Austin

Friday Oct. 2nd Day #1

This weekend was epic. It was objective. It started where it all began….

What does heaven look like to you?

It’s raining and it’s supposed to freeze and they’ve made that announcement every five minutes. That is not an exaggeration.
People are even sending in pictures of tiny icicles on their cars and rooftops. I forget that I’m in Texas and these sort of things are a big deal.
Meanwhile, my mother watches as inches of snow accumilates outside her window, sighing, dreading having to wake up an hour earlier just to get properly dressed, defrost and scrape off the car, and drive five miles per hour through the back roads of Upstate NY.

It was so lovely last week. The city was full of life. I ran through Town Lake running-dancing to Sly & The Family Stone and beamed at every person who crossed my path. How can I not smile when it’s January and 80 degrees, I’m listening to one of the best bass lines in rock music (“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin”), and my legs have the ability to run. I scavange for a coffee shop, but am dismayed to find that every single one is filled up. Every single person (more…)

A funnel thought cloud has been brewing in my brain. A thought that’s made me feel something I should have felt at fourteen. A sprinkling of insecurity, a dash of jealousy, and a whole lotta not feeling like I fit in.

Austin is cool. It’s too cool.

Now, I’m cool too. I’ve been cool because I’ve lived in not cool places (cool being extremely relative to begin with). I was the odd ball who wore horn-rimmed glasses, suspenders, and wigs and listened to David Bowie records in high school in Upstate New York. I was the girl in college who made a Frank Zappa mask for her Religion course and put quotes from “Kids in the Hall” on her dorm door. In L.A. I was the girl who, well, didn’t have fake breasts, a perpetual tan, or go to clubs.

But here in Austin, well shit, they all wear fucking horn-rimmed glasses and suspenders and love David Byrne and Frank Zappa and have perfectly pale skin and twig limbs and thick bangs and expensive bicycles and flannel shirts and witty counter-part significant others…and (more…)

Living in a new city, working in retail, and having zero dollars to buy/create a costume can really take the fun out of Halloween. When most people were out partaking in the fantasy of being someone else for an evening, I was tying to explain to the 90th person that we sold out of gold wristbands and headbands because “everyone and their mother wanted to be fucking Paulie Bleeker for Halloween and you’re a FUCKING IDIOT to think that at 8PM on Halloween night we’d still have them in stock.”

For the first time in my life, I hated Halloween. I wanted the evening to end. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go out and even if I did, I really didn’t know where to go. This holiday meant so much to me and there I was, angry, uncostumed, and stomach empty of candy. I wanted to punch every Sarah Palin or Amy Winehouse that crossed my path (I’d definitely punch one of them even if it weren’t Halloween). To add insult to injury, as I locked up the store, someone shouted from a van, “Fuck you hipster!” (more…)