74
I know what you’re saying.
Why did you leave him?
Why didn’t you break up with Kevin?!
WHY?!
I’ve asked myself that every day for the last four years… but I always come back to the same answer.
On one hand was the only boyfriend I’d ever had. I’d lost my virginity to him. He was the only guy I’d ever gone all the way with… and until those last few days in Athens, he was the only one I’d ever kissed. He’d liked me back when I wasn’t pretty. We had three and a half years of history, and an entire future planned. We were going to go to college together, then we were going to go to New York City, and then to exotic countries, and write and get married and see the world.
On the other hand was the hottest guy I’d ever met. But I knew he was a womanizer. No matter what he said to me, no matter how much I wanted to believe him, there was this lingering fear that I was just another conquest. He had slept with dozens and dozens of women – used them up and then tossed them aside. Or at least never stayed with them. And that’s what I wanted: someone to stay with forever.
I was weighing a lifetime against one moment. Maybe not a moment; maybe a week, or a month. Maybe two or three… and then he would cheat on me. I was certain of it.
What’s one week or month against a lifetime with someone you love?
…or think you love?
I keep coming back to this interview I did once for the Syracuse student paper. I talked to a woman who ran a beautiful old house in the country that doubled as a wedding site and a reception hall, all in one.
She said that by her estimation, a third of the brides who had walked down the aisle in that house knew it was the wrong decision. She could see it in their faces that they knew they were making a mistake. Some even confided in her, because she was the only one they could tell. It wasn’t necessarily that there was another man, although occasionally that was the reason. Usually it was just that the person they were about to marry wasn’t the One. But it was happening now, and her parents had spent so much money, and 200 people were sitting there waiting as the music played –
Even more than that, those brides loved the men they were about to marry, even if they weren’t in love with them.
How could they walk out on them like that? How could they hurt them like that?
That’s essentially what my mom had done to my dad. Gutted him. Broken him. Hurt him so badly he never recovered.
I couldn’t do that to Kevin.
I couldn’t be my mother.
At yet, at the time, I was too young and inexperienced to see all the warning signs Kevin was throwing up like red flags. The insecurity… the petty jealousies… the anger and immaturity… the emotional manipulation…
But how could I see them? I’d only been with him. I didn’t know that’s not how it’s supposed to be. I didn’t realize that’s not how all men act.
I met a man who didn’t act like that, but, hey… he was a womanizer, right?
In retrospect, it’s funny that the womanizer was the more emotionally healthy of the two.
Not funny ‘ha ha’… but funny painful.
Or funny f*cked-up.
Even when Shanna spelled it out for me… well… you only hear what you’re ready to hear, or want to hear. Anything else gets marked down to ‘how can a girl who’s never had a real relationship know anything about mine?’
Everything about my relationship with Kevin looked good on paper.
But you don’t make a life out of how things look on paper.
My heart wanted something else… but I went with my head instead.
Sometimes that’s a good thing.
Not this time.
Kevin and I broke up anyway.
See?
Funny f*cked-up.
Actually, I broke up with him.
Like mother, like daughter.
Lying… destroying the people she was supposed to love most…
So go ahead, hate me for what I did.
You can’t hate me more than I hated myself at the time.
The really f*cked-up thing?
As much pain as it eventually caused me… I wouldn’t have traded that night with Derek for anything.
That probably should have been my first clue.
75
Kevin knew something was different from the minute he got back to Savannah. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I was just afraid. Going to a new school… growing up… it was suddenly real, not just a daydream anymore.
I’m not sure he entirely bought it, but he had me around him again – and he was getting sex at least every other day – so he let it slide.
But the guilt slowly drove me insane… so I told him two weeks before we left for Syracuse.
Sort of.
I told him I’d kissed Derek, and that I was sorry, it was stupid, I was drunk, I didn’t mean it, I loved him – Kevin, not Derek.
Kevin freaked out, of course, and immediately broke up with me.
This time, I was the one pleading. I left messages and texted him a thousand times and cried and said I knew I didn’t deserve him, but please oh please could he forgive me, please, just this once?
He eventually yielded, and we got back together just in time to leave for college.
And then the fun really started.
He played passive-aggressive mind games every time I left his sight. “Don’t cheat on me while I’m in the bathroom.” “Don’t kiss any strangers on your way across campus.”
I accepted it at first. A masochistic form of self-punishment. I told myself I deserved it.
And then he crossed the line one Friday night when he was drunk at a party and called me the C-word at the top of his voice in front of crowd of, oh, fifty or so people.
Yeah. That was a wake-up call.
A Damascus Road conversion, if you will.
In front of that very same crowd, I told him to go f*ck himself, and that I didn’t want to be with him anymore.
This time, he didn’t call and text and whine and beg.
No, he systematically poisoned all his friends against me.
People who had become my friends by default.
Which basically meant half the undergraduate journalism school thought I was a horrible slut who cheated on a really good guy… and I lost my entire social circle in one weekend.
It was a really, really shitty way to spend my first year at a new school.
I thought about transferring. Hell, I thought about going back to UGA… about going back to Derek…
But I’d never heard from him.
I mean, that was at least as much my fault as his. I had Ryan’s cell number; I could have contacted him and found out if Derek still wanted me back.
Unfortunately… I followed their band’s Facebook page.
In the seven months since I’d left, Inward Spiral blew up – at least as a cover band.
Which meant a lot of frat parties.
And apparently some gigs at the 40 Watt and the Georgia Theater.
There was picture after picture of show after show…
…and gorgeous girl after gorgeous girl hanging all over Derek.
Which made me want to cry and vomit and kill him, all at the same time.
Each one of those pictures actually hurt worse than my break-up with Kevin.
Derek had obviously moved on… and there was no way in hell I was ever going to contact him now.
