What I Got They Used To Call The Blues

From the Maple Leaf Recording Studio Sessions, for the upcoming album "Handsnaps and FingerClaps"

He said he could always tell the sound of a song assembled in the studio, or polished onstage.

She had never been in a recording studio.  She was used to hearing her voice get lost in the music onstage.  But she had never felt so naked having her vocal track recorded. Like walking on a tightrope, no throwing out a highwire out in front of you, creating something solid to reach stretch out of you.  One wrong note, and this weak (rope bridge?) will fall out from beneath her.

She felt like Indiana Jones.

She felt like Wile.E. Coyote who would begin to fall only at the mention of gravity. (But her gravity was her FEAR.  The Shattering Glass.  The drop of sour milk that would curdle everything.  The opposite of his smile.  And all she wanted to do was to make him smile)

He was sweet and helpful, getting her to relax.  Allowing her to record a bunch of songs they had no intention of being serious about.  All the showtunes she loved, that would bring out her laugh, her natural playfulness.  He had a sense that if he spent a certain ratio of warm-up time to recording time, everything would work out.

He had her pick 5 songs that she LOVED.  Easy, fun, beautiful songs to record for posterity.  Easy being the key word.  He wanted to save those, even if just a portrait for himself.  Like taking out someone's picture, and caressing their smile.  He knew every facial feature as she went through her motions.

She wanted to be a Broadway ingenue or comedienne.  He just wanted her to keep smiling and sing lullabyes to him.


From The Carpenters, "Rainy Days & Mondays"

That Mighty Dragon Sadly Slipped into His Cave

She was driving down a highway.  She was 38.  Not quite lost but not quite found.  Wondering about business school, if the student loans would pay for themselves or if she'd quit the life and be stuck with them.  Worse than a divorce, which she had counted herself lucky to have avoided, thus far.

Seeing him waiting outside the box office, leaning against the wall, everything came flooding back.  Her body recognized him before she did. And with long hair and a long scraggly beard, nobody else recognized him at all.

When he saw her, he smiled like he was caught by surprise.  Before she could deliver her practiced speech, he grabbed her into a bear hug which squeezed out all the petty resentments of the past 8 years.  He knew he could get her to see him with a bribe and an excuse.  A free ticket that would go to waste for her favorite group, and an honest admission of missing her.  Not too hard of a compromise. This concert was a long trip for her, and he hoped that she had spent the ride singing rather than stewing.

She had pulled up a series of their favorite cds.  And was in a mood to smile and look beautiful, living well as the best revenge.  She was hoping for some honest conversation, or at least some fun flirting.  But she still wasn't expecting much.

They were seated in the back of the room, in the worst corner, by the sound guy. Where all the comps go. He had given tickets away to another loyal listener, who was only too eager to monopolize the conversation.  This guy held his head to one side, as if he were constantly considering something, but the more animated his litany of famous autographs got, the more she thought it was probably a birth defect.  Another bearded guy showed up, another refugee from the radio station, looking clear eyed but so large that putting one's arms around him seemed like a impossible feat.  She wondered if they realized how much they looked alike in their nonconformity.  Shaggy beards, long stringy, greasy ponytails, salt and pepper hair, balding in front or back.  All wearing the same uniform: music tshirts, jeans, as if there was some bouncer who wouldn't let them in wearing a suit.  Shoulder bags that all held the same 45rpm albums, each with their own square plastic condom, waiting to be signed.

This was going to be a long night.

He joined in the conversation when the lucky contest winners compared war stories of famous photographs.  As usual, his brief rise to stardom granted him the most credibility at the table.  Everyone,  except her, leaned in to hear the Playboy Bunny story. Afterwards, the conversation was a steady decline into the failures of modern society.  Mostly the loss of the Free Form Radio format.  She was interested in only the vaguest of ways about the politics of all the local folk music radio stations.  Names that she hadn't heard in 10, 20 years started popping up; it tickled her to think that they were still alive, playing a variation of their old roles.

"Jane ran for public office.  Western Mass somewhere!  Remember how scatterbrained she got just trying to pull the news together?"  There was a special machine dedicated to the AP wire service and it printed out the hourly news just minutes before it was to be delivered live on the air.  Or was it a fax machine?

Halfway through, during the last song before intermission, she awoke to the evening.  The Famous Singer, not liking to play alone (after his rise to fame as part of a trio), began inviting audience members up onstage.  He started by asking for the children to come up.  Then, "All children under age 50".  She was only one of 3 who stood up, a group defined by age as well as boldness.  Seeing the results, he extended it to anyone under 70.  10 more people got onstage, but the rest being painfully shy. She could never be accused of that.  (No matter what her anxieties told her)

The moment itself was lovely; a large variety of people, in various stages of emotional and physical handicap sang together on and offstage and their hearts beat in unison rhythm.  It had the vague effect of church.

She found herself one of 15 audience members onstage, singing THE song of her childhood, and maybe the #2 or #3 top folksong in terms of popularity.  Practically the "Born in the USA" of the folk world.
And then, the Famous Singer handed her the microphone.

She took it graciously, fully in the moment, and gave into the music.  From the back of the room, he could hear her, could see how easily her body commanded the stage, even in the crowd.  Even her sincerity, came through which gave her confidence to stay on pitch.  She sang the few lines of the verse miraculously enough, even to her, the words came out sweetly and with a lovely bit of musicality.

"She's got it," he thought.

After the song was over, she stepped off the slightly raised platform and was beaming.

He hugged her.  And for the second time that night, he tried to lean in for a kiss.  But the other members of their motley crew were excited by proxy. If she wouldn't hug them, she'd at least want a copy of the moment.

"Nice solo, there, kid!  You have such a lovely voice.  I've always thought so."
"Thanks.  That was sweet of him to invite everyone up"
"I got video of that.  I'll send it to you.  What's your phone number?"
"You better get in line before he gets sick of signing autographs!"

Even though he didn't understand how his lust for an autograph won out over any other lust, he was quickly disposed of.  Back at the table for the rest of the night, he kept trying to ingratiate himself by offering more details of his conquest to get photos with every singer from the 1960's rock era.

She held hands under the table with her favorite DJ.  And when the waitress came with their burgers, and the constant and endless refills of coffee, she shifted her leg so that it was touching his.  When she pulled it away, his found hers. And when everyone else at the table was engrossed in the song about the Vietnam war, he undid the clip from her hair.  In the dark reflected audience light, he ran his fingers along her temple, to her lips, to her neckline.  She silently responded.

The music was over quicker than it had taken them to drive there.  She waited politely again, while he scribbled his info on the back of a cardboard box of gum and gave it to the Famous Performer.  He was trying to use his credibility as a DJ, when he pulled out his music cred, he just got a funny look.

"I remember that group.  Which one were you?"

That shot his confidence and even in the pictures she took, he looked nervous and the Famous Singer was already looking away from the camera, eager to move onto the next city.

"Always look people in the eye, no matter how tired you get,"  She said as they walked back to the car.
"It conveys a sense of sincerity to the fans.  And you know what they say about sincerity . . ."
"Once you can fake that, you've got it made,"  They both said in unison.

They had heard it in the control booth one day, a non-cynical musician, a real California type, who just blurted it out.  And then laughed.  As if the notion of anyone faking sincerity in that business was inherently ludicrous.  As if it wasn't already an oxymoron.  As if he were permanently stuck, California dreaming.

They had bonded over similar levels of cynicism; both suspected everyone of insincere and those in the industry who didn't realize it yet were doomed.  The only joy was the music onstage and the accidental magic that spills over into the audience.  Nights like tonight, which somehow gave them hope.

He hugged her to say goodnight as the group was heading in separate directions for their cars.  He wouldn't let go.  His lips aimed for hers and she turned a bit, so he landed only 3/4ths of a direct hit.

She did look him straight in the eye, hold him by the shoulders and smile as she said goodbye.  He decided to follow her to her car, leaving the others to wander off (laughing) to find their cars.

