A Look Inside the Head of a Middle Aged Deviant’s Top Dozen Obsessions

 

Without obsession, life is nothing. ~John Waters

Recently, over drinks with my soul-twin and dear friend, The Suburban Acrobat, we explored our favorite conversational appetizer—our mutual appreciation for pop culture.  Delicious, delectable pop culture.

Midway through the second martini, my friend posed a most interesting query—what were our defining obsessions…not the general music-movies-television route, but genuine, lasting, lifelong obsessions that consumed our minds, our money, our time?  Obsessions that connected our souls and outlined portraits of who we were…and who we were to become.

One might presume that, as a pop culture junkie, social media access has been my driving obsession for some time, but I consider my indulgence in the electronic smorgasbord more of a vehicle to reach the destination, not the obsession itself.  In truth, the staple of my soul’s diet has been always been nostalgia…

…but how in the world could I possibly distill all that I love into all that I am through the identification of the top dozen obsessions of my life?

As I held my sugar-rimmed, watermelon martini aloft to the sky (yes, I am a girl-drink drunk), I felt as lost and searching as Hamlet holding the skull of his beloved friend Yorick to the heavens—questioning the very purpose and meaning of my own existence.

I was left spinning. 

Was it the weight of identifying the elements of my obsession and their contribution to the thing I have become…or was it the third martini I’d begun sipping as the afternoon gave way to the impending night?

Infinite jest…infinite introspection.

Before you I lay a map of my life, my essence, my very existence—the route has been circuitous and strange, but I invite you to take a closer look at the sights I’ve pinned, for they are not to be missed.  To crib from the words of the divine Ms. Annie Lennox: this is the fear, this is the dread…these are the contents of my head... 

*

My twelve top obsessions, from first until forever—



Nancy Reagan never told me
to just say no...to books!

Obsession #1) Scholastic/Arrow/Troll Book Clubs:

I am a true 80’s kid, in every conceivable sense of the word—there exists no cliché from this era that I did not immerse myself in from stacks of jelly bracelets and legwarmers to pegged jeans and spiral permed hair.  Thank Christ smartphones did not yet exist and that there is limited photographic evidence.

Before we had a Barnes and Noble on every corner and unrestricted access to the internet, the savvy Regan-era kids knew exactly where to get their kicks—the brightly colored monthly flyers that our teachers passed out were Generation X kid crack.   From within the seductively slim folds of the Scholastic offerings, I built a veritable shrine to the canons of Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary.  I was dazzled by “The Girl with the Silver Eyes” and awestruck by “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler”—but my obsession for 80’s book club offerings climaxed with my introduction to the sensual glamour of the privileged denizens of Sweet Valley High.  

Fiddy Shades for the
premenstrual set.

If only my dear mother had picked up on the moment when her baby girl stopped ordering Mrs. Grossman sticker books and began her obsession for the glorious Wakefield twins, Elizabeth and Jessica—dual halves of every adolescent girl’s brain, one Audrey Hepburn and one Marilyn Monroe—she would have been able to identify the precise instant when a childhood was left behind and a young woman was born.

Reading was, is, and will always remain the ultimate reward…one that I still cherish every day of my life and that I vow to never take for granted.

So, Mrs. E.L...
whatcha thinkin' about...?

Obsession #2) Rob Lowe:

Without exception, Rob Lowe was the seminal influence on my developing girl-child hormones…and it all began the moment I found his poster in a little independent record store on a sweltering summer afternoon.  I was stopped cold, midway through my interpretive dance to Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop”…and I simply had to acquire it. 

His eyes—the way he looked at me: for the first time in my young life, I felt SEEN.  I felt POSSESSED.  At ten fucking years old.
 

When I returned home with my treasure and smoothed in on my wall*, running my fingers across his, lingering on his slender hand, which was occupied by lifting his shirt for my innocent eyes to absorb his magnificence—I didn’t understand what I was feeling, but suddenly, I looked at everything differently. 

