-Cold-

Cold weather, and to a lesser extent the sensation of being "cold" has nostalgic properties for me, even though the memories I associate with the cold are generally unpleasant.

It makes me feel more "myself."

For much of my adolescence, my family lived in upstate NY.

At some point in 8th grade, when my depression was beginning to mature alongside the rest of me, and my undiagnosed gender dysphoria was making itself known, I began the gradual process of moving - unofficially, from my bedroom to the house's unfinished basement. Minimal furnishings, no heating, concrete floors and makeshift "walls" crudely fashioned out of scrap fabric, dividing my space from the storage half of the basement.

At first this was a part time relocation, just where I went to get away from my family, play videogames, watch DVDs, but sometime in 9th grade as my depression ascended to something constant and definite, and I became less consolable and more obstinate, it became permanent. I fashioned a makeshift sleeping space on the beaten up area rug, made of a comforter wrapped around two cheap sleeping bags from my youth. I would sleep on this, almost without exception, until we moved out of the house, in my early 20's.

What was the appeal of this? At first I'd be hard pressed to tell you - I was probably just being difficult. But it was a serviceable base of operations over the years.

As a drug den: From my incompetently, poorly hidden pot smoking in 9th grade to my late night binges on powerful psychedelics and heroin use after highschool.

As a social space: Gatherings of oversexed teenage males viewing lurid anime OVAs, extended periods of unsupervised time with partners, listening to records and smoking dope and pontificating late into the night about the ignorance and excess of the day with the few faithful friends who stayed by my side through my worsening mental illness.

As a safe space for self-harm: My parents pulled me from my basement in late 11th grade, after I had hardly moved and refused to eat for days. I ended up involuntarily committed to a youth psych ward for a short period. In 12th grade I started cutting, not as a cry for help, as I always did it in easily concealed places, but as a mode of control over my own body and an expression of my rage and despair. I would often adorn junk art objects with blood detailing. The cover that made the top layer of my sleeping space must have been more tears than fabric by the time I threw it out.

As a music studio: I remember the night, the moment I realised I could manipulate a crude, thin line of feedback with a mini-dv camera purchased for a TV production class I failed to take seriously hooked up to my TV. As I withdrew into weirder and weirder music, it occurred to me that I had an amp, a guitar, purchased by my parents in hopes of giving me any productive outlet. I wonder if the racket ever made them come to resent it. The first collection of AxemRangers recordings was titled "All Live Recording At My Basement."

As a place to think, a place to cry, a place to work out who and why I was and why it was so fucking terrible.

The point is that, for nearly a decade of my life, this basement was an extension, and a reflection, of myself as a person.

And it was extremely cold.

Upstate NY, with winter intermittently lasting half the years, and snow on a daily basis for much of that. An unfinished, unheated basement, 2/3 underground, with no walls, no ceiling, no flooring, and several poorly insulated windows opening at ground level directly in front of my living area.

It was not uncommon to see your breath at night. I have memories of huddling over a space heater with one of my lovers for warmth, of having to toast my hands in between games of Guitar Freaks and beatmania IIDX, lest my fingers became numb and unresponsive, of not knowing whether I was shivering from cold or the research chemicals I took two hours ago.

I loved it. I embraced it. There was a masochism to it, that I was choosing to subject myself to it. But, like cutting myself, it was a -choice- I was able to make, when I was able to control so little in my life and within my own body as I attempted, in all the most pigheaded and self-destructive ways, to come to grips with male puberty. It was dumb as hell, but it allowed me to project some of what I was feeling onto the world. AxemRangers pieces would frequently make allusions to the cold, and the way the experience of cold became part of my identity extended to the little time I spent out of my basement, as well. I took pride in going to check the mail BAREFOOT, trudging through ankle deep snow to the corner, or going out terribly underdressed, waiting to be picked up from my parents outside work in just a t-shirt and flannel.

Struggling to be comfortable, and carve out a space for myself, in that environment of my own choosing, seemed like a more fair, and honorable fight, than trying to survive in the world above ground.

As I said: These are hardly happy memories, by and large. But, from where I'm standing now, they bring with them a sense of clarity, of who I am, of what I've been through. This time of year brings sadness, yes, I expect I have a seasonal mood disorder on top of everything else. But it also gives me a chance to commune with Joe, with AxemRangers, with that asshole kid to whom I owe my life. I don't want to forget how he felt.

So I don't mind the cold.

I'm used to it.

Thanks for reading.