Everything Gets Broken

Originally Posted Sunday, October 6, 2013

But that is not what happened at all.  The night took a turn, a friend came over, we drank scotch, and then we went out.  For a bit.  Only a moment.  But it was enough. 

I rarely go to see live music any more.  My throat and ears won't take it after playing in clubs for so long.  Within minutes of trying to talk over the music, my throat won't make normal sounds.  The vocal cords, strained, just give up and seem to flap in the breeze coming from my diaphragm.  And when I get home, my ears ring mercilessly.  I had taken to wearing ear plugs near the end of our club-playing days.  And I am glad that I did, for while I suffer from tinnitus, some of the other fellows I played with have lost a significant amount of hearing.  So anything loud is really not so good for me. 

But the place we went is a restaurant and the band that was playing was one we used to headline with so long ago.  They have been playing some "reunion" gigs, and now it seems they have a sort of following again as they play more often and more regularly.  So after a few scotches, my buddy and I decided to go for one drink and see the crowd that had come to listen to "Some Shades of Weird." 

Ouch!  Just walking into the place was painful.  It was a chain restaurant, I think, something called SoNapa.  The band was playing and the crowd was what you might expect. . . old people come to relive their youth, only this time with glasses of wine instead of beer and pot and cocaine and LSD.  The band. . . holy shit. . . I hadn't seen them in years.  I thought it was a different group using the name.  I recognized only one of them at first.  I thought perhaps he had put together some other musicians, but slowly as in trying to Find the Face in the Forest, their identities began to emerge. 

"Oh yea, that's him.  Jesus Christ, is that. . . it is!" 

They looked like sacks full of potatoes.  I turned to my buddy and said, "They should change their name to 'The Chins.'"  I tried counting how many their were, but it was impossible.  The wattles just kept changing shapes. 

But I had to admit, as musicians, they had not diminished.  Indeed, I thought, they were better than they had been.  The music was alright. 

A couple got up and began to move arthritically around the dance floor. 

"What are they doing?" I asked my buddy.  "What is that?"  It seemed painful.

I turned around to look at the crowd.  A woman at the bar was smiling at me.  I was certain I didn't know who she was, but she kept look and smiling and then began to wave.  "This is worse than a high school reunion," I thought.  She had gotten up and was moving through the crowd toward me smiling at me all the way.  I was a slightly terrified. 

"Hey," she said and grabbed me into a hug.

"Hey. . . you." 

"Do you remember me?" 

My mind was racing.  Yes, yes, I knew who she was.  What was her name?  It wouldn't come back to me.  I am bad with faces, worse with names. 

"Sure." 

"What's my name?"

"You're the girl that lived on the railroad tracks," I said.  I knew it wasn't any good, but it was something. 

"That's how you remember me. . . ?  Didi."

"Of course, of course," I said.  She came to hear our band play often.  She was a skinny, not unattractive girl who was always very friendly.  But other than that, I didn't really know her. 

We chatted for awhile.  She wanted to know where the other fellows in the band had gone and what they were doing, so I gave her the rundown, my voice already breaking up so to be almost useless.  It seemed that she was looking at me with greedy eyes, but she was with a fellow she had left at the bar, so I felt pretty safe. 

"Well. . . it was awfully good to see you again," I said trying to put a punctuation mark on the conversation.  When she was gone, I turned to my buddy and said, "You finished your drink yet?" 

"Sure.  You ready to go?" 

"That was great," I said.  "We did it.  We had our drink and saw the horror show.  Perfect." 

Back at the house, we had one more and joked about the evening.  It wasn't even eleven yet.  I could watch my recorded first episode of "Masters and Johnson" and be in bed at a decent hour. 

Before bed, before I brushed my teeth, I picked up a hand mirror and looked at myself in profile.  O.K., I thought.  It's O.K.  Nothing too bad there.  But that would not be of much help, I knew, around three o'clock when the horror show began.  There were plenty of other things to worry about. 

Broken head and broken dreams.  Broken bodies, there ain't no joking.

Everything gets broken. 

(link)

(link)