He hedged and hemmed and told her about everything he could, just to stop her from driving off.  They talked, and talked some more.

"I still have a long drive ahead of me,"
"You can come to my house, you know,"
"I know.  I could," she said noncommittally.   Then closed the door, rolled up the window and started the car.  And waved a firm, certain, goodnight.

He waved back, trying not to hide his disappointment.  Even walking away, he felt a warm glow.  As he got into his car, he felt loved.  And thought about how good it was to see his old friend.  And how horny she had made him.  But he was okay with it.  Just bewildered by the strong pull he felt towards her.  Different than before, somehow.  Lovely.

And then his engine wouldn't turn over.

And then he felt cold.  And more alone than he had ever been. All his wingmen had already left for their own journeys home.  What help were they, if they couldn't even wait to tease him about her and see if his junky old car would start?

He stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel of his dead car, contemplating.

Nearly had a heart attack when she knocked on his window.

"Wanna ride, mister?"

==

She was picky about the radio stations, kept switching the channels, until he turned it off.

Sing Everyday.  Or the Cats song.  They had lots of suggestions, but neither were in shape to sing.

He told her about the concert they asked him to host.  And if she would come help him out.

She told him to stop trying too hard, of course she was gonna sleep with him.

They laughed.

She squinted into the windshield that was full of glare in the darkness.

He kept trying to hold her hand or her knee or tickle her along her chin.

She scolded him and he stopped when they got to construction on the highway.

He told her what exit it was.

She reminded him that she remembered.  That she had driven the route 100 times before.

It was just like old times.


"Puff The Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary

When ya comin home, son?

They had been talking for a while now.

Sitting by his fire, he has big old man fuzzy slippers on.  Looking dashing, his beard neatly trimmed.  She's afraid he's going to lean over and make a pass at her.  And she'll have to hurt him as she pushes him away.  He looks a little weaker than before. She could take him.

But her gut is telling her that there is no sex in the air.  There's something wrong.  He's brought her here, surrounded himself with comforting things---something's wrong.

He's drinking hot cider.  They talk about the rain, the leaves, the ball game (he knows she hates sports, but she indulges him when he talks about the big comeback game.  She had heard about it on the radio the next day.  Everyone gave up and went to bed by 10.  By 10:30, the game had flipped.  Moral of the story: fall asleep in front of the tv)

She even tries to ask him.  But he just looks her in the eye, or looks away.  His eyes are bloodshot.  Either he's been drinking (it seems like he's as sober as the day he walked into his first AA meeting 39 years ago), or he's been crying.

God, she had never known him to be a crier.

"Remember that song?  About the baby?"
"Of course I do."
"Y'know how I told you about the kid. . . "
"Justin.  The one who might have been yours.  And the one you treated like your own son, even after she married some other guy."
"Yes,"
"For a guy who's not a father, you sure seem to have missed out on a lot of chances"

He turns away from her, and turns back trying to be brave.  His face crumples before he can get the rest of the words out.  He makes a few snorting sounds with his handkerchief, which she would normally laugh at.  If it wasn't such a serious moment.

"Wasn't he living in Wisconsin?  A banker?  3 kids?"
"He (snort) He -- it turned out he had a tumor. In his brain."
"Oh my god, is he going to get treatment for it?"
"Well, he found out 3 years ago"
"And he hasn't told you til now?"
"We hadn't really been in touch.  He didn't tell me.  His mom did.  He's dead."

All her coldness be damned. She runs over to hold him. Cry. Snort. Snort.

"I'm so sorry."
"Me too."
"When's the funeral?  Are you going out to Wisconsin?"
He doesn't answer.
He only starts rocking himself, slowly.  She rocks with him.  Gently.  Like a prayer, like how the Orthodox Jewish men daven/pray, always moving like a candle.  Always mourning, actively.

She was thinking about the word "Abandon".

How he had always used it as if it were such a word of action.  He abandoned his family. That girlfriend abandoned him in his hour of need.  But it seemed like the word was for something much less dramatic.  It was a word about not doing something.  She had abandoned him, after all.  Hadn't bothered to call.  At times she didn't miss it at all.  A thing she didn't do.  When you walk away, you may be slamming a door, or running.  But you make yourself disappear, and then poof!  Life is made up of being there.

He was there for the kid as long as his Mom would let him be.  And then she and the kid abandoned HIM.  And he was left with the Big Nothing.  And now, here he is, still mourning.

He pulls away.  Tears still wet on his face, but he's much calmer now.

"He died 3 months ago.  She didn't think to call me until now,"

And calmly, he lights a cigarette. The first he's had in 17 years.



Cat's In the Cradle by Harry Chapin

Even My Sweat Smells Clean/I think myself into jail

"You should have gone on that solo tour.  Your voice was a real gift."

She looked over at the man who deserted her.  He chose to push her away when his Cash Cow went on tour.  They could have been the opening act.  The Boys loved her, they were a smash.  And very funny to boot.  But he was too cautious. He was . . .

"You had a gift." he repeated.
"We had a a gift," she reaffirmed.

He looked into her eyes for the first time that day.  He didn't understand why she was still talking to him.  Sure, she had disappeared for 17 years.  Most people disappear on him.  No, she had called.  And now, here she was, visiting him, in person.  More than anyone else had done.  Nursing him during this long slow decline.  Into death, if he was lucky.  Damn, why was he always cold?

He looked down to see her hand around his.  When did she do that?

"I never wanted to tour by myself,"
"You would've had that piano player . . . what was his name?"
"That guy who burped all the time?"
"He was on some medication," guiltily he made a mental note not to burp in front of her.  Just when he thought he was in a safe space.

"He wasn't you,"
Was this the time for explanations?  Now or never.  He wasn't sure if he wanted any explanations.  Why didn't they understand each other?

"How come you didn't marry me?"
"How come you stopped touring with me?"
"You first,"

He always seemed to get his way.  But it was always a false concession.  She was good at flipping his questions over like flapjacks.

"I didn't marry you because you didn't love me.  Except onstage.  And that was all I wanted,"
"Everybody likes me better onstage," he grumbled, turning his face to the wall.
"Because when you leave, you turn into an ass!  You ALWAYS had a groupie or two in your room, in OUR room.  And when I needed you, when our roads diverged in the wood, and you had the chance. you didn't take me with you,"
"You would have hated it.  They are cruel.  Besides, I wasn't gonna hold you back from that deal."

They sat in silence.  She didn't feel like rehashing this old argument.  Especially when he was wrong and wouldn't revise the narrative to reflect reality.

He had the power to bring her on tour and he used it to keep her away.  There was no DEAL.  Someone said something one night, which he interpreted as an opportunity.  She had some vague kind of offer, some solo gigs, from someone she didn't trust.  Something that would've faded easily and quickly.  She said yes.  That's the crazy thing.  She TRIED.  And he still blames her for never seizing her career.  She exhaled, knowing there was no career without him.  Without THEM.  They were the act.  And they were damn good.

A duet which was the opposite of his other Band.  The Cash Cow.  Something he had fallen into.   A story which had yet to find a satisfying narrative.

"I was walking in the East Village.  And I had a vision.  Go to California!"

Like any other drug trip taken in the early 60's.  And then his friend bugged him to go.  And then money, fame, girls, music, everything he ever wanted.  A wish come true.  It lasted 3 years.  And then *poof*.

20 years later that Band got back together, found out they were even more beloved.  Did a tour.  And then every 4 or 5 years.  And then one of them died.  That's when they began the final push.  Roll themselves out every year.  A series of tight, 2 hour concerts.  Full band backing them, everything easy.

But he still stubbornly did his solo gigs.  He was lucky to fill up a bar.  Somehow, the Cash Cow had nothing to do with his own music.  He used up all his magic in LA in the early 60's.

And that's where she found him.  At a DJ job he had.  And the shows he'd do on the side.  She'd help out.  Be his roadie.  Or a planted audience member.  They'd drive together.  Sing in the car.

And when the audience wasn't paying attention, he'd bring her up onstage.  Or she'd introduce him.  They'd work up an act.  Something silly.

