It’s the fall of 1990. I’m a miserable 18-year-old college freshman, home for the weekend, yet again. I’ve made the 1 ½ hour drive from College Station back to Austin as I’ve done pretty much every weekend since school started. I’m despondent at A&M, missing home desperately, completely out of my comfort zone and choking [...]
February 1985. Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Texas. The stadium is filled to capacity. Stage hands swarm behind a curtain, preparing for the show; a huge Jumbotron hangs over the stage, screen black. Individual bodies are hard to make out with the lights so low… but you can hear them — a sea of small voices [...]
I’m six, maybe seven, and my dad’s just picked me up from the university’s community pool after a big day of splashing around with my friends. Over my bathing suit I wear a green t-shirt with a picture of an apple on it that says “Spoiled Rotten” in sparkly letters. Dad piles me and my floaties into [...]
Without music, life would be a mistake. – Nietchze It’s early winter, 1989. I’m 17, just about six months shy of graduation. I sit in a car with my boyfriend, my first love, the first one I ever thought was The One. He’ll later become The One who stole my heart (and my virginity) only [...]
It’s 1988. I’m 16. My best friend the Queen Bee and I are dancing. At the Sanitarium. *** The Sanitarium was a dark, dank, early-days-of-goth club, unmarked and off the beaten path, but close enough to Austin’s famed Sixth Street to get the trickle-down crowd. The inside of the club was dingy and painted black –I [...]
It’s August in Austin. The summer before my junior year in high school. My best friend Queen Bee is at my house and we’re sunbathing in plastic folding lawn chairs set up behind my house. Again. (I’d call it my backyard but there was no fence – just a tennis court on top of a hill [...]
I settled into my morning as usual today - logging in, responding pointlessly to pointless emails, savoring my first few sips of coffee, trying madly to keep the depression of my boring-as-hell job at bay… you know, the normal weekday morning routine. I pulled out my best weapon – my trusty iPod – and plugged in, [...]
