boots with the frayed laces, but his tangle of long, cool hair was chopped off. His dad had given him an ultimatum: you can have long hair, or you can have a car. In Judsonia, the choice was easy. Wear your hair in a hairdo that gets you beat up and not have the wheels tospeed yourself away from your tormentors, or cut your mop and have freedom of movement.
One day I finally got up the courage to uncoolly ask if Anthony liked punk. He was so sweet and shy that he didn’t even speak, he just nodded yes. I asked him to a show and he nodded yes again. He finally gave me his phone number. I tried to play it cool, but I was stressed because I didn’t have a phone number to give him—I didn’t even know where I’d be sleeping that night.
One week later we were boyfriend-girlfriend and we stayed coupled up like that for three whole years. After school I would walk a mile to the pay phone to call him. If he wasn’t there it would be so depressing. It was even worse if he was in the bathroom, taking a shower. Phone calls cost a dime. If I had two dimes I could hang around for a minute and try again, but I often had only a single dime.
Anthony and I had a really sweet relationship. I told him about my uncle, and that I couldn’t remember ever being a virgin. Anthony was a feminist boy, compassionate and patient with me. He listened to a lot of the same music I did and we shared mix tapes. We had endless conversations about music, and with our information exchange, both of our music libraries doubled. He played guitar and I liked to sing, and since we had so many great influences, we decided to start the world’s shittiest band, Little Miss Muffet. Anthony named it.
Little Miss Muffet was so silly. We had one song called “Ziggy Nut.” I still don’t know what it was about. Our drummer, Joey Story, was only thirteen years old. He was kind of a surly kid, and he had a real sweet mom who let us practice in her living room.
Little Miss Muffet had our first show at this place called Hastings. It didn’t make any sense for us to be part of that show, but we were. Joey had an older brother named Dean, who was in a band called Room Fullove Thirteen. They sounded like Third Eye Blind or Blink-182, or something awful like that. They had fancy banners announcing their band. I felt like Room Fullove Thirteenwas just mocking us, all the time, because we were the shittiest band with the shittiest equipment, and you could tell they thought they were really going somewhere. They would take their equipment around in a trailer, while we showed up in our car with a busted-ass Peavey amp. Joey and Dean’s father, Mr. Story, was deep in the throes of a midlife crisis. He’d left Mrs. Story, bought a super-fancy car, and was fake-managing Room Fullove Thirteen. It was like something you’d see on TV, like a bad reality show that makes you cringe because the people all think they’re really going somewhere but you, the viewer, understand they’re going nowhere fast.
We played a couple of shows together. It made me realize that even within the “us” there is a “them.” Like, Room Fullove Thirteen were sort of weird for Arkansas, but next to nerds like me and Anthony, they were normal. They, like everyone else, didn’t know what to make of us.
There was Room Fullove Thirteen, Little Miss Muffet, and Nathan’s band, Mrs. Garrett, which is how I first learned of the whole Nathan phenomenon. Nathan had a tape distro, where he copied the shitty demo tapes of various bands and sold them to people via mail order, or at his shows. He put out a tape of Little Miss Muffet without even asking us! Nathan was so exciting and different, but he was only one of the cool new people I was meeting.
Around that time, my gay feelings were becoming unavoidable. I didn’t have any doubts about how I felt. I had two options: coming out and not knowing what the future held, or staying in and becoming a typical Judsonia woman. In my desperation, I
One day I finally got up the courage to uncoolly ask if Anthony liked punk. He was so sweet and shy that he didn’t even speak, he just nodded yes. I asked him to a show and he nodded yes again. He finally gave me his phone number. I tried to play it cool, but I was stressed because I didn’t have a phone number to give him—I didn’t even know where I’d be sleeping that night.
One week later we were boyfriend-girlfriend and we stayed coupled up like that for three whole years. After school I would walk a mile to the pay phone to call him. If he wasn’t there it would be so depressing. It was even worse if he was in the bathroom, taking a shower. Phone calls cost a dime. If I had two dimes I could hang around for a minute and try again, but I often had only a single dime.
Anthony and I had a really sweet relationship. I told him about my uncle, and that I couldn’t remember ever being a virgin. Anthony was a feminist boy, compassionate and patient with me. He listened to a lot of the same music I did and we shared mix tapes. We had endless conversations about music, and with our information exchange, both of our music libraries doubled. He played guitar and I liked to sing, and since we had so many great influences, we decided to start the world’s shittiest band, Little Miss Muffet. Anthony named it.
Little Miss Muffet was so silly. We had one song called “Ziggy Nut.” I still don’t know what it was about. Our drummer, Joey Story, was only thirteen years old. He was kind of a surly kid, and he had a real sweet mom who let us practice in her living room.
Little Miss Muffet had our first show at this place called Hastings. It didn’t make any sense for us to be part of that show, but we were. Joey had an older brother named Dean, who was in a band called Room Fullove Thirteen. They sounded like Third Eye Blind or Blink-182, or something awful like that. They had fancy banners announcing their band. I felt like Room Fullove Thirteenwas just mocking us, all the time, because we were the shittiest band with the shittiest equipment, and you could tell they thought they were really going somewhere. They would take their equipment around in a trailer, while we showed up in our car with a busted-ass Peavey amp. Joey and Dean’s father, Mr. Story, was deep in the throes of a midlife crisis. He’d left Mrs. Story, bought a super-fancy car, and was fake-managing Room Fullove Thirteen. It was like something you’d see on TV, like a bad reality show that makes you cringe because the people all think they’re really going somewhere but you, the viewer, understand they’re going nowhere fast.
We played a couple of shows together. It made me realize that even within the “us” there is a “them.” Like, Room Fullove Thirteen were sort of weird for Arkansas, but next to nerds like me and Anthony, they were normal. They, like everyone else, didn’t know what to make of us.
There was Room Fullove Thirteen, Little Miss Muffet, and Nathan’s band, Mrs. Garrett, which is how I first learned of the whole Nathan phenomenon. Nathan had a tape distro, where he copied the shitty demo tapes of various bands and sold them to people via mail order, or at his shows. He put out a tape of Little Miss Muffet without even asking us! Nathan was so exciting and different, but he was only one of the cool new people I was meeting.
Around that time, my gay feelings were becoming unavoidable. I didn’t have any doubts about how I felt. I had two options: coming out and not knowing what the future held, or staying in and becoming a typical Judsonia woman. In my desperation, I
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