Daily affirmations of a word mercenary
Narrative Non-Fiction Category
“Narrative non-fiction” is a term for “essays that use the word ‘I’ — a lot.” Well, it’s other things, too. David Sedaris writes narrative non-fiction. Dave Eggers writes narrative non-fiction. Ariel Meadow Stallings writes narrative non-fiction. Oh yes. Yes, she does.
Next week I’m attending GoTT, the Gathering of the Tribes conference. This is the fourth year of the conference, and will be my third year attending (some of you may remember my stories from 2001).
Back when I wrote for Lotus, I used to joke that rave years are like dog years — things evolve so quickly in the dance community, which is of course a reflection of the rapid evolutions that many members of that community experience. Collectives and their events can rise and fall in seasons, and people come in, transform, and exit rather quickly.
Some folks stick around, and it’s mostly these people who attend GoTT. Although even with this more “committed” group of evolved ravers, people are in still in rapid flux.
Take me, for example.
Big Wheels & Lollapalooza
23
Apr
2003
In: Narrative Non-Fiction
Summer of 1992, my two best friends and I liked to pass our late nights by driving around Bainbridge Island, then a sub-rural community beginning its transformation into its current upper-middle class suburban state. Like bored teenagers driving around hometowns everywhere, we were looking for trouble…but in our case it was plastic trouble.
We were looking for big wheels.
None of us drank and two of us were virgins, so we had to get our thrills where we could. 3:30 on Sunday mornings, we would cruise the wealthy newly-developed neighborhoods scanning dewy lawns for glistening big wheels left out by rich children who hadn’t put them away come sunset. When we hit the jackpot, the car would silently roll to a stop, one of us would silently jump out, and the big wheel would be confiscated.
No eruptions of teenage giggles would ensue until we were safely back in the car and several blocks away. We knew when to be quiet.
Once we’d accumulated three big wheels, we would drive to the steepest, longest hill we could find. Typically, it was Arrow Point, near Battle Point Park. We’d hide whoever’s car we happened to be driving and take our big wheels to the top of the hill.
Then we’d head down the hill on our stolen plastic contraband.
Riding a big wheel is no small feat when you’re 17 trying to fit into a seat designed for a 6 year old. The plastic seats would sag beneath our asses, and putting your feet on the pedals (and therefore brakes) was not an option. Knees can’t bend like that. My two companions always opted to ride the hills with their legs sticking straight out on either side of the front wheel. This was probably smart as they could use their feet to brake.
I, meanwhile, preferred to prop my legs up over the steering wheel. This granted me no braking control, but allowed for a less awkward, more kamikaze, experience.
We would scream down the hill, the sound of over-burdened plastic against concrete in our ears, the rush of night air on our faces. It was very exciting in that “don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” sort of way.
One weekend night, as we were in a mid-hill decent, a car crested the hill in the front of us. “Ditch!” came up the battle cry, and all three of us steered toward the ditch at the side of the road. Since the other two could use their feet to brake, they had smooth transitions from downhill to ditch. I, meanwhile, steered to sharply to the right, and wiped out on the asphalt…effectively wiping off the top several layers of skin from my right forearm.
I made it into the ditch anyway. We liked to think the cars never saw us, but I’m sure there were late night Island drivers wondering what the HELL those three girls were doing in the ditch at this time of night. Whatever. I was bleeding and pissed off and had cracked the axle of my big wheel. This meant we would have to hunt for a replacement next weekend, instead of just enjoying our night-rides.
The road rash on my arm healed pretty well. It turned into a vast field of scab.
A couple weeks after my accident, I headed to Lollapalooza with Susannah. We weren’t big grunge fans, but we were high school girls with a huge rock festival happening at the county fairgrounds where we used to show our rabbits as part of 4H, so we had to go…just for the irony of it, really.
Naturally, when Soundgarden came onto the main stage, I did what every good 17 year old girl wearing flannel and cut-offs was supposed to do: I went into the enormous mosh pit.
It was dusty-sweaty and hot and exciting and rough and all the things that mosh pits were supposed to be. I jostled around and laughed and tried to keep from get getting knocked over. I didn’t know any of the songs playing, so I couldn’t really sing along. If I’d been trying harder I could have been a poser, but realistically I was just there … having as much fun as I could.
After the set ended, the mosh throng loosened up, and I squeezed my way out to go get some lemonade and meet back up with Susannah.
Once out of the crowd, I straighten my shirt and hair and noticed my arm.
