Last week I wrote about shame of the personal sort, mine being money. I heard from a lot of people who shared how they could relate. (And by-the-by, I love hearing from all you fine folks on any and all topics that land in these four corners, so thank you for that!) It occurred that although money was the thing the shame was woven around, the real guts of it, the innards if you will, has really to do with something much less tangible than bills or coinage you hold in your hands or 0s&1s that click through electronic accounts. So with that in mind, I’m digging a little deeper today to be more honest about who I was (still often am) around this particular shame.

In writing about the Pearl Jam Groningen experience, I wrote about how busy the band’s tour manager was keeping them on the road and doing their daily thing (his actual job), which meant me bothering him with my needs would be out of bounds. Two things about that: 1) considering my situation—that I didn’t have enough cash to get from the club to my hotel a mile-ish away or so—as an embarrassing problem to be kept a secret meant I didn’t ask for his help, thereby watching the taillights of the tour bus pull away while I smiled tightly and waved into the dark, then walked really fast and not a little nervously through a city I didn’t know. If I’d told him I’d needed his help, I have no doubt he would have offered it so we could have found a solution. Because he was an aces fellow like that. Thing two: if I hadn’t felt shame around my finances, I would have called the record company to straighten out the problem with the hotel bill as soon as I’d become aware of it. But because I didn’t want them to think I was a pain in the ass who couldn’t cover the cost, then get reimbursed later, I did not make that call. Which meant I wrote a check against an account that didn’t have any money in it. And because we were all living in a time without WorldWideWebs, my piece of paper was just a slip of something that wouldn’t be known to be useless until Monday morning when the banks opened and I’d be back in NYC. But the larger point in these examples was that I consistently played myself small. The core being: It’s money, you fool, of course you’re messing it up (now put that inner dialogue on a loop). Naturally when I got home and told two fellow (guy) editors what had happened, they were baffled. Said stuff like: “Why didn’t you call the record company to straighten it out?” and “Shit, man, you should have called me, I could have wired you the money. Probably.” In fact, none of that had even occurred to me. My monkey, my circus, my madness and shame.

Sometimes the layer of denial around how to be inside of that circus made me mad and I would become a very tiny-aged person who wanted something no matter what it took. In my mind, at the time, I’d justify it as Well this will make a good story someday and actually, the one I’m about to tell did become a pretty inciting incident in my first novel, where, because it’s fiction, I spun it for more drama. Suffice to say it turned out less well for the fictional me. In actuality, while it didn’t turn out well in a make-wise-choices kind of way, when I’m honest, I’m glad I did it. Of course, this is retrospect.

It was the end of June 1992. The New Music Seminar was going on in NYC and I was scheduled to speak on a panel about—educated guess-memory here—the state of grunge music because that was what I was usually invited to talk about on panels. Like so much about the music industry, this was an unpaid thing. More for profile than money. Although I came to realize from others that the doing of these things often became monetized by way of raises. But I was far from thinking like that back then. So there I was in a hotel room with a bunch of friends visiting for the conference and I mentioned that I’d gotten a phone call from those crazy kids in Nirvana that I should come over for their show that very weekend in Dublin where they were playing with the Breeders and Teenage Fanclub. It was the band’s first show in months. Wouldn’t it be fun, they asked, if you came over and joined us? Of course, it would be. And yes, I wanted to. But, well, the magazine wasn’t going to pay for it because in no universe was a show review worth the price of a ticket from NYC to Dublin. And plus, I was speaking on a panel the next day. So, no. Have a great show guys, and look forward to hearing all about it. And that, I thought, was that.

