Me and Mr King

I wrote about Stephen King on FB yesterday, but it turns out I had this huge blarp waiting to come out as well. It’s pretty emo, so sorry if you were hoping that I’d do some kind of postmodern critical reassessment of my attachment to a problematic author etc. This is definitely not that.

I was 12 when I stumbled onto my first Stephen King book. It was 1988 and it was my first day at Colac High School, and I visited the school library. (I was already a lifelong library-dweller by then. I spent so much time in my primary school library that the librarian sometimes made me her ‘helper’.) That first day the high school library felt new and exciting. It had its own building, for a start, like the town library; my primary school library was just a room. It had a lobby with a display case and TWO doors: one to go in, and one to go out. There were full-length windows in the back, so there was actual sunlight inside; and most importantly, LOTS of books. I remember walking through the fiction stacks, excited that there were SO many new books I’d never heard of. There’s nothing more exciting to a book lover than MOAR BOOKS. 

Anyway, one book stood out to me on that day: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. 

When I went to the front desk to check it out, the librarian, Mr. Martino was waiting at the counter. He was a tall wiry man with black hair and a kind face hidden behind a full beard and big wire-rim 80’s glasses. He always wore plaid shirts and sneakers and walked on the balls of his feet like he was about to break into a full sprint. He looked at the book and then peered over his glasses at me.

“There’s some pretty scary stuff in here. Won’t it give you nightmares?” 

He smiled at me but his eyes held just the slightest hint of concern. I remember nervously laughing and saying, “I hope not!” and secretly hoping like crazy I was right. Something told me I could handle it. Or at least I wasn’t afraid of trying. I was feeling brave, apparently.

My biggest memory of actually reading Skeleton Crew was firstly of how scary some of the stories were – ‘The Mist’ and ‘The Raft’ scared the PANTS off me – but I also vividly remember being excited by how ‘grown up’ it was. Nothing was more illustrative of that than ‘Survivor Type’. Even for Stephen King that story was just plain bananas.  A surgeon smuggles heroin onto a cruise ship that then sinks. He ends up marooned on a desert island with his pile of heroin. After trying to eat seagulls and whatever else he can find, he starts amputating his own body parts for food, while loaded on heroin. And he narrates all of it in his journal. By the end he’s amputated almost everything from the waist down. It’s crazy. CRAZY.

Remember: I was twelve. I barely knew what heroin was! I knew about ‘drugs’ as a catchall from different ‘very special episodes’ of TV shows (Punky Brewster, Diff’rent Strokes, even Little House on the Prairie had a two-parter where Albert got hooked on morphine) but I was far from worldly about them.

The fact that the scary/horror element didn’t deter me is interesting. You have to understand: at twelve I was afraid of the IDEA of horror movies; just seeing the trailer for Death Ship was enough to make me cry. I would sneak down the horror movie aisle at the video store & look at the covers but then I’d get real scared and run away back to the ‘normal’ sections. Even Alice Cooper album covers scared me!  Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video was about as scary as things got for me back then. And I don’t remember ready scary books up until that time. For some reason, Skeleton Crew with its cannibalistic mists and oil slicks and limb amputations didn’t send me scurrying back to my Enid Blytons.

I’m not 100% sure why, but I have a theory.

For me reading scary stuff in print was different to seeing it. I could deal with written material more rationally. And more importantly, with print, I felt like I had more control.

When I read Skeleton Crew, I imagined what was being described, but I was in control of what I saw in my mind’s eye. And I could always stop reading if I got too scared and think about something else. 

The scary stuff in movies always felt like it was going to come out of the TV and get me.  I wasn’t able to think on my feet quickly enough to tell myself it wasn’t real. With a book, I knew that it was just words on a page and that the monsters I imagined were in my head: nothing could tangibly hurt me.  I always subconsciously knew I wasn’t in any danger; whereas with movies and visuals I was scared as soon as I saw something scary, and it was hard to dial that back; it was a lot harder for me to consciously know that I wasn’t in danger.

