Public Apology

Books Dave BrySteve and I have been crappy about posting, it’s true. We seemed to hibernate this winter, if that means writing, playing a couple of shows, taking care of family, and for Steve, releasing an album with Hem for the first time in 6 years. But it’s been blog-quiet.

Among that quiet, I read a friend of mine’s memoir through letters: Public Apology, In Which A Man Grapples with a Lifetime of Regret, Once Incident at a Time. Dave Bry and I went to high school together, in Little Silver, NJ. He was a year ahead of me, so I didn’t really know him until we sat next to each other in Physics class my junior year. We spent it just getting by, grade-wise, and writing each other vulgar notes. I don’t remember what we said, but it was an ongoing contest based on out-doing the last response. I remember feeling uber-clever, and I’m now quite confident that this too is worthy of regret. But thank god the evidence is missing.

I re-connected with him through an old high school friend, so we’d seen each other sporadically over the past 4 years. Then I got word that he was doing a few readings from his new book. So of course, I went.

I can’t really think of a better book premise – you mine everything you’ve ever regretted from your life, and then write an apology to the main co-star of each story. And I’ve never understood those who say ‘life’s too short to regret’ or something along those lines, when I am FULL of regret over ways I hurt others over some silly spur-of-the-moment comment or action. Or the worse stuff, those digs that I actually intended. I mean, what are people actually DOING while they’re busy not regretting? I need a tutor. But that’s an aside.

There are hilarious entries, including a letter to Jon Bon Jovi apologizing for tossing beer cans into his yard, while simultaneously demanding an acknowledgement of the weak-as-all-get-out lyrics to “Wanted Dead or Alive”. You can hear Dave’s building hysteria throughout the letter, simply in the punctuation. Brilliant. There are deep, cringing tales, like ruining a Bob Mould concert and getting publically told off by Bob himself before the encore. There are of course the cruel love apologies. There are the letters that open wide Dave’s teen-aged periods of self destruction and drug use, a result in some ways of the anxiety that accompanies the tragic desire to be accepted (as we all want in high school – hell, maybe forever -), and a diversion to avoid coping with his father’s terminal cancer.

I told Steve I couldn’t read Dave’s book before bed, as I’m vulnerable to stories of violence and the horrific things people seem to do to one another with regularity. I am basically a weakling. So I rationed myself to daytime subway rides. When I’d crack it open at night, Steve would gently ask me, “Do you really want to read that now? I mean, you said…”  Right.

Would this book would punch the average reader in the gut the way it did me? I think so indeed. Dave writes with such honesty that you feel all the complications and messiness of being alive – how life is chopped up and uneven and there are some things you really never resolve. You just keep going. And maybe purge it all in a memoir. Then read it to everyone you know on your book tour, egad! Oh, and if I haven’t said as much, buy this book. Not because he’s my friend, though that does count. But because it holds the promise of side-splitting laughter. And it’s got its share of the dark side, as any self-respecting read should. I mean, I might have been able to write something like it. Except I’m pretty sure my letters would have closed with something like this:

So I’m sorry.

But you have to admit you were a total dick, too.

Love, Erika