Musical Monday: Tramps Like Us

Together we could break this trap
We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
Will you walk with me out on the wire
`cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider
But I gotta find out how it feels
I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real
- Bruce Springsteen

First imagine riding shotgun in a minivan down the interstate next to your husband. You are not the kind of woman who leaves her children for the night or goes to rock concerts. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is completely unfamiliar.

Gleefully pitch children’s CDs out the window. Put on The Stones lamenting lack of Satisfaction. Perhaps ditch shoes and press feet against dashboard. Look at your husband. The furrow in his brow should be gone. Check to see if he holds onto the wheel with one hand instead of two. If two, try putting on Led Zeppelin. Remember looking over at him on your first date twenty some years ago as he drove you home and liking the way his glasses slid down his nose and not knowing until then that you liked men in glasses.

You snap back into reality. This is after all a minivan, and you made mistake of looking over your shoulder and seeing your children’s left-behind jackets and mystery papers. Turns out you weren’t gutsy or impractical enough to chuck all children’s CDs out the window. Husband’s cell phone rings. Find permission slips under feet you were supposed to sign. Momentarily worry about host of things you can’t do anything about. Remember that tomorrow you will go home to cul-de-sacs, back behind garage doors, to jobs, playgroups, and the PTA. Shake it off. Tom Petty now runs down a dream. Look out the window and remember your favorite college jeans, having big hair and being on your way to see Tom in concert with some guy whose name you can’t recall and whose face you cannot see.

This time neither of you had to call your parents to ask for advances on your allowances to get there. Disproportionate numbers of SUVs and minivans fill the parking lot. When you get inside look around and realize you fit a profile: 35 – 65 years old, leather jackets and blue jeans. People are there with their – gasp – children! In order to avert useless guilt trip, briefly allow conversation to detour off on how you should have brought your children. Discuss how they would have liked it, how it would have been a fine cultural experience. Speak of this with earnestness, as if you were talking about taking them to hear the Boston Philharmonic or see the Bolshoi.

Note that compared to the last time you went to a rock concert, more people buy the $30 tee shirts than buy the $20 programs. Not only is beer for sale, it’s imported. Cabernet and chardonnay are also available. Instead of stench of Jack Daniels, weed and stale popcorn, a pleasant combination of Heineken, Ben and Jerry’s, expensive aftershaves and hair products wafts through the air. Your husband gets carded and says, “Bless you” to the beer/wine lady. The floor is less sticky than the tile in your own kitchen. The atmosphere is that of a convivial cocktail party with a touch of frat. Camaraderie spontaneously materializes with the people seated around you. Enjoy moment of knowing that if there is a coliseum in heaven, this is it. For next several hours dance. Remind yourself constantly, if necessary, that your kids aren’t watching.

With luck, all hype will turn out to be true. Bruce plays and carries on like a tent revivalist for baby boomers for something like 11 hours, almost everyone stands up the whole time, the band is awesome and his three encores are exhilarating. Especially when he plays Born to Run, when you and your husband look at each other, when Bruce is at the part when everyone waits for him to go, “1, 2, 3, 4.” You know that your husband is thinking that not only is waiting for the “1, 2, 3, 4″ great, but isn’t it pretty funny that 17,000 people, the mass majority who fit the profile too, are screaming up their lungs and like you may have driven for over 100 miles, paid money that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago for something that boils down essentially to this moment – hearing a 58- year- old in tight black jeans make you wait for as long as you can humanely stand, yell out “1,2,3,4?”

Like after anything you experience together, you are transformed. For as long as you can, allow selves to see things differently. Not differently from each other, but differently together. For a while, like Bruce, be ageless. Hope and pray there will be more good years than bad. Know those years will blur together. Remember it’s okay if months have sometimes passed when you have forgotten to look at each other.

Occasionally recall you are the same two people who married each other long ago who couldn’t wait to leave your wedding reception. Perhaps you pulled away from the curb listening to Steve Winwood’s, Back in the High Life and you threw the ham sandwiches a strange lady in a chiffon dress had handed you out the window as you made your way up I-95 into the dark.

Together Wendy we’ll live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I don’t know when, we’re gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go, and well walk in the sun
But till then, tramps like us, baby we were born to run – Bruce

For more Musical Monday head over to Jori and Diane’s! It’s my first time trying Mr. Linky. Still don’t know what’s up with this guy. He seems very friendly, but please let me know if he gives you any trouble. xxx ooo

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