He greets me with a hug, practically lifting me off the ground, and says, “What is up, you big fucking rock star? How did you convince all these people you were important?”
“Oh, believe me, nobody thinks that.”
“Yes they do, man. There was a line out front. I had to push my way to get in. People were upset.”
We settle in at the bar with a couple glasses of scotch on the rocks so I can “ice” my voice, which has been failing me for a few shows now, all sung out, screamed out, talked out.
He puts an enormous hand on my shoulder and shakes me like a bear. “So what’s it like, man? You got, like, groupies and shit?”
“No. It’s hardly Led Zeppelin around here. Backstage is usually a plate of hummus and, like, someone’s aunt.” I tell Jake about the tour, how strange it is that though I’m so far away from home all the time, the band has become a kind of meeting point for the family.
My aunt Pam moved to Atlanta, and when she heard her nephew’s band was coming to town, she was determined to watch me play, even though we were in a tiny beer-soaked club called the Drunken Unicorn in which my matronly, kind middle-aged aunt watched me play from the back of the room while the exposed pipes dripped condensation on her from the ceiling. She told me that after the show, as she was heading upstairs, some guy stopped her and said, “You know where you are, right?” Yes, she said. I’m here to watch my nephew.
My uncle Jon came to a show with my cousin Heidi. He still had that long beard, that soft, affable way of his. Both of his boys grew up to be gymnasts like their grandfather, learning their skills in a gym he owned. There’s a new sadness around his eyes, a hint of tragedy since his wife, Andy, died. She was exercising in the front yard outside the third house they built by hand in Nevada City. She came inside with a terrible headache. Jon got her some water. When she threw up, Jon called an ambulance that arrived shortly. They joked around with her because she was the nurse who had conducted their training. They placed her on a gurney and loaded her into the ambulance. When my uncle got to the hospital, they told him she had a subdural hematoma and died before they even got to the highway. He asked me about the tour over dinner and seemed genuinely charmed by the fact that his nephew’s life took the turn it did. He’s a kind man. You can see the kindness in his eyes from behind his big bushy beard and I can’t help but think of the life others are leading, filled with promise and tragedy, while I attend sound checks and sleep off hangovers in cheap motels.
“It must be weird to have all these people knowing your songs,” Jake says. “I mentioned you to one of my co-workers the other day and she couldn’t believe I knew you. I was like, Know him? I fucking made him.” He laughs, checking my gaze. “Well, not really, but you know what I mean.”
“It is weird. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“I saw you guys on Letterman. It seems like he really liked you.”
“It helped to have that string quartet playing with us.” Anna’s brother Andrew is also a classically trained violinist whose ensemble, the Calder Quartet, flew to New York to play Late Night with David Letterman with us. It did feel like a kind of arrival, like the joke was spiraling out of control: this song that was just a sad story about Amber that so many people knew by heart, this record about restlessness, about wanting to be anywhere but my own head, taken seriously by so many people.
There is a giddiness to it. We all feel it. We get compared to bands we love; we’ve made (a little) money, enough to buy an actual car and still pay rent. We’re all aware of how rare a thing it is and the best nights are the ones when we play a show and we know the audience loved it and we’re practically leaping arm in arm as we exit the stage. It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to live a dream.
But the irony that keeps occurring to me as I sing these songs night after night, as they conjure the image of Naomi dancing sweetly around her place, her colorful acrylics scattered on the floor beneath her feet, or of Amber balled up in the corner of that dirty yellow couch in the trailer on the edge of the world, is that I couldn’t actually have the relationships. I could only sing about them. I couldn’t be in them, so I wrote these stories to try to make sense of them. It’s so much easier to sing these sad songs than to live out the relationships they are about, easier to simply climb up the stone tower in the sky where I feel safe.
I smile at Jake. “Yeah, it felt like being launched into space. You know that scene in The Right Stuff when they’re walking in slow motion and the rocket is warming up in the background? It was like that.”
