"Fuck This Shit" An Autobiography For Riot Grrls #11
copyright (c) 1996 by Annalee Newitz
it doesn't take a near-death experience
to make your whole life flash before your eyes
just yesterday as I looked in the mirror to see myself dressed
in proper business attire, ready to become a professor at Somewhere
University
this change made me remember everything
or at least all the details of some random party I attended when I was
nineteen
and I had the feeling of watching my life return in
bursts
of laughter, and seemingly trivial talk, and all the things that make up
"your whole life"
dozens of us (most of them strangers) moved in and out of the tiny
apartment
smoking cigarettes on the third floor balcony and telling ironic
stories
and at intervals my friend and I giggled in the bathroom
with another surreptitious line of speed (don't tell or they'll want some
too)
the house band was playing a song they had written the week before
and the lyrics went like this:
you're ugly
you're unkind
but you're so valuable
so valuable
it was marvelous
and sad and hard to experience while it was still happening
I think it must have prepared me for something, or for the loss of
something,
because those are the only reasons I can imagine for recollecting
decontextualized moments of social pleasure
as I stare into my own eyes and pull back my present-day hair with a
barrette
perhaps this memory, one of many I could describe, is actually part of my
future too
and I will find that party again
in a different time (and probably with a different band)
a room and a half full of us will be recounting a dozen stories
leaning on walls at relaxed angles
intoxicated in whatever way we choose to be
and listening to someone sing
just for the hell of it
to entertain us and make us remember
12-25-96
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