Renee had Sat.u.r.day errands to run, and I invited myself along to keep her company. We drove all around Charlottesville in the afternoon sun. We listened to a mix tape another guy had made her, back in Roanoke. It had some lame indie rock, some decent indie rock, and one really great song: Flatt & Scruggs doing their bluegra.s.s version of "Ode to Billie Joe." She told me she"d thrown a Billie Joe party that summer. "I had it on the third of June," she crowed. "You know, the day the song takes place. I served all the food they eat in the song: black-eyed peas, biscuits, apple pie."
We couldn"t think of anything else to talk about, so we just drove in silence until she dropped me off at my place. I spent the rest of the day making a birthday tape for her, mostly Senegalese acoustic music by Baaba Maal and Mansour Seck, just in case she smoked pot. I started to add Bob Dylan"s "I Want You," but then thought better of it. Instead, I added Scrawl"s "Breaker Breaker," to show off my affinity with feminist trucker punk songs, and the Neville Brothers, to make her think maybe I I smoked pot. smoked pot.
We met up at a dive called the Garrett on Monday, the night before her birthday. It was not a romantic bar-the carpet was so pot-soaked you got a buzz walking to the bathroom-but it offered privacy, cheap liquor, a cigarette machine that was easy to tilt, and pool tables to distract pain-in-the-a.s.s innocent bystanders. I"d spent the day writing a sonnet sequence for her. I"m not sure what I was thinking-I mean, I used the word "catachresis" in the first line. But I was certain my prosodic ingenuity would melt her heart for good. I used one of my favorite rhyme schemes-stolen from the James Merrill poem "The Octopus," though he"d stolen it himself, from W. H. Auden"s The Sea and the Mirror The Sea and the Mirror-rhyming the first syllable of a trochee with the final syllable in the next line. How could she resist?
At midnight, I gave her the poems.
"What"s going on?" she asked.
"Well, the last word in the first line is a trochee, and it rhymes with the end of the next line. So "catachresis" rhymes with "fleece.""
"No, what"s going on on?"
"In a catachresis?"
"No. What are you talking about?"
"Uh . . . I have a big crush on you."
"Oooooh," she said. She smiled and let the pages drop on the table. She relaxed in front of my eyes. "So how did it start?"
"Well, I think you"re really beautiful."
She relaxed a lot more-in fact, her face changed shape a little, got a little more round, as if her jaw had unclenched. I didn"t know whether that was a good sign or not, but I couldn"t shut up yet.
"I always thought so. Right away, when I saw you."
"The amazing black dress," she nodded. "I was wearing that when I met you. There"s, uh, a lot of me me in that dress. My f.u.c.k the Hostess dress. It"s a real "drop to your knees and say amen" dress." in that dress. My f.u.c.k the Hostess dress. It"s a real "drop to your knees and say amen" dress."
"I noticed. It"s gotten worse since then."
"I know." She lit one of my Dunhills. I had never seen her so comfortable. "I was on the phone with my friend Merit tonight, and she was like, Does Rob like you? And I said, I don"t know, he made me a tape and he didn"t call and then we danced together and then he left and called and left a message but didn"t call after that. And Merit was like, So, do you like Rob?"
I couldn"t believe she was making me do this. "So, do you?"
She smiled. "I don"t know. He"s not my type, but I really like him." She told me her type was farm boys with broad shoulders, football players. She took her time smoking that cigarette. She still had most of her beer left and she was in no hurry at all. I was too scared to talk, but I was more scared to not talk.
"I don"t know what your type is. I don"t know what your deal is. I don"t even know if you have a boyfriend. I know I like you and I want to be in your life, that"s it, and if you have any room for a boyfriend, I would like to be your boyfriend, and if you don"t have any room, I would like to be your friend. Any room you have for me in your life is great. If you would like me to start out in one room and move to another, I could do that."
"But you"d rather be a boyfriend than a friend?"
"Given the choice. No, not given the choice. That"s what I want."
"Where are you parked?"
"I walked."
"What"s a catachresis?"
"A rhetorical inversion of tense, kind of like a transumption. Let"s go."
