in person since, and that was two and a half years ago. My loyalty is of course to my bestie, but she’s never told any of her friends to cut off contact with him (it wasn’t that kind of breakup), and they were together for such a long time that he and I became good friends in our own right. It was really, really good to see him. After our chat, we both went into the White Lilac, and it was time for Micah’s solo set, as Torrahbull. His solo stuff is electronic and really fucking good; it reminded me a lot of The Prodigy and some other big beat stuff from that era, mixed with abstract hip-hop, and I once again danced my ass off. (Micah messaged me the next day and said the highlight of his set was looking out into the crowd and seeing me dancing.)

Then I just sat at my table, watched some other poets and musicians perform, sipped another beer, talked to people that stopped at my table. A few people bought zines; I made some new friends and talked to more old friends. Lily came by, gave me the gift she had for me—a miniature horse skull replica, because we’ve been trying to get a Mari Lwyd happening in our area for the Yule season for years now, but there’s always been some hiccup or other. (Fingers crossed, it may actually happen this year!) Now that night had fallen, there were no more yellowjackets flying in—there were moths flying in, instead. But moths are significantly less bothersome than yellowjackets. Cody stopped by my table; we traded stickers. I told him that I’d recommended his music to a radio DJ friend in Philly, and he was stoked. He also told me that he’d recently been making connections with some electronic musicians out in Philly, and so might actually end up playing some shows out there in 2025. And again, it was a moment of meeting someone new who has a connection to some of the same places and/or people I do.

Every once in a while, I ducked outside for another cigarette and a moment alone, or to talk to people who were hanging outside. Hank had come over to the White Lilac by that point, and we had a big long conversation about everything from local poetry community drama to politics to parenthood to punk. He told me how his other friend (meaning: not High Life) that had been at Paddy O’s had left after the Yates Kids set, because he thought things were getting “too crazy.” He said: “I mean, he’s from here, but he’s lived in Oregon for a long time now, and I think he forgot what the midwest punk scene is like.” We talked about how midwest punks are a rare breed; how most of us are lifers in the scene even if we don’t go to shows and party hard every week like we did when we were younger. We agreed that Midwest is best and that midwest punks are more hardcore than punks anywhere else. Then we were just quiet for a bit, looking around at the neon signs of restaurants and bars and the lights bending and refracting on the water in the harbor, and it was like a hundred thousand nights before and it was just as beautiful as the first time. I said something about the lights on the water, how poetic it was, and he said: “It is poetry.” There’s not too many people I could have that exchange with without feeling like a huge dork, but Hank gets it.

Then it was time for Joni’s set, and my set, with Honey (as Dead Language Decoder) backing us up. I had brought my tripod so I could get video of the whole thing, but when I pulled it out, I discovered the locking pin was missing. Fortunately, one of the people at the table next to mine had electrical tape, and when I got the tripod to the right height, he helped me tape it into place. Joni went first, and she brought the house down—she’s a fucking amazing performer (as well as a phenomenal poet). When I went up, I said: “I don’t know how I’m going to follow that.” I wasn’t actually looking for encouragement—I wasn’t feeling bad, I was just simply trying to acknowledge how fucking great she was, in a mildly self-deprecating way—but still, a few people shouted: “You got this!” And I did have it. My performance went great, too; I’m not the same kind of performer Joni is, but when I’m on I’m on, and that night I was on. Afterward, we hung around while Honey did some of her music solo. I started packing up, while also talking with more people. Pookie gave me another big hug on his way out, said: “I love you.” (Oh, to be told you are loved by an old friend! That’s the stuff!) One of the other poets who’d performed earlier in the night came up to me, and said she was heading home to immediately go write some new poems, because my stuff had inspired her so much. (That’s the stuff, too—being told my writing inspired someone else is probably my favorite compliment ever. Though being told my writing made someone cry is a close second.)

