May 2005 Archives

I got pinkeye from a hug. I've had a whole bouquet of elementary school afflictions the last couple of months: strep throat, 3-month runny nose, babyish outbursts toward authority figures, unrealistic but devoted secret crushes, now pink eye. I'd better watch out for my pumpkin--I could get lice.

I think I got pinkeye from giving Mark a hello or adios hug cause he had it too. I woke up Tuesday morning with eyes like blood marbles, garlands of spidery veins in my eyeballs and the eyes were gooey. I looked like a fun glassy zombie. I drank a gallon of water, thinking the redness was just dehydration. Later that night at Melt Banana, Mark diagnosed. I was highly contagious but went and danced into the crowd anyway. I assume most people have a more powerful resistance than I do. I shouldn't even read about something like ebola, I am such a petri dish that the vermin virus could just jump off the page to be hosted by my tonsils. This blind mole jackass punk was trying to give hysterectomies in the pit and became more astonishingly violent even as I tried to touch him kind of ternderly and look him in his eyes to calm his tornado down. Mark said sometime that night that he thinks that anything goes in the pit cause that's the freedom of it, and I almost agree. In the right enviornment, like a house show, I think people can be trusted to put each other's femurs and dentals in a little danger. But Albino Mole was sweating glass because he seemed so high on meth, and he was being outrageously stupid and unpredictably insane and hurting people. So anyway, I rubbed my eyes into his T-shirt and blew in his face, trying to spread my pink--amazingly, he thought I was flirting with him and he finally made eye contact, smiled and settled down.

I went to the acupuncture school the next day for my pink eye and 10-day-old cold. I left my home and all the schoolchilds were in bright-color T-shirts in the streets and the palms hustled on dark skies and all of the lights were out--traffic, liquor store, all of them. The acupuncture school was dark, power was out there too but I waited until the lights hummed back alive because I needed treatment very badly. Sitting in a room without electricity, after a few moments you feel like a potted plant. I like it. A doctor and five interns analyzed my tounge and called my pulse "slippery" and "hovering" and ordered many needles and teas which need to fester for two hours in a ceramic pot and have pussy willows and bark in them. The tea is terrible to drink, thick and dank, but the cure is almost instant. My eyes are much less red and my lungs are not so swampy. I feel very relieved because I started to get lonely and sad, being so weak and not wanting to ask friends to prop up my head.

After I left acupuncture, there was a bomb scare at a federal building in the center of downtown Oakland. It was very disruptive and exciting. It was frightening though too because Oakland seems like the kind of place where something very bad could happen because it is always happening in frozen time. I sit and look out the windows of my house at night and there are two men every night, drinking beer out of a gas can and riffling through plastic bags in their pickup truck, which is piled high with the limbs of dead machines and piled higher with stained mattresses. They burp and fart and fall asleep sitting up, side by side, covered with woolly blankets. I wonder when I see them, just barely nourished on the milk and rust of the fringe, what would happen to them if there was a crisis? Oakland is a great place to launch a huge crisis with a little flick of the terrorist cortex. If somebody dropped a nice egg of bubonic on Market Street, we would all incubate it willingly and spread it accordingly; nobody has health insurance, nobody is in good enough health to battle that kind of reaper, and there's a lot of people with spare time just happy to hitch up to Berkeley and snot on whitey's sheltered and immune-deficient infants.

Speaking of whitey, I get called "white girl" every day by a little ensemble of boys down the street from me. The other night I stopped my bike and said, "Listen, I may be white but I am no honky. My name is Eva. Let's be friends." The dudes each moved in about four feet to breathe in my face and ask to fuck my ass. I'm so frustrated.

I miss my journal. I have not had the internet in my home for almost two months and miss toasting my hands over the flame. I try to secretly post at work but I can’t get the spirit in the same way, when I’m trying to conceal. Very soon, my life will be different and steered toward every decadence of the creative effort. I will undamm and let the flow carve a deeper bed. In a few weeks I will live in a commune, in a tent, doing a couple of hours of manual labor every day and having 20 hours in the day for other things, like reading and sunbathing and making rituals to vegetables in the solar powered kitchen. There will be a wedding and I will play music with the community. I hope there are no raccoons there, those banditos scare the hell out of me, grumpy old garbagemen.