And when the Band came around, they actually performed for them.  She went with them once.  As his "assistant".  They'd do the schtick during sound check.  Jokes, stories, some songs.

The first song she did for them was "With Plenty of Money" in her stripper voice.  The first 15 seconds were agonizing, meant to make everyone question why he had brought her along.  But then she'd belt.  And do the gravel-voiced impression of him.  Ventriloquism gets 'em every time.  By the end, the Band asked her to perform.

And he hated that.  He hated that they liked her better than they liked him.  Hated that he was always the wet blanket.  The guy who wouldn't drink.  (HE went off the wagon on his own gigs sometimes, but wouldn't drink around those guys.  They were downright assholes when they got drunk).

He hated to see her among the Other Women on tour.  The Wives, the Girlfriends, the Roadies and the Groupies.  He was dictating his life to her, he had his own version of history.  And seeing her watching him in context, he was embarrassed.  This was him as a millionaire, as The Most Famous Person IN The Room, and everytime, he felt like an ass.

He was jealous of her.  Of them, The Duet.  Afraid that Their Act would supercede his Solo career.  There was that tiny part of him who wanted to save that piece of performance for himself.  He liked the bit where he flew solo.  On tour with The Boys, he always had a few songs to himself.  She knew that it was lonely, and worse, the audience didn't like it.
She felt it, heard the shift.  They went from a cheering mass to a restless one.  His solo songs were the moments when people got up to go to the bathroom.

But he had to keep that space sacred for himself.  Fall or fly on his own.  She had been so angry about it.  Because when they performed together, in all those noisy bars, they were magic.  They could have gone on touring the rest of their lives.  She used to have fantasies, of him and her being normal, growing older together.  But they fought.  He was pushing her away, and like a fool, she kept leaving.

"I'm glad you're here," he said.
"Me too," She said.
"I'm cold,"
"I've given you all the blankets,"
"Um, could you, ah, get in?"  Sure, now he was hesitant and shy.
"Of course,"  She took off her sweater but left her tank top and pants on.  In any other context, she'd hate showing off her neck and batwings; she couldn't remember the last time she shaved and she smelled faintly of sweat from moving all those boxes in the living room to clear a wider path for him.

Somehow, armpit hair and aging fat never mattered.  She was a good 20 years younger than anyone else at all the hippie concerts anyway.  Being in his orbit was like crossing over into the Woodstock movie.  First nude beach.  Brought her to her first orgy.  How bad could the world be if people were still having orgies?

He tried to wrap his arms around her, and even so, she could feel how hollow he seemed.  His chest was a rib cage, like he was melting down into a skeleton.  He finally acquired that old-man smell.  Like that bent old guy down the hall from her in her first NYC apartment.  It was the smell of someone who was unloved.

The house seemed to shrink into silence as they held each other and the sky outside got darker.  Even though they were both awake, he didn't ask her to turn on a light.    The first time she entered the room, it had been decorated by his previous girlfriend.  The carpets still smelled brand new and the ceiling had a boarder of "Country-Style" hearts that seemed to scream out Dolly Parton or Kenny Rodgers every time she looked at them.  No, the house wasn't getting smaller, she thought, he just had more crap.  More boxes, a television, piles of papers and neglect.  Broken things.

When was the last time anyone else had come to visit him?  If she was kind to him, would he-HORROR-leave everything to her?  Would she be the one stuck cleaning up his house?  Would she have to make the calls for his funeral?  Did he even have a living will?

"I'm gonna have to get up to go to the bathroom."
"Just a few more minutes, don't go yet,"
"What if I come back?"
As she got herself out of his bed, he kept a tight grip on her hand.
"Okay, as long as you come back.  You always come back, don't you?"
He winked at her like the teen idol he once was.  Somehow, he even resembled Cary Grant.

She stumbled down the dark hallway to where she remembered the bathroom to be. His gold records peeked out from behind the cardboard boxes.  She saw a postcard with a younger version of herself on it.  A promo for their record.  She had told him not to print so many.

The audiences and touring all seemed like such ancient history.  She didn't have many regrets, just that they should have sung together more.  This was not a house for singing now.  This house smelled of death.






"Hammer and A Nail"
From listening to the Indigo Girls on
http://www.onbeing.org/program/indigo-girls-on-music-and-finding-god-in-church-and-smoky-bars/6008

Won't Be Surprised If It's A Dream

He looked over at her in the spotlight.  She could slip into a song like it was a nightgown.  Some were flowing, silken, long and gorgeous-out of a 1930's musical.  Some were cute and skimpy, just the way he preferred; and she'd offer the audience a little bit of "coming attractions", like a bride on her wedding night, or a good girl gone bad.

She made him feel like everything was so close.  Like back when he was young.  That singing was so easy, it just mattered WHAT you sang.  The difference wasn't that big.  If one song wasn't a hit, then the next one would be.  And it lasted, for a while.  Every album had one or two really big singles, and the rest still got decent airplay.

Her voice sounded good in almost all of them, like a nice fitting pair of jeans.  That was it.  Her ass looked good in everything.

Like he could reach out to her and she'd embrace him like she used to.  What broke his heart was how quickly she could slip into the Beauty and the Happy of a song.  Damn, she was a good actress.  Made him forget the fight they just had.  Or not forget, but maybe let him think she had forgiven him.  She was so professional.  Smiling and winking at him, the same every night.  The actions of an old married couple, trusting each other, trusting that the fighting always led to fucking.

But you could work your ass off, singing the songs.  Even if they were the RIGHT ones, it mattered so much who was singing.  And where they stood in popularity.  Even now, when he sang the hits, the ones 40 years out of date, they sounded false on his lips.  Like kissing the wrong woman.  Or a woman who doesn't want to be kissed.  Stiff somehow.  Accepting a hug, but eager to pull away. He repels all the hits, all the successes.  When they step offstage, she won't be talking to him.

But just maybe, she'll let him hug her when they are onstage.

So close.


Top of the World by the Carpenters

His Clothes are Dirty But His Hands are Clean

The look in his eyes was straight sex.

Usually, there was laughter or sentimental stuff floating between them, diffusing the space between them. Soft clouds, a fine haze, but she had to catch her breath on how suddenly everything was clear.

The clock radio was playing next to the bed.  A song that he thought was romantic, or at least direct.  A big folk singer, in his "alternate voicing" stage.  She thought it sounded like a bad Jim Neighbors impression.  Testing his audience, daring them to laugh at his insanity.

She only heard the song that reminded her of her father.  That song that her mom hated because it was from a girlfriend of his, back in the old country.  It was "their" song, a song of a previous life.  As if the wedding ring magically could render all previous love, events and emotions null and void.

Her father's daughter thought of the phrase that she had read in the dead man's journal.  "Perhaps I should have embraced everything she had to offer.  When I had the opportunity,"

The girlfriend her mother was jealous of never even seduced him out of his virginity.

And now, here she was, looking across a big brass bed, at a man who loved her.

The hinge of his hand.  He lifted up his shirt, in a shy way, revealing a surprisingly muscular stomach.   She could fly from this space like a bird.  Or she could stay and accept everything he had to offer.

Was this a matter of simply saying yes when she had so often said no?  Could this man wield his instrument like a sword, poisoning her, initiating her into his curse?

She would only let herself do it if she couldn't bear to tear herself away.  If he carried a curse, she wanted the moment to be worth it.

He smiled at her one more time, like that first time he winked at her from behind the mic at the radio station.  Her stomach dropped and she could feel herself melting from the inside, like a glass candle.

She held her breath and smiled back, like she was a black and white movie star.  That's who she wanted to be in this moment, strong and with a big band behind her.  Her fingers rolled the dial until the room changed flavors and colors, out of his comfort zone and into soft lush tones that she was comfortable with.

==

The grainy taste of a brown sugar cookie mixture she made with her grandmother on a warm summer day. Before it went into the oven, when she could steal a fingertip behind her back and lick it off before she was caught.

