Prelude
Tuesday night meant the End.
"Already? Doesn't feel like a Tuesday. I must have lost a day."
"I'm pretty sure," I said, though in truth, there was no doubt in my mind that it was Tuesday. At this point, my life centered around our weekly excursion to the End.
And she knew that. Silver stepped closer and slid a loving arm around my waist. On this night, like every night in those wild early days of the crested millennium, I intended to sing.
My whole being wanted to sing. Life had become difficult and my goals, my reasons, my state of mind had become hopelessly muddled. Singing opened me up and the relief it afforded me gave me the sense that this was something I had to do. Everything else I knew, believed and trusted had fallen apart and I found my thoughts constantly returning to this path, this course of self-determination, as a way out. Singing is something I had always done, but only privately. The emotional turmoil I was going through wrecked me but it also took away some of my fears, making me more anxious in ways but surprisingly un-anxious in others. Suddenly I found myself capable of getting onto a stage in front of an audience and that freedom opened up a world of exhilarating experiences, unlike anything else I had ever done or knew how to do. So I sang.
Within that, I found myself wanting, driven even, to sing the right song, find my zone, sing a song perfectly chosen for the moment, to expose my voice in all its glory, to express my pains and joys in the bright spotlight, to pierce the darkness, to invigorate the crowd, to break the monotony of a life come crashing down. Singing was what I do, have done, will do.
I sang from my earliest youth, absorbing the music of the radio in a time when radio played almost all we heard. I forever sought new songs to sing. Nothing hard, nothing challenging, she shed her clothes, lyrical songs with joy and passion, gently cultivated and learned, singing in every stolen moment to entertain myself. Only their echoes in my mind. A gifted turntable and four years of college eventually opened a realm of harder rock, less radio ready, learning songs with more bite.
On a day like any other day, there's no telling where the money went, strutting her stuff on the street. How you look through other people's eyes, whatever you want when you're high, I hear the rhythm of the DJ so forgive me if I seem out of line, this time I know it's for real. Would you know just what to do? For those who think and feel he showed me what it was to cry. See the lights of a neighbors house preparing for an evening, a performance shaking loose the tensions of a day, to escape into the spotlight, the stage, hoping to find in the progress of time, a song, or songs, perfectly captured the moment when my voice engaged as I fumbled with realities, the order and structure, objects and ideas.
The dew still hung upon the grass. The afternoon droned slowly by. The music held my wanting ears, teased me with songs I'd wished, somehow I could wholly express. Songs of beauty, songs of love, songs that formed the substance of my youth as I have sung, since I first had words to sing.
I've learned how to laugh and smile, believing in well chosen fantasies, however unbelievable they truly are, holding onto dreams that satisfy the cravings for peace, for meaning, for sense and satisfaction. The land of the perfect song, where singing the lyrics pieces truth together with reality, tears away the harsh edges as you lay down on your side, given a moment of relief that should last well into tomorrow, please release me, let me go.
Take your weight off of me. Picking up a pen, scrawling notes to remind myself of songs worth singing, suited to my voice, to the mood, to the energy of the crowd and I just can't get it back. Not like that, you're living in a North Dallas suburb, but I ain't no pretty boy, where summer sure does take a bite but I am a man who likes the heat. Roasted brown surrounded by practically unclad beauties, take the cold and keep it, the way you move, soft and slippery.
Silver lurked downstairs, preparing her luscious sexy self for the show, my entourage of one, my alter, my partner, companion, co-conspirator. I prefer you behind the wheel.
It's got to be tonight. What you going to do with your life? I hear the whole world burning. I've spent my life rejecting labels, avoiding the attachment of a label, any label, except the most vague, so I am thoroughly confused when anyone eagerly labels themselves in any way at all.
Measuring the marigolds, I never said you have to offer me a second chance. Taking care by steps, by stages, picking up the pieces, making sane, passing judgments on everything in reach, yes to this, no to that. Take my heart, take my soul, just like Jesus wore it.
Hide her away from the rest of the world? We were lying together on a silver lining, one night thought I'd reached the bottom, the cult of individual feeling, searching for expression in the apocalypse following that atom bomb of divorce, destroying in fear every word I might speak or write, rending me wordless except when I sang, finding my expressions in the composition of others, foregoing my own words, unleashing my crushed spirt in my lyrical performances.
Sitting down on the floor, toking a bowl, raising my mind to meet the imagery, shapes rising, filling making space whole, reverberations, pleasing every corner along the way. Markings try to explain, to point the way, make sense of trials littering our worry, agonizing. The resin coated glass bowl broke, leaving slivers of glass in the carpet, waiting for a land mine's pounce to embed itself in my bare foot.
Taking my time, walking the path, letting my thoughts wander into the crests of the clouds. The tune of a flute played happily, distressing our hope to return in streams of consciousness, floating without urgency, regaining our strength in strokes, playing the songs I dreamed to sing.
I religiously attended informal classes, histories of vocal music, engaged the pop composers of the high-middle ages, with an emphasis on high, worked through the intellectualization of a basic fundamental human expression, checking my fingernails, lifting my guitar, cycling through some minor scales, listening to the evocations between the fourth and fifth, haunting my thoughts with the devil's interval.
