Born Against - Pt 2
Rock and roll, bad behavior and an Olympic size trampoline. That's my childhood in a nutshell and it prepared me well for what was to come: Hollywood.
People check into hotels to be guests. Many are seeking an escape from their day to day reality. They indulge in affairs, trash their rooms, and make messes they don’t have to clean. The hotel staff form relationships, they love and hate each other, they hookup during graveyard shifts. One of The Oxford’s employees even went home one night and murdered his wife.
Living in a hotel taught me that even when surrounded by people, nobody could be counted on to stay. People came and went and it was up to me to learn from them in a limited time. I observed what worked and what didn’t for others, applying my collected data to strengthen my resolve. As the only child in this environment, I grew up without many age-appropriate peers, modeling my behavior after the chaotic adults around me. My parents weren’t the ones to give me the attention I needed, so I sought it from anyone else. I became the bravest, most brazen, fiercely independent little girl possible. I turned my ability to always be "fine" into being fearless, never allowing myself to show hesitation or trepidation.
*This is the second part of my post from last week. If you haven’t read part one already, do so here.*
**also, a warning: this post mentions suicide**
At thirteen, I met my first love, Blayne, a bellman ten years my senior. Initially, he was drawn to me by my contrarian attitude and eagerness to start trouble. Hell, he liked that I was the trouble. He let me drive guests’ luxury cars around the parking garage, throwing me the keys while he rolled joints. I admired his indifference to societal norms and his genuine curiosity. I liked that he didn’t give a fuck about what people thought of him. He didn’t care if people saw us together. He didn’t care if my dad was his boss. Our relationship wasn't sexual, but considering my age, it was inappropriate. Then again, very little in my childhood was appropriate; hence, there was nothing to measure it against.
Blayne came from a small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. One of those places where, as kids, Blayne and his friends shot each other with BB guns for fun. I imagined it was a Gummo-type upbringing. Most of his classmates didn't survive past graduation, and if they did, they likely ended up in prison. He wanted something more for himself so he went to Germany for a year and learned to speak German fluently. He immersed himself in books, music, and art. He made himself a well-rounded, cultured person; yet, he never put on a front. He was never someone he wasn't. He was the first person I was ever impressed by.
We made each other mixed tapes. His were always themed and featured artwork made of cut up polaroids. He introduced me to the indie rock greats —The Pixies, Neutral Milk Hotel, Pavement, Sonic Youth. One day, while sitting in his car, he played a song called Water and it changed my life. Even through the shitty speakers, the music was everything I ever wanted music to be. It was heavy and expressive, and the woman’s voice was unlike anything I had heard. It was 100 things at once. She was PJ Harvey and the CD was Dry. Blayne gave it to me along with Liz Phair's Juvenilla EP. Both records showed me that women were doing what I wanted to do. My dream of being a storyteller through song and a feral woman through sound felt possible.
I was convinced a song called Batmobile on Juvenilia was about me. My entire disposition was expressed in this 3 minute song. I listened to it on repeat on a CD Walkmen while working weekends in the hotel basement’s laundry room — slowly saving up for my great escape to anywhere but here. At 14, I ditched my acoustic guitar for a Fender Squire electric that my grandpa bought me for my birthday. It was time to make noise.
We eventually moved out of the hotel and into a 4,000 ft. industrial loft next door. There was a zip line and an Olympic-size trampoline inside of it. My friends and I would skateboard and roller skate from one end to the other. Numerous people lived in the loft at any given time. At one point my mom’s ex-husband moved in. Then, his adult son. Then, a family from Colombia. A homeless man lived in the old freight elevator shaft for several months. Kinda sounds like a fucked up sitcom, right? It was confusing and disorderly; thus, it was typical. My dad was MIA most of the time, chasing tail and sowing his seeds around the world. Therefore, everyone under his roof was able to choose their own adventure. And I did.
I split myself in two. There was the little girl with perfect grades and dreams of college who was always her grandparents’ favorite. She slept clutching onto stuffed animals and collected Lisa Frank stickers. Then there was the screaming, violent, wild child. She looked for compromising situations to throw herself into and dabbled in self-harm. Both girls were true to who I was but reconciling the two was a struggle.
