Chapter Nineteen

“If I hadn’t been up on a stage, he wouldn’t have looked at me twice. He was the type of man who measured his self-worth by the kind of woman he was with. I was definitely not that kind of woman.
If I hadn’t been a singer-songwriter, he wouldn’t have thought he knew me when we’d barely met.
If I… if only… why do things happen the way they do?”

Transcript

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Chapter nineteen If I hadn't been up on a stage, he wouldn't have looked at me twice. He was the type of man who measured his self worth by the kind of woman he was with. I was definitely not that kind of woman. If I hadn't been a singer songwriter, he wouldn't have thought he knew me when we'd barely met. If I if only why do things happen the way they do? I landed another gig opening for Todd Snyder, this time in Birmingham, Alabama. My experience playing the Pittsburgh of the South was scant, starting with last roundups barely attended 1987 gig at the Nick, a lovable toilet of a club. I'd played there again solo in 2000 with similar underwhelming results. I mostly remember the smell of beer and a dank freezing space too meager to be called a dressing room. Todd was classier than that, on a higher singer-songwriter level, so we were playing a decent establishment called Zydeco. I checked into a hotel on the outskirts of town after the three hour drive from Nashville. I had a little time before heading over to Soundcheck, so I worked up a Luvin brothers song in my room. The Angels Rejoiced, always moved me, but I wasn't sure whose version I preferred, the Luvins or Graham Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris. I felt so much for this song and the story it told in a few minutes. It connected me to my discovery of country music in the early eighties, and also to the man who'd become my husband and father of my daughter. Will loved the Leuven brothers so much we danced to their song Kentucky for our first turn as a married couple, and neither of us was from the place. I wanted to share my appreciation of the Hillbilly Harmony duo right there in the song's originator's home state, even if there was only one of me. Maybe music's ability to help fill in what's missing, love when there isn't any, words where there were none, is what draws me to write and play songs. I'm not here to impress anyone, just share a feeling. It was February but already warm, the air slightly humid and smelling of hydrangeas crossed with hickory smoke. I played a good set for the largest assembled crowd I'd seen below the Alabama border. They seemed to really like me. I don't know why that was a surprise. It must be a byproduct of years of less than impressive audience numbers at my own gigs. One or two hundred in a room make a lot more noise than twenty. I'd done well opening for Warren's Yvonne and found a new level of relatability with my last two albums. Songs like Cynically Yours, Don't Ever Change, and Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again felt personal and universal and grabbed listeners whether they knew me or not. After Todd's set where he was his usual hilarious, engaging self, I stood behind a wooden counter selling my CDs and signing them for anyone who asked. The night had been a success. In retrospect, I wish I'd basked in it, packed up my merch case, loaded my guitar into the Lumina, and driven back to my comfy hotel room to enjoy some premium cable channels we didn't have back home in Nashville. Instead, a man approached the table. He looked a little like the actor Stephen Collins who played the Reverend Father in Seventh Heaven. Nice looking, sandy haired, clean cut, straight. You're funny, he said. You don't usually hear women who are funny. Okay, so kind of an old fashioned guy. He continued. I said to my friend, I bet she gets the joke. He told me his name. I signed a CD for him. To Charles. I get it. I felt flattered. A normal person thought I was funny. He probably even had a job. I mean, I'd played on late night with Conan O'Brien and gotten a big laugh several times from the studio audience. Maybe even from the million or so viewers at home, many of them normal with civilian jobs, but Charles was right here in front of me. Maybe he could be my boyfriend, I thought. It was just that fast, that simple. I handed him a pen and asked him to sign up for my mailing list. I emailed Charles a night or two later, assuming he was married and that would be that. No more married men ever. I'd learned as a gullible twenty year old that scenario never works. He emailed back. He was divorced, living and working in Birmingham. Did he like barbecue? I asked. I said I wouldn't mind driving back down that way for some dreamland. I'd tried their legendary Tuscaloosa location back when last roundup toward the south and could still taste the smoke and tang of those perfectly charred ribs. The Birmingham branch was supposed to be nearly as good. A week later at one in the afternoon, we dined together, chastely carrying our trays of ribs and cornbread and sweet tea to a table in the noisy, crowded barbecue place. It was a sea of chinos and pastel polo shirts, and Charles fit right in. Not a tattoo, band t shirt, bandana, or hip haircut in sight. The normal sea felt downright exotic. We swapped stories. He was recently single after twenty years of marriage to a knockout, who also happened to be really nice and still came around weekly to clean the house that had been theirs. He, the one who knew how to spur their children on to succeed, stayed in the family home to keep pushing their high school age kids to be the star athletes they were destined to be. He ogled my freeform life, an eager tourist urging me to tell him about the sex and drugs I no doubt indulged in as part of the musician lifestyle. Um I drink wine