Occasionally D. will mention in a sort of ain’t-it-funny kind of way the life I led back in the music days. Who I rolled around with, rubbed up against, etc., and while he’s bringing it up more as a what-a-life, please-to-celebrate moment, I have feelings about it. Complicated feelings that activate from a way-back, tucked-in place of shame around all sorts of judgments to do with sexuality and freedom. That’s not altogether the dominant feeling. I also have pride for what I accomplished and how I accomplished it in a world that was clearly defined as a man’s, man’s, man’s world. But also … feelings of discomfort as old as time and equally as gendered. Danyel Smith wrote an insightful, incredibly honest article a couple of weeks ago about this very thing, “I Knew Diddy for Years. What I Now Remember Haunts Me. (Gift link here.) What I felt reading that article was not new. For the longest time, I’ve wondered why certain swathes of my life in the industry are fuzzy at best, disappeared at most. It’s not because I feel there are buried memories, given I can call up quite clearly the times I was predated upon, a collection of gropes and unwanted kisses that come into my mind sharply. When I think of them, a flush of chiding for not stepping out of the way or standing my ground with a NO or a WTF slap-back does cover me like itchy mohair. I remember instead that in those times I wished for invisiblility, wanted to be an ice statue that might melt under the heat of my discomfort. I’d talk myself into making this discomfort part of a story that in future would be included in an adventure collection. In short, I disassociated while telling myself it would all make a great story.

When I think about when I met D and how I constructed those stories in the retelling, I’d been well out of the business for over a decade with the portion in between my last days at the record company and the first night I met him having been filled with a marriage where I tried to retreat altogether from the life I’d known, pretty much cutting off friends from music days, refusing to go see bands or listen to music, and going a bit regressive in a let’s-play-house in Brooklyn way, where I’d cook&clean and generally play the role of wife. Until the next chapter where I became a divorcée in the city taking pole dancing classes and finding connection with a group of fierce females celebrating their cracks right alongside me. I was constantly recasting myself in the story as I tried out narratives until I found a decent fit.

There was a basic LSpencer narrative thread running through. I’d constructed a lone wolf plot that had me convinced I didn’t need to be in romantic love although that kind of love was something I really wanted. When D stepped in, I’d been on my own for a good bit of time, which was both a great learning curve and also a fantastic place to hide given I wasn’t really in the habit of challenging myself to investigate the judgment monster I’d locked up in the closet growling about shame and how I hadn’t done enough to raise my voice during those years. How I’d slept with too many people, done too many shots, inhaled too many lines, ignored too many transgressions. That I was bad and complicit. Naturally, that monster was breathing out a toxic cloud event that needed to be kept firmly away from my new-start airspace. But wait, there was also a little mouse in there who was goodness, light, and empathy. Unfortunatley, it didn’t stand a chance. Sure, at times, I’d peek into the closet when the ruckus got too loud. But then I’d shut it tight. T’was my choice to do so. No one was asking about anything.

When D&I began to know each other, it was up to me how much of my story I was going to tell, or rather how I was going to tell it. I told the tales of tours I’d been on and side-stages where I’d stood with some of the most creative music-makers of that day. Of spending a NY birthday with Pearl Jam, a Shea-stadium baseball game with EddieV., a Gronigen hash bar with JeffAment, Dublin adventures with Nirvana, Temple bar with DavidG., LES clubland with CourtneyL. (which included a bar brawl with a bouncer, because of course it did), London shoe shopping with KimG., and on&on. I love those stories and they track a great narrative arc. They also filled a great amount of my living that didn’t include much personal investigation. It’s only recently occurred that at that time I loved tending to this intoxicating scene more than to my creativity. I happily handed over the storytelling power to others, choosing to enter their sparkling, exciting, effed-up people spaces rather than seeking out my own to write about the things I felt while I was there. I wasn’t so much interested in finding out what I thought about these moments as I was at making sure I could still be invited in. I did still write though. It was my job. But the stories were travelogues about other people’s high-point moments. I’m not being too critical of that given that’s actually what entertainment journalism usually is. I was neither better or worse at it than anyone else. It’s just that I now realize how I didn’t yet believe in putting myself squarely in any story. So I rubbed the glitter all over myself and danced the night away, leaving the pen and paper to the side.

With time, therapy, age, the narrative of who I’ve been and who I am: the flaws, beauty, lumps, and bumps are there kicking out of the closet. Even though I’m not great at staying in the room when they enter, looking them in the eye, and having a conversation, I at least see the motley, interesting parade of them. Not yet comfortable with all that tumbling out of the closet causing things to break and fall to dust and make life messy. Logically, even emotionally, I know that mucking about in that mess and letting it all fall around me means something else, something more clear-eyed, can begin to take shape. Again, I know this in the frontal parts of my brain. Resistance on a deeper level still clutches me. But for sure, the goal that the stitch in my side comes from laughter rather than paralysis, the blush from happiness not shame is one I keep in mind. So when D asks during my favorite movie (Almost Famous) “isn’t Penny Lane a little like you?” Instead of feeling a certain way about the role of a woman with a band and how I’d ached to be somebody’s muse, I can instead channel a Daisy (& the Six) response, “I’m not a muse, I’m the somebody.”