After my stuff was packed up, I stepped outside for one last cigarette and to chat with a few more friends/say my goodbyes before hauling my stuff to my car and heading home. I talked to Hank some more, and then: oh, High Life was there, too. Turned out he’d been in the crowd for my set. “Hey,” he said, “your stuff is really good.” “Thanks,” I replied. “I’m sorry about earlier,” he said, “I uh…I do remember who you are. We used to…” “Yep, we did.” “You must think I’m a complete asshole, or maybe just stupid, huh?” “Nah, it was more amusing than anything. Like I said, it was a long time ago.” “Yeah. Oh, but hey—I did mean what I said. I think you’re hot.” “Thanks.” “We’re all going over to The Port for the after party. You should come.” “Wish I could, but I’m kinda beat. Plus I don’t wanna get too drunk before I have to drive all the way back to Racine.” “I get it. Maybe I’ll see you around again soon?” “Yeah, maybe.” Then he gave me a hug and moseyed off to the after party. I said goodbye to Joni and Honey. Honey said: “It’s so good to see you. You need to come out more often.” “I for sure do,” I said, and she hugged me. Then Joni hugged me and said: “I love you. Your stuff is so awesome.” “So is yours,” I said, “It was so good to perform together again. It’s been too long.” “We should do it again soon!” “Yes we should! I love you.” And with that, I went back inside the White Lilac one last time, grabbed my stuff, put it in my car, and drove home.

My whole family was already asleep when I got there (no surprise, as it was well after midnight), but I couldn’t fall asleep. I was still fired up from all the love, and the music, and the adrenaline spike I always get when performing. It didn’t help that through the open window of my bedroom I could hear both an owl hooting in a nearby tree, and a loud accordion from someone blasting norteño music a few streets away. When I finally did fall asleep, I had sex dreams about High Life.

The next morning, I received Facebook friend requests from both Dean and High Life. I accepted both. Dean and I immediately got to chatting. He apologized for not really talking to me when he saw me the day before, but said that he has really bad social anxiety these days, and was currently in the process of adjusting his meds, so was extra on-edge that night. I of course said “no worries, I get it,” because though my anxiety isn’t as social-based as his is, it can sometimes be triggered by social situations, and I’d had my panic meds in my bag at the show just in case. Then we started talking about other stuff, like the Beats—he’s one of the few people I’ve ever known who was into the Beats in as deep a way as I am. In any case, we message each other about random stuff every few days or so, now, and I’m glad he’s back in my life. The first message High Life sent me was very flirtatious, a lot of: “No, seriously, when am I gonna see you again?” And I was very tempted to respond with: “I’m free whenever you are,” cuz like I said, he’s still a cutie, and his band rules, and the sex dreams were hot as fuck, but I decided to play it cool, and ultimately decided that I’m not gonna pursue anything with him. Mostly because it would be 5000 kinds of messy—the Kenosha scene is very small and borderline incestuous (not in the literal sense, obviously), and I banged my way through it Back in the Day, and there was so much drama, and there would probably be even more drama now, and as I’ve said before…I am too old for that shit.

I was feeling good all day, albeit a little achy (I fucked my hip up dancing at the show) and tired, but mostly good. Realizing that so many people remember me fondly, and like me, and like seeing me, and want to see me more often. And then in the evening I got a text from our landlady: “Can I come do a walkthrough of the property next Saturday?” And I went into full-on panic attack mode. I was shaking, crying, pacing, swearing, the whole bit. Because I have had bad experiences with landlords or their lackeys doing walkthroughs. Especially when we lived in the house on Colonial Ave.—our landlady’s daughter was always trying to evict us because she didn’t like the way we kept house or yard, and basically just didn’t like us, and was also a raging bitch. So I was having flashbacks to that and going: “Oh my god, what’re we gonna do, what’re we gonna do?!” And P. was very calm and rational, saying: “It’ll be fine, we’ve lived here over six years and have never had problems with her, and she gave us almost a week’s notice. We’ll just clean and organize as best we can, but she has to understand that we live here.” And though I knew, logically, that he was probably right, I couldn’t turn my panic off, because panic is not logical, and then he got kinda shitty, telling me I had to get my shit together because I was upsetting the kids. And of course I didn’t want to upset the kids, duh, but telling a person in the midst of a panic attack to calm down and get their shit together does not help.

