When i was living in Birmingham a few years ago I really began to miss my friends. T/Z and Melinda had come to visit, and we had gone and seen and reformed Blake Babies (John Strohm was living in Thee Ham at the time, thus his Vestavia album) (Ben Lee opened up), and the ladies left me a present: a big pink (some would say coral) cloth-covered sketchbook.
So I stenciled the number 75 on the front (the year I was born) and starting drawing in it: sketches of the Garage, one of Birmingham’s best bars; a rubbing of my great-grandfather’s grave; some other stuff I can’t quite remember. I slathered it with stamps and sent it to Jas’n Smith in Atlanta, with the caveat that one might only hold onto it for seventy-five hours before sending it on to the next person of your choosing.
So it bounced from there to D.C. to Savannah to Conway to Athens to Orlando, with various and wonderful results, to New York City, where our little bird crashed (now 75 may be in London). Me and Hud and Smith were at Jonnie & Sara’s for the ‘00 Super Bowl when we ran into the book and peeked inside.
Here is what I remember of what Big Gray added, the part that means something today most of all: a tracing of a little hand, with his loopy cursive all around it, spelling out everything ever: this is the outline of the hand of a beautiful girl. I think that I am in love with her.
That hand was Mame’s. A person is not just defined by the people around her, but their friends and loved ones are worth listening to. Mame is the type of lady that people love, and I don’t mean BFF love, I mean fist-fight for you love.
The jumping-on-the-bed-singing-”Worlds Apart” kind of love. The calling-at-two-in-the-morning-totally-drunk kind of love. The tracing-her-hand-and-telling-all-of-my-friends-I-love-her kind of love.
So on this, her birthday, I toast her: may you always be the kind of woman that you are now—and always have those passionate loves. And may you never have a scorpion in your schoolroom.
xo,
gorjus
Happy Birthday, Mame! Yer a good ol’ gal!
oh god….those were days. i remember that blake babies show well. i think signed a petition to get Ralph Nader on the ballot in AL for the 2000 election or something. i also remember being close enough to Ben Lee that I could reach out and touch him. After the show, Melinda got her t-shirt signed by Ms. Freda Love and has been crushing hard ever since.
Damn! That was a great trip! I remember tooling around the B’ham interstate with the windows down, as Gorjus didn’t have A/C. It didn’t matter…it was so hot that A/C wouldn’t have made a difference; we would have stuck to the vinyl seats anyway. We went to the Alabama Thrift Store, where i bought a $7 brown courderoy jacket and a paperback edition of Good Omens with a cover that you can’t get anymore. I also bought three ugly retro pillowcases that I still have and use to this day. Oh and we went to the BOMA to see a Matisse exhibit…it was beautimus. When I got home, I dedicated an entire issue of Cramp to that roadtrip. I think i even have a copy of it lying around somewhere.
I had completely forgotten about The Sketchbook. I should have made my mark in it before I gave it to Gorjus, b/c I’ve not seen it since. Do you still have it, G?
good times. good times.
oh, and happy birthday, mame.
BOMA? I meant BMOA. yeah.
I’m totally crying.
put the blame on mame, boys…
put the blame on mame.
(sung by Rita Hayworth in Gilda)
i’m crying too.