In her car, we listened to Marshall Crenshaw"s first alb.u.m, and when we got to her place, we sat on the couch under that big painting. She was not comfortable anymore; she was really scared. She got up and put on my Big Star mix, then took it off. She put on Marshall Crenshaw again. I went through her shoe-boxes of tapes. This girl was definitely an eighties girl. She had a tape with R.E.M."s Murmur Murmur on one side and U2"s on one side and U2"s War War on the other, another with on the other, another with The Velvet Underground & Nico The Velvet Underground & Nico backed with backed with Moondance Moondance. Uh-oh, she also had a lot of XTC tapes. We"d have to work that out later.
"Oh, Rob," she said. "I"m really scared."
I was scared, too. That was a long, long night. I swear her face changed shape several times. I don"t know how this is possible, but it did. Her eyelids got heavier and wider. Her breathing got slower and deeper, and her jaw kept dropping lower, making her whole face bigger. She had a solemn look in her eyes. Around dawn, she said, "I hope I do right by you." I didn"t know what she meant, so I didn"t say anything. I was wearing my Husker Du T-shirt from the Warehouse Warehouse tour. She was wearing a Bob Jones University sweatshirt. I figured there must be a disturbing story there, but I didn"t ask. tour. She was wearing a Bob Jones University sweatshirt. I figured there must be a disturbing story there, but I didn"t ask.
Sometimes you lie in a strange room, in a strange person"s home, and you feel yourself bending out of shape. Melting, touching something hot, something that warps you in drastic and probably irreversible ways you won"t get to take stock of until it"s too late. I felt myself just melting in Renee"s room that night. I remembered being a kid, standing on the bridge over the Pine Tree Brook, when we would find a wax six-ring holder from a six-pack the older kids had killed. We would touch a match to one corner, hold it over the water, and just watch it drip, drip, drip. We"d watch the circular rings, long before the flame even touched them, curl up or bend over in agony. Six rings of wax, twisting and contorting permanently, doing a spastic death dance like the one Christopher Lee does at the end of Horror of Dracula Horror of Dracula, when the sunlight hits him.
The minutes dripped by, each one totally bending and twisting my shape. We eventually stopped getting up to flip the tape, and just listened to dead air. I could feel serious changes happening to me the longer I stayed in Renee"s room. I felt knots untie themselves, knots I didn"t know were there. I could already tell there were things happening deep inside me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than "irreversible"? It"s a hiss of a word, full of side effects and mutilations. Severe tire damage-no backing up. Falling in love with Renee felt that way. I felt strange things going on inside me, and I knew that these weren"t things I would recover from. These were changes that were shaping the way things were going to be, and I wouldn"t find out how until later. Irreversible. I remember that we discussed The Towering Inferno The Towering Inferno that night, the scene with Steve McQueen, the valiant firefighter, and William Holden, the evil tyc.o.o.n who owns the hotel. William Holden asks, "How bad is it?" and Steve McQueen answers, "It"s a fire, mister. And all fires are bad!" That"s the last thing I remember before I fell asleep. that night, the scene with Steve McQueen, the valiant firefighter, and William Holden, the evil tyc.o.o.n who owns the hotel. William Holden asks, "How bad is it?" and Steve McQueen answers, "It"s a fire, mister. And all fires are bad!" That"s the last thing I remember before I fell asleep.
sheena was a man
NOVEMBER 1989.
Renee was my hero. Have you ever had a hero? Someone who says, I think it would be a good idea for you to steal a car and set it on fire then drive it off a cliff, and you say, Automatic or standard? That"s what Renee was. A lion-hearted take-charge southern gal. It didn"t take long for us to get all tangled up in each other"s hair. Have you ever had a hero? Someone who says, I think it would be a good idea for you to steal a car and set it on fire then drive it off a cliff, and you say, Automatic or standard? That"s what Renee was. A lion-hearted take-charge southern gal. It didn"t take long for us to get all tangled up in each other"s hair.
