animals

it was our first night with the album animals, my high school sweetheart and i. we were at his parents' condo, his parents were (as usual) away and had left us with a rather marvelous stereo. it was a marantz quad system, a big ole honkin amp and four speakers, two marantz and two custom built by the HSS's grandpa. these things were big enough you could fit two good sized teenagers in 'em, and one statistic i remember is that they had 80 pound magnets. altogether, these four speakers on this amp would knock pictures off walls and lamps off tables. i have no idea why the neighbours didn't call the cops. no idea.

so we had a brand new copy of animals, and some excellent weed. excellent. so we smoked the excellent weed. as per the usual, i was off to myself with the album cover, reading the lyrics raptly, tripping hard on the trippyness of them. also, that quad stereo had a 1" green CRT, which served as a balance indicator, sending squiggly lines into the four corners to illustrate the sound patterns. trippy. i can't even describe it, it was that trippy. and profound. oh, damn, it was profoundly trippy.

and the HSS fell asleep on the couch. typical, me wide awake while people slept and resisted me expressing to them how trippy stuff was. so there i was. tripping. may i mention at this point that during my adolescence i had plenty of image problems and occasionally dealt with them obsessively, especially my weight, and at this point in time i was having some success with the eating disorder, and i was looking good? i was looking so good, so thin, good hair day, no one to appreciate it, woe was me. or was it?

the HSS, with whom i was at that time �just friends� (we had a lot of those changes), had an older brother, hereafter known as hunky older brother, or HOB. the HOB comes downstairs, makes some comment about, damn you're fine (in a surprised way, i'd always been the frumpy chubby chick). unzips my cute sweatjacket, says come upstairs. i zip it back up, flustered. he zips it back down, and repeats, come upstairs. so that is what i did.

utterly unremarkable sex in which i feel i was more or less just used. and it was over quick, a shock to me who had only ever before had the HSS and considered forty-five minutes a quickie. afterward, it was all about act like this never happened.

so that's what the album animals brings back, memory-wise.

as an addendum, the first and second guys i ever had sex with were the HSS and the HOB. the third was on another drugged out night at the HSS's parents' condo, with the HOB's best friend george, no doubt he heard i was easy. the HOB acutally discovered us in whatever bed we were in (probably the parents') and just smiled.

so the next day, i got a ride home, in a volkswagon beetle with all the men i'd ever had sex with.

it went downhill from there, breaking up with the HSS precipitated a wave of 70's style promiscuity in which i tried to find validation via the theory that if they wanted to have sex with me, maybe i was pretty.

this is all i can manage to tell of that story, now and hopefully from now on. but now you know.