Of course, the world came back in a rush an hour later, because I get drunk easily but I don’t stay drunk, not usually, and my life is insistent. Shawn’s hand was still broken, my other friend still had a weird virus and still needs me to come to the hospital a bunch, and I had a show every Monday night at Johnny D’s and a World of Hurt showcase run for which to prepare. Because that wasn’t enough, I got called in to pinch-hit produce the big Best of Boston Sketch show. I threw myself into that with a fervor that surprised me; I was still trying to prove myself, still trying to make people think of me as a go-to producer that got stuff done. I got stuff done. And then I found more stuff to do.
I was still feeling my losses, you see. Writing for FEARnet.com had been a dream come true, and working that second job that made me temporarily rich-ish had made my life easy. And my novel was done. Oh, I still had a mess of edits ahead of me, but the fact is that I’d glommed onto Panic Town with the same fervor as I was approaching all my creative projects. Now it was over, the main thrust of it anyway, and I was adrift. On the other side of Panic Town, I was desperate for ways to pass the time that kept my mind off of those things, and Shawn’s hand, and my other friend’s illness, and my own existential struggles with identity and gender and my constant battle of being a good person who does bad things versus being a bad person who does good things.
I launched into editing My Agent of Chaos, the novel I finished before I wrote Panic Town. I got to have conversations with my past self about my tense changes and character shifts, and I was having fun doing it. I clung to my gym routine and my Saturday night routine – writing or editing in the early evening, then Mainstage and Face Off at ImprovBoston, then Rocky Horror before a bike ride home – with such an intensity it worried even me. After my bumpy August, with its existential crises and real-world issues, the need to return to something approaching my normal seemed necessary.
That’s when I got sick.
Like sick sick. I’m talking lying on the couch for hours just staring ahead into the void sick. I’m talking, drug me out and make me not feel because all feeling hurts sick. I forced myself to go to rehearsals and my Johnny D’s shows. This got me sicker, especially when I forced myself to ride my bike. I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to slow down. I knew I had to, I knew that my doctor asking me how much rest I got in general was in itself a sign that I was doing too much … but you know how it is with Type As. I didn’t have strep, thank God, but some sort of lunatic viral infection, partially caused by my lack of sleep and rest. You’d think I’d learn. I never do.
Add all this to the fact that I was suddenly having a knock-down drag-out fight with a friend I was not prepared to be fighting with. All of it added up to me getting low and staying low for half a month. I didn’t leave the couch much, unless I had to produce or rehearse something. Meals fell by the wayside. I felt useless.
Because I listened to my body instead of raging against my uselessness as I usually do, I started feeling better mid-month … just in time to go to my first Boston concert in a long time. The Gaslight Anthem was playing the House of Blues, and though I had balcony seats, I found myself on the main floor. Groups of people were pushed together and talking excitedly about the opening band – a group called Against Me!, who I knew about mainly because the lead singer was once a man and was now a woman. A couple of bro dudes behind me were talking about this very thing, and I kept expecting to hear a whole host of homophobic and transphobic missives. Here was the conversation:
“I used to really dig Tom as the lead singer, but Laura’s pretty good.”
“Yeah, the new album has an agenda, but it’s good, so who gives a fuck, right?”
“Want another PBR?”
And that was it. It was kind of a revelation.
Then the moshing started. I stayed out of it, mainly because I didn’t know anything deep about Against Me!. Plus, I mean, who wanted to jump in and maybe get hurt? I’m 39. I’m well past moshing age.
But then Gaslight Anthem took the stage and launched right into “Stay Vicious,” so hard and dense and rocking, and one of my favorite songs from the new album. The first time I’d heard new Gaslight Anthem this year was on my last day in California. Josh had dropped me off and I was missing him. My flight was delayed and delayed and delayed, and while I waited, my email told me that if I preordered the new album, Get Hurt, I could get the first single, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” right now. My flight eventually came an hour late, but already I’d listened to the new song six or seven times. The rest of the record came out months later and I fell inside a lot of it, especially the title track and the song “Selected Poems,” which went:
And all I seemed to find is that everything had chains
And all this life just seems like a series of dreams
Selected poems and lovers I can’t begin to name
And all in all I find is that nothing stays the same
They crashed into that song midway through their set – not really the kind of hardcore moshing – and I felt isolated in the middle of the floor, pinned to my spot with tears flowing down my cheeks, wanting to stop feeling useless, wanting to stop feeling like shit, wanting to be alive again. My year was one of upheaval, and here we were in September and nothing was as it had been the year before. I was sad a lot more, I was feeling a lot more tired, and maybe – just maybe – I was feeling a little bit old, too. 39 is young enough, but it’s not twenty.
Except … except when Gaslight Anthem blasted off into “Rollin’ and Tumblin” next, I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself right into the middle of the mosh pit. I screamed, “I’m almost forty!” Elbows bashed me. A knee jammed into my leg. Sweaty men and women on either side jostled me and I jostled back, and there was energy in it, and aggression, but no malice. A trangender teenager looked at me warily for a moment, then threw their hands in the air and screamed with wild abandon, then they were up above my head, and I was helping them surf.
Maybe I came here to get hurt, but I got healed, too. Just a little. Not enough. But I was learning that this year really was a series of dreams, and I had to keep waking up.
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