She saw sand on cement down a path, a wooden fence post-so far gone from the weather that you could see the splinters.  Maybe a parking lot.  Cape Cod, the sun was different there.

3000 miles from the West Coast to the East.  From the East to the West.  What does it matter if the person you love is on the next coast or in the next room.  Even being inches away from someone is too much sometimes.

She floated through the music, from song to song.  Senses displaced and mixed, memories flooding in, all the sensations surprised her but she let them come freely.  His skin was new to her, but she had no place for new details in her mind.

From
Lay Lady Lay by Robert Zimmerman

Wars/Whores on 7th Avenue

Going to big concerts with him was always a trip.  They had lots of comp tickets, more than they could use, often.  Especially for concerts that weren't very popular.  Sometimes they couldn't give tickets away, and they tried.

He preferred "up and coming" acts; i.e. scenes where he was adored as one of the Rock Elders.  He took such pleasure from being the most famous person in the room.  And to his credit, he liked supporting groups that needed a leg up.  When he curled up alone with a secret glass of wine on those cold nights in the Farmhouse, it was his Greenwich Village days he thought about.  Cheap red wine, apartments with the shower in the kitchen and the toilet in a closet.  And friends, always friends, just downstairs or around the corner at Washington Square Park.  When all he had was his guitar. Before the invention of electricity.

He was more interesting to watch when he was lost in the crowd.  She saw him melt into his anonymous mask.  Where nobody recognized him, but where it also didn't consume him.  Arena shows, mixing into the crowds on 7th Avenue, the escalators, touching grimy things that other mere mortals had touched.  These handrails, these ushers, where the world showed up and the arena was the belly of a ship.  The performers themselves were just priests, or captains, or the sacrificed.  The music was the ocean they all rode on.

In the dark, they were all lost on the ocean, under the stars.  She imagined the soloists were the performers who inherited the trance of the great piano players of the last century.  The front men only had lyrics, their voices and faces.  Perfect for the teenybopper girls or drunk gloryboys who wanted the vicarious experience.  But it was the backup performers, the bass player, the 10 minute guitar solo that held her in the middle of the air, that impossible space where she lived in that dream last night where she could fly.

The concert was nice, she felt herself "lost" during only a few moments. Where nothing else mattered.  Where she expected him to lean over and kiss her.  And she wouldn't have minded.  She might have even liked it.  But looking over at him, she felt completely ignored.  The music wasn't an aphrodisiac for him, it was a language that he understood better than she realized.

Most of the music brought her back to her childhood all right, just like the hippies a generation older than her.  They had high school glory days.  But she only remembered moments in the back of her parents' car, a powerless child. Or wandering around in a mall, or a grocery store.  The song "American Pie" reminded her of processed food in square containers, plastered with words like "bakery fresh" or "homemade".   The taste of processed strawberry flavor, overly sweet and syrupy.  A flavor distinct from the fruit itself.

The music was over, but the roar was still in her ears.  The jumbotron went back from the live feed to the repetition of ads and future acts, looking especially lively, next to their names and dates.  The movie was over and she felt nothing but a great disappointment.  The surrounding humanity made her feel incredibly lonely and the music was loud enough to only be noise.  She was relieved when they got up from their seats to head backstage.

At the tender age of 19, she was expecting to be literally plucked out of the crowd.  And if not her, then at least HIM.  Wasn't he the Great Unknown?  He was the one to be recognized.  And even then, it was only by a duo of balding brothers, who had inherited the same male pattern combover.  They seemed to vary in their bathing habits, but only slightly.  The younger one was carrying a supply of square files under his arm in a white battered plastic bag from The Colony.  "I Found It!" shouted the bag, and a girl from the 50's seemed to be crippled in mid leap, the plastic stretching and crumpled in ways that made her original body appear grotesque.

There was a rehearsed dance between The Brothers.  One album was selected and removed with great difficulty from the overstuffed plastic bag.  Then the cardboard album was removed from the plastic bag in which it was encased.  Unfortunately, this was one of those complicated fold out-fold over novelty covers which exploded like a map of Northeastern Suburbia.

P always considered the act of autographing as a piece of his own performance.  Instead of hugging the tunnel wall, he nudged out into the center of the space, like an actor centering himself onstage.  The remaining trickle of the crowd had to exit around them, making him feel like Moses.  Or at least someone important enough to disturb traffic.

He used the unfolding as a "piece of business", as the vaudeville actors used to say.  He seemed careful not to let the actual record fall out, juggling the folds back and forth, trying to find just the right spot for his name on another band's record.
"Y'know, I've always thought their music was light, but this is ridiculous!"  He stuck his face into the envelope of the empty cover.
"Oh, we never carry the original records with us!"  The Brothers cried in discordant attempted unison.
"Too heavy or too valuable?" P asked.
They blinked as if confused.  The more normal looking brother said, "We file the records separately from the album covers.  Prevents scratches to the records and bending of the covers."
As if every household in America had a room dedicated to record storage and classification.

"Are you sure I'm adding to the value of this one?  I'm not even on it."  He asked as he attempted to read the back cover without his glasses.

"Well, Chip produced you guys and he worked with the Bass Player on cut number 7,"  the Ugly Brother continued on a long rant about the "all too obvious connection".  Her new shoes were cutting into her ankles and her polite attention was losing all sense of propriety.  She tried to pay attention to the conversation, but it was more of an exchange of obscure details.  Maybe a surreal tennis match, between cartoon Russian spies.

"For the Sun Record sessions, they had to ...."
"Of course, Paul plays upside down,"

The more they talked about Ginger Baker, the more she had a craving for crisp cookies shaped like men.

Even the More Normal Brother wasn't paying attention to her.  Usually, she'd follow her policy of flirting with the underdogs, but she had no interest in the resulting gossip.  She was the assumed girlfriend or sex slave, and if she as much as spoke to the More Normal Brother, they'd have masturbatory fantasies about secondhand sex.

She tried to imagine taking off his horn-rimmed glasses and running her finger through his greasy hair.  When he caught her looking at him, it was clear that even as a potential sex object she didn't register.  He looked away, into the crowd, his attention excited by the security guard that seemed to be approaching.

He had his Smile-Mask turned up to 5.  Modest Former Rock Star, blending with the Plebians, glad to sign something for the few who found his star amid the crowds.  It would have mattered more if The Brothers weren't at every single show.  She knew he was disappointed that not a single other person even gave him a second glance.  Not even when he was signing.  She wondered how much of this performance was for her.  Or for The Brothers.  Or for his own ego. Or just because he couldn't help himself.

Finally, the security guard caught P's eye and with a few clever hand motions, indicated that they were to be led into the inner sanctum.  His fame worked again.  She was always afraid that it wouldn't.

He introduced her as his  . . . "friend", but she quickly jumped in.  "We work together at the radio station,"  careful to introduce herself professionally, and not as an ambiguous lover or groupie, and to replace the dreaded euphemism of "friend".  Careful to say she worked "with" and not "for" him, for all the innuendo that would inspire.  She wanted to make it clear that she got backstage on official professional business, and not as a female sacrifice to the rock gods.  The musicians blew scented smoke in her direction and talked only to him.  The women just rolled their eyes at her, one led her to the snack table.  There was a cooler of soda and beer, some fruit and an elaborate round tray which started the evening shaped vaguely like a wagon wheel.  Chocolates wrapped in silver paper in concentric circles with rolled joints acting as spokes.  It was a mastery of Busby Berkeley precision.  Except for the empty areas which had already been raided.

Her strategy was always to underplay her awe.  If everyone backstage was a groupie of one form or another, so she was going to be the one who never gave compliments.  After 10,000 screaming fans, she was not so worried about their egos.

(This backfired in the world of comedy.  Her opening line to a very famous comedian who had clearly killed onstage, "You were terrible," was received with less enthusiasm than she had predicted.  She tried to turn it into a joke.  But she had also killed his sense of humor.)

