Fight # 2: Brendan Hits The Girl Next Door

Actually I hit the girl down the block but you catch my meaning.

I was 7 or 8. I was playing with a whole group of kids across the street at the Hodges house. My neighborhood seems to have been drawn by Rockwell if he'd had the 1970's as his main aesthetic. It felt as if 20 or 30 kids would simply gather and roam about, playing whatever came into their heads at the moment.

The boys would split off and play some kind of sport, usually baseball or whiffleball. The girls would go do whatever girls do. Occasionally the sexes would mingle in some sort of make-believe activity. The infamous fight # 2 happened on one of these days.

A girl named Kristen had moved into a house 3 or 4 doors down. I remember the distance as being quite far but when I went back and visited I could have thrown a rock from my house to hers. In my neighborhood there were the mainstay families and then the Johnny-come-lately-don't-stick-arounders. Her family came and then moved (to London, perhaps if memory serves) in less than a year.

Just long enough for me to do something I regret to this day!

I don't remember how it happened. We were all congregated in front of the Hodge house, a little red ranch with a perfect square of a yard gently sloped down to the street. Right on the edge of the street in the right hand corner of the yard was a tall fir tree that served as a right field wall in whiffleball or an impenetrable fortress in war games. Since there were girls around this must have been a fantasy game of sorts.

Kristen and I didn't get along. I can't remember her face but in my recollection there lurks the faint whiff of pre-adolescent attraction. Perhaps it was mutual, I don't know. The enmity certainly was.

We squared off angrily for a forgotten reason. She hit me and I retaliated, knocking her backwards into the fir tree. In my mind's eye she was enveloped completely by the green, as if I'd buried her in it. How my mother knew what was going on from across the street I'll never know but she yelled my name and told me to come inside.

I burst into tears and ran across the street to our front door. I don't remember exiting or entering by that door very often, we primarily used the side door nearest the driveway. The front door had something formal about it and we weren't a formal family.

All of a sudden what I'd done was in a larger context. All of a sudden I wasn't an infant anymore, I was a human being who had crossed a line of decorum that was not tolerated. I felt like I aged 7 years from the moment my fist hit Kristen to when I threw myself on my bed face down and sobbing.

The next morning I walked down the street alone and knocked on Kristen's door. One of her parents must have answered but I have no memory of that. I do remember apologizing to Kristen and not being able to tell which one of us was more embarrassed.

Some people have stolen kisses that they remember from the time before their teens. Not me. Big man that I was, I beat up the cute little girl from down the street.

Fight # 1: Idiot Attempts to Burn Own House Down

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I struggle with the corrosive effects of anger on my soul. My son, wired very similarly, recently described how he felt after he got angry..."It hurts." And he meant physically, shrugging his shoulders to show the warping that accompanies such turmoil.

There is a constant flowing river of rage running through me, sometimes silently and invisibly, other times it floods up and over the banks and becomes apparent to the rest of the world. It is my only source of regret.

Oddly, the only full-fledged fist fight I've been involved with as an adult was devoid of anger on my part.

Here's how it went down. A friend from high school was having a party. I was in college and it was summer. I was recovering slowly from a break up. And by recovering I mean NOT recovering. This friend's mother was out of town and had given her blessing for a barbecue. Kegs were bought. Plastic bags with frozen hamburgers were dug out of freezers. Perhaps a hundred people were expected.

I arrived early to help set up. I parked my beat up Volkswagen Karmann Ghia at the very edge of the house, at the top of the driveway. This will be important later on.

An ex-girlfriend of mine was best friends with the hostess and we were de-facto hosts ourselves. She'd been a part of the triangle that had eventually caused the ultimate breakup that I wasn't recovering from. We are friends to this day. I brought 30 or so CD's because the hostess had left hers in storage at her college. Someone took The Cure album that had the 'Kiss Me' song on it.

In any case, a day of leisurely keg drinking stretched out. I also manned the grill, churning out burgers and dogs in a white apron. I felt the knot of unease loosen in my stomach. Maybe I would get over this girl after all. Maybe I could enjoy myself this summer.

