Ravens Fly at Night

Soon it became quite clear that our aborted romantic encounter in Baltimore was now doomed to never again be repeated.

The New York show was a triumph, by any definition of the word. We played a one hour long set of our six best songs for a vocal crowd of ten thousand alternative music enthusiasts, who loved every moment of it. The promoter of the festival even had us do an encore (which was supposedly against the rules for any band to do). The festival merchandisers had sold every last copy of our 2nd run demo CD pressing even before we had left the stage and with our quick "ok" they rushed out to get more duplicated ASAP on their own dime and quickly sold most of those as well!

In the days that followed we had three offers for corporate worldwide distribution of our next CD and more merchandising deals than we could even count. We politely accepted all of the proposed contracts for our review, but refused to sign anything "until our lawyers" had been over them. No one actually knew any lawyers except for Erin, whose father was a hot shot corporate attorney. They were a bit estranged, but still on speaking terms with each other, and when she called he agreed to review all of the documents. Eventually with his invaluable help we did sign a few marketing deals that did make good financial sense for us.

The big problem was that our "band name" still kept evolving from show to show. We gave up and put to a vote of all of the band, roadies, cast and crew (and a room full of new friends). The winning vote ending up being "The Dark Ravens of Light" or DROoL as we began to laughingly call ourselves to each other. It was no ones favorite choice for a name, but it was nearly everyone's 2nd favorite one, and won purely on points. The actual name with the most #1 votes was "The Ravens Fly at Midnight"; not bad, but it reminded me too much of the terrible old Jack Benny movie about a bunch of hapless musician angels in heaven called "The Horn Blows at Midnight". Anyway, DROoL might have won the voting for external use, but we remained 'The Ravens' amongst ourselves.

I mentioned earlier that the tour had been originally scheduled to end in NY, but of course our manager Byron had other ideas. By the time he finished tweaking our schedule with last minute changes we still had another 60 shows to go. Next, was a night in Boston, and then three quick dates in upstate NY at Albany, Syracuse and then Buffalo. Mostly stops along the college music circuit.

No one was burned out yet by the road and everyone seemed in pretty high spirits... except for me. I was feeling "a bit low" and the deep pains of emotional loss seemed only to get worse for me as each day on the road passed without any sort of meaningful exchange between Erin and myself. I began to fear and suspect the worst, but just couldn't bring myself yet to confront the situation.

By Buffalo my fears were confirmed, the two women had indeed become lovers. It was obvious in the 100 different little things that lovers do. It was apparent in the way they looked at each other, the way they secretly held hands under the table at meals, and especially in the way that they deeply kissed after getting onto the motel elevator, apparently not seeing me behind them. I went back to the bar downstairs and had a beer, but didn't enjoy it much and left it still 2/3 full after about 20 minutes and went upstairs to their room to see if I could get Erin to speak with me at least. Instead, I could clearly hear the unmistakable sounds of female lovemaking on the other side of the door. Few of the words were distinguishable, I could once hear Erin's voice clearly say, "Oh yes, keep licking my clit just like that".

My worst fears confirmed, I no longer had anything left to fear or lose. I knocked on their door. A minute later, Faith answered the door, still adjusting her robe, her face and chin still wet with Erin's cunt juices. I asked if I could talk to Erin for just a few moments, and that I felt "it was important". Faith invited me into the room where Erin was still in bed, obviously still naked under the sheets. She pleaded that she was "tired" and they wanted to "get back to sleep".

"It can wait", she said with a tired and slightly annoyed look on her face. I turned and left without saying another word, but I think Faith could see that my heart was broken utterly in two at this final rejection and I left the shattered pieces in trail the long walk out of their room.

************

I don't remember much of the next month or so... really I don't.

