by Cecilia Tan
"Yeah, but we’ve got to do something." His frustration echoed my own. "Maybe we should take out our own ad. It might be better than nothing. And that way you can make it clear it’s your band."
"No." I snorted. "It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t want to meet my next bandmember through the ads anymore than I want to meet my future wife through the personals." That sounded so weird as I said it. "I mean, we’re talking about a deep, meaningful, lifelong relationship, and these ads are like the Dating Service for Unemployed Musicians." I picked up the paper and began reading from the ’Musicians Wanted’ column. "’Working Band seeks male vocalist, have gigs and rehearsal space, bring your own tux.’"
"Wedding band."
"’Keyboards and drums seeks singer influenced by Cure, REM, Siouxsie, New Order, better to look like Robert Smith than sound like him.’ Ugh. Or how about this one, ’Hard-working guitar band needs front man for covers and originals, long hair and transportation a must. No drugs, No egos.’" I dropped the paper. "This is bullshit. We’ve got to ask around ourselves, see who we know."
"Great. Just sit on your ass, why don’t you." And he walked away, leaving the paper and the muffin with me. He got in the coffee line.
I studied the paper again as I finished the last dregs of sugar from the bottom of my cup. There were pencil marks in the margin I hadn’t noticed before, just check marks, and each one was next to a "Bassist Wanted" ad.
Bart came back balancing a cappuccino or espresso or some such. He was still pissed when he sat down. "I bet you didn’t even do it, yet."
"Do what?"
"Tell Roger we’re giving him the boot." He blew on the tiny cup.
"He was asleep," I said. "I’ll tell him."
"You’re wasting time!"
"I—!" I didn’t know what I wanted to say. "You’re just having withdrawal symptoms from not playing out enough."
"Ha! Thank you Doctor Music. Okay, fine, I’m sick of sitting around. You’re the one who can do something about it." I’d never heard him so accusatory. His voice cracked on "So go do it!"
"You’re right, you’re right." I passed the paper back to him. "I’m a wimp, I’m lame."
"Have fun, Manager," Bart said, his coffee finally cool enough to sip. I put my coat on and stood there for a minute, trying to think of one more thing I could say. But there wasn’t anything. As I made my way out the door, I saw a girl with long, dark curls take my place at the table.
I went home to find Roger still missing. When he came in around midnight, I pretended to be sleeping. He closed his door. He had an early class, so by the time I got up for ear training he was long gone. I stayed out all day. When I came home, he was in his room, playing something very loud with the door shut. I picked up the phone. There was no answer at Bart’s.
It went on like that for several days. I passed my finals without really trying. Bart had dropped off the face of the earth, and Roger and I hardly said two words to each other. Then one morning when I hadn’t yet slept that night, I tried Bart’s number. And I finally caught him at home.
"Bart, Daron. Can you come down to the studio tonight?"
Bart’s voice had an even higher pitch on the phone. "Did you tell him?"
"Eleven o’clock. Bring your stuff."
I heard his voice waver. "I can’t make it until midnight."
"Midnight, then."
"And I’ve got to get up early, too. Maybe we should make it another night."
I let his hesitation fuel my suspicion. "OK, how about tomorrow."
"Great. Tomorrow’s all clear, I think. Midnight."
"Yeah, Bye." I hung up the phone, gnawed on a hang nail starting on my left thumb. He was going somewhere tonight and he didn’t want me to know where. To audition, maybe, for some other band. Why not? Bart didn’t think of himself as a songwriter; he was a player, a hired hand. He liked that image: Bass for Hire. One day, I thought, it’d probably make him one of the most sought after studio musicians in the hemisphere. But that didn’t help me right now. And nothing in the contract could stop him.
Without him, I’d go from having half a band to being a solo artist starting from scratch, and I didn’t want that. But even if I found another bass player...? I still didn’t want it. Bart was the closest thing to a friend my own age I’d had since before junior high school. I wasn’t looking forward to losing that.
