I need to tell you this story.
Before I do, don't judge me. I get ear worms. Badly and often. I get songs stuck in my head and they just don't leave. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have good songs stuck in my head but other times, my luck is typical of my life--shit. And that's when I get horrible ear worms.
Earworms for me are often triggered by memories. Last night, before I finally fell asleep, after days of not sleeping more than an hour or two, I was reminded of my time working at a gas station in Freeport. I worked the late shift until close at midnight every night.
I have a lot of stories about those days.
But there's this memory that popped into my head. It was back when cellphones first started to have ringtones you could adjust and replace with sound bites from your favorite song. A regular customer, a beautiful eighteen year-old girl, had her phone ring while she was in line to pay for her gas. It was a pop song that was so distorted I couldn't understand any of it.
She started dancing. But it wasn't just dancing, it was this elaborate set of moves while she sang. Sure, she was beautiful, but she was squirrely. I like squirrely.
I asked her the song and she weirdly began to sing the song title. "Rockstar," she said.
I went home that night and got on Youtube.
Something about me I should say right now--I have OCD badly when it comes to music. If I hear a piece of a song, I have to know what it is. I have to know who the artist is and what song I'm hearing.
I have to.
If I don't, then I need to find it.
True story. I worked at a pizza place owned by Sicilians. They had an old cassette tape with Italian love songs recorded into a mix tape. One of the songs had this woman sing in a haunting but beautiful voice in Italian. Nobody knew who she was or what song it was. But I remembered the melody.
I would spend time once in a while trying to find it on Youtube.
And then something happened. Maybe my life took another spin. Maybe more unrequited love ate away at me. Or maybe my brain began yet another tailspin. Whatever.
I logged onto my computer and spent thirty-six hours straight looking for that song. Thirty-six. I didn't sleep. I just drank caffeine and listened to old Italian songs. I never found it.
Sometimes, I still hear that melody and her voice. I tell myself that now is not the time to search for it. I promise myself that one day, when I have time, I will. I made a note of it mentally. Delaying it to the future helps me get through the OCD moment.
But this beautiful woman. Blond hair, long and curly down her back, blue eyes, tall and incredibly thin, tripped the switch inside my brain that forced me to find this song. So, in about ten minutes, I did. I'm really good at finding things.
It was one of the shittiest pop songs a person could like. Horrible. Vile, trite, cliche, and all of the things I despise about pop music. I get angry when I hear it. When it pops into my brain, I wonder if perhaps I picked up a brain fluke from bad water someplace, and as it eats away at my frontal lobe, it produces excrement that somehow mixes into the wiring, like a wrench in a gearbox, and triggers this song.
Prima J--Rockstar.
Don't judge. It's not my fault. I'm sick. I'm very, very sick. I hate this song and everything about it.
But that's why we call them "ear worms." They are disgusting things that get lodged and we can't stop them.
Lately it seems has if my brain is screaming at me. I slept last night. Collapsed, really. I was a zombie until I finally sank into oblivion. And that's when the dreams started.
First, I dreamed I was upstairs in some house. The Incredible Hulk was there, running room to room. He wasn't smashing anything or breaking anything. He wasn't roaring or shouting. Sure, the doorframes were broken a bit because he had to get through them, but at least he was using the doorways and not just blasting through the walls, right?
He smiled at me. He seemed to be there protecting me. And I hugged him. The Incredible Hulk let me hug him.
The second dream, I was in the basement of a recently built house. It was one of those split-level ranch homes that are so common. The basement was a finished basement. You know the type--wood paneling painted white, off-white carpeting, crappy second-hand furniture that doesn't match.
This basement went on forever. It was massive. Room after room.
It was raining outside. It was a cold, winter rain.
I searched the basement for something to drink. I was thirsty. Every time I found a kitchen, the refrigerator was empty. One kitchen had about twenty pounds of raw bacon set out on the counter but the refrigerator had the door removed. I found about five kitchens in this basement and each time the same thing--nothing to drink.
And then my mom came downstairs. She was sick with a cold or the flu. She didn't talk to me.
Mom sat down at the shitty kitchen table set out in the middle of this basement room. She was eating a bowl of cereal or oatmeal. The table was one of those with the thick brass-colored frames and faux-wood tops. Mom's old, ratty bathrobe hung off her shoulders, revealing tattoos covering her back. They were Asian in theme but Western in artwork. Her back was covered in them. For the record, she doesn't have a single tattoo in real life.
Mom had an oversized can of 7-up that was about the size of those oil cans we used to get oil in up until the early 80's. It was empty because she drank all of it.
I wasn't wearing a shirt and I didn't want to get too close to her because I didn't want her to see the scars on my upper arms. I had new ones from when I melted down with a meat cleaver in January and I didn't want her to see them. She freaked out twenty years ago when she saw them then. New ones would not be good. She was worried enough about me as it is.
We didn't talk. I woke up.
There was something about this dream that has lingered with me all day. I feel disconnected and disjointed. Something changed. Something ended. I missed something.
I feel like a door closed on me and I don't know which one. An opportunity has been lost. I lost. I missed out on something. I failed someplace and failed to make something happen. But I have no idea what.
I feel like mourning. I've felt like mourning all day and I don't know why.
My brain screamed at me last night. It wanted me to know something and I don't understand what. I'm not going to demean myself by saying I'm stupid or something like that. I'm not. I just don't get it. I wish I did.
I wish I knew what was needed to fix whatever is broken. But for some reason I have the sneaking suspicion that it just might be too late to fix it.
