An Ultimate Encounter

they go to a rented house
a big beautiful old fashioned house with high ceiling rooms
and they take over one particular large room
the kind of room that feels gigantic and intimate at the same time
it has dark walls, dark curtains
plush furniture
beautiful rugs on the floor
beautiful lamps
a really nice stereo
good food and drinks
they turn the lights down low
they sit up
they lay down
they are on couches, chairs, the floor
where they end up the most comfortable and enthusiastic is when they are laying on the floor
their heads right next to each other
their feet pointing in opposite directions
its all about the minds
they take turns picking the music
playing each other things they love
getting excited to see how the other reacts
how about this, what about this, what do you think of this, check this out
and they talk
about everything
all of it
who they are
things they have done
things they have seen
what they want to do
what they dont want to do
they change their minds
they think of new things
what they dream of
what they dread
they ask every question
they answer them all
they tell stories about every person they have ever known
they laugh
they listen
they interrupt
they cry
they add on

they recant

they exaggerate
they take breaks
they take naps
there is ping pong
its really competitive
they go out for long walks
they sleep
they eat
but they dont do anything else distracting
no shopping
no movies
no sightseeing
no phones
ok they need some movies and a tv

but not for vegging out

there is none of that
its cuz they have to talk about those too
they need the internet with a big monitor
and a huge library in the room next door
but its just them
no one else
two minds
working at full capacity
there is no time limit
it just goes on until they run out of things to say
until they are satisfied

Boris

This House

The day I got the keys to this house,

I opened the door,

Walked inside,

Closed the door behind me,

Turned around,

Put my back to the door,

And slid to the floor.

Safe at last inside my own four walls.

I have rarely gotten up from the floor since that day in June 2000.

The 9 months prior to getting my house I was literally homeless.

Luckily I never spent one night on the street or in my car.

But i was millimeters away from that on more than one occasion.

And the shit that happened in the 20 months leading up to that were the worst in my life.

I doubt that I have ever fully dealt with it.

I had left my dream world in the record business.

That was my whoooooooooole life.

It was everything I had ever wanted in life and I had achieved it.

At the time I was inches away from being a major success story.

My parents grew up on dirt poor farms and moved to the small city nearby (population 25,000 at the time - bigger then a town, but not much of a city) to take entry level jobs with glorified High School educations. (They graduated because if you showed up you got a diploma not because they learned anything.)

Yet somehow as they raised me and my brother we found the arts.

There was no art in our house.

To my parents Art was a nickname for a guy named Arthur. (I stole that line from Andy Warhol.)

How we found music first, then books and movies and then fine art I will never know.

We didn't have a an older sibling or a relative or a neighbor or a friend with an older brother or sister to turn us on to any of this.

Yes we played all the sports too and did all the things that normal kids do.

But for both of us by the time we were at our senior year in high school the arts and and especially music was everything to us.

I began to have this dream of rock n roll, and living in that world.

I didn't have the foggiest idea how one did that.

There were no role models for that.

At 17 I walked into a new little record shop that was opening and begged for a job.

A few years before that I had discovered another little record shop in town and had my mind blown by the music.

(The albums that changed my life were Easter, and Horses by the Patti Smith Group, and a compilation of local bands - I had never heard of a local band. Every band I saw either had a hit and played arenas or played covers of the hits of the day in bowling alley bars. In my world no one wrote their own songs and played at local venues.)

Before that we bought our 45s and LPs at the department store.

I had loved buying records since a young age but it was just the top 40 drivel.

As I got to 13 or 14 my love for rock n roll began to creep in.

Before I got that job at the new record store I, like every other kid, had a shitty job in a restaurant 3 blocks from home.

But this record store was "downtown."

It was me breaking free.

My parents were furious with me when I told them I got a new job and quit the old one.

"How will you get to work and back home? You can't walk. Its too far. We will have to come and pick you up and we don't have time."

They were not wrong about any of that, but I didn't care at all.

Really they were just scared because their kid was about to step into a world that they knew nothing about.

They could relate to the shitty job in the restaurant, and it was so close to home that I just walked back and forth, worked with other kids from the neighborhood, and mom & dad knew where i was all the time.

Now I was about to venture off into the unknown.

And boy did I ever.

That was December 1979, and from that point on, until I went to work at the college in Oct 2000, I never once applied for a job in the music biz, never had a resume, never even looked for another job.

Jobs came to me.

One after another.

