Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Volume One

by Cecilia Tan

  The driver took me straight up the hill, through the heart of RIMCon, and then down the other side toward the student ghetto where Roger and I lived. On Thayer Street people were out walking their dogs, jogging, buying frozen lemonade from vendors in yellow trucks, overdressed musicians were putting posters onto telephone poles and skate punks were hopping the curb.

  "Let me out here."

  The cabbie didn’t even look at me funny in the mirror, just swerved toward a fire hydrant and jerked to a stop. "Five fifty."

  I paid him in cash and then dragged my crap half a block down. I opened the Ovation’s case and set myself up in front of the entrance to the ATM machines, across from the Copa and the ice cream parlor. The clock on the bank said it was two o’clock, and if I had any plan in mind it was to just play for an hour, then get some frozen lemonade for myself and go on home. After all, there were no street musicians in Providence. But I didn’t go home at three, or at four. I stood in the cool concrete shadow of the building and played until the dinner crowd was milling around and the lemonade vendors had long since left. I played songs people knew and I played things I made up on the very spot. The bright jangle of the Ovation bounced off the sidewalk like bells ringing and I could almost hear a kind of joyous music, like something coming from a church just over the hill, that I could snatch the bare gist of and run with. A song full of heart and meaning, but I couldn’t catch the words. And I made twenty one and change, to boot.

  Part Two

  December 1986

  Life In A Northern Town

  Roger hung his head, bumping it against the mic stand and muttering to himself, his short hair shining golden under the track lights of the studio. He couldn’t hear me swearing on the other side of the soundproof glass. I punched a button on the console and backed up the tape for what seemed like the millionth time. I spoke then so he could hear me in his headphones. "Rog, do you want to take a break?"

  He didn’t move and I thought maybe the signal hadn’t gone through, but then he ripped the headphones off his ears and stood clutching them. Then he said something I couldn’t hear—I had turned the microphone off when he’d started banging on it. I potted the monitors back up.

  "...hopeless." I think he was saying something about the song. "This just isn’t going to work."

  I was having the same thoughts, not about the song, but about Roger. "Dammit, Rog—"

  The door to the control room swung open and Bart came in, carrying a grocery sack. "What’s up? Did I miss anything?"

  "No." I flicked a glance at the forlorn figure standing behind the glass. I spoke into my mic again. "Rog, let’s take a break." The digital clock read 3:00 A.M.

  Rog pushed through the heavy silent door that separated the recording chamber from the control room. "Hi," he said to Bart.

  "Hey, Roger Dodger, have something to drink." Bart slid down the wall next to the groceries and tossed him a can of Yoo Hoo.

  Roger tossed it back, speaking slowly as if we might not understand him. "This has milk and chocolate in it."

  Bart looked up from under unruly bangs. "I know. That’s why I buy it."

  "It’ll ruin my voice." Roger sat down in the rolling chair next to me, his face glum. "No thanks."

  Another look flickered between me and Bart, one of many that seemed to be coming with greater and greater frequency these days. I suppressed a sigh. "Why don’t we call it quits for tonight."

  "Fine with me." Roger didn’t meet my eyes. "See you at home." And he left.

  Bart sighed with relief. "Gods, Daron, what are we gonna do with him?"

  I chewed on one loose fingernail. "You think he’s hopeless."

  "Yeah, I do." He climbed up into the empty chair, cracking open a can of Yoo Hoo for himself. "I don’t think we’re going to be able to get his head out of his ass with a crowbar. He’s so stuck on his precious voice that he doesn’t even want to use it to sing, forgodsake. If you think we’re having problems in here, just wait until he’s out in a smoke-filled room with a bad sound system."

  "You’re right." But I held back my comments.

  Bart didn’t. "And let me guess what was just going on in here, he was having trouble ’interpreting’ your lyrics, right? Couldn’t ’get the feel’ for them. Fuckin’ artsy artist-y art art art-out-the-ass." It was rare to see Bart so pissed he got vulgar. "It’s such bullshit. I mean, he never had this kind of constipation back when he was writing all the words himself."

