HANGING WITH THE GIRLS

I've always had platonic female friends. I've had more of them than I've had steady girlfriends, although many of them started off as romances and settled as mutual friendships.

I'm also the type of guy that finds himself, time and time again, sitting in a room full of women as they are talking about men. Often times I am just ignored, and many times I am involved in the talks, but I think it's funny how women openly talk shit about men around me. I mean, I am a man, after all.

But I'm different.

It goes back to my childhood, countless nights sitting around the dinner table with my mother and her sisters, listening to them talk. My aunts were only teenage girls when I was growing up, and they doted on me and my older brother regularly. By all accounts, I was a quiet and cooperative kid to raise-- it was probably the phenobarbitol that I was being fed that kept me so sedate. I was always allowed to sit in on the talks, because I didn't know what they were talking about.

But I learned a whole lot anyway.

I still happen upon circumstances where I'm the only guy in the room and I am privy to the dirt being dished: who's fucking who and who's getting fat, you know the drill. Last night was no exception.

I arrived at Elle's shortly after work. Dave, the guitarist, was just finishing up some licks on Elle's Pro Tools set-up. He looked exasperated to say the least. Katie was there as well, with her boundless energy and borderline obnoxious enthusiasm.

I felt bad for the dude. Dave's a nice guy, and I think he has the best intentions with this band. He already has a girlfriend, has money, has his own business, and does basically whatever the hell he wants to do. He is not in it for the glory or the pussy. He is an extremely talented musician, but he is also feeling a bit wary of the direction the band is taking. His patience for the women in the band is as infinite as mine is limited.

They made him stay very late, even though he had to get up early and work. You could see in his eyes that he was all tuckered out. I resolved not to get as flustered as he, and it helped that I was already stoned by the time I got there.

Lately, I've been cutting back on the pot smoking, but working on recording music with two girls who are learning the ropes is one of those occasions where I need to light up real good. This is not a sexist statement, because it applies to ALL musicians as well. After years of engineering sessions where people became annoyed by all the down time (i.e. those moments where the computer crashes or something has to be re-recorded because of an error), I have developed a rather tough skin in a studio setting. Part of that toughness comes from being nice and baked throughout the whole evening.

Some would argue that my getting stoned gets in the way of progress, to which I reply, "If I had a nickel for every time I was stone cold sober and freaked out over something trivial while recording, I'd be rich, to say the least." Yes, it's a cliche statement, but quite apt on top of that.

The point I'm making is this: recording music is tedious work, if you want it to sound good. Levels must be adjusted, multiple takes must be had, lines must be written on the spot or improvised later. It gets messy and ugly real quick.

Then there's the claustrophobia. I make it a point to take a break as often as possible. Sitting in front of a mixing console or a computer screen in a small room for hours at work is one thing, but when you're supposed to be "relaxed" and in an informal setting, it almost makes no sense to get anxious. But it happens, and I try to prevent things from getting out of control with a mellow demeanor.

This isn't enough for some women.

Dave left, and I started prepping to record. Katie and Elle were dissatisfied with Dave's guitar parts and wanted me to re-record them. I refused, citing a few factors:

1. It's almost a cardinal sin to re-record over someone's tracks without them knowing. Unless they're unforgivably bad, I try not to do it. And since it's not my session to lead, I feel weird about being asked to do such a thing.

2. I'm not the guitar player. Sure, I play guitar, and my style is more in tune to what Elle and Katie want, but Elle is technically the rhythm player, so she should be the one to re-record the parts, not me.

I said I would engineer while Elle played. But first, Elle wanted to smoke some weed. She is a bigger stoner than I am, and seeing as she was stuck behind the boards for hours, I understood that she needed to take five. Katie, however, saw it a different way.

I haven't messed around with Pro Tools in almost a year. I work exclusively with Wavelab at work, and it suits me fine. I can do everything in Wavelab that Pro Tools does, but Elle has a G4 Mac and I am a PC person. The Mac Operating System is still a bit foreign to me.

