Why I took down the Dallas sucks entry
September 2nd, 2008A couple of reasons. First off someone suggested I was biting their blog style and that kind of bothered me although I’m wiling to concede that it’s a possibility, we all have influences. Also, and I know you will roll your eyes at me because of the general high level of profanity and low brow commentary usually found in my blog, but I used the word “gay” as a put down for the first time ever (in my blog) and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I mean, I have gay friends that call stupid shit gay all the time, but as with the n word there seems to be different rules of usage for different people.
Also it was kind of an introspective personal thing, mixed with some very personal attacks. Also I was concerned that some of my nice Dallas peeps might be offended because I really slam the place pretty hard, and Dallas may be their special beloved town that fills them with civic pride and here I come talking shit yet again. One thing that sucks about taking it down was the comments that were left and by who.
Oh fuck it… whatever, RIP Sloppyworld, here it is again:
Dallas sucks.
Yeah, I said it. Dallas sucks, and it’s full of old people. Dallas is for old people with tons of money who couldn’t buy style if it bit them on the ass. It’s got a nice skyline yes, but it still kinda sucks.
There’s “big” culture there, as in giant museums with “real” art but who cares about that shit anyways. I prefer counter-culture and Dallas, for all the shadiness, is so devoid of an underground scene it’s ridiculous. Example- I went to a show on a Saturday night and I was embarrassed by the behavior of one of the guys I was with. Some friend of a friend former DJ who has that meth mouth too many cigarettes alcoholic look, who kept breaking into these rubbery dance moves where he would swing his arm in the air like he had a little lasso. For lack of a better word it was really gay, I just don’t know how else to put it. He would do it for about 5 seconds and then stop. My point being, this guy who represents underground electronic dance music and club culture looks like he would die if he actually moved his pudgy body for more than a minute. It was disgusting and I will never look at rave music again in the same light.
At the same time, I did see this one woman, elegant, very tall, white hair, flashing lights on her chest moving to the music, conducting the DJ’s beats with her arms. She was the most striking figure in the room, austere, ghost like and alone. The upside of rave I guess. I wish I knew who she was.
Parts of Dallas are kinda charming, like lower Greenville and areas near downtown, but otherwise it’s a suburban sprawl filled with the dying and those that have resigned themselves to a monotonous boredom broken up only by work, drinking watching sports on TV, and repeat, but then again to some that’s a fun lifestyle… Also, There were some real freaks- I lived for two months with a diabetic gay older obese man with a broken ankle that wasn’t healing who is generally known to be pretty dirty, arrogant, and condescending, which is actually kind of hilarious and the reason I had little sympathy for the fucker. Until you live with someone who lets their own filth pile up around them day after day, and in this case obviously year after year, I don’t think you can say you have seen it all…
That was after I lived in a hotel for a month where I saw all kinds of late night pimping, gangster business/drug dealing and shady looking women. That hotel was actually kind of fun for a while, but soon became surreal and that’s why I chose to live in the house with the weird friend of a friend, because there was more room and the rent was cheap, despite the freaky atmosphere and depressing, dirty environment. Shudder. I became reclusive in the house sticking to the back area where my room, the garage, and the patio were. I did my best to keep the patio area clean but it became apparent that being quiet and clean was freaking the guy out, and amazingly, he asked me to leave! I doubt if it had anything to do with the fact that an impressionable, homeless and young “art guy” had started hanging around with the fat man who seemed to like playing the daddy role if you know what I’m saying.
Frankly I was happy to go. The endless pontificating and big talk about art and writing projects that were never going to happen mixed with the filth was making me a little bit hostile towards the guy who quite frankly should have a caretaker at this point. I was warned several times by a few people about moving in to the house with said dirty old man, so the whole thing was my fault, poor judgment, I’m just a sucker for low rent and back patios.
What else, oh yeah, I hung around with an old friend who was closing down his art gallery after 15 or so years of being in business. As much as I love that guy there were times when I was surprised by the lack of basic civility that was being shown by the group he surrounded himself with. Lack of basic civility is too mild- they were some real creepy, libertine-esque, ass holes, pardon my french. And bear in mind this is an older crowd too. They all smoke like crazy and were simply arrogant, self absorbed and rude. I guess that’s what some older people do to feel better about themselves when former good looks are fading, the hair starts thinning, and life’s harsh realities begin to sink in. I don’t think that group represents the art world in general, but let’s just say that I might as well give up painting now because I would rather jump off a cliff than to feel beholden to that energy. They all went on and on about money, and we all know that talking about money is uncouth, and unless you’re giving it to me, your money (if it really exists at all) does not impress me.
Happiness impresses me. Speaking of which, one of the cooler things that happened in Big D was that I met a girl named Candy and I became a character in her blog called “Candy Says”. There’s a link to it on the side thing. It’s pretty neat to be in a blog actually, and it has only happened to me once before that I know of when Arcie Cola (a transgressive character on a local Austin TV show) would mention me in her blog. From what I understand there is more of me to come in the Candy Says and I think that’s pretty cool. So there was something positive I took away from Dallas after all, and you thought I was exclusively negative and mean spirited in my blog… not so!
What else… I drove around a lot. I became an adulterer (bet you didn’t see that one coming!). I hung out with friends from high school who now are married, have kids and mortgages and lawns to water. I realized just how much movement there has been in my life since I left Dallas for New York City in 1991, and that was juxtaposed on more than a few occasions when I was around people who I knew back in the day who simply had just never left.
They never left.
Why does that not seem normal to me? I could not imagine staying in a city like Dallas for my whole life… At the same time I came to terms with the fact that life had moved on and the comfortable familiarity I felt there had more to do with places than people. I found myself more than a few times driving to the house where I lived when I was a kid, even to the shabby apartment complex my family lived in when we first arrived fresh off the boat from Canada and Ireland. I had this compulsion to touch the past, revel in it. I think much of that had to do with the fact that I didn’t leave Dallas on bad terms (like so many do) and I knew that no one from my past was mad or pissed off at me (although that may change when they read this!). Also when I left I had been in a serious relationship that I now see was a huge part of how I defined myself and I wanted to see what it was like to be back there as a single person. It was all a bit weird and obviously my search for nostalgia finally got boring and the reality sank in that Murder City was no longer my home, my friends had moved on, and despite my old school credibility in Dallas, it just didn’t mean that much to me (or anyone else for that matter) anymore.
I’ll explain the old school credibility at a later time, but let’s just say that when I was 16, 17, 18, I made the scene and ran with the key players. It was job related and like I said I’ll bring that back later.
So you may ask, “What the hell were you doing, man? Did you learn anything from what sounds like a pretty bizarre three month stay in Dallas, or what??”
My answer is I don’t think so, I just wasted a lot of money on gas and suffered a record breaking heat wave while living with a pompous slob. There was some romance and crazy parties, some art and I made a bunch of new music so it wasn’t all for naught. I will say this though, if you want stability and consistency across the years stay put and don’t get too far away from home for any extended period of time, but you also risk becoming bitter and bored and worse, boring.
If you do choose the gypsy life style that I unwittingly have assumed, I say go for it. Just do it. Run away. Go. There is so much world out there and it takes more than a little vacation to really know another place and culture and people. Learn another language and have sex with foreigners, that’s what I did and I feel great. Don’t get married, don’t buy anything too big, and sweet fucking Jesus don’t have kids. Move away and live an adventure but remember- you can never go home again.