To Have a Friend, Be One

Since my sister Felicia keeps insisting that all my friends are “damaged” people (she sometimes uses the word “losers”) perhaps I need to explore this topic. My first instinct (once I’m able to quell my fury) is to insist that all humans are, to some degree, “damaged.” We’ve all been children, we’ve all had disappointments and punishments, unfairnesses and handicaps. It’s just a matter of degree. The experience of living wears on a human. Habits of response and coping develop. At times these habits look like maladaptation. But “adaptation” to some norms can itself be damaging. Those are my initial thoughts. Now I’ll review my personal history of friendships.

The extra-curricular social world of kindergarten and early grade school is directed by adults, usually mothers. Dressing up and attending classmates’ birthday parties was a ritual that occurred more often than enough for me. I went along with the rigamarole uncomfortably, sensing the existence of some sort of unspoken hierarchy amongst both mothers and children. I don’t remember any actual “friends” except for Billy Duke, who stands next to me in a group photograph of the Laurel Springs School kindergarten class of 1956. Without knowing what it meant, he and I had agreed that we’d be married someday. Billy was not the smartest kid, and had a goofy demeanor. I suppose my taste in friends began there.
    Even early on, I was encouraged by my mother to become aware of, and to befriend, individuals who might be “different” or neglected; that is, to be an extension of my mother’s charitable impulses. She’d been on the receiving end of charity herself as a child. But isn’t “charity” simply a form of human kindness? A personal extension of warmth and understanding? It doesn’t start out necessarily as marking the recipient a “loser,” not in this giver’s mind.

From first through sixth grades, I attended St. Lawrence parochial school. The playground was divided: boys on the east side, girls on the west (adjacent to the convent where the nuns lived). Boys spent lunchtime recess fighting; girls organized activities and invented rules. There was plenty of social drama on the girls’ side. Older girls (7th and 8th grades) hung around in clumps rather than jumping rope or playing circle games. The sounds of transistor radios could sometimes be heard. Songs like “Lipstick on Your Collar” and “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb” puzzled me. I was busy running and jumping. I had a new best friend every day, it seemed. My diary records the breakups and makeups between me and a series of other little girls: Carol, Nancy, Maureen, Cassie, Deborah. I also took a younger girl, Christine, “under my wing,” and yes, it was because I thought she needed someone to pay attention to her. But perhaps I also wanted someone to look up to me.
    If any one of these youngsters were “damaged” I wouldn’t have known. I did feel, however, that it wouldn’t be right to pursue a friendship with a girl who was prettier than I was, or smarter. According to my report cards, I was close to the top of the crowded (50-plus) class, but not at the top. And by fourth grade I was wearing glasses, so my looks were compromised. In that sense, I was “damaged,” or thought I was. I had a crush on a very handsome classmate, Edward, for two years; after the glasses, I turned my attention to a squirrelly blonde boy named Thomas.

Outside of school and during the summers, there was another set of friends—neighborhood kids. This was a more diverse, all-ages group including boys, particularly my brother Michael, and of necessity, non-Catholics. Some of these kids I liked, some I thought were yucky, but we were all swarming in the same swarm.
    Meanwhile, my mother kept pressing the issue of helping others. She wanted me and my brother to start a lending library on the front porch (which we did, but we didn’t get many takers). She wanted us to be aware of the O’Briens down the street, who were poor and lived in someone’s attic. We gave them clothes, and my mother washed the lice from their heads. At Halloween, like many other children, we collected money for UNICEF.

When we moved to Massachusetts, I was sent to the Academy of the Assumption, a private girls’ school. I gravitated toward the two most odd-looking girls in my class, Veronica and Linda. Was this because I knew it was unlikely I’d be rejected? I don’t know. I became fond of them, however, and their looks (Veronica, a redhead, was covered with freckles; Linda was heavy and slightly hirsute) had no effect on their interests or abilities. They were as interesting and amusing as I could have wished. Veronica was the one who first told me the “facts of life.” (The Catholic booklet my mother handed me was frustratingly vague). Linda’s big Italian family invited me to gatherings during which we stood around a piano (who played? I don’t remember) and sang. My favorite was “Yellow Bird.”

