Ball and Chain

Things I know I should not have seen

Most people I know have seen something that makes them feel uncomfortable in their lives. You know like seeing your parents having sex. I haven't actually seen that myself but the things I have seen seem worse than that.

I was telling a story to my friends at work the other day. It was about coming across a handful of Polaroids with guys from the 70's pictured doing stuff I should not have seen. I REALLY didn't think it happened or at least I didn't want to think this shit actually happened. I'll tell you in a bit the details but be warned it is graphic and I'm not going to hold back my descriptions. And I do this not to entertain you but to help you perhaps be in my head at that moment when things changed for me. Brought me to tears.

I realized after telling this particular story to my friends that I had a few of these somewhat disturbing stories. The ones that make people shake their heads and say, "Oh my God".

First memory starts with a lovely father and daughter bike ride through King Phillips Stockade in Springfield. Right on the Longmeadow border. It used to be open to the public and quite a pretty area overlooking the Ct. River. Dad and I peddled into the park and pretty soon thereafter I was looking at two guys fucking against a tree. That's why it was shut down. Wow right? My father quickly saw what I had seen and got us turned around and out of there quick. Now keep in mind I had no idea what I was seeing. I was young. It took a few years to learn about that kinda shit and then realize I had seen what other kids were joking about when they were trying to be outrageous. They had no idea what they were talking about. Why should they. It's shocking enough to see a man and women having sex when you're young. This was different. No one talked about gay people back then. This scene was not lovely to me. No Cinderella kiss and Snow White Love. I didn't tell anyone. How do you say, "I saw two guys doing it" as a little kid. Well that was a teaser, so to speak, of the crap I ended up seeing in my life that I knew I shouldn't have.

Around that same time in my life or close enough to that age where sex was never in my thoughts. . . I was at a family friends lake house with the whole ski school crew. Kids and parents partying together. Not an unusual weekend happening for us. Myself and my friend went downstairs to sleep in their very funky kids room/play/hangout area. Lots of kids all ages living there. Big family. Sleeping in cool cut out bunks and lofts on all different levels. I woke up hearing a horrible gasping and brutal sound coming from the other side of the room. I shook my friend and said "wake up. . . I think someone is hurting your sister". She was a bit more street smart than I was at this point in my life. She looked in the direction I was pointing and said "they're just having sex, I hear it all the time".

O.k. hearing it was scary to me. Men making deep grunting sounds and women practically screaming isn't what I thought sex was like. Whoa. But the image of the two bodies didn't make any sense to me at the time. Later of course I realize they were in the classic 69 position. I mean Jesus Christ! What kid would be able to figure out what the hell was going on by looking at that. I had never seen or heard of anything like it?

More weird sexual images to clutter my mind. What's worse? The fact that my young friend had seen that before and wasn't even phased by it or the innocent kid that I was seeing what I knew I shouldn't have seen?


One night when I was in my early twenties. A group of friends, three guys and two girls including myself, were hanging downtown. One of the guys said "let's go to the strip club". She laughed, I laughed and we said O.k. We walked in and right away we saw a girl on the stage, of course naked, with tennis sneakers on (weird) maybe she was the sexy tennis pro who then stripped. Stupid. Anyway, she was doing her grinding, pole rubbing, bending over bleached asshole thing. The place smelled like cheap perfume and feminine deodorant spray. Another thing I will never get over. A few moments into her act she looked up and was face to face with myself and my girl friend. Her face dropped. She was humiliated. She lost her composure and looked completely lost. My friend and I looked at each other feeling kinda sick about the whole thing and left. I had the feeling she knew she was fucking with the whole unspoken-powerful-sisterhood-bond thing that us women don't even know we have. Quite sad and another thing I knew I should not have seen.


Of course it goes on. Still in my twenties for this one. Another scene that left me feeling oddly depressed and detached. I was in a band and we were setting up our gear at a club. A bachelor party was going on in the basement at the same time we were doing our sound check. One of the guys in the band said, "lets go spy". I don't know why I went to spy having already seen enough in my past to make me feel bad. Why do we do things we know we shouldn't? Maybe we can't believe what we saw before and if we see it again it will make it real ?? or maybe it will be better this time and the bad memories will go away. Who knows? Who cares?

