I had a flashback last night. Not the LSD kind that concerned citizens used to warn us about, but a sudden random memory access flashback. It was so weird. I was sitting in a restaurant, eating my extremely yummy chimichanga, and chatting with John, when I flashed back to a scene from 1979. I stopped eating for a moment, fork halfway to my mouth, it was so striking in its intensity.
No chimichangas were involved in the memory, so I don't know what inspired it, but I began thinking about one night after a show, doing a line of coke in the back room of the Rainbow Tavern with Robert Hunter. I remember how impressed I was to be invited (I was working for several rock bands as a graphic artist, but I wasn't any big deal in the Seattle music scene). I hadn't done a lot of coke, being chronically underpaid, but I wasn't going to turn down the chance to be in a back room with the lyricist for the Grateful Dead! I was a Deadhead punk rocker. Weird, I know. Hey, it was 1979. My other choices were disco and southern death rock.
So I yanked down my miniskirt, fluffed up my rock chick hair, and slunk into the back room of the tavern, trying to look really cool. Someone laid out the lines, and everyone snorted up. Robert Hunter didn't even look at me, as I recall. I hung around talking to whoever it was that invited me, stole glimpses at Hunter, tried to eavesdrop, and felt utterly stupid. After a while, I slunk out of the room. It was so typical. Nothing trippy happened. Nobody said anything worth remembering. I couldn't think of one thing to say to a guy who I thought was a genuinely unique artist. I just stood around like a dope.
That's probably why I hadn't dwelled on the memory enough to keep it around as a party piece. After all, what could I say? That doing drugs with musicians was boring? It was. That I had no conversational skills as a young woman? Afraid so. That no matter how cool it looked on the outside, being around famous people was just a lot like being around anyone else? I just can't look at someone and think of them as different from me. Well, okay, Michael Jackson, but he's from another planet altogether.
I played through the memory as I finished my chimichanga, thinking about working at the Rainbow, and all the bands I used to know, and how the streets gleamed in deco ripples of black and white light, late at night when it rained and we'd all stand outside after the shows. I remembered wondering why nothing interesting ever happened to me. All I wanted was to be around music, listening and dancing and singing along. Just a kid still, waiting for life to give me the high sign, spell out my moments of glory.
Funny. Doing coke with Robert Hunter and forgetting about it for 17 years. I guess I'll never know when I'm cool.