When Mahala Loved Rick

Dinner was a little later than usual tonight. It would have been done on time, but I was distracted watching Def Leppard on "Live at Abbey Road." It was the third time I've watched it this week... and I've cried every time.

When the Amazon was a tiny baby and I was still a kid myself, I struggled.. straddling that line between motherhood and hard partying headbanger. It was a period in my life when I felt so emotionally misplaced and alone. I didn't have a job or a car so I spent most of my days at home, passing the time sitting in the floor with crossword puzzle books I'd bought at the dime store and looking up anything I didn't know in our worn, old encyclopedias.

I was Googling before Google existed.

It was the heyday of MTV, when hair metal ruled the scene and boys with long perms and eyeliner were every girls dream. I had a huge crush on Rick Savage, the bass player for Def Leppard. Back then I had one friend, a girl who worked for Ma down at the Family Dollar. A girl Ma had said had an "attitude problem."

Me and Deneene became friends right away.

Deneene wasn't into the headbanging scene, but I lead her down the Aquanet path, introducing her to the wonders of torn net tanks and black lace pantyhose. It wasn't long before I'd turned her on to my favorite addiction... Def Leppard.

Deneene fell hard, she had the hots for both Steve and Joe. We talked about "them" all the time, we lived and breathed Joe, Rick and the boys.

Sometimes, fantasy is the only way you can deal with your reality.

See, back then Ma was dating a violent drunkard who would show up all hours of the night. I lived in constant fear of him. She was working two jobs, but the lights kept getting cut off and the rent was always late. I was getting welfare, all my aunts and uncles, who used to treat me like a little princess, now looked down their crooked noses at me, at the filth I'd become.

My life sucked.

But no one could see inside my head. It was safe there. I'd learned from an early age how to escape to that place where no one could touch me, hurt me. To get by, I obsessed about this band, these guys from far off places with beautiful accents and used it to survive.

So now when I watch them perform, totally oblivious to me and my life back then, I can't help but shed a tear or two... because I don't know how I would have gotten through those years if I hadn't had those silly childhood fantasies to focus on.

For that I am grateful.

Me and Deneene had some good times back then. Once, when we found out that Def Leppard was recording in Denmark, I found the name of the recording studio in one of those teen magazines. I called information, got the phone number, then me and Deneene loaded the Amazon in her stroller, walked down to the pay phone and called the recording studio.. person to person collect to Joe Elliot.

Oh I had the cajones of a redneck at a Monster Truck Rally back in the day.

My plan didn't work, but you have to admit, I was pretty effin' crafty. We didn't have the internet back then, there was no Google Earth or MySpace, you had to have actual skills to stalk productively.

There was also the night we went to see the boys in concert, then hung out at the hotel bar where we thought they'd be staying until we got totally shit faced, climbing on the elevator and going up on every floor, with the bright idea that we'd quietly listen at each door until we heard English accents.

That plan didn't work either. An over achieving security guard escorted us out when we'd only made it to the fifth floor. The whole, elaborate escapade would have stood a much better chance if we'd at least been at the right hotel.

Deneene and I lost touch shortly after I moved to Chattanooga. She and her mother helped me escape from an abusive boyfriend when living in a car became more than I could handle and put me on a bus to Tennessee. I've tried to hunt her down, the last I heard she was living in Memphis. If ya'll happen to run into Deneene White, tell her I said hi.

Anywho.. the picture at the head of this post was taken at a Def Leppard concert in Richmond, Virginia, around 1988. I took it with a cheap little drug store camera and had it enlarged. It hung in my cubicle at the asylum until a few years ago when I started to feel like I was too old to be hanging pictures of headbanging bass players on the wall.

I watched Def Leppard perform on "Live at Abbey Road" tonight and although I noticed they were a little older and maybe didn't move quite as fast, that quickly passed and all I could see were the faces that got me through a really shitty time in my life. I remembered how Deneene and I mourned Steve's passing, how shattered we were over Rick Allen's accident, worrying about the future of the band.

And they never even knew.

Weird huh?

On that note, I'm going to find something to do. Maybe dust off some old cassettes and remember how things used to be.

Ya'll have a good one.

Later Taters!