A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #146.5 And she listens like her head’s on fire
Like she wants to believe in me
Dear Internet,
Bernard, from over This Week in the ‘90s (subscribe subscribe subscribe), put a call out for guest posts with the caveat that the song/album not only had to be from 1993 but also on the UK charts that year. (Bernard is in Ireland and their charts are different from American charts. Not off by much but still different.)
I chose the album “Gentlemen” by The Afghan Whigs.
The album, a song cycle about a toxic relationship, really struck a chord with me and I wrote one of the most vulnerable pieces I’ve written in a long time.
Now, I wait for Bernard to accept (no pressure) and if so, getting it published. I cannot wait for you to read it.
While I was writing for Bernard, another album from 1993 came to mind, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” by Sarah McLachlan.
Now most people know of McLachlan by the song “Angel” (173 MILLION streams on Spotify), from the album “Surfacing,” due to the ASPCA commercial. You know the one, where pitiful shots of animals in need rotate across your screen with the very depressing song playing in the background. That’s “Angel.” That’s the song.
Here ASPCA, let me write you a check!
Back to “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy.”
In the mid ‘90s, I worked at a local record store. We were allowed to play anything, no corporate BS here!, and the more senior of the crew were obsessed with McLachlan. OBSESSED! We heard her back catalog day in and day out all fucking day, namely FTE.
I grew to hate McLachlan with the hatred of 1000 suns.
(McLachlan played at the small venue in GR around that time and oh boy, were the goth and emo kids EXCITED.)
Time marches on. It is late one night. I’m watching MTV, probably 120 Minutes. I’m sitting on the couch, smoking, and the video for “Possession” comes on.
Now, “Possession” is a fucked up song. Told from the male perspective of his obsession with a woman. (True facts: McLachlan was the receiver of obsessed fans herself and that is the impetus of the song. More history on the Wikipedia page.)
(I listed to “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” in full on Saturday while listing shit on eBay and wow, is that album still as powerful then as it was 30 years ago.)
These 30 year old (!) lyrics are totally rapey:
And I would be the one
To hold you down
Kiss you so hard
I'll take your breath away
And after I'd, wipe away the tears
Just close your eyes dear
But something about that song, on that particular night, just tore at me. In that moment, I knew that longing. I knew that feeling.
And his name is Roark (not his real name).
So, I’m thinking it’s 1996 or so. I’m several years out past the man who crushed my heart in 1993 (see above the piece I wrote for Bernard) and I’m willing to be open again. Willing to try.
But what I remember during that time was the fear of not belonging. I always suspected I was mentally ill, long family history and I had my first anxiety attack when I was 13, and the recent bipolar diagnosis just cemented what I suspected. And with that diagnosis, and my own unmedicated 24 year old self, I was feeling really alone. I had a zillion friends I hung out with day to day but at night, at its darkest, when it was just me and my thoughts, I was alone. Utterly alone. Really scared that I wasn’t going to find anyone to love me. If (not the best) Alan could smash my heart in a million pieces (and as I say in Bernard’s piece that I’m still not quite over it 30 years later), who’s to say someone else wouldn’t do the same?
I wrote a lot and reached out online in any capacity I could try to feel the need to be accepted.
Understood.
Loved.
I then meet Roark. He was never a great love of my life but even nearly 25 years on, but he is memorable.
I met Roark on IRC (precursor to Slack/Discord for the youths) in #philosphy I think? Probably. I styled myself as a great thinker when I was 24. Now my thoughts are how many keggers I can hit before curfew and if my favorite lip gloss is available.1
I’m not sure how he and I found each other but we did. Our online chats turned to hours long phone calls, when long distance was 10¢ a minute, and eventually into phone sex.
I was in lust with a boy I never met in the flesh and by god if “Possession” didn’t tell our story.
(In a non-rapey kind of way.)
There are two paths I’m going to take here:
Path 1
Roark and I pulled and laxed our relationship with each other for months. In the winter of ’97, I flew to see him, and he left me alone in his apartment because he freaked out and went to his local woman’s house. (I found a long red hair on the towel he gave me to shower with and I knew right then what was going on.) After a few days of eating gas station food and chain smoking, and no word from Roark, I borrowed $200, changed my flight, and came home humiliated.
Ten years on, Roark and I somehow got in touch. I don’t remember the specifics but as we caught up, he did tell me how much he regretted not being with me and that lost time. He was just a kid.
That pumped up my ego.