We climbed down the stairs and sat on the steps. A girl was sitting on a chair which was in the center of a ring of chairs. Maybe twenty chairs. Each guy was sitting and facing the center "ring". She moved her chair around to each guy and spread her legs while the guys shouted shit like, "stuff my beer up your twat!". The look on her face was so blank. Dead. The guys were laughing at her and at each other. If that wasn't bad enough another girl came out from the kitchen with a double headed dildo wearing shaving cream. How stupid. And they got on all fours in the center of the "ring" and fucked each other. I was in shock. I couldn't move from the stairs. I was so profoundly sad and feeling scared for these girls. It was an awful feeling in my gut. They had no expressions on their faces. The guys were acting so violent and crazy. I wanted to tell them to stop but I knew I wasn't supposed to see this.

I climbed upstairs and joined our band on stage, we started our show. Those asshole guys started making their way up to our stage when their "show" was over and they stood right in front of me with those same evil fucked up perverted eyes yelling over the sound of my voice for me to "take of my clothes" and other disgusting demands. I think the guys in the band told them to beat it but I felt so strange for weeks after that. I hated guys. I felt that I had scene some underworld of "guydome" that girls weren't supposed to know about. Every guy I knew that went to a bachelor party or a strip joint or even looked at porn really pissed me off. I kept it to myself but it took me awhile to like guys after that raw scene. I don't mean I was lesbian I mean just to like them. Or want to share any thoughts with them. Thankfully I don't feel that way anymore.

Some things that you read about make you wonder if they are really true. Like gerbils or cum guzzling rock stars. You haven't really seen anything like that but you just assume it's true. Or better still you don't even give it a thought. That is normal. Let me tell you YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THOSE THINGS.

Here's the piece de resistance. Going back only 12 years or so ago I was dumpster diving with my Mother. Let me explain. My boyfriend at the time owned a recycling business and the huge walk in dumpsters that he used for house clean outs and the like were pulled into his huge business garage area near our old house for him to inspect before being taken to the landfill. He had to make sure there weren't any hazardous shit or whatever he did. He always called up to the house if he saw something in them that he thought I would like. More than once there would be furniture from old homes where there was no family around to take the stuff. I have rifled through many a dumpster to find great antiques and fabric and cookbooks. This particular day my mother was over and he called us up saying there were tons of cookbooks and some boots I think that we might want. Mom and I ran down and started making our piles of treasures. I had some very cool drapes, lamps, cowboy boots and old cookbooks. I wanted this tall dresser and had grabbed the first drawer to dump out its contents and saw a tube of K-Y jelly. I said, "uggh who's house was this? I thought it was someone old. I guess they were still doing it with someone or maybe themselves haha hahaa ". My boyfriend told me it was the Minister in the next hill town over from us. Hmmm. He was old.

I picked up a stack of Polaroids two inches thick from the same drawer and looked at the first picture. I started crying. Quiet tears. I had lost the last bit of innocence I didn't even know I had just by seeing the first picture. I saw the Minister with about 8 men performing sex acts for the camera and each other. I saw one man on the floor in fetal position with another guys ENTIRE foot buried in his ass. I am NOT EXAGGERATING. Next photo a guy on the floor again but this time it's someones fist and arm up his ass. The other guys jerking off over him. All the while someone is taking pictures and this Minsiter had saved the damn things. He was young in the pictures. Guys lying on beds with straps and clamps on their balls. It was surreal but there it was in color pictures. My mother looked over and said, "what's the matter?". I handed over the pile without thinking. I think she looked down for a split second then my boyfriend took the pile, looked at the first few and slammed them in the drawer closed. My Mother and I left the pile of treasures we had been so happy about and walked to my house in silence. We were shocked. Not only were the pictures so outrageous but it was the fucking Minister. The next day at work I tried to tell my friend about it and I started crying again. I cannot explain how terrible it made me feel to see people doing such outrageous things to each other. Things I really didn't think were real. ENTIRE FEET#$@?!! Am I a prude? How would it make you feel? Really I want to know. I have never talked about any of these stories with a shrink. I have so many other tidbits that make me the complete whack job that I am. it wouldn't take a shrink to tell me that I shouldn't have seen those things.

