…Me and Terry Became Friends
except that I’m “Terry,” but you knew that
Yesterday, Brandy Niremburk published this deep take about song-names, or rather, songs named for people like herself:
As you’ll see, she got the prompt from Krystal Mossbarger, whose story is linked within Brandy’s. I responded to Brandy about her own title song — a song that once buoyed me through that almost cliched period of teenaged romantic angst. I say “almost cliched” because everyone knows that sixteen year-olds can’t be trusted with hormones, and no matter how many times someone tells you that these are the “best years of your life,” you’ll still want to disbelieve and likely do great harm to them or yourself, or the nearest wall in your room.
My most immediate response to Brandy’s story, though, was that, shit, no one’s named a song after me (Terry), though she did find a tune that I had never heard of and have nothing pertinent to add (but thanks Brandy — it still means a lot that you tried!).
So, the best I could do, and really I’m doing this to spark up Paul Combs as much as anything else, is to write about a car drive I once took with three friends, from Princeton, NJ, back to Knoxville.
This had been my first trip to Manhattan. We had left our car in Princeton and took the train into Penn Station, and when we disembarked, a guy came running up offering to carry our bags to the street. Now, you know I’m from Alabama, and despite our rebellion down there against vaccines, when we hit New York, we’re a pretty trusting bunch. So, I thought:
“How nice; how helpful. What a town!”
As you likely know, the guy wanted five bucks for his effort, carrying our bags all of 100 yards.
We had fun anyway in NYC, and my grad school friends, Les And MJ, met my childhood Bessemer friend, Jimbo, and we all got on like we had once been a pan of cornbread. On that trip we saw Amadeus on Broadway and the Alvin Ailey Dancers; went to a Polish film on the east side (Man Of Iron), and managed to find the most out of the way Dairy Deli on the island.
Jimbo rode home with us, as it was the approaching Christmas holidays, and after Knoxville, he and I would travel on to Bessemer, Les and MJ heading to Eldorado, Arkansas. I remember our hitting a near blinding snowstorm somewhere around Charlottesville, and if you get your maps out and look, you’ll understand that we didn’t take the shortest route between the two points: departure, destination.
So what I had done before we left came in more handy than I could have known. I made a series of mixtapes, back in the days when you’d synched a tape deck to your turntable and tried to make seamless segues by timing everything precisely. I was neither the best nor the worst at this fine art, but I was at least competent.
The point came in that drive where Les and MJ were sleeping in the backseat, Jimbo and I taking driving turns in the front, though truthfully, he didn’t last too long, and though I’m not in love with steering, I took the major shift at the wheel of Les and MJ’s Olds 98.
The mix tape I had in included songs like Kantner, Slick, and Freiberg’s “Sketches of China” (“storm the palace, look for Alice”), Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby” (didn’t we all “wanna play football for the coach?”); Neil Young’s “Motion Picture” (“…home away from home and livin’ in between”); and…
Bruce’s “Backstreets”:
“One soft infested summer Me and Terry became friends Trying in vain to breathe The fire we was born in Catching rides to the outskirts Tying faith between our teeth Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house Getting wasted in the heat…and
Hiding on the backstreets…
Terry you swore we’d live forever Taking it on them backstreets together….”
After this set of songs, Jimbo sat up straighter.
“Those songs…”
“Yeah, I know.”
What did I know, actually? Alone, or feeling it, on a night of fatigue from those New York streets, barreling down highways and while not exactly lost, not so found either. Two of my best male friends, then and now (MJ was Les’s then wife), one of whom called me “Buddy;” the other referring to me always as “Barr.” Neither ever calling me Terry.
And yet, for Les and I at least, when “Backstreets” plays, I know we go there, thinking of how a Shakespeare class in McClung Tower, way above the backstreets, brought us together. For Jimbo, we’ve known who the other is way back since Sunday School, where his favorite story was “The Prodigal Son” and mine, “The loaves and fishes.” Being lost, being found, being nurtured and fed.
After our car ride finally deposited us at another high rise in Knoxville, we got some sleep — maybe two hours — and then I fried Jimbo and me some bacon and eggs, and we were off again (I sprinkled sugar on the bacon, but you hated that, remember?). I gave you that tape, and you surely lost it somewhere, but tapes exist to be lost and remade, unlike friendships, which transcend material and scratches and misplaced cues.
It wasn’t summer, either, but a pretty hard winter.
It’s not amazing, either, but we’re all still friends.
If you came to my zoom reading earlier this summer, you saw them there, faces shining, friends till the end.
Not hiding, either, but there to be found, for those of us always looking anyway.
So yeah,”Backstreets” is one of my top five favorite Bruce songs, and okay, maybe that’s because I’m in it. I’ll get to the others later, or one day, or after another road trip with my friends.
Hope that does Krystal, Brandy, and Christopher Robin, Samantha Drobac, Steven Hale, Chris Zappa, Pierce McIntyre, David Acaster, Reuben Salsa, Alex Markham, Alexander Briseño, Kevin Alexander, Rob Janicke, Jessica Lee McMillan, JP Timko, Kathryn Dillon, If Ever You’re Listening, TheWellSeasonedLibrarian, Michael Hall, Jim Mowat, Danielle Loewen, Zsófia Vera, Karla Clifton, Nicole Brown, Bonnie Barton and everyone at Songstories proud.
In case you missed it: