This is a long-read… 

Lost Without Love

I am a fuckup and a mess. I can barely function. I just want to stay wrapped in my blankets and warm under the covers and disappear from the world. I am so exhausted, so tired and so fried… I just want to stay in bed and cry myself to sleep. I shiver as if it’s 40 below and freezing and then an hour later I’m sweating like a New Orleans hooker on Dollar Day in July. Not only am I depressed but evidently I’m going through Menopause. I’m a mess. As the kids say, I. Can’t. Even.

I had to push everyone away. Everyone Out. There is only so much I can take and I was/and am overwhelmed. I couldn’t engage. I can’t. How can I? What can I say? I blew off all my friends. Childhood friends, people I have known since 4th grade, my oldest friend and her mother, my closest friends and acquaintances, people who barely know me – fucking Rockstars for God’s sake – publicists -- I pushed everyone out by not answering the phone. I deactivated my Facebook account. I went off the grid. I ignored the phone and messages from texts, emails, various social media: I pushed everyone out by ignoring them, avoiding them, and, like a Diva Opera singer after a bad performance, passively said, “Everyone get out of my dressing room!”

As of this writing, I have over 2000 emails I haven’t opened or answered; 32 phone calls I haven’t responded to; text messages up the ass and a host of other forms of socials that I just blew off. I blew off everything – because what the fuck is the point? I am alone and my love, my beautiful lover is gone. I had an exclusive interview with Adam Ant – that’s right, maybe he’s not your favorite artist but he’s one of mine and he only talked to me – to ME -- and no one else IN THE WORLD about his upcoming tour, a third leg kinda deal for the U.S. “Friend or Foe” tour -- and I couldn’t sit still long enough to transcribe it because I fell apart. That’s how bad it is. My anxiety was/is crippling. I was paralyzed. Immobile.

I pushed everyone out -- fully crazed – and basically – I gave up giving a Fuck. It got so bad that my editor at Billboard, Christa Titus, got in touch with a couple of friends – Dan Epstein and Rey Roldan, God bless them all – and she called the Newport Police Department – from New York -- and had them do a “Wellness Check” – which means the Police came by the house to see if I was alive. My 76-year old mother answered the door…. and had to assure them that I was, in fact, alive, but just broken down, miserable and fucking depressed. A wreck. But I had to check out.

I had to. I was like a plate spinner, a guy who juggles chainsaws. I was overwhelmed. After Ebony passed – I took care of her, with her Mother, who moved in with us into

our one-bedroom apartment in Queens, against all odds after her Cancer progressed and she needed 24-hour care – she couldn’t use her arms and her legs but yet she was cognizant about what was going on – I was not going to fail her no matter what -- and yet somehow I worked a full-time night job at ABC News Radio and still got up at 9 A.M. to clean her, change her, bathe her, make her tea… and make certain that she had a LIFE and not just an Existence in a place surrounded by LOVE – I did what any lover would do, I think -- I later resigned from ABC and I moved from Queens back home to Newport, R.I. to grieve and look after my mother and I was starting to mope… and Jamie Roberts, a publicist friend who used to work for Century Media, and who knows a little about depression, texted me and told me to go see one of her bands, AWOLNation, in Providence – a band I didn’t even know and isn’t in my iPod. – no one turns down Jamie Roberts, she used to handle Type O and Fear Factory -- so, after only a couple of months after Ebony passed – and thanks to some amazing publicists -- I was going to see bands – for free -- as Ebbs and I used to do so frequently – I saw everyone in the area – Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, Five Finger Death Punch, Adam Ant, The English Beat, Slayer, Powerman 5000, Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, The Cult – my 30th Cult show –
Jah 9 (I love reggae), Helloween (yes) –– I even saw Junglepussy and Hopeadope (female hip-hop rapper ladies) and everyone here back home just kept me so distracted from my depression. Ebony was gone and I was so miserable but there was so much activity I couldn’t focus on it long enough because there was so much to do. I was just putting on a good face.

