There are all sorts of reasons why marriages go south.

Sometimes it’s when your wife turns over in the night to find you missing and catches you speaking in hushed tones on the phone to Billie in the downstairs den about tomorrow morning’s practice. Sometimes it’s creeping in at 5 AM, trying like hell not to wake the kids when all you really wanted to do was stay out with the guys until the sun came up.

Sometimes it’s having your wife call at exactly the wrong moment, when you just got done with a set and you’re tired beyond belief, there are fans on your heels and not an ounce of tolerance is left in your body. These are the moments when she hears someone of the female persuasion calling your name in the background and questions you on it. These are the moments when you snap back about trust and commitment to a lifestyle and to your bandmates. These are the moments when you wince at your own words.

And the distance. Distance can strain any relationship, even the strongest. Just a disjointed voice on the other end of the phone can’t assure someone the way strong arms and soft touches can, can’t allay the strain in your chest and tightness in your pants. And despite how many times you reassure her, it’s too tough to stay. It seems you like the company of your boys more than spending time with her.

But still the longing to come home can nearly render you unconscious sometimes. It’s a longing just as much for a place as a face and hands to hold on to. All you want is to return to the city where the fog is ever-present and like an entity, like the other person in the room ... you want to return to a place where there lies the possibility for the fog to be that third party.

But instead you stumble in with bags in hand to a home quiet and dark, chairs pushed in at the kitchen table, silence overwhelming and deafening. You pull out a chair, sighing and staring out at the lights barely visible across the bay, but not turning on the ones overhead. It must have cleared a little to allow you one blessed glimpse of San Francisco and the water. The fog licking at the glass isn’t anywhere as comforting as a warm body against your chest and arms about your neck, hot breath tickling your cheek, whispered naughtiness in your ear. You gnaw absently on the inside of your lip before you pick up the phone to make sure Billie made it home from the airport all right.

Adrienne picks up and you talk and laugh together a little before she hands the receiver over to Billie. The tone on the line indicating a waiting call doesn’t give you a second’s pause. You click over. It’s the wife.

She’ll always be the wife, no matter what some papers from a goddamn lawyer say.

She asks what you’re doing and you answer before thinking that you’re talking to Billie on the other line. You cringe internally, feeling like this was months ago all over again. You say quickly that you’re going to hang up on him so you can talk to her, to hold on just a second. You switch over and say goodbye to your bandmate and click back over to a dial tone on the other line.

She hung up.

You don’t even say “hello?” as though she may be hiding there behind the two-tone hum. You just pull the receiver from your ear and feel your hand aching from squeezing it so hard. You don’t hang it up; you leave it off and wait to hear the operator ask politely for you to hang up to make another call. Then you turn your eyes to the window again and believe you can hear the perpetual wind blowing off the bay, making the fog swirl like some thick, translucent soup.

The moon breaks through and lights your skin in blue light you can almost hold in your strong, calloused hands. Unconsciously you begin drumming a riff against your knees. Perched out on an empty hill overlooking the water, your work jacket wrapped tightly around you, you try to remember where you are, how you found this place.

You’d proposed here.

And you imagine somewhere in this vague, shadowy city that She is wading through the clouds to make her way to your side ... walking through the headlands with the clouds at her feet on her way to find you.

There are a lot of reasons marriages go south. But love of another dooms the majority. Whether it’s love for a woman or for your band, there isn’t enough room in one heart for two loves so strong. One will always fall by the wayside at one point or another, and a band never grows bitter during a time of negligence.