Well, shit, I’ve let the ole tour diary fall by the wayside, and as I’m marooned (moroned?) in Allie’s apartment right now, too sick to go out and hang out with the friends I’ve missed so badly, right now might be a good time to take stock.
The van is holding out so far, though I hesitate to say that for fear of jinxing it. The passenger’s side door still doesn’t open and has proved unfixable and, worse, I’ve often returned to the van after parking it to see that the ‘door ajar’ light has lit because the nylon strap holding the sliding door shut isn’t quite tight enough. One of these times I’m going to come back and the fucking battery is just going to be dead. The power locks work intermittently at best and the passenger side window doesn’t work at all—well, didn’t work at all, now it doesn’t exist as it got kicked in the other night. The thieves didn’t get much, only my power converter and a twelve pack of beer as far as I can tell, and they didn’t take any of my necessities like my credit card, my frickin’ passport, my porn, my naked pictures of Allie, my digital camera, my Richard Pryor boxed set, etc. The passenger seat is soaked and full of shards of broken glass, which isn’t too big of a deal, the Pod is getting to be more and more of a one-man ride. It only smells a little odd right now, but I’m sure it’ll ripen up nicely once I hit the warm weather. But somehow, it’s still running like a champ, and it’s almost a pleasure to drive. All in all, not too bad considering the sixteen thousand miles I’ve put on it since I got it.
My friends seem to miss me, which is nice. I got a real warm welcome from Jay Braun and Jack Martin gave me a hug and a kiss, which was really swell. The same day, I ran into Curtis on the street and was really glad to see him and have him make fun of my soft hands—like he’s such a hard worker, my first experience of Curtis is hearing him bragging to some pals in a liquor store how he fell asleep on the toilet at a construction job. After we made plans to hang out—which we still haven’t done as I’ve been so goddamn sick—I realized that when I was living in NY, I wouldn’t see him for months at a time and think nothing of it. I guess I could have seen him if I’d have needed to, though, which makes all the difference. It’s funny, too, who I’ve kept in touch with and who I haven’t. The person who’s called me the most (after my gorgeous girlfriend, of course) is my old pal Danny. It seems the best way to make friends with someone is to try out for their band and not get in, then recruit them to play drums for you and terrorize/irritate them with your drunken exploits. Shit, if that’s really true, then it’s a wonder I don’t have more friends… I got to hang out with Eben, too, which was pretty great, our memories of working together have distorted in the same way; like, when I think of the club, I imagine me and Eben and Andrew and Willy and Ben all bartending together with Tony the Neck giving free tattoos and The Giraffes playing while smokin’ hot naked chicks dance on the bar while equally hot chicks come on to us while they order drinks and then tip really well. Ah, the good old days, may they remain right where they are.
The show? Well, it’s like I said to Eben, man, it’s amazing, from three months of playing guitar nearly every night… I still suck. I mean, I’m better, my slide is more convincing, but I’m still a hack, I forget songs, I get too drunk and repeat verses, I miss notes, I just generally struggle with the whole singin’ and playin’ at the same time thing. My voice has gotten a lot stronger, and I’ve got the shtick down. Which actually kind of bothers me. I got a fantastic review from Tris McCall, which isn’t just good because he says nice things, but because he says some things that aren’t just nice, things that show that he’s really engaging my records. I think he’s frustrated with the continual ‘I’m so hungover/you’re so beautiful/I hate my guts/insert gritty, depressing imagery here’ bent of my music. I am, too. And though I want to say ‘when I stop seeing it, I’ll stop writing about it,’ things haven’t been fucked up for a while. Or at least they haven’t been as fucked up as they used to be for a long time. Or at least in the way they’ve been. Drinking isn’t the number one problem anymore. Or even chicks, as I’m in love and have been for years and showing no signs of slowing. Figuring out how to be/who to be when I’m not drinking is the number one problem. Or maybe trying to survive under the twin pressures of my hubristic, megalomaniacal ambition and my paralyzing fear of trying hard at something and failing. So my options are continuing to revisit my fucked up past, which is essentially a bottomless mine for depressing narratives, albeit remarkably similar narratives (how many ways can I tell the