"That dragon is hurting!"
"Die, dragon!"
"Hey, ice cream man, you got a girlfriend?"
The kids at High Point Village in West Roxbury were special because they were allowed to sa.s.s the ice cream man. This was a privilege rarely extended. They called me "R.E.M.," because that was the music they heard coming out of my truck one afternoon. They thought it was incredibly funny to meet a guy who actually listened to R.E.M., and they did mean imitations of the singer Michael Stipe in the video, clutching earphones and wailing, "I"m soooorryyyyy! I"m soooorryyyyy!"
"Hey, R.E.M., do you live in the truck?"
"Do you got a girl in the truck?"
"A naked girl?"
"Hey, R.E.M., do you sell any dimebags, man?"
"Gimme something free, R.E.M.!"
n.o.body else was allowed to sa.s.s me.
I would sell to girls around town I had crushes on, girls whose communions at St. Mary"s I had gazed upon as an altar boy, now girls who bought ice cream from me. It would have been nice if any of these girls had noticed me. It would have been even nicer if they"d said, "Excuse me, Mr. Ice Cream Eye Candy, but I"m having trouble getting my tongue warmed up-could you spare a girl some practice licks? I don"t know, I guess I"m feeling a little . . . fros-tay fros-tay!"
This never happened.
On weekends, I parked by the Public Garden, or near the Boston Tea Party Ship. I sat in the truck and read Kafka"s The Trial The Trial or some depressive s.h.i.t like that, waiting for tourists. I snickered at English people for calling popsicles "ice lollies." On the Fourth of July, my friend Barak and I parked the truck by the Esplanade for the Boston Pops concert and made an absolute killing. On the way home, traffic was backed up so far that people were getting out of their cars to come buy something, or pa.s.sing bills from car to car. By the end of the night, we were tossing free ice cream cones out the window, since we"d bought more than we could store in the freezer. G.o.d bless America. (n.o.body bought any Bomb Pops, however.) or some depressive s.h.i.t like that, waiting for tourists. I snickered at English people for calling popsicles "ice lollies." On the Fourth of July, my friend Barak and I parked the truck by the Esplanade for the Boston Pops concert and made an absolute killing. On the way home, traffic was backed up so far that people were getting out of their cars to come buy something, or pa.s.sing bills from car to car. By the end of the night, we were tossing free ice cream cones out the window, since we"d bought more than we could store in the freezer. G.o.d bless America. (n.o.body bought any Bomb Pops, however.) To tell the truth, I was a little bit drunk on my new popularity. n.o.body wanted to antagonize the ice cream man, because they knew I would never stop on their street again. So I was treated like a visiting king. It"s fair to say I lost perspective. I began referring to myself in the third person, even when I was mumbling to myself in the truck, saying things like "The ice cream man will now stop for lunch," or "The ice cream man could use another Hoodsie." Even driving my c.r.a.ppy old Chevy Nova home, I would announce, "The ice cream man is signaling to switch to the left lane. Stand back lest ye melt!" My sisters began grumbling and calling me Snow Miser.
It was the closest I"d ever come to being a star, the kind that Prince was in Purple Rain Purple Rain, riding that motorcyle around with Apollonia on the back, cruising Lake Minnetonka, suffering the hard work of being so beautiful that people bombard you with attention day and night. I was already a big fan, but watching Purple Rain Purple Rain, I thought, this is my life. Finally, someone else gets it. I felt like Prince could understand what I was going through. We"d have to hang out some time. He could play me some tasty new tracks, and maybe I could serve him a Hoodsie.
PAUL MCCARTNEY.
"No More Lonely Nights "
1984.
It was Paul McCartney who warped my young brain with the idea that not worshipping a girl was a waste of time, an idea that has caused about 88 percent of the misery in my life. (The other 12 percent was caused by "Say Say Say.") Paul McCartney is one of the central mysteries of my universe. He"s the only Beatle people really argue about. The other three, for better or worse, are fixed in their roles-John as the caustic rebel, George as the religious one, Ringo as the drummer. But Paul is the loose cannon, the danger Beatle, the X in the fab equation. He"s the only one you can mention in a bar to start an argument. n.o.body really knows what to do with Paul, which is why I think about him all the time.
Paul was the b.i.t.c.hiest Beatle. Everybody knows the other Beatles thought he was bossy. Even in the interviews for the 1990s Anthology Anthology doc.u.mentaries, George Harrison physically bristles in his company. But he was the Beatle who worked hardest, who forced the others to finish their songs and show up to the studio. doc.u.mentaries, George Harrison physically bristles in his company. But he was the Beatle who worked hardest, who forced the others to finish their songs and show up to the studio.
