Just what is it about my face?

I wrote the following a couple of weeks ago, on a southbound train. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. A few days later I drove for a day or two to Key West, loaded everything I own out of the storage unit where it's been sitting for a year, and drove for another day or two, stopping in Jennings, Louisiana to replace a bad alternator. For a moment I wondered what it would be like to get stuck living in that small Southwest Louisiana town, where the people are so friendly. The trainee who smiled at me in the Taco Bell was unforgettably cute. I now live in Austin, Texas, so I'm fixin' to change the name of the blog here real soon...


What is it about my face? I mean really, what the hell is it? I can’t usually see my own face, so I just can’t put my finger on it. The next pair of mirror aviator sunglasses I see, I’ll buy and put them on, and people will leave me alone. I’ll be safe again.

I’m on the New Orleans bound train from Philadelphia, speeding across the lush summer Delaware landscape on a sunny afternoon. But 12 hours ago, I was sitting at a gay bar in downtown Pittsburgh. I was getting drunk, something I haven’t wanted to do in quite a while. I didn’t realize it was a gay bar. Well, not right away. I was just impressed that something was open so close to the train station in the middle of a Tuesday night.

Actually it was the second bar I had found. The first was in the lobby of a big fancy hotel. There I had two delicious pale ales and a Jim Beam, straight up. I haven’t had anything to drink in months and it went straight to my head, which was just what I had in mind. The Miss Hooters pagent was playing out on the flat screen in front of me. A half dozen other well dressed people sat around the bar, watching, murmering comments about the girls’ measurements.

“Thirty four? No way. No Way!” said the young, middle eastern bartender, repeatedly. The measurements did seem arbitrary when you looked closely at the fast-moving girls’ bodies. There were a lot of Hooters girls on the TV, and each one had maybe five seconds to bounce and bubble across the stage, with her measurements displayed next to where she’s from.

It was a welcome if absurd distraction for me. This whole trip was a major failure. I can be philosophical about failures, and won’t dwell on this one for long, but the sting is still quite fresh and needs time to fade. The last month and a half or so of my life has seen a sizeable quantity of time, money and emotional capital invested, gambled, on a venture that turned out to be a wash. It could be depressing to think too much about it for too long. Six hours in that station, waiting for the 5:30AM train, that would have been a lot of long moments to notice my failure. Watching phony looking women parade their 34’s and 37’s across the stage in matching bikinis was a perfectly acceptable diversion.

I can’t believe that I almost moved to Pittsburgh. I know damned well that I cannot be happy and healthy in Pennsylvania or anywhere near it or anywhere like it. I learned this lesson in 1997, 2005 and 2007. And again in 2009. But this time with a twist. A simple twist of fate. A five foot tall, 95 pound, stunningly beautiul little twist who I foolishly fell in love with like a train rolling down hill without brakes. The resulting wreck wasn’t deadly, but it sure smarts. Left me seeing stars. Like a cartoon character with birds circling the new bump on his head. It’s painful. And furthermore, it’s embarassing.

So drinking was the obvious diversion. And watching this ridiculous pagent on TV. If I could have thought of anything else to divert my attention from the thoughts I was having, I would have tried it. A long walk wasn’t looking like a good idea, considering the time and place. A nap would have been nice but they design bus and train stations to be uncomfortable places to sleep. I couldn’t focus on either of my books.

The bar closed up and I was rather high on the booze when I stood up and walked out with my guitar under my arm. The big fancy hotel was right across from the bus and train terminal, and had this nice public looking plaza with benches and bushes. I took out my guitar and started playing and singing. Not real well. I haven’t been practicing much and it takes me some time to get back up to par after a long break. My voice was dusty and my strings were rusty. I always get back into it with something from the Steve Earle’s greatest hits cassette that I burned deep into my memory by listening to almost without pause in the years of 1999 to 2001, before I even had a guitar.