AND I was taking care of my mother. Her health is failing. I don’t know how much time she has. She has respiratory and heart disease. It’s a mess. I have to help her up the stairs, among other things. During the time I was taking care of Ebbs my mother had been to the hospital three times and I was in New York and couldn’t get back there, to Rhode Island. Thankfully, I had friends here who looked in on her. But that was then. So now here I am. I am her only living relative. I wouldn’t turn my back on Ebbs, how could I turn my back on my Mother? Impossible. So, as Tennessee Williams wrote in “Sweet Bird of Youth,” when Princess says “a distraction from panic,” everything I was doing was keeping me so distracted and engaged, I never took time to seriously grieve.

Two months ago, more or less, Ebony’s mother, Sundai, called me. She lost her mother, Ebony’s grandmother. In less than a year, this woman lost her only child and her mother. We cried and cried and cried and shared our experience taking care of Ebbs. I was gutted. And suddenly, I had no distractions. Nothing. Zero. Nada. I was devastated. Already, in one year, I had lost Ebbs and then two of my closest friends lost their parents to Cancer. My friend Anthea lost her mother, Beverly -- the dynamite Beverly -- who was so nice to Ebony -- to Cancer; my friend Andrew lost his father and then he himself went through a traumatic experience with Cancer (He is a survivor, thank God, if there is one). People are getting sick and dropping like flies around me and it is heartbreaking and devastating. And I am constantly reminded of what Ebony and I went through. But it all came crashing down around me and all of the memories came flooding back. Everything.
I have been to some dark places lately.

I am wrecked. I’m 51 and still bite my nails. I can barely keep it together. My hair is a mess and starting to lock up into dreads. I have so many split ends Tim Finn wants royalties. I’m barely able to get through the day without crying seven times or more. I couldn’t even sit still long enough to write this without Soviet courage and American Spirit(s). I’m in chaos. I break down at everything. I haven’t even been able to listen to Christmas music. My mother goes around talking about how this will be her last Thanksgiving, her last Christmas, and “let’s make it a good one.” I can barely stand for falling over. Color me Elvis Costello, but I can’t stand up for falling down.

I was holding it together for so long and thought I would get through it. But – as Hemingway wrote in “The Sun Also Rises,” everything fell apart – “gradually, then suddenly.” -- All of my feelings and emotions came crashing down around me like the scaffolding at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I am alone and the woman who blew my mind, who loved ME, whom I took care of… is gone. I can feel her absence. When I can sleep, I sometimes dream and I wake up thinking that she’s here… and, confused, I wake up and realize, she’s gone. And here I am, alone, and wondering what the fuck is my purpose anymore?

People say, “Oh. You need to get help” … but you don’t understand. None of you do. You know that scene in “The Departed?” The one where Matt Damon and Vera Famiga talk over dessert and reference Freud, who said the Irish are the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis? That one. I’m half Irish (just the good half), so yeah, but it’s more than that.

People say, “Hey, you should see someone.” Like some psychoanalyst? You don’t understand. I was raised by a clinical psychiatric care specialist. My mother, after her divorce, an RN, went back to school, got her BS, her Master’s, her Ph.D, her C.S. and used to counsel people. When most kids would get yelled at for not cleaning their rooms, My Mother would sit me down and say, “Why do you think you shouldn’t have a clean room?” I have had psychoanalysis my entire life. And, “Oh, you should be on drugs…” Oh yeah? I spent 4 years with hospitals and drugs – do you know how many drugs Ebony had to take? – No. Fucking. Way. I’m sick of it all. Sick of it. I spent four years in hospitals – and going to the hospital in Ambulances TEN FUCKING TIMES – not counting the time – December 9^th, 2017 --- I was hit by a van crossing Queens Boulevard – and I want nothing – NOTHING – to do with pharmaceuticals – nothing. I don’t want to put some garbage into me to take away my pain. 

