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And now...
Chapter Eight
Sex, Contact Highs, and Rock
n Roll
It's not really the 8th Wonder of the World. It's more like the third nipple on the kid at gym class, that you can't stop staring at.
[Author's Note: at the top of this chapter I write that I have only ever been high once in my life. That is no longer a true statement, given that, when some of my friends found out about that, they made it a personal mission to get me good and stoned a few times in Middle Age. Mission accomplished...]
I have been drunk many times in
my adult life. As I’ve previously mentioned in this memoir, I like to drink. A
lot. I don’t need to drink, and I
know this is true because the only times I have ever had booze before noon is
when I’m on vacation, which is perfectly acceptable to any culture in any age. (Except
maybe cultures who eschew alcohol completely. Which is just fucking weird.) But
I have only ever been high once in my
life, and that’s what this story is about. I wish I could tell you it was an
awful experience, that it made me nauseous and guilty, and afraid I would
become a horrible addict who would lie and steal, or maybe even kill to get
that next high. It wasn’t like that at all. It was a second-hand high I got in
1982 at the Texxas World Music Festival in Houston.
A brief word about me and
drugs. I don’t do them, and never have. I figure if any teenager could have
been forgiven for a crippling drug habit, it would have to have been a teenager
whose dad had killed himself, and whose mom lived in a bottle. I was THE prime
candidate for drug abuse. I never did drugs for two reasons, the first of which
is that I was too poor to afford them, the second of which is that I had
already discovered sex, and no one could convince me that drugs were better
than that. They still can’t. If you
think drugs are better than sex, then you’re doing it wrong. Period. So, that’s
me and drugs.
1982 may have been the
greatest year for big-ass rock concerts the city of Houston has ever, or will
ever, see. Houston was one of the last rock ‘n roll bastions against New Wave,
which had already claimed some of my more marginal friends in Conroe. But the
Texxas World Music Festival was the big Middle Finger to all that techno,
plastic, one-hit-wonder pop trash, and it had been going on since 1978. The
gods of rock descended upon the Republic of Texas every summer to lay their
hands on adoring fans (and their guitars, and sometimes their penises, if you
were a hot chick), to scorch the heavens with full-throated vocals and sear
flesh with white-hot guitar solos, to perforate ear drums and implode chest
cavities, all in the name of rock ‘n roll. I freaking loved it.
On June 13, 1982, I found
myself in a van with my two best friends, Doug and Geoff; their girlfriends; my
sort-of girlfriend at the time; Doug’s brother David, who was driving, and
Doug’s older sister Sara, whom I was completely wacko-insane about, as she was
the single most attractive girl I had ever been that close to in my life, ever,
up to that point. There were probably some other people in the van as well, but
none of them was Sara, so I don’t remember who they were. We all had our
tickets to the Texxas Jam, and we were heading south on I-45 out of Conroe,
bound for the Houston Astrodome.
If you’ve never been inside
the Astrodome, all I can suggest is that you keep it that way. I know it’s been
remodeled a bunch of times since my teenage years. It’s just that building a
huge stadium designed to hold thousands of people and then slapping a dome over
the top of it is, in my opinion, a fundamentally bad idea. Like pet rocks. Or
New Coke. You can do it, sure. But why? The Astrodome was built in order that
the city of Houston could get some professional baseball and football
franchises in a part of Texas where the weather can be so shitty, you have to
seriously question the mental health of anybody who would choose to live there.
It’s bad enough that the summers typically stay in the mid to upper nineties
range, but on top of that the humidity is always like 170 percent. It’s the
kind of humidity that makes you actually think, and I’m paraphrasing Lewis
Black, “Gosh, you know what? I really
wish I had put antiperspirant on my balls.”
In 1982 the Astrodome was a colossal concrete and steel cave, with
bad ventilation and worse acoustics. (The bad ventilation will become important
shortly.) It was also the venue for the Texxas Jam. This was the lineup of
bands, from opener to headliner: Point
Blank, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Sammy Hagar, Santana, and Journey. The only band I wasn’t
balls-out excited about was Santana, but it was a solid line-up and I couldn’t
wait for the show to kick off. As a lot of people weren’t bothering to show up
until the second or third band took the stage, we had no problem parking and
getting to our seats in the Gold section. That sounds like a really great
section to be in because of the name, but really it was called the Gold section
because that entire section of seats made a dingy yellow ring all the way
around the Astrodome. We were midway up in the dome, on the left-hand side of
the stage.
One of the biggest reasons
Doug and Geoff and I were friends, was that we were music freaks. We had huge
record / tape / CD collections. We briefly had a garage band, with Doug on a
Fender Jazz bass and Geoff playing a Peavy POS guitar, but we folded for two
reasons: we didn’t have a drummer, and I couldn’t squeeze my nuts hard enough
to sing like Paul Stanley or Rob Halford. And we meant business when it came to
rock concerts. We watched the show.
