Punk Rock MisAdventures

In the fall of 2006, I found myself broke and living on my mom's couch in Tacoma, WA. It had been about a month since Warped Tour had ended and I was long overdue to get a "real job", but instead of reclaiming my place back in the workforce I opted to live payday loan to payday loan and eat up all of my mom's food until the option exhausted itself.

 One of my best friends from tour, Laura Jean, was on tour with a band she managed at the time, Rocket. The band was opening for the Suicide Girl's punk rock burlesque tour, so me and a couple of friends came to hang out with the Rocket girls. Laura Jean asked if I wanted to come out with them for the last few days on the tour and sell merch for them in exchange for a ride to LA where they all lived. I didn't have any obligations, so the only question I had to ask myself was, "Broke in Seattle? Or broke in LA?" I went to my mom's house and packed a bag with a week's worth of clothes and everything vegan in my mom's pantry and I was on my way to sunny California with 40 dollars in my wallet and a payday loan for 400 dollars that was due to come out of my account in 10 days.

In the few days I spent on the tour, Suicide Girls' tour manager, Sharon, disclosed to me that she was thinking about firing her merch girl and asked me if I might be interested in taking her place. A job? Hey, I need one of those. I told her that I would start right away, but when Rocket's run on the tour ended, I found myself at Laura Jean's apartment in Hollywood instead of with the Suicide Girls who went North to Canada.

 A few days after arriving in LA, I had already eaten all of the food I had smuggled out of my mom's house and spent nearly all of my money on 40s from the corner store accross from LJ's place. I took a walk down the street to Del Taco to get something that would resemble dinner that I could spend less than a dollar on. I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself until I saw a woman who used to be in a band that played on Shiragirl Stage the summer before begging for change in the street outside. I spent my last five dollars getting us some tacos and coffee and visited with her for a few minutes before going back to LJ's.

Half an hour later, Sharon called. Suicide Girls booked me a flight for the following morning to Calgary to start work the following day. Later on that evening, I met with someone from their office who gave me my laptop (which I managed to break within my first week of tour) and 50 bucks to take a cab to the airport the next day. I gave 20 bucks to my friend, Emily, to drive me to the airport and kept the other 30 to buy food with until I got my first paycheck that came the day before my payday loan was due.

Fast forward three weeks into the tour...

Suicide Girls tour had a day off in Connecticut the same day the the Good Charlotte tour was playing there along with The Pink Spiders and Young Love to support them. My friends Envy and JD worked at the venue and I knew a couple of the guys from The Pink Spiders, so I brought May-har and Miss Krissy Rose to the show with me. (Videos of the girls dancing on stage with The Pink Spiders can be found on youtube).

The Pink Spiders are from Tennessee and can drink Jack Daniels like it's water. Why I ever thought I could keep up with them remains a mystery to me, but that was the last time I have ever let whiskey anywhere near my lips. The bits and pieces of the night that I remember include Terry from Young Love hula hooping and Joel Maddan getting into a tap-off with May-har and culminate with me being thrown off of Good Charlottes tour bus for being too drunk and driven back to my hotel by the cops and thinking I was in a cab until I tried to borrow money from May-har to pay them.

The truth is that was one of the best nights I had on that tour and May-har today remains to be one of my best friends in the world. The only night that compared was our last night on tour together when we sang "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men at karaoke and cried.

There's no way to neatly wrap up this story because it's only a chapter in the story of my life which is far from finished. The best summation I can offer you is the lesson I chose to learn from this perticular period of my life: I wasn't afraid to take a chance and I have nothing but amazing friends and an arsenal of quirky stories to show for it. Would I have gotten than phone call if I didn't buy that homeless woman that taco? Probably. But just getting a phone call doesn't make a very good story.