Lucinda Williams melancholy nostalgia

Lucinda Williams melancholy nostalgia
4/14/07 5:59P
L’Hotel du Fucktards


Le Petite Fromage sent me (amidst yet another wunnerful care package) Lucinda Williams’ latest album, and I swear, this woman’s been living the parallel-universe version of my life. With actual success, of course, the major difference between our universes.
The timing couldn’t be more bittersweet… She’s singing, with that raspy, compassionate blues voice of hers, those delicate guitar phrasings, that folksy-country-blues melody, exactly what I’m feeling these days.
Tracks #1 & #3 are the hardest for me, “Are You Alright?” and “Learning To Live (Without You In My Life)” --- it’s like she was there the whole two years that I was The Boy’s co-dependent friend/occasional booty-call/emotional punching bag. And it’s probably because my back is fucked-up yet again and that I’m back on the narcotic painkillers (big pink Vicodins), but I’ve been missing his ornery, shiftless ass so much lately. Yeah, I get lonesome like anybody else, and I’m glad that I’m a spinster (especially after a year with Dullard McDumbass and his pathological lying and outright emotional abuse), but sometimes, I still miss The Boy. I have three books of rants from that era, that’ll probably never be published, and four discs of the highlights of my spoken-word performances. A good 35-40% of those rants & poems were about The Boy and how he would not allow me to love him with my whole heart, ‘cause he much rather preferred to throw himself at anybody with a pulse who’d fuck him (and then reject him and he’d come running back to me, even if only as a “mommy figure” to feed, console, massage, and make him feel better), as long as they weren’t ME. I was a self-imposed doormat for him for two years, I know that. I deserved better. But there was something about him, about the way that we fit together, emotionally, spiritually, musically, and on those very rare occasions physically, that was unlike any other man in my past. Hell, even he was better to me than those few women in my past.
Maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe I’m just PMSing. Maybe it really is perimenopause. Maybe it’s because that I know that I’ll never get back to New Orleans, and even if I could, that one sparkling moment in time, when I could hold an entire barfull of people in my thrall, as I spoke my words and became myself on those stages. Maybe I miss the idea of him, those rare unmatched good times, even when we were both broke as hell and had nowhere but bars to go to, maybe I miss the few good memories of when he was really there for me, when he understood me like nobody else ever has or would ever want to do. His sweat, his pheromones, were so burned into my brain, that I could walk into a crowded, smoky, stale-beer-on-the-floor seedy old bar an hour after he’d left, and I could smell his presence still hanging in the air. I loved him with my entire being, every flaw, every weakness, every hateful way that he HAD to remind me that I was never going to be “the one” for him (especially when he’d hit on boys, right in my fucking face, in MY fucking bars) --- I still loved him. I knew the gentleness, the generosity, the odd moments of sentimentality that snuck up on me, the strength that he willed into me when it came to standing up to The Dick for the first times in my life. I knew that he had a huge heart inside of that skinny-assed body, he just wasn’t ever going to give it to me.
And I still think of him from time to time, but lately, he’s been taking over what’s left of my drug-addled brain. I’ve known many good men friends in my life, and have some of the best friends right now that I could ever ask for, even if we never do meet in person. I’ve known much better men than him, and quite a few who were way worse. He is no one’s ideal, I’m sure. But he still owns a part of my soul, even though he never wanted that gift and never truly accepted it. Or me.
Ten years ago, he was my life, when my career was going into the toilet and I was working weekends as a half-assed dominatrix at the Dungeon, he was my best friend, my best lover, and the biggest pain in my ass that I’d known up to that point. I took care of him, I made him chicken soup from scratch when he got sick and his ulcers made him puke blood. I packed-up his belongings and was terrorized by about eight trillion nasty little german roaches when his bullshitter of an ex-boyfriend and lousy roommate got him evicted. I massaged every inch of that boy when he ached, and sometimes, I got lucky and he reciprocated. Not as thoroughly as I did, of course, but he did actually put SOME effort into it.
I can’t forget his hands, his laugh, the casual way that he’d lay an arm across my thighs, the way he always came to me when he was drunk, lonesome, and dejected/rejected by some heroin-skinny whore and I’d always make him feel better and nurse him through those alcohol-poisoning hangovers that lasted longer than his flings with other women and men.
He was hell on my ego, he gave me miles of material to use in those onstage rants, not to mention the back-bedroom rants/fights between us, when he still refused to even acknowledge that he even gave a fuck about me, when he knew damned well that I’d have laid down my life for him. And unlike most men, boys in grown-up costumes, he went almost every damned time that I was onstage, he sat there and applauded (and occasionally heckled) as I ripped him to shreds onstage, as I upbraided myself for being a fool for love that didn’t exist. He at least respected my writing, if he never respected the woman. He could make me laugh when the whole fucking world collapsed.
When the Crack Whore tried to beat me to death that afternoon while I was on the phone, in bed, in the dark, with Nannie on the other end of the phone, The Boy was there for me like nobody else. He held me when I cried so hard that I couldn’t breathe. He told me that I was strong and that I was getting better. He understood every fucking flinch and flashback and every time that I lashed out in paranoid expectation of more abuse. He was my best friend there for a while after the Crack Whore, until his current sugar-mama found out about us being friends again, and then she started calling my house to get dirt on him. Such a sane couple they made, those two. When his secrets came home to roost, and his lies to her were shown in the daylight, he hated me again. If he hadn’t made a point of calling her from my house (caller ID *did* exist then, y’know), if he hadn’t lied to her about spending time with me, maybe she’d have never called my house to find out who he was. If he hadn’t lied to me about so much more, maybe I wouldn’t have told her.
