Juliana Hatfield's Bad Boy Decisions

In the morning I would meet the boys outside at the van. Sam, transformed back into his sweet old now-apologetic quiet and sober self, would tell me with an embarrassed smile that he'd banged on my hotel room door for a while and when I didn't hear him knocking, and didn't let him in, he'd gone and slept in one of the other guys' rooms. Then the guys would chuckle and rib Sam about it for a minute ("Ah, Sam, crazy Sam, you nutty kid!")

But I was often still really angry in the morning after a fight.

It was exasperating being with someone who vacillated hour by hour between good and evil.

The tour wasn't any fun. In fact, it was horrible. Sam ruined it for me, and made it very unpleasant for everyone else.

And then he broke up with me.

Sam was the last straw. I'd foretold it to Sam, in a jokey-but-serious tone, in the early days of our relationship, after we'd made up yet again from yet another fight: "Sam, when you leave me for Kate Moss, I'm done with guys. Guys in bands, anyway. This is it for me. You guys are too much trouble."

Sam would smile. He thought I was kidding. He didn't believe me.

But I meant it.

After Sam, "No more rock guys! No more rock guys!" became my mantra. I would pray, "Please, dear God, just keep them away from me! No more."

They were just so hard to resist, like junk food — and so bad for me.

I was drawn to to the puer aeternus — the archetype of the "eternal boy" (the "beautiful creature" of my album of the same name, full of songs about these boys). The puer is narcissistic, immature, sensitive and artistic but not so good at coping with the demands of the world, wanting to escape into fantasy rather than dealing with the reality of a situation. The puer doesn't have to grow up because he is playing a child's game (rock and roll); playing — playing guitars, making up rhymes, playing dress-up and jumping around onstage.

Was I drawn to these boys because I hadn't matured — because I was still a child and couldn't see my way to growing up? Were they a way to avoid the difficult task of growing up? Had rock and roll, and my doomed relationships with rock and rollers, stunted my emotional growth? When — how — would I ever become a woman if I kept getting mixed up with these confused, selfish, damaged, fragile, capricious boys, so careless with their own and others' feelings? How could I transform my own carelessness, confusion, selfishness, self-absorption, childishness and hurt into strength, sense, sureness, patience, knowledge, confidence, maturity and kindness?