The whole show. None of this running about the venue, dicking around, trying to
find a non-urine soaked corner to make out in. We were there to rock. So, when
Point Blank hit the stage we were firmly planted in our seats. We only got up
during band breaks when the stage was rearranged to make ready for the next
group, and then we only went to pee or load up on concession food. Joan Jett
came next, and I had no idea at the time that she was a lesbian. I didn’t even
know what a lesbian was. I only knew that she kicked ass, and I should have
suspected something when I went to the bathroom after her set, and there was a
line out the Women’s restroom made up of women that I’m pretty sure could have
kicked my ass in a fair fight. And I was a black belt at the time.
Sammy Hagar was still the Red
Rocker, and still three years away from joining Van Halen, thus ending my love
affair with Sammy Hagar and Van
Halen. Maybe you liked that weird incarnation, but to me it was too much liking
kissing your sister. But the night of the Texxas Jam he was shredding. After
the Hagar set I got up to walk around and look at the merchandise (my high
school wardrobe for four years consisted mainly of jeans and concert t-shirts).
I was in no hurry to get back for Santana’s set, and I was walking through the
very large music library in my head looking for Santana songs that I was actually
familiar with. There was Evil Ways, Black
Magic Woman, and Oye Como Va for sure. And in the last two years they’d had
a couple more mainstream singles, Winning
and Hold On. So, okay, if they
played those five songs, I’d be happy. But Carlos Santana had always been known
as a jam-guitar guy, who could segue from one Latin-infused solo into another
so effortlessly that after a while you thought you were at a jazz concert, for
God sakes. I paid for my commemorative t-shirt and headed back to my seat.
And that’s when I first began
to notice that things had gotten… foggy.
Santana opened with Black Magic Woman, and while I was kind
of familiar with the song, I had this thought about two minutes in: Damn. I am really enjoying this song. I
also thought that the stage guys were overdoing it on the fog effects, because
there was a thick miasma hanging out everywhere in the Astrodome. And it seemed
to be making the music sound better.
I have no idea what the second song in Santana’s set was. But I do remember
thinking: Man, this is better than the
first song. And halfway through the song I didn’t know, I thought: This is the best fucking music I have ever
heard in my entire life. Carlos Santana is a goddam genius. How have I never
seen that before? Toward the end of his set, when he broke into Oye Como Va, I nearly shit my pants with
excitement. I was singing along in perfect Spanish, and I don’t speak Spanish.
When Carlos left the stage, I
was more despondent than the time my dog had abandoned me for a family that
could actually afford to feed him every day. But that feeling evaporated when
somebody in our group said, “Anybody want
anything to eat?” I was about to open my mouth and say hell freaking yes,
but as soon as I did open my mouth I saw in my own head the list of things I
wanted – no, needed – to eat at that
moment, and I knew they’d never be able to remember them all, and they didn’t
have octopus arms, which they were going to need to carry all the shit that I
was hungry for, and then I realized that I’d been sitting there with my mouth
wide open for way too long and it was Sara who’d asked the question and I was
staring at her open-mouthed like a goddamn lunatic. I slammed my jaw shut so
hard that my nasal passages hummed, and fled to the concession stand. Here is a
partial list of what I know for sure I ate:
*Two large orders of nachos
with cheese sauce and extra jalapenos (which I wasn’t going to order because at
the time I didn’t like jalapenos, but the concession lady was like “Aw Honey, you gots to eat nachos with jalapenos!” and I
thought Well, shit, she sells this stuff,
she should know…)
*TWO foot-long chili dogs with relish, onions, mustard, ketchup, and
a bag of Fritos crushed and sprinkled over the top, because why the fuck not?
*One
(maybe two) corn dogs slathered in mustard
*Two giant salted pretzels (I
just realized that this event alone is probably why I have high blood pressure
to this day)
*One large barrel of popcorn
that was probably left over from the first Texas Independence Day, drowned in
imitation butter product
*One Snickers, one Baby Ruth,
one bag of M&Ms (plain)
*Two Dr. Peppers, one Mr. Pibb
(Dr. Pepper’s “special” cousin), and a Coke. All big enough to drown a child in
I did not at the time realize
that I was experiencing what stoners everywhere call “the munchies.” I only
knew that it was the best freaking food I’d ever eaten in my life. A few hours
later, when the high had worn off and the gastro-intestinal consequences had
kicked in, I would significantly alter this view. But for the moment, it was
awesome.
