25 Years

 As far as my musical life is concerned, everything has been turned on its ear. The band lost our secret weapon to health issues; my solo work guitarist joined a band; my new piano player and singing partner got called away to work on a Broadway album; so musically, I was a dead man walking during the holidays. Good news is the band has a new guitarist and vocalist, and our first official show with the new line-up is in two weeks, which just happens to be my annual Birthday Bash – I will have a Rock Star post about the bash soon after; and as soon as I’ve cleared the air with my two musicians, I’m hoping to have another post or two.

In the meantime…

I wrote this over on Facebook, decided I needed to go ahead and share this here. Because even though this blog is supposed to be about me becoming a Rock Star, this is part of who I am, and a big reason I am who I am.

It is the 25th Anniversary of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. When I joined the Army, it was three weeks after the invasion of Kuwait. I did not join because I wanted to get shipped off to the Persian Gulf – I joined because my work life was going nowhere, I was in love with a wonderful woman I could not support, and I was desperate to feel that sense of belonging and purpose I had back when I’d been a kid in Boy Scouts and JROTC. I wanted to belong to something greater than myself… but I also didn’t want anyone asking me why I didn’t have the stones to go off and do my patriotic duty. So even though there was a very good chance I’d find myself in the middle of a desert in six months time, I signed the paperwork, took my oath, and headed off to Basic Training a month later, September 25th, 1990.

I got my orders to go to Desert Storm on February 1st, 1991; I got married on the 3rd, and then graduated on the 8th. I took a quick trip back to Texas so that everyone I cared about would have one last memory of me laughing and smiling; and then I flew back to Augusta, Georgia, where I would spend the next week doing… well, nothing. Somewhere deep inside the Pentagon, it was still being debated exactly how many troops would be necessary for the Persian Gulf; while the Generals and Admirals made up their minds, I spent a week picking up garbage, mowing grass, and trying to stay out from underfoot. Even after I was shipped down the road to Fort Benning to be outfitted, there was still scuttlebutt our particular group of soldiers wouldn’t be called on, more than enough boots were already on the ground. So while we took possession of our still-wet from gun oil M16A1’s and fresh, never-before-used protective masks complete with atropine injectors, the ones of us with something or someone to lose kept hoping and praying we’d get left behind.

February 19th all that hoping and praying were for nothing. We all loaded up onto a double-decker jumbo jet, wedging all our gear in around us, and took off. First for New York City for fueling and supplies; then to Belguim for more fuel and fresh pilots; and then finally to King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. The trip took nearly twenty hours – even though we’d boarded around 6am, I stayed awake the entire flight. The last thing I wanted to do was rush this trip, so I did all I could to make the flight last as long as possible.

I’ve always had a high opinion of myself – I’m smart, talented, and semi-charming when I’m not trying too hard. I never thought I’d actually end up in a war zone – somehow, someway, the Universe would pull some strings at the last second, poke me in the ribs and exclaim “Psyche!” and put my butt somewhere else out of harm’s way. I was still holding on to that delusion five minutes before the jumbo jet landed – the pilot came over the loud speaker:

“This is your captain speaking. We’re coming up on King Fahd International Airport and are going to start our descent. Since we’re not sure what can of reception to expect, we’re going to corkscrew in so it’s harder to get a bead on us. If at any time I hear bullets bouncing off this aircraft, I will gun the engines and we will head back to Belgium. Attendants, prepare for final approach.”

Never before in my life had I ever prayed to be fired on – my prayers were not answered. Twenty minutes later, I was on the tarmac and carrying my gear towards an airplane hangar full of cots. And it hit me that I was not one of God’s favorites – I wasn’t going to get a last-second reprieve; I was going to war. Worse, I was no longer a person – I was just a thumbtack on a map signifying unit strength and placement. While I could say that I was truly a part of something bigger than myself for the first time in years, I’d done so by sacrificing my individuality. I was just a service number on someone’s clipboard somewhere, a faceless, nameless cog in the military machine. If I died, no one I cared about would know for months, maybe years.

(Maybe not at all. The Army had sent me overseas in such a rush, my records had become lost. I would be stateside six months before my records would catch up with me in Colorado.)

Since the 8th, every time I stepped onto a vehicle, some of the soldiers I knew and had trained with had been pealed away and sent somewhere else. Graduation had sent all the Reservists and Guardsman back to their homes, including my best friend and Best Man; the trip to Fort Benning had separated more of my old company; and after a night at the airport, the replacement detachment people divided up even more of my old squad. By the time I loaded up onto the old, rickety double-decker bus, I was by myself. No one I’d met in Basic Training was still with me. My support system was now the Army. I’d have to depend on the fact we were all in the same uniform to prompt my brothers and sisters to watch my back… just as they’d depend on their uniform to prompt me to watch theirs. Which is how my particular experiences differs from my contemporaries, my other friends around my age with military experience like my band leader – when they were sent into hairy situations, they were with the people they knew, soldiers they had trained with. They knew how each squad member would react in given situations, had some indication as to how their NCO’s and officers would lead them. I had none of that – all my friends, squad members, NCO’s and officers were gone. I was surrounded by hundreds of people wearing my uniform, and yet I was completely alone.

(Well… sort of wearing my uniform. While I had gotten a new rifle, bayonet, helmet, and protective mask, I had not been issued a Desert Camouflage Battle Dress Uniform – I was still wearing the Woodland Green BDU’s I gotten in AIT, the replacements for the set I’d been issued in Basic Training that no longer fit after I’d dropped forty pounds. The other soldiers that had been snatched up directly out of AIT were also in green BDU’s – the joke soon became if some sort of enemy aircraft came in for a strafing run, we should all huddle together and try to camouflage ourselves as an oasis.)

There is scared, and then there is scared… and then there is what I was experiencing. I was numb. It was as if someone had injected novocaine into my emotional core – I was thinking clearly, I knew exactly what was going on, I understood what was being explained to me and I followed orders to the letter… there was just no emotional response to any of it. I was scared past the point my system could process it, so it had stopped processing anything: no fear, no joy, no skepticism, no anger, no longing, no nothing. As far as emotions were concerned, I was a functioning corpse.

(While I was awake – asleep, I had nightmares of being chased by something horrible trying to kill me. One night it was Jason from the “Friday the 13th” series; the next night, it was the Alien aboard The Nostromo; zombies shambled after me one night; and one extra special night, it was the giant spider I’d first dreamed of when I was four years old, the jet-black horror the size of a VW Beetle that had haunted me ever since. Every night, I sat up, jolted awake by whatever it was pursuing me, trying to catch my breath and hoping I didn’t cry out in my sleep… only to realize I was in the Army, sleeping in the dirt with my field jacket as a pillow, in the middle of a war zone. And then I would wish I was still asleep – as terrible as the nightmare had been, it was less terrifying than the reality I was living.)