I am sure I am missing a few but you get the point. Bizarre.

P.T.S.D.

Some time ago at one of my many shrink appointments the guy tells me I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder along with the O.C.D. and depression I already knew about. I buy the O.C.D. thing. I'm not a handwasher but a looper. Thoughts come in and just loop around in my head until I jog 18 miles or get wasted. They could be creative song shit or paranoid boyfriend fucking someone else thoughts or too much to do in little time according to ME. Anyone else just goes along and makes mental notes of their to-do list. I have legal pads with lists in every room of this house. Tweaker. But P.T.S.D. is for dudes who have been in wars and seen bodies and guts everywhere. Oh yeah, that's me too. I did see bodies and guts everywhere at a young age. Three different occasions come to mind. Curious aren't ya? I'll get to that.

I wonder if P.T.S.D. would explain my very poor memory or maybe the constant rocking. But I have been rocking, literally, side to side (not just rock out with your cock out music type rocking) since I can remember. In bed, in cars, at the dining room table. No music needed although as soon as I do hear it I'm rocking in my seat no matter where I am. When I read a book my head is rocking front to back, when I watch a movie I'm rocking my head. Weird right? Reminds me of my first night in College in my dorm room and I was lying there on the bottom bunk dying to rock and doing so ever so softly and the chick says "what are you doing. . .the bed is moving?" So maybe that is a symptom of P.T.S.D in some people but it dates before my traumatic happenings.  Pediatricians told my mother the rocking was a calcium deficiency. Shut the fuck up. I ate cheese everyday. Anyway. I do not know exactly why my squash rotted head is the way it is but I do know what I saw. The story goes something like this.

Heading home with my boyfriend and parents from an outdoor Arlo Guthrie concert in the Berkshires. Winding roads. Michael and I in the back seat. We turn a corner and BLAMMMMOOOOO we are the first car in line to witness two pick up trucks hit head on. One full of kids coming from the concert and the other an elderly couple. The kids were thrown from the cab and the back of the truck. I think their truck was flipped over. In any case bodies were everywhere. Trapped under the truck and launched from it.  I got out of our car like a robot ready to help in any way I could. I was fully trained because of my State Lifeguard Job in c.p.r., emergency car extraction (isn't that weird) and almost everything else someone in my shoes had to know. I had no fear or hesitation to get my hands dirty. I remember moans and blood. A womans chest ripped off. Someone folded in half in a very strange anatomical way. I remember having to decide who was dead and who needed help. Cars were surrounding the scene from both sides but I was unaware of it at the time. I remember talking to "Angela" and asking how many people were in the truck. Both wanting to see if she was  coherent and wondering if someone may be off the side of the road.. She kept asking for someone and it didn't match the count of bodies I saw. Turns out the drunk driver split the scene cradling his chewed up arm into the woods and passed out somewhere later to be found by cops because of Angelas ranting about so-and-so. Well we had to stay at the scene and tell cops what we saw and what we did. I clued the EMT's in to what I knew during my time there. While sitting and waiting bodies were being covered up or carried into ambulances. I know there is more to the story but I cannot REMEMBER. "That" my shrink says "is symptom ONE". My new Arlo T-shirt was covered in blood and my boyfriend was nowhere to be found. I think my parents stayed in the car for quite a long time too. No one in their right mind wants a close up look at blood and guts and shit and hell. Following the incident I didn't receive counseling and according to the shrink that was a crying shame. I still have the T-shirt.

Fast forward to my twenties and my cover band years. Playing every weekend in Springfield which was a tough place back then. Singing and rocking my ass off and someone comes screaming into the bar yelling about something gruesome happening in the parking lot. Once again I find myself in robot mode bounding off the stage barefoot and running to the lot. Under the street light lays a kid with his head run over by a car. It lined up so that his ankles were also under the wheels. Turns out it was a van and a bad drug deal. I'm inches away from his face yelling at him to wake up and one of his friends is hysterical and trying to reach into his pants to get the drugs. I'm trying to keep him from moving the poor guy and calm the screaming chicks down by shouting out orders like "give me your shirt" and "someone call 911."  I guess I did a tourniquete around his head. Again I don't remember. I don't remember if he died. I know your thinking "how the fuck could you not remember?"  Ask my shrink or google it. It must be for protection.

