Oh, holy fucking Christ. I feel like my insides are revolting. Good fucking God.
I was once at a convention for work when I saw a uterus in a jar. It was part of a preserved specimens collection on display. I was amazed at how small it is. In fact, I think my words at the moment were, "Holy shit - that little thing can cause so much trouble?" For those of you that don't know, a uterus is about the size of a small pear.
That little fucking pear is driving me fucking nuts right now. I'm glad I'm healthy - this isn't a complaint. It's more like an observation coupled with an explanation. I'm observing that my lower abdomen feels like someone is stabbing me with a screwdriver and twisting it a little each time. I'm explaining why, then, nothing I write tonight will make a whole lot of sense probably because I am feeling it for sure. For sure.
Anyway, I just finished reading Bob Mould's autobiography See a Little Light. I started it a long time ago, but his alcoholic childhood and closeted adolescence really bummed me out, so I had to put it down.
I'm glad I picked it back up.
I was interested in reading the book because I love the band Hüsker Dü. I first heard Hüsker Dü three years after they stopped making music together. I was sitting on the floor at a local record store. I remember it really well because I was wearing a skirt and my eleven-year-old thighs were all sore from riding my bike to the store. That banana seat was a real bitch sometimes. Anyway, the floor was feeling awesome as I was rooting through milk crates stuffed full of "forgottens." Forgottens were records and cassettes that hadn't sold in a long time, and were put away under the tables as sort of a bargain bin. No one ever saw them - it was a marketing strategy gone way wrong. The store owner put a sign on the crates acknowledging his failure while still not correcting it. Personally, I think that it was always a strategy on his part to be able to hoard these records while still appearing to be making an attempt to sell them. Most people that came into the store were not as young as me - I was the only little kid that wasn't wandering around with an older sibling. I was most often alone when I went there, so there was no one to stop me from getting on the floor and spending hours digging through the forgottens. There was no organization to the forgottens, and - mostly - it was just an area where scummy teenagers would try to slip records they'd peeled off the price tags from to get for a cheaper price. It never worked, though, because the store owner knew every record in the place.
Anyway, I picked up a copy of Candy Apple Grey and asked the store owner to play it for me. He was fucking around with his dogs - he was always fucking around with those dogs when no one was there. He shuffled over to me, muttered some sarcastic question about whether or not I had parents, and then took the record from my hand. I remember he looked at the album cover, asked me if I had ever heard the band before, and then gave me his hand to help me off the floor. I could always tell if he thought the music I was interested in was good or not because if it wasn't that great, he'd throw it on the store's tiny audio system. He'd let it spin for a little bit, let me publicly see the error of my ways, and then he'd dismiss it for something else. If it was good, though, he'd put it on the stereo system that had these giant headphones. I'd sit on this shitty wooden stool he had that was all soft and worn from years of use. The cracks of the wood were filled with years of grime and dirt from other listeners' hands. I loved sitting on that stool. When I first started sitting on that stool, my legs would dangle. When the store closed some years later, they were planted firmly on the fucking ground.
He put it on, smiled, and left me with the headphones on. I listened the the whole record. The only time I got up was when I went over to the counter to ask him to flip it for me. (After a terrible, record-scratching, needle-breaking incident, we came to an agreement that I was to be less of a do-er and more of an asker when it came to playing records.)
I bought the record and played it all the time. The next time I was in the store, I asked the owner where I could see them play, and he told me to, "go buy a fucking Delorean." Those were the days before the Internet. How the fuck was I supposed to know? Anyway, that crusty bastard was kind of a soft-heart on the inside and in the coming months when I went to visit the store he may have picked up a copy of Zen Arcade and Flip Your Wig. You know, they just happened to come up when he was looking for stuff in the store, and, you know, I could listen to them if I wanted.
Anyway, that former me sitting on the stool with the giant headphones on was super-psyched to be getting just a little peek at the back story of a band that might have some coherent explanation. Next to listening to the music, it is as close as I'm ever going to get to being there, which is especially poignant in the fuck-you-if-you-weren't-there culture of rock n' roll. (I bought this book at a record store a few years ago and could not get into it. The editing is so bad that whole sections of the book are repeated - word-for-word - in multiple chapters. I plan to try it again someday, but not today.)
Want to know something weird, though? The Hüsker Dü section was the part that ended up holding my interest the least. I mean, it was pretty good to hear from the artist the meaning (or lack of meaning) behind the songs, and all that nonsense, but in the end it was the same ugly story that always kind of turns me off: great band, great potential, potential realized, personal problems, things fall apart, they argue about money. It's not that I am so overly romantic that I think that contracts and money are not part of releasing music. However, it's kind of like when you're friends with a married couple and their marriage falls apart. You don't want to hear the ugly details of who got what and why. You don't want to see the contents of the settlement.
However, I'd be down-right hypocritical if I didn't accept that as part of Mr. Mould's story because I loved the candid nature of his story in all other instances. The way that he recounts his childhood without bitterness but brutal honesty is refreshing. He points out his parents' downfalls without painting them as monsterous. He lays bare inner conflicts that are both shocking and distubringly relatable.
His post-Hüsker Dü life is captivating, too. He explores some aspects of gay culture that everyone seems aware of but no one seems to talk about without being all rainbow about it. I could relate to this. Some people think being queer is one of two things: nipple rings and feather boas or in the proverbial closet. Mould is neither (though he does spend some time being scandelous - like all (well, most) people do when fully taking the helm of their own sexuality).
There is one theme throughout the book that seems to fall into the 'human nature' aspect of being irritating. He often will list one of his personal story-comings, say he's not making any excuses for himself, but then continue to list the reasons that lead him to make whatever bad choices he made. I think I only find this annoying because I do that same fucking thing, and I am disappointed with myself every time I do it.
Also like me, Mould is a worker. Being a worker is largely a cultural thing. There are some people I've met who aren't workers and I am always fascinated by them. They can go for stretches without devoting large chunks of their time to a project or job. I can't do that - it is not in my blood. I've had a job as long as I can remember, and when I have my job I do it well.
The thing I liked most about this book, though, is that Mould is sentimental without being mushy. I appreciate that. You get the feeling that he's not just bullshitting you through enough pages to fill a book, he's not explaining or bragging. He's telling a story that turns out to be a pretty good one. I highly reccommend it.
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