Shortly after my first menstrual period (hormones kicking in) I involuntarily became an ardent Beatles fan, and joined another group of girls who were on the same adolescent wavelength. I became especially close to Connie, who had a streak of pure white in her black hair, which she wore in braids. Her face was long; her limbs were skinny. Connie exhibited an extreme case of confidence, almost an “attitude.” We had many fun times pursuing Beatles-related magazines and trinkets. I began writing stories about our “adventures” to make her laugh. Graduation from 8th grade ended all that, because my mother decided to put me in the public school system. I suppose the money was not available for me to continue at the Academy’s high school. It was just as well. I was losing my faith, which I think is a natural outcome of reaching the age of “reason,” if a girl has an inquiring mind.

My first friend at Wellesley Junior High School (9th grade) was Janice. Another odd-looker, with crooked teeth and nose. She came from a huge family that lived on one of the more “working-class” streets, close to Route 128. We bonded over music and formed a folk duo, “Clyde and Percival,” modeling ourselves after Peter & Gordon. We also talked about boys. Though we privately dissed other girls' looks, we were not conventionally desirable ourselves. I now wore braces in addition to glasses. Skewed, superficial values were on the ascent.
    My friend Caroline, on the other hand, was a cutie with dimples. Her family had been missionaries in Japan, so she was slightly worldly. Caroline and I had common academic interests: we wanted good grades. When we all moved on to the main high school, I sloughed off Janice and began spending more time with Caroline. However, Caroline still wore ankle socks. Despite the exhortations of Janet, a new friend recently come to town from New York, Caroline persisted in her child-like mode of fashion. Janet was an aristocratic-looking, overly-animated person. I was very attracted, and she became the closest I’d ever had to a “best friend” since early grade school. Her “damage” began to come into view months later, when she spoke of her drunk father regularly crawling upstairs to bed. He happened to be Editor-in-Chief of the Boston Herald newspaper at the time; I’d known of his prestige. Janet’s mother was the typical long-suffering alcoholic’s wife, quiet and gentle. Their house was perfect.

My own “damage” was not yet evident, but it lurked in the background. I was well taken-care-of, but lack of directly-expressed parental affection and attention tore at me. Good grades were highly valued in my family, but I was losing the will to achieve that. My mother, overwhelmed with child care, suspected me of sexual activities long before I engaged in any. I wrote poetry, trying to create a world of words within which I had influence and could make decisions.
    I was becoming prettier, and used that to get attention from boys. I cultivated brief friendships with Robin, a Jewish girl who claimed to have an adult male lover in Boston; and with Erica, a serious music student (cello) whose progressive agnostic family lived near mine. Parents (mine) forbade me to see Erica after she lent me “Tropic of Capricorn” by Henry Miller. Parents (hers) discouraged Robin from seeing me, probably because I approved of her erotic adventures. Parents were the ones wreaking “damage” here, it seems.

Janet had taught me how to smoke cigarettes, which led to being caught puffing outside the designated “smokers corner” at school. Thus I met seniors Lynda and Sally in after-school detention. I never discovered if they were “damaged” or not, but Sally, who was beautiful, reportedly worked as an artists’ model, and came and went as she pleased. Eventually I was invited to a private party with college “men,” one of whom I allowed to deflower me after knowing him for 45 minutes. My thinking was that I would then not experience pain when I finally “did it” with my 19-year-old working-class boyfriend Ralph whom I’d also met through Lynda and Sally just two months before that party. That never happened, because I told Ralph all about the party and, dismayed, he quit me.

I never once looked around my high school social environment with objectivity or breadth of assessment or awareness of “status.” I never decided who would or would not be my friends. Friends simply happened, mostly amongst the members of my small “advanced” English class. I’m sure there were girls whose influence would have been better for my development, but I never thought of my development or future, and ceased to ponder the possibility of college. I wasn’t liking what I saw about the world, the war in Vietnam, or the pressure to conform. I did see that there was an escape: Hippiedom. One needed minimal credentials to be absorbed into that group.

You could say that the hippies, at least in Boston, were self-discarded individuals who could not follow the proper paths to “success,” having been “turned off” by various aspects of the American enterprise. Articulation of their reasons, or of any “damage” inflicted by their respective families was not forthcoming, merely understood. Occasionally the “damage” was visible, as with my cross-eyed friend Merlin, whose Christian-Science parents would not allow him to wear corrective lenses. But Merlin played lovely guitar, and his presence calmed me.
    Some of the older hippie-adjacent folks were entrepreneurs. I made some “psychedelic” drawings in turquoise fountain pen for The Avatar, an alternative newspaper whose office was near the Cambridge crash pad where I resided for a time. I pushed oily bubbles around under an overhead projector for a professional light show producer at the Boston Tea Party, but these occupations were transient. Additionally, any sexual involvements I might have capitulated to were one-time-only propositions, and I never did the proposing.