Same band, same parking lot, same scene some time later. . .someone comes running in. This time going directly to the stage and getting me. Barefoot again I run to the lot and see a kid I know with his face wide open from ear to chin from a lead pipe. Steroid rage. Maybe drug thing too. Don't know. I do remember asking our drummer for his shirt. I always wore skin tight dresses and there was no way I was ripping it off to reveal my bloated nakedness. no shoes, no undies. Dig?

So now you can kinda get the traumatic visions that swim in my head and have attached themselves to my cell walls able to send me into some kinda freak out at any moment. I guess that is enough for someone to experience P.T.S.D. 

It makes me so angry when I see people playing video games with blood and guts as the entertainment value. Or watching shows where there is gore for the fuck of it. I feel like screaming "You think that's FUN? you wanna see some guts you fuck wipe You couldn't handle it!"

This time I got away

As I just wrote to my Chelsea, the reason I tell everyone everything about myself and always have is because it gives me my power back. I'm a very insecure person. You wouldn't guess that being that I am able to sing in front of 20,000 people and I like being the center of attention.  But it's true. I figure if everyone knows everything about me then NO ONE has anything up on me. Whatever.

    Well that being said, rape once again showed it's ugly face when I was in college. I was dating a guy who was a brother in a fraternity.  Frat parties were almost every night. We partied till midnight with the doors open to the public and then after 12 they would do a sweep and get everyone but the brothers and their girlfriends/girls out of the house for the late night insanity.

This particular night I was milling around the first floor waiting for the "all clear" when out of nowhere two guys grabbed me and pulled me into a pitch dark room. They immediately try to rip off my shirt and get my pants off. One guy was about my height. Someones hands were inside my shirt and one of them was saying disgusting shit in my ear covering my mouth so hard I couldn't breath.  Half my nose was under his huge hand.  The other fucker was taller than me and they were both all over me. No way was this gonna happen. Oh my God, no way. This time I fought back and I stayed in my body. Amped up to save myself.
I could feel they were trying to push me down to the floor. I twisted toward the short guy and grabbed him by the fucking neck and I pushed in so hard on his adams apple that  he chocked and let go coughing. I turned and reached up in the dark and smashed the other guys head against the door jam or something hard. I was insanely strong and fighting for my life. I was able to get away.

    I ran up the stairs with my clothes still all fucked up. I found my boyfriend what JUST happened. The president of the house ran downstairs and locked the doors. He gathered every frat boy and made them all go into the kitchen without telling them all why. I was to look in and see if it was any of them. I said I just don't know- it was so quick. I only know dark hair short guy and lighter hair taller guy. Nothing came of it that night.
    I cried a lot and had the shakes when I was alone. I was so embarassed as I walked around campus. Not sure why. I guess I was wondering if the two assholes were looking at me or if they were in my class.  They may have been so drunk that they couldn't even pick me out of a crowd. I don't know if I was singled out or if I was the unlucky female in the hall next to the dark room. I was not right for awhile.

  Anyway,  shortly after the incident I was sitting in the cafeteria with my friends and my boyfriend. I looked up and my friend later told me my that my face went white. Some one said "what's up" and they all turned to look where I was looking. They all saw what I saw. A tall guy with a scab or scratch/cut on his face and a short guy with a bruise on his neck. I think it was four of my guy friends including my boyfriend that got up and escorted the guys outside. I didn't see any of that I had my head down looking at my tray. My girlfriends were probably rubbing my back. I still to this day do not know what they did to those guys.  They wouldn't say after. It didn't matter.

   This past Summer I saw my boyfriend from those days for the first time in YEARS. We had connected again through Facebook and he was vacationing on the Cape. My husband and my daughter and his kids all met on the beach and we talked and laughed. I brought up the ugly story and asked if would finally tell me what he and the guys did to those assholes back then. He said he wasn't quite sure. His memory sucked in general. I could relate to that. I guess it really doesn't matter.

Brian Fellows. Musician, Best Friend, Funny Bastard.

Does everybody have a rape story?

Well, here's one of  mine. It will do me good to write it down but these incidents are stored in my cells. Those cellular memories shape you forever. I'm still just figuring out why some things sexually DO NOT WORK on me.

