I love so many of the albums he produced, but the first thing I thought of when I heard Steve Albini had died was a boyfriend yelling at me. Tim, a musician himself, was trying to convince me I was a terrible and stupid person for liking Amanda Palmer by reading aloud Steve Albini’s words to me. The more I defended Amanda, the angrier Tim got, and the more he yelled. Even after I started to cry.
I grew up around a lot of anger and yelling. It always made me cry, but I was used to it. For years, I yelled at people, too, thinking it was normal.
One boyfriend I had, Mike, used to scream at me in public while I cowered slightly on a bench or against a wall waiting for it to be over. This was in New York City, so people would gather around us, ready to grab him if he got physical.
A neighbor once called the cops because she heard him yelling at me in his apartment. She heard it a lot. She was a little younger than me, and I’d see her looking at me with worry in her eyes. I thought she was naive and didn’t understand that I was fine.
I wasn’t fine. She was right.
I was embarrassed that she saw me as a victim, that she pitied me and wanted to help me.
I’d break up with him, then go back. NYC was a lonely place for me.
Finally, I went to a therapist. I didn’t tell her anything about the relationship, just about everything else. I was too embarrassed to tell her what I was willing to put up with. Still, it made me more able to leave him. I moved into a nicer apartment, so I didn’t feel tempted to go to his place. I dove more into my art and my work. I built my own safety net, then I leapt.
I finally told the therapist about the relationship after it was over. That was the last step I needed to take.
I’d love to say I’ve moved past it all, but I still get yelled at in relationships sometimes. Like with Tim, who I dated two decades after I dated Mike. Was it because of the pandemic that I was willing to put up with that again? Or was it that he’d started out so kind and loving and then turned? Mike was always gruff, Tim was utterly devoted in the beginning. The rage took me by surprise.
I think that was the first time I saw his rage, at least directed at me, when he read aloud from Steve Albini’s piece. He was emboldened by it, first in his mocking condemnation of Amanda, then in his humiliation of me.
I’m sorry Steve Albini is gone so young. I’m glad he personally eased up on Amanda later. I’ll still always associate him with rage.
Your writing is made powerful by the way you describe complexity with such concision. Thanks for sharing your stories with honesty and clarity and giving me a standard to aspire to as I write of my own experiences.