Orbits

[0bleak]

For those that aren't familiar with the Club Kids, here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_Kids

I'm not mentioning them to say that I was on their level, and I don't think I really even knew about their existence at the time, but there was kind of a parallel in that these people lived for going out to clubs and raves (I was going somewhere at least 3 nights a week on top of my Friday DJ gig - often going to "nearby" larger cities like Charlotte or Atlanta - or even going as far as Cincinnati), and that they also had a striking appearance (very creative, a lot more so than I could come up with in most cases, but also some of the looks were pretty ludicrous (although I guess that's what they were often going for so props to them).
I was also in the south where it took a lot less to stand out, and I also wasn't just a "freaks come out at night" (famous electro-rap song by Whodini) although about 8-10 years before this time period so it would have been a bit dated by then.
It's also not like I could just easily remove all of the colors in my hair and then put them back again when I wanted to go at night. Also the piercings. And I didn't feel like I should have to conform anyway so some accessories like my watch which looked like it was from some cyberpunk future and pretty big and clunky (someone once said it was like I was carrying a suitcase on my arm, but that was more then a bit of an exaggeration) so I pretty much stood out all of the time no matter how little else I "dressed up". Oh, and always different color contacts in each eye (I usually went with a green and a purple). That was just the minimum of "striking" stuff when I went out anywhere like during the day.
It seemed to attract a lot of (mostly positive) attention from women (and I don't just mean those in "alternative" subcultures) so I often had people either coming up and flirting with me, or being more subtle like just making eye contact while smiling, or whatever.
That's not to even mention the attention I got when I was going out dancing (and I was also known for my dancing - i don't even know how to describe it - some kind of footwork).
One woman i was with said something one time along the lines of "every single woman in here is staring at you."
Long story not ever going to be short at this point, there started to usually be at least one or more women that I was dating at any one time.
Some I liked more than others, naturally, and so I didn't let myself become too pulled into their orbit or stop also dating other women when they asked (but they would stop things with me if I said no to the request).
However if I really liked someone, it would be pretty much exclusive from the point I met them. It was weird how no words ever needed to be said - like we would both just know.
The problem is that i often was like Icarus - I couldn't really hold on to this beautiful woman, could I?
I still held all of the self-loathing inside of myself, and she's going to eventually find out how incapable I am.
"You were so hard to find. The beautiful ones, they hurt you everytime (...) The beautiful ones, you always seem to lose"
There was one woman in particular who I thought was so beautiful, and she went by the name Guinevere (surely that must have not been her real name!? right?), but that's how she introduced herself to me one night (and while she was with another guy in tow. what was she playing at there?)
i never really tried to get with her, but I guess maybe she had been waiting for her moment to strike with me which was one particular night i just went out with some guy friends.
I left the club for a little while with her because she wanted to take me somewhere to eat and talk for a bit, and when we got back to the club, I just kind of jumped out of the car (I guess she wasn't going back in (surprise to me), and then asked me something like "i don't even get a kiss or anything?!" so I walked back over to give her a kiss, and while kissing her it occurred to me how absurd and impossible the situation was in my mind (someone this beautiful wanting me?!) so the kissing turned into a laugh on my part, but I think she took it that I was laughing at her because she was kind of catty to me when I saw her after that).
Now at this point I think I've started to lose the plot, but the main thing I'm trying to get across is that in the middle of all this stuff, there was sometimes something of "I want to pull you exclusively into my orbit" that I just wasn't going to do with the options I had available.

I know the songs I referenced are anachronistic for the time period I'm talking about, but I don't care.

 

[0bleak]

I'm kind of chuckling at this and at myself when I listen back to this.
Considering it was one of my favorite songs that year, I wonder if it had a subconscious influence on me 8-10 years later.
"all kinds of colors running through their hair"
"Freaks are so bad they got their own dance"
"and they don't walk, when they step, they strut" - I could punk most anyone. Even the baddest looking f*ckers would "move lanes" when I came through, and I would NEVER be the first to avert mine eyes.
I mean, how many people would confidently go to a crack dealer's house in one of the worst hoods in town, by themselves, and unarmed, to demand their roommate's stolen tv back and also be successful with it, eh? eh?! EH?