“Goodbye is All We’ve Got Left to Say” came naturally. It felt so good to sing it. Who cares how it sounded. It’s like song therapy. I saing the whole song right away. And a second time. And a third. A sketchy looking inter-racial couple sauntered by, snickering at my country music. I ignored them. The din of passing trains and trucks and the solitude of a downtown in the wee hours gave me the freedom to belt my voice hard, revving it up like a cold engine until it purred to life and rumbled all on its own. I think I played and sang “Goodbye is All We’ve Got Left to Say” about ten times. I’ve never taken anti-depressant medication, but nothing could work better than this. I felt fine.

“It’s not that I’m in a hurry to lose you. I’d call you up but there’s nothing I can do. Talking won’t do any good anyway. Goodbye is all we’ve got left to say”

Then I had one of those magic guitar moments. The tune that follows this one on the “Essential Earle” greatest hits tape that I listened to in my old Volvo station wagon until the tape wore so thin that it wowed and fluttered and distorted from the damage is “Six Days on the Road”. I’ve never even tried playing the song but I just naturally segued into it, automatically. Just like on that old cassette. The end of one song just naturally leads to the beginning of the next, on the tape and forever in my head. And the chords just came to me like I already knew them. It was most satisfying, since I’m not really a guitar player, certainly not a musician and I only know relatively few chords.

“Well I pulled outta Pittsburgh, rollin’ down the eastern seaboard….”

It must have been the Pittsburgh line, and the thrilling anticipation of escaping from Pittsburgh, that inspired this sudden burst into this classic country tune.

I was playing “Six Days on the Road” for maybe the third time when I was startled to notice a big fat bald man standing close enough to me to touch. Close enough to goose me or tickle me if he were gay and so inclined. Another man was walking by, someone really sketchy, someone who looked like he would mug me if he could, and no, not just because of his race. That man said to the big fat bald man, who was dressed in a security guard uniform with a billy club and walkie talkie, “he serenadin’ you, or what?”

Security man replied, “oh I’ve been listening to his little performance here for a little while yeah. He thinks he’s pretty good.” Real bitter and menacing. Like the worst kind of prison guard. And then he turned to me, with the same ultra nasty cynicism, “why don’t you just go serenade the folks outside the bus station. You’ll be arrested if you stay here.”

I didn’t say a word, just started packing up the guitar, which is a much slower process than he would have liked, as I have all sorts of little instruments and accessories in the guitar case when I am traveling and it all fits back together only a certain way. Security man studied my every move intensely, still within tickle distance, his impatience with me as palpable as the carcinogenic diesel soot of the night air.

“Boy, you don’t take no chances, do ya?” he said, commening on what I was doing, and I still have no idea what he meant. I said nothing. Just took a full two minutes to pack everything up, and walked slowly away. I almost said “is this some sort of private property issue?” but just didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I especially did not feel like talking to him. I had the right to remain silent.

I was going to find another place to play by the train station, but I looked way down the street and saw what looked like a cluster of bars, and I thought to myself:

“Well I’ve gotta get drunk and I sure do dread it cuz I know just what I’m gonna do…” (Willie Nelson)

And:
“Since I started drinkin’ again, I ain’t shed one lonely tear over you…”(Dwight Yoakam)

And:
“Could be holdin’ you tonight. Could stop doin’ wrong and start doin’ right. You don’t care about what I think. I think I’ll just stay here and drink.” (Merle Haggard)

I’m typing this, and my southbound train is crossing the upper reaches of the Chesapeake Bay. Several years ago, I sailed within sight of this very bridge. I get a great deal of satisfaction from thoughts like this. Similar to when I flew over Pamlico sound en route to Florida. “So many nights I just dream of the ocean and I wish I was sailin’ again” (Jimmy Buffet)

Yes, I often think in country music cliché’s and soundbites. Especially when I’m battling the blues.