People came to me offering me job after job.

I went from the new kid at the record counter to an executive at the biggest coolest record label in the world.

The home of some of the greatest musical artists of the last 40 years. (The list is gigantic.)

(Also tons of amazing artists that almost no one knows about cuz the sheep are too stupid to know good music when it kicks them in the face. The list of those artists we worked with is even more gigantic than the popular one.)

The label was so awesome because they never went out looking for teen pop.

They never signed the one hit wonders that every other record label signed.

We had no time for Whitney Houston or Brittany Spears or Justin Beiber shit.

We made real records for real people who loved music.

Everyone who worked there loved music.

We worked with artists not pop stars.

It was beyond anything I could have ever dreamed.

And it all ended in a giant ball of fire.

The ending story for me is not that big of a deal.

Nothing dramatic happened.

The world of the music business began to change dramatically in the mid 90s.

The corporate structure was taking over.

The stock holders demanded instant return on their investment.

They brought in new bosses.

Those people were idiots.

They didn't know anything about real music, real artists.

Really talented people had made 5 albums before they had a hit.

Those days were over.

Now you had to a have a hit on day 1 or you were out.

So I was out.

My contract had run out in the summer of 98 and a lawyer spent 6 months trying to work a new deal for me.

One day after many horrible months of trying to convince horrible people that I knew what I was doing I called the lawyer and said stop negotiating a new contract.

Negotiate my way out.

The moment my boss heard that he called me to his office and fired me on the spot.

You want out? Then get out.

That massive loser couldn't even look me in the eye as he handed me a huge pile of money to go away.

I literally flew-in one morning working for the greatest record company of all time and by noon that day I was unemployed.

I went straight back to the airport to catch the next flight home.

I remember standing at a bank of payphones and calling my brother and just sobbing.

He new.

I didn't have to tell him that it was over.

I got offered lots of other jobs.

But they were shit compared to who I was or what I wanted or demanded.

They were all horrible record companies who made the worst music on earth.

And I turned them all down.

In my last months at the label I had discovered this very talented new kid and so after I took a month off to recover I tracked him down, told him who I was and that I wanted to work with him.

Over the next 13 months he went from a kid who could hardly get a gig, and couldn't give away his cd, to being King of the Scene and rapidly taking over the whole region of the country.

We sold 10,000 cds. (At $10 a pop that was a cool quick $100,000 in our pockets.)

We turned down 4 out of every 5 shows offered to us because they were the right one for us.

Sold out big cubs.

Sold out 4 nights in a row at small clubs.

Artist Of The Year on local radio.

Cover of the weekly culture paper and winner of the best new band.

None of these people had given this kid the time of day for the 2 years he struggled before that.

But we did it all, took the city by storm.

And then after 13 amazing months he fired me.

He said I was bitter and angry and scary to be around.

Just before that went down with him the house I had been renting at the time was sold out from under me and I had no idea where to turn to.

I took everything I owned and moved it into a long term storage garage.

I went from couch to couch wearing out my welcome.

Creating a trail of people hating me.

And then a new story began.

The forest had been burnt to the ground.

It was all gone.

But new life eventually sprouted and here i am today.

11 years later.

The time flew by and I spent a great deal of it deep inside very safe walls that would keep out the powerful demons of broken hearts and destroyed careers.

Luckily during all of that I stayed sober.

I know that if I had been drinking alcohol or using drugs during that time that I would not be alive today.

Too many people I know died.

People close to me.

Literally dead from abuse.

And it runs deep in my family too.

That tree is littered with bodies (dead and barely alive alike) from abuse.

That is the one thing that saved me,

Being sober through it all.

I probably felt the pain a lot more intensely because I never self-medicated but at least now that I am finally healing I can use the memories of the pain as character and something to build on.

I just hope its not too late.

I hope I am not too old to give it another try.

That scares the hell out of me as I write today.

I lost a whole decade.

God damn, an entire fucking decade.

