SONG OF THE DAY: Freak Like Me

At one point in my life, I was living with an soon-to-be ex-girlfriend who had detached emotionally, way the fuck on the southside of Richmond, and I didn’t have a car, was finishing up college, so rode a 10-speed bike all over the place, crossing the Nickel Bridge so many damn times. I worked as a housepainter part-time, usually meeting the dude I worked for at Byrd Park, riding out to west end somewhere or another to work like 6 hours, then rode my bike hard as fuck to Carytown, where I was a kennel attendant at a vet there. There was an older black dude, chill as fuck, who was the other kennel attendant, in the mornings, from like 6 to the afternoon, then I held it down the second half of the day. Tight time was like until 6, but after the owners and all the other vets left, so it was two hours of vibes, just letting all the dogs out and cleaning up their shit, making sure all the cats were good. That other dude, Reggie, who always had the radio on Power 92, and I’d just leave it on that, because fuck worrying about a radio station, plus they had the 5 o’clock mix show most weekdays back then anyways. Sometimes Reggie would leave me a joint hidden under the radio in the kennel, and sometimes I’d do the same for him. Two songs used to fuck me up though back then. One was “Don’t Take It Personal” by Monica, because like I said, the woman I was living with had become disconnected as fuck, and I was miserable but stuck (a pattern in my life), and that song would get in my feels. But then this song by Adina Howard would come on, and I’d be like, “WHY THE FUCK DON’T I HAVE AN ADINA HOWARD IN MY LIFE?” That was some hard times man, sitting there in the kennel cleaning up dog shit, buzzed, knowing after I got off work I was gonna ride my bike back across the river to an emotionally cold ass house. But it also was a total vibe, so I didn’t necessarily mind it I guess. I mean, you can’t mind shit like that all that much anyways, because life is what it is, and a lot of times you don’t control all that much of it. Like you can customize the trim plenty, but you’re sorta stuck with the base model. So fuck it.