A Steadier Hand
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off. A place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy, and I'm coming to you from sunny central Mexico, the state of Guanajuato. Myself and my two senior pets are on a sort of world tour, you could say, interviewing places to live and potentially retire one day. Day.
Biddy Bops:Mexico is an incredible country with much to offer, but I don't think I've found my forever home yet. I've realized recently that if I were to make the move full time, permanent, forever in Mexico, I would have to become a sandal person. Not a strappy sandal heel, but a toes gripping the earth sandal person. I think I'm more of a boot person, stomp through the rain puddles boot person. Strappy can be a desirable feature in boot wear, as well as a slender or short heel, nothing blocky for my taste.
Biddy Bops:A rounded toe shape is my enduring preference. A holdover, no doubt, from my days wearing Mary Janes and plastic barrettes shaped like circus animals. Hanging around outside of gay clubs in the nineties and the parks and alleyways, nearby concert venues waiting for the show to start. Once, back at just such a park in Denver, my BFF and I shuffled around the periphery, smoking cigarettes and trying to look cool while chatting up a couple kids our age. Danny wore low, slim jeans like mine, but instead of the baby tee I wore, her t shirt was ringed around the neck and sleeves.
Biddy Bops:Her hair was bleached blonde, the color I'd always wanted, but mine always ended up orange looking. She was eyeing me in a way that made my belly button piercing flutter and my BFF to roll his eyes. They didn't have tickets and we were going up to their place a block away to drink some beers. We rounded the corner near the center of the park by an empty stone fountain, and I was immediately struck by her bright red hair, a neon red against her alabaster skin. Her narrow shoulders were hunched inward like folded bird wings.
Biddy Bops:Mickey Mickey Verigni and the rest of her band, Lush, the band impress her, I walked right up to them and apologizing profusely, stuttering in between sips of my cigarette and with my stringy, chin length hair falling into my face. Micky must have admired my moxie back then. She put I gasped and she gave me a coy little wave. The elegance conveyed was electrifying. After the show, which was a fucking frolic and a dream, we made our way out of the theater stopping to receive thanks from the 1st band of the 9th for showing up.
Biddy Bops:The lead singer smiled broadly at me, saying he'd seen me out there and he really liked my barrettes. You guys, it was Rivers Cuomo. The opening band was Weezer, back when Patrick Wilson was the most famous member, the drummer. Lending credibility to his new project, thanks to the more successful band, at the time, The Rentals, let's take a listen break. Maybe even a booty shake.
Biddy Bops:First, we heard Friends of P by The Rentals. Following that was For Love by Lush. Welcome back. So I've been trying to teach myself to sew. This is another thing I can do at home alone as I like it with pets.
Biddy Bops:One of the few things I toted from the US all the way to Guanajuato along with myself, the cat, Cozette Schuette Papette Mapette, and my Pekingese boy, the monkey lion dog of Peking, China, is a white brand, millennium edition sewing machine. My mother purchased these for each of us, my older sister and I, one Christmas long ago now. My sister was given the traditional white colored white machine, which meant mom was acknowledging my fashion choices and aesthetics in general by choosing black for me. My wardrobe still heavily features black, not the primary choice, some might say, for the tropical climes here in Mexico. Neither my sister nor myself knew how to sew or had even asked for a sewing machine.
Biddy Bops:Mom sewed the odd Halloween costume for us and my grandmother made a living sewing custom draperies out of her home. We'd never been taught and so each of us toted these machines around as we moved houses and apartments over the years. When COVID hit, I moved in with my mom who, despite her high risk status, never contracted it. She died later that year due to a constellation of other illnesses. In life, she remained a NOVID.
Biddy Bops:I pestered her in our last year together to teach me to sew. She huffed and puffed, presumably exasperated that I'd never learned on my own. There was the great rolling of eyes and smacking of lips, wet as aunt Rella's kisses had been. Aunt Rella was from dad's side, obviously, since affection hadn't been something I'd grown up with, unless you include alienation of in front of it. But these weren't kisses.