with dinner is about all I had to offer. My mundane striving was not the stuff to inspire vicarious thrills. Charles made it clear he wasn't a Republican and didn't go to church. I asked him what the hell was he doing in Alabama? His job, he was all about his career and the kids. A clean cut guy with an actual job. I'm embarrassed to admit it turned me on. And when we walked back to his car through the broiling Alabama afternoon sun and he unlocked a sleek, dark green series seven BMW, I was smitten. Looking back I wonder, was I really that shallow? The answer is, unfortunately, yes. So Charles looked like my savior for a minute, if a savior wore polo shirts and khakis and shopped at Costco. Clean cut is something I hadn't had much experience with. Khakis felt comforting, neutral fabric indicators of someone who had it all together, who was moral, upright, and true. Here was a man with hair cut by a barber. Aside from my dad, I don't think I'd met a man with that kind of haircut before, let alone slept with one. Maybe meeting Charles felt like a sign I should throw in the towel on my bohemian life. I'd had what felt like my big shots, a record deal and a publishing deal in Nashville, but I was still struggling away, trying to make my quirky records and play gigs for an audience I wasn't sure how to find. In certain respects I felt I'd failed. I didn't realize these were all just steps along the path. I still thought there was a destination you reached that said winner, or a point where you called game over. If I didn't qualify for a manager, why didn't I qualify? Was I too old or just too intent on doing things myself? Or an agent. I'd had agents willing to work with me and I inevitably decided they weren't finding me enough work. Was that their fault or mine? Even Lawrence Welk's son's publishing company couldn't interest other artists in recording my songs. Was it time to just call it quits? If I was only capable of attracting men like me, artists, bohemians, dreamers who struggled and suffered and woke up some mornings wondering what the hell they were doing, well, that was the equivalent of having my own stamp of approval, and what was that worth? Like Groucho Mark's sort of, I didn't want the member of any member of a club that would have me as a member. So here was a man with a closet full of suits and dress shirts. Maybe if I had the attention and approval of that man, I'd merit the attention and approval of my father. For a person well into middle age, I had a lot of misconceptions about normal people, how they had it all figured out. I still held on to the belief that I could go straight any time. I still clung to the notion that not being an artist was a choice I could make. The barbecue lunch was a tentative fishing expedition. The first real date was dinner in Nashville. He arrived at our door in a dark grey press shirt and dark blue suit jacket. I dressed up in a silky top and low slung boot cut jeans, kitten heeled shoes. You're not as good looking as I remember, he said. Not the first thing out of his mouth, but nearly. I'm not usually seen with a woman as how can I say this flawed as you? My mouth was probably wide open at this point. But you're so talented I'm willing to make an exception. My mouth closed. Remember that early two thousands guy with the awful ponytail and top hat, who was featured on every TV news show for teaching men how to capture a woman's heart by insulting her? I think his name was mystery. His patented technique was called negging. Charles hadn't studied his teachings, he just came by this behavior naturally. In a matter of weeks, he'd given me a BMW of my own. I loved that car. As ashamed as I was of what it might mean to accept the gift of a car from a man. When I was driving it, I felt about myself all the things I wanted to feel out there in the world, and only occasionally felt on stage. Deft, capable, powerful. I'd always had problems with low self esteem. Maybe it was growing up in close knit provincial Pittsburgh, feeling like an outsider. Probably it was the acne I suffered as a teenager and again and again as an adult. Too visible evidence I was bad inside. The wounds that spur us to create are the same ones that make us doubt ourselves. Like a child I took everything Charles offered, alternately doubting his intentions and thanking God for my good luck. I wanted to be adored, to be worshipped, to be noticed, and here was a man who seemed to be offering that kind of attention every minute of the day, every day of the week, whether we were together or apart. You're so talented, you're so smart, you deserve the best. He said the words I'd longed to hear all my life, especially from my dad. Would I give up my autonomy to be treated like a princess? I felt a genuine attraction to his clean cut looks, confidence and intellect, but within two months he was talking about marriage, claiming betrothal was the only way he could legally sleep with me in the family home he shared with his teenage daughter and son. My daughter felt deeply uncomfortable about the whole situation. Charles insisted I take Hazel to a psychotherapist to get to the bottom of why she was barely civil around him. To keep him off my back, I agreed. The therapist was a friend of Charles. She's a spirited, intelligent young woman, I don't see any problem, said the therapist. Charles was furious, deciding his therapist friend was a quack. I wished Hazel could understand how I was trying to make a better life for the both of us, at the same time wondering how she could have any respect left for me. I was up in the northeast playing a few gigs. Early spring, and Bob, my first New York boyfriend from back in art school days, and I made a plan to meet up in the last old fashioned coffee shop on University Place in Manhattan. This type of