Paul is the bossy Irish sister in the Beatles. Every Irish family has one of these, and it"s always the oldest girl. My cousin Graine in Dublin explained to me that this sister is called "the Alsatian," which is the British Isles term for the breed of dog that Americans call a Doberman. "I"m the Alsatian in my family," she explained at one family dinner. We were standing against a wall watching our cousins congregate from all over Ireland, noting the uncanny pattern-every family seemed to have a gang of sisters. "Yes, but there"s only one of us us per family," she told me. "The Alsatian-the enforcer. I"m the one who stirs the pot and speaks my mind. I"m the Alsatian in my family. Ann is the Alsatian in yours." per family," she told me. "The Alsatian-the enforcer. I"m the one who stirs the pot and speaks my mind. I"m the Alsatian in my family. Ann is the Alsatian in yours."
Any Irish brother can recognize what Paul was doing in the Beatles. He was the Alsatian. He kept coming up with more work for them to do, dreaming up big, daft ideas, sometimes brilliant (Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road), sometimes involving walrus costumes (Magical Mystery Tour). He got mad if he didn"t think they were pushing hard enough. It always cracks me up that some people describe "Getting Better" as a cheerful, optimistic song. Nagging the other Beatles about how things could be better, a little better, all the f.u.c.king time-that sounds like Paul to me.
Paul was the girliest Beatle, the prettiest star with the long eyelashes. He was one of the original rock-and-roll gender-benders, which is why he was the most new-wave Beatle. But if his prettiness helped create the Beatles, it was his b.i.t.c.hiness that kept them alive, and it isn"t much of an exaggeration to say that the Beatles were his fantasy-every time the others were burned out and felt like trying something different, not being Beatles anymore, it was Paul who would herd them back into the group. John dismissed his tunes as "granny music." Exactly-I bet Paul"s granny was one tough Irish broad who could beat up any bartender in Liverpool. And I also bet she had some terrified brothers.
That"s why he still bugs people. His image might be the pop softie, the crowd-pleaser who plays nice for the old ladies, the one who plays it safe. But paradoxically, he"s the only Beatle that people despise. Beatles histories tend to agree about everything except except the Paul Question, which is where they get contentious. Countless bands have styled themselves in opposition to the Beatles, as the "bad boys" of rock: the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the s.e.x Pistols, etc. These bands set out to p.i.s.s people off. But there"s no way they could possibly p.i.s.s people off the way Paul does. the Paul Question, which is where they get contentious. Countless bands have styled themselves in opposition to the Beatles, as the "bad boys" of rock: the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the s.e.x Pistols, etc. These bands set out to p.i.s.s people off. But there"s no way they could possibly p.i.s.s people off the way Paul does.
Paul"s girl worship will always be the most disturbing and mysterious thing about him. It is strange, no matter how you look at it, that he likes them so much, considering the time and place when he became a rock star. He waltzed into a life where, by the time he was twenty-two, he knew for a fact that no whim would ever be refused him, whether it was s.e.x, drugs, cars, gurus or druids. (Football teams-I think lots of English rock stars buy those.) Paul chose to be a husband. In nearly thirty years together, he and Linda famously never spent a night apart, except when he was in jail for smuggling weed into Tokyo.
The Stones suggested that if you dabble in decadence, you could turn into a devil-worshipping junkie. Paul McCartney suggested that if you mess around with girl worship, you could turn into a husband. So Paul was a lot scarier.
He didn"t just sing about the way love messes up your mind-he lived it out. He even let his wife, Linda, join the band. Everybody made fun of him for that; everybody knew the joke, "What do you call a dog with wings?" There"s no way Paul didn"t know the whole world was laughing at him for giving his wife so much of his attention-he just didn"t care. Or maybe he did it to annoy people. (And it is both weird and impossible not to notice that all four Beatles had absurdly long-lived marriages, second marriages in most of their cases-did any other major rock band sp.a.w.n such notoriously doting husbands?) Paul has been called many things-sappy, sentimental, complacent, a pothead, a mama"s boy, dead, the Walrus. But never a misogynist, which definitely makes him stand out from the other rock stars of his generation. As early as 1968, the first biographer to write a book about the Beatles, Hunter Davies, noted that Paul was the one with "modern" att.i.tudes about women. (He compared some of the others to Andy Capp.) Even before he married Linda, he was squiring the actress Jane Asher, making him one of very few "60s rock stars whose choice of female companion was another creative artist. He was always vocal in giving her credit for helping to introduce him to things like cla.s.sical music and modern art, the things that influenced Beatles alb.u.ms like Sgt. Pepper Sgt. Pepper and and Revolver. Revolver. And he fawned over his wife, so he spent the Boogie Nights era on an organic farm in Scotland, raising four kids and eating her steamed wheatgra.s.s ca.s.seroles. And he fawned over his wife, so he spent the Boogie Nights era on an organic farm in Scotland, raising four kids and eating her steamed wheatgra.s.s ca.s.seroles.
In his music, even from his earliest days, Paul liked girls so much that he sounded phony when he tried to be mean. The only time he ever sang an "it ain"t me babe" song, he came up with "Another Girl," which is laughably insincere. And even then he disses one chick because he met another who "will always be my friend." He became insanely famous by singing about how he liked girls, but once he got famous, he just seemed to go right on liking them.
