I love to tell stories, and I’ve told many, but there is one I’ve never told.  And it’s special because it’s a story I told myself.  How?  Two years after my mom passed, my brother was cleaning her room.  She, like every mom, kept special things her children made for her and sent to her.  One of those things, those special things to her, would turn out to be special to me.  In my own words, the words of a girl really, it’s my story of seeing Van Halen for the first time, the story of having Eddie Van Halen say hi to me backstage, and remarkably, it’s the story of everything I was then… then, in the Fall of 1981, the last season of a life I was so lucky to live – the life when I was the daughter of a certain degree of privilege and could do anything I wanted, when “it” was so normal I couldn’t see that everything really did revolve around me.  These are my words of all those things, in my weekly letter to my mother, as I was… way back then.  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  I didn’t count these words; they are probably even more than a thousand, but no picture could ever capture this time, no picture could capture my thoughts, and I thank my mother for keeping this letter because I feel like it is a time machine to see myself so long ago, to feel what this era of my life was like when, now, it’s almost impossible to even remember how any of it actually felt.

Here it is, my story to me, those exact words, except that I changed the names and added brackets for explanation, where needed.  I typed this on an IBM Selectric I (taken from my family’s office and you can tell I wanted a better typewriter).  Remember, all grammar and punctuation, sarcasm, as well as off-color now-un-PC language was left unchanged, and as for grammar and punctuation, I think, even then, I probably left it without correcting whatever errors I made.  I still make them, then edit on the computer screen, so yay for computers!  Here we go… my first trip to see Van Halen, chronicled one week or so later.  And if you had ANY doubt as to my queen-girl status, at least back then, well… you be the judge.

September 1981:

Dear Family,

This typewriter is primitive.  I don’t think that I can type without one of the fancy ones, but if you are going to send us typed letters I will send the same to you.  I keep pressing the area for the correcting key; there isn’t one.  It also doesn’t have an exclamation mark.  I had a Geology lab today; that class is going to get really hard.  We had to tell what minerals were in rocks, I had no idea.  I hate studying.  I wish that there was an easier way to get a degree.

Josie and I went to Houston Sunday to see Van Halen.  It was one big adventure that has caused so many problems … Sara and Cindy being the main problems.  Last week when Van Halen was in Dallas (on Thursday) Sara asked me if I wanted to go.  At the time I was skeptical about going to Dallas with Sara because she has so many wild stories about the times that she has seen Van Halen and I didn’t want to get involved.  So I didn’t go with Sara.  Josie and I decided Saturday night that she wanted to go to the Houston concert.  She knows some guy that also wanted to go.  He backed out Sunday morning, but we still wanted to go, so we went.  We had this plan…. Sara was supposedly going to be on the guest list, so I went up to ticket counter and I said I was Sara ____.  Needless to say Sara wasn’t on the guest list.  The ticket agent told me to go talk to this guy named Steve Vando, backstage.  We went around to the backstage entrance, found Steve Vando, and made up a story using Sara’s identity.  I finally convinced him to give me a pass, but it wasn’t one that I could use during the concert; it was just an after-show pass, but only about 30 people in there even had that.  We were pretty happy at this time.  Then we found another person selling tickets outside.  They were floor tickets.  When the concert started, we ran up to the very front and stood right by the barriers, so we were as close as we could get.  It was a concert that you would really love Mama, loud, loud Van Halen.  It was good though.  After the concert we got to see all of the people in the band.  It is really different backstage.  I always wanted to see it.  There are so many rockstar-like people back there.  Alex Van Halen, the drummer, left first.  They don’t ever really talk to the people backstage, they just look cool and say “Hi”, maybe.  Eddie Van Halen, lead guitar, said “Hi”.  He is a cool dude.  The ever-famous David Lee Roth came out looking like such a rock-star.  He was wearing sunglasses and colorful clothes, trying to act wasted.  I don’t think he was though because there is no way he could jump around on stage the way that he does if he was on drugs.  We went to the hotel for the after party to see what that was like, but some big shot cop said you couldn’t get in unless you had an access to all areas pass.  We were supposed to be able to get in, but you know how the cops are.  I think everyone should see a really big rock-star backstage, if they like the music as much as I do, it makes you feel important.  That’s the story of my Van Halen concert.

