When I was a kid, I was a good kid, quiet, a little shy, cute, intellectual–I’d rather read a book than go to a party–but I liked music, a lot. I grew up in a small town in West Texas, with a club there called The Stardust. Back then, a lot of country artists that are very popular right now got their humble beginnings touring through these sawdust dance clubs. My parents were competition ballroom dancers. Does that make my family sound eclectic? We weren’t. We were just strange.

Anyway, they sometimes would take us to these clubs. Then later, when I was older, I sort of messed around with a garage band. In fact, Ryan and I both did, the same band. I played piano as a kid, was pretty good at it, and clarinet, dabbled with flute and oboe and saxophone, most of the reeded instruments, harmonica, pipes, and keyboards. There really hasn’t been many instruments I couldn’t pick up and play if I wanted to. There’s something about the connection between creating with my hands and brain like that, the same connection that lets me type well over 100 word per minute mostly accurately, at least on days I’m not on mind-altering medication (of the legal variety).

I’ve met Kenny Rogers in person, as well as Reba McIntyre, The Judds, and Alan Jackson (whom I am distantly related to through my father’s side of the family). I’ve also played with and known people who have met famous bands. Gregg used to work as a roadie of sorts, being hired for setup, cleanup and security at venues across the country. He’d travel around in a beat-up truck and take cash-paying gigs and he got the chance to meet a lot of really neat people, some real assholes, and has all the stories he can tell that differentiate the two. Some day, I plan to pick his brain and write about some of the adventures this road musician has traveled in his life.

He’s met Jon Bon Jovi. Sure, Jon probably won’t remember it, but Gregg does.

When I was 13, I got my first real, grown-up kiss from a boy named Eddie, who had long blondish-brown hair and pouty Bon Jovi lips and looks. He wore the tight jeans, the jacket, the attitude… he was cute, I remember thinking, and way out of my sheltered league. Eddie played in a band, and he could sing and wiggle those tight jeans, and he played guitar.

My parents owned restaurants while I was growing up and we grew up in the back rooms and outside of the business. There, in a small house they also owned next door for us to play in during the day, Eddie and I sat on the old oil spool that we used as a launching ground for the rope swing hanging from the tree. Our legs touched each others, his hand rested gently on my knee and I tried so hard not to move lest he move his hand. It was warm, and he was exciting. We chatted, and then, the moment came when the silence was awkward and we tried not to look at each other.

I finally turned my head toward his and he was smiling and looking at me with those eyes, those oh-so-blue eyes, and he leaned in, and he kissed me. Full on pouty lips, soft and warm, a little tongue across mine, and then he pulled back gently. My lips trembled, my heart fluttered and Eddie said, “Cool…” I nearly died of embarrassment, but then he kissed me again and that faded.

At least, it faded until my father–a big man of over six foot with a burly chest and a mean stare–came out of the back room of the business, pointed at us but said nothing, and then moved his blazer from in front of the window and reparked it so he and my mother could watch me from out of the window.

I thought the ground should just shrivel up and suck me in right then. I never saw Eddie again after that. Guess my dad scared him off, which is really sad.

The sadder part to me is not being able to share that moment with my mother or father. I still remember my daughter coming home telling me when she had her first real kiss, at age 14, and he we giggled and talked about it, and it opened a door to us talking about sexuality and boundaries without lectures, with real genuine excitement for the new phase in her life she was entering.

I never got that with my parents. In fact, soon after that, I ended up grounded and on parental house arrest for the next three years. I won’t go into that in this blog, and some of you know the story already, but I’ll skip forward to that event leading me to leave home at fifteen years old. I also ended up pregnant at sixteen, and my daughter was born just three months shy of my seventeenth birthday. Lucky for me, I’ve beaten the odds–my daughter is 23 and my son is almost 17, and neither of them are pregnant or have gotten someone pregnant, and I think that if nothing else, I learned something from what my parents did wrong, and so it wasn’t a waste. Plus, it’s given me plenty of writing fodder.

Now, back to music. I’ve always loved musicians. My entire life, just about every serious relationship I’ve had has been with someone who had something to do with music. Music changes me. It can put me in a good mood, put me in a bad mood, make me stronger, happier, sadder, better… it makes me feel. I would rather give up my eyesight than to ever not be able to hear music again.