 I was supposed to join an artillery unit that was laying down suppressing fire for the 101st, but my convoy got stuck waiting for a tank division to cross the one and only highway going our direction for four hours; by the time we reached the halfway station, it was after dark. Since it was pitch black and a wrong turn meant finding yourself inside the wrong end of Iraq, our bus driver refused to go any further – we’d carry on at first light. That night, February 22nd, the ground assault officially started; and by first light, the unit I was supposed to be joining was one hundred miles in country. The decision was made that I and the rest of the replacements would stay at the halfway station until our receiving units found a place to park.

(Replacements. The military estimated that there would be 30,000 casualties the first wave of the ground assault, so all of the units had the number of their personnel increased to 125% capacity. I and the rest of the soldiers I was holed up with were to replace those unit members injured or killed during the first wave, which is why a communications graduate was being sent to an artillery unit.)

I don’t pray often. Not because I don’t think it works, but because of the exact opposite – I do think prayer works, and if a prayer of mine is to be answered, I want to make sure it’s a situation completely out of my realm of control, as close to a miracle as possible. It’s rare when I pray, but I found myself gazing into the heavens that night. That far out in the middle of nowhere, there are no ambient city lights to interfere, so stars are visible all across the sky. In all my years of Scouting and volunteering with The Order of The Arrow, I had never seen some many stars. I had listened to everything my drill sergeants had been telling me since late September, I knew what was expected and what had been planned for, and I knew what my chances were expected to be. I wasn’t scared of dying – when you’re dead, you’re dead, nothing left to worry about – but I couldn’t shake something one of our drill sergeants had said weeks earlier:

“It’s not the bullet that has your name on it you have to worry about – it’s going to find you no matter what – it’s the one labeled ‘To Whom It May Concern” you gotta look out for. ‘Cause it don’t care who or what it hits.”

I didn’t want to lose my legs. I didn’t want to end up blind. I didn’t want to be maimed. I didn’t know how strong I could be, and I didn’t want to put my wife of less than a month through a lifetime of nursing me. So I prayed. I asked whoever or whatever it was that had me convinced there was a higher power at work to not let me be crippled; if going home whole was not to be, then please, just go ahead and kill me.

I then told the Universe I’d make it easy. I had every intention of going home. I had a new wife I’d never been on a honeymoon with, never lived with as a married couple with, and I’d be damned if I didn’t get the chance of experiencing the simple joys with her. I was going home, so whatever and whoever got in-between me and her had to go. I’d kill whoever I needed to, I’d destroy whatever I needed to, I’d become whatever monster I needed to be to make that goal. I wasn’t asking forgiveness – I was just stating fact. If I wasn’t to go home, then kill me now, because there would be no middle ground.

Four days later, the cease-fire was called. The middle ground wouldn’t be necessary – I’d be going home. And well sooner than expected: mine had been one of the last planes to land before the ground assault, so I was with stationed with a bunch of Independent Ready Reservists who’d been called up with just days left on their contracts. The IRR’s had careers and families back in the States, and their wives were hard at work, calling their Congresspeople to get their husbands sent back home ricky-tick. Their combined pestering worked, so instead of the six months I’d expected to spend in the Persian Gulf, I spent just under six weeks, long enough to earn a couple of medals and the right to wear a combat patch.

After that, life happened so fast, I didn’t have a lot of time to process what I’d been through… other than to notice my head suddenly sparkled. Where once I’d had a stray silver hair here or there, I now had hundreds of stark white strands all over. I moved my wife to Colorado Springs for two years of active duty; then to Arlington, TX for three years of Reserves while I want to art school at night, holding down a full-time job during the day. It wasn’t until after I got my orders moving my status to the IRR and I graduated that the war began to seep in. Not showering enough love and praise on my deserving wife was the first indication something wasn’t completely up to snuff; a lingering dissatisfaction with my day job and it’s lack of social significance another. But it was after the invasion of Iraq that everything came bursting out.

9-11 had been traumatic, but no more so for me than it was for any other American; the invasion of Afghanistan didn’t bother me, really – if anything, I was disappointed it had taken weeks to get to doing what I thought would be undertaken the week after the Twin Towers came down; but when the military went into Iraq, something inside me snapped. Iraq had been my war, and my war had been over for a decade. I had gotten accustomed to my participation being overlooked or even forgotten… and yet, here it was: boots in Iraq, fighting my war all over again, restarting what I had been led to believe had been finished. As I watched the news, as I saw the troops land inside my war zone, I began to sniffle. Slow tears began to slide down my cheeks. I wiped my eyes and went back to getting ready for my day job, making pretty pictures to sell couches to the Middle class… only the tears kept coming. Not a sobbing fit… just slowly tearing up, clearing my throat and wiping me eyes, over and over and over again, for the next three days.

For three days, the only time I wasn’t crying was when I was asleep. I stayed home from work. The counselor I’d started seeing after my marriage had started to crumble was sympathetic, but not much help. If I wanted the tears to stop, I’d need to confront all the stuff I’d buried a decade earlier.

There’s an unspoken truth to being a soldier: you’re only truly a soldier when you’ve done your job during a war. Whatever you’re particular job specialty, part of what you train for, part of what you prepare for, is doing that job in the field during a combat operation. And while the training and preparation is vitally important, it is still not the real thing; soldiers with combat patches – sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously – get afforded a higher level of respect than soldiers without. I had a combat patch; I had felt that respect while I served; but I also felt like a fraud – I’d only done half my job. I knew what it was like to stand up and be counted, I knew what it was like to be ready to lay down my life, and I knew what it was like to be in a war zone surrounded by not just enemies, but FEAR… but I didn’t know what it was to be under fire; I didn’t know what it was like to be counted on to protect my brothers and sisters; I didn’t know what it was like to take another life in defense of everything I hold dear; and I especially didn’t know if my courage would hold true in the face of hopeless odds.

During the war, I’d been prepared to do terrible things – now, years later, part of me was thankful I’d never had to do those terrible things; but just as large a part of me was wracked with guilt I hadn’t done those terrible things. Thankful I hadn’t had to do a terrible job, but left feeling like a fake because I hadn’t had to do a terrible job. And now that ground forces were back in Iraq, I was thankful I wasn’t there with them, yet feeling guilty that I wasn’t still serving my country; and worse, even more guilty for feeling thankful it wasn’t me overseas a second time.

For years, my wife and I would see and read reports of people who’d never finished their military contracts finding themselves called back into uniform years later. People a hundred pounds overweight, grandmothers in their 50’s, high-paid executives who had forgotten to resign their commissions, all being backdoor-drafted back into serving. And even though I knew my contract was over, I’d received my letter saying I’d been removed from IRR roll, I still went to the mailbox every day with dread, half-expecting to find the letter commanding me to go to my nearest recruitment center, half-hoping to find that same letter so the dread and the guilt would finally be over.