The guys who skateboarded outside in our neighborhood were infinitely more intriguing—I recognized that boys were made for more than annoying us.  I devoured everything I could of Rob—Youngblood, St. Elmo’s Fire, Oxford Blues, The Outsiders—and forever fell in love with the broken bad boy inside every man. 

Yes, I used to look like this.
Now I scare children and
small animals.  Problem?

It was Rob who led to James Spader who introduced me to Patrick Swayze who let me hang out with Nic Cage who hooked me up with Christian Slater who left me in in the custody of Mickey Rourke […oh LORD,don’t get me started on Mickey Rourke] and a lifetime bandaging the bruised egos and boo-boos of bad, bad boys began.

Thank heavens there was the bad-boy antidote always in ready supply: John Cusack.  Every girl needed a little John Cusack in her life to balance the damage. 

[ And before you dare scoff at the Mickey Rourke fixation, I DARE you to go google images of 1980’s-era Mickey Rourke.  See? Now you owe me an apology.] 

*Um, if you were waiting for me to tell you about how I made out with that poster, don’t hold your breath.  Some stories are best left untold, some images, best left to the imagination. 

But, yeah.  It totally happened.

Obsession #3) Violence & Sex in Media:

I have a skewed sense of propriety (no, really!?) and I struggle each and every day to balance the insanity in my soul with the societal expectations of being a proper human being. 

I’ve traced the origins of the dichotomy between this mess in my head and my heart to my early obsessions with forbidden television, movies, and music.  My upbringing was eclectic, to say the very least, and often sent a confusing series of messages to me: my first film in the theatre was 1979’s Amityville Horror, my first drive-in movie experience was a Jaws marathon, my first MTV video was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”—and even though I was aware that I was supposed to be frightened, I was never scared…not even for a second. 

I was enthralled. 

The beautiful people, the pulsing music, the shadowy sets, the glistening blood—it was all viscera and oh-so-taboo.

Pretty sure channel 41 was just home shopping. 
NBD.

So taboo, in fact, that when my mom remarried my domineering stepfather, he actually super-glued a block on the cable box to prevent me from sliding the lever to channel 31 (MTV). 

I shit you not—it was the most absurd thing I’d ever seen.  I mean, I was the kid who could recite The Exorcist to you, verbatim, but Madonna’s latest video was going to damn my immortal soul?  WTF? 

(But, don’t worry.  I was a resourceful child.  You’ll be happy to know I quickly found that by gently lifting the lever, I could slide it over the block and drop it on the other side without him knowing. 
NOTHING and NO ONE came between me and my MTV!)

The obsession with seeing what I wasn’t supposed to see, whether it be the latest horror film, the most recent raunchy stand-up comedian, the next Tipper Gore-tripping video, or the raciest must-see TV shows, were a driving force in my early years—in fact, for a time, the sound of the introductory static followed by the sight of the high angle tracking shot of an HBO feature presentation manifested a near- Pavlovian response as I raced to the television to discover exactly how explicit the material was going to be in the upcoming programming—would it have language?! (Score!)  Violence?!  (Double score!)  Nudity?! (The TRIFECTA!) 

Maybe this helps to explain why nothing shocks me anymore…Bret Easton Ellis, Clive Barker, and Chuck Palahniuk were kindly uncles for this deviant brain, John Carpenter and Bruce Campbell were my twisted older brothers, and Quentin Tarantino became my eternal soul mate.  But more on him in a minute.  

Seriously: Why's the basketcase
always gotta sit on the floor, yo?

Obsession #4) John Hughes: 

Before you find me to be a soulless freak of nature, I’ll remind you that John Hughes films were the Dr. Jekyll to my dark Mr. Hyde-side.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful, Uncle Buck… some he wrote, some he directed, some he produced…but what he touched was always near-perfection. 