Slowly it got dark. The hostess' brother arrived. He'd been estranged from the family. His mother had kicked him out of the house. He showed up with a little coterie of fawning midgets. Maybe they only looked like midgets because he was quite tall but the image remains in my head of a ropey six two dullard surrounded by midgets.

This caused a rope of tension to tighten around the property. A wooded acre, the house sat atop a yard which sloped away from it. Directly at the top of the driveway a stone wall came up to chest height and followed the descent of the yard. Tucked at that corner of the house was the propane tank that kept the house warm. Next to that was the grill I'd been working.

All the guests were high school friends who'd gone off to various colleges. Dave the Angry Brother had dropped out of high school to join the Army. He felt like an outsider at his own home. He thought everyone at the party looked down on him for not going to college. I avoided him.

I went out to check on the grill. I saw him down at the end of the diminishing stone wall. I smelled gasoline. The entire wall was doused. Somehow my presence aborted his bizarre mission and he and his giggling buddies abandoned their sabotage and set about antagonizing party goers again.

Then I saw him about 20 yards down the driveway. The woods encroached immediately so he was shrouded by tree shadows and actual foliage. He had made a small pile of wood near the line of cars that stretched away from the house. He was now pouring gasoline over it.

I immediately went to his sister who was inside the house and trashed. I told her what he was up to. She and my ex-girlfriend asked if I would go talk to him, because he'd always seemed to like me more than any of her other friends. Why I agreed to this I'll never know. But I did.

I purposely grabbed a beer and a burger so that I wouldn't seem as if I was threatening him. I strolled as nonchalantly as I could over to him and asked him what he was doing.

Of course he said it was none of my business. It was his property and he could do what he wanted. I merely stated that some people were getting nervous with all the GASOLINE being poured all over the place.

That was when he grabbed me around the neck, calling me 'College Boy'.

Everything went slow motion and quiet. He was strangling me but my hands were free. Like I said, he wasn't the brightest bulb on the tree. In fact he was so stupid he was trying to burn the bulbs and the trees.

I took both of my hands and thrust them upwards into his chin. He seemed shocked that I had responded at all and he backpedaled, confused. Then he REALLY got angry and rushed at me open-armed. I wound up and punched him in the mouth with full extension and power.

He fell backwards, blood spurting from his lip. My hand was bleeding on the knuckles. By now a crowd had gathered. He was woozy and his little midget goons took him into the house to clean him up.

I immediately wanted to leave. But my car was blocked by a line of at least 20 other cars. I tried to mobilize people into moving their cars. I was not confident that further confrontation would be as painless for me as the first had been. He was much bigger than me.

Just then he burst out of the woods behind the group I stood in and sucker punched me in the back of the head. I then rushed at him and punched him in the exact same place, reopening the cut.

A strange melee ensued in which 60 people were unable to stop the twisted will of 1. He tackled me. My cheek hit a rock on the ground and I had a hard time thinking. We were tangled up. I felt his hand on my face and he clawed at my eyes. The next day I would have Cleopatra bruises from the corners of my eyes almost to my hairline.

As we tussled, I felt his fingers just above my hip on the love handle. He pinched me. I laughed. I asked him, "Are you pinching me?" He said, "Yeah, I'm f*#cking pinching you!" I got on top of him briefly and managed to hit that same spot a third time. Neither of us looked too good at this point, but my cheek was already swelling a good bit and the bloody eyeliner he'd given me was truly creepy.

Finally people intervened. I always wondered why it went as far as it did. People like to see a fight, I guess.

I wasn't angry in the moment. I am now actually fond of this memory somehow. I have never been in anything even remotely resembling a fight since. I'd had scraps on the playground in elementary school and bullshit shoving matches in frat houses and off-campus bars. But a full on fight? With a disgraced pyromaniac Army son?

He later menaced my sister as she drove my Karmann Ghia. He was on a bike. I left a message at the home threatening to kill him if he ever spoke another word to anyone in my family other than me. This was in the days of answering machines so I don't even know if he ever got it. Oh, I was angry then! You don't mess with my sisters!

But in looking back on it I'm struck at how calm I was while I fought him. He was bigger and stronger than me which gave him enough of an advantage to do me serious damage. His frenzied clawing left a hole in my retina that allows me to see in the dark.