The future became too heavy to contemplate without help. I took the last beer out of the fridge and popped it, carrying it cold-steaming and sweating back to the mattress. I probably never would have spoken to Bart if he hadn’t befriended me first.
My first semester at school, I lived on campus, in a dorm, and so did he. But he wasn’t a first year student like me, he was a transfer from one of the schools in Boston, with a couple of years up on me. I was the only other person on that hall who dared play anything other than an orchestra instrument and we stuck together, us versus them. Bart was supposed to be there because the best bassoon teacher on the East Coast had transferred down from the BSO, and Bart was supposed to be on some kind of career track into the orchestra world. But his secret love was electric bass, a love affair which, once I heard him play, I encouraged. And he hung on my every word, my every critique. No one had ever talked about his bass playing before—no one who played rock or blues, anyway.
It took him a while to get comfortable in the rock world. But now Bart was so comfortable with it, he didn’t need me to walk him through it any more. I’d given him that little taste of the big time, too. I decided the beer was making me maudlin, not relaxed. I put on my sweatshirt, then my coat, and went out into the morning.
You Got Another Thing Coming
By noon I had worked my way over to Bart’s house and knocked on the door. After a few minutes his roommate whose name I could never remember opened it.
"Bart here?" I realized then that I didn’t see his car.
"Nah, he took off for Boston with Michelle." Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
"Yeah, right, of course." I wondered who Michelle was.
"You wanna leave him a note?"
I didn’t—I’d see him tonight, I hoped. I thanked the roomie and went back down the steps. I climbed back over College Hill to where all the used record stores, used clothing, used books, and fast food stands were. With four dollars in my pocket I could get a pretty decent meal if I doled it out right. But I wasn’t hungry. Lack of sleep was turning my blood to mud. I went through the motions of looking through the record stores and got real depressed looking through the dollar-bin. Band after band I’d never even heard of, the cover photos on their albums seeming utterly ludicrous in the face of their failure. It was time to go home.
When I stumbled in the door, Roger was sitting in a chair in the living room, reading a magazine, the same one as the other night. I let my coat fall on the floor and let myself crumple onto the futon. Roger spoke up. "So are we rehearsing tonight?"
He sounded too smug for his own good, or maybe I was just getting paranoid from lack of sleep. "What?" I said from the pillow. "I thought you were going solo with your disco project."
He huffed and crossed his wrists over his knee. "As far as I know, I still work for you. Unless you’re prepared to release me from my contract."
I ignored him. "Midnight. We’re supposed to meet at midnight."
I went to the studio around four in the afternoon, to do an engineering shift for the guys in Tygerz Claw—they’d asked for me which was cool since it meant I’d almost surely get paid. They were trying to do some original material again, none of it brilliant, but I did my best to make it sound better. They turned in when their five hours were up. Roger brought me some dinner around 10 and I let him watch the boards while I laid down a few tracks I had going around in my head. I was psyched to play; it had been too long and we were all itching, I was sure.
I looked at the clock around ten after midnight. Bart still wasn’t there. "Is that clock right?" I said to Roger.
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Roger looked at his bare wrist. "I have no idea."
We sat there in the control room like toys with no batteries, Roger not voicing his annoyance, me not voicing my fears.
At 12:30 am I heard the outer door open. Bart came into the room, empty handed, brushing cold off his sleeves. He didn’t take off his jacket. "Just got back," he said, his eyes sliding in annoyance onto Roger.
"You’re late," Roger said, his lips pursed.
"Well, that doesn’t matter now," Bart sing-songed. He looked from Roger to me. "I’m going to have to quit."
"Why?" I wasn’t taking this news sitting down. I stood up, the chair rolling out from under me and hitting the edge of the console.
"I’m moving." He shrugged. He directed some venom at Roger. "I obviously can’t make it here on time for rehearsals."
I almost laughed. "So screw that, we can go back to rehearsing in the recital hall. We can work around your class schedule."
