by Rick Boling
The harpsichord, constructed using fragments of ancient schematics and drawings from Taskin’s archives, was laden with intricate marquetry and featured a beautiful landscape scene painted in oils on the underside of the lid. Harley was a genius, not only as a craftsman, but as an artist and designer, and the finished product brought him and the workshop international acclaim. It also nearly doubled our commissions for Baroque instruments of all kinds, while adding to the demands by well-known musicians for custom guitars and repairs. I became so absorbed in the work that my young wife—the infatuated groupie who’d been the first person to hear Sunday Morning Sentinel—hardly ever saw me. She would occasionally join me at the few gigs I managed to book as a single, but after those performances I was often too tired and drugged out for sex or intimacy of any kind. Before long she filed for divorce, and I had no desire to fight it.
I could easily have gotten lured into abandoning music altogether in favor of becoming a luthier, however, even as frustrated as I’d become with the constant rejections by my local producer, I couldn’t let go of my obsession with writing. I was also falling deeper into drug use, and my early experiments with heroin were becoming less experimental and more habitual. I had started dealing as well, and between my work at the shop, the occasional singing engagement, and profits from drug sales, I had accumulated a substantial bankroll.
For years I’d harbored a dream of getting away from civilization: finding a place where I could leave the bedlam of city-life behind and concentrate solely on writing. But by the time I turned thirty, my life was so complicated and my mental equilibrium so dependent upon maintaining the cash flow necessary to keep myself in drugs, I had all but given up hope of ever realizing that dream. Fate, however, would soon intervene.
One night the cops came banging at my door yelling that they had a search warrant. Having become paranoid about the drugs and the dealing, I kept the majority of my stash in the trunk of my car, which—thankfully—their warrant did not cover. I managed to flush most of what was in the apartment down the toilet before they broke through the door, so all they found were some syringes and a little residue, plus a single roach I’d forgotten about in an ashtray. Still, they decided to arrest me, and I spent the night in jail awaiting my first appearance before the judge. My one phone call had been to Jimmy, who was well versed in dealing with drug charges, and he contacted his favorite attorney, who showed up at the hearing to defend me.
It turned out they didn’t have enough evidence to impose bail, so they released me on my own recognizance, and a week later the charges were dropped. But the experience woke me up to the fact that I was in serious jeopardy of being arrested again and charged with more serious crimes. I spent the next few days gathering the tools I’d accumulated and selling most of my instruments, then packed everything I owned in a rental truck with a hookup for my VW Beetle and headed north. Jimmy had a friend who’d bought some undeveloped land in north Georgia with the idea of someday retiring there to grow marijuana, and he agreed to rent me a small cabin that was on the land when he bought it.
Even though he was upset about my leaving, Harley graciously allowed me to take the workbench I’d built, so I arrived at the cabin with all the trappings of a small woodshop, plus a few sticks of furniture, half an ounce of uncut coke, 500mg of nearly pure heroin, and a little over $20,000 in cash.
Had I possessed any measure of sanity, I would have realized my exodus represented a perfect opportunity to kick the drug habit and go legit. After all, I was in a place I’d always dreamed of being: away from the confusion of civilization, in an awesome natural setting where I could commune with nature and write, and with enough money to see me through at least a year of relative comfort without the need to generate any additional income. The drugs, however, preempted common sense, and instead of cleaning up my act, I took whatever gigs I could find, while blowing through the coke and heroin and cash like a tornado on steroids. I awoke six months later lying in a pool of bloody vomit, with a lovely young woman slapping my face in an attempt to revive me.
Robin’s Song
Robin Barbary worked as a waitress at the club where I’d apparently passed out on stage. I’d tried to hit on her a few times, but she’d always rebuffed my advances, so I was surprised to find her in my tiny cabin playing the Good Samaritan. Over the next two weeks, she nursed me through the severe dysphoria of withdrawal, force-feeding me liquids and dealing with the nausea and diarrhea like a professional nurse. She never once complained about the messes I made or the burden of cleaning up after me, and she even seemed embarrassed to ask if I had any money so she could buy groceries, because she’d quit her job in order to stay with me twenty-four-seven.
We went through the cabin and scraped together a couple of hundred bucks, but we both knew that wasn’t going to last long. So as soon as I’d dried out enough to be left alone, Robin took a part-time job waiting tables in a truck stop at the nearest exit on I-85. Though not bedridden, I was still feeling a little woozy and confused, especially when it came to making sense of this mysterious intervention by someone I barely knew. We’d spoken several times at the club, but other than her patient and sometimes apologetic rejections, I couldn’t recall anything that might have suggested she would sacrifice her job to be my savior. And that was apparently all she intended to be, since she continued to rebuff my sexual advances, even though we were sleeping in the same bed.
Despite her obvious devotion to my wellbeing, our personal interactions were limited to brief conversations about practical matters. And although she was affectionate, her concern seemed more like what she might feel for an injured puppy than a human being with complex feelings. I tried several times to draw her out, get her to explain her reasons, not only for refusing to have sex with me, but for being there at all. Her responses were sketchy and evasive, mostly designed to redirect the conversation to questions about me and my past. And over the course of a few weeks she managed to coax me into relating most of my life story, the good and the bad.
