PSIH8U Redux

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might remember the bizarre experience I had two years ago reading Antoine Wilson's book The Interloper and finding myself, or at least my car, in the pages. Now, an old acquaintance of mine has experienced it, too:

I know it's been 20 years since we last saw each other, but I just read this crazy book and saw your old PSIH8U plate in it and had to google you. You need to pick up a book called The Interloper by Antoine Wilson and just start reading. You're in for a surprise.

Which makes me think perhaps it's time to reprint the post here from the archives:

The other day, I was reading Antoine Wilson's excellent debut, The Interloper, when I ran across something that literally made me sit up in bed and go, "What the fuck?" It happened on page 21:

Her name was Patricia Stocking. Patty. P.S. Like the Palm Springs bumper sticker: P.S. I Love You, and the license plate I saw once on Palm Canyon Drive: PSIH8U.

The first car I ever owned was a 1982 Nissan Sentra that had been my sister Linda's 1982 Nissan Sentra before that, and, before that, had been Lee's 1982 Nissan Sentra, too. When Linda inherited the car, she went down to the DMV and got a personalized plate to voice her displeasure with living in Palm Springs, a situation rectified a few months later when she left Palm Springs under the cloak of darkness. Two years later, when I was of proper driving age, the Sentra became mine, where I then spent the next two years rollin' down Palm Canyon not picking up women, probably because my license plate indicated a boiling hatred because, of course, my license plate said PSIH8U. This was from 1987-1989. Which means Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, remembered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird. Fortunately, my sister Linda has long had a lawless streak in her and thus, through the magic of time and space (and a box in her garage) here's the plate: 

It gets weirder. It turns out that not only did Antoine routinely see me, I saw him. Antoine drove an old BMW with a license plate that said THSPIAN which, for years, I used to see wherever I went. At the time, I didn't know what a thespian was and so Linda and I presumed it was a lot like a lesbian, to the point that we ended up using Antoine's plate as our code word for women we suspected were lesbians throughout our teenage years: Oh, she must be a thespian! [uproarious laughter, WHAM! on the soundtrack, the ironies thick in the air]. I even remember seeing Antoine at a Ralph's in Palm Springs (Antoine has confirmed my description of the teenage him, right down to his car) and then, later, in LA somewhere in the Valley. Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing him -- or his car -- at a Jane's Addiction concert at the Palladium, too.

Considering that both Antoine and I have written novels about people who pretend to be other people -- though his is much, much better than mine -- makes this no less freaky.

The other day, I was reading Antoine Wilson's excellent debut, The Interloper, when I ran across something that literally made me sit up in bed and go, "What the fuck?" It happened on page 21:

Her name was Patricia Stocking. Patty. P.S. Like the Palm Springs bumper sticker: P.S. I Love You, and the license plate I saw once on Palm Canyon Drive: PSIH8U.

The first car I ever owned was a 1982 Nissan Sentra that had been my sister Linda's 1982 Nissan Sentra before that, and, before that, had been Lee's 1982 Nissan Sentra, too. When Linda inherited the car, she went down to the DMV and got a personalized plate to voice her displeasure with living in Palm Springs, a situation rectified a few months later when she left Palm Springs under the cloak of darkness. Two years later, when I was of proper driving age, the Sentra became mine, where I then spent the next two years rollin' down Palm Canyon not picking up women, probably because my license plate indicated a boiling hatred because, of course, my license plate said PSIH8U. This was from 1987-1989. Which means Antoine saw me driving around in that car, with my bad keyboard-player from the Cure hair and, 20 years later, give or take, remembered it and put it in his book. Now that, my friends, is fucking weird. Fortunately, my sister Linda has long had a lawless streak in her and thus, through the magic of time and space (and a box in her garage) here's the plate: 

It gets weirder. It turns out that not only did Antoine routinely see me, I saw him. Antoine drove an old BMW with a license plate that said THSPIAN which, for years, I used to see wherever I went. At the time, I didn't know what a thespian was and so Linda and I presumed it was a lot like a lesbian, to the point that we ended up using Antoine's plate as our code word for women we suspected were lesbians throughout our teenage years: Oh, she must be a thespian! [uproarious laughter, WHAM! on the soundtrack, the ironies thick in the air]. I even remember seeing Antoine at a Ralph's in Palm Springs (Antoine has confirmed my description of the teenage him, right down to his car) and then, later, in LA somewhere in the Valley. Come to think of it, I think I remember seeing him -- or his car -- at a Jane's Addiction concert at the Palladium, too.

Considering that both Antoine and I have written novels about people who pretend to be other people -- though his is much, much better than mine -- makes this no less freaky.

Comments

[Elodie]

That had to be quite the rush, seeing your old plate in that book. And that photo...I had a hard time making out what was on the bottom of the license plate: The Goldberg State? Geeze, some people just get everthang!

[Mike Barer]

I wonder if they would issue that plate again. State Government has gotten very PC over the years.