The following week was full of mostly bullshit, broken up with small good things. We had to do all kinds of cleaning and organizing, and my hip injury had gotten worse, so I was in a lot of pain while doing all that. Plus I was still internally panicking about the impending walkthrough, and the kids were both in constant bad moods, and during that week it was Derry’s birthday and I was missing him so hard and worried about him too because he’d had surgery in the time since I’d last seen him, and I wanted to write but had hella writer’s block, and after our one weekend of cool leather jacket weather it had gotten hella hot and dry again (and windy—and hot dry winds make my allergies worse), and ugh ugh ugh. The small good things were trips to the craft store for Halloween-related craft stuff, and making visual art. And I got to talk to Derry—though we couldn’t be together on his birthday, I was able to call him—and he was doing well; the surgery was a success and he was recovering speedily.

And the walkthrough happened, and it was chill. The landlord said she understood why our house was a bit cluttered, and she wasn’t upset about any of the normal wear and tear. She said she was going to have the front porch repainted and repaired (there were a couple boards that were partially broken and needed replacing), and the broken storm door replaced. The only thing she seemed a little concerned about was how overgrown our yard was—not grass-wise, but “weeds”-wise. She asked if we could do some weeding, especially out front, so she didn’t get a citation from the city, and that a week later she’d come back with her husband to haul it away to the yard waste composting place. We of course said yes, no problem. So after she left, I breathed a sigh of relief—I really thought P. had been right; I had been panicking for no reason, and everything was fine.

The next day we went to a local farmer’s market, for fresh apples and cranberry white cheddar and some other treats. I dressed up a bit, for no other reason than that I felt like it, and took a selfie, and the day after that I posted it on Facebook with the caption: “I looked hella cute and autumnal yesterday.” And a bunch of people commented, and one was Ashanti, saying: “Hell yeah you did.” And I responded with: “Miss you, lady,” but the amazing thing was she was typing the literal exact same words to me at the exact same time, and we both clicked ‘post’ within a millisecond of each other. And then she said: “We said it at the exact same time. That means we’ve gotta fix it.” So we started DMing about when we can get together. That was two months ago and we still haven’t yet—we’re both very busy—but I almost cried tears of joy that day when we first got back in touch. We hadn’t talked in so long, and I really thought she hated me or at least had written me off entirely. See, for a while after we met, she was relentless in trying to hang out with me one-on-one, and we only did a couple times—partly because we were both busy a lot, but partly because of some weird feelings/insecurities on my end—and then she just stopped trying, and when I would message her she wouldn’t respond, and yeah, I thought I’d fucked up what could’ve been a really close friendship. Well, from talking to her again I found out that it had nothing to do with me. She’d just been going through her own shit and wasn’t very active on social media (including messaging apps) for a while. Much like seeing all those old friends the night of the Paddy O’s show, it was a reminder that a. everyone has their own shit going on that can keep them from reaching out and b. most of the people I care about still care about me, too.

On the last day of summer, we took the kids to Old World Wisconsin. We drove there on the backroads, through all these small towns, one of which was having their autumn festival that day. The houses and the downtown storefronts were so lovely, and I briefly thought: “I could live here,” and then I saw how the ratio of Trump signs to Harris signs was, well, heavily skewed towards the Trump side. Old World Wisconsin itself was fun—despite the fact that the weather was still very much summer weather (it was 90 degrees that day)—we learned about Norwegian rosemaling and old-school shoemaking, and played a game of sticks and hoops, and P. and I got to try an old-style Lithuanian beer. When we got home that day, we did a bunch of weeding in both the front and the back (focusing on the front), and piled everything in the front yard. And not an hour after we’d finished, our landlord showed up. She did text first, but I wasn’t looking at my phone—but anyway, they decided to come by and haul the stuff away early because it was supposed to rain the next day. And that’s when shit got really weird. She started freaking out about all the “weeds” we still had left, even though I thought we’d done quite a good job of clearing things, and she started freaking out about the clutter that she’d previously said she understood. We didn’t talk much about it that day because they were in a hurry to load everything into their truck, but she seemed really pissed and said that over the next couple weeks, they’d be coming by not only to repaint and repair the porch and replace the storm door, but also to clear out the rest of the yard to their liking. So I was immediately panicked again.

But the next day, the first day of autumn, came with a drop in temperature and some soothing and much-needed rain, and I made more art, and set up my autumn altars, and ran errands, and drove around in the rain while listening to Depeche Mode, and I felt briefly better.

