TOTAL TRASH is a group music blog by musical girls/queers about musical girls/queers! It’s brand new.

TOTAL TRASH – GIRL / QUEER MUSIC BLOG.

I love an empty dancefloor, especially when the music’s good. The dancefloor fills up when the music is bad (read: Mariah Carey and Beyonce, my two least favorite things to hear ever) and clears when the music is awesome (New Order and Joy Division).

I love an empty dancefloor, used only by my friends and I, sloshing around like idiots, holding hands and falling to the ground in bullshit agony. Even as the perpetual (voluntary) designated driver, I become drunk with both love and hyperconsumption.

I love an empty dancefloor, and I love the inevitable grunge sing-a-longs that follow all weeknights out – the nights when you feel like you’re being naughty for not staying home and studying for a huge math mid-term. The nights when you *are* being naughty for not staying home and studying for a huge math mid-term. The nights when you realize that all you do is study and do homework, the nights when you remember that taking a break from studying is good for the soul.

In a frenzied effort to make the most of the fading sun, I forgot about the moon. Some people I knew were going to OMSI to watch the moon bombing happen live at 4:30AM, but sleep is too precious during these days of insomnia. I stood on the front stoop with three precious ladies holding candles: three for peace, one for protection, held up to the moon. Cassia and I wrote an impromptu moon jam to the tune of I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend by The Ramones. I started bleeding that day.

Sleep came quickly that night, and we arose to a fairly uneventful moon bombing that will most likely deeply affect our lives sooner than later.

San Francisco is the city of death and exes. That’s why I left.

But it all follows you everywhere: The city. The death. The exes. These things will hunt you down for the blood and try to consume you, all vulture-like, sucking you dry.

Four years and two cities later and you’re reloading social security death indexes every two seconds to see if ‘exes’ and ‘death’ have finally become synonymous.

Summer is for being outside, reading, traveling and not blogging. I went home to New Jersey to spend a week with my sister and her son in her brand new totally adult house, lounging in the sun, swimming in pools, using wasteful waterparks, obtaining my very first plantar wart, playing Guitar Hero and eating pizza for breakfast. For a split second I entertained the thought of checking out certain colleges in my home state… but I quickly remembered that New Jersey is the kind of state you only love when you don’t have to live there anymore.

I then met my sweetie back in New Orleans for a magical week of sweaty bike rides, sing-a-longs, snowball & po boy consumption and the kind of friend-family-love that makes everything else in the world pale in comparison. It was so hard to come back to Portland – it felt like a bad drug hangover for about a week. The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival people talk about “re-entry blues.” I feel that way every time I return anywhere from New Orleans!

Fall is for your humble return to the real world.

We spent a good buzzed, dashboard-lit hour last night talking about the unnecessary difficulty involved in maintaining relationships (friendship and otherwise) with people who come from a different class background. I say ‘unnecessary’ because such relationship situations generally fail after a while, somewhat nullifying the time spent therein. While varying circumstances contribute to the ends of relationships, a class difference that exists almost always outweighs all other differences and certainly contributes to each person’s style of communication and tolerance for bullshit.

I don’t have a ton of experience with people who come from upper-class backgrounds with the exception of one – he’s still my best friend. The class divide was always really apparent, especially when family was involved. I remember being really embarrassed by my trashy mom who would fall asleep with cigarettes hanging out of her mouth, burning holes in everything and trying to make conversation through her drugged stupor. I loved her, and yeah, it was hardly her real behavior, but still…. bringing my friends over was not always easy unless they had similar upbringings. When I’d go to my rich friends’ houses I’d have to pretend I knew what certain foods and vegetables are, ask for clarification of certain words, and be totally confused about certain upper middle class phenomena like the removal of shoes upon entering the house or calling people Mrs. or Mr. whatever.

Sarah said that part of a successful relationship is the understanding of where the other person is coming from, specifically how they were raised and their style of communication that is influenced by their upbringing. While most people who come from middle/upper class backgrounds like to think they understand the experience of lower/working class childhoods, they don’t. It wasn’t their experience, just like having a safety net wasn’t ours. I agree.

