The 90s

I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman’s cultural history of the 1990s called The Nineties: A Book.

It was an informative book that dredged up a a lot of personal memories, but it almost entirely lacked mentions of Klosterman’s personal history through the decade. Normally he weaves his personal history through his cultural criticism and that is the entertaining quality of his writing. But for some reason, he leaves it almost entirely out in this book and it was sorely missed.

For example, he spends a lot of time on Kurt Cobain and Nirvana and how Nevermind was a staggering cultural landmark of the 90s. True enough. I saw it with my own eyes as a teacher when that record came out and demolished hair metal’s supremacy forever. But where was Klosterman when it happened? Did he give up heavy metal for grunge? Did he start wearing flannels?

Oh well. I’m not writing here to review Klosterman’s book. I’m here to recount some of the events that transpired in my life during the 90s that seem worth recounting now as I launch into a new idea for fiction that’s set in the 90s in a suburban high school reminiscent of the one I taught at.

In the 90s, I was introduced to computers and the Internet, but both were insignificant in my life.

I got married.

I played guitar in a medicare rock band called Gravy that played approximately 50 shows. I wrote about a dozen original songs.

I bought a loft in the Pearl District for $62,000.

The homeless of Portland were confined to Old Town.

I moved to Istanbul and taught English there for a year. I visited Israel, Egypt and Rome.

I tried writing short stories but it didn’t take.

I became a vegetarian.

I escaped Portland and moved to the Oregon Coast.

I got dogs and found the ocean. I built my first driftwood fort and saw my first beavers in the wild.

I became a caretaker of a National Wildlife Refuge, the single most transforming event to that point in my adult life

I met AG.

I met JA.

I met AW.

I met SM.

I met AT.

I met JC.

I became a newspaper advisor at a high school.

The dark room was still around.

I took roll and entered grades with pen and paper.

I was around when all the anti-gay measures were on the ballot and poisoned the state.

I had a landline and never a pager.

For almost the entire decade the mainstay of my cultural life was seeing live rock and roll in small clubs that featured mostly regional bands.

I saw the national finals of the Poetry Slam.

It was the last decade I read a daily newspaper.

I was thinking about becoming a writer the whole decade but couldn’t pull it off. The next decade I did.

The 90s were still a paper and pen decade for me, and most of us. It strikes me as interesting today that I still try to keep ink, pen and paper in my life, and the effort is worth it.

Many Americans no longer have pen and paper in their lives or never have had it. There is a novel in that somewhere, but that’s not the one I want to write as I return to the 90s for this new literary project. Music is the real subject, rock music, Something no longer relevant in my life.

Luckily I saved all my mix tapes from that era. This might be the first novel ever written where the main research tool will be listening to a couple hundred mix tapes from 1990-99.