The memory of doing the Midwest span of that tour rings absolutely no bells for me, and I couldn't even name five of the cities that we played in. I wasn't eating or sleeping well, and I started to become like Eric, becoming the last one to get on the stage and first to try and leave it. I stayed 100% of the travel time on the band truck now, usually driving in a state of zombie exhaustion until I had one "close-call" too many and Gus took my set of truck keys away from me. I took to "hiding" in a small unoccupied dark corner at the back of the truck where I could be by myself, to think and try and get a little rest, but I mostly just brooded instead.

It should have been so simple! I had waited for her to choose me and she instead selected someone else. Fini. Done. Get over it! But it wasn't that simple for me. I'd had lovers before, but this was the first time I'd ever really been "in love", and it hurt... badly. I felt as if I'd never be happy ever again.

In Cleveland, we picked up a new permanent member of our entourage, Pamela, who was a news editor for a local alternative newspaper. She took photos of everything, and banged out press releases on an antique portable typewriter and before we knew it we had an official "Fan Magazine". Later when we reached Portland she met another new fan of ours who was even better at photography than she was and he became our official photographer. They were happily married after a whirlwind romance by the time we left California a month later.

Erin, sensing the despondency I was now mired in, now tried to get me to me to speak with her, but I rebuffed all of her attempts by throwing "I'm tired - it can wait" repeatedly back into her face, and if her face now seemed to have more shadows around her eyes and occasionally looked red from tears, I never noticed it.

By Chicago, I was apparently openly muttering thoughts about quitting the band to the horror of everyone. Irv and Simon now seemed to be stuck to me like glue, one of them around me night and day following every move I made, as if I had become a loose cannon... and maybe I had. I started drinking a little more than usual, but I don't have the temperament to be a drunk, my "enough" switch always kept kicking in.

Irv especially kept trying to talk sense into me, "Erin's a lesbian and has been one for years, and so is Faith, for even longer. THEY'RE BOTH LESBIANS; of course they're now together. What did you honestly expect?" I could never quite get him to understand that I had expected Erin to remember that I cared deeply about her and wanted that golden lost opportunity in Baltimore back to prove to her that I could give her the all of the comforting love and care she needed, and maybe that could be enough for her, and then she could someday love me back in return... even if just a little. It would have been enough for me.

Irv just couldn't understand that, probably because he was now very much in love himself. In Chicago we had opened for a very popular all-girl local band for three nights in a row, and he had fallen head over heels for their bass player. The two of them tore up a hotel room together and were nearly inseparable thereafter.

Everyone else seemed to be finding some sort of love or comfort on the road, except me. In Syracuse, Simon had met a groupie that was a seamstress with an interest in Gothic and macabre costuming. She joined our caravan entourage and within a week they were a fixed couple sharing their lives together. Everyone I looked at now seemed to be pathetically happy. Now that I was spending all of my nights alone again while everyone else was with someone they loved, this just seemed to make things even worse.

Conversely to my pathetic mental condition, folks were saying that I had never played the bass better before in my life. I was staying fixed on my right side corner of the stage with my eyes closed the entire length of the show just letting fingers express the emotions that my mouth could not. My fingers ran up and down the strings so fast our last night in Chicago that when the show was over I noticed that my fingers were bleeding on both hands. One of Pam's early photos from that show that later became the cover of our first fan magazine issue, showed my bleeding fingers dripping down all over my blood splattered bass guitar while my eyes were closed, utterly lost in the bliss of what I was playing. Last year the Rock & Roll Museum called our office to see if they could get a good print of that photo to hang in one of their exhibits. Another is hanging right now over my home office desk.

From pain can indeed come beauty. Certainly at that time my soul was definitely in considerable pain. There are folks who have heard hundreds of our concerts that say those Chicago shows were among our best ever, despite our lack of a good metal rhythm guitarist. I've heard a few tapes of them, and I believe them.

Things came to a complete head when we reached Clinton, Iowa. My father had died here when I was just a young boy, too little to understand what was happening. I have almost no memories of him, and remember absolutely nothing that he may have told me as a small child. Early in the morning I got up and left a message for Byron, my head jailer these days, that I was running up to the local cemetery for a bit, and should be back by the sound check at 3PM, and off I went. The distance wasn't very far up the hill from our hotel on the slender banks of the upper Mississippi, and with the help of some of the cemetery staff I soon found my father's grave, and sat on it and began to talk. I regretted that we had so little time together, and that I had hardly known him at all. I told him of my life, and my hopes and dreams for the future, and then began to cry.

