Rock ‘N’ Roll All Nite: The One Night I Wasn’t A Kitty

I wrote this piece, and posted it, to my private Facebook profile on Feb. 1st, 2016.

Writing about family is tough for me. I’m never sure what’s really gonna come out. Sharing it is difficult, but I think I’m ready now.

I’ve had some memorable concerts. This one’s up there with Voodoo Lounge in ’94.

Rock ‘n’ roll.

~ ~ ~

We had KISS tickets. I think T worked her concert mojo and won the ticket seller’s lottery because she had come out with four seats not only in the same section, but RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. That’s rare.

It was done. We needed to prepare. We headed for the joke/magic shop.

The old dude behind the counter was rather awesome. While I was browsing the rubber chickens, Whoopee cushions, dirty dice, and playing cards, the others were picking out various makeup containers in shades of silver and black. The silver glitter was an afterthought from the old man. He got us. Like attracts like. We took our loot and headed home.

Hungry but too excited to eat. We painted our faces and dressed in our blackest finery. I wore my silver sequin tube top and black vinyl pants. If I had a tail, I don’t remember it. Erik wore the Demon face, Marci had the Starchild, T and I were both Ace. If I’d been a little more sure of my skills, I’d have worn the Cat makeup. No time for regret! But… regret.

Sunset. Time to roll. We filed out to the hoopti, garnering strange looks from the nieghborhood kids. They knew we were odd, but they hadn’t known just how much. They still don’t.

Flying through the darkened streets, tunes blasting, we arrived at the parking garage more or less in character; a state of mind that crystallized when T found herself on the wrong floor. First she was next to us waiting for the elevator, then somehow we were up, and she was one floor below. “Goddammit, Ace!” Then we went down and she was up. I’m still not sure how she pulled that trick off–hell, there was only one elevator on that side.

We were on the right track. Rock n roll, baby.

After extricating ourselves from the garage with much laughter, we head into the venue. Our silver makeup glinted in the light. My sequins made me feel like a disco ball. We bought one concert tee forever known after as “The KISS shirt”. I did a quick change on the escalator. The disco ball was feeling vulnerable showing so much skin.

We find our section and show our tickets to the usher. They call another usher over. They look at the tix again and murmur amongst themselves, casting quick glances at us. They say, “This way,” and we follow. Up, down, up, round and through half a stadium and some parted curtains into… box seats. The swanky seats the rich snots usually sit in. We sit. We look around. We see a sea of Aces and Peters and helluva lot of Genes and Pauls. They look good. We look better. The old man’s brainstorm on the silver glitter was genius.

The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ was playing low throughout the place. It was five minutes in before I even registered it. The crowd was getting rowdy. T and I started waving at everyone, cheering them. The crowd got rowdier. The song got louder. We waved more.

And then… “Yeeeeaaaahhhhh! Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

The crowd goes wild!

And then the lights went down.

Showtime. The smoke. The boots. The codpiece. My eyes. Dat bass. The shattered mirror guitar. The sunburst. The swagger and the blood, the synchronized guitar and headbang. Ace’s perpetual slur. The spectacle, indeed. It was everything that had been promised, and it was good.

It was only after we sat sprawled, exhausted, into our seats that we looked up and saw the video cameras filming the crowd, us included.

That was a good night. Hope you enjoyed the view, boys. You’ll never get that again.

Life is pain « Cristian Mihai

“All this pain, all this suffering…even though it almost broke me, almost turned me into the worst version I could be capable of being, in the end, all it did was make me want to save the world, made me want to spend the rest of my days improving myself and helping others too.

That’s why I write. Why I blog. I try to make sense of my suffering, and hopefully help others understand their own struggles.

. . .

The real struggle is in the choice. The real pain. In walking on the street without wishing for someone to hold your hand, in spending time by yourself without feeling bored as hell, in working your ass off every day, trying to better yourself. The pain of choosing to love yourself even though you hate what you see in the mirror. To help the broken even though some of them will try to break you as well.”

Source: Life is pain « Cristian Mihai

No One Spoke | Storyshucker

We turned to face the faint light. As if a few feet would make a difference in the millions of miles that separated us, we all drifted a bit closer to the water in the direction of the already brighter pink sky. In that first light I noticed we had not been alone.

via No One Spoke | Storyshucker.

Walgreens Joins Gloucester Police Effort To Offer Discounted Anti-Overdose Drug | WBUR

In this 2012 file photo, a tube of Naloxone Hydrochloride, also known as Narcan, is held up. Narcan is a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose. (Charles Krupa/AP)

“The irony there is that we’re taking the money away from drug dealers and using it to pay for life-saving medications of people that they get addicted to this drug,” Gloucester Police Chief Leonard Campanello said.

Here’s how it works: When an uninsured person walks into a particular pharmacy and asks for Narcan, the pharmacy sends the bill to Gloucester police and the department picks up the tab, Campanello said.

“We’re initially offering each person that comes in one supply every 30 days so that we can make sure we at least get a supply to everyone who comes in in Gloucester,” he said.

The partnerships with local pharmacies are part of a new approach by Campanello’s department to deal with the opioid epidemic that is affecting Gloucester and other communities in Massachusetts. Campanello said the department felt the need to step in when they learned it could cost up to $120 for Narcan if you don’t have insurance and just a few bucks if you do.

“We weren’t going to make a distinction … on whose life was more valuable,” Campanello said.

via Walgreens Joins Gloucester Police Effort To Offer Discounted Anti-Overdose Drug | WBUR.

Joe Hill’s Thrills | Scribble Scribble

And something about working in a notebook frees me up to make this mess without worry or guilt. I can’t explain why exactly. I’ve tried to see if there’s a scientific basis that connects working longhand with uncritical creativity, but evidence for that notion seems pretty scant. The actual work of shaping letters one by one, though, seems to turn off the part of my mind that hesitates and likes to second guess. My conscious mind kind of goes away. I think it helps that I know my notebook is just for me, a private thing, almost like a diary. The work becomes a recorded daydream.

Read the entire piece at Joe Hill’s Thrills | Scribble Scribble.