I could only listen to the band The Cars again a few years ago. I then bought the box set from The Earth House and drove around listening to the whole thing twice. They were awesome. I missed out enjoying them when they were popular because the radio station I happen to be listening to at the  time I was being violated was playing a rock block of  The Cars. I had to forget about my body and just focus in on the music. Three whole songs. I was young. I hadn't even had my period yet. Probably 13. Back then girls didn't have breast, hips and periods at 13 like they do today.

    It was the Fourth of July. We were at our family friends party. We know this family and the extended family forever. We went every year. I grew up with the boys Michael and Robbie. There are so many Uncles and Brothers and Fathers. It was a huge and very fun time. All day-all night.

My experience with boys was pretty limited as it should have been. I had crushes on boys and I had "made out" before. In the 5th grade Milo Bacciochi and I won the make out contest under the slide. No tongue just faces smashed together. I can still smell his littlle boy breath.  Kate and John came in 2nd. One boy had even touched my boobs up in my attic at a make out party once. Weird. I hate to think of even this while my 6 year old daughter sits in the other room but I will take that over what happened to me at this party any day.

     Friends of friends were always at this party every year. A new guy was hanging with us. Couldn't pick him out of a crowd today. He was older. That made me feel cool cuz he liked me. For some reason the four of us were going into the car on the street to hang. Probably drinking beers, maybe smoking.  I was in the front seat with him and I think it was John and some other girl in the back. Anyway here comes the making out. Everything as usual for me just more aggressive. Then this boy starts putting his hands down my pants and he jams something-everything inside me and I am frozen in pain and fear. I have NO IDEA what is going on. He is not letting up on anything. My mouth is being attacked at the same time and I am having an out of body experience/panic attack all at once. The music became very loud in my head and I tuned in to just that. . . ."I guess you're just what I needed. . . yeah yeah yeah".  This boy was probably drunk and he may not have even known that I was not a willing partner. My body language said nothing. Some how it ended and my shirt was undone and my pants had popped open.

I only remember  looking for my Mom and Dad and hanging next to them the rest of the night.  Never said anything about it to anyone for years and years. Brian was the first one I told only after spending YEARS with him on the road and listening to thousands of hours of  radio and reaching over instinctively to change the channel every time the Cars came on.  After awhile I had to explain myself.  Then of course it comes up at shrinks and now I tell you.

This is my first bad sexual experience. I'll tell you more later. I need to walk away from this right now. Makes my stomach tight. I'm gonna go hug my perfect little daughter.

Saved by a deaf kid and I save a gay kid

Brian and I were playing colleges all across the country for years before being signed to a record label back in 2000. We would showcase each year for thousands of kids in huge convention centers from Texas to Boston and then do the meet and greet thing up in the exhibition hall under a life sized cut out of Settie. Our agent at the time, Tom Najemy from Squad 16, would then put together our tour schedule from the interest gathered at the showcases. We would then head out on the road for months. The N.A.C.A. circuit was the biggest money maker out there for unsigned acts. Tracy Chapman, Ray Romano and Natalie Cole were some of the other acts in the circuit.

We had backstage riders (food and drink and whatever else we decided we needed before going on stage) waiting for us at every gig. $1200 a gig and sometimes playing 6 times a week we were killing it. Selling 20 plus c.d.'s every night and signing autographs after the shows. It would seem like life was pretty peachy but inside it was slowly killing me.

I was dating Brian for most of this time and the two of us were insecure drunks who knew how to push each others buttons without even knowing we were doing it. He was so talented and I felt like I was riding on his wave (he won the US songwriting competition once for Alternative rock song and Bass Player Magazine once rated him as one of the best players. You get the point) and he felt scared that someone would come take me away and write me great songs like the ones I sang so well but he felt he couldn't write. For example Janis Joplin. Our own secret anxiety for years about losing each other. He once said he was gonna try out for the ZZ top opening and I knew he would get it. Dudes at the recording studios told him he was an in. Then I would be nothing. Someone said I should do a stand up routine and he assumed I would do it. Then he would be nothing. If he looked at a girl with short hair for longer than my definition of a glance then I would chop my hair off. As shown in the short hair picture on the mic.

