#46 In December of 1992, I had been working in and around the mall, Valley River Center, for nearly 4 years. Having survived one Christmas season working at the Coffee Corner, I was less than thrilled with one I was in the middle of. I paid off the last of my credit card debts and my lead-foot fines and was in the final stages of preparing to move to Portland. Carl and I gave our notice at the little duplex we rented on East 18th and planned our final weeks in Eugene before we hopped on our motorcycles and headed north. I was single and well used to ~the mingle~ (heh heh) by that time, and I was ready to get out of Eugene and away from all that it represented to me. As we headed into the holiday proper, I took advantage of my disdain for anything commercial and holiday-like by volunteering to pick up as many shifts as I could. Brent had already moved to Portland by this time and he and Andy were getting set up with an apartment for us to crash at when we finally hit the road. With his absence at the coffee shop, I picked up more hours, which meant more money for moving. My parents had insisted that I bring Carl with me to Christmas, but I was thoroughly displeased by doing anything Christmas related by that point. Christmas was for suckers. I was a punk and Christmas merely represented the patriarchy of the church and the exploitation of the poor through blatant commercialism. It didnt help that my parents, as sweet as they were, were kind of embarrassing to me because of their need to give me lots of presents of which I found little use for. I didnt consider socks a present. I considered them something you bought when the ones you were wearing had a hole in them. My parents had little idea of what I wanted or needed and usually bought me things like socks or clothing that I was never going to wear. In retrospect... I was a dick. Instead of being grateful that my parents tried to help me out and tried to make Christmas special, I was embarrassed by their inability to relate to me and their need to buy lots of cheap presents to try to make the holiday special for me. As well... socks are kind of awesome. Christmas morning, Carl and I woke up, mixed some Baileys with our coffee and smoked some of the last cigarettes we would ever smoke in our garage. We headed out shortly thereafter with the intention of making the trip to my parents house a brief one. We arrived, ate a pretty terrible meal (my mom was an awful cook - she tried, but she failed miserably), opened some gifts and then parted with hugs, thank yous and a fresh set of socks. My intention was to make Christmas with the family as short as possible so that I could go home, get drunk, and hopefully play some reindeer games with an attractive chick from the mall who said she would come over Christmas night to drink with us. When Carl and I got back home, we immediately cracked open the bottle of Bacardi 151 and made rum and cokes. I liked to drink, but I wasnt a huge drinker in those days. I was surprised that after a couple of 151 and cokes, I was still standing, so I switched to regular Bacardi for the rest of the night. I maintained pretty well and was happy and engaging when the ladies from the Bon Marche showed up. I mixed them some drinks, threw on some music, and tried to be as charming as possible. It all went pretty well until the girl I was smitten with asked if she could smoke. I took her out to the garage, our landlord approved weather proof smoking area, and lit her cigarette and mine. It was all going to swimmingly up until the time that the garage turned into a merry-go-round. The last words I remember hearing from her was, are you ok?, before I turned back toward the door, dropped my cigarette, and launched myself headfirst into the back bathroom, only to shower it with the contents of my stomach. I guess it took a while for all of that rum to catch up to me. I passed out on the floor, only to be awoken by Michael, who had shown up at the house sometime earlier in the evening. I have no idea how long I was out, but Michael forced me to get up and crawl my way to the upstairs shower. He knew I was going to open the coffee shop at 6am the next morning and he did his best to get me to a place where I could at least go to work when my alarm went off. Michael made me take a much needed shower, and then stayed with me the rest of the night making sure I drank water and had a bucket near by when I drank that water in reverse. The next morning, I went to work. I was miserable, but I knew I had a job to do. I faithfully executed my opening duties in between periods of dry heaving. When Shirley, my boss, showed up at 7, she took one look at me and knew exactly what I had done the night before. To be honest, she could probably still smell what I did the night before. I wreaked like a homeless guy who just took the happiest bath of his life in the waste water from a distillery. I tried to tough out the morning, also known as the second busiest day after the dreaded Black Friday starting the holiday season, but I was worthless. By 10am, the expected crowds of after Christmas shoppers failed to appear, so Shirley sent me home. After the best sleep of my life, I woke up in the living room under the stairs feeling amazing. I stretched and stood up, dropping the couch blanket on the living room floor, and looked at the answering machine on my desk. The light was blinking, indicating that I not only had a message, but that my messages were full. That wasnt a common occurrence. Generally, I would have a message from my parents, but that was about it. This time, my messages were full. I hit play wondering what could be so important to fill up my answering machine and was greeted with multiple messages from multiple coworkers telling me how much of a dick I was for being too hung over to work on the day when our sales matched Black Friday. Shit. In reality, I had pretty much screwed myself out of our best day of tips ever. My coworkers werent so much mad at me as they wanted to give me shit for blowing off work in that way. They worked their asses off that day, but I was really the one impacted by it because of the hours missed and the lack of tips. I made sure to apologize, but everyone pretty much laughed it off and told me I was a dumbass. They were correct... I kinda was. During the last few weeks in Eugene, Carl and I borrowed a friends van and moved our stuff into storage in Portland. We then did a few needed repairs and cleanups to the duplex before signing away our deposit. We couch surfed our last 3 or 4 weeks while we waited to finish out our final pay periods to collect our final checks before mounting up and venturing to a new city. I was in constant contact with Brent and we decided we wanted to try something new for a band. He had played in a variety of punk rock and college bands, while I had played in pretty straight forward punk rock band. We were both leaning towards an industrial sound - a combination of electronic music and metal. Al Jourgensen had successfully mated dance, electronica, metal, and punk and combined it with a double dose of drums, industrial hardware, sampling and visual media. I was already somewhat well versed in industrial music with bands like Skinny Puppy and KMFDM, mainly because of the girls I had spent time with. When I purchased the album In Case You Didnt Feel Like Showing Up, I knew I had found a sound that I wanted to emulate. Even though the songs were long, there was a certain feeling they evoked. I wanted to take the aggression I felt and transform into something similar. Nobody would ever accuse me of having an original idea when it came to music. Thieves - Ministry youtube/watch?v=6IL4KCa4Wnk
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 10:05:58 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015