What was I doing 10 years ago? Oh yeah….

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

November 20, 2004, and I was about to put in the final piece of the puzzle to my plan to leave America and live in UK full time.

It had all begun at Jongleurs Comedy Club in Bow, East London, on Saturday, April 5, 2003. I was closing the show that night, and should remember who was on the bill, but since bigger things transpired, that part of my memory is vague. What I do remember is waiting near the entrance to the venue, about to be brought on stage. Just before I was to do that, I saw a woman being propped up on one side by the venue manager, and on the other side by the woman who unbeknownst to me would eventually become wife #3!

The woman being propped up was clearly not well, and I remember feeling bad for her, but only because she wouldn’t get to be entertained by Rick Right. Nor would her friend, but that turned out to be a good thing, as we shall see. I was having such a great show that night that I exclaimed to the audience, “Where were you LAST night, when I was dying on my arse?” It’s true the previous night had sucked, and yes, I do remember saying arse, not ass.

Having had such a great set, I felt compelled to hang around for the disco, and see if anyone was going to fancy the Yank with the goofy guitar. I found myself dancing with a group of schoolteachers who were very sweet, but none were saying anything even remotely close to “Oh, you’re the sexiest, I want you now!” In that whole sentence, possibly the words “you’re” and “the” might have been said, but definitely not “want.” In spite of no come-ons from anyone, I was still having a good time.

Then from out of nowhere came a slightly tipsy, tall pretty brunette who was suddenly right in my face. She was definitely not with the schoolteachers, but clearly interested. “Oh boy, groupie action” I thought to myself, but within five minutes of conversation, it emerged that she hadn’t even seen the show, and was flirting with me because (as she said about a year later), a voice from within was telling her to go there, and how she wouldn’t regret it. I was flattered that someone was liking Brian without knowing about Rick. The romance developed quickly, and within 3 months, we moved in together.

The reason she hadn’t seen the show, or at least the second half that I was in, was that her friend who she had been propping up had a terrible reaction to a mixture of alcohol and some concoction made out of beet root, which Americans just call beets. My future wife not only was escorting her friend out of the club and arranging for a cab to take her home, but she spent the entire second half of the show cleaning the vomit off her clothing. Had she seen the show, she confessed later, she probably would have been less inclined to flirt, as she would have felt I was only looking at her as a groupie, which was EXACTLY how I perceived her at first.

Things happen for a reason, and a year and a half later, I was taking the vow for the third and maybe last time in my life. It was a dreary, drizzly day 10 years ago that we took our vows at The Eastbury Manor House in Barking, Essex, a building which dated back to the 16th Century. So much about the wedding was funky, but mostly because the people we’d entrusted to help us put it together basically ignored the plans we’d set out, to the point that when we’d said our “I do’s” and were marching down the aisle, I had to give an exaggerated gesture just to say “Start the music, please!”

From Eastbury Manor House, we went to a dingy community hall in Dagenham, where only a few months before, I’d accompanied my future stepson to a Boy Scout meeting. There was much wrong about the facility, but we made the best of it. My corps of friends and family amounted to a total of less than 20 out of the 100 or so in attendance, and I still feel guilty that we booked my brother and his wife and daughter at a grossly overpriced hotel in Romford with a faulty heating system, while we allowed my best friend and his wife, who’d all flown out on the same flight and endured a 3-hour cab ride from Heathrow in traffic that even for London was record-breakingly awful, to stay at our house in Dagenham.

We still had a grand old time, though I didn’t know that most of her friends who knew her best were giving the marriage possibly a year. As part of the festivities, we had a music trivia quiz, for which the winning table would receive a grand prize. I came up with the questions, not knowing that ten years later, I’d be getting paid to do the same thing, though this one was multiple-choice, and all the questions were pop music related. Generally, the whole evening was the sort of drunken revelry you’d expect, with many cabs being called, and yet, as inebriated as the Mrs. and I were that night, we still found the time after we got home to open all the wedding gifts!

It doesn’t matter as much now that the marriage started to have an ominous feel within the first year, and never really recovered from that. We soldiered on for four years and three months, mostly trying to keep a happy face on to those around us, but it was clearly “not a match, the board goes back,” to use an old game show phrase. We split acrimoniously in 2009, and continued to have estrangements for a couple years after, but I’ve talked about that part way too much over the past five years.

What’s most important to me is that she and I have evolved beyond that, and can look back fondly at the good times we did have. There’s really no point in trying to analyse what went wrong, but it wasn’t as disastrous a marriage as, say, Paul McCartney and Heather Mills. At least my divorce didn’t cost me any large amount of money, plus I’ve become good friends with my ex, and can remember again what the attraction was. She may not have been right as a wife, but she’s a good person and has become a good friend. Just being able to refer to her by her name instead of 4-letter invectives was for me a major step. I can now look back to that Saturday ten years ago and raise a smile or two.

November 19th, 2014



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