Having been “invited” by my parents to commit myself to a stay at McLean Hospital in order to “get out of that environment” (that is, the people with whom I was indulging in drug-taking), I was suddenly catapulted into different surroundings, full of adolescent girls like me. It was inevitable that I’d bond with one or two. Pat was the first; we giggled and talked about sex and astrology. After she went home we exchanged letters. I was surprised to find a high-school contemporary at McLean’s—Marci. We’d not been friends in high school, merely knew of each other. But when we were assigned to share a room, we became inseparable. We both were skeptical of the powers that be; we both had a sense of mischief. We filled our room with furniture and objects collected from other rooms. It was cozy and companionable. Marci dismissed her situation by explaining that she’d been doing some “cutting.” She was somehow “damaged,” we would thus suppose. Marci’s mother later committed suicide; her wealthy father seemed cold when I met him. During the next few years Marci married, and her husband Larry and I, and Larry’s bass player friend, formed a folk band. We actually opened for other performers a few times at a Boston coffeehouse. One of those musicians was Drew, my first live-in boyfriend, who I’d also met at McLean. “Damaged” wouldn’t have applied to him, you might have thought, but even while I was with him he showed tendencies to alcoholism. The Cambridge neighborhood where we lived was full of McLean alumni.

When Drew moved back in with his parents to recover from a motorcycle accident, I sought a cheap place to live, and met the crew that became “The Marsh Folk.” For two years, nine of us shared the expenses of a contemporary house by the sea in Marshfield, Mass. Eventually I invited a friend from Cambridge, Susan, to move in. We were close, but not without difficulties and disagreements. We drove to and from Boston in her Dodge Dart to attend art school; I majored in filmmaking, she in printmaking. I could never untangle what “loyalty” meant to her. I was too free with her secrets, and she was too critical of my choices in life. I was obsessed with her for a while, wondering what I’d done wrong. She introduced me to Anais Nin, and to free-form cooking. I had married a Marshfield roommate, Bob, and she did the same (Mike) a year later. I would say now that Susan was a bit wacky, but very creative, and I don’t know what sort of “damage” she suffered, unless her family (in Maryland) had been too indulgent.

I will admit that “friendships” for me were mostly dictated by my environment. I have kept up with Marci and eventually re-contacted Susan, but other friendships depended on shared workplaces or classrooms. Subsequent exchanges after the shared experiences would fade to occasional phone calls and then nothing. Even Janet has disappeared by now (although we exchanged letters for years).

A big landslide of life changes for me came in 1978. Divorce, being fired from my job, moving several times, having an abortion and breaking up with another boyfriend, and seeing my hired “feminist counselor” be taken to McLean’s and put in a high-security residence (for physically attacking her brother-in-law) were destabilizing events. Again, I had lots of roommates, but none I considered close friends except for Erica, who was a LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation). When we first met she was studying violin at New England Conservatory and seeing a woman named Peggy. She advised me regarding the abortion, for which I later angrily blamed her (in a fit of regret that was not repeated). I met Erica’s parents in Memphis once, and did not detect any “damage” sources. Erica became a psychiatrist, married a man, moved to NYC, had children and made money. Evidently there was a “path to success” that she’d been intending to get back to all along. I never detected this, and never understood it, and we no longer communicate.

It begins to seem that I am the “damaged” one, since I am still repelled by conventional ambitions, disdain a focus on money, and reject the idea of having children. I remain quite “counter-culture,” except for lapses such as when I worked for the staid Huntsville Museum of Art and tried to fit in with the ladies of the Women’s Guild there. I wrote publicity for the museum, and had to twist my brain around to praise exhibitions that I didn’t like. That was my job. Trying to get along with everyone was also my job. I did not succeed entirely. Still, it was one of my longest-lasting jobs up to that point.

