Then Again

by Rick Boling

  Pat scribbled as I built a story song out of the various school-skipping schemes we’d tried at one time or another. These included fake phone calls Pat had made to the assistant principal, those forged excuse notes, and the granddaddy of them all: the day we called all the phones at the school from payphones, then left the receivers off the hook and hung Out of Order signs on the phone booths. It was an elaborate plan, designed to tie up all the school’s phone lines so they couldn’t call and check on the sixty or so students who had agreed to skip en masse that day.

  I continued to work on the song for the next few days, refining the lyrics and melody. And when the band debuted it at the Saturday night YMCA sock hop, the crowd went wild. Ever the promoter, Pat’s next move was to get Dad to pay for printing a promotional brochure. The three-fold pamphlet, printed on glossy paper, featured an action photo of the band, above the legend, “The Nite Cats, Singing Their Smash Hit, Skip School Flu.” Of course, there was no record to qualify the song as a hit, but Pat had a plan.

  We needed to raise $500 in order to pay the local recording studio for a package deal that included studio time and a pressing of a thousand 45s. Pat got Dad to kick in $300, but that left us $200 short. So at our next few gigs she passed through the audience with a fishbowl, while we played the song and made a plea for donations to the “Skip School Flu Record Fund.” We also solicited donations from the kids at school, and within three weeks we had raised the rest of the money.

  After convincing Mom to cosign for a checking account, we took our bag of cash and coins to the bank and deposited a total of $510.70. Then it was off to the recording studio, where we booked a session for the following week. The package deal included only four hours of recording time, so we practiced like crazy for the next few days, and when we got to the studio it took us less than an hour to finalize the recording. We were about to pack up our instruments, when the engineer said over the intercom, “Okay, guys, let’s hear the flip side.”

  In our excitement we’d completely forgotten the record would need a flip side, and we were going into panic mode when Pat came up with another one of her brilliant ideas.

  “What about that jungle crap you guys are always screwing around with at the beach?” she asked. “It never made any sense to me, but everybody seems to love it.” By “jungle crap,” she meant this weird African chant thing we did, usually late in the evening after consuming a substantial amount of beer.

  It had all started one night when Paul was playing an African beat on his conga drum and I chimed in with a drunken imitation of natives in the old Tarzan movies. Before long Tom picked up the bongos and Sam turned his bass fiddle over, slapping the back in a syncopated rhythm. There were no real lyrics, only guttural sounds like what I thought a tribe of African headhunters might make. After a while everybody was adding their own variations, which often included humorous sexual references and profanity. It was goofy and unstructured, but the beach-party crowd always requested it, and next to Skip School Flu it was the most popular “song” we had.

  With nothing else original in our repertoire, everyone quickly agreed, and Pat went to the sound booth to ask the engineer if we could take a break in order to bring in some extra instruments. He said to make it quick, so we all scattered, arriving back a half-hour later with the conga, two sets of bongos, a pair of maracas, and Sam’s bass fiddle. We also called several beach-party regulars, and by the time we were ready to record, fifteen rowdy high schoolers were jammed into the cramped studio space around us. Pat explained to the engineer that the unruly entourage was necessary for the performance, and after we got everyone settled down, he gave us the signal and started to roll tape.

  What followed was one of the most hilarious recording sessions I would ever experience. The first take was so saturated with profanity and off-color humor, there was no way it would have made it onto a record. The engineer quickly caught on to what we were trying to do, and during the playback he pointed out the areas we needed to clean up. The second take was a little less offensive, but still way too nasty, so we tried to disguise the words better on the third one. By then the studio manager had joined the engineer, and the two of them became our co-conspirators, tweaking the tracks and suggesting ways we could keep some of the bad stuff in without stepping over the line.

  During the next five takes, the manager and engineer laughed so hard they could barely talk at times. Meanwhile, Paul and I kept refining the offensive words and phrases, garbling them to the point that they could only be understood by someone with a dirty mind paying close attention. Eventually we put together a version that loosely adhered to their guidelines, and after adding some reverb and a little overdubbing, they gave the track their stamp of approval.

  For lack of a better name, we called the song Jungle, and we left the studio relieved, with both an A and B-side of our new record ready for pressing. Of course, we knew no radio station would ever play the B-side, not only because Jungle didn’t qualify as a rock or pop song, but because it was far too gross. It would, however, have its day in the sun—or out of the sun, actually, since it was destined to become somewhat of an underground cult phenomenon.

  I discovered this several years later at a college fraternity, where my group, The Madisons, was playing a weekend gig. I was walking down the hall on my way to the bathroom when I heard the strains of Jungle drifting from one of the rooms. I opened the door to find a bunch of frat boys, drinking beer, pounding on bongos, and singing along with the words we’d tried to disguise. It seemed that our impromptu flip side had been taped and copied dozens, or perhaps hundreds of times, and had become a favorite among college students all over the country. In fact, the kid who owned that particular copy said he was from California, and that he’d gotten it from a friend at Berkeley.

  It took three weeks for the records to arrive, and once we had them in hand, Pat and I went around to all the local radio stations, begging them to play it. Most of the DJs agreed, some airing it on the spot. And the ones who didn’t were so deluged with requests (orchestrated, of course, by Pat) they were forced to call and ask us to come back and bring them a copy.