Every day of 8th grade, I'd finish school and walk across the street to catch the #2 bus downtown. I'd go from playing team sports with my private school friends to smoking weed and listening to records with my older friends —mostly consisting of the hotel employees and poets from open mic nights at The Mercury Cafe. I was the lone girl in their boys’ club —a position I continued to find myself in for years to come. I thought I was real cool…I learned a lot about life through my relationships with these men. Some of them took me to great concerts and record stores, exposing me to diverse music and art. One of them even taught me how to drive a stick shift. I also learned about toxic relationships, predatory behavior, vices, and all the wrong ways to get attention.
By 16, I was jaded as fuck and more determined than ever. I was playing solo shows regularly and I joined an indie rock band with some high school friends. I was living with a shitty, alcoholic boyfriend in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood, working the food counter at Union Station, and cutting every corner possible to graduate high school early. Occasionally, I'd retreat back to Blayne’s house to get wasted and play cards or watch Kubrick movies on VHS. But, too often, he'd disappear down a rabbit hole of drugs and despair. He'd eventually resurface with newfound obsessions: Russian literature. Matthew Barney. Infinite Jest. Transcendental meditation.
When, at 17, I decided to move to LA to live with the rockstar who sings about wanting to fuck someone like an animal, the overall response from everyone was, "Of course you are." So, I packed up and left Denver. Not for New York City as I had once planned, but for Beverly Hills. At this point, I was an expert at normalizing bad behavior and seemingly ready for anything Hollywood had in store for me (so I thought).
By the time I went to LA, Blayne had already left the country. He rid himself of all of his earthly belongings and was traveling the world. He sent me pages and pages of handwritten letters, telling me stories of hash cakes and bed mites, sex with strangers in youth hostels, riding camels across the desert, running from the police in Spain. He sent treasured gifts: a necklace made of rope with amber beads from Marrakech that smelled like him—musty and boyish, a pillow for my heavy head—stained and lumpy. We still subscribed to the romantic narrative that we would end up together someday. He, with a tattoo on his chest to remind him of the years we'd agreed to wait for each other, and me, knowing deep down that I would never turn back.
Blayne and I remained close friends until 2018 when he shot himself in the head. Writing about him feels strange but he played a significant role in my upbringing, so it would be even stranger to leave him out. Still, trying to water down our relationship into a blog post feels almost like a betrayal. Honestly, I don't think I’m emotionally prepared to adequately capture the nuance that’s essential to telling our full story. So, I’lll just say our time together was complex. In ways it was indecent, but it was also sacred and significant. And I miss him a lot.
Fire up the Batmobile
Cause I gotta get out of here.
I don't speak the language.
And you gave me no real choice
You gave me no real choice
You made me see that my behavior was an opinion.So fire up the Batmobile
Cause I gotta get out of here.
It's the mouth of the gift horse I know
But I gave it my best shot
I gave it my best shot
I gave you the performance of a lifetime.So I hope you all will see
There just isn't a place here for me.
I look around and feel
Like somebody must be fucking with me.
I just can't take any of you seriously
And I can't keep keeping myself company.Fire up the batmobile
Cause I gotta get out of here.
Big shoulders block the view
You can't get your money back
You can't get your money back
You can't pretend that isolation is the same as privilegeSo I hope you all will see
There just isn't a place here for me.
I look around and feel
Like somebody must be fucking with me.
I just can't take any of you seriously
And I can't keep keeping myself company.- Liz Phair, Juvenilia
c u next tuesday.
XX CARRÉ
So happy I subscribed. Let your imagination and memories run free here. Hugs. Xo Tina
I remember too the first time I heard batmobile it was in the 'dirty girls' video where a bunch of young riot grrrls are ridiculed at school for their beliefs and for "not showering since Kurt Cobain died" both the video and song felt so real to me and that's what got me into Liz Phair. She is such an incredible lyricist all her songs feel like a story.