Cast of Characters--"Pus" Evans

I believe this is a subject that is going to comprise many posts. It’s too complicated, too current, and too “fluid” to fit all into one—I predict it will be alternately the most hilarious and potentially heart-breaking of the things I write about. I don’t know where this subject is going, so strap on your instruments. We have a grueling "tour" ahead.......

Let me introduce you to "Pus". Like all proper bloggers, I'm committed to calling the real people in my life fake names. You know to protect their innocence.  But here, I have to admit, I'm precariously close to the real-name edge. Pus, or "PE", or "E-e-e-e-v-a-n-s", are his literal, real actual nicknames. I'm hedging my bets on the fact that he doesn't have a technologically inclined bone in his body (odd it seems, for a professional musician) and would no more find his way to this blog than he will ever have a weekend off in his entire professional life, to carry on with this risky almost-real-name-using behavior. And I mean really, you'll see after you get to know him, there's no way I can possibly pass up calling him Pus.

Pus--my erstwhile, we're about to break up any day now, boyfriend of the past four years, two months, and ten days. The crazy bass-playing musician from San Francisco I met (ironically the day after I signed the settlement agreement with Ex) while he was playing at the "Jewish Mother" in Virginia Beach. Here's how we met: I was on a stool at the bar.  He had just sidled up on a band break and said something completely ridiculous to a woman sitting next to me about the "glass rocks" in the bottom of a glass on the bar holding up pens or flowers or something, being mints. I distinctly remember thinking that was about the lamest pick-up line I'd ever heard, when I suddenly realized he was the bass player who had just had the kickest-ass-est solo I'd EVER heard. You know how it is, who ever notices the bass player? So after he started his solo, the entire place got quiet and you could practically hear everybody in the audience saying in their minds, "THAT'S the BASS PLAYER?? ...........Damn!!!" Then the band went on break.

I was so impressed I immediately forgot what he looked like. So thirty seconds later, when I'm thinking what kind of a guy older than college-age would use such a lame-ass line on any woman older than college-age and expect it to work, was when I finally got around to recognizing him. I quickly put aside my thoughts on the pick-up line and leaned around the lady to say, "Nice solo."

And that ladies and gentleman was all it took.

One of the bands he tours with—oh yeah, you guys must be wondering what my friends were thinking when I announced I had fallen in love with Pus ……“Well he certainly sounds different than Ex” is basically how it went. In fact my friends all call him the “Un-Ex”, and even I have to admit there isn’t a more textbook rebound in any textbook anywhere.

Anyway, one of the bands he tours with (well he's not with them anymore but that's not the point--actually it is--even though he's not with that band anymore, the nickname stuck) came up with these charming nicknames for each other--Pus for the bass player, "Puke" for the drummer, and "Phlegm" for the keyboard player. The lead guitarist & lead singer, whose band it was, or the owner per se, was wisely not gross-P-starting-with-nickname-monikered by the other three, emerging with at least a modicum of dignity despite having to play with and tour with the three “P’s” for hours and days and nights on end. I guess the P’s at least remembered who was paying the bills.

Pus is good--"great" and "brilliant" and "genius" I've heard his peers and his fans describe him, but he's still a starving musician. He's constantly on tour all over the country and the world, recording in studios, playing in a multitude of little bars all over San Francisco, the East Bay Area, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, and hundreds of little towns in between like Calistoga and Half Moon Bay.  Oh and yesterday he got back from a week-long cruise to Cabo--a Blues Cruise. A cruise ship filled with great blues musicians and rabid blues fans. And he gets paid so little for all this that he's the very definition of The Starving Musician.

But I don't care about any of that--in theory. After four years of living on opposite coasts though, there is this little thing called "reality" that keeps peskily sticking its nose into my "theory". The truth is that he has never been married, never had children, has had this fascinating, albeit crazy, life, playing music for thousands of people everywhere and he and I (simply divorced suburban housewife with two teenage boys) fight constantly these days.

Oh I need to add something that must be at the back of your minds. Pus is many things, but as naive as this sounds on my part, he is a one-woman man. Really. Ask his friends, they will confirm. So believe it or not, that is something we never fight over--his monogamy. No that isn't a problem, although he certainly knows women everywhere. He just recently (barely) joined Facebook. I've been trying to get him to join FB for months. I thought it would be great for his business--every day he can post where he's playing that night and with who; he can post to FB when he's out on the road from his phone, etc. You know, good idea. Every time I brought it up these past six months though, since I joined FB, he blew me off proclaiming it was all "a bunch of BS and that he didn't "do those things". I already mentioned his terribly old-schoolish ways (can't/won't "get" technology) .....

My 15 year-old son at the time, when the boys & I once stayed with Pus at his house in Marin County, the county on the north-end of the Golden Gate Bridge, fixed Pus's doorknob all by himself.  Pus was amazed and said it'd been broken for five years! Since then, on numerous other visits, I've fixed his toilet twice, bought and installed a new faucet for the kitchen sink, and eradicated a yellow-jackets nest from the back yard that had been terrorizing Pus and his dog for two years .......

So not just technology, but all things mechanical, and things with stingers, are not on Pus's radar.

Back to Facebook. He finally did join FB!!!! And guess how many friends he has? At latest count, 288!!!!!!! Yep I've been on FB for six months and I have 75 friends. Pus, who can't fix a doorknob and still doesn't even "get" the whole FB concept probably has 300 friends by now ......it's been 45 seconds since I posted the 288-number.  Well over 300 by now ....it's been 98 seconds!

Sheesh! No I don't worry about him fooling around with other women. Yes somehow it seems like I hold most of the cards in this relationship. But Pus has 300+ friends and counting, and I'm holding steady at 75. That does piss me off a little. My ego just took a little nosedive. Maybe I'm a little too smug for my own good. And maybe I don't want to be holding most of the cards anyway? Holding just half of them would be good enough for me.