  When I’d first met Roger, I’d liked his pretension, that black-beret aura he cultivated, so different from the workaday guys I knew outside school and so seemingly rebellious compared to the other conservatory students. I thought he was serious about his own music. As I was learning, it meant that he was serious about himself and little else. Bart was still talking.

  About me. "If you don’t make some more money soon, you’re going to be in deep shit. Aren’t you."

  The semester ended in two weeks and the bill for the next one was about to hit. I wasn’t doing too bad, though; I had enough saved up to go part time, then maybe I could catch up in the summer. "Roger isn’t about to become a cash cow, head in ass or no," I said. "You and me can make more playing acoustic at the coffeehouse than the three of us could doing club gigs. So don’t even start talking about him being a, a... financial liability."

  "I still say we might be doing bigger, better gigs with someone else. We’re going nowhere, bwana."

  "I can’t fire him."

  "Why not?"

  "I can’t." I thought about why. First off, he was my roommate and my life would get real difficult if he didn’t want me around anymore. Secondly, we’d have to start from scratch with someone new. Third, I couldn’t figure out how to tell him. "I just can’t."

  Bart exhaled in disgust. "Daron, just what kind of control freak are you?"

  "Not a very good one, I guess."

  "I’m serious, you insist on having control over these things, and then you don’t exercise it." He swiveled the chair to face me. "To hell with the contracts. If you want, I’ll do the firing."

  "No." I was beginning to hate those contracts. I’d been going on Remo’s model, no manager, one member of the band holding managerial control, that is to say, me. "How about we dissolve the band?"

  "Why?"

  I stood up. "I’m going to say to Roger, ’Rog, we’ve decided to break up the band. It’s been great but...’" Bart was staring at me. "See, then you and I can start a new band, and I think Roger’s ego will be less bruised."

  "Why are you so worried about how Roger feels about this? It’s his fault." Well, at least Bart’s taking this stuff seriously now, I thought. He no longer thought of the band as a hobby. Usually, that thought made me happy.

  I dimmed the lights in the studio until it was completely dark on the other side of the glass. Now I was looking at my own reflection. I was keeping my hair at shoulder length until it all grew out. Roger had been trimming it for me.

  "It’s what I’ve decided," I said. "And we’re starting a new band. And we’re going to call it..." I flailed for something that was at the tip of my tongue. "...Moondog Three."

  Bart digested that. "Sounds as good as anything."

  "Yeah, did I tell you I changed my name?"

  "No."

  "Or, I’m about to." I went through the control room shutting things off, rewinding our tape and stowing it in my bag.

  "That’s ambitious." Bart picked up the groceries. "To what?"

  "I’m keeping my first name but chucking Marks. Moondog works as well as anything." I shut off the lights as we backed out the door into the lobby. I clicked off the lights on the Christmas tree in the waiting room and on the obligatory fish tank. Candy had set that up after the owner had changed the name of the studio to The Aquarium. The name fit, what with all the big glass windows separating rooms. I locked the outside door behind us and armed the burglar alarm. Using the studio in the middle of the night when it wasn’t booked was worth more than what they pa
id me.

  "So, when are you going to tell him?"

  "Tonight if he isn’t asleep. Tomorrow, otherwise. You want to meet back here tomorrow, anyway?"

  "Sure." He hefted the electric bass in its case. "We’ll both be there. You want a ride home?"

  "Sure." That was another good thing about Bart. He had a car.

  Don’t Do Me Like That

  Bart dropped me off in front of a gray three-storey house on the East side. Once upon a time it had been one huge house, but now it was divvied up into apartments, two on the first floor, one on each of the top two. Roger and I had been roommates for eighteen months, now, ever since I’d moved off campus to spare the dorm expense. The bedroom was his, I slept in the living room and paid only half rent. We’d been in this place three months now and I liked it. It was larger than our old place in Fox Point and closer to the campus. In the old apartment there hadn’t even been a door between the bedroom and the living room, but I’d moved in with him anyway, the rent was so cheap. When it came time to quit the old place, I sometimes felt Roger had brought me along with his furniture. Roger liked to pretend that he didn’t need anything but his music, only sometimes requiring food, sleep, and sex. With me in the house, Roger had discovered that to have all his needs met, all he had to do was go out for food.

