In a matter of months, I wrapped up my life in NYC and moved to Key West. I figured I’d try it for a year and if it didn’t work out, I could always come back. I had tried for decades to remake Sam into something she wasn’t, and I finally abandoned ship, leaving her with the apartment on Thirteenth Street. I couldn’t change her, any more than I could change myself.
A few years later, Frank Mattiello called to tell me that she was discovered dead in the bathroom of our apartment. Sam had died from cirrhosis. It’s still hard to accept that she’s gone. You’re intimate with another person, you go through so much together, and it feels unreal that they’re not in the world any longer. I don’t think there is really any “closure” after a death. You just go on with your life, knowing that someone you once loved doesn’t exist anymore. Never to be seen again, ever.
Life in Key West looked fabulous at the outset: a new town, a new relationship, and a fresh start. Some local musicians heard I was in town, and called me with an offer of work. I asked when the rehearsal was; in New York, everybody rehearsed a lot. You never knew when a producer, director, or record label type might walk into the club and want to sign you or use you for a project. But the fellows in Key West said they knew I could play and that I’d know all the tunes they were playing, so no rehearsal was needed.
I showed up at the first gig. I knew most of the tunes, and I could hear the chord changes of any songs I didn’t know, so we were off and running. Key West was a pretty good place for a competent musician; you could have your happy hour gig or your sunset gig and a nightclub gig in any of dozens of spots up and down the Keys. Plus, there were banquet gigs at luxury hotels, and they paid a minimum $50 per hour per man, with a three-hour minimum. Sometimes you could do two a day. It was perfect if all you wanted was a steady gig on a tropical island. The downside was, that’s all there was, and I was still ambitious.
In 1990, after being in Key West for a year, Gloria and I were married at sea on a little harbor cruise boat with a waiter officiating. He was also a notary public, so that made it legal. Mick Farren and a couple of other friends came down from New York, and my mother came from St. Augustine.
It was supposed to be a beautiful scenic Key West sunset. As it was, the seas were unusually rough, and the wind was blowing so hard it was difficult to stand up in the boat for the ceremony. Some of my friends were puking over the side. But we had a very nice reception party back on the island. All the local musicians came and everybody played, ate, and drank. There was a massive amount of cocaine. What does it say about the marriage when the groom is high on coke and spends part of his wedding night out in the street looking for more blow?
Life stumbled along. At one point, Gloria and I were talking about our problems. She presciently pointed out that my drinking and drug use were going to be our biggest problems. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t disagree, either.
I met some carpenters, and started working during the day doing commercial cabinetry and displays. I fell in with one local builder, and we got a couple of big jobs building custom homes. I actually quit playing gigs to build them.
I was intrigued by building something this comprehensive from the ground up. We did it all: framing, sheathing, decks, roofs, trim, kitchens, and baths. It was good, honest work, and we executed it with a high level of craftsmanship. Building these houses was very rewarding in a creative sense. I would drive away from the site at night, knowing I’d built something of quality that would last for a while. We’d build it right: plumb, level, and square, everything according to the architect’s specs.
I liked the problem-solving aspect of building. It was like playing music and improvising a melody. I enjoyed using tools, too; that was like having a good amp or beautiful guitar. My mother had always told me to learn a trade to “fall back on” and now I had. But still, I drank and drank. It was a Key West tradition among carpenters and musicians and everybody else I knew. I lived in a drunken, coke-addled world.
At one point, Gloria told me she would leave me if I didn’t do something about my drinking. I looked up Alcoholics Anonymous in the phone book and went over to a meeting. The meeting surprised me; I found the program nonjudgmental and sensible. I liked the talk about spirituality. It reminded me of the kind of talk we used to throw around in the MC5. Later that night, I read the twelve steps, and, while drinking beer and peppermint schnapps, declared to my wife that, if you actually did this stuff, it would change your life. Of course, I wasn’t ready to do any of it. I read the AA pamphlets but I didn’t go back to any more meetings. Just going to the one seemed to get her off my back for a while.
Even though building homes was satisfying, I missed the artist’s life in the big city. I’d drink and call up my friends back in New York and annoy them with my drunken dialing. I felt like the world was passing me by.
MTV had become a major force in music by 1990, and Gloria questioned why I’d get so angry every time I saw rock band videos. I would rant and rage about these bands that had the look or moves of the MC5, but the MC5 could have eaten them for breakfast. The guitarists weren’t as good as I was, and I resented the fact that they were getting all this attention, and I wasn’t. I was sitting here drunk in Key West, building custom homes for rich motherfuckers. I resented the whole music business and everyone in it. In fact, once I got started, I resented the whole fucking world. I raged at everyone in my life that had ever stopped me from doing what I wanted to do. It was all their fault. They’d all fucked me over, and the only solution was to get hammered.
I wasn’t any more capable of being a husband and a partner in Key West than I’d been in any other time or place. My marriage never had a chance. At the same time, I wanted Gloria to fix me. I thought she could, if she would just do what I told her to do. I wanted her to go to law school, then get into corporate law, and support me so I could return to being the artist I really was. I wanted to remake her, so she could remake me. But she couldn’t fix me, any more than she could fix herself. I also believed that the solution to her problems was having a real man to love her, and I was that real man. But the last thing I was, was a real man. I was selfish, spoiled, resentful, immature, and had serious substance abuse problems.
Gloria had troubles of her own. She suffered from terrible migraines, endured three-day bouts of excruciating pain, and had to take various medications. On top of that, we continued to drink like fish.
In 1991, we agreed to leave the Keys. She wanted to go back to school, but she hated the idea of the big city. Nashville was the compromise. She was accepted into the graduate program at Vanderbilt. I knew I could carpenter there, and possibly do some music work, too.