I hated Ozzy. It wasn’t his fault. The blame belongs to the man who tried to kill me. Like all mistakes, my entanglement with that man had a before and after. Before him, I was a fan of Ozzy. Ozzy rocked. He was danger and rebellion. For a kid growing up in the 80s, that was more than enough.
1989 was a tough year. I played “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” from Diary of a Madman repeatedly. I mostly listened to cassettes back then, so every time the song reached the end, I had to rewind and find the right spot in the tape at the beginning of the track. After a while, your fingers learn exactly when to push rewind and play. Do that enough and the tape gets warped enough so that Ozzy sounds like he’s warbling from the bottom of a lake. I had a serious problem with authority figures and that song became another anthem in my private arsenal of therapeutic “fuck you” songs.
My problem with authority figures hasn’t softened over the decades. If anything, it’s intensified. Those songs did their job well.
So, me and Ozzy, we were cool. Until the man who tried to kill me walked on stage. He moved in with my mother and me in the summer of ‘91 just before I turned 18. Most parents don’t invite their 17-year-old daughter’s boyfriend to move in, but Mom wasn’t most parents.
This cohabitation was a disaster before he finished unpacking. He immediately took over my bedroom. My personal sanctuary. The cool, groovy, stoned vibe of The Doors and Hendrix was pushed out. No more Adam Ant and Sinéad O’Connor. No Clash or Social Distortion. I was an insensitive piece of shit for having posters of James Dean and David Lee Roth on my walls. I didn’t yet know how to stand up for myself. Nor did I have the maturity to share a space like a grown-up couple. Neither did he. So, up went the posters of Farrah Fawcett and naked women. My carefully curated 17-year-old girl decor was throttled by horny boy shit.
He was obsessed with Ozzy and played him all the fucking time. I liked Ozzy well enough and had no opinions on Suicidal Tendencies, but over those months, I began to despise the sounds of their voices. They represented the loss of my personal space and my terrible decisions.
Until the night he attacked me with a knife and scarred my face in May of ‘92. Everything sounded different after that.
In the following weeks as my broken face healed, I said “yes” to things more than I had during the months we lived together. He was in jail. I was free. My bedroom and my time were all mine again. I had to re-learn who I was. The best way to do this was to leave that bedroom, go outside among people, and say “yes” to invitations for mayhem and adventures.
So, I said “yes” when my friend Lisa asked me if I wanted to go along with her and a few of her neighbors to go see Ozzy at Red Rocks. She sold it well. “We’re renting a limo. It’ll be a total party.” I’d never ridden in a limo. (And still haven’t.) I was excited to cut loose after getting rid of that abusive piece of shit, so I said “yes” despite it being an Ozzy show. I also did it for spite itself. To spite that asshole who’d upended my life. I’d go see his favorite singer while he sat in jail for assault.
Life is often uneven. While I was feeling myself again, my home life was still in turmoil. By the time Ozzy rolled into town in June, I’d been kicked out the house and was homeless. I’d just begun a summer of couch surfing and non-stop partying. What else can you do when you’re broke, without a car, 18 years old, and unable to process a constant steamroller of trauma? Also, it was 1992. The word “trauma” wasn’t in our everyday vocabulary back then. I had no idea that I needed help.
So, I partied about it. Lisa took me to her neighbor’s apartment, which was shared by two oversized dudes. Greg wore a baseball cap and looked like a jock. I had been programmed throughout junior high and high school to be wary of jock types. But my assessment was incorrect. Greg smiled a lot and treated me like we were already friends. His roommate, a big Latino guy named Richard, had a quiet laugh, a soft voice, and nodded attentively when I spoke. When they heard what I’d been through over the past weeks, both of them showed so much empathy and humor that I began to see there were still decent men out there. Men who aren’t possessive, creepy, and abusive. Men who are supportive, kind, and give broken weird girls plenty of space to be themselves. A woman named Carla was there, too. She looked like she’d stepped out of a music video. She had big curly blond hair and wore a Hooters t-shirt. She no longer worked there but still wore the shirt because she could. She was a cool hang. Everyone was. We started day drinking hard, getting psyched up for the show.
Around the time the limo was supposed to arrive, something felt wrong. First, the limo was a bit late. Then, really late. Worry set in. Phone calls were made. We learned that our ride wasn’t coming at all. The people with vehicles and driver’s licenses (everyone except me) began to formulate a backup plan. I remember Carla being very glass half full and saying, “Hey, we’re still going!” to boost morale.
I don’t remember the drive to Red Rocks. I have zero recollection of climbing all those steps. My body made it there. My mind did not. That happened a lot back then. We missed the opening act, Slaughter, altogether. Maybe we caught part of Ugly Kid Joe? I think we might’ve.
None of the show stuck to my brain. Except for one moment. When Ozzy played “The Road to Nowhere” during the first half of the show, Greg and I had our arms around one another like old war buddies, raising our drinks in the air and singing at the top of our lungs. The kind of singing that comes from joy and triumph and being young in the summer. The kind of singing that comes from leaving the horrors behind while knowing the horrors to come can’t touch you here in this place. Not here. Not now. Here, the hurt stops. The fear dies. Dread cannot survive. This kind of singing comes from existing in a single moment of invincibility.
The following summer, I returned from a miserable time living in Florida for eight months. Lisa had moved away. Carla evaporated into the realm of people who come and go in life. Richard went right along with her. And Greg was dead because he’d made the decision to stop being alive.
I got over my Ozzy hate. A decade later, he and his family were on a cheesy reality show, and his image no longer had the teeth and sharp claws it once did. Now Ozzy is dead. The man who tried to kill me went to prison and apparently, is on parole, living a life that just about anyone could’ve seen coming.
But it’s all good. I’m still here, listening to “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” remembering that for a moment, we were invincible.