I could write pages upon his influence, but I’ll let a scene from Kevin Smith’s Dogma express the cultural zeitgeist of the Hughes’ revolution upon my developing soul:

[When asked what brought them to Illinois.]

Jay: Some fuck named John Hughes.

Bethany: "16 Candles" John Hughes?

Jay: You know that guy too? That fuckin' guy. He made this flick, "16 Candles." Not bad, there's tits in it but no bush. But Ebert over here don't give a shit about that kind of thing, 'cause he's like, all in love with this John Hughes guy.

[Silent Bob shakes his head with a "whatever" look on his face.]

Jay: He goes out and rents, like, every one of his movies.  Fuckin' "Breakfast Club," where all these stupid kids actually show up for detention.  Fuckin' "Weird Science," where this babe wants to take her gear off and get down, but oh no, she don't, 'cause it's a PG movie. And then "Pretty in Pink," which I can't even watch with this tubby bitch anymore 'cause every time he gets to the part where the redhead hooks up with her dream guy, he starts sobbin' like a little bitch with a skinned knee and shit. And there's nothing worse than watching a fuckin' fat man weep.

[Silent Bob blows out his cigarette smoke angrily.]

Bethany: What exactly brought you to Illinois?

Jay: See, all these movies take place in this small town called Shermer in Illinois, where all the honeys are top-shelf but all the dudes are whiny pussies. Except for Judd Nelson, he was fuckin' harsh.

[He and Silent Bob bump fists.]

Jay: But best of all, there was no one dealin', man. And then it hits me: we could live like FAT rats if we were the blunt connection in Shermer, Illinois. So we collected some money we were owed and caught a bus. But you know what the fuck we found out when we got there? There IS no Shermer in Illinois. Movies are fuckin' bullshit.

If there’s a heaven, you just know that scene made John Hughes weep with laughter.

 

Obsession #5) Supermodel Beauty:



Blue Steel: All Day, Erry Day.

Say what you want about the 80’s and 90’s and our rampant American self-indulgence and cannibalistic consumerism, but Jesus…the fashion was fucking epic.  Seriously.  Growing up, I was obsessed with Vogue and Glamour and the holy trinity that was Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, and Naomi Campbell. 

I pored over the glossy pages of pop-art photos, coveting the extraordinary arch of their eyebrows or the hypnotic curve of their philtrums.  Their flawlessness followed every line and lithe limb of their physically perfect frames and envy curled inside my too-soft tummy, eating away at more than my appetite, scoffing more than my self-esteem. 

In an era that predated PhotoShop and long before our vastly more accepting society, the supermodels were creatures of elusion and mystery…impossible standards of feminine mystique and, as the old song goes, our excess wasn’t rebellion, we were drinking what they were selling.  Our self-destruction didn’t hurt them and our chaos didn’t convert them.  The obsession went so far beyond the clothes and hair and makeup and jewelry these women represented—their omnipresence ingrained a lifetime of issues with eating disorders and insecurity upon the mortal souls of their sovereign. 

I do not blame them for being so beautiful, after all, the responsibility does not rest solely upon their impossibly slender shoulders but the marketing machine that pumped them into our bloodstream…and, of course, on the impressionable sheep who bought the merchandise. 

Baa-aaah.
 

Not sure if virgin...
or needs to pee.

Obsession #6) Angst-y Music:

“What came first, the music or the misery?  People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over.  Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss.  Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable?  Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” ~Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

Music—the first, foremost, and defining love of my life.  More on this is forthcoming, but I need to remind you of my enduring and abiding love for ALL music (with the exception of the aural rape that is modern country, obvi) before I admit to posing as a metal-head for the better part of the 80’s and 90’s while secretly spinning the records of The Smiths, The Cure, Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, U2, REM, Sonic Youth, The Church, and their contemporaries, behind the closed doors of my adolescent bedroom. 

Why hide it, you ask?  Because.