Where my expansive brittle scab had been, now was just smooth pink skin. Not a single crust or hint of scabacious material remained. I poked my arm. It wasn’t tender or painful in the least.
I slowly realized that all the sweat and friction from the mosh pit had effectively eased the scab, piece by piece, right off my skin. A sense of foul accomplishment spread through me as I realized that every person who’d slammed against me, every sweating concert-goer who’d jostled up next to that innocent looking 17 year old girl that was me, every single one of them had taken away a little gift. They’d one by one transferred my scab to their skin or clothing.
And THAT was disgusting.
And THAT was hard-fucking-core.
Tales Of The Insured
19
Mar
2003
In: Narrative Non-Fiction
In an effort to distract myself from the black cloud hanging over my head (you know: that black cloud that smells of war, diplomatic melt-down, and impending death), here is a story that includes drugs, children on crutches, a russian, a dutch woman, and me being nearly naked and having my mouth wide open (although not both at once).
Marked
24
Feb
2003
In: Narrative Non-Fiction
I have a birthmark.
Crackeine
31
Dec
2002
In: Narrative Non-Fiction
My boyfriend’s father gave him crack for Christmas.
Ok, ok: not actual crack (which we know from Whitney Houston is “whack”). But close enough: a bag of coffee, complete with its “fresh from the head shop” paraphernalia: a grinder and a French press. Oh, and a fantastic kettle, which I will use for my own non-coffee devices.
Now, when I got my first office job in 1996, I conducted what I called “The Butt Tests.” These test consisted of eating and drinking different substances and then sitting on my butt and observing the effects on my nervous system, mood, and digestion. Refined sugar made me giddy, then exhausted. Carbohydrates made me go into a mild desk-coma. Black tea made me alert and excited to be alive. Green tea kept me gently buzzed for hours and hours.
Coffee, meanwhile, made me sweaty and twitchy, and I would type so fast that my fingers couldn’t keep up. After an hour or so, coffee would drop me on my ass like the jilted crack-ho I was, leaving me begging for another cup and mopping my brow, a fire in my belly that could be a craving or could have just been the beginnings of an ulcer.
I saw quickly that coffee was the methamphetamine of the office world. In coffee land, everyone’s wide-awake. And they want you to join their club where the code words are things like “double half-caff non-fat caramel mochafrappaesspresachino.” That’s actually the country club of coffee drinking. Most of the time you find folks in the coffee crackhouse: low-browing it around the office drip coffeemaker, filling up styrofoam cups that look suspciously like stained mattresses lieing in a dingy basement somewhere.
Moral of the story? Coffee bad! Alternate moral: I’m a tea bigot.
And now, thanks to his father, my boyfriend has joined the dark side of the caffeine empire. Long ago I had a boyfriend who drank coffee. Three triple shots of espresso a day! Once ever few months he would have to quit cold turkey, and would spend a couple days writhing on the floor in pain. Soon, that may be Andreas.
While I sip my tea with milk and honey, he’ll lie twitching on the floor, begging for just one more cup of the good stuff. I’ll shake my head and sigh.
Editorial Embryo
17
Dec
2002
In: Narrative Non-Fiction
Fall of 1995, I moved into a four+ bedroom house in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle. I moved in with four female roommates: two UW buddies, and two young women we’d found via room postings on college bulletin boards. One was an 18 year old from the Tri-Cities, the other was a deadhead from Chicago who’d been forced to settle down by Jerry Garcia’s death.
Five women between the ages of 18 and 20 in one house was exactly the sort of bedlam you’d expect. The deadhead painted the basement sky blue with white clouds. We all went and bought matching Indian bedspreads. The fabric-covered lights in the front windows prompted several friends to comment that the place looked like a brothel. We liked it that way.
Naturally, any solid college house must have a name, and this one was christened “The Mothership.” The name served the place well, even easily lending itself to becoming a legacy: our next house was called “The Othership.” But that wasn’t until ‘96.
In 1995, it was all about The Mothership. My father, tickled by the name, offered to wood burn a sign for our door. He called one afternoon while I was out (no doubt I was getting stoned behind those campus columns), and spoke to my deadhead roommate. My dad knew that we didn’t pronounce the name properly — the “th” was softened, and the “r” eliminated.
“How should I spell it?” he asked my roommate.
“DA MUTHASHIP,” she answered.
And so it was.
