(the box broke out into a slightly oversize container)

Don’t we all have things deep, deep inside that, when they knock on the soul, they flush the system with a sense of cringe? Might call it shame. That cagey cousin of the Fear family (BTW she and he have amazing things to say about that clan).

A friend’s was around being messy. Especially when it came to her apartment. Although she wanted a romantic relationship, she felt she could never invite anyone over because they’d take one look at her place and flee or if she was at theirs, she’d bring her cloud of chaos with her. Mine was/is around money. Not having it. Mismanaging it. General lack of control around. Which in essence is what I think all shame is about: how to get our arms around something that brings big and unruly emotions that want looking at, talking to, understanding. But damn, Skippy, that takes some work and bravery to invite that thing out for a chat.

When I decided that writing was what I wanted to do with my lifetime, I chose journalism because it seemed a more guaranteed way to get a regular paycheck. Yet truth was, and as everyone told me, there was no real money in journalism, it was just slightly more stable than getting an MFA and trying to get a novel sold. The fact I loved music made the choice of working at Rolling Stone and Spin an easy one though. And absotively I never expected to get rich in dollars and cents doing it (spoiler alert: I didn’t).

I had this cockamamie idea that as long as my annual salary matched my age, all was well…absurdity and delusion. So my years at Spin spanned from thirty-one to thirty-four and I didn’t ever hit the high number while I was there (got to around 33,000). But I did often think how romantic it was to drink really extremely cheap wine and use dollar-store shampoo for bubble bath. As if I was gaming the system and finding luxury in an affordable way. What wasn’t at all romantic: the bill collector messages piling up on my answering machine as I drank wine in the bathtub. It would get extra dodgy when I’d find myself in a situation where I’d stress myself sick wondering if a credit card would go through so I could pay for a band dinner during an interview. Sometimes the answer was no and I’d have to call someone—most often a fellow Spin journalist who knew the drill—to come foot the bill. And my shame cave would grow deeper and colder. You’d think as a working journalist for a music magazine there would be a corporate card. You’d be wrong, at least in the case of Spin. After one of the more Hunter S. Thompson-esque writers had abused the concept by charging up huge sums on inflatable sex dolls and vintage bottles of wine, all delivered to his apartment and claimed on his expenses as “story research,” the magazine’s brief excursion into corporate card land saw its borders shut down. Instead, writers would charge expenses to their own credit cards, then be reimbursed. The problem was that we didn’t get paid enough to sustain that but, and here’s where shame made an entrance, no one, or okay more specifically me, didn’t want to admit that. So I carried on going into overdraft at the bank, being charged late fees on credit cards, not paying bills in lieu of having cash. My workmates and I also knew the finer points of saying yes to all record company lunches, dinners, and parties where ordering extra and loading the food into to-go containers or swiping off catering tables was a well-practiced activity. Artful Dodgers dressed up in careerist rock’n’roll gear. Record companies also footed the bill for junkets, sending a writer to wherever one of their artists or bands happened to be in order to get coverage for a just-released album or tour.

It was always wink-wink around whether, after the trip was done, you’d choose to write something favorable about your experience. But if you wanted to be on the good side of that record company or publicist or band or artist, there was usually a fair amount of pay-for-play going on. (An aside: Rolling Stone rarely accepted record company junket offers, thereby retaining some journalistic integrity. But they were more flush than Spin, so….ya know.) It was on one of these overseas junkets with Pearl Jam that money, shame, and questionable resourcefulness collided. I’d pitched a story (can see on p.50 here) on the band, whose major-label debut Ten was becoming massively popular, wherein I’d travel on the bus with them for a few dates in Europe while also taking Polaroids for the piece. This last bit of picture taking had been inspired by singer Eddie Vedder’s habit of snapping photos of the audience from onstage. In essence, Spin was getting a two-fer given they wouldn’t have to hire a photographer. The record company would pay for the flight and hotel and all would be well.