Anguish-alternative music was reserved for only the highest echelon of my school—the kids with the courage to build an entire wardrobe of a hundred shades of black clothing, the kids who pierced parts of their bodies that were (to my naïve mind, at least) un-pierce-able, and the kids who painted their faces as white as the dawn they, apparently, avoided.

The hair...the lipstick...

Oh GOD, how painfully I wanted to be one of them.  And how tragically ironic, considering how outside the mainstream they generally perceived themselves.  If only we'd both known.

[Side note: I actually tried to assimilate my junior year, but I never really made it past wearing the occasional black sweatshirt, carrying my leather-bound copies of the collected works of Poe, hanging around the black-lit corner of the nearest Spencer’s store, and experimental kohl eyeliner. I was a fraud.]

While maybe I never quite fit into the mold, its music crept into my brain like a careful lover—Smith and Bono and Morrissey and Thurston and Murphy were the first poets to carve their initials upon my musical soul.  Unlike the boys of heavy metal or hip-hop, they never disrespected me and they never, ever let me down.  In fact, these thoughtful men even introduced me to their friends, Oasis and Radiohead and Leonard Cohen and Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith…and the love affair has never, ever ended.
 

Oh, GOD.  Yes, please.

Obsession #7) Rolling Stone Magazine:

I could easily throw CREEM, SPIN, Blender, Entertainment Weekly, et al. in this category, as I’ve purchased them all and devoured every issue that I could of them, but Rolling Stone was my first taste of exceptional journalism—musically, nationally, and globally—and has remained my premier choice for entertainment news.

I will never forget my first issue, stolen from my best guy friend my freshman year of high school—it had coverage of Michael Keaton’s upcoming turn as the Batman and I was completely infatuated, consuming every page from cover to cover.  (My apologies for never returning it, Matt, wherever you are.  Sucker.) 

In the pre-world-wide-web-microcosmic-rural-central-Illinois-farm-town where I subsisted for the lion’s share of my teenage years, there was no way to learn about real music, real artists, real life, or the real world.  Rolling Stone became my backstage pass—it led me back to Patti Smith, Cameron Crowe, P.J. O’Rourke, and Hunter S. Thompson and it led me forward to Neil Strauss, Jenny Eliscu, Matt Taibbi, and the late Michael Hastings.

For me, Rolling Stone has always been about more than music…it is fearless and intelligent and informed.  I keep every issue and share them regularly, especially when students need well-researched and properly written periodical coverage of anything from the war in Iraq to the legalization of marijuana.  [Seriously.  Mark Binelli’s exposé on the United States’ position in the global weed market from issue 1101 is one of the most informative, articulately delineated pieces on the subject that I have ever read.]



JUST for the articles,
I swear.

Look, I’m a fairly agreeable person—I’ve  learned patience and wisdom from the intolerant and ignorant—but, as I’ve aged, I’ve grown to loathe people who blather on, in person or electronically, pontificating on about one thing or another—especially when they follow up their incoherent or vague vitriol with “…well, YOU know what I mean…”

To them, I’ve always screamed (inside my own head, of course): “NO.  I don’t know what you mean.  MEAN what you say, motherfucker, or shut the hell UP.” 

Friends have come and gone, presidents have changed faces, empires have fallen, and the world still spins.  Thank Christ Rolling Stone has consistently shown up once a month and been there to always tell me everything I wanted to know in a way I wanted to know it.

 

I was lookin' back to see if you were lookin' back
at me...to see me lookin' back at you...

Obsession #8) Quentin Tarantino: 

This may seem like an easy choice to anyone reared in this viscera-smeared media circus we call modern 21^st century American life—but, the truth is, before Quentin Tarantino, my world was almost entirely caper comedies and slasher psycho flicks. 

What I was READING—Kafka, Nabokov, Roth, Ellis—all activated the synapses in my head, but what I was WATCHING was, essentially, a steady diet of junk food that always left me feeling…hungry.  That is, until I killed a Saturday afternoon alone at matinee of a little film called True Romance—and for the first time, I understood what cinematic satiation truly felt like. 

