The Year is (still) 1987…!

Things are just starting to heat up when I take the 60 second stroll over to the gas station that sits on the southwest corner of Austin and Addison avenues to make a call on the outdoor payphone (this gas station is somewhat famous for having been robbed by a fairly famous former college basketball star, someone I once saw play in a big game when I was a kid)…this is payphone option ..1 because it is a little more off the street (than the option ..2 payphone), and sits in the shade after 12 o’clock, which is perfect if you hope to have a longer conversation…it’s around 2 o’clock in the afternoon when I dial her number, a girl named Chris (a boyish sounding name to my ears)…she picks up, and we have one of those stop-start chats you have when you like someone, don’t know why you like them, and can’t think of a whole lot to say because you don’t really know them at all…she tells me she grew up in a small town in Indiana that’s just over the border from Illinois, and that she is attending school at the college of the Art Institute, which impresses me right away because you have to have some kind of talent to get in there…we talk some about art, and my frustrations with music, and how there is no school one can go to learn how to be a rock star…she asks me why I didn’t go to college, and I tell her my usual story about how I could have gone if I wanted to, but instead made the leap fully into music proper, a choice that so far wasn’t looking like such a hot idea…after about an hour on the phone, we come around to the notion of getting together, and she invites me to come over to her apartment in a few days to have some lunch…I ask her what time, say I will be there on the dot, and thank her for taking the time to talk to me…as I hang up the phone, I can be caught grinning ear to ear…

I am almost finished with my ‘album’, which is nothing more than a collection of songs I have been working on for no one…by no one, I mean that there is really no one to give it to once I am finished, and I question ‘who’ I am making it for…on one hand, I am excited to be doing something that has meaning to me, connecting more deeply to myself through song and exploring new ways to produce my sound…on the other, I am really disheartened because there really isn’t anyone that interested in what I am doing…I have completely disconnected myself from the downtown arty-goth scene of former friends, live out here on an island with my crazy father, have no connections to anyone in the music business, and have even lost touch some with Lenny and his friend the guitarist that he played in the band with…and the person I most look up to in this world, both as my idol in real life and a musical giant in my eyes, my father, couldn’t care less about the music I am making…

I take the same bus that I take to get over to the record store with, the Austin Avenue bus north, over to Foster, and then take that bus east over to her apartment…I have given up on my over the top, goth-haired Robert Smith wannabe look, and am letting my hair grow out some…part of the reason I have toned down my look is because I take the bus all the time, and appearing incognito is just an easier way to get around the city (less hassle)…the day is hot and dusty, and the bus ride takes forever…I find her apartment easily, which is just off the main corner…I ring the buzzer, and she tells me she will be right down to get me…I have a choice in that moment, the first moment she will see me this way…I can act natural, or I can act cool…I take door number 2, put on my sunglasses, and lean against the cool marble wall…this is how I am standing when she swings the door open (she later tell me that in the first moment that she saw me standing there, a moment she described in exact detail, was the moment she ‘knew’)…

Usually when you meet someone new, there is a whole dance that you have to go through before you become an actual couple…a ritual that demonstrates that the man is interested in the woman…he must prove his desire, willingness to be faithful, and individuality as a solitary spirit offset against all the other suitors…and she must prove her purity, desirability, and overall softness…this is not always the case, some move quicker, others don’t care for it is a game like any other, but I think if you look close it always comes down to the same thing…”do you want me and no one else?”…

Her place is sunny, small, and cute…she lives alone in this studio apartment, the couch doubles as the bed, and there are various pieces of her art laying around…against the wall she has one of those cheap stereos that your parents give you when you go away to school…her hair is just starting to grow out some and is dyed white-blonde…her face is softly round, with the biggest most beautiful eyes and these little, little lips that she paints fire red…her parents are Hungarian and Italian, the Italian side giving her her handsomeness, the Hungarian side creating the drama…to me, she is so simply beautiful that I cannot put my finger on it…she makes me a sandwich in the kitchen while I thumb through her records…I am surprised because she has really good taste in music, a little different than mine (more dance/new wave), but good taste nonetheless…we talk for awhile, and from that point forward there isn’t a moment where we are not together…like 2 kindred lost souls, we simply go from being strangers to a partners, skipping right over the dance…there are no kisses, because there is no hurry, for we are now together…

On my second visit to her place, I bring along the ‘album’ I have been working on…the entire running order lasts somewhere around 40 minutes, and we sit close together on her couch as it plays thru…I don’t know what I am expecting her to say when it is finished, but I am very surprised by what she does say…she tells me that she is very impressed, being fairly specific about what elements of the songs attracted her, accentuating the positives and downplaying what the music is lacking because there is no band backing me…I have recorded all the songs by myself with drum machines, overdubbing the guitars and basses, and am pretty used to the idea of people not ‘getting’ what I am hinting at, instead focusing on what isn’t there, as opposed to what is…she is the first person in my life that tells me I have a true future in music, that she believes I really can be successful…just her telling me this, in the kindness of her room and the with the grace of her heart, changes my life forever…
it is as if someone has finally found the right key to fit the lock of my heart…