Now comes the Cindy and Sara part….  Sunday morning Josie called Cindy to find out how to get to Houston.  At that time Sara was out of town.  Josie told Cindy not to tell Sara that we were doing this,  not that we didn’t want her to know, but we didn’t want anyone to know because we didn’t know if we could get in or not.  Van Halen is popular, and Sara goes to every concert, so we wanted to just see if we could get backstage, which she always does.  Cindy and Sara would be the first to laugh at us if we couldn’t get in.  Incidentally, Josie told Cindy not to tell Sara.  Cindy is one of those that cannot keep any secrets, and when Josie told me that she told Cindy, I knew something would happen.  Josie and Sara basically don’t get along; it is Sara’s fault.  Cindy told Sara in a way that it made it sound like we were against Sara, and Sara is a bitch when she wants to be.  Sara needed to get some History notes from me, so she came over here last night.  She brought up the subject and made it sound like Josie and only Josie had something against her.  It is not like I’m involved; in her mind, I think that she thinks I don’t have a mind of my own.  I defended Josie, and when Sara left, I called her and talked to her about Cindy and Sara; she has the same feeling that I do about Cindy, but would never tell me because she thought that we were really close.  Ha Ha Ha.  I’m just Cindy’s friendly neighborhood financial institution.  Both Cindy and Sara weren’t very friendly today.  In fact, they didn’t say anything to Josie and only “Hello” to me (Eddie Van Halen said that).  I finally figured out that the only reason that Sara ever stared hating Josie is because of Cindy, it is always when Josie and I do something and don’t tell them, or when we “leave them out”.  I think everyone is entitled to do things without the whole gang.  Cindy needs to think that everyone needs her around, so when someone doesn’t include her, she twists the story around to make it sound like there is some sort of enemy situation.  She is emotionally about 10 years old.  Sara has from the beginning gotten the wrong idea about Josie because Josie and I do things by ourselves, and since Cindy is jealous of me doing anything without her, she will make Josie look bad.  The girl has got to go.  End of that story.  Sara hasn’t said anything to Josie yet, and as a matter of fact, neither has Cindy.  We’ll see.

Cindy also had this girlfriend of hers from Houston coming this weekend, and at the same time, schedule a date for the football game [Note, this was the Texas Longhorns, playing in Austin, where we all lived].  She had already gotten her ticket with [Whisperbrother] and me, so she called me Saturday afternoon, three hours before the game, and asked if her friend could use the ticket.  Well no, she told me her friend was going to use the ticket.  She came with us.  Cindy went on a date and then to a fraternity part, leaving that girl at home.  I thought this was pretty low, so Cindy was already on my bad side before she “made a villain out of Josie”, and when I found out that she told Sara that we weren’t going to tell her that we went to Van Halen, I wanted to kill her.  I might still.  The original plan was if we got in the concert we would tell them everything.  As it is now, neither of them know we got backstage and we are afraid to tell then now for fear of another “cover-up accusation”.  I can’t win.

Anyway, I thought you would want to hear about how the most exciting thing that ever happened to me got spoiled by Cindy ____ without her having been there.  Actually, it wasn’t spoiled but complications developed.

Also, Ron Simpson’s son [the father was an executive where my mother worked], the gay-looking, blonde, skinny-looking guy who worked at [my mom’s employer, where we all had a summer job] is in my Stats class.  I walked up to him before class to say hi, which he doesn’t know how to do (I don’t like this guy).  This was Monday morning, after Van Halen.  I was pretty tired from driving at night, and I was wearing [my sister’s] half shirt and shorts, and when I said that the reason I was so exhausted was because I had been in Houston seeing Van Halen and had been backstage, I thought he was going to die.  It was great, I hate dorks.  He asked me who I knew, so I said the manager, Steve Vando (he is the person who gave me the pass).  Simpson didn’t say anything then.  I guess he will tell his father that Whisper Mom’s [I used my mom’s entire name here] daughter is a rock groupie.  You have such awful kids Mother.  Is Ron Simpson as boring as his son?  His son doesn’t want to go to school because he thinks it’s boring.  Enough of this letter.  I have things to do.  Maybe next time I write, I will have met Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones).  Ha Ha.

Say “hi” back to Peppe [our family dog] and tell him sorry he didn’t get to see Van Halen with me …. Peppe listens to them with me a lot in my car; he knows all their songs.

Bye,

Love ya (your rock-star daughter)

Whisper

P.S. [written in handwriting] My spark plugs are fouled out.  My car is missing pretty bad.  Of course, it started in Houston.  It has something against me.  Do you know anyone down here who has a spark plug wrench?