Yet…somehow it wasn’t. In London, where we started, everything was hunky-dory. Accommodations, check. Credit card in working order for one round at a pub, check. Record company rep along for meals and such, check. Room service for solo times, check. Then we took a ferry over to the mainland where I would stay for one more show, then home. The band was playing in Groningen, a tiny, picturesque (naturally, there was a canal) town in Holland. Because this tour had been booked before the album’s release, all the clubs Pearl Jam played in were slightly too small, which added to the mayhem both inside and out. Eric Johnson, the band’s tour manager, had his hands full making sure the guys weren’t swarmed (literally) by fans pre and post show. As an example: In London, Eddie had walked into Hyde Park after their performance to get closer to the fans as he was always interested in doing. Eric had been forced to wade in five circles of humanity deep and drag him onto the bus so we’d make the ferry on time. I imagine he had him by the ear. In Groningen, Eddie and I had decided to check out a local cemetery in the tour bus before the show, but no one had told Eric, so with go-time approaching he was … well… stressed. This was the kind of busy the man had to be always. He was in charge of these guys, both individually and as a whole. They were a commodity the record company expected him to keep safe and sound. I was very well aware of that, so when it turned out something had gone wrong with the record company booking my hotel and my credit card was unusable, nor did I have any ready cash, I felt literally untethered and terrified. (This was at a time when international ATMs were just not part of my world. Traveler’s Checks. They were an actual thing. And Karl Malden commercials…classic.)

But I didn’t say anything. I pretended all was cool, even after I’d asked if they could give me a ride on the bus back to the hotel (no money for taxi) and Eric said Sorry, we’re heading out of town in the other direction. The cold sweat colliding with the hot stone sinking in my stomach as I watched the bus pull away kicked in and autopilot was the thing that got me walking toward my lodging. Why didn’t I find someone from the club and ask if anyone was going that direction? Because I was embarrassed. I had shame. My overriding moment was How could I have gotten myself in this situation? Maybe the walk took twenty minutes, maybe an hour, I’ve no memory of specifics, but I do know I was freaked out on a couple of levels. It seemed stupid to be walking alone in the middle of the night, even somewhere as picturesque as this town in Holland because I watched Twin Peaks, I knew there were weird people everywhere. And also I wasn’t sure how I was going to check out of the hotel and get to the airport the next day. Even now, thirty-plus years later, I can touch the flush of embarrassment, worry, and self-recrimination I felt during that moment in particular and that time in my life as a whole.

I made it home. I wrote a check for the accommodations (the Dutch are very trusting. The check bounced). There was a free airport shuttle from the hotel. By the time the plane had touched down in New York and I’d used a bus ticket into Manhattan I’d smartly bought round-trip before I’d left, I chalked the whole money thing up to a rock’n’roll, starving artist, romantic adventure story. But my stress levels always told a different story. And I’d never admit just how broke I was. After leaving the music-magazine industry, after having a well-paying job and spending literally every cent to keep up and go out with other well-paid New Yorkers, after leaving music altogether and realizing I was a bona-fide adult, someone who in the olden days would have been dead already at 45, I still struggled with money. And hid it. As if it was a worry stone I’d rub always.

Over the last decade, I’ve managed to pull myself out of the spiral and feel safer, yet the sense of spinning down again is never too far under my skin. The difference: digging into where that shame lives, paying some attention to it and recognizing I’ve just made up so many stories around what others will think if they really knew my relationship with money, well, it all falls apart when I yank it out of the shame cave and stare it down. There are issues for sure, but the learning curve rollercoaster is a lot more manageable when I keep my eyes open.

Funnily enough, it’s been pointed out that some of the things I gathered over time, like the Danny Clinch photo above and the limited edition t-shirts and the like could be worth some money on the open market. But really, the stories they remind me of are not of shame but of joy, so no amount of money needs exchanging there. The shame comes from somewhere altogether different. The memories are the things that shine.