I still have the sign my father made, and it still irritates me to no end that it’s “DA MUTHASHIP.” It’s inconstant. It should either be “DA MUDDASHIP” (ridiculous!) or “THA MUTHASHIP” (preferable). I blame not my father. I blame myself, the embryonic editor at age 20, for not being there to answer the phone.
Next week I’m attending GoTT, the Gathering of the Tribes conference. This is the fourth year of the conference, and will be my third year attending (some of you may remember my stories from 2001).
Back when I wrote for Lotus, I used to joke that rave years are like dog years — things evolve so quickly in the dance community, which is of course a reflection of the rapid evolutions that many members of that community experience. Collectives and their events can rise and fall in seasons, and people come in, transform, and exit rather quickly.
Some folks stick around, and it’s mostly these people who attend GoTT. Although even with this more “committed” group of evolved ravers, people are in still in rapid flux.
Take me, for example.
Big Wheels & Lollapalooza
23 Apr 2003 In: Narrative Non-FictionSummer of 1992, my two best friends and I liked to pass our late nights by driving around Bainbridge Island, then a sub-rural community beginning its transformation into its current upper-middle class suburban state. Like bored teenagers driving around hometowns everywhere, we were looking for trouble…but in our case it was plastic trouble.
We were looking for big wheels.
None of us drank and two of us were virgins, so we had to get our thrills where we could. 3:30 on Sunday mornings, we would cruise the wealthy newly-developed neighborhoods scanning dewy lawns for glistening big wheels left out by rich children who hadn’t put them away come sunset. When we hit the jackpot, the car would silently roll to a stop, one of us would silently jump out, and the big wheel would be confiscated.
No eruptions of teenage giggles would ensue until we were safely back in the car and several blocks away. We knew when to be quiet.
Once we’d accumulated three big wheels, we would drive to the steepest, longest hill we could find. Typically, it was Arrow Point, near Battle Point Park. We’d hide whoever’s car we happened to be driving and take our big wheels to the top of the hill.
Then we’d head down the hill on our stolen plastic contraband.
Riding a big wheel is no small feat when you’re 17 trying to fit into a seat designed for a 6 year old. The plastic seats would sag beneath our asses, and putting your feet on the pedals (and therefore brakes) was not an option. Knees can’t bend like that. My two companions always opted to ride the hills with their legs sticking straight out on either side of the front wheel. This was probably smart as they could use their feet to brake.
I, meanwhile, preferred to prop my legs up over the steering wheel. This granted me no braking control, but allowed for a less awkward, more kamikaze, experience.
We would scream down the hill, the sound of over-burdened plastic against concrete in our ears, the rush of night air on our faces. It was very exciting in that “don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?” sort of way.
One weekend night, as we were in a mid-hill decent, a car crested the hill in the front of us. “Ditch!” came up the battle cry, and all three of us steered toward the ditch at the side of the road. Since the other two could use their feet to brake, they had smooth transitions from downhill to ditch. I, meanwhile, steered to sharply to the right, and wiped out on the asphalt…effectively wiping off the top several layers of skin from my right forearm.
I made it into the ditch anyway. We liked to think the cars never saw us, but I’m sure there were late night Island drivers wondering what the HELL those three girls were doing in the ditch at this time of night. Whatever. I was bleeding and pissed off and had cracked the axle of my big wheel. This meant we would have to hunt for a replacement next weekend, instead of just enjoying our night-rides.
The road rash on my arm healed pretty well. It turned into a vast field of scab.
A couple weeks after my accident, I headed to Lollapalooza with Susannah. We weren’t big grunge fans, but we were high school girls with a huge rock festival happening at the county fairgrounds where we used to show our rabbits as part of 4H, so we had to go…just for the irony of it, really.
Naturally, when Soundgarden came onto the main stage, I did what every good 17 year old girl wearing flannel and cut-offs was supposed to do: I went into the enormous mosh pit.
It was dusty-sweaty and hot and exciting and rough and all the things that mosh pits were supposed to be. I jostled around and laughed and tried to keep from get getting knocked over. I didn’t know any of the songs playing, so I couldn’t really sing along. If I’d been trying harder I could have been a poser, but realistically I was just there … having as much fun as I could.
After the set ended, the mosh throng loosened up, and I squeezed my way out to go get some lemonade and meet back up with Susannah.
Once out of the crowd, I straighten my shirt and hair and noticed my arm.
Where my expansive brittle scab had been, now was just smooth pink skin. Not a single crust or hint of scabacious material remained. I poked my arm. It wasn’t tender or painful in the least.