One day that fall we were driving around in her 1978 Chrysler LeBaron and Gladys Knight"s "Midnight Train to Georgia" came on the radio. Renee sang lead, while I sang the Pips" backup routine. She"s leavin"! Leavin" on the midnight train! Woo woo! A superstar but he didn"t get far! When we got to the final fade-out, with Gladys on board the train and the Pips choo-chooing their goodbyes, Renee c.o.c.ked an eyebrow and said, "You make a good Pip."
That"s all I ever wanted to hear a girl tell me. That"s all I ever dreamed of being. Some of us are born Gladys Knights, and some of us are born Pips. I marveled unto my Pip soul how lucky I was to choo-choo and woo-woo behind a real Gladys girl.
Girls take up a lot of room. I had a lot of room for this one. She had more energy than anybody I"d ever met. She was in love with the world. She was warm and loud and impulsive. One day, she announced she had found the guitar of her dreams at a local junk shop. I said, "You don"t even play the guitar."
She said, "This is the guitar that"s gonna teach me."
We drove up Route 29 and she got the guitar. It was a great big Gibson Les Paul with stickers of the Carter Family and the Go-Gos and Lynyrd Skynyrd plastered all over the case. We drove it home and spent the whole weekend kicking around the house as Renee sat on the couch figuring out how to play her favorite Johnny Cash and George Jones songs.
Unlike me, Renee was not shy; she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people"s secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did. She was finishing her MFA in fiction, and was always working on stories and novels. She had more ideas than she had time to finish. She loved to get up early in the morning. She loved to talk about wild things she wanted to do in the future. She"d never gone two weeks without a boyfriend since she was fifteen. (Two weeks? I could do a year standing on my head.) Before she met me, her wish list for the next boyfriend had contained three items: older than her (I failed that one), rural (that one, too), and no facial hair (I would have needed six months" notice to slap an acceptable sideburn together).
I often took the bus to her apartment, where we drank bourbon and ginger ale, listened to the music we wanted to impress each other with, which eventually turned into listening to the music we actually liked. She was particular about her bourbon, winced if I forgot to put the ice cubes in before I poured. She"d hiss, "Don"t bruise the bourbon!"
She was the first person on either side of her family to go to college, and she held herself to insanely high standards. She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was free.
She could play a little piano, mostly hymns that she learned to play for her grandfather. They were tight. When he came home from the mine, she would rub lotion into his blackened hands. When he was on the dialysis machine, she would sit next to him and feed him Pringles. She had some of the scrip they used to pay miners in, instead of cash, to keep them in debt to the mining company. Her grandfather, like mine, worshiped FDR.
Sometimes she would say romantic things like, "I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet." I couldn"t fully translate this. I was from the suburbs-I had no idea whether you"re supposed to dry off a horse before you put it away somewhere. But if Renee was trying to make herself unforgettable, she was doing it right.
Renee and I spent a lot of time that fall driving in her Chrysler, the kind of mile-wide ride southern daddies like their girls to drive around in. She would look out the window and say, "It"s sunny, let"s go driving"-and then we"d actually do it. She loved to hit the highway and would say things like, "Let"s open "er up." Or we would just drive around aimlessly in the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved to take sharp corners, something her grandpa had taught her back in West Virginia. He could steer with just one index finger on the wheel. I would start to feel a little dizzy as the roads started to twist at funny angles, but Renee would just accelerate and cackle, "We"re s.h.i.ttin" in tall cotton now!" a lot of time that fall driving in her Chrysler, the kind of mile-wide ride southern daddies like their girls to drive around in. She would look out the window and say, "It"s sunny, let"s go driving"-and then we"d actually do it. She loved to hit the highway and would say things like, "Let"s open "er up." Or we would just drive around aimlessly in the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved to take sharp corners, something her grandpa had taught her back in West Virginia. He could steer with just one index finger on the wheel. I would start to feel a little dizzy as the roads started to twist at funny angles, but Renee would just accelerate and cackle, "We"re s.h.i.ttin" in tall cotton now!"