It’s also so interesting to see how punk plays into this, both of us coming from punk backgrounds (and foregrounds, fuckers!) and knowing people who have chosen the punk identity at some point in their lives and since abandoned it. I guess I’m tired of feeling cheesy about talking about punk and classism and the abandonment of punk in favor of consumerism. I’m not sure how one outgrows punk ideals, and I think it’s all rooted in class differences. Most “ex-punks” I know who were entrenched in the lifestyle are those who came from middle to upper-class backgrounds and had access and experience to things we didn’t.

While I wish all people could understand what it’s like to exist in the world coming from a poor background, there are certain things I’ll never feel comfortable with sharing with my more privileged community. I don’t want people to tell me how hard it sounds… because I don’t know any different, and to be perfectly honest I don’t think people from upper class backgrounds could ever understand our thought patterns or reasoning despite their huge vocabularies and numerous sociology degrees.

Some interesting articles on “white flight” from Myspace to Facebook. For a second I thought everyone’s jump to Facebook was the sheep mentality, but now I think it’s something very different.

The class divide is alive and well on the internet.

Facebook/Myspace class divisions.

Research shows different races are on different social networking websites.

Today I used a shiny new food stamp card for the first time in my adult life. Clearly when people are newly unemployed and between sources of income we should be able to turn to the government for help and protection… however, because of the stigmas attached to the social services most of us feel tremendous embarrassment when it turns to this. In our capitalist system, we’re taught that those who work the hardest get to reap the ultimate financial rewards. Obviously that’s not true – with few exceptions, most people who wind up with that kind of money had financial backing from their families to get them going.

To me, the ultimate financial reward is not billions of dollars, yachts and Gucci. The ultimate financial reward is arriving to the point where you don’t have to worry about money. There is a very distinct feeling that comes along with not having a financial safety net. It’s a feeling that constantly looms in your universe no matter how much happens to be in your bank account at any given time. It’s the fear that comes along with every paycheck, the “Oh shit I can’t spend this, what if I need it?” and the fear that comes along with unexpected medical bills, vet bills, or car repairs. Those who have families who are willing to help them out don’t know this fear, even if they may occasionally be late on some bills or not be able to buy the $12 cheese at Whole Foods.

Newly unemployed, I sat timidly in a plastic chair inside the DHS office waiting for my number to be called. It was familiar in the least comforting way in the world – I grew up in offices like these, spending hours upon hours in welfare offices and clinics throughout my entire childhood. I watched my mom cry to these people, fight with these people, beg for help that wasn’t available. I played with those nasty toys that always sit in the corner of these offices, toys covered in the drool and boogers of other little kids. My mom would sit there and read The Star or The Enquirer and drink free instant coffee out of a styrofoam cup while I tried to entertain myself. Now I was there alone, observing the other people in my situation. White hippies with dreadlocks, fashionable lesbians texting on iPhones, and a couple of single moms.

It was a major clusterfuck of paperwork, but a few days later my foodstamp card was activated. I picked up a friend and we headed to the grocery store where I swiped my foodstamp card for the first time and tried to avoid making eye contact with the cashier.

In high school, my mom did her shopping at FoodTown. My friend was a cashier there and I used to beg my mom to shop somewhere else, or at least not use her foodstamps. I would wait outside the store for her while she picked up whatever we needed, and she’d always assure me that she paid with cash. One day, I was trying to un-jam my locker and was pushed over by a group of popular girls who started chanting, “Welfare brat! Welfare brat!” Rather than defend myself, I got really angry with my mother. How could she betray me by using foodstamps when I asked her not to?

The shame I feel now is residual from what I felt growing up, not because I believe in capitalist bullshit. Rather than accept the free lunch at school I would steal chips and candy from the corner stores. Now I’m in need, with no family financial net, no savings, no health insurance, nothing of value to sell, and $140 a week unemployment checks.

And a foodstamp card that brings back the worst memories ever.