But we’re talking about friendships here. I met Joy because I’d been singing with an “acoustic eclectic” cover band in town, and she’d been playing bass in a rock’n’roll band, and she wanted to talk with me about dealing with an egomaniac band leader. We had coffee. I suppose it started there. It was the seed of a sometimes-close friendship that still exists, although it’s been very much pruned down since the early 2000s. If someone seeks me out, and they appear interesting to me, I’m going to pursue it as far as it goes. Their social status or job or appearance has nothing to do with it. A friendship has its own life, and I will nourish that life to the best of my ability (though I don’t go overboard and give what I don’t have or pretend to be someone I’m not). I do not ask, Is this person “damaged”? Should I hang out with them and risk “contamination”? My friendship with Joy has been both rewarding and distressing. I met her mother and sensed a reluctance to express affection or approval that reminded me somewhat of my own mother, though there were probably different causes. As a young girl Joy was molested by her stepfather’s sons. This is definitely “damage,” but it does not fully define a person. I am amazed by the changes Joy has weathered, and she seems settled now, un-partnered, self-sufficient, politically active, still writing poetry.

I’m unable to cite any general principles here. My tactic has been to reveal details of my own friendships so that I can explain to my younger sister why I seem to surround myself with people who appear (to her) to be "damaged." But there are at least two things wrong with this view: one is the lack of a criteria to measure the extent to which these people are actually “damaged” (or simply unconventional and quirky); another is that I have not consciously pursued these friendships. I gravitate toward people who have approached me and seem intriguing, not because they have a prestigious job or are conventionally attractive. Often I am interested because they, too, are writers; or they, too, are musicians. Much to talk about! My friendships include men, especially now that flirtation would be a parody amongst us elders. My circle of friends, with its offshoots, has been a gradual development and has as much to do with my husband’s choices as with mine. Russell has told me recently that his response to requests for rides and other sorts of help from his “damaged” friends Dave and Kim is simply that: a response to a request. He doesn’t refuse to help them. It’s that simple. He has had to take a break at times, but rarely for long. Russell likes to drive; he also enjoys Dave’s conversation when Dave isn’t drunk. Kim is safe in a “halfway house” now, but Russell has sent her things from her storage unit upon request.  Russell also responds to Vicki, a long-ago friend of ours from the Unitarian Church who is now struggling with bipolar disorder. I have backed away from this friendship because I do not have tolerance for her rantings. So there ya go: I won’t put up with TOO MUCH “damage.”

Speaking of bipolar disorder, my own family is quite “damaged,” I dare say. My sister Camille came down with bipolar disorder in her mid-thirties. This was disconcerting, and I did my best to help. She had to give up her busy Seattle life of teaching philosophy and working as a forest ranger during the summer. Her brief marriage to an Army buddy had already fallen apart. She’s now doing OK on medication and has returned to Wellesley where she lives in a government-subsidized apartment. She still reads philosophy books that most of us would not want to tackle.

My one-year-younger brother Michael eschewed anything “respectable,” and now lives and works on a farm, but owns very little. He managed to have three sons, however, during his long relationship with their mother. He has farming skills. This is nothing to sniff at (although he might occasionally smell of manure).

Our youngest sibling, Ray, has a touch of “Asperger’s,” and did not finish college, but has made the most of the opportunities he did have. He’s a bicycle enthusiast and has bonded with his fellows in that arena. Our sibling Brian has clearly been “damaged,” but no one is sure how except for his being left with our father in Huntsville, Alabama for two crucial middle-school years. Brian also dealt with too many deaths of close friends and lovers in too short a time. He took his decades-ago divorce very hard. He’s gentle and scholarly by nature, but uses that passivity to reject and dismiss all attempts to communicate and help, at least from family. He does not take basic care of himself. He recently moved out of my house after nearly four years (at age 64) and is living down the street. I have no answers to his problems, and he won’t seek answers elsewhere. If you met him in a coffeeshop, he would seem to be the most personable, undamaged socializer ever. He’d ask you lots of questions. He’d call you friend and find things you had in common. The only clue that he was “damaged” would be his lack of teeth (if he let it show). Something happened there, and it was not taken care of until it was too late. But he hides it if possible.

There was an “ideal” time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, perhaps, when all my younger siblings were having what I saw as a great, fascinating lives. I was so proud of all of them. Felicia (the sister who criticizes me for having “damaged” friends) was establishing herself as an English professor in Seville, Spain. Camille was thriving in Washington state. Brian was pursuing internships in industrial geography and public history in exotic locations. Ray was participating in the annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa. I was simply living and working in Huntsville, Alabama with Russell, and enjoying my own activities, but I admired my siblings and thought it would last forever. I idealized them as I would new local friends whose lives I thought interesting and creative, and who I wanted to continue to know. But as life goes on, “damage” either occurs or surfaces. Nothing goes well (or stays hidden) forever!

