I sipped my horchata and told him the story of how I met Marlene at our college open mike about four years ago. Her voice and stage presence mesmerized me, but she only sang covers. All she needed was some decent, original songs, and all I needed was a powerful voice for my songs. We clicked right off and became best friends and songwriting partners. She showed me I have it in me to write pop songs, not just the brooding songs I used to write.
I pulled up some of my demos. Some of them were the original versions; others were the versions after Robin added his guitar part.
“Killer guitars. That you?” I wish.
“It’s Marlene’s boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Not sure. Some guy Marlene knows played the guitars.”
“Been there. I got back with my wife after a six-month separation. Still not sure I’m making the right decision.” Silas talked jovially, yet I was still afraid to say the wrong thing.
“Marlene brought Robin the guitarist into our sphere. We’re making demos for her to send to potential managers or where ever it is you send them to make someone famous.” I feigned competence with a horchata in one hand and a tortilla chip in the other.
“You’ll need better demos than that to wow a manager. And for Marlene’s career to jump off, she needs to create a mini-scene here in Chicago. Don’t wait to get a manager to record an album. You record an album and sell it, and that’ll get a manager’s attention.”
“Why would she need a manager then?”
“Bingo. You don’t. But they can help you with the bigger stuff. The bigger-than-Chicago-stuff.”
“You know the business?”
“My band was the shit in Milwaukee,” he said. Our waitress walked over with our burritos and set them down in front of us. He almost picked the burrito up with his hands, but then cut into it. “We played all the clubs in Wisconsin and toured the Midwest. I led vocals and played guitar. Didn’t have her vocal chops or his guitar chops, but our songs were solid. I gather you’re a better songwriter than me too.”
“No, can’t be. I’ve sent my songs to so many contests and managers and have had no success. It’s my dream to have one of my songs hit number one in America.”
Silas glanced up from his burrito. “This song is better than anything I’ve ever written,” he said. “I didn’t write those kinds of songs for my band. We were alternative-metal. In pop nowadays, a producer creates the backing track first, and then they find a songwriter to write over them. That’s why when you see the who the song is by, it lists the producer and the singer. Think of songs by Timbaland and David Guetta.” Silas’s expression changed. “I produce music, but have no one to produce. You have songs, but don’t have a producer. Maybe I could produce your music.” He stopped eating and raised his eyebrows. Silas bounced in his chair. “Get us all together, dude. Let’s do dinner. To be honest, since my wife moved back in with me, I have had nothing to excite me creatively. It’s not like the help desk stimulates me much, either.” He laughed and rolled his eyes.
“Try the Springfield project,” I said, shaking my head in disgust.
“You’ve been on that forever now, haven’t you?” Silas asked. He scooped guacamole with a chip. “When I had my band, I had a purpose. It helped me get through school. All that studying seemed pointless. Now I know for sure it was pointless. I mean, other than helping me get my pointless job.” He frowned at his burrito. “Back then, I looked forward to every weekend, even when we didn’t have a show. There were the hours and hours of planning. We put pins on a map of where we would play next. I searched newsweeklies and websites to get interviews or find reviews of our music. When we got one of our songs on iTunes Radio, I checked its ranking three times a day. My wife said I was obsessed.” He took the headphones out of my phone and slid them into his. He dialed for a second and pressed play. A wall of guitars blasted me, each with its own distortion and effect. He had samples of many types of music from other musicians he’d recorded, even pop.
“This is exactly what Marlene needs.”
“Those songs are already spoken for,” Silas said. “But we can duplicate the style and sound.”
“Good, because I’d get jealous if Marlene recorded a song by another songwriter.”
“Even more so if that song became a hit.”
“Oh, I’d kill her!”
Silas nibbled a little more on his food. “When you were in grade school, they asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, right? Ballerina, astronaut, firefighter, whatever. Glam rock star wasn’t on that list, was it?”
“No, neither was songwriter.”