  As soon as the song hit the airwaves, we made the rounds of the local music stores, which were already turning away customers because they had no idea where to get a supply of the records. Most bought a couple of dozen, even though we wouldn’t give them the discount they were accustomed to. Since we had paid around fifty cents apiece for the records, we decided to sell them wholesale for seventy-five, so we could realize a profit on our investment. And, at all our gigs, we sold them for the standard retail price of ninety-eight cents.

  Those were heady days. Despite not having a record contract with a major label, we did have a hit record, at least on the west coast of Florida. Pat doubled down on her promotional efforts, using the record’s popularity as an excuse to increase our performance fees. She even set up a couple of private dances, renting local halls and advertising with fliers we would stick under the windshield wipers of cars at all the high schools.

  Eventually, however, we saturated the market, and sales began to lag, then stopped altogether. And, without a follow-up record, let alone an album, the group fell back into the mediocrity it deserved, since we really were only a bunch of amateurs with nothing to recommend us except our one hit and me as a still-developing rock singer.

  Then one day, out of the blue, we got a call from the manager at the studio where we’d cut the record. It seemed an executive at a new Nashville label called Diddy Bop Records had somehow gotten hold of a copy of Skip School Flu and wanted to talk to us about a possible recording contract. They’d found the studio through the information on the label, and asked the manager to have us contact them. Pat made the call, and when they invited us to come to their offices for a meeting, we dropped everything, took the money we’d made from our record sales, and headed for Music City USA.

  There were many factors that led Pat and me to split up, not the least of which were the pills
I swiped from my mom for that trip to Nashville. Back then, the amphetamines that would one day become known as ‘speed’ or ‘bennies’ were considered relatively harmless diet pills, and Dad was getting tons of free samples from pharmaceutical salesmen. And, since Mom was always struggling with her weight, there were sample bottles of Dexedrine and Dexamyl all over the house. Pat and I had experimented with the pills, and we knew one of their effects was to keep you awake for prolonged periods of time, particularly if you were suffering from the sleepiness brought on by drinking alcohol.

  Before we left, I went through the house and filled a large bottle with dozens of 20-milligram pills, justifying the theft by telling myself that since we planned to drive straight through we would need them to keep from falling asleep on the road. Of course, we both knew we would be using them to get high as well, and once we were on the road, we did just that. Add in a cooler full of malt liquor, and we had the perfect formula for a fifteen-hour, non-stop argument.

  The war of words started off with trivialities, joking complaints concerning insignificant things that irritated us about each other. But as the miles rolled on and more pills were consumed, the lighthearted bickering turned to anger and screaming, mainly over our long-festering disagreement about how I was wasting my time with “that bunch of losers.”

  Reliving the episode, I could now see that, even though she was high as a kite, Pat was sincere in her criticism; that her objections came from a desire to help me get past the career stagnation caused by carrying the rest of the band on my shoulders. At the time, however, being drunk and stoned myself, I wasn’t about to give in and admit she was right.

  Mental exhaustion often led to long periods of angry silence, which would then be punctuated by flurries of insulting epithets that exploded between us like shards of broken glass. And by the time we reached Nashville, I think we both knew our relationship was over. When we showed up at the address we’d been given, only to find an abandoned suite of offices, we couldn’t even manage to direct our mutual anger at the assholes who had conned us into making the long trip for nothing.

  We spent a restless night at a motel on the outskirts of town, sleeping in separate beds and not speaking except to mumble necessary things about the use of the bathroom the next morning. And after a quick breakfast at a nearby Toddle House, we headed off on a silent fifteen-hour trek home.

  The emotional wounds we inflicted on each other during that trip added up to what would one day be referred to in legal terms as ‘irreconcilable differences,’ and it wasn’t long before our relationship had deteriorated to the point that it was no longer salvageable. Everything came to a head two days before my sixteenth birthday, when our final argument escalated into a physical confrontation. The next morning, she left a tearful note and disappeared. And I never saw or heard from her again.

  At the stroke of midnight, I found myself back in the dentist’s chair, bathed in sweat and trying to shake off the memories of those last few weeks before I turned sixteen. After they administered some drugs to calm me down, Aurélie took me to the sleeping quarters we’d occupied before at the lab, where she held my hands and tried to talk me down from the trauma caused by my trip back in time.

  During the earlier previews I’d breezed through my two years with Pat without slowing or stopping, because I had no desire to watch our relationship fall apart. But after living through that period again, I was surprised to find that the painful experience had been somewhat enlightening. Observing things from a more objective viewpoint, I could now see that my affair with Pat had been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in the sense that it provided the exposure I needed to solidify my reputation as one of the most talented musicians in the area; a curse because it set me on a long, destructive road of substance abuse.

  The downside manifested itself subtly, starting with alcohol and pot, and eventually leading to those early experiments with amphetamines. After Pat left, the combination of pills and alcohol often sent me into fits of rage over the inability of my band members to keep up with me musically. Fortunately, this all worked itself out in a more or less natural way, when Tom and Paul left for college, and Sam, who was actually quite talented on the electric bass, accepted an offer to join another popular local group called The Midnighters.

  The dissolution