Quentin’s fearless dialogue, his relentless passion, his complete commitment to coloring his characters so far outside the lines of the common conventionality…it all left me dizzy.  And breathless.

Of course I love my Allen, Kubrick, Scorsese, and Coppola films…but Quentin ushered in a certain approachability to independent film for me—were it not for him, I might never have given myself to David Lynch, the Coen brothers, Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow, or any filmmaker who saw how to manipulate the studios AND the audience in a way that didn’t require Adam Sandler-level stupidity or a Michael Bay-level budget.  Quentin made me admire film—and crazy as that motherfucker is—he taught me to trust his instincts and to respect my own.

This fall will mark twenty…TWENTY…years of my obsession this auteur—and from True Romance and Four Rooms to Django and Inglorious Basterds, his work remains irrationally brilliant and uncompromisingly visionary.  Tarantino is so gloriously in love with his imagination that he can scarcely vocalize the wonders inside of the frenetic Punch and Judy show in his head…but this is explicitly what makes him all the more intoxicating and endearing to me. 

It’s his bloody Kool-Aid and damn it, I’m drinking every drop.

 

Obsession #9) Surrealistic/ Speculative Fiction:

Next to music, books have always been my best friends—so much so, that the thought of ending a book that I’m thoroughly enjoying actually pains me; I feel the impending ache and I taste the bittersweet melancholy of it all before I even reach its final pages to mourn its loss. 

Want to try it?  Start here...

People…it is absolutely crazy what I would do for a good book.

I’m a collector and a voracious reader—memoir, horror, supernatural, science-fiction, adventure, drama…I’ve run the gamut over my lifetime, but my growing recent passion has become the stories that weave all of these elements into one, cohesive mystical entity that absorbs my attention and devotion completely.  They aren't horror, but horrific things happen.  They aren't sci-fi...but there is an otherworldly quality to them.  The stories tend to involve ordinary characters facing extraordinary situations—sometimes absurd, but always complex and challenging—and exploring the consequences of how they choose to respond to these encounters. 

I’ve heard it called speculative fiction, I’ve heard it referred to as surrealistic fiction—I’m not sure which is more appropriate, but, in my experience, these novels are compassionate, wise, numinous and utterly compelling.  They haunt me long after I read them, lingering like spirits of long-forgotten kisses, remembered on lonely nights.

Recent favorites include Aimee Bender’s “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”, Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!”, and Karen Thompson Walker’s “The Age of Miracles”—but the genre is ever expanding, as is my obsessive appetite to devour even more of it.

 

Obsession #10) Father Figures: 

Look.  If you know me even a bit or if you’ve read practically anything I’ve written, you know I have a... complicated...history with men. 

I believe my good friend Josh recently labeled me as having “more issues than Rolling Stone”—a dig that I dug because he is right and I love the magazine, so we’re good.

But, I digress.

I love a good father figure and I treasure their influence on the world as much as the next person…but thanks to my personal father-abandonment/ shitty-ass-stepfather issues, I’ve got serious conflicts with trust.  Perhaps this is why, even if unconsciously, I have always been drawn to men who just genuinely love their kids for who and what they are, whether they were real or fictional. 

No one really knew what it was like
behind those blue eyes, did they Mr. Reed?

Atticus Finch’s unwavering dedication to loving his children and raising them with integrity?  *swoon* Cliff Huxtable’s unlimited patience and humor in the face of his family’s constant bullshit?  *swoon* Clark W. Griswold’s heartfelt, insane quest for family bondage…I mean, bonding?  *swoon* 

I have an especially soft spot for the adoptive father figures—the ones who were not necessarily obligated in any sense to the young lives they helped to shape—Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred, Harry Potter’s godfather Sirius Black, or, my first and foremost father figure obsession: Mike Brady…who took on not one, but three daughters, and never once let them feel anything but loved as though they were of his own flesh.  Mike Brady loved his wife, provided for his family, and never spared his wit or his wisdom for their edification.  His simple, pure love was a straight arrow to my young heart—I’ll never forget Greg questioning why his dad was letting him ramble on about some ridiculous problem:

GREG: Why didn't you stop me, Dad?