Go ahead, drink and sing, cricket and I don't have news of him. You've got me wanting you. He came into the world in the usual way. Sleep silent angel go to sleep. Never lost one minute of sleep worrying. It made me want to cry. Lightly ended night in rapture. You'll laugh til you collapse. I got good news she's a real good liar. Cap your ass like a looter in a riot. The sweetest melody is an unheard refrain. It just ain't the same in a coat he borrowed from James Dean, so much younger than today. I see you standing there again.
Giving in to the self-appointed task, I took these afternoons seriously, for a singing performance in the evening demanded a full day of preparations. The mind needed to find a strong place, sufficient support for the exercise of a full-throated voice. Tuesday night at the End had become my thing. A familiar crowd worked to my advantage and I had come to know them all, in ways.
"Yeah, I'm sure," I corrected my vague doubts. "Yesterday was Monday. Remember?"
Singing karaoke proved reductive and so beneficial. When we entered the bar and engaged in five hours of drinking and singing, choosing songs and choosing drinks, attending the chaos, everything else, the explosive destructive forces of living in the fast lane and crashing hard against ourselves slipped into blind silence. Weathering a decade long storm of crumbling relationships, being able to forget for a while kept me afloat.
They ran karaoke shows at the End on Tuesday and Friday nights. For a while, Silver and I attended both shows and a whole bunch of others at other bars on other nights, sometimes two or three dives in a mad cross-town dash, because I was always looking for a place to sing. The need to sing, amplified, in public, consumed me.
But after a year or so of Metroplex trotting, our enthusiasm for nightly excursions slowed and we settled on Tuesday night at the End for our once weekly venue. The End was close to home and spacious compared to most of the bars that promoted casual singing. Friday nights were crowded with people, your basic let’s get the weekend started crowd, drunk and ready to bellow poorly slurred versions of popular songs. Tuesday was different. A crowd that assembles on a weeknight to perform until the wee-est hours of the morning is more dedicated, less conventional, curiously motivated. They were, in many ways, our kind of people.
Gonna light this place on fire with a vanilla smile and a gorgeous strawberry kiss. It's like a merry-go-round. They used a quarter staff. You don't slow down you never get old, in touch with the ground. She doesn't give you time for questions, had been taken to the top when living for my life. I'll be running down this dusty road, time keeps on slipping into the future. Words are weapons, sharper than knives, sings the streets a serenade, get off of your feet, I'm shaking like milk. I'll get you anything, my friend.
Running trains for three days and it always makes me smile, no place to hang up the washing. My tone, my cologne, the way I walk; The picture is very clear. We'll waste some time, sing sweetly to the murmur of the waves, slowly courses the spring of the laurel. I've made myself so sick. Life is not sacred, never was when all you've got to offer me is a drink of gin, with their noses in the air. How was your slutty Saturday?
"What's on your mind?"
"Nothing," he said with a smirk.
The noise filled the space, ignoring the music to get loaded in the strip mall on a Tuesday night. We weren't your ordinary out on the town Friday night responsible style party crowd. This was Tuesday night on the heels of realism Monday and miles and leagues from Friday, in pursuit of no answers, searching for a moment in the North Texas strip mall in the deepening heat of a weary summer night, songs isolated in time in our psyche driven deep between strings, woodwinds, brass and drums, the full complement of organized mirth makers, invisibly digital and given to adorn our expressions from enthusiastic ungifted wailers to the serious profit seeking, the fun loving, love seeking performers, glad faced.
Promises and songs of yesterday, I remember hating you for loving me. I wish I'd stayed asleep today but this was no place for beginners or sensitive hearts, just a silly phase I'm going through. Days arise when sex consumes my thoughts, days in even weeks obsessed between a vision of a mature Rita standing tall upon a platform, loins girded, swaying slightly to unheard of rhythms, moving in response to silenced directions, posing while staring beyond me, sad mistakes beautifully etched into the slender flesh of her bare torso.
Looking past myself in the mirror, losing focus as I recalled the firsts, the strange and unprepared boldness, recognizing in the moment the healing that freed my musical muse from life-long imprisonment, the panic, soothed in the midst of infinite turmoil, allowing me to rise from the table, nod and smile furtively to Silver, ascend the attention of the crowd and take the leap with the swing of a brick and give my rendition of tying your mother down, feeling the explosive expression let loose from my overbound soul.
Trials exposed the depths of our skills, our direction and ascent, our belief in getting somewhere else, escaping the future, rewriting the tone of our songs, modulate the bridge, change the game, change the tempo, change the score. And a one and a two.
The blade fell with a crash, that mistake you'll never make again, practiced all the things I would say. Sometimes I stayed too long, looking over the past, the stories spread over time, finding solution in the interplay of details, conflicts resolved in passing, answers forced by insistence that something happen in casual transactions, eyes meeting, souls joining in the enflamed croon, the head dissipating, the fire slowly becoming smouldering coals and embers drowning in ash, hard pressed to find an excuse. Well dressed and standing tall, white spats and arrow collars walking toward the horizon, tending off to begin another tale.
Rising above the daily grind concerns that bring life small, keeping the big picture in perspective while the bastards grind me down. Knowing that set backs are merely lessons, that a thousand journeys begin with a thousand first steps, innovating, redefining and refining. Creation is at the root of life. Backbeats de-emphasize.
A solitary voice, weak and pained, can sing songs an opera singer can't. The performance requires stepping on stage and breaking the rules, moving boldly to that next stage, originality as a synthesis of everything that came before, taking in the history, taking that next step, that next step expected and yet unexpected, new in all the old ways as a model, stepping beyond the physical form of a woman. All a woman can be beyond the limits of the unusual, the ancient, the fashion of anti-fashion, reactions built of impressions, all new ways of presenting the commonplace.