Before I do, don't judge me. I get ear worms. Badly and often. I get songs stuck in my head and they just don't leave. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have good songs stuck in my head but other times, my luck is typical of my life--shit. And that's when I get horrible ear worms.
Earworms for me are often triggered by memories. Last night, before I finally fell asleep, after days of not sleeping more than an hour or two, I was reminded of my time working at a gas station in Freeport. I worked the late shift until close at midnight every night.
I have a lot of stories about those days.
But there's this memory that popped into my head. It was back when cellphones first started to have ringtones you could adjust and replace with sound bites from your favorite song. A regular customer, a beautiful eighteen year-old girl, had her phone ring while she was in line to pay for her gas. It was a pop song that was so distorted I couldn't understand any of it.
She started dancing. But it wasn't just dancing, it was this elaborate set of moves while she sang. Sure, she was beautiful, but she was squirrely. I like squirrely.
I asked her the song and she weirdly began to sing the song title. "Rockstar," she said.
I went home that night and got on Youtube.
Something about me I should say right now--I have OCD badly when it comes to music. If I hear a piece of a song, I have to know what it is. I have to know who the artist is and what song I'm hearing.
I have to.
If I don't, then I need to find it.
True story. I worked at a pizza place owned by Sicilians. They had an old cassette tape with Italian love songs recorded into a mix tape. One of the songs had this woman sing in a haunting but beautiful voice in Italian. Nobody knew who she was or what song it was. But I remembered the melody.
I would spend time once in a while trying to find it on Youtube.
And then something happened. Maybe my life took another spin. Maybe more unrequited love ate away at me. Or maybe my brain began yet another tailspin. Whatever.
I logged onto my computer and spent thirty-six hours straight looking for that song. Thirty-six. I didn't sleep. I just drank caffeine and listened to old Italian songs. I never found it.
Sometimes, I still hear that melody and her voice. I tell myself that now is not the time to search for it. I promise myself that one day, when I have time, I will. I made a note of it mentally. Delaying it to the future helps me get through the OCD moment.
But this beautiful woman. Blond hair, long and curly down her back, blue eyes, tall and incredibly thin, tripped the switch inside my brain that forced me to find this song. So, in about ten minutes, I did. I'm really good at finding things.
It was one of the shittiest pop songs a person could like. Horrible. Vile, trite, cliche, and all of the things I despise about pop music. I get angry when I hear it. When it pops into my brain, I wonder if perhaps I picked up a brain fluke from bad water someplace, and as it eats away at my frontal lobe, it produces excrement that somehow mixes into the wiring, like a wrench in a gearbox, and triggers this song.
Prima J--Rockstar.
Don't judge. It's not my fault. I'm sick. I'm very, very sick. I hate this song and everything about it.
But that's why we call them "ear worms." They are disgusting things that get lodged and we can't stop them.
Lately it seems has if my brain is screaming at me. I slept last night. Collapsed, really. I was a zombie until I finally sank into oblivion. And that's when the dreams started.
First, I dreamed I was upstairs in some house. The Incredible Hulk was there, running room to room. He wasn't smashing anything or breaking anything. He wasn't roaring or shouting. Sure, the doorframes were broken a bit because he had to get through them, but at least he was using the doorways and not just blasting through the walls, right?
He smiled at me. He seemed to be there protecting me. And I hugged him. The Incredible Hulk let me hug him.
The second dream, I was in the basement of a recently built house. It was one of those split-level ranch homes that are so common. The basement was a finished basement. You know the type--wood paneling painted white, off-white carpeting, crappy second-hand furniture that doesn't match.
This basement went on forever. It was massive. Room after room.
It was raining outside. It was a cold, winter rain.
I searched the basement for something to drink. I was thirsty. Every time I found a kitchen, the refrigerator was empty. One kitchen had about twenty pounds of raw bacon set out on the counter but the refrigerator had the door removed. I found about five kitchens in this basement and each time the same thing--nothing to drink.
And then my mom came downstairs. She was sick with a cold or the flu. She didn't talk to me.
Mom sat down at the shitty kitchen table set out in the middle of this basement room. She was eating a bowl of cereal or oatmeal. The table was one of those with the thick brass-colored frames and faux-wood tops. Mom's old, ratty bathrobe hung off her shoulders, revealing tattoos covering her back. They were Asian in theme but Western in artwork. Her back was covered in them. For the record, she doesn't have a single tattoo in real life.
Mom had an oversized can of 7-up that was about the size of those oil cans we used to get oil in up until the early 80's. It was empty because she drank all of it.
I wasn't wearing a shirt and I didn't want to get too close to her because I didn't want her to see the scars on my upper arms. I had new ones from when I melted down with a meat cleaver in January and I didn't want her to see them. She freaked out twenty years ago when she saw them then. New ones would not be good. She was worried enough about me as it is.
We didn't talk. I woke up.
There was something about this dream that has lingered with me all day. I feel disconnected and disjointed. Something changed. Something ended. I missed something.
I feel like a door closed on me and I don't know which one. An opportunity has been lost. I lost. I missed out on something. I failed someplace and failed to make something happen. But I have no idea what.
I feel like mourning. I've felt like mourning all day and I don't know why.
My brain screamed at me last night. It wanted me to know something and I don't understand what. I'm not going to demean myself by saying I'm stupid or something like that. I'm not. I just don't get it. I wish I did.
I wish I knew what was needed to fix whatever is broken. But for some reason I have the sneaking suspicion that it just might be too late to fix it.
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