DIED 2017
I MET HER AT a strip club called the Doll House. She was one of the Jam and Jelly Girls, bodacious backup singers in tutus who did burlesque routines with Dino Lee and his White Trash Revue. The Skater and I elbowed our way backstage to introduce ourselves—as she herself was a famous groupie, we figured she’d understand. About five years later, she became my editor at the Austin Chronicle, and the last time I remember seeing her was in 1996, after The Skater died and I wrote a book about it. She was in the studio audience at my stupid Oprah appearance. Her first husband was gay, as were her father and brother, so she fit into the theme for the show, which was “Holy shit, I think this man is a homosexual.”
After sleeping with many rock stars, she began her writing career with a gossip column in the Austin Chronicle and quickly became its top music critic. By the time of her retirement at sixty, she was beloved as the patron saint, den mother, historian, and emcee of the whole scene. She went on to conduct what may have been the most glamorous, enviable, poignant, and lengthy death in history, which you could attend from afar on Facebook, with the city naming a park after her and legions of musicians and writers offering tributes in the months before she died.
She had several great loves, the last being a treasured Austin hash-slinger named Steve, and though they had about five minutes before she got sick, it was a damn fine romance. You know what, let me give her the mic. On a cold February day in early 2013, I told my boyfriend and my mother that something was wrong with me and I needed to go to the emergency room. I went into surgery the next morning and upon recovery was given a terminal diagnosis of stage IV colon cancer. That quick, that fast. It’s a cruel luxury to know death will come soon, but it’s a bizarre comfort to know how.
A life writing about music wasn’t part of the plan, but then I’d had no plan. I’ve long joked that I got in through the back door, so whenever I am let in through the front door, I run to the back to see who I can let in.