Happy Early Birthday to my somewhat famous abuser

If you belong to Generation X (let’s just use Douglas Coupland’s original dates of 1961 to 1977, even though I’m really not ready to be a straight-up Millennial, thanks), you might enjoy listening to indie rock. And if you belong to Generation X and you enjoy listening to indie rock, you almost certainly know the person I am talking about. Some people who don’t belong to these categories even manage to know who he is without me having to tell them… but not many. Anyway.

After I decided to separate from my husband on my sister’s birthday, July 21, 2019 (apparently not the first time I broke up with someone on her birthday… sorry about that, Christie), I waited a few weeks before posting anything about it on social media, because it just didn’t feel right, or even necessary. But once I had told my closest friends and family, and then my other friends started reaching out with questions, I got permission from my ex to post something short and… not sweet, exactly, but neither positive nor negative, neither wistful nor snarky, just NEUTRAL, I guess. Just something informative, like, “Hey, here’s a thing that happened, it’s all good, just letting you know because I’m tired of having to mention it every time I talk to any of you individually who don’t know yet.”

As a result of posting that, several people reached out to me to make sure I was okay, even though I’d already said I was okay, which is totally fine and I totally should not act like a defensive teenager who doesn’t want to be asked if she is okay. A few of those several people were men who had additional intentions. Some were platonic friends popping out of the woodwork to put themselves on my dance card (no, ew). Some were previous long-time-ago lovers offering the same (uh, well, okay, maybe, but just this once). And one was Ken Stringfellow, with whom I had shared the stage as a backup singer on two songs back in the spring of 2016 at a house show where The Posies were playing. We had stayed in touch via Facebook and messaged from time to time about music stuff. I had really gotten a kick out of singing alongside him and spending time with him, because I wasn’t in a very good place mentally and emotionally at that time, but we traded intellectual banter and melody and harmony lines like we had been doing it forever, and it made me feel good to know I could hold my own in that regard with someone who is very well-known in some circles and who is undeniably very smart and talented and charming (“Me, me, me also…”). He said he was really sorry to hear about my divorce, and that he was there if I wanted to talk or anything. Then he wanted to know if I was interested in sharing the stage with him again on his solo tour that fall, and of course I said yes. I joined him several more times on stage in various cities between September 2019 and March 2020.

So now here I am, posting this in response to several people reaching out to me regarding a story that broke yesterday, which I read yesterday when his ex-drummer posted it on Facebook, and which as of today has made its way to every major music and pop culture-related news outlet, in which three women accuse him of “sexual misconduct.”

The above is the extent of the story that most people know. What actually happened is that he was interested in me all along, but was also just waiting for me to be “available” so he could put the moves on me. Apparently he couldn’t have a married woman as a conquest, even though he himself was married. Regardless, however, his advances were more flattering than those from my platonic friends in whom I had absolutely zero interest, or even those from past flings. He told me the most beautiful things about myself and I believed them all (fortunately I still believe most of them, because therapy and meds over the past few have given me the confidence I’ve sorely lacked for most of my life). He told me he loved me, like the FIRST DAY he was courting me, which should have been a red flag, but you have to remember I was vulnerable after leaving a marriage that was incredibly out of balance on the scales of romance and respect vs. laziness and disdain. And while he was never physically violent toward me, as it appears he was with at least some other women, when his words weren’t busy flattering the hell out of me, they could cut worse than anyone’s. Of course, I made sure that mine cut right back. He was in fact physically violent toward himself a few times, albeit accidentally, due to blackout levels of drunkenness. He fell in the street while getting out of an Uber in Paris and busted his lip, then kept asking me the next day, “How did this happen to my face, again?”

A healthy “relationship” this certainly was not. A consensual relationship, however, I would have to say it was… aside from his party line of “I’m married, so no one can know about this, even though I live in France and am married to a French woman and everyone in France cheats on their spouses, and besides it’s the 21st century and doesn’t anyone know how to be in a relationship with a married man, people are in throuples and doing all sorts of weirder things than this…” And he would always tell me that I was going to break his heart, which I would laugh at and say, “Certainly it will go the opposite way. You are married. This is not serious to you. It will always be imbalanced in your favor.” I didn’t realize at the time that he was always projecting, gaslighting me, trying to get me to believe that I was the one in control so that he could go on manipulating me.

Furthermore, when we were together, he would talk about other conquests (“Winona Ryder! She was a bad kisser”; “Hey, I only slept with three out of over 100 of my backup singers on tour this year! Wait, no, four”) and potential conquests, ostensibly to make me jealous or want him more...? It’s funny to me that a person who says that he “respects women” would so enjoy pitting them against each other cattily while pursuing as many of them as humanly possible. He also ostentatiously posts happy birthday and happy anniversary messages to his wife on all social media platforms, saying that she is his true love and soul mate, which neither excuses/lessens the impact of his dalliances with other women nor imparts a single modicum of respect toward any other woman he has claimed to love. In fact, it insults every last one of us, wife included.

When COVID happened, I had just flown back from seeing and singing with him in Chicago. I knew it was a great time to get myself out of this completely ridiculous situation, so I got back on dating apps and eventually landed myself a super sweet boyfriend. When I sent him a message telling him I’d met someone, he raged out and accused me of trying to hurt him, sending a series of messages telling me what a terrible, mean person I was. I tried to take the high road, but I raged back, at least a little. At least with words, I have that power. I don’t even want to think about how it would have felt if it had been physical rather than verbal assault.

Anyway, I don’t know what I mean by any of this. It’s certainly not meant to be a full “me too” piling on, but it’s also definitely not meant to be a “he was always cool to me” apologist stance. There’s a lot more that I could say, but I’m still processing.

Thanks for reading…