The New Stone Age

 

It’s been said that if you dream about someone it means that that person has been thinking about you.  What exactly does that mean or how it could possibly be quantified?  It’s a nice notion, isn’t it?  Even after so many years Robert still thought of her often and she occasionally starred in his dreams.  He’d always hoped that she thought of him, because the notion made him feel important.

There she was.  She sat towards the far end of the bench with her legs angled so that her heels were touching the creaky hardwood floor with her toes pointed upward.  She was mostly a silhouette from Robert’s angle.  She was backlit by the bright white sky lighting the room from the big window on the opposite side of her.  The light made him think 1980s music video: "Turn around Bright Eyes."  She was looking up at him without fully turning her head. Despite the backlighting, he could clearly see her face.  Robert had always wondered if he ever ran into her in person, would he recognize her.  It had been over thirty years and he hadn’t actually formally met her back then, yet he had never forgotten her.

 

“Did you find her?” She asked him.  Her voice both startled and comforted him.  Her eyes connecting with his was almost more than he could handle.  He could feel his body jolt just with electricity before a rush of heat blasted through it.

“I thought that search ended years ago,” Robert turned his head to see his longtime friend Brian to his right respond for him.  “Can you help him find her?” Brian re-directed, turning his forearms like a hoops referee calling travelling urging this sequence to move along.

 

Robert had found her and she was directly in front of him.  He studied her face.  She was as stunning as he remembered.  He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and even more so in his temples and down both sides of his neck.  He could not stop looking at her like he was trying to identify her as a suspect in a police lineup.  His jaw dangled as if held in place by a Slinky.  He was worried that he might pass out. 

 

“I have found her,” he blurted emphasizing his point. 

Considering the momentous amount of time that he had dreamt and imagined being close to her – at least a part of her life - he had never really known or figured out what he might say if it actually happened.  He knew long ago that it would never happen, so apparently he decided that he didn’t need a contingency plan.  There was that one time he thought he had seen her a couple of years after the brief time they had been at the same school, but that was so long ago that he finally stopped thinking that he might ever run across her in a public place. 

It was that one time when he was driving home over on the east side of town.  It was soon after sunrise.  A baked out late summer dawn.  He swore he had seen her jogging the opposite way on the sidewalk adjacent to the park fence.  She was jogging the opposite direction, so Robert slammed on the brake and cranked the steering wheel sharply and executed a 70s cop show spinout.  Actually, that’s how he’d imagined it.  Instead he drove carefully to the next block, turned his car around safely and drove back toward the park.  No one was in sight.  He had been awake for several days straight and had just spent the previous night at a 24 hour bowling alley with some friends – bowling and drinking, or drinking and bowling.  He was fully aware of the creepiness of the scenario, and chose to drive away, and ponder if he had actually seen her, or if she had been a figment of his imagination.  She was never far from his thoughts.  

When they shared a campus, he had wanted to say something – anything – but he did not.  That was the problem.  Robert never said anything to her and that seemed to be his decision, which is why he knew he wouldn’t be a part of her life.  They shared the same campus for a few months and he would see her around every so often.  He had never been drawn to anyone like that before.  Yes, he thought she was incredibly pretty, but it was more than that.  For some reason, he felt like she understood him in a way that he had he never felt before.  He did not know what it was.  Her friendly disposition made her seem like an accepting and understanding person, but he didn’t know anything about her. 

Robert didn’t take care of himself, or particularly like himself.  Yet he wanted to be there for her in any way possible.  He felt it in every fiber of his being.  This was all new to him and he didn’t know how to reconcile his thoughts and feelings.  For the first time in his life, he had the desire to allow his guardrails to lower, or so he kept telling himself this.  It couldn’t have been true, because he did none of these things.  He couldn’t even muster a passing “hello.”  His inaction being that much more frustrating because he realized that he wasn’t a draw due of his good looks or magnetic personality.  Robert needed good timing and a lot of luck.

Aside from occasionally falling into lonely teen angst stretches, he had always wanted to spend most of his time alone.  He didn’t think he could ever relate to anyone, so he knew that, though this exciting and surprising new presence was in his periphery, he would likely not try to meet her – a decision Robert had always regretted.

This was the crux of why she had haunted him for so many years after their first encounter.  He had made no effort.  Here she was, a dream he didn’t know he had had come true, and yet he was content to be thrilled by a distant passing sighting of her once every couple of days.  He did not make an effort to try to actually get to know her.  What could’ve been the reason?  Looking back, his inaction feels an insane decision.  Sure he was terrified of being cruelly rejected and having that image he had of her burst like an overfilled water balloon, along with his strangely erratic pride.  He was also terrified of making a tragic fool of himself in all the worst possible ways – a creepy, overbearing, neurotic, desperate way, which all were incredibly accurate – except he never thought of himself as creepy, but that’s not for him to judge.

Robert had once been told that he might be afraid of success.  This had been a revelation for him.  Was he afraid of success?  Despite not being very happy with his lot in life, he was indeed afraid to take risks and threaten the protective isolative shield he had worked so many years to build.  In retrospect, he had noticed patterns, where almost any chances he had ever had of possibly accomplishing things he had worked to achieve, he would sabotage, or turn against them. 

The more he thought about it, the more he began to realize his history of avoidance and obstruction.  Robert remembered when he was offered a great job as an assistant manager for the campus station, but turned it down, because they didn’t hire his friend and dorm mate along with him.  He remembered missing the final interview for a scholarship to that engineering trade school he was about to attend and was very expensive.  After learning he was only competing with one other, he felt excited, but still assured that he would miss the final interview.   There was also that sound engineer apprenticeship he skirted at the Bad Animals recording studio in Seattle.  There was even that time in school when a very pretty girl he didn’t recognize who pulled him aside one day and asked him out and he scurried away like the frightened cat from those weird French skunk cartoons (Pepé Le Pew).  There were several more examples that raced through his thoughts like projectiles from a missile battery firework.  What the hell was he doing?  He had always been filled with regrets - not from his failures, but from the things he gave up on, or when he didn’t try.

 

The problem was, he did not know why he so often had chosen to turn away from opportunity.  There was that internship he had taken about fifteen years prior, where he was given most of each week’s new music releases all in exchange for a simple paragraph write up about each one.  It seemed like a long time dream come true, yet he remembered how quickly he began to hate music and writing – his two main passions.  Instead he chose to stick with his normal job, full of frustrating personalities, insane tasks with even more absurd deadlines.  Yet he clung to that job with an unbreakable grip, despite having little interest.

