blue trane's Journal: Happy Birthday Jimi

I ran across a 20-year-old photograph of me, a girl I used to date, and a flaming gay guy standing at Jimi's grave in Greenwood Cemetery in Renton: http://i.imgur.com/4fKglh.jpg. (I'm in the jean jacket.) The inscription on the back of the photograph says "Van, Julie, and me - 1992".

We're standing at about the same place as the kids in the first photo on this site: http://jetcityorange.com/seattle/jimi-hendrix-grave/, but the camera angle is different. The trees in the background show that the spot is the same though.

For what it's worth, I agree with the guy on the linked site: the old old gravesite was classier in its simplicity.

I think I was just getting into heroin in those days. I was later to use that girl ("Julie") as a justification for progressing towards becoming a full-fledged junkie, after she broke up with me ... the guy taking the photo, "Harry", took me downtown and showed me how to buy jeeva from the Mexicans ... He was a real "character", a coworker at the concert security firm where I worked. He wasn't a junkie himself, but helped me buy some heroin when I expressed a desire to try it. He was sleeping with the gay guy in the picture, because he was "polymorphously perverse" I guess.

In the picture, I'm leaning a bit to my right, towards the girl, indicating perhaps that I had gotten out of balance. I'm trying to correct for it by tilting my smile upwards to the right. The result, as I look at it now, is a bemused expression, a little sceptical of the girl, but still giving her the benefit of the doubt. I look straight into the camera, my eyes communicating some kind of ironical feeling. I'm carrying a folded-up blue umbrella, and a paper bag. Was there weed in it?!?

Some of those times are coming back to me now. Van (the gay guy laughing with Julie) knew a lot of clubs on Capitol Hill that we went to. Julie worked as a publicist or something for some band like the Temptations that played the Edgewater one night that I went to with her. We had a kind of a whirlwind grunge romance that ended abruptly, pushing me into a deep depression that I self-medicated with heroin. Those were the times of BBSes and her roommate James was one of the proto-trolls on Chat Chat Chat, one of the popular Seattle boards. His nick was "Prince Valium". I'm remembering now, we met online, and then met up because she wanted to get some weed. Buster Bunny, Cavedweller-Ratking, the Shadow, Elf were some other original trolls from that time that taught me a lot about how to have fun online :)

Hendrix would have been 70 this November 27th...

remembrance

[PopeRatzo]

We have similar stories.

It ended up taking me a long time to recover from my choices, but unlike a lot of others, I lived through it. People who knew me back then didn't have a lot of confidence that I'd survive, but I did, and now that I'm on the other side, I can't imagine becoming the person I am any other way. Funny how I chose to emulate the worst aspects of many of my musical heroes. Today, I try to emulate their best aspects instead.

I didn't remember Hendrix' birthday, but that explains why one of