happiness is a warm, yes it iiiiiii-iiiis......guuuuuuuuuunnnnn....

i havent listened to the white album in forever but i guess because i listened to it so much at one particular time the memories from that time and the songs are so concentrated that they bring me back and my body registers the smell and temperature of that one place that one night - and im fifteen years old again one december in monterey park, surrounded by a bawdy group of boys - the most beautiful boys that i ever met in all my life as a meeter-of-boys. the most beautiful boys i will ever meet. theyre not the same anymore - assemble them all together again and itd be meaningless at best, wretched at worst...but then we were all so young. and i have the clearest memory of sitting cross legged on the floor in gians living room on dover...the old house, with the real view...gian and noel are playing and singing blackbird...at one point james plays dear prudence, or the beginning of it anyway...im not sure he ever learned the whole thing. his hair had suffered a failed attempt at achieving leopard spots via bleaching...he looked retarded. then there was patrick who im relatively certain i was in love with even then...he was wearing a brown leather jacket and his mouth was stained with red wine and i dont think anyone has ever made, before or since, such a concentrated effort to grab my ass at the slightest opportunity...he was sixteen and drunk off the wine, champagne, and the high of playing the whisky for the first time (he would swear he hated every second of it, but he would be a liar....actually, i think they'd all kind of say that in some attempt at faux modesty or whatever it was...i think i journalled about it even then...sufficed to say it was as much a put on as anything - they were beyond thrilled...oh god and that cheesy video that the whisky gives you afterwards with the cross dissolves and shit...so funny...id give a million bucks to see that crappy video now, id laugh so hard...i think at the time we all thought it was kinda cool in that way where we all wanted to see it but no one would say they did)....meanwhile erte was somewhere, probably outside smoking a cigarette or inside eating pizza, chicken and mojos from shakeys...and im not sure where nicolo was, but im sure he was laughing at the antics and wittily interjecting...it was perfect. and outside the sliding glass doors...the city spread out behind us and glowed, the trees all in silhouette...three in particular...one in the yard that the boys carved into, and underneath it two white plastic chairs, and directly in front of them, off in the distance a little ways - two palm trees, one shorter and curving towards the other...sid and nancy. they seemed pretty far away but you could actually drive to their base and see that they basically grew out of the same place in the ground. and my big brown eyes took all of it in...these boys who'd just played their first gig at the whisky on sunset and san vicente, saw their bands name on the marquee for the first time anywhere let alone a place the doors played...these boys who sat in the rainbow room next door and contemplated how much sex had been had in the red naughahide booths by axl rose, slash, and anyone else of that ilk, all the while too nervous to eat...and i was so pathetically eager and thrilled to be with them. i sometimes look back at it and cringe, wondering if i weaseled my way in, not satisfied to be the little matchgirl with her nose pressed up against the glass. but they pretty much adopted me too from that night on...their ironically innocent groupie. anyway, that entire night is the white album for me...or maybe the white album is that entire night. semantics, anyway.....

ok, nostalgia. done.