“Are you going to ask me?” Her brown eyes focused intently on Robert’s.  He dropped his head.  Feeling overwhelmed.

Robert had never spoken to her.  He had had his chances all those years ago.  She had spoken to him a couple of times with a passing greeting in her sing-song voice, but he could never quite form the words and now, over thirty years later she is still haunting his dreams.  He is not so full of himself to believe that he could’ve won her heart back then and in reality he is pretty certain that he wouldn’t have, nor had he been ready, or would ever be ready to do so.

Aside from the most extreme examples, he felt that he was living a normal life.  When opportunities had risen, he would find a way to at least try for them.  In his work life he generally found himself able to raise his stock enough to earn and accept promotions.  In addition, he had found himself actively dating and continuing his search for a long term loving romantic relationship.  However, he was not passionate about these things.  He did them because he felt like he was supposed to do them.  He felt no intense interest with his career, so none of the responsibilities he accumulated felt important.  His biggest goal with work was to not have to bring it home.  His attempts at relationships went similarly.  He often felt uncomfortable and wasn’t sure if he wanted a relationship.  He was not fully present with them, because he wasn’t with her, or his invented image of her.  It was no secret why none of his relationship efforts lasted long. 

All he wanted to know now is how to fix this.  What is it that is often said: knowing is half the battle?  It’s true that recognizing his tendencies as a problem could help him avoid these issues in the dwindling future.  It was clear that this problem of sabotaging potential success was deep-seeded. 

“My life sucks!  Boohoo!  I’m Bobby and I’m great at everything and don’t try to be!” Brian shouted as he pretended to rub his eyes with his fists. 

“That’s not what I me-,” Robert stopped himself.  “I do not assume any of those things were destined to work out, but why was I hell bent on taking myself out of or never entering the running?”

“Blah Blah Blah!”  Brian continued unmoved by Robert’s clarification.

Ignoring Brian, Robert focused his eyes on her sitting on that worn church-style pew directly in front of him.  The dusty old stained wood stench overwhelmed his senses once he took in a rapid deep breath.  She returned his stare with a slight smirk on her lips.  A flash of heat rose from his gut straight up into his face.  He began to feel unsteady and placed his hand on the back of the bench for balance. 

“What’s wrong with you?!” Brian shouted at him with what sounded like legitimate rage.  He turned his head to see a fading silhouette of Brian lurking in the shadows of the room.

“It’s more than that isn’t it?” her voice recaptured all of his attention.  “It’s not so much that you’ve been afraid of success,” she paused keeping this important wisdom from him for at least a few more seconds.  “Why didn’t you at least try to get to know me?  Are you afraid of the responsibility that success might bring?”  She closed her eyes and bowed her head, as if she were praying.  “It’s easier for you to always have me as a ‘what could’ve been,’ instead of ‘someone you blew it with.’  As it is now, I will always be perfect in your head,” she grinned and closed her eyes as she let him absorb these words.

“This dumpy chick is right, you know?” Brian interjected.

“Why are you here?!”

“You love beating yourself up.”

She looked back up at him and added, “You don’t want the responsibility that might bring success, or that success might bring.  However you define success.”

He wasn’t sure if he knew how he defined success, but he was pretty sure that it had negative connotations to him.

Next thing he knew, he could feel his pulse pounding in his temples.  He was lying on his back gasping for air.  She had taken over his dreams yet again.

“Do other people have dreams like this,” Robert wondered in a quiet mumble

He also wondered if these dreams had continued to recur every few months for years, because he had a masochistic need to continuously poke his most painful emotional bruises so that they would never heal.  Or maybe it’s a realization that he has avoided achieving all of the biggest goals he had ever set for himself and now it’s too late.  Unlike the previous dreams of him encountering her in the present time that he had experienced, this one was not full of embarrassment.  This felt different.  He did not wake up feeling defeated.

Is it for Me?

Have you ever looked through Facebook’s “People You May Know” listings?  There are multiple levels of connections that come up: everything from people you may not know at all, but who have a singular “friend” connection to someone you have a hundred social media friends in common with to someone that you actually know in person.  Ed found these suggestions fascinating as he would peruse through them, surprised to occasionally see musicians from bands that he was a huge fan of as a kid being suggested, because of mutual friends.  Who would’ve thought?  He might get a suggestion for someone that he went to high school with, who is already connected to all the same former classmates that he is.  Makes him wonder why he didn’t get the friend request nod from that old acquaintance.  Did he do something wrong all those years ago?  Are they still holding onto a grudge?  He wonders why he doesn’t send the friend request himself.  Probably out of stubbornness. 

Every so often, he’ll see someone on the list that he had forgotten about and memories crash his thoughts. 

Seeing Susan hit him like a ton of bricks.  Her profile picture was mostly unrecognizable from how he remembered her.  Her style had changed significantly.  For a short period of time, she had been the center of his social world.  Now, she was a cartoonist/satirist, who also made short lo-fi indie solo recordings, AND worked as a software engineer in the Bay Area.  What he found most interesting is that she hit his “you may know” list – not because of mutual friends from their brief shared past, but because of more current shared music circles.

Ed remembered her as tall, broad shouldered, and always in control of the chaos around her.  Susan was a force of nature!  An art major who grew up on a small farm not too far from the university they both attended.  She was more forward and outgoing than anyone he had ever met, a truly magnetic individual.  Everything seemed fun for her, and she was fun to be around.  She was one of those rare people that could effortlessly connect with just about anyone.  Ed felt comfortable around her and immediately opened up to her.  He was rarely that at ease with most of his longtime friends and family.  He recalled sharing an early morning Illustration class with her one semester, and even though, he generally slept in and often missed the class, she always seemed to like him, and thankfully adopted him into her circle of friends.

