ONE OF THEM IS ME

There’s a girl I know so far away from here
She’s got a lover, she’s got a friend and she’s got someone who’s always near
One of them is me
And I don’t know who
One of them is me
And I don’t know who

Few people are unentangled when that spark occurs.  They haven’t been coasting along solo, they’ve got somebody of the opposite sex, who they do things with.  Sometimes there was sex.  If there’s still sex, there’s no room for you to enter.  But usually, this so-called friendship is unrequited love on your rival’s part.  At least you know this when you finally hook up, when you’re finally in, but before this moment you’re a bit confused.  Could it be that this friendship is really something more, and YOU’RE the diversion?

We’re all jealous.  We want to believe we’re the only object of their affection, that there was nobody before us, and won’t be anybody after.  But this isn’t true.  And somehow, we’ve got to align reality with our fantasy.  Oh, we tell ourselves stories.  That she wasn’t really into him, he didn’t treat her right, they didn’t connect the way you do, because to think this prior relationship was reasonable just hurts too much.

But, at the beginning, you’re just focusing on getting in.  Feeling comfortable before the hard work begins, when the infatuation ends and you start trying to integrate your two lives.  You alternately feel elation and despair.  And you don’t know exactly how to feel when an obligation comes up, with him, her, the so-called friend.

We were in her apartment, with all our clothes on, I was lying on her the way you do in a new relationship, when her tit isn’t quite your property, but she doesn’t hold back from contact.  You’re not full-on face down, rather you’re on her side, looking into her face.  She ultimately had to leave.  To go to the Roxy.  To see Andrew Gold.  With him.  He’d purchased tickets.

Although Andrew played with some great acts, to buy one of his solo albums was beneath me.  Andrew was just too pop.  But, to gear up for the show, as we used to do in the seventies, we let his record spin.  And I heard the above track, "One Of Them Is Me".

Now I hear all the time that people have lost records in relationships.  That hers got mixed in with his, and vice versa.  This doesn’t happen with me, that would be like losing a child in a divorce, I always maintain my collection.  At least when collections still counted.  Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t lived with a woman in a while.  This was the final "date".  After that, it was clear.  We were a couple.  When the weather turned cold, we moved in together.  It lasted for years.  She ultimately wanted to get married.  But the bad times were a dealbreaker for me.  I ultimately had to say no.  And for a long time that breakup was the hardest thing in my life, to be one after being two.

But now, with my time my own, I could haunt the record shops all I wanted.  I went out and bought that Andrew Gold album.  And the two after that.  I guess it was kind of a tribute to that original friend, now I was where he was, someone behind her.

STILL YOU LINGER ON

You’ve been away about a year or so
I still sit and wonder why I had to let go
Oh baby, baby I miss you
Oh baby, sometimes I do

I’m reluctant to get into relationships.  Because I can’t break up.

Oh, part of it is I don’t want to hurt anybody, I’ve been too hurt myself.  But more it’s I don’t want to lose the one person who knows me, who listens to me.

I’m confused whether everybody is lonely and doesn’t admit it, or whether my story is unique to me.  Oh, I know a zillion people.  But I don’t really let them in on my hopes and dreams, never mind my fears.  But if you can stick with me, get past me trying to push you away, slowly, you get to know me.  In a way nobody else does.  You can read my moods, you know my reactions.  And I don’t want to give this up.  I don’t want to retreat to the loneliness.

Some people count on their families.

I’m nobody in my family.

Tonight I picked my mother up at the airport.  She’s in town for my nephew’s high school graduation.  Oh, I’ve got so much to talk about, so much to tell.  But you don’t boast in my family.  You wait for the questions.  And none were forthcoming.  And, I guess I could have ultimately volunteered information, but that would have left me vulnerable.  To reveal my little victories and get no response…that would just kill me.  So I stayed silent.  I didn’t talk about the other members of the family, which I always do to keep the conversation going.  But then we started talking about irrelevancies, the moment was past.

Ultimately I heard the stories of other children of my generation.  The ones who’d hit bad patches deserved sympathy and understanding I never got.  And the ones who’d succeeded, who’d won life’s lottery, their stories were told in such a way that I knew I could never compare.  I tried to stand up for myself, to retain a shard of my dignity.  But I was told to shut up.

Oh, after years of this my mother knows to throw in a couple of compliments.  But they’re always backhanded.  A slice of bad laid in with the good.  Somebody I know is in a documentary, but they’re revealed as a crook.  They finally know someone whose name I dropped.  Am I really dropping names?  Or am I just looking for SOMETHING to connect on, SOMETHING to be validated on?

Oh, the newspaper with my name on the front page sat on the coffee table.  But, even after forcing everybody to read it, having been emboldened by years of psychotherapy, I got no reaction.  Not even an uh-huh.  It’s like I’d done something WRONG!  By stepping out of my quiet loser role.

On the way home from Woodland Hills, my heart truly started to sink.  I realized this was just the beginning.  There were DAYS of family obligations, how was I going to SURVIVE?

And then I got truly creeped out.  I thought of driving home from the Valley with my live-in girlfriends after previous family gatherings.  We had something solid, but it was jeopardized by my interaction with my family.  I’d changed.  I’d turned back into who I used to be, I was no longer close with them, I was enmeshed in the family drama.  We were driving in the car, did I even KNOW them?  These women sitting just inches away?

I don’t know if you’re always embroiled in the family drama.  Whether you can ever escape.  My father would die all over again if I ostracized myself, saved myself.  But sometimes I think it’s my only hope, to survive, to be a self-respecting adult.

My ex-wife had a theory.  She believed my mother was jealous of me.  And I felt the solidarity, until she turned not only on my family, but me too.  I can’t classify that relationship, other than being done.

But the person before her, the one who went to the Andrew Gold show, she was more normal.  Less understanding, but more present.  Ultimately, her family drama was one of the reasons I distanced myself.  But, she endured abuse at the hands of one of my family members.  That night at El Cholo is one of my most horrific memories.

And thinking of all this, as I exited the Santa Monica Freeway for my home, Andrew Gold’s "Still You Linger On" came over the radio.  The seventies came back.  A decade without the charisma of the sixties, but within which I went to college, and law school, and had my first serious relationship.  Seems like yesterday, but it’s not.  I can’t go back.  I’m not sure I want to go back.  But I yearn for that connection and understanding I finally felt for the first time.  The knowledge that someone was on MY team.