“Oh, you should talk to someone.” Oh yeah? Let me tell you something. My Mother, God bless her, treated me like a colleague – a colleague – she always treated me like an adult -- since I was ten. TEN. She was working at Butler Memorial Hospital and the Pawtucket Mental Health Center and came home from a frustrating day and she and my Nana and I went to the Newport Creamery in Middletown – an ice cream place that is kind of a diner – and she told me this story. Keep in mind – I was ten. TEN. Some guy she was counseling, he had traumatic stress or something. He came home early one day and found his wife fucking his son. He caught them “in flagrante delicto” and the son, he pulled out in shock and he had an erection covered in blood. That’s right. His wife was on her period and her son was fucking her. The blood was visible on his dick. She told me this over ice cream. Over ice cream. Just said it like it was no big deal. Like a colleague. I have never shared this. Now how am I going sit in a chair like Tony Soprano and listen to someone question me about my feelings? “Oh, how do you feel about losing Ebony?” FUCK. THAT. You wanna know how I feel? Everything sucks. That’s how I feel.

There was only Ebony and no one else. And no one else can understand. People don’t and will never understand what we had. I loved Ebony, desperately. We were an unlikely couple. We were incongruous. But we loved each other so much. She was tall, I’m short; she was black, I’m white. She was born and raised in Queens and I’m from Newport, Rhode Island. If you looked at us, you might think it didn’t make sense; but really, it did. We were both Only Children, raised by single-parent working-mothers, two people who both loved rock-n-roll. We were a natural fit.

And it was not just romantic love but a fierce passion. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. The first time Ebony and I were together she grabbed me, pulled me in close by my shoulders, looked down at me and whispered, “I want you and I want to give you everything.” And then she kissed me like the world was on fire. Perhaps because of the nature of her job – she was a flight attendant for JetBlue – she would travel and be away for 3 or 4 days. We would miss each other in this time and when she returned, we would go at each other like cats in heat. This went on for ten years. TEN. YEARS. And I knew with Absolute Certainty that Ebony loved and desired ME as much as I loved and desired HER, and I don’t think I ever knew that with anyone else. I don’t know. And, my God, she was built like a Mac Truck. I was so dating above my pay grade. After we had been together for a few weeks, I sent Sir Mix-A-Lot a Thank-You note. Oh. My. God. I loved her so much, totally, haplessly, fully crazed all the time and I just miss her desperately.

And now I’m alone and miserable. And the pain is stultifying. I listen to Sade on repeat, over and over – “By Your Side” – from “Lover’s Rock (2000)” and cry. I am suffocating with the bleakness of existence. The world is coming down yet here I remain. I am standing on the beach with the waves crashing cold upon my feet. Darkness swaddles me like a shroud. There are no stars in the sky and there is only the sound of the ocean. I am staring into the blackness of the abyss and the pain is shattering. I want to wade into the sea and float away, wondering if there’s a Heaven. And yet, in spite of this chthonian misery, I stand: desolate, unattached, abandoned, still, voiceless and alone. Nevertheless, I am still here, though I don’t know why. But I am going to figure it out. On my own terms, and in my own time. Please forgive me if I had to disengage, but it’s what I need right now. I don’t know the right road to Salvation and currently I’m a little lost, but I’m working on getting there. I’m just moving slowly… I should be driving a Caddy but I’m walking.

Like the Springsteen song… “Eldorado fins, whitewalls and skirts, rides just like a little bit of Heaven here on Earth. Well, Buddy when I die, throw my body in the back, and drive me to the junkyard in my Cadillac… Cadillac, Cadillac, long and dark, shiny and black, open up your engines, let ‘em roar, tearing up the highway like a big old dinosaur… James Dean in that Mercury ’49, Junior Johnson runnin’ thru the woods of Caroline, even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans Am, all gonna meet down at the Cadillac Ranch… Hey, little girlie in the blue jeans so tight, drivin’ alone through the Wisconsin night, you’re my last love, baby, you’re my last chance, don’t let ‘em take me to the Cadillac Ranch… Cadillac, Cadillac, long and dark, shiny and black, pulled up to my house today, came and took my little girl away…”

I am lost… without love. But trying to find my way back. It might take a while, I don’t know how long… but I am still here. In spite of all of this…. Merry Christmas.