If I'd been angry I wouldn't have gone into slow motion and seen his lip with a big bulls eye on it.

Shifting Gears

I've come to a fork in the blog.

When I started this project I thought I would write a new piece of short fiction every day as a way to train myself to think creatively. While I still enjoy that idea, it didn't inspire me to any consistency. I wrote sporadically.

Once I shifted to writing about music everything changed. I would get to work at 9 and start flipping through the mental Rolodex until a card got caught in the gears. I had no intention of writing about my personal life...the idea was to write a posthumous review of a dead show.

But what started to happen was a flood of surrounding circumstance, which is ironic seeing as I titled the blog before stumbling onto the paradigm.

And now I think it is time to shake things up again. Sure, there are still concerts in my past worth discussing, like the time at the Living Room with Circle Jerks blaring away when a stage diver was diverted upwards by the front row and came down vertically so that his skull landed directly on mine. Or the underrated Del Amitri on their first American tour in the middle of a 'who can have the weirdest facial hair contest' with the lead singer winning on the strength of stripes on one side of his face and an Abe Lincoln-esque chop on the other. Yet another Living Room memory of going to see Violent Femmes but being forced to leave early because of a whining ride who had to get up early. Primus taking the stage at dusk at Lollapalooza and proceeding to lay an acid trip on 20,000 people. Sitting in the front row of a Craig Ferguson taping as Paul Westerberg bashed out three more chords and a nightmare. Willie Nelson's voice floating over the desert at Coachella like some sort of Gold Rush apparition.

I could go on and on and on.

But something is telling me it is time to focus on some other sliver of perception.

I don't know yet what it will be.

Like a Luddite with a GPS I may double back and retrace my steps from time to time but I'm going to search out uncharted territory.

Larry and Fielding Get Hitched

I'm breaking tradition here on the blog to talk about my friends Larry and Fielding getting married in Santa Barbara at the gorgeous Bacara retreat. The wedding took place in the Miro room, a spectacular restaurant with scores of Miro art work set against a panoramic view of the ocean.

The ceremony was outside, brief but beautiful and heartfelt. Funny, too. Larry was in a crisp dark suit with a red tie. Fielding wore a couture tan diaphanous cocktail dress that was especially sexy when she did a cartwheel during the traditional first dance.

I could rhapsodize about the sushi hors d'oeuvres, the tuna tartar passed in little ceramic spoons, the channel islands lit by an almost full moon, the lobster that elicited oohs and aahs, the chocolate fountain for pete's sake.

But what I'll remember most about Fielding and Larry's wedding is the relaxed sense of fun and joy that permeated every inch of the proceedings. There was none of that pinched nervous tension that accompanies so many weddings. (Well, actually, when Terry Maratos broke those three plates the wedding planner summoned a whole raft of that angst!)

They were determined to foster a feeling of ease, as if they happened to LIVE in this amazing room and had casually wound up with all of their family and friends coming over for dinner. And so that is what wound up happening. We were all at a dinner with Larry and Fielding, not A WEDDING!!!!! Which made it even more of a wedding, if you catch my drift.

So, a toast. To two people I love dearly two days into the rest of their lives. You shared the true colors of your relationship with all of us this weekend and gave us a beautiful memory in the process.

Congratulations, Larry and Fielding, Fielding and Larry!

Cat's Cradle, Pts 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming, The Wig, The Almost-Fight, The Lie

I turned around to see up close the loveliest face on God's green earth. It was shockingly beautiful.

She asked me how long the jam band had been on stage. I said at least 30 minutes because they'd been on stage when I arrived that long ago.

Then, because I wanted to keep staring at her forever, I turned my back on her and looked back at the stage.

I could feel her behind me, her scent lingered as I stared straight ahead. She had sought me out to speak to me. Why was I looking at a jam band from Atlanta?

I turned back to her and asked her what she knew of Emmitt Swimming.

As she answered, I had to stop myself from blurting, "I'm married and I have a one year old son. I'm not wearing my wedding ring because I needed to reconnect with my essential self, the one that is beholden to no one, not because I'm trying to score, not because I'm lying."

