March 2004 | Guest Commentary: Nightmare Girl
Another pointless essay by Debi

I have been listening to Aimee Mann’s Lost In Space special edition over and over recently.

I liked Til Tuesday in the 80s, and am fairly certain that I choreographed an embarrassing dance to one of their songs. Not to be confused however, with the embarrassing dance I choreographed to a Naked Eyes song. To begin with, the song itself was badly dramatic, with moaning “Everyone seems to be part of the conspiracy” and sighing “There’s a hole in my wonderful world” lyrics. Add 8 to 10 girls in black leotards and paisley tights who knew the five basic ballet positions and the shallow depths of upper-middle-class teenage angst. Serve this performance during one of the most tragically pathetic recitals in the State of Maryland.

But back to my main tangential point, which is Aimee Mann. To this day, Voices Carry still reminds me at 36 of what it was like to be me at 16. Feeling stifled and shushed and abused, without the type of character that interrupts, always demands its way, and returns evil for evil, and surrounded by people who didn’t know how to or didn’t care to listen to me.

Thank the Lord the 80s ended, and both Aimee Mann and I began styling our hair rather than landscaping it. And years went by and I was listening to Internet Radio and heard Save Me. Soon afterwards I went out and bought the soundtrack to Magnolia. It was like running into an old acquaintance and suddenly having that relationship blossom into the deepest of friendships.

Things have changed for both of us, and things have remained the same. She’s apparently shed a bad boyfriend and an even worse record label; I’ve shed a hometown, and nearly all of the aspects of insecure adolescence. But her music is still touching to me, and consistently on a soul level that is reached only during some moments at church worshipping God. (Okay, and also by certain Nirvana songs.)

I did not start writing with the intent of creating a tribute to Aimee Mann. But I’ve had one of her songs stuck in my head recently, Nightmare Girl, with the lyric “Things are getting weirder at the speed of light.”

Exactly. The sad majority of my life is spent at work. (Yes Nup, work sucks!) But during the six months I’ve had at this job, the sucking has reached far past the “Why must I get out of this warm bed and do things for other people?” into a far-too-great familiarity with how to weep at my desk without disturbing my officemate, which friends are able to talk me out of telling my manager to violate himself in a barnyard manner while I deliver a furious hail of kidney punches, and what combination of antidepressants may make it possible for me to make it to 5PM Friday night without committing suicide.

From this vantage point, it’s easy to make the case that I have not been successful in any jobs in this millennium, so it’s obviously all about how much I suck. Which may have truth in it, but leaves out obviously relevant facts like the manager who didn’t believe African-Americans and Jews were equals of the white man, the company who hired me as a senior technical writer when I was clearly a junior technical writer (and then let me go because I couldn’t ramp up to 7 years of on-the-job experience in 30 days, and they didn’t have a junior technical writer position anywhere, and my manager bawled when she let me go) and my current manager who I’ve likened to an abusive husband (Just to his staff, not to his real-life wife as far as I know.)

He hit me, and it felt like a kiss, if a kiss feels like an acrimonious annulment where I flee for my life, abandoning everything else with the hope of maintaining my physical, emotional, and spiritual safety.

My friends and family hear me, and are here for me, and encourage me to talk. But strangers and co-workers can still be the same stifling, shushing, abusive types that interrupt and demand their way, returning evil for evil. But Aimee Mann still understands, and writes songs about it that make me feel better. That gives me hope.

Hey, peeps. Send mail to mail@tiny-dog.com.