Don't Look Back (Or Forward) In Anger

The past hurts my feelings but so does the future.

When I lived in Brooklyn and had no children and could stay up being an idiot til 4am then wake up for work at 7am, I used to frequent a beer bar called TØRST. I didn’t exactly love the vibe. With its gorgeous mahogany tables seemingly carved from the hull of a viking ship, the decor felt a little self-important for a place that literally just served beer. And the clientele was mostly wealthy young people living southwest of McCarren Park in very expensive glass high rises owned by Jared Kushner who could get to Manhattan in fifteen minutes on the L Train. As a wealthy young person living northeast of McCarren Park in a very expensive pile of feral cat shit and cockroach corpses, where a raccoon once squatted on my balcony for two weeks and I had to walk to Queens to catch a train to Manhattan, I was from a different, humbler world, and simply couldn’t relate. What I liked about TØRST was the story behind it. When someone told me the bar was founded by Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, a Dane oft described as “one half of the Oasis brothers of beer” I felt immediately warmth, comfort, and nostalgia. How could I feel so at home in a place that serves beer in a wine glass? Because, Reader, when someone mentions the band, Oasis, it’s like I’ve been shoved back up my mother’s vagina into the gently lapping amniotic waters of her womb. And that’s a nice, not at all creepy feeling.

As you may have heard, the (Oasis) boys are getting the band back together, and Generations X through Z are already scrambling for tickets to shows that haven’t even been scheduled. But guess what? I don’t need tickets! And I couldn’t afford them anyway! (Really regretting the rent I forked over for that raccoon trap house.) But I’ve got something better than tickets. I’ve got memories. Because back on April 18th of 1996, I saw Oasis live at the Mammoth Theater in Denver, Colorado, with my two best friends, Aly and Abby. I was thirteen, my hair was impossibly long and shiny, and I had a pair of railroad overalls that wouldn’t quit. (I’m also now realizing that same day was my dad’s fifty-forth birthday. Sorry for missing dinner, Dad!) The point is, I’ve already shared one magical night with Noel and Liam Gallagher. It looms in my mind as the quintessence of pure, adolescent joy, and every time I think of it, I feel unbridled happiness, followed by a twinge of grief. It’s wild how even the fondest memories can find a way to hurt your feelings.

When I saw Oasis, times were simpler. I didn’t have to contend with Ticketmaster’s “in-demand market based surge pricing.” I just had to be friends with someone whose parents cared about helping young people experience cool shit. Aly’s step dad wrote for the local newspaper and Aly’s mom worked for the state film commission. They were always scrounging up tickets to stuff through their local arts community connections, and we, the triumvirate of Hallie-Aly-Abby, were happy to make use of them because it cost us nothing and Aly’s parents provided transportation to and from. We had no idea of the cultural education they were handing us when they took us to a screening of Foxy Brown followed by a Pam Grier Q & A or Smoke Signals with Sherman Alexie, or Lucinda Williams, or a Reel Big Fish show, or Oasis, or a quantity of Wallflowers concerts I’m too embarrassed to number. We just liked having a reason to get ready in Aly’s bathroom, with her mom’s abundant collection of Clinique lip shades, placing our riot girl baby barrettes just so, dotting our acne with Maybelline concealer. What were we so excited about? What were we looking forward to, besides a night at the Mammoth with Oasis, of course? How ridiculous that the answer is: NOW. We were excited for our skin to get better, to have sex, to move out of our parents’ houses, to go to college, to make our own money, to have partners, to have babies. Guess what, girls? I’ve seen the future, and it ain’t that great! Enjoy your time in Aly’s bathroom, because the rest of your life will be full of small tortures. Trying to put socks on your squirming child’s sweaty feet may not sound like the tenth circle of hell, but trust me, IT IS.

Look at me, condescendingly extolling wisdom on kids who were already wise, because Hallie-Aly-Abby did enjoy it. Riding the RTD home from school, hanging out behind the Cherry Creek Mall, sneaking out of Abby’s house at dawn just to walk around the neighborhood, even watching Princess Diana’s funeral. We had so much fucking fun together. And our night with Oasis was no exception. One point during the show, a man standing next to me asked, “Do you want to go up?” then hoisted me onto a sea of hands as “Champagne Supernova” blared so loudly it was like my entire skeleton was a set of bone conduction headphones. Crowdsurfing at an Oasis show with my two best friends - was this the platonic ideal of being thirteen? Is it any wonder that so many days since have felt like Pleasantville before the color hits?

I guess I should mention that today is my 42nd birthday, so naturally, in addition to contemplating my lost youth, I’ve also been mourning my imminent death. Like many women of a certain age and demographic, I just finished reading Miranda July’s latest novel, All Fours, which is about menopause, marital woes, creative stagnation, or as I’ve been thinking of it since I finished the book, all that’s left for me. And yet, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question, “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?”. 42 is the number of degrees at which light needs to be refracted then reflected through a water droplet to produce a rainbow. It’s the amount of galactic years the Sun-Earth system will survive before being destroyed. And it’s the expansion rate of The Universe in miles-per-second-per-megaparsec. As I sit here meditating on the time I saw Oasis like a woman lying in hospice, it’s worth reminding myself that 42 is an ending, a beginning, and the sharp turn needed to create something beautiful. Why am I looking back with longing on puberty? Why am I looking forward in horror at menopause? Maybe today I should focus on at what’s right in front of me. If the meaning of life is 42, and today I am 42, then the meaning of life is today. I know it sounds corny, but it’s just deductive reasoning.