I often wondered if I was imagining things, if my drug-addled brain hadn’t conjured her up out of thin air. But as time went on and she didn’t disappear, I realized she was not a manifestation of some psychotic break, but a real, live person. So real, in fact, so fascinating and enigmatic, I soon gave in to the feelings I’d been trying to hold in check and admitted to myself I was falling in love with her. I held these feelings inside, however, not wanting to chance the rejection I felt sure would come if I told her how I felt. But one night, as we sat on the rickety front steps of the cabin under a sliver of moon shining through the trees, I decided the romantic atmosphere was too good to pass up.
“You know,” I said, “other than through my music, I’m not very good at expressing my feelings, which is why I haven’t found a way to thank you for everything. Maybe, when I’m feeling a little better, I’ll write you a song. In the meantime, though, at the risk of sounding corny, I wanted to tell you … I wanted to say that I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen in love with you.”
She looked up into the trees, her face silhouetted against the glow of the new moon. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she shook her head, slowly, as if preparing to admonish a child. “Don’t mistake gratitude for love, Rix,” she said, staring straight ahead. “You owe me nothing. I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for me.”
“But what the hell do you get out of it?” I said, a little angrier than I intended. “If you refuse to let things go any further, or to even explore the possibility, what’s the point?”
She turned to look at me then, her eyes conveying sympathy and something I chose to interpret as poorly disguised longing. Finally, she took my hands in hers. “I never said I didn’t want to explore the possibility,” she said. “But there are things that have to happen first, the most important being that you have to convince me you’re through with drugs.”
“But ... but I am. I haven’t taken anything in over six weeks, not e
ven a drink.”
“Yes,” she said, “and that’s mainly because I threw everything away and I’m in control of the money now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of you for making it this far, hopeful even. But I’ve been through this scene dozens of times before, and I’ve learned that six weeks is nothing more than a blip on the scale when it comes to kicking a drug habit, especially if it includes heroin.”
“Dozens of times?” I said. “What are you, some kind of undercover drug counselor, disguising yourself as a waitress and looking for addicts to cure?”
“Don’t be angry with me, Rix. I have not tried to deceive you in any way. I made it clear from the start that I wasn’t interested in having an affair. And whether or not you want to believe it, that was a difficult decision for me. After all, you’re an extremely talented and good looking guy, and underneath all that ego and seductive horse manure, I could sense there was a nice person struggling to get out.”
“I don’t know about the nice-guy stuff, but if that’s the case, why do you keep avoiding me? And I’m not talking about sex here. I can deal with that. What I mean is you won’t tell me anything about yourself, so how are we supposed to, I don’t know, explore the possibility? You know almost everything there is to know about me, but all I know is your name and that you quit your job to take care of me. I appreciate what you’ve done, I do. But if we’re going to get to know each other, try to get past this caretaker-patient relationship, you need to stop being so evasive.”
She looked down and closed her eyes.
“Come on, Robin,” I said, lowering my voice. “This is killing me, this mystery woman shit you’re pulling. Don’t you see how unfair it is?”
“I know it’s unfair,” she said, “and I’m sorry. There’s a lot of pain involved in my life story, and talking about it brings that pain to the surface again. But maybe just this once, if there’s something specific you want to know …”
I could see the reluctance in her body language, feel it in the moistness of her fingers. But I could also sense a chance for intimacy. And even if it had nothing to do with sex, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s go back to that ‘dozens of times’ comment you made. What did you mean by that?”
More silence, then a deep sigh and a nervous cough. “I was a flower child,” she murmured, her voice distant, almost too soft to hear. “My parents were both musicians, and I grew up during the Beat Generation. You know, Kerouac and Ginsberg and the rest of that New York gang? We moved to California when I turned sixteen, and I eventually joined the so-called counterculture: free love and drugs and all that. I stuck with it for a while, thinking I could help save the world, but when my friends started dropping like flies from overdoses and psychotic episodes, I decided I’d better get out while I still had the chance. That’s what I meant about having been through the drug-withdrawal thing many times before. Not only myself, but with my friends.”
Her eyes were closed now, tears dripping from the corners. I squeezed her hands and waited, knowing there was more she needed to get out.
“I lost five of them to overdoses,” she said, finally. “Most of the others ended up in jail or in psycho wards, and every single one had quit at one time or another. Some for weeks, others for many months. But they all went back. Promises meant nothing. Swearing they were done with drugs, flushing their stash down the toilet, voluntarily admitting themselves into rehab programs—none of it meant a thing. I loved some of those people, Rix. And I’m scared to death of loving you.”
I waited until her body stopped shivering, then said, “So, what happened after that? I mean, how did you end up waiting tables in Atlanta?”
“That’s a long, sordid story, and it’s not something I want to talk about, so please don’t ask me to tell you. I’m here now, and I’m going to give it one last shot with you. I have no illusions about what might happen, but I’ve made a commitment and I intend to see it through, no matter how painful the outcome. I know my refusal to have sex with you seems cruel, but that’s the way things have to be, at least for now. So please, let’s drop the subject.”
