I was going to tell you about that New Year's eve party twenty-five years ago. What I have neglected to tell you before now is that back then, I played in a garage band. Yes, we were awful, but we had high hopes of becoming less awful. I played keyboard and was best suited to background singing. Oh, I sang well enough, but I enunciated too clearly for most rock and roll cover songs. So, I harmonized after listening to the scratchy practice tapes they made for me, played the piano parts, harmonica parts, and anything else that my synthesizer could match. It was fun! We practiced in the basement at the lead singer's house on a street that was called Rock Ave., no lie.
Our band had five members. The drummer was my ex-boyfriend, Jim. Remember Jim, the one who used to ask me if I had money whenever the check came at dinner? Yup, after he broke up with me, I decided I could stay with his band even though the man himself had rejected me. The guitarist was this guy who could remember the lyrics for absolutely any song written after 1953. He was an encyclopedia of lyrics. It was so cool to test him! Our bass player was a really tall guy who walked a postal route during the daytime. I used to sit at my keyboard in the back of the room and stare at his calves while we played. He was a sweet, ugly man, but he had great calves. Our last member was a girl who liked to sing lead but couldn't play an instrument. She didn't like me because I sang lead sometimes and when I did, that left her with absolutely nothing else to do. She wouldn't even play a tambourine. She didn't know how to harmonize, no matter how much I coached her. I got the distinct feeling she did that on purpose. What I disliked most about singing backup to her songs is that she expected me to sing the high notes that she couldn't reach. It just seemed pigheaded to insist on singing lead when she couldn't sing the whole song. I kept quiet about most of this, because I had my keyboard and could always find a harmony to sing. Besides, I liked her brother, Bob.
Oh, I knew I would be long in getting to this story.
By late fall, my current boyfriend - remember Asshole? - had given up trying to get me to quit the band. He'd also quit trying to horn in on practices since boyfriends and girlfriends weren't allowed to come to practice. I never did understand that rule. My ex-boyfriend, Jim the drummer, had come to me one afternoon after practice wanting to get back together, even offering to marry me to make me happy. Oh, that ship had sailed. I even burst into tears when he asked me if I loved 'that guy.' I assumed he meant Mike even though I was dating Asshole at the time. That was one of those conversations in which arrows of communication were being shot, but none were landing on their intended targets.
So, I flirted with Bob instead. He was just so good looking, something along the lines of Rob Lowe when he was eighteen. Bob had a good job and drove a brand new red Mustang. He wasn't anyone's boyfriend and lived in the house so he had to be allowed at practice, but I can tell you that he was a distraction. Maybe that was why somebody made that rule. Then again, maybe Jim, my ex, was just not enamored of seeing Asshole enter his territory. No one ever complained about Bob being at practice because he brought beer. He seemed to be the only one among us who ever had money.
My whole situation was complicated by Bob, who kept asking me out. Oh, I have to tell you that I considered it, but Bob was eighteen and I was twenty-six. He'd just graduated from high school of all things. As much as I liked the guy, I just couldn't get my head around kissing someone who was eight years younger than me. But Bob was definitely a sweet distraction.
When we finally got a paid gig after more than a year of practice, I was ecstatic. I was going to be paid to be a musician. We were still awful, but being cheap and having two sets of music ready to go helped a lot. We were going to play at a private club in the Bronx. I had been to the Bronx a few times and, on the afternoon of New Year's eve, I could see that this warehouse, painted black with a sagging plywood stage at the front, completely fit within my stereotype. I was surprised that most of the windows were intact, though they were painted black as well. I wasn't entirely sure that the police weren't going to crash this party.
I had invited Asshole, a group of my friends, some coworkers, and Mike to come hear us. The cool thing was that Mike showed up a little early and helped us set up the 16-track mixer and four-foot speakers that my bandmates had bought to prematurely consume all of the profits from our gig. Everyone liked Mike so much that they called him our roadie and assigned him to the spotlight that we'd rented. He sat in the back with that spot all night and won my heart again.