But that would have been absurd. I didn't know her so I let the conversation unfurl. I still regret it.

She loved Emmitt Swimming. I told the story of Justin playing it for me years earlier and how I'd hated it. When she told me her name was Melody something in me fell even harder. Again I fought the urge to confess my situation.

My explanation of how I'd heard of Emmitt Swimming led us to some interesting discoveries. She'd been sitting in her car in the parking lot deciding whether to come in as well. She had performed that evening in a play. The cast party was happening AT THAT MOMENT at her house. We marveled at how we'd both continually told ourselves that we weren't going to go inside. Her connection to Emmitt Swimming? It had been her and her ex-boyfriend's favorite band. They'd had a nasty breakup and had only recently spoken. He'd suggested they could talk at the concert.

I told her why I was in Chapel Hill...turns out she was a theater student in the UNC-Chapel Hill theater department. Playmakers Rep is affiliated with that department, using students as interns, the theater is part of the campus. She'd been in a student production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' as Titania.

Emmitt Swimming was about to take the stage. Melody suggested that we go up on the riser to get a better view. We had already become a we. We chatted and laughed. Our hips briefly touched. I made sure it didn't happen again. She said that she couldn't stay to see the whole show because she really did have to get to the cast party. It had been opening night, after all, and the party was at her house.

I was having such a good time that my panic subsided. I would enjoy this moment with her for what it was worth and let her go. Would she later discover that I was married and a father? Maybe, it was a small theater department and word would surely get around. Plus I thanked Maria and Cashel in the program notes for the show. No, the more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to the fact that I had to tell this person I'd met not 15 minutes earlier the entire truth about myself.

Then she invited me to the party. This gave me a glow of the warmest warmth.

So I said I couldn't go. I had a rehearsal early in the morning. I hadn't seen her show and it would be rude to go to the cast party of a show you hadn't seen. She seemed not to think that was a big deal but I insisted. By this time Emmitt Swimming was playing and it was hard to talk with all the noise. They were great, by the way.

They'd played several songs. We had stopped chatting to listen. Soon she had to go.

The Lie

That was when she spotted her ex in the crowd, the guy she'd come there to meet. It was the tall guy with the tall girl I'd focused on earlier. I'd imagined she'd come to meet them but she'd only come to meet him. Seeing him with another girl shook her a bit and she asked if I'd walk her out to her car. I said we could walk right by them if she wanted. The old 'pretend to be your boyfriend' trick.

Once outside of the club I was struck again by how completely at ease I felt with her. She again asked me to come to her party. I knew I shouldn't go, that going was only going to perpetuate this interlude, that every second I spent with her in which she didn't know the truth about me was going to haunt me.

So I got in her car and went to her house.

The Wig

I can't remember why I didn't drive behind her. Like I said, we were already a we. It seemed unnatural for me to get in another car. So we went together to her apartment off campus. I left my car in the parking lot of Cat's Cradle.

Her apartment was in a complex off of Highway 54 which runs through Chapel Hill. The party was in full swing. 40 or 50 people crammed into a small 2 bedroom apartment. Music blaring. Beers. Kitchen clusterfuck.

Melody went into her bedroom to change clothes. When she came out I'd gotten involved in a conversation with a group. She came out in a wig and a Mets t-shirt. We made eye-contact and she saw that I was comfortable and then she set about mingling on her own.

At this point I was planning how I would explain my life to her when she drove me back to my car.

The Almost Fight

A drunken undergrad was trying to goad me into a confrontation by calling me Brandon. I had no intention of letting that happen. This calm response to that age-old vague homophobic aggression was new. I smiled and corrected him every time he called me 'Brandon'.

By now I was on a couch in the living room having reconnected with Melody. I'd been in the house for 45 minutes. She became angry with this young idiot, found the friend who was responsible for his presence at the party, and told him to get his friend out of there. I said it wasn't necessary and I should probably be getting home anyway.

I told myself I'd tell her in the car. But at the last minute her roommate came along. I said nothing about Cashel or Maria. To this day I feel guilty.