I knew that if I had another beer I would probably become useless on the guitar. But there was really nowhere safe to play anyway. I’m not stupid enough to sit in some dark alley at 2AM in downtown Pittsburgh. Obvious would-be muggers were circling me, sizing me up as it was. It’s my face, I know it. My face says “mug me! I haven’t a fucking clue!” Open space was the only safe place. But I had absolutely no intention to serenade anyone. I sing for myself, not for others. This is such a common misperception. It used to happen all the time on the beaches in Ecuador. I would try to get away, to get alone, and people would find me and then rate my performance. Sometimes with good ratings, sometimes with odd looks, but the point being, I’m not performing. I’m merely performing therapy on myself.

The bar was several blocks away. An overly friendly African-American man walked with me, chatting me up, sizing up the depths of my naiivete. Later he would find me again, near the train station, at 4AM, and ask me very aggressively for two dollars. I stepped into the middle of the street where he would be least likely to assault me, and told him fiercely, “I got no money for anyone!” He acted insulted.

Is it my face that says “Yes I am willing and eager to whip out my wallet here in the middle of the night in downtown Pittsburgh! I am thrilled that you asked. I’m just so happy to have a new friend, and to be able to lend a helping hand.”

If only my face actually displayed the depths of my true inner cynicism. People would be scared of me.

The bar I found was the gay bar. I was still oblivious as the bouncer collected my $1 cover charge and pointed out to me that my Pennsylvania driver’s license expired just a few hours earlier, and made some very silly and longwinded jokes about it.

I was still oblivious as I sat at the bar, nursing a pint of Yuengling, playing a video game. I hate video games and until tonight, I was really happy not drinking at all or spending time in any bars. But I was in such dire need of distraction, it was all deliciously soothing. The video game was absurdly stupid. But at least it wasn’t asking me any questions. I was supposed to be driving an SUV monster truck with huge tires over bumps and it kept flipping over, no matter what I did, and landing on its back, wheels spinning sadly and fruitlessly like an inverted, defeated turtle. It made me laugh. Then, and only then, did I suddenly notice I was in gay bar.

“You’ve got fins to the left, fins to the right and you’re the only girl in town.”
(Jimmy Buffet)

I would have chugged the beer and ran, but I’m out of practice. And my belly was already full of beer. I needed five minutes. It was not a pleasant five minutes. Being hit on by men is not the kind of diversion that will help me escape the blues. It’s one of the things that makes it worse.

The night before, she gave me a facial. She cleaned my unruly child face, thoroughly, carefully, lovingly, like no one ever has before. It was a birthday gift. One of many she gave me before and after my 37th birthday. She also gave me a professional massage and baked me a cake. I ended up loving the facial. I mostly just loved her being so near me, touching me. I felt her breath on me and I felt in love with her. But initially I had resisted the idea, strongly at first. There was that familiar big crybaby in my head, whining “I want to feel like a man! Goddammit I am a man, not a woman. I don’t want a facial. Facials are for women. I want, I need to have sex with you until you scream. You hear me? This is what a man needs. Not a facial. I could, I should make love to you all night long, starting right now, ending when the sun is up. I don’t need a facial. I need to make you come so hard it turns your entire little limited definition of sex upside down on its head and splits it in two and leaves you quite literally begging me for more!”

But like I said, the facial ended up being nice. I enjoyed it. And I have such a clean, soft, even more youthful looking face now. Perfect for the gay bar.

Now in the gay bar, the big crybaby in my head was having an absolute hissy fit, his panties badly in a wad over this turn of events. “I don’t want to be talking to anyone at all right now. I am heartbroken over a beautiful girl who I almost could have had and now I have nothing. I want you gay men to go away. This is salt in my wounds. I want a t-shirt that says “if you’re gay then go away.” I can’t believe the lines these guys are using. I am a fucking man, goddammit. Why does this shit happen to me?”