When I was in my first year of college at Odessa College, back home, we went to the high school carnival, with all the rides and the lights. It was one of the few moments in my life when I remember feeling normal. I’ve never, ever felt normal. My mother locked me into the house for three years, I had almost no friends growing up because I couldn’t leave and friends couldn’t come over… I never learned how to be friends with anyone, how to have fun, how to develop social skills. But this night, at this carnival, with a man named Robb, two girls I barely knew but friends of Rob’s named Robin and Christy, and their dates named Wesley and Marcus, I road rides and ate funnel cake and we stood in line in front of the Screamer and listened to Jump! by Van Halen blaring from the speakers.

That night, I was not the teenager who had run away and gotten pregnant. I wasn’t the girl who had disappointed her parents, screwed up her life. I wasn’t the socially inept teenager I believed myself to be. That night, I wore tight jeans and a snug sweater with just the right amount of cleavage showing, comfortable ankle boots that where chic and stylish, my hair worn down and long and wild, with the wind blowing through it. I was tall and thin and happy and young and in love and it was a magic, beautiful moment in my life, and it’s still there, frozen in my memory.

We danced in line, he spun me around, and then we made it to the front and got into the scrambler car for the ride, and they locked the bar down. I put my hands on the bars in front of us, and he put his right hand on top of mine and his left arm around me. I leaned back into the car, my head against his chest, the smell of his cologne mixed with the smell of waffle cone and powdered sugar, and I closed my eyes.

Slowly the ride revved up speed, and it pushed me back against him. I opened my eyes and I laughed out loud. The wind blew stronger and pushed my hair back behind me, flowing in the breeze. I leaned my neck and head all the way back and opened my mouth and sighed and then laughed out loud again. He kept his arm tight around me, and then the music queued up again, Born to Be My Baby, to be exact, a new release by Bon Jovi at the time, circa 1988.

And around and around we went, my laughing and my eyes sparkling with mists of tears, his arm still firm around me, the smile still evident in his oh-so-beautiful eyes, and we sang, “You were born to be my baby, and baby, I was made to be your man. We’ve got something to believe in, even if we don’t know where we stand. Only God will know the reasons, but I bet He must have had a plan…”

For the next three and 1/2 minutes or so, the ride, the man, the night, the song… transported me to somewhere else, somewhere outside of myself, or maybe somewhere deep inside of myself, allowing me to feel me, to be me, to know me… in a way I’ve never known myself before.

As I said, a moment frozen in time. I’ll never forget not one single detail of that moment.

I never did get to see Bon Jovi or any other band in concert, since the age period where I would be going to concerts was during my home lockdown time or after that when I was trying to raise a child and struggle with school and work and bills. Concerts were expensive, and I couldn’t afford to buy tickets and get babysitters and I had no good friends to do things with, because I had never made friends when I couldn’t go and do anything with them, and after I could, I was too busy being grown up and responsible, so I was no fun to them. I had no one to go with anyway. “Late at night and we’ve worked all day. We’ve both got jobs, ’cause there’s bill to pay, but we’ve got something they can’t take away: Our Love, Our Lives…”

On Tuesday night, we have tickets to go see Bon Jovi in concert in Houston.

I’m as giddy about it as a school girl, but I can’t help but think of how different life could have been, should have been. After all, I’ll be going in a wheelchair to the concert, having had to go out of our way to buy accessible tickets. We’ll likely not dance in the aisles with floor seats or anything, and there won’t be any weed smoking, drinking or late-night partying afterward. There’s no carnival rides either. “Light a candle, blow the world away. A table for two on a TV tray. It ain’t fancy, baby, that’s okay. Our Time, Our Way…”

But I won’t be alone. “If we stand side-by-side, there’s a chance we’ll get by…” And when the music plays, I plan to tilt my head back, open my mouth and sigh, and sing at the top of my lungs… and I won’t even mind if there’s a few misty tears in my eyes while I take the wheelchair and spin it around and around like the Screamer and my hair flows behind me.

“Our World, Our Fight.”

Or else, I’ll hold up a lighter or something. Do they even still do that?

“And I know that you’ll live in my heart till the day that I die…”

Love and stuff,
Michy