Melissa

it was my last day at the job and a woman who worked there approached me in what i thought was a fairly bold manner
it was unspoken but it was bold
she used the old "we should hang out some time," line

she was very good looking
but a little too goofy and suburban for me
with very mainstream tastes
nothing that attracted me to her in a cultural sense

i remember one time she was laughing hard because the winter cap i was wearing was inside out
she found that so funny
no one she knew would ever do that
the tag was on the outside
who would commit such a faux pas
i couldn't have cared less about little shit like that
i've worn shirts inside out to work and didn't care enough to even change it once i found out
to put it mildly i did not respect her
but i went out with her anyway

the first time we went to a mediocre chinese joint
then under the pretense of watching tv or some shit like that we went to her apartment
we turned on the television set
she tried to turn me around about the show "friends"
she thought it was very funny
i thought it was quite lame
those characters either bored or insulted me

but soon we were touching
then stroking
fingers running over skin is pretty damn cool
(i love the slightly dreamy-woozy feeling you get in your head)
not much longer and the kissing started
and then hands were going everywhere
the clothes started coming off
we headed to her bedroom to have sex
it was decent
it could have been better if i had tried a little harder

over the next six months or so we had a sex a couple more times
we didn't bother with excuses like tv shows after the first time
usually one of us would just call when we wanted to fuck and i would drive to her place and we would have sex
it was usually pretty good
i never spent the night
she never asked me to

one night as we lay in her bed i simply couldn't get it up
i was done
it had run its course
i got dressed and went home
that was the last time we were together

i saw her in public a couple times after that
once i completely ignored her
i was mean
then i saw her out with a nice simple suburban guy who i knew
and they were together
i was happy for her
she had found a guy on her level

i never saw them again after that
but i am friends with him on facebook and every once in a while a picture of them pops up
they have a cute kid too
its great for them
they seem really happy
its good when things work out the way they should
and not the way they shouldn't

Sadie

It wasn't that she said she wouldn't be with me that ruined me. It was seeing her a few months later with someone else that left me so devastated.

I really liked this one. Sadie was different. Totally her own person. Quiet, seemingly naive at times, but strong. And the most sensual being I had ever encountered. Dark quiet sexuality. So amazing. Brooding. She had moved here from Connecticut on her own. Very different from midwestern girls. I really liked that part of her. She did and said things that I as a full blooded midwestern boy had never encountered. And extremely likable if she let you in.

And nearly 5 years after I first met her, and was instantly intrigued by her, she had let me in. But there were also those times when it felt like she was reticent to have made that move. One minute she was with me all the way. The next she wasn't anywhere to be found. Most of the time it didn't matter, because for one thing I was constantly on the move in those days traveling for a job, and for another it was that good when she was in my life. It was so good that I was all the way in on this one. I opened up and gave it all to her. When I say I really liked this one, I'm lying. I loved this one. That's not easy for me to admit now, considering how it ended.

- - - - -

A few months after Sadie told me that she refused to see me any more I was out to see a band and very unexpectedly saw her in the club. She never went to see bands. What the hell was she doing in this club?

She had not seen me there yet but I couldn't take my eyes off her. As she got closer I noticed that she had a distinct look about her. One I recognized. This probably sounds crude but it was that fresh fucked look. Then I saw the guy standing next to her. He had the same look. And I knew him. He was a fucking loser. A tobacco chewing, slobbering, do-nothing, say-nothing, know-nothing, lump of a human. And I sensed immediately that they were together. I was blown away. It was a horrible feeling. These two had just fucked. I could tell. Now they were in this club to see this same show as me. She was with him. Oh my god no. I was gonna be sick.

We made eye contact. We locked eyes. It burned hard. And Sadie knew that I knew. She looked embarrassed. Probably not embarrassed that she was with him, but that I KNEW she was with him. Embarrassed that she knew that I knew that fresh fucked look on her face. I had loved that look. I thought she used to wear it oh so well. But now it was the most grotesque mask I had ever seen.

At that moment it literally felt like the ceiling caved in on the room. I had never been hit that hard in my life by anything. I was so stunned that I could not do anything. I could not breathe. I could not cry. Like torture I could not think about anything else. She was with HIM. Holy shit. I was sick. I was destroyed. At that moment I could not imagine anything worse than her with someone who was not me. The most I could do was turn and look away from her. I could not even force my feet to head for the door.

And events from a few days earlier suddenly made so much sense.

- - - - -

Late in the week I found myself at home for what seemed like the first time all summer. I got a call from Jay asking if I wanted to go to a minor league baseball game. He and his friends had a bunch of tickets and some interesting people would be gathering for a tailgate party before the game.

Yeah. Why not.

It was the kind of thing I didn't do very often.

Sure.

It was a Friday night. Beautiful weather. I walked around at the tailgate talking to people who were already there cooking some food, enjoying cold beverages, and then greeting the new arrivals as they joined in. At one point I looked up and saw that Sadie was there. It made me pretty uncomfortable.