When we would listen to the radio he would say, "now that's a good voice." I would die. He would get people to come to his studio and record and then tell me how good they were and that they could do gigs together. Head games and we were fucked. So it went on and on like this.

Along with that anxiety I also carried around paranoid anxiety. Turns out I had this way back when I was in my teens. Panic attacks for no good reason. Convinced someone put L.S.D. in the hand soap in the bathroom and I was gonna be tripping in two hours. Or the act before me was tripping and I would use the same mic and then I'd be tripping. I had and have not ever tripped on acid. Can you imagine a whack job like me tripping. Depression and Alcohol and Anxiety and The Music Business DO NOT SLEEP WELL TOGETHER!

So there we were on the road for God knows how many days. Next gig Houston Texas. Outdoors on the roof top nice sunny day. We are playing and I see Brian staring at the girl on the bench. I assume he is cuz I'm so fucking paranoid and insecure and drunk and on stage and tired and tweaked. I start to cry. I'm still singing my ass off. Actually I am singing so fucking good Brian actually hears it and starts really rocking out. Never looking at me. Tears stream down my face under my sunglasses and I am thanking God for this gift I have and I am realizing that I have never sang so well as this very moment. I knew it was because I had nothing to lose. I was going to kill myself as soon as this fucking show was over. I was gonna jump. No one could tell I was crying because they were forced to stand far enough away. Gig ends and the crowd is quickly escorted off the roof. C.d's and autographs would happen inside. Brian leaves for back stage and I head right over to the edge. No one around I shuffle to the right because I would have landed on the overhang of some door or whatever. I find my place and feel light. No real thoughts just empty and calm. The someone taps me on the shoulder and says, "You were really great" in that deaf voice. You know the way deaf people talk it's unmistakable. I am first pissed off cuz I was feeling calm and nothing for the first time in months and then this fucker is deaf and what the fuck could he know. You can't hear asshole I'm thinking. I drop to my knees in a ball and cry. I don't really know what happened next. Brian was standing over me saying,"what the fucks up with you?" In an annoyed way. I tell him my attempt and he goes white. We get the gear in the truck somehow, get paid, no autographs, Settie doesn't feel well, and call his friend Hank Schlinger, on the bag phone from the school parking lot.
We had one of the first mobile phones with phone cord and everything. Hank was a psychologist or something. He told Brain what to do next. I called my dad and told him I just tried to kill myself. Tears. I don't remember much else of the conversation. Hours on the phone with a shrink friend of Hanks. Set up a meeting with the guy for my return. I'm still far away from home. I think we even did some more gigs. Tears streamed down my face uncontrollably for no apparent reason often. A car in front of us hit a bird and I thought to myself, "I wish that were me."

Once home the shrink put me on Wellbutrin for the paranoid anxiety and Prozec for depression and all around tweakness right away. While waiting in the room for my appointment I had to fill out a questionnaire. Have you ever. . .maxed out credit cards, had sex with multiple partners, put yourself in danger for amusement, had fear of being poisoned, had trouble sleeping because of repeating thoughts, drank alcohol to excess and 20 more questions and I answered Yes to all of them. I FELT GOOD. I wasn't the only one who was completely fucked.

Three weeks later I am eating a blueberry muffin sample off some skanks platter at Costco. Life was good. I in turn helped Brian and another good friend of mine get help and medicated. We all healed in our own time. Gigs continued and we were back on track.

I could never in a million years tell you who the deaf kid was that saved my life. Funny how he was deaf. hmmm.

Some years later I received a fan letter addressed to me but sent to the record label. That was how it worked now. I wasn't supposed to get them at home anymore. Freaks I guess. It was from New Britain Ct. A young guy who saw me at his college, bought the c.d. and loved the song, "I know a girl". He said- quote- "That's why your song touched me- you have a way of telling it how it is and exposing your feelings completely which a lot of people (myself included) can seriously know what you're talking about and say hey I'm not weird after all- there are real people who feel the same as I do. I'm just glad I have you as a friend to express my everyday obstacles". It helped him when he was at his lowest and was thinking about dying too. He was gay and it wasn't going over well at his house. His mother was an asshole and his life was shitty. He said he listened to my voice and the words to that song over and over and he felt like he wasn't the only one going through shit.