Susan had lived on campus in a four-person room.  Her and her roommates: Stacy, Tina and Marcy were the best of friends. They were freshmen, and new to the school, except for Tina, but it felt like those four had all known each other for years.  Stacy, a business major, was a stunning blond girl who took an immediate dislike to Ed and completely ignored his presence, other than naming him “chump.”  He kept his distance, despite Susan’s invitations.  Tina was an art major, very reclusive, and a massive fan of both Bauhaus and The Cure.  Ed shared her music tastes, but Tina did not appreciate his penchant for singing along with her beloved songs, especially when he changed the words.  The music was all very serious to her.  She taught him that ‘Tina’ was short for ‘Christina,’ and that it could be short for a variety of names.  He had never thought about this before, always assuming ‘Tina’ was a stand-alone name.  It reminded him that he never liked being called ‘Ed,’ because no one took it seriously.  It was always treated like a joke name.  He half-heartedly tried to get people at his new school to call him ‘Edward,’ but no one did, except for Marcy.  Susan told him that she went from being a ‘Sue’ in high school, to ‘Susan’ now.  She pulled it off.  No one ever called her ‘Sue.’  Ed especially hated the nickname of ‘Eddy,’ but when Susan started calling him ‘Eddy,’ his heart would skip a beat and imaginary butterflies would spin around his head.  Marcy reminded him of Marcie from Peanuts.  It was a lazy comparison, but they kind of looked the same.  She was a care-taker.  If someone in the group was sick, she took care of them.  She took care of the group all the time.  In retrospect, Ed could see how she was incredibly underappreciated and he felt bad about that.  Most of his regrets in life stemmed from not fully appreciating people from his past.  Taking them for granted.  He wanted to be more like Susan, and always leave a positive impression on people.  Maybe more of them would him a friend request.

 

Being friends with Susan always meant you were going to be part of a group.  She grew up the youngest of many siblings.  Ed could not identify.  He had one much older brother, and craved isolation.  There were always guys hanging around this group of four young women. Because they both were incredibly attractive, Susan and Stacy drew young men like bees to honey, or moths to light.  He wondered what that would be like - constantly being sought out and getting attention.  It would seem annoying to Ed, but Susan always welcomed the attention.  Stacy did not like it at all.  She often complained about it, but she didn’t try very hard to stop it, as her audience were the guys who always hung around her.  Tina drew her own admirers, who wore black and wrote poetry, but she had a boyfriend named Jarrod.  Marcy was always busy taking care of the group.  I was not the only person who took her for granted.

Besides Ed, the usual visitors to what became known as “the Room,” were the two Dave’s, James, Dan and John, and, of course, Jarrod who took no time before essentially moving into “the room.”  Both Dave’s were tall and handsome and seemed older.  Dave B. was an outgoing black man, who had a quick wit and a gregarious personality.  Dave D. had a similar personality, was white, had long dreadlocks, and wore tie-dye shirts and ragged ropes as bracelets around his thick wrists.  Ed did not know what brought the Dave’s to college, other than to be campus legends.  James had a goatee, always wore a sweater, had an impressive deep bass of a voice, a talent for writing, and knew Susan from their theatre class.  Jarrod was a loud, opinionated, quick witted, pop culture wizard, who was a creative writing major.  Ed liked these guys, but never liked Dan and John.  He found them both off-putting.  He didn’t trust them. Ed had met them in a few of his classes that first semester.  They had all been business majors.  In fact, by the urging one of their professors, they all shared a subscription to the Wall Street Journal.  He quickly learned that he had no business being a business major, so he adjusted his academic schedule beyond that first semester.  He wasn’t sure what he disliked more – the classes or his classmates. 

Ed had always been a conscientious student growing up.  He always did his homework and tried his best, eschewing any kind of social life in favor of studying and being alone.  He didn’t like the unpredictability of other people.  He felt safe at home.  His older brother was the opposite, always out with his friends and his endless amount of girlfriends.  If he wasn’t out, girls were climbing into his second story bedroom window on a nightly basis.  Ed couldn’t figure it out, because he couldn’t get himself to talk to the girls at school.  There was one girl, named Tracy, who lived nearby, and clearly had a crush on Ed’s brother.  She somehow had the nerve to come to his home and talk to him.  He was never home, so Ed’s mom would invite her in, and she would sit uncomfortably in silence with Ed, while he did his homework, and his mom, while she did whatever the hell she did – balance the checkbook, or whatever.  His mom would ask Tracy questions about her life, and then eventually, Ed would finish his homework and he and Tracy would hang out and listen to music or watch TV. 

The thing is, he found he could talk with her.  It was easy.  She was only a few years older than him, but Ed thought of Tracy as an adult.  She was still a kid to his brother, who had no time for her.  Tracy became a constant companion for Ed.  He really liked hanging out with her.  He and his small group of neighborhood friends would stop by and visit Tracy in her apartment on summer afternoons.  They would watch those teenage slasher movies from the early 80s – the ones their parents wouldn’t let them watch.  They would all be as obnoxious as they could, because they could get away with it, and Tracy would pretend to be outraged.  Ed never really thought much about those short-lived interactions with Tracy.  Never realized that she was always alone – that a parent was never around.  That there was only a trashed couch and a TV on the floor as furnishings.  He never really noticed that his mom would always cook her food when Tracy would come to see his brother.  He really didn’t notice when she stopped coming over once the next school year began.  He just remembered how fun she was to be around and how easy she was to get along with.

After sophomore year of college, almost everyone in Ed’s social circle - everyone who lived in or constantly hung around “the room” - were either gone, planning to move out of the dorms, or away.  The living on campus thing was no longer a requirement, so moving out felt like an obligation to most students.  Ed applied to become a Resident Assistant as a work study job and for free room.  He wasn’t ready to share a big home or dingy apartment with a bunch of other people.  As an RA, he would get a private dorm room.  He was used to dorm life.  Both of the Dave’s had already disappeared from school – truly becoming legends.  Tina graduated.  Stacy was from the area, so she would begin to commute to school from home.  Marcy decided to attend school closer to her home in the Midwest.  James had disappeared after freshman year.  Jarrod had set up life with some friends of his in a tiny apartment near campus and Dan and John joined a fraternity and moved into that house.  Susan, was planning on moving in to an old farmhouse on her parents’ property that summer and talked about commuting the 45 minutes to school.