I was at home, in-between freelance assignments, when the troops officially left Iraq a few years ago. I cried as I watched the convoy cross over the border. Since that day, I haven’t had a nightmare about being reenlisted in the Army – while there were still troops in Iraq, I had that nightmare every six to eight weeks or so.

It is the 25th Anniversary of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. It’s the middle of an election season, so the anniversary of the ground assault has been overlooked and ignored by the media except for the military magazines and newspapers. It originally took about two years for me to go from being an American hero to a footnote. Back in 1993-94, the economy was starting to improve, unemployment was dropping, and the stock market was beginning a meteoric rise. The Persian Gulf had been the former President’s war, and he was gone, replaced by charismatic Southerner who had never served in uniform. No one was still itching to shake the hand of a veteran any more – they all had important things to do.

After the caskets started coming back week after week, month after month, after “Mission Accomplished” had been declared, suddenly the same folks who’d had important things to do ten years earlier were crying as they hugged me, thanking me for my service. by 2006, I was back to being an American hero again.

Another ten years have passed, and I’m back to being a footnote. The veterans of Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are probably starting to experience that sensation, as well. No one is talking about the “advisors” that are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one is talking about the backlogs in the VA hospitals, and no one is talking about the suicide rate among the recently discharged veterans.

It is the 25th Anniversary of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Since mid-January, when I haven’t thought about my 50th birthday party bash in March, I’ve looked at the calendar and remembered where I was 25 years ago. This isn’t just my 25th Wedding Anniversary, and this isn’t just my 50th birthday… this is the 25th anniversary of my becoming a Desert Storm veteran, and like it or not, that is just as important as the other two events. I’d be lying if I said there were never times I wished that wasn’t the case… but it is what it is. And I am who I am.

Bobby Lee Laye

Bobby, right after moving to Talhina

When I was around eight years old, a classmate followed me home one day. And he never really left. I buried him last month.

His name was Bobby (or “Bobby Lee,” as his sister would call him), and I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d recently lost his father, a victim of a murder. His mother, Mary Ann, was a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks in a little bitty podunk town in Oklahoma, and was in no position to suddenly be a single parent – on more than one occasion, Bobby would find himself being shook awake at four in the morning. “Get dressed and get packed,” Mary Ann would whisper, “we gotta be outta here by six, before rent’s due.” One of the few jobs she could get that would pay enough to support three kids was cross-country truck driving; she’d get the call and she’d be criss-crossing the nation for the next few weeks. Seeing how her family was up in Nowhere, Oklahoma, and her late husband’s family had never approved of her in the first place, Mary Ann had next to no support system in place for such a job; more often than not, the kids were left to their own devices while she made some much needed cash. Bobby’s brother and sister, David Wayne and Sherrie Ann, were older, teenagers by this time, and could look after themselves if they had to (and they did) – Bobby, on the other hand, was still in middle school and needed a little more attention. So when Mary Ann would disappear for a couple of weeks, Bobby would come stay with me, sleeping in the floor of my and my brother, Kelly’s bedroom, washing his clothes in our laundry, and eating with us while still going attending West Mesquite Junior High.

When Kelly and I started camping in the Boy Scouts, my Dad just naturally took Bobby along; when we heading to Summer Camp, Bobby was in tow, as well. Even after Mary Ann remarried and moved to Duncanville my sophomore year of high school, Bobby was still over at my house every other weekend (how he got a ride to Mesquite remained a mystery). After we got our driver’s licenses, Bobby’s visits became even more frequent; a couple of times, I’d wake up in the middle of the night to find Bobby and a couple of his Duncanville High Friends in my bedroom – he’d been bored and convinced his friends a midnight drive to my place on a school night sounded like fun. Of course, with Bobby involved, it was fun – Bobby could make mundane activities an adventure.

Where Bobby had never fit in at West Mesquite, he excelled at Duncanville High where the Arts were a bigger part of school life (as opposed to sports at WMHS). Bobby had been born a ham; now, he blossomed into a gifted actor and intuitive dancer. Bobby thrived in the spotlight and made friendships that would last the rest of his life; Bobby also discovered he was a cheap date – about one drink was all it took to get him inebriated, then the party would get really crazy. I wasn’t there for his seventeenth birthday party, but I saw the pictures and later heard the stories; dancing buck naked in the living room (he’d gotten hot, so he took off all his clothes); hiding behind trees, then jumping out in front of passing cars to get them to swerve in an insane game of “Drunken Chicken;” and my favorite, bazooka-barfing on the fur coats in the back bedroom after some foolish person thought that would be the perfect place to let Bobby sleep it off.

His inability to handle even the slightest bit of alcohol became both a running joke and the easiest button to push to create an epic party; we’d later find out it was also evidence that Bobby had inherited more than his father’s good looks.

Mary Ann had pushed the Mesquite school system to accept Bobby as a student even though he had an October birthday; because of this, not only would Bobby be one of the smallest kids in class for years, but he was still five months shy of his eighteenth birthday when he graduated high school. On that fateful day, while his friends were being handed the keys to their new BMWs along with their diplomas, Bobby was handed instead his walking papers. “You’re a high school graduate now,” his stepfather told him. “Get out of my house.” Bobby came and stayed with us for a while over the summer until I started college that fall, then he couch surfed until moving in with my ex-girlfriend the next year. State university wasn’t working out for me, so when I returned to Mesquite, Bobby soon returned, too. We got an apartment together, not the first or last time we’d be roommates.

Our friend Roxanne; my Lady Fair, Kristi; me; Bobby, my ex, Carol; on the way to tube down the Quadalupe River over Memorial Day weekend

It was around his eighteenth birthday that Bobby came out to me. He wasn’t my first friend to do so (David had beaten him to the punch the year before), so it wasn’t like I was shocked to find out I had gay dudes in my life. It did mean that a second creative, sensitive man I knew had come out as gay, so my being a creative, sensitive hetero male was being exposed as a rarity; it also meant that there would now always be a part of Bobby’s life that I would never completely be a part of. I’d understand certain aspects – the being singled-out for ridicule by the so-called Moral Majority I’d certainly experienced – but no matter how accepting of his sexuality and lifestyle I could and would be, I’d never fully understand what it was to be a young gay man in Dallas in the mid-to-late ’80’s. And I told him as much that night at my house – I also told him I didn’t care: he was my best friend and brother, he’d always be my best friend and brother, and I would always love him, no matter what.

As much as Bobby hated school work, he loved the school atmosphere, so he was already performing at Eastfield Community College plays and musicals when I finally got my act together and returned to school as the voice major I’d always wanted to be. Whenever I was nervous, whenever I was ill at ease, I’d ask myself “What would Bobby do?” Then I’d do that. It was doing my interpretation of Bobby reciting song lyrics as poetry that I caught the eye of a lovely young woman in my voice class – Kristi had a soft spot for intelligence and glasses, and she thought my kicking over the music stand and falling to my knees in mock exhaustion hilarious. We’d later start dating, and Kristi and Bobby became fast friends – that my soon-to-be wife and oldest friend had so much in common wasn’t lost on me.

