Letter2
Hey, this is Mike from Wormbath. So here I am, kinda bored, and looking at our Ask Jeanie section and wondering if I should ask this dumb question, cuz there's really no answer I don't think. I feel like my band rocks and I'm totally enthusastic about every show and every recording session and writing songs and everything, but I feel like, I dunno, worried that I'm just wasting my time sometimes. I mean, is it a matter of taking myself too seriously at this point and I should be content to having a few people here and there who get into us or am I just generally fucked by the notion of self-unworthiness? (That was a long sentence.) Do you ever feel like, 'Gee, I'm having a really great time being in DBA, but I wonder if it's worth taking all that seriously?" (Of course, you've already had at least two successful tours, so your situation is quite different from mine, I suppose) I dunno, what do you think?
How did you meet your hubby, and how did you know that he was the one??
Mike
Dear Mike,
i'd be lying if i said that i've never asked myself the same questions. the answer that keeps me going is this: the most successful bands are always the ones that stay together. Hmmm, too much of a cliche for you? For the first time ever, joe and i moved into a place that has a backyard. When we first moved in, the "yard" was not a place where you'd want to walk around barefoot. Imagine a pile of dirt, tiles, peanuts, rubber gloves, hypodermic needles, old toys, claw foot from a bathtub, candy wrappers, and oh yeah, some more dirt. Since spring hit, we've hoed, raked, dug, weeded, seeded, planted, and watered the shit out of this yard. Now when you come over, you'll see that it's about time to mow the thick layer of bluegrass we've got growing! And if you come over again in a couple of weeks, I'll hopefully be able to make you a nice salad with the lettuce, tomatos and beans straight from our garden!! Unfortunately, there are neighborhood cats that use our yard to take their morning shits in. i can't express how disappointing it is when i get home from work and run out back to be greeted by 3 or 4 piles of cat poo strategically shat in the few bald patches in the grass. we've also had a lot of rain lately so there are broken branches and leaves all over the place and all the sproutings are bent over and looking totally depressed. this weekend we'll have to go out and stand up all the tomatos on stakes, do some weeding and maybe even wash off all the plants because the weight of the dried mud is pulling them down and killing them. it's work. and sometimes it can be a lot of work, but we keep doing it because eventually i don't wanna pay 1.29 for 3 beefsteak tomatoes at shoprite and $3 a pint for blueberries. Plus, when i feel like sitting out in the sun and can't trek out to coney island, i want to be able to lie on fresh grass, not a lump of dirty dirt. The worst hasn't happened to that yard so we've been really lucky. No monsoons, no tornados, no hoodlums breaking in and destroying everything that's growing. But even if any of those things happened, you could always bring in more dirt, plant again, reseed and eventually the end result will always be the same. Fat fucking tomatoes. If, for some reason, we don't see any tomatoes this summer, then at least i'll have a place to get a good tan. i'm not gonna stand around yelling at my yard, "why didn't you grow??" and stomping my feet, as much as i'd feel like it. i'll just have to maybe get some fertilizer or something next spring. i don't know if any of this makes sense, but this is the analogy i used to try to convince adam and dan the other night that we have to stop thinking that we need some five-year-plan. joe said to me once that if i keep telling myself that i need a backup plan, then i'm not really believing in what i'm doing...because if you really believe in what you're doing, then why would you need a backup plan? Wormbath fucking rocks. That's really the end of story. Taking it too seriously? Then don't take it so seriously! Keep it fun for a while! Think of it in a way that you need to in order to make you feel better about what you're doing....just don't stop doing it. Maybe these are all just selfish words, because i personally think you guys totally fucking rock...even if you used to be pussweeds! i just know that if i'd be disappointed to see you stop trying, imagine how disappointed you might be?
ok, you might wanna grab a seat for this one. i wasn't exactly the most popular girl in high school hence i managed to graduate without ever having had a boyfriend. i guess by the time i got to college i was pretty set on having a boyfriend (a realization only in retrospect). i started dating some guy before i even chose what classes to take and went out with him for 2 months. it only took that much time for me to realize that although he wasn't the one, but that i really liked the idea of having a boyfriend. shorty thereafter, i started going out with a friend of mine and ended up staying with him for 3, count 'em, 1-2-3 long years.
luke was four years older than me and i was a freshman in college. joe was already at the nyu film school and was actually playing in a band with him the year before i even got to nyu. i guess you could say that i met joe through my ex-boyfriend. Hint #1: Your boyfriend is convinced that you've got a crush on the guy no matter how much you deny deny deny. the only time joe and i hung out alone while i was going out with luke was when we went to the Met and i used jewelry class homework as some excuse. later we went to his apartment and slow danced, but he was too classy to kiss me while i had a boyfriend. i swear! i withdrew from jewelry class shortly afterwards, but that's neither here nor there. luke and i went through a long, drawn-out, traumatic break-up and from that point on i was convinced that love was not for me. i called every crush i ever had in college, and made sure not to turn any of them into boyfriends. most reactions to my call was "jeanie? as in luke'n'jeanie?".
i had contacted pretty much everyone on my list except for joe, and even dated some new faces along the way. we had lost touch since around that day at the Met that occurred about 4 years before and last i had heard he was living somewhere in boston. i tried calling boston information and only found a JOHN orlowski (which later i found was his brother). after some further stalking, i finally found him living in brooklyn! next thing i knew, he was at a dirt bike annie after-show party and i'm telling him how much i like him while slobbering drunk into some unmemorable alcoholic bevarge. he told me that he liked me too but was seeing someone. we parted with a friendly kiss on the lips (that we re-enact till this day) like the gentleman he is, while i practically wrapped myself around his leg to keep him from leaving, "You know, you're totally welcome to sleep over, burp". Hint #2: He doesn't sleep with you because he respects you too much to turn you into the "other woman".
He finally called to tell me that he and jackie broke up and to ask me if i wanted to meet up with him and some mutual friends (no, not including my ex) at some bar in the east village. "hurray!" i think. i get to the bar and no one i know is there yet. so i wait. and i wait. call my roommates (no, he hasn't called). keep waiting. wait some more. finally i decided to enjoy a night alone and found myself sitting at 7B's, wasted, hitting on some ex-con that i ended up going home with later on that night!
i didn't hear from joe for a few days, then he finally called and apologized for the standing me up. Hint #3: This guy stands you up and doesn't call till days later, but somehow you aren't mad and insulted, just giggly blushing that he wants to hang out still. a year later he explained that the reason he stood me up, OTHER than the fact that he went along with everyone who had decided to go to a different bar, was because deep down he knew that if he met me that night, that that would be the end of his life as a single guy. i know...sounds like a crock o' shit, but i believe it. If it wasn't true, why would we be married?
we married each other under the covers at his rat infested apartment in brooklyn 6 months later. Hint #4: You don't want to call each other boyfriend/girlfriend anymore. We went to Mexico together around that time and we would pretend we were husband and wife...till i guess we realized we didn't have to pretend. another 8 months later we had a big ol' wedding (see DBA411 Spring issue) and were back in Mexico for our honeymoon. Hint #5: You share the same first name and birthday with his mother. There really was no one thing that made me realize that joe was the one. i think the most important one, though, was that he's the only person that makes me feel comfortable enough to express all the many faces of myself. i'm gonna call him right now!
xo, Jeanie!