That summer, Ed went back home to the small coastal town he grew up.  Went back to work his old high school job and to forget about his crumbling school life that hovered less than two hours away.  In August, he received a letter with no return address.  The purple envelope was full of funny little pictures and squiggly drawings.  Curious, he tore into the envelope.  It was a short note from Susan.  She was moving into the farmhouse on her parents’ property outside of McMinnville.  Would he be interested in helping her move?  She went on to write about her adventures (lots of rivers and lakes and campsites) and how excited she was to finally have a place of her own.  She offered that there would be beer and BBQ as encouragement to help her move.  There was a silly looking map and drawing of her new home.  She closed by letting him know that he was missed and loved.  Ed read that note over and over again. 

A week later, he was driving his parent’s car toward the valley.  It was still early, but the heat was already quite intense.  He thought about Susan.  He didn’t know when he had developed such a massive crush on her.  His previous crushes had developed quickly and he would agonize over them for long periods – beating himself up for his inability to communicate.  Susan simply started talking to him one day in class, and he surprisingly kept his end of the conversation.  Ever since then, he found himself following her around as often as he could.  She seemed to like him, which confused and confounded him.  He was not adept at reading signals.  During his high school years, he was friends with a girl from his Spanish Class.  They rode the same bus home from school most days.  They bonded over music and began to hang out a lot.  He considered her one of his best friends, but then after they went to see a movie one evening, she seemed upset with him, and from then on they stopped hanging out.  He began to wonder, if they had been dating, without his knowledge.  Had it been a real life version of Some Kind of Wonderful?  Whatever the case, his realization was too late, not that he would have known how to address it anyway.

 

Susan was different.  Not only did he feel more relaxed and at ease with her than anyone prior, but he thought she was the prettiest person he’d ever met, and he was drawn to her.  Her casual nature was contagious.  It inspired her uncluttered style.  Ed began to feel sad and disappointed when he wasn’t around her.  Now, he was on his way to visit her.  Would they be alone, or would the usual entourage be there?  Butterflies flapped intensely in his gut.  He leaned back and tried to lose himself in the music on the mix tape he had made her, and ended up flying by the turn he needed to make to get to her place.

Ed slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop.  Then he simply started up again along the empty two-lane highway.  He was embarrassed, even though no one was around on the country highway.  He continued forward until he found a place to turn around and go back. 

The side road to Susan’s house was gravel.  There was an incline up the road for about a half mile with brown cut fields on both sides.  For the next half mile, the road descended into a valley of giant oak trees, and the road curved around these before going back uphill.  Finally, the road crested a final slope into another open field.  A dilapidated one story house sat ahead under a pair of huge oaks.  An unmown brown field lay directly behind the house, followed by more trees and a forested hillside.  There were four cars parked in front of the house.  He saw someone who looked like James carrying a box from a pick-up truck to the house.

Ed pulled into the circle shaped space, trying not to block anyone in.  He climbed out and felt the hot sun on his skin and recoiled for a second.  It was so bright that even his tightly squinted eyes couldn’t keep his pupils protected.  He stretched and turned toward the house.  Standing on the porch to the old dilapidated and peeling house was Susan.  She stood tall in front of the open entrance.  She was wearing pale blue overalls, with a tight bright yellow t-shirt underneath.  Her long, straight, light brown hair was blowing smalls strands across her freckled nose and big toothy grin.  She waved and called out to him.  He stumbled his way up the two steps onto the porch and she put her arms out to accept a hug.  He obliged and held her uncomfortably tight and perhaps a beat too long.  He had recently developed a habit of leaning his head onto the shoulder of whomever he was embracing.  He did this and he did not want it to end.  She smelled like vanilla.  

She broke his embrace and directed him to the open front door.  “Come inside!  The gang’s all here!”

Inside, James was standing near the entryway over the box he had been carrying.  He waved at Ed; with a smirk on his face.  To the right was a living space that had two old couches pushed together to form on ‘L,’ framing a very large stone fireplace.  On each couch sat one of the two Dave’s.  Both were strumming and picking away at acoustic guitars.  Ed could not tell what they were playing, if anything, nor could he decide if they had each brought their instruments, which he thought was a little over the top. 

“Sup?” both Dave’s groaned in unison.  Dave B. gave him a smile and a creepy wink, before re-engaging with the fretboard.  Ed, nodded, and turned back to Susan standing in the doorway.  “What can I do?”

Susan asked James to put the box at his feet in the kitchen, which was situated behind the big fireplace.

“All that’s left is a few more boxes in the pick-up, and another truckload at my parents’ place,” she replied, before adding, “Thank you for coming!” 

Ed turned to grab a box from the pick-up outside.  He felt eager and energetic.  He and James took turns carrying the boxes into the house, and exchanging friendly quips.  Susan directed them to various locations in the two-bedroom house to put the boxes, and the two Dave’s squealed a terrible rendition of Janes Addiction’s signature song: “Jane Says” from the couches.

 

After the boxes had all been unloaded, Susan offered everyone a beer.  She had two large ice chests full of bottles of Henry Weinhard’s beer.  Before he accepted one, he trotted outside into the sunshine to grab the mix-tape he had put together for her.  She yelped with joy when he held it out for her, and then, immediately put it into a cassette player she had already set up in the kitchen.  He had designed the tape to start out fairly quiet and then slowly build in intensity and volume.  The intensity was meant to reflect his loneliness and his internal war against his own crushing shyness, as well as his growing feelings for her.  As soon as the first song hit, the two Dave’s both started to protest and complain about the dourness of Ed’s musical tastes.  They both grabbed another beer and Dave B. began mimicking and mocking the vocals of the first song.  Ed kept his mouth shut, feeling a tinge of embarrassment, and took a long pull on the cold bottle in his hand.  Most of its contents were taken in that first drink.  He was done with being there.  He wished that she would save the tape for another time. 

Susan giggled a soft protest to the Dave’s, and then began putting together a plan for everyone to go up to her parents’ place and retrieve the remainder of her things and bring them back to unload.  She figured one more pick-up load would be enough.  After that she would BBQ up some beef patties and chicken. 

James and Ed slid into the cab of Susan’s pick-up and she drove further up the gravel drive past a big field with what looked like grape vines and toward a huge house behind them.  She pointed out that her parents were going into the wine business.  They all went inside.  There were about twelve boxes stacked up and ready just inside the door, and two big lamps with their shades lying next to them.  No one else seemed to be around.  The house was dark and very cool.  Ed liked the chill of the air.  None of the boxes were heavy and they quickly hauled everything out to the back of the pick-up.  Ed and James tried their best to tightly wedge the lamps in so they would stay upright along the bumpy gravel drive.  Susan seemed to be comfortable with their effort. 