And that dovetails into an aspect of my childhood that bears mentioning. Life at home during my tweens and teens was tumultuous;  much as I loved her, in those days Mum could be downright terrifying sometimes. The fear that horror movies brought was too similar to fear I had already felt: and as a kid fear was something I wanted to avoid more than anything. I did not like being afraid. It wasn’t fun being scared back then, so why would I want to watch something that scared me? But reading Stephen King was empowering; I believe that over time those early books made me brave. They helped me to understand my relationship with fear. I mean, I don’t think it’s 100% because of the books, obviously a lot of that was just part of growing up and maturing mentally, but I think being able to independently process certain types of fear in Stephen King novels helped me develop critical-thinking about fear in my own life. They also gave me an escape during times when I couldn’t handle what was going on around me. I could escape to his imaginary places. By escaping to a place where things were supernatural and terrifying, the scary things in my own life didn’t seem quite so bad.

From Skeleton Crew onward, Stephen King’s books were all-consuming for me. Especially in my high school years. If I was brushing my teeth for bed, I was reading. I remember wishing there was a way I could read on my bike on my way to and from school.

Recently I wondered what it might be like to meet Stephen King in person. I thought about it for a minute or two and I started crying. Because when I thought of seeing him face to face I immediately thought back to my teenage years.  I cannot shake the feeling that he gave me something more than just books to read. I can’t think of Carrie, or Salem’s Lot, or Christine, or It, without thinking of them as a kind of Stephen King treehouse where I could go and hang out and hide and get myself together.   That treehouse gave me happiness and courage during times when I don’t think I could have found those things on my own. Thinking about it overwhelms me. It makes me feel like I owe him something more than just a thank-you. But I don’t think I could ever articulate that in person.

I've Always Been Crazy, It Keeps Me From Going Insane

First ride of the late spring-almost summer, back in the saddle again etc etc. I dragged my feet a LOT getting back out again, more because of my natural laziness than actual reasons. But ultimately it was retail therapy that eased me back onto the bike - the gods blessed me with an Amazon gift card that financed a new set of hand grips, a new comfy saddle and a little computerized odometer,and once I farted around all of last weekend installing the (expletives), it would have been a tragedy of narcissistic proportions NOT to go out for a ride. If only to hope that people were looking at me with renewed respect because of my prowess at a) buying things and b) attaching them to my bike.

Another motivation - Peter Sagan tweeted a pic from Lake Tahoe, training for the Amgen Tour of California next week. Weee! Ok. Motivated!

 


So I went out for a ride after work tonight, same route as last year, on the American River Trail from Parkshore to the overpass.  My fancy new right grip seemed a bit loose so I tightened it up, checked the tire pressure and off we went.

Set out for ooh about 30 seconds before clocking that my back tire was reaaaaaally mushy. I had half-assed the pressure test for that tire and I knew it. It seemed odd that it was the *perfect* psi after 6 months of not riding, but did I squeeze-test it before I set out? Nooooo.

So I re-inflated and set out again. It felt lovely getting out again and I was really feeling it for a while, but then I started getting distracted, because my right hand grip was still loose. GRR. It kept moving around and it was bugging the hell out of me. And my front wheel was rubbing against my brake pad which meant that it was slightly off alignment RAGH. Stuff like that gets in my head and I start getting OCD like it's not PERFECT why isn't it PERFECT goddammit I can't do anything right, full-on shame spiral... yeah I'm a mess.

I was trying to go slow and take it easy, knowing that I might hit the wall like I did last year if I went too hard too quickly. But I'm super unfit. The merest incline leaves me heaving like a bilge pump no matter how easy I take it. Plus I'm all in my head about the grip and the tire and I just know I'm not drinking enough water and I'm starting to feel not great. 

I find a place to stop and gather myself for a little spell, til I'm calm again and breathing normally. I head back, figuring it's better to just start heading back than to push any further and get myself in trouble. Taking it nice and easy, but the bloody goddamn right grip that won't stay put and the tire making that noise and I'm so in my head at this point it's just getting a bit beyond me. I stop and walk again for a bit, and finally get back to the car and I'm in ok shape. Sweaty and a bit tired but not feeling lightheaded or anxious or weird. 

But then I decided that NOW was a great time to try to get the bike back in the car. I'd rested up for a little bit, but in retrospect not quiiiiiiite enough. Wrestling with the bike just broke me out in a shaky dizzy sweat and that was pretty much it. I sat in the car for a while, hydrated, cooled off  and fought  the urge to take a long pouty sad nap. 

