by Bob Mould
By now I had accepted the fact that Kevin was probably not being sexually faithful or—much more importantly—honest with me. But I simply didn’t have the wherewithal to close up the relationship. It was all I had, it was all I knew. And no matter what either one of us did, things got worse.
Personally, things had been rough for well over a year. Professionally, 2002 was the lowest point in my career. No matter which way I turned, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t catch a break. There was nowhere to go but down.
CHAPTER 24
So far DC had been a real letdown. I’d made one or two acquaintances, but I wasn’t fitting in anywhere. There was quiet to be had in the house, but not the good kind of quiet. I felt very little enjoyment being with Kevin. We were both miserable.
But late in 2002, Rich Morel and I began building a friendship and started writing music together, strictly for fun. We worked in his comfortable basement studio in Takoma Park, Maryland, sampling sounds, playing guitars, and programming beats. It was the first time since my Minneapolis days I’d truly collaborated with anyone. We built a good amount of trust in a short period of time.
One day I noticed a big square box in Rich’s studio. I asked Rich what was in it, and he said, “It’s a DJ rig that Deep Dish gave me so I could learn to DJ, but I hate DJs.” I think he was being half funny. I was like, “Dude, why don’t we DJ? I don’t have any friends, and you hardly ever go out and party.” Rich replied, “I’m really good friends with the FedEx guy. Seriously.” Rich was the kind of guy who did his work, had a longtime partner, and stayed focused on those two things. I said we should throw a gay dance party. Where could we do this? Rich suggested the Velvet Lounge, a small two-story club on U Street between Ninth and Tenth. Rich’s band played there sometimes, so he had a connection with the club.
We booked our first party for Sunday, January 26, 2003. When I worked at WCW, we did the monthly pay-per-views on Sunday, and the end of a story line or feud was called the “blowoff.” I suggested Blowoff as a name for the party, and Rich was fine with it. We made a business card–size flyer and printed up a box of them. I walked around Dupont, Logan, Seventeenth Street, P Street, and if I saw someone who I thought might be interested in a gay dance party, I would give them a card, which would get them in for free. This hand-to-hand advertising was familiar to me from the old days, as well as being an easy way to introduce myself to cute guys.
We were on the small stage with our laptops and the DJ rig. Although I didn’t understand how to beat-match like a proper club DJ, at least I was up there doing something. The crowd of thirty was a mix of friends, rock people, and neighborhood guys. It wasn’t a sophisticated presentation, but we played good music, people danced, and everyone was smiling at the end of the night. We made enough to pay for the business cards and the chairs we’d rented so people could sit down. The club was satisfied with the event and asked us to come back. We booked the last Sunday of every month through the summer, and each month we did a little better than the one before.
Sunday was a tough night to throw a party, and DC was a tough town to do it in. DC has always been a type A personality town, but with the Republicans in power, it was exponentially more noticeable. There were lots of big gas-guzzling SUVs with Maryland and Virginia plates tearing through town. You could tell the dark star was in charge. Meanwhile, Blowoff was this sexy gay dance party that was flourishing in the face of all the negative energy. (I have to mention just how many gays there are in the military. I’d talk to guys at Blowoff, and when the conversation turned to occupation, some guys would say, “I work at the Pentagon.”)
In June we moved to the last Saturday of the month. People were paying attention, and attendance was up. After the June event, we managed to get some coverage in the Washington Post, and everything was built toward our Saturday in July. But the Friday afternoon before, we received a call informing us that the DC Health Board had closed the Velvet Lange due to a code violation. Apparently they didn’t have any hand towels in the men’s room. Six months of work, all the building of momentum, and it looked like we were fucked. We called every club in town, but nobody was able to host us.
Late that Friday night, we received a call from Chad, the production manager from the 9:30 Club. He said, “I hear you guys are looking for a place to do your party tonight. We have a show booked upstairs, but we’ve got the basement space called Backbar. Why don’t you come down? We’ll put a little PA together, we’ll make it work.” It was great—not only did I have a long history with Seth Hurwitz, but the 9:30 Club was only one block from Velvet Lounge. We asked one of our friends to stay at Velvet Lounge, so that when people got out of taxis, he could tell them to get back in and go around the corner to Backbar. It was a complete success. Over the course of the night, two hundred people passed through a space that legally holds sixty.
The centerpieces of the Backbar were the drinking bar from the original 9:30 Club, where Hüsker Dü used to play, and the old phone booth that we all used to call home from. They brought us back in September, we started spinning music every week, and all was good in Blowoff land.
That was the good news for 2003. The bad news began one day in late 2002 when I’d said to Kevin, “We both seem so miserable. I really wish that there was something that would make you happy. We are driving each other right down to the bottom.” I didn’t know it then, but this was yet another “say it and it will be so” moment.
A few months later, Kevin and I were sitting in Dupont Circle and this short, nondescript preppie fellow showed up and basically presented himself to us. This fellow’s ex was a Blowoff regular who’d brought the guy one night, and I remembered seeing him and Kevin hanging out while I was working. I could tell Kevin was really fond of this guy right away, and he floated the idea of us spending some intimate time with him.