It was one of the strangest nights of my life. I was nervous because I was going to be singing and playing my synthesizer in front of about two hundred people. I was also nervous because the people who had arranged the party were Jim's cousins, whom he had once said were involved with the Mafia. I wasn't entirely sure it was true because Jim had worked hard to impress me when we first started dating and later, I found out that lots of his stories were just that, stories. Still, there was that lingering doubt. I was nervous because I'd never been in the Bronx at night and that was a downright scary prospect for a girl from a small town in Indiana. And the whipped cream on the cake was that there were five guys there who had either asked me out or rejected me or both. My friends wanted me to point out each one of them before the music started and at the same time, I was trying to get my head around the fact that in ten minutes, I'd be trying to sound just like Pat Benetar on a bad night.
Asshole showed up half-way through the first set and came right up onto the stage and started talking to me while I was trying to sing and play at the same time. It was Pat Benetar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot.' I tried to mime him away, but missed a couple of chords on my keyboard. After that, I just ignored him and focused on the music. This pissed him off, royally. He was trying to complain because the music was too loud. Finally, the song ended and I told him to go sit down, pointing out my friends at the third table on the left side. I told him that he couldn't be up here or talk to me in the middle of a song. I saw him go sit down with them and the band started our next song, 'Only the Lonely.' Asshole had only met my friends once before, but it wasn't like I could send him to talk to Bob or Mike. I was just hoping that his radar was off and he didn't clue into any of these other guys with whom I had a history, or a future.
I talked to my friends in between sets, but they must have been chatting the whole set because they didn't even notice that I'd sung lead for a few songs. I wanted them to tell me that I'd sounded great. Well, okay. Mike and I talked too, once I'd scanned for Asshole and hadn't seen him. Mike said we sounded pretty good, but that the spotlight was set too far back to light up the singer the way he wanted. Then Jim grabbed him to help with something technical that he couldn't figure out. I wondered if Jim had any idea that this guy was the reason I'd burst into tears after I'd said 'no' to his weak marriage proposal.
During the second set, what I remember most was trying to keep some drunk guy from leaning on my keyboard and sloshing his beer onto it. After an Eagles song, 'Take It Easy', I tried to explain to him that it was a $700 piece of electronics that didn't like the liquid he was pouring into it, but that was trying to get an elephant to piss into a tea cup. I spent the rest of that set using my body to block his elbow and eventually, I knocked the beer out of his hand entirely, trying to make it look like an accident.
"Oh, sorry man," I said into my microphone, trying to look innocent. Someone in the audience laughed. There was one guy still listening. I wondered if it was Mike.
I kept scanning the crowd for Asshole, but I hadn't seen him since the end of the first set. My nervousness had vanished. I hadn't impressed my friends and now I was simply playing to an inebriated crowd. The universe hadn't imploded with all these significant men standing in one room, so I managed to get through the second set without faltering. At the end of the last song, I don't remember feeling like it was a stunning success, but we hadn't been kicked out or booed. I thought it would have felt better than it did.
Afterward, my friends told me that 'my boyfriend' had left in a huff after the first set. I knew I might not see him for three or four days or ever understand what had set him off. He had promised that he'd follow me home to make sure I got out of the Bronx safely. Asshole.
While everybody else started to gather up their gear, a coworker I'd dated oh so briefly wanted to show me something he could play on my keyboard. Suddenly, I was a little more interesting than I had been before. I watched him play, knowing that he had no idea he was a factor in the perfect storm of my life. I looked around. Bob was out of sight. Asshole had gone. I realized that Jim had assigned Mike the job of moving the big speakers while he sat in the double-parked truck we had rented. Mike ended up coiling cables, helping me to pack away my keyboard and microphone, hauled the spotlight, and disassembled the drums.
Jim walked by as I was snapping the last latch on my keyboard case and said, "Hey, your friend Mike is a pretty good guy."
Don't I know it. It seemed like Mike was waiting around and just trying to look useful. After everything was packed up and Jim and the rest of the band had driven off with the rented truck, Mike and I were standing there in the pre-dawn light. And I had worried that I'd be trying to drive out of the Bronx in the dark. Even so, it felt good when he offered to follow me home. In the end, we decided to head off to a diner that served the best Greek omelets in New Jersey.
