* I chose my college for no good reason other than I was a fan of their radio station (WSOU, the hardest rock) and wanted to be on it. Seton Hall University was weird; a Catholic commuter school, it was very much like High School 2, only the proportions were all off. In high school, even some of the popular kids had been visited by the Alternative Nation Fairy by the end or were sporting beads from the Dead show. At SHU, the Conservative Nation prevailed. The Young Republicans were a force, but the poor slob who tried to start a gay club was denied (and then I believe ostracized by the leader of the Young Republicans, who wasn't so popular himself). And guidos, guidos, guidos! Well, it was a Catholic school in Jersey, after all.
And on WSOU, you know all those guys you hear snarling, "THE HARRRDEST ROCK!"? Well, they're all nice Catholic boys. The guy who was punishing you with a blistering cut from Carcass on the air most likely went home after his show for some of mom's casserole, then out to rage at a show at the Ritz or Club Bene or whereev, then back home to sleep in the bed of his adolescence. Or if, say, dad was "in construction" or something and made a lot of money, the guy would retreat to his dorm to sleep between sheets mom washed on the weekend.
Some of the girls, on the other hand--mee-ow. And the gays, well, they just kept their gayness to themselves.
* Snuck to NYC to see Danzig at the Roseland with my WSOU crush, who was up till then the cutest guy who had ever liked me back. That guy had a self-proclaimed boner for Glenn Danzig. I don't know what the hell was going on with metal, homo-eroticism, and Catholicism. But SOMETHING was. Someone should really do a thesis on that.
* Became a WSOU DJ! At that time, it was the crowning achievement of my life. For some of my peers, it might very well still be theirs. Whoops--did I say that?
* After Lemmy's visit at the station, he gallantly kissed me goodbye on the cheek. I did not catch the cocoa puff skin affliction. ("Ace of Spades" should be blasting here.)
* My favorite station I.D. to play on my radio show was a recording of a very inebriated and/or zooted Ace Frehley of KISS fame. (Station legend held that during the visit when he made that I.D., he'd puked in our little bathroom!) The message started out strong and then just kind of trailed off. It went something like this: "HEY ROCK N ROLLERS THIS IS ACE FREHLEY...[garble]...FREHLEY'S COMET [garble garble]...SOU...895...THE COMET HAS LANDED...[fumbling mic noise--is it over? Not yet!]...rock ON?!"
This was good for multiple plays per show, perhaps during a KISS song. That station didn't even know what a talent they had in me.
* The five semesters I attended Seton Hall, I was still basically a high-school kid myself, living at home, but sleeping in my friends' dorm rooms whenever possible. There weren't a lot of mental challenges at that school, just a lot of social ones.
I was kicked off the station twice. My take on it now is that in both cases, the women who had it in for me thought I was a little too cute. Maybe I was taking longhair attention away from them, so they wanted me gone. And it worked--in retrospect, thank God!
The less-than-supportive ways the women treated each other are consistent with my observation that, after attending three Catholic schools and three public schools in my time, people at the public schools treat each other better than people at the Catholic ones. Which is not unrelated, I think, to what happens when you stuff too many chickens into one tiny, restrictive pen: they peck each other's eyes out. (That is, until the factory farmer cuts their beaks off without any anesthetic--but that's a story for another time that no chicken-eater wants to hear anyway.)
And metal, well, it certainly still ROCKED, but most of it was as fucking backward as the school. It didn't speak to me in any real way. It was a genre made by and for guys, and not the most progressive guys, either. (I know, thank you Captain Obvious...) Women's options as fans seemed a bit limited to being voluptuous cartoon characters bursting out of strips of leather, sentimental girlfriend-y types into the hair band power-balladeers, or good-sport tomboys. We had no voice in the music--when I first got on WSOU, I believe there were exactly three acts in the music library featuring women: Lita Ford, White Zombie, and L7.
* Metal could still fly for me as a funny throwback for occasional blasting in the car (the hard stuff, not the hair stuff--cringe!), but Cannibal Corpse's "Entrails Ripped From a Virgin's Cunt" did not make for relevant lyrics circling in my head while walking around town or singing in the shower. Fortunately, in addition to some of the alterna/grunge stuff going on at the time, and some punk and little bit o' hardcore, I was into Bikini Kill, Hole, L7, and Babes in Toyland. Well, not that their lyrics were all that great, but hearing women screaming was a welcome change from hearing men who looked like women screaming. They were another gateway, and they saved the day.
I transferred to Rutgers and started to become more like myself.
what a badass. (i wish.)