Found Yourself a Hopeless Case

Herein is the first edition of Marathon Man's long-awaited Team-Up with Subdivided We Stand.  Long-awaited, but will it be long-lasting?  Let's hope so!

My God and oh man but I was such a loser when I was seventeen.

It was a chilly late fall Saturday night in 1980 when the doorbell rang and it was that funny talkative senior girl Caleigh from across the cornfield standing there in the porch light begging to take me out.

"Where?  To the cornfield?"

"To Eric's house."

It was a small town, Waterford, and I didn't know who the hell she was talking about.  Until I remembered.

There was this kid on my elementary school bus, a quiet little kid with glasses.  Sat next to him a few times, but he didn't make much of an impression on me or the bus seat cushion.  He made such a limited impression that when high school rolled around I hadn't noticed that he was gone.

Caleigh from across the cornfield was now dragging me out of my house on a dark Saturday night in my junior year to go visit this same kid, now grown up a little bit.  My mom was out of town; I had nothing at all better to do than watch Love Boat followed by Fantasy Island; but I still didn't want to go to this high school drop out/practical stranger's house.

"He's getting his GED," Caleigh said.

"He's really cool.  Now."  She said.

"He works at Record Town."  She said.

Still no go for me.  Paul Lynde, Jim Backus, and Charo were among the guest stars.  Besides, it sounded like trouble.

"Kirby's going to meet us there."

I grabbed my Member's Only jacket from the closet.

Kirby was on the student council with me.  I had an all-time heavy crush on this girl since Junior High days.  She was tall and athletic with full lips, short wavy hair, legs that came up to her chest, and a chest that went out to there. I loved her when she stood up.  I loved her when she sat down.  For five consecutive years I went to sleep every night with the vision of her pillowy lips squished together against mine.  With my face smooshed against my pillow.

For some strange luck that I couldn't grasp I found myself in the downstairs bedroom lair of a slightly butch high school drop out/record store clerk with a jabbermouth girl from across the cornfield and the leggy girl o' my dreams, wondering how the spinning wheel of fortune had landed me in that particular room that particular night.

It seemed that every infrequently uttered word that this Eric fellow purred was a stiletto-heeled bon mot that would delight and tickle Kirby and Caleigh.  To them he was some kind of worldly wise dark poet emissary from the land beyond exurbia.  I didn't see the attraction.  While we were taking Trig and Pre-Calc tests this guy was slumming it behind some counter pasting .99 cent stickers on Leo Sayer singles in Downtown Troy.

Besides.  I couldn't take my eyes off Kirby lounging on Eric's bed, sipping Eric's homemade potato wine.

"Try some potato wine, Joe.  It's homemade!"

That's some ringing endorsement.  I daringly took a swig out of the crusty old green used bottle.  It was sticky sweet and aside from an annoyingly incomplete buzz it left me with a craving for sour cream and chives.

"You've gotta listen to this," Caleigh said as she removed the album from the inner sleeve.  "Eric turned us on to them."

A cascade of guitars and drums.  Angry, pissed off, sexy voiced punky vocalist sneering, "But not me baby I'm too precious.  F--- off!"

I flipped the LP cover over and over and stared at the punky leather-jacketed Brits (didn't know the lead singer was an ex-pat from Ohio) and shrugged my shoulders.  If it wasn't Beatles or Tull in them days I wasn't listening closely enough I'm afraid.  New wave hadn't crested on my shore yet, skeptical loser that I was, scared of anything new.

If I hadn't mastered the lingo and syntax yet I tended to reject it, or cop an attitude with most anything new in those days.  I suppose I was leery of the future, or what sounded like the future, and felt more comfortable living in the past.

But as the music played and the softer second side washed over the harder first side, and her sexy tough voice filled the room, and the potato wine worked its obscure magic on the girls, I discovered to my surprise that my lips were pressed against the lips of the girl o' my dreams.  With double-taked opened eyes I was much relieved that those lips weren't Eric's, crazy night that it was. I feared it might've gone that way in a heartbeat, in the potato wine fervor, in the new music sound.  But, whew, it didn't.

Into the night air to clear our heads and head back home there were more quick kisses with Kirby and some jealous tugging from Caleigh.  When we reached the pathway to the cornfield Caleigh practically mauled me with her tongue swirling around my mouth.  She kissed with such a vengeance, no doubt spurred on by Chrissie Hynde's aggressiveness.  "I've got to have some of your attention.  Give it to me!"

I don't recall getting that close to her again, but Caleigh and I stayed pals for a couple more years.

Never saw that Eric fellow again.

Not sure that I bothered to dream about Kirby again after that strange night.  She was seeing a college guy.  I heard that she became an actress.

My relationship with Chrissie Hynde lasted much longer. 

Right up to the moment Sunday night when I was screaming out "Middle of the Road!  It's Middle of the Road!" from the balcony.  That was when she asked the sold out crowd in the club to guess the next song.  Hell, I saw the roadie deliver her the harmonica at the end of the previous song.  And I could recognize the distinctive drum slaps from Martin Chambers.  "You don't know?  You all must be hypnotized!" She sneered and then began to wail the first lines: "Middle of the road...is trying to find me..."

"I knew it was Middle of the Road," I screamed, as everybody in the place did at once.  My arms were around my beautiful wife and my oldest boy who is nearly as tall as me now and only a couple years away from my age when I was in that crazy bedroom drinking potato wine and listening to that Pretenders first LP on that turntable for the first time.

I was standoffish then.  Chrissie Hynde is standoffish, too.  That's what we love about her.  Prickly at times, like last night when she didn't want all those camera phones pointed at her. "Or any binoculars looking up my snout."  But what a god-damned good show.  In a club, not an arena, a club like you picture it's 1980 again and you are hearing her and the band for the first time. 

I didn't get it then.  I definitely get it now.  I was much too dumb to know it that she was playing rock music. Amazing, original, searing rock music. Took me a long time to realize that it wasn't all that new and scary.  It was rock music.  Pure and simple and exciting.  It can still get the heart beating faster.  Get your fist pumping.  Get you screaming out of your head. Give you swagger, confidence, thrills, pain.  A vat of memories. 

And a big wide smile that lasts for days.

Comments

[Julie]

Yeah, you're back!!!!! I, for one, welcome our new ant overlord...um...I mean our long-lost blogger.

[Nic]

After two months (exactly two months and 3 days), you're baaaaaayaack. You're back in da saddle again.

Good comment, Julie. "Deep Space Homer", right. My dad didn't get that until I told him.

[Leo Sayer]

Is this like one of those acoustic songwriter gigs where one songwriter tells a story...sings a song...then passes it on to the next songwriter? Now it's your turn Subdivided??? Loved the story Marathon Man...we have missed you.

[yellojkt]

Awesome. I've never been to th 9:30 Club and probably won't until the smoking ban goes into effect. Chrissie Hynde is the toughest chick in all of rock ever. She has lived a life that will kill 10 dudes. Rock on.

And welcome back. Does this mean I can finally drop Marathon Man from my blogroll?

[Joe]

That's funny that you mentioned smoking, yellojkt, because the two shows I've been to at the 9:30 club this summer (T-Bone Burnett and Pretenders) were No Smoking shows, apparently at the artists' request. Made for a more pleasant experience for us, bringing our kid and all, and meant I could rewear my jeans again without annoying smoke trails all week. Pity for the poor cigarette bar attendant though who didn't get any business at the show. That suggests to me it's an uncommon event to have No Smoking there...but that day will surely come. Sold out crowd of mostly old fogies made us feel rather less old, too.

I'm still a bit of loser though the way I was screaming at Chrissie Hynde...

I'll be posting here from here on out, so you can feel free to kick Marathon Man to the curb if you'd like.