The Lengths That I Will Go To
It’s a Wednesday afternoon, the 28th of May, 2008, and I sit in a tattoo parlor on Sunset
Strip in Hollywood California, glancing out the window to avoid looking down at my own wrist,
which feels like it’s being scraped with a rusty safety pin. I’m trying to fix my attention on the
darkly painted exterior of the Viper Room directly across the street, attempting to recreate in my
mind the scene of River Phoenix, the heartthrob of my generation, overdosing and dying on the
sidewalk all those years ago, but it’s sunny and gorgeous, and no such morbid thoughts can stick
in my head. On the other side of the counter, Brett says my name and points his camera at me. I
lift my free hand and flip him the bird as the digital flash goes off.
“I’m sending that one to your mom,” he says in his mouthful-of-pudding Georgia twang.
His accent hits a nerve in my brain, sending the same question up into the air that I’d
been asking myself for two days. What in the world am I doing in Los Angeles, sitting in a tattoo
parlor, surrounded by this motley-crew of characters? There they stand: Brett—a recovering
alcoholic guitar salesman from Atlanta, Andrea, his brand-new wife—a transcendental
meditation-center employee who had recently lost forty pounds, and has big giant hair and a
drawl like black-strap molasses, Joy—a magenta-haired Walgreens clerk from Cleveland who
travels England on bicycle tours and follows Morrissey around, and Francisca—a fifty-year old
self-proclaimed “fat-assed, saggy-titted Cuban” from Orlando, who wears an air-brushed jean
jacket and tiny plaid schoolgirl’s skirt. The only one missing is Shari, a five-foot-nothing halfJapanese, half-Irish piano teacher who has in the last two years become my closest friend. She’s
skipped the scene today, opting to attend her oldest son Sean’s college graduation ceremony
somewhere up in “The Hills.” Earlier, we had playfully chided her for choosing Sean over
Michael Stipe, who would be signing autographs at Book Soup down the street in less than two
hours. The funniest part was that she’d actually had to think about the choice.
That same brand of die-hard allegiance had united us all here today. A diverse gaggle of
near-strangers whose homes were scattered across the country, we’d congregated to worship at
the altar of our favorite band R.E.M., who was playing the Hollywood Bowl that Thursday night.
And yes, we had all met, even the recently married Brett and Andrea, through—how I hate to
admit this—THE INTERNET.
I know, I know.
For the longest time, I didn’t even own a computer; I was the kind of person who checks
her e-mail at the public library. Once re-enrolled in college after an eight-year hiatus,
compulsory ownership of a campus-issued laptop required that I inch a little closer into the
information age. Three years later, I got a digital camera for my thirty-first birthday—I had
actually asked for one! Last year it was an mp3 player; now I can’t put the thing away. Those
who know me well like to laugh in my face, delighted that the old curmudgeon’s finally moved
into the twenty first century. However, I still treasure things that most people find clunky and
inconvenient, and have so far proudly refused to own the most obnoxious invention ever, the
thing that has turned our culture into rude, impatient blabbermouths—the cell-phone.
So here I am, the old-fashioned technophobe with a fascination for hand-written letters
and wooden telephones, who once scoffed at the falsity of “online” relationships, cavorting
around with five people I’ve never met face to face until two days ago, all because we have one
three-letter fanaticism in common. I’m simultaneously amazed at my own ridiculousness and
elated that we’ve found each other, and are getting along like lifelong chums—especially Shari
and me. It’s so funny, because I’m tall and she’s tiny. I’ve just turned thirty-two; she’s fortynine. I live in the frozen tundra of the Midwest; she resides less than a mile from the ocean in
San Pedro. Despite all this, we are absolutely twins.
“Are you going to show Michael your tattoo?” asks Francisca as we stand in line like
star-struck cattle holding our photo-books, the title pages marked with yellow post-it notes
bearing our names in black sharpie.
“No,” I say, glancing at the still puffy black script just to the left of my branching blue
veins, “I didn’t do it for him.” Which is completely true, but even if it weren’t, the tattoo is fresh
as hell and I wouldn’t dream of pushing my wrist into Michael Stipe’s face in a million years.