So it took me a while to get acquainted with her set-up. Everyone has a different style, and Elle has her gear wired in a way that I'm not used to manning. As Elle was showing me the ropes and getting ready to play, Katie kept things lively with small talk.

"So this guy I met online has two tickets to the BMG Sony Grammy after-party on the 13th," she said. "I tried to get you a ticket, Elle, but he wants a date."

Elle said, "He only wants to sleep with you, Katie."

"I know," Katie said. "All men want to sleep with me." She looked over at me. I kept my mouth shut.

"So, are you going to go?" Elle asked.

"Yes, but should I take a demo of our stuff? Or should I just pass out cards with the band website on them?" Katie asked.

"Trust your instincts," I said. "You know what works. Maybe you should bring a CD but not volunteer it. Plus, you can meet so many other artists there. If you see Andre 3000 from Outkast, give him a card-- he's dope."

Katie sighed, as if the weight of the entire world rested on her slender, upright frame. "I mean, this guy's using me, 'cause he's like a 45 year-old man with no life, and he wants to screw me, and I'm using him as well. That's just the way the world is, you know?" Katie leaned in on the couch, stroking Elle's dog's mane. "I'm not a whore, but I'll smile and act sweet and play dumb if I have to."

"If you have to," I repeated, chuckling.

Elle and I started the session up, and we met with some delays when I couldn't find a particular button to click on the monitor. She had to keep coming over to me to show me where to assign this bus and that channel. Katie grew impatient.

"You guys," she said, "I don't want to seem like a wet blanket, you know, but... maybe next time we get together, you guys shouldn't smoke anything. Not that I'm against it-- I smoke sometimes myself. But it just slows everything down to a crawl, you know?"

I could see by the look on Elle's face that this remark from Katie was bothering her. Before I knew the whole story, I already had it pegged: I've seen it and heard it a million times. Musicians get bored when they are not the ones in the spotlight, putting in work. It happens to me quite often, but what I do is sit in the corner and, er, play by myself while waiting for the technical aspects to get cleared up.

And since Katie doesn't know Pro Tools from a pick-axe, she is quick to berate us for our seeming lack of drive. But running full-tilt into recording sessions is the quickest way to lose your inspiration, because invariably you will hit a snag, and the momentum will dissipate, weed or no weed.

It didn't help matters that Katie was hopped up on caffeine.

I turned to Katie and, with the quietest tone possible, said, "I know you're impatient right now. But believe me, it's not a weed matter. It's a vibe matter. This is tedious shit, and I'm not about to lose my mind over a cheesy Pro Tools demo that's not going to be used in the final product anyway."

Katie got defensive. "You don't understand. You're trying to defend it."

"No, I'm not defending it," I said. "I just know what I know. You're bored and antsy, and we're trying to figure something out and you think we're taking too long because we're high. But the fact is, I don't know Elle's board like she does. If you were to sit here and try it, it would take longer, right?"

Katie wouldn't buy it, but it didn't matter. The Number One Secret of controlling a session is to let natural emotions drive the performances. Before Katie's remark, Elle was giving false starts and flubbing her guitar part. But she was sufficiently pissed off enough to deliver a take that went all the way to the end with only a few flubs here and there, flubs that can easily be fixed later on.

I call 'em Angry Takes, and my oeuvre is full of them.

Katie was a bit miffed, but it would pass as soon as she heard the final product. That's Secret Number Two: No matter how much they complain, if you did everything right the first time then everyone who was on the track will get excited upon hearing it played back.

Secret Number Three: Don't get mad. If you are frustrated and tired, just say it to the engineer or producer. If they don't get it, walk away. If they say you're wasting time, tell them it's a bigger waste of time to force a performance that just isn't in you at the moment.

Luckily, I didn't have to get to Number Three, because Elle's downstairs neighbor Stacy came in, at 2am, to see what was going on.

