The Story of Tom and Monica:
A San Francisco Serial Memoir
Parts 4 and 5
This story is written as a series: you can start here
Follow Me to Get Updated with New Posts!
Yesterday was fairly useless in terms of the closet-clearing, the paper-sorting, the forward movement. Let’s be honest: I was trashed. I’ve been going out almost every night: drinking more than usual, running, riding my bike, hearing live music, meeting friends for dinner or at the Dogwood in downtown Oakland…and yes, dating like crazy. It’s like I’m trying to suck up every bit of the life I’ve been missing out on, as if I only have this moment and I better live it before the clock strikes midnight – or before another tragedy strikes. I feel younger and sexier than I have in 10 years, but also more vulnerable, always turning to look over my shoulder, trying to make sure no evil is gaining ground on me.
In August of 1997 I was deep into the recording of my second album, which would be titled “Sweet Remains”. I was working with a brilliant young guitar player named BZ Lewis who played in my best friend Renee’s band. BZ was a computer-geek-genius who was an early adopter of Pro-tools and was eager to start learning to be an engineer/producer. I had an idea for a new direction. I’d started recording a couple of songs in Amsterdam earlier that year with a guy that did electronic dance music. This was around the time that artists like Beth Orton and Fiona Apple were mixing up folk/singer-songwriter stuff with beats and I was feeling that same urge. I told BZ I could pay $15 an hour and he agreed.
My first album had been a really high-stakes affair, what was known as a ‘spec deal’ (like a bet or investment deal – I didn’t pay anything up front with the expectation that money, fame and glory would follow on the other end). A major Bay Area recording studio and a lot of established talent had laid it on the line for me: what amounted to over $100,000 in studio time, personnel and equipment (not counting all the great musicians), which in 1996 had been a huge deal. By the end, we had a beautiful album but we all felt burned in our own ways. Typical music business stuff. We had made something good, we had taken great risks, but the “industry” didn’t bite and we ended up resenting music, the music business and each other.
In the summer of 1996 my band, “Monica Pasqual and the Planet Ranch” (Jeri Jones, Jack Hines, Ian Hoffman, Bruce Kaphan and Pam Delgado) broke up and I pretty much broke down. After years of piano playing and waitressing I had such bad tendonitis in my right arm that I couldn’t even play the piano for dance classes anymore. Uninsured, broke and with no mainstream job history that would have garnered me Unemployment, I took a grim job at UCSF as a telephone operator – the first “straight job” I’d ever had. I found out the hard way that the system had a ‘big brother” that could tell when you were on one phone call for more than a few seconds, that it knew if during your 8 hour shift you spent a few minutes on a personal call. There were no windows. I sat in a room with about 8 people, staring into my own private, putty-colored cubicle as the calls came rushing in, one on top of the other. I was 35 years old, I had taken some big risks and this is where I’d finally landed.
Part 5
So much stuff. I’ve never been good at getting rid of stuff – it confuses me. Is it valuable or not? Will I need it as soon as I throw it away, even if I haven’t used it in 10 years? When will I feel the regret? (Years ago in a particularly broke moment I sold some beautiful seamstress-made clothes from Mallorca that had been my mother’s and gifted to me – it haunts me still). But this is of a whole different magnitude – Tom really hates to get rid of stuff and he loved to find things and bring them home. Everything is valuable to him, no question. I’m still dealing with the years of clothes, rock tee-shirts, 2nd hand button-downs from his mom, the nice ones I would buy and encourage him to wear.
After my father died my mother gave Tom all of Dad’s sports jackets. Somehow Tom incorporated them into his style and as his illness has progressed, though his face is still young, his hair thick, brown and wavy with no gray, he more and more resembles an old man with his felt hat, the tweed jackets, the slow, bent walk – and when he was still driving, the 1981 Mercedes Benz that lumbered and puffed slowly down the street with Tom at the helm, still oblivious, as un-self-conscious as ever.
These jackets, about ten of them — tailor made, “classy” in that tweedy way of my Dad’s, professorial although he wasn’t a professor — these jackets are stabbing me in the heart. There is no room for them at Tom’s studio and I don’t need them here reminding me. But as I put them in the to-go pile I feel like I’m erasing both of them. As if I’m saying my life no longer has room for the special brand of pain that these objects–as–memories represent.
I didn’t see Tom for several months after the week I first met him, in the spring, the week of the Song Cycle and his photo opening. I had stuck to my commitment of no-men for that whole time and was deeply focused on writing and recording my second album with BZ. The job at UCSF dragged on but at least I had a little more money than usual, and less drama,less heartache.
Back again to August of 1997 and it was my turn to perform in the Song Cycle series. I was super thrilled to be on the stage with Victor Krummenacher, from the band Camper Van Beethoven, as well as Mike Myer’s older brother, Paul. For the life of me I can’t remember the fourth songwriter, a young guy and I think his band name had the word blackbird in it.
BZ had recorded a cassette tape with some of the loops and rhythm tracks from my new songs, so I was doing something a little different. I had a boom box on stage with me, a mic set up in front of its lame speakers and whenever my turn came around I would have these lo-fi beats to accompany my keyboard and voice. It had been months (at least) since my last live performance. I was nervous but I felt strong. This was a scene that I’m pretty sure was unaware of who I was. They had not come to see me, most of these people, but I felt there was something original, something undeniable about what I was doing and the audience was responding to it. From the stage I couldn’t help noticing a few local luminaries in the audience – Chuck Prophet was there, which gave me a little thrill, the writer Kurt Wolf and others I didn’t know yet but soon would. And I was responding to my fellow musicians, too – especially Victor who had recently released an album called “Out in the Heat” that Bruce Kaphan had engineered. I loved that CD.
Seeing Tom again that night, with his booming voice, his deck of cards, his running around the club to make sure all the tables and chairs were properly set, the filming and recording and photo-taking – it all made me smile. His energy and excitement were irresistible, though I didn’t know quite how irresistible yet. After the show he told me how amazing he thought I was and oh, I was so ready to hear that, I needed it. That afternoon I had been fired from UCSF for calling in sick one too many times. I was unanchored once again.
If you like what you just read, please hit the green ‘Recommend’ button below!