“It’s less a matter of what you want to do than what you can do,” Silas said. “Some avenues weren’t open to me. I lacked things like talent, money, or connections. So, instead, I vowed to spend the rest of my life doing my second-choice career while feeling bitter about it. Bring on the 401K.”
“True.” I laughed. “But you make it sound so dismal.”
“Dismal is exactly the word. You’ve walked through those halls at work. You can’t tell me you haven’t lost a tiny bit of your humanity.” There’s always some truth in sarcasm. “Here we are, two techies talking about our dreams of making it in the creative world. We could be poets, painters, actors, anything. It doesn’t matter because in the real world we slave away in cubicle prison. Am I not supposed to feel destitute?”
Although I agreed with everything he said, I wasn’t as serious about it as he was. “At least we get free pens,” I joked. It was lame, but I needed to release tension, even if it was half-baked.
Silas seemed to come back to planet Earth. “Yeah, free pens. And you’ll use one of those pens to write a hit song.”
An awkward silence fell between us. The bright walls and the Tejano music surrounded us, and the Virgin Mary continued to stare down at me.
Next was to put the puzzle pieces together by introducing everybody. I arranged a dinner for the next night at Pancake Heaven.
* * *
Silas drove me to the North Side after work the next day. We walked into Pancake Heaven and waited at the counter. The gaudiness of the place struck me every time. Why would they have an old-time crystal chandelier hanging in one spot and then a disco ball hanging three feet away? Because it was Pancake Heaven. That’s why.
As soon as we walked in the front door, Char came up behind me and patted me on the back. Marlene wasn’t there yet.
“Girl, where’s your girl?” she asked. “Is this your new boy?” My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, worse than that time in the seventh grade, when the first-chair flautist asked me to the dance and I didn’t know how to say no, so I said I wasn’t allowed to go to dances because my family belonged to a cult that didn’t allow dancing or kissing girls.
Silas had a big grin on his face. He threw an arm around me. “Yup. This is my man.”
“This is a friend of mine from work,” I said, taking his arm off me. “And he’s straight.” Better to out him now before the Pancake Heaven crowd get too excited about the new guy.
“Oh, hello baby,” Char said. She set her tray down and sidled toward Silas. She moved her hands up his back and over his shoulder. Silas loved it.
“He’s married,” I said.
Char’s hands flew off him. “Shit, fellow. Why you gotta get me all wound up over this hunk-o-man here when he’s happily married?” She pivoted to him. “Is it a happy marriage?”
“I don’t mind,” Silas said.
“Does your wife?” Char probed with eyebrows so high it looked like she had a botched Botox injection. Silas lifted his palms up. “Want your usual booth?” She asked. “Where’s your girl?”
“Yup, usual booth. She’ll be here soon,” I said. Char led us to the back corner, and we followed. “She’ll be coming with a straight guy too, but don’t put your hands all over him either. She’ll get mad.”
“Thanks for the heads up,” said Char. She winked her glittery eyelashes and poured coffee without asking. She knew her customers.
; The front door opened a moment later, but nobody entered. All I could see was an arm and a hand propping it open. There was a pause, and the restaurant grew silent. I wasn’t sure if I heard a gasp or imagined it. Marlene strutted in wearing a red lace bustier, a short black leather skirt with a wide white belt sporting the most substantial belt buckle this side of the Mississippi. Her hair was up in a French twist held together with a single mother-of-pearl hair stick. Robin tried to walk through the door behind her, but she shooed him back. She needed to stand in the doorway a moment while the patrons inhaled her presence. Five seconds was all she needed before she stepped into the entryway, allowing everyone to resume their lives. Robin capitulated and trailed three steps behind her. He seemed familiar with the drill.
“Girl,” shrieked Char, scampering toward her.
“Girl,” Marlene cheered back. They kissed each other’s cheek five times.
“Your boy’s in your booth.”
Silas watched the sideshow and let out a belly laugh. He stood up to shake Marlene’s hand as she made her inauguration at the booth. I was a little unnerved by the glare exchanged between Marlene and Silas. It was too intense for a married man to be giving another woman. But then again, Marlene flashed her dominatrix-on-the-hunt look to everybody, even lesbians on the Clark Street bus.