“That’s so fucking cool, man. Goddamn.” He shakes me again.
I want to laugh with him, to pretend all of this isn’t overwhelming. It’s just that it never occurred to me how I might appear to others in this hall of mirrors I’d constructed, that there would be these thoughts I would guard, private things I kept to myself. Performing on the stage on a good night leaves a buzz in my chest that I carry with me like a secret. I return to it again and again, the look on their faces, the roar of their voices as they meet mine, a place where I felt anxious, then bold, then elated, then floating as if lifted by the energy in the room. Walking down the street with headphones on some quiet afternoon in yet another faceless town, I think, None of these people know and I’m not going to tell them.
But when those moments end and the buzz is gone and the reality sets in that I know I am lost and that this facsimile, however splendid or romantic, cannot erase the basic feeling that I am alone and it is because I am damaged and it will always be that way, the whole thing seems less like a romantic story and more like an intoxication from which I awake to see the consequences, like those kids on LSD in the 1960s who died thinking they could fly.
And now we’re at Coachella, the same Coachella I attended three times as a journalist. The same one where I flashed my backstage/VIP credentials as I followed rock stars around, secretly hoping somebody might mistake me for one, the same Coachella where I watched from the back as the tiny speck of rarefied artists took the stage, as the din came to a standstill, and the artist began to sing, my heart soaring. That Coachella.
It’s different from up close. Nerve-racking. We mount the rickety steps at the back of the stage. Everything seems bigger than everything else. It’s hard to hold one thought in mind, my chest all nerves, my head spinning. We swat each other and pat each other and hug each other, holding on for comfort, for strength, fellow travelers on this road we never really thought we would walk down. I can’t feel my feet or the air on my face as we emerge from behind a side-stage curtain and see the people, some leaning on banisters at the front, some lying on blankets in the back smoking weed. I walk to the microphone at center stage, close my eyes and begin to play. Soon there is a drum behind me and I see the faces in the front row, some singing along, some beginning to clap. I start to feel like I can move, wandering over to Steven as he plays his perfect riffs on guitar and we exchange a smile. I sing until I lose my breath, I pant and run, thinking, Show them, just fucking show them. And when it’s over, when we walk off that stage and hug in the field behind it, we are relieved, intoxicated from the moment, downright high. And this, too, becomes a feeling I guard like a jealous secret.
After Letterman and Coachella, we sign to a larger label and get word that the tour is going to be extended. We are going to have a bus now where we sleep at night, driving between venues. We’re going to play The Tonight Show, Austin City Limits, Lollapalooza, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel Live! A few of the songs get placed in movies, in TV shows, one in a car commercial. It doesn’t even make sense to keep an apartment anymore, because I’m never home. I have to move out the next time we’re in L.A. We are booked in bigger and bigger rooms. The days run together now that we are on a bus, sleeping in small bursts in a kind of rumbling coffin, disoriented and far from home, never quite asleep, never quite awake. Life comes at us like a collage.
We are in Minneapolis. Did I even sleep? I remember the shaking in the dark, t
wisting and turning through what I assume were hills, though it’s hard to know in that dark little fever dream they call a sleep compartment.
And then Chicago. A friend! We ran together at the front of the pack on graduation day! Do you remember? We were younger and bursting with, what was it? Hope? No. Life? No. Pride? I’m not sure. I was hiding something and now it’s plain. Or it isn’t. I can’t really tell. You’ve married. You’ve had a child. She is beautiful. I’m so sorry your wife has cancer. I’m so sorry you’ve been through so much. No, I don’t have things I love more than anything else. I have this.
And then Cleveland. I’ll be at the casino. I’ll just sit at this table and think of Dad. I miss him. I’m worried about his heart. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s proud of me. I am his son. What is a son? I miss being a son, sitting in the sun with a racing form making jokes, eating corned beef sandwiches and feeling calm.
