“Sure,” I lied. “That would be
fun
.”
The club owner, as it turned out, was a big fan of Jonathan’s band. He fell over himself to impress my date, avoiding eye contact with me like it was some kind of endurance challenge reverse staring contest.We got a VIP tour of the place, and spent what seemed like hours touring the club dressing rooms, soundboard, coatroom, even the toilets, while the owner barfed music gossip at Jonathan and pressured him for details about his new album. Jonathan amicably soaked it all in, smiling, nodding, easy-breezy, all lowercase. He was “chill,” which is a noun that dicks have recently made into an adjective.
After the tour, we walked around his neighborhood some more, where he ran into so many people he knew, I thought they were plants to impress me. It was like he was taking me for a stroll on his estate—and from the way people on the street reacted to him, it seemed that he was, at least in his mind, the prince of Williamsburg.
“Hey, Jonathan! How’s the album going?”
“Oh hi, Jonathan! When did you get back from Seattle?”
“Jonathan! Is the album done? When are you touring?”
Jonathan and I wound up in a bar, where we sat next to each other on stools. There were more people he knew inside: his downstairs roommate, who worked at the bookstore that became a cheese shop, and her girlfriend, who gardened. The colloquial incestuousness turned me off, maybe because I felt left out and maybe because I felt like his attention was so diffused that I’d be lucky to get any time alone with him at all. He seemed to be dating the whole neighborhood, and I was just another extra on The Jonathan Show.
When I got my beer, he finally turned away from his friends, and then he put his knee in between my legs, and I remembered why I’d agreed to go out with him in the first place. I felt my contempt for his Peter Pan posturing slip away as hormones took my body hostage. Suddenly, all I could think about was how the corduroy over his knee felt in between my bare thighs.
He told me he’d bought a DVD of
The Electric Company
to show episodes to his son, because he knew I was a fan of 1970s children’s television.
“Do you wanna come over and watch
The Electric Company
?” I squeezed his knee with my legs.
“Sure.”
JONATHAN LIVED
in a one-bedroom apartment, and converted the bedroom into a playroom for his little boy. It was cluttered with wooden toys, and everything was at shin-level; he kept it that way for whenever his kid came to visit him, which seemed to be not very often.
We retired to the living room, where dresser drawers hid a Murphy bed. His mattress lowered like a drawbridge, and we kissed until I was naked. We made out for a few hours: it was fine, clumsy fun. I had him leave the lights on, so I could watch him, and then I had him call me a car service so I could sleep in my own bed when it was over.
“How did it go?” Nate asked me the next day. I told him everything.
“It doesn’t seem like you
like
him,” Nate said.
“But he was so cute!” I replied.
Jonathan texted me three days later.
“hope you got home okay last night i had fun!”
Then, right afterward, “oops sorry julie i thought i sent that text tuesday.”
Oh, technology. Thanks to you, there are so many more ways to fail.
After the fail text, I didn’t hear anything from Jonathan for a couple of weeks, which was disappointing. I feel dumb admitting it, especially after Nate had pointed out that I didn’t even like him, but I guess I thought a face-to-face encounter might encourage him to launch into action mode. I’m not the first woman under the impression that her magical vagina will inspire a man to change.
A FEW
weeks later, I took a trip to Chicago, where I had a close encounter with a good-looking drummer with broad shoulders who took me back to his place on the South Side, but didn’t make a move. He was taking care of his ex’s ancient, dying lapdog while she was on tour, because she was, of course, also a rock musician. I remember thinking he was taking me home with him under the guise of “feeding the dog,” but that he, in fact, would be sexing me big-time within moments of entering his place. Instead, I came in to find a decrepit, rodent- like creature shedding into a dirty towel in front of the TV, which blasted
Emeril
for its benefit when no one was home.
