Sideline Doll
I realized later that it wasn’t so much that Jay and I had fallen in love with each other, but that we had fallen in love with the same things: perpetual motion, velocity, riding the open road toward the vastness of no predetermined destination. No reason to slow down, no need to protect the motor.
Sometimes I traveled with him as Yellowbird rose to greater popularity. Often not; it was hard to determine the exact nature of our relationship. I was a girlfriend, yes, but not a permanent fixture, and probably not the only one if I chose to think about it, which I didn’t. The first European tour was coming up; it was time to raise or call. This particular weekend, though, was all about the perks. We were in Elkhart Lake at Road America for one of the bigger races. The band was playing two nights in nearby Milwaukee, and Jay, a big NASCAR fan, was going to be taken around on the road course by Justin Mayer the day before the race, complete with a publicity shoot.
I too would’ve loved to have ridden in Mayer’s car and be taken around fast, up over the hill, but it was never suggested. I would stand on the sideline and be enthusiastic. But that was okay; I was happy for Jay. He did everything that came his way and loved the doing of it. I loved him because I loved those things as well. Because I didn't do them, I loved the man who did. I loved his broad shoulders both literally and figuratively.
So, on Friday mid-day, before the traditional evening parade of cars from the race track to the town then back to the track again, photos were taken of Jay and the NASCAR Champion at the course, Jay outfitted in a white racing suit and helmet. First, both men outside the car. Then both men in the car, giving the thumbs up. Shaking hands with each other. Shaking hands with the sponsors. Justin signing one of Jay’s Telecasters that would be auctioned off for charity. Finally, after an interminable amount of conferring among individuals with clipboards, and fiddling with the car’s innards, Justin smacked his hands together and said, “Let’s go, man,” and the two men jumped in. Mayer’s crew chief put his hand on the small of my back and directed me away from the action.
“You watch over there, doll.”
The car fishtailed out of a standing start, then straightened and headed down the track and out of view, a Doppler echo the only clue of the engine’s continuing RPMs. Then nothing, then you could hear it coming back. Justin and Jay appeared again over the hill, on each lap going faster and faster. I stood on the grass in front of the bleachers, rising up on tiptoes each time the car passed by, my eyes following after it with dissatisfaction with this whole sideline shebang. Sideline girl, sideline doll, give them the thumbs up each time they come up over the hill. Faster, faster—don’t screw up race car driver. Don’t screw up. You don’t screw up, doll.
* * *
After returning from Wisconsin, the fog of my infatuation began to lift. The band was back in New York rehearsing for the upcoming tour, but I decoupled from that departing train and immersed myself in the affairs of my shelter. One of the cats brought in had been horribly abused, and I was the only one who could comfort him and get him to eat a little bit. I'd smear the tiniest bit of baby food across his mouth so he'd have to lick it off. The violence inflicted upon this creature, who the staff called “Sugar,” and the unfathomable reasons for it stabbed at me every time I sat with him after his surgery. How hasn’t our violent nature wiped us out by now, I would ask myself as I sat there. The power of it sweeping unabated across the centuries surely should have done us in. How could we still be here and not have devolved into some gigantic wasteland: love, beauty gone extinct like the dinosaurs, and—I was afraid in our lifetime—the tigers and rhinos as well. I sat next to Sugar’s open cage as he lay on his old towel, a creature comfort a few days earlier impossible for him to imagine. He looked at me as if to say, ‘I knew there was love.’ It was more than I could bear. On the one day I couldn't be there, Sugar died, and the cruelty of this seemingly deliberate mistiming haunted me.
The day after his death, I forced myself to return to the shelter; I had no place else to go, and it was still possible to feel the presence of Sugar’s mute love. I sat in the tiny courtyard with the garbage cans at the back of the building. I sat there for the better part of the next two days, unable to move, unable to go forward. There were two overturned large plastic buckets permanently there, where people came to sit and smoke, or cry. It was getting warm, and there was an unmistakable stench of things best not thought about. Late in the afternoon of the second day, Jay appeared in the doorway, then came over and sat down on the unoccupied bucket, an awkward arrangement for a tall man. He lit up a cigarette, not breaking his silence, but I knew he was there for me. At last I said, “It’s sweet of you to come when I’ve been acting like such a jackass lately.”
“You put me through my paces sometimes, baby.” He drew on his cigarette, then exhaled. “This whole thing—everything—it’s messed up. Funny, you keep telling yourself it’s not going to be how you think, but still it’s not what . . .”
There was another long silence, both of us thinking our own thoughts, sympathetic but nonconvergent.
“Sometimes I want to throw the guitars in the back of the van and just go, you know. Yeah, just go . . . you and me. Just drive, stop at some bar and play for our supper. Good, bad—we’d have some stories to tell. We’d come back now and then . . . the road would always call us, though." He looked down at the ground, flicking his cigarette. "You up for it? Would you do that? Do that with me?”
I turned and looked at him. What a sideline life. Maybe I wanted to ride around in a van; I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure I wanted to do it with him.
“It’s not . . . let me think about it, Jay.”
He looked momentarily stunned at my non-answer, as callous a slap-in-the-face rejection as if I had laughed at him. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it on the ground in disgust. “Let’s go. What the hell’s wrong with you, sitting out here.”
* * *
So, Jay and Yellowbird flew off to Europe for three months while I remained stuck in the city with a developing abscess in my bottom left molar. My punishment, I suppose, for being a fair-to-middling doll. My sentence: working during the hottest summer on record, trudging up 6th Avenue, running the gauntlet of flyer pushers, tooth throbbing, pain radiating up the side of my face. Serving penance on behalf of all of us for Sugar.
Struggling along through the humidity, I passed by the restaurant that employed the most aggressive stringers and met my match in determination. A man stood there holding an armful of take-out menus, immaculate in his white short-sleeved shirt, dress trousers, and ambition. He was determined I would take his flyer, I was determined I would not. Our eyes met for a second as I turned toward him, but I looked back straight ahead and continued on my way. Not to be dismissed in this manner by a mere girl, the man followed me down the street, shouting and stabbing the paper menu at me behind my back like a rapier. I was concerned he would follow me all the way to the corner, but he finally spun back around, swearing loudly to cover his retreat. A triumphant grin flickered across my face, lighting the fuse that exploded into a flash of pain shooting up through my damaged tooth that made me see stars.
I wrapped the pain around me like a veil, shrouding myself against further abuse, and in this self-pitying state, eyes downcast, focusing on the pavement just a few feet ahead of me, made my way to my mother’s office. I arrived at my corner victoriously flyerless to be met once again by the young women I knew yet did not know. They emerged from their mustard-colored building—today three, no, four of them—in the form of some unbreachable sisterhood; used by men, no doubt, but seemingly unscarred, the damage unseen. Truly, I was sick of men. Broken men. Cruel men. Men who raced cars and men who would be gypsies, men who introduced you to the world of the NFL, men who insisted you take what they were offering. These seamstresses appeared to belong only to each other, while I belonged to no one; I just walked and walked endlessly up and down the avenue, not looking, not seeing, one foot in front of the other, going on and on until I thought I would drop. These women had elevated themselves to a higher plane through no visible effort of their own, and the pain in my jaw and heart egged on my anger toward them. They were smug; I disliked them. I hated this city. The weight of the world was pressing down upon me. Why was I forced every day to see these stupid girls? What did they know about anything; what did they know about being at a loss in this world?
Image: Road America — Frontstretch. Source: By Royal Broil (Flickr) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons