(me in 1989)
It has become something of a tradition for me to talk on the blog about the year I am exploring for my birthday show. Around the time of my birthday, I play music from a particular year in my life - the first Self Help Radio around the time of birthday, in 2003, I played my favorite music from 1968, the year of my birth. This year I've made it up to 1989.
In 1989, I turned 21 years old. Imagine that. I was in my third year of college into my fourth. There is a part of me that thinks I may have taken the spring semester off - I took off two semesters of college so didn't graduate in 1990 as I was supposed to, but instead in 1991. But I don't think I had discovered that I could take time off yet. After all, you couldn't do that in high school!
The year was dominated by first real relationship, which, it turned out, wasn't much of a relationship at all. The signs were all there - when we returned from holiday break, in January, I really wanted to see her but she wasn't too excited to see me. I was pretty persistent tho, & at some point in the spring I guess we were a couple. I should stress that she never really loved me, & it was only something like codependence that kept us together until she could find a way out. In most every possible way I existed to support her & she - well, she deigned to allow me to be in her presence.
She came from a very conservative family who was not white. At some point in the spring, she introduced me to them, & they told her later that she was not allowed to date me. So she lied to her family & continued to date me. It should have been a red flag that she could deceived her parents so easily - she after all thought the world of them. But I was very much in love. & I would do anything for her. Perhaps defying her family made the relationship more exciting. What happened that spring is that we spent a lot of time together & the codependent bonds were tightened.
When summer came along, she went home to her family & I stayed in Austin. I had been working at a department called The Language Lab at UT but not enough to pay for me to stay in my little efficiency.
I wrote about that place here. Instead of going home to the Dallas area for the summer, which had been a disaster the previous year, I got a job that summer working nights at 7-11. It was a weird summer to say the least but I spent most of it sleeping during the day & working at nights. I didn't have a whole lot of friends & didn't see many people. & because I was not supposed to be dating her, I couldn't call my "girlfriend" at her home.
We devised a stupid solution. She would call me collect. It's very hard to explain to folks today who pay for a cell phone plan how the phone company could gouge you back then. A collect call was very expensive. A collect call from another city was
very expensive. & she & I would talk hours. I was not allowed to call her back - her parents would hear the phone ring. & I did want to talk to her. Though I imagine those phone calls, if I had a recording of any of them, had very little content that I would find interesting today.
One day in August I was wakened by a phone call - remember, I worked nights so I slept from around noon to eight pm every day - & it was a person from the phone company who kindly told me that my next phone bill - they wanted me to be prepared - would be around $1500 dollars. (A web site told me that's equivalent to nearly four grand today.) I remember being cool about it - I had been asleep - & saying thank you & hanging up. Then it hit me & I called the person back.
To put things into perspective, my efficiency cost me $165 a month. It was going to be nearly impossible to pay that off any time soon. So they put me on a payment plan & I lost my phone. I remember having to get the last collect call from the "girlfriend" & explain it to her. One might say I was lucky that summer was ending & school would start soon.
That summer (I think) I had gotten a twenty-hour-a-week job at the Language Lab, soon to be called Liberal Arts Media Center. In 1993 I think I got a full-time job there & worked there until I left Austin in 2009 - so basically twenty years. But until the end of the year I kept my job at 7-11 & so my days were very much like this: Wake around 9pm. Shower & drive (my "girlfriend"'s car - in the summer I bussed) to 7-11. Work from 11pm until 7am. Come home, eat, go to school. All of my classes for the fall of 1989 were scheduled between 8am & noon. Meet the "girlfriend" at noon for lunch. Work until 5pm. Go home & go to sleep. Repeat the next day.
As a person about to turn 57, I can't believe I did that for months. To give you a sense of some of the difficulty I had to endure, one day the "girlfriend" got mad at me for not being around. "We never do anything anymore," she told me. I tried to explain the reason I had this nightmare schedule was because of the phone calls during the summer. She had gotten an apartment very close to mine & I had basically moved in - & I used her phone number though I could never answer the phone - but kept my efficiency probably until the end of the year. But the fact that she contributed nothing to the financial bind I was in - & I would never have asked her to - but she never even offered - & still expected me to keep her entertained while working two jobs & going to school - it's a snapshot of how little what I was in was a committed loving relationship.
There were many great adventures at 7-11. Maybe one day I'll recount some of them. I was robbed at knifepoint. I had beer stolen from me just once - though folks tried again & again. I interacted with some funny characters - cops who came to grab all the day-old donuts when the donut guy came, a super tall chick named Monet to whom I gave hot dogs when she was drunk, a homeless man who distracted me with a puppy while he opened & drank several bottles of Nyquil with astonishing speed. I had worked nights at a 7-11 in Garland two years earlier, & I basically grew up in a convenience store, so it was a gig I liked. I drank way too much soda though (for the caffeine) which was very bad for my teeth. & I was too young to be so exhausted all the time.
My job at the Language Lab/Liberal Arts Media Center was a pleasant change, it was salaried & I got insurance & all that. I worked in a room with a real character who was in charge of duplicating language tapes which I sold at my office's dutch door. I decorated the door with stuff I clipped out of magazines & newspapers. I don't know if anyone told me I could do it, I just did. & no one told me to stop. & also one day I may write about the people with whom I worked. I wanted them to like me. I liked being a student who interacted with students. But boy that fall I was falling asleep at my desk like all the time.
Wait a minute though. Isn't this a blog about a radio show? It is. & tomorrow I will talk about how my relationship with music changed in 1989. But I appreciate having a chance to write a little bit about a year in which I was very young & maybe even a little pretty.
