a hurricane of yuck

Music has always been tied very closely to memories for me, even when I was really little. Certain songs or albums can trigger very specific memories from times in my life or remind me of very specific places, such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" reminding me of downtown Milford and Extreme's III Sides To Every Story album reminding me me of Francestown.

This month with painted_wolf not being in school, I've had a lot of time driving alone when I could listen to music that she doesn't much like. One album in particular is Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, one that is very near and dear to me. It triggered a lot of memories I had somehow forgotten over the years, some that I don't want to discuss so openly here and others I don't mind discussing so openly now. In particular it reminded me of the time when I discovered Tori. I was living on Elm Street in downtown Nashua, behind City Hall and upstairs from C&R Furniture. It was my second apartment and I had invited my friend Andy to live with me.

I had this sudden realization how much I really appreciated that time living with him even though there were some awkward and tense moments. Andy was the one who challenged me to not be such a prude and realize sex was natural and something about which I should not be ashamed to talk. He also helped me to start coming to terms with my own sexuality and understand that, yeah, it was okay to find women and men attractive and that it was called bisexuality. It took me a long time still to accept being bisexual, but it was the frank discussions we used to have that helped me begin that process of being okay with it. It was also a time when I was really struggling with life, my concept of self and how I fit into the world or rather how I felt so alienated from it. In so many ways I just identified with much of the lyrics on Little Earthquakes.

When I got home from work tonight, painted_wolf was listening to "Still Life" by Iron Maiden and it reminded me of my favorite pasttime when I was quite young: making mix tapes! That song was my favorite Iron Maiden song at the time (and it was still new! How old do I feel?!) and I had it on one of my mix tapes. I used to get the really cheap cassettes that the convenience store on Temple Street used to sell for something like $2 for a package of three tapes. I used to take a couple of dollars from my paper route money to get tapes and record my favorite songs off the radio or from my dad's records (yes vinyl!) and cassettes or tapes, records and 8-tracks I would borrow from friends and family. Believe it or not, I still have some of those mix tapes and even an Anti-Jeff tape that quantumswordsmn and I made. Someday I really should hook the cassette deck up to the computer and listen to them again just for a trip down memory lane, but I'm also a little leary of doing so because it was also a very confusing time for me when I was escaping into music and making those mix tapes.