Target?

Target?





From Target I shuffled over to a recorder recital at my son’s school. My son is nine. Here’s the thing: I went to school there. I performed in that same auditorium when I was nine. Same stage, same curtain, same smell. It jogs ones sensibilities to say the least. I make the best out of a situation where one could be considered a townie. I remember when we first moved into the O.G. house about 10 years ago, this house I was raised in which I bought from my Dad, I was working on a rock record with an up and coming rock band. The lead singer and I got quite close, and we are still now, but we never made love despite an excruciating sexual tension. During this time of getting re-acquainted with my old home and my old home town, I was never there; I was at the studio well into the nights, so I didn’t really feel it. But then my son was born, and in we came into the quaint yet queer community called Old Greenwich. Being a musician, I was home days, and I built a studio off the house where I could work when the work came in. So I was in the unenviable position, as my estranged wife works from home also, and also in the music business, to go to drop offs and pick ups at pre-school and of course the dreaded “concerts”. The fall festival recital, the spring into music celebration, and so on. At these pickups and drop offs I was forced to interact with these things, these “women” as it were, these stick figure blonde bobbed inanities. My first reaction was to want to seduce them of course, but then I was struck, as they politely snubbed me, (for what kind of a man is not in an office on Wall Street?) by the feeling of not being good enough, of being unpopular. This for me was a new feeling, because all through school I was popular with the freaks ‘cause I partied, the jocks because my band played at all the keg parties, and obviously the band crowd. Woman from all these groups saw me as a kind of Jim Morrison, if I may be so bold. An enigma, an artist. And so I had no trouble with popularity or girls. Fast forward in time to 5 years ago, me standing next to Barbie Doll with feted breath from abstaining from food but yielding to a white wine at lunch. And I am unpopular? The truth is, these girls were the cheerleaders, they have always been snotty, and now, with their husbands’ money, their clicks in place, they have no need to talk about something of substance! Who of them could be served by a conversation about art? Music? You’re a musician? Oh my, Oh, my my my. This just won’t do. And so that year, and several years after that, I let myself feel like that guy in high school that the girls turned their backs on because he wasn’t even worth worrying about if he was dignity was blatantly wounded. This had a damaging effect by the way on my sexual identity. Having just come off doing a record with a beautiful young girl who would have, in an instant, jumped into bed with me, I was now faced with feeling like I couldn’t have these girls if I was the last guitarist on Earth.
But back to the most important thing; my beloved Target. I went shopping for my sheets, and my lamps, and my carpets, and my drapes, and my windex, and my paper towels, and my phone, and my soap, but forgot shampoo for some reason, but remembered pillows, but not pillow cases, had the presence of mind to borrow some Fabreeze from Vinnie, but spaced out on light bulbs. And I made my bed and I was happy. And that makes me feel like I am betraying my wife. But this is her doing, no, it is our doing, but this whole thing feels like freedom mixed with regret. Shaken not stirred. But it feels good to drink it. I can’t help but feel guilty that I like it there, at 5 View Street, because I feel free again, and at the hand of my wounded wife, the last person you’d ever suspect as the hero, is the reason I have come alive again. And I’m worried that she will be the victim of her own gallantry, her finest hour will be her undoing. I have moments when I see her being alone, and unhappy, and that makes me very sad, but I have just as many moments seeing her making love to some rich fifty year old divorcee, him devouring her because she is to him young and she is very good in bed.
And of course the newness, the elixir of the sexually satisfied. And so my happiness cannot be real, because it is actually paralleling a new sexual experience. Of course this feels great, I don’t have to live with someone who sees me as a liability. But how long will this last? How long will freedom span into reality?