(7s) LPs I Be Lusting After #7 - Dilate by Ani Difranco

Can't just pick LPs for myself, though I'd honestly love to own this on wax, but it would make my wife and at least the oldest kid stoked too. I listen to far more Ani Difranco than you'd probably expect from a 230 pound alcohol-fueled overeducated piece of white trash from southside Virginia, but I come by it honest. The first era of exposure to Ani Difranco music was when I was first dating my wife a long time back in Richmond, when we were both pretty different people. I was a lost ass dude crashing on couches, or in closets, or on linoleum floors, or wherever really, finishing up my last semester of college, and getting fucked up on the regular. I dug my wife, and she dug me, but I was in the type of place where no matter how much I dug somebody, a couple percocets and a 12-pack of PBR would sidetrack me to like another city or some shit. I was cheating on her, and cheating on the girl I was cheating on her with, and cheating everything I could, straight up con man for the only time I've been that in my life, at least that proudly. I guess I've always been a con man because most folks tend to think a lot higher of me than I know myself to be. But at that point, I was wide open, and you could've just replayed the hook to "Self Destruction" by KRS One and friends real faintly in the background all the time, because it would've made sense. I wouldn't have heard it though.
Anyways, a date for me and my wife back then usually entailed getting an 18-pack of Budweiser in cans and pointing one of our vehicles out of that fucking cesspool of Richmond, usually either east on Route 5 or head down 60 into Goochland and into Cumberland County, where my dad grew up. We'd find side roads to get off on, looking for logging trails to just kick it and drink beer and chill out without the glare of the neon city lights tinging our soul with a thick electronic BZZZZZZZZZZ all the goddamned time. Probably that's why we ended up together years after even my cheating ways, because it was in those momentary escapes we could see what was really underneath all the grit and grime of being young and lost in a goddamned shithole of a city. Well, there would be times where these outskirt excursions would come after me fucking things up in one way or another, being taken care of like a baby after going black after too much of this or that, or disappearing for a few days, and our night time country date would be thick with tension, so I'd pound the 18-pack with a super-majority to overcompensate, causing me to pass in and out on the ride back to the BZZZZZZZZZZ. These times, the wife, who was just a chick I kinda loved but couldn't stay true to, she'd be pumping the Ani Difranco, singing in her way that she sings that I steal hear all the time and can hear in our kids when they let it loose, and the songs made perfect sense. I was a complete piece of shit, and I knew it, but you don't want to admit it. If I admitted it outright, she might've stopped enabling me like she did. And as I passed in and out, I'd look over and see her face in the green glow of her Jeep Cherokee's stereo lights, singing loud, beautiful, driving through the country, and it was some real shit to see, especially when in the midst of a bunch of constant fake ass shucking, jiving, conning, conniving, drinking, driving, and barely aliving. I'm thankful that I didn't tear it all asunder so badly that we didn't end up together, out here in the country now for good, not just on a drunken trip for a few hours, and we've got the kids and chickens and pigs and junk cars and buildings and artwork and dreams and life we used to talk about wanting to have. Richmond was a dark ass place, and laughed at all that talk back then. Well fuck you Richmond, and your untouchable face.