I had taken up singing in public very naturally when the big divorce, the one with kids, tore my life apart. First, I joined the choir at the church my kids then frequented, to see them and to release my expressive tensions in second tenor. Generally, I sing baritone but adult choirs are usually replete with basses and baritones, often lacking tenors as many grown men eschew singing the part, so I volunteered to sing a little higher. Singing in a choir was familiar for me and the low expectations of a church choir kept stress at a minimum. But it wouldn't be enough to set my heart free.
As the battles raged on around me, I moved my act to the karaoke stage. Few will understand what a huge leap that was, for although I had always sung, my anxieties had always precluded a solo act in front of an audience. But much to my surprise, I found strength in the spotlight, going to the one place no one would have ever sought me. I became one of my characters, the introverted artist, performing for reasons no one could ever guess.
Anxiety had always been the main obstacle in my life. I continually crushed myself with a ceaseless stream of poorly-considered, self-defeating internal monologues. The divorce pushed me over the edge, until the white noise of fear rose and crashed over my mind, rendering all thoughts into pure nonsense. In this maddening chaos, for reasons I will never know, I found a new kind of clarity. The anxiety still plagued me, but I was able to remove myself from the push and pull, the sturm und drang of daily existence, and turn my thoughts in more self-expressive directions. Aside from my writing, which has always been the main outlet of my persona, I began to sing, in public, on stage, with all my strength. For five years afterward, I sought the microphone, I performed and I began to reform my soul into a delightful, energized and self-fulfilled living force.
I wasn’t interested in the performance as a way to garner attention. Quite the opposite. I have never cared for applause and approbation. Even so, singing before a crowd is significantly different from singing in my loft. The presence of the people brings a surge of energy to the situation. I cared about the way I managed the power derived from standing on stage. I stood as a wizard collecting strength from the amplified emotions.
The first step of my daily preparation was to begin the endless process of choosing the songs that I might want to sing that evening. The selection process was loose because it was important for me to sing songs that worked in the moment, considering the crowd, the atmosphere and my emotional state at the time. Nothing, for me, would have been worse than to interrupt the flow of a swinging party with a doleful ballad, or to meet a crowd full of misery with a thoughtless lark. I had compiled a long list of songs I knew or wanted to try out. So I sat down with my list and considered the possibilities.
Picking songs to sing seemed a relatively easy task for someone who has sung so much but the job proved to be more difficult than I imagined. Sometimes I thought I knew a song, but when I found myself faced with the responsibility of carrying the whole melody, I found I didn’t. Sometimes I had hardly noticed a song and discovered in the spontaneous act of singing the tune that I knew it as well as I knew my own hand, so it wasn't always obvious what songs I actually knew well enough to sing. Sometimes a song seems perfect but reaches a note or two too high. Sometimes a stupid lyric would stick in my craw. Sometimes the tempo didn’t really work for me. I had no choice but to work out a repertoire, singing each number over and over and over again.
My playlist touched randomly on fifty years of song, inviting me at once to sing as I have daily done. Lyrical joys derived diversely from a variety of genre.
Silver woke a bit later than I had, feeding the dogs, brewing coffee, opening blinds, engaging her day as I raised the first notes of my voice, preparing to explore the octaves in majors and minors, in rondos, both low and high, but never falsetto, for I cannot respect the untrue, undiaphramatic, a child's voice declaiming falsely by the throat of a man self-emasculated, howls of derision rather the low rumble of a lusty baritone amuses my artistry. And so I sing.
Although I slept downstairs, I largely lived in a loft over the garage, isolated enough to make me feel safe but not so far away. Walls of my best books surrounded me, held me, comforted me, protected me. A television babbled under the measured control and bop of the Tivo. I huffed piles of weed. The days went rolling by.
I had two desks, a large resin table for my primary computer and a tight corner desk for my gaming/singing computer. After staring at the long list of songs in my notebook, I picked up and moved to my music setup. I loaded the list I had compiled in my head and turned on my amp. The microphone hovered before my lips as I waited for my first cue.
Every time I took the stage, the rafters shook, the air pulsated, mighty in forces, sold to the realm and an empty bottle of booze. Scribbling answers in the margins, looking up solutions in the back. I tuned my guitar, tightened the E, loosened the A, and gave a strum. Rebels been rebels since I don't know when the stage calls, the microphone hums, a hot guitar trembles in my hands clutching the strings to hold the feedback, electricity played in vibrating strings strung tight from stem to stern.
Another night, another party, even though parties are the last thing I'm usually hoping to do, but parts of life demand new approaches and I had been recovering from interpersonal trauma, first degree divorce, to be specific, so party we did, late at night, exploring the lust that surrounds us, taking pleasures in the dark, stealing kisses in the hallway, sitting around the card table, puffing on a big dank pipe.
Someone took a knife, baby edgy and dull. I know you never even try girl. The Beatles had to stop performing live because grown women, our mothers and grandmothers wouldn't stop screaming, squealing so insanely that no one could hear the amplified music the fab four played. When the set finished, drunken and late, escaping into the night aglow with the tingling energies of performers leaving the stage straggling home to after parties, for the night owls. Collapsing into beds sometimes we peopled orgies trading the singers for the sexual for the truth, strangely proved that singers were frustrated effectively unsexual, asexual, complaining about sex while avoiding it at every turn. So we recruited from other places to join in our sex games.
