Jordan came and tript on campus Friday afternoon. I felt like a jerk because I was so tired and irritable and sober, I was afraid I’d bring him down. Sean was already feeling down because news from home said his beloved sun conure Naranja had died. We lookt for parties but none seemed friendly; ended up watching TV in 302 with Kenan and some other guy. Also went to Walmart to buy Dr Thunders and found a camera that someone had left behind in a booth at the in-store McDonald’s, which Jordan just kept. The next morning, Sean left for the hills of Wilkinson County to bury his bird while Jordan & I slept in. When Jordan left, I coordinated the rest of my weekend: down to the Muse to fetch Ceejay’s drums, up thru Echo Hollow to drop them off and to pick him up, and then the next day spent out in Murfreesboro.
Ceejay’s cousin is looking to rent a big old house in Goodlettsville for around $600 a month. The plan is for him and Ceej and Jordan to split it three ways. It’s next to an industrial park, so it has no real neighbors; we could play as loud & as late as we want. For now tho, it’s practice as usual in Ceejay’s parents’ basement, which has to stop at 9pm. That night as Ceej & I stood outside his house an SUV with 3 of his old friends puld up. He ended up trading some acid for some Soma tablets, of which I took 4 and got completely trashed, dizzy, clumsy, couldn’t stand up straight, stuck in a hectic fuzz once we smoked a fat blunt from a sack of ghetto weed wrapt in notebook paper (the baggie, not the blunt). Somas are not for me. I crashed in the basement. In the middle of the night I moved to the divan in the separate sewing room, because I couldn’t sleep very well on the cellar-den recliner. Soon after waking up around noon, Sean arrived with his guitar & there we were, playing every song that we know.
Once Sean drove back to campus we headed southeast on I-24, past the Malvern & Smyrna exits where our families (mine & Sean’s) live, to the flattest part of Middle Tennessee—the real bottom of the Nashville Basin: Murfreesboro. Our first stop was Ceejay’s girlfriend Ericka’s house out by Sulphur Springs. Then we went to these cliffs along the Stones River (coming up the secret locals-only way so that I didn’t even realize we were actually in Smyrna) where two ledges, one with a swinging rope and one without, offer jumping-off space into the murky river below. My friends from high school met us there, Jessica and her boyfriend Paxton, who are both going to MTSU, our chief athletic rival and the only other school in the Basin with a student body as large as UNash. The three of us floated downstream away from everyone else to catch up with each other in the sun.
Later that night I tript for the final (?) time at Jessica’s duplex, which is on Pitts Lane in the ’Boro proper. That trip was intense but manageable, a bit awkward since Jess and Pax weren’t tripping and don’t know much about it. Murfreesboro is a nice place to watch the walls move tho. We watched Gangs of New York and Ceej & I smoked several bowls on the back patio. Ericka came over in her red Saturn, bringing along her kitten named Brutus. Wide-eyed, batting his paws at shadows, in fluffy awe of us giants… it seemed like he was tripping, too.
Monday, Labor Day, kinda suckt ass. Went first to Ericka’s friend’s apartment, which is shared among 4 girls—one of whom, Avery, I’ve been crushing on since we met earlier in the summer—but none were home, which was a bummer. So we went to another friend’s almost identical apartment across town for Ceej to sell his wares. This gave me a chance to dig Murfreesboro and MTSU, which is quite different from Metro Nashville. A true college town, the ’Boro is somewhere between suburban & urban (mediurban?) and somehow has an even more confusing street layout than the Athens district in Nashville. Highway 41, the “Dixie” highway, tears thru town at a 45-degree angle to the core street grid, in which the town square itself is a block or two removed from the main drag, creating lots of interesting and chaotic Y-shaped intersections. One such intersection leads to the Red Rose, a once popular café and all-ages venue that had live music most weekend nights until it closed at the end of last year. Sean & I went to a few shows there before its demise, but never got to play there ourselves. (In fact, along with the Muse, it’s part of how we came to know Ceejay—but I’ll save that for another day.) That’s been my only experience with Murfreesboro until now.
Then Ericka left to go out of town for work, so the kitten was now Ceejay’s responsibility. I’d moronically left my UNash parking pass in Jordan’s car (it was just easier to let him use it, he’d get lost if he tried to park somewhere off campus) so we had to drive to where he’s staying near Spring Hill to pick it up, but neither Ericka nor Jordan can give directions worth a damn, so a lot of money and time are wasted on gas and phone calls… all for a fucking parking pass. Ceej had to meet his supplier so I drove him to his cousin’s to get money, but he wasn’t home. Turns out he couldn’t withdraw what he needed. The kitten of course had been mewing ever since we left the ’Boro. It was now close to 8pm. I dropt Ceej off at his parents’ house and went back to the dorms. Bought candy comfort food at the campus convenience store and went to sleep sorta satisfied—yet still annoyed at everything.
Today was a long day of music classes, laundry, guitar practice, ensemble & masterclass, then band practice in Echo Hollow. I am exhausted.