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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

So it turns out you don’t have to do a lot of drugs or have a lot of sex to have what I–and probably most people–would consider a rock star weekend. Magenta seemed determined to prove us “kids” weren’t going to outlast her and when you have three lead-singer types hanging out together, they will sort of compete with each other for the spotlight. Okay, maybe “compete” isn’t the right word, but whenever one would cede center stage, another one would step up. It meant things never got dull and I was content to be along for the ride.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I ended up seeing Sarah’s doctor, because that was faster and a better idea than sitting around in some New York City emergency room waiting to be seen for a non-emergency. He confirmed I probably had a concussion and said the main thing to do was to avoid things that might aggravate it, including hitting my head on anything else, vigorous physical activity, brights lights, and loud noise.

Ha.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I barely moved until the last song, a Spanish-language version of “Do It,” played, and then there was the sound of the needle hitting the end and I jerked reflexively before realizing that this was a tape of the vinyl. I hit rewind and sat up. I swung my feet over the edge of the bed to put the second empty bottle back into the cardboard caddy. I turned to Court.

Her reaction: “Huh.”

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

(Happy Thanksgiving, USians! Happy Thursday, everyone else! -ctan)

Turns out everyone but me thought we were going to Jordan’s after The Cat Club. I caught up with the plan quickly, though. I went to say goodbye to Artie and found him talking to Barrett, who I hadn’t even realized was there. “How long you in town for?” Barrett asked me, when it was clear I was leaving.

“That might be up to Ziggy,” I said jokingly but it was the truth.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I had always attributed the buzz in a room when Ziggy and I walked into a place to the fact that Ziggy is like that. He draws every eye to him like a beacon. I didn’t have to be there for that to happen.

But maybe it was the fact that this was supposed to be my thing, or maybe it was all the incessant digging from the media about whether he and I were getting back together, OR BOTH, but this time it really felt like people reacting to the appearance of both of us. Use whatever cliche you want: a ripple went through the crowd, a murmur, whatever. I had thought a New York crowd of mostly industry people wouldn’t be affected like that.

I was wrong.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Sarah made it back into town in time to see the show at Nassau Coliseum, which was yet another hockey arena, this one in Long Island. I had to wonder was some of the problem with places not selling out that they had, for example, put us in four venues in one week that were all within a one-hour drive of where Remo and I used to live? Except later I asked and found out that all the New York area shows had been sellouts. So much for me trying to apply logic to the situation.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I learned something I didn’t know from the vocal coach. I freely admit I knew only the rudiments of singing. You learn a little by osmosis in music school, even if you’re not in voice. I sang in my junior high school choir one year, too, and learned a little bit there. You know how it goes.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

That nap wasn’t when the nightmares started. I think I was having them already, but I’m not sure exactly when I had the first one. I think maybe I didn’t remember the first couple of them. Pretty sure it was some time after I left L.A. and before I saw Ziggy again.

Maybe nightmare is too strong a word. The dreams were more annoying than terrifying, really. Have I told you the one where I’m a busboy? That one recurs in different configurations. I still have it once in a while. The really annoying versions of it feature Ziggy as either a waiter or host… I don’t even want to think about them. Like that might make that dream come around more often.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

So, hit me over the head with a brick about it.

Somehow, despite ample evidence to the contrary, I was used to thinking of myself as the only gay person I knew. I in fact knew a ton of people–Ziggy, Colin, my own sister, Jonathan, Matthew, Sarah, maybe even Mills if she was right about him–but in my head queer people were still really few and far between.

I tried to work out the math. If you believe the one-in-ten estimate, well, that would mean ten percent, right? Pretty rare. And yet clearly way more then ten percent of the people I knew were not straight.

Well, I thought, maybe one-in-ten doesn’t take into account that the entertainment industry probably has a higher concentration of gay folks. And it also probably doesn’t count bisexual people properly in the first place.