After that month, I will go to Portland for about 7 weeks. I will sunbathe and feed Meghan and fill her freezer with blackberry jam. I will walk the city every day and look for friends. I will spook around at night. I will dig up the bone jewelry at RIP. I will write and read. I will go to Peoples Food Co-op every day. I will record music by myself and with my friends. I hope these smart months of work and conservation in Oakland will result in a period of nutritious rest, a perfected relaxation in Portland. When I was free of straight-world obligations for almost a year in Portland, I got an unshakable contempt for provincial existence and I did not properly enjoy the beauty or benefits of that kind of liberty. Instead, I indulged in boredom. I think I learned my lesson.

I am trying to keep up the magic. It’s work all of the time. It just seems so risky sometimes to live this kind of life, as a troubadour, so exposed in order to bask in any and every opportunity. But what if that exposure results in a melanoma? What if I get in a bike accident? What if I get SARS? What if I end up an old maid? What if the evangelical Christians start a Nuevo Fascist campaign and burn our chapels and get away with it? I always try to tick off a list of possible bad fate collisions, as a superstition. But let me tell you this: Last weekend, in the Redwood forests, we fell asleep on the roots of the trees, which were thicker than the neck of even Andre the Giant. I said before we slept, “What if an earthquake happened now? How would the trees react? What would we do for safety?” John asked if I always worried about earthquakes and I said it was a superstitious reflex. And about an hour later, Oakland had an earthquake big enough to wake the Australian band sleeping in Peach and Grave’s living room. So much for superstition dispelling what bad things lurk in the lottery. I guess at least the earth didn’t spit out redwoods and concuss us.

Took acid in the redwoods this weekend, felt like a soft-serve custard of rainbows. I spit because my fangs were juicing and frothing, every step was heavy because of the lurking animals looking to snout out our condensed milk. We were in a campfire trance when racoons invaded our camp, just a few bold feet away from us. I heard a snotty snort and thought it was a bear and Chanel and I hugged in fear behind a tree while Jackie and John bravely went into the darkness to seek the thief. The banditos: racoons, with their jail stripes and masks. Bandito Sohungry even pawprinted up to us at the picnic table when we were zoning in the dark. I could not see even a foot in front of me. Imagine my fear when I jarred out of my trance to hear paws scurrying away.

I fear wild animals because I can't understand why they haven't tried to fight us for our disrespect and stupidity. I can't believe a dog can endure the embarrassment of shitting on the sidewalk without one day venging with his jaw, you know? I don't understand these creatures but they are my distant brethren and this scrambles my instincts. At this moment I am in a space surrounded by soulless objects, pellets of the human mind, inanimate elements. In the forest, the spongy floors are dense with life, life so mysterious and foreign to me. I feel overwhelmed by the density of the souls and spirits around me, ashamed and fearful enough to want to just retreat to the human world sometimes.

I put my heart and face in the tree's trunk and expressed my affection for 2,000 years. My eyes were crazy and I walked into the campsite's restroom and stammered in a weird accent, "Is this bathroom unisex?" The doctor was taking out his contact lenses and said sharply, "This is the men's room!"

Tonight at 8 pm I will have my aura read for two hours. It will be audiotaped. I might cancel, I feel like my shine has a different buzz and buff than usual. I am nickel colored. I am lighter by 12 years of eggs. I am 150 eggs lighter.

Marijuana Lemon, you are smooth butter. I could carry your love like smoke in the lung. Sunset Pitterpatter, you have changed my blood pressure. Ax Cashew, why do you pronounce your vowels 25 states away? You are a mint leaf in Vietnam. Each one of your teeth reminds me of a frosted cake. I would kiss your typewriter. I would keep your ice cubed even when sleepy. I recommend you replace your neck with tree branches. I am sometimes jealous of you because when you have spring you get to smell the lilac. For me, you redefine pudding.

This weekend was hard. On Friday, I heard sad news. I went home and my phone was shut off. I went to San Francisco and banged on a toothless piano and whistled into a room mic with Randy and Rob. It was only OK. The Siamese cat Manny made me feel better. The wind was mild, just strong enough to move hairs, but even that frustrated me. I worked up my excitement to go see the Coachwhips' last show in SF. Rob and I visited Spencer and James first and warmed on their posi-smiley glow.

I had plans for wild interrogation at that show, I wanted to lead the crowd into muscle release and jaw unlock. We got there and waited in line for 45 minutes with people who wear uncomfortable shoes and verbally emote their hammered tootsies accordingly. While waiting in line Rob and I consumed about 50 ounces of Anchor Steam and that kept my pot simmering. Finally, we entered the building, and spooks massaged my burrito in my bag, searching my stuff and my pockets. It was a gallery show and I was not used to that kind of security detail.

I watched the band for a while and felt 5 hearts beating on my skin at once because it was so crowded. And bright. I went to get a glass of water and the plastic cup I was drinking from accidentally kind of broke into this girl. I expected some fashionable cruelty because this woman and her boyfriend seemed mean and girdled like most of the crowd.

She said something to me but it was so loud and overwhelming that I didn't know what she said.
"What?"
"Blah blah blah blah blah," she said. I could not read her expression, I was confused.
"I can't hear you!"
She blanched. "What's wrong with you?"
This was a foreshadowing montage.
"There's nothing wrong with me. I just can't hear you!"
She huffed. "Can't you take a joke? What's fucking wrong with you?" She and her boyfriend glared at me.
I asked him, "What is going on? What are you trying to tell me?"
Finally he said clearly, "She was asking you if you think I'm hot."

I made a puke face and just plunged back into the crowd. Then I ran into these massive guys trying to eject my pal Rob from the show. Rob was being pretty calm and trying to diffuse the situation, cause he did not want to be pummeled by these guys, who had already beat people for trying to sneak in. The conflict escalated so I stepped in between Rob and one of the guys and said a couple of things, trying to help these dudes understand that wild dancing is totally acceptable at the Coachwhips last show. The men said there was a woman standing on a catwalk who was instructing the security to forcibly remove people and Rob was picked out. Finally, they just got frustrated with me and told me I had to leave too.

I turned around and tried to melt into the crowd, but they extended their big hands to me and plucked me from the crowd. I don't remember much after that. I think I was on the floor once. I struggled against them. I saw friendly faces and reached toward people but people just watched me back. Adam Stonehouse finally helped me, he shouted, "She's a girl, you can't fucking fight her." The huge dudes concentrated on me and finally one of them just started dragging me out by the waist of my jeans. I clung to a door jam and people were arguing. "Shorty, just leave," one of the guys said. He was pulling me by the jeans so fiercely that I thought my pants would split and I'm surprised they didn't. I was already so humiliated, I can't imagine the indignity if I had lost my pants. They had to peel my fingers from the door jam and I agreed to leave, but then I panicked because all of my things were inside. They let Adam Stonehouse escort me to my purse and jacket's hiding place. I was so freaked out and scared that I grabbed his hand in a heroic moment. Everything was so blurry and dramatic and public. He helped me get my stuff and in my outrage I grabbed Dwyer by the shoulders and tried to tell him, but Adam said, "Forget it, just go." And I'm glad I did.

I went outside and found Rob and put my forehead to a brick building and started to cry for a long time. There are some people that find glamour in moments of controversy, or some people that just find bruality to be a so-what realilty of life, especially city life. "Safe space" notions make me a little sour, but yeah, I guess I do expect a certain amount of consideration and bodily security at any show I would be musically compelled to attend. The whole event made me very emotional and disappointed---in the fashionable indifference of the crowd, in the fascism of the venue, in the sheer mass of these men, in my own actions at the time. It was like a public mugging, and the audience was a group of people who stifled a yawn when I must have looked very scared and worked up.

I think the men who carried me out felt bad about it because the goons looked at me with sad faces at the night's end.

Rob and I took the transbay bus back and coughed up my sensi and he told me that Chateau is closing. Ai yi, I can't wait to leave.