My New Year's resolution is not to spend New Year's with my husband anymore, or travel with his band on road trips. Holidays are not special days. They are just days designated as special. You can make any day with family and friends equally as important. New Year's Eve is, for small-time musicians, the most lucrative gig of the year.
For some reason, musicians are considered a catch. There must be something romantic or sexual about watching someone perform and knowing you'll be the one with them after the show. But the reality is, there is probably no more miserable life for a woman than to be with a musician. If you go with them, you have to show up early for the equipment load-in. You sit at a table alone or with other bored wives and girlfriends during the show. You're the last one to leave because of the load-out. Every drunken guy and girl in the bar wants to talk to your guy and hold up his departure. They shout for encores when you're praying for the show to end.
If you don't go, you're often home alone or making other plans for Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes he even plays on Sundays, usually at benefits that pay nothing.
He needs thousands of dollars worth of equipment to earn $80 for a seven-hour gig. Because it is so prevalent and somehow enhances their creativity, musicians often abuse drugs and alcohol while playing. Neither is inexpensive. I've seen many a paycheck for the entire band eaten up by the bar tab.
My first realization of 2005 was I'd rather be happy and alone then with him and miserable on these road trips. This last one, I sat in the van listening to satellite radio while they unloaded and set up. No one could believe I'd rather do this then sit in the tiki bar the homeowner had constructed next to their house and get a jump on drinking with the early arrivals. At the beginning of every party, everyone is always happy, excited and cordial.
I moved into the house during the duration of the show. The band was playing in a frigid garage, heated by one dubious propane heater. The drinkers became progressively louder, then just insanely loud. I could tell the hour was approaching 2 a.m. as the noise died down and the drinkers became disgruntled and belligerent. People who wanted to drive drunk leaned on their car horns while designated drivers sat on the hoods of the car. Angry neighbors shouted the time out windows like cuckoo clocks. “It's 2 in the morning! It's 2 in the morning!”
There was much searching for misplaced possessions, including a missing dog that I spotted several times trotting around in the neighbor's yard. None of the inebriated could formulate or carry out a plan to search for the dog, so they just bleated with despair, and then anger, that the dog was gone. Then as the hour approached 3 a.m., there was vomiting, stumbling and passing out.
Some guy had been talking to my husband for an hour, and my kind husband gave this meandering, senseless monologue his undivided attention. Meanwhile, his equipment was not making it back into the van where I sat, listening in the dark to all this hellish commotion and crying with boredom. I wanted the party to end. This is not how I want to spend my time. But my husband insists this is all part of the “job” and he is having a good time. If so, then I'm just ruining it for him by being so miserable.
As you get older, you realize how little time you have left and you don't want to waste any of it. The greater good is no longer to accompany my husband on these trips to preserve our togetherness. If it splits us up, so be it. I just can't be this bored anymore.
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