From that rock-group novel I'll never finish writing....

I miss my friends.
I still have a photo of all of us together, the only photo ever taken of us all together as we were back then, shot in the winter of 1977-78 at about 3 a.m. in the glass-walled lobby of the guys' dorm at Boise State University. It's a grainy black-and-white photo, with the darks turning to unrecognizable mush, but the brights still come through, and the faces jump right out at me.
All my friends, lined up against the glass wall at the dorm and shot: Instant history.
Almost 35 years later, I can still remember the feelings that were in the air that night. We'd just finished a session for our first album, OUT OF THE MIST -- doing me and Don's "Everywhere You Go" or maybe Melissa's "Songbird" -- and I was starting to think we really had a handle on something. And the feeling that was in the air can be seen on the faces of everyone in the picture.
I'm all the way at the left, leaning against a wall. I look happy, relaxed but tired. Though I'm smiling, there are big, dark circles under my eyes, as always. I'm slumped, as usual, against the wall, my ever-present coffee cup in my right hand, my left arm wrapped around Tina, who leans in next to me. I actually had long hair, back then....
Tina also looks tired, but her eyes are wide with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look she was famous for. She doesn't have an arm around me -- both her arms are crossed over her chest, as they always were when she was uncomfortable, nervous, or just didn't know what to do. Which was often. Usually whenever Don was around. She is Don's former girlfriend. Because she's leaning into me in the picture, as if she's going to let me wrap her up in my arms, she almost looks happy.
She isn't. Within six months she'd start sleeping with an army of other guys. Within two years, our drummer Miles would marry her -- God knows why -- and she'd leave The Zoo completely.
Next to Tina, even shorter than she was, is jaunty French-Canadian exchange student Lee, who introduced me to Scotch. He's trying to look macho, with his hands curled into fists on his hips. He's grinning, but his eyes look shifty, like he isn't sure whether to keep an eye on Tina -- who he always had a thing for; when he got near her he'd almost purr -- or to focus more on the woman seated to his left, who is:
Melissa. Of all the people in the photo, she's the only one who's glowing. She is positively beaming into the camera, with a big smile and a ton of self-confidence. She's young and brilliant and energetic, positive and confident, probably the best pure musician (and artist) out of all of us. It's mostly her songs we've been working on, her arrangements, her lead-singing. She is on fire. She's the star of these sessions, and she knows it. Her energy has lifted us all up.
Several of the guys in the photo are in love with her. With her grinning face and perfect teeth and waterfall of dusty-blonde hair, the spotlight naturally drifts to her. As do the eyes of several of the guys in the band. And none more than....
Don, who sits to Melissa's immediate left on a packing crate. He's smiling too, but it's more of a long-suffering smile than one for being so close to a woman he absolutely adores. Don's been alone for awhile. His soulmate Merlene won't come along until the summer of '78, and then she'll be killed in a head-on car crash in the spring of '82. She'll die in his arms. Of course he doesn't know any of that yet. He doesn't know yet that his future-wife Robyn even exists.
He looks lonely, like he wants nothing more than to wrap his arms around Melissa and hold on forever. It's all over his face that he loves her, as he sits there gazing at her. But Don didn't move quick enough. And Don is stopped from reaching for Melissa by the man standing to his immediate left....
Thom is tall and skinny, his thick, curly brown hair falling below his shoulders, his arms drawing the bow across his violin, "Panache." Thom has always been better with instruments than he is with people -- women, at least.
He and Melissa have been sleeping together for six months, and they fight constantly over what Melissa says is stupid, meaningless stuff. Melissa says Thom is too jealous, too possessive....
Thom must be furious in this picture because Don is sitting next to Melissa rather than himself. But Thom hides it well. He always did. Only 20, and he's already bitter about women. And his slashing wit cuts into Melissa, Tina, Allison -- any woman who crosses his path. All the guys in the band think he's screamingly funny. The women usually just scream. When this photo is taken, he's facing-off with....
Allison, our "group mother," who holds onto her viola in a pose mirroring Thom's. She is uncomfortably heavy and wears loose jeans and long, baggy shirts to cover up her weight. I think she's too sensitive about her weight -- it was never a problem for me. She's my ex-girlfriend.
It is 18 months since Allison dumped me for her new boyfriend Richard, who's also in the band; six months since Allison learned about Tina and I; we are still close, she expresses concern for my future. It is a couple of years before we take each other to bed because there's no one else better available for us. For now she's involved -- and she also expresses concern for the futures of all the other guys in the band: our diets, our jobs, our love affairs.
She is destined to retire early from teaching and doomed to an unhappy marriage with a husband she'll hardly ever see, living in the half-finished Dream House he promised to build for her. But at the time this photo is taken, she's wrapped up with....
Richard, a dark, hairy presence staring straight into the camera, acting forceful when he's plagued with self-doubt from too much self-analysis. In another year or so he'll come out of the closet and break up with Al, destroying her dreams of being head-over-heels in love with an intense young Psychology major. After all her bragging about what great sex they have together, Richard will dump Al for an astrologer in his early 60s. That after trying to live with Tina for a month. Of course, Tina could make any guy turn gay. Tina will eventually end up marrying....
Miles, who duplicates Tina's deer-in-the-headlights stare behind his big round glasses near the right-hand side of the photo. A cigarette dangles from his lower lip. Though a little wooly-headed because of his constant search for his next marijuana cigarette, Miles is the best drummer any of us have ever worked with. Besides, when you put Miles's philosophical musings together with Thom's misogynistic rantings, the results are hysterical. Too bad he chooses to ignore all of our warnings about marrying Tina. They last less than five years together. Which is almost twice as long as Tina and I lasted....
At the far right side of the photo, looking like he's wearing his favorite monk's outfit, is our manager and background-vocal arranger, Bob. Perhaps following in Richard's footsteps, within four years Bob will also proclaim that he's gay. That will be after convictions for forgery and embezzling, and the first of several hitches in the Idaho State Penitentiary.
Heavy-guitarist and cartoonist extraordinaire Jeff can't be in this photo because he's off attending college in Texas. Merlene, Robyn, Cyndi, Deb and Mary haven't come along yet. Behind the camera is our guitarist Jim, Melissa's future boyfriend -- a tall, skinny, intense young man with a nose like a knife, who probably had no idea when he pointed his camera at us that he was going to catch us so intensely being ourselves.
But this is how I remember all of us back then, just like this, with the emotions and memories that are awakened in me every time I look at this picture. The photo was used as the back-cover for our first album.
Don once said that we were all "united by the awful things we've done to each other." Allison said around the same time that we were "a very incestuous little group." And at the time this photo was taken, things hadn't EVEN become as intertwined as they would be by 1982.
But I don't care much about the bad things, most of which I can't even remember 30+ years later. I miss my friends, and I miss those times, when most of us still had hope for the future. When we knew clearly that we were put here to do something great, and we thought we could DO it, if we could just get all the details pulled together and the right feeling was in the air. The creativity and brilliance were there, if we could just give a shape to it.
I miss the energy and confidence and optimism that almost all of us seemed to have.
It wasn't until later that things got hazy and confusing....

(...So, whadda ya think? There's more if you want to read more....)