The Cage

Me and Mia

As I was walking through a life one morning
the sun was out, the air was warm, but
Oh, I was cold
And though I must have looked half a person,
to tell the tale, in my own version,
It was only then that I felt whole
Do you believe in something beautiful?
Then get up and be it
Fighting for the smallest goal: to get a little self-control
I know how hard you try. I see it in your eyes
But call your friends, ’cause we’ve forgotten what it’s like to eat what’s rotten
And what’s eating you alive might help you to survive.
We went on as we were on a mission, latest in a Grand Tradition
And oh, what did we find?
It was Ego who was flying the banner, and me and Mia, Ann and Ana
Oh, we’d been unkind
But do you believe in something beautiful?
Then get up and be it
Fighting for the smallest goal: to get a little self-control
I see it in your eyes, I see it in your spine.
But call your friends,
’cause we’ve forgotten what it’s like to eat what’s rotten
And what’s eating you alive, might help you to survive.
And even the nights, they could get better
And even the days ain’t all that bad
And after a week of fighting, as more and more it seems the right thing
But do you believe in something beautiful?
Then get up and be it
Fighting for the smallest goal: to gain a little self-control
Won’t anybody here just let you disappear?
Not doctors, nor your mom and dad, but me and Mia, Ann and Ana
Know how hard you try. Don’t you see it in my eyes?
Sick to death of my dependence, fighting food to find transcendence
Fighting to survive, more dead but more alive
Cigarettes and speed for livin’, and sleeping pills to feel forgiven
All that you contrive, and all that you’re deprived
All the bourgeois social angels telling you you’ve got to change
Don’t have any idea. They’ll never see so clear.
But don’t forget what it really means to hunger strike
when you don’t really need to
Some are dying for a cause, but that don’t make it yours.

And even the nights, they could get better. -Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, “Shake The Sheets”

That song, and after years of denial, has taken me back to the place that shaped a large part of my personality. This is my idea and this is The Cage:

We dropped an average of three hits of acid each around six-thirty that evening, possibly an hour or so later and everything began to fall apart, slowly, unraveling like that knit cap I refused to stop wearing that winter. There were seven of us that night, possibly more but we were too high to notice. By the end of the evening, sometime around two in the morning, we had aptly named the experience as “D-Day”; a war had indeed taken place. A car was on fire on the highway, while I sat on the breakfast bar in the kitchen and took stock. “What the hell am I doing?” What the hell were we all doing? It started hitting us while sitting at the diner, yeah, we had to leave. Piling in two cars and three miles from the restaurant, Rich and I began a ten minute long laughing fit. Our bellies about to burst, we got it, there was this amazing joke and it was zen. Or so we thought, for by the time we returned a few hours later, someone would get slapped and the collective high would become dark and sinister. But we were still high, together, all of us had our experiences that night and could never say we would have done the same thing on our own. Damn, what was it we were laughing about, anyway?

I truly miss those guys, all of them. “The Cage” was a cultural mess, stereotypes bundled in friendships and ideas, good pot and cool music. There were beds, most of us slept on the floor, some of us were getting laid. It wasn’t the sixties, this was seven years ago and MTV had taken a turn for the worse; a worrisome state of affairs for Generation X after Kurt’s death… more on that later. So, I pretended a book I had indeed begun to write was going to get published, a book about them, us. We had deadly crushes on each other, self-destructive out of drama with the freedoms we exploited. As individuals, we were painfully flawed and I do not mean that lightly. Some of us were suicidal drivers, others were binge drinkers. Few of us were “nice all the time”, while all of us were guilty of at least TWO criminal offenses, possibly every day. We were “retro” before the word needed quotation marks and even hating someone had to be done “as a group”. There were short trips, bundled in a mustang, legs intertwined with the minimal sexual forethought. The days of carrying a three-foot bong inside your “Dakota Sport” without thinking twice about it are indeed gone. In the novel I had been writing while living there, I had special names for all of them and their cars, which actually had names anointed for one reason or another. Too long has passed, however, and after one of us had a kid… things, changed. Sure, nothing stays the same, but life had truly changed for all of us, some I can simply assume. And that is sad.

These people actually exist, The Cage was christened so after one morning I awoke to a pigsty and letting the kids know a little cooperation goes a long way, the front door whiteboard asked to keep The Cage clean. This is beautiful, revisiting a place you always avoided on your way to work… I think the clouds may be clearing, it’s summer in freakin’ Florida people!