We all sat down. “Duncan played me examples of your work. Can you make me sound like that?”
He sat perched at the edge of his seat. “With your voice? Better. The production’s easy.” He locked eyes with her, lips parted. “Finding someone with real talent is the hard part.”
Robin grabbed Marlene’s hand with a gentle squeeze, chin jutting up ever so slightly. Were they together again?
“Did you need extra time, honey?” Char said, looking at Marlene. She held her pad with her pen cocked, ready to write.
Marlene glued her eyes to the seasonal table tent menu. “Pumpkin pancakes for the three of us,” she said. She paused and turned her head to Silas, offering him the luxury of choosing his pancake flavor.
“I’ll have the chicken and waffles and–”
“Oh no, no, no, honey,” Marlene said. “You have to have the pancakes. If you’re going to roll with us, that’s how it’s gonna be.”
“It’s part of the deal,” I said, nodding. “We don’t joke about pancakes.”
“You people are weird, but you’ve got talent, so I’ll take it. Pumpkin pancakes it is.”
“Star!” I said.
Char finished writing and walked away. Silas flashed an inquisitive stare. He seemed to want to ask me something but stopped. He’d understand our lingo soon enough.
“Why won’t anybody respond to my demos and discover me?” Marlene asked.
“You have to discover yourself first,” Silas said. “There are hundreds of beautiful, talented girls knocking down the door of every manager. You need something to set yourself apart by showing them you can sell ten thousand albums without label backing, so they’ll be invest in you to sell a million.”
Robin’s eyes lit as wide as silver-dollar pancakes. “Even the most successful of my bands have only sold a thousand.”
Silas sat back and stared into her eyes. “Pop music is a different beast. I propose we go straight to the fans, locally and online. We’ll create an assembly line—like in a factory. Duncan will write the songs and I’ll create a backing track of the drums before sending it to Robin for the guitar parts. Then Marlene will add keys and together we’ll finish with the vocals. By then, the next song will come from Duncan, and we’ll repeat the process like an assembly line.” Silas stopped and let us ingest his ideas. “If the song requires it, we’ll hire live musicians for drums and bass.”
“What about live shows?” I asked. “So far it’s been me strumming a guitar behind Marlene, but now we have Robin to do that.” My air-strumming amused nobody.
“Pre-recorded on my laptop. Press play and bada bing, bada boom.” Silas air-drummed. He looked at me. “You could even run the backing virtual instruments yourself.”
I pretended to move dials up and down an air-mixer, with air-keyboards to my side. “I’m gonna be Moby.”
Marlene flipped her hair. “Be whatever you want to because the crowd will look at me.”
“Don’t play keys live,” Robin said to Marlene. “Hypnotize the audience with your body. As if she didn’t already plan on shaking her booty on stage. He looked her up and down.
“What about the songs I don’t want?” Marlene asked. “What about when Duncan forgets he’s not Bob Dylan and writes a novel of lyrics instead of something people can sing?”
I scrunched my face. “I’m an ar-teeest.”
“If it doesn’t fit Marlene’s image, send it to song pluggers and get another artist to record it. But let’s keep the factory moving along. We’ll split the money four ways.” As the producer, he would put in the most hours. “I need this for reasons other than money.”
“Write something up. I need a team behind me,” Marlene said. “We’ve been around the block many times in this scene and have gotten nowhere. We need to try something new.”
Silas grunted. “I’ll let my wife know we’ll be recording in my basement studio. She won’t have a choice. I’m sick of Rachel telling me what to do. This is the least she can give me, something of my own, something she can’t take away from me.” Marlene and Robin toyed with coffee creamers to distract themselves from Silas’s rant.
“Do you have a big studio?” Marlene asked, changing the subject.
“Pro Tools setup, keyboards, vocal booth. I have an acoustic drum set that has yet to be broken in, and guitar amp-simulating software, so you don’t have to drag them across town.”
