I have learned that to be with those I like is enough.
Oh, if only I'd paid more attention in school. Mrs. Boyles, my eccentric copper-coifed 11th grade English teacher, proselytized about the writers in her curriculum - literary icons like Franklin, Steinbeck, and Thoreau (dear God did she love Thoreau) - in a manner that bordered on cultish. As a result, I just tuned her out, poo-poo-ing all her favorite authors and their works. Which is a shame, because if I'd been paying attention when we started studying lovable gay goofball Walt Whitman, that quote of his up above might have resonated with the Younger Me, when it mattered most.
See, Younger Me spent many years taking for granted the fact that it was incredibly easy to make friends. Starting with James, my good buddy of almost fifty years next to whom I randomly sat in first grade, I've just fallen into friendships with almost no effort. Middle school, high school, college, all my various jobs... Within days of stepping into some new social environment, I'd be able to find at least one kindred spirit, and from there begin making great, long-lasting connections.
And that unconsciously cavalier attitude towards my friendships is probably why I didn't think even for one second what it would mean to uproot myself from North Carolina and relocate to the opposite side of the country. I wasn't thinking about the future, I was thinking about going on an adventure. I mean, I guess you have to put yourself first every once and a while, but for Pete's sake, did I take that mindset to the extreme.
My incredible lack of foresight caught up with me big-time, however, the first morning I woke up in my new Silicon Valley apartment. It suddenly hit me right in the solar plexus: for the first time since elementary school, I was completely alone. My girlfriend (hereafter referred to as “The Teacher”, since she... well, she was a teacher)... my parents... my friends... even my cats... they weren't there. Before you start ragging on me, yes, I know, they were all still a part of my life. And yes, The Teacher and my cats were heading to California a few weeks later. But for that moment, physically and geographically, everyone I cared about was over two thousand miles away.
I'd never before considered what it took to put together a new social circle. In the past, I just sort of segued from group to group, often alongside one or two friends making the same transition with me. But laying there in my sleeping bag, taking in the big empty domicile I'd just leased, about to walk into my new job at global tech giant Sun Microsystems… Hee-YIKES! I felt pang after pang of existential dread. What if I couldn't meet anyone in my new situation? What if my camaraderie mojo had dried up? What if (gulp) I didn't have what it took to make friends anymore?
Luckily, I didn't have to stew in my angst for too long. Just a few days into my brand spanking new West Coast way of life, I would happily discover that my fears of unlikability were unfounded. An amazing friendship was waiting right around the corner, an unbreakable hetero bond based on the Three Pillars Of Friendship: a mutually twisted sense of humor; copious quantities of Indian food; and car stereos blaring the skeleton-rattling alternative rock grandeur of...
THE SMASHING PUMPKINS.
My move to the San Francisco Bay Area wasn't the culture shock you'd think it was. (The sticker shock was worse. Rents were three times what I was paying in NC!) Although I grew up in a very Stranger Things-like suburban environment, I'd done enough traveling to get some “big city” experience under my belt. Actually, the biggest challenge was cohabitating again. I had spent almost two years living with The Ex before our breakup, so I already had an idea of what to expect. But for my new lady love, this was her first time living with a significant other (and his cats). Learning how to share our space was tricky at first, but we did our best to adapt. (Here's a tip for all you lovebirds out there who are considering moving in together: if you can swing it, having two separate bathrooms definitely helps ease the transition.)
Once we got settled, though, we were free to explore what the San Francisco Bay Area and the surrounding environs had to offer. And boy howdy, there was a lot to explore. For one thing, the hiking was spectacular. The golden hills east of Palo Alto, the lush parks above Berkeley, and the steep oceanside elevations north of the Golden Gate Bridge were riddled with challenging trails that took us to breathtaking vistas. And when we were done wandering the woods, we had a virtual United Nations of great cuisine available to sate our hunger, everything from sushi to In & Out to farm-to-table canard aux cerises. (With a fried egg on top and spam.) It seemed like very week we were discovering some fantastic new culinary delicacy.