Around the time I joined the Army and eloped before being sent off to war, Bobby moved to New York. Bobby loved the Big Apple, taking to the Five Burroughs like a duck takes to water. He was there with college friends; and Wendy, Cheryl, David, and Bobby would be there own little version of “The Big Chill.” David went into publishing, Cheryl would work on Broadway, and Wendy and Bobby would pursue their acting ambitions while working day jobs. It was in New York that Bobby found he had a knack for management even without business schooling; he also learned how to let those a little too proud of their credentials get hoisted by their own petards while he toiled away in silence on the sidelines. Even though he’d finally landed a role in an off-Broadway play that got him rave reviews and the attention of several important people, Bobby’s success as a recruiter convinced him to make what I considered to be the biggest mistake of his life – he took a job in San Francisco, leaving New York and his New York support system behind. He hadn’t done his due diligence and had no idea the amazingly-well paying job was for an extremely socially-conservative company, an oddity in such a liberal city. Even without wearing his sexuality on his sleeve, the religiously oppressive atmosphere of the work environment took a heavy toll on his soul – soon, it became too much, and unable to return to New York, Bobby heading back to Mesquite, his self-confidence in shreds.

Bobby lived in our spare bedroom/office for about a year; when Oklahoma City and learning web development didn’t work out, he moved back in with us, this time spending a year in the room behind my garage. Kristi’s grandfather had originally built the space as a workshop, with a solid floor and drop ceiling; it also had it’s own phone line. We had the cable company come out and hook the room up, and with an ac unit in the window for the summer and a space heater next to the bed for the winter, Bobby had a mini-apartment.

It was after Bobby met Randy and started spending more and more of his time with his new boyfriend that we had our last big fight. Bobby was suppose to be paying rent and wasn’t; while he was away getting his love life back in order, I was keeping the lights and ac on to keep his pets happy and healthy. When I called him on it, Bobby got incensed that I was telling him how to live his life. After he stormed out, Bobby came back five minutes later.

“What just happened?”

I sighed. “You do what you’ve always done when you’re ready to move on but you feel guilty because you don’t feel like you lived up to your end of the bargain: you managed to make it all about them instead so you could justify leaving.”

Bobby blinked, then frowned. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.” Tears filled his eyes. “I don’t want to do this with you.”

Any and all anger I’d felt vanished at the sight of his pain. A light bulb turned on in my head.

“You know what? Let’s don’t. You’ve got a new love in your life, you’re ready to move on from here and start something new – just say that. Say ‘Keith, brother, I love you, but it’s time for me to move on. I know I owe you, and I’ll pay you back when I can; but I’ll be happier someplace else. I’m getting to the point where I’m resenting the help, and I love you too much for that. So thanks for everything you and your lovely wife have done, I so appreciate it, but I’ve got to go.’ And I’ll say “Bobby, my brother, I completely understand. All I’ve ever wanted is for you to be happy, so go do what you’ve got to do.Pay when you can, and don’t sweat it when you can’t – that’s what family is for.’ And we’ll leave it at that, with no judging and no resentment – just love and acceptance.”

Bobby stared at me with tear-streaked cheeks. “Can we do that?”

I smiled through my own tears back at him. “Why not? We’re family, right?”

Bobby hugged me like I was due for the gallows in the morning. “Yes. Yes, we are. You are so my family, and I love you so, so much. Thank you.”

The was the last time Bobby ever lived with me – he would bounce between his own apartments and sharing spaces with Randy for the next fourteen years.

A few years later, Bobby would come work at Heritage Auction Galleries with me, again amazing people with his innate management skills as an consignment co-ordinator. It was at Heritage that Bobby got sick for the first time: late-stage Hepatitus he’d more than likely picked up from a dirty tattoo needle. He’d end up going through two rounds of what was basically chemo-therapy to finally get healthy, eventually losing the job at Heritage from too much time off, but he’d would get a clean bill of health.

Then his kidneys started failing.

Bobby had discovered years earlier he’d been born with polycystic kidney disease (PKD), a hereditary disorder he’d gotten from his dad. It meant that his being a cheap date was a symptom, not a genetic perk; it meant while his kidneys still worked he’d be plagued with kidney stones every four to six weeks; and it meant that his kidneys would flat-out give up on him at a relatively early age. Bobby joked that he was meant to be born a woman, seeing how once a month he’d get cramps and bleed; what wasn’t a joke were the trips to the emergency room, his blood pressure high enough to cause micro-strokes in his brain. Randy would get him to the ER, the attending nurse would take Bobby’s blood pressure, see the numbers and immediately turn white – seconds later, a doctor would show up with a hypodermic needle full of Morphine. “How about we take the edge off?”

“Yes, please!”

A few seconds later, Bobby would get a happy, goofy smile as his BP would start coming down. A couple of days in the hospital to pass the stone and watch his BP, and the doctors would send him on his way.

After a while, Bobby’s BP would just stay too high – that started the first of his daily medication ritual, a rite that grew more and more elaborate as the years went by and his kidneys got weaker.

I was never more disappointed than when I found out Bobby and I didn’t share the same blood type – I couldn’t donate a kidney to Bobby. Neither could Kristi. Neither could my mother. Bobby would have to go on the transplant list. He was practically a perfect candidate: the only thing wrong with him other than the fact his kidneys were garbage was the high blood pressure, which was a symptom of the PKD to begin with. The transplant list for Oklahoma was far shorter than the one for Texas, so Bobby made what I considered to be the second biggest mistake of his life: he up and moved to Talihina, Oklahoma to be near his brother and sister-in-law, Barbara Ann, sit through dialysis three times a week, and wait for a kidney.

The good part of being in an Oklahoma town the size of a postage stamp was the slower pace of living. The first couple of months were a vacation, as Bobby got to know his big brother in ways he’d never dreamt possible as he soaked up the fresh air and sunshine. The bad included being bored out of his mind after the luster of country living wore off (right about the time he’d seen every movie at the local rental store), and being over an hour away from a hospital on those nights something drastic happened.

Such as congestive heart failure.

With his blood pressure meds keeping his body slightly out of whack, Bobby had trouble sleeping, so some doctor prescribed him Ambien – right on the label, it says not intended for people with kidney disease. In his drug-induced stupor, Bobby was sleepwalking into the kitchen and drinking water and juices to the point of overloading his system. Bobby was only allowed around a liter of liquid a day – he was drinking twice that all at once in his sleep. Basically, he was drowning; and the fluid build up around his heart kept it from expanding as it should, causing it to shut down – congestive heart failure. I don’t know who I was madder at, the doctor for not reading Bobby’s chart, or Bobby for not checking the damn label – either way, I was quickly becoming convinced living in Oklahoma would be the death of him.