By this time, years into my singing career, I had worked out my costume, the introverted artist romantic hero. Black slacks and a flowing white pirate shirt, untucked with the cuffs unbuttoned gave me the air of a modern day Childe Harold. My hair flowed in long brown curls. I stood taller than tall in heeled boots. A heavy gold ring adorned my pinky finger. When things grew cool, I donned my fringed black leather jacket with a dappled hide yoke. I never bothered to acquire leather pants, but they would have suited me well.
Why do stars fall down from the skies? Looking the windswept romantic hero, I would gather my handwritten book of secrets and a serious portable stash for one more toke before we go. Later, I would rally Silver from her modest yet immodest preparations to reach the sleek convertible that would convey us hence that Tuesday evening as so many other Tuesday's before.
Silver the red-headed practical nymph nestled, as always, by my side, came along for the ride, experiencing the drama from a different point of view, another vantage point revealing things I would never see. And maybe we'll come back. We're headed for Venus and yet we stand tall, fire breathing sexuality, spreading the joys of making the world a sexier place in a short skirt and loose blouse
And as in uffish thought he stood, one guitar after another, electric excepting the black Ibanez given to me for Father's Day when my daughter was a few months old. My leather jacket, London bought, with a yoke of hide and full body fringes reaching down each arm. Carmen, my car men and bars, the black leather enveloping my upper torso from fall to spring, my pockets becoming my purse, carrying everything I could need my weed, my lighter, my harp, my wallet and my pen. Girl you send me, girl you send me, sweeping fringed hand gestures, a hippie touch to a rocker's form, so sexy it hurts, New York and Japan, for a fake Chinese rubber tree plant, looking the part of an aging rocker, lead guitarist for Gash, or lead singer on a solo tour, The Malinov Experience, fanfare, thick lipped panty pulled lewdness, mine for the taking, licking, fingering after the show or before, rarely during. But she was a naughty girl and there is really nothing I don't do.
I dragged a comb across my hair, afternoons of study giving way past dinner and into the night, finding my clothes, patting them down, fighting wrinkles and stains to develop my visual persona, for another show, staged elegantly. The best heroes are Byronic. Glancing at myself for a moment in a full length mirror, majestic curls descending down past my shoulders, a practiced stern look, broad shoulders draped in soft white cloth, loose, ready to blow in a breeze, a pirate, unschooled by laws (despite my legal vocation). That young man should have been strangled at birth. Do I look good - yeah - I look good. A touch of cologne, a musk, tight black slacks, cowboy boots to raise my impressive height to a more commanding level. Rolled a few joints for the inevitable parties in the cars between movements, a lighter, my wallet, my phone to be ignored when stalkers insisted on calling as they often would.
I sang on stage to find myself, to hear my own voice, to take my place within the realm of the real. Other than in terms of the emotional energy surging through me, I was oblivious to the crowd surrounding me. The singing came unconsciously from deep within my psyche. I never thought a stroke about the song once the introduction had given me the initial cue. I knew every word without reference to the scrolling text of a karaoke display. I laughed at times when the words they projected were wrong, because I trusted my own knowledge implicitly. These songs were me. I became the songs.
Family lore suggests that I was always fond of singing, vocalizing melodically for my infant sister when I was a mere two years old. I remember sitting beside a record or eight-track player and singing throughout my youth. At some point, I began singing for the church choir, one of a handful of boys in a vast assortment of ladies and a few men. Throughout my school years, I would sing with choirs. Although I am not fond of choral music, all of my formal training was in conjunction with those group efforts, sliding smoothly from a boyish soprano down to tenor until I found my range settled in the baritone. I can still sing tenor but will always prefer to center my efforts low.
I saw my chance when the Walkman was introduced, the ability to channel music directly into my ears satisfied my needs perfectly. My introversion fed on the isolation provided by individualized sound while my need to sing feasted on the endless stream of self-selected music. For about twenty-five years, I was rarely seen without headphones. Alone in sound, I sang with reckless abandon, everywhere I went, everywhere I walked, everywhere I sat and read. Injected with music, I dissolved myself into the beat.
For many years, most of my singing was done while walking, tape player on my hip, headphone stretched over my curls. All of my life, from the first days of school, I have been a walker. Miles and miles every day, I walked alone, enjoying the solitude and isolation that came with my travels. I walked to school, to work, to see friends, to shop. I wandered down streets, over fields, through vast parking lots. I sang in full voice, oblivious to anyone who might see me or hear me. I grew strong in body and sound.
I spent so many years and so many hours commuting alone that it is virtually impossible for me to drive without singing. I will flip through my library of two thousand songs with the press of my thumb until another sing-worthy song comes up in the random queue. I sing, I harmonize, I improvise and rework every song that I know. I meld into the words. I breathe in the music.
Sunday nights, once upon a time, held my greatest joy, my escape; a radio show, my little orphan, my joy of verve, my pleasure, two hours of music, the thud of a hand against the box of a guitar, oh, lordy, the blues erupted in the delights of manly laments. Nights of pain, love abandoned, undeserved and unwanted, searching in moments of silence, scratching in delighted release. A picture of fury, a flash of lightening, displaying in stark contrast the landscape of our soul, pounding and strumming words in cycles, exposition, development, variations on a theme, turning around in mastery, in modesty, in retreating fear, in the grip of endless poverty, despair and disdain, completed roads to nothing, important in fears and frame, general sensations, cloying crimes, a fashion unraveled, Baby. Her west coast strut ran like molasses.
