Some Memories, Some Music, Some Me

When I moved to Richmond in 1995, I was moving in with the Rev (not yet even a GLIMMER of reverendosity in her eye!) and her boyfriend and his brother and another friend of the Rev's and two cats. I was told to come on down, bring your dog Caesar, and don't worry about paying rent until you get a job. You can't beat a friend like that.

So I came on down, still recovering from the loss of my beloved Grammy and from caring for my terminally ill stepmother. Caesar was himself recovering from having both cruciate ligaments replaced. So we hauled our bruised and battered selves up to the second floor to the largest apartment we'd ever seen and into the smallest bedroom we'd ever occupied. Once my futon was set up, the door only opened partially. My bottom dresser drawer was inaccessible unless I folded up the futon. We called it the Starter bedroom and joked about who would have to move out for me to move up to a room with a view.

Within a week I was employed by a temp agency doing all sorts of mind-numbing jobs, which fit beautifully into my schedule of staying up late. If we didn't go downtown to see a band at the Flood Zone or Moondance, we hung out on the front porch and drank and talked shit and just enjoyed being carefree. We were Friends without the tastefully decorated apartment and coffee shop.

One regular late night event was playing cards with Jon. We would sit at the dining room table smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and playing cards. Jon and I had a "hate/tolerate/hate" relationship. At that point, we were in the "tolerate" phase, and we talked as least as much smack, if not more, than we played cards. And we listened to music. I remember one long stretch (maybe a month?) when we played cards almost every night while the same three cd's played random tracks on the Rev's cd player. Mine: I Am an Elastic Firecracker by Tripping Daisy. [I was convinced that my soul mate would approach me singing, "I got a girl she loves her dog, I got a girl I love her dog too."] The Rev's: Wonderful by Adam & the Ants [Antmusic for Adults?] Jon's: Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette [This might actually have belonged to the Rev, but Jon was relating to it heavily that year and would violently declaim his right to go down on you in a theatre.]

As you can imagine, hearing tracks from these three albums randomly intermingled was jarring. After a few weeks, I don't think we even noticed we were singing along between drags and gulps and "play your card, bitch." But we were. Because when I put my newly acquired from eBay $0.99 Wonderful cd in my car stereo this morning, I remembered every word. And these are not words that really merit retention 12 years after the fact: push, push, because I like it like that, push, push, and then she pushed back. Or this nugget of wisdom: words are only words, said another way. But I knew them all.

And I remembered sitting at that dining room table, smoking cigarettes (which I don't do any more), with Jon (whom I don't see any more -- permanent hate phase), listening to a musical mash up (which I could now create on my Zen), and being happy.

Happy because I had friends and enough money for beer and my nominal rent. Happy because I was surrounded by life after being so close to death. $0.99 is a pretty decent price to pay for a reminder of how that happy felt.

Now if I could just remember the name of the card game we played. Seriously, it is driving me mad.