 

[0bleak]

I was thinking back it occurred to me that if I was pulled into someone's orbit and we're going out doing things she liked to do, meeting her friends, or whatever else that I would cut back on the going out a little bit - not because i was ever asked to cut back, but more like a natural response to other things taking up time/energy (mental energy being a big one - I was horrible when it came to socializing with new people).

I might have it wrong that dating in general is basically different degrees of what you consider being pulled into people's orbits so hopefully I'm not just venturing down more of an incorrect path here:
There was one person I really liked where we became more of an exclusive item, but then I got into a couple of situations where I had a choice to make with her:
There was this one particular girl, and she was REALLY hot, but I didn't know her at all, but somehow she knew me and just showed up out of the blue in the middle of somewhere I was walking in the middle of the day and started complimenting me on my eyes, and I was rather dumbfounded and didn't know what to say besides thanks, and then she showed up again soon after that and went off on the typical "weather" small talk - again, I don't know this woman at all, or even her name (yeah, people with working brains and social skills probably would have asked by that point), but then soon after that, she shows up to the gay club where i went on Thursdays (definite stalking behavior - there's no reason she would have been there otherwise, and it's pretty weird that someone was able to find out that information about me) and starts talking to me again while I was either on or coming off the dancefloor (don't remember exactly) like she knows me and even says my name, but I'm there with the woman that I mentioned above and i'm pretty sure she's going to be angry if I keep talking to this person because I look over across the club and she's looking at me talking to the stranger so I had to make a quick calculation - keep showing interest by talking to the hot stalker or go with the devil I know - i chose the latter so i tried to keep the conversation short while continually looking back over to the woman I was there with and kind of trying to make head nodding/pointing/directing the stalker to her so that the stalker would catch on, which she did.
My "girlfriend" didn't even mention anything about it, but I did notice that she became more sexually charged after that.
The funny thing is that like a week later I got too drunk beforehand to go out that particular night, but the "girlfriend" I was seeing where i thought things were now more exclusive - she went out that night anyway, and someone reported back to me that she was flirting with someone so I was like wtf?
the thing is though (and unfortunately for the supposed "girlfriend") I saw someone while I was out about during the day the next week that i thought was really hot, and I noticed that she was very noticeably looking me up and down and ogling me while, coincidentally, someone I kind of knew was talking to her. So after he was done talking to her, I went over and talked to him to find out a little more information to have in my "back pocket" for next time.
The thing is though i didn't really need it, and this is where it's quite an ironic turn for what i thought was the more exclusive relationship mentioned above because, for whatever reason, she didn't show up the following week to the club, while the ogler did (had she been stalking me, too - wtf?) and suggested i go home with her so i made the calculation that the "girlfriend" wasn't really as such if she had been flirting with someone the night I wasn't there, and so I decided to go home with this new woman.
But, the "girlfriend" was quite angry when she found out, but I didn't care (I mean, she thought it was ok to be flirting with other people, so...) although eventually we at least became "just friends" again.

 

[sus]

@line b

 

[line b]

i will say something I swear I've just been so busy and neglecting the board leaving it to the continental brutes it's really a shame watching them impotently gum at the prime cuts you've been bringing the board

 

[sus]

I know, they're prime cuts

but mainly I wanted to alert you to your up and coming rival as board lady killer

 

[sus]

Need to make a bedrock vs birdsong thread.

No one else wants to have conversations about ideas any more. But I'll keep talking to myself

 

[sus]

Thats gonna be a good one it will expand on versions time eye mind flux thread (I can never remember the names, terrible names)

Stabilities over different time scales.

 

[0bleak]

in case anyone thinks i'm making up of any of this, i trawled through some of my old photos and also some friends on facebook

It's hard to make me out here, but this is where I first started DJing from about 92-94
I mostly cut off the dancefloor below me except for the top of some of the taller's people heads since I don't feel comfortable posting other people without their permission - you will just have to trust me when I say there's also a hot blonde on the bottom left that I had a short fling with


A close-up of the hair colors I was going with around the time of my birthday in 94 - looks kind of like a mix of green, blue and purple


The same day/apartment with a shortie



a week or two later clubbing in cincinnati with another shortie


halloween 93 where i was acting as if I with this other guy who is in drag - apparently took him three hours to shave his legs with the help of the girl that took the photo


just hanging around at a friend's place

 