So. Not a terrible first outing, if I'm honest. It's not great to you, but my bar is waaaay lower than yours. My positive take away is that I'm better at knowing the signs to look for, knowing when to stop and not bonking on the actual ride itself. I'm getting better at shifting and my hills are a little better than they were last year, which I'm kind of proud of. Mainly I think my pre-cycling nutrition needs some work. I had been doing cliff bars and/or bananas last year and those seemed to work really well -- the new hippie bars I ate before my ride today just didn't quite cut it nutritionally, so I think going back to the tried and true foods is a safer option. 

Part of me is like, Jeez Louise ya big wimp, it's only a 20 minute ride it's not like you're doing a 3 hour ride. But the other part of me is like, Um blow it out your ear, I'm unfit and out of shape and I need to pay close attention to this kind of stuff now so that I don't completely deter myself from riding altogether. It's supposed to be fun! And I'm determined to continue trying to make it so

Frump out. 

Purple Thoughts

It’s not that I have anything to say that hasn’t already been said.  It’s just the feelings keep coming and coming and they’re not going anywhere except back inside in a loop and I just need to get them out of me

Plus a tiny part of me wants him to know that I know, that I knew, I need to say it out loud narcissistically I’m not sure what this compulsion is all about, to be honest.

I keep forgetting that Prince is dead. And when I remember, it trips me up. And then I get this weird panic, like I want to hit the stop button and rewind and go back to before he died, go back to when he was alive so that I could appreciate him more somehow. How? I don’t know. It’s not like I didn’t. But now that he’s gone, I’m left wondering if it was enough.

I should have seen him on his last tour. I should have bought all the albums he released this year. I should have subscribed to Tidal. Wait. No. Lol, definitely not. But…

It’s just, I mean I consider myself a Prince fan. But now that he’s gone, is my fandom enough? Do I have a deep enough well inside me to get through something like this?

Ok that’s ridiculously melodramatic. Of course I’ll “get through” it. He wasn’t a person in my actual life, he wasn’t my parent or family member, there’s no impediment here to me getting up in the morning and breathing in and out. I know that. I know it deeply. And I don’t conflate personal loss with the loss of a beloved musician.

But.

Prince was personal. He sang his feelings so hard, his wants, his needs, his loss, his longing, all those deeply human things that made him so Prince-like. To me there was a devotional quality to  almost all of his music, a deep vein of spirituality where *everything* was god, even when corvettes were vaginas and berets were clitori and the water was warm enough and he’s boning his sister, even when on the surface it was just sex, he always, always tried to communicate how it felt. Through his words, through his singing, through his music. Even the suuuper dirty songs. When you’re in it, on your own dancing around your bedroom or driving or just listening, his commitment to the feeling was 100%. I always felt it. His music was often aspirational; wanting, reaching out, needing. He hardly seemed to sing a thing he didn’t feel, and even the stuff I did not and still do not understand (hi Annie Christian), his delivery made me feel like I should feel a certain way? He emoted from within the stereo, and in kind my…ugh I this sounds so corny…my soul was like a tuning fork. The simple, powerful sorcery of  communicating a feeling that sparks a feeling in return. That is my experience of listening to Prince. Quid pro quo.

I didn’t fully understand the weight of that arrangement until he was gone.

I love so much music, everything is my favorite, my favorite band list is like one of those plastic chains little kids suspend from the ceiling to hold their teddy bears, except I have like 200 of them full of my favorite bands. I love the way music makes me feel.

But in these few days since Prince died, it’s occurring to me that there’s no-one else that makes me ~feel~ the way Prince made me feel. That experience for me was deep and uniquely of Prince.

Questlove said something in his Rolling Stone remembrance of Prince that has stuck with me: "For the last twenty years, whenever I was up at five in the morning, I knew that Prince was up too, somewhere, in a sense sharing a workspace with me. For the last few days, 5 a.m. has felt different. It's just a lonely hour now, a cold time before the sun comes up."

Listening to Prince in my little feelings-exchange...now that there's not a living breathing Prince somewhere in the world to balance the equation, it just doesn't feel right.  

I don’t know how to end this so I’ll just stop here.