A couple of months ago my step-father delivered a sealed, olive green plastic tub to my house. He took me aside and explained that these were my things. They had been in their garage for years, and now it was my turn to store them. I had a pretty good idea what was in the tub, so i ended up shoving it to one side in my office, and stacking boxes on top of it.
The other night i was driving home from a late night in town with my friend Josh, whom i’ve known for something like 25 years, and we were talking about people from the past. Usually i laugh, or feel some degree of fondness for just how stupid and messed up i was as a teen ager, but for whatever reason the conversation left me feeling empty, and sort of unresolved.
So i opened up my plastic tub and thought i’d take a look inside.
First thing i noticed was all my old buttons. Handfuls of pins, badges and buttons that i used to wear from head to toe in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Sex Pistols, Wayne County, The Stranglers, The Screamers, The Weirdos, X-Ray Spex, The Buzzcocks, Pere Ubu, Gang of Four, and even the short lived button declaring that Sid Vicious was innocent (pressed up hastily during the few days he was in jail between the death of Nancy and his inevitable suicide.) He wasn’t innocent. But it was nice to think so at the time.
It must be how most people feel when they open up an old box and discover the fisher price barn from when they were little inside it. This was a handful of expression. Little emblems of my feelings for the world, and everyone in it from that period in my life. What’s interesting to me is how these little badges have come back in fashion. Only now they’re more or less tastefully added one or two at a time to the lapel of a postal worker’s jacket, or on the flap of a denim jacket. I used to wear the entire collection from top to bottom. What’s even more ironic is how much i wanted to be left alone, i thought. Yet i was a chinking, clinking, walking billboard curiosity that the occasional hippie would pause to peruse. Boy were they ever sorry… I didn’t share the general amusement of good humored people who felt that my oddities and errors in judgment and good taste were for public consumption. Like a neon sign, blinking in the darkness that says “Don’t look at me!”
Next thing i found was a fairly hefty chain with a little tiny master lock at the end of it. Holy Crap! My necklace. I clicked this lock closed, sealing the chain around my neck in 1978, and didn’t take it off my neck until the middle of 1983, possibly the start of 1984. I immediately thought of the black mark it made, and how i kinda liked that i was foul, and unwashed. Then i remembered my Step-Grandfather one day expressing his concern for me by grabbing hold of the lock, slipping a pencil in between my neck and the chain and giving it a good twist.
“Aren’t you afraid someone’s gonna really hurt you with that contraption around your neck?” He asked.
I was totally taken aback. This was a deeply gentle man, who had never raised his voice to me.
“No.” I said snottily.
“Well you better watch it.” He said, and then winked at me.
No one else ever tried that one. But this chain and lock were a piece of me. A defining accessory. I remember taking it off finally… I felt so light, and so strange for a long time. Like how you feel all bouncy and stupid when you tie up some tennis shoes after years of wearing boots, or dress shoes. boing, boing! light. Really the weirdest thing about it all was that the key was actually in there too. I remember spending hours looking for that key. As far as i was concerned it was lost. And yet, i got the thing off. Maybe it was among the many things i’d left behind when i took my records, my guitar, and walked down the hill never to return…
Then i found something that smelled terrible. My wife left the room when i pulled it out, said that the whole container had as very dark feeling. It was my old vest. A sleeveless levi jacket which i used to wear over my leather jacket. The hand made silk screen of Negative Trend’s logo, and Target Video’s target on the back… the thing was nasty. Holding it in my hands i could feel the weight of it. It looked like it was going to disintegrate before my very eyes.
I opened up the pockets and rifled through them.
All i found was an old Muni bus transfer, a foil wrapper (which i smelled to see what it had once contained) and a little washed piece of blue paper with someone named Julie’s phone number written on it.
I searched my mind. Trying to remember the last night of my jacket’s proud and angry life. The bus transfer, the foil wrapper, the phone number. Sounds like it went well… but nothing returned. Julie Runt? I’m not sure Julie Runt would have ever even considered giving me her phone number. There was a girl from somewhere i hung out with for a few days called Julie. But she didn’t have a phone. She didn’t live anywhere. Couldn’t be her. Could that be Julie Rodgers’ phone number? She used to come visit me at the record store where i lived and worked. I was completely in love with her, but i’d felt that i was such a scum bag, and she was such an angel that i couldn’t hope to meet her parents, or do anything with her aside from smile at her when she came to the shop. It couldn’t be her number. I’d have called her if i even thought i had it. She just stopped coming into the shop one day, and several years later i heard that she was getting married. Her brother (i didn’t even know she had a brother) was then dating the older sister of a friend of mine and he was paling up to us to get to her. I wasn’t happy to hear that Julie Rodgers was getting married. ‘Specially so young. Especially because she wasn’t marrying me. So i said “Tell her i said congratulations.” with a hint of sarcasm. And he left the room.
I thought for a moment of actually dialing the number. I get like that. Sending emails to Galadrielle, and hoping she’ll be glad to hear from me (wrong!) Spending 4 hours searching for Kathy Hijar on the internet hoping to locate her and send word that i am glad she’s alive, maybe thank her for her kindness to me at one of the worst times in my life, or feeling sheepish and awkward around people who knew me in those days, yet strangely compelled to maintain some form of connection to them, however loose, or even passing someone who looks kinda like Liz Lubin at office depot and spending a few months thinking about it. Yeah, i’m like that…
“Where are we going to store this?” I asked my wife.
“If you leave it there i’ll put it in the garage tomorrow morning.” she said.
So i took my lock and chain necklace, a small handful of buttons, and the contents of my vest’s pockets and set them on my desk. Then stuffed everything back into the plastic tub. Closed the lid with a firm “pop,” and dragged it outside and left it there, up against the side of the house in the dark.