A calamity often foreshadows something even worse … Technically, Judy was my first wife. We never found a preacher, but she was the first woman who latched on to me and seemed determined to stay, no matter what.
Of course, “no matter what” was no match for me, but our time together was sweet while it lasted.
I met Judy at a nightclub on New Year’s Eve, and six months later we moved in together.
Our worlds seemed to merge as her friends became mine and mine hers.
We vacationed together, tried to learn what cheese went with which wine together, and became allies as we navigated the turbulent seas of life.We even had pet names for each other, but I can’t reveal what she called me. Readers would begin to tease me, which might lead to property damage, arrest warrants, and lawsuits.
My friend Rick and I had started a band before I met Judy, and she often came to our practices at a place we called “The Shack.” She sat in the living room with Rick’s wife and whoever else showed up while we played in the garage. We were writing songs and recruiting new band members. Everything seemed promising.
Then one day, quite out of the blue, Rick called me and said he and his new bassist and drummer wanted to move forward as a three-piece without me.
I had been fired. I was livid. I told Rick to put my equipment by his front door so I could pick it up after work.
When I told Judy, she was furious. She rode with me to The Shack.
I walked up to the door and grabbed my guitar, amp, and gig bag without making eye contact with any of the six people sitting in The Shack’s living room.
Then someone started to clap.
It was an act of cruelty I still don’t quite comprehend. Why?
Judy was a Texas girl, and it was all I could do to keep her from attacking the clapper (the bass player’s girlfriend).
Maybe I should have let her.
I was humiliated and angry, and Judy did her best to comfort me as we drove home. We sat at our kitchen table while I poured out all of my fear, anger, and self-doubt. I wasn’t good enough. I had never been good enough. I was little more than a pretender.
And anybody who believed otherwise was full of it, including Judy, I said.
The more she tried to draw me out, the more isolated I became. The more she tried to lift me up, the heavier my burdens felt. I looked for validation and meaning in places I shouldn’t have.
I wish I had been more perceptive in those days, more understanding, but I was young yet.
And then I saw goodbye in Judy’s eyes, to borrow a phrase from Zach Brown.
Lesson: Women don’t usually take up with victims. If you don’t love yourself, a woman probably won’t love you either.
I wrote a dark song about the end of that relationship called “Ducks on the Pond.” Here is some of it: I’m a duck in a dry lake without you.
An empty cement mixer with eight flat tires, a lineman in a town that has no wires.
A crowded filling station that’s running out of gas, there’s a semi on my freeway that will not let me pass.
Ghastly! The band that rejected me didn’t last long, and neither did Rick’s marriage, so we eventually renewed our musical pursuits back at The Shack. We didn’t talk about it all that much, but I guess he was as lost and demoralized as I was.
Rick and I played a lot of blues music in those days. Sometimes it felt cleansing. But it wasn’t.
Judy was gone, and it would take me a long time to get used to that idea.
But there is a happy ending of sorts.
A few years later, I introduced Rick to my friend Jenny. They married, had eight children, and now live on their farm near Siler City, N.C.
In 2017, I sat on the tailgate of an F-150 jamming on acoustic guitars with Rick and his son Ry, who was about 18 years old then. We played a song I wrote, called “I Gotta’ Have You, Baby.”
But that song is another sad story.
Selah.