The Curse of the PA

I often curse the day my husband got his PA. He claimed he was going to make money running sound for other bands and it would pay for itself. It would also provide him with band security, because he'd be the one with the PA, i.e., harder to kick out of the band.

So, for years, an entire room in the apartment became the storage room for the PA. Now in the house, I have to walk through a maze of PA equipment to get to the washing machine. One of the cars always has to be big enough to haul the PA. And it never really pays for itself because things break, things have to be replaced. Bands that make money buy their own PA, and bands that don't make money don't want to pay anything reasonable for PA. So you end up just being the guy in your own band that always brings the PA.

And if you're the girl dating the guy in the band that brings the PA, and you ride with him, then you're there two hours before the gig starts and at least an hour after it's over. It's a long night. Lately there's been few paying jobs and more freebies running sound for friends' parties.

Musician parties are tantamount to Woodstockian events. Musicians know musicians, so there's usually eight to 20 bands. These things start early in the afternoon and go into the wee hours because people won't go home. They camp out. They drum circle. They sleep on the lawn. If you're bringing the PA, you go in at 11 a.m. to set up, and when the final band gives up at 2 in the morning, then there's another hour or two of amateurs -- people who can't play, people who can't sing, people who are drunk -- who want to take advantage of the live mic and live out a fantasy for awhile. If you're a nice guy like my husband, you don't pull the plug on them until everyone at the party is comatose.

In the beginning -- when I was working on our relationship, or felt I needed to be supportive -- I would go to these ordeals, but I am notoriously and famously the Least Fun Person at Any Party. Now I don't go. I fantasize about going to parties in a normal way, arriving when things are well underway and then leaving before they get stupid. I fantasize about having a date for parties who actually hangs out with me, who isn't either chained to the PA for 15 hours or on stage himself. (Probably the key was to date someone who likes music, not someone who plays music.)

So my husband comes back from these things and says, "Everyone asked about you." He thinks they missed me. But I know, being the Least Fun Person at Any Party, that's not the case. I tell him, "They ask about me because they think we've broken up. They're just checking to see if there is any way possible we could still be together."

iPod App Saves Marriage

I kept my head down tonight all the way to West Point playing Bejeweled on the iPod Touch. Did not look up once. Did not get upset about my husband's driving.

My husband likes to yell at all the other drivers on the road because they are all clearly dumbasses. This makes my blood pressure percolate. He also drives in the left lane.

The left lane is for passing, I say.

I'm passing everybody, he says.

But when you're finished passing, you're supposed to get back in the right lane.

No, he says.

So he and 40 other macho drivers are all in the left lane, bumper to bumper at 70 mph, even when there's no one at all in the right lane. Not one of these macho left lane drivers will get on the right. If one person hits their brakes, we're all smashed up, 40 car pile up.

Please get over into the right lane, there's no one in that lane.

No.

If you cared about me, if you LOVED ME, you would GET OVER INTO THE RIGHT LANE.

NO!

So now I am all sobbing, in tears, because it is a dark day when you find out your husband has chosen the left lane over you and doesn't love you enough to get over into the right lane, that he doesn't care if you die as long as you die in the left lane.

This scenario has produced many a very tense car ride. But now...with ear buds in, I hear nothing about dumbasses. I see nothing but the colored shapes of Bejeweled, telling me I am a wonderful matcher of threes, that I have advanced to another level, that I am doing EXCELLENT. I do not know (or care) what lane I am careening to my death in because all I see or hear is Bejeweled.

My Richmond Police Story

My husband was driving down McCloy and stopped to turn right onto Cary Street at 2 a.m. It was right after he played a gig and he stopped at the bank there to get money to pay the drummer, who was in the van. They see the cop in the Cary Court shopping center. Now my husband is a by-the-book driver and he doesn't drink at all when he's playing music. (Yes, call Ripley's Believe It or Not, it's true!) He's always yelling at me about my driving. And no one wants any trouble in the middle of the night when you have a drummer in the car. He's eyeball to eyeball with a cop car, so you know he's not going to blow past the stoplight. That would be crazy ass stupid.

He comes to a full stop before turning. The cop pulls him over ANYWAY and gives him a ticket for not stopping because it's 2 in the morning and two guys in a van have to be up to no good, right?

Well, he goes to court to contest the ticket. He tells the judge he made a full stop, honest to goodness. My husband is a short haired, sincere fellow who looks like an old Harry Potter. The judge asks the cop, is it possible he did stop and you just didn't see it? The cop says, yeah, it's possible. He might have stopped.

The judge finds my husband guilty, ANYWAY! The drummer was supposed to go with him as a witness, but court starts at 9 a.m., and he's a drummer, so...not gonna happen. And if the drummer had testified, my husband might have gotten jail time for being in possession of a drummer at 2 a.m., so maybe it was for the best.