MIKE BRADY:[confidently] Because, son, I think you just proved you're smart enough to stop yourself.

[*sigh*  Oh, Mr. Brady. 
You had me at your paisley leisure suit and second season white dude perm.]

Obsession #11) Zombies:

So now that you know how I practically cut my baby teeth on films filled with bleeding walls and satanic portals in subterranean basements, I suppose it’s no surprise that horror films—the divinely sublime (Psycho, The Shining, The Exorcist), the delightfully mediocre (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity, Halloween), or the dreadfully awful (Sleepaway Camp, Friday the 13^th, Leprechaun)—are all an integral part of my pop-cultural DNA.  I love them and I always will—but, the truth is, they do not frighten me…and they never have. 

Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart, you say?

Only one kind of film can do that:

Post-apocalyptic narratives, especially those involving the ravenous, fully ambulatory undead. 

[Well, those, and most Adam Sandler films.  With the exception of Punch Drunk Love, after The Wedding Singer, I’ve really come to fucking hate that man.]

Long before there were twinkly Twilight vampires roaming the Cineplex, I used to be completely into the breed of vampire that was about ferocity and terror and sexuality, not good hair and sensitivity to petulant teenage girls.  Think Chris Sarandon in the original Fright Night.  I even wrote my high school sophomore year research paper on vampire mythology—Vlad the Impaler, legends of the vrykolakas, strigoi history, the tragedy of porphyria—they were kind of my thing. 

But one evening, on a whim, I saw George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead uncut and commercial-free on late night television and the implications of the corollary of choice were not lost on me. 

Zombie films became analogies for everything wrong in our society—they shone a spotlight on everything that was fucked up in our world…and fearlessly pointed the blame directly where it belonged: on the human condition.  Our hubris and our avarice and our endless capacities for cruelty and carnality all drove the zombie metaphors into being the only trope of this genre that, for me, can never been overused.

And HELL YES…they scare the fucking wits out of me.  That’s good fun, people.

 

Oh, LORD.  What I could do to you in
under 90 minutes with one of these...

Obsession #12) Mix-Tapes:  

By now, you’ve likely figured out that music flows in me in equal measure to the blood in my veins—this obsession has spilled over into, onto, and across every memory and moment I’ve ever had in my entire life. 

While I try to live my life as peaceably and as gently as I possibly can—you know, going with the flow and all—I am, at heart, a complete control freak.  Seriously: it devastates me when I can’t orchestrate an outcome the way I KNOW it should go. 

It is a struggle I face every day as a mother, as a teacher, as a citizen of this crazy-ass world of wonderful creatures who continually use and abuse one another.

While I learned long ago that I am powerless to script the scenes of my life, I was delighted to realize that I did possess the ability to create an amazing soundtrack that represented the experiences I endured.  Controlling my fate?  Not possible.  Selecting the songs that accompanied the movie of my life?  Well, at least that was within my scope of possibility.

Had my family been wise enough to invest in Sony, Fuji, JVC, Maxell, or TDK in the 80’s, I might be blogging this entry in a coked-out haze from my Hollywood Hills’ pool cabana right now for all the money I threw down on their products.  Pffft. 

Seriously, though. 

I have spent over thirty plus years crafting thoughtful soundtracks—musically setting the script for every scene of my life to a note or a melody.  It all began when I took control of my music tastes around the middle of the 80’s and stopped solely listening to the records (you heard that right) of my mom’s collection and started cutting tapes from the radio of my own interests.  This evolved into crafting mixes for secret crushes, for friendships on the rocks, for graduations, for losing the love of your life, for finding the next one, for incredible sex, for the devastation of bad sex, for making up, for breaking up, for giving birth, for facing death…

People, I can make a killer mix for anything—one that will lift your spirits above the clouds or one that will drive your soul into the ground.  Pleasure or pain is only an hour away…

It is in my power; I was blessed with this skill.  Anything I can anticipate, I can create a musical accompaniment for—and anything that happens extemporaneously, I begin sifting through the tracks in my memories before it’s even half over. 

Of course, I’ve long since graduated from tapes to CDs, but nothing has been lost in translation in the transition from analog to 1’s and 0’s, I assure you.  My mixes are lyrical tapestries, crafted to match the emotional journey of any experience, with perfect form and structure: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.  If you’re ever lucky enough to receive one from me, trust that what you hold in your hands speaks volumes more than any words I could ever write to you—read between the lines and verses and notes.  I’ve exposed something deeper inside of me than you may ever have imagined.

Anytime the Suburban Acrobat and I collaborate to put our hearts and minds together on something, we try to reward our readers with a little extra piece of the pop puzzle that comprises our souls, so to round out the baker’s dozen of the driving, obsessive influences of my life, I give to you:

(Bonus Obsession) Sorrento, Italy: 

I love to travel, anywhere at any time.  Walk, drive, fly…just get me the hell out of wherever I am, whenever you can. 

I’m sure I could hypothesize about the origins of my nomadic, rootless spirit, but the fact is, I just think we live on a great big, gorgeous planet and I’d like to see as much of it as I possibly can. 

I’ve been all over the US, Mexico, the gulf, the Caribbean, Ireland, France…but as amazing as these places were, nothing has ever compared to the impact and magnificence of the birthplace of culture…Italy. Though I would never label myself an artist, I am most certainly a dabbler and connoisseur of the fine arts—and where else would an artist dream of going but the epicenter of the entire Renaissance?

If this piece was to explore the true obsessions of our souls, mine could not be what it is without the influence of having lived in Italy while completing my minor in Classical Civilizations by taking an ancient Roman archeology course.  I recently recollected my encounters there with the dear friend and found the hunger and the obsession to return almost overwhelming.

Imagine (if you can) me, your sarcastic, bitter writer-friend, Uncomfortably Numb, when I was still very much a young girl—a terrified, naïve, dumbass, white chick from the Midwest all alone in a foreign country for the first time.  I was broke as hell, but the potential was limitless…and I promised myself to molt the shell I’d been hiding in for so long to suck every memory from the experience that I could.

Whether or not you’ve been yourself, I can assure you that you quickly acclimate to life in Europe, especially when you’re nearly penniless.  You learn to nibble on the biscotti by the coffee machine in your hostel for breakfast and taste the cheese and fruit samples of the market to make it through lunch.  At dinner, you befriend the people outside the nearest trattoria and split wine and small bowls of pasta and company for the night.

I lost nearly twenty pounds there…but had the time of my life.  I have more stories of joy and heartache from that month than I’ve been able to gather in the sixteen plus years that followed.  Oh GOD…in the space of a month I flirted, I danced, I explored, I got lost, I got scared, I fell in love, I got my heart broken, I witnessed, and I FUCKING LIVED.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself...

So…there is this bar in Rome, in the heart of the city, on a corner near the Trastavere, just a few blocks from the filthy-gorgeous Tiber River.  The dive was called Caesar’s…it had an old, shadowy pub on the main floor and a cheesy, forever-stuck-in-the-80’s dance club downstairs.  From what I heard from friends, it has since become a fabulous gay club with a drag revue, but when I was there, it was just a simple space that was dark and warm and intimate—as much a place for conversations with cranky old Italian nonnos with skin as dark and shiny as polished walnut-stained wood as it was a place to be seduced by two fraternal twins offering a night of unapologetic, decadent, hedonistic sex.

(And yes, the conversations and the propositions both happened.  But that is another blog for another day.)

I quickly made friends with a few of the best of the students studying with me and Caesar’s became the heart of our nights.  If nothing else, there were always pretzels for sustenance and, hell, I was pretty cute in my twenties, so I never had to buy a drink.

One night, my three best friends from the trip, all fellow students from my university—Josh, the pre-med student, Kelly, the avant-garde hippie chick, and Jeff, the tragically hip philosophy student—were sitting, nursing our beers to make the night last, talking about this incredible, obscure band, Daft Punk (yes, really—this was, after all, the late-middle nineties, people) and the latest news from the states.  We were lulled in the sleepy womb of pre-9/11 young American idealism and excess, secure in our futures and cocooned in our ignorance.

An older couple of gentlemen in shiny silver suits struck up a conversation and, after joining us for the evening, were incredulous that we hadn’t traveled south of Rome (we’d only explored up to Firenze and back).  The two new friends insisted that, when our class moved to Naples and Pompeii, we take a side trip to this sleepy village—Sorrento. 

Jump ahead a week, once we’d explored the near-Holocaust-level tragedy of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we decided to heed our friends’ advice and spend our three free days in Sorrento.

It was a life-altering choice.

Sorrento was alive and on fire with sunlight, and color, and music, and laughter.  Seriously.  Every afternoon, the ocean was like molten fire…and, as an Oregon born and bred girl, I knew my west coast sunsets well.  But they were nothing like this. 

The beaches had the softest sand I’d ever experienced under my feet, the salty sea licked at gorgeous jewels of polished sea glass, honed smooth as pearls, that peppered the shore with their glistening wealth.  A pauper would feel like the richest man upon earth to hold but a handful of that sand. 

And the lemons.

Oh, the lemons…let me tell you about the lemons.  The lemon groves were everywhere…bright green trees heavy with the ripest, most succulent lemons you’ve ever tasted.  You see, we don’t know lemons in this country.  Those bitter-sour, pulpy things we can buy at the store in sallow bags for garnishing cheap drinks?  Those are not lemons.  Sorrento lemons were luxuriant and foreign to my numbed American tongue…their sourness was complimented by the richness of the earth and the brine of the sea and warmth of the Mediterranean sun.

The nights were made…absolutely DESIGNED…for sitting in ancient town squares, sipping icy-sweet limoncello made from the magnificent fruit of Sorrento’s womb, while fire-breathers entertained crowds as gypsy children wandered in the masses of tourists and locals alike.  Random minstrels with guitars and saxophones and accordions made harmony from cacophony and strings of white lights illuminated memories of moments you never wanted to forget…memories you knew were falling through your fingers as fast as the grains of sand from the stunning shores of that fire-lit ocean.

I wish I had the power to convey what five minutes with Google images could (seriously…if you’ve never been, go look up “Sorrento, Italy”)…but my skills with the written word are far too weak for all that I witnessed.

Sorrento flows in my blood, like the memory of a lost lover—ever present, ever imposing.

I could write volumes of my experiences there and why this magical place has marked me as deeply as any scar and is embedded in my flesh more deeply than any tattoo.  If our bodies are the passports of our journeys, then Sorrento is the only stamp that every changed the structure of my existence—its power, its magic, its permanence…are all indelible.

*

In her sublime memoir, Just Kids, Patti Smith wrote: “I immersed myself in books and rock 'n' roll, the adolescent salvation ...”  For me, her conclusion is absolutely right: drowning in one's passions is like a baptism.  My obsessions saved my adolescent and adult soul more than once...and I’m sure they will many times again.

Celebrated author and journalist, Norman Mailer, asserted that obsession was the single most wasteful human activity, because, he apprised, with an obsession we are fated to return, “back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.” 

With all due respect, Mr. Mailer can kiss my infatuated ass; I’ve found more keys to unlocking the mysteries within these vaults inside my head and heart through my obsessions than a lifetime of therapy could ever even HOPE to provide. 

I’m standing with Ms. Smith and John Waters on this one, good sir.