Drinking with the Band

I meet you 
at my brother's show. 
I say, "I think you're terribly attractive." 
You say, "The feeling is mutual." 

You show up on our first date with a
single rose. It is Valentine's Day. 
But the main part is, you show up. 

You are my first 
real, grown-up boyfriend. 
Like the first one I can see 
myself settling down with. 
I hope you are the last. 
Like forever, like a princess movie. 

How naive I am at twenty-three. 

I love almost every 
minute we spend together, 
driving around in your old Chevrolet, 
watching you dance and play basslines onstage. 

I love our Sunday lunch dates 
at Bob Evans, drinking coffee, smoking, 
reading the paper. You make me feel alive 
and stable. Like an adventurous adult. 

The day we park in the abandoned Red 
Lobster lot and climb into the back seat. 

You own a house, and you have cats. 
My red-headed friend says, 
"There's something to be said 
about a man who has cats." 
At night I say, "Can I keep you?" 

I am not very good at communicating. 
But I am good at listening. 

I run our charts. 
You are Leo Moon, Pisces Sun 
and I am Pisces Moon, Leo Sun; 
I am masculine, you feminine, 
our stars. We are exact opposites. 
I think we are Meant to Be. 

You tell me being a Pisces that you can feel 
everyone and everything in the room 
which sounds 
exhausting. 

Most of the time, I only 
show you my Leo, 
because the Pisces part of me 
is so meek. 

I walk into the bar 
where you play in the band 
with my brother 
with my girls and we pretend 
like we are Madonna and her friends 
the hottest girls in the place. 
We prance in
straight to the bartender. 

I can't feel anything 
I remember too much. 

I love the last apartment we live in 
with the chairs out back 
and the sliding glass door. 
The trees out back look like lovers, 
branches entwined like their trunks long to touch. 

It is dark 
all of the time we 
live together. Are we only 
up at night? 

Your mother takes my chin at Christmas and says, 
"I want a baby from this one." 

You would have made a great father. 

But suddenly 
all of the other guys 
in the band 
are cheating 
on their girlfriends, 
who are my friends. 
Except for you? 
Except for me? 
I don't believe it. 

I call you one day while you're 
on the road and all I can hear are 
unfamiliar girls' voices 
giggling 
in the background. 

You're traveling farther 
and longer away 
and you want 
a record deal 
to make it big
and I am never 
going to get used to 
all of these girls. 
And I can't give you 
and ultimatum. 
I feel like I have to 

break up with the band. 

I lie to you. 
We stand in our living room 
by the stairs. You say, "Is it the band?" 
and I say, "No." 
I can't ask you to leave 
your dream. 
So I ask you to leave 
me. 

I run 

like facing 
on oncoming motorcycle. 
I grab it by the handlebars 
stop it, straddle the front tire, 
use all of my power to steer it into reverse. 
     That's how it feels 
to push you 
away. 
     I hate every minute of it. 
I pick up my bags 
and keep going. I've already met 
my future ex-fiance 
     
     like a cool rainstorm turns 
into a hurricane. 

     After you leave
and I throw him out 
I have a dream so real with you in it, 
I can smell your cologne. 

You wear a white tee shirt and when I wake 
and you aren't there, 
only your cats, I fall back into 
crying myself to sleep. 
It's a really bad time.

I suppose you could call it a rebound
gone awry. Trying to avoid 
the real feelings. Which I know now 
is the nature of these things. 

By then it is physical, the pain 
and less tangible. It's the only time 
I ever think a human is the devil. 
I am legally stoned. I don't see another 
choice. 

In the waiting room 
I pick up the Rolling Stone. 
The gonzo reporter has just put a 
shotgun in his mouth and pulled. 

The girl next to me wants to talk. 
She says, "I'm just not maternal." 
I do not want to talk. 

There are so many girls coming in 
and out of there, which should 
make you feel better, but it doesn't. 
It's a really bad time 

for a doctor to show any interest--
but how could she know 
I am shattered
from the inside out 
and alone from every angle. 

There's this scene in The Tavern. 
We're drinking cheap draft beer 
with lime wedges, playing the juke box 
next to the dart board 
and Carrie is drawing a picture 
of a lotus flower 
on a napkin. 

She says, "I just have a thing 
for Irish men." (I know you don't 
want to hear all of this). 
But I should back down 
right there and let her have him
and the hurricane 

of what will come but I am stubborn, 
goddess-of-the-hunting and I won't 
wish all of these consequences on her, 
or anybody else. 

By then you are gone. 

I am so lonely 
only surrounded by drinking 
"buddies." 

After all of that violent struggle 
I isolate, sorrow out 
in white merlot and mellow music 
vocal harmonies, my favorite band's 
least favorite experience: 
Jimmy Eat World, "Drugs or Me." 

I see a white hawk 
flying over the interstate 
and take it as a sign that I should move 
to the beach. 
I have a dream 
I am flying out of a certain 
peninsula. 
     (I don't know why 
I'm telling you all of this or 
what it means or if it matters except 
maybe the inside moon part of me 
feels everything, too.) 

You know I always wanted to sing 
harmonies and play drums, and maybe 
that's why I appreciate your mind so much. 
Leo moon, hazel eyes, Kind Pisces. 

The last thing I say that I regret: 
"Can I keep the couch?" 
I'm so sorry. 

I buy my first microphone without you. 
Blue conga drums come as a wedding gift 
from my kind husband. I play with my brother 
since there is no longer a band. But that is 
your story to tell, and not mine. 

The stage and the sound 
transform me, somehow 
into someone young again 
powerful, humble, yet bursting red-orange. 

I tell my brother about running into you. 
He says, "Whatever happened with you two?" 
I tell him, all of this. I tried to tell you 
all of this. 

He says, "You know, I always gave him a pass 
when we were on the road. I told him he could 
do whatever he wanted, and I wouldn't tell you." 

I say, "Thanks," and he says, "I'm sorry." 
Like he means it. 
"But he would never do anything," he says. 
"He would go off by himself when the rest of us 
started partying." 

I go back to you there sometimes 
to the late-night cigarette smokey apartment 
with the music rehearsals and the cats and 
my poetry afternoons, our lunches, our midnights, 
all of those full moons. 

And I say the things that will be
long still hidden, Leo,
Pisces-felt, but unseen. 

​Maybe it was the drinking 
maybe it was the band 
maybe it was just no longer  
Meant to Be.