Felicia has spoken of choosing her friends carefully, and making sure they are people she’d want to “emulate.” I never had that notion at all. I have let my friendships just happen. I have let some people go, but I’ve clung to others. I’m good at making temporary bonds based on proximity or shared projects. I don’t aspire to join social circles that I cannot fit into without strain, and that would include people with considerably higher incomes. I will tolerate differences of opinion up to the point where a potential friend seems to approve of political cruelties inflicted by the current administration.
    Since moving to Huntsville in 1981, I’ve realized that I am not going to fit into the general Southern populace, so I’ve had to find friends where I can, and that would be out of the mainstream. Wealthy people, seemingly attractive people, conventional people, have some advantages when it comes to being able to hide any “damage” that they’ve suffered or continue to suffer. They can put on a good show (as brother Brian does sporadically).
    People who have had to scramble to make a living (Jane), or who have never been asked to marry (Joy), or who have difficulty making themselves understood (Paige), are all friends of mine BECAUSE of the way they’ve dealt with their “damage.” They remain interesting to me, and they remain creative, and my affection toward them (though not effusive) is not faked. This is an achievement on all sides, and I feel that I, too, deserve some accolades.

On selfishness in the age of constant solicitation...

I’m starting to get aggravated by the proliferation of events that email senders and Facebook algorithms think I should be aware of or attend. My immediate environs are, I’m told, teeming with activities and presentations and shows and opportunities for participation. Just hearing/seeing about these planned disturbances makes me tired, but also makes me worry that I am missing something—certainly not real pleasure or entertainment, but the approval of insignificant others for showing up. 

That I am distressed by this implies that these “others” are not, in fact “insignificant.” And I suppose that’s true, although they’re not individually identifiable. 

Sure, I used to volunteer for things, the Film Co-op being the primary beneficiary of my efforts, back in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although I eventually began extracting $50 per month from them for my popcorn and publicity services, I believed in the “mission.” Make available to the public worthy independent films that would never appear in commercial movie houses! I hope the Film Co-op’s offerings gave people some communal alternatives as we all awaited (unwittingly) the coming of the serve-yourself streaming system that wound up isolating us in our silos-of-interest. It began with video cassette rentals, of course, but quickly metastasized. I can no longer distinguish between invitations distributed for egotistical (though artful) purposes, and solicitations that, if heeded, would make me part of something that actually helped specific communities or the “world.”

 

It’s definitely silly to imagine that a person like me could shift a situation toward positivity, or shift it at all. As a volunteer, I had a tendency to insist upon, the “right” way to do things, almost to the point of chastising newer volunteers for nonconformity. This benefits no one. There are organizations that raise money to “help” people, and then there are organizations that actually help people. I am not good at actually helping people directly. (To wit, I’m delighted to now be shoving money at my recently-moved-out brother rather than facing him directly. I cannot hold my own, and am easily distracted. He seems to be missing some qualities that I take for granted, like curiosity about what others around him are doing. Like the instinct to respond, even minimally, to personal communications.)

I may respond too much, however. Seeing all the local “Events” I’m missing; seeing FB pages about projects that I am admittedly not-at-all interested in, makes me wonder who I am, and who these other people are. Mere knowledge of something going on, particularly if it’s purported to “help” people, triggers a low-level of guilt in me, because in truth, I do not care. But I’m supposed to care. This is a conflict that’s been going on all my life. I cannot let myself be. In the past, I often could not tell the difference between my genuine interests and pleasures, and what I was supposed to be interested in. When first moving here to Alabama, I understood the importance of “making friends” immediately. I did not want to be isolated. But did that mean I had to participate in the belly-dancing club for as long, and as sincerely, as I did? Or to cater to people with whom I probably had nothing in common, or with whom I had to suppress large chunks of my “personality”? Chalk it up to my desire to perform, I suppose.

Most of those women have disappeared from my life, but one or two show up on Facebook occasionally. We are all so much older now, and would not dare show our bellies for love or money.

As a “fellow” musician, I tear a few hairs out each time I see that a beginner or an old-timer is playing somewhere, or hosting an open mic that I don’t have time for. I have my schedule, I need my rest. I’m friggin’ older than I look! I also dont necessarily enjoy

much of the music that is emitted by many of these persons. I pay my listening dues twice a week at the open mics I’ve settled upon. I cater to my own impulses to write songs and practice at home, and I have other non-music projects and relationships that take up some time. I refrain from promoting myself and my few minimal public appearances because I do not want anyone to feel obligated and/or be disappointed! (as I have been on occasion.)