Biddy Bops:Since suffering at least one stroke that I knew of, she seemed to be producing more saliva than before. Mom was suddenly a whirlwind, flicking fabric and snapping bobbins and needles in place. As she worked her expression into a sort of grimace, smacking her lips, sucking her teeth. Wait, I said. Slow down.
Biddy Bops:If you let me watch you set up the machine I might understand better. She did somewhat allowing me to ask questions along the way. Snorting in response. It's just so simple. Anyone can do it.
Biddy Bops:You see? See? I realized our styles of teaching were different. An unfair comparison for sure, as I've been formally trained, but my heart sort of sunk to recall this familiar method of teaching. The old, I can't believe you don't know this already method.
Biddy Bops:It would have been hard to learn anything that way, but very easy to believe yourself worth less for not already knowing this or that or probably anything. I watched a few videos on YouTube before learning how to sew a seam just this last fall after renting a house near Ajik and toting out my black white brand sewing machine. I fired it up and realized I'm something of a needy learner. It was reassurance I saw while researching and cross checking various videos. I tried once before, but I broke the needle straight away.
Biddy Bops:I break guitar strings too. I ruin everything with my brute force. Eventually, I was able to sew a seam. It was crooked as my grandma's gnarled hands had been. The seam in front of me, a ragged zigzag.
Biddy Bops:This is because my hands shook. I was nervous I'd made mistakes, ensuring I'd make them by exceeding my own thoughts with self doubt. When that wasn't enough, my own hand set about sabotage. The shaking is part of the clenching of the jaw and the tension in my neck and the concrete shoulder raising up so that the hips follow out of balance, out of alignment, and the spine flares up and nerve pain joins in with the arthritis and inflammation, a system within my body. We all have systems like these, our own versions of them.
Biddy Bops:Our emotions become oversaturated, and my mental state overrides my body expressing itself through my muscles and joints, no less than a vice like grip of days gone by clamping down on my neck, twisting my spine, all while my heart is caught like my breath in my chest, in my throat. A hummingbird fluttering with all its might and merely hovering going nowhere. Paralysis can set in, but this is spring now. It's a new year on a steadier hand and we're stronger for recognizing the systems of dysfunction within ourselves. For me, taking those moments for myself is a way to show respect for not only my experiences in the moment, but to show respect for the girl within me who has suffered.
Biddy Bops:These are the moments we share now, gentle listener, as we enjoy a song together. We just heard Grow Into a Ghost by Swearing from 2018, and we're back. I've always been interested in fashion. And before I had ever heard of Prada, Galliano, or McQueen, I was obsessed with getting my hands on a pair of pink and purple pinstriped jeans. Lee's, Jordache, either would look bitchin'.
Biddy Bops:I just knew it. I begged and instead of a trip to the mall, my mom drove me to the fabric store. I leafed through the Holly Hobbie style of dresses sans bonnet ofs. I never wore skirts or dresses back then. They made me feel vulnerable.
Biddy Bops:I convinced my mother that pants would be best, a jumpsuit maybe, full of black and white stripes instead of pink and purple. My aim was to replicate the black and white suit Nikki Sixx had worn during the theater of Pain era, my favorite band at that time. It started with Shout at the Devil, a tape I bought with my paper route money. Mom saw the title and threatened to confiscate the cassette. I convinced her to let me keep it by explaining they were shouting at the devil because they knew the devil was bad.
Biddy Bops:The suit was a cotton polyester blend and hung like the baggy costume it was over my shapeless 12 year old frame. I hadn't the nerve to wear it outside of my room, but before it made its way back to the dark recesses of my closet for good, I used my sister's eyeliner to color in one black rectangle under each eye and scroll FTW up my arm. Clad in my badass ensemble, I performed my best air based moves in the mirror. The good news was I hadn't asked for the red leather pants, dust in kerosene and set alight like the Livewire video. The bad news was that their next album Girls Girls Girls featured heavily in the development of body issues and internalized misogyny.
Biddy Bops:So it goes when all of life is a stage and all of us players in the theater of pain. Our last song comes from Evans, the deaf. It's called Telling Lies. This has been Biddy Sounds Off. Thank you for listening.