I was rude, which doesn’t come easily to me. I was well dressed, which was making matters much worse. My face so soft and clean and fresh. I was almost finished with my beer, and the sharks had mostly all swum away after their initial frenzied circling, when a woman walked by me with her group of loudly lisping and giggling men.

I swear, it must be something about my face. She touched me on the shoulder, as I poured the last drops of the pint down my throat, and she said “awww, are you a little bit shy?”

The venom just naturally spewed from my mouth as I mimicked her instinctively, instantly, from the depths of my most primitive lizard brain: “yeah, that’s right. I’m a little bit shy.”

The way I said it made the smirk vanish from her face, and she retreated out the front door with her friends, her narrowed eyes lingering on me with disdain. I don’t enjoy being nasty to people at all. I didn’t even have time to think—the words just shot out of me like a bullet. Bullseye. It felt good.

But what is it about my face? She wouldn’t say that to just any man. My face must have been saying “I’m insecure and shy and here alone and I just wish someone would talk to me…” Why does my face say these things that I do not approve of or agree with? What does one do with a face that behaves like an unruly child? Will punishment work? Is this something best addressed with a carrot or a stick?

At 5AM, I was sleeping sitting up on a metal chair in the train station. The ticket agent gently tapped me. “Sir? Are you waiting for the 5:30 to Washington?”

I must have said yes somehow, deeply asleep and still drunk. “Well, the train had an accident. It hit a tow truck just outside of Chicago, and it’s going to be six hours late.”

I was awake enough now to think to myself “Sure. That makes sense. I’ve been here enjoying the people and places of downtown Pittsburgh for seven hours, and now I’ll get to be here for another six. This doesn’t even require cynicism or bitterness. It’s just naturally how things are going on this trip. Nothing could possibly surprise me. Let’s lose my luggage and strip search me.”

“We tried calling the number you gave on your ticket reservation…”

The number on my….oh yes, that’s so perfect too, I thought to myself. The number I gave them, since I’m just back in the states for a week or so and still don’t have a working cell phone, I gave them her number. Firefly’s number. The girl I fell in and out of love with like the biggest kind of idiot. The girl whose computer I messed up, whose storage key I lost, whose beautiful gift silver necklace I broke. She’s sick and exhausted and needs sleep bad. She was already hurtin’, knowing she had to get up for work at 7:30. And Amtrak just called her at 5AM to talk to her about my train. Perfect. Nothing could surprise me on this trip.

The good news was that they put me on the 7:30 train to Phildelphia, with a direct connection to Charlottesville on this train I’m writing on, smokin’ towards New Orleans. A young way too friendly hipster from West Philly got on in Johnstown and tried to talk to me for the next five hours, and I tried to sleep. He received text messages about every five minutes, his cell exploding into the same loud hip-hop sample each time. He actually had two cell phones. He told me all about their reception, about his ex-wives (he looked about 21) and he asked me all about my career.

I wanted to be nice. It’s awkward. I don’t know where I live. I don’t know what I do for a living. I can’t answer the most basic questions of small talk. I can’t really explain where I’m coming from or where I’m going if I want to. I’d rather just not talk. But I’m polite. For some reason, I told the young hipster the story about the Ecuadorian bus driver’s assistant lady who molested my crotch in the middle of the night when I was sleeping on that bus to Guyaquil a couple of weeks back. He thought that was pretty weird, and shifted most of his chit chat to the girl across the aisle, glancing at my every move out of the corner of his eye.

When I ran out of my health and psychology podcasts to listen to, I listened to some of the mp3’s that I copied from her computer, right after I wreaked havoc on it by installing Skype on it, slowing it down, making her a little crazier and a little more irritated with me. Her mp3’s were really hard metal. Crunching, relentlessly distorted guitars and gutteral, primal screaming. I tried it. I tried to like it. I tasted each tune, gently spitting each one out. I just don’t like it. In Spanish, we’d say “it just doesn’t please me.” I wish it did. I wish Pittsburgh pleased me. I think I would transform myself into a cat if I could, in order to live in her house and have her stroking me each night. But I’m not a cat. She said that me moving to her town on the Ohio river to be with her felt, to her, like she was caging a bird. And she’s right. She’s so fucking sadly right.