Yes, she was friends with this group but it never crossed my mind that she would be there. I had not seen her in months. I had spent the summer immersed in some huge projects trying to forget her. I was trying to scrape her from my memory. It was going ok too. But here she was and I was going to have to deal with it.

Who was she with? Turns out it was her old boyfriend. The one she had left to be with me. Or did she leave him? That was always in dispute between us. Or at least my dispute with her. Hers with me was that I was cynical and poisonous.

I had never met this old boyfriend she was with, but surprisingly I recognized him. He was part of the music scene that hung out at a club downtown that I frequented. From the little she said about him I had pictured her ex to be much more of a normal sorta guy. She had said he was a cook, not a music scenester.

Its no exageration to say I was a little shocked when they walked right over to me and Sadie introduced us. She had ice in her veins.

This is Matt.

We shook hands and he was warm toward me. I was numb. He thanked me for recommending a Thelonius Monk album to her one time as a gift for him. Wow. What did he even know about me? Was I just a guy she knew who had told her to buy him a great album? Could he really not know anything about what had gone on between me and her for over half a year? Or was he just cool about it all? Shit. I would like to be that cool. I was feeling lucky for once in this whole mess between her and I because I would have understood if he had been a complete dick to me. On the other hand I was suddenly feeling quite guilty and could barely look this guy in the eye when talking to him. My discomfort grew by the second. I had been with her. He had been with her. I figured that I had probably caused a lot of hell between them. But now what was going on?

And there she stood with a natural smile on her face. It was jarring for me.

I made it as simple as possible for myself and probably confused him, as I eased my way out of there.

I headed across the way to see what was up with this other guy in the group who always seemed harmless enough, but really your basic loser. It seemed like a safe zone.

Jack was drinking watery looking beer and cooking gray colored burgers. Sittin' there on the edge of the trunk of his old clunker car. He had the stereo blasting some run of the mill 60s garage rock. He was the singer in a run of the mill retro garage rock band himself. He had mediocre written all over him.

The second I walked up he set his cup of cheap beer down inside the trunk of his car so he could flip his burgers. I sat on the trunk, not knowing the beer was in there causing it to tip over and drain its contents onto the floor of his trunk. He flipped out. Not angrily, just kinda spastically, trying to sop up the beer. It was gonna smell bad in that trunk for a while.

When Jack finished cleaning up as best he could I noticed that he was a nervous wreck around me. He could not look at me, and could barely speak. I should have known he wasn't my type of person. So I just split that scene too. So much for safety.

I went over and got my game ticket from Jay and headed into the stadium.

A packed house and we had general admission seats. The good viewing spots were already gone when I went in, but it was minor minor minor league baseball so it wasn't really about the game. I ended up standing way down the left field line along the fence.

Different people from our group began to gather along that fence too. They came and went and we all chatted as the game progressed. I was having a decent night despite the earlier weirdness. Several interesting people to talk with.

Late in the game someone came up on my blind side and gave me a sharp hip check. It was her. Sadie. She was a little drunk. She was smiling real sweet,

Hey, how are ya.

To this day I can still hear her voice. She looked and sounded like a young pre-superstar Jennifer Aniston with black hair instead of blonde. She was a little thicker too. And being a life long dancer she had strong legs. She really was beautiful.

We talked a little. But I couldn't do more than small talk. And really not much of that either. This was the first time I had seen her since she said it was over. I got quite mad back then and she resented me for it. For not being more mature about it. Fuck mature. I had no say in that break up. She was leaving me and all I could do was stand in her exhaust fumes. She couldn't understand how I couldn't understand why she had to end it. I never did get a reason out of her. It was just over and I could piss off.

So what was I really going to say at a baseball game with people we both knew standing all around us? People who had always wondered what our relationship was about. Did she really break up with Matt the old boyfriend to date me? Or not? She was here tonight with him. But she was talking to me. And this was months after she made it known that it wasn't happening anymore for us.

Apparently she was back with him. Or was she STILL with him? And improbably he had no problems with me! What an odd scene.

She told me that she was going somewhere with someone for something out of town the next day. Madison maybe? I didn't really hear her. I wanted out of the spot I was occupying yet again. I had spent too much of the night leaving one uncomfortable situation for another. Cruel irony.

I decide mid-sentence to just leave her just standing there and walked away. I tracked down the guy I had come to the game with.

