When Tenth Avenue Freeze-out Killed the Party

He proved my mother wrong. With him, life was a party. That alone secured his permanent position in my heart, making bonuses of the countless worthy reasons to love him.

I lived in anticipation of the excitement his spontaneity promised and appreciation for his refusal to entertain negativity. His easy, infectious laugh, hilarious antics, entertaining stories, refreshing outlook, and talent for including everyone set my smile and guaranteed our invitation any time friends gathered. My secret was that the time we spent alone was more exciting than the parties were, and the afterglow floated me through the dreaded hours when work or reality tore me away from him.

Having to wait my turn for his attention in crowds might have been the downside of loving the life of the party but even that had its own reward. I loved him more each time I watched him lift a spirit, ignite a smile, smooth a ruffled feather, or hug a friend through the blues.

I stood behind his rapt audience that night, caught his smile, and returned my keep-going-I'm-okay nod. His story was funnier the second time than it had been on the drive over, when I laughed until I cried and begged him to stop before my eyeliner ended up on my chin. He might have embellished details or exaggerated reactions for the bigger audience but I attributed the bulk of my giddiness to the fact that his arm was around Denise and she was laughing for the first time since Stan left her.

From across the room, a current goalie let me know their game was almost over and we were up next on the foosball table. A couple of guys beside me vied for the opportunity to impress one another by snapping the plastic rings that had once held their beer cans in a six pack. The doorbell announced pizza delivery. We had been in the same place, with the same people, doing the same things many times before. My thoughts and actions were automatic. I was comfortable.

He ended his story and detached from still-smiling Denise. His audience reached for wallets and purses to pay the delivery guy. I expected him to follow the food. I would say we didn't have time to eat because we had next game, and he would tell me he'd grab a couple slices and meet me at the foosball table.

But it didn't happen that way. His eyes darkened as he approached, upsetting the sameness, and confusing my predictions. Carefree turned to intense which I decided could only mean one thing - he was deathly ill.

He took my hand and led me past the pizza and beer and down the hall to a back bedroom. Terror set in when he called back and told the others to skip our game before he closed the door that separated us from familiarity.

Still somber, he dropped to one knee. A flood of conflicting emotions rushed up my throat and threatened to choke me. A proposal beat deathly ill - barely - but his obvious level of discomfort and the fact that he wasn't facing me were not encouraging. My heart stopped racing when, instead of a ring, he pulled out headphones for each of us and said he wanted me to hear something.

In the seconds it took him to turn everything on, plug everything in, remove the album from its cover, blow the dust off the record and the needle, and, touching only the rim, position the album on the turntable, my relief tumbled through several stages of confusion. I had never known him to push the button to change songs on the radio, much less select an album and play it. Deciding it was time to mow the lawn or wash the car when I played Engelbert or Tom Jones versus staying in the room if I selected Humble Pie or The Doors was the closest he had come to expressing an opinion about music. Now, he had pulled me away from a party to hear something.

His continued darkness clouded my curiosity.

He handed me one set of headphones, donned the second set, and pressed the automatic play button. As the arm settled in the grooves to deliver the anticipated music, he sat, back to the wall, on the floor and pulled me between his legs. I rested against him, comforted when I discovered he still felt like the same man even if everything else seemed to have changed.

Although far from an orchestral sound, the mellow harmonica and piano intro was more suited to Engelbert than to Humble Pie. That told me he knew my taste, and this something he wanted me to hear was for me. Maybe the darkness was in anticipation of how miserable he would be sitting through it? I pulled his arm around me and squeezed his hand just as a mournful, scratchy, nothing-like-Engelbert voice joined the mix.

Once over the shock, I enjoyed the unlikely combination of mellow music and raw voice and decided the something he wanted me to hear must be in the lyrics. It didn't mean much to me until the singer blasted my last hope of sameness with a mournful, "Roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair." I recovered in time to catch something about, "Ready to take the long walk," and "I know you're lonely for words that I ain't spoke."

My make-something-of-nothing conclusion returned me to the proposal scare but the lyrics rescued me before I went into a full panic attack. My final conclusion, after "Town for losers, pulling out of here to win," was that he had introduced me to a powerful combination of great instrumentation and passionate vocals, and he wanted to ditch our friends because they were a town of losers.

With the mystery solved, I reached up to remove the headphones and return to the party. But he stopped me. We were there for the long play.

The second song started with the drive it had taken the first song a complete verse and chorus to build up to, and with lyrics that are more upbeat. The dancer in me had trouble sitting still until I felt his heart beating against my back. I snuggled closer, knowing this was probably as close as I would ever get to a dance with him.

More into the heart dance than the lyrics, I almost let that song be nothing. Almost. He made it something when he flinched with the words about being all alone, on his own, and can't go home. The saxophone cried and he tensed again. I remembered thinking he was in pain before we entered the room and made more something of nothing.

I turned to look at him but he didn't open his eyes. His arms were still around me but he had detached and didn't seem to notice my movement. Was he crying behind closed lids, placing me in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and leaving me through music?

Physically, I couldn't have been closer without crawling inside his body but emotionally I felt like I was on another planet. I wanted to go back to hearing something because I didn't like feeling it.

The seconds it took for the needle to scratch over to the next song felt like an eternity. I vowed I would only hear the music, but words broke through. "And you're just another prisoner of your dreams." I didn't know his dreams. In all that time, I had not considered the possibility of his wanting anything after the party, or that my mother could be right and the party might end. I didn't hear, feel, or think. I blocked everything until a new song started and the piano lulled me into believing this one would be simple and the music would return me to familiar emotions.

There was no blocking the pain in "Backstreets". The first hide took a piece of my heart that never returned. I tried to crawl inside my broken life-of-the-party's body, where he could protect me from that song, but I didn't find an entrance. Who was that singer and why did I need to hear him plead for whatever he needed so desperately?

The answer came in a crushing blow when my guy's body reacted to Bruce Springsteen's heart-wrenching Whah-ahh that not only sounded like he was dying, but also convinced me that he planned to take me with him.

Emotionally shattered, I resented Bruce for delivering my guy's pain to me. At the same time, I was both resentful and grateful to my guy. I appreciated his willingness to share the part of him that either I had ignored or he had hidden before, but was devastated to come to this point of no return, where he no longer wanted to protect my dreams and visions and my party would end.

I reminded myself repeatedly throughout the rest of the album that this was someone else's autobiography, not his. I heard the challenge to let him know if love is real, and thought about where I could go physically with that music. But we had been there, and obviously, it wasn't enough to feed whatever hunger made him feel Bruce's wails.

The last thing I remembered was him kissing the top of my head and releasing me from his hug following the words, "Back when her love could save you from the bitterness." That must have been what he wanted me to hear. Past tense.

There was nothing I could do to shake that freeze-out. And, Baby, I was born to run.

Bruce Springsteen website with links to lyrics.