You have to admit, there aren"t many stories like Paul McCartney"s in the annals of rock and roll, or s...o...b..z in general. This was the most ardently desired male on earth, not to mention one of Britain"s top earners. Most of us would not have made the s.e.xual choices he made, given his options. I have no idea how he treated his groupies in the "60s-although maybe it has to signify something that none of them ever sold him out to the tabloids. But if it was ever a pain in the a.s.s to be married to Linda, who by all accounts was as tough-minded and stubborn as he was, the world never heard about it. And when John and Yoko split up in the early 1970s, guess who Yoko sent to L.A. to go talk to John?
People have spent many years trying to figure out what happened to Paul McCartney, but maybe we"re not really asking the right questions. His flaws are actually not that hard to figure out. ("Maybe he used to smoke dope every waking moment" explains a lot of them.) It"s his virtues that seem profoundly f.u.c.ked up. He was a man deranged by love, driven to madness by a happy love affair, a deeper madness than other rock stars got from their unhappy ones. By the late 1970s, most of his peers were making their divorce alb.u.ms, but McCartney was knocking out increasingly crazed nondivorce alb.u.ms, and n.o.body ever enjoyed being a husband more than this man. "Maybe I"m Amazed" is an infinitely freakier song than "Revolution Number 9." Linda seemed like n.o.body"s idea of an obsession-worthy muse, just some random hippie chick Paul liked. It would have been one thing if he"d married Elizabeth Taylor or Jackie Kennedy. But he married a photographer who did the alb.u.m cover art for Tommy James and the Shondells.
I"m not claiming to like all the music-far from it. "Let "Em In" is some kind of high-bongwater mark for how zonked and sedated a grown man can sound when things are going too smoothly. Songs like this terrify me. I mean, Keith Richards has some impressive vices, and I always love hearing gossip about them. But they only disturb me in theory. In real life, I"m not in any danger of turning into Keith Richards, and neither are my friends.
But turning into Paul McCartney? It could happen to anybody. anybody. Some of your friends are probably already this f.u.c.ked. Some of your friends are probably already this f.u.c.ked.
Two of my friends have met him, neither one affiliated with the music biz or the media in any way, and both used the same word to describe him. I hate admitting that the word was "dumb," and I hate recalling I was unreasonably aggressive both times in defending him. But I know what they mean. A lot of smart people think Paul McCartney is dumb, and it"s easy to see why. He doesn"t worry about looking cool. He doesn"t have the defensive armor we expect in people who have been visible all their lives. Like a lot of naturally intense people, he seems to have overcompensated with an almost cartoonishly easygoing manner. His moronic public actions get more attention than his smart ones. I mean, there are great songs on his recent alb.u.ms, but who the h.e.l.l listens to them? n.o.body. Meanwhile, millions of people around the world watched the Super Bowl when Macca showed up and sang an impromptu duet with Terry Bradshaw of "A Hard Day"s Night."
Indeed, his flaws are a nonstop source of comic delight. He has no apparent ability to feel shame. If Terry Bradshaw wants to sing, Paul"s game. If he wants to release hit singles so cringingly awful I would rather gnaw off my fingers than type the t.i.tles, he goes for it. He sponsored an authorized biography where he detailed how much harder he worked than the other Beatles-he wrote 65 percent of this song, 70 percent of that song. Somebody really should have talked him out of that. Also, during the period he was married to the unspeakable Heather Mills, the Give My Regards to Broad Street Give My Regards to Broad Street of Beatle wives, she was clearly goading him into being more of a b.i.t.c.h than he normally is, telling him she"d never heard of songs like "Get Back." (You"re married to Paul McCartney! Google the man!) That was when Paul began his deeply embarra.s.sing campaign to change the songwriting credit from Lennon-McCartney to McCartney-Lennon. of Beatle wives, she was clearly goading him into being more of a b.i.t.c.h than he normally is, telling him she"d never heard of songs like "Get Back." (You"re married to Paul McCartney! Google the man!) That was when Paul began his deeply embarra.s.sing campaign to change the songwriting credit from Lennon-McCartney to McCartney-Lennon.
When he divorced this nightmare of a second wife, her lawyers claimed that, among other cruelties, Paul had gotten angry at her for breastfeeding, allegedly telling her, "They are my my b.r.e.a.s.t.s!" I love that story. Yeah, right-Paul raised his kids on an organic farm with the crunchiest hippie mama who ever lived, so I suspect he was familiar with the concept of nursing. The lawyers should have tried something believable, like "He fell asleep and left the baby on the plane" or "He wrote "Say Say Say." " b.r.e.a.s.t.s!" I love that story. Yeah, right-Paul raised his kids on an organic farm with the crunchiest hippie mama who ever lived, so I suspect he was familiar with the concept of nursing. The lawyers should have tried something believable, like "He fell asleep and left the baby on the plane" or "He wrote "Say Say Say." "
Of course, anyone can sympathize with the other Beatles. If you"re George, and you wrote a great song like "Taxman," you have every reason to be furious that Paul dubbed his guitar solo over yours. But so what? Paul just played it better. Paul didn"t even care about claiming the credit-99 percent of listeners a.s.sume George played the "Taxman" solo, and apparently that"s always been fine with Paul. (I had no idea until a few years ago, when the Beatles" engineer Geoff Emerick revealed it in his book Here, There and Everywhere Here, There and Everywhere.) He let George take the credit; all he wanted was to play the d.a.m.n thing. "Let It Be"? Not really his style.