Do you want to hit the road?

Yeah.

- - - - -

So Sunday came around and I headed to a club in Uptown to see this little band from Columbus, OH. A guy I knew named Jimmy who worked at a great record shop was the singer. He was a wiry, angry, funny guy. Full of life. Totally genuine. A cool guy with a bite to him. I liked this guy. And I was really looking forward to seeing him perform.

Some local Twin Cities record label guys were there and I knew that they were having discussions about making a record with the band. That excited me. I sat in a booth and talked with the label guys for a while.

Then I saw Jimmy from the band and he introduced me to the other guys. They all looked pretty awkward and sorta weird. I liked this a lot.

It was getting close to show time so I moved in to the other room and made my way up toward the stage. A nice crowd actually as the headliner later in the night was quite popular. I stood there by myself waiting for the band to go on. I said Hi to different people I knew in the crowd. It was a friendly night.

Then it happened.

Sadie was there. Standing next to that guy Jack who's beer I had spilled into the trunk of his car. The do-nothing guy.

Huh? This made no sense at all. What about Matt the ex? She was there in the club with the idiot who was all nervous around me at the tailgate? Is this who she went to Madison or wherever with? They were TOGETHER?

Yeah I knew they were together. And I could tell that they had just had sex. He turned her on? I was instantly beyond nauseous.

My mind was trying to comprehend what I was seeing: I wanted to be with her - And she was with him - I thought very little of him - What did that make me?

The roof of the club/my life caved in. I was horrified of them. Of me. Of the position I was in. By myself. I went deep inside my own head. As the building/my ego collapsed I found myself trapped in the heavy rubble in my own brain cells. Oh God it was bad. This guy Jack knew every little thing about me and her, didn't he? Of course he did, that's why he was all freaked out around me at the baseball game. Oh fuck. And now he was with her. This was the worst kind of rejection I could ever imagine. Her breaking up with me was one thing. Taking up with another though, someone I had no respect for, was a whole other seismic event. I might have just run out the door, but I could not even move.

Then, with what had to be the best timing a band has ever had, they took to the stage. In hindsight it was a miracle. I am not kidding. Anything to take even 1% of my attention from Sadie and Jack standing there freshly fucked was a god damned miracle.

As they launched into their first song it was like the band gathered up their own ugly, skinny, pathetic anger and harnessed it to my putrid embarrassment. That phrase is not strong enough. My massive self-loathing. More. My complete and utter self-hatred. This band had the ability to somehow lash that all together. They grabbed it with both hands like they grabbed the strongest power line in the entire city, and with the wild surge it created they just exploded on stage.

I had not anticipated this at all. It was pure genius. It was an awful howl. It was unconscious. The single most unconscious performance I had ever seen.

Straight up in the air as high as they could go, then crashing like lightning bolts straight back to the ground, but not on their feet, on their knees. Ram rod straight onto their knees. Like the harshest contrition. The pain must have been excruciating. Full-on subjugation.

When your heart has been broken over and over again, and you feel inadequate in every way, and it seems like you are ignored the most by that one person whose attention you crave more than anything, that type of excruciating pain feels amazing. It lets you know you are damn well alive. I mean really alive. Screamingly alive.

Next song. Same power. Again Jimmy the singer and Johan the guitar player were straight up in the air as high as the energy of the music would lift them and then smashing back down to the hard ground.

Electrifying.

I had been watching bands play every single night for years on end to earn my paychecks and this is exactly what I lived for. The rare insanity that took my head clean off.

The songs were fast, short, angry, sad and scream at the top of your lungs glorious. Perfect for a night like this. Up there with the best drugs I ever took.

- - - - -

I got hurt by a woman like never before on that night, and fell in love with a band like never before on that night.

A true Love-Hate night if ever there was one.

Sadie had made me feel so low that I have honestly never fully recovered. Some things broke in me that night that have not all healed.

That band will always be associated with her, and she with them, in my heart and mind.

I went on to make a record with the band and had some great adventures with all of them.

Years later though Jimmy the leader of the band died unexpectedly and I found myself spending a lot of quiet time thinking about him.

That always brought me to thinking about her.

Jimmy and I had had a falling out in the years between and I never got a chance to make up with him before he died. But I will always have the sheer beauty that he brought to the world inside me.

Sadie... well, I still have those broken bits inside me too. Not nearly as broken now, but still there.