Then later in the day, while still coked out of my mind, I completely tanked our performance at the rooftop launch party thrown by Spin. Our publicist introduced me to Doug Brod after the set, the magazine’s editor-in-chief. That’s part of the game at events like those; you’re there to make fans out of the magazine’s staff as much as you are the magazine’s readers. I shook Doug’s hand and all I could manage to say through my clenched jaw was “I have to go pack up my shit.” My publicist was not impressed, and cackled a laugh that indicated to me that the band was dead to him. All of this work had gone into the album, and I was too drunk or high to see it to the end.
And now we were stuck sitting on the side of the highway in a broken-down bus and this tour was going to shit as well. Of course it was.
With Andrew gone for over a month of our dates opening for Silversun Pickups, whose fans didn’t like us to begin with, Against Me! became a motley crew of people I barely knew. In addition to our fill-in bass player and our brand new drummer, I’d also brought along other random hires to come aboard to handle keyboards, stage lighting, and various new elements that I hoped would expand our live act and make us more dynamic. I was overcompensating for the loss of what had made us any good in the first place. Some days would go by where the only face I recognized was James’s. “I miss Andrew,” he told me on the walk back to the bus one night. I agreed, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. I was a stranger in my own band.
The only good that came of bringing a crew of strangers on board was meeting Pope. The first time I saw Pope, he was walking down University Avenue in Gainesville wearing a pair of silver aviator sunglasses. Half of his head was shaved and the other half dyed a mix of blood-red and black. All visible skin was tattooed.
Who’s the fucking freak? I thought to myself.
I was on my way to meet up with our crew for the tour we were leaving on the next day. I pulled up in front of the hotel and that freak came walking up to the van. The word “hell” was tattooed on his neck, “dope” and “sick” on his knuckles, and drawings from the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac on the tops of his hands with stitching around his wrists. He collected tattoos of the word “cunt” on his leg.
“Hi, I’m Pope, your new lighting designer.”
We became fast friends, which is rare for me. He was my buddy. The first tour we did together up in Canada was my favorite tour we’d done since the novelty of touring wore off. Pope was a big part of that.
When the stress of a pending lawsuit and a failing partnership with a record label became overwhelming, Pope was always willing to do stupid shit with me in an effort to keep morale up, like buying pellet guns and turning the front bus lounge into a shooting range, or smoking weed and playing video games until the sun came up. We took ecstasy together in Montreal and got in a street fight with a Canadian junkie. Pope took a punch in the face and laughed wildly. I’ll never forget that laugh.
He would throw his hands up in the air and walk away with a scream when he got frustrated.
“Fuck my life!” he would exclaim to himself throughout the day.
The burden was then on me to keep our spirits up. I’d laugh and respond: “Mandatory happiness!”
March 21, 2010—Driving
The Canadian auxiliary guitar player was 45 minutes late for bus call. A search team was sent out to look for him and he was found blind drunk in the alley behind the bar we had been drinking at earlier. When we yelled out his name, he jumped behind a dumpster and tried hiding. He could barely stand, couldn’t walk without help, and not a word coming out of his mouth was coherent.
We get him back to the bus and he pushes past me, grabs two slices of pizza and goes crawling into his bunk to eat them. We’ve asked him several times not to eat in his bunk. It isn’t sanitary. It makes the sleeping area smell like food. This was the last straw.
Greg the bus driver suggests we just kick him to the curb, leave him on the side of the road. I wanted humiliation. Andrew grabs the video camera and we all surround his bunk. We rip the curtain open and there the slob is, disgustingly drunk chewing on one pizza slice with the other resting on his shirtless chest. He tries to get up and I push him back down, hold him inside the bunk as we all meow like cats as loudly as we can until we feel satisfied. His bunk was then sealed closed with duct tape.
In the morning a small hole has been burrowed through the duct tape and the Canadian is nowhere to be found. He makes himself scarce all day.
We should just send him home but with only a couple shows left and his return plane ticket already booked to leave from the last city on this run, we’ll keep him on with us.
It was a stupid decision to bring a stranger out on tour to play with us, a total overcompensation for feeling insecure with a new drummer and a new album with songs that have more parts overdubbed onto them than we can possibly reproduce live as a four-piece. This is us jumping the shark.
March 26, 2010—Driving
I don’t remember what time I went to bed last night but I do remember drinking white wine, then red, then whiskey, and smoking a ton of weed. I keep telling myself I need to chill out and take better care of myself but I want to hang out and be social and the social scene on this tour is fucking high and drunk. This Canadian run opening for Billy Talent is how I always imagined our arena touring would be. Huge audiences, great shows, and then at night after the crowds leave, the arena is ours to do whatever we want. We play cards in smoke-filled locker rooms, drinking into the early morning hours, talking shit and hanging out, listening to music. I don’t want to see it end.
If there’s a shopping mall close by on our day off, Pope and I have plans to decorate the back bus lounge. We have a vision. We want the back lounge to be called “Cookie World” and be decorated in an all-cookie theme. Cookie pillows, cookie posters, everything we can find that’s cookie-related. The absolute key to Cookie World though will be that there will always be trays of cookies set out for people to munch on. This is what happens when great minds get high.
