To hear Peter talk in the early ‘90s, he divided women into
two groups, the fuckable ones, and the others. The fuckable ones were the ones
you fell in love with, the ones who ruined your life, the future bitches. The
others were the Others, not that you wouldn’t also fuck them when you were
drunk or stoned, but they were the friends, the fans, the ones you used for
errands, loans, drug runs, places to crash, the occasional hand or blow job.
They were less pretty or not pretty at all, and strangely, they tended to be
friends with each other. Their devotion to Peter brought them together as a
faithful team who stayed loyal to him no matter what, right to the end. The bitches came and
went.
When I started my local music newspaper and it began to gain
a little traction in the music community, Peter saw it as a springboard to
launch himself back into the scene in a big way. He had been big before, in The
Rage and Ten Ten, and both attempts at fame and fortune had fallen away after coming oh so close. The new band he was working on was a bad fit. It was
folky and more acoustic. It didn’t rock. It didn’t wear cute clothes. It had no
sex appeal. And again, he wasn’t the frontman. Bass players seldom are. But he
could get in front on my newspaper, so I got a phone call. How would I like to
tell his life story, he asked, because he had a really interesting life. He had
photos. And he had opinions on the past and present local music scene that
would make my newspaper a must-read.
Yes, indeed, I would like all that.
So we met at his friend’s townhouse in the Museum District.
He came down the stairs, looked at me, setting up my cassette recorder and
stack of tapes for what would become a four hour interview, and said, “You’re
not at all what they said.”
And I knew what he meant. He had been told I was a potential
“Other,” a utility girl who, because I was not fuckable and gorgeous, would
fall in line as a devotee. Instead, he sensed right away I was older than him
and an unforgiving mom type. I was a different type of Other, not one who would
ever love or like him, but I would love his story and like his roguish
reputation because it was all good copy. I was going to use him the same way he
was going to use me, as a catapult for our ambitions.
The interview was the sensation I anticipated. Everywhere I
went, people wanted to talk to me about it. Mostly they said Peter was full of
shit, or full of himself. He had few male sympathizers or admirers. But they
had thoroughly enjoyed the story of his brush with fame, because they were all hoping
for the same thing. They all knew when and if it was their turn, they would handle it better than he did.
Peter tried to continue to ride that wave by reviewing CDs for me, but quickly realized he could not be part of the local music community and antagonize them at the same time by trashing their music. He was dating a girl in his band, and she didn’t like my newspaper at all, so we fell out of touch.
Peter tried to continue to ride that wave by reviewing CDs for me, but quickly realized he could not be part of the local music community and antagonize them at the same time by trashing their music. He was dating a girl in his band, and she didn’t like my newspaper at all, so we fell out of touch.
But not before one more odd thing happened. Two decades have
passed since then, so I have forgotten the reason he came over to my Carytown
apartment, which doubled as the newspaper office. He was restless and erratic,
and still planning to marry his girlfriend, although his nervous chatter was
almost as if he was talking himself out of it, or wanted me to talk him out of
it. He was sharing intimate details about her with me, and it was making me uncomfortable. She was recuperating from a surgery, so maybe they were on a break
physically. There was a weird vibe, like he was making himself available to
me if I wanted (or maybe he was just talking to me like I was a mom) but I had zero interest in his love life, and stayed seated, protected by my
fortress of computers and books and paper, while he buzzed around my apartment,
looking at everything, chattering away and smiling. Then he went into my
bathroom.
And there he stayed. And stayed. And stayed. After too much
time had passed, and I still had not heard the toilet paper turn, or a toilet
flush, or a sink turn on or off, or any noise at all, I was totally weirded
out. What is going on in there? Is he ever coming out? Does he want me to knock
on the door? Should I? Is he dead?
No. I’m just going to sit here. I tried to pass the time
working at the computer. The clock ticked. When he finally came out, without
any explanation about why he was in there so freakishly long, he said goodbye
and left in a hurry.
I rushed into the bathroom and tried to figure out what he
found so entertaining for so long in there. There was nothing to read. I looked through my medicine cabinet
to see if anything was missing, or what secrets he might have learned about me
from the items I had. There were no clues. To this day, I am baffled.
So there's four mileposts I have in my life from my encounter
with Peter Bell: His curious surprise that I was not what he expected, which I
took as a compliment; the boost in readership of my
newspaper; the mysterious visit to my apartment; and, most important, he introduced me to my future husband,
who played guitar in his band at the time.
Even though we have not talked in 20 years, I think about
him several times a month, every time I drive by the house he bought on
the corner of Ellwood and Nansemond with his Ten Ten money. It was the perfect house
for an alcoholic, he had told me, because there was a 7 Eleven right behind it.
Endless cold beer and wine, any time of the day or night. It was a party
house. Everyone crashed there. Everyone drank his beer and wine and used his
drugs. He told hilarious stories about his so-called friends cooking up all his
food, leaving him with nothing. And he hardly cared because life was one big
party. And, of course, he lost the house. It’s still there. It will always
be a cautionary tale to me about fame.
6 comments:
Great article, I remember seeing Ten Ten a few times and meeting Peter on various occasions, including recently. Thanks for an unusual but honest tribute, you are never what people expect.
If you didn't know Peter well enough to know that he was 55 when he died - what it was that he was doing in your bathroom - or that the house at Ellwood & Nansemond was a rental...then with respect to those who did (and do) know and love him - was it really necessary to publish this two days after his death?
In addition to the mayhem of the 80s and 90s, there was more to Peter's life than this post indicates. (For example, he was the father of three and a grandfather to two.) It would seem to me that as a writer he apparently respected, that you might have wanted to do a bit of follow-up research to close the 20-year gap of information that you openly acknowledge exists.
Anyone who knew him could easily have answered your four mysteries.
I don't claim to have known him very well. We sat for four hours in July 1994 and he told me his life story from high school to that time and I recorded and transcribed it. And yeah, I always publish what I have from the paper about a local musician when I hear that they died. Have you looked at any of the other blog entries here??
The first news story I found about the accident said he was 54. Check out the blog entries of his interview from 1994. It sounded like he had bought the house on Ellwood. He says his brother, sister, and girlfriend lived in it while he was touring in Europe. In 1994, he was a father of one, and that's where this particular story about him ends.
No, I had no interest in doing anymore follow-up research about the last 20 years. I will leave that to people who knew him during that time. And if you know what he was doing in the bathroom so long, do tell, because I do not and would love to know. I did go to his apartment on Stuart Avenue once when he and Julia were away and Frank Daniel was housesitting, and there was a big stack of Playboy magazines in his bathroom that would have provided some extended entertainment, but there was no reading material in my bathroom.
"I bought a big house sight unseen on Elwood Avenue and Nansemond while I was in Europe and my sister, brother, and a girlfriend were living there. I moved in, too."
Anonymous, I assumed he bought the house because in the third episode of his story, he said he did.
I saw Ten Ten sometime in the mid 80s either in blacksburg or Roanoke, and then again in the late 80s in richmond. Peter auditioned for a band I was in around 1990. We jammed a few songs in our basement practice space on Park Ave, but it wasn't really a good fit. Peter was pretty drunk and frankly our band was pretty lame and I think he realized that, but he was really nice and it was the only time I ever really talked to him. I remember him saying that Ten Ten never practiced and that Mark taught them the new songs at sound check and I remember being impressed by that. Sad that he's gone. I never knew he was from blackstone. My father was born about 10 miles from there.
Three years have passed now and Anonymous has still not told me what Peter was doing in my bathroom so long.
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