People who go, “Look at this...see? See what I’ve got?” drive me absolutely crazy.
Francisca just shrugs and adjusts her jacket. Ten years ago she’d had the face of Mike
Mills, R.E.M.’s bassist, tattooed above her left breast, and has since become a legend in her own
mind by flashing the tit-tat all over creation. It’s huge, and quite frightening, as she specifically
asked the artist to make sure that one of Mike’s eyes was slightly larger than the other, and that
the frames of his glasses were bright red, to be as accurate a rendering as possible. “Mizz Mills”
as we call her, is actually quite famous on a small-scale, in that the number of shows she’s
attended is in the double digits, and she’s actually been interviewed for television on a number of
occasions. If you Google “Mike Mills Tattoo,” you will find her picture. Frankly, I think the
drawing on her chest looks like John Denver with a hangover, but I humor her. The woman
scares me to death; earlier while we rested on Shari’s living room sofa during a break in our
pilgrimage, Fran had slid a piece of paper out of her bag and showed it to me. It took me a
moment to realize what I was seeing, but once I’d scanned over the document, I’d nervously
handed it back to her. Only a bat-shit crazy lunatic would steal Mike Mills’ birth certificate. I
hoped my fingerprints weren’t on it. Francisca makes me feel utterly, completely, one hundred
percent normal.
At the door of Book Soup, a lanky guy in black who looks like a body guard or part of
the Mafia ushers my friends inside, but inexplicably draws a chain across the entry before I can
cross the threshold. I’m resigned; this kind of thing always happens to me. However Brett, who
is having none of it, sweet-talks the guy into letting just one more in. He’s my polar opposite—
one of those people who always get what they want. I think he believes he’s put upon this earth
to help timid folk like myself. He’s given me the nickname “The Baby” on this trip, not only
because I’m the youngest in the group, but because he sees me as a small-town, doe-eyed novice,
and he relishes the role of experienced tour guide, even though this is his first time in L.A.
Upon stepping inside the bookstore and hearing a familiar voice murmuring among the
journals and novels, I’m instantly petrified. I’ve met famous people before, and ones that I really
admire, too. Heck, just ten minutes ago, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck had walked past me on the
sidewalk, no more than two feet away, and my stomach had jumped and my heart had raced, but
I had kept my cool, snapped his picture as he passed, and giggled into Andrea’s Steel Magnolia
hairdo. It was no big deal.
But this is my…well…darn it. I really hate to use the word hero, as it conjures
insufficient connotations in my mind, like empty-headed adoration for someone exempt from
objective criticism. Or, equally unsatisfying, it implies that the person being admired should be
some great conqueror of injustice, curer of disease, or moral crusader. Idol doesn’t work either; it
implies a karaoke pop-star. As much as I cherish words, sometimes the ones that already exist
just don’t work. I guess I’ll stick to hero. It’s just so sickeningly unabashed, but there it is.
In any case, I don’t do hero worship in public; I do it at my desk.
The desk where I do most of my writing is pushed into a corner of my bedroom, a corner
I call my “wall of inspiration.” It is adorned with photos of bears—polar, panda brown and
grizzly, still scenes from old Star Trek episodes and Wes Anderson movies, and photos of other
artists I admire. But the bulk of the wall is papered with pictures of Michael Stipe. Who knows
why we pick any one particular person as a muse? I’ve gone through my share of favorite
singers, painters, poets and actors, but over the years, the lyrics written by this particular man
have failed to leave me alone. I’ve just always been enamored by the way he strings words
together and how those words, delivered in an unpolished gravel-road of a voice, shake through
my very viscera. Certain phrases haunt me; “the privileged and weary-eyes of river poet search
naïveté,” and orbit around in my brain, rattling, jangling, and sneaking into my work.
That said, I am not a gusher; I do not gush, nor do I like other people to gush to me.
There’s a line in The Catcher in the Rye where Holden Caulfield is watching an audience react to
a hokey-piano player in a jazz club that I always identified with:
“I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes
though I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap
for the wrong things. If I was a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet.”
