Monday, October 28, 2013

Lou Reed is really dead



Lou Reed is dead. Really dead this time and not an internet hoax. I wasn't a big fan of his. I associated his music with heroin use and my experiences with people who used heroin were all negative...eventually.

I did plenty of drugs myself but mostly just pot and hallucinogens. I learned early that speed and downers were not for me. Speed made me lose weight and I was far too skinny as it was, downers just put me to sleep and one time I almost didn't wake up and I don't even know what it was I took. Scared my roommate because she couldn't rouse me for classes.

It was a very stupid act on my part. I was 19 maybe and I was getting kicked out of college six weeks before the end of the second semester for smoking pot

which I was doing but they only caught me because they set me up using someone who I thought was a friend and she turned me in

and I had made the mistake of letting the Dean Of Women call my parents to inform them of the fact

apparently she lied to them about what kind of drugs I was taking

and I had recently gotten off the phone with my parents who were coming to get me over the weekend and I knew I was in for a world of hurt and I finally had a date with a guy in my Geology class that I was interested in and we went out that night and he gave me this 'downer', a pill he had got somewhere and I took it.

Fortunately I did get back to my dorm room before I passed out and fortunately (or unfortunately) my roommate just let me be I was still breathing and eventually I woke up and had an awful hangover and had to face my parents in a few days.

So the day comes, and they barely speak to me and frogmarch me to the car and don't let me get in the backseat but make me get in the front seat between them and my father grabs my left arm and jerks up the sleeve of my shirt and checks my arm for tracks and then does the same thing on my right arm and...

I cannot believe he just did that

I am insulted to the core and after that everything he says to me falls on deaf ears. I am, of course, their virtual prisoner so I try and make all the sounds they want to hear.

That little act cleaved me from my parents for the rest of my life. That and the year or two that followed, before I escaped their house altogether and I married the Rat Bastard to do it.

Who I divorced 3 1/2 years later.

The next time my father tried to control who I was and, basically, my life, I stood up to him and told him I would do what I damn well pleased.

Actually, I think what I said was I would sleep with who I wanted and when I wanted and if he didn't like it I would move out.

I was living with them at the time.

I know, I know.

So where was I? Oh yeah, Lou Reed and heroin. My 1st husband/ex-husband used heroin but not while we were married. I didn't put up with that shit. Last I heard he had got disability from his parent's company where he went to work after I divorced him because he didn't have anyone to support him anymore from an accident on the job site because he was probably STONED and hooked up with another junkie who got an inheritance and they were living in a trailer house somewhere in Florida doing drugs all day.

But that was a long time ago.

I had a friend once who did heroin, this was back in the Rat Bastard days, until he broke in my house when I was gone on vacation and stole from me.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I know I'm being unfair to Lou Reed. I know he was a very talented guy and very influential and I did/do like some of his stuff and we are poorer for his passing.

But I was never a big fan.



15 comments:

  1. Well, I think Lou just inspired one of the best posts I've read from anyone in awhile. Yours. This one. So there is that...

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  2. Oooh ... I loved this post! Best Ever!!! I laughed and can relate! hahaha..can totally relate!

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  3. Oh GAWD Ellen, you are my sister! BUT I always loved Lou's music and the mystery of those folks in NYC with their wild ideas and poor judgement- totally smitten with crazy Edie S.

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  4. Never was sure what he did to make so much money.

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  5. I was a casual fan of Lou Reed, but only from afar -- in the way that a singer singing about drug abuse and transsexuals living in East Village tenements within a stone's throw of Andy Warhol can seem glamorous to a young person growing up in the late '70s.

    I still like some songs from that Velvet Underground and Nico album, though it seems like a very haphazard, inconsistent recording to me, and I'm continually puzzled about how it always lands on music industry "greatness" lists.

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  6. Boy this whole post is just over my head entirely, although I do sort of remember Lou Reed. I never ever did any kind of drugs (I did drink a Fuzzy Navel once & thought maybe I got a buzz from it).

    Which all makes your post very exotic to me & suddenly you're even MORE interesting :)

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  7. I saw Lou Reed once in concert - he practically cried on stage when he got heckled by someone in the audience - who to be fair was only voicing how we all felt. Lou Reed was stoned and not putting on the show we had all paid good money to watch. I liked some of his music but to be honest I'm surprised he has lasted so long.

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  8. Look at us all gathering round. I stood in a bathroom once that had the water closet on the wall with a chain. It also had tiny black and white tiles on the floor that visually extended a couple of miles to the toilet with the chain too high for anyone to reach. I woke up in the bath tub and went clean.

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  9. Oh god, I loved everything about Lou Reed, especially in the late 60's.
    College in those days was quite a trip; especially for young girls brought up in OK/TX. Interesting times to say the least.

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  10. Makes no nevermind to me one way or the other but I did like his wife/girlfriend Laurie Anderson. Now there is someone creative.

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  11. Yes to lautir anderson and maybe to lou reed. I was always underwhelmed. Drugs?
    We don't do things like that in Australia.

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  12. Not too good at spelling either - Laurie Anderson of course.

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  13. I guess I was very lucky, because growing up in the sixties and going to hippie Hawaii for graduate school, the use of drugs scared the s++t out of me and I never even wanted to go there. Perhaps it had something to do with how I was raised, but I think it was more because I was living penny to penny.

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  14. An interesting tribute despite not being a fan. I did like Lou Reed and I'm sorry that he's no longer with us. But I'm glad that his passing inspired such an interesting post.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.