I slowly realized that all the sweat and friction from the mosh pit had effectively eased the scab, piece by piece, right off my skin. A sense of foul accomplishment spread through me as I realized that every person who’d slammed against me, every sweating concert-goer who’d jostled up next to that innocent looking 17 year old girl that was me, every single one of them had taken away a little gift. They’d one by one transferred my scab to their skin or clothing.
And THAT was disgusting.
And THAT was hard-fucking-core.
Tales Of The Insured
19 Mar 2003 In: Narrative Non-FictionIn an effort to distract myself from the black cloud hanging over my head (you know: that black cloud that smells of war, diplomatic melt-down, and impending death), here is a story that includes drugs, children on crutches, a russian, a dutch woman, and me being nearly naked and having my mouth wide open (although not both at once).
Marked
24 Feb 2003 In: Narrative Non-FictionI have a birthmark.
Crackeine
31 Dec 2002 In: Narrative Non-FictionMy boyfriend’s father gave him crack for Christmas.
Ok, ok: not actual crack (which we know from Whitney Houston is “whack”). But close enough: a bag of coffee, complete with its “fresh from the head shop” paraphernalia: a grinder and a French press. Oh, and a fantastic kettle, which I will use for my own non-coffee devices.
Now, when I got my first office job in 1996, I conducted what I called “The Butt Tests.” These test consisted of eating and drinking different substances and then sitting on my butt and observing the effects on my nervous system, mood, and digestion. Refined sugar made me giddy, then exhausted. Carbohydrates made me go into a mild desk-coma. Black tea made me alert and excited to be alive. Green tea kept me gently buzzed for hours and hours.
Coffee, meanwhile, made me sweaty and twitchy, and I would type so fast that my fingers couldn’t keep up. After an hour or so, coffee would drop me on my ass like the jilted crack-ho I was, leaving me begging for another cup and mopping my brow, a fire in my belly that could be a craving or could have just been the beginnings of an ulcer.
I saw quickly that coffee was the methamphetamine of the office world. In coffee land, everyone’s wide-awake. And they want you to join their club where the code words are things like “double half-caff non-fat caramel mochafrappaesspresachino.” That’s actually the country club of coffee drinking. Most of the time you find folks in the coffee crackhouse: low-browing it around the office drip coffeemaker, filling up styrofoam cups that look suspciously like stained mattresses lieing in a dingy basement somewhere.
Moral of the story? Coffee bad! Alternate moral: I’m a tea bigot.
And now, thanks to his father, my boyfriend has joined the dark side of the caffeine empire. Long ago I had a boyfriend who drank coffee. Three triple shots of espresso a day! Once ever few months he would have to quit cold turkey, and would spend a couple days writhing on the floor in pain. Soon, that may be Andreas.
While I sip my tea with milk and honey, he’ll lie twitching on the floor, begging for just one more cup of the good stuff. I’ll shake my head and sigh.
Editorial Embryo
17 Dec 2002 In: Narrative Non-FictionFall of 1995, I moved into a four+ bedroom house in the Maple Leaf neighborhood of Seattle. I moved in with four female roommates: two UW buddies, and two young women we’d found via room postings on college bulletin boards. One was an 18 year old from the Tri-Cities, the other was a deadhead from Chicago who’d been forced to settle down by Jerry Garcia’s death.
Five women between the ages of 18 and 20 in one house was exactly the sort of bedlam you’d expect. The deadhead painted the basement sky blue with white clouds. We all went and bought matching Indian bedspreads. The fabric-covered lights in the front windows prompted several friends to comment that the place looked like a brothel. We liked it that way.
Naturally, any solid college house must have a name, and this one was christened “The Mothership.” The name served the place well, even easily lending itself to becoming a legacy: our next house was called “The Othership.” But that wasn’t until ‘96.
In 1995, it was all about The Mothership. My father, tickled by the name, offered to wood burn a sign for our door. He called one afternoon while I was out (no doubt I was getting stoned behind those campus columns), and spoke to my deadhead roommate. My dad knew that we didn’t pronounce the name properly — the “th” was softened, and the “r” eliminated.
“How should I spell it?” he asked my roommate.
“DA MUTHASHIP,” she answered.
And so it was.
I still have the sign my father made, and it still irritates me to no end that it’s “DA MUTHASHIP.” It’s inconstant. It should either be “DA MUDDASHIP” (ridiculous!) or “THA MUTHASHIP” (preferable). I blame not my father. I blame myself, the embryonic editor at age 20, for not being there to answer the phone.
Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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