May 16, 2010—Saint Augustine, FL
Neither the dress nor the shoes fit. My toes are going numb. I should have tried them on before buying them. If only I was so brave.
The elevator is broken so there’s a lot of traffic in the stairwell tonight. I accidentally left my cell phone in the van. I’m going to have to go and get it soon, which I’m nervous about. I’m full-on femme. I’m her. What if the key demagnetizes while I’m out of the room? How would I go to the lobby front desk like this? The simple trip of walking to the van and back will be my first outing. Can I pass? Could I ever?
I’m not happy. Maybe coming out and pursuing this fucked up delusion is the only way to save myself, and instead of spending the rest of my life feeling like I’m a sick pervert or that there’s something wrong with me, I could move on and focus on things that are good for me and make me happy. Maybe there’s a chance of saving my soul if I follow this path.
I’m sick of lurking around the women’s section in department stores feeling like I’m some kind of fucking pervert. I want to be able to buy a dress that fits me.
May 17, 2010—Saint Augustine, FL
I’ve turned off my cell phone. I need to calm my mind. I need this time to be her. I know that I’ll hate myself after a binge like this, I always do.
Is there any difference between this and having an affair? I’m not fucking anyone but myself.
In the time it took me to walk from my hotel room down the stairs to get outside, it started pouring rain. I was going to find a place to sit on the beach and write. Even something as simple as writing in public while her is exhilarating. The sun on my skin feels like an accomplishment.
I think my weight and facial hair are the biggest obstacles for me in passing. I wish I were a woman. It’s a thought that no matter how long I go without entertaining it, it always comes back to me.
I don’t know how to reconcile those feelings with my current life, my wife, my daughter, my family and fr
iends, my band. I don’t think I have the strength to transition. Shaving my legs and painting up my face is one thing. Hormones and plastic surgery, changes you can’t go back on, are a different kind of commitment.
I’m in plain sight now, surrounded by people. Is anyone onto me?
The other guests here at the Holiday Inn are mostly families and middle aged tourists. This feels less threatening. Young adults scare me. They’re more likely to notice and less likely to be polite about it if they do.
These tits aren’t real. This is just a wig.
I’m just a faggot in a dress with my dick tucked between my legs.
July 20, 2010—Houston, TX
What would be my biggest obstacle in transitioning? Coming out to my family, my friends, the people I work with, the public at large? The physical changes of hormones, electrolysis, and plastic surgery? Passing? I don’t want to embarrass myself. I don’t want to go through the pain of coming out to only end up a bald woman. Do I have the hair for it? I don’t care about passing by anyone else’s standards but my own. I want to look in the mirror and believe that I’m looking at a woman. I want to feel like a woman. That is my biggest fear. That I would never truly feel like a woman. I don’t want to be a joke. I don’t want to ruin my life. I don’t want to be ashamed. I want to draw a line in between the past and the present. I want a new life. I want to be happy. I want revenge. I want to take back control. What’s the alternative? I don’t want to settle for a half-life.
In a strange way, my dysphoria started to become a sense of empowerment through all of my career failures. What had in the past always felt like a vulnerability had now become the one thing keeping me going, an ace up my sleeve of sorts. It was a secret that was mine alone, something that no lawyer or manager or label head could touch because it existed only in my mind. It was one thing about myself I knew to still be true.
There was one other thing I could make sure no one could take. When it started to become clear that White Crosses was not going to save us financially, I had the foresight to buy a house in Saint Augustine. I’d done research and learned that Florida law shelters property from lawsuits. Even if I was taken to my last dime by legal fees, my house would still belong to me. Heather, Evelyn, and I would always have a home that was ours, no matter what happened to the band. I was excited to start packing up and leave Los Angeles behind, though Heather hated Florida. She tried to put on a happy face, but I knew how miserable she was about the idea of returning.
Andrew jumped back onto the tour after a few weeks and, although I was still annoyed with his timing, I recognized that new parent glow about him and was empathetic as a recent father myself. I missed my daughter terribly on tour. I would watch videos I had of her on my phone repeatedly throughout the day. I studied the way she moved her hands and the way her eyes paid attention. I loved the way her tiny little neck supported her pumpkin head, and most of all I loved her beautiful smile. I thought of me, her, and Heather, a family. I thought of us in our new house. I thought of Saint Augustine, the white sand shores, the tips and towers of Flagler College, the Spanish Fort, the tourists on King Street, and the merry-go-round that we would one day soon ride together. It was a feeling of safety. There were still a lot of shows left to play, a lot of miles yet to cover, but I was coming home to all that soon.
Though White Crosses charted higher on the Billboard list in its first week, overall album sales were on the decline. While this normally would have been another tremendous disappointment for the label, they had bigger problems to deal with. Right after the album’s release, Tom Whalley was ousted as head of Warner, replaced by Lyor Cohen, who had previously led Def Jam Recordings. Cohen came in and gutted the place. Our publicist, our product manager, and almost everyone else on our team were given silver parachutes and left. Our A&R contact got promoted to the head of Sire, and I knew we wouldn’t be much of a priority anymore. We were about to slip through the cracks. The promotional campaign was finished, dead in the water before we had the chance to even do a headlining tour in support of the album. I got the call from the manager letting me know all of this a day before we were supposed to fly to Australia for a tour, followed directly by one in the UK with the Toronto band Fucked Up. I hung up the phone and called a band meeting in my room at the Garland Hotel in Los Angeles.
