The Story of Tom and Monica:
A San Francisco Serial Memoir
Parts 2 & 3

This story is written as a series,if you haven’t read part 1, start here
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Tom in his Brown University Days, probably self-portrait

For weeks now I’ve been inundated with paperwork, phone calls, interviews, bureaucratic mess-ups,invoices, receipts…a mountain of crap that I either haven’t had the bandwidth to address in the last few months while taking care of Tom or stuff that has newly appeared because of the changes we’re making, I’m making.

There was a lot of hip on the stage that night, but Tom wasn’t part of that. He was charmingly oblivious to the eye rolls, the slightly sarcastic asides, the cool-man posturing that was their reaction to Tom’s uncontainable, enthusiastic fandom. He unabashedly adored musicians and it either drew them to him or put them off. There was no middle ground. But one thing was for sure, everybody wanted in on that concert series. It was a guaranteed packed house on the first Wednesday of every month, great coverage in the Bay Guardian and an eclectic mix of songwriters whose main commonality was that Tom liked them, liked their music. That was his only criteria, much to the consternation of those who didn’t make the cut.

Somebody once told me that I should always carry a few of my CDs in my purse, that they were better than any business card and almost as cheap — or maybe almost as worthless. When the show ended I asked Alice to introduce me to Tom. Yes, he was cute, but mostly I wanted to be on that stage. He was surrounded by musicians pushing CDs at him, but with Alice at my side I got a little more attention. Especially when I mentioned that Bruce Kaphan had played on and co-produced the album. Tom was a huge AMC fan.

Part 3

The bedroom is in complete chaos: shoes, tee-shirts, jackets, books, VHS tapes, papers, super balls, business cards form the 80s and 90s, etc. I gave Tom the closet in our bedroom when we moved to the house in Oakland 6 years ago – I kept my clothes in the closet in the other bedroom. It’s the kind of little thing I do a lot in my life, a habit I have of making it easier, nicer for others. Thanks, Mom, I learned that one from you.

What I am doing now, what I have finally come to, is a reclamation, a taking back of my space, my life. A lot of people do this. I’ve done it myself in other relationships. But when the other person in the picture is helpless, when he literally depends on you for everything, when you know he can’t make it alone, this choice is eviscerating. I feel gutted. How do I walk this line? How do I make sure he’s okay and not let my own soul die?

It was this choice that paralyzed me for so long: My life or Tom’s? My life or Tom’s? My life or Tom’s?, until finally, after years of that internal chant it seemed I no longer had a choice. I hit the metaphorical rock-bottom. I started having anxiety attacks whenever Tom walked in the room, when he’d ask me how to do something for the 100th time or when he wanted to tell me a story I’d heard every day for years now. I was literally running out of the house, going out with friends, feeling guilty about not inviting Tom but realizing that I had to breath, I had to take in oxygen. This hyperventilation was not feeding the brain, let alone the soul.

I was living in a beautiful house on Euclid in North Berkeley with my friend Jory. She’d invited me and my soul-mate-dog, Morty, to live there after my little studio flooded for the third time in a year. That was back in the really watery years, remember those? It was a Tuesday or Wednesday morning and I got a phone call. An excited voice said ‘Hi, Monica? This is Tom Erikson. I really like your CD, do you want to play a Song Cycle?” He told me that it had surprised him because about 95% of the stuff he got was crap, and since he’d never heard of me he’d expected the same. We talked for a long time about the people we knew in common – he was a huge fan of Bruce Kaphan who had played pedal steel in my band (before that project blew up, before he went on tour with David Byrne), and co-produced the album (with Tom Carr), “Three Complete Novels”. Then Tom asked me if I wanted to come to a photo show of his that was opening in a couple of days in the Mission.

My first album produced by Bruce Kaphan and Tom Carr, released in 1996, photo by Irene Young

I was pretty sure he was interested in me so I got dressed up and asked Jory to come with me to the city that night. As soon as we walked in the door he ran over to greet us and then introduced us both to his girlfriend, Dida. Oh, well, it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten the signals wrong from a guy. But the show was great, black and white parent/child portraits. I really didn’t know that much about photography but I recognized the honesty in his work, the way he captured what was true about people and the way he used depth of field, focus and perspective between subjects to tell a story. Before we left we had settled on a date about 6 months in the future when I would play one of his song cycles.

Continue on to parts 4 and 5 here: https://medium.com/@monicapasqual/the-story-of-tom-and-monica-a-san-francisco-serial-memoir-parts-4-and-5-1195ddad7232

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