old fans

can identify in my raw face the reflection of the rock dude in leather pants humping a monitor at the Channel, the Rat, CBGB's. they connect with a persona and with a band that no longer has anything to do with me or with what i am working on now. how do i react? not well. i try to not be rude. i smile and nod, but in the background smirks embarrassed discomfort. my first encounter with this phenomenon happened when i came home my sophomore year from college. it seemed that many of my high school friends were trying to relocate the person i'd been, the person they remembered but who was no longer wearing those ratty, down-at-the-heel loafers. they seemed to want me to put 'em back on. 'c'mon, rick. this ain't you!' in some ways we never change, not deep down. the overcoat of identity masks the Essential Self from all but the most observant. we are comfortable in the personality-of-the-present, but we don't like it if we can't shed skin, if the butterfly can't liberate itself from the chrysalis. that's why i become distant at holiday reunions and blame the hard eyes of old friends who are convinced i haven't changed, when, in fact, i had, in a thousand ways. i couldn't be 'read' or i didn't want to be. my emotions were covered with bruises and that was the problem. when i seemed to 'not be into girls that much' it worried my high school pals. they didn't get it or didn't want to. my new friends at Yale thrived on an honest playing field. i'd stopped being the make-'em-happy-president-of-the-senior-class boy who knew in his homo heart that he had fooled everyone, including himself. to be back home was like staring into a fun house mirror and despising the distortion. and so it is with fans. even new ones. they like a song i never play any more. they treasure on a dusty shelf a record i can barely recall. not long ago i ran into a woman who as a teenager was fanatically devoted to one of my bands. before shows she'd appear back stage with some wild object she'd decorated meaningfully and given to us with all her heart. sadly, i not only failed to recognize her, i had no memory at all of any incident or interaction or gift. it had all gone down the brain drain. i felt awful. i did not live up to her nostalgic day dream. i'm hardly a big shot in the music business. i am, at best, a small fish in a small Jamaica Plain pond, known, but not iconic. which is fine. i like how it is. mostly i like what i'm working on at present and am well over my archives. so forgive me, whoever you are, if i have that vacant look when you say hi, when you remember when. i have long since thrown out the leather pants or the see-thru blouse or the lead vocal stomp. i do sincerely appreciate your post card recollection. on a rare occasion when i listen to a record i made 20, 30 years ago, i am moved by the spew of memories, jokes, arguments, colors and scenes. one thing does bother me, however. i wonder when it's a guy, say, in his 40's with kids? 'did i hit on you back then?' because the boy he used to be is now scatter-eyed, losing head hair and has a pig gut. maybe he was fond of the attention. maybe, in retrospect, he'd actually wished i'd tried t get into his pants. or maybe because i didn't, he respected me, but worries about his shy son standing just behind him. all of this in my cob-webbed attic over something as shallow as being recognized as The Rick Berlin.

secrets

'if i tell you this you won't tell anybody else, ok? cuz i've never told this to anybody ever'. i promise when they ask, but why me? is it the Uncle Homo syndrome (he has to be discreet because he had to hide his 'nature' all those early years and will get it about secrecy)? do they unload because i have a rep? i leak and they want it told to others. they want the dead fish pried out of their gut and onto the street. these confessions remind me of the criminal who is driven to tell a girlfriend, a cell mate, a lawyer, a brother so that he or she will unlock him from the prison of his guilt. so yes, sometimes i break my promise. i slip a velvet whisper into a safe ear just because the secret is nasty, funny, or impossible to keep. i insinuate permission. on the other hand i hide a handful of privacies who's lock box has never ever been violated. some are mine, some belong to friends, or strangers. they live inside my head like a child hiding in the basement, safe but wary. secrets begin in childhood. they begin the first time you realize that mom and dad are not god and that they don't know everything there is to know about you. they don't see you walk out of a barber shop with a comic book that doesn't belong to you. they don't catch you flipping through dad's Playboy unmoved by Marilyn's juicy tits. they don't know what happened between you and your next door neighbor out in the barn. you are out of range from mom and dad's all-seeing eye of Saruman. this began for me when i realized that Santa Claus was a fiction. that he smelled of booze and had a voice like Uncle Karl. i didn't say anything about it because i hated the truth. i didn't bring it up with my sisters because they were younger and living the magic of Christmas. i kept doubt to myself until i met my first best friend. he was the first person i told things to i never told to anybody else and with whom i did things i never did with anybody else. things that were secret. secrecy is a part of love. my first best friend was the first person i ever fell in love with even if i couldn't use those sacred words. i thought about him when he wasn't around. i felt differently when i touched his arm and when he leaned against me. i was hurt when he criticized. my heart leapt when he laughed. it was the secret of how i was with him that changed me, made me feel new, re-invented, bursting with light. which is why, later on, a love affair gets it's charge from secrecy, from a dream world enshrined in a cathedral built, brick by brick, with the person you love. why, early on, i didn't want to use the 'l' word until i was sure. i didn't want to jinx the miracle with a silly verb. i didn't want my friends to be in on what was happening or to break love down into shards of demeaning transparency. if all secrets are known then magic evaporates in a torch light that exposes worms and rust and insects.