ONE OF THEM IS ME<\/p>\n
There’s a girl I know so far away from here Few people are unentangled when that spark occurs.\u00c2\u00a0 They haven’t been coasting along solo, they’ve got somebody of the opposite sex, who they do things with.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes there was sex.\u00c2\u00a0 If there’s still sex, there’s no room for you to enter.\u00c2\u00a0 But usually, this so-called friendship is unrequited love on your rival’s part.\u00c2\u00a0 At least you know this when you finally hook up, when you’re finally in, but before this moment you’re a bit confused.\u00c2\u00a0 Could it be that this friendship is really something more, and YOU’RE the diversion?<\/p>\n We’re all jealous.\u00c2\u00a0 We want to believe we’re the only object of their affection, that there was nobody before us, and won’t be anybody after.\u00c2\u00a0 But this isn’t true.\u00c2\u00a0 And somehow, we’ve got to align reality with our fantasy.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we tell ourselves stories.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n But, at the beginning, you’re just focusing on getting in.\u00c2\u00a0 Feeling comfortable before the hard work begins, when the infatuation ends and you start trying to integrate your two lives.\u00c2\u00a0 You alternately feel elation and despair.\u00c2\u00a0 And you don’t know exactly how to feel when an obligation comes up, with him, her, the so-called friend.<\/p>\n 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.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re not full-on face down, rather you’re on her side, looking into her face.\u00c2\u00a0 She ultimately had to leave.\u00c2\u00a0 To go to the Roxy.\u00c2\u00a0 To see Andrew Gold.\u00c2\u00a0 With him.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d purchased tickets.<\/p>\n Although Andrew played with some great acts, to buy one of his solo albums was beneath me.\u00c2\u00a0 Andrew was just too pop.\u00c2\u00a0 But, to gear up for the show, as we used to do in the seventies, we let his record spin.\u00c2\u00a0 And I heard the above track, "One Of Them Is Me".<\/p>\n Now I hear all the time that people have lost records in relationships.\u00c2\u00a0 That hers got mixed in with his, and vice versa.\u00c2\u00a0 This doesn’t happen with me, that would be like losing a child in a divorce, I always maintain my collection.\u00c2\u00a0 At least when collections still counted.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t lived with a woman in a while.\u00c2\u00a0 This was the final "date".\u00c2\u00a0 After that, it was clear.\u00c2\u00a0 We were a couple.\u00c2\u00a0 When the weather turned cold, we moved in together.\u00c2\u00a0 It lasted for years.\u00c2\u00a0 She ultimately wanted to get married.\u00c2\u00a0 But the bad times were a dealbreaker for me.\u00c2\u00a0 I ultimately had to say no.\u00c2\u00a0 And for a long time that breakup was the hardest thing in my life, to be one after being two.<\/p>\n But now, with my time my own, I could haunt the record shops all I wanted.\u00c2\u00a0 I went out and bought that Andrew Gold album.\u00c2\u00a0 And the two after that.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess it was kind of a tribute to that original friend, now I was where he was, someone behind her.<\/p>\n STILL YOU LINGER ON<\/p>\n You’ve been away about a year or so I’m reluctant to get into relationships.\u00c2\u00a0 Because I can’t break up.<\/p>\n Oh, part of it is I don’t want to hurt anybody, I’ve been too hurt myself.\u00c2\u00a0 But more it’s I don’t want to lose the one person who knows me, who listens to me.<\/p>\n I’m confused whether everybody is lonely and doesn’t admit it, or whether my story is unique to me.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I know a zillion people.\u00c2\u00a0 But I don’t really let them in on my hopes and dreams, never mind my fears.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you can stick with me, get past me trying to push you away, slowly, you get to know me.\u00c2\u00a0 In a way nobody else does.\u00c2\u00a0 You can read my moods, you know my reactions.\u00c2\u00a0 And I don’t want to give this up.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want to retreat to the loneliness.<\/p>\n Some people count on their families.<\/p>\n I’m nobody in my family.<\/p>\n Tonight I picked my mother up at the airport.\u00c2\u00a0 She’s in town for my nephew’s high school graduation.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I’ve got so much to talk about, so much to tell.\u00c2\u00a0 But you don’t boast in my family.\u00c2\u00a0 You wait for the questions.\u00c2\u00a0 And none were forthcoming.\u00c2\u00a0 And, I guess I could have ultimately volunteered information, but that would have left me vulnerable.\u00c2\u00a0 To reveal my little victories and get no response…that would just kill me.\u00c2\u00a0 So I stayed silent.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t talk about the other members of the family, which I always do to keep the conversation going.\u00c2\u00a0 But then we started talking about irrelevancies, the moment was past.<\/p>\n Ultimately I heard the stories of other children of my generation.\u00c2\u00a0 The ones who’d hit bad patches deserved sympathy and understanding I never got.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to stand up for myself, to retain a shard of my dignity.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was told to shut up.<\/p>\n Oh, after years of this my mother knows to throw in a couple of compliments.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re always backhanded.\u00c2\u00a0 A slice of bad laid in with the good.\u00c2\u00a0 Somebody I know is in a documentary, but they’re revealed as a crook.\u00c2\u00a0 They finally know someone whose name I dropped.\u00c2\u00a0 Am I really dropping names?\u00c2\u00a0 Or am I just looking for SOMETHING to connect on, SOMETHING to be validated on?<\/p>\n Oh, the newspaper with my name on the front page sat on the coffee table.\u00c2\u00a0 But, even after forcing everybody to read it, having been emboldened by years of psychotherapy, I got no reaction.\u00c2\u00a0 Not even an uh-huh.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like I’d done something WRONG!\u00c2\u00a0 By stepping out of my quiet loser role.<\/p>\n On the way home from Woodland Hills, my heart truly started to sink.\u00c2\u00a0 I realized this was just the beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 There were DAYS of family obligations, how was I going to SURVIVE?<\/p>\n And then I got truly creeped out.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought of driving home from the Valley with my live-in girlfriends after previous family gatherings.\u00c2\u00a0 We had something solid, but it was jeopardized by my interaction with my family.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d changed.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d turned back into who I used to be, I was no longer close with them, I was enmeshed in the family drama.\u00c2\u00a0 We were driving in the car, did I even KNOW them?\u00c2\u00a0 These women sitting just inches away?<\/p>\n I don’t know if you’re always embroiled in the family drama.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether you can ever escape.\u00c2\u00a0 My father would die all over again if I ostracized myself, saved myself.\u00c2\u00a0 But sometimes I think it’s my only hope, to survive, to be a self-respecting adult.<\/p>\n My ex-wife had a theory.\u00c2\u00a0 She believed my mother was jealous of me.\u00c2\u00a0 And I felt the solidarity, until she turned not only on my family, but me too.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t classify that relationship, other than being done.<\/p>\n But the person before her, the one who went to the Andrew Gold show, she was more normal.\u00c2\u00a0 Less understanding, but more present.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately, her family drama was one of the reasons I distanced myself.\u00c2\u00a0 But, she endured abuse at the hands of one of my family members.\u00c2\u00a0 That night at El Cholo is one of my most horrific memories.<\/p>\n 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.\u00c2\u00a0 The seventies came back.\u00c2\u00a0 A decade without the charisma of the sixties, but within which I went to college, and law school, and had my first serious relationship.\u00c2\u00a0 Seems like yesterday, but it’s not.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t go back.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure I want to go back.\u00c2\u00a0 But I yearn for that connection and understanding I finally felt for the first time.\u00c2\u00a0 The knowledge that someone was on MY team.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ONE OF THEM IS ME There’s a girl I know so far away from hereShe’s got a lover, she’s got a friend and she’s got someone who’s always nearOne of them is meAnd I don’t know whoOne of them is meAnd I don’t know who Few people are unentangled when that spark occurs.\u00c2\u00a0 They haven’t 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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<\/em><\/p>\n
I still sit and wonder why I had to let go
Oh baby, baby I miss you
Oh baby, sometimes I do<\/em><\/p>\n