After an Oklahoma hospital not only put in the wrong type of stints into Bobby’s heart, but put them in backwards to boot, Bobby became convinced of it, too. He headed back to Texas and moved in with Randy.

Bobby hated being on a diet; Bobby hated having to restrict his fluid intact; Bobby hated being forced to do mild aerobic exercise instead of the weight lifting he wanted to do – so he didn’t. He’d made token efforts to live right, but more and more often he’d eat what he wanted, drink what he wanted, and go do what he wanted. And as if on a schedule, about once every four months, he’d end up back in the ER with congestive heart failure. It wasn’t long that Bobby would demand that Randy not let anyone know he was back in the ICU – the official reason was he didn’t want anyone to worry needlessly, he be back up and about in a week or so; the unofficial reason was Bobby didn’t want to hear the lectures he knew he had coming from worried friends and family. We wouldn’t hear from him for a few weeks, then we’d get a phone call out of the blue. “Hey. Just got out of the hospital. What’s up with ya’ll?”

When my old friend and Boy Scout mentor, Donny, passed away two and a half years ago, I wrote about what he meant to me on my Facebook page; his sisters were so taken by what I’d expressed, they asked me to speak at his funeral as well. I worked on the eulogy all week, then delivered the speech from memory that Friday morning – when I was done, I sat back down on my pew and was just devastated, choking back the tears that threatened to engulf me. As soon as I could, I went to visit Bobby.

“Brother, I just gave Donny’s eulogy and it destroyed me. I’m not ready to give your eulogy – I can’t do it. You have got to take care of yourself, you have got to do whatever it is you’ve got to do.” I blinked back the tears. “I can’t lose you. Not yet. I can’t handle it. Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. Promise me I won’t lose you.”

Bobby smiled and hugged me. “Don’t worry – I’m going to be around a good, long time. You can count on it. I promise.”

Three months later, Bobby was back in the ICU. Congestive heart failure. Bobby’s promise was shit.

I didn’t go visit him, even after the one week turned into two, he’d developed an infection that had to be dealt with before he could go home to start his now four-day a week dialysis ritual. I couldn’t. I was heart-broken, livid to the point of wanting to do him physical harm. I frankly didn’t trust myself to be in the same room with him. After he started asking people where I was, after he started questioning why I wasn’t coming to see him, I finally sent him a text.

“I’m in a really bad place, so bad I don’t trust myself to do the right thing, and you need positive energy and support around you more than ever. When I can trust myself to do what’s right for you, I’ll be around; in the meantime, believe me when I say I doing this for your good, not mine.”

Bobby stopped asking about me. He’d been home about a month when I finally went to see him.

“I wrote your eulogy.”

Bobby’s mouth fell open. “Oh, God, don’t tell me that!”

“Listen to me!” I snapped. “I wrote all but the last two paragraphs of your eulogy. Those last two paragraphs are all up to you, what you do now. Because I can write one of two things:”

“I can write about how, when confronted with the unthinkable, you never flinched when dealing with the insurmountable odds, a shining example of grace and courage in the face of adversity for all of us;” my eyes narrowed in anger, “or I can write about how, when confronted with the unthinkable, you chose to deny your circumstances, pretending you were Peter Pan and you’d be young and pretty forever, and your inability to face up to the severity of your situation directly resulted in you dying several years early.”

Bobby let out a half-cry, half-moan. I ignored him.

“It’s up to you, brother. This is your new normal – you can either deal with it head on and make something of this time; or you can continue denying it and kill yourself. The choice is all yours. But whatever you choose, THAT is what’s going into my eulogy, and THAT will be your legacy.”

We didn’t talk about it again. Three months later, he was back in the ICU.

At the start of the year, Bobby left Randy to move in with his old Duncanville friend and confidante, Loretta. I was cool with the move: Randy had done all he could to keep Bobby healthy, saving his life on more than one occasion with his quick actions; but the relationship was turning toxic despite their love for each other – Bobby hated being told what do do, and Randy hated constantly being put in situations where he felt he needed to tell Bobby what to do. Loretta had lost her husband to cancer a few years ago, so she both needed the emotion support Bobby would provide while understanding the unique position being roommates with someone with a chronic medical condition entailed. Bobby needed a new environment; Loretta was the obvious choice. So I wasn’t surprised when I hadn’t heard from him in a few months – Bobby would be busy settling into his new digs on the other side of Irving.

Late on May 5th, I got a phone call from Barbara Ann.

“Bobby was out and started not feeling good, called an ambulance – he went into cardiac arrest on the way to hospital. The EMTs resuscitated him, but he didn’t wake back up – he’s still in a coma in the ICU. I’m heading down, his mom is heading down, the hospital told us to call people.” Her voice quavered. “Keith, it doesn’t look good.”

I thanked Barbara Ann, then immediately called my mother – Mom called Barbara Ann, got Bobby’s location, room number, and password, then made plans to go see him in the morning. I went to bed with a pounding heart, a condition that was still in place when I woke up the next day. It didn’t feel right. His heart had stopped before, but he’d never been a coma that hadn’t been medically induced – this felt different, and the more I reflected on how much different this felt, how wrong it felt, the more I knew I wasn’t going to work. If he died and I wasn’t there, I’d never forgive myself. I wrote a note to my coworkers, then wrote notes to people I thought needed to know what was going on: Bobby’s old friends Carol, Cheryl, and Michele. I then threw on some clothes and headed to the hospital, fighting Dallas rush hour traffic the entire way.

Bobby had woken up by the time I’d gotten there. He was groggy from the amazing drugs they were pumping into him, and he couldn’t communicate with the breathing tube crammed down his throat; but his eyes were bright, and he acknowledge us when we got there. He recognized me, he recognized Mom, who got there soon after; he recognized Carol, who bolted from work as soon as she could. Carol made plans to come back the next day, Cheryl made plans to go see Bobby as soon as she could, and we all thought Bobby had dodged a bullet. ICU removed the breathing tube the next day, intending to move him to a room on another floor the day after that.

Bobby coded. He was dead two minutes before the crash time resuscitated him. The decision was made to leave the breathing tube in place until after the experts figured out why Bobby’s heart was stopping.

It was the next day that Carol finally got a chance to speak to the internal medicine specialist, who’d only just seen Bobby after four days in the ICU. It wasn’t the high level of potassium, it wasn’t congestive heart failure, or anything else we’d grown accustomed to being told – in the internal specialist’s opinion, it was Bobby’s heart, pure and simple. He had the heart of an eighty-year-old man. Worse, the medication they would normally give Bobby to strengthen his heart would damage his liver… which again, normally wouldn’t have been a problem except the last round of resuscitations had finally damaged his liver. Bobby was between a rock and a hard place, and no one had a clue what to do.