When they emerged 3 hours later, The Brothers were still there, talking to an exhausted looking overweight mother and daughter in matching outfits.  She urged the Bass Player to sign the album, but he just kept walking.

Boxer-Simon & Garfunkle

Taller Than the Tallest Tree Is

"Poor Van Gogh. During his life, he only ever sold one painting"
"And I think that was to his brother"
"Claude Monet was more successful. He figured out how to sell his stuff. In fact he was so good at it, they named selling stuff after him."
"Named it after him??"
"To this day! They call it Monetizing!"

She noticed that he started stealing the joke from her, at first when he was mad or wanted to get a rise out of her.  She knew he first loved her when he used it onstage.

For the first few weeks, and for much longer than she suspected it would last, her heart would jump whenever he walked into the room.  2 months in, angry, annoyed and fed up with him, she'd still react like the 8 year old who fell in love with him on TV.  No matter how awful he was, he could be incredible in new ways. He'd make a joke, a small kindness, in lieu of apology. And she'd feel blessed to be his sole audience.  Inside those moments, she began to love him as a human. And it was this Love that surprised her the most.  The residual glory day stuff, the second hand glamour, that was superficially easy.

But he was letting her IN. And for that, she'd always be grateful. To peer into spmeone's soul, a true gift. The Persona melted away, and he became Himself.  And soon, that was the larger part of who she knew him to be.  After that summer, her heart leap for the man who was playing the role, burdened with The Persona.  Like living with the Grand Canyon. Soon you stop taking in the vastness, and focus on the crevices and path directly in front of you.  But early on, that vastness took her breath away. And all he had to do was laugh at himself.

Later, during his "difficulties", she'd try to get back to this place.

He was delicate about how he reciprocated this worship, especially looking at her in later years. Her loyalty, his only sense of having made a lasting impact on the world. Not just an audience, not selling one album at a time. But someone who shared and stored his memories. She took his breath away by taking care of him.

That last Fall, that Lost Weekend, that Lost Year(s). She cooked for him. Went out of her way to find Tab, even after they stopped making it.  When nobody else would.  She was always kind to him, especially when he didn't deserve it.  He took her for granted like the forest behind The Farmhouse. The oaks were Old Growth, and always seemed to tower over him. Unpredictably large, like a surreal dream. Strangely tall, he was surprised every time. She was there. Like the trees.

Frank Sinatra's All The Way

If She Asks You Why, You Can Tell Her That I Told You

Onstage, it was a few cabaret songs, everything inspired by him, directly or indirectly. This was getting to be a regular thing for her; a gathering of the tribes.  Not that she could tell the difference between friends and the people she had met out on the road and in the city, maybe some of them considered themselves her fans. If you perform often enough, everyone will come around. As if of you had never left the piazza in Rome, or Washington Square, and just let the world come to you.  And the world was in the audience that night.  She'd walk away with some money, a few good reviews, and a sense that there were more strangers in the audience than family.  And there he was, sitting right out in front, where she could see him.

But she wasn't sure until the break that it even WAS him.  He'd disappeared for years.  And he looked different, lost weight off his already skinny frame.  She couldn't tell if it was better or worse.

"Meet my fiancée,"

Her heart dropped into the bottom of the earth, but she didn't miss a beat.

"Congratulations!! When's the lucky day??"

"Well, we haven't set it yet. All his god kids seem to be getting married .... And every time we pick a date, it ends up being too.."

"Yeah, we're just amazingly lucky to be surrounded by so many happy couples!!"

"Um, yeah,"

She recognized the humiliation in the poor fiancée 's eyes and immediately decided to be on her side. The wedding had often been close to not happening many times, his lack of commitment and fear of changing anything. The poor woman was so close to being free, to being lucky, but was completely blind. And too heartbroken to fall out of love now.

Heartache gets to be a feeling that one grows to know well. And when you tell yourself that it is equal to love, to HIS love, then it is hard to break away. One smile from complete and utter happiness. And he smiles less and less often. Well, not at you.

If she had been hooked up to a lie detector, or heart monitor, her body would have easily betrayed her.
It was only as she walked away that she realized that her body had been in PANIC mode.  Eyes dilated, sweat sprang up suddenly, like driving through a Stop light, and then awaiting impact from the phantom autos headed her way.  But when she took a breath, she had to remind herself how lucky she was.  To get away.

Even he could tell she wasn't buying the story about postponing wedding dates.  And neither was his fiancee.  He wasn't in love with this woman, she wasn't The One.  She was just the one to be taking care of him right now.  If he were smarter, he'd grab her.  Make her commit to him legally, the solid gold handcuffs in the shape of a single wedding ring.

So he shifted the conversation to her current charade.

"Speaking of happy couples, how long have you been with him?"  He indicated the flamboyant man in the black suit who was flirting with the young sound engineer.

From a distance, she hoped that her "date" resembled a sophisticated lounge singer who may not have been entirely gay.  Until he put his arm around the boy, he might have even passed for bisexual.  She couldn't tell if the question was as sincere as it sounded.  You'd think that even a straight man, with 70 years of experience would be suspicious of a fabulous man who could arrange Broadway show tunes into power ballads.  But she was nonplussed to see that the Rock Star seemed vaguely peeved, which was as close as he could get to admitting jealousy.

"Oh, I've known him about a year or so. And, yes, we ARE happy! Much too happy to get MARRIED!!" she was careful to overdo the emphasis so that it could all be passed off as a joke.

If this conversation were being played out on a Scrabble board, she would have gotten a triple word score. Funny, evasive and insulting all at the same time.  But they both walked away from the exchange feeling as if they were performing in a scene they had never agreed to.  She made an excuse about getting back on stage, and he graciously began to let her go.

And then he whispered the words that made her nearly cry, "Go get 'em, kid!"  A simple thing he used to say before they'd get on stage together.

"Can I invite you up?"
"It's your night.  Besides, I'm not ready.  I couldn't."
"Are you fishing?  Should I insist harder?"
"No, really, I haven't sung in a while.  My voice isn't . . ."
"Next time then,"

She shrugged, half embarrassed and half relieved.  He'd steal the spotlight, certainly.  But it was politically the right thing to do.  Not that anyone in the audience even recognized him.  And then the absence hit her. as if her body were suddenly hollow. He wouldn't be on stage with her ever again.  Maybe she'd mention that.  At least.

Thankfully, by the time she got back onstage, someone else had taken over their seats.  He had walked out on her show.  Maybe he was sick.  Or maybe just an asshole.

In between songs, she became more honest.  One mournful song was introduced in a new way.

"Once upon a time, there were two people.  They loved each other, but they could never quite get along.  He wanted to live in the country and sing around the fire.  And she wanted to be where there were people. It sounds like such a cliche, until it happens to you."

Castles in the Air by Don McLean

What Are You Doin' Hangin' Round?

She decided to team up with the bass player, who was one of those amazing talents who would never be recognized.

"Testy" was his nickname, or at least that was the polite spelling.  He was always jumpy, twitchy and nervous.  Thin as a bean pole, it looked like an impossibility of physics that his skinny arms could even hold a guitar.  He always looked down when he was doing a solo,  one of those incredible moments where you feel as if you had never heard music before.  He played guitar and wrote songs as well.  Incredible stuff, but he would never look out at the audience.  His face looked blank, his eyelids covering his eyes out of shyness and introvertedness, even when he was connecting with everyone in the room during a solo.

The mean spelling was "Teste", as in, he has testicles where his eyes should be.  Which profoundly granted him an extra set of balls.  In a deep drunk, she pondered this point with the drummer.
"It's mean that you guys call him that,"
"He's got balls enough for two guys.  It shows in his writing and his playing.  Nothing left over for the rest of his life.  That's fine by me,"

So she went to him to collaborate on her latest masterpiece.  It would be a spoof on one of The Group's most popular songs done in concert.  It was a bouncy tune, completely misogynistic, zenophobic, American arrogance glorified in country music.  During the last round of concerts, after He left the stage doing his embarrassing yet still absurdly popular novelty song, they'd all get back on and do the rousing number for an encore.  Except the very title suggested that they were asking themselves why they kept doing this thing-this music.  They were all old men by then, loyal fans and everything, but the idea of questioning themselves made the audience question them as well.  The Rolling Stones, they weren't.