establishment was becoming a thing of the past in the city, giving way to a whole new kind of deli with banks of bright flowers out front, healthy nuts and fruits inside. I wondered when university became a one-way avenue that flowed up town only. I'd been away from the city less than four years, and as I crossed to the opposite corner of Twelfth Street, sense memory caused my head to swivel left, right, left, in search of that rarest of things in Manhattan, two way traffic. I reminded myself how one year in New York was like a decade in other places. The large, empty rectangle of sky over downtown, until two years ago neatly intersected by the twin towers, seemed to flash on and off as if outlined in neon, saying, You're an outsider now. Remember when the towers came down? Sure you do. You saw it from a distance, but you weren't here. The city had changed, it was cleaner, brighter lit, traffic and subway signs easier to find. I wished I could have frozen everything in nineteen ninety nine, gone out and raised my daughter, and returned a more successful version of myself to a gently spinning carousel that kept one painted horse open and waiting for my inevitable return, with permanent access to the brass ring. I was in a reverie, and then Bob, denim jacket, olive skin, and slim build, just like when I'd met him in 1976, appeared out of the past, or the fourteenth Street and University exit of Union Square subway station. The one you could only enter if you already had a token, or more recently, a metro card. Tokens had been retired last year, yet another piece of my New York they'd chipped away. If it was true our bodies regenerate every seven to ten years, it was only a short amount of time before the me that existed here would be replaced by another me, and one day I'd arrive through the Holland or Lincoln Tunnel, and New York City and I would greet each other as complete strangers. Amy McMahon, Bob said, using my maiden name. We hugged and told each other we still looked exactly the same. Since we were only in our early forties, that was actually close to being true. Inside the door of the coffee shop, the manager, dressed in classic white shirt and black suit jacket, directed us to a booth. We exchanged current biographical details. He was back out on Long Island living at his mother's house. I was doing my best in Nashville, but found myself caught up in a relationship that was getting serious. We were somehow talking about marriage. I'd only known the guy a few months. Oh, that's Charles calling me right now, I said, as the familiar number appeared on the screen of my flip phone. I'll call him back later, I said, sounding more confident and in command than I felt. I knew from experience that ignoring even one phone call from Charles now meant interrogations and harangues later. But the familiar formica top table distance between me and Bob and the space around our leatherette booth created a shimmering force field of NYC energy that cloaked and grounded me in the past, Bob and I shared. As we ate our patty melts and fries, I felt like myself in a way I couldn't get to down south. There were gaps all around the space I inhabited in Nashville, places I felt I just didn't fit the way I fit there in New York. And maybe that partly explained how Charles found his way in. Bob and I talked about old friends and family, me, Hazel, tenth grade in a Nashville magnet school, my four brothers sprinkled through New York City, Pittsburgh, and Virginia, Dad looking after my mother and senior living, Bob, his mother same as ever, and music. Good old Lou Reed's new release The Raven. Hmm, did I have another hour? We hadn't caught up like that for almost a decade. I gave Bob my latest CD, work I felt proud of. We call this the Nashville Handshake, I said. Bob, one of my oldest friends, and my first musical mentor, laughed at the idea of me promoting myself to him. We hugged goodbye on the street corner, and my phone rang again. Why didn't you pick up before? I've been calling you for an hour. Charles launched into a diatribe. I was a slut with loser friends, and Bob was the worst. If it hadn't been for him, I'd have gotten a lot further in life. I wondered when I'd started dating my dad. Actually, Charles made me appreciate my father more, his basic decency and humanity. Yet lately I'd found myself distanced from my family. The same way he had no contact with his, who were sprinkled somewhere out in the Midwest. Like all the other red flags, I kept telling myself it was all okay. He insisted that if I couldn't accept his love, the purest, deepest love I'd ever have, well, I was surely flawed beyond repair, and even he, my truest believer, couldn't help me. I stood outside the mental health building on East Twelfth Street, two dozen therapists' office a short elevator ride away, wondering how I could make Charles disappear. I should shut my phone and ignore him completely, but I played my side of the sketch, arguing, denying, reassuring, while New York swirled around me. I could allow the flow of the city life I still longed for and dreamt about to pick me up and deposit me in the stacks of the strand bookstore half a block away, where I'd happily lose myself. Instead I leaned against a cool stone wall as Charles kept talking. Are you going to sleep with him? You'd better not sleep with him. The thought hadn't occurred to me for many, many years, but I argued my virtue like a lawyer defending a client on trial for her life. Stories of struggle of trying to make ends meet as a single mom. So what was I doing loading my guitar and merchandise case into the trunk of a silver BMW? The girl reminded me a little of myself twenty years earlier, slightly bedraggled with reddish brown lanky hair falling into her eyes, pert breasts and friendly hips in a calico