The drummer stroked that sad animal’s head, and I realized he was conflicted between wanting to screw the willing out-of-towner and being stuck in a flailing relationship with his ex, embodied by that sick little dog. I ended up going back to my hotel that night frustrated and horny out of my mind, not to mention having cast another strike against musicians, and the next thing I knew, I was texting Jonathan from JFK, having spent the entire flight back home thinking about degrading sexual acts I had been cheated out of by a shih tzu mix. I asked Jonathan if he was around later. My intention was not “Maybe I was wrong about this guy.” It was “If I don’t get laid tonight, I will kill myself.”
JONATHAN TEXTED
back. He said he was cleaning but that I could come over, and I said I’d bring my copy of the
Free to Be . . . You and Me
special, on the off-chance he was up for some ’70s kids’ TV, which, by now, I meant as a euphemism. I cabbed over to his place and we hung out in his kitchen listening to records. He offered me ravioli and pot from the stashbox where he kept his coke and rolling papers, while he told me about his son.
The custody proceedings in the past week had gotten ugly, he said, and he was heartbroken about it. I asked him about her. He told me they went out for three months, but that “she was never his girlfriend.” After he broke up with her, according to Jonathan, she told him that she was pregnant. He thought she was on the Pill. He called her crazy, a sociopath; getting pregnant so he wouldn’t leave her, like that’s ever happened before in the history of time. He left anyway, and she ended up having his son and taking the baby with her to Europe, where they spell “neighbor” with a “u.”
I listened carefully to Jonathan’s story so I could draw my own conclusions. I wondered if that girl wasn’t crazy, just dumb and reckless. I felt bad for her if she thought a baby could act as Maturity Miracle-Gro on a man who dated her for months but still kept it casual. But I felt bad for Jonathan, too. His situation was a symptom of a life lived dreamily, while reality charged on. He was sideswiped by this woman’s actions; what he thought was her agenda. His idea of plans, after all, was strolling around his neighborhood saying hello to people who sold cheese and grew tulips. He was in over his head with that woman, and maybe that’s why he dated girls like me, ten years his junior. I remember Collette telling me how his songs were about longing and loss. It made sense that the love of Jonathan’s life, this little boy with yellow hair, lived halfway across the world.
Jonathan made sure to use a condom with me that night, on his son’s bed.
I DIDN’T
hear from him for three weeks after we slept together, which was more annoying once I realized I’d left the cute new earrings I bought in Chicago and my
Free to Be . . .You and Me
DVD at his apartment. I felt like a fool when I thought about his baby mama. About his dull songs. But above all, I was just bitter from the experience of spending the night with a guy who wasn’t breaking down my door for seconds. I knew I was making a mistake when I agreed to go out with Jonathan, I just wanted it to be a fun mistake. And now I felt bad, and I felt bad for feeling bad, too, because I knew he was a flake from the start.
If he didn’t have my stuff, I wouldn’t have gotten in touch with him. The whole thing would have vaporized and I would’ve told myself not to date a musician again. And maybe I would have anyway, but as it turns out, I haven’t. Either way, I knew that he wasn’t going to call; I was waiting for the Great Pumpkin to give me back my earrings. I decided to end it that night, if only for the sake of getting my stuff back.
I sent Jonathan a curt text on my way to the L train, telling him I’d be in his neighborhood later. In the meantime, I had drinks with a friend at a bar on Lorimer, and finally heard back from him five hours after I told him I wanted my stuff.
“hi julie. so sorry i’ve been out of touch. things have been crazy. the other thing is that i’ve started seeing somebody. anyway, i have your stuff, just let me know where i can drop it off, xo jonathan.”
I got so angry. How did this happen? I wasn’t some groupie. He approached
me
. I may not have been as dumb as the girl who let him knock her up, but I was still a moron, proceeding with something that had “Warning—Don’t” all over it. I felt myself get jealous, not of the girl he was now “seeing,” but of him, for having so many suckers to breeze through at his princely leisure. I was mad at him for being so lame and mad at myself for getting myself into what was now an awkward mess, with feelings and everything. Even though I saw right through this clown, I still managed to get hurt. It wasn’t fair.