Back at Susan’s much smaller home, Ed was relieved that the lamps survived the journey unscathed.  He grabbed the necks of each, and carefully walked them into the front room.  He noticed the Dave’s had shut off the mixtape, opened more beer, and were murdering some song that he couldn’t quite place from their off-tone acoustics.  The remainder of the boxes were brought in by Ed, James and Susan upon her direction for which room.  The Dave’s each had slowly stumbled outside, each fully adorned in work attire – Dave D. even had put on gloves – and brought in the remaining two lamp shades. 

“Thanks a lot, you turds!  I mean, my heroes,” Susan shouted at the Dave’s.  “Appreciate the help!” she exclaimed, shaking her head with a big smile on her face.  “I’ll start the coals.”  She walked out onto a back patio from a door off of the kitchen.  There was a round table out there, a few white plastic chairs, and a small charcoal cooker outside.  Ed followed her out there and asked what else she needed done.  She asked him to pour some charcoal from the giant red, white, and blue bag into the black grill.  Several of the briquettes bounced around on the ground beneath the grill.  

“I think I’m gonna head home,” Ed summoned up the nerve to tell her.  He wasn’t feeling good about being there.

“Aw, man, you don’t want to stay and hang out?” she pleaded with him, as she motioned to the grill and towards the music emanating from inside the house.  She smiled, and angled her lips to blow a strand of hair out of her face.  She looked a little exasperated and mumbled “take me with you,” as she ducked back into the house – her home. 

Ed would’ve gladly taken her with him.  Absolutely, anywhere she wanted to go.  Instead, she returned with a plate with beef patties and a couple of boneless chicken breast fillets on a plate.  She set the plate down and turned to stand in front of him.  She put both of her hands on his slumped shoulders and looked him in the eyes and said, “thank you for helping, and for the tape.”  Then she put both of her hands on his cheeks and closed in for a big sloppy kiss on his lips.  He was surprised and a little alarmed.  It was over before he knew what was going on.  Her kiss tasted like candy blueberries – not like the salty kisses he had previously experienced.  He stood there dumbfounded for a moment and then reached in to hug her tightly, before turning to head through the house.  “Take care of yourself Eddy.”

Ed felt weak at the knees, and a little blind, as he navigated his way from the bright sun of the patio to the darkness inside.  

“Catch you guys later,” he shouted as he hit the front doorway.  He heard a few voices respond with a resounding group “Yo!” 

He numbly drove back home.  It was a quiet 45 minutes or so, as he decided not to turn on any music.  He felt overwhelmingly sad and wasn’t sure why. 

 When he returned to the small beach community he grew up, he drove to a beach access, got out of the car, and huddled into a pile of driftwood bunched up as far from the ocean as possible while still being on the beach.  He hid there, protected from the vicious and chilly north wind.  He liked the beach for his meditative moments; because the beach was its own environment.  The roaring of the waves and the constant wind overwhelmed his senses.  Sometimes Ed would feel a little beaten up after hitting the beach.  It was its own world.  The fact, that he could only hear and feel the sea and its contained ecosystem, helped him focus. 

He brought a pad of paper and a pen.  He considered writing a letter to Susan, but no words came to mind.  He thought the world of her, and ached for her attention.  She was almost always in his thoughts.  Everything reminded him of her.  Ed felt inspired to be a better person in her honor.  He thought a lot about this.  He admired the way she treated people, seemingly without prejudgment, and so welcomingly.  He strove for this.  He always felt very good around her – very comfortable, but he was never sure, if this was just how she treated everyone.  Was there a chance that she liked him in a way that he liked her?  Ed was pretty sure that he was unlikeable.  He could not fathom how someone so vibrant, smart, funny and pretty could ever be interested him beyond being a portion of her constant entourage.

After the beach stop, Ed began mentally beating himself up for not writing, or even starting the letter.  He drove up and down Highway 101 cranking music as loudly as he could.  He cruised by the old high school hot hang out spots and wasted as much time as he could in an effort to squeeze out every bit of angst he was feeling, or until he was tired, whichever came first. 

That night, when he got back to his childhood home.  No one was there.  His parents were out.  He didn’t turn on any lights, and instead turned on the old television before flopping face first onto the old orange couch – the one he’d grown up watching TV from.  He turned the channel to WTBS for their weekend video show Night Tracks.

 

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians "So You Think You're in Love"

The first video he saw was a very generic music video for Robyn Hitchcock’s “So You Think You’re in Love.”  The song was okay, he thought, but didn’t hold a candle to the previous year’s acoustic marvel Eye, or even his pseudo commercial breakthrough Queen Elvis prior to that.  The second video was from Toad the Wet Sprocket.  It was a video for a song named “Is it for Me?”  The video featured super saturated sun-drenched images – bright for the eyes.  For some reason, he always liked that technique.  The video also seemed to depict the band as a rag tag bunch doing stuff around an old farmhouse.  The singer, Glen Phillips, is dressed very much the same way as Susan had been earlier.  He was fully enthralled in the music video for a song that he had zero interest.  It all felt very familiar and now he was pretty sure that he had developed a crush on the singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket as well.

 

Toad the Wet Sprocket "Is it for Me?"

Recovering from his trip down memory lane, which had been brought on from looking at Susan’s Facebook profile picture, Ed tried to interpret how she was doing now after all these years.  Not easy from a small picture.  She looked so different, but not so much due to the passage of time.  Her hair was now styled carefully with bangs, and she wore a lot of eyeliner.  He remembered her not wearing make-up when they were at school together, or the last time he saw her at the farmhouse.  

Ed opened up Susan’s Bandcamp page to listen to her musical offerings.  He wanted so much to like her acoustic indie pop sketches, but he decidedly did not.  He listened to most of them, which were all under two minutes each.  He wanted to become a fan and supporter of her music in the worst way, but it was not going to happen.  He went back to her Facebook profile to look at some of her cartoons.  These were interesting, thought-provoking and occasionally scathing towards her intended target.  

Nervously he clicked on the “Add Friend” button. 

Thank you to Ken Grandlund for help unscrambling my writing.