By this time, March of 2003, I was so miserable that just about anything seemed like a good idea. It was a foolish way to try to save what little of a relationship we had. At first it was fun, a no strings attached booty call, but I could tell Kevin was getting emotionally drawn to the guy. I had told Kevin I wished there was something that would make him happy—and, well, here it was. As time went on, I could feel whatever remaining love Kevin had for me transferring to this other guy. I had no deep feelings for this person, but I went along for the ride. Over the next few months, the three of us tried to negotiate our roles in this relationship, but it seemed like an impractical arrangement, not to mention a mere Band-Aid placed clumsily over a much bigger problem.
In July I had a West Coast acoustic tour, and the three of us were going to go together. At the last minute Kevin proclaimed that he and the other guy were not going. I sensed Kevin was waiting for me to leave so he could make his case to the other guy for the two of them to start a family. It didn’t seem like a good idea—at times I felt like the third played the role of the “child” stuck between two fighting parents, as opposed to being a potential parent himself. To Kevin’s credit, though, he had finally quit smoking pot a month earlier. I only wish he’d done it sooner, for himself as well as for me.
I guess I wasn’t giving Kevin enough hope that we would someday start a family. So for the second time in our relationship, Kevin looked elsewhere for a co-parent. But this time I was completely entwined in the arrangement, and it was happening right in front of me—and without me. I could tell this relationship was going to get interesting.
In August I booked some solo shows in the Northeast to coincide with a vacation the three of us planned in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I kept holding on, thinking that maybe something good would come of this. But I was enjoying this three-person relationship less and less. While in Provincetown, the three of us went to a jewelry shop and ordered identical rings, to signify that we were an official “thruple.” Friends and acquaintances saw what was happening, scratched their heads, but mostly stayed out of it.
When the HRC did a national print ad campaign focused on gay couples, they con
tacted Kevin and me and asked if we would agree to be one of the couples featured in this campaign. Kevin was delaying his response, and the reason was obvious. He didn’t intend for us to be a couple much longer. I said to Kevin, “I thought you wanted to do this, this is the kind of stuff that you like.” He kept hedging, and the opportunity came and went. By now people started coming to me saying, “Do you realize what’s happening to you? Just to let you know, Bob, you’re about to be odd man out.” I said we’d see what happens.
Through it all, Kevin wanted to get more involved with Blowoff, but I was protective of my working relationship with Rich. One day in October, I went out for a business lunch with Rich, his then manager, Richard Reese, and Bug Music publisher Garry Valletri. We were eating outside on Seventeenth Street and Kevin walked by, stopping and motioning as if he wanted to join us. I wasn’t having any of it.
A few weeks later we were eating Chinese takeout in the den when Kevin made his proclamation: “We’re going to move on without you.” This was just after Kevin and I had decided that the three of us were going to live together. I had hired an architect to redo the entire house and design an addition, a $200,000 job. I’d even arranged to rent a place where the three of us could live during the six-month renovation.
I looked at the third guy and said that maybe he should go back to his own place for a couple days and let me and Kevin sort this out, and that then we’d get back to him. That night, Kevin and I talked about it, and he said, “I really think this is what I want to do.” I said, “How about we separate for a couple months, put the renovation on hold, and you can live in the rental place. I prefer that you don’t see the other guy while you and I sort it out and talk through this, and if we’re going to finish up, let’s finish it up properly.”
Within days, Kevin and I went into couples therapy. It wasn’t very productive—we’d presented a unified front for so many years, it was very easy for us to assume the roles of Bob and Kevin, the couple. But everything Kevin was saying was different from what he’d said to me before. I was bullshitting as well. After these sessions we’d go out to our scooters and, without saying a word, ride away from each other.
I was like, OK, this is nuts. We were six months into this slow and final dissolve of our fourteen-year relationship. And for most nights of those six months, I was in my bed with one eye open, lucky if I got an hour of sleep. My brain wasn’t functioning properly—I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or what I was doing.
In November and December, I was in the house by myself and Kevin was living at the rental apartment. I presumed he was by himself because he told me he also wanted to be alone while we tried to work through this. He said he would not see the other guy, but other people were telling me different. I didn’t care to spy on them, so I had no sure way of knowing. While we were separated, I went on dates with a couple of guys. I wasn’t intimate with them, but I was moving away from our relationship as well.
Christmastime arrived and we started to communicate a little bit more than sending a text or two every day, which is what it had degenerated to. In my mind, we were separated but still a couple. We had made no formal closure. Kevin and I decided that we were going to spend the holidays together in an attempt to keep each other from killing ourselves. Killing ourselves, as in being suicidal, as in November when Kevin dropped this line on me: “You make me so miserable, every time I go across the Connecticut Avenue Bridge I want to throw myself off.”
What better way to spend the holidays than to go to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs? We flew into Las Vegas but didn’t spend a whole lot of time there together. Both of us were out on the prowl individually, getting together to eat meals and that’s about it. I would come back to our hotel room and he’d be on the phone with the third. We spent the three days before Christmas in Las Vegas and the funniest thing happened. Back in Malone I’d dragged home the school Christmas tree that one year, so Kevin and I always loved buying a big tree and doing it up. This year, what did we do for a tree? We went to the drugstore and bought a tabletop light-up tree. We took it back to the room, plugged it in, and of course the lights didn’t work. Fucking perfect.