Right? Did that mean my impression was less stupid? Probably not.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

(Notice to Kickstarter backers! Surveys are out! Please respond ASAP: look for email from Kickstarter asking to confirm your address and other info! More below… -ctan)

Since I’d last visited Sarah her career had taken a couple of leaps and turns. (I forgot to say: we did go out to dinner once or twice when she came to LA but nothing of consequence to report there.) She’d moved into a new apartment: this one on Central Park East, and not a sublet, so it had a lot less stuff in it and felt a lot less homey, but she hadn’t been there very long. She assured me she’d fill it up with things soon enough. She was going out on tour that coming summer, North America and Western Europe, and she had this plan she was going to come back with souvenirs from everywhere she’d been.

“You seem skeptical of the idea,” she had said.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I’ll tell you about seeing Matthew later. Telling you about Ziggy is more urgent.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

“The problem with writing songs with you,” Sarah said in the morning, when I had put the guitar away and she had put some waffles in the toaster, but we hadn’t yet slept, “is that you write these things that sound so great with the guitar riffs and then when you’re gone it sounds kind of lifeless.”

I leaned against the kitchen counter. “I didn’t think ‘Blue Skies’ sounded lifeless when it went to number three.”

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

The word came via voice mail a few days later that Ziggy was flying to New York on Monday, so I called Sarah to see if she was around for the weekend and if she wanted company. She said yes and yes, so I got on a train on Friday morning (where by morning I mean 12 noon) with a guitar and a book (and then slept the whole way anyway).

I thought I heard a camera shutter snapping when I walked up to the lobby of her building. The door man greeted me like he remembered me. He was a slim hispanic man with very short cropped hair and creases around his eyes.

“You might want to check for paparazzi,” I told him. “In the bushes or something.”

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I found a payphone and left a message at Sarah’s saying I hoped they weren’t worried, I was fine, and I’d fill her in when I got there and hopefully she’d be there when I arrived… She had the kind of voice mail you could call to retrieve messages, so if she and Jonathan were out searching for me they could at least check to see if I’d called.

Then I called Jonathan’s, in case he’d gone home, but got his machine, also. I left him a similar message.

I wasn’t quite ready to talk with anyone yet.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I told her the rest over lo mein. It was weird telling laying out the whole thing, the whole trajectory of me and Ziggy, and I told her so. “I’ve never spilled it all at once like that, from beginning to end.”

“End? Is it over?”

“I sure as hell hope not,” I heard myself say.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

I don’t know if you noticed, because I certainly didn’t at the time, but I came out to Trav in the course of that little conversation. It was only later that I realized it was no big deal to him. Maybe it’s more important that for once it was no big deal to me. Or at least in comparison with the other stuff I was dealing with, you know?

Sarah wanted to know where we’d disappeared to when I found her again. She was a little drunk.

“Can I lean on you?”

“If you kick your heels off, maybe,” I said.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

So I learned a very important lesson about tequila.

The lesson was this: I remembered way more about what happened when I was on LSD than after two drinks of tequila. At least, I think it was two. Like I said: I don’t remember.

Let me back up to what I do remember.

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Mirrored from the latest entry in Daron's Guitar Chronicles.

Have you ever had a connection to someone where it was like you had the same sense of humor so you didn’t have to explain a lot to them, like you can get halfway through, or even give no explanation at all and they just click with you? I’m doing a terrible job of explaining it because, well, I don’t click with that many people. I mean, it’s like music, sometimes you just go the same place without discussing it: it just happens.

Maybe I should give an example.

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Tie Your Mother Down

Pleasure and Pain

Chorus

Let Love Rule

Twist of the Knife

Sweet Harmony

Promised You a Miracle

Tonight

We’re All In the Same Gang

Golden Blunders

All the Things She Said

I’ve Been Thinking About You

Somebody’s Watching

Roam

Show Me Your Soul

She’s So Unusual

Glamorous Life

Metropolis

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