Bobby had been “incident-free” for a couple of days, so the decision was made to remove the breathing tube again. The doctors were waiting until after his dialysis, they wanted as much space around his heart as possible before he was allowed to breath on his own again – seeing how he only had an hour left on his treatment, I stuck around. Bobby was awake and alert; his wonderful nurse, Abby, had given him a marker and some paper so he could write to Carol and me. Even drugged up with a tube down his throat, Bobby was still making jokes. As I’d always been able to do, I understood everything he was trying to convey.

Scribble scribble.

“I woke up with blood on my ass and we got high. Good times, good times!”

Thumbs up.

Carol left. It was just Bobby and me. Dialysis had another fifteen minutes.

Scribble scribble.

“Difficult question? Sure, shoot.”

Scribble scribble.

“Am I going to die?”

I looked at the tech. “Nope. Not today.” I looked at Abby. “Not if I can help it. Bobby’s going to be fine.” I shrugged and smiled at Bobby. “They say you aren’t, and they should know. Not your time, brother.”

The last really good picture Bobby took… later photos show the toll that was being taken on his heart

Bobby closed his eyes. I left the room so they could unhook the dialysis machine and finally pull that tube out of his throat. I went to the waiting room to turn my cell back on, text my persons of concern Bobby’s status. Loretta and Bobby’s mom, Mary Ann arrived, and I filled them on on our day… though I left out the part about Bobby asking if he was going to die; I did mention Bobby expressing he’d marry Carol if he only wasn’t gay.

I went to check on Bobby – tube was out and he was talking with no trouble. His memory was swiss cheese, though, which distressed him – he didn’t remember moving to Irving with Loretta or than he’d been there for over four months; he thought he’d been in the hospital since January.

“No, you’ve been in the hospital a week – you’ve been in Irving since January. Don’t sweat it – they’ve been pumping you full of the good stuff for days, bro; give yourself some time to filter the drugs out of your system, your memory will come back just fine.”

I squeezed his hand, told him I loved him, and made plans to come back after work Monday. Monday, a small monsoon drenched the metroplex and destroyed rush hour, so I took myself home and recommitted to going out to Bedford Tuesday. I was in a morning meeting in the conference room when my cell phone vibrated on the table.

“What was that?” asked my acting Marketing Manager and friend, Aja.

I didn’t look down – I didn’t have to. “That was my phone letting me know I just got a text informing me Bobby took a turn for the worse.”

Aja blinked. “Okay. Moving on.” She resumed the meeting. I took a look at my phone – I had a text from Carol. “Loretta says Bobby coded again.”

The meeting ended. I looked at Aja. “I was right. It’s bad. I’m leaving.”

“Do what you have to do. I’m praying for you.”

I ran to the car and texted Kristi. “Bobby coded again. I’m heading to Bedford.”

“Work was slow, so I’m off – come get me?”

“Absolutely – on my way.”

I ran by the house, picked up my wife, then reminded myself to obey at least some of the traffic laws as I sped across Dallas to get to the hospital. Kristi fielded the texts that came in while I drove like a maniac. I pulled into a parking spot and headed toward the doors.

“Keith!”

It was Mary Ann, sitting in a wheelchair, crying as she smoked in the parking lot across the street from the entrance. “They say there’s nothing left we can do.”

I turned and made my way to the ICU; there was Loretta, tears in her eyes. “He coded again this morning; they brought him back, but every time his heart drip stops, he codes again. The doctor says Mary Ann will probably have to make a hard decision soon, but if he keeps coding, the decision may be taken out of her hands.”

I hugged her. I texted my parents, who were still on the way. I texted my friends. I squeezed Kristi’s hand. We filled in Carol and her stepdaughter, Lauren, when they arrived. I checked on Cheryl.

The doctor came back out and stood next to Mary Ann. “There’s nothing left we can do. At this point, the only thing keeping him alive is the medication, and eventually that won’t work. You need to make the call.”

Randy was standing behind Mary Ann, his hands on her shoulders. She let out a sound that was just louder than a moan, just a little more quiet than a cry – she let out the same sound Bobby had when I told him I’d written his eulogy. “I can’t. I can’t say it.”

No one moved. She sobbed once, hard, then coughed. I left Kristi’s side, knelt down in front of Mary Ann, and took her hands in mine. I looked up into her eyes. “You have to be strong. You have to be strong for Bobby. He needs you to say the words. He needs to rest. We have to let him go. You have to say it.”

Mary Ann cried again. “How can I say it? Loretta, help me say it.”

Loretta’s amazingly steady voice came from behind me. “Do it. Turn off the machines. I’ll take responsibility.”

The doctor frowned. “It has to be her.”

I squeezed Mary Ann’s hands. “You have to say it. Let him rest, sweetie. You have to let him rest. Say the words.”

Mary Ann cried, then softly made out something the doctor could use. I stood, texted my parents, then made my way back to Bobby’s room in the ICU. Randy was seated on Bobby’s right, holding his hands as I’d held Mary Ann’s. I made my way to the left side of the bed, placing my hand on his shoulder. There was no light in Bobby’s half-closed eyes – he’d already left us, we were just allowing his body to catch up with his spirit. The heart monitor slowly counted down to zero. I stepped back just as the room’s curtain swung open – Cheryl looked at Bobby, then looked at me. “Is he gone?”

“Just this second.”

She fell into my arms. I squeezed her gently, then let her go to stand next to Bobby. I looked around the room: Randy, from when he’d come home from Oklahome the first time; Loretta and Ty from Duncanville; Cheryl with her partner, Natalie from New York; Kristi, Carol with her stepdaughter, Lauren from Eastfield; and finally me, from Galloway and West Mesquite. Bobby’s closest, oldest, most beloved friends from all the different periods of his life – the family he started creating for himself after his father was taken from him forty years earlier – all by his side as he’d gently gone to his final sleep.

I did and didn’t keep my promise to Bobby a few days later. I delivered most of the eulogy I’d written two years ago, but those last two paragraphs I said were up to him to finish, I used expressing what Bobby had meant to me instead. I didn’t need to talk about how Bobby had dealt with the last few years of his life – Bobby had died as he had lived: on his own terms, doing what he enjoyed with the people that he loved. He was the impetus that had brought so many of us together, and he was the glue that held so many of our relationships together; and when I wrote Bobby’s obituary and later delivered Bobby’s eulogy, THAT would be the legacy I would impart to the people who loved him so very much.

If I have the confidence to stand in front of a room full of strangers and perform for them, it’s because Bobby gave me the confidence that I could and the courage to try. This next phase of Operation: Rock Star is dedicated to him, my oldest friend and brother.  I owe it to myself to be the success he always saw I’d be.

I miss you, Bobby. And I will love you forever.