A note about Stacy: By odd coincidence, I found out that she worked with Eve on a TV pilot a year ago. When I was trying to find Eve online, I ran into that site and saw Stacy's picture on it. It blew my mind, and so the next time I saw Stacy, at one of our gigs, I told her about the connection. Thankfully, both Eve and Stacy got along, so there was no awkward cattiness to reckon with between the two of them.

Stacy is a beautiful redhead, possibly from down South judging from her accent. She resembles Eve in a cursory way. Before I knew who she was, I remember seeing her at Elle's and being very attracted to her. However, I am pretty sure that I am not her type.

But that doesn't stop me from being nice, I suppose.

"What's your dog's name?" I asked, as her chihuahua licked his own snout and peered into my bloodshot eyes.

"Loki," she answered.

"Loki? The Norse God of Chaos?" I remarked.

"Well, I always thought he was the Scandinavian God of Mischief."

"You're probably right," I replied.

"It's all the same, when you think about it," she said, impressed that I even knew one thing about Norse mythology.

The girls commenced to dishing for a spell. Evidently, Stacy had been on a walking date with a guy she just met... and happened to run into another guy whom she had met the week before, while on Coldwater Canyon!

"He's the one who didn't call you?" Elle inquired.

"Yes," Stacy said. "And here I am, with this other boy toy-- he's a chef, from Sweden --and all of a sudden it's like 'Whoa, funny seeing you here!'"

"Why do men do that shit?" Katie asked aloud. "They like you, they say they'll call, then they take forever to actually do it."

"Maybe they're afraid of coming off desperate," I said. My words were met with deafening silence. No matter.

"So what did you do when you saw this guy tonight?" Elle asked.

At this point I tuned out, because I've been through this ordeal so many times I now have a way of zoning out the parts I don't want to hear. When I re-focused again, I overheard Katie saying something about how she is right now more into her music than any guy.

"Yeah, but you just got out of a relationship," Elle said. "In time, you'll be wanting more."

"Yeah," she said. "I just wish I could date the music."

I laughed. "I've had steady girlfriends, but I always date the music, no matter who I'm seeing. The music will never lie to you, the music will never cheat on you."

Katie misheard me and said, "You have a steady girlfriend?"

"No, I said that..." As I repeated my answer, I recognized something in Katie-- the frustration of a woman who is used to being hit on constantly, dealing with a guy like me who doesn't betray his emotions readily. She was trying to figure out why I wasn't gaga over her. She thought, for a flicker of a moment, that it was because I was already attached. But I never even let on that I want anyone half the time. It's the other half of the time, when I am flirty, that surprises girls like Katie, who see themselves (rightly so) as much-coveted objects of desire.

The surprise comes with a twist. Let me elaborate:

After my remark about dating the music, there was a lull in the conversation. Stacy, another big stoner, passed me the little bong and asked me how Eve was doing.

Thrown off for a second, I decided to be diplomatic. "Eve is doing well, I guess. She recently got into a minor car accident, so her car is out of commission right now. Otherwise, she is doing good, I guess."

Katie, sizing me up and trying to see what planet I was from, interrupted. "Who's Eve?"

I was unfazed. "Eve is the girl I brought to our Knitting Factory show in December," I said. Then, I went straight back to talking with Stacy. I didn't hold back while talking to her. If I made her laugh, I smiled. If she said something funny, I would laugh in kind. I asked her questions about herself, and she replied honestly and intelligently. Katie, who is a Jersey girl through and through (and there's nothing wrong with that), can be a bit hard to talk to because she wants so badly to come off as city-sophisticated. It isn't hard, however, with a girl like Stacy, because her Southern demeanor makes her a great conversationalist.

And, unlike Katie, I get the sense that Stacy doesn't think she is Ms. Thang. Yes, she must know she is hot, if she's hooking up with Scandinavian pastry chefs and auditioning for TV pilots, but she would never announce it as a bold declaration, as Katie did earlier.

