1993- TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

In 1993 Bill Clinton took office. He was the first president I voted for, and since I was too young to really remember Jimmy Carter, he was the first Democratic president for me. My memories consisted of Reagan and Bush. Clinton was a voice of change. It felt like things could happen now–like the youth had spoken to an extent and I was part of it.

I was living at home. I decided to take a semester off from school, and I pretty much vowed that I wouldn't go back to Whitewater. I'd had my fill. It was time for a change, but I wasn't ready to take any radical steps.

I listened to a lot of Tom Waits. Bone Machine was in my cd player for most of the year. My room was below the living room and my mom would ask me who the guy with gravely voice was, and I'd tell her. "I kind of like him," she'd say, "that I don't wanna grow up song should be your theme song."

I'll never forget my Dad's reaction when I brought home The Black Rider. It was one of the rare times when I asked my parents if they minded if I put something on. The Black Rider begins with this circus noise and Tom coming in with a megaphone screaming "ladies and gentleman under the big top tonight, we have...". My Dad puts down his paper and looks at me and says "I don't know how you can listen to this. You call this music?" Sure, I'd long given up the Metallicas and Iron Maidens, and I choose this album to play in front of him? Of all albums, of all of Tom's albums, The Black Rider? It was too perfect.

I worked at this factory that made playground equipment for kids. Plastic slides and swings that came with plans to build a structure to attach them to. You had to look busy all the time. You could sweep the floor ten times and the employees would still get nervous and the supervisor would tell us to look busy. Everyday the temp service would send in new people and the boss guy would go around and fire people who looked lazy. If you weren't moving when he came around, you were a goner. Apparently the temp service owned the factory.

You couldn't smoke there either. If they caught you smoking, even in your car on the way out of the parking lot, you were fired. Punching in was a problem too. If you punched in a minute or two late, they weren't too happy. But if you punched in too early you'd also hear about it. So there was a huge line of people waiting to punch in at exactly six am. And if you were slow, the guy behind you would give you crap. It was a cold dark winter. I wanted to take a Sharpie and write the words "help me" on one of the slides. I'd imagine this perfect scene of a suburbanite dad putting together a swing set for his kids and seeing my unexpected plea.

After helping to fund the city of Whitewater with the finest in police vehicles, SWAT teams and ammo, I finally turned 21. No more hiding in dryers and refrigerator boxes. No more sucking on a penny and praying that it would work this time. No more visits to a lawyer's office in an attempt to be the one guy who would finally stand up to the injustice of not being able to drink a beer at the age of 20. No more of any of that. But at 21 I hardly cared. I was burned out and sick of it. All it really meant for me was that I could finally serve alcohol without supervision at the bar I was working at.

Hotheaded owner aside, the bar job was pretty cool, and it didn't take long before I was bar manager and was pretty much running the place. It brought a sense of freedom and built my confidence up, even though I couldn't use it on any of the customers. Nobody under 40 ever set foot in there, and if they did, it wasn't to sit at the bar.

Mary used to come in and order gin martinis every afternoon around three o'clock. I'd pour her one and she'd nurse it down. I'd hand her another one and reach for ice cube remains of her old glass and she'd slap my hand. "I'm not done with that." I'd watch her suck those ice cubes past her false teeth and suck each one of them dry and spit it back in her highball. Sometimes she did it twice before letting me take the glass.

Then there was this guy named Chuck. He sold real estate, and he was the sleaziest old guy I'd ever met. Every other word that came out of his mouth was "pussy". It wasn't the word itself, but how he said it. He made it sound like the vilest thing on earth. I didn't like the way he ate his ruebens either.

Maureen and Dave were a cute couple. At 70-something years old, they'd been coming to the bar since it opened. Everyday. Without fail. She had a several glasses of White Zin after an initial martini. He loved his manhattans. I never thought about cutting them off even though they had four or five of them. They were like grandparents. They probably drove like grandparents too, only loaded. I tried not to think about that.

The summer was winding down and I remembered something. I had been accepted at the University of Minnesota. I'd applied almost a year earlier, but I was good to go if it was something I wanted to do. I knew I was never going back to Whitewater, and I feared if I didn't make a change I'd be stuck in Janesville. I was really curious about Minneapolis too, ever since I got into Prince and The Replacements. I thought the city would be purple.

I moved to Minneapolis in the fall. For a couple weeks I don't think I talked to a soul. School hadn't started. I was alone if my one room apartment. Or at least I thought I was alone. Wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the light, and the roaches told a different story.

One day the cable guy knocked on my door. It was so nice to interact with a fellow human being, so I let him talk me into one of his special introductory packages. This was the Paragon cable days. Back before all of the cable mergers happened. I ended up getting all the basic cable channels plus a DMX music tuner with over 100 cable music channels. The remote would list each artist, song title, album and label the song could be found on. I set it to the alternative/college rock channel.

This song came on that I had never heard. I instantly loved it. It was so poppy. So positive. It made me forget about the creepy guy down the hall who I thought was chasing me up the stairs one night. It made me ignore the roaches and not think too much about the Murphy bed and everybody who slept on it and the bathroom I shared with the guy next to me and how I had to knock to see if he was in there. It made the 100-degree room seem tolerable and the showers I'd rig up in the bathtub and the hose that would usually explode when I had shampoo in my hair and soap all over my body not seem so bad. It gave me hope that maybe this was a just a temporary funk and that school would be starting soon and I'd meet new people and would look back on this time as a defining moment in my life.


Flaming Lips
"Turn It On"
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart
Warner Brothers Records