Celebrating 34 years Sober Steve Aoki Style at Jersey Shores HQ2 Club
Once in life you gotta get caked something the EDM music artist is famous for which is throwing cake into the audience of of fans who want to be covered in cake, and cake can be a double entendre as it was coined in the French Revolution "Let them Eat Cake" by Marie Antionette at the beginning of the French Revolution when she had no clue that the peasants outside were starving while she was living the high life and her ignorance in the end got her beheaded, so let the be a lesson to modern day white privilege. As you acquire more and more wealth and become less and less attached with the have nots? It can get you a lot of well deserved hate for your ignorance. Thankfully Steve Aoiki is a giver and not a white privileged taker, and so I not only love his music, but I love his mission to give back. I think I first became a Steve Aoki fan when I watched his documentary I'll Sleep When I Die and being he took a dis from Madison Square Garden in New York who canceled his date and then went back to his hometown of L.A. and held a free concert? Hell yess! I have much respect for a rebel who takes a dis and makes it a positive. Really wouldn't it be more memorable anyway to see Aoiki's comeback in L.A. than pay for the Madison Square Garden, but this was a new year for me, and time for me to celebrate my own victory of 34 years sober and when I found out that the guy who does not sleep really meant it and he was flying in from Ibiza for a few hours to perform at the Jersey Shore? Heck Yeah. I was totally committed.
Shannon Falk
8/27/20227 min read
Celebrating 35 years sober with a pool full of day long new best friends 33 days after the fact!
Was I nervous driving down to Jersey to see Steve Aoki alone?
I reflected, on Steven Hiroyuki Aoki the solo artist who brought me to Jersey's shore.
Certainly he didn't pilot his plane from Ibiza Spain. Wanna bet he designates his schedule, which is insane, so hell yes I respect Steve Aoki, the & a tour aptly named Hiroquest-Amnesia, fits with his 2016 I'll Sleep When I Die documentary. To me? Both the tour & the documentary speak of an artist on an unconscious mission. A competition for the ungotten attention of a father long passed. Call it a live dead reckoning. Rocky Aoki died July 10, 2008 in NYC from pneumonia. In life? Rocky was most interested in himself and outside attention. I guess if I hadn't deeply analyzed my own living father for the similar traits. I was raised by a narcissist, so I know how easy it is to get shit confused. Rocky Aoki? No doubt he was bigger than life at least according to newspaper headlines I caught growing up North of San Fran. I remember the dude was from Tokyo, founder of Benihana, an indelible chain of restaurants that were beloved in the Bay Area. Who doesn't want a meal cooked by a Samurai? In 1978 I had my Tiburon Benihana birthday party where my father was trying to impress me. Steve's father? I can't judge that man. He did raise me to control me. Rocky wasn't my father. Aoki Sr. was really testing a powerboat on San Francisco Bay when it lost its trim, tucked under a wave & disintegrated, making Rocky almost as infamous as one if his boneless sirloin's.
I won't share my opinion of Rocky Aoki, the father of the performer.
Stamp my wrist, Steve Aoki's going live
When I entered the pool venue.
There was that moment when I wondered
Was I out of my depth? Looking at seats I was told those aren't what you paid for, in other words I wasn't one the entitled few who paid big dough to sit looking important, so I asked the obvious question, how do you know what I can afford by looking at me? How do you know that I'm not a trustifian? Maybe I have one, two, three, or more than four trusts? Maybe I just don't think it's important to waste money to make false impressions.
Men needing crutches? I mean this is Atlantic City, home of Donald Trump's billion dollar fail "Taj Mahal" so I know a few details from my ex Michael Falk, who got punished with a trip to New York Military Academy & had to share quarters with Trump for the better part of a year before he escaped, while "the Donald" graduated class of 1964 both men equally failed to get into West Point. Guess that makes two jokes. Michael Falk isn't like Trump. He should have a slogan don't look at me - lol Mr. Falk disdains New York. His 2004 comments on Trump? Something like "if you have to borrow casino chips from your daddy to float your casino and you still go bankrupt?" At least Trump wasn't using that ploy in a divorce. I was happy to be in a Jersey pool in the "cheap seats".
Being in New Jersey for purposes other than digging into Bruce & Donna Falk's multiple monied misdeeds? Chill me out.
You want impressive? That's 3 decades of sex, lies and deceit. I have earned the right to celebrate sobriety. Trust me. I have survived 35 years of abusive trustees stone cold sober. It was my day in New Jersey to chill, and celebrate that throughout the three and a half decades of stress I never chose Alcohol as my crutch.
Time to try something new. Yup a "Red Bull". It wasn't my first time ordering something non alcoholic or being in New Jersey, but celebrating poolside on the Shore? Suck it up!
As it turned out? I sat next to the same woman I had stood behind in line, and she was the proverbial head turning Lady in Red. At first I thought she might be one of those women who's relied on her outside & had nothing inside.
You know that old saying about making assumptions?
She never gave up & recovered her dog after a decade? I shared feelings of of 2 lost living children whom light or dark I miss.
With our shared connection over missing dogs and children Marzena confided "my relationship is complicated". Why let my sorrow from the past, or her current dude ruin electric pool dancing?
Marzena gave me that light of hope for impossible miracles.
Then I noticed that only one dude in the entire pool seemed to care about our wild free romp.
Yup, the wannabe husband. "He's very possessive" my co dancer confided, but I am the sober writer so I didn't need words.
Men? There's different types of those. The types who know you're not available for a relationship beyond dancing in a pool party for a few hours.
Where you can heist a bandana in good fun
Where your able to joke about your "Ed" because you have attained 35 years sober by going into certain rooms and you're proud of a symbolic bat tattoo who was nicknamed in 2005 by your daughter as "Ed" after your last "temporary" sponsor in California died of gangrene. The guy who you confided in about the sociopath ex has always had your back. Almost like Ed is still beside me whispering "you are so strong. You can survive anything"
Appreciation of tattoos with meaning in a friendly fashion is oh so fine, but I didn't get a fun vibe from the dude who wanted to monitor his partner. I mean heck, she might be having more fun dancing with a stranger.
Unfortunately you don't have to go to Jersey shore to find possessive men who want to use a woman. I have been sexualized and exploited by my own father in his house since my 1965 birth. It's all over my 2018 "Trauma" board from when I first arrived in New York. Yeah, you do flee the West Coast abuse to process the 2018 suicide of your nephew. So that set up of men exploiting women? It began before my nephew's hanging in Boulder. It started in Marin County California when I was a little girl. You could say I've spent a lifetime being abused by my father. Dude set up my first rape by a guy from New York when I was ten, and so why am I surprised my father Bill Willitts arranged for me to meet my last abuser Michael Falk from New York at one of my first 12 Step meetings? I was vulnerable and my father saw a way to continue a cycle of abuse that no surprise, extends to Oregon, Michael Falk, my daughter Zoe Falk and of course is facilitated by my mother Patricia Z Willitts and her husband William G. Willitts. A facilitator and a pimp
If your father Bill Willitts was financially benefitting from your sexual assault in his house in 1978? Pretty sure by my 1989 marriage was a "convenient" way of carrying on a cycle of sexual abuse cycling from New York.
When on the Jersey shore to celebrate sobriety? Truth is go for the view and stay for the perspective. That's the point of not drinking for more than half your life. You become aware of what is under the metaphorical pool.
It's also perfectly acceptable to leave the party, shed your wet bathing suite and return to your hotel.
Just text everyone that your coach turns into a dog at midnight :)
