Rest in Peace, Michael Geissinger.

by Peter Roberts 

We lost another friend today.

If you were in a band in the Tidewater music scene in the eighties and nineties and you were good enough to play out of town gigs, chances are you remember Mex-Econo. At the center of this salty, Outer Banks beer joint/emporium of all things weird, debaucherous, and funky was a tall, dark, southern gentleman with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. His name was Michael, but everybody called him “Miguel.” He was one of several proprietors of Mex’ who bled their own soul sacrifice to create a space for us punks, surfers, and misfits to freak out on sticky Nags Head summer nights.

Miguel was many things to many people. And many will have more to say about him, so I’ll just throw in my little part. I met Miguel in ’90 or ’91. But I really didn’t get to know him until around 1992 when John Finney started doing sound at Mexis. I remember Mig being initially standoffish at Finney, and myself following behind him on summer afternoons when bands were doing load-in and soundchecks, and the bartenders were getting ready for another rowdy night.

Finney was working, but I was just a stringy-haired kid drinking on his tab. I remember feeling like an outsider for the first couple weeks. Eventually I would end up at Fort Apache - the Mex-Econo crew house and site of _________.** I don’t remember Mig ever being all that outspoken. But he was always directing the action. He liked to invite the most eclectic and diverse group of young adults he could find into his world and watch, with a cold beer, as the pandemonium would ensue. Taboo love, he called it. Get ‘em all together under black ceilings and fluorescent lights, throw ‘em a _________** and a trailer load of cheap beer and watch it go!

Closing time at Mex’ he’d put on Frank Sinatra and turn up the lights to scare away all the pier rats and skaters that had fallen asleep soundly on the couches in the corners. As the blood dried on the floor, and as the beer coolers gasped for relief after another humid hellraiser, there was Miguel, cigarette dangling from his lips as he’d push-broom the piles of empty and broken beer bottles aside to call it a night.

What happened after hours is the stuff of both nightmare and legend. I’ll just stop it there and let your memories take over however accordingly need be. But what really stayed with me these twenty-five years since he closed the bar and moved off the beach were his efforts to stay in touch, and the love and pride he had in his powerhouse of a daughter, Uma Perry. The past fifteen years I don’t have a single memory of Miguel that isn’t also a memory of his love for Uma. I can’t stress enough how much he loved to brag on his baby girl...and the only times he ever second guessed himself, it was when he felt an embarrassment to her. She was his world.

Through depression, family illnesses, and eventually his own decline in health, Miguel would always make it a point to reach out to me when he came in town to pick up or drop off Uma, his co-pilot. He’d stop by and play with my kids, sneaking his cup of chilled white wine in when I was supposed to be sober, and we’d share it with a cigarette and some laughs.

Miguel was admitted to the hospital yesterday, complaining of breathing issues. He and friends kicked around the idea of his own mortality just last night, as we have often done many times before. But the words he typed last night showed a most gentle sign of weariness. Still, as he bemoaned as we often do the troubles of the world, he joked that the nurses kept chasing him back into his room - wouldn’t let him play. And as friends urged him, again, to just get in bed and rest, Miguel’s phone must’ve stopped. His comments and messages went quiet, and I went to bed thinking nothing of it.

This morning, my friend Miguel woke up in another place. I don’t know what it looks like there, but I know it’s not a hospital. I know it doesn’t have walls, and I’m hopeful that any nurses chasing him from here on out, will be doing so at his request.

Rest well, my friend. Until we meet again. I’m gonna find John Finney sometime soon, and we’ll raise a Mickey’s big mouth or six to you, and talk about the things that nobody else will.

Lamento mucho la muerte de mi amigo, Miguel. Mi sentido pésame.

-Pedro

**certain details have been removed in order to protect the innocent. - editor