She wanted her version to be from the woman's point of view.  This gringo thought he could just take advantage of a girl because she didn't speak English.  But she wanted a baby.  She didn't want to be forced into a marriage with a man she didn't love.  Her family was rich and important in Mexico, something he had no clue about because he didn't speak any Spanish.  She'd be sent off to Spain to finish up the pregnancy, like they did with her cousin. Her cousin stayed in Spain, and so would she.  They'd raise their kids together and never have to learn English.  If he ever came looking for her, she would have disappeared with his son.  She even told him about her plan, in Spanish, he was clueless.  She kept waiting for him to get on his train, but he was a good kisser.  How cruel to make him miss his train for just another kiss, he'd be out money and he'd be a few hours late.  The one thing she did understand was that he was even poorer than anyone she knew in Mexico.  She was NOT going to let him stay with her, an albatross around her neck.

It would have been easy to flip all the lyrics, and they did in the first version.  Slowed it down into a ballad, a simple answer song.  But Testy kept adding frills to each of the lines, changing the melodies slightly.  And the story evolved and evolved, until the only recognizable lyric was the title. And that turned too.

They performed it on stage, in the middle of a set.  He just stood back, silent and (she hoped) blown away by what he heard.  Backstage, when they were packing up, he told her how much he loved it. Genuinely.  And then she screwed everything up . . .

"Aw, it weren't nuthin'.  Nuthin' t'all.  I just wanted to write an answer song to that one you guys do.  The one that The Great Texan is known for.  The song that launched country-folk-rock.  The one where you guys are up on stage asking yourselves why you are still doing this . . . "

With that, he turned his back on her and walked to the door.

"He didn't even write that song.  He gets all the credit and everything that has a country sound gets attributed to him!  I did all the arrangements on that song.  He asked me to make it sound "Country"!  He had the voice and the ego! Damn him, he just sat back and took all the credit!"

The band just sat back and took all the shouting. She had inadvertently hit a nerve, a big faux paux.

The Group never played that song publicly again.

"What Am I Doin' hangin Round?" written by Michael Martin Murphy

He Could Give Insomnia To Rip Van Winkle

Fairfield-ish-

Plink.  Plonk. rumble, rumble.  He awoke to his least favorite sound.  Her practicing piano.  Or worse, she was just plunking away.  She had no sense of rhythm.  Terrible at sight reading.  And he could never figure out how to get her to sing the right notes instead of the wrong notes.  

6:15 AM, said the clock radio by the bed.

She begged him to teach her piano.  She wanted to play Chopin, while he could barely get her to plunk out “Twinkle, Twinkle”.  Plus, she never practiced.  Except early in the mornings, like now.

Now, here she was.  One note at a time.  Then, worse, 3 in some repeated sequence.  Starting over and over again, the fourth going up or down-completely lost.  A driver who can’t make a three point turn and has to go back and forth endlessly.  A thirteen . . . 40 point turn.  Every time they woke up in each others' arms, she would be singing in her sleep. Then when she awoke, she'd tell him some rambling stories about music in her head and desperately wanting a way to transcribe it.  How it was in her brain right before she woke up. All the world needed was more terrible music, but still, he’d give as many lessons as her tolerance could take, which wasn’t much.

The empty house they were in belonged to some friends who were in process of moving.  Plenty of bare space in the house, but all the artwork was still up.  Abstract fingerpaints of their three year old and a curious pencil drawing of a mother and baby.  Head at her breast, the crucial element of nursing lost to a lack of courage.  The curve of breast and nipple he kept looking for was obscured in a eager act of shading.  The woman’s fingers were repeated, practiced in different sizes.  Floating detached, by her head, and somehow enlarged among the folds of the baby blanket.  The hand holding the actual baby was better for this practice, and looked strangely familiar to him.  Elongated and slightly rectangular, he remembered holding them and maybe them holding him.  Maybe being tickled by them.  Haunting,ghost fingers.  The face held nothing for him, a focused stare at the child, maybe even a frown.  He should try to ask about the sketch before he left, or maybe in a quick note he’d leave with the keys.  In the mailbox or under the mat, or under the first rock to the left of the walkway.  Damn, he could never remember which. He was happy to have earned enough trust to borrow friends’ empty houses, where all he had to do was to make sure they weren’t locked out.  Why were those little things so awful for him to keep track of? Why was everything getting to be too hard for him to remember?

8:45AM  He rolled over and fell out of bed, into an empty house.  The cupboards were empty, but he found some yogurt and stale cereal, that he ate with a fork because the only two spoons he could find were in the sink.  He wandered over to the piano and played the three bars that were scribbled on some note paper.  The staff was hand drawn and the lines weren’t exactly parallel.  “Marching band, drums, flutes and saxophone” was the only title.  He added a chord or two and began fiddling around with it.

She walked in through the screen door in the back with a handful of wildflowers.  She wandered over and began talking.  

“Meadows,” he heard.

“A deer running,” he heard.

“Get packing before noon,” he heard.  Finally, he couldn’t deal with her interruptions anymore.

“Look, I'm working. I found this thing.  Melvin must’ve been scribbled before he left . . .”

“That’s me.  I woke up this morning with this tune stuck in my head and . . .”

“YOU did this?”  It suddenly hit him that these repeated notes had disturbed his dreams just a few hours before.  He played the first notes slowly.  Did it strike him because he had just heard it?   Or because it was the beginning of a new song that was instantly familiar to him.  The few hits he had worked on (and admittedly some other bombs) all appeared to him as something instantly recognizable.  As if his soul was listening to its future.

He believed in Buddhism, sometimes genuinely and deeply and sometimes only superficially.  Because he was always feeling some form of dejavu, he had always naturally assumed that he had been reincarnated.  As himself!  Maybe others started as animals, but he was gifted & doomed to repeat this exact life over and over again, until he got it right.  

She kept talking, and he kept not listening.  Until one word got through to him.  

“Coffee?”

“Yes. Coffee.”  He was going to be there until the song was finished.  And he was already almost done.

8:49PM

"Now, I’d like to introduce a song I just wrote.  Um, we just wrote. You don’t mind sitting this one out, do you? Nothing like an audience to test out new material!"

She was a little startled.  They didn’t rehearse this.  He didn’t rehearse this, she had no idea what to expect.  The front row was empty, as were most of the rows, so she just shrugged and sat down.  The more he described how easily the song flowed, the more she became uneasy.  It was gonna be HER song.  And then, right before she was ready to storm out (especially if it was good, and she was afraid it was going to be heartachingly beautiful) he stopped and pointed to her.  “It’s her song, I’m just here to deliver it.  It’s called ‘The Dutchess’”

He then broke into an unfamiliar intro.  She kept listening for her notes, the song that she had dreamt of. He had woven it into something else. Some romantic story which sounded too familiar to her.  A man with eyes as blue as the sky.  Or broken blue bottles held up to the light.  How he was from the Netherlands, which was wide open for a pun about both Hades and sexual nether regions.   The girl who loved him didn’t want to be a queen or have riches.  She only wanted him.  And thus, by marrying a Dutch man, would naturally be granted the title of “Dutchess”.   The song was conscious of its self-consciousness.  Childhood dreams and their funny echoes in adult life.  A story she had told them when they were crossing the plains of Iowa.

Plus it was catchy. The piece that she had dreamt was the intro came in as the refrain, which surprised her. Catchier than she had suspected. And easy on his throat; he could mostly whisper-sing the whole thing, except a few places which were still in his comfortable range.  

It absolutely made her cry.

In their regular set of songs, it gradually displaced another favorite of his, not a hit, but something he had labored over endlessly in the studio in 1973.  The one that she had tried to discourage him from.  He left both songs in their act for a while, until his voiced cracked on the old one.  He never sang it again.