Christmas Day, we drove to Los Angeles, where it was raining and gloomy. We were still not communicating much. It was more nonsense, cruising guys and finding no solace or enjoyment in each other. We did that for a couple days and then off we went to Palm Springs. We were staying at the same clothing-optional resort as before and everything was a complete mess by this point. We were disappearing from each other for hours and then running into each other, and then he’d get angry because he was trying to snag some guy. By this point, I didn’t care anymore. I was going to have a good old time, so I dived right into my own mud hole. So what if he walks into the wet area and sees me getting jerked off by some hot guy? After all these years, finally, he would feel how I felt, or so I thought. Turns out he couldn’t have cared less.
We went back to Las Vegas for New Year’s Eve, where we had a room that overlooked the fireworks on the Strip. We had our fancy New Year’s Eve dinner, and I got yelled at because I didn’t know you’re supposed to order the soufflé at the beginning of the meal. By the time we got back to our room, Kevin was pissed off and noncommunicative. He knocked himself out with either booze or pills or both, and fell asleep at 10 PM. I looked out the window, watching the fireworks go off, thinking this was the worst holiday ever. Spending Christmas Day alone eating turkey dogs in a freezing-cold apartment in Minnesota was way better than this.
We flew home the next day. Kevin was feverish and coming down with the flu. We were at the Vegas airport, and he wouldn’t come to the counter to check in. I bumped us up to business class seats, and at least he was grateful for that. We landed in DC, I dropped him off at the rental apartment and continued to the house thinking this whole thing was insane.
If 2001 was brutal, and 2002 was like having my limbs stretched for a year, then 2003 was a total mind-fuck. By December I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on in my life, and the final collapse of our relationship was on public display.
In January 2004 I had a solo show booked at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. My sister, Susan, lives in Roanoke, and she flew my mother up from Florida for the show. They’d met Kevin many times, but I asked Kevin not to go to the show, given the state of things. He understood and suggested that he come over to the house the next day and cook brunch for everyone. I said, “OK, that sounds reasonable.”
The ’60s folk-pop legend Donovan was in town then for a photo show at Govinda Gallery in DC. Chris Murray is the owner, he knows a lot of famous rock people, and he brought Donovan backstage after my set. Twenty minutes into the after-show party, my sister comes up and says, “This is the most interesting group of people. I met this guy named Donovan, and it’s so weird—I never think of that name except Donovan the singer. He was my favorite singer when I was in college. I loved Donovan.” I looked at my sister and said, “Susan, that is Donovan. That is ‘Wear Your Love Like Heaven,’ ‘Sunshine Superman’ Donovan.” She made a beeline toward him and bent his ear for the next half hour.
The next day Kevin came over for brunch, and we put on the Bob and Kevin Show for the last time. My sister and mother left, Kevin and I had sex with each other for the first time in months, and he split quickly after we finished.
A few days later, Brendan Canty, who had played drums in DC band Rites of Spring and the DC post-punk band Fugazi, was filming the first installment of the Burn to Shine music DVD series in DC and wanted me to participate. Kevin wanted to tag along, so we rode together in my truck. I filmed my bit, we got twisted around on the way home, and a shouting match started in the car.
The next time I talked to Kevin was a week later. He called from Florida to tell me he was on vacation with the other guy and that he thought we were done and he was going to partner up with the other guy. I said, “Fine, it’s probably for the best. Don’t worry about me, but if you think that what you’ve
done and what’s happened over the last nine months is a solid foundation to build a relationship on, you are fooling yourself. This is like the guy you left me for in Hoboken and the guy you left me for in Texas. You do the same things again and again. Good luck.” That was the end.
Kevin soon moved out of the rental apartment and into a house three blocks from mine. For the next six years, I would see him around the neighborhood, but mostly from a distance—across the street, across a bar or restaurant that we happened to be in at the same time—never speaking or even acknowledging each other. The first time we came face to face after that phone call was six months later in June of 2004, at the coffee shop on Seventeenth Street that we used to go to. He was in line waiting to get a coffee. I walked in and was behind him in line. I didn’t say anything, but through smell or a sixth sense, he knew I was behind him. He turned around and started to say something to me, and I immediately turned around, turned my back to him, stretched my arms out straight, and tipped my head down as if I were on the cross. I wasn’t going to hear a word of what he had to say. I was done with Kevin. We have never spoken again.
* * *
I had loved Kevin dearly. I’d often thought of us as the modern-day Verlaine and Rimbaud—but with less nihilism, debauchery, and mutilation. We saw light and hope in each other at the beginning, but time changed our view, with depression, overprotectiveness, and possessiveness corroding our bond. We did the best we could, but we lived and loved in a cycle of darkness. Our relationship wasn’t exactly a race to the bottom, but when one of us got too low, the first solution was to get even lower than the other in order to push him out of the hole. We tried to take the best care possible of each other, in our unique way, but over time it became too much for either of us to manage.