We would always sing along to the radio. I was eager to be her full-time Pip, but I had a lot to learn about harmony. Whenever we tried "California Dreamin"," I could never remember whether I was the Mamas or the Papas. I had never sung duets before. She did her best to whip me into shape.
"They could never be!"
"What she was!"
"Was!"
"Was!"
"To!"
"To!"
"To!"
"No, no no, d.a.m.n it! I"m Oates!"
"I thought I I was Oates." was Oates."
"You started as Hall. You have to stay Hall."
We never resolved that dispute. We both always wanted to be Oates. Believe me, you don"t want to hear the fights we had over England Dan and John Ford Coley.
Have you ever been in a car with a southern girl blasting through South Carolina when Lynyrd Skynyrd"s "Call Me the Breeze" comes on the radio? Sunday afternoon, sun out, windows down, nowhere to hurry back to? I never had. I was twenty-three. Renee turned up the radio and began screaming along. Renee was driving. She always preferred driving, since she said I drove like an old Irish lady. I thought to myself, Well, I have wasted my whole life up to this moment. Any other car I"ve ever been in was just to get me here, any road I"ve ever been on was just to get me here, any other pa.s.senger seat I"ve ever sat on, I was just riding here. I barely recognized this girl sitting next to me, screaming along to the piano solo.
I thought, There is nowhere else in the universe I would rather be at this moment. I could count the places I would not rather be. I"ve always wanted to see New Zealand, but I"d rather be here. The majestic ruins of Machu Picchu? I"d rather be here. A hillside in Cuenca, Spain, sipping coffee and watching leaves fall? Not even close. There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what h.e.l.l she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear is this girl"s hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else.
personics
AUGUST 1990.
I brought this Personics tape brought this Personics tape home to Renee as a present from Boston. The Personics fad didn"t last long, but everybody got one that summer. You went to the record store, flipped through the catalog of available songs, some costing $1.75, some $1.15, some just 75 cents. You filled out your order form, handed it to the clerk, and a few hot minutes later you had your own Personics Custom Ca.s.sette with a foxy silver-and-turquoise label. home to Renee as a present from Boston. The Personics fad didn"t last long, but everybody got one that summer. You went to the record store, flipped through the catalog of available songs, some costing $1.75, some $1.15, some just 75 cents. You filled out your order form, handed it to the clerk, and a few hot minutes later you had your own Personics Custom Ca.s.sette with a foxy silver-and-turquoise label. Toast in the Machine Toast in the Machine, my tape from the Tower Records on Newbury Street, is labeled: "Made by the Personics System Especially for: RENeE." Tres romantique!
Personics seemed incredibly high-tech at the time, but really, it was just another temporary technological mutation designed to do the same thing music always does, which is allow emotionally warped people to communicate by bombarding each other with pitiful cultural artifacts that in a saner world would be forgotten before they even happened. The worst song on this tape is "Bird Song" by the Holy Modal Rounders, which I had never even heard before; I included it because I was curious how bad a song had to be to cost only 50 cents in the Personics booklet. It"s two minutes and thirty-eight seconds of giggly hippie folk s.h.i.t; I think it had a whistling solo, but I don"t have the stomach to listen again to find out. I guess you had to be there, and by "there" I mean "dangerously baked for about three months in 1969." This tape doesn"t exactly flow; it"s just a bunch of burnt offerings to this G.o.ddess girl.
I realize it"s frowned on to choose a mate based on something superficial like the music they love. But superficiality has been good to me. In the animal kingdom, Renee and I would have recognized each other"s scents; for us, it was a matter of having the same favorite Meat Puppets alb.u.m. Music was a physical bond between us, and the fact that she still owned her childhood 45 of Andy Gibb"s "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" was tantamount to an arranged marriage. The idea that we might not belong together never really crossed my mind.