thrift shop dress under a dingy leather jacket, boots, guitar case a little grimy, but her face was dewy and so alive she was giving off sparks. I was forty five, still relatively pert myself. Maybe I was cleaner than I'd been back in my twenties, when I lived in a roach infested Manhattan apartment with a bathtub in the kitchen. The red light was a humble singer songwriter joint, the type of place I'd gotten used to playing over the years of writing songs and putting out records. I was too old to play the ingenue, the promising newcomer. I wanted to tell the girl to come see me after twenty years of running a marathon and cheap used sneakers. Maybe by then she'd understand how a woman gets tired sometimes and doesn't think so clearly. Instead, I just chuckled grimly. A late breakfast in Birmingham. Wasn't this the life I always dreamt of for myself? Gigs on the books for weeks or months ahead, a man on my arm on the way to brunch, the wherewithal to pay for it. Charles and I ordered eggs, bacon and biscuits in the cozy cafe, where a fancy, mostly white part of town turned into the racially mixed neighborhood that felt way more comfortable to me than the big houses and well maintained lawns of the Tony area where Charles lived. He tutted when I added grits to my order, adding a knowing chuckle like you're just trashy enough for grits. I picked up a copy of the New York Times at the counter. The cafe was a rare establishment this far south that carried the Yankee paper of record. The edition was dated Monday, september eighth, two thousand three, leafing through stories about George Bush and Tony Blair, I found an obituary for Warren's Yvonne. I knew it was coming, like everyone knew it was coming. He'd been so open about the cancer that was going to end his life, joking Riley on the Letterman show, about death and enjoying every sandwich. That still didn't make it right, or easy to accept. I hoped he'd had an endless array of perfect sandwiches. I thought of how generous he'd been with his deli tray like a Jewish mother. You need to eat, he'd say, eat. Beyonce sang about being crazy in love through the deli speakers, and I shared the news with Charles about Zevon's death, and Charles was thankfully reverent and even managed to refrain from saying something crass and offensive, as was his default setting. I wondered to myself, is this love or just crazy? Some might say Warren Zevon wasn't the greatest model of how to live. He'd even called himself Mr Bad Example. I think his droll fatalism could have made some sense of my current situation, just as he'd done with the school marm, the partner. He'd been keeping himself in line for a few years earlier. He'd had the school marm and here I was with Charles, as if allowing a person with the attributes furthest from our own can bring our self-defeating traits into line. As we walked back up the hill towards Charles' car, he pointed out the house he'd lived in with his first wife before they'd moved to a posher neighborhood. This was a good time to remind me how beautiful she'd been and still was, how lucky I was to have someone with his excellent taste and professional position interested in the likes of me. And by the way, in case I'd forgotten, I had a big ass. Sweat poured down my face and back, and my hair began to frizz. I was amazed this didn't lead to more derogatory remarks as Charles cranked the air conditioner in his BMW. You'd be prettier without those acne scars, Charles said. My ex-wife has a good plastic surgeon. He was hitting me where I lived. I felt like anything that didn't happen in my life the way I wanted it to happen was due to those scars. What scars, my friend said. I seesawed between panic that things were moving way too fast, and a sense of security that issues like college for my daughter, house payments, and my loneliness would all be taken care of. In spite of Charles' demands and behavior that alienated my friends and family, this man believed in me. After decades of barely getting by, I felt lucky to dress up and go out to eat in Nashville places I'd longed for but hadn't been able to afford Sunset Grill, Zola, F Scots, arrive, be seated, glance around, wondering who were these privileged folks and could they tell I was just pretending to be one of them? A martini or a glass of wine, some appetizers, why not? He was paying, and he never tired of telling me he'd retire a millionaire. A little light conversation and then I know you slept with that guy we saw out the other night. I can just tell, didn't you? Admit it. You've never had a good boyfriend until me. Just these losers. Why have you always settled for losers? My thoughts careened between he's right. No one decent would want me. And why are you sitting here listening to this? My hands gripped my knife and fork. My lip trembled. I tried to ignore him. These crab cakes are delicious, I said. You're not only a slut, you're a liar, he said. My hands were on the sides of my large white dinner plate. So big, so heavy, so beautiful the way they arranged the food. And then the plate was across the table. The contents spilled in his lap, which was unfortunately covered with a heavy white cloth napkin. Fuck you, I shouted. All the diners around us turned. That was a word you never heard in Nashville. Little and shouted in a fancy restaurant. He laughed. He looked happy. He'd gotten what he wanted. Me acting like a child, recipient of his abuse and largess. They were a package deal. The low lights of the dining room twinkled off his glasses. He reminded me of my dad all of a sudden. My dad, who had nothing to say to me while I was involved with this man, who I thought would please him, make him proud. Isn't this what you wanted, Dad? Didn't you hope I'd find somebody in control like you? This is Amy Ray. Thanks for listening.