Paul was the Beatle who was never embarra.s.sed about having been a Beatle. He spent his Hall of Fame induction speech urging them to induct George and Ringo. When he was knighted, he said, "It"s strange being here without the other three." He"s bewilderingly generous to the idea of the group, and one could say it"s because he tended to get his way in that group, but considering the decades of success he had without them, his deference to the others is a bit baffling.
Nothing, however, can explain how he convinced a capitalist record label to release Give My Regards to Broad Street Give My Regards to Broad Street, which gave the world "No More Lonely Nights." I only know this record because I bought it as a Christmas present for Ann in 1984. We listened in awe. This alb.u.m is mostly composed of orchestral remakes of Beatles songs, fluffed up by Paul in the nadir of his tragic Hawaiian shirt phase. It has "No More Lonely Nights," which is a surprisingly gorgeous tune, and deserves to be remembered as an "80s pop trifle on par with the best of Phil Collins or Steve Perry. Yet it"s completely forgotten because it was buried on the soundtrack of this infamously a.s.s movie. Not even Ann, a confirmed Paulmaniac, could find anything nice to say about this alb.u.m.
Paul really only makes sense to me as an Irish big sister. His loyalty to the group is second only to that of my sister Ann, who would take a bullet or even two for any of her siblings, yet would not think of letting us board a plane without drawing up a diagram of how we should pack our suitcases. She works harder than we do.
Ann is a take-charge gal. Ann is the only one of us who can drive a stick, the one you"d call from a Turkish prison to explain you"d be late for dinner. When one of our bas.e.m.e.nts gets flooded, Ann is the one who drives over with the sump pump before being asked. Ann taught our ninety-year-old grandfather to use the microwave, knowing full well he"d never touch it. She organized my mom"s closets and wanted to throw everything away; my mom insisted on keeping our first-communion blankets. They argued over this for days. Ann finally said, "Fine. When you"re gone, they"re gone."
My mom likes to say that Caroline is her daughter, Tracey is her sister, and Ann is her mother. I am old enough to remember my mom and her mom having the same arguments that Mom and Ann have now, usually involving one telling the other what to do.
Ann is the girl my grandmother warned me about, because she is the girl my grandmother was. My grandfather used to call her "the girl from Glenbeigh," because she looks just like her. Nana knew this was coming. Back in County Kerry, she was Bridget Courtney, and she continued to terrify her brothers even after she had crossed the ocean and settled in the new world. Nana was "fussy," as she herself put it. She was fond of giving orders on behalf of her grandson, mostly the matter of who was going to feed him in the immediate future, so I had no complaints. But the point is, you want this woman on your side. If somebody is invading your country or the river is flooding your farm, the Alsatian is who you want on your team. Or, if you"re one of the Beatles, you want Paul in your band.
When my grandfather tried explaining the Alsatian to me, he said it was the Courtney temper versus the Twomey temper. My grandfather, my sisters and my mom got the Courtney temper, where you blow your top and then it"s over. He and I got the Twomey temper, where you stew about it for hours and hope it goes away. He told me it was better for everyone to have the Courtney version, and apologized for pa.s.sing on the wrong kind to me. I didn"t mind that-I was grateful to be surrounded by all these women. All I wanted to know was how to live with them in peace.
I"m sure he would have told me, if he had any idea.
MADONNA.
"Crazy for You"
1985.
In general, people do not remember 1985. It"s the decade"s forgotten year, even when people have made their peace with the rest of the "80s on so many levels. At this point, everybody admits that the early "80s new-wave stars were the bomb, and late "80s hip-hop and disco stars were tubular. But 1985? It was the year of the great awesomeness drought.
The reason, obviously, can be summed up in one word: Rambo Rambo. If you were alive at the time, this name probably brings back a Proustian rush of memory, but if you"re too young to remember, Rambo Rambo was a hit movie in 1985, a year so starved for laughs that Rambo became the big summer blockbuster. And it gives us traumatic post-disorder stress trauma or whatever it was Rambo suffered after "Nam. There was nothing else to do but go see was a hit movie in 1985, a year so starved for laughs that Rambo became the big summer blockbuster. And it gives us traumatic post-disorder stress trauma or whatever it was Rambo suffered after "Nam. There was nothing else to do but go see Rambo Rambo every weekend, and it hurts too much to remember. every weekend, and it hurts too much to remember.