I ignored more texts from Jonathan asking me the exact address of the bar where I told him I was, one saying he Googled it, never mind, and one chirping “on the way!” Then I saw him enter the place, holding a shopping bag. He saw me sitting with my friend, and slid into the booth next to us. The awkwardness was palpable. Why did he sit down? Did he really think this was an opportunity to socialize and make nice? Catch up? Chat? Flirt? Just like he thought I lived near him: did he honestly assume that I was as low-key, as lowercase, as he was, about what had happened? That we’d be
friends
now? I guess my policy about who I’m friends with is stricter than the one about who I sleep with, because I can’t be friends with somebody unless I actually like them.
He said hi, like a cheerful idiot who didn’t know there was something wrong, and gave me the shopping bag with my stuff in it. I thanked him absently and stared at my drink, hoping he’d get the hint to go and fuck off. Then there was a long, obscene silent pause: the kind that makes Jewish girls wish somebody was scratching a blackboard instead, just to fill the space.
“So,” Jonathan said, turning to me, grinning like a golden boy. “What are you doin’?”
I took in a sharp breath. “Having a
drink
,” I said, answering the world’s stupidest question.
My friend smiled nervously and looked down at the floor. Jonathan took a moment to add it up. Nobody was looking at the star of The Jonathan Show. He noticed for the first time that I was glaring down at my drink and not at him. He saw my friend blushing and cringing. And, I like to think, maybe he saw that he made a mistake of his own, thinking his charm would let him weasel out unscathed from what had become an uncomfortable affair.
After a few more pregnant seconds, Jonathan silently got up from the booth and skulked out of the bar into the night.
I took out my DVD and put on my earrings. I crumpled up the shopping bag he used to carry them, and then I finished my Diet Coke.
so you want to date a musician
A
t some point, learning how to play the guitar, for men, has become a rite of passage in line with shooting a deer, or losing your virginity to a prostitute on your dad’s dime. It’s what guys learn how to do so they can get laid—because it works. Ask that guy from the Counting Crows! He’s awful and he’s
still
always knee-deep in muff.
Meanwhile, crushing on musicians is a phase most straight girls go through, and some never get over. My rock-star phase lasted through high school and college. I saw a ton of live shows, and when the singer was cute enough, I hit on that moldy observation that the expression on a guy’s face when he’s playing guitar is similar to the one on his face when he’s totally doing you. But it’s harder to date a musician in real life than it is to pretend that a good-looking guy is getting off from sex with you, instead of just trying to remember how the bridge goes. Here are a couple of things you need to know if you want to go out with a guy who plays music.
First of all, you have to remember that you’ll never be able to compete with his bandmates. Remember all that “Yoko” mythology? How these four beautiful boys—even Ringo, if he was lit correctly in 1967—supposedly lived harmoniously and created silky sounds until one of them dared love a woman who made
conceptual art
? What a dumb bit of cultural detritus—that Yoko broke up the Beatles—and, on top of it, what an offensive phrase: “My band
broke up
.” You can’t marry your band, even in Maine. But if you’re going to be a musician’s girlfriend, you have to know that your man will always love his bandmates in a way you can’t even touch, because they are the guys who help him create
music
. You can only help him create a living human being, with your dumb uterus.
The other thing you should get used to if you’re involved with a musician is that you’re expected to go to every gig of his that you can. And he could have a show at times of the week during which no sensible human being would leave her apartment. Even Sunday night, which everybody knows is for Chinese food and HBO. It is not for putting on stockings and makeup so you can watch four people you’d have nothing to say to individually over dinner slam out eight songs after making you wait for an hour while they set up equipment.
So much about live rock shows is insufferably boring. The unfunny patter. The awkward dancing the singer will do to “get into it” even though sometimes there are more people onstage than in the crowd. The standing around. The expensive drinks. The sound of it all being so loud that you can’t chat with the poor friend you dragged along to see them. All you can do is stand and watch the band play, which doesn’t even make sense because there’s nothing to
watch
. It’s not Laser Floyd, and there is usually no choreography.