I was still crying at his tombstone hours later when darkness had began to fall, and my keepers had found me. I was still sobbing gently but uncontrollably hours later then they put me on the band bus heading for Davenport. I think it was one of only two concerts I have ever missed on a tour, even playing a few times later on when horribly sick with flu. Irv's girlfriend filled in for me and did an acceptable job, but everyone said it wasn't the same without me.

We reached our hotel in Davenport in the early morning hours but I knew I wasn't going to get any sleep and I walked over to the crowded 24 hour diner next door. For the next half hour or so I moved a small piece of apple pie around on its seemingly impossibly huge plate. Everything seemed vaguely odd to me and familiar objects like my plate of pie now seemed strangely malformed. I don't think I noticed Faith sit down in the booth opposite me for several minutes, before she took my hands in hers. I had a hard time concentrating enough to see her face, but I did notice that she had been crying too for some reason and I gently dried her eyes with my unused napkin. The conversation that followed seemed absurdly existential in a way as if we had become an actor and actress in some incomprehensible 1960's European art house film.

"Why do you hate me so?" She asked, still drying a few wayward tears.

"I don't" I replied, "Quite on the contrary, I have the highest regard for you and believe you to be the most beloved creature and favorite of all of the Gods, because for your blest slumber each and every night you lay down your lovely head on such exalted pillows that mine eyes are unworthy even to bear their sight. Had mine eyes not first beheld the fair Erin, I would have indeed praised your beauty as being the highest I had ever seen, and I would be even now at your knees begging for but the smallest token of your favor. But, alas, now I have indeed many dragons that require smiting, but now I have no Lady Fair to bestow upon me her token before I doth ride off to battle. 'Tis a great shame and pity."

There was dead silence in the diner and it seemed like a hundred eyes were upon me, but I continued undaunted.

"No fair lady I do neither hate nor despise you. Instead it is I who am envious over your true-found love, for your victory means my most utter and total defeat, for you have won the greatest of all prizes there is to be earned, and it is her soft shoulder and fair breasts that shall give thee respite from thy labors, and peace and joy within your heart and soul, but never again within mine."

There was more dead silence in the restaurant, until our waitress completely dropped her load of dirty dishes she was carrying, I think, utterly agog with disbelief.

I pushed my plate of dissected pie toward Faith and stood up to leave and kissed her goodbye on her forehead, bid her to "subdue at last for me this one last remaining foe that doth mock us both!" With that I left the restaurant to return back to the hotel to seek slumber.

That is I 'thought' I was heading to the hotel which was right next to the diner, but I somehow wandered off the entirely wrong direction, walking down the state highway until I eventually ended up at daybreak nearly at I-74. I knew then something was terribly wrong, and started to head back the way I'd came, but I wasn't 100% sure about any side roads that I might have taken. By noon I realized I was hopelessly lost, but I had just enough remaining sense left to flag a taxi and have him ask his dispatcher if anyone knew what nightclub 'The Dark Ravens' were holding a rock concert at this evening. In a surprisingly short amount of time I had the name of my destination; the dispatcher's teenage daughter had been talking of nothing else for over a week.

I paid the cabbie and he wrote down the name of the daughter of the dispatcher for me and I told him I'd leave her some free tickets at the box office window for her. I waited sitting at the back loading dock doors until some of the club staff arrived and let me in early right before three. I left the promised note for the promoter to have the ticket staff leave the promised four tickets for the young lady who would call for them later at the window.

My last quest completed, I then curled up on a comfortable sofa in the artist's dressing room and fell fast asleep. When I awoke next I found that I was undressed and in a hotel bed. It seemed to be dark outside and there was a hand wrapped around my chest. Erin was with me, still dressed and sleeping on top of my sheets with her left arm wrapped tightly around me, but when I awoke again in the early morning, she had already left, if indeed she had ever been there at all. I began to think I had dreamed it.