It"s a Sylvester Stallone movie about a guy named Rambo who goes back to Vietnam to fight the war all over again. He did not pack a shirt, but he did bring bows and arrows and a nice little Richard Simmons headband, in order to play upon the enemy"s fears by invoking the ancient Vietnamese legend of the Great Gay Warrior who comes across the sea to unleash his mighty power of seduction. He kills everybody in the whole country, and finds true love with a local girl who says, "You not expendable, Rambo."
No matter what your politics were, this was a spleenpunchingly funny movie and everybody went to see it six times. If you weren"t born at the time, you have never heard of this movie, even though every other Vietnam franchise is in constant weekend TV rotation, from Delta Force Delta Force to to Missing in Action Missing in Action, as is every other Stallone movie from Rocky Rocky to to Demolition Man Demolition Man. Rambo"s Rambo"s been written out of history. But in 1985, it was a brilliant movie to watch in the theater, especially if everybody in the crowd was high as a kite. The third time I went, as they rolled the credits, the guy behind me told his buddies, "I got a f.u.c.kin" woody already!" been written out of history. But in 1985, it was a brilliant movie to watch in the theater, especially if everybody in the crowd was high as a kite. The third time I went, as they rolled the credits, the guy behind me told his buddies, "I got a f.u.c.kin" woody already!"
However, it sucked and n.o.body remembered it a year later, because n.o.body liked to think we were all so desperate. So 1985 is the memory gap no one wants to recall, much like the way Willis and Arnold on Diff"rent Strokes Diff"rent Strokes blocked out their traumatic memories of 1975 (inspiring the shocking "Willis throws book at annoying tutor who won"t shut up about 1975" episode). blocked out their traumatic memories of 1975 (inspiring the shocking "Willis throws book at annoying tutor who won"t shut up about 1975" episode).
The only other thing we did for fun in 1985 is talk s.h.i.t about Madonna and how much we hated her and how we couldn"t wait for her to go away. Except she didn"t.
Madonna entered my life with the "Burning Up" video, which was so s.e.xy it just made me mad. She turned my private Catholic angst into a spectacle, a one-woman Vatican 3. "What"s a-matter?" she asked in the "Open Your Heart" twelve-inch remix. "You scared a-me or something?" Well, yes.
I couldn"t believe anybody could be as brazen as she was. What the movie said about Rambo was truer about Madonna: "What you call h.e.l.l, she calls home." I was a shy boy who craved a not-shy girl to be Madonna for me. She dared me to open my heart, and now I had to figure out how, listening to her for clues. I was lost in Madonnadolatry. And I was p.i.s.sed off about it.
Of all the complex females in my life, Madonna was the one who taught me how to be completely exasperated by a woman, and how to like it. She was the first woman who ever told me I can dance (I can"t) and the first who told me I came when she wished for me (I"ll have to take her word on that one). I literally never go the movies without thinking about the scene in the "Into the Groove" video where she puts her head on the guy"s shoulder and lets him feed her popcorn. She screwed me up good. Oh, Madonna-you put this in me, so now what? So now what?
By now she"s saturated popular music longer than anyone else from that time. For me, it"s "Angel," "Who"s That Girl," "Keep It Together," "Bad Girl." For you, it might be "Papa Don"t Preach" or "Deeper and Deeper" or "Frozen" (none of which ever did it for me, but you never know).
Some of her songs are so beautiful it hurts to feel them pierce my body, making me too sad to listen to them ("What It Feels Like for a Girl," "Promise to Try"). Some make me happy every time, like "Dress You Up"-that thwamp-thwamp-thwamp thwamp-thwamp-thwamp synth-snare intro, exactly one second long, and exactly as perfect as any number of equally joyous seconds in that song. Some become my go-to karaoke jams ("Crazy for You" on a vodka night, "Justify My Love" for bourbon), some evoke deep historical paradoxes ("Angel" is the same song as both Lou Reed"s "Crazy Feeling" and the Stylistics" "Betcha By Golly, Wow"-how the h.e.l.l did that happen?), sometimes she sounds silly enunciating the consonants ("Drowned World/Subst.i.tute for Love"), sometimes she gasps for breath between low notes she can"t hit ("Angel"). Sometimes she says "Whee!" and sometimes she says "Hey!" As a cruel Italian G.o.ddess, she does stupid things like synth-snare intro, exactly one second long, and exactly as perfect as any number of equally joyous seconds in that song. Some become my go-to karaoke jams ("Crazy for You" on a vodka night, "Justify My Love" for bourbon), some evoke deep historical paradoxes ("Angel" is the same song as both Lou Reed"s "Crazy Feeling" and the Stylistics" "Betcha By Golly, Wow"-how the h.e.l.l did that happen?), sometimes she sounds silly enunciating the consonants ("Drowned World/Subst.i.tute for Love"), sometimes she gasps for breath between low notes she can"t hit ("Angel"). Sometimes she says "Whee!" and sometimes she says "Hey!" As a cruel Italian G.o.ddess, she does stupid things like Evita Evita or the "Secret" video, but that"s just her painful way of teaching us not to trust her. or the "Secret" video, but that"s just her painful way of teaching us not to trust her.
