Tommy (old draft just posted)

Deeply entrenched in the punk scene in Austin in the early 80's, I like a lot of chicks, wanted a really punk rock boyfriend. I had my square side still, but at night, lubed with liquor in those clubs, thrashing around to that 3 chord noise that can still blow out my solar plexus, I felt as punk as they come. I couldn't do the full on costume: the mohawk and safety pins through the cheek, but I was punk in my bones and that's all that mattered. Because I had such fragile self esteem when my buddy alcohol wasn't in my system, I usually had sweet, mild mannered boyfriends who made me feel safe. I had kind of a double life where I went to class during the day and drank and slam danced at night. One night at the club I met some boys who I hadn't seen before - they were all standing in a pack and I grabbed a beer out of one of their hands and swigged it, and the boy who I took it from said "you're the meanest girl in Austin." He went home with me that night and never left, and we lived together for the the remainder of my college days. He was one of the Vidor boys, a group of country boys who moved to Austin and moved straight into the punk scene and took it over. I swear, I've looked at thousands of photos of those days, and I am not in a single one of them even though I was at every show, but Tommy is every one of them, front row center, flying across the stage, totally engaged with the band. Tommy was not the boy I took home with me that night, but he was one of the pack of boys from Vidor that I soon fell for...he was my muse, the one I always wanted to be with, the one who I wanted and then he wanted me and I was too afraid to go all the way and be with him. We were from different worlds...he drank way way to much (the reason he is no longer alive), and there was too much chaos and drama around him. He lived on the knife's edge of junkiedom and homelessness and squalor, and I was a self hating obedient college student. We circled each other for almost 30 years...dear sweet Tommy. When I was getting divorced he was the only person I wanted to see...I lost 50 pounds and bought sexy mini-skirts and hung out at the 24 hour coffee shop across from he restaurant he worked at, waiting for him to get off at around 2:00am..me having gotten up at 6:30am and worked at my hideous office job all day, gone jogging after work then primped to go out and then sat and waited, and waited...all my friends started going home at 11:00, midnite, 1:00am...and then eye stabbingly bored, I still waited in my perfect tiny skirt and clunky heels and big red lips...waited in a boiling hot plastic chair on a cement porch for that kitchin smelling man to come meet me and whisk me away to his apt in South Austin. At around 3:00am we're on the couch watching tv with his roommate and he's drinking, and drinking...me in horror-ville, having been awake so fucking long, but waiting and waiting for that magical 5:00am time, when he's liquored up enough to get in bed with me and get on top of me...and he's sweet, and its terrible, but this is what I've been waiting for...the call of the muse wrecked my marriage and upended my life..the call of this sweet, broken drunken muse..who still calls to me, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get back to him...the muse busted me from the prison of marriage...led me to back to Tommy, led me to S., led me to C....and then, led me to Antarctica. And most recently led me back to Antarctica after 4 years gone, and led me to A. - and a pain I couldn't reckon with. I knew how to handle past pains but this one sunk me. I'm ready to hear the call again, to follow again...

[deleted]...only to be recreated then. God this feels good to come back home to the writing...feels so good to come home to.