him to meet Third Rail.
The show was at the arts center. It was loud and wild and pumped me full of confident energy. But when Joe brought me backstage, I was actually surprised at how suddenly nervous I felt.
First, Joe introduced me to some roadies. Then I met Marc Miller, the lead guitarist, who offered us something to eat. He led us to a long buffet of cold cuts. My heart stopped a little bit when I saw a tall, thin man dressed in a faded black T-shirt and jeans toss back those curls as he regarded the spread. It was Richard Ruiz. The Richard Ruiz. I sidled up near him, pretending to check out the offerings myself, and waited for the right moment for Joe to introduce us.
Then I heard Richard grumble, “Bummer. It’s all animal kill.” His voice was deep and raspy, like a growl.
As a devoted vegetarian, I saw and took my opportunity. “The Silo is open till two, and they have a pretty good veggie burger.”
He then turned toward me and shot me a slow, appreciative smile. “Is that right? Because I’d probably even kill an animal for a veggie burger just about now….”
I laughed and then gave Joe, who was standing beside me, a subtle nudge. He snapped to. “Well, she would know; she’s a hard-core vegetarian,” he answered. I nudged him again and gave him a look. “Uh, this is my girlfriend, Jill,” he said.
He would have to throw in the “girlfriend” part. I stuck out my hand. “Jill White. Good show by the way,” I said nonchalantly, trying my best to play it cool, using all my will to keep from gushing and looking like just another fan.
Richard smiled, grabbed my hand, and held it.
“Sooo,” I said, flustered, “uh, I was going to run over and grab a veggie burger myself….”
“Bring back two, then,” Richard said, releasing my hand. “One for me, one for you.”
I did just that, and me, Joe, and the rest of the guys hung out talking in Richard’s dressing room until the wee hours of the morning. After my heart stopped doing that freezing-up thing, I was amazed at the confident conversation that came out of my mouth. I was talking to Richard Ruiz just like he was a regular person—like a peer. We had an especially great conversation about his lyrics, which often referenced obscure philosophers and poets. I was ecstatic that he seemed impressed by my depth of knowledge of them all.
The time flew, and at about 5 A.M., one of the roadies tapped on the door. “Guys, we really gotta go now,” he urged. “We should have hit the road hours ago. We’ve got a morning radio interview in Boston.”
So the night was coming to an end. I wanted to soak every last minute of Richard’s presence, so Joe and I helped the guys gather their things and trailed along to their bus to say good-bye. Richard picked me up in a bear hug. “Come with us,” he whispered in my ear.
When he put me down he stared intensely into my eyes. I turned to Joe, who was chatting with the drummer.
“I…I can’t,” I said weakly.
“That’s a real shame,” he said, sighing. Then he added wistfully, “Idle youth. Enslaved to everything…”
It only took me a second to recall the rest….
“…by being sensitive I have wasted my life,” I finished for him. “Rimbaud.”
“I knew you’d know that,” he said simply, offering me a smile before he turned to the calls of his bandmates.
“Let’s go, man! We’re going to be late!”
Richard gave me a disappointed wave before he climbed on the bus, and I felt like I was going to throw up once the engine hummed on. I felt like such a stupid groupie, but I was pretty certain that in the past five hours I had, for the first time in my life, fallen in love.
Joe came over in the meantime and grabbed my hand. “Are you okay?” he asked gently.
The bus slowly backed up out of the lot while Richard’s rugged voice echoed in my ears: “Enslaved to everything…”
The bus pulled away, and I still, to this day, can’t believe what I did next.
I looked at Joe; dropped his hand; quickly mumbled, “I have to go”; and chased after the bus, running down the street with all my might. When it hit the stop sign at the end of the block, I pounded on the door wildly. “Wait! I’m coming with you!” I screamed. “Open the door!”
The bus door flew open, and I ran up the steps and right into Richard, as the rest of the guys erupted in applause and whistles.
Laughing, he dragged me to the backseat and he planted his lips on mine. “I’ve wanted to do that all night,” he said. So had I.
And that’s when I first knew that I was capable of being as selfish and mean as anyone I’d ever hated…because I didn’t even think to look back out that window at Joe. I just kept kissing Richard.
In one week, we hit Boston, Providence, Hartford, New Haven, and New York. In each new city, we had the same routine: sleep late, caressing each other in the mornings; rehearsal, when I would sit in the wings and watch brilliance in action; a healthy bite to eat; and then my favorite part—the downtime, when we’d steal away to a quiet spot, like a park or a coffee shop.
Those were my favorite times, when it would be just the two of us. Richard would share lyrics he was working on, and I’d read him snippets from a short story that I’d started on the road. And I felt so special when he’d confide in me, telling me things like how he was inwardly afraid of the band hitting it big.
“I just don’t want to lose our raw edge,” he told me one day when we lingered in Boston Common.
“What makes you think you will?” I asked.
“The bigger we get, the more money we make, the more demands on our time…the more pressure to sell out,” he said.
“But that sounds like such a cliché,” I told him. “You’re above that.”
“Am I?” he said, concern covering his face. “I’m only human. It’s so easy to get sucked into the machine….”
He seemed so vulnerable. And I was so honored to be the girl he chose to bare his soul to. I dreamt of always being the girl who would ground him, no matter how famous he would become. “Even if you do hit the big time and make a lot of money, think of what you can do with that. Think of the platform you could have. Think of the people you could reach. How you could spread your ideas. What effect you could have on people—on the world!”
I could tell by his smile that he liked what he was hearing. I was inspiring him; I just knew it. Thinking about my goal to start a charity from my “Things I Want to Accomplish in Life” list, I went on: “I mean, if you end up making a lot of money, there are a lot of causes you could donate it to.” I imagined us starting a charity together, the two of us saving the world in every little way we could.
“I just want people to hear my music,” he said. “It’s that simple. I want life to stay that uncomplicated. The tragic thing is, it never will.”
“That’s why we have to live for today, then,” I said boldly, before kissing him.
“I agree,” he said. “The future doesn’t exist to me. The only thing that really does exist is the here and now.”
After that conversation, we went back to the bus and had the best here-and-now sex I could ever have imagined.
Sex with Richard at that time was incredibly eye-opening for me. It was intense, grown-up, sensual, and explosive, instead of the fumbling, quick and wanting variety that I experienced with Joe. With Richard, I finally understood what all the fuss was about in Cosmo. Richard taught me the reason every issue had a “discover your G-spot” coverline, and he found A through F, too; it was like a veritable octave of pleasure each time we went at it. Which was at least twice a day.
My least favorite