  I put my guitar down at the foot of the mattress I slept on and shrugged off my coat. It was too cold out for just the thin overcoat, time to start wearing a heavy sweatshirt, too. I could hear him moving around in the bedroom. I threw the coat over a chair and poked my head through the open door.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed, a magazine open in his hands, but as I watched him I realized he wasn’t reading the magazine. He was just sitting there, staring, seething. I opened my mouth to say something trivial and then his eyes locked on me.

  I forced myself ahead. "Hey, Rog, how’s that music history class going?"

  "I’m sick to death of school. I’m sick of it!" Roger picked up the magazine and threw it at me. I ducked back out of the way. If he’d thrown it any other direction it would have hit some expensive equipment. "I hate this place. I’m never going to start my career by wasting my time in a library somewhere. It’s just not fair!"

  Sigh. I’d heard this rant before in several different forms, and didn’t have anything new to add to the debate. I backed out of the room and closed the door. A while later as I lay awake on the mattress I heard the whine of a tape recorder and he started singing. The drum machine began to pulse. Some time around dawn I was just falling asleep when he came into the living room and sat down.

  "What were you going to tell me?" he said, nudging me awake.

  I yawned. "What?"

  "When you came in, you didn’t really want to know about my music history class. You were going to tell me something."

  The band breaking up. "I don’t remember," I mumbled. "Nothing important."

  He nodded and went back into his room. I didn’t hear any more sound so I assumed he went to sleep. I turned over and tried to do the same, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking about what Bart said about wasting time. I thought about how long Remo waited for his chance at success. I thought about finding a new singer. The winter sun was bright in the windows by the time I slept.

  When I woke up, Roger was playing something at full volume with the door open. He only did that when he had finished something he wanted me to hear. It was dancey, with a throbbing techno-beat, his clear tenor distorted on one end into an industrial growl, into a soprano aria on the other. I went and stuck my groggy head into the room.

  "OK, you got my attention," I shouted over the beat.

  He was perched in the middle of the bed, shaking his shoulders. "This is the new me, Daron, Roger Dodger — Disco Diva!" He threw up his hands and froze in a fashion model pose. "What do you think?"

  I rubbed my eyes. "I think it’s loud. Don’t you ever sleep?"

  He killed the sound with the flick of a switch. "You hate it."

  "No, that’s not it." Roger Devon — Sonic Psychodrama, I thought. It was perfectly serviceable disco, though. I wondered if that meant his prog rock phase was over. From Jon Anderson to Jimmy Somerville overnight. "That’s good stuff, Rog."

  "I need to invest in a better sampler," he said, running a finger along the edge of one black component. "Then I’ll be all set. I’ll never even have to leave this room if I don’t want. No outside musicians, no outside interference." He hugged himself. "Life is full of possibilities!"

  "Yeah." I looked at the time, noon. "Is it Wednesday?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  "Just making sure I wasn’t supposed to be somewhere else right now." I turned away from him, thinking about food. I crossed my room to the kitchen.

  "Daron." His voice was soft, beckoning me. I knew what he wanted; he always did after finishing a new song, a new tape.

  "Not now, let me eat something."

  He came up behind me, circling my waist with his hands. He could kiss me on the top of the head if he wanted, he was that much taller. He leaned over to breathe in my ear. "I promise I’ll cook you a fantastic breakfast."

  "No, I have things to do." I tried to take a step forward. He held me fast. As soon as I felt his erection pressing into my spine, I felt my own start to rise.

  "Come on, Daron, it’s been weeks."