The chaos of life exploded and lead me to discover new methods of reining in my anxieties, taking the shroud of insecurity to reveal the foolish restraint that had strangely held me back. We had gone deep downtown to a less pleasant part of town, the haunt of the green fairy, a world where rules had been suspended by the environment. Seated low, they offered me the microphone. I rose to take the stage alone for the first time in my life, to engage myself in the complex expressions of hearty rock and roll, full voiced and energized to reach the limits of a raging need for love.
It was a cold winter night when the adventure first began. The crowd where I first met Silver had dispersed long before but a few of the more organized among the sordid ones had gathered together and purchased a small bar on the far side of town. Looking for ways to escape the troubles that had been haunting us so long, we made the trek across the highway to Greens in a section of downtown that was nearly entirely deserted at night. I parked my car across the street and crossed to recover some semblance of self-determination.
When I pulled open the door that mirrored me, darkness poured into the street from below. As I stepped slowly, carefully down the twisted stairs, I descended into the hell of a smoke-filled, crowded narrow bar. An old and shady friend greeted us from a distance as we approached.
A dark wooden bar faced a handful of tall tables surrounded by equally tall chairs. Silver and I took a pair of seats at one of the tables where Trevor joined us. “What can I get you?” he asked and went behind the bar to fetch the drinks. A dark round musician sat beside Silver in the fourth chair and began to babble a low jargon filled rant of music and women, “and a bit of spanking,” he slyly added at the close with a lascivious laugh, his eyes fixed hungrily on the woman beside him. Silver has that effect on people. Trevor came back with the drinks and shooed the corporal musician away.
"I'll be a while," Trevor apologized, "but I'll join you later. I have to sort out some deliveries that just came. Candy will keep your glasses filled. Take a seat down below and relax."
I responded with a nod and made my way through the mass of late-night humanity to find a low sofa to nestle us. A new round of drinks appeared unbidden. I turned to Silver and smiled.
Something in the music caught my attention, something that changed my approach, that made me see the situation in a whole new way. The idea of singing at the bar had never crossed my mind but I suddenly realized that I didn’t have to sit there and passively absorb the energies of guitars and drums. A spark caught kindling within my soul. I breathed in the gathering gloom and felt the strength build inside my chest until I wanted to scream, laugh, cry, shout. I looked around at the drama boiling in my unleashed thoughts. I needed to make a stand. I needed to express my anguish loudly.
I looked up from my drink, from the past, into the future. “Why the hell not?” I asked myself. “Why shouldn’t I sing?” I knew how to sing, I sang well and I knew the song. I had no fears left. I could carry a melody, harmonize and improvise. I needed a change. I stood and stepped into a new world.
"What’ll it be?"
I gave the name of a particularly fierce rocker I'd selected from my youth. I wasn't just taking the stage. I was storming the caste.
"Sure," the karaoke jockey replied, turning to his computer screen, "sure thing."
My voice powered out the song until the last note left me exhausted, beaten, breathless and cowed. Applause engulfed me, for although I knew the depths of my own lackluster performance, it was enough to please the masses. On that first night I learned an important rule, one I would sometimes neglect and regret. Never attempt a ferocious songs before warming up.
Time slipped into the future and we started eating at a fusion Indian restaurant, curry and jalapenos, and grew familiar with the wait staff, jabbing with them for hours as we downed a few drinks. They, in turn, routinely spent their free time hanging out at a bar across the road, Quilty's, a small and overdecorated dive with rough wood booths and long, tall windows, letting the sunshine, the sunshine in and so we followed them there. One evening, the Q hosted a karaoke show, which I soon discovered was run by the same fellow who had queued up that first song for me at Greens. The Dallas karaoke world is after all small. Emboldened by the familiar face, I decided to give public singing another go.
I took the four steps to the stage with an easy stride. Looking down from on high, the crowd faded even deeper than usual, hid in the shadows of the tall wooden bench backs. Two huge black speakers flanked me as I centered myself on the microphone. The music started and I waited for the inevitable cue to a song I knew instinctively. The lyrics snapped from between my lips. My eyes opened wide. Who sang that? It didn’t sound like me, not my voice. It wasn't even familiar. Rather, I heard Elvis, the King in his prime, booming, provocative, teasing with that deep sultry Memphis drawl. I almost missed my next cue.
The next time I strode up to take the stage, I passed a table where a couple sat. “Listen,” the fellow said to his friend. “This guy is good.” I smiled slightly at the encouragement, blindly determined to take my place before the first cue. The song rang and I sang, but the range was testy and the tempo dragged. I shook my head as I walked away from the applause. I wasn’t as good as I hoped.
Staring into the future from the vantage of the past, tearing us apart, I wanted a song to challenge my voice, to allow me to let loose linguistic joys in the mesmerized draw of a crowd fixated, startled into attention. "Listen up, babe, he's good," and the eyes of a young blonde woman followed me with the notice of her fellow, probably wondering what I'm up to.
Taking a drink, cool, refreshing, wanting to find the right song in the right moment, the right energy, the electrical banana making such a fool of me. He's got the action, he's got the motion, but I sure know where I've been. I wonder what went wrong with our love, the ground beneath your feet, I'm open to falling from grace, wearing out things that nobody wears. You shouldn't waste a single day, find the girl while you can. Our campaign to live sane, I like my coffee with sugar and cream and I wish you the best on your way. I don't want anybody else, watching the stars which tremble with love and joy.
There ain't no easy way out and from that very moment, set free, I sang at every possible moment in every possible venue across the Metroplex until I finally settled on a bar close to home, the End with a history already stretching back to times when everything was different.
Years rolled by and in the midst of my nightly performances, Silver took sick, bedridden for a bunch of days. Friday night she slept and I slipped out of the house for the first time, looking for a quick bite before resuming my nursing duties, I dropped into the old familiar haunt with a new decor for a sandwich and a beer, accidentally discovering a new place to sing, ripped out a Black Betty and headed home to tend and inform Silver of the newest venue.
The End had been a pizza place with a train of cartoon animals painted on a long wall, an arcade, a giant sport showing television, a bar with a small stage, seating twenty at the most, only slightly removed from the much larger dining space, since expanded into the store next door, removing the locomotive motif and the menu becoming that of a large dark sports bar with a full size, if still smallish stage for live performance, best suited, time would tell, for karaoke. Many years had elapsed since I took the kids there for pizza, during which the transmogrification had taken place all around.
The bar itself, the End, the old pizza arcade, played a significant role in the story, as the stage the dramas unfolds upon. The bathroom, back room, parking lot and cars, patio, tables and chairs, pool tables, dart boards, bar games, a brightly lit jukebox, a truckload of audio equipment, glasses, trays, neon and mirrors, napkins, olives, limes, onions, tabasco flavored popcorn from a popcorn machine, weak bar food, beers, spirits, mixers, water, tuxedos and dresses, jeans, slacks, shorts. skirts and pants and panties, bras, blouses and shirts, collars and tears, tattoos and piercings, hair wildly coiffed, moussed and tinted, wigs and hats, turbans and scalps, nipples and cocks, nipples and cocks, looking vigilantly for a naked view, a glimpse of private views, like the films of Rita, only just eighteen and starkers in a pure costumed art work, swinging her legs, holding her breast, shaking her thighs and waist.
The song swam by fast, pounding, tense and clipped. Bam a lam. The crowd fell into my senses, throbbing and shouting in and despite the music. With a short bow, I left the stage in a daze. “Are you Tess’ father?” a woman asked as I passed. In those days, in that neighborhood, I was known more for my extroverted daughter than as myself. I smiled and affirmed the woman’s identification. “I knew it,” she shouted through the noise, nodding and reaching over to impress upon her companions the out-of-context recognition.
I met Ralph that night, my first contact with the dramas filling the End. When you get up in the morning, words still get you uptight, the master of ceremonies, self-proclaimed karaoke whore with a gentle baritone, given to country ballads proclaiming his tender devotions somewhat in contrast to his rugged appearance, but who can read the voice in the lines of the face?
Not all who complain are seeking a solution. Friday night gave way to Tuesday, a wholly different crowd in kind, not the weekends here, let's get drunk and sing, in that drunken way. Tuesday drew a less festive, more expressive faction, surrendering a week night's normalcy for a chance to approach the mike. Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat, Satan's cock of performance seeking, attention loving spotlight freaks without an audience except the rest of us freaks, each singly motivated. Every glass has a story explaining in ways that will never be verbalized an underlying truth casting shadows even often self-deluded in our quest to sing a song.
Extracts of lyrics swirling incessantly lofted among the noise, the talk, the clatter, the clinks and shouts, the laughter, groans, words and sounds, pulsations of light within the cave, hypnotic swirls of spotted truth leaning uneasy against the walls. The sudden thud of a dart struck home, cries of success and failure mingled, the dull bell of two glasses struck in a spontaneous toast.
The raggle taggle gypsies, the four horsemen intense in laudatory phrases shouted praises of themselves and their like. "Come" they shouted eagerly, reaching with outstretched arms enfolding on approach to hold the toast of five shot glasses. A shout, "Huzzah!" a swig of brightly colored alcohol shot past the lips and gums, clunk the glasses hit the table, the sizzle tries our throats and stood awhile in thought. Is she walking back to me? Curses and complaints charged before they rode into the night
Four intoxicated young men fell upon me. "We like the way you sing," insisted one.
"Yes, we do."
"This guy," one said, pointing to another of the guys, "this guy is going into the army."
"Wow," I said, for lack of anything else to say.
"Drink a shot with us."
"No," I started, edging away from their drunkenness. "I need to get home."
"Just one. Brandy!" Five shots suddenly appeared.
I clinked glasses and drank the shot down and as quickly headed home.
How far into the night they fled, wanting to mark existence, to turn to release the tension, life trying desperately to stay alive despite the warzones hidden ahead. Mounting his bike and racing away, he cheated the army with his honorable demise.
Now I see you went somewhere taken away from the long agonies, the unquestioned belief against change insisted that the way things were somehow should dictate the way they are.
The lay of a guitar neck, an old Stratocaster, against the palm of my hand, the flailing methodically, with bursts of quirky improvisations, fingers in a steady, exploratory rhythm stopping the string in short pauses with the heel of my hand, digitally tapping in patterns on the six string array of frets. We need body rocking not perfection. Over and over in practiced repeats, mirrors teasing the rhythmic games in variations, move the accents slowly from one end of the scale to the other meeting again at the next root played, modulate the key, take the next scale, up and down, down and up, each time varying the timing enough to keep the tedium interesting. Working the words into the strums interlacing harmonies, taking liberties I loved the way you moved, I loved to watch you dance with the lyrics, by mistake for fun, find new rhymes to suit the phrase.