same fucking story? Hmmm, answering that question would actually make a good record…) or to start writing about my current life, like how I wish any institution that hits you with default charges without telling you would go straight to hell and stay there, or how I understand the US as essentially a plutocracy, which I think is more horrendous than India’s caste system, as at least in India it’s clear that the system is based in hatred and ignorance, with the interest of stratifying humanity, whereas in the US we celebrate the ‘free market’ as morally right. I think I’ll always want to ‘comfort the wounded and wound the comfortable’ as the saying goes, and I think The Washington Ballet does that, but it also conveniently throws a pity party for little old me. That song and Island of Misfit Boys are always the best received, and they also pigeon-hole me as the drunken, Romantic loser that Tris doesn’t want to be and, fortunately, I no longer am. I do think that somewhere along the line I ceased to be ‘promising’ and that I am slowly proceeding down the spectrum to ‘disappointing’ but as I’m not quite there yet, it seems unbecoming to piss and moan about all the ‘potential’ wasted. There’s got to be a change, som! e growth somewhere, but damn it, Tris, I’m not going to write political songs and I’m not going to write third-person Springsteen-ian narratives of the downtrodden. For better and for worse, I am my best character.
Things with Allison are good, which is to say that sometimes things are great, and other times less than good. I had a distinct feeling when I got back this time that she missed me less than I missed her… but then I came back exhausted and lonely and really fucking sick and worn down, so that could play into it. I immediately thought it must be because she’d hooked up with some dude, which of course is fair by the rules of the game which we both laid out and agreed to, but still, my fucking heart sank. I don’t really know how to put this, but it fucking kills me how much I love all the little things that she does, from all the fucking coochie coochie coo baby talk that we do to each other that would drive our friends fucking nuts if we did it around them, to what she does in the sack, to what a pure heart she has, I mean, it’s like she exists in this world simply to alleviate the pain of others, and man, just everything about her, that she’s still best friends with the girl who grew up next door to her who has always been her best friend, that she still calls her mom ‘Mommy,’ I mean all that shit, everything I know about her, it’s the fucking best, and that some guy she meets at a bar who’s really into Radiohead could pick her up and fuck her just because she’s lonely and horny and then call some friend the next day, all casual and say “oh yeah, that bitch I was chatting up last night? Yeah, she took a ride on the purple-helmeted crusader, if you know what I mean” well, that makes me fucking homicidal. It’s clear that my ‘odyssey in a mini-van’ is wearing on both of us. We’re both still committed and really enjoying each others company, but now we’re both suspicious of each other. I worry that we’ll get so good at making do while the other is not around that very gradually and then all of a sudden it’ll just be easier for us to not be together at all. I really don’t think it’s to that point yet, or even close, but if it ever came to that, well, I’d never forgive myself for fucking up the one perfect thing I’ve had in my life.
And how am I doing? Like I said about the van, not too bad considering the sixteen thousand miles. I’m kind of fucked up right now because I’m sick (recovering/ not recovering from strep throat, and still slugging it out with a bitch of a sinus infection) and I’m horrendously busy booking shows. I’m pretty fucking broke, but also not as broke as I could be. I’ve had some success with getting on decent shows that actually pay a little and getting good write-ups. The High Strung have been a constant ally who I’ll never fully repay for their support. I offer my eternal friendship guys, I hope that’s enough. I’ve also had some setbacks—the January tour with the High Strung has ended up being me just calling all the booking agents at all these clubs to beg my way onto the bill for twenty minutes with no pay, the van getting broken into and needing five hundred bucks worth of work in CO to pass emissions has sucked, getting sick is the worst—but I guess right now, I’m rolling with the punches. As I understand it, this is attrition warfare, I just need to burn up those highways and wear out some tires and some desolate Monday nights and hopefully by the time the van dies, I’ll have enough support from a label that I can just keep on doing what I’ve been doing. But, shit, hopefully with my baby by my side.