So, the man who wrote “So. Central Rain” and “King of Birds” stands there greeting
people and signing autographs, and I have no thought in my head other than “run.” As I stand
there, mortified, person after person splatters their innermost gratitude and admiration onto this
man, who looks rather like a skittish deer in the headlights. An emo-cute girl with jet black hair,
who’d just a moment ago told me she was overcome with nerves, is handing Michael an
envelope containing a “zine” she’s published; something that anyone with a brain knows he will
probably never read. He takes it hesitantly but politely, thanking her in a barely audible mumble,
and the line moves forward. Joy bemusedly tells me I look like I’m about to throw up. She’s so
nonchalant; she finds this all very boring and silly. I think the sole reason she’s here is to see
Johnny Marr onstage with Modest Mouse tomorrow night.
My party is next up, and for the next few minutes I watch as Brett, who might have been
a used-car salesman or a game-show host in his past life, chats up the reserved singer like
they’ve been buddies for years. Maybe because Brett used to chauffer Mike Mills’ brother to
A.A. meetings in Atlanta, he feels entitled to such familiar camaraderie. Then Andrea takes her
turn, engaging him in conversation in that thick, North-Carolina accent of hers as if she’s never
feared a thing in her life. She gave me some B.S. earlier about being “twitter-pated” with nerves,
but I swear, I’ve never encountered anyone so seemingly nonplussed about everything. (Later
when I catch her smoking a joint in the rental car it will make perfect sense. I had assumed she
talked so slow because she was Southern.) While I watch this scene, feeling completely
disconnected, a man standing behind the glass bookcase takes my books from my hand; one with
my name and one with Shari’s, and lays them open to the title page on the glass in front of
Michael. I wish Shari was here so I wouldn’t feel like the lone tongue-tied idiot.
Now is the time I realize I’m supposed to say something.
I can’t.
I can’t speak. I just stand there.
What do I say? “I like your music?” “You’re swell?” “Your face is on a magnet on my
fridge?” “Do you have the correct time?” Words are meaningless drivel at best, poison at worst.
Michael finishes writing, lifts the sharpie off the page and slides the second book across
the desk to the apparent deaf-mute standing stock-still before him. He looks up at me then, and I
feel like I am encountering part of my own self, which is really quite a disconcerting sensation.
By the grace of pure chance, my mouth manages three whole words. I’m amazed; I must be on
auto-pilot. It happens a lot.
“Thank you, Michael,” I say, and wonder who said that.
With an amicable slight smile and a nod, he replies, “sure.”
As I walk away, I hear Francisca blathering away at him about something or another, and
he humors her politely the same way I have done for two days. Brett grabs me around the
shoulders and shakes me, laughing like a hyena.
In all honesty, it could not have gone better.
Hours later, outside a coffee shop on the strip in the fading daylight, my friends are still
giving me grief about my silence in big, snarky handfuls. Joy prepares to snap my picture.
“Say Cheese! No, wait! Say, ‘I just met Michael Stipe and didn’t say a word to him!’”
Brett cracks his Nicorette gum and from behind aviator shades says, “Aww…s’ okay,
Molls. Everybody hurts…sometimes.” He breaks into a wide smile, pleased at his own hilarity.
The truth is I’m not hurting in the least. In fact, I’m quite happy, but these people seem
to get a kick out of the hangdog expression I carry around, interpreting it as exasperation because
they’re not yet familiar with my regular face, so I let them have their fun with me. I know they
can’t possibly understand why it was so important not to speak to him. It had dawned on me the
moment he’d printed my name, just another meaningless word, in big messy capitals on the
glossy page. I should not know him; to do so might ruin the perfect thing we have going—the
whole hierarchy of “You write the words, you sing the lyrics, and I’ll listen and smile and sigh
and cry and feel my heart well up, and everyone is happy.” For me to open my mouth and
possibly incite him to react would have stained the meeting with a dose of reality that has no
place within the institution of Artist and Admirer. Gauging by the friendly but humble, and
cautiously quiet way he regarded those who nearly fell over themselves flattering and fawning,
he’d probably felt much the same way I did.