The evening came and I cast aside my need to isolate myself alone, setting forth, notebook in hand, ready to consider the list to define our evening in basic stages, introductory notes, phrases expanding with every slowly drawn breath, expressing on that famous thoroughfare. Hounded by memories of casually cruel soul destroying criticism, I dusted lemon lies and broke free of the shell I was never encouraged to break. That's our specialty, music coursing my veins, childish beginnings in an unbroken sequence, knowing the power only to myself. Make no sound. Singing for me, a daily thing in every solitary moment and a few less private but anonymous, playing the vocal chords and teasing the lyrical scales.
My book of songs, stacked on the desk beneath the last week's novels read, filled up with phrases defining my new literary directions, flopped open casually to allow me to augment the list with new ideas I'd gathered, delineating the songs that seemed possible, one time or another, appealing to me within my range. Interesting lyrical machinations, nostalgia of some new found curiosity, sometimes not really close enough to consider seriously but having enough of a spark to make the list, grayed and stained by rain and drips, fodder for the rise of melodies contending to be the one.
My notes, accumulated in months of attending the microphone shows, songs in long lists, compiled from my tenderest youth and decades before, through the sixties, seventies, eighties and beyond, easy listening, heavy metal, showtunes, ballads, no tone ditties and bits of saucy, jaunty humor.
I sang because I could, because more than forty years of anxiety constrained my voice, an obstacle finally overcome by meds and a mind-altering regimen designed to rewrite the insanity I had been programmed to live. In success I indulged my life long love of songs, my trained and practiced voice with every microphone I could find to experience the fruits of my hard-earned sanity.
So it was another Tuesday night and I gathered my notes to take off for the End, to spend another evening searching for the perfect song to sing, a difficult and endless quest, a moving target, elusive, teasing, dancing out of reach. The evening slipped in slowly, the depth of the Texas heat slowly releasing the tight grip in a slow easy breath, humidity rising as the air lightened in the slowly descending darkness.
Found my way downstairs, finally, in search of Silver, collected my things, had a smoke as the daylight had just begun to fade. Readying myself to go proceeded effortlessly, mindlessly, moving forward as I did night after night, sometimes to find a wild party to fuck, other nights like this one, to step on stage to sing, having perused the endless lists to find the perfect song to sing. I don't care what goes in.
"You ready?" I called.
Or to care what comes out
"Just about," Silver answered.
My throat felt strong, my voice had been warmed but not strained. Turn to the left. I checked my clothes, my look, evoking the image I saw myself within, a cultivated rogue, laughing hard, singing lovely, enjoying the aura and then leaving at midnight to find parties to screw. Listening on as the boys in the attic double teamed their pleasure as the rain descended, spoiling our concert, escape in the night, hiding from time, lust gone lurking about. Sprays for my throat and my big book of songs and scrawls of perpetual poetry and notes, like groceries, Christmas gifts and inventions, not mine. Driving the short ride to the End while songs turned in cycles.
"I’m ready."
"So let’s go."
"Gone," I said, reaching for the door. We made our way to the convertible. Another night. Another bunch of songs.
Crossing a threshold, stepping inside, she never begs, shit I've got to have her, changing in the process of crossing, becoming a different person in ways; a singer, a swinger, slight changes mean the world softly through the shadows.
United by humor and overexpressive sexuality, we strode into the night, walking in beauty. I wrote my first novel when I was five. It was an immature, derivative work. The sun slowly setting, our day only just begun with the journey from home to stage, to lights, to songs. Belief that the truth of freedom escaped in this run into the night, finding solace in the litany of gin, truth within her iridescent eyes, blue as the sky reflected in the still calm sea, the echo of gulls, the slow steady crash of water pounding on the sanded shore.
Silver slid swiftly into the seat beside me with a laugh and a toss of her purse. The fading daylight caught the gold in her deep red hair with a sparkle and a glint. I turned up the stereo, advancing the tracks to begin the memory fresh, one more time. I slipped into reverse and with a full throated bass began the short drive to the End. My love lies silently before me.
The roads were nearly deserted by eight o’clock but in the heat of the summer the sun still shone brightly. I had some of the songs I considered singing playing on the stereo and tested my voice against the lyrics. I had been singing so often lately, that I had to be cautious of over-working my voice but on that particular night, I was going strong, full of verve, ready to shine.
Silver sat beside me, my five year incessant companion during the storms of divorces, a partnership forged in the first moment and rock steady every moment since. We communicated, cooperated and commiserated. I counted on her to provide perspective. No matter how close we stayed, we experienced whole different nights. Huge amounts of what went on those nights, I learned from what she heard, what she saw, what she thought. I was often preoccupied. She had little else to do.
Her eyes looked into me, connected in a glance, understanding mutually transcending mere thought. I nodded involuntarily, accepting her interest and vision. We took on the night bound together by an intricate web of shared experience. The music entwined us.
I knew, almost at once, against all odds, the connection between our tormented souls, the love we shared, despite every hurdle, held us strong, learned how to get along. Beauty articulated in the depth of being seemed to go somewhere, daily steps leading us from strangeness sometimes we can only await the end. Changes developing in our situations, releasing our bonds until we broke free. Love released, flutters, takes wing, wants to be free, love empowered took ahold of my hand, holding my heart. The easy smile of freedom accomplished daring to dream of new possibilities craving to embrace the life realized and so I sing because of her.
