Unexpected

Back in 1985, I showed my mom a picture I'd taken of some of my punk-rock friends, whom she knew well. In the picture was a new friend, a big guy with dreds, which, in 1985 Orange Park, Just Was Not Done. "He's SO cool, mom," I said. 

"HIM?!?!" said mom, wrinkling her nose. "He looks like trouble." She doubted that a person so unconventional and menacing-looking would amount to much. 

Last night, I spent some time standing next to this same guy, whom I haven't seen since that day back in '85. He lost the dreds long ago, but is still SO cool. We each have kids who are older than we were when I snapped that photo. And not only did he amount to something, he's an incredibly accomplished and successful person. An overachiever, even! So, and I mean this in the most loving way possible, TAKE THAT, MOM. 

This is but one of the many ways that worlds collided and the past and present folded in on each other last night in Athens at the 40-Watt, when Beggar Weeds and the Chickasaw Mud Puppies took the stage. This is going to be long, everybody. If you're looking for a quick read on the potty, this post ain't it. This post? It's for constipated people only. 

I came up to Athens in '86 or '87 to sleep on the floor in a house that belonged to the older brother of a close friend. This older brother was way too cool for the likes of 16-year-old me. He was a Jax institution who had somehow made it out; a long-haired, beskirted man who played in bands with other famous people and hung dried flowers and rusty bicycle wheels on the walls of his house, boldly eschewing the interior decorating conventions of the day. The house where he did this was right next door to one lived in by a strange man who had no electricity, and who rode his bicycle while wearing glasses with slanted eyes painted on the outside of the lenses. Soon, very soon, the band this man sang for would be one of the biggest in the world. 

It was nice of my friend's older brother to host me so I could get away from Roosevelt Blvd's Ortega Rats for a minute, but it was hard for me to look directly at him, he was so much the embodiment of everything I wished I could be. I was fixing to be breathing some mighty rarified air up there at his place in Athens, so I brought along some reinforcements: a close female friend from Orange Park High School. My friend and I could play on the floor together like toddlers so the grown-ups could barbecue with Pylon and not worry about entertaining the youngsters. 

Near the end of our visit, my female friend and I got a treat. We were invited to accompany the older brother to Java, a coffee shop/bike-repair place on a forgotten street near the edge of downtown. Like most places I remember from my stints in 1980s Athens, it's not only not there anymore, but the memory of it has been erased, too, by the constant churn of progress afflicting this town. But that night it was definitely there, and so were we, and so was an interesting older guy with red hair, an intense personality, and a quick and slippery mind. He was friends with our Athens host, and stopped to chat with him, but it quickly became clear that the person he really wanted to talk to was my female friend. 

It made good sense that this guy would like my friend, who was smart, funny, and artistic. She'd customize your leather jacket with Tones on Tail album cover art! She made her own shoes out of scavenged materials! She could put on eyeliner and not be sorry! She knew the names of all of the rocks! Me? Well, I had a car that I pretty much knew how to drive, and only had to wear my headgear on my braces while sleeping. 

I sat at the small table and listened as they got deeper and deeper into conversation. The guy was eager to talk about a new project he was working on, called "Blinks." He explained that he'd close his eyes briefly, and then, once they were open, he'd paint what he saw while they were closed. He told my friend that he felt sure that he was on to something special and long-lasting with this idea, but, if not, there was always this band he had just started a couple of days earlier. He could fall back on that for a while if the Blinks thing didn't work out. He told us the name of the band, but I forgot it immediately because it was too long and too weird. I always remembered his name, though, because, though it was also unusual, it was much shorter than the band name: Brant Slay. 

Last night, this Brant fellow was up on the stage with his weirdly named fall-back project, fucking chewing through wood and bone as he wrestled with the sounds coming out of him, and won. He no longer has red hair, or any hair, but he was showing us the art that he saw when he closed his eyes, and we were listening. 

It was way past my bedtime, but my teeth were straight and unsheathed, with no headgear in sight. I stood on the floor in between my close friend and his older brother, and I not only looked directly at him, I joked and opined and carried on the way that I do, and then I warned him, LOOK OUT! I'm fixing to dance. He has not become less of what he was -- that's not why I can do this now without stammering. I can do it because, thanks largely to these people, and this music, and this town, I have managed to become more than what I thought I could be. 

I knew last night at the 40-Watt would be fun, but I did not expect it to be so fraught. I didn't expect nearly everyone there to be someone I'd built or broken something with -- and all while the soundtrack to these very same memories played live in the background. I did not expect the son of the guy who tried to smooch me on a park bench to look so damn much like his dad did that night 4 decades earlier. It was spooky, and confusing, like seeing the ghost of someone who is still alive and standing right there. It was hard to accept that we are the parents, wondering what these kids will amount to. 

I didn't expect the lady who asked me for a cigarette to be the lady who vetted me to run for state senate, or the stranger who convinced me to jump Congressman Jody Hice at the gastroenterologist's office to be my close friend's old roommate. Things just did not turn out the way I expected, I guess, both last night and in general. But both turned out so much better and so much more interesting than I ever dared hope. 

One thing I DID expect, though, and can always count on, is the close friend in this story, whose older brother let me visit the town that's now my home. My friend might roll his eyes when I grab him for a spontaneous dosey-do like I did last night, but he never doesn't dosey. For nearly 40 years, I've knocked him over while dancing to X at the 40-Watt, bruised his kidney at Camper van Beethoven at Einstein's, and asked him to hold my beer for a second during Fetchin' Bones at the Orange and Brew so I could hitch up my britches because I'm built like a 14-year-old boy and "wearing a belt" = "laughably over-accessorized." 

I'm so grateful to him for always showing up, and for always coming out to the show. And thanks also to Beggar Weeds and Chickasaw Mud Puppies for providing both an evening of kick-ass music, and an intense yet ultimately comforting certainty that, in the face of all our mistakes and our struggles and our very obvious impending mortality JESUS CHRIST HOW DID WE ALL GET SO OLD, life has been pretty kind to us, and the kids are all right. Not bad at all for $10 plus parking, but it might be a while before I'm ready to go out on the town again. It was a lot of fun, but, my God. It was a lot.