Look At Your Game, Girl

It could've been in November 1994. I just had bought the cassette. I put it in the recorder of the Jetta. Dunno exactly why or who, but John & Yoko were looking for someone in the streets, and they had left us inside the car. Ringo and George were making some silly jokes, or so. Probably they were excited for the video game they'd just bought. Probably it was another one of the style of that Flintstone's video game they'd played for entire weeks in the summer. 

In the same store they'd bought the video game, I'd bought The Spaghetti Incident?, the eight or nine cassette I'd bought in the same store in the last months. I was crazy about Guns N' Roses. I'd heard them for the first time in the last summer. On TV, they frequently showed the videos of “Estranged”, “The Garden”, “Live And Let Die”, “Don't Cry”, “November Rain” and “Since I Don't Have You”. I was almost 14 years old, a nobody, a teenager, and 'the most dangerous band in the world' blew my mind.

With their fifth studio album in my hands, I had their entire discography –in record time!, two-three months!

It was cold, dark and windy. 

Slash's guitar riff came out from the tiny music speakers of the Jetta. It gave me the chills. 

Dunno knew anything about the album or that song in particular. 

As the song progressed and my brothers made silly jokes, I just watched the photographs and read the lines in the booklet of the cassette. They were photos of the awesome logo of the band, of Duff, of Slash, of Matt... of the famous Axl's white & red Converse... and a sentence: 

A great song can be found anywhere. Do yourself a favor and go find out the originals.

Or something like that.

Then, after drums and bass and some sort of weird synthesizer's sounds, Axl's voice appeared. It sounded so soft, so warm and so sad. A thousand miles different from the ferocious screams of “Welcome To The Jungle”. 

The song made me think of 60's rock n' roll, and I liked it. The next song was a lot more punk rock. I guessed it was from the early 70's, or so. 

It was titled “New Rose” and it started with a little bit to understand words of Duff McKagan. Milliseconds later appeared the drums and then the guitar. Duff sang that awesome song. 

I was so excited! I was about to discover some old cool songs! 

Then John & Yoko got back to the car. 

John looked at me, he sighed, smiled and lowered down the volume of the cassette recorder. Then he turn on the Jetta's engine machine and drove us home. I took back the cassette from the recorder and put it in my walkman –I carried it everywhere– and then I put on my headphones and listened to the album all the way back home.

I should have heard it a thousand times.

Now, almost 30 years later from that first-time experience –the album was released on November 23, 1993–, I am listening The Spaghetti Incident?, again. And, again, I have headphones on. And I would like to write about many things –the origin of the album's title, the addiction issues of Steven Adler, how fun it is to play Slash's guitar riff of the Skyliners' song, how fun it is to play “New Rose” on guitar, how weird and cool and creepy it is to listen to the hidden track with that Charles Manson' song at the end of the album–, but I can't get you out of my mind. 

I got the flu and I am a little bit tired. For two-three days, I hadn't been able to sleep, but I finally could, and I woke up from this dream In which YOU appeared. It was so intense that it pulled me out of bed.

Then I wanted to read but I turn on the Mac, started to write in this blog –my wife & cats are asleep– and put The Spaghetti Incident? on Amazon Music –I miss so much those times in which we were not forced to pay any rent per month to streaming platforms– and put my headphones on, and, as music and words and hours elapsed, I couldn't get you out of my head. 

In my dream, we were so young and we were inside a bus. It was a sunny day. As the bus moved thru the streets, I couldn't stop looking at you. You were enigmatic and beautiful. Perhaps you were some sort of Frankenstein of all the women I have felt attracted to. Also, there was some sort of chemistry between us. I wanted so bad to ask you out. Our eyes met, and finally I asked you out. You smiled and I felt so attracted to you. You said Yes!, and, in an old-fashioned love movie style, we got closer and closer, seconds were like eons, and then we kissed. 

It was so intense! It seemed so real! It was so vivid!

I even have the feeling that my chemical senses are overloaded.

It is cold, dark and windy. I woke up like an hour ago, but I'm still some sort of dizzy.

Dunno know who you are. Nor why did you appear in my dream. But you made me feel I was 14 years old again.

I Dreamed I Dream

I am almost done. I can't breathe. My entire body is electrifying, but in a real bad sense, not in the way you feel electrified when you're in love or when you're drunk.

I've been like this for an entire week. 

I can't sleep. I'm tired.

Suddenly, drugs knock me out and I fly above my own painful consciousness, and you appear out of nowhere in a dream. 

I see you in the shadows, a few meters away from me. You wear a white dress and you smile and you touch your hair in a very shy way. You want to make eye contact with me, but I refuse to do so. Somehow, I still feel angst. I am annoyed. Somehow, I still remember our last fight. And I cannot get out of my head your attitude. 

Have you thought about me, or is it just me?

Seems To Me Time Was, Little Bit As Complicated Then

«Yes, it's him», she said. And she was sitting in her chair, in front of her computer, in the office that both of you shared at that time, a thousand years ago, before the storm, before the earthquake, before the apocalypse..., when you were ill and tired of dealing with your health issues. 