To celebrate the new tomorrows we have forged in troubled times, the kiss quickly marking beginnings, the struggle marked, victory won, the eyes of danger finally closed. The wind-swept sandy beaches drowning the music in the crash of reality, of dreams, here you go again, you've got your reason, the scorn of the simple, the muddy, the creation impaled in misery leading the fight.
The best damn woman, Silver accompanied me, as was her wont, to serve her own purposes, to help me on my quest to express the endless scream of life released, to find solutions to the twisted puzzle, to exude the madness forced upon us by the mad surround.
The shuffle and the noise of life muffles every chance of understanding. Information circles and lands in intermittent spurts, like love, like beauty, like fulfillment, straws that crumble en masse, the end point far and far away, the light at the end of our hope, the need to escape the inevitable that rushes full bore towards us in our recline, taking life as it comes, as it wanes. The memory stuck like a song from our youth that refuses to let go, the melody, the accompaniment, the bass line walking along the underpasses, clinging to the starvations, the surrender of what should be, the recapture of pain, the burden that is, our need pinned up on the wall like some rock and roll mug, recriminations, discovery, defined and abandoned, misery making an inroad back to the return. The word she said made no sense, no sense at all and yet I want her. I will always want her.
Making the journey, intent to pursue some relief, some truth, some definition for I dared to dream that singing would forever fix some elements of my much abused psyche into a meaningful path, a direction, a reason to sort my life into shape.
The world revolves, as usual, surrounding the four walls containing the maelstrom known as the End. Cars roll and race the wide streets as street lights dimly illuminate the almost silent dreariness of an evening proceeding uneventfully, calmly, relenting of the searing heat that held the summer day in a slow, considered Texas drawl.
Through the glass doors, within a cave called End, a circle of life erupted joyfully, an oasis of delights hidden, leading me to suppose that littering the quiet strip malls were hidden other similar gatherings, groups of people of similar cloth searching for songs, craving the love of another, attempting to mimic perfectly. Imitation is the sincerest flattery, but it is the weakest form of artistry. The summer in north Texas begins hot and grows hotter, a heat that permeates time, cotton breathes, shrouds, hangs and the music flowed in electric blues.
Valet parking, recognition at the door, I dreamed of moving into the darkness, into the decadent, sculptures, paintings, photographed, a brass water bed, red lights and shit. Tables and chairs, cups and ice, billowing black clouds of thick tobacco smoke hung amidst the clatter and laughs. A gentle DJ's beginning proclaiming I don't want to be friends.
Strapped into a car, we rolled toward my goal, wind flowing through the thick curls of my hair, my mind roiling with musical ideas illustrated with pornographic images, dreams of hard-cocked sex to come. A root, a fifth, the dominant, soft and made of melting snow, working in rounds, in harmony, turning around to face the emptiness, the minds around me still, quiet, yet everything but calm flying in circles of madness of want, of need, respite. You know I believe and how pitches rise and pitches fall to rest among the great refrains, ease into the last, long whine.
Hey, they're going to get you too, rolling down the wide straight roads, traveling the suburbs between Richardson and Plano to an empty intersection, four corners built deep into retail, a city's worth of stores surrounding, yet replicated in ways in all four directions just a mile away. A consumer's paradise with always ample parking, the north east corner held, in the varieties of shops and stores, the End, a bar in the strip mall sandwiched in the center of the west facing wing, a patio flanked by entrances lit with beer hawking neon signs and a large one proclaiming them open.
We always took one last hit before we proceeded to face the question at hand, to choose a song to suit my mood, my voice, their mood, the energy, the night, the messages the scene deems appropriate to send, secure the car, brush down the wrinkles acquired on the drive, kick some gravel, share a laugh as we made our way to the door.
Hermana, baila con ami, because now we all live underground, time emptied by our presence, shielded from the descending Texas sun, our darkened windows reached, corners, I hear your name and I'm falling over.
Another ounce, another dollar, crisply rolled to render a crushed bud into a slender tube of psychoactives, burned in a slowly ascending glow, orange lighting the darkness, as each inhale strikes my fire higher, investing our lungs with neural-actives.
The selection problem plagued my thoughts as they rose formless into the night skies, between the spread of creamy thighs. Lists traversed familiar, cold, rarely does the hoped for rise to meet my performance, the effect is never quite what it seemed it could. Sometimes the situation changed out from under me or my experience proved to be sadly under rehearsed. It feels so good in my hood tonight, to put another song under my belt and at once begin the road to the next, searching the stars for a new song.
The connections we make between disconnected things are who we are.
Standing quietly, the east end of a wide parking lot spread before us, one wing of a wearied strip mall, one of four collections of retail, the north-east corner of a wide north Texas intersection. A few neon lights and an awning, shrouding slightly the windows, eyes into the moving world, masking the cacophony within. Colors floating through golden darkness hiding reality in disconnected flashes.
Patches of the parking lot, so much larger than the bar alone required, had busted into a thin layer of gravel, popping under tires like tiny gunshots. “Ready?” I asked as Silver adjusted and collected. A pair of cowpokes discussed a situation loudly near the entrance as a lady friend stood by bored. The glass doors revealed nothing of what went on inside, partly covered by a wild assortment of stickers. I grabbed a chrome handle and pulled.