Appar­ently, even after 25 years to this day, Emily the Groupie is not dead.

Oh yes, every­one … Emily appar­ently has some life in her just yet. At least after this past week­end, any­way. And what a week­end it was.

It started out inno­cently enough. Hubby & I drove to our Chicago apart­ment on Thurs­day night, know­ing that we were going to see my favorite band, INXS per­form Fri­day night at a casino just 20 min­utes out­side of the city cen­ter. As we drove around the park­ing garage Fri­day evening, Hubby pointed out the freight ele­va­tor at the far end of the struc­ture. And as I looked over, we both noticed that the large ele­va­tor door was opening.

It was kind of a sur­real moment, watch­ing this group of peo­ple step out of the freight ele­va­tor; it almost appeared as if they were mov­ing in slow motion. Actu­ally, as I think about it now … it reminded me of the begin­ning of the 1982 “Don’t Change” video. What I hadn’t noticed — ini­tially, any­way — was that it hap­pened to be all the mem­bers of INXS. When it finally dawned on me, I was too stunned to do any­thing but smile and wave at them from inside our car. And I man­aged to get a big grin and wave from a cou­ple of them.

Now … why didn’t I do the orig­i­nal “groupie” thing and jump out of the car at that time? I’m not sure. I think it was likely because I sud­denly felt shy; felt intim­i­dated by them. Which is ridicu­lous, right? See­ing that I man­aged to track them down a cou­ple of times in my youth.

Except now, I was older. I had expe­ri­enced things since those younger days. I was brave back then; not intim­i­dated by doing silly things, not afraid to be dif­fer­ent or unique in front of other peo­ple. Now … after expe­ri­enc­ing sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment, I had become afraid of rejec­tion … of being laughed at or sin­gled out.

I’d say that all of that sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment and rejec­tion (and not to men­tion, feel­ing iso­lated and and cer­tainly sin­gled out) came from my expe­ri­ence from Infer­til­ity, but the truth is, such emo­tions can come from a cul­mi­na­tion of things. I say this now … after wrap­ping up my IF jour­ney … only because when look­ing at every­thing that hap­pened over the past year (loss of a job, birth of another new fam­ily mem­ber which didn’t come from me, the sud­den loss of a par­ent, etc), I’ve felt every sin­gle one of those same emo­tions I did when in the depths of Infer­til­ity depres­sion. Just not as intense.

Why am I telling you all this as I’m ref­er­enc­ing my younger “groupie” days? Well, it goes back to that ini­tial encounter in the park­ing garage before the show. And my mind telling me — based on my past expe­ri­ences of sad­ness and iso­la­tion — that I would just be mak­ing more of a fool of myself be putting myself in the posi­tion to be pos­si­bly rejected.

My hus­band chided me for not “run­ning” after them; say­ing that I should have been more aggres­sive. And it’s because of him that after the con­cert (and know­ing exactly where the band would be exit­ing the venue) I found myself run­ning up to the band and ask­ing for a quick pic­ture with them. While I orig­i­nally got the stan­dard “The band needs to hit the road” com­ment from their snooty band man­ager, two of the mem­bers took the time to take a pic­ture with me. So yes … I was elated. And I felt myself gain a lit­tle more con­fi­dence in myself.

So flash-​​forward to the next day in Detroit, MI. (Yes … we did buy tick­ets for both loca­tions. Don’t judge! ) After pass­ing the band’s tour buses twice on I-​​94 back to our home in metro Detroit, we headed down to the Fox The­ater for another night of great music. (In fact, if you ask my opin­ion … I’d say their Detroit per­for­mance superceded the Chicago show.) But see­ing that I was in such a “lucky” streak, we took a cou­ple of the band’s older vinyl records and an old photo from my first encounter with the band to get autographed.

At the end of the show (and with the lit­tle con­fi­dence I gained from my most recent encounter), Hubby and I hung around the back of the the­ater wait­ing for the band to sur­face. How­ever; unlike the pre­vi­ous night where I had them all to myself, there was a crowd of other fans lin­ger­ing around.