Except for the people in the room decided no that wasn’t it and that I should go. You obviously want to, they said. And they weren’t lying. Then we did some (probably tequila) shots and the idea itched and scratched around inside my cranium. How would it work if I decided to go? I thought. Then I said that out loud. How would it work? Someone said, “Charge it on a card.” “No room on my card,” I admitted (drunkenly? quietly? defiantly?). “Well write a check,” said another. “It’ll bounce,” I said (quietly? embarrassedly? avoidantly?) “Yeah, but it’s Saturday. When you get back, you can work it out.” (Side note: the amount of worthless paper floating around back then disguised as money and calling itself a check is bananas to think about now.) And so I called an airline just for giggles. Just to see. I found out there was a flight to Dublin leaving in a few hours. I asked if I could write a check and when they said they preferred credit cards, I said mine had been stolen. What happened in between then and getting to the airport is fuzzy—I assume I went home, stuffed some clothes into my purse, got my passport, and was taken by one of my friends with a car to the airport. Stepping up to the airline’s ticket counter, I remember adrenaline. The lovely woman behind the counter found my reservation, expressed sadness about my losing my credit cards, hoped I hadn’t been hurt in the incident. I nodded and became the person she thought I was and embraced the story she was telling me…about me. I’d been mugged, was writing a check, needed to get to Dublin for a …thing, a special thing. The out-of-body-ness of it, the this-is-actually-working stirred in with the guilt and stubborn defiance I do remember. I became someone who wanted what I wanted no matter how. Cloaked it in the story that money was a bullshit corporate contrivance. Why should not having it stop me from experiencing things? Did I wonder about how I was breaking the law? That because I was a woman of a certain color that it was unlikely I’d go to jail for this? No, I did not think about that. Did I instead double-down on my want? Absolutely. Plus all my friends wanted this for me as well. Hadn’t we all come up with this batshit alternative together? As if we were fighting the man and taking what was ours in the process. The tale end of the go-go economy (remember that?). But it wasn’t really that grand or punk rock. I wasn’t Abbie Hoffman making a stand, I was a girl sliding a worthless piece of paper across an airline counter, then getting on a plane overseas with only $20 who wanted to see a band and be with her famous friends.

So I did that. And, oh, small point. The band didn’t know I was coming. For some reason it had seemed like a good idea to surprise them, which, while turning my last 20 dollars into Irish sterling at the Dublin airport for the taxi, suddenly seemed like a very bad idea. Also, one of my fellow SPIN editors was showing up to be me at the panel in NYC, which also at the time had just seemed a hilariously good idea, but now in the furry light of an Irish morning seemed career suicide. I got to the hotel. The band had not changed their alias check-in names. I found them. I had a very good time: soundcheck, glimpses of a city I’d never been in, hijinks in the commissary, watching the Breeders and Teenage Fanclub, taking in energy from the audience, standing side stage during Nirvana’s power-fueled show, diving headlong and losing even more of myself in the music and mayhem that was being passed back and forth between band and crowd, meeting some of the fans at the hotel and hearing about their dreams, going to a hotel bar in Dublin owned by U2’s Bono and the Edge (maybe they were there), then going to the airport the next morning for my flight home. Even though I’d expected an excuse-me-Miss-come-with-us, hand on my shoulder at the terminal, my bounced check hadn’t yet been caught. By the time I walked into my apartment five hours later, it had. A message was on my machine from a man with a thick brogue and very clear directions to call him directly. Then when I walked into the Spin offices the next day, Bob the boss yelled at me for missing work on Monday without calling. And the schedulers at the New Music Seminar had been very unhappy with my bait and switch panel decision. And no, I didn’t even ask the SPIN accountant if the magazine would pay for my flight to Dublin. Instead, every month I sent a little bit of money to slowly knock down the bill. I couldn’t ever afford to send whatever chunk I was, but I’d also decided I couldn’t have afforded to not have gone.

It would be a few years before I’d realize that there wasn’t a helluva lot of romance around poverty and debt. That I wouldn’t often find any simpatico partners in skint-ness who would laugh with me about having a dollar in the bank. Maybe I started running with another crowd, but I instead stopped talking about money and me. I fashioned a shiny shame shield and over the years I used it to cover my beyond-means living. Eventually, I did learn how to express myself around the almighty dosh, probably more out of fatigue at the stress shooting too much cortisol through me. I began to ask a little more regularly for what I needed even though I didn’t get it as often as I wanted (I’m looking at you music publishers and yearly raises). And after every No, I had to work hard to not roll up in a ball and take it as confirmation that I didn’t deserve it. I also started to learn the difference between a crazy impulse that needed tending to now and a crazy desire that might just take a minute.

And about that Nirvana show at the Point in Dublin on June 21, 1992: It was a time of flying high on the people’s energy, everyone singing along, watching Kim and Kelley Deal, whose band The Breeders were one of my favorites and submerging myself in life with all its terrors and triumphs. And for a while, standing there in the magic of it, I forgot about the mess that I knew would be waiting when I stepped outside the circle. Started spinning the story as success even as deep-down I’d colored it in deprivation. The two coexisting. And that’s just life. Paying for it. No shame in that.

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