I immediately got his phone number from his return address and called him. He answered the phone and I asked for Jaime. I said, "Hi, it's Settie". He said something like "yeah right. . . leave me alone" and before he could hang up I said "I got your letter". We wrote back and forth and I still have that one letter today. Obviously if I am quoting him above.

I have always been one to tell everything about myself to anyone and wether that is good or bad I learned that from my dad. Everyone loves him and feels safe around him and they don't know exactly why but I know why. I feel blessed to have touched this kids life and blessed that I have survived my shit too. I don't know where he is today. Lost track, lost touch. Hope you've got your freak flag flying my friend.

Settie now and then

This is me at my peak. But I didn't know it. Back in 2001 this ad was in the Tower Records magazine. I was certain that it was the beginning of the life I had been working on having for the previous 16 years. All the touring back and forth across the country for 6 years playing over 150 colleges every year. All the N.A.C.A. conferences, music festivals and Ski resorts. The Summer gigs. . . Martha's Vineyard and Cape Cod. The private parties for the people that knew us from playing their college. The fan mail. I figured all that work and all those years had paid off.
The story kinda goes. . . we were signed to Iguana records then picked up by Tower. Photo shoots with gay guys doing my makeup. Stripping down to my bare ass for outfit changes in the middle of Grand Central Station during the rush of Thanksgiving travellers while the crew held up blankets for my privacy. Huge posters of ME on the wall at HMV next to Lenny Kravitz. It was fucking awesome. I figured it was just the beginning and I would be the next Sheryl Crow. They even said it. Movie Soundtracks, T.V shows and radio interviews.
It now represents to me the half way mark, the time where my life was flipped over. First half kick ass Rock Star chick. Second half new mom and grieving over the loss of her best friend and music partner trying to figure out who the fuck she is. I'm not saying the first half is better but I only have 7 years on this side of that flip.
Excuse me, I must go to the door right now because UPS is dropping off packages. I still shop like a rock star. That is one thing I haven't been able to let go of. Even the Wellbutrin doesn't touch my compulsive spending on expensive wrinkle products, shampoos and clothing. The Wellbutrin (started after suicide attempt years ago) and the compulsion (sex back in the day, spending and any other goddamn thing I got into my tweaked head) are topics for another day.
Since this whole page magazine ad came out Tower Records has folded and their record label 33rd Street has also left us all behind. One of the dudes from the Eagles was also on this label and we opened up for him in L.A. somewhere. Don't remember much about it. That seems to be the case for things that do not WOW me. But I do remember my first love, Joel Micucci, walking on stage and introducing us to the crowd. I must have told him about the show. He was and still is a comedian and Improv actor. Now one has to buy the 2001 "debut" of Settie from one of those music websites that buys up all the old shit. It's not a fucking debut either. We, Brian Fellows and I, had put out three c.d.'s on our own and made thousands of dollars in the previous years selling them from the stage. I mean cash rolled up and stuffed in the glove box and in the 30 year Glenfiddich box with crystal rocks glasses under the seat. So much money it didn't matter if I spent $1000 on custom made leather pants or $90 for a bottle of wine with LUNCH. This went on for years before the labels got involved. Once again another story for those of you who do not know how the music business works.
Well that part of my life ended when the label folded and my music partner/best friend was dying of cancer. It all happened so fast. And in that spiral of time I left my boyfriend and met my husband and got pregnant and moved to Wellfleet. Compulsion has a bit to do with that.
I recently went on one of those music dumping ground websites and I spent $50 on 15 of my c.d.'s. I still have the need to give them out and live in the past.
The reason I am starting this Blog is probably to stroke my Ego or maybe it's to heal the hole in my fucking heart by writing about all the things that only Brian and I know. I feel invisible in this half of my life ( really pathetic to say when I have my own business now, a family and friends I love here) but when someone on facebook sends me a friend request with "are you the Settie that played my college back in blah blah blah" in the subject box my something in me comes alive again. How pathetic. I still feel like a new born fawn wobbling around looking for applause. I go to a shrink now. Well I should say again. I basically get my script filled and check in now. I would like to think that writing about my shit will be some therapy for me. I must thank Sarah Hutto for telling me to do this.
Excuse me I must go pick up Ella Mae from school.