“Never gonna hap­pen,” I thought; but since Hubby kept egging me on, we persisted.

Really, I only wanted one person’s sig­na­ture. I wanted Andrew Far­riss, the brains behind the band, to sign a photo of myself with my brother & LJC next to Michael Hutchence. I wanted that par­tic­u­lar pic­ture signed because — while Hutch was the main focus in this pic­ture — the pic­ture caught Andrew sit­ting qui­etly on a curb behind us in the back­ground. To me, it’s such a serendip­i­tous shot; espe­cially since Hutch, Andrew’s song­writ­ing part­ner and best mate, was always out front. While Andrew, the shy genius always avoided the spot­light. Since Hutch was no longer around, it just seemed appro­pri­ate that I try to get Andrew to sign my favorite photo. Besides, although I fan­cied Hutch to the nth degree … I secretly had a thing for Andrew; know­ing that if we ever crossed paths and became friends, we’d have a lot more in com­mon than I would ever have with Hutch.

I still had my doubts that I’d ever get that sig­na­ture … espe­cially since Andrew wasn’t one that liked crowds. That, and the lit­tle con­fi­dence I had from ear­lier seemed to be dwin­dling by the minute. But just as I was about to throw in the towel, I spot­ted an old HS friend who’s sis­ter took us to one of the last INXS shows before “Kick” blew up. I think all of us had the same thought: that we’d never get the chance to talk to them. But now that I had friends to talk to, it made it worth my while to stay. In fact, within a half hour or so the tour buses left … as did the remain­ing crowd sur­round­ing the theater.

Hubby had then left me alone con­vers­ing with old friends to get our car from the struc­ture. While wait­ing for Hubby arrived with the car, HS friend and I stood talk­ing amongst our­selves. A few moments later we noticed a flut­ter of activ­ity next to us. HS friend nudged me and said, “There he is!” And a few feet in front of me stood Andrew Far­riss. Stunned, but unwill­ing to allow myself to freeze up again — fear­ing that I’d be rejected again — I quickly walked up to him and told him my story about why I wanted this par­tic­u­lar pic­ture signed by him. And gra­ciously, Andrew signed it.

Unfor­tu­nately, no stun­ning con­ver­sa­tion or spark of friend­ship ever occurred from that encounter. Yet I felt extremely lucky and … happy. It’s some­thing I’m just now real­iz­ing I wouldn’t allow myself to feel since the pass­ing of my father 8 months prior. Even back then, I was only start­ing to allow hap­pi­ness back in my life after a sh*tty year and after years of unre­solved Infer­til­ity issues.

My hap­pi­ness was some­thing that appar­ently my Hubby noticed later that night. He smiled at me as I told him the story of what hap­pened when he had left to pick up the car. When I fin­ished he turned to me and said, “See? There’s the Emily that I remem­ber. The one that I fell in love with the day we met.”

While I know our love is stronger now than it ever was back then, I couldn’t help but reflect on Hubby’s com­ment. I couldn’t help but remem­ber who I was back before Infer­til­ity came into my world; before expe­ri­enc­ing sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment. And what I recalled was — despite teenage hor­monal ten­den­cies — I was a happy, free-​​spirit who loved meet­ing new peo­ple. And I loved hav­ing fun while expe­ri­enc­ing new things. I was con­fi­dent and dar­ing; and I didn’t care what any­body thought of me.

And even though it had taken awhile to sur­face this past week­end, I real­ized a part of that Emily still existed inside. I under­stood that I could still be that same per­son I was so many years ago. I rec­og­nized that — despite think­ing that the “groupie” part of me died many years ago — I was still, and will likely always be “Emily the Groupie.”

*****

Related Posts:

Hello. Meet Emily the Groupie …

Uhm … what’s my favorite band again?

Oh, Hutch … why? Why?!

Need­ing INXS tonight …

(Pssst … look over to the right for some awe­some con­cert pics! –> )


 

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