"I’m not taking any more classes. I am out of the conservatory." His voice didn’t betray any emotion at all, but he made a little boot-kicking motion when he said the word ’out.’ "I’m going back to Boston. I thought I should come and tell you in person."
I tried to say "Well, thanks," but I choked on it.
Bart clapped me on the shoulder. "See you around."
"Yeah." I watched him go back the way he came, my brain doing a little flip that was the start of a panic. Like a little voice trying to say "do something!" in my head, but stuttering instead.
Roger spun his seat around in a full 360. "Well, let’s get to work."
I shook my head again. "No. That’s it. Consider this band gone." I turned around as if I might see something in the studio that might answer my questions and solve my problems, but there was nothing. What now?
Roger stood up next to me, watching me stare into the empty studio. "Look, there’s no reason you and me can’t pair up, just the two of us."
"No," I said without really hearing him.
"Why not? It makes more sense this way. You and I have so much more in common, Daron." He turned my head so I was looking at him. "You know what I mean."
"No, I don’t." I wondered what Roger-nonsense he was speaking now.
"You and me, living together, recording together, it makes sense. I’m gay, and you’re gay..."
"No." I took a step back and bruised my thigh on the corner of the console. The stutter of unfinished thoughts crescendoed in my head. "No."
He folded his arms. "When are you going to grow up? Wake up and smell the cappuccino, Daron, you’re as queer as a three dollar bill."
I shook my head. "You’re wrong." I tried to rationalize while I still could. "I’ve slept with women." Well, that wasn’t exactly true, but it was the one coherent thought I was having at that moment.
"Yeah, and you’ve slept with me." He closed the physical distance between us, his height looming. "How many times have you slept with me? Ten? Twelve? Twenty? How many..." he breathed in my ear.
I pushed him away. "Don’t talk shit. I didn’t..." My mouth and my brain weren’t working together. I could have said so much about why I moved in with him, there were all kinds of reasons, dammit, I didn’t even know that he liked me, or other men, when we met. Actually, despite what he was saying, I wasn’t sure he liked me now.
And he was saying all kinds of melodramatic things, about how I didn’t have to be afraid, about how he had ben afraid until that time he’d tried to kill himself, but now he realized... I was shutting down the equipment and pulling my sweatshirt over my head, not hearing him. It was unfortunate that I couldn’t just storm out, since I was the one who had to lock up the place. Roger seemed to be talking to hear himself talk, and as he neared the door in his coat, I pushed him out and locked it behind him. Then I sat in the dark for I don’t know how long.
After maybe an hour, I went to Candy’s Post-It-Noted desk and picked up her phone. Yeah, it was late. But I called Bart.
He answered, still awake.
"Why are you moving to Boston?" I asked him. "Are you doing it just to get away from Roger and me?" I hated myself a lot just then.
He actually laughed. "No, it’s nothing like that. Can you meet me at the coffeehouse tomorrow? I’ve got a lot to tell you."
He sounded so normal and happy, it didn’t seem real. "Sure, what time?"
"Two PM. Don’t be late."
"Ha. I’ll be there." I hung up the phone unsatisfied, but less angry. I slept in my clothes on the couch in the reception area.
Goody Two Shoes
I arrived at the Copa at 1:30 and sat there staring at strangers for a half an hour, Brown students talking Derrida and Freud, some Rimconners discussing their recital, a few townie kids trying to be artsy, some part of me thinking that Bart wasn’t going to show. But he walked in the door at two o’clock sharp and pulled a stray chair up to the table. What he said caught me by surprise. "Daron," he said, "You must be the sanest person I know."
I laughed in spite of how miserable I felt. "What?"
"No, seriously." He took his coat off. "At least I have a 99% chance of having a coherent conversation with you." He grinned expectantly.
"Jeez, how am I supposed to answer that?" I turned my empty coffee cup around in my hands. "Okay, how about this one, what’s the deal with you leaving school?"
"I couldn’t tell you this with Roger the Walking Gossip Machine there. I’m getting out of town to avoid a scandal." His eyes shone.
"What kind of a scandal?"