“Fuck yeah!” Robin said, slouching in the booth. “Those bitches are heavy.”
Char brought four plates of pumpkin pancakes to the table. They were fluffy and covered with a white cream glaze. Perfect choice.
“Let’s pick five of my most crowd-pleasing songs and then add ‘Touch My Soul.’ I like the way it’s going,” Marlene said. She droned on about how her career would pan out. She didn’t know what she was talking about, but still, this was exciting.
“In the songwriting circle, I learned about the Windy City Songwriting Contest,” I said. “I have three songs I might submit.”
Marlene fiddled with her hair stick. “What the fuck’s a songwriting contest going to do for me?” Notoriety, I guess. Maybe managers drop everything for songs that win contests.
“Great, then write,” said Silas. “The Factory won’t work without the first step. The song.” The Factory. Sounds like a good name for a band.
Part Three
Gingerbread Pancakes
Chapter Seven
SLUTS VS. WHORES
I didn’t feel like going out, but Countess Marlene was playing keys at the Lakeview Theater for a campy musical comedy called Sluts vs. Whores, the Final Countdown - a typical musical name for this theater. I agreed to check it out the night of the final performance. When it finished, I stood around backstage waiting while Marlene talked to a few cast members. She turned and put her arm around my shoulder.
“A bunch of us are going out to Aldine’s. Want to come?” she asked. Usually, Marlene would put on some outrageous outfit to go to the gay clubs, but she was wearing all black as required for pit orchestra. Her solution was to spread glitter all over herself when the show was over–Lady Gaga on a piano teacher’s budget.
She and I walked out with the cast members down North Halsted. Aldine’s was packed for a Thursday night, and we headed for the side room, which was always less crowded. Marlene introduced me to several guys at once, and I forgot all their names except one. Christopher eye-fucked me when Marlene introduced me. He had a severe case of the Trendy-Filipino-Hair Syndrome, slick and shiny, and pointing in every direction. It took all the restraint I had to keep from playing with it.
“Why haven’t I seen you around here before?” he asked, moving in closer. Jesse and
I rarely went out to the clubs, so I was out of my comfort zone. He looked me up and down. “I need to take you shopping.” Was he saying he wanted to see me again, or just criticizing my fashion sense.
“I’ve always wanted my own personal shopper.” I looked into my drink because I was uncomfortable looking in his eyes.
He reached up and ran his hands through my hair. “We’ll doll you all up, and you’ll look even hotter than you do now.”
“Thanks. I think.” I never took compliments well, so I changed the subject. “How do you know Marlene?” I asked.
“Just met her tonight,” he said. He pointed to some guys. “My friend brought me.” A Katy Perry song came on, and I mouthed the words was every good gay should. He bobbed his head with the song and waved a few friends over. “My best friend Luis and his friend, Jason.” They giggled with a hint of cattiness before walking away.
“Come here often?” I asked, always saying something stupid or cliché.
“We hang here sometimes,” Christopher said. “We hang everywhere.” He waved his hand in the air. “What about you? What’s your story?”
Marlene shot me a wide-eyed glance. She was signaling for me to do something, but I couldn’t tell what. I scanned the room and then noticed Christopher was eyeing me. The thumping bass overwhelmed us. His friends stood in the corner, turning around often to giggle and then lean in and talk with each other, like schoolgirls. I was the new girl in school who showed up in a ratty dress and was now the new object of cool kid ridicule.
I leaned into Christopher so he could hear me. “What do you do?”
“Like, for a job?” He laughed. “I run a small store in Andersonville that sells fine imported goods from Asia. You should come to my store?” He put both his hands on my chest and then placed his finger on the tip of my nose. “No excuses.” I liked that he was brash and unbothered. He was a gay male Marlene. It gave me enough confidence to put my arms around him and pull him in close. “You have had nothing to drink yet,” he said. “We need to loosen you up.”
Blueberry Pancakes: A Novel Page 5