I went home with Renee, and she drove me around her hometown, three hours southwest of Charlottesville, down in the New River Valley. We drove around Pulaski County. We went to dinner at the Pizza Den and ate fried potato wedges at Wade"s. Gary Clark, who played for the Washington Redskins, was from Pulaski County, and his mom had a sporting goods store right next to Wade"s, so we checked it out. The closer we got to Pulaski County, the sharper Renee"s accent got. She started using words like "reckon." I even heard her say "dad gum it" once, in the Safe-way parking lot. We stopped at gas stations along the way and she"d buy Hank Williams or Dwight Yoakam tapes to play until we got near enough to a town to pick up some radio. and she drove me around her hometown, three hours southwest of Charlottesville, down in the New River Valley. We drove around Pulaski County. We went to dinner at the Pizza Den and ate fried potato wedges at Wade"s. Gary Clark, who played for the Washington Redskins, was from Pulaski County, and his mom had a sporting goods store right next to Wade"s, so we checked it out. The closer we got to Pulaski County, the sharper Renee"s accent got. She started using words like "reckon." I even heard her say "dad gum it" once, in the Safe-way parking lot. We stopped at gas stations along the way and she"d buy Hank Williams or Dwight Yoakam tapes to play until we got near enough to a town to pick up some radio.
Her people were from Greenbrier County, West Virginia, hardcore Appalachian coal country, where her grandfathers were miners. Her parents, Buddy and Nadine Crist, went to work in Washington, D.C., out of high school, and met in the Department of Commerce cafeteria. They got married at Hines Baptist Church, back in Greenbrier County, when they were both nineteen and just before Buddy was transferred to Georgia. Her high school boyfriends were all football players. Her kind of guy drove a truck and wore thermals; she was always amused when she saw thermals in the J. Crew catalog, tastefully renamed "waffle weave." Every September, no matter who her boyfriend was, the same thing would happen-he"d be out sick from school the first day of buck season, along with all the other guys. Renee considered herself open-minded to be dating a dude who had never shot anything.
When Renee drove me out to Pulaski County to meet her folks, she warned me that her dad was a boyfriend killer. She was right. He looked like Jim Rockford. At our first meeting he shook my hand and went right back into the story he was telling, about one of his least favorite relatives, Uncle Amos, a professional dynamiter whose South Carolina vanity plate read I BLAST I BLAST. Buddy snorted, "He"s s.h.i.thead number two." I came to play ball, so I got right in there and asked, "Who"s s.h.i.thead number one?"
Buddy nodded in Renee"s direction. "Her last boyfriend."
I swallowed my face into the back of my throat. That night, I slept in Nadine"s sewing room. Monday morning, Renee got the lowdown from her mom. All Buddy had said about me was, "Well, better than the last one."
We went to a couple of family reunions that summer. We rolled out to West Virginia, and she took me to the famous gas station in Hughart country where the locals say Hank Williams stopped for gas on New Year"s Eve 1953, in the middle of his fatal all-night ride in that long black limousine. Renee"s family reunions were fun because they were all about music. Her dad would bring his guitar, and so would all her uncles-Dalton, Zennis, Troy, Kermit, and Grover-and her Aunt Caroline. By day, they stood in a circle and sang "Sweet Thing," with cousin Jerry taking the Ernest Tubb part and Aunt Caroline taking the Loretta Lynn part. At night, we stayed up late in somebody"s motel room and they sang the old songs they grew up singing together, trying to remember their old harmony parts, and taught one another new radio songs. Uncle Grover"s lead vocal was "Cool Water," by Sons of the Pioneers. Everybody sang on "Rocky Top." Renee"s dad played a few songs, including a sad song about the coal mines he"d written for his father and one called "Itty Bitty Girl" that he wrote for Renee when she was a baby. He did one of his favorites, the old Waylon JenningsWillie Nelson tune "Good Hearted Woman," and busted out a Porter Wagoner song I"d never heard, "The Cold Hard Facts of Life," which rhymes with "knife," which is what you get offed with when you mess with another man"s "wife." I a.s.sumed Buddy meant it as a warning. He also dedicated a song to me, a rowdy version of "Red Necks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer."
After she told her grandmother I was an Irish Catholic boy, her grandmother said, "You know, the Catholics killed the Christians in Spain." I had no idea what she meant, but fortunately, she didn"t seem to hold me personally responsible. grandmother I was an Irish Catholic boy, her grandmother said, "You know, the Catholics killed the Christians in Spain." I had no idea what she meant, but fortunately, she didn"t seem to hold me personally responsible.