What I want (and need) to be told by someone I respect is: “You’re doing the right thing! You’re OK! You are doing what you should be doing! Pay no attention to the man or woman, priest or nun, mob or in-crowd, behind the curtain of the psyche!”

Navigating the strait of jazz-schmooze

What is writing to me? Is it self-expression? Is it a search for a self to express? Is it a plea for attention from an imaginary reader? I don’t know, but sentences form in my head to try to explain things, particularly when things aren’t to my liking. As were many things today at the jazz jam.

I had come up with some wise general statements a short while ago as I tried to meditate, all of which I’ve forgotten. I have only this: Other people are often the cause of annoyance for me, not always through behaviors, but because I feel they cannot “see” me as they go about their activities. Likewise, I cannot “see” them. These personalities all around me—they seem insignificant, in the long run. As, of course, do “I.” I’m more torqued about my own insignificance than theirs. After all, I can give them some significance if I want to; I can pay some attention, make some comment, pretend they are real. These are good moves, because my existence depends on these others, in a way. If I acknowledge them, they might acknowledge me. However, sometimes they don’t, despite my ministrations.

I wonder why I was in such a bad mood though? Granted, I wasn’t as enthusiastic about going to the jam (which was at The Dish today) as I have been. It’s been three weeks since a jam, due to a fifth Sunday followed by Easter Sunday. (Of course there have been open mics, but that’s a different set of “other people” with its own problems.)

I’m supposed to (in my own mind) “love” Kirby. And I’m supposed to (in my own mind) “care” about Wil (who seemed in a very positive frame of mind last night when we saw him at the VBC after the Bela Fleck concert, and gave him a ride home). I remember feeling glad that he seemed to be doing better than he had been, and that he was actually exercising some, he said. I wondered if he’d be “dressed up” today or not.

He was not. He seems to have embraced the dark-colored androgynous turtlenecks and soft pants he bought for his trip to Florida. There’s still the wig, though—unkempt, inappropriate, odd. That is always enough to annoy me all by itself. His impulse to perform is as healthy as ever, and I always wonder why he doesn’t see himself as I see him, and try to improve his appearance and disorganized approach to music before getting up there and singing. I attribute his bizarre confidence to being brought up as a male and to having made a more-than-adequate living with his math smarts so that he worries not about paying for his new Subaru. Which makes his apparent wish to be female (in a mostly superficial way) more than a little ironic. One thing, perhaps, that trans women don’t understand or try to adopt (who would?!) is the constantly nagging internal perception of oneself as a second-class citizen, a basic (early) feminist-observed phenomenon, and probably still a reality for many women.

I had been planning on singing “Close Your Eyes,” and asked Pete if he still had the music. He said he did. Though I am frequently hesitant, I thought, well, I’ll SING it, then, when I get the chance. Kirby got up first; a microphone was brought and produced such horrendous feedback that I rose from my chair and left the room (but not in time to save my ears). Kirby sang and I played some harmonica (which I’m getting weary of on “Stormy Monday”) and Ted sang, and then Kirby sang again, and then Sharla arrived.

I am sweet to Sharla, despite my internal grumblings. She’s a semi-innocent diva with pitch troubles, but a great tone and of course, beauty, which she is very conscious of using and maximizing. And she also plays flute on instrumental numbers, so I knew she’d do more than one song. Therefore, I essentially gave up the idea of singing my song, and said so to Ted (who was sitting alone behind us (me, Wil, Kirby) in a black hat and exuding a vaguely Napoleonic air). I was surprised and not pleased when he rushed up there immediately after Sharla’s “set” to sing “Blue Skies” (his second song!) without encouraging me to sing instead. (I suppose I really am depending on the kindness of (relative) strangers! My attitude was slightly passive-aggressive.) I went so far as to hold the lyrics for Ted since there was no music stand. He had no idea how pissed off I was.
    Kirby had some more guests (from the mosque) come in, so of course she had to sing another one, and I got to play melodica. But I had really wanted to sing.

Additionally, Tom Branch began bashing the drums so hard, I got up and almost left the room again, muttering something. It doesn’t cause actual pain in my ears, but it creates some sort of shock.

