What I Learned from Peter Bell

Peter Bell died in an auto accident in August 2015 at age 55.

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.

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.