I wasn't sure what would happen after that, but something had shifted even though I was still dating someone else. I knew then that I had a true friend, someone I could talk to, someone who said my awful band sounded pretty good, someone who would follow me home to make sure I was safe.
Thank you for listening, jb
Our band had five members. The drummer was my ex-boyfriend, Jim. Remember Jim, the one who used to ask me if I had money whenever the check came at dinner? Yup, after he broke up with me, I decided I could stay with his band even though the man himself had rejected me. The guitarist was this guy who could remember the lyrics for absolutely any song written after 1953. He was an encyclopedia of lyrics. It was so cool to test him! Our bass player was a really tall guy who walked a postal route during the daytime. I used to sit at my keyboard in the back of the room and stare at his calves while we played. He was a sweet, ugly man, but he had great calves. Our last member was a girl who liked to sing lead but couldn't play an instrument. She didn't like me because I sang lead sometimes and when I did, that left her with absolutely nothing else to do. She wouldn't even play a tambourine. She didn't know how to harmonize, no matter how much I coached her. I got the distinct feeling she did that on purpose. What I disliked most about singing backup to her songs is that she expected me to sing the high notes that she couldn't reach. It just seemed pigheaded to insist on singing lead when she couldn't sing the whole song. I kept quiet about most of this, because I had my keyboard and could always find a harmony to sing. Besides, I liked her brother, Bob.
Oh, I knew I would be long in getting to this story.
By late fall, my current boyfriend - remember Asshole? - had given up trying to get me to quit the band. He'd also quit trying to horn in on practices since boyfriends and girlfriends weren't allowed to come to practice. I never did understand that rule. My ex-boyfriend, Jim the drummer, had come to me one afternoon after practice wanting to get back together, even offering to marry me to make me happy. Oh, that ship had sailed. I even burst into tears when he asked me if I loved 'that guy.' I assumed he meant Mike even though I was dating Asshole at the time. That was one of those conversations in which arrows of communication were being shot, but none were landing on their intended targets.
So, I flirted with Bob instead. He was just so good looking, something along the lines of Rob Lowe when he was eighteen. Bob had a good job and drove a brand new red Mustang. He wasn't anyone's boyfriend and lived in the house so he had to be allowed at practice, but I can tell you that he was a distraction. Maybe that was why somebody made that rule. Then again, maybe Jim, my ex, was just not enamored of seeing Asshole enter his territory. No one ever complained about Bob being at practice because he brought beer. He seemed to be the only one among us who ever had money.
My whole situation was complicated by Bob, who kept asking me out. Oh, I have to tell you that I considered it, but Bob was eighteen and I was twenty-six. He'd just graduated from high school of all things. As much as I liked the guy, I just couldn't get my head around kissing someone who was eight years younger than me. But Bob was definitely a sweet distraction.
When we finally got a paid gig after more than a year of practice, I was ecstatic. I was going to be paid to be a musician. We were still awful, but being cheap and having two sets of music ready to go helped a lot. We were going to play at a private club in the Bronx. I had been to the Bronx a few times and, on the afternoon of New Year's eve, I could see that this warehouse, painted black with a sagging plywood stage at the front, completely fit within my stereotype. I was surprised that most of the windows were intact, though they were painted black as well. I wasn't entirely sure that the police weren't going to crash this party.
I had invited Asshole, a group of my friends, some coworkers, and Mike to come hear us. The cool thing was that Mike showed up a little early and helped us set up the 16-track mixer and four-foot speakers that my bandmates had bought to prematurely consume all of the profits from our gig. Everyone liked Mike so much that they called him our roadie and assigned him to the spotlight that we'd rented. He sat in the back with that spot all night and won my heart again.
It was one of the strangest nights of my life. I was nervous because I was going to be singing and playing my synthesizer in front of about two hundred people. I was also nervous because the people who had arranged the party were Jim's cousins, whom he had once said were involved with the Mafia. I wasn't entirely sure it was true because Jim had worked hard to impress me when we first started dating and later, I found out that lots of his stories were just that, stories. Still, there was that lingering doubt. I was nervous because I'd never been in the Bronx at night and that was a downright scary prospect for a girl from a small town in Indiana. And the whipped cream on the cake was that there were five guys there who had either asked me out or rejected me or both. My friends wanted me to point out each one of them before the music started and at the same time, I was trying to get my head around the fact that in ten minutes, I'd be trying to sound just like Pat Benetar on a bad night.