My better mood didn’t last long. After the one day of rain, things got warmer (not as hot as before, but still too warm for my liking) and drier and windy again, and the landlord and her husband were there every day for a week, absolutely ripping every single plant out of both the front and back yards. And every time I tried to talk to her, to ask if there was any help we could give, she’d say no, but then start ranting about something. It was either “the yard looks like trash because you let all these weeds grow and most of this neighborhood is homeowners with immaculate lawns and you’re bringing the property values down,” or “there’s too much clutter in the basement, you just can’t keep it there, it’s a fire hazard, you need to get a storage unit if you don’t wanna get rid of it.” And I still had writer’s block, and the kids were still grumpy, and I couldn’t even take them out to play in the yard because it was full of people ripping plants out. After a few days of feeling like a hostage in my own house and seriously worrying she was going to evict us, I decided I had to talk to her about it. Of course I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say: “I don’t give a fuck about property values, and we purposefully let certain plants grow if they are non-invasive and good for pollinators, not to mention leaving some overgrowth so that the fireflies have a place to lay their eggs. And the clutter you’re freaking out about? It’s in the unfinished half of the basement—isn’t that the part of the house most people use for storing things? And it’s some boxes of papers and some bins of old clothes. It’s not like we have stacks of oil-soaked rags next to the furnace. And fuck off about a storage unit—are you going to pay for it?!” So I phrased all that in the nicest, calmest way I could: “We purposefully let some of the plants grow, because we like to have birds, bees, and butterflies in our garden. I wasn’t aware it was such a problem; I promise in the future we will not let it get like that again. As far as the clutter goes, I am aware that we have a lot of stuff we need to get rid of, and I have been going through it and getting rid of stuff, little by little. So please don’t worry too much.” It wasn’t a lie about going through and getting rid of stuff—in fact I’d taken a huge load of things to the Goodwill the week before she did the walkthrough—and in any case, I must have said the right thing, because she almost immediately calmed down. She apologized, said it was partially on her for not doing the walkthrough sooner and letting us know about the issue with the yard before it got to that point, and also said she’d been stressed because the company she’d initially called for a price quote on the porch job had tried to upsell her and insist they needed to rip out and rebuild the entire porch, for which they were going to charge an exorbitant price. She also said she wasn’t trying to get rid of us, that she likes us, and that she can tell we love this house just as much as she did when she lived here. Crisis averted.

Even though she was still around in the evenings working on the porch through the end of September/beginning of October, I was no longer worried about getting evicted. And my writer’s block cleared. I suddenly had all these ideas, and wrote some poems, and started working on that month’s zines…and then all the weeks of dry winds and allergy bullshit caught up with me, and I got a sinus infection. I was in excruciating pain, and hella fatigued, for a few days, in fact it was so bad I was afraid I might not even be able make it to Chicago Zine Fest on October 5th, let alone finish the new zines. But I guess I’ve gotten better at managing my disabilities than I used to be, because I got in some writing and zine-layout/zine fest prep time every day, yet also took plenty of time to rest and do other stuff to take care of myself, like take long hot baths and drink a lot of tea and eat soup. And I got the zines done, and one of them—Neal & Jack & Me—I think is a pretty good piece of writing. (The other one isn’t bad either, it’s just that that one was a reprint of a story I wrote in 2018, so it’s not brand-new.) And by the day before CZF, I felt mostly better—definitely well enough to go.

#razorsadness #dear livejournal #read at your own risk #content warnings for…#rape //#drug use //#shitty landlords //#and there’s some other mildly unpleasant or potentially upsetting stuff but those are the main ones #also it’s reallly long #and it’s just part one!#lol after months of going #i have so much to write about but more things keep happening #i decided to make this epic journal entry a three parter #so this one is #september 2024 #and a tiny bit of #october 2024 #also…#did i finally come up with pseudonyms for a lot of the people i’ve been using initials for for years?#yes i did #i mean i don’t know why i don’t just use everyone’s real names considering that there are enough identifying details of people and places #that even just an amateur sleuth could figure out people’s true identities if they were so inclined…#but i enjoy making up pseudonyms for people so :P #also - am i going to go back and edit old journal entries where i used initials and replace them with the new pseudonyms?#no. no i am not.#i like to keep people guessing

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