I'm feeling really sentimental today. I attribute it to listening to Cyndi on my way to work. Sometimes, when I listen to Cyndi, I'm transported back to the time when nothing made sense and life was scary. And then I think about all the great things that have happened to me over the years, including meeting her, and how her music has really been with me through it all.
You may have read this before, but I felt the need to put it on my blog today. I hope you enjoy it.
1984
My friends were metal-heads. I liked Quiet Riot enough, but that was about it. Oh, and Def Leppard. I liked that song, Photograph, and would sing, “Look what you’ve done to this rock’n'roll clown” over and over. My friend Amy and I had bought Def Leppard Pyromania Tour shirts at Hastings Records that summer, and her mother had taken a picture of us in them, on her back porch, with their dog Princess. Princess looked like Lassie, but she was really fat.
The sound was like pure sugar. Bubblegum. Sweet tarts. Tangy Taffy. And I loved it. The boops and bops were pure girl, and unbeknownst to my friends, I was a baby dyke in the making, and wanted every little piece of girl anything in my life, especially if that girl was considered weird, punk, and unusual. Cyndi was all that….cute but not traditionally beautiful, and strange, and her songs touched something in me I didn’t even know what to do with. It all stayed inside.
I went to the record store, without my friends, and bought the tape. I put it into my yellow portable tape recorder, and it never came out. Not all summer. The song names were eventually rubbed cleaned from my greasy fingers consistently flipping it. The yellow radio didn’t even have an auto reverse. I listened to Witness about ten times every night. “You’re sorry now. And you’ll change some how–And I am what you need to get out, but–I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be a witness.” This song made me cry, even though I didn’t really understand what she didn’t want to be a witness to.
“So, will you go with me?” I asked Amy. Amy and I had been best friends since kindergarten, and even though my family had moved the summer before 6th grade and we had gone to different middle schools, we were back together in the same High School. We had remained friends those three years, her mother driving me out to my house “in the country” to ride horses, my mother driving me “into the city” to go bowling and to movies. We had drifted apart enough to notice, but not enough to talk about it. I desperately wanted her to go the concert with me, as I had no one else to ask. I knew she’d rather go see Ratt or Cinderella or Bon Jovi, but I wore her down and she agreed. My mother bought the tickets, and I went to my room, locked the door, and listened to my tape for the 3490th time.
We stood in line outside of the Kiva Auditorium. I was nervous and excited and completely in awe of the crowd that was forming outside. There were girls. Girls. Girls my age and older, with cropped and dyed hair, torn plaid skirts, and rubber bracelets stacked up to their elbows. I didn’t even know these kind of girls existed, and here they were, all around me, here to see my favorite singer in the whole world. In that one moment, I felt like I was okay. Not quite cool, with my Forenza button down shirt and matching sweater, but that there was a future for me. I took it all in, in deep breaths, and exhaled my old self.
She stood above us and looked out into the audience. I was there. Right there. I could see someone grab at her bracelets, and manage to get one lose. I reached down and took off my rhinestone pin, shaped like a squared off bow, and threw it on stage. The thought of someone picking it up later and delivering it to Cyndi thrilled me. I jumped up and down, forgetting everything and everyone… forgetting that my friend Amy thought that the girls with orange hair were weird, forgetting that I felt unattractive and sad and strange, knowing I wasn’t like my friends, but not sure why.
I looked up at Cyndi, in her blue and green Converse, and matted multi-colored messy hair, and her lipstick that was the color of the New Mexico summer sky. I looked up at her, and saw myself. And my eyes teared up as I sang along.
All through the night, stray cat is crying so stray cat sings back, all through the night.