One of the reasons I keep listening to her, whether I want to or not, is that she keeps teaching me about how difficult women are, how needy and pushy they are, how silly it is to think you can control them or make them what you want them to be. I guess I should have learned this lesson years ago, but I never do, so I keep getting burned by Madonna. I guess that"s one of the reasons I keep her around.
In 1985, it was still possible to believe Madonna was just a flash in the pan. She was this year"s girl. I was a librarian that summer, shelving books to the radio. Every time a Madonna song came on, my coworkers, groovy lesbians with new-wave haircuts, raved about how Madonna was the s.h.i.t. This made me feel a little stupid. And so did the yearning in Madonna"s voice when she hits those growly low notes in "Crazy for You."
At nineteen, I had never had a girlfriend, and I knew for a fact that this was somebody"s fault, though not mine. So I decided it was Madonna"s. I had pretty strict ideas about how I thought the world should be, and my plan for getting a girlf riend was to make the world rearrange itself to conform to my conditions. I thought that was a fair set of demands. Madonna kept reminding me, over and over, how full of s.h.i.t I was. So I resented her bitterly and prayed for her to not be famous anymore. I was sure she was going to have a short run anyway.
In August, my parents took me and my sisters on a road trip through Europe. Four of us were packed in the backseat cruising through Spain, Italy and France. So it was a summer spent in the car with my sisters, like so many summers and so many family road trips. We sat in the backseat and sang every song we knew, from "American Pie" to the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat soundtrack. Ann and Caroline sang every song on Ronnie Milsap"s greatest hits, just to annoy me and Tracey. soundtrack. Ann and Caroline sang every song on Ronnie Milsap"s greatest hits, just to annoy me and Tracey.
The book I brought with me was Virginia Woolf"s Mrs. Dalloway Mrs. Dalloway , a gift from a girl I liked, except I read her inscription even more obsessively than the novel. "For you," she wrote inside the front cover. "Read this and think of me. This pen is horrible." The ink ran dry halfway through "horrible," leaving me with questions. "For you"? What did that mean? Why didn"t she pick a new pen to write the rest of the inscription, so she could sign her name and maybe add some hearts or "XOXO"s? It was a mystery. I loved the novel but I had to admit, my concentration kept wandering back to that girl"s handwriting. , a gift from a girl I liked, except I read her inscription even more obsessively than the novel. "For you," she wrote inside the front cover. "Read this and think of me. This pen is horrible." The ink ran dry halfway through "horrible," leaving me with questions. "For you"? What did that mean? Why didn"t she pick a new pen to write the rest of the inscription, so she could sign her name and maybe add some hearts or "XOXO"s? It was a mystery. I loved the novel but I had to admit, my concentration kept wandering back to that girl"s handwriting.
We had a radio in the car, but we rarely turned it on because the songs were all Madonna, as they were back in the States.
We all had destinations we were keen to see-Ann was looking forward to Rome, Tracey to Milan, Caroline to the ruins of Pompeii. But I was waiting for Lourdes, the sacred Catholic shrine in the French countryside. I was nineteen and extremely devout, struggling with all my screwed-up obsessions about Catholicism-and, as was inevitable, they were all tangled up in my screwed-up obsessions about Madonna.
Religion was something I"d been somewhat cuckoo about all through my teen years, and I found it excruciating to discuss with anybody, even though I was raised in the faith and had plenty of well-meaning adults to talk about it with. I"d grown up religious enough, but I got a little intense about it as I got older. I could pinpoint distinctions between mortal sin and venial sin on episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter Welcome Back, Kotter (Horshack didn"t know the vitamins were drugs) or (Horshack didn"t know the vitamins were drugs) or What"s Happening!! What"s Happening!! (oh, Rerun, you knew bootlegging that Doobie Brothers show would break Michael McDonald"s heart). (oh, Rerun, you knew bootlegging that Doobie Brothers show would break Michael McDonald"s heart).
I was an altar boy until I was sixteen, which is pretty late to stop, but I didn"t fit into the ca.s.sock and surplice anymore. I still went to CCD cla.s.ses after confirmation, which hardly anyone does. Of course, I was the only boy in the CCD cla.s.s. Once my teacher had asked the girls in the cla.s.s, "Who"s he going with?" Regina Kelley (who of course reported this entire discussion to my sisters immediately afterward) said, "Well, he"s kind of shy shy." The teacher said, "Awww, that"s the best kind!" I was mortified when my sisters told me about this-once your CCD teacher is trying to find you a date, your social life is probably a matter for St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless cases.