Renee didn"t just sit back and wait for adventures to happen. She covered ground and took me with her. Renee drove me out to Danville to find a reclusive old fifties rockabilly singer she worshipped, Janis Martin. Janis invited us in for coffee and told us stories about Patsy Cline and Ruth Brown and Elvis Elvis Elvis while her prize greyhounds bit my ankles.
Janis Martin nodded in my direction and told Renee, "He don"t say much, do he? But he"s got a sweet smile. I think he likes me."
Renee nodded and smiled. "Oh, he likes you."
Janis said, "He"s thinking, h.e.l.l, she"s old but she"s fine. The t.i.ts ain"t bad."
Renee said, "Definitely the t.i.ts."
We visited each other"s rivers, the New River and An Beithe. Water was important to our ancestors. Renee"s people worried about droughts, mine worried about floods. Some places you don"t miss your water till the well runs dry, but in the old country, my people lived in fear of water. You had to build your house close enough to water so you could go fetch some, but on a hill big enough so you wouldn"t get flooded. It was a guessing game-estimate too low and you lose your whole family. That"s why Auntie Peggy, still living in the old boireen in Kealduve Upper, refused to allow indoor plumbing right up to her dying day, which was in 1987. Whenever anybody suggested indoor plumbing, she always said, "Sure we"ll be drowned in our beds!"
That"s the way they did it in the old country. Two people battle the elements that are trying to kill them, and if one of them weakens, the other dies. If they stay strong, they get to die some other way. That was romance. My grandparents stayed in love for over sixty years.
a little down, a little duvet
JULY 1991.
Renee made this tape for us to listen to while falling asleep, and it served us well on many nights. It"s a tape full of soothing soul and vintage country and whispery rock and private jokes and intimate history. Some of the choices I didn"t like at the time, such as Aerosmith"s "Angel," but they all flow together in my memory now. I think about this tape years later, when I"m interviewing Aerosmith, and they tell me how much they hate "Angel." Steven Tyler tells me, "Sometimes a heavy leather biker guy with tattoos will come up to me and say, "Oh, man, let me tell you my favorite song," and every time, I know it"s gonna be "Angel." And I just gulp, and I don"t know what to say. Ugh, for us to listen to while falling asleep, and it served us well on many nights. It"s a tape full of soothing soul and vintage country and whispery rock and private jokes and intimate history. Some of the choices I didn"t like at the time, such as Aerosmith"s "Angel," but they all flow together in my memory now. I think about this tape years later, when I"m interviewing Aerosmith, and they tell me how much they hate "Angel." Steven Tyler tells me, "Sometimes a heavy leather biker guy with tattoos will come up to me and say, "Oh, man, let me tell you my favorite song," and every time, I know it"s gonna be "Angel." And I just gulp, and I don"t know what to say. Ugh, that that one?" one?"
I wonder whether I should tell Steven Tyler I used to hate "Angel," too, but after my wife put it on this romantic mix tape, tucked in between Big Star and the Beatles, I fell in love with it. I decide not to tell him. I"m sure somewhere in his cosmic rock-star heart, he knows the whole story.
"Thirteen" was the song we chose as the first dance at our wedding.
I never planned to get married when I was only twenty-five, and I"m not sure exactly how it happened-neither of us ever officially proposed, or anything dramatic like that. It started off as a playful fantasy we talked about. Then the fantasy became a plan, the way fantasies sometimes do, and the plan became a future. It didn"t hit us as the climax of anything, just the celebration of something that had already happened to us. I guess we hoped the celebration would help us understand what had happened.
It really started one Sat.u.r.day when we were driving around in the mountains off Route 33, listening to a Marshall Crenshaw song called "Lesson Number One." It"s a sad rockabilly ballad about how lying is bad, and telling the truth is lesson number one. We started talking about the song, and I carelessly said, "I"ve never lied to you."
"Yeah?" she said. "And you never will?"
"No, I never will."