She looked at you, and you listened up and you thought what kind of life was her life, and what kind of life was your life. You really hated your life. Everyday was an inner war for you. And she used to be happy, her husband was still alive and they were a pretty happy couple, and she was smart, strong and absolutely amazing at his job.

And her eyes were like almonds and her face was white and pink, and her hair was long and it had a strange shiny color, between black and brown. You sort of had a crush on her. While she spoke –«Yes, it's him»–, you couldn't stop feeling attracted to her lips, and you wanted to kiss them and to devour her tongue, and you desired to touch her face and her hair, and to hold her hands –to loss your mind in the brief glimpse of her nails–, and to look at her almond eyes forever.

She referred to another researcher and one of the undergrads of this researcher. Three or four antibodies had been lost and the lab had run out of budget. 

Suddenly, she shut up. This researcher entered the office. And it was awkward. 

And this happened a thousand years ago, but you remember it right now 'cause she appeared out of nowhere in your dream. You were inside a van, someone drove you up to an academic event. Apparently, both of you had been invited to give a conference. You didn't know what the hell would you speak about, but you didn't care.

She had a guitar and she said that she admired Izzy Stradlin, and you started to teach her how to play “Seems To Me”, her guitar was not a left-handed guitar, so it was not easy for you.

Then she said that Izzy was the brain of Guns N' Roses, and you felt so impressed. You agreed with her, and you felt so happy. At last, both of you had something in common!

And it is Saturday, and it's Izzy's birthday and it's also the 29th anniversary of the discovery of Kurt Cobain's corpse in the Green House of his mansion in Lake Washington, and you don't know why did she appear in your dream. And you write about it. 

And you are a moron and you wait for her to read what you just wrote in this blog.

 

Since I was born I started to decay

Dunno why but I still remember when you called me up on the telephone last afternoon, I needed to ask you a favor, and I dunno why but I also still remember what I just dreamed a couple of hours ago... Maybe I'm just thrilled 'cause I got in touch with you. 

Whatever. 

I remember how that dream was so scary and how I was so brokenhearted. 

Vividly.

In my dream, this guy –with whom I should have a published paper in Nature Neuroscience– appeared out of nowhere. We were walking across empty and cold German streets, and then we got into a supermarket and then we left the supermarket and then we got into an old building, and so on, and then the dream became some sort of a Matryoshka-like story, like those of Christopher Nolan's, but this is not relevant. 

The most relevant thing is that you... You were spying on me.

I can't explain just why I knew it, but I knew it. 

I felt your presence behind my steps, like a ghost, like a shadow, like the wind.

Then, in a moment, I saw your reflection in a window. It was electrifying. I got shocked. Freezed. Dumbfounded.

I must have been sixteen years old, or so. My own reflection was younger, and I felt so weak and had no confidence in myself. As always happened when I was sixteen. 

What's all this fuzz about...? Are we running...? 

Are we hiding...?

I Preferred Her To Any Other Marijuana

I'm working in this nightmare lab, again, and I dunno why still I'm frightened and attached to it. I hear voices from my ex advisor's office. It seems he's interviewing someone and having a good time. He laughs, and I think “what's goin' on? 90% of the time, from Monday to Friday, I'm the only one in the lab, he always seems unsatisfied with my work, I have published four papers as first author, I never skip none of the seminars in the lab... and he doesn't even says Hi when I say Hi”

Suddenly I don't give a f$ck and I leave the lab. I'm determined to never come back.

Then I sense someone walks behind me. Kinda see her face and her body. 

It all happens as in a movie. 

She's NN, a woman whom I felt attracted to when we were in elementary school, a thousand years ago. Obviously, she's now a woman, not a girl. 

She's all dressed in black and she kinda wants to make eye contact with me, so, at some point, it is impossible to get rid off her eyes, and I look at her, directly to the eyes. She smiles. Her lips are enormous. I cannot stop thinking about a paragraph of The naked ape, one in which Lorenz states a relationship between the size of the lips and the size of the vagina. And it is somehow scary.

Suddenly we're having some sort of picnic, between Las Islas and El Paseo de las Facultades. It is a sunny afternoon. She's having tamales. They look warm and nauseating. She says something about tamales and the way they seem a warm vagina. As she says 'vagina', she emphasizes 'vagina' and gives me a strange look. Again, she smiles.

I tell her I don't like tamales, that I eat them once in a year, and I'm about to tell her that my family has a weird tradition, that they have bought tamales in each each funeral I can think of, when she kisses me.

Her saliva is magnetic, strong and hypnotic. I feel like a bee attracted to a beeswax. 

Then I kiss her and I do it remembering the boy I was in elementary school, the one who believed she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Somehow I am on top of her and I can see her face in a very detailed way. Her eyebrows are weird. It seems she just came out from the beauty salon. And, again, I look at her lips and think about what Konrad Lorenz said about lips and vaginas in his book.

NN smiles again and I feel weak and strong and happy and sad, all at the same time, and I want to get laid with her, and I tell her, and she says “Great! Let's do it!”

Then I wake up.