For me, religion was an escape from the world, not a connection to it. I gleaned all my religious ideas from books and kept it all fiercely private. I went to confession at four on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, the only time of the week they had confessions, because n.o.body went except the same five or six old ladies, who were more weirded out than gratified by my presence. I kept confession note cards in my pocket so I wouldn"t forget any of my sins, even though I never really had any juicy dirt to share. I never even rode my bike, for fear somebody I knew would pa.s.s by St. Mary"s on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and see my bike in the bicycle rack. The priests of the parish, who were all extremely kind and friendly guys, would usually try to cheer me up. They seemed puzzled but glad to see me, and we"d chat about the Red Sox, who were testing our faith something fierce.
One nice thing about growing up Catholic is it makes you open-minded about other people"s religions, since ours is nuttier than yours. I believed lots of nutty things, so many that I"m never surprised at the dumb s.h.i.t other people believe. I always looked forward to the annual Ma.s.s where we"d renew our baptismal vows. ("Do you renounce the glamour of eeeeviiiiil?" Who wrote this script, Ozzy?) Being a pop fan is a lot like Catholic devotion- lots of ritual, lots of ceremony, lots of private oblations as we genuflect before our sacred s.p.a.ces. We touch the icon to enter the sacred s.p.a.ce, genuflecting to reliquaries and ostentatoria that make something splendid of our most secret desires and agonies.
I always believed rock stars knew more about everything than I did, so I was always relating them to religion. I pondered the existence of G.o.d because Billy Idol did. I questioned the connections between s.e.xual freedom and spiritual concentration because Prince sang about them.
My beliefs basically bordered on idolatry. I was like the Israelites in the book of Exodus when they"re always getting caught with false idols, because G.o.d can"t turn his back without his people cheating on him with some Babylonian fish G.o.d or golden calf. The whole Bible read like one long episode of Three"s Company Three"s Company, with the people of G.o.d as Jack Tripper, always getting busted in a "two dates for the same night" episode, with G.o.d as the jealous cuckold dumping a drink over their heads.
Being a hermit was my vice. Not necessarily a bad vice; it protected me from other, more interesting vices I could have been discovering, which may have left more damage behind. I guess, strictly speaking, it was not even a vice in itself-more like what Catholics of my parents" generation used to call a "habitual disposition," a tendency to have trouble avoiding specific occasions of sin. I was in the market for some snazzier vices, some that would actually teach me something.
Lourdes was nothing like I pictured it. From books, I had imagined a peaceful solemn spot in the woods, a quiet little grotto where I could enjoy an unmediated, unspoiled moment with true divinity. Instead, it was like Las Vegas. There were neon lights everywhere, signs for motels and gift shops, stands selling special Lourdes candles. There were tourists everywhere. And I loved it. I loved how Las Vegas it was, and my main emotion was relief. I loved all the electric glare and all the noise. I loved hearing all the excitement in all the different languages and accents. It wasn"t so different from going to a hard-core all-ages show at a punk club on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, brushing up against other people"s bodies, letting go of my boundaries, trying not to get spooked about the push and rush of the crowd.
I didn"t dare to tell my family a thing about what an intense experience I was having. I held on to my candle and listened to the other pilgrims sing. I didn"t have any miracles to pray for-I wasn"t there looking for a cure or a sign. I just stared and tried to take it all in. I had shown up as a nineteen-year-old tourist who knew everything and suddenly I felt like I didn"t have the answer to a d.a.m.n thing. It was frightening, obviously, but just like a punk rock show, it was also exciting.
I"ve tried to purge the religion from my system, and I"m always frustrated that I can"t. No matter how hard I have tried to pry that Catholic block out from inside my head, the best I can settle for is being a bad Catholic. It"s like Lou Reed said to Lester Bangs about drugs: "I make no bones about the fact that I take amphetamines. Any sane person would any chance they get. But I"m not in favor of legalization, because I don"t want all these idiots going around grinding their teeth at me." That"s basically how I feel about religion. It"s a drug I abuse, but I don"t want to see it on the street.
This relationship is not a romance. G.o.d is not a girlfriend-she is a roommate"s girlfriend, one you put up with having around. You can break up with your roommate, and you can break up with your girlfriend, but you can"t break up with your roommate"s girlfriend, and even when you"re both through with the roommate, you can"t break up with each other. Long after you"ve moved out and they"re broken up, she will still be coming up to you at parties and saying hi. You will run into her at the library where she works or the bar where she pulls pints. You will not make a scene, because (it"s a fact) people are more polite to their roommates" girlfriends than they are to their own girlfriends or their own roommates, for that matter. You will not give her the "You remind me of an apartment I wish I could forget I got trapped in" face, or the "I"ve heard you through the walls screaming the name of that deadbeat who skipped out on the phone bill" face.
You will, instead, feel vaguely sorry for her. She doesn"t know anyone else at this party. You are who she"s talking to and it"s not fair? Why you? Why her? Great, now she"s going to need a f.u.c.king ride home. She is suffering and she is maybe even bleeding and this is not at all your problem, so why won"t she learn to take care of herself for once?