Asshole showed up half-way through the first set and came right up onto the stage and started talking to me while I was trying to sing and play at the same time. It was Pat Benetar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot.' I tried to mime him away, but missed a couple of chords on my keyboard. After that, I just ignored him and focused on the music. This pissed him off, royally. He was trying to complain because the music was too loud. Finally, the song ended and I told him to go sit down, pointing out my friends at the third table on the left side. I told him that he couldn't be up here or talk to me in the middle of a song. I saw him go sit down with them and the band started our next song, 'Only the Lonely.' Asshole had only met my friends once before, but it wasn't like I could send him to talk to Bob or Mike. I was just hoping that his radar was off and he didn't clue into any of these other guys with whom I had a history, or a future.
I talked to my friends in between sets, but they must have been chatting the whole set because they didn't even notice that I'd sung lead for a few songs. I wanted them to tell me that I'd sounded great. Well, okay. Mike and I talked too, once I'd scanned for Asshole and hadn't seen him. Mike said we sounded pretty good, but that the spotlight was set too far back to light up the singer the way he wanted. Then Jim grabbed him to help with something technical that he couldn't figure out. I wondered if Jim had any idea that this guy was the reason I'd burst into tears after I'd said 'no' to his weak marriage proposal.
During the second set, what I remember most was trying to keep some drunk guy from leaning on my keyboard and sloshing his beer onto it. After an Eagles song, 'Take It Easy', I tried to explain to him that it was a $700 piece of electronics that didn't like the liquid he was pouring into it, but that was trying to get an elephant to piss into a tea cup. I spent the rest of that set using my body to block his elbow and eventually, I knocked the beer out of his hand entirely, trying to make it look like an accident.
"Oh, sorry man," I said into my microphone, trying to look innocent. Someone in the audience laughed. There was one guy still listening. I wondered if it was Mike.
I kept scanning the crowd for Asshole, but I hadn't seen him since the end of the first set. My nervousness had vanished. I hadn't impressed my friends and now I was simply playing to an inebriated crowd. The universe hadn't imploded with all these significant men standing in one room, so I managed to get through the second set without faltering. At the end of the last song, I don't remember feeling like it was a stunning success, but we hadn't been kicked out or booed. I thought it would have felt better than it did.
Afterward, my friends told me that 'my boyfriend' had left in a huff after the first set. I knew I might not see him for three or four days or ever understand what had set him off. He had promised that he'd follow me home to make sure I got out of the Bronx safely. Asshole.
While everybody else started to gather up their gear, a coworker I'd dated oh so briefly wanted to show me something he could play on my keyboard. Suddenly, I was a little more interesting than I had been before. I watched him play, knowing that he had no idea he was a factor in the perfect storm of my life. I looked around. Bob was out of sight. Asshole had gone. I realized that Jim had assigned Mike the job of moving the big speakers while he sat in the double-parked truck we had rented. Mike ended up coiling cables, helping me to pack away my keyboard and microphone, hauled the spotlight, and disassembled the drums.
Jim walked by as I was snapping the last latch on my keyboard case and said, "Hey, your friend Mike is a pretty good guy."
Don't I know it. It seemed like Mike was waiting around and just trying to look useful. After everything was packed up and Jim and the rest of the band had driven off with the rented truck, Mike and I were standing there in the pre-dawn light. And I had worried that I'd be trying to drive out of the Bronx in the dark. Even so, it felt good when he offered to follow me home. In the end, we decided to head off to a diner that served the best Greek omelets in New Jersey.
I wasn't sure what would happen after that, but something had shifted even though I was still dating someone else. I knew then that I had a true friend, someone I could talk to, someone who said my awful band sounded pretty good, someone who would follow me home to make sure I was safe.
Thank you for listening, jb
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