My car sat alone outside of Cat's Cradle. It seemed like years since I'd gotten out of it to go see a show I had no intention of seeing, a band I didn't like, on a night I'd planned on staying home.

Instead I sat in a car with Melody Dawn Garren and couldn't tell the truth. Which, for the first time in my life, was all I wanted to do.

Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Fate Taps Me On The Shoulder

As I stood in line outside of Cat's Cradle to go see Emmitt Swimming, I grew increasingly annoyed with myself. There was a much larger crowd than there had been for Combustible Edison and it seemed more collegiate, young, like a band playing in the basement of a fraternity. I decided to get in my car and go on home.

I bought a ticket and went inside.

A jam band from Atlanta was playing. I'm not sure if it is apparent from the posts on this blog, but I am pretty open-minded when it comes to music. I deny no genre. However, I must admit that the 'jam band' subculture is one that I've never come close to getting sucked into. I am a song guy. Improvisation is something great actors do on film sets within the boundaries of a script, not two Teds, a James, and a Rufus on bongos turning 'Highway 61 Revisited' into a 20 minute swamp stomp.

Not big on jam bands. Even good ones. The guys onstage were not one of the good ones.

I bought a beer and stood near the exit, still convinced that I wasn't there at all, that I was at home. The jam band seemed to be near the end of their set as they were all incredibly sweaty. I think this was supposed to add to our enjoyment, as if their sweat was proof of some kind of psychic artistry put into action. I just wanted to hand out towels.

From where I stood I could see out the tunnel hallway to the exit. A steady stream of what seemed like high school sophomores entered the club. I had been constantly struck in my first two weeks on the campus by how young everyone looked. It added poignancy to everything. They were little kids! I again wondered what I was doing out with a bunch of preschoolers when I'd planned to be asleep by this time.

I saw a tall guy who looked a lot like me walk by with a tall girl. He looked sad somehow, like he was not where he was supposed to be. I wished I was taller. This doesn't happen to me often, I'm usually pretty okay with what God gave me. I only saw the girl from behind and she had one of those bodies that seems attractive but on closer inspection is all angles, too much bone and not enough skin. Then when I saw her face their relationship became clear to me. She was arm candy to him and he was ashamed of it. I wanted to go tell him to own up, that I was in my own ill-fitting relationship, that he didn't need to put on a front. This advice which sprang into my head left me feeling self and hypocritical.

A light from the parking lot beamed in every time the doors opened. This left all concert goers silhouetted until they got within 10 feet of me. I had sipped about a quarter of my beer. I'd been in the club all of 15 minutes.

Her silhouette happened and it was like all the noise stopped.

As she moved through the dark passageway into the light that would reveal her face to me I felt this knot of fear well up and dissolve. When her features came into relief I sort of lost my mind.

I instantly told myself a story about her. She was the younger prettier sister of the tall guy's girl. She was supposed to meet them here. Our eyes met briefly and she walked past me to a wall length mirror.

Now I'd been surreptitiously taking passes by this mirror to check myself out since I'd gotten inside. When I went to the bathroom. When I went to get a beer. But I was impressed by how she simply walked right up, stared herself in the eye, arranged her hair, checked her face...why was I so sneaky? Why didn't I just walk up to the mirror and give myself the once-over if I was so concerned?

Then she walked off into the club.

I immediately felt panic that I'd lost her. I couldn't talk to her. I was a married man with a young child. I realized that I wasn't wearing my wedding ring. She'd think I was a sleazebag. A scenario unspooled in my head, one in which I lied through my teeth to her, told her a fake name, told her whatever I wanted to just to spend time with her. Who was I kidding? That wasn't my style.

So I went after her.

One sweep of the club. Nothing. Another sweep of the club. Nothing. A quick look at the girls bathroom line, waiting until the person inside came out. Nothing. She'd vanished.

I had made my way to the very center of the club, right by the risers on which sat the sound man's equipment. I faced away from the back room where the bar sold Pabst Blue Ribbon, one of which I still held in my hand. The same one I'd had since I arrived. I faced the stage where the jam band from Atlanta still noodled.

I felt incredibly sad then, and more alone than I've ever felt since. That's it. I'm going home. I drained the beer and put it on the riser to my left.

