Austin Confidential

changed my life. If I can think of different points when my life just turned 90 degrees or 180 degrees, that was one of them. Musically he was such an influence on me.

S- How did you wind up in Austin? Are you from here?

M- No, I grew up in San Antonio and New Orleans and I came to Austin because my boyfriend wanted to move here and go to school and I thought it wounded like a really great place to live. When I was in San Antonio in high school, Austin was THE place. When people spoke about Austin they practically fell down and bowed.

S- When was this?

M- That was the late sixties and the only thing that was remotely hip in San Antonio was that every Sunday afternoon they would have these concerts in Sunken Gardens and everybody would go take acid and listen to Shiva's Headband and stuff like that. But you'd hear stuff like, "It's like this in Austin all the time."

J- "You can take acid every night in Austin."

S- Which high school did you drop out of in San Antonio?

M- Yeah, and I was foolish enough to go back to my high school reunion, my twentieth and it was so depressing to find myself there and still find that part of me wanting to be liked. "I've done really well, don't you like me now?" I felt so stupid you know? I left one of the things really early thinking, "God, what an idiot I am."

S- Were you a geek in high school?

M- I was a total geek in high school. One time I was coming out of the lunchroom at Nimitz High School and the gym was right across from it and in order to cross from the lunch room to the gym you had to pass the area where all the popular kids hung out and I was walking by them and I saw them kind of waving and laughing at me and I thought they were calling me over, and it turned out that they were making fun of me because I was riding my bicycle to school. This is eighth grade and in eight grade at that time in the sixties it was so uncool to ride a bicycle and I was the geek that rode the bicycle and I was really humiliated when I walke over to them and all they were doing was laughing at me and this really popular guy walked up to me and he goes, "So will you give me a ride on your bicycle?" And it really hurt my feelings terribly and I ran into the gym crying. As a matter of fact, I think I left school and didn't wanna go back for a couple of days. And I would never tell my parents what was wrong and they thought I was just being miserable about it, but really I was being traumatized. Today I think I could have grounds for a lawsuit, don't you?

S- Absolutely. Or reason to bring in a gun.

M- But that's one reason I really like working with young writers, and when I was editing at the Chronicle it was such a pleasure working with the young ones, because so many of them would come in and I could tell that they were exactly like that in high school, too.

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