"The Dean’s Daughter kind of a scandal." He kept his voice low. "I’m sorry I wasn’t totally straight with you. You know I’ve always hated music school."
"I made some guesses."
"Well, I never told you the whole story of why I left Boston. I got myself kicked out there, too, thought that would be the end of it. But my father pulled some strings, got me sent down here, and I went ’cause I didn’t have anything else to do. But now," he spread his arms. "I have reached the proverbial point of no return. I’ll never be able to show my face around here again. I’m sorry I never told you all this before."
"We," I let myself smile as I said it, "We all have our little secrets to keep."
"Cool." He jittered in his seat. "At least I know you can keep one."
I thought about that for a moment. "Won’t your running to Boston make it look kind of suspicious?"
"Of course not." He tapped the table. "The official story is obvious. I’m throwing away a brilliant career in the symphony to start a rock band with my best friend. That’ll be scandal enough for my parents."
"Wait," Too many things were trying to sink in at once. "You’re not going to live with your parents?"
"No, I’m moving in with my girlfriend, Michelle."
"Aha." I sat back. "And what’s this band you’re starting?"
He smiled. "I’m not. You are. It’s called Moondog Three, and you’re going up there during the break to look for a singer, right?"
I smiled back. "I’ll do you one better. I’m quitting school, too."
"Why?"
I let my tongue roll out the words. "Roger convinced me."
Welcome to the Machine
It was a long, dull winter in Boston. Bart and Michelle moved into a nice one bedroom in Allston, right on the T line, while I got myself a cheap studio sublet in the Fenway from a Berklee student who was abroad until September. Michelle worked at Tower and got me a job there as a clerk by telling them I knew something about jazz. As it turned out, I did know more than most of the other clerks. Bart spent much of the winter doing some studio backing musician type gigs while I worked six days a week. Most days I punched in at 1pm and worked until 9pm, others I worked 4pm to store closing at midnight. It took me exactly eleven minutes to walk from my apartment to the store, unless my clock at home was wrong, which was always a possibility. A bus ran from the corner of Queensberry right to Newbury Street, but because of the weird fucked up way that Boston’s streets run, it some
times took longer to ride the bus than to walk. Besides, I could never get a bus that got me there exactly at 1pm, which meant I walked in the snow and winter rain and other weather-type crap, but this was not a big deal compared to the amount of walking I did in Providence. My walk took me right past Jack’s Drum Shop, where despite the name they also sell guitars and other instruments, and the Berklee Performance Center.
Technically I worked in the jazz department, on the third floor separated from the classical music section by glass partitions which are meant to be soundproof but really aren’t. Thing is, there wasn’t always that much to do in jazz, other than stand at the cash register. The questions people tended to ask me fell into one of two categories, those that showed how very little the customer knew about jazz (like "Do you have a trumpet section? I’m looking for a really famous trumpet player." Me: "Do you remember the name?" Them: "Oh, let me see, it was... wait, I got it. Benny Goodman.") and those that showed how very little I knew about jazz. (I’ll never again send someone to the hip hop section looking for Herbie Hancock. Promise.) Lucky for me, all the time I spent in school ignoring what was being said had made tons of room for the memorization of the smallest trivial details about pretty much every recording artist I cared to read the liner notes on. Management let me play what I wanted out of the new releases, and with all the classic rereleases coming out on CD, I got a pretty good jazz education pretty fast.
But when things were especially slow in jazz, which was about every other day, they pulled me or the other guy who sometimes worked with me (an art school student named Jay) down to the second floor for various dumb retail duties. The dumbest of these was rack combing. People have this tendency to browse and pick up things, and carry them around the store. Then when they find something better/cheaper, they abandon the first thing at whatever bin or shelf the second thing is found in. By the end of a week of rabid browsing, the racks would be full of misplaced crapola, hence the task of rack combing. For some reason, the jazz department didn’t get as shuffled as the pop and rock sections, and this annoyed me, and the fact that it annoyed me also annoyed me.