Keb Mo "Every Morning"

I got dumped by this girl.

We hadn’t been dating very long, and I thought things were going just fine. But then I kind of got a whiff that something wasn’t right, from her perspective.

So I can’t say I was really surprised that I was suddenly getting the “It’s Not You, It’s Me” speech.

Fine. Or at least, at another time in my life, it would have been fine.

But it had been a really hard year.

My Uncle had died suddenly earlier in the year. My sister was battling cancer. A huge rift had opened up between myself and my 2 closest friends. And in the last week, my Aunt had died suddenly. I was pretty new on the Vineyard. It was winter. I didn't have to many friends.

So I was in a pretty low, low place, all that cumulative weight on my shoulders. And I took getting dropped much harder then, than was maybe warranted.

I had to get out of the apartment. I’d been there for days, shut in by the cold, cold Vineyard off-season and my own depression.

I was broke, too, of course. But I scraped together a handful of bucks and took myself to a discount Tuesday matinee.

To see the feel good movie of the year: “Fahrenheit 9-11.”

What was I thinking?

More depressed than ever, I decided that I should walk down the street to my regular pub, and have a beer. And maybe feel the warm embrace of other Islanders who needed a drink on a rainy winter Tuesday.

You don’t need to be a screenwriter to guess who was down the far end of the bar.

I waved to her. It was the polite and friendly thing to do. And I stayed and drank my beer instead of running out the front door. It was the non-chicken-shit thing to do.

But, unshaven, unshowered and pale, mole-eyed from sitting in the dark theater, I didn’t think I could feel too much worse. I certainly looked about as terrible, as unkempt, as disheveled as I can ever recall being.

So the only way out, was up.

I walked up the street to one of the upscale restaurants. They had an upstairs bar. And it was early enough in the night that it was virtually empty. Just me and the bartender.

I had a credit card that was about 50 bucks short of maxed out. So what’s an extra 50 bucks?

I got a big, not-too-greasy-but-just-greasy-enough Cuban pork sandwich and fries and a few beers.

It is the one and only time in my life that I recall telling my troubles to a bartender, who took pity me, while I unpacked some baggage.

“What are we listening to?” I asked him, as the cd that had been playing, looped back to the first track.

“Keb Mo. His first record.”

“I like it,” I responded positively, determined to go in the only direction left.

Up.