#002: Hey man, nice shirt

We weren’t looking for anyone.

Just a hotel room in downtown Raleigh, a couple drinks, and maybe a few hours of pretending the world wasn’t on fire.

The Jane’s Addiction show was tomorrow. That was the plan.

Check in, check out the town.

No big deal.

Walked through the lobby and saw a guy in a Jupiter-8 shirt. For a second, I’m thinking: hell yeah, someone still remembers what a synth used to sound like.

I said, “Nice shirt.”

He gave a nod—barely a whisper of acknowledgment. Quiet. Familiar. The kind of face that smells like a memory but won’t tell you from where.

Then my wife, not realizing who she was talking to, just goes:

“Are you guys here to see Jane’s Addition?”

That’s when Stephen Perkins turned around from the bar— smirking like a cat with a backstage pass to the apocalypse.

Paying their tab.

Eyes saying, yep, that’s who you think it is.

And probably trying not to laugh himself off the barstool.

The quiet guy?

Eric Fucking Avery.

Yeah, that Eric.

The ghost of the bassline. The one who left, came back, disappeared again.

Short hair now. No sunglasses. Just walking around like a civilian— like the last 30 years didn’t happen or maybe happened too hard.

They left.

Crossed the street.

We quickly grabbed some drinks at the hotel bar— still laughing about the unknowing of the ghost of decades past.

Then we closed out our tab and walked out the hotel door to find a brewery across the street… the same one they’d happened to visit.

(Great minds think alike, right?)

They were sitting outside, chatting like it was just Tuesday.

Stephen eventually split.

Eric went inside for another beer.

When he came back out, I asked if he wanted to join us.

My wife was quietly freaking out— worried he might say no. But something was different in the air that night. Cosmic coincidence? Fate? Who knows. Whatever it was, he sat down at our table.

And he stayed. For hours.

it may have only been one but felt like more time than ever expected.

No ego. No performative small talk. No pictures or autographs asked for... those always seem silly.

Just real conversation.

Music. Time. Getting older without going soft.

We found out we share the same birthday.

It felt less like meeting someone new, and more like picking up an old conversation—casual, comfortable, easy, like a Sunday morning.

Simple. Warm. No spotlight. Just truth sitting quietly between beers.

The next day, we kept running into him. Lobby. Sidewalk. Coffee shop. After the fourth time, I finally said:

“You’ve gotta quit following me, man. You’re starting to freak me out.”

He cracked up. So did we.

A few nights later, the band broke up.

Tour canceled .Press releases dropped. People acted surprised.

But we weren’t.

Because we were there.

Not at the edge of the stage— at the edge of the unraveling.

In the beer glow. In the weird weightlessness before the fall.

And all of it started with a synth shirt, a forgotten face, and a moment no one meant to make special.

If that’s not a perfect metaphor for Gen X, I don’t know what is.

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