But all the fresh air and Michelin star dining in the world wouldn't have mattered one whit if the music scene had sucked. Spoiler alert: it rocked! For one thing, the Bay Area record stores were in a class all their own. From the gigantic Amoeba Music in Haight Ashbury to the multi-level Rasputin's on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I found it very easy to swap all that pesky software developer money taking up space in my wallet for a slew of glorious CDs. And when recorded tunes just didn't cut it, a trip to one of the world-famous Bay Area venues was in order. I got see Oasis at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Yes at the Warfield. The Posies at The Edge. Why, the very first artist I saw live when I moved to CA was my indie rock hero Matthew Sweet at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco. I was living the dream, folks!
A Southern boy hobnobbing with the beautiful people in the Big City. (Thanks to Nancy Skinkle for the photo.)
Silicon Valley living was worth all the effort it took to make it happen. I had a kick-ass job. Weekends were spent enjoying the great outdoors. I stuffed my face with a dizzying selection of international food. Right in my backyard was a thriving music scene. And I had started an exciting new adventure with a great girlfriend. Yep, my life was pretty much perfect. All that was missing was a good pal to have dumb, stupid fun with.
And that's when Paul entered the picture.
A tall, lanky, eternally-shorts-wearing California native, Paul reported to my boss Steve, but he worked on a completely separate development team, so I had no regular coworker interactions with him. However, he occupied the office next to the cubicle I was temporarily shoved into, so just by the providence of geography we wound up bumping into each other multiple times a day.
Like with so many of my friends before him, precisely when Paul and I had our “a-ha!” moment, the moment one of us made some magic comment that opened our eyes to the fact that we were fellow degenerates, is lost to the mists of time. But when it happened, it was like a bolt from the blue. Within weeks of starting my new job, I'd found my immature thirteen-year-old soulmate.
It was apparent from the get-go that Paul and I shared the same warped sense of humor. The more crude and depraved the joke, the more we laughed. When Fred used Jackie The Jokeman's hooting laugh to punctuate a sad news story on The Howard Stern Show, we cackled right along with him. We tortured our co-worker David by purposefully confusing his Irish heritage for Scottish, giggling as we watched him go apoplectic with every incorrect reference to haggis and kilts. Both of us being huge fans of SCTV, many of our conversations devolved into a series of quotes from and impressions of classic characters like Bobby Bittman, Count Floyd, and Harry, The Guy With A Snake On His Face. Paul would recite every line from Bill Murray's Dalai Lama bit from Caddyshack as I listened in rapt admiration. We were “those guys”, the poster children for the cliché that men mostly communicate through pop culture references.
But Paul wasn't just a towering encyclopedia of movie and TV quotes: he was also an amazing foodie. From the looks of his sinewy Slenderman frame, you'd never know Paul loved to eat. But the man was a gourmand of the highest order. He introduced me to the edible joys of Persian falafel drizzled with tahini, steaming hot Burmese curry chicken, dirt-cheap Vietnamese barbecue pork banh mi sandwiches, and the restaurant that changed my life: Swagat, the all-you-can-eat Indian buffet place. Endless tikka masala and tandoori chicken with a soda for just seven bucks?!? Yes, please!
It was scary how much Paul and I had in common. A love of food. A love of booze. A love of dark humor. A love of goofiness. And a love of the one thing that really bonded us back in the day, the one shared fetish that really revved our motors: music.
Although we were both children of the early 80s New Wave era, Paul's tastes were a lot more eclectic than mine. As a result, he opened my mind (and ears) to a lot of music I'd either ignored or drifted away from. For instance, one day at work, Paul showed me his newly-purchased copy of XTC's Upsy Daisy Assortment, which, after a single spin, rekindled my love of Andy Partridge and crew. Driving to lunch one day, he cranked up “It's Too Late”, a crazy powerful song that made me an instant fan of Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü. Paul's admiration of Michael Stipe and his bandmates helped grease the wheels for my eventual R.E.M. worship. The two of us were lucky enough to get tickets to the first Tibetan Freedom Concert in Golden Gate Park, where we grooved all day long to bands like the Beastie Boys, Cibo Matto, Pavement, and the late Biz Markie. (Our only souvenir? A hideous case of sunburn. Fog does not block UV rays, kids!)