Her song became their best number. The first single off their album (the only one to make any traction). Even the reviewers stopped complaining about his "ruined" voice and began using words like "mellow genius" to describe him.

Rumble by Betty Hutton (written by Frank Loesser)

I'll See You In Another Joint

"I liked my acid, I enjoyed it"  he was always almost misty about his past life in the eye of the storm.  Orgies, drugs, parties, for a few years-one in particular-he could do no wrong.  And he spent his year of glory a mile high.

She couldn't tell if it was the success he missed, or the drugs.

Now he had days where he couldn't look anyone in the eye or leave his house.  But back then, everyone wanted a piece of him.  His autograph, his kiss, his drugs, his parties. He was at the center of all the photographs, the bull's eye, the focal point.

When they drove into LA now, she could sense it was a ghost town to him.  A ghost of himself.  She knew scenes from Gidget, sun and sand and surf.  And your only job is to say stuff and smile for the camera.

Nowadays, he had to scrounge for every dollar.  And even then, last night's take didn't even make gas money.  California is huge and requires a lot more driving than New England, but still, it was not a good sign.  She was out of money, and knew he was saving every last bit for his retirement.  His house bills were sky-high and he was thinking of selling the Farmhouse back east.  His parents had left it to him, but it was more of a white elephant, and worse-he loved it.

She still made sure to stash the change from their rest stops in the glove compartment and places he'd never look.  She had $40 in her wallet, that would take them through dinner, breakfast and lunch until they hit his friend's house tomorrow.  Credit cards would take care of the motel, but still, it had to be cheap.  The kind of place where the rugs smelled and she was afraid to let the sheets touch her skin, in case of bedbugs, fleas or just the dirtiness/flith of other guests.  But when she reached for her stash, it was gone.

"Where's my money?"
"The guys needed a few bucks for smokes"
"But that was MY money.  Our emergency money!"
Who were these "guys" anyway?  The band hadn't been in his car for more than a year.  He was giving her/their emergency money to strangers?  To those groupies who were plotting to write his bio and then presented him a contract giving him 45% royalties for his own life story.  They seemed to be out of the picture now anyway, but she expected he had slept with her, and that a paternity suit would arise quickly.  He never wanted to reveal his hysterectomy, as he called it.  The thing that prevented his entry into fatherhood forever.  Just in case a kid showed up that he actually liked and wanted to claim.

They drove up to a toll booth that was asking for something just beyond their means. $4.50.  Maybe they could scrounge up $2.00 among the pennies on the floor.  Even after he tried his best to charm the tolltaker-who would not be charmed- she could only come up with $1.83.

His ATM card had stopped working.  She had assumed at first that he was being cheap.  Then that he had just forgotten his PIN number, stupid old man that he was.  And then she found a slip, $6.  There must have been other accounts.  And some of those were frozen from a past wife or for legal issues.  She wanted to curse a guy like him for not lining the roof of his car with $50 bills when he had them available.

She offered up the change with the nicest smile she could bear.  The tolltaker just gave them a stare.  And then pulled out a form.  "You could mail this when you get home.  But make sure you . . ."

He stepped on the gas.

"Why did you do that?!?!"  Anticipating police sirens.
"Putting a stamp on it would increase the toll by too high of a percentage,"
"So they'll send you a ticket.  If they don't arrest you.  Or stop you at the next toll"
"They'll send me a ticket, so what? Bernie is used to giving away my money"
"So, now it's gonna cost ten times what it would have cost if you had just accepted that piece of paper!"
"$1.83, that's all we have?"
"And the $40 for food, we could've"
"You have 40 bucks?!?!?"
"Yeah-"
Their eyes met.
And they started to giggle.
A little release of pressure.

Which lasted until later that day.  A truck stop with a restaurant.  Closed.  And they couldn't start the car.

She would have walked away, if there was anywhere to go.

By the time the car was towed to a (cash only) garage, it was too late and too far to get a motel.  They both crashed in the greasy waiting room, on a green plastic pseudo leather couch with stuffing coming out.  She curled up in a ball that would hurt her shoulders for the next day.  As if she had the weight of the world on her.  The weight of this tour that would never end.

This was the thin line between "Plenty" of Money, and enough to make life miserable.


Master of Disaster by John Hiatt

Lady's Baby, I Love You

Visiting his "goddaughters" was never easy.  Plus, he seemed to have lots of them, didn't quite claim any of them.  All their mothers were just "good friends", most seemed to be single, or partnered with guys who didn't seem to be these girls' fathers either.

The logical answer was that he probably sired close to 20 kids.  But, no matter how many times she tried to pin him down, he shook his head.  Sincerely, he'd claim that none of them were his.  Even the ones he had wanted.  "If any of them were, none of them or their mothers would have me anyway,"  It seemed more pitiful than logical, so she didn't press him.

And indeed, at every house, he was treated like a stranger.  A welcome stranger, one who would provide entertainment or good stories.  But not a father.  No matter how much he wanted to play that role, he was stuck with his aging-idol status.  Which made mothers, daughters and even granddaughters flirt with him.  But those that weren't attracted to his flame were also blind to him as a human; if they couldn't give him credence as a phenomenon, they also couldn't bear to put up with any other bullshit. No love, no hate, just apathy.

She saw some kind of ache in his eyes every time they left.  A life he never could manage somehow, no matter how hard he tried.  She certainly never let him take advantage of the 20 year difference between them to patronize her.  Or even act paternally.  But she thought it was different.  Maybe there was something about him that girls instinctively stayed away from.  He wasn't to be trusted for the long term.

He had far too many suspicious stories about girlfriends who seemed to arrive on the scene with children already.  He was a sucker for someone asking for help.  Especially someone with a child.  Never quite understood why his generosity was never reciprocated.  Why he failed, when he loved a woman SO MUCH that he would accept her child as his own.  It made him hard.

Lady's Baby

All these places have their moments

Something about how the truck had landed on her car triggered something in her mind.  Dying was easy and without any kind of pain.  Maybe the music influenced her brain chemistry. And the sound of dripping, maybe it was rain.

It was a soft, pleasant feeling, as if she had just been made love to.  Cradled in the steel, she had no sense of the limits of her body, or gravity, or cold or warmth.

Like being held in his giant hammock bed. There was lots of laughter and tickling, they hadn't kissed for years-and then suddenly, they were.  Everything was white and bright and lovely.  The rain outside was music enough; they listened to it before and after, and then snoozed in each other's arms.

Often after orgasm, she would fall into a light sleep and be woken up by a sudden snore or grunt of his. It woke her up just enough to bring her to the edge of consciousness.  Like she was swimming, and breaking the surface.  Just enough to remind her how lovely her body felt, just enough to make her aware.

And then she slipped under again.

In My Life by The Beatles

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” 
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

We Can Share The Women, We Can Share The Wine

There was a lot of misogyny on the road.

A lot.

And so, initially, when they were touring and she was supporting the band, she dressed all in black.  In layers, hiding everything, never fixing her hair, except to tie it up.  No makeup.  She wanted to be taken out of the equation.  She didn't belong to Him and she didn't want to be thought of as an option for the rest of them.  She wanted them all to forget she was a woman.

Most of the time it worked.  Weeded out the guys who were looking for a one night relationship.  Any conversations she had were about what she knew.  The only thing she would blow was their minds. (BLEW MY NOSE AND THEN SHE BLEW MY MIND-Rolling Stones)

The transformation when she started doing "The Act" onstage was amazing.  Nobody recognized her.  She pulled off the Marilyn Monroe act without a hitch.  (Of course, coming at it from the angle that Marilyn herself was playing the role of a sex goddess, giving the men what they wanted.  Much smarter than she let on.  Until the drugs got out of control)

In the 60's, he used to have a button: "Orgy Organizer". It would've been funny if it wasn't actually true.  Although he tried to deny it to the women he met now, he was the centerpoint of getting laid.  His parties were legendary.  Memories of hedonism used to overwhelm him, mixed in with drugs and alcohol.

