Have you ever been in love?
Yeah. I'm in love right now. Crazy. Yeah, I've loved women … a few of 'em. I don't know if they've loved me or not, who knows. But been in love once, where you go 'Wow I matter to somebody and somebody matters to me! Shit!' That's a lot of gear, man. That's heavy-duty. And it's different than anything else I've ever been involved with.

So yeah, there's a girl I'm going out with, and I'm learning a lot. She's only interested in me being real. She says shit that no female's ever said to me. She goes 'Look, you don't have to be afraid.' And I'm like, 'WHAT?!' She says, 'All that shit you just said is coming straight from fear, and that's cool. But you can drop it when you're with me.' Now, when that happens, you can either storm out of the room and realize you chickened out, or you can go, 'Okay. Help me out here. Tell me what you mean, and what I did and where that's at.' Because obviously, this person is really concerned about you. And that is such an honor. It's something I'd really never known.

I mean, I've been with a lot of women over the years. You know, the rock-n-roll thing, and that's like, 'Thanks, see ya next time.' And I've done the "adult shuffle" in this town, which is like, 'Later, that was cool.' And that's about as satisfying as drinking a Coca-Cola when you're hungry. It's kind of sweet and kind of staves off hunger for a second, but it's not a meal. I've noticed with this time around, it's really something that the more you give, the more you get, which is really cool. And makes me realize a lot of times I was operating on fear, with women. Not fear of women. Fear of getting hurt. And I'm not one [to hold grudges] -- I don't stay mad, I stay hurt. You betray me? I can't walk for a day. I had enough of that to where I was like, loneliness hurts, but that shit hurt way worse.

This time around there's none of that. It's just like, 'You be cool and I'll be right there for you. You fuck with me and I'll just try and help you.' And it really puts you in a position of having to be real and give up a lot of your bullshit. The last two months have been really amazing. Fantastic. And sometimes I get really mad. She stormed out last night and came back. I stormed out the other night. It's not like I'm gonna hit her, I don't have that chip planted in me -- but 20 minutes later we're laughing and going, 'Now where did that come from?' An hour later it's hilarious, but at the time you're like, 'Fuck that. I'm getting out of here!' That was last Sunday. I was trying to go out the door and she's like, 'Whoooaa, sit down.' But there's that confidence of knowing that it's cool. Twenty minutes later she came back and she's like, 'What are you doing?' and I said, 'I'm waiting for you.' I'm learning so much. I think maybe I'll become a better person.


Shawna Kenney is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Entertainment Today, While You Were Sleeping, Maximum Rock-N-Roll, Taboo, and Transworld Skateboarding, among others. She is also the author of the recently published memoir, I Was a Teenage Dominatrix, and has contributed artwork to the upcoming DC punk anthology, The Dance of Days. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their snake.

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