Not long after Roark and I got back in touch (it waned as it does), I got an email from his first ex-wife. In short, she says he spent a lot of time talking about me and wanting to mold her to be me.
It was a very long letter and alternately, it pumped up my ego and made me very sad.
I didn’t respond but I sent it on to Roark who responded with a terse, “I’ll take care of it.”
I don’t think I ever talked to him again.
(I wrote about Roark, briefly in April 2021.)
Fast forward nearly two decades and I was thinking of him for some reason. I found him easily enough. He had married a second time. He and his wife travel in their RV. He works in tech still. A few years ago, they were in N. Michigan the same time we were which gave me a freak out. I would not physically recognize him in a million years but still. My territory. My boundary. Fuck off.
His wife sells DoTerra (an MLM) and he once quoted his wife’s dinner was “yummo” which destroyed my heart. 24 year old Lisa would not tolerate someone who says “yummo” and 50 year old Lisa certainly would not. (I have standards.) He is a die-hard libertarian and I hate libertarians with the passion of a thousand suns. Democratic socialist for life.
Even if we were single and in lust, it would not happen. (Hate sex?)
It dawned on me after I wrote the above, he could have looked for me all these years and decided “fuck that bitch” for whatever reason. That was humbling. Aren’t I amazing? I think so.
Oh, another song that recalls Roark is The Cure’s “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” which is from their 1992 album, “Wish.”
I’m listening to this now as I write and it’s crazy how quickly I’m transported to 1996 and long phone calls with Roark.
(That song is nearly eight minutes long. Damn!)
Path 2
Around the time I flew to see Roark, I really got into McLachlan. I joined a fan mailing list, as one does in those days, and made a lot of local, and long distance, friends.
It was lovely.
Fumblers, as we were called, got together to see a lot for concerts, dinners, and general hanging out. And if you were a fan of McLachlan in the late ‘90s, you for sure went to Lilith Fair, the mainly female/gender queer concert tour. In the summers of ’98 and ’99, I traveled up and down the West Coast, in a pilgrimage of sorts, with fellow Fumblers to see Sarah. As J and I got together in April of 1998, he came along for the ride. He still remembers the name of the hotel, Hotel Dufferin, in Vancouver that was above a gay club when we were in Vancouver for LF.
We heard Whitney Houston all night long.
I think I saw over a dozen Lilith Fair shows over ’98-‘99.
Who’s obsessed now?
I don’t know when I stopped participating in the Fumbler’s listserve but now they have all moved to a FB group, in which I’m a member of. Lots of the lovely people I met via that time I’m FB friends with and some I do see occasionally.
I still adore McLachlan but time marches on.
1. This is a quasi-quote from “Heathers,” the 1988 teen angst movie that satires cliques and Christian Slater plays a homicidal maniac. It’s a great GenX movie.
Other Newsletter Updates
lisa rabey writes stuff issue #8: writing as a love
What I’m Reading
This year I’ve committed to read 75 books via the Good Reads Reading Challenge.
Glenarvon Byron’s ex-lover was so distraught about their breakup; she wrote a roman à clef about their relationship
Pride and Prejudice Read this a zillion times but doing a read-a-long for Austen Mondays
The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club #2) Elizabeth receives a letter from a man the last she saw, he was dead.
If Walls Could Talk Lucy Worsley walks you through the history of the home
Miss Lattimore's Letter Miss Lattimore meddles in the marriage mart and is she going to make her own catch?
Magic for Liars Ivy Gamble does not have magic but she must use her wits to figure out the gruesome murder that happened at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages
Waiting for a Scot Like You (Union of the Rakes #3) When Major Duncan McCameron meets sassy Lady Farris, passion and misunderstanding ensues
Would I Like to the Duke (Union of the Rakes #2) Jess McGale needs to save her family business and will her entanglement Duke of Rotherby help her?
Artfully Yours A female forger falls for an art critic.
When in Rome Opposites attract in Rome, Kentucky
Yours Truly, The Duke (Say I do #1) A duke needs to wed. Drama ensues.
The Book of Goose Gripping novel about female friendships
Off the Map “On the road to love, you don’t need a GPS”
Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1) In 1910, Daniel Pitt races to save his client from execution
Check out the media I’ve consumed for 2023!
Wonderful Thing
Treats in freezers
There are things that taste better when they are frozen:
Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups
Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies
Peppermint Patties
That’s my life hack 101.
Have a good week!
lisa x