Then I’m in the familiar surroundings of 30th street station in Phildelphia. I’m indluging in the comforting familiarity of NPR talk radio in my earphones and a couple of vegan friendly Taco Bell fresco style bean burritos in my mouth. A man walks up to me who looks quite a bit like legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus. He’s talking to me. He’s dissheveled looking, and I don’t feel like a racist when I assume he’s asking me for money. I’m dressed like I have a lot. I must look successful to those around me. I have to remove my earphones to hear what he’s saying to me, just like I had to dozens of times for the young hipster seated next to me on the train from Pittsburgh this morning.

He’s pointing at my weathered, black gaff-taped guitar case. He’s saying “Is that a Gibson? Or is it a Strat?” And I reply, “it’s actually an old Seagull Grand, made in Cana—“

“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” he cuts me off. “Ain’t nothing wrong with playing a cheap guitar when you’re a beginner, just starting out. I learned on a Sears guitar when I was a kid. I play bass, jazz---“

And it was my turn to cut him off. “Actually Seagull makes really nice acoustic guitars. This is one of their cheaper models, but—“

He wasn’t hearing me. He had an agenda for me. My face was telling him “I haven’t a fucking clue about anything.” Why does my face do this? Always when I least expect it.

He said “You in a group?”

“Nope. I just sing and play a little country music—“

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that,” he comforted me. “Ain’t no reason to be ashamed if a little country/western is your thing. Nothin’ wrong with that at all…”

I guess my face had told him that something was wrong with country/western music. I’d like to have a mirror handy in these situations, to catch my face when it’s having conversations with people without me. Telling them things that I don’t approve of or agree with.

“I’m a jazz player myself,” he boasted. “Jazz bass.”

I didn’t want to be rude. I never want to be rude. But even if he were the jazz bass legend Charles Mingus who he looked so much like, I would have had limited interest in talking to him. I’m blue. I’m lonesome too. I don’t want to chit chat. I want to be distracted from my aching heart. I want to focus on the sensation of the bean burrito in my mouth, the burn of the hot sauce. I want the soothing one way conversation of my favorite NPR interviewer, so familiar and intimate and deep in my ears where it does me the most good.

“Be-Bop is what I’m all about,” he continued, “I ain’t down so much for this modern smooth shit.” Personally, I couldn’t agree with him more.

“Well this is a good town for it,” I offered him, but it came out apologetically. Like a question. Because I know that the jazz clubs in Phildadelphia are a bit upscale and exclusive and it’s nothing like back in the 50’s. Back in the days of Mingus.

He shook his head. “Nah, New York is the place to be. That’s where I’m from. New York City.”

I nodded, and sort of drifted, forgetting to reply to him. He was a nice man. But my thoughts returned to my face. What is it about my face that someone would comfort me for having a cheap guitar, when it’s not cheap, and comfort me for singing country music, which I love doing as much as anything and feel no apology for? Other men can’t possibly get this much—this much whatever this is that I seem to get—can they? This is why I like to wear mirror aviator sunglasses. People treat me differently. Those glasses—any sunglasses, really, act like shields. Like in Star Trek. “Shields Up!” and people leave me alone. It’s like an umbrella when there’s rain. Sunglasses alow me to be myself in comfort, without getting soaked. I’d just wear sunglasses everywhere I go in public, if it were practical. Especially in train stations. Especially on trains. Especially in gay bars.

If I had been wearing them in her bed, when she asked me, “what’s your gut telling you?” then maybe we both wouldn’t have burst into tears. This time my face was actually telling the truth. But like the unruly child, it was being careless with the truth, not taking the consequences into account…