Sharing tunes was the connection that carried us over the friendship threshold and into the hetero buddy playhouse. I mean, this is a guy who bought and restored a 1965 Austin-Healy because he saw Curt Smith driving one in Tears For Fears' “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” video! Who wouldn't want to be best buds with someone like that? But recommendations of stuff we both already had couldn't sustain our musical hunger forever. To stay fresh, we needed a regular infusion of new bands and artists. We needed a source of new songs. We needed to throw our hard-earned cash at shiny new CDs.
The best way to make that happen? A trip to Tower Records.
My precious Tower location in Mountain View, right before it closed down. Rest in peace.
Founded in 1960, over the span of three decades Tower Records went from being a single store in Sacramento to an international powerhouse with locations in over a dozen countries. Eventually management issues would bring their reign as one of the biggest music store chains in the world to a messy end, but for many years, Tower was the hip, go-to music store mecca for fans and celebrities alike.
There had never been a Tower location near me in North Carolina. So imagine my delight when Paul introduced me to the store in Mountain View... not two miles from our office!
Since I could no longer enjoy weekly runs to my beloved BB's with my buddy Burt, field trips to Tower Records with Paul became my new music shopping tradition. Wandering the aisles wide-eyed like Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka's factory, every time we were there, I walked out with some sort of musical treasure. I bought my first Oasis import CD single, “Live Forever”, at Tower. I snatched up George Michael's Older on the day it was released. I found a ton of CDs that were reviewed in my magazines, now-classic-to-me albums like Velocity Girl's Gilded Hearts And Zealous Stars, that dog.'s Retreat From The Sun, and suddenly, tammy!'s (We Get There When We Do.). Over the span of three glorious years, I'm sure I helped put some Tower Records executive's kid through college with my spending.
No lie, Paul and I were in Tower at least once a week, often taking a long lunch to browse the racks looking for new tunes. (Please don't tell our boss Steve... he thought we were at training sessions.) As we'd amble from section to section, our paths would inevitably intersect, and we'd giddily share what we'd found. Most times our selections didn't overlap. I had my predilections, he had his. But every once and a while, our musical biorhythms would sync up, and we'd zero in on the same thing.
That's what happened the day we both excitedly reached for Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, the new double-album from The Smashing Pumpkins.
The classic Pumpkins lineup - D’arcy, Jimmy, Billy, and James - on the verge of megastardom.
True confession time: I wasn't a fan of the Pumpkins when they first hit the scene. Their big songs from Siamese Dream - “Today” and “Disarm” - had been all over radio while I was living in NC in 1993. But because the band was coming into their own during the whole grunge plague, I discounted them as yet another group of pissy flannel-sporting poseurs.
However, I did have one good friend, Lisa, who was a big fan, who begged me to give them a chance. She felt a kinship with Pumpkins frontman and main creative engine Billy Corgan, based on the childhood experiences that drove his musical ambitions. Listening to “Disarm” and “Today” through Lisa's ears, I found I could appreciate the subtle differences in the Pumpkins' style that attracted her to their music. But to her dismay, her recommendation wasn't enough to convert me into a full-blown fan.
Fast forward to late 1995. Driving to work one warm October morning, the radio tuned to San Francisco's sorely-missed alternative rock powerhouse 105.3 KITS, I heard Corgan's distinctive voice proclaim that “the world is a vampire”, before proceeding to rock - and rock hard - for three and a half minutes. “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” grabbed my lizard brain in its angsty clutches and would not let go. Paul had heard it too, and we began using the phrase “I am still just a rat in a cage” as an excuse not to do stuff.
A few weeks later, there I was, standing in Tower Records, staring at the amazing cover of Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness over Paul's shoulder. (I was too slow. He grabbed it off the rack first.) I was captivated by the Victorian angel-styled woman emerging from the gold star that floated among the planets, as well as the ornate font used for the titling. In my mind, the Pumpkins were grunge. (Or at least, grunge-adjacent.) But this album... this album didn't look angry or mopey. It looked - dare I say - artsy? Whimsical, even? Not the vibe I was expecting from a 90s alternative band. Not the vibe I was expecting based on the addictive energy of “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, that's for sure.
Still, I was on the fence. As a wise man once said, “One decent song does not a great album make.” I'd been burned before, dropping fifteen bucks or more on a new CD (or, even worse, back in the day, a tape!) based on one song, only to find that most of the album sucked. And this was a double CD! The odds of disappointment were twice as high! It was too risky. I was gonna give it a pass.
But then Paul enthusiastically said, “Oh, I am sooo getting this.” And that was it. I had to have it too.
Whatever fears I had about the album being a one-trick wonder, though, they were immediately dashed when I heard the haunting, melodic opening title track. From there, the album segued into the wistful orchestral bombast of “Tonight, Tonight”, and it never let up from there. The hard-driving emotion of “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”. The prog-like musings of “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans”. The serene daydreaming of “Lily (My One And Only)”. And the hazy summery nostalgia of “1979”, the song that's risen above the others to become my favorite. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness was (and still is) an astounding artistic achievement, a double album that was “all killer and no filler”, the pinnacle of what alternative rock of the 90s was capable of.
Needless to say, Mellon Collie finally made me a life-long fan of the Smashing Pumpkins. I dove into their back catalog, giving Gish and Siamese Dream the quality listening time Lisa told me they deserved. I absorbed Adore as I traveled around Europe in the summer of 1998. I dipped my toes into the online bootleg world in early 2000 when Corgan released two albums' worth of material, for free, just to spite his record label for not supporting MACHINA/The Machines Of God. I was even there for the brief period that Corgan started his new band Zwan. (“Honestly” is a fantastic song.) I'm such a fan now, I've even updated my collection with all the super deluxe editions of the classic Pumpkins albums. When you add up all the CDs, B-sides, demos, and live shows, I've got more Pumpkins music in my collection than any other artist save Prince.
And to think, all that fanaticism started on a fall day in 1995, standing in the middle of Tower Records, sharing my love of music with my new pal.
Hetero lifemates on the express train to Hell.
It's been twenty-seven loooong years since those first days in CA. So much has changed! Swagat, my Indian food mecca, is long gone. Tower Records is no more. Sun Microsystems collapsed. The Teacher went back to the East Coast. I know nothing lasts forever, but... Jeez. C'mon, Universe! A little stability, please!
Paul and I, however, are still going strong. The two of us are pushing sixty (!), yet when we're together, we become a couple of giggling teenage girls, eager to one-up each other with a goofy anecdote or a silly movie reference. Our bromance is so transparent that even when I'm on the phone with him, the big dopey smile on my face will make my wife Suzie sarcastically quip, “You must be talking to your girlfriend.” Forget her! So what? We love hanging out with each other.
The thing is, unfortunately, Paul and I don't get to hang out in person that often anymore. Just like my friend-abandoning move from NC to CA back in 1995, I didn't anticipate the interpersonal isolation I'd experience when I left the fog-shrouded environs of NorCal in 2005 for the eternally sunny skies of SoCal. Five hundred miles isn't nearly as far away as twenty-five hundred, but it's still quite an obstacle to overcome on a regular basis.
But I didn't stop there! Circumstances forced another relocation in 2019, taking me a good hundred miles or so from my Los Angeles social circle. Once again, when my eyes opened on that first morning of my new residency here in this suburban beach town, I realized that my local friend counter had been reset to zero.
I've been running from my friends like they're Dawn dish soap and I'm the blob of grease scurrying for the side of the baking dish. In the past, I was okay with knowing I could get in touch with everyone through an email or a text. But these days... I dunno. I find that I'm needing more. I don't know if it's cabin fever after two-plus years of Covid, or being run down from years of trying to “make it”, or if I'm having a mid-life crisis about fifteen years too late... Whatever it is, I've really been missing my friends lately. (My long-suffering wife Suzie doesn't figure into this. We're together 24/7... she's in a relationship class all her own.)
Hopefully, this won't be permanent situation. If the Powers That Be are kind and generous, one day I'm going to have the resources to choose my geographic destiny, and go back to where my friends are, for more than just a week-long visit. I just want to swap comic book stories for hours with John. Or spend an entire evening shooting pool with Burhan. Or watch the newly-restored Monty Python Blu-Rays with Mark. Or waste an afternoon prowling through a record store with Paul. I'm not looking for riches or fame or anything like that. All I'm striving for is the means to be able to hang with my pals whenever I want to.
I just want to be with the people I like. For me, that would be more than enough.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning screenwriter and film editor. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow his ramblings on Twitter and Instagram.