And at that very moment she was right behind me waiting to tap me on the shoulder.

Tomorrow: Emmitt Swimming, The Wig, The Almost-Fight, The Lie

Cat's Cradle, Pts. 3 Thru Now: Emmitt Swimming

Somehow today is the day I tell this story. I met Melody Garren at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC on February 20th or 21st back in 1999.

But the story really begins at Justin's house back in the late '80's. Justin played me a song by a group called Emmitt Swimming. I hated it. Made fun of HIM for liking it. To me it sounded like Mel Torme covering an REM song with The Cure. Hmmm. That doesn't sound half bad! But I truly hated this song.

Within 15 minutes we had moved on to writing a song, watching the Red Sox, eating buffalo wings or taking a drunken rowboat ride up the small river that ran through his backyard. I wouldn't think of Emmitt Swimming for at least another 10 years.

In that time I'd lived in France for a year. Lived in Providence for two. Did 500 children's theater shows. Met my future ex-wife in an avant-garde play at Perishable Theater. Formed a band and played rock shows. Broke up with future ex-wife and moved to NYC. Reconnected with future ex-wife and planned marriage. Appeared in several NYU student films which will come back and haunt me someday. Started another rock band and played rock shows in NYC. Got married. Got a job on this crazy new thing called the INTERNET. Wrote an article a week about Urban Legends for AOL as Legs Urbano. Moved to Brooklyn when Maria got pregnant. Appeared in first full production in NYC of 'Tis Pity She's a Whore' at Expanded Arts. Got my SAG card with the same day booking of a video for the band Live and a Law and Order episode. Began couples counseling several times. Halloween 1997 brought Cashel Michael McManus O'Malley into my life. Booked and shot several commercials. Attended Public Theater Summer Shakespeare Lab. Auditioned for anyone and anything anywhere at any time. Wrote song after song about the difficulty in my relationship with Maria. Felt impending doom in spite of all the good things.

Auditioned for and was cast in 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' at Playmakers Rep in Chapel Hill, NC. I got my Equity card with the booking. I would be there for two months, from the middle of February to the beginning of April.

This was a dream come true in many ways. Paid acting work. A gorgeous setting. A chance to work on a groundbreaking Irish play. As I've said here before I was determined to use my time wisely. To get in shape. To deliver my maximum effort. To knock the role out of the park.

I did all of these things. I also set about going to see live music as a way of reconnecting with a part of myself that had gotten lost in a marriage I knew I would end.

Rehearsal was leisurely and enjoyable. The gym was clean and well laid out. The house I lived in was spacious and quiet. Cat's Cradle was a 2 minute drive away. I saw Combustible Edison and wasn't impressed. I saw King's X and was but had to leave because they went on so late.

Then I saw that a band called Emmitt Swimming was playing that Friday night. Where had I heard that name before? It took me some time to find the memory. Once I did I actively set about making plans to do something else. Perhaps a movie. Perhaps stay home and read. I had hoped to keep seeing live music but I knew I wouldn't go see Emmitt Swimming.

The day of the show I woke up early and went for a workout before rehearsal. My thought was to work out twice so as to tire myself out so I'd be able to go to sleep early and not go to Cat's Cradle. I ate a big lunch and relaxed around campus. I went to rehearsal for a couple of hours. I went and worked out again in the afternoon. I cooked myself a big dinner and read. I turned out the lights at 9 and settled in to go to sleep. I was not going to go see Emmitt Swimming at Cat's Cradle, that's for sure.

I lay in bed. I became annoyed with myself for getting up and putting my clothes on. I then got up and put my clothes on. I told myself I wasn't going out to the car. I then went out to the car. I reminded myself that I did not want to see Emmitt Swimming at Cat's Cradle. I then drove to Cat's Cradle.

I sat in the parking lot and looked at the line. I listened to the radio for 15 minutes. At least 3 songs. I hadn't had to wait in line to get into Cat's Cradle before. I didn't want to wait in line. I didn't even want to see the damn band! I was going to start the car and head home.

I got out of the car.

Tomorrow: I feel a tap on my shoulder...