I stopped going on the band’s Facebook page. It was just a little too much like ramming a needle into my heart, over and over again.
But eventually my wounds healed. I compartmentalized those two weeks with Derek, and turned them into a beautiful memory… nothing more.
And I began to realize all the petty little ways Kevin had controlled me. Worse, I began to realize that I had let myself be controlled. And manipulated. My self-pity and sadness curdled into anger, and that anger reignited my famous stubbornness, which made me say, Leave this place just because my ex-boyfriend is a petty a*shole? F*ck THAT SHIT.
And I moved on.
I made new friends outside the Journalism school. I got involved in intramural volleyball. And I met a guy in junior year who I ended up dating until the end of school.
The relationship was fine. He was nice and sweet and giving… but he wasn’t the One. By now I was a little more self-aware and knew not to drag things out, so I tried to have a gentle talk about how we had had a great time together, and would always be friends, but after graduation it might be best if we went our separate ways.
He called me a bitch, got in his car, and drove away. Never heard from him again.
Funny, I didn’t feel anything other than a little sad.
Same with Kevin. I was ten times more angry than hurt.
Both breakups were nothing compared to the first time I heard Derek’s new band on the radio.
76
It was the summer before my senior year. I was driving around Savannah doing some errands before heading back to school, listening to the local top 40 radio station, when a Bruno Mars song finished and the cheesy-ass announcer came on.
“You’re gonna be hearing big things out of this next band, a rock group out of Athens, Georgia named Bigger. Bigger what, you might ask?” he asked with a suggestive smirk in his voice. “You be the judge… but I think they’ll be bigger stars than anybody out there, if their first single is any indication – it’s Bigger, with ‘Girl, Please Stay’!”
The guitar intro was really good – a beautiful melody expertly played.
For some reason, even though the songs didn’t sound anything alike, I thought of “Under The Bridge” and a day, long ago, spent in a basement singing along to Katie Perry and Beatles songs.
And then, like a ghost appearing in the seat next to me, Derek’s voice – sexy, deep, seductive – filled the car.
I met a girl who turned my head
She took me home one night
But when I looked, saw you instead,
My heart gave up the fight
Every moment before we met
Was time I spent in vain;
Before you it was emptiness,
Booze and sex to numb the pain
But you say you’ve got another man
And you can’t say no to him
I’m asking, girl, for just one chance,
Just one moment, sink or swim
And all the times I heard you say
That I can’t expect more than just today
I’m asking you, girl…
Please…
Stay.
That night with you, I never knew
That sighs could be so sweet
I gave my best, I gave it all
To sweep you off your feet
And there’s got to be more than just one way
Every night you leave I fall down and pray
That you’ll listen to me, girl –
Please…
Stay.
But you left and broke my heart
You tore it right in two
But know no matter where you go
You’ll take one half with you
I know one day that you’ll come back
And once again we’ll meet
I’ll be waiting there for you
And sweep you off your feet
No matter how much you push me away
I’ll keep on asking till you say ‘okay’
And you stay with me. Girl –
Please…
Stay.
I was crying by the end of the second verse.
Shortly after that, I had to pull over to the side of the road, where I bawled my eyes out for ten minutes straight.
Hearing him sing those words was like a knife in my heart… even after all those years.
77
According to Derek’s Wikipedia page, Inward Spiral didn’t last too long. The cover band thing was good for local frat parties, but they didn’t want to hear the band’s original songs, and Derek had bigger ambitions. After plowing through numerous local guitarists and drummers, Derek and Ryan dissolved Inward Spiral… and then Derek went and did exactly what he’d said he would do.
He convinced British guitarist Killian Lee to move to America and join him and Ryan.
Then they recruited some absolutely batshit insane, 98-pound punk-rock girl with a mohawk to play the drums. They rechristened themselves Bigger and recorded their first album, Bigger Than Yours.
It did well on the college charts. ‘Girl, Please Stay’ actually made it into the Billboard Top 20, but fizzled out at number 18. Meanwhile they toured throughout the Southeast, opened for much larger acts, and recorded their second album, Bigger Is Better.
That was the one that hit like gangbusters.
Four songs in the top ten.
Two of them reached number one, with a third on the way.
At least half of them were about me.
And that was just the hits. There were a lot more references in the songs that never got released as singles.
It was pretty freaky walking down the street in New York City and hearing songs blaring from radios – songs whose lyrics contained exact words Derek had said to me, and that I had said to him.
And while some of the songs were wistful and pained, others were angry. Pissed-off.
Occasionally enraged.
It was uncomfortable.
Actually, it was excruciating. At least for the first couple of weeks. And then I became numb to it, and they just became background noise. Then they dropped out of the top ten and went off constant rotation.
But every so often, I would go a week without hearing one of their songs – and then a car would go by with its window down, or I’d walk past an apartment in my building playing the radio, and I’d hear Derek’s voice and it was an unexpected jolt of pain all over again.
Meanwhile the band embarked on a short European tour, then followed it up with a much larger American tour. They started selling out stadiums. They appeared on every late night show there was.
But they never gave a print interview. Wikipedia speculated that it was because Bigger Than Yours got a bunch of two and three star reviews in national magazines, if they got reviewed at all. Spin snarkily referenced Derek and Ryan’s origins, referring to Bigger as ‘the best cover band in Athens who quit their dayjobs… and probably shouldn’t have.’
Spin, and every other rock magazine in existence, lived to regret those words.
And so it went, the band ignoring the print media, and the print media alternately dissing them and slobbering over them… until a girl from California named Shanna Williams met an editor at Rolling Stone at a party, and told him about a roommate she’d had at the University of Georgia…
…and now here I was on a plane bound for Los Angeles.