Nothing to Prove

Cosplayer at the 2013 San Diego Con. Photo courtesy of http://www.mtv.com/geek

I’m a Geek. Even though I stopped collecting, I still call myself a comic book geek – I have Steranko‘s autograph, I have Stan Lee‘s autograph, I have Julie Schwartz‘s autograph, I have Martin Nodell‘s autograph; I’ve seen every episode of Star Trek: TOS and Star Trek: TNG; I was standing in line at the butt-crack of dawn for Return of the Jedi and at midnight for Phantom Menace both opening days; I have every Harry Potter book in hardback; I watched Firefly on Friday nights, then gave copies of the DVD to my friends; I’ve seen every Highlander movie, including the bootleg Director’s Cut of the first sequel; I have a copy of the translated Crying Freeman manga in trade paperback; I can tell the difference between a Ditko Spider-Man and a Romita Spider-Man; and I have original artwork from Stangers in Paradise framed and hanging in my dining room. No one doubts my Geek Cred.

Spending whatever meager allowance I could muster up for comic books when I was 8 or 9 was cool; making weekly treks to the comic book shop when I was 16 or 17 was not. I caught a lot of grief for my passion, up to and including losing a letter-grade off of a paper when my English teacher didn’t consider X-Men #137 a viable source material, and being tossed over a table by a football player who didn’t appreciate my wrecking the Bell Curve in Art VI with anatomy studies of Colossus. Now that The Avengers is the biggest movie in the world, Harry Potter is the biggest movie franchise in the world, Game of Thrones has been nominated for an Emmy for Best Drama three years in a row, and Lord of the Rings: Return of the King won the Oscar for Best Picture, being a Geek is suddenly cool. Very cool. So cool even the hipsters are wearing their Justice League t-shirts ironically with their hoodies and black rimmed glasses. I was never un-cool – I was just thirty years ahead of my time.

Now that is finally mainstream to love comics and manga, animation and anime, Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon however, there’s a bit of a backlash from the Geeks who withstood the stares, the name-calling and the bullying for so many years – they’re not ready to be amongst the normals, they still maintain their self-image through exclusivity. Suddenly, it’s all about the True Geek versus the Johnny-Come-Lately’s: you’re not a true Whovian unless you were watching the Tom Baker years on Saturdays at midnight on PBS; you’re not a true Avengers fan unless you knew who the purple alien was at the end of the film without Googling Ain’t It Cool News; you’re not a Potterhead if you don’t know which of the Marauders was Harry’s father; you’re not a true Geek if you’re a girl into Cosplay; you’re not a true Geek if you’re a girl at the Con just for the Twilight panel; you’re not a true Geek if you’re a girl, period.

Again and again, boys, young men and adults; amateurs and professionals alike, are complaining that the press shows up and spends too much time filming the Cosplay hotties, the Booth Babes, and the Geek Girls in their Team Jacob t-shirts and over-sized glasses. And because there are a small number of attractive model-types showing up at events in revealing costumes and bikini-ready bodies, the True Geeks have labeled all females Un-True, only there to garner attention to themselves, attention they couldn’t get somewhere else. Girls aren’t real Geeks.

Bullshit.

25 years ago, I started dating a beautiful, amazing young woman. Since I wanted to spend every waking hour with her, I introduced her to comic books – I started her off with my original run of Elf*Quest. When that didn’t run her off, I took her to my comic book shop and asked the clerk for a suggestion: needed a comic book for a girl who wasn’t into long-underwear characters. The clerk said a new series had just started a couple of months earlier, was dark, gothic, more fantasy-based and was getting amazing reviews, might just be what she was after – soon, my Lady Fair was dragging me to the comic shop every month to pick up the next issue of The Sandman.

My wife is a Geek – a bright, talented, friendly, lovely Geek. My wife took to being a Geek like a fish takes to water. The Sandman statues in the house belong to her. She introduced me to Harry Potter. She introduced me to The Guild. It’s her Strangers in Paradise original artwork framed in the office. She stood in line seven hours to buy tickets for the opening night of the new Star Wars movie. She’s read every Sookie Stackhouse book. She’s read every Anita Blake book. She’s read Mists of Avalon. She owns every season of Buffy on DVD. She wrote Mobile Suit Gundam Wing slash fiction. We stood in line at midnight together to get our copies of Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Deathly Hallows. We stood in line together to see the final Harry Potter movie in 3-D at midnight.

Does she know who Lamont Cranston is? No. Has she ever played Skyrim? No. Does she know the difference between Jor-L and Jor-El? No. Does my wife know who Spider Jerusalem is? Yes. Has my Lady Fair beaten every level of Portal and Portal 2? Yes. Does the love of my life read Joe Hill and John Scalzi? YES.

My Lady Fair has nothing to prove. The PFC from my reserve unit who introduced me to Ender’s Game has nothing to prove. My ex-girlfriend who introduced me to Robert Aspirin and Myth Adventures has nothing to prove. The high school marching band member who introduced me to Elf*Quest has nothing to prove. All the intelligent, warm, amazing girls and women I know who are unapologetically enthusiastic about the comics, novels, movies, games, music, and television shows they love have NOTHING. TO. PROVE.

And as for that meager handful of hotties that show up and steal all the thunder, two things:

1. Remember the old adage “All publicity is good publicity.” If that amazon with the belly so tight you could bounce a quarter off of it in the almost-perfect Witchblade costume means the Con gets that much more time on the evening news, then that’s a Win-Win for her AND the Con. Quit yer bitchin’.

2. Remember what it felt like when the Cool Kids wouldn’t let you in their club. Then grow the fuck up.

Because here’s the thing: if you spend your time excluding people from your “club” because of their gender, no one will think of you as a  GEEK – they’ll be thinking of you as a DICK.

The Doubleclicks, who said it better than I. And the stuff I didn’t link to? Go look it up.

Dancing for the Desperate and the Broken-Hearted

I heard something over the weekend that broke my heart.

For a guy who took voice lessons and sings a little Italian to sound impressive, I’m not that big on opera. I like certain songs, mainly the biggies everybody’s heard – O Solo Mio, Nessum Dorma, etc. – but overall, not my cup of tea. Given the choice between going to a dive bar to listen to a little three-piece blues combo or heading to the Dallas Opera to sit through La Boheme, I’ll take the dive bar.

(Downtown to watch a rap crew or the Dallas Opera? Opera, every time. I am so very, very caucasian.)

For a dude not all that down on opera, I do love me some big, over-blown operatic rock tunes, though. Paradise by Dashboard Light, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That), It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, Making Love Out of Nothing At All, and my all-time favorite, Total Eclipse of the Heart – total rock opera, baby, and I LOVE THEM. The melodic, almost music-box beginnings; the build up in thematic intensity; the choral back-up singers; the big crescendo – I mean, DAMN, what is not to love?

