Names are impossible
The last time I thought about starting a tinyletter, I stopped because I couldn't come up with a name. When I had a blog the url was fishunderwater, even though I called the blog "surplus" (as in, a place for my surplus thoughts, though I always felt self-conscious about it as a chunky girl), and I have no idea where that thing about fish came from. I don't have a great track record with titles and usernames. For years my email address was djpopeurban at yahoo, because my friend James and I got loopy one night in college while we were running a shift dispatching the campus shuttles. In high school my AOL screenname was RiottAngel, with two t's as if nothing was already embarrassing enough. I loved Rancid and one Suicide Machines album, is where that came from. And I guess RiotAngel with one t was taken. In the random AOL message board where I hung out, I acquired the nickname "Rio," as if that's what it meant, which I loved. To be given a nickname by internet strangers.
I loved Rancid and that one Suicide Machines album, and named myself RiottAngel. My two best (only) friends in junior high wore black or blue lipstick, giant jeans and whatever else they bought at Hot Topic; one of them was allowed to dye blue streaks in her hair in eighth grade. (Her mom took her to her own salon, a generous and also supervisory decision.) I guess I did get my eyebrow pierced the summer before ninth grade—my mom came with me, since I needed an adult's permission, and she almost passed out but I felt no pain, sitting there with a needle in my face. She denies to this day that she came with me, but like, I literally couldn't drive.
The point to that was going to be that my two junior high friends wore their—what, their musical taste? their identity?—wore it externally, like I guess I feel we were supposed to. But I didn't.
This is the point in writing this when a Verizon agent came on the line and ended the awful hold music. Welcome to my tinyletter I Guess!