I usually have some “kindness” (that is, calculated acknowledgement) to dispense to Rick Pappas and Deborah Saylor, but today I had none. I had no energy for goodbyes, either, so I just left. Inside I was pouting, but I try not to whine in front of anyone. I merely start thinking how rinky-dink this whole enterprise is. And how rinky-dink I am as a participant. This harsh judgment of my own pastimes may have originated with Felicia, but it wormed its way into my brain, and will poison almost everything if I let it. It’s related to the more general idea that nothing we humans do means anything—because of impermanence and death (not to mention unstable value/meaning systems). Also, Felicia accuses me of pouting as part of her persistent treatment of me as if I were an unsatisfactory child. That said, our family zoom today was probably the better part of my day, since we didn’t overtly argue.

Back at home after the jazz jam, I ate something-or-other and then went through a few minutes of WHAT-THE-HELL-IS-WORTH-DOING?! In these golden years, mindless exercise is frequently my answer to that question, since it contributes to so-called health, but this time it seemed pointless. So I meditated for ten minutes, because I’d just watched an interview with the writer George Saunders, and he said he was a meditator. (I do imitate others, more than I like to admit.)

To top it off, Russell is anxiously getting ready for his drive to Knoxville tomorrow to visit with Widower Bob for a week, so he’s not listening to me when I speak, and continues to be distracted by Facebook and YouTube while also trying to wash clothes and pack. There are many times lately (maybe it’s always been this way?) that I feel do not get what I “need” from him. But who says he has to provide for my psychological/emotional “needs”? What if he simply can’t? What if I can’t for him? What if neither of us can for ourselves?

And then there’s Brian, who pretends he has no needs; look where it got him! Living in an alcove behind a curtain in the cluttered little house of his older sister. Strangely, today I have not worried about Brian very much at all, so he has been the one person who has not gotten on my nerves. But I’m sure his existence will trouble me tomorrow, though, which would be normal.

 

The terrible, horrible, no good night...

What’s missing these days is that urge to write. I used to have an eagerness to get typin’ especially when it was about myself. But now I see myself as a helpless peon dismayed and fearful like everyone else who’s paying attention—as far as the outside world goes—and worrying about my mortality and my life’s worth on the inside of me. All while compulsively playing and singing songs over and over again at meagerly-attended open mics.

Tonight’s open mic was a disaster for me, mentally. I’d yelled at Brian earlier in the day, and thought I wasn’t disturbed by it, but I must have been. Everything was wrong at Liquor Express. Everything around me, what people did, said, looked like. Kirby was there, with Roy and Andrea, which flummoxed me. They’re JAZZ people! Wrong scene, clash of cultures, or perhaps my inability to play both roles at once. And I had nothing much to present musically. So I wound up doing “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” and “Easy Street” on the acoustic, which I wasn’t used to doing. Later, after Kirby left, I noodled on that weird electric thing from Australia, to an open tuning…while Tim was packing up. I’d soothed myself last night with that.

While I was at the open mic, Debbie texted me to suggest her and Rob taking me and Russell out to dinner TOMORROW. Not enough notice, and I can’t do that sort of thing anyway. (Just as I won’t be able to take her up on her offer to accompany me on a day excursion out of Huntsville). So I texted back how busy I was. And she got upset because I didn’t THANK HER FIRST for the offer. I tried to explain but she didn’t want to talk about it. And here I thought she was a counselor.

But, is going out to eat with another couple a normal thing? Whether it is or not, it’s not something Russell and I have done in the past twenty years. We tried earlier in our marriage, and nothing went wrong, but it was not fun. The thought of it NOW scares me. (And this is after bragging to Paige last night that I was so at ease, socially.)
    Perhaps all this “ease” is another masking. I certainly will only actively socialize if the time frame is limited. Three hours (open mic length) is just about too much. A crowded party is a little better because one can seek out a variety of conversations. But the forced “good behavior” of dining with another couple?! Without alcohol? I cannot consider it. And that was foremost in my mind when declining the invitation. Too bad, because apparently expressing appreciation was THE most important thing to Debbie. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but I do. Maybe at Allana’s.

I am neither aghast at my own neglect of “manners” nor proud of my quick, rotten responses. But where can I be “myself”? How much of what I have been thinking lately as MYSELF unmasked really is that? Am I only myself at home? And intermittently? Russell is always chiding me for some verbal faux pas or other. We discuss, I rationalize. Is it that I don’t KNOW what other people want and/or how I should treat them? Or that I don’t care? Some of both?