Looks like the guy who’d write “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red rose?”

Those with a serious musical background will notice more than just a theme running through those songs I picked: they were all written by the great Jim Steinman. Steinman was the composer, lyricist and/or producer on the epic Bat Out of Hell and Bat Out of Hell II/Back into Hell albums with Meat Loaf, which would be enough to guarantee his inclusion into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, but he’s also worked with artists as diverse as Billy Squire, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manillow, The Sisters of Mercy, and The Everly Brothers in his storied four-decade long career. If the song has that epic rock opera feel to it, chances are it was written and/or produced by Steinman.

Two of my favorite songs by Steinman appeared in a movie nobody but I and about three other people saw when it came out in theaters, Streets of Fire. Streets of Fire, directed by Walter Hill, is touted as a “Rock and Roll Fable,” and it tries really hard to deliver on that regard: the sets and wardrobe are all straight out of the 1950’s, but the music is all 1980’s pop and bar rock. The story is ridiculous: the leader of the outlaw bikers from across the way, Raven (played deliciously by a young Willem Dafoe) decides to kidnap the home town girl does good, rocker Ellen Aim (a barely legal Diane Lane, looking ever so rock n roll) for his own nefarious delights; Ellen’s ex-boyfriend, bad boy Tom Cody (Michael Paré, hot off of Eddie and The Cruisers), gets called in to rescue her; and along the way meets up with a tomboy ex-soldier McCoy (Amy Madigan playing against type), manager with little-man syndrome Billy Fish (the perfectly cast Rick Moranis), and doo-wop quartet The Sorels (featuring the then-unknown Robert Townsend); Elizabeth Daily and Ed Begley, Jr. also show up in the film because it’s the 80’s and they were in everything else back then. The film ends with a showdown between Cody and Raven featuring pickaxes, and Cody leaving Ellen to pursue her music career Bogie-style, driving off into the night with new best friend, McCoy.

I miss the days when movie posters looked like this…

You don’t watch Streets of Fire for the movie – you watch Streets of Fire for the music. The soundtrack is awesome – incidental music composed and performed by Ry Cooder, and features songs written or performed by Cooder, Dan Hartman, Stevie Nicks, The Fixx, and Jim Steinman. The two Steinman songs are the two tunes Ellen’s band, The Attackers, perform at the start and the end of the film: Nowhere Fast and Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young. Both songs are performed by session musicians under the name of Fire Inc., with lead vocals handled by a blending of the voices of vocalists Laurie Sargent and Holly Sherwood. Nowhere Fast is a hard-driving rock anthem with a great beat, but Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young, with The Sorels joining The Attackers on stage to fill in all the choral parts, is pure unadulterated Wagnerian rock opera.

I found the song on YouTube and played it for my Lady Fair, who immediately added it to her list of tunes to add to her mp3 player. We were driving out to my parents’ house for a day of poker and smack talk, when the tune came on – my lovely wife was piping her mp3’s through the SUV’s stereo – and the Lady Fair commented that while she adored the chorus, she kinda hated the verses.

“Hate the verses?” I responded. “How can you hate the verses? The verses are great! The verses are cheesy and sugary and over-emotional and completely overblown – I LOVE the verses!”

“I’ve got a dream ’bout a boy in a castle
And he’s dancing like a cat on the stairs.
He’s got the fire of a prince in his eyes
And the thunder of a drum in his ears.”

“But it’s only a dream and tonight is for real
You’ll never know what it means
But you’ll know how it feels
It’s gonna be over (over)
Before you know it’s begun
(Before you know it’s begun).”

“It’s all we really got tonight
Stop your cryin’ hold on (tonight)
Before you know it it’s gone (tonight)
Tonight is what it means to be young.”

My wife kept looking at me like I was speaking Klingon. “Sweetie, the song is about being 19, 20, 21 yrs old; old enough to start making a mark in the world, but still young enough not to have given in to cynicism, to still believe you can conquer all as long as you keep your faith. It’s about feeling your blood flow and your heart race, too inexperienced to know why, but just mature enough to realize you have to act on that emotion now before you lose the momentum. And it’s about sharing that momentum with someone else, some other young maverick, if only for one night, in that one perfect moment. ‘You never know what it means, but you know how it feels – it’s gonna be over before you know it’s begun, Tonight is what it means to be young.’ DAMN. That’s EXACTLY how I felt at 21.”

I got serious, and pointed at the radio. “When I’m on stage with the band, and everything is gelling – the guitars are in synch, everybody is feeling the beat, the crowd has joined in and the entire band feeding off that energy, and I hit that one note strong and true, and it soars, and the crowd responds – THAT is what it feels like. THAT is why I’m trying so hard to make this band work: so I can keep feeling THAT.”

For a long moment, she didn’t say anything. Then my Lady Fair, the love of my life, my soul and inspiration, looked at me with tears in her eyes and admitted, “I’ve never felt that way in my life.”

And my heart broke.

I never met my father-in-law, he died of cancer my wife’s senior year. The sickness had been slow and ugly, and as much as it pained everyone involved, his passing had also been a relief since it meant the suffering was over – it also meant my wife’s childhood was over. I’ve spoken before about my Lady Fair’s ongoing struggle with Depression, but I haven’t mentioned her struggle with dyslexia and its lesser-known cousin, dyscalculia (just like her letters, my lovely bride gets her numbers out of order, making it almost impossible to do long-division or algebra). Back in the 70’s and early 80’s, back before everybody and their dog admitted they have learning disabilities, my wife’s pretty freakin’ obvious problems were just dismissed by her teachers and administrators. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, didn’t know how to respond, so she just went along with the school’s assessment – as a result, one of the smartest women I’ve ever met grew up thinking she was dumb; and not just dumb, but unteachable. My wife – who can take apart and reassemble the VCR, wired the living room for surround sound, and installed the battery and battery cables in my Mustang – was flat-out told she’d never be able to attend college. “You don’t have the capacity, dear, but don’t worry – not every little girl is meant to get a higher education. You’ll just need to find yourself a husband, be a good housewife.” Because she wasn’t part of the norm, my Kristi was ignored; worse, because she was a girl, my Kristi was written off.

And I knew all of this, knew about the blow she took from losing her dad, knew about the learning issues, knew most of her teachers never gave her the attention she needed or deserved, knew it all contributed to decimating her self-esteem – it just never occurred to me it all contributed to my beautiful Kristi growing up without inspiration, without passion.

I still think it’s counter-productive to give out awards to kids for just showing up on game day, but I also think it’s vitally important that kids feel supported in whatever they feel passionately about, that they be given all the help and tools they need to be successful. No one deserves to be ignored or written off, everyone deserves to feel the passion and inspiration I get to enjoy as a band member, writer and artist. I am very, very lucky, but right now I’d give anything to give any and all of that luck to Kristi.

Go hug your kids.