And then Seattle. A phone call. Mikel, dahhling? How’s the road? Don’t you worry about your grandma Juliette, I’m fine. It’s quiet since Grandpa died. He loved you, you know. He was so proud. No, I know you couldn’t be here. I’m just sad. I miss my boy. I think I hear him sometimes. No, we all understand. You’re in the world now. You’re living your life.
And then Portland again. Jake! Jake! Look at this! Look what we did! Look at all the people! All those lives! Where are they now? They’re at the bar! They’re lined up at the front of the stage! We did this! You did! You don’t know it, but you did! I remember the wedding. Of course I do. Tony spoke and your mother was drunk and your bride did that funny dance in her wedding dress. We laughed until we fell over and I tore my pants and you picked me up and carried me through the room with my boxers hanging out. Your girls are beautiful. You are a man. You have a family. No, I don’t have that. I have this.
Then we are in San Francisco. Then San Diego and finally Los Angeles. I can’t do it, Tony. I can’t. You’ve got to help me. I can’t move a thing. I have to have everything moved out in two hours. I’m supposed to be at sound check right now. There was a time when we were just going to move in together, but I fucked it all up. Of course I did. I let everyone down. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to do. I have a flight to London at midnight. You will? You’ll come over and do it for me? No, no, no, no. I couldn’t ask that. Are you sure? Oh, thank you. Thank you. I can just get all my things from storage later. A brother. A brother. How much I need a brother. I’m so glad you didn’t die.
Lights down. A brief silence as the wind whistles through the hills. They came after all. I can’t believe it. I guess I can sing. I can always sing. Good evening. Thank you for being here. This is all I have.
Then we’re stomping. Then we’re screaming. Then we’re clapping. Then the keyboard swells and the violin floats in from the hills, a catch in my throat, a moment to look out and look up and wonder.
Maybe I’ll just walk into the sea alone, carrying these broken pieces with me. That’s how I always imagined it: I was alone as I walked into the waves to disappear. I can feel the water licking my toes, the soft sand beneath my feet. But then I lift my eyes and see there are others, women with lace dresses fanning behind them like wedding veils drenched in sea-foam, men losing their hats in the wind, their trousers stuck to their legs by the waves, hundreds of them, thousands (on a good night, if the promoter did his job), all of us disappearing into the ocean together.
The questions. Why are we? How did this? What was the? When did we all?
There is no one answer. There are as many answers as bodies in the room. There are ten times as many answers as bodies in the room, some terrifying, some charming, some cunning, some innocent, some a hundred feet tall, godlike and invincible, others tiny and frail, beseeching and ironic. Something occurs to me as I stand under that light where I wish to disappear, something I remember like a forgotten milk tooth from a time before shame. There was a book of matches, a river, a red dot of light, something was lost and then I too became lost and then, finally, I chose to lose myself on purpose, to become the ghost that haunts my castle in the sky.
CHAPTER 42
BROKEN
“Hi, I’m Tony, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Tony!”
He stands at a wooden lectern in a community center in Culver City on Washington Boulevard, near the freeway. Seventy-five metal folding chairs fan out in front of him. The smell of burned coffee and cigarette smoke fills the room. I’m in the front row because he asked me to come watch him tell his story. The room is silent. Everyone is watching my brother as he gathers himself. He’s wearing glasses and a baseball hat, his strong, heavily tattooed arms grasping the edges of the wood for balance. He has broad shoulders and a handsome face, ruddy, rakish—a light in his sparkling blue eyes. That’s new. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. When did that happen? Where was I?
He’s been speaking at prisons, telling his story in hopes that it will help others. That’s AA. Build a ladder to the sky. Climb it. Help others up.
“I don’t know where to begin, so I guess I’ll just begin by saying drinking was never fun for me.” He takes a sip of coffee. “And you know, that’s the whole thing with drinking. You say you’re having fun. And I think I pretended it was fun because that’s what we did. We partied. That’s what we called it. So if you asked me, I’d say I was partying too. But the truth is I was sad and ashamed and I drank because I felt bad and I wanted to stop feeling bad.”
