Warning – rocky road ahead, so to speak. You don’t have to stick around and read for this one. It’s probably really just for me, and someone else who might never read it. But it’s okay if you do. Doesn’t matter to me.
Sometimes I write because if I don’t, it’ll nag and nag and nag at me until I finally just do it and get it all out and be finished with it. I would say I make a habit of that, but there’s boxes of notebooks and typewriter-typed pages and all kinds of other such stuff tucked away in a box in the back of my bedroom closet that would prove that to be the contrary; that I always finish it, that I always get it out and over and done with. Which, actually, probably explains a lot about, oh, everything. I think I’ve come to terms with the fact, lately, that after 20 and 15 and 10 years, none of that stuff in those boxes is ever getting finished.
And sometimes it’s just the stuff that has no potential entertainment or literary value whatsoever – it just needs to get out of my head and be somewhere else.
So, here.
Having written about Nashville, non-country, music past this week and reading a bit about the same genre in the present – and having been involved in a couple of long conversations that included a lot discussion about Nashville past and present this week – I find myself over here at the sorry, flat, ugly southwest end of the state a little preoccupied, both with past memories and a few present troubles. And also a little homesick, I suppose.
It’s never been any secret among my friends and family that I never really wanted to leave Middle Tennessee. I basically moved to Memphis because I was young, stupid, and in love, and thus I convinced myself that moving here was the right decision to make.
Actually, if I’d HAD to move somewhere and had no choice at all about staying in Middle Tennessee at the time, I would have rather gone to East Tennessee. That was where the object of my affection was at the time and had been for a while, and where I was quite a bit of the time anyway at that point. But he decided he wanted to go westward for school. I came with him, and here we ended up in Memphis.
Sort of eerie and what may have been a portent of things to come – fortunately he was driving – I became violently ill, sick to my stomach, before we even left Rutherford County on the day we moved, and stayed sick for a couple of days after. I couldn’t even drink a couple of sips of water without it coming back up.
In retrospect, it was yet another really bad decision to go right along with all the other thousands of bad decisions I have made in life. Still and all, I was a pretty big fan of Memphis for a while, and there were some good years here with him, and still some more good years here after him and without him. It wasn’t all bad. Sometimes I think I just outgrew this city. I don’t think there was any one thing or one event that soured me so, such as I am. I think I just stayed too long.
And again, the longer I’m here and not that happy about it, the more I regret ever leaving Middle Tennessee in the first place. The last year I was there was the best ever. I had finally moved into an apartment that I absolutely loved, after years of bouncing from place to place every six months or less, on a quiet street a few blocks from the MTSU campus. I was taking classes again, at night. My job at the time, I worked with people I genuinely liked a great deal. Three very distinctly different groups of friends to hang out that were all great fun – friends from school, some of which were also from my hometown; friends from a former job to party with in Murfreesboro; friends I hung out with, most of the time, in the clubs and indie music scene in Nashville, a couple of whom I had actually known since childhood via church camp and other Episcopal youth statewide stuff throughout childhood and teen years.
It was that last group I was closest to, always have been, all these years still. What’s left of us anyway. Kind of like everything else I had, all those great things I was so happy with at the time in Middle Tennessee that I left behind. They’re just gone, mostly.
Many of my friends from that time are gone, not only from Nashville and that old scene, but gone from this world altogether. Accidents, drugs, a murder, illness – you name it, most of the usual culprits have whittled down what was a very close-knit group of twelve or thirteen-odd or so people down to a meager group of six. The oldest one is only 42 years old.
I know, “only” 42. Maybe that sounds old to some people. 40 sounds old to me lots of days. But it’s really not, not in the grand scheme of things. No, it’s not.
Anyway, that – coupled with many more friends I have lost from my hometown crowd, and some other friends – it’s just stunning. You’re not supposed to be 40 years old and have lost count of how many people are irretrievably missing from your life. You’re not supposed to be 40 years old and have outlived so many of your peers.
I’m kind of afraid though, lately, I’m losing another one. I’ve been down this road before – and with the same person, no less, as well as others – to know you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Or find someone who doesn’t want to be found.
