Summer's Kiss is Over, Baby
This dream is not a dream. I wake with it inside of me.
I’m sitting on a coffeehouse patio in Boston’s South End, killing time until I have to be at the airport, when a car rolls by, blaring one of my favorite songs of all time.
Am I hard enough?
Am I rough enough?
Am I rich enough?
I’m not too blind to see.
My mind turns not to the Stones, or even Bette Midler’s 1983 cover of “Beast of Burden” which introduced 10-year-old me to the song. It turns to a grainy amateur video from the early 1990s, of Greg Dulli telling a crowd that he heard the song on the radio, had it in his head, so he was going to play it.
And as I hear the song fading down the street, and I watch the couple kanoodling at the next table, the world knits together in notes and keys and lyrics. Universal. I’ll never be your beast of burden. Draw the curtains. Make sweet love to me.
I haven’t felt like enough in a very long time. Chronic pain will do that, when you can’t do what you want, what others expect from you. When you have to cancel plans.
I think of all the times I’ve had to bail on people since I injured my knees as karmic retribution for the times when I was a bitch about people bailing on plans with me. Because I can recall plenty of times when I was a real asshole about canceled plans, thinking more about myself instead of having empathy for my friends. They weren’t doing enough.
And now I know what the flipside feels like, to be the burden in need of a beast. I’m sure I’ll know the feeling many more times in the years I have left. But let me be the beast of burden to anyone I love who needs it.
In this week’s travels, I’ve still been the burden, but not nearly as much as I’ve been in recent years. The plan I made for myself in February was absurd:
Fly to Philadelphia
See the Afghan Whigs
Take the train to New York City
See the Afghan Whigs
Take a train to Boston
See the Afghan Whigs
Fly home
And I fucking did it.
I did it all, save for the Boston show. But I’ll get to that.
This trip, I did something people have been telling me to do my whole life: I focused on what was going right. Most of the times I’ve been told to do this, I was in the middle of anxiety attacks and such a request rightfully made me want to punch the advisor. And with the electrocuting anxiety I felt before leaving on Monday, I was ready to throw punches until I broke every task down and just dealt with the next thing I had to do.
No need to worry about making an ass of myself while talking to Greg Dulli when I first need to make sure I get on my plane out of St. Louis, right?
Why did it take so long to learn that? Because like you, I am a product of evolution, taught by my ancestors who survived unthinkable hardships by always considering the worst-case scenario and acting accordingly.
There are currently no wooly mammoths on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Time to turn down the precautions and turn up the reason.
And goddamn if it didn’t fucking work.
I arrived at Penn Station in the middle of Manhattan, whisked across the Brooklyn Bridge, and walked into my hotel lobby five minutes before check-in time. It was St. Louis hot. While I’m accustomed to the heat, it doesn’t mean I like it. And having had a case of heat exhaustion about a decade ago, my body is no fan. I took a few minutes to guzzle a Coke and some water, change into dry clothes, and hurry to the Brooklyn Paramount to catch soundcheck and a q & a session with Dulli.
And then we hit traffic. Not just Brooklyn traffic, but traffic that had my Lyft driver saying, “It’s usually not like this on a Thursday,” while the app buzzed my phone to see if I’d been abducted because my ride was taking so long. I accepted that I’d missed soundcheck and considered the next step: meeting my friends Beth and Natalia.
Except when we arrived at the Paramount, there was a line of people baking in the 90-degree sun. Not only had soundcheck not started, but they hadn’t even let anyone in.
After half an hour of standing in the heat, I was more thankful for traffic than I’d ever been in my life. Otherwise I would have been standing there longer. And standing, like summer heat, is not my strong suit.
I connected with Beth in line, and once inside the venue we struggled with the heat together until we switched to struggling with the cold of the air conditioning. But that’s okay because we didn’t miss a thing.
I stood, hand on the rail at the stage for every song, not trying to be cool in any sense of the word. I was absolutely geeked at my continued lifelong run of good fortune that put me yet again in the place and time with people who hook my soul. Whether they’re friends or my kid or rock stars, I always find them and get nourished. And I have been really fucking hungry these last few years.
As an adult woman who loves music, I’ve always been adamant that women like me aren’t in this to be groupies. We’re in this for the same reason as the men—music speaks to us. We chase bands the way other people chase sports teams. It’s no different. It’s not about teenage-style crushes.
The exception to that rule for me is Greg Dulli.
I swear to god, I’d lick his poster.
But it’s also about the music, and his work hits me at my core in a similar way that Wilco and Springsteen do. This music is the sound of who I am.
Wilco and Jeff Tweedy articulate my insecurities and losses, the worry that keeps me safe while sucking up my life.
Afghan Whigs and Greg Dulli articulate my passion and anger, sexuality and that electric anxiety and frazzle underneath my sneaky slynesses, the secrets I keep.
