I wrestled with this post for a long time. Like, a really long time. It’s funny, a lot of what I put up here over the last several years has been intensely personal. And it’s never bothered me.
But there’s a line that I have never crossed. I’m not exactly sure where the line exists, or in what form, but it’s there, somewhere, and I’ve been very careful not to cross it. At least in my mind.
I went back and forth in the last day or two about if I even wanted to do this. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed to this point, although I think with where my life is currently, and where it may well be going in the not-too-distant future, this may be my last rodeo for a while. Maybe ever.
And that’s kind of what got me to this moment in time and the above thoughts. As I type this out I’m 35,000 feet over, I don’t know, Ohio? Pennsylvania? I’m between Chicago and Washington DC. The Great Vincenzo and I are traveling to DC to meet up with Dave and the Pink Heals tour.
Regular readers know I’ve documented my time on tour here for the last several years. I’ve had a lot of fun on tour and I’ve had at least as much fun at whatever keyboards were at my disposal putting my thoughts, such as they are, onto the Interwebz for my dedicated followers.
Both of you.
But things are different this time. I’ve struggled with a reality that I heretofore had never faced. And it’s been, I think, a contributing factor in my less than normal enthusiasm for this time out on tour.
The pirate and I divorced last year.
Let me just go on the record here and say, I own this one.
Sure, I know, it takes two to tango and whatever other cliché you want to use, but, in retrospect, I did a terrible job at being a good husband. This caused me to do a fair bit of self-assessment in the last year or so. I thought about many of the things we talked about in the time leading up to the end of our marriage. And I thought about my response (or lack of same) to those talks. And how I failed to make our life together a success.
I feel like one of the reasons was I had a really hard time going all in on marriage. All of them. I found it easy to be on tour, because we had many short, almost hit and run like relationships with the people we met rather than one long in-depth relationship. So I could get a warm fuzzy moment and not be around for any of the hard stuff. The stuff the people we meet are forced to deal with.
The stuff I was unable to deal with in real life. And no, she’s not sick. At least not to my knowledge. I’m talking about the stuff most married couples deal with and figure out on a daily basis. The late, great Red Smith once said about writing (I’ll paraphrase here) that it was easy, all you had to do was sit down at the typewriter and open up a vein. I’ve occasionally been able to do that here.
I was never able to do that in, really, any of my marriages…
I will not say a bad word about the pirate. Ever. She will remain one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever known and my time with her made me a better person.
But not good enough.
I think I’m also often not a very good friend. To many different people, and in many different ways, I’ve looked at my relationships over the years and found myself lacking in a few things friendwise. I think I’ve made a little progress on that front, but I still have a long ways to go.
Baby steps.
Geez Louise do I know how to bring a room down or what?
So let me tell you about the Great Vincenzo. Chicks dig him.
Just ask him. Vin and I were partners at the firehouse for 8 years. In fact, he’s probably my most successful relationship.
But I digress…
At any rate, We’re now in DC (well, Alexandria, VA if you want to pick nits) and we have not much to do today. Jaime left for Jacksonville this morning and Dave is taking Lisa to the airport this afternoon. I think we have to get the bus today, but that’s about it. Sounds like the next two days will be in Emmitsburg, MD then two stops in OH (IO) before we head (if you don’t get that, you needn’t ask) to Illinois for a couple weeks. Jaime gave us the lowdown on the fleet and now we’re left to our own devices…
The Great One was still asleep when I got up so I wandered a few blocks away to a lovely little coffee shop- Misha’s -for a little free Wifi and some nectar of the Gods (yay coffee!) to finish up this little gem of a post.
A few words now about Vinnie, cause he saw me working on this on the plane last night and asked if it was all about him and if there’s nothing about him I’ll never hear the end of it and we’re going to be traveling together for the next little bit and I don’t want to continue listening to, well, you get the picture, right?
btw that last paragraph is meant to be read progressively faster as you go.
Try it.
Go on, it’s ok.
I can wait…
…
…
Any way, I’ll wrap up and introduce The Great Vincenzo this way. I have so many stories about working with Vin, but most I choose to keep out of this forum cause if you’re not familiar with us or what we do, they can easily get taken out of context and I don’t want that to happen. So I’ll try this one-
We were leaving an assisted living high-rise residence one day, we had gone to pick up a little old lady that had fallen. She wasn’t hurt; she didn’t need or want to go to the hospital, so we helped her regain verticality and went on our merry way. As we were leaving we saw one of the other residents, a woman in her late 70’s, making her way to the lobby in her motorized scooter. We said “hi” to her (she was a semi-regular of ours) and Vin, not being one to leave well enough alone, proceeded to make a flirty comment to her. Her reply was something along the lines of-
“C’mon upstairs with me honey, I’ll teach you a thing or two.”
I thought I was going to lose bladder control. It was then, and remains to this day, one of the few times I’ve seen him flustered to the point he had no come back.
Peace.
Wait, one more thing- Can anyone tell me if caffeine causes an infatuation with the hyphen?
I'm asking for a friend-
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