The silence is heavy in the room. It’s hard to ignore his voice, his words that carry such weight. The truth just sounds different.
There are old-timers with ten years of sobriety, hands on their laps, listening with quiet smiles, young Dope Fiends with messy hair and disheveled clothes, one week sober, having just detoxed at Brotman rehab center, leaning forward with wild eyes.
There’s literature at the back table, like the pamphlets Mom used to leave around the house, the big book of AA with its twelve steps, the laminated sheets for the meeting chair with the steps and traditions.
“I can’t tell you how many nights were spent like that. You lose track after a while. But I was always first to leave the party, because I wasn’t really there to party. The truth is I felt very alone for most of my life and drinking was a relief. The first time I ever tried that bottle of Thunderbird wine at thirteen years old, the one I stole from the Plaid Pantry, I was in. That moment changed my life. I finally found my best friend. I was drinking every single night by the next week.
“You gotta understand, I’ve never been anywhere I felt comfortable. I was born in a place called Synanon and we didn’t even know our parents and then we had to escape when I was almost seven. We moved constantly. Our mother was very depressed; our stepdad was a drunk and he disappeared, or died. We never even knew. So anyway, I always felt like an outsider, this strange kid from this strange place, angry at the world in hand-me-down clothes. And then I had that one drink, that Thunderbird wine, and for once I felt like I belonged. I felt comfortable in my own skin. Literally from that moment on nothing else mattered.”
He tells the whole story, drinking in high school, the rebelliousness and anger, the sense like he was trying to extinguish something. He talks about the years of being a “functional” addict, of holding down a job and paying rent while getting drunk every night. Then came the pills. Percocet and Vicodin. Two became five became ten became forty-five a day.
He pauses when he mentions his son. A pain fills his blue eyes, a straining. He wipes a small tear from behind his glasses. He gathers himself, drumming his fingers on the wood. The room is silent. “I think about my son every day. I know I was not in a place to be a good father to him. I wish so much I could’ve been. That one’s hard. You talk about regrets and I have some others but that’s the hardest one.” He clears his throat. “But all you can do is try to make amends. Try to deal with what’s real today. The truth is the shame of it, of knowing I could’ve done better by him, it was really hard to live with.” I
can’t believe these are my brother’s words, this wisdom, this calm reflection, this strength.
“When I first tried heroin, it was the best thing I’d ever felt. I thought, Holy shit, now we’re talkin’. I don’t need to live and feel pain. I could just do this. But heroin will kill you quick. And it wasn’t six months before I felt like I was gonna die. And like the drinking, by the end it wasn’t even fun. You’re just sitting alone in an apartment trying to blot everything out. I knew I needed help. That if I didn’t get help, I would be dead. That’s probably why I’m here, if I’m completely honest. That’s probably the only reason I’m here. Because the only alternative was death. That’s how much the drugs and alcohol had a hold on me. In a way it’s easier this way, to know I have no choice.
“So I went to Brotman. I dried out in that room, just puking and shaking, feeling sicker than I’ve ever felt in my life. I couldn’t take methadone because my liver enzymes were so bad the doctors said it would kill me. We had group meetings every day but it was hard to listen; I was itching so bad to go out again and use. But I just kept coming back to, well, it’s either this or death. I chose to not be dead. But it was close.” He laughs. The room laughs.
“I started working steps, going to meetings every day, finding myself in these rooms with people who’d walked down the same road as me, who knew every lie I could tell myself or others to hide my habit. It’s tough, man. Especially in the beginning. You just kind of have to put your head down and do it. But after a few months I started sleeping again. I started feeling okay. Healthy, you know? And then a strange thing happened. I found I liked being with others, that it was so much better to be here with friends, with people who understand me than to be using alone in the dark. That’s the thing I always wanted anyway. To just be around people who understand me.”
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