On Longing—By Kelly (With PJ)
Mic Sharing (watercolor, manipulated at Photomosh.com) by Kelly Eddington, 2004. Based on a screenshot from U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle.
On Longing
Kelly Eddington (with poem by PJ DeGenaro)
“Here is the problem: You can only desire something you don’t have—that’s how desire works. And we had each other. Resolutely. Neither of us with a stray glance at another. … I wanted nothing different. I just missed the longing. We are not supposed to want the longing, but there it is. So what do you do with that?”
A couple of months ago, I watched Hulu’s limited series Fleishman Is In Trouble with my husband Jeff. The show’s secondary plot featured Lizzy Caplan as a disillusioned married woman in her early forties who viewed longing as a pleasurable act that married women miss.
I immediately thought of PJ. The U2 fandom and longing? Soup and sandwich. Numerous times during our years-long group chat, where we talk about a thousand different things plus U2, we’ve asked each other variations on this question:
“People who aren’t fans of anything: what do they even do?
U2 have given us an infinite number of things to discuss. We feel sorry for those who don’t care about anything as much as we do because they have nothing to long for, such as a new record or a performance in May that’ll get them through the winter. They seem like the kind of hollow people who would put Chippendales posters in their cubicles.
Being friends with a poet means that sometimes they’ll send you gorgeous poems as gifts, and that’s what PJ did for my birthday last month. I’ve added it to the bottom of the post because (a) it describes friendship born of fandom, (b) I’d lose my mind if PJ and I weren’t friends, and (c) I have no idea how to end this pIeCe*.
I come from a family of obsessives and was seemingly hardwired to become a fan. When I was a lonely girl who drew lots of pictures, I was a fan of the following (not a complete list):
Bugs Bunny
glamorous teenagers in the school cafeteria
Rodney Cratsenberg, a big, quiet man in our church who sang O Holy Night on Christmas Eve flawlessly and did nothing else the rest of the year
the faceless musicians on the radio
my teachers
Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, David Letterman, and later on:
my baby sister.
I was not a fan of athletes except for Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals. I was not a fan of actors except for Christopher Reeve in Superman II. MTV and U2 on horseback/barge eventually came to my town in 1983, and the rest is history.
When I was a lonely young woman who taught children how to draw lots of pictures, longing was a way of life. All of my meaningful relationships (and there were only three, so don’t get too excited) were long distance. Sometimes multiple years would pass where I didn’t date anyone, and I didn’t meet my husband until I was almost 39.
Before Jeff, my two most meaningful relationships were with unlikely people. I loved their minds and their talents. I wasn’t attracted to one of them at all (he flippantly and correctly described his face as a train wreck). Missing them was oddly pleasurable. Sometimes I asked myself if I wanted the other person, or did I merely want to be them? And did I like being with the other person as much as I liked the ceremony of going to see them? With Train Wreck Face, it was probably the latter. Nothing was more romantic to me than physically removing myself from my ordinary, hard job and driving for three hours to spend a Friday night with T.W.F.
Being a fan of a band is the ultimate long-distance relationship. Wouldn’t you agree? U2 are not there for you at all, ever, but at the same time, they kind of are. They are there for you just enough to keep you in a constant state of longing.
And when it comes to actually seeing them (assuming you are fortunate and wealthy enough to join them in some faraway, gigantic room), talk about ceremony! Money must be saved, airplane tickets must be purchased, and hotel rooms must be reserved. You’re going to spend at least an entire day standing around waiting for them to arrive, and you’ll be surrounded by thousands of others who seem to think they’re more invested in the band than you are.** And when you’re all together in the gigantic room, what does this band play more often than not? Songs about longing.
Again, what do people who don’t have this kind of thing in their lives even do?
Reader, I am married to one of them.
Jeff is a handsome, Edge-like genius. He wasn’t hardwired to be a fan. He endured an abusive upbringing in a tiny farm town where he grew up fast and found ways to escape it via academics and sports. While he has numerous interests:
backpacks
Godzilla
science fiction
comics
3D printing
…he doesn’t long for these things, except maybe backpacks, and he is not a fan of creative people, except maybe me.
I think non-fans actually have lives during their teen years. Jeff did. He has the special brand of unapologetic intelligence that boys could get away with but girls couldn’t. He wasn’t the most popular boy in school, but he wasn’t ignored, either. While I spent my teenage years longing for people who might actually understand me, Jeff lived on the other side of the state, had an uninterrupted string of girlfriends, and became a father too soon.
He’s never been in a long-distance relationship that lasted for years. He’s never been alone for more than a few months. He’s suffered a couple of unimaginable tragedies, but he’s never experienced sustained romantic longing the way I have.
So Jeff wonders why I care about an arrogant little prick and his three friends. He views my U2 fandom the way an atheist views people who are devoutly religious. He can’t comprehend why I waste my time on these, ugh, these celebrities.
In the interest of spousal goodwill, and because I am a fan of Jeff, I don’t play U2 in the house. My U2 paintings go in a drawer. He has no idea that they will release a quadruple album of re-imagined songs next month. I’m jealous of fan couples who give each other tickets and trips to shows as birthday presents. I avoid talking about U2 with Jeff. And this only creates more longing.
Heterosexual male fans: why do you love U2? [Insert your answers here.] I’m sure my answers align with yours more than you might think. Achtoonbaby is not the digital manifestation of me (and PJ) lusting after four men. What we do here is the adult equivalent of playing with dolls. I’ve come to view U2 as a collection of characters with a mother-father-craftsman-clown dynamic. They’re unproblematic role models. They have wildly different heads that are challenging to paint. If my beloved husband isn’t on board, he doesn’t have to be (for what it’s worth, I don’t get his backpack obsession, not that it’s at all comparable). But I am grateful that this band has given me a friend who understands me.
And as an arrogant little prick once said:
From A Year with Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary by Brian Eno.
Here’s the poem PJ folded into quarters, placed in a birthday card, and sent to me. The word “Groupies” in the title is ironic.
* I dislike the word “piece.”
** And I haven’t even mentioned the longing I feel every day: I miss being in the same gigantic (or normal-sized) room with PJ so damned much.