the mythical iridescence of memory

(From the blog entry originally titled Cabaret Voltaire III: A short Ode the Act of Losing Oneself.)

The other day I decided to go for a walk. A long one, facilitated by the fact that my bike is in the shop awaiting dealer approved repairs on an oil leak sprung on a recent blast to Virginia and back.

There was once a part of Houston I escaped to as a kid after I became old enough to drive a car. I’d go there at night alone or with my acid-addicted friends, using the 3 or 5 dollars in my pocket to get into the Cabaret Voltaire, a spray painted shell where local punk bands played, situated amongst acres of windowless cinderblock warehouses in an industrial part of east downtown. It was 29 miles away from where I lived and it usually took an hour or more to get there. But the anonymity of that space made it worth it. It was so far removed in every sense from my daytime life that it allowed me to slip into another existence that seemed more exotic, but that made far more sense to me. I could skulk around in long shadows cast by those occasional streetlights and pretend to be a badass, throwing empty bottles at brick walls or huddling in corners, getting drunk on cheap liquor with (much more badass) friends, knowing I wouldn’t be caught.

Naturally, I’ve romanticized the hell out of these memories. I've blown them into mythical proportions that have taken on a kind of sparkling iridescence in my brain over the years. I remember the beat-up cars in the parking lot across the street, the overgrown weeds glowing green under the street lamp light and the boxes upon boxes of browning paper and stationery inside the Voltaire (which must have at one point been some sort of paper warehouse).. as opposed to the quality of the music I went there to see. I remember interactions with certain people, the intonations in their voices, what they wore, the drugs they took, the fights they got into, and how they accepted my awkwardness.. once it was determined that, despite my suburban-middle-class-white-femaleness, I wasn't going to call any cops.

It’s roughly 4 miles from Cherryhurst House to the old Voltaire site. The walk starts in a wealthy, comfortable neighborhood filled with renovated ‘20s era bungalows, long-limbed live oaks and brand-new high-density condo complexes, whose rooftops rise up above the treetops. On the south side of Hwy 59, these give way to many square miles of modest apartments that all look the same, painted in tasteful, muted colors. They appear to have been built within the last 15 years, though the sidewalks are much older, cracked and misshapen by the unruly roots of still-older trees developers have left intact.

To get to the warehouse district you have to cross a kind of no-man’s land beneath a tangle of freeway flyovers created by the Hwy 59/I-45 interchange. Crammed underneath it all, yet next to a field of waste-high grass and sunflowers, is an Exxon gas station that sells cold soda pop and 16 oz cans of watered-down domestic beer. I waited in line there for relief from the mid May Houston heat amongst a bunch of guys with 6 packs of “Cheladas”, a rather bizarre-sounding combination of Bud Light and Clamato (a cocktail mixer made of tomato and clam juice). They’d just been released from their job sites and were readying themselves for the coming weekend. I wanted to ask the young one in front of me what that stuff tasted like…but it seemed like an intrusion, so I stayed quiet. 

Their Spanish words triggered an entirely different chain of memories, transporting me back to moments I shared with people all over Latin America. In an instant the landscape changed in my head, and this gas station under the freeway became the bridge I crossed to get into Guatemala from Belize a year ago. The lady scrambling for change at the counter transformed into the tollbooth guard I had to convince to let me through because I lacked enough of the proper currency to pay the toll. I heard the word, "Venga!" on my left, from a woman to her daughter, and I found myself in the Nicaraguan city of Léon, as I was fed carne con arroz by Idalia, who grilled me hard about my lack of husband and makeup, who should have been my sister. In a split second these gulfs of time and space disappeared, rendering differences between places and people irrelevant.

The southeast section of town is still covered in warehouses. There aren’t as many weeds and boarded up buildings, though there are few windows so it’s hard to tell which ones are occupied. There is a trendy street with some that have been converted to art spaces, bars or breweries. But if you keep walking east it starts to feel a bit like it once was. Empty, and supplied with enough blind corners and corridors to provide places of escape.

The building that once housed the third Cabaret Voltaire is still standing. It’s got fresh paint and one of those mid-century sign arrows pointing to itself, lacking the telltale text or flashing lightbulbs. The front door is shut with a small boulder blocking the door. There is a warning posted of security cameras.. but I didn’t get the impression anyone was watching me.