  "That never bothered you before," I said. I never should have slept with him that first time, I thought. I had been crashing in his living room for two weeks and we had just written our first song together. We were sitting on the futon and I was playing the guitar, and he was belting out the words like a gospel preacher. His voice was amazing, always would be. I let it happen, let the sex flow out of the music like it was one thing. I told myself that’s what it was, the creative urge blossoming, uncontrollable, spilling into whatever receptacles would accept it, in this case each other. I didn’t think it would happen again, I shrugged it off, forgot about it. But after a few months the pattern became obvious. Roger hit one of these highs every couple of weeks, and sometimes I was there when he did. It didn’t mean anything to either of us.

  "Go on, Rog, lay off. I’m hungry." But the fight had gone out of my voice.

  "So am I." He nibbled my neck and I felt adrenalin rush through my legs and my groin. It had been weeks, and I’d been too wrapped up in extra hours at the studio and the practice hall to do anything about it. Cruising took time, sometimes a lot of it, especially when they wouldn’t let me into the one bar downtown. But I could only have Roger when Roger wanted it. I wasn’t sure if the rest of the time he had no interest at all in sex, or just no interest in me.

  He pressed me down against the mattress, rubbing against my back, pressing my erection down into the firmness of the bed. He pulled off my shorts and licked the base of my spine, pressed his dick against my tail bone. He rocked his hips, rubbing himself on my back, his rhythm rubbing me in turn against the sheets. I lost myself between the roughness of the sheets and the heat and weight of his body. I came, shuddering against the mattress, while he redoubled his efforts until he squirted hot and wet onto my back. I lay there, limp and panting, while he stood up and got into the shower. It was time to wash the sheets again. I went back to sleep next to the wet spot. When I woke up, Roger was nowhere in the house.

  Tell The Moon-Dog

  I made myself some lunch when I woke up again at one, and started looking through the phone book. It took me a few phone calls, but I eventually talked to a lawyer about changing my name. She told me that it was a much simpler legal procedure to give myself an additional name than it was to get the old one taken away. She tried to convince me that for $250 per hour she could handle the more complicated procedure. I decided to add the new name and bury the old one my own way, and to worry about paying someone to finish the job someday when I had money to spend on it. I took the bus down to city hall, and filled out some papers. The clerk gave me shit about not having a driver’s license, and I told him it’d be pretty stupid f
or them to give a license to someone who couldn’t drive. He didn’t find that funny, but I filled out the papers and he didn’t tear them up or have me arrested. At least I accomplished one of the things I had told Bart I’d do. I called him and told him to meet me at the coffee house, and blow off the studio tonight. I left Roger a note telling him we weren’t recording.

  Tell the March Hare

  The Copa was a coffeehouse on the corner of Angell Street two blocks from where Roger and I lived. One of these places with ceiling fans turning all the time, summer or winter, all kinds of coffee and baked goods and even pretty cheap sandwiches, people’s stuff dumped all around the edges of the place, the windowsill full of backpacks and bookbags and the cases of the more cavalier violinists. There were seats for about forty. Me and Bart played an acoustic set there every third Thursday night under the name the Right-Ass Brothers (don’t ask), and on the other nights we often hung around and listened to whoever they had. I arrived early and sat at a table against the wall.

  Bart threw the classified ads down on the table.

  "What’s this for?" I moved my coffee to the side to get a better look at the paper.

  "For us. To start looking for a ’Lead Vocalist’ ad or ’Musicians Wanted.’" He sat down with a muffin on a saucer. "Got a pen?"

  "No."

  "Well, here..." He held out a pen. "Take it."

  "No," I said again, trying to kickstart my sentence. "I mean, no, I’m not looking at any ads."

  "Why not?"

  I slurped the coffee. I’d put so much sugar in most of it was piled in the bottom of the cup, undissolved. "I’m not interested in joining someone else’s band, I want someone to join my band."

  "What’s the difference?"

  "There’s a big difference!" I looked at him. "And those Lead Vocalist types are going to give us the same prima donna shit Roger’s giving us."