Way back in those old days, technically I lived in Murfreesboro at the time, but most of my friends and my boyfriend for a good bit of that period were in Nashville. Throughout much of the last half of 1986 and almost all of 1987, I was really pretty much living in Nashville, even though my mail was still being delivered to Rutherford County and I was still paying rent there.
One of our gang had this little apartment that’s no longer there, almost within spitting distance of the good old Exit/In. Even though there was, like, NO room – it was a tiny place, really small – the core group of a dozen of us were living there almost ’round the clock. Between all of us, plus all the people that were always coming home with us from the clubs as well as some of the bands from out of town, there was hardly room for that many bodies. Somehow we managed, as long as you didn’t mind getting stepped on in the dark in the middle of the night sometimes.
I wrote about that time earlier this year here in the blog (at the time, my intentions being to poke fun at my good and old friend Josie Walker’s gigantic boat feet, which really are huge, you wouldn’t believe):
“…way back in the old days when everybody used to flop at Scott’s old apartment in West End, which was small to begin with, sometimes it was even harder to find sleeping space because not only the twelve or thirteen of us in our little group, as well as any assortment of dates and girlfriends and boyfriends, would be crashing there as well as, sometimes, most of whomever had been at whichever club that night. As well as, sometimes, whatever band from out of town had been playing at whichever club that night. Sometimes it would just be wall to wall people crashed in every available chair (not many) and the couch (only one) and the floor and you’d have to watch where you stepped if you had to make one of those middle of the night sneaks to the bathroom. This was always especially fun if you’d had too much to drink that night and were, indeed, trying to get to the bathroom to throw up or something.”
Some of the best and funnest (sic) times of my life were spent in that little hole of an apartment. As long as you had no immediate need for the restroom facilities – since there was ALWAYS someone else in there – it was actually a pretty cool little place to be, at that age anyway.
Also in that apartment, so were some of the worst times. One of the worst days of my life was the morning I had to drive down there after working the graveyard shift at the ER at Southern Hills, having had the misfortune of being the one on the front desk that night when the ambulance brought one of our group in following a wreck on Harding Place. The only explanation for why he was down that far south in the first place, and at that time of night, was that he must have been coming to visit and hang out with me at work. And instead, I had to be the one to go tell everyone the next morning, everyone crashed and hungover in that little apartment, what had happened and that he was gone.
But there were probably many more good times than bad back then, and if not good memories, extraordinary ones. It was a pretty wild time, crazy time. When the party ended at whichever club, the party relocated to that teeny apartment most nights. You never knew who you might find worshiping the porcelain god in the bathroom, since that door would never lock. There’s a few secrets I can never tell.
All of the great bands that came through town at the time, I had the privilege of getting to meet almost everyone I could have ever possibly wanted to back then – with the exception of Paul Westerberg and the rest of The Replacements, which is a humongous thorn in my side to this day. Every single time The Replacements ever came to Nashville then, I had to be somewhere else, one time back home for a funeral. I never got to see them play live until the last tour before they broke up, seeing them here in Memphis.
The only person whose name was actually ON the lease of the apartment – well, if it was three in the morning and we weren’t bailing him out of jail or picking him up from night court, he was frequently found hanging upside down off the balcony half-naked (or sometimes all naked) singing at the top of his lungs, sometimes with guitar in hand, sometimes not. Several in that core group of people living/slash/squatting there had serious drug and alcohol problems, but that one – he was completely out of control. So much so that people all over town were taking bets on how long he’d last, when he was gonna pull the ultimate Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix and, you know – ::poof:: – be gone, just like that.
And then he shocked the hell out of everyone by cleaning up, getting straight. Going back to and finishing college. Went out west for a while. Made a shitload of money, enough that he could pretty much retire before he was 40 years old, though he still kept working when he felt like it.