So, what the hell can I ask the people who make this music?
I’ve talked to Tweedy on multiple occasions, even interviewed him for that Woody Guthrie manuscript. It’s always a delight, and I feel like I’m talking with an old friend when I encounter him.
I’d joked that, during the two q & a sessions with Greg, I was just going to just ask what his cat Pervis was up to while he’s on the road, secretly hoping that Pervie goes on tour and Greg has a little kitty backpack.
In Philly, as mentioned, I said some dorky shit but then I also asked about lyric writing. He’d just answered a question about how he never wants to write a memoir, that no one’s life is that interesting (I disagree vehemently), and that memoir-writing likely contributed to the death of his friend Mark Lanagan.
“But isn’t that what you’re doing with your lyrics?” I asked.
To which he talked about some of his lyrics being about him, some not, listing a few songs that aren’t autobiographical.
Okay, lyrics as fiction and non-fiction. I’m good with having asked that question, and he gave a thoughtful and interesting answer.
In Brooklyn, the woman in front of me asked who was watching Pervis while Greg’s on tour. And he was delighted to talk about his cat.
Always go with your gut.
He said he’d set up a camera system in his house so he can watch Perv while he’s on the road, and that he gets roundly ignored when he speaks to the cat through the system.
I asked if we could get some of this new Pervis content on his Instagram account. We laughed, and he asked if I was a cat person.
We’re married now.
I refrained from babbling about Woody, and how one of his many nicknames is Brother Woodrow, from an Aghan Whigs song, and … and … and …
It was all a little breathless and silly and funny and swirly. Like all dumb, impossible crushes should be.
Believe it or not, that’s not even the highlight of the event. This is: I stood for over an hour.
When I baked a black raspberry pie two weeks ago, before getting the cortisone shot in my spine, I could only stand for 15 minutes before the pain would force me to sit. But this time, even after an hour of standing, part of that time in the heat and sun, the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as those 15 pie-making minutes.
I haven’t been able to do this in years. Over five years. Always being on the lookout for a chair. Skipping events where I might not have a seat. Being anxious about what happens if I can’t find a place to sit and the shaking, sweating pain wallops me.
It’s not completely gone, but it was so much better.
At the show Beth and I opted for ADA seating. The venue was standing room only general admission, and as good as I felt about the hour on my feet, I didn’t want to push it. We were right up front, comfortable and safe, able to enjoy the show even with the bit of frustration of having tall people slipping in front of us and being a bit disconnected from the crowd energy. We were compensated with guitar energy.
After their phenomenal set, Beth and I caught up with Natalia for hugs and a quick hello before heading out. Beth had driven in from Long Island and offered me a ride back to my hotel. We were about to leave the theater when it hit me. The gag in the bottom of my throat threatened to bring up whatever was left in my stomach. In a panic and not wanting to throw up in the beautiful lobby of the venue or Beth’s car, I hastily told her I was going to grab a Lyft and took off, slapping my hand over my mouth as she asked if I was okay.
I wasn’t, but I said I was.
Didn’t want to be a burden.
But the fact was, the migraine had arrived, and hard. I made it to the exit of the theater and knew I was going to hit the floor if I didn’t stop. Two ushers grabbed a chair and a water for me as sweat poured and I shook. They probably thought I was drunk, or had taken something, when all I’d had was water. Which I explained when they brought out the medic.
I told him what was happening: I had a migraine, no, not the headache kind, but a kind that causes vertigo and nausea before the headache. He looked skeptical and asked me to wait while he went … somewhere. He’d return to walk me to my ride, he said. But my ride arrived before he did, and I knew what I needed better than him: I needed cool air, a dark room, and quiet.
I returned to my hotel, ordered tacos and ice cream because I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, got hydrated, and went to bed.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. But I’d eat lunch next time.
The next day’s train ride to Boston was a bit rough, being sold out and having someone else’s rogue 11-year-old sitting next to me. Then the conductor was rude to me. And upon arriving in Boston, I got to experience the most Boston thing happening that day: the throngs of people in green, going home from celebrating the Boston Celtics’ NBA championship.
With that stress and some of the previous night’s migraine lingering and getting active because of an incoming thunderstorm, I opted out of the show. Had Afghan Whigs gone on a little later than 8 so I could have taken a nap, I might have made it, but I was fine with calling it, taking care of myself. I wasn’t that disappointed, and when I told Beth and Natalia, they were understanding and kind. I ordered dinner, watched videos from Tuesday and Thursday’s concerts, and slept for ten hours.
My Boston experience is sleeping and hanging out in a lovely hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse in the South End, passing time in one of my favorite ways: writing in a coffeehouse in a new city, watching life. I have a backpack loaded with two kinds of babka, and my 6:00 flight just got pushed back to 7:45 but you know what? Everything’s going right.