I was high through Journey’s
entire set. I should mention that this was the Journey of the Steve Perry days,
and that the Escape album had just
been released the previous year, which was, and remains, their pinnacle music
achievement. When they broke out Open
Arms – probably the greatest power ballad in the history of ever – there
was no cheering among the more than 53,000 fans at the Astrodome, because every
single one of them was making out. I was making out with my sort-of girlfriend.
But I may have been making out with Doug, or Geoff. I honestly don’t know. I
wanted to be making out with Sara, but she had flown away on the back of a
rainbow-colored unicorn to destinations unknown. Or maybe that didn’t happen,
and I only thought it happened because I was high.
By the time Journey was into
their second encore, and all the pyrotechnics were going off, the Astrodome had
been transformed into the world’s largest rock ‘n roll bong. It’s a miracle
that the sheer volume of weed smoke didn’t blow the roof right off the place.
Evidently the people who built this monstrosity had never heard of air scrubbers,
or were too cheap to install them, because the recycled air was blowing back
out on the entire audience like a fog machine. And I had a brilliant thought,
as only truly stoned people can have: a new home air conditioning system that
cooled you down and got you high at the same time. And I would call it
“Air-ijuana.” I was just about to share this idea with my friends, but Journey
started into Wheel in the Sky and my
brain immediately went to “Dude! ‘Wheel’
and ‘Sky’, are two images that are both symbolic of infinity. Holy shit!” And
I was trying to explain this to the couple sitting next to me, but they
couldn’t hear my brilliant analysis of the song lyric over the volume of the
song itself. Plus their faces were mashed together in a desperate attempt to see
who could suck the fillings out of the other person’s mouth first. So I sat
back and let the last song of the evening take me wherever it wanted, and I was
awash in second-hand weed smoke, smelling vaguely of chili, and, for a moment,
pretty damn happy.
Rock concerts were a huge part
of my teenage years, mainly because live music was my drug of choice. Alcohol
is a close second these days, but I didn’t really drink until I was in my late
twenties. I’ve been going to concerts since before I could legally drive. And
what I mean by that is, yes, I did illegally
drive my friends and me to concerts more than once. I think one of the reasons
I never really fit in with any clique in high school was that a big identifier
was the kind of music you listened to. The Kikkers listened to country, the
Preps listened to pop, the Homeboys listened to rap, the Jocks didn’t know what
music was, and the Band Geeks listened to… well, band music. I listened to rock
‘n roll, in all of its varieties and subsets. I would go to a Judas Priest
concert one week, then turn around and hit the REO Speedwagon show the next. I
will also admit here and now that I attended a Neil Diamond show one year, but
only because Doug had an extra ticket, and his sister Sara was going. I had heard
rumors that women became so enamored of Neil when he performed that they would
spontaneously take off their bras (and sometimes their panties) and throw them
onstage. If there was even a one in a million chance that Sara would do
something like that, then I was going to sit through a Neil fucking Diamond
concert.
She didn’t.
Every spare dollar I had in
high school usually went toward concert tickets. My friends and I had long ago
made the acquaintance of the owner and proprietor of Rainbow Records and Tapes,
the only real record store in Conroe. (I later learned that the owner also ran
a paraphernalia and dope operation out of the back of the store, for which he
was later busted.) He became a Ticketmaster outlet not long after the store
opened, and we spent many nights sleeping in front of his shop on lawn chairs,
so we could be first on line when tickets to shows we desperately wanted to see
would go on sale. This strategy got us excellent seats for shows such as ZZ Top
on the Eliminator tour, YES (90125 Tour), Judas Priest (Screaming for Vengeance), and front row
center for REO Speedwagon (Wheels Are
Turnin’).
So, when I say that I have
developed a bit of a hearing problem in my mid-forties, this should come as a
surprise to no one. You do not (at least, I didn’t) think about the
repercussions of constantly exposing your ears to a decibel level that has more
in common with a battlefield in World War II than a music performance. I
remember at the REO show, our buddy Joe S. had shoved cotton in his ears, and I
think we all made fun of him for it. We were all standing there, front row and
center stage for the entire show, and it was awesome. REO always ended their
encore with Ridin’ The Storm Out, and
on the last few power chords they’d fire off these huge pyrotechnics. So it’s
the end of the song, and guitarist Gary Richrath hits that first ending chord,
and at the same time BOOM!!!, this
cannon or something goes off – and something hits me in the side of the face.
Not hard, not like shrapnel or anything. It was soft. And I turn my head, and
there’s Joe, standing next to me and looking shocked and awed, and he’s
pointing at the sides of his head and shouting something, but I can’t hear him
over the song, so I look at his mouth and what he’s saying is IT BLEW THE COTTON OUT OF MY FUCKING EARS!
That was the first time I thought there might be consequences to all of my
rocking, later in life.
Next Week, Chapter Nine: Dad Before The End