Being in a pissed-off mood, I made a loud remark toward Tim’s girlfriend (or ex-wife) about being “substituted for” when I returned from the Liquor Express restroom and found Tim playing harmonica with Mike Perry. But it was half insincere. I apologized to Tim’s girlfriend (ex-wife?) once Mike’s set was over (and I’d played on “Beautiful Boy” anyway), but then she insisted on trying to cheer me up or boost my “self-esteem” or something and she was really getting on my nerves. I told her it would all have been better if I’d been drinking. She said, “So have a drink!” I had to explain, and that was more than I wanted to share. With her anyway. She left later and sat at the bar. I had told her straight up that I was a JERK, and I was. People may need to start accepting that about me, because apparently, I screw up the simplest of interactions.

 

I’m inclined not to take all this heavily, but part of me does. I tell myself that it’s OK to yell at Brian because the less comfortable he feels here, and the crazier he thinks I am, the sooner he’ll find a place to live and leave. But that’s probably not the way it works. The source of my anger seems obvious, but not to him. How can I say, “I don’t want you here and I never did!” So it has to be about something else, in this case, his dismissal of my good deed in putting his bike behind the gate when he’d left it out in plain sight. “I think you remember when it was almost stolen,” I said. He said, “So you said.” I yelled that he was saying I lied. But the best thing I said was, “No, we can’t talk about this later. You can’t just slip on a rainbow coat of rationality— we’re HUMAN.” His mild-mannered, calculated calm in all matters drives me nuts. I did make him slam the door slightly, and I think that might have been good for him, but what do I know?

You know, I want to be “right.” I really do. I bristle when people disagree with me about certain observations I might make or about things I think are self-evident. With an emphasis on “self.” I bristle when I’m told how to do things. I bristle when Brian interjects into every overheard conversation his encyclopedic “knowledge.” I just bristle all the time. I try to keep it at a low boil when I’m “out” or relating to non-intimate friends. But today I simply failed. Is this the beginning of the end? Both Mike and Ted texted me later to see if I was “OK.” Well, that’s nice. But I can’t really TALK at length to either of them. And now I probably have (even more of) a reputation as a “difficult” person.
    Fuck it. Nothing great was ever going to happen with this scene anyway. I’m either not good enough, or too weird. And I wouldn’t want a bar gig anyway. Nor would I want a “house concert.” My specialty is hit-and-run; I can only be “inspired” for short bursts. Four songs is almost too many (although I slogged away for four hours at the Green St. Market last summer, but that was different).

I’m losing my impetus to practice my old songs. But I’ve written a new song to that open tuning mentioned earlier, though I didn’t play it tonight. It might need memorizing, it is so fast-paced (which reminds me—all Eric’s songs tonight were awfully slow, which yes, made me bristle aesthetically, but I’m not going to mention it to him). To what end all these attempts to maintain acquaintanceships though? And to what end all these songs, which in my case are really poems in disguise, set to music to make them more palatable?

Felicia questioned (by email) why I didn’t pursue a lucrative “career” starting in my twenties, but I just wanted to laugh in her face. If I try to explain about the times, the hippie ethos, the REAL underlying causes of the women’s movement whose achievements she benefited from, she just asks more questions. Unfortunately, I like to answer those questions, and so it goes on forever. She’ll never understand. Is she alone in that? Does anyone around me understand me? Russell “manages” me, but does he sympathize? And when I tried to ask Felicia some questions about herself, she said she’d already answered them years ago. She is a person who doesn’t enjoy writing about past. How can that be?! Does that mean she’s less selfish? I don’t think so, because in Zooms she’s impatient, critical, and likes to direct the conversation.

About focusing on one thing, though—how do I ever know it’s the RIGHT thing? Plus, I don’t enjoy anything enough to do it all day and all night, and when I anticipate getting something done “in a minute” and then open Facebook, I am easily distracted by the impulse to comment on things that stir a thought or two, as if people needed my input. (This occurs in person, too, though I don’t address every damn topic as Brian does). I am not sure this has anything to do with my imagined struggle to get any serious consideration of my “work” in this Huntsville music scene (small portions of which are all I dabble in anyway). Maybe more gigs with Mike? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the ukulele. Also, I’m almost 76 years old. What can happen NOW? Only decline. And naturally, invisibility, even if I sing loudly and include “bad words” in my lyrics.

If I listened to my sensible side, I’d quit this racket and start farming in my backyard. We might need the food.