And that was that. She left no room for discussion. Argument, maybe, but I knew I couldn’t win, so I didn’t even try. The fact that she’d finally opened up a little did, however, release a lot of the tension between us, and after that she would occasionally—very occasionally—offer me little tidbits of her life story, though she always used those opportunities to emphasize the pitfalls of drugs. She tried to be encouraging and upbeat about my recovery, but there was an underlying current of doubt in her words, and I could tell she had little confidence in my ability to stay clean. I soon came to understand that nothing I could say was going to convince her I was different from the others, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut and let my actions speak for themselves.
I’d never tried to give up drugs before. I’d thought about it from time to time, and I felt confident I could quit whenever I wanted, but I always managed to convince myself there was no good reason. Now, however, there was a good reason, perhaps the most persuasive reason I would ever have.
As soon as I felt steady enough to work without fear of cutting off a finger or two, I started organizing the shop in hopes of drumming up some repair business. I had no desire to perform anymore, and Robin accepted this without complaint. Meanwhile she continued to refuse my sexual advances. She did, however, promise that once I’d convinced her I was through with drugs, she would “reconsider” having sex with me. How long that was going to take, she wouldn’t say, and not knowing nearly drove me crazy.
A week or so after she made that somewhat nebulous promise, we were sitting on the front steps during what had become a daily ritual of watching twilight descend among the trees, when I told her I knew there was more to her reluctance than my giving up drugs.
“I’m not trying to push you, Robin,” I said. “But I’m also not blind. I can tell you’re having a hard time with this and, well … Look, I told you I love you, and I meant it. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before in my life, and I’m finding that there are new feelings, new emotions that go along with it. One of them is compassion, or maybe empathy would be a better word. Whatever it is, it means that I know you’re fighting against your desires just as I am. And I know there’s more to it than the drug thing. Nothing you can ever say is going to change the way I feel about you, if that’s what you’re worried about. So please tell me what’s really going on.”
She looked away, and for a moment I thought I’d made her angry. But then she sighed. “You have to understand something, Rix,” she said. “For me, sex used to be as thoughtless and routine as brushing my teeth or taking a walk. I was smoking pot before I hit puberty, and I lost my virginity when I was twelve. I’ve had so many lovers I couldn’t count them if I wanted to. Hell, I can’t remember more than five or ten of them, and even those relationships were so casual they were meaningless except for the friendships involved.”
“So, what? Are you saying you’ve decided to swear off sex because you got laid a lot when you were younger? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“I’m sure it wouldn’t,” she said, smiling. “Not to point out the obvious, but you happen to be a male, so you’re predisposed by nature to have as many partners as you can manage. Besides, I’m not talking about remaining celibate for the rest of my life. What I’m saying is there’s a big difference between getting laid and making love. I was lucky enough to find out about that difference a few years ago, and I’m never going to go back to having sex simply for recreation or physical pleasure.”
We both knew what my next question would be, but before I could get it out she turned to me and held up a finger. “Don’t ask,” she said. “That’s part of the pain, and if you have any respect for my feelings, you’ll leave it alone. The point is, after that I decided sex was going to have to have meaning beyond animal desire or procreation. In your case, that meaning—my purpose for
being here—is to try and save you from yourself.”
“How noble of you,” I said, immediately regretting it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. The thing is—and please don’t take this as a come-on. The thing is … Oh, shit, I don’t know what the thing is. I mean, it’s not just because I’m horny as hell, although since we’re finally talking about it, I have to admit that I am. What I’m trying to say is there’s a lot more going on here than physical attraction. At least for me, there is. No one’s ever crawled into my psyche like you have, and for once in my life I’m dead sober, so it can’t be drugs or booze making me feel this way.”
“Feel what way?” she said, turning to look at me.
“I don’t know, like I’m being swallowed up by something I can’t control. Something I don’t want to control. Like I’ve found the last piece of a puzzle I’ve been trying all my life to complete. But when I reach for it—for you—it’s like reaching for that ring on the merry-go-round I could never quite touch.”
“But you can touch it, Rix. All you have to do is be willing to get off the merry-go-round and come back into the real world for good. You’re already halfway there. You’ve fallen off the painted pony and now you have to get back up and climb into the saddle on a real live horse. And I don’t mean the horse that group America sings about. Drugs aren’t the answer, they’re the problem, and until you convince me you’ve accepted that as a fact, my job won’t be finished.”
“But I have,” I said. “I swear it.”
“Don’t swear to something you’re only hoping for,” she said, touching my hand. For the first time her touch felt like more than that of a caretaker’s, and the feeling reverberated through my body like the tremors of an earthquake. “I’ll know when you’ve finally committed, and nothing you say before then will persuade me.”
It would be three months—three agonizing months of complete abstinence from drugs and alcohol—before she gave in. And when she did I realized what she’d said about there being a difference between getting laid and making love was true. It wasn’t a matter of technique or physical compatibility; it was an all-encompassing experience: quiet and graceful, like the sighing of wind in the trees. And it was followed by a preternatural calm, during which we held hands and listened to the sounds of the forest as it came alive in the early dawn.