But everyone wanted to relive it.

A Naked Party.  No promises about what it would turn into.  No drugs.  No alcohol.  Bring the 60's back.

The boys all thought it was a great idea.

She got some of the girls together.  They had their own great ideas.  Sure, the groupies wouldn't mind being naked.  The only rule was that there could be no touching.

The idea of it drove all the guys crazy.

Usually, guys being naked in front of other guys was awkward.  And invited bouts of insecurity.  Especially when women were brought into the picture.

But they gathered in the motel room the girls gave them the key for.  No touching-sure, whatever.  Just a party.  Public, honest, open.

The girls never showed up.

The guys ended up watching reruns of ball games and falling asleep.

No such thing as control when it comes to women.  Rock & Roll boys humiliated again.

From
Jack Straw by The Grateful Dead

The Luckiest People In The World

The first time she drove him somewhere.  She freaked.

"Listen, I'm really sorry.  I have to sing.  I'm a terrible driver otherwise.  I lose focus.  I was trying to be good, and I wouldn't have stopped except . . . "

"Except you didn't see that truck that nearly killed us,"

"Right.  And I don't want to go down in the history books as the girl who killed the rock star,"

What a sweet kid, he thought.  Any history book that included him was only good for toilet paper.  He cringed at her choice when he saw the "Best of Barbara" cassette, gritted his teeth at the idea of having to listen to her.  This unknown quantity that held his life in her hands.  And he needed to pretend that he liked it, she was his only option for an assistant at the radio station.  This one time he could be nice, or risk her spitting in his iced coffee for the rest of the summer.  His ears could suffer for the safety of the rest of his body.

She began shyly, whisper-singing the words, but she gradually forgot herself as the city turned to highway and then country.  He was pleasantly surprised.

Her voice was easy, able to high notes easily, even though he could tell she hadn't warmed up.  There was a faint scratchiness in her voice, she probably hadn't sung in while.  And her voice was better than his. It wasn't hard, his career was based on his versatility on instruments and clowning around to distract from his singing.  He'd go off key rarely enough, but when he was at his best, he knew he sounded like a pubescent boy.  Even in his 40's.

"I love him more each day/When years have passed away"

He recognized her kind, one of the talented few who weren't Crazy enough to do it professionally.

As they sped around the corners, he was brought back to a time and place where everything was round and gentle.  The women, the dancing, the curls of smoke, Laurel Canyon. When everything good was just around the bend.  He remembered an acid trip where he spent 5 hours traveling in the golden curls of a naked nymph passed out next to him.

Her voice sounded like wine. Easy, as you lean over and pour that first glass into your partner's glass, anticipating sex. Or a dinner party with friends, your crystal goblet getting refilled again and again, the smoothness and the color of stained glass toasted against candlelight.

When life was glorious.  When all those friends accepted him easily, back when he drank and was still fun. In the time before everyone was uptight, back when it was okay to consume everything laid out before him.

He wondered vaguely if this moment was a portal, a new path for him in his career.  To play Svengali.  The moment seemed strong for him, like he was given access to a great gift, a nugget of knowledge.  He could make or break her career.  He relaxed in the car seat, smiling broader than he had realized, allowing himself to feel powerful again.

She seemed to take it as encouragement, and proceeded to act out some novelty songs that came up. Suddenly her eyes were ablaze with flirtation and her voice dipped into a scratchy register, and went slightly off-key, intentionally.  Driving her Cadillac of a voice against the median, knowing it would escape unscathed.  She was in full control of her voice, knew its edges, its valleys and mountains.  Knew that you'd go on the journey, even when she drove through a river, because she'd emerge on the other side in full sun, holding you in a single long note, like the spot on top of the mountain.

Maybe he would get her vocal classes for her birthday, hook her up with one of his perennially underemployed musician friends. He wondered if she would be upset at that. Take it wrong.
He noticed where she cheated. The Broadway sound, maybe that's what she was going for? He reassessed the situation again.  So many great kids have amazing voices, even if he tried he wasn't sure he still had any kind of power to get her noticed.

He knew one thing.  He hadn't been smiling this long or this large for a long time.  It was a strange, yet good feeling.

In that moment, he knew he didn't want to ever let her stop.

People by Barbra Streisand

He hoped that she'd forget that question

When she had first began staying with him, she had put plastic-doll-googly-eyes on a few of his framed photos.  He had laughed at first, the way she hoped.  In the same way he had joked about those days to her in the first place.

But now he had lost his sense of humor.

Initially, he was comedic and cynical about those days and she'd ask leading questions, allowing him to make fun of himself and the monster called FAME.  But now, lately, he seemed to give it more respect, a place of honor in his conversations.  As if it were a certain master he began to serve.

She realized now that he saw his life as historic, and all his time was to be "invested".  She began to realize that being alone with him, taking up his time, was a right that could now only be "earned".  The illusion of FAME didn't interest her, nor did his sudden irrelevant vanity.  Some things he could still joke about, but somehow, his legacy became serious.

She finally began to understand what the curse was.  Not some big romantic Dorian Grey thing.  But the fact that he was so old, that he had seen so much.  How painful it was to get close to someone, and have them die, or disappear on you. Normal people want to settle down with someone else who can mirror their lives, a 75 year love affair and marriage.  But he only found a partner suitable for a few months at a time.  Not so bad, in terms of curses.

Every so often, he'd remember he was famous, and that she was not.  And that she was just another girl.
But she always remembered that he was just a man.

The Curse by Josh Ritter

The Dearest Things I Know

"Wait until the horn comes back in,"  they would dance furiously during the bridge, as if it were a musical number from Fred and Ginger.  Semi-choreographed, they'd jump and twirl around whatever furniture/set surrounded them at the time.  She had a way of balancing herself on one leg, holding herself in midair, floating longer than gravity should allow.  There were a few bars where they could catch their breath, before the horns.

Standing in his living room, or at a check-in desk at a motel, or in the lobby, their eyes would meet, daring the other to dance.  There usually wasn't enough room, and it was silly to do in front of others at first, but the dare became bigger than the embarrassment.  Especially the twirls.

For both of them, it was a primal physical memory of childhood, losing control of gravity and being spun by another body.  Nonsexual, yet almost incestuous in the reaction. Almost hyperventilating because you are laughing so hard and can barely keep your breath.

"Close as you can get to orgasm while keeping your clothes on, " he said
"Almost better than singing with you," she said.
"Wait, wait.  NOW!"  He'd put his arms around her and spin her, gracefully, tightly.  She could never not laugh.  His smile was bright and innocent, close enough to kiss; her face would brush against his beard harshly, scratching.  A casualty of the fun.  A bruise she'd still feel hours later, even when she could no longer remember the details of his embrace.

The single greatest physical joy brought to her by another body.  Spinning in their orbit.  Feeling their gravity and control over your momentum.It was a game, to spin her as quickly as possible.  Although she played it too, so she was never sure who was the instigator, or who was winning.  They were evenly matched here, and the music stopped short for the singer to continue.

"You are . . ."  it could easily have been a song of insults.  And sometimes, when they fought, and he wanted to call her names, she'd sing to him.  Slowly, taking all the drama out of the recording.  Now the listener was being complimented, and the singer quickly ran out of comparisons.  "The dearest things I know are what you are,"  Trust me, it's not that you are JUST the miracles of nature, those perfect moments that create the beauty, you are all the stuff I can't even name.

That should cover it.

Jerome Kern sang it as part of his dying breath.  She always thought of that.  You are better than anything I could ever do or write, and I'm still trying to sing your praises.  I'll never finish.

And appropriate to the movie they imagined they were in, they'd finish in a flourish.  Which also sometimes resulted in applause by bewildered bystanders.  They'd land with a laughing sigh, their game completed.

No matter how tired, she'd always ask to do it again.  Like a little child realizing the difference between earth's gravity and centripetal force, pulling you into another human's orbit.  And who loves the idea that there is all the time and energy in the world to do it again and again.

"All the Things You Are" performed by Keely Smith
written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II