[0bleak]

visiting fam in kentucky


bonus recent pick after 25++ years of additional damage, drugs, and smoking, at over twice the age - but somehow still pulling with no effort - *shrug* - nothing special as far as i can see so make up your own mind how that can be

 

[dilbert1]

Hell yeah bleak. Line could never

 

[kid charlemagne]

bruh..... this is way older than me..... those photos wow.....the olden days..... the grain and the lighting remind me of pictures books of my family that i can look through

 

[0bleak]

in case anyone is wondering, that's a handcuff key around my neck in the photo with the second woman, but maybe a certain male of the lesbian community will come back around and tell everyone more about how to be a proper freak according to judith butler and other sophisticated, learned intellectuals

the woman in the second photo, when she was "done up" to go out was hot as f*ck - that's the day after going out the previous night and a long drive to cincinnati, and also "getting down" all over my parent's place (obviously when they either weren't there or were sleeping)

her hair and make-up would normally be more like
(the smart people will notice the schoolly d sample)

 

[sus]

One of the interesting things he talks about re: electron orbitals is how it's kinda like a wear pattern

Like if you mapped many human paths, over the course of a timelapse, against a space. You'd get a cluster pattern of how people walked around a piazza.

Which reminds me of the Wellworn subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellworn/top/?t=all

The dragging of coins & product across a counter

Where the ping-pong ball is prone to landing

 

[0bleak]

bruh..... this is way older than me..... those photos wow.....the olden days..... the grain and the lighting remind me of pictures books of my family that i can look through

I have to laugh at "olden days" because a lot of it is still as fresh in mind as ever, but yeah, it's like 30+ years ago so that would have been like someone talking about the early-mid 60s at that time to me in the early-mid 90s.

But, hey, if you're interested, there's still time for you to become a dancing queen


^what can I say about that? I grew up with disco mom!

and then when "we're old and grey Fernando"
you can look back
"Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando"



but maybe it tastes even sweeter if you had to grow up facing some very troubling challenges (another parallel with at least one of The Club Kids), with no help at all, when all you really had to keep you company most of the time was mtv and the radio, dreaming of better future... when you would be able to step out into the night
"We
So tired of all the darkness in our lives
(...)
Can come alive
Get into a car and drive
To the other side"

 

[catalog]

@0bleak do you have any old DJ sets from that period taped? So I mean specifically those recorded/played at the time, rather than something made now of tunes from the period, if you get me. Sometimes very interesting to have the period document.

 

[0bleak]

unfortunately, no - it would have been a smart idea since they had what was also like a pro cassette deck (also had pitch control and such) there in the booth which I also used on the rare occasion to play stuff i only had on tape

 

[catalog]

Ah that's a shame. Any flyers of the nights? Amazing pics BTW

 

[Murphy]

1996-99. I went to Orbit twice, once to see Weatherall and once to see Fabio and Grooverider. I hated it. I have no recollection of speedqueen.

 

[0bleak]

unfortunately, no - it would have been a smart idea since they had what was also like a pro cassette deck (also had pitch control and such) there in the booth which I also used on the rare occasion to play stuff i only had on tape

but I might have had to go around the back of a lot of the stuff in the booth and really move some things around to get things set to record into the deck, and they probably wouldn't have been too happy about that, but I don't know - I'm kind of fuzzy on some of the details. Like, I remember we also had pro CD decks, but i don't even remember what it was like at all when using them. Did they even have things like CDJs with pitch control back then?

but it would have been really helpful to have a tape especially since I was kind of unceremoniously booted from my position by the owner when he opened a new, bigger club and closed that one (but I later find out the new one is more commercial leaning) even though the owner told me I would still be DJing at the new one, and so on the night it opens, I take my crates of records, CDs and tapes down there and get to the door and get told, at the door, by bouncers (like they were waiting for me) they have another DJ.
Although I did find out about another cooler club opening located more downtown, and I tell them about myself (seemed like it was being opened by some rich girls fresh out of college or something), and they ask for a tape and since I didn't really have much of my own gear at the time, I just had to make a tape of the kind of stuff I would play given the opportunity. Needless to say, they probably weren't very impressed because I never heard back from them. OTOH, it could have just been they weren't interested in rougher sounds since when I did go there the DJ (also a better DJ than I anyway) was playing house.
Didn't matter much though because for another long story, i would soon be off to a bigger city...