That"s still basically my conception of G.o.d-a stoner chick who hasn"t eaten any solid food all weekend and won"t admit it. She makes disastrous decisions and says things she hasn"t thought through. When I try to commune with G.o.d, I"m basically talking to this stoner chick and trying to suggest politely that she eat something. "Hey, I"m really interested in what you"re saying right now, and I can"t wait to continue this discussion, so let me make you a sandwich and we can keep going, okay?"
When I was nineteen, I seriously thought that if I solved the problem of religion, I would get out of having to think about all this stupid stuff. It always makes me mad that I never solved it. I did not expect to still be furious about these things when I was an adult-but then, I didn"t expect to still be buying a new Madonna alb.u.m every year either, and since Madonna was so fearless and rosary-flashing on the surface, yet so crucified and mortified on the inside, she probably still gets p.i.s.sed about religion too. She even named her daughter Lourdes. Since Madonna, like so many other h.e.l.l-raising teenage girls, has gone on in adulthood to be a bit of a religious bore, I guess she wasn"t as bold and independent as I thought she was at the time-she was probably just as f.u.c.ked up and scared as I was. She must have taught me something about feeling a little pity for the G.o.ds. But it"s more likely she was feeling pity for me.
THE REPLACEMENTS.
"Left of the Dial"
1986.
The bus came every afternoon, right on time. Every forty minutes, the New Haven city bus rumbled down Whalley Avenue, and I could see it from my bedroom window. The billboard on the side had Judge Wapner"s face and the tag line "Today Is Judgment Day!" I never got on the bus-I just waited to see that billboard as it rolled past my block. Proof that the world never runs out of trivial omens for ominously inclined adolescents, which is another thing the world never runs out of. Omens like this were a dime a dozen, and I was the sucker with the pocketful of dimes.
I was living with a houseful of hippies in New Haven, sleeping on a futon in the corner of my friend Bob"s room. It was the first time I was living on my own, paying rent. It felt like a bold move into manhood. On Sat.u.r.day afternoons, Bob and I would make Jell-O in the kitchen, and our housemates crowded around to watch. Bob stirred the liquid Jell-O as they stared into the bowl. It was the first time I began to get a vague sense of what drugs were.
It was a busted-up neighborhood with a lot of winos, who would hang around the corner liquor store and leave empty Thunderbird bottles around. One car down the street had a b.u.mper sticker depicting a black Jesus who looked a lot like Prince. It read, MY PRINCE MAKES RAINBOWS . . . NOT PURPLE RAIN! My housemates mostly lounged on couches playing bongos or guitar while I made us all peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches and wrote tortured love letters to a red-haired girl in Nova Scotia.
I had a job at the library shelving books, living on my daily bread of two Wawa dogs with extra cheese and a thirty-two-ounce c.o.ke ($1.69). Every day around noon, I woke up, rolled over and pressed play on the boom box by my futon, drowsily contemplating the day ahead of me as the Replacements blasted out of the speakers. Before work, I would laze away the afternoon under a tree, reading St. Augustine"s Confessions Confessions. That spring, I had read Ulysses Ulysses and and Portrait of the Artist Portrait of the Artist for the first time, and they had really shaken up my Irish Catholic applecart. I was full of questions about G.o.d and the universe. The answers, obviously, were all there in my boom box. for the first time, and they had really shaken up my Irish Catholic applecart. I was full of questions about G.o.d and the universe. The answers, obviously, were all there in my boom box.
The Replacements made me feel a little less scared, because they made good imaginary friends. They looked like a band that would actually be fun to be in. Some bands just lend themselves to that fantasy, like Lynyrd Skynyrd or Earth, Wind & Fire-they looked like you could just drop in and they wouldn"t even notice you were hanging around for at least two alb.u.ms. Jonathan Richman once said he formed a band because he was lonely. The Replacements were imaginary friends who I could practice on while I was learning to have actual friends.
At night, everybody would gather on the couch to watch TV with the sound down, through a haze of bong smog, flipping channels while listening to Laurie Anderson. The goal was to find cosmic random synchronicities in the airwaves of the collective unconscious. One night, they flipped to a Superman cartoon during "O Superman." Everybody freaked and ran out of the room. There was another hippie house on our block with some guys who called their band Acidemix. The only song they knew was "Bela Lugosi"s Dead," but they could play it for hours.
The neighborhood kids hung out in our yard, mainly because of Nick, who had a boa constrictor in his room. Once Nick let the kids come up to see Bo, we had the most popular house on the block. They lined up every evening for Bo"s dinner. Nick would bike home from Woolworth"s with a mouse in a cardboard box. The front of the box read, I"VE FOUND A HOME! The other side of the box read, SOMEBODY REALLY LOVES ME! The cover photo showed a boy and girl happily frolicking with their new hamster.
"Is he gonna eat that thing?"
"d.a.m.n."
"Is he gonna kill it first?"
"Is the mouse dead?"
"I can see him."
"He"s got to be dead now."