James, Andrew, and George came over and sat down on the beds. I offered them the only solution I thought made sense at the moment, the last option I saw left.
“It’s over,” I told them. “We’re done.”
I had been humbled by it all, beaten down by the lawsuit and too tired to keep fighting.
My plan had failed. I thought that if I fully devoted myself to making an album—if I gave every ounce of my soul to it without reservation; if I worked cooperatively with all the people involved in the project; if I listened without cynicism to advice; if I invested financially in the band and its infrastructure, the stage show, the crew; if I was accommodating to press and radio, willing to try to put a positive spin on the answer to every question asked; if I opened myself up and tried to have a good time while onstage and connect with the crowd—I thought that maybe if I did all of these things, it would pay off and the album would be successful and we would stand a chance of fighting this lawsuit. But I thought wrong. I felt defeat, and it burned.
I told the guys I’d be going back home the next morning and would start selling off my equipment to make payments, and recommended they do the same. No one really argued. What was there to argue? The writing was on the wall for Against Me!. George was quick to distance himself from the band. “Well, you all have got some things to figure out.” The emphasis was on you. He was already on a lifeboat, rowing away from our sinking ship.
They bought plane tickets back to Florida, but I opted to rent a car at the airport. It meant something symbolically that I drive back on my own. A year ago, I had packed up and driven west alone to begin my quest of making the album that was meant to save us, but I’d failed. It seemed only right that I do my penance by returning the way I came.
Fifty-six hours and 2,400 miles from Los Angeles to Saint Augustine, the rental car’s stereo broken. Minimal stops for gas and bathroom breaks. As I pushed the speed limit, the road beside me blurred into a flickering stream of fading memories. The highways that once served as paths to endless possibilities now were a gloomy procession for the loss of a feeling. I clenched the wheel and pressed my foot further on the gas pedal. I met my blue eyes in the rearview mirror. “We’re never going home,” I scoffed aloud at the naiveté of my former self, but there was no one there to hear it.
The band was worth nothing now. Less than nothing, in fact. All the years I’d spent building it up felt like a lie. I leaned on the pedal even harder. Fifty-six hours and 2,400 miles to think about everything I’d lost, and how I could ever get it back, or kill the son of a bitch who stole it from me. I crossed over the Saint Johns County line through a thick morning fog.
I was inhaling the burning scrapings of resin out of a bong while listening in on a conference call with the managers and lawyers when they told me the lawsuit was over. They assured me that it was done for good, but I didn’t trust it. It was late October, and this lawsuit had consumed me for over two years. It was hard to believe it could actually come to an end. Even if it was finally finished, the damage had been done. Against Me! had been declared dead.
Though we were able to cancel our Australia and U.K. dates, management was insistent that we honor obligations we’d made to play three radio festivals to end the year, threatening that reneging would “irreparably damage our careers” should we ever decide to play music again, and could even result in another lawsuit. The problem was, George had already committed to a tour with Hot Water Music. So we’d need someone to fill in for three shows.
I remembered reading that the New York hardcore band Madball had recently parted ways with their drummer, Jay Weinberg. The story made news because the split was not on amicable terms, lead
ing to some drama. We had met Jay through the Bouncing Souls. He was a fan who had been coming to our shows for years. He even used to jump in and take over drums for Warren on the last song in our set when he’d see us play. To us, he was just a young kid from New Jersey, only 20 years old, but he had an impressive resume. His father, Max, was the longtime drummer for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. When Jay was a teenager, he got to keep his father’s seat warm for a few dates due to a scheduling conflict that kept Max busy as bandleader for The Tonight Show when Conan O’Brien took over the hosting gig from Leno. Guitarist Steve Van Zandt once attributed Jay’s skills behind the kit to the Weinberg DNA. If he had the chops to jam with Springsteen, certainly he could pull off an Against Me! song.
Jay knocked his audition with us out of the park. I asked him to learn 15 songs, but he showed up knowing the whole catalog; songs even Andrew, James, and I had forgotten how to play. He had a style that was frenetic and wild, like he was putting his whole body into his playing. Best of all, he was not above doing the claps. He was in. We sent word to management that we’d worked out a solution for the shows. They offered congratulations in response, and in the same breath told us they were dropping us from their roster as clients.
Against Me! felt both born anew and like the same old prison sentence. We were ending the year with no lawsuit, but also no manager, no label, and a big pile of debt. We had a new drummer, but even that came with caveats. Jay’s comparative youth both motivated us and was a total pain in the ass. After our first practice, Andrew, sweaty and winded, said, “I’m gonna have to start hitting the gym again to keep up.” But we also quickly realized we were dealing with a spoiled brat. That was OK, we thought; we’ll take him under our wing, we’ll show him how to be cool, like our kid brother, something his privileged upbringing and Daddy’s deep pockets could never buy him.
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