Becoming Spring Brucesteen: My Quest to Meet the Boss
This is a story about getting in the getaway car, driving fast toward your dreams, and then turning the car around. In this case, the getaway car was New Jersey Transit. One day, I was eating a can of chickpeas and drinking Aperol in my living room, and the next, I was on a train from Penn Station to Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was January, and we were in the midst of the bomb cyclone. I had received a hot tip from a loyal informant in the form of a text message: “This is tomorrow at The Stone Pony,” she said. Attached was a flyer for the Big Man’s Bash, a concert in honor of the life and work of “Big Man” Clarence Clemons, the musician and former saxophone player in the E Street Band. She went on, “A friend of mine (and more importantly, a friend of the Boss) says she would bet $$ that Bruce Springsteen will be there if he is in New Jersey.” I wondered how much money this friend was willing to bet and decided I would wager the seventeen-dollar train ticket.
The NJ Transit North Jersey Coast Line train is one I have taken many times. I grew up in Manasquan, New Jersey, a beach town, alternately known as “Bruce nation.” Asbury Park, of Springsteen’s famed Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., is just a short bike ride down the boardwalk, and during the summer months, virtually every bar hosts a Bruce Springsteen cover band performance every night. This sojourn, however, was the first NJ Transit ride I took in search of the Boss. My fandom was recent. The sound of “Born in the U.S.A.” used to conjure images of the muscular white boys of my high school years, drunk with testosterone and Natural Ice, clad in denim and American flags. They screamed along with E Street imitators in bars we were all too young to patronize. I had always found the Springsteen omnipresence in coastal New Jersey offensive.
On the train, I took a seat toward the back of the car. I sat against the wall and moved sideways with the train, shoulder toward my destination, and contemplated my transformation into a Springsteen fanatic. Back in August, I had embarked on a road trip from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, for the 2017 solar eclipse. My partner and I listened to The Argonauts on tape on our last long haul, a sheer delight, and, the autobiography of Bruce Springsteen. The boy on the cover was wearing plaid, his mouth agape, and he was balanced on the hood of some old-time vehicle, mesmerizing. How many times had I seen this face before? I felt like I could reasonably have taken this photo myself, from the familiarity. When I saw that the text was read by the Boss himself, I brought the discs to the counter. It was not a natural progression from Maggie Nelson.