 

Unreadable Communication

 

He sat down on a chair off to the left side of the room, hoping not too many people would stand in front of his view of the stage.  He could no longer stand for hours on end at concerts, now that he was older - probably the oldest person in the room.  He was getting used to that fact, but it didn’t really bother him.  It was simply an observation, though sometimes it did make him feel old.  He always found it fascinating to overhear some of the conversations in the small club.  His favorites were when an old song from the 80s or 90s would be played pre-show, listening to some young guy explain the history of that song or the artist to his bored date.  Sadly, he knew the history, because he was that kind of music nerd and had lived it.  He sometimes had to resist the urge to bore both of these youngsters with the actual facts.  This was getting increasingly rarer.  He didn’t care anymore about that stuff and isn’t sure why he ever did.  He could hear his droning voice sometimes spouting statistics about such and such and it was hard to believe how fatiguing it made him feel.

 

When he was coming of age in the early 90s, he always wanted to belong to something.  He always felt he lacked conviction.  He would read Maximum Rock-N-Roll and a ton of punk ‘zines.  He learned all about straight edge, and how pretty much everyone is a “sellout.”  In a way, he wanted to believe all of the punk dogma, or ethos that was in vogue at the time, so he could lose himself in the scene.  He desired a cause.  He was outraged by a lot of things, but saw too many things in greys as opposed to blacks and whites.  Instead, all of the rules and regulations bemused him.  It all felt like the same kind of thoughts that they were supposedly rebelling against. 

In the 80s and 90s, selling out was a massive betrayal.  The thing about lesser known music, is that the early consumers become very attached to their music.  If said artist achieved any notoriety outside of their original small scene, it was considered a money grab and a complete betrayal.  It never made sense to him.  He would try to muster up outrage when a Husker Du signed with a major label, but their music was still essentially the same and most people still didn’t know who they were.  The rules seemed random to him and counterproductive.  Did these people (or scenesters) really not want their beloved bands to succeed or earn money?  Did they really want them to live in poverty eternally?  As we know now, signing to a major label or licensing a song to an ad campaign does not ensure a financial windfall, or even a reason to quit a day job, and with the evening of the playing field due to technology, almost no one can actually earn money selling music.  Sellout is no longer a thing.  Younger people now consider all past music the same, while some of us older folks still hold grudges against Top 40 bands versus our underground favorites.  To a 25 year old, there’s no difference in streaming a song by Florida punk band Spoke, or Glenn Fry’s “You Belong to the City.”

He was always regular.  Though he was fluent with all things goth, punk, industrial, noise, post-punk, and college rock growing up, he never gravitated to a particular scene.  He never adopted the regulation costume, or changed out his friends based on their music tastes.  Probably the closest he came to a look, was by being his record nerd self and wearing old Levi’s and cheaply made concert T-shirts almost exclusively.  His hair was a wreck – stringy and in the way of his face – a little like Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth, but he was built more like Black Francis from the Pixies.  However, neither of these things were conscious choices – it just happened, because all of his time and money went into finding new music, working to earn money to buy music.  He never had the drive to try to become a full on punk rocker or anything else, because he liked too much of the other stuff and the punk culture at that time (late 80s – early 90s) didn’t allow for outside interests.  You needed to look and live like a punk, not just listen to punk.  He wasn’t aware of a music nerd scene, until he reached his mid-twenties, but soon discovered that that scene horrified him most of all!  There was just as much a feeling of superiority within.  A lot of these people reminded him of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.  They were the type who would look down their noses at others who were unaware that Australian band, The Church, had had five albums before having a hit single in the US in 1988, for example.  It was a club of one-upmanship, and often times about collecting and not about the actual enjoyment of the music.

 

By the late 90s, not much had changed.  He lived in a shitty apartment and paycheck to paycheck, but his costume had not changed.  Some of the old T-Shirts were still in circulation - holes and all!  His supervisor had taken him aside one time to urge him to start dressing in more appropriate office attire.  He struggled to do that too.  He didn’t fit in anywhere!  He was himself, but was looked down upon when he went to see most of the bands he liked, as well as at his job, or at places like golf courses.  He nearly always felt like a walking contradiction.  When he was in his 40s, he went to see The Jesus and Mary Chain perform a best of set, and was wearing a brightly colored golf shirt, while everyone else had teased hair, creepers, and black clothing.  He felt awkward, and judged, but he imagined that he was one of the only ones there who knew and owned the Mary Chain’s entire catalogue and had been a fan since before they were included on the Some Kind of Wonderful soundtrack.

 

His inability to commit to anything extended into every aspect of his life.  He wanted to feel faithful to something spiritual, or to a cause, and especially to a significant other, but was never able to genuinely do it.  It wasn’t in him.  He felt that he was incapable of change.  He had seen his friends change completely when falling for someone romantically, when they were all young, and it never felt right to him.  Although most of his closest friends did find fantastic partners eventually.  When someone would commit to a band or genre in his teen years, all others would become off limits.  Back in the 80s, for whatever reason, no one was allowed to cross music allegiances.  This is not really true, but there was always the risk of being labelled a sellout or be outcasted by your friend group, if you were a Christian Death fan and then started listening to Metallica, and wearing their gear. 

He was often mystified by his attractions.  He encountered beautiful girls/women every day, but he could only conjure up a few in his memory that made him especially attracted, conflicted, nervous, itchy, and bonkers.  He could never quite figure out that rare allure.  It had to be something more than lust, but what else could it be, he wondered?  He remembered early crushes going back to his first memories.  He used to have dreams about his first grade teacher, and he remembered watching West Side Story with his Mom on TV as a toddler, and making fun of the movie, but going silent every time Natalie Wood was on screen. 

 

During the late 90s, his favorite record store, Ozone, where he spent hours on end, over five or so years, nerding out over their inventory.  This was the place that he would pick up all of those essential early 90s UK shoegaze EP releases.  He would load up on US indie 7” singles from labels like Slumberland and Pop Narcotic, as well as punk singles and compilations – looking for the next Husker Du or Jawbreaker to fill that void in his life, or the latest Sarah Records releases.  They had it all!  And by 1998, they had an employee who reminded him of a little of Natalie Wood.  He could never forget walking into Ozone Records on a Saturday and seeing the newest single at the time from long-time favorite Buffalo Tom, “Wiser,” which she was playing loudly in the store and dancing and singing along behind the counter.  He nearly fainted on the spot.  Could there possibly be a woman for him?  Someone he wouldn’t have to give up his identity for?  Someone who he could play records with and have it be meaningful for both? He felt his knees buckle.