The next night, between sets by opening acts The National and Modest Mouse, Shari
hangs onto my arm like a teenager. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she squeals, “second
row!” I turn and look at the expansive crowd gathering behind us. In front of us, only feet from
the stage, Brett and Andrea sit in the front row, beaming back at us. Those two have seen R.E.M.
about seventeen times a piece, but for Shari and me, it’s show number one. We sit and stand, and
sit and stand, too nervous to be still but too excited to venture from our seats.
Anyone who’s ever been to a concert knows the euphoria of music being created before
their eyes—no filter between instruments and ears but the air. I’ve nearly floated above the
ground in Montreal with Radiohead, and wept in Detroit with Tori Amos, and gone into a trance
with Underworld in Pontiac. But what I experience the moment Peter Buck, Mike Mills and
Michael Stipe walk out onstage is somehow different, and here, I struggle to find the right words
to describe it. Real is the only thing I can come up with.
I watch the man who looked like he might run away himself when confronted with a
crowd yesterday, transform into a performer. Onstage, one must go from an artist to an
entertainer, and I can’t imagine how difficult that must be, as making art for one’s self and
presenting it to an audience are two completely different things. Who we choose to present to
people can be so removed from who we really are.
I start to think about my travelling companions; even though I’ve been corresponding
with them for upwards of two years, I’ve only just met them, and I really don’t know them. I
hope that I’ve not judged any one too harshly, or naively tricked myself into thinking someone is
who they’re not. Who knows if I will even still know these people a year from now? That’s just
how relationships work sometimes; people come and go, and bring you something very urgent
and ripe for the time being, but all too often, time, distance and circumstance shuttle them away
again, leaving only a memory of the encounter, a bright daub of paint on the canvas of your life.
It’s a boring cliché but it works, and as I scan the gleefully agitated crowd for Miz Mills and Joy,
I see so many faces all painted in hues of mutual passion, none of whom I’ll ever see again, and
wonder how I can be any happier.
It turns out that I can. Brett approaches me during the last chords of one song and ushers
me up to his front row seat. I stand there tearing up as Michael Stipe sings, “Hey, kids, rock and
roll, nobody tells you where to go.” I’m not crying because I love this song; I mean, I do, even
though local radio played the shit out of it when I was in the tenth grade. I’m crying because
everything is perfect. Mike wears his cowboy hat, and Peter’s dinosaurs are lined up on the amps
as usual, and Michael, my personal poet laureate, doesn’t know me from any other anonymous
face in the crowd. What’s more important, I’m standing in the strange crisp air of California, a
place I’ve never been before, my arm around Shari, a woman I’ve never met before. Everything
is brand new.
I told myself I would never get a tattoo because only trendy-wanna-bees who wear all
black clothes and walk around making devil horns with their fingers do things like that. I told
myself I would never make friends on the internet, because only pale dorks who play World of
War Craft and socially-handicapped misanthropes who can’t talk to real people do things like
that. I told myself I would never get on a plane and fly to California, because only rich yuppies
who play golf at Disneyland do things like that.
But you know what? Sometimes you just have to do things that you wouldn’t normally
do. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve sold out; it just means that you might not know yourself
as well as you thought you did. I love the fact that I have this simple two word song lyric,
scrawled on my wrist in black ink over my own handwriting, to remind me to take a brave and
clumsy step forward every day. In the beginning, my trip to L.A. was about one thing: R.E.M.,
but it ended up being about so much more, and when I think back on it, it’s not the book signing
or the concert that I recall first. It’s putting my feet in the ocean for the first time, putting my
hands inside the palm prints of Jimmy Stewart and Leonard Nimoy on Hollywood Boulevard,
laughing as Brett smooth-talked his rental car price down by twenty dollars at Avis, eating
Japanese food with Shari, dancing to a family band at her son’s graduation party, and standing,
completely alone, on a balcony in the middle of the night, watching the lights of Hollywood
dance in vivid lucidity as far as I could see in any direction.