Party of One

Copyright © 2016 by Dave Holmes

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype and colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Epigraph on
this page
courtesy of Frank Turner.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Holmes, Dave, 1971–

Title: Party of one : a memoir in 21 songs / Dave Holmes.

Description: First edition. | New York : Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015047486 | ISBN 9780804187985 (hardback) | ISBN 9780804188005 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Holmes, Dave, 1971– | Holmes, Dave, 1971– —Childhood and youth. | Comedians—United States—Biography. | Television personalities—United States—Biography. | Radio personalities—United States—Biography. | Authors, American—Biography. | Gay men—United States—Biography. | Coming of age—United States. | Self-acceptance—United States. | Popular music—United States—Miscellanea. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs. | HUMOR / General. | MUSIC / Genres & Styles / Pop Vocal. Classification: LCC CT275.H6446 A3 2016 | DDC 780.92—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/​2015047486

ISBN 9780804187985

ebook ISBN 9780804188005

Cover design by Jake Nicolella

Photo credits:
this page
: © Getty Images;
this page
: © Jim Smeal

v4.1

ep

To Dad, Mom, Dan, and Steve, for messing me up the exact right amount.

Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings,

About fire in our bellies and about furtive little feelings,

And the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering,

They help us with remembering that the only thing that's left to do is live.

—
F
RANK
T
URNER,
“I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous”

Of all the epic stories, both factual and fictional, that we have passed down through history, I identify most strongly with the journey of the Bee Girl in Blind Melon's “No Rain” video. If you didn't happen to spend your life in front of a television in 1992, here's the situation: a plucky, bespectacled girl, maybe nine years old, has dressed up in a cheap bumblebee costume that looks like it was made by a parent in a great big hurry—and all she wants to do is dance. Throughout the video, Bee Girl tap-dances her little heart out, giving everything she's got to everyone she meets, and over and over she's met with stone faces.
Move it along,
the people of the town seem to tell her as the song shambles on. Nobody is interested, but does she give up? No, she does not.
I've got spirit yes I do, I've got spirit, how about…
you
?
she wonders.
Are
you
my people? Do I belong
here
?
No, no, and no.

And then, as the song reaches its post-
Nevermind,
pre–Rusted Root, Woodstock '94–bound crescendo, Bee Girl approaches the wrought-iron gate of a peaceful pasture, and with a look of pure amazement and joy swings the gate open to reveal a
whole field of frolicking bee-people.
Bee-people young and old, black and white, each united by their unfortunate costumes and love of dance. She is home. She has found her people. There
you are,
you imagine her saying with a sigh.

I remember seeing this video for the first time in college—miserable, half-drunk on Keystone Light, a Camel Light smoldering my mouth, about to desperately tap-dance my way through another social interaction—and saying out loud: “I fucking
get
you, Bee Girl.”

My name's Dave Holmes, and I have spent most of my life being the odd man out. In retrospect the only bad thing about that is how much time I spent thinking it
was
a bad thing.

I hunted high and low for my place in this world. I changed myself around every which way to make myself normal. I tried to be each of the five archetypes from
The Breakfast Club,
all four of the
Facts of Life
girls, every one of the emotions inside
Herman's Head.
I tore it
up,
you guys. It didn't work, exactly, but if my unquenchable thirst for acceptance sent me on a long series of wrong turns, I'm exactly where I want to be now. I'm not going to tell you that I found my field of frolicking bee-people inside me, because then I would have to close my laptop, fill my pockets with stones, and walk into the ocean. But if you find you're reaching that conclusion on your own, I'm not going to stand in your way.

I did a lot of embarrassing things and put myself through a lot of useless trouble on the road to accepting myself, and it would have been a much more painful experience had I not had access to the most powerful stimulant known to humankind: the music and popular culture of the last forty years. I came of age in the time of the Monoculture, when we were all watching the same three networks and listening to the same Top 40 radio stations. My identity was formed in the eras of
Thriller, The Cosby Show,
and Nirvana—all those stories ended well, right?—and when I felt like I didn't have a friend in the world, they were there for me. I had intense love affairs with albums. I saw movies so many times I could direct them from memory. I spent so much time in front of MTV it finally gave up and invited me in.

In my younger days, my preferred method of communication was a mixtape (and then a mix-CD, and then, ever so briefly, a mix-MiniDisc). I could tell people I liked them, or that I wanted them to like me, or that I was breaking up with them, or that I understood they were breaking up with me (but if they could just understand how I felt, maybe they'd change their minds) in ninety minutes of music. It's the way a nonmusician could make his own album, the way a kid too scared to speak his mind could get his point across.

It's still my favorite thing to do, and you better believe I tried to sell my publisher on getting this into the marketplace as an Apple Music playlist, but these book types insist that you use words. So here they are: stories of the blessed and stupid life of a kid on the margins, and the music that moved it forward, in book form, which I figured I should hurry up and do before we start passing down our histories via emojis and GIFs of Rue McClanahan. I put it together like an album, with a few interludes in between, like how hip-hop albums used to have skits. (But maybe they'll, you know, age better.)

I hope you like it. I hope I bring back some memories or help you understand a beautiful time in recent history that is absolutely gone forever. And if you are in the middle of your own desperate tap dance right now, I hope that you can learn from my mistakes.

Just stay with me, and we'll have it made.