godspeed you black emperor! / jackie-o motherfucker
12-04-2003
eglise st. roche, quebec city
(when i get back to the alter-reality, something else will appear in this space.)
i was actually at this precise show.
this is the first of several concerts where i had to deal with the distraction of a partner that was trying to sleep with my friends, and that i should have dumped months previous to the event, or at least explicitly not invited to the show. the truth is that she wasn't interested in the music at all, and ruined several experiences for me through the process of distracting me from the concert. hindsight is obvious: i should have never let it happen. it's harder to come up with an exit strategy in the thick of it than it is to state it from a distance, though, and the end result is that i have lot of memories attached to this period that i wish i didn't have. i should have enjoyed this show more than i did...
i don't know if it's a culture gap or a generation gap or something else, but she seemed to view the idea of sleeping with my friends as normal. in her mind, sharing girls was just something guys did; she almost seemed to even expect me to take some kind of pride in sharing her, as some kind of status point or something, and didn't really understand why i reacted negatively to it. i state this with the benefit of hindsight: it took me forever to understand this, and i didn't at all understand it at the time. i need to stress the point: i didn't understand what she was doing, and i didn't know how to react to it. every time i invited her anywhere, she spent the night hitting on my friends - but she always ended up back in my bed at the end of the ride. she clearly wanted to stay with me. so, what the fuck? was she trying to make me jealous? was she trying to start a fight? was she trying to make me protective? was she trying to assert my dominance? or did she really think that it was just a normal thing that happens? i really couldn't work it through - because she always came back to me, every time. that was the part that i couldn't work through, the fact that she always came back...
i always recognized her autonomy: i never got mad at her, i just got distant from her, and i guess that that misbroadcast a concept of permissiveness. i didn't understand what the fuck she was thinking, and she didn't pick up on my subtle points of coercion. everything else aside, it struck me as pointless to get angry at her: i didn't want to yell at her, i wanted her to stop hitting on my friends, and not because i was mad but because it was what she actually wanted. in the end, i walked out on her because that point wasn't getting across to her: it wasn't about what *i* wanted, it was about what *she* wanted. and, she confused me that much further by trying to move back in with me, afterwards. i really don't think that she ever got her head around what i was being turned off by: she legitimately didn't see the problem with sleeping with my friends.
on this particular night, i had to deal with her making out with my friend in the back seat of the car on the way there (did he like the taste of my cock? because we literally finished moments before we got picked up, and she didn't shower.). again: it was just befuddling. how do you react to that? you have sex with somebody, and an hour later they're all over your friend. what the fuck...
...and, then, she had the nerve to snuggle with me for the entire show. and, as usual, i didn't react to it because i didn't know how to react to it.
but, you can imagine that my mind was a little distracted. what the fuck had i gotten myself into?
i had heard the yanqui material years earlier, from bootlegs over the skinny fists period. my view is that this marked a kind of return to form. so, i was actually happy with the setlist and enjoyed the show as much as i could.
i just wish i would have left her at home, or, better, had already broken up with her.