************

Things got somewhat back to normal. No one said a word about my having missed two shows in a row. We had a quick early meeting at which everyone seemed glad to see that I was "feeling better" and we hauled ass on the road. We were about six hours behind schedule but had thirty-six hours to make it up for our next show in Nebraska. I resumed my usual seat on the truck with our gear, and everyone pretended to leave me alone, while keeping a very close eye on me. I caught up on a bit of my lost sleep and became slightly more cheerful. My depression seemed mostly gone now, but instead I was left with a deep sense of loneliness and loss. I still hurt, and mostly still kept my eyes closed when I played (with slightly less mania now) and almost never faced or looked at Erin and Faith at all when on-stage.

By Denver, I was one again openly thinking about quitting the band after the end of the tour, and folks became gradually resigned to it. Denver wasn't all bad though, Darryl met a woman metal guitarist who very much interested him and vice versa. It was not quite instant overnight love at first sight, but they grew on each other and complimented each others weakness amazingly well. They dated for about a year and when they finally married she joined the band and provided that missing metal rhythm guitar sound that we had previously lacked.

Erin and I managed to talk a few times privately, mostly on one long trip with her joining me in the gloom of the back of the truck between Medford, Oregon and Sacramento, CA. She and Faith were "happy together" and "thought they were in love", but she acknowledged under pressure that "something did seem to be missing" in the relationship. She confessed that she deeply missed our late night talks and companionship, that they provided something to her that was now somehow absent. She obliquely mentioned our one aborted lovemaking attempt, and mutual heartfelt "regrets" were jointly expressed. She felt "confused" and unable at present to sort out her conflicted feelings, but was ever so thankful that I had never pushed the issue emotionally with her.

I did confess that seeing the two of them together still hurt my heart tremendously and that it was insane for me to keep allowing myself to be hurt — I would leave the band at the end of the tour. Their voices were irreplaceable; a bass player, even a decent one, was not.

We began to carefully avoid each other again, but once while I was driving the truck (Gus had given me back my set of keys) between Phoenix and Tucson near the end of the tour, Faith surprised me by joined me in the cab as my passenger for the trip, and after some initial hesitation the ice was quickly broken and we chatted like old friends for the entire trip. She was in every sense a good and delightful person, it was just a shame that we were in love with the same woman, I joked. Once, she even kissed me on the cheek. She'd always liked me, but my insane sleep deprived soliloquy to her at Davenport had further raised me much in her good opinion. I'm quite sure she intended it as a compliment when she told me that although she had never made love to any man, if it ever had to happen, she hoped I would or could be that man.

In one of her last remarks to me as we pulled off of I-10 in downtown Tucson, just blocks from our hotel and club was "She still loves you, you realize. You occupy a special and unique place in her heart despite the fact you've never had sex together. Someday she just might come back to you, but if she does it won't be behind my back. The three of us should never have any secrets from each other. We both love her; let her continue to choose her path". I agreed.

We fondly hugged after getting out of the cab and let the roadies do their bit. Faith I'm sure went straight to Erin and told her of all that was said and done. I had no nocturnal visitors over that last week and we arrived home exhilarated but utterly exhausted.

For better or worse I had already made my decision. My letter of resignation was already written, typed out actually on Pamela's typewriter since my own handwriting is close to illegible. After all the unpacking was done in our warehouse, I left the letter on Irv's drum kit.

Chapter 5:

After leaving my resignation letter, I went home only long enough to dump six months of ill-laundered clothes that would probably never become clean again, and grabbed the remaining part of my casual wardrobe that I hadn't taken on tour, and threw it all into a different overnight bag. After checking over six months of accumulated mail (my rent was automatically debited from my checking account and I had no other recurring monthly bills that I hadn't paid while on the road) I skipped town as fast as I could.