I was living in Brooklyn trying to be a real journalist I had done the Harpers internship and was trying to make my way in that world making my way up through the organs of the Obama era The truth is I was also half in another world making my slow slow way out of punk Still going to the post-Bent Outta Shape house shows I was also going to parties with literary editors and agents and fancy New York literati who wore suits and dress shirts but also lived in group houses I went to a journalist party and the lit agent host with the pretty hair had the Born Against LPs in milk crates on the floor I could never escape Jamie died the night Obama got elected and we all met at some bar around the corner from McNally-Jackson to cry I was wearing a little suit from Banana Republic I was living two separate lives completely I wanted to lose myself I wanted to become nothing and no one It was sometime around then I met Blake from Jawbreaker he was coming out of his long hibernation and had started going to a lot of house shows at the grimy houses in the gentrifying Bed Stuy and still-ungentrified gunshots Crown Heights and Sunset Park This being New York, everyone pretended this was normal even though we had grown up with his band's records A giant from the previous era walking among us misfits A poet who Kurt Cobain had worn his band’s shirt His face was lined and furrowed in a pleasant way it looked like like Knausgaard said, my face is a mask He painted his fingernails black and the polish was peeled and cracked His whole energy was someone coming out from some kind of deep hole having a second chance at life, an awakening He was starting little DIY bands and it was like he was purposefully trying to keep them small and marginal as possible it was unclear whether it was from natural feeling or calculation or simple self-preservation whether he was actually being reborn in the slime at the bottom of the world or just damaged by the whole 90s “major label” controversies He was also teaching or going to school or writing a dissertation about Shelley or Lord Byron And working at a cool bar in shithole Kensington Cracked black nail polish very decadent very 80-90s very bay area very gay (queer and therefore good, they would think, all the queer punks we were hanging out with) He was feuding with Aaron Cometbus They were in some supergroup little band together even recruited the Florida punk artist girl Giants from the previous age of punk But they were both too big personalities to be in a band together man-children pampered by the world of the 90s when fanzines and indie bands just mattered fundamentally more (when someone could make a life strictly on that basis) when fanzines and indie bands got you jobs and girlfriends Men Men who had never been forced to do literally anything (and i mean FORCED by being nothing and no one to anyone) to grow up these were 40-something men without any marriages or children (this is why the married men with black-frame glasses and office jobs with children admired them, the feeling that these man-children had purposefully avoided a quagmire and said "NO" when it might not have been a choice even on the table) I don't say this out of a personal critique The conditions of their time were such that they were never expected to grow up and give up on ego and self-regard (I wouldn’t grow up either, if not absolutely forced to) I did a panel about the 90s that my post-riot grrrl lit agent friend helped put together I asked Blake to participate he didn't respond I could tell he thought it was ridiculous and embarassing if that’s what he thought it turned out he was right it was embarassing (for me, Emily Gould trying to shame me for being too young) But I still saw him at all the house shows in Sunset Park and Crown Heights and and waited in line in long upstairs bathrooms with him And one night he told me I was beautiful Something about my tight lines and wearing “all black and white" I blushed and felt so flattered and weird that a punk god believed I was young and beautiful when at that point I already felt so fat and bitter and worn out Truth is, I was not yet fat and sad and worn out yet But you always feel fat and sad and worn out and look back and realize you weren't but that you are now, bitch! (I still had a lot of youth and promise, I hadn’t yet disappointed everyone’s expectations) There was something about him, how do i put this exactly Most of the best Jawbreaker songs are about love and heartbreak The listener assumes that these songs were about various women he loved With soulful eyes and raven black bob haircuts and sweaters and a single band pin But with him, you couldn’t picture him having all this heartbreak with various women exactly You couldn’t picture women at all him loving women at all That is to say, there was not an imprint on him of these song heartbreaks But meeting him it was just hard to picture all these women (or one woman) that the narrative of the songs seems to indicate he had actually been in love with You got the feeling he might have just sat alone completely solitary in some shit room smoking cigarettes like Stephen Merritt making up these love stories on his own I don’t know, I don’t care to know We went out for coffee at the old-world Italian coffee shop he gave me a bunch of copies of Jets to Brazil vinyl god knows why I pictured his shelf filled with 50 copies of his own own vinyl records in his lonely apartment I was no one and nothing still am He told me he had gotten accepted to the Harper’s internship too the internship that I was in at the time but he hadn’t taken it and that turned out to be the right decision Is that pride, pride in saying no to the SYSTEM, that I sensed? over the old world Italian cortado? I suddenly felt really ashamed really really ashamed in the shit path I had taken of compromise "But you're the guy from Jawbreaker," I said "And i'm nothing and no one" A journalist parasite Taking the path of the so-called journalist, not the path of the poet (This turned out to be the wrong path, I can say) We talked about loving Janet Malcolm The Journalist and The Murderer In the Freud Archives I loved Janet Malcolm Should I even say it its embarassing But one night we went down into the subway together And somehow the fact that I had girlfriend came up He looked really surprised like really off I could tell looking at him that he thought it was bad but was being polite You have a GIRLFRIEND? where is she then? Haha. I couldn't tell if it was because he was a real romantic who believed in love (and thought it was wrong that I would be out on the town mingling with my girlfriend sitting at home) or something else My girlfriend had gone out on the town alone to shows and always wanted me to go with her I preferred to stay at home alone and then when I did finally decide to go out into punk world I wanted to go out on the town alone (I guess I disapproved too, but I was doing it anyway) I think it was because I was out on the town so much at shows without my love He disapproved But I was trying to do my own thing, trying to be my own person But yeah he was probably right I didn't see much of him after that He eventually broke up his small little new bands with the credible DIY punk people And did what the people wanted, started playing shows and the hits as Jawbreaker
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