And despite all of the lies, the bullshit, the manipulation, the emptiness and the feeling like I was nothing but an orifice with a car (who could COOK!), part of me still craves him. After Dullard McDumbass, I feel nothing towards sex. I think that his abuse and psychotic hatefulness finally killed my overarching libido, that monkey on my back since I was not even 2 years old. I don’t miss it that much, really. I’ve had some fun fucking, and I’ve had a lot of fucking fun, but all in all, it’s never been worth what I put into it. 9 times out of ten, the boys & girls that I’ve fucked weren’t even worth shaving my legs, ‘cause to them, I was a score, an easy lay, something to brag about in poetry-jerk circles. Even the total strangers disappointed, which is supposed to be the antithesis of a one-night stand --- no expectations, no promises, no disappointment. WRONG.
The Boy was a one-night stand that went wildly awry. He was the one-night stand who let me know, two days later, that he had no romantic feelings about me, despite the 13-hour romp in the hay (with only a 20-minute nap, I might add), when he made me feel desirable, powerful, beautiful. But he craved to have me in his life, at his service, as his “friend”, that last-resort bitch that he could take his blue-balled resentments against those who rejected him out upon. He was such a huge chunk of my life, and nobody since has ever been able to fill his big, stinky, size-11 shoes. He’s the reason that my cats have a foot fetish to this day.
I’ve never been so comfortable with anybody, even though every other minute that we were together, I was torturing myself because I couldn’t “get” him to love me.
And now that I’m at the lowest low in my entire clusterfucked life, toothless and too weak to ever get onstage again with these disintegrating looks, lonesome and crippled again and again and too broken to ever trust or try again, he’s the one that I miss. He’s done more damage to me emotionally than any man that I picked to have in my life, more than the married Tattoo Artist (although never with the passion or the sex appeal or even the ability to make me feel so wanted, so sexy, even though I was never anything but “his little slut”, even he couldn’t surpass The Boy’s dent in my life), more than the Crack Whore, who gave me a seventh version of PTSD and flashbacks that still haven’t gone away entirely, even after 7+ years, even more than Dullard McDumbass and his remarkable ability to surpass any and all psychoses of every other man and woman in my life. Dullard McDumbass could spurt out the most hateful, most animalistic ravaging of my body and soul with a smirk and those black, empty eyes, but he never had me convinced that he really loved me, so even as much as he did hurt me, he couldn’t reach the parts of me that The Boy had permanently branded with his scent, his touch, his soul.
And here I sit, decrying lost love that was never mine, missing a man who was never mine, craving those beautiful artistic hands, that voice that could hit every single note that Eddie Vetter ever uttered, those taut muscular rangy arms that looked so skinny but could hold me so tight.
This is what narcotics will do for you. They store in the fat cells of your brain, just like old acid trips, and as soon as you get another whiff of the shit, every single memory from the last time comes rolling back out, like the fat off of a well-marbled steak sliding off of the grill.
Most days, I try to keep myself busy, even if only in my brain, so that I don’t fall into that “pitiful old spinster” shit of being lonesome enough to revert to my old life of one-night-stands that only make me feel worse, especially considering that I no longer live in a city, nor anywhere near a REAL city, and when you live in Redneckistan, you can’t fuck-and-run because sooner or later, they’ll find you again and talk shit about you until they do. You can’t have the casual fuck-buddies who’ll show up a month or two later, no regrets, no anger, just another booty-call with a familiar body that still feels so good next to you.
I don’t want a relationship, I don’t want anybody in my fucking house ever again. I don’t ever want to go through what I went through with Dullard McDumbass again. Nor do I want the long-distance-phone lies and jokes and sharing, only to be realized as resentment and sexism and utterly closed-off sex-war of that married Tattoo Artist. And I never want to be that weak, weak woman who worshipped at the altar of a Boy who loved my writing, craved my friendship, relied upon my caretaking compulsions --- but never once thought to love me back. Hell, if I have to live this fucking long, I at least shouldn’t ever have to GO BACK to what I was then, much as I miss being onstage, much as I miss the passionate writing that I did then, much as I crave the approval and attention that I could only get from a live audience. If I could travel back in time, and regain THOSE parts of my past, I’d be glad to do it. But if I had access to time travel, it’d really be to go back and keep Tater from being murdered and to keep the Fallen Uterus/Beastmaster from sentencing my Nannie to death by putting her in the worst hack-joint excuse for a hospital in the entire Gulf South. I would’ve kept the Fallen Uterus from claiming “power of attorney” so that she could kill the only real “mother” that I ever had, and so that she couldn’t kick Tater out on the street so that they could buy a fucking RV and TRAVEL.
But even though I can’t find The Boy by google or the white pages or anywhere else online, I’d still love to hear his voice, to feel his laughter resonate through me. Just to lie next to him, one of his skinny legs thrown over me as he nestled in my collarbone, our long hair tangling together like an animal nest.
Self-destructive? Probably. Pointless and maudlin? Definitely. But then, there’s really no logic behind a craving, is there.