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It seems like only yesterday.
And it’s a memory that causes a single oily tear to well up and slither quietly down my heavily botoxed cheek.
It was my tragic, first marriage to Consumer’s Distributing catalogue model Shashanna, which lasted all but four days.
Four wonderful, topsy-turvy, sandwich-filled days.
Oh, we should have known we were doomed from the beginning — a modern-day tale of Montague and Capulet kept apart by one family’s unswerving allegiance to the folks at Sears — but, heck, we were two crazy kids who couldn’t see the truth, blind to future’s swinging steel-toed boot which was directed squarely at our love.
Our vulnerable, cup-less love.
What ultimately ended things? Well, who’s to say, really.
It could have been a number of things: My total disregard for Shashy’s feelings (she hated when I called her “Shashy”); forgetting our safe word not once, but thrice; her death, which was ultimately ruled “the funniest thing” the coroner had ever seen — it could have been anything, really.
But I think, perhaps our biggest stumbling block — one which all if not most new relationships struggle with — was my not being supportive of her career.
At that time, I was a frustrated novelist, working on the story I felt I was born to tell — the tale of a welder moonlighting as an exotic dancer, dreaming of one day taking the stage with the Pittsburgh ballet. (Working title: You Can Weld An Engine Block But You Can Not Weld A Dream.)
When things started to go well for Shashy — she was moved from camping equipment to personal massagers — I became jealous and somewhat intimidated.
We fought, it escalated, we calmed down a little, made a couple of sandwiches, started up again, I laughed at a joke I remembered from earlier in the week, we fought some more, and then …
Well, the rest of the story is public record. Or rather will be when the grand jury testimony is eventually unsealed.
So basically, in a long-winded and space-consuming way, what I’m trying to say is: Scott Stapp, you and I are kindred spirits.
This week has been a trying one for your new marriage, what with your arrest for public drunkenness as you were to begin your honeymoon, the release of a sex tape featuring you with Kid Rock and a group of women with low enough self-esteem and great enough control over their gag reflexes to have sex with you and Kid Rock, the fact you’re actually Scott Stapp, etc.
Right now, these may seem like insurmountable obstacles for a happy life together, and maybe they are (especially that whole thing about you being far too Scott Stapp-ian).
But if I have any advice for you, it’s to stick it out, work through these things, listen to one another, love one another, sandwich with one another and fight through the bad to get to the good.
If that fails and ultimately you discover you can’t be together, my next piece of advice to you is let her go, give your love her freedom.
Especially if she asks for it three times by using the word “veranda.”
Quick hits:
Anticipation for the Guns N’ Roses album Chinese Democracy is heating up with the online leak of a couple of tracks reportedly from the album, IRS and Better. Band management apparently went to work to plug the leaks, but reportedly some radio stations even got in on playing the songs. All of this makes former GNR guitarist Slash’s prediction of a March or April release of the disc seem likely … On the band’s official website, Metallica has confirmed it’s in the studio working on their new album with producer Rick Rubin … Also in the studio is Britney Spears, who tells People magazine she’s ready to save pop music with an album that might see its release before the end of the year. “It’s been boring,” she tells the mag of the state of music. “Nothing’s been wow to me.” If anyone can make music more exciting, Brit is more than qualified. Hell, look what she did for child care.