I was at Jumbo's Clown Room during the 2 weeks of June 2021 when we thought the pandemic was over and mask regulations were lifted. I showed up alone, but the place was packed. I chatted with the dancers whom I hadn't seen in over a year and dropped off some special hats at the bar that I had designed for the club before the virus. After a few hugs and drinks were thrown my way, a young blonde woman in a red dress came up to me and asked me what my deal was. It wasn't in a defensive or condescending tone; she was genuinely curious. I asked her if she could be more specific and she asked me what was up with my expensive-looking suit and why were dancers hugging me and why were the bartenders giving me free drinks. I told her the truth; my expensive-looking suit was legitimately expensive, the dancers that hugged me were my friends, and the bartenders gave me free drinks because I gave them some free hats. I'm a regular. Or at least I was, before the pandemic. I typically don't tell people the truth about me, but what the hell. The blonde woman and I bought each other some drinks and sat by the stage. We chatted in between pole dancing routines. I told her that I was at the seedy motel across the street for a couple nights and she was more than welcome to join me over there for a few minutes. We could finish our conversation in a place more quiet and with free mini-fridge Tecates. Surprisingly, she said yes. I didn't think that in 2021, a single woman would agree to go to a fleabag motel across the street from a strip club where she just met a stranger, but here we are. Social isolation lapses your judgement, I guess.
When we got to my room at the motel, I told her that I lived in LA but I spend a lot of time in motels and hotels all over the city for a couple days every month or two just to get away from the people around me. She told me she was on a tourist visa from Canada as she illegally interned at a very popular podcast that I had actually heard about. I opened my suitcase and pulled out some warm beers and exchanged them for the cold beers already in the fridge. I also pulled out a copy of Jon Lindsey's novel Body High which I had recently gotten in the mail, and reread the last paragraph I had finished. She asked me what the book was about and I told her it was about a sad, bummed out guy making his way around LA with his fucked up friends and his even more fucked up mind. After I said that, I realized that Los Angeles was one of the better characters in the book. The main character isn't a hero; he isn't cool and nobody would ever want to be him or be in his situations. It isn't romantic. I think that's what makes it so good. The 20th century had too many lovable losers and romanticized addicts. Getting smacked with reality is good for growing up.
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Ethel Cain has been floating in and out of my YouTube algorithm for a couple of years now. I regularly listen to Lil Aaron and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal (both of whom appear on Ethel Cain's Inbred) and other artists associated with the GothBoiClique. A ticket stub from one of Lil Peep's last shows before he died is always sitting on my desk; it was the only time I'd ever seen him in person.
I listened to Ethel Cain's earlier releases from 2019, but never with much lucidity or even intention; the songs just popped on and I'd drift through it. Her demos and other releases from 2019 (under the names White Silas and Ethel Cain) were a haunting and calming mix of Aphex Twin's piano music, the black metal band Ulver's acoustic album Kveldssanger, Gregorian chanting, and graphic lyrics that are akin to DIY Xeroxed, low-circulation fetish zines you could find in the bathroom of a sex club. I think that's why Inbred struck a chord with me when I first heard it. It was infused with more pop, but still kept the creepy, graphic, and ethereal vibes with tasteful amounts of reverb that I associated with Ethel Cain's earlier music. The song I became obsessed with was Crush. I listened to it on repeat throughout the spring.
I don't know why I became so obsessed with this song. Maybe it's because it's a combination of so many of my interests that I never thought would intersect because it wouldn't make any sense, but here it is and it makes more than sense. The best way I can describe it is if Taylor Swift was born and raised around Southern gothic poverty, smoked cigarettes, and wrote a perfect love song about Tummler from Gummo.
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