Fifteen or so really good years, and then in a flash, it was like all that good stuff never happened. He was using again. Things got ugly. There was a horrific argument between four of us – three against one. He told us all to go to hell, especially me. All of the addicts and alcoholics I have known except for a couple, it’s either my “fault” or I’m the first and foremost target when they’re lashing out. I’m used to it, I know how to stand my ground with them, they hate me for it, big deal. I’m only 5’2″, but I somehow become like the biggest threat to them being able to poison themselves with whatever they’re on at the time, like I’m someone who will take their drugs or their booze away from them. Not that it ever stopped any of them.
But then he got clean again, shocking what few of us are left to be shocked once again. And was doing so, so great.
And then he split town to go work on a big project, presumably for a few weeks. That was late August, or maybe early September. Supposed to be back long before Thanksgiving.
The cell phone’s still on, though goes to voice mail every time. Credit cards are still being used, and with the proper signature (very helpful when the best friend is also one’s accountant). MySpace profile has been logged into a couple of times. Shrug.
Back in the old days when we were all living/squatting/crashing in that little place in West End, young Greg, who was like my baby brother and was the only one of the whole group younger than me – he was 17, 18 at the time – had these delusions that we would just all be together forever. That we’d like all just go off and set up some bohemian commune somewhere. Since everyone there was either a musician or artist or writer, or a wannabe of any of the three (except Stevie Kane, who rather inexplicably went into accounting and will, by god, tell you himself that accounting is an art in itself – yeah, OK, Steve)… well, Greg just had these stars in his eyes about all this hippie dippie shit. Let’s all just go off and start our own little artists’ colony or whatever and just live there forever, happily ever after. I think it broke his heart when everyone started graduating, moving away and moving on, scattering as people do. Growing up, supposedly.
I won’t go so far to say everyone in the bunch was hugely talented in their respective art, but we did have a few that were simply amazing. Watching and listening to Joey or Greg or Scott play guitar; Joey crafting a new song from start to finish; watching Scot the Happy Italian draw or paint and his keen eye for capturing everything perfectly; reading anything Ev wrote – all experiences I was fortunate to be able to witness, day after day.
But the most prolific and constantly evolving piece of art in the house (and I use the term “art” here loosely) was one big giant long poem (also using the term “poetry” loosely) that was scribbled in black Sharpie, in the handwriting of a dozen or so different people, on this beat up old bulletin board that was hanging down almost the entire side of the refrigerator. That bulletin board was Communication Central for the house for about two years, and the rule was everything written there had to keep the poem going, no matter what it was about. Grocery lists, reminders, arguments and calling someone out on their shit, whatever – it had to be part of the poem.
A few I remember -
Paper towels, milk, and please some Cap’n Crunch?
Pork chops and applesauce – The Brady Bunch!
Can someone pick me up after work today?
That all depends, Miss Jo, how much you willing to pay?
Looks like someone forgot to pay the electric bill.
Oh, you’ll learn to love the dark, quit bitching and take another happy pill.
You fucking asshole, Scott! Where the hell is my money??
Ummmmmm probably in his dealer’s pocket, honey.
Nope, no stellar poetic talent there, but at least it was kind of entertaining most days. Two, two and a half years’ worth of it. Probably mostly arguing about money, since nobody ever had any, something always needed to be paid or someone needed to be paid back, and whenever the boys had any money anyway, it almost all went to colossal amounts of booze, weed, other party favors. If not for Jo and me, we’d have never had electricity.
I’ve no idea what happened to it after everyone finally moved out and left for good, it’s probably a shame no one kept it. I called Josie Thursday morning to ask about it. She remembered how it was about to fall apart to begin with when the boys slapped it up there on the fridge, so she figures it probably fell apart when anyone tried to remove it.
This below lives elsewhere on the ‘Net, posted late this past summer:
Photos scattered all around my floor
Twelve souls plus a couple or three more
But only a handful of souls outside 900 Broadway
Bitter gray cold February day
Walking along Church Street, pausing at a stop sign
“When there are two or three of us, it’s fine”
“When we’re all together, it’s toxic and sick”
And with that the wise little one stopped traffic
Don’t tell me you’ve never been able to see
The common denominator was always me?
I didn’t write that, you see.
But you who did, I think you’re reading here still – please, just call me.
Or Stevie Kane or Jo or Jay.
We just want to know that you’re okay.
