When I was 24 years old, I was a junior business partner with my Uncle in Silver Spring, MD. It had been a year since my college girlfriend broke up with me, and even though I spent a very promiscuous eight months in Tempe, AZ, the pain of that loss just would not go away.
Now that it’s almost 30 years later, it seems obvious why that was. It was a very deep hurt and a profound loss and I remember trying so hard to cry. Emotionally, it felt like I ate bad eggs and couldn’t puke. I stared at lights, I made myself imagine her having sex (and really enjoying herself) with guys I couldn’t stand–but it just would not happen. As you might imagine, the blindness I suffered from staring into lights subsided after several minutes, but the other thing was like eating six more rotten eggs. Raw. Like Rocky.
Oh–editor’s note: when a boy is 14 years old, and you are a parent, and you outweigh them by at least 300 lbs, it’s probably not a good idea to scream, “STOP CRYING! YOU”RE A BOY, DAMN IT!” It’s almost impossible to say for sure, but they may find themselves 2000 miles from home, emotionally constipated and staring at fluorescent lights.
Now my uncle was an enigma to me at that age. Since I was a baby, he’d come to the house and always make the funniest jokes I had ever heard. My dad was always somber and monosyllabic and my uncle was the polar opposite. He could make my mom laugh so hard, she’d have trouble breathing. So when the idea to go into business with him was brought up, it felt like a no-brainer. I was miserable and this appeared to be just the thing to restore my will to live.
It only took about 72 hours to learn that there was another side to my uncle that was unbearable. He’d fly off the handle and call me the most horrific names. I managed to make it to 24 years old without once being verbally abused so gratuitously. The fact that he was an adult who I loved all my life made it torturous. The combination of what was living in my head from the break-up and this new business arrangement was way too much. I took the twenty five year old pickup truck he bought me and escaped back to New Paltz in the middle of the night.
To say that it caused a scandal in my family is putting it mildly. My uncle was livid. The thing was, he was always livid. So as far as I was concerned, I did what I had to do for my self preservation and he was granted the gift of having a really good thing to be mad about. In a weird way, it was a win/win.
Thirteen years later, when I learned my mother was dying, I flew to Florida to see her in the hospital. She only had a day or two left. As soon as I got to the waiting room in the ICU, good ol’ Uncle Forgive and Forget had to start making snide comments about the pickup truck and the way I left. I believe that is all I need to say about that.
But all of that is just back story and looking over the length of this thing, I am pretty sure that this will be the first article I’ve ever written that will have a “to be continued.”
As I drove up I-95 from Silver Spring to Jersey, the wheels began to spin in my head. I made a plan to sell the truck, get an apartment and a 4 track recorder, a mic, a reverb unit and write about fifteen of the best songs in the world. Every song would be dedicated to Ms.You Know Who.
With musicians being the greatest natural resource in New Paltz, it would not be too difficult to put a line up together. Especially if the songs were as good as I imagined they’d be.
I did manage to get some of the greatest players around and I think it had more to do with my drive and enthusiasm than the quality of the songs. I’m sure it helped to have good ones, but it was my desire that sold Chris, a bass player who just came back with a band who opened for The Ramones all summer (while my uncle was calling me a stupid asshole) and a lead guitarist named Fabrizio whose looks and charisma stood out more than his blues chops. They were nothing to sneeze at, either, but the ladies came to the shows because when you have a six foot skinny, blonde haired Uruguayan in your band, news travels fast.
Chris also talked the drummer from his touring band to play and, before long, I had a rhythm section comparable to no one else in town. I can’t stress enough the difference in professionalism between guys who get together with a six pack on Wednesday nights vs. guys who spent three months opening for The Ramones.
Within weeks, me and Chris became best friends. We did everything together but mostly we wrote and practiced our songs. When we weren’t doing that, we were listening to the multitrack recordings on constant repeat. People didn’t know what to make of it, but it made us super tight as a live band. Those songs were essentially tattooed into our skulls.
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👉🏻 Embedded in this article is one of those first songs called, “Paper.” I chose this one because it was essentially the explanation of everything. I was a writer of poetry, but poetry was never going to get my love back to me. I needed to do something a lot more drastic.
The trench coat and boombox thing had already been done, besides that always seemed kind of lame to me. I wanted to be what was coming out of the boombox. But it couldn’t be a ballad and it couldn’t be grunge. One is too ho hum and the other so loud, people will tune it out. It had to be dramatic and dynamic and passionate and visceral. I wanted her to walk in that club and be transfixed by what was happening on that stage. A catchy melody was not going to that. This song did. Please take a few minutes and listen.
Oh, and just a quick note: I was working at a hotel as an overnight clerk and after work I began to walk home. On this night, it began to snow as the sun was rising and I could feel something move in my heart. It was a feeling of wellbeing and knowing that I was going to get her back.
I sat on the bench in front of the library, letting the snow just fall on me and I opened my marble composition book and wrote these words—
Come back next week as the story unfolds
Paper
Everything seemed as safe as a pillow
To a weary head
Even as I passed the cemetery
There was no sense of the dead
A burning shot of light hit my chest and
Was about to burst
So spare me your sympathy
I’m just a boy blessed by my curse
Like a dog that’s been shot I am hiding cuz
There’s nobody left to confide in
Please someone come in and tell me where I can turn
Cuz I’m tired of writing on paper, paper that easily burns
The snow delicately covered the filth upon the street
And erased the place where I had met and accepted defeat
But the snow makes it clearer and I am beginning to see more
Like those who are defeated in battle usually win the war
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Song, vocals and acoustic by Billy Manas
Drums—Bob Parrillo
Bass-Chickenbutt (Chris Magistro)
Lead guitars—Joey Rose
YAY! I got to listen to it. Thanks for pointing out the button to press.
This is right up my alley