Annette nodded. I suddenly noticed how much leather these two were wearing.
This spontaneous plan had a hole in it, though. Anna was flying up to New York the very next day. She’d gotten an impressive job at MTV. We’d been separated for nearly two years, but we were still a sort of team. She had even come up to visit while I was living in Montclair, New Jersey, and I had been happy to introduce her to my new friends as my wife, even though I doubt I’d ever mentioned I had a wife before. We were winging it. Being buds isn’t enough to sustain a marriage. The shame of divorce was the last tiny thread holding us together. We were both solidly on separate paths. Either way, I had just scored a free house-sitting gig in a wonderful three-story brownstone in Jersey City—an easy commute for her new job. And, separate beds or not, it seemed like a good arrangement.
* * *
—
Now we can unfreeze the sad Ben on the suitcase and keep the reel running.
…But what’s this? He still looks frozen. He’s not moving.
Well, that’s because I actually sat on that damn suitcase, frozen in indecision, most of the day. I didn’t move for hours. Anna was to arrive in the late afternoon, and the plan had been to hop the PATH train into the city to see an MTV taping of Nirvana Unplugged. Yes, that one. That morning, however, my creative visualization had crashed my entire nervous system and I found myself paralyzed on my luggage. Should I stay or should I go?
Every selfish cell in my body said, Go to North Carolina now! It’s time! Leave a note! Anna will be fine! Start the car and GO!
There were some decent unselfish cells in me too, but those cells were being shouted down by the majority. The decent minority tried to hold a filibuster and explain that leaving a Southern girl who’s just come to town, still technically my wife (and my best friend), in a slightly suspect neighborhood, without at least sticking around a week to help her set up—well, that’s plain wrong. Couldn’t I stay and see this Nirvana TV taping, help get Anna settled, have a discussion, and then leave in a few days?
But then I thought, what if those few days led to endless wallowing in indecision, with all that back and forth, hot and cold, for months on end? What if someone gave us one of those awful Save Your Marriage books and we wasted a year on marriage therapy? I could end up stuck in New York another year while some other piano band took my rightful spot. Anna and I had been separated for so long it all seemed like a done deal. We were over. Why the charade? Just go.
I learned something about myself at that moment, frozen on that suitcase, clutching a set of keys, as the sun inched across the floor. I realized, when it came to my musical ambition, I was not going to be stopped. I had been fooling myself if I thought I was taking my career in stride, that I didn’t have some very lofty goals, or that I was always a nice guy. All along I had really been one of those assholes who was out for himself. That creative-visualization stuff? That was pure unadulterated ambition, dressed up in some pseudo-spiritualism. Sure, I was a hard worker and I was polite and fair. Kind, courteous, empathetic, a good listener. All of that. But all that good-guy-from-N.C. shit always melted away at the first threat to a music career that I believed was rightfully mine. I was ready to admit that. Sitting there on that suitcase was about coming to terms with who I was and what my priorities were.
Moments of self-honesty are often laced with selfishness. I’m not proud of my selfishness, but we’ve all seen how acts of honest selfishness can often unblock the way and liberate others to live their lives. At least then everyone knows the truth and can carry on. I’ve reflected on this moment many times when considering the amazing man that Anna soon met, to whom she’s still married, and the two wonderful kids they had, who are now themselves nearly adults.
It was midafternoon when I finally unfroze and stood up. I left a note for Anna and gripped the handle of my poor beat-up beige luggage. In white tube socks and Teva sandals (yes, laugh all you want), and a massive backpack on my shoulders, I started the old Volvo and headed toward the Jersey Turnpike. Heading south for an all-night drive to North Carolina, I could see through the leafless trees along I-95 that the holiday season was already gearing up. There was even a nativity scene at the truck stop where I grabbed some junk food for dinner at midnight. You always notice the holidays more when you feel the most alone.
I was twenty-seven years old, alone as alone could be, with more highway in my future than I could even yet imagine. I was off to find a drummer and bassist, a van with which to move my piano, and a small rental house in Chapel Hill, where in a few months a deputy sheriff would serve me my first divorce papers while my new neighbors watched. But I didn’t yet know what lay ahead, beyond the headlights of my Volvo, as I sang along to its distorted radio with one hand on the wheel—the other brushing tenacious white donut powder off my lap.
Merry Christmas 1993.
BFF
COMING BACK TO NORTH CAROLINA, my to-do list looked something like this:
Call around to get names of bassists and drummers. Maybe an accordion player?
Find house to rent. Chapel Hill? Maybe Asheville?
Find a van for moving piano/touring.
Pick up piano and other stuff from storage in Nashville.
This list looked quite similar to the one I’d made a few years ago, before embarking on Majosha, only the circumstances had shifted. I now had more experience, many more songs, and some friends in the business. And I felt the music scene itself was changing quickly in my favor. I’d felt very out of step with the music of the eighties. The polish, the theater, the style and content. But the winds of popular music now seemed solidly behind my sails. Overnight, my boy-next-door musical voice felt relevant. It was as if “my people” had risen from the rubble after Nirvana blew the roof off the music business, and they had infiltrated the mainstream.
It wasn’t just grunge that Nirvana ushered in. They introduced a far-less-formal way of looking at things. Music was suddenly less slick, more cerebral, like my music! On my all-night drive down I-95, I was hearing music like “Divorce Song” by Liz Phair, “Low” by Cracker, and “Linger” by the Cranberries. On commercial radio! I felt confident that my years of music-business rejection were solidly in the rearview and that what I had to say would now be granted a listen.
* * *
—
I pulled into Winston-Salem just before the sun rose. My parents weren’t expecting me, so I waited for daylight in the Cloverdale Shopping Center parking lot with the car heat blasting, an apple, some chips, and a Mountain Dew. There was one other car in the lot, and I recognized the man sleeping in it from kindergarten and grade school. We caught up briefly. He had just left his wife and was sleeping in the parking lot, trying to decide what to do.