January 24, 2004

10:35 p.m.

Monday, Sarasota

Just finished a house concert in Cape Coral, FL and I'm hiding from the stragglers. Nice concert, though as often happens it was everyone's first time hearing live music in a living room. There's often a certain lack of discipline about it all, but we got some more converts and considering there were really only a few people here, we sold quite a bit.

This afternoon at a Subway, we were talking about my date-less state, and I asked Carol if she thought it was strange to not have a boyfriend for years. She said no, but I still think it is. Carly Simon keeps saying to me, "The river doesn't stop here any more," and it becomes increasingly clear to me that I just don't meet people in my normal routine any more. So Carol and Chris said I should "keep my eye out" at gigs, for someone who might be attractive, and maybe I'd want to make eye contact with, maybe speak to. Yes, I'm sure that while I'm doing my job, I'm going to be cruising for a date, guys. You know, you're standing at the CD table selling stuff, and you just don't talk to a person long enough for one of you to say, "Hey, do you want to do something later?" Usually, "later" is when I'm driving to the next state. And it's not a level playing field anyway, at a gig. There's that idol thing. There was a guy who came to my gigs for YEARS -- he was this really sweet hippie guy with a big gap between his front teeth, and this long, pretty hair. He was very shy and lived way off the grid. Anyway, just clearly not my type... One day he finally got up the courage to ask me if I had a sweetheart, and I did at the time, and I told him that. He said he'd thought so, but just had to ask, because it had been eating away at him... Jeez, I felt terrible for him, and I've also felt that kind of idol worship, you know how you hear someone's songs and you just think you know all about them inside and out, and you could be so good for them, if you could just get backstage... and it's all an illusion, because there's so much more to a person, how they breathe and react to things and whether they leave hair all over the bathtub, that their songs don't tell you.

Anyway, Carol suggested I might circulate more if I took writing workshops and the like -- that was a better suggestion. She then destroyed any respect I may have just mustered for her opinions by also suggesting online dating and personal ads. No thank you, not me, not in a million years. I had ONE experience getting to know someone through email before actually spending live time with them -- this was years ago, maybe 1997 -- and it was such a horrible mistake, I realized it's too easy to get lured into some kind of mutual fantasy, only to find the reality is miserably different.

So how have I met people in the past? Well, I worked in theatre for years, and since you work with a new cast for every show, you end up meeting a lot of people in a year. But I don't do that now. I pass through towns, singing about things in front of strangers that I wouldn't tell most of my friends, but rarely making significant contact. Hm.

I've also fallen for my share of musicians. I just think I'd like someone who is a better financial risk than I am.

Anyway, Carol said just to put the idea out into the universe, and things would start to happen. Oh yeah.

So we got to Cape Coral, and these lovely people heard us on our website and booked us based upon that; they'd never hosted a house concert before, and invited thirty of their friends, about eighteen of whom chickened out at the last minute because they were afraid if they didn't like the music they wouldn't be able to leave. Meanwhile, one of the guys who did come, with his wife, was this very jokey guy with questionable teeth who had brought a smoked pork butt to the party which he had smoked himself in his home smoker, which smokes beef so tender you can cut it with a fork especially if you add beer to the water underneath, and add lots of smoking chips to make it really smokey, and who laughed at everything he himself said, and when he first saw me walking to the car, said, "Oh, look out!! Be careful, you're walking all over the ground!" I just ADORE redneck humor. Later I was putting on some makeup and heard him talking to people out in the kitchen, and everything was oh so jolly, hyuck hyuck. I went back out to make some tea, and we were chatting a little and he was asking me things about music, and then he asked me if Chris and I were married. I said no, Chris and Carol were married, and he said, "Oh, so you're more or less freed up. Do you have a significant other?" Now, believe me when I tell you that NO ONE has ever asked me this at a gig. And my band and I had this conversation today at Subway, and all of a sudden THE GOMERS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WOODWORK. I lied sweetly and said, yes, I did have a significant other, ready to make up all the details of his life in the moment if necessary, to which he replied, "I thought you would have, someone like you," and then I went into Carol's room at the first opportunity and cursed her for putting ideas out into the universe.

The concert really was okay, except the whole night I felt like going home and eating an entire box of Freihofer's raspberry cheese danish in one sitting.

And everyone was really nice, even Gomer, who bought every single one of our ten CDs. And in retrospect I don't think he was really hitting on me. It was just the serendipity of the day that made it seem horribly funny at the time.

The folks here have a gorgeous puppy, and I heard them all out in the kitchen a short while ago trying to get him to lie down and roll over. "Lay," she'd say over and over. "Lay! Lay!" I'm expecting a clutch of eggs when I go out there in the morning.

Tomorrow, in fact, we're driving three hours to do a half hour radio spot in Miami, then going to a schmooze party (yawn) and then driving three hours back here for the night. Monday, Sarasota.

Incidentally, I spoke to Will by phone today and he's working like gangbusters and obviously feeling pretty stable. He said he loves the gulf side of Florida because of the sunsets. I told him I'd try to catch one.

Sigh.