 

“Shoegaze” was a derogatory term created by the British music press, indicating that the bands lacked any kind of stage presence.  However, these bands were varied and exciting to him!  These bands all seemed to be music fans.  Their music elicited all kinds of differing greats from the past and were infused with an energy unlike anything he had ever heard.  He appreciated that they seemingly weren’t bands made up of cocky bastards.  What the press disparaged them for, he felt was a strength.  A lot of these bands excited his imagination as they somehow merged all of the things he loved about music into affordable and frequent four song EPs.

The first band had finished their set.  He decided that they had been pretty good, and reminded him of the Lo-Fi indie singles he started buying in the mid-90s.  They were apparently local.  He briefly thought back to the old Portland music scene, which he rarely found inspiring, but commonly offensive.  His favorites were generally brought to his attention via indie labels from elsewhere.  This band had brought a devoted following of friends and family.  He was happy for them, despite being a five-piece stuffed to a small portion at the front of the stage.  The other two bands’ equipment was ready to go behind them.  He considered standing up to buy something from the merch table or a beer at the bar, but instead chose to stay in his chair.  The danger of losing it was too great.  This was his first post Covid show.  Everything felt strange, but it was great to see live music again.  There’s an anger to live rock-n-roll that always fed him in a way he didn’t understand. 

The floor in front of the stage opened up.  In his younger years, pre-Covid, he would’ve made his move to be close to the stage, but now, despite his back and butt hurting from the terrible chair, he stayed there.  He knew that standing would likely lead to him collapsing.  He was already embarrassed enough by his appearance or existence, and he was there by himself. 

There she was, he thought, as a chill rushed through his entire body.  Across the room.  He would never forget her, even after all of these years.  In a black dress that draped down to her knees.  She had dark hair that still didn’t quite reach her shoulders.  Seemingly only a few years older, while the past 25 had been rough on him.  He looked like a grizzled world war veteran and grandfather, who ate all of the leftovers, all of the time.  She still looked like a young woman who could be in a new band or working in a hip record store.  She was swaying back and forth to a song, over the PA, he didn’t recognize, but that reminded him of an eighties synth duo.  A younger version of her stood in front of her sipping from a pint of beer.  Her daughter looked like a teenager, but must’ve been over twenty-one.  He remembered how he used to sneak glances at her over the top of the records he was holding up for further inspection, while trying to drum up the nerve to talk to her.  He always hoped that one of his amazing purchases would spark a connection.  He began to wonder what her life had been like over the last lifetime.  He assumed that it had been much better without him in it.

Buffalo Tom "Wiser"

Trouble

Hospitality

Trouble

(Merge)

Later tonight (February 9^th, 2014, as I write this), Brooklyn band Hospitality will be performing a show at Portland’s Doug Fir Lounge.  I plan on attending, since I somehow made an excuse not to go after their prior trip through town (in support of their wonderful 2012 self-titled debut - #24 pick seen here).  And again, I find myself in a dilemma.  The show is a Sunday night.  We’ve had a shower of ice layer over the streets after a few days of unusual amounts of snow, I’m old, I work early tomorrow morning, and I’m not sure I will be able to convince anyone to join me.  Should I go?  I’m listening to their new second album right now and the internal battle between my love of music and desire to support the bands I love versus the cheap old curmudgeon shut in that I’ve become rages on.  What to do?

There is a dilemma spread across Trouble as well.  Of course, the crossroads explored in vocalist/guitarist Amber Papini’s lyrics are a lot more in depth and more important than my trivial one.  Papini seems to be stuck in a purgatory between the desire for a relationship and a desire to be alone.  This is something I think all of us can identify with at some point in our lives.  Do we want to deal with the weirdness, frustration, compromise and potential heartbreak of dating or do we want to be lonely?  Neither one sounds particularly appealing, does it?  Maybe this is the jaded view and we should always dream of that perfect match that only a rare few of us seem to find in life, but such are the emotional ups and downs of love and life.

Let’s begin with the lonely side of the equation.  The smooth Luna sounding first single, “Going Out” (the video fittingly stars Luna’s Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips), finds our protagonist dressing up for a night on the town (“ruffled dresses and parasols / rhinestone rings and high-heeled soles / wrapped in cloth from your head to toe”), but the frosty night only turns out to be an evening stroll alone (“you’re looking at yourself a lot / standing in the glass with costume on / posed for no one but you were caught”).  The stuttering “I Miss Your Bones” finds her alone either from separation or from being let go, while the epic and mysterious sounding “Last Words” finds her stranded on an island wanting companionship desperately enough to “evacuate to salty arms of a soldier or a snake.”  On the closing spare acoustic “Call Me After,” Papini finds herself outstaying her welcome due to a rainstorm and the resulting humiliation of this realization: “Will you want me after? / will you want to walk me home in the dark? / is it the weather that just keeps me?”

Yet, on the other side of the coin, the album opens up with Papini’s faux British accent cursing a cheating lover in “Nightingale” (“If you sleep here you’ll see sirens and vamps”) over the top of spectacularly splashing cymbals in the rousing denial chorus: “What girl?”  In the brief “Inaugaration” finds Papini sitting alone watching TV and giving a subtle kiss off to her missing partner (“Why you call and say / you’ll call me back / I’ll disconnect the line”), while the first album Psychedelic Furs sounding “Rockets and Jets” is a case of a lovely sunny afternoon out watching planes when things go south (“I left the knife on the rafter / I’ll have your heart after / I know this won’t last too long / I’ll have the day a long long time”).  Meanwhile, the frank “It’s Not Serious” is all about being the on the other side and disinterested – “I’ll figure out / I don’t want this / and so it’s not serious”).  Clearly, there are no easy answers.  We are all heroes and villains in the world of love – depending on whose side you’re on, but finding a balance between independence and companionship is not easy to achieve.

Musically, this sophomore album is a big departure from the to-the-point baroque pop of their debut.  As hinted at in the post album double-A sided 7,” “The Drift” b/w “Monkey,” the band have decided to stretch things out and linger over notes and passages in a more spacious way.  Much like the early 80s post-punk influenced cover art (reminds me of early OMD); the music sounds like it could’ve been recorded from that period.  There is a darkness and mystery behind many of these songs and the keyboard layers and moments of programmed beats and stark piano hammers enhance the indecisiveness and hollow feelings of the words, while the space allows for bolder crescendos and longer passages of near silence.

It is fun to hear a band growing and trying new things and so successfully.  This album is an enjoyable listen from start to finish from the get go, but it reveals more and more with repetition.  Now, should I go to the show tonight?  I really should.  They’ve travelled a meandering 3,000 plus miles to arrive here across a nation decimated by bone chilling cold and treacherous roads.  It seems as though I could chance a 15 minute drive to see them perform.  But I do have to be up early tomorrow….  

(facebook.com/hospitalitylives or mergerecords.com/hospitality)

Hospitality "Going Out"

 

Scared To Get Happy

For as long as I’ve had to deal with having a genetic disorder (VHL – or Von Hippel-Lindau), which wreaks havoc on the body, I have occasionally had people kindly tell me that I’m so brave or strong. It is a strange thing to hear. Like most people, taking compliments is much more difficult than giving them, but I have never felt brave or strong. I have never felt like I’ve handled it well, especially as the problems became more intense over time. People have sometimes asked me how I have managed to get through these times. My answer has never wavered. I have always felt like I have survived the problem like most people deal with any personal or family crisis. What does one do when they lose a loved one, or break their leg in a car accident, or struggle with chronic migraines, or whatever the worst thing that happens to them may be? They find a way to cope and to persevere. I never felt like my issues were any more tragic or severe than anyone else’s. It is simply a different crisis.

However, it is the ongoing nature of the VHL syndrome that I do not feel like I have dealt with very well. The older I get, the more I realize and lament how I have allowed it to control me, instead of me taking charge of it. Sure, I’ve mostly kept on top of my continuing annual scans that monitor the kidneys, pancreas, the brain and the spinal cord, as I promised my mom I always would not long before she passed away from this disorder. I have kept my regular appointments with my specialist doctors to check hearing and to make sure my retinas stay clear of tumors. I ask all of the questions that need to be asked about improving my health and what I need to do to manage symptoms and prevent emergencies that could result. I have done this with little question like a programmed robot over the last 28 years and will continue to, despite being absolutely sick to death of visiting doctor’s offices and being filled with radiation and poisonous contrasts from these scans. What I haven’t done well, is deal with it emotionally. When it has come time to go in for some awful surgery, I have always gone into some sort of zone where I feel almost nothing inside. Sure I feel the aches and pains from the procedures, but I go through these events as if I’m doing a job that I don’t really care for. It is just something that needs to be taken care of before I punch out for the day. I have also let these momentary life halting occurrences truly stop my life. So much so, that I have ended many really good things in my life, like a burgeoning relationship, or a great chance to intern at a highly regarded professional recording studio, just to go take care of the latest disaster. But I never go back to a life with growing potential; instead I go back to life in the daily grind and forgo those potential dreams ignoring the previous achievements and strides. The older I get, the clearer this has become to me. When I hear someone say that I’m courageous, it only reminds me of the coward that I truly am.

I am trying to examine the reasons behind this, and it has become more and more apparent that I need to change this pattern – a pattern that has become such a part of me, that I struggle to see it until after I sabotage myself. There’s no way to know how my life or my level of satisfaction with life would be different, if I had returned to school after each time I had to take time off, or if I had attempted to keep friendships and relationships alive through these bypasses. However, it’s the idea that I have allowed opportunities to go by the wayside that has often filled me with regret and sadness. There’s a biting feeling that I am always missing something, especially since I am not very happy with many aspects of my life. I am unhappy and uninspired with my work; I live alone, struggle each month to get by financially and I don’t feel like my life is heading in a direction that will change this course. I do try to make changes as my frustration grows and sometimes I find temporary relief, but in the end, I never feel like I’ve gained any ground. I truly believe that this feeling of futility stems from my habit of starting from scratch each and every time my body decides to go haywire. I have allowed my health issues to control my life so much that I have not ever dedicated myself to long term goals, always waiting (as an excuse) for the foot to drop so I can stop whatever progress I’m making and go back to my life in medical institutions, where someone else can take care of me. I decided as a 13 year old that I would never have kids of my own, based on the genetic aspect of VHL, and not surprisingly, this kind of stern decision has affected my ability to find loving companionship and to maintain them. It’s as though I’ve become afraid of success, because I’m afraid that this disorder will someday take it away, so instead I subconsciously choose to live with mediocrity – a place I may well have found myself in no matter what paths I’ve chosen along the way – but it feels like I’ve taken the coward's way out.

All of this self examination has become stronger than usual of late as a small health scare hit me within the last few weeks, which coincided with me developing a major crush on a woman who I was lucky enough to meet and get to know a short time before. It has all felt eerily reminiscent of last summer (see previous posts Fear of the Weather and Numb) when I felt mysteriously physically terrible, while pining for my doctor’s receptionist (who I still see on a regular basis as my appointments and tests increase with these new issues). It took this latest development to notice that nearly every time in my life that I have had a downward change in my health status, from the very serious (dangerous brain surgery to losing my kidneys) to the much smaller issues that can be dealt with through therapies or medication changes, that I have attached my hopes and dreams to the ideal of some unsuspecting woman who I find very appealing at the time. I’m certain that those women have been a distraction to avert my focus from my fear of the unknown my tenuous health status creates, and they represent what I feel I am missing when I am set to confront those fears – companionship and support, but it has yet to go well. It is no surprise to me that these advances have all failed. Besides being pretty unappealing in general, my history of trying to win over women have most frequently happened when I have been desperate and scared and even more unappealing than usual. Again, I am allowing my health problems to dictate a path toward failure or mediocrity or loneliness or unhappiness. However, one would want to look at it. My hope is that recognizing this self destructive direction is a sign that maybe I can start to make more positive decisions and maybe for once start seriously planning for a future.

It is almost time for the LPGA to return to Portland, along with the vacation that I take to allow full immersion into that world. Maybe it’s time to take myself seriously and start introducing myself to the right people and make an effort to be the Admiral of Awesomeness that I know I can be. It’s time to dream again and to stop allowing myself to give up so easily.