Stacy and I started to talk about acting, and this is where I knew Katie was burning up. Katie is an actress herself, and when I first met her she had been performing in a play that she invited all of us in the band to go see. I promised her I would, but never got around to it, mostly because Eve and I were spending time together and I didn't want to give Eve any reason to think that I wanted to be anywhere else but with her. And now, here I was, talking animatedly with Stacy about theater and all sorts of related matters. Stacy also mentioned her admiration of Eve's acting ability, and pretty soon the conversation was just the two of us, with Elle too busy figuring out Pro Tools to comment.

I know it sounds like I was trying to get Katie's goat. And you'd be right to guess that. This is par for the course in The Battle Of The Sexes, and I want to explain why I make conscious attempts to throw women like Katie off of my trail.

Men, as we all know, are dogs and slaves to their dicks. Most women know this, and exploit it for all they can. They use the withholding of sex to punish men, but at the same time some women will complain that they are seen as only 'sex objects'.

I am a normal man, with healthy desires and urgent needs. But I value dignity, even if it is a strangled form of it. I know that if I just played along, I'd probably meet more girls than I normally do. But as you can see from the contents of my blog, I have this bad habit of finding the most fucked-up women to be attracted to, and it makes for some rough riding further on down the line.

So, my patented aloofness stems from my unwillingness to let a woman control me through sex, which is the one trump card in their favor. I dislike being treated as if I am an animal in need of taming. It is also an insult to my intelligence: Yes, I have gonads and testosterone flows through me, but I also have a mind. I'm smart, I can do things other than procreate. I like girls with nice bodies and pretty faces, but I fall for the ones with sharp minds and quick wits. I can look all day at models in magazines but the ones who intrigue me are the ones who make me think for more than one second about something other than myself.

So, even though Katie's interest in me is about as deep as the little pocket inside the right-front pocket of a pair of jeans, she cannot stand that I have opted to give my attention to someone else. I'm nobody, of course, so it's not like Katie cares either way... which is the funny part. She is upset that a man she is not interested in is lavishing attention on another girl in the vicinity.

So much for controlling men through sex, eh?

By the way: The guy friends that I keep think that I'm loony. They don't see me as a champion for every poor sap who ever did something unnecessary for a girl just because she had a nice rack. They see me as a fool who passes up a multitude of chances to get laid.

Then again, those same guys are the ones who saddle me with their sob stories, when their relationships go sour and the whip comes cracking down.

I'm not immune to this-- haven't I been pissing and moaning all week long about Eve being cold to me? And my last post-- I still have to explain that one before I wrap this one up.

However, you don't hear it from me all that often, because I know for a fact that I'm not ready for relationships, and I steer clear of them when I can.

So I'll admit, last night was some weird, ego-driven attempt by me to try and maintain the illusion of control in my own life, by driving some girl crazy in imaginary retaliation for what has been done to me, either in the past month or all of my life.

It wasn't all antagonism, though: I sweetly promised Katie that, if it really meant that much to her, I wouldn't smoke at all during the next session. She smiled and whispered, "Thank you." It was almost enough to make me forget about my own problems.

But, when Elle finally drove me home, and I went to sleep, and I woke up this morning, I finally decided that I'd had enough.

I called Eve and left a voice mail on her phone:

"I just wanted to say that, if you are going to continue with this silly grudge, then we may as well pack it in. I need my vaccuum back, because it belongs to the apartment, not me. And I need the computer back. You can trash my bike, I don't give a fuck what you do with that. I have some stuff of yours here that I need to return as well. If this is how you want it, then congratulations-- you got your wish. Let's just go our separate ways and leave it at that, okay? Okay."

Harsh? Yes. But it needed to be said. I really don't want to see her go, but she leaves me no choice. I broke up with my last steady girlfriend over the same shit. I felt like I had to choose between being well-fed and well-laid but miserable and spinless, or being starved and horny but happy and free.

I opted for the latter, and it looks like once again I've chosen art over love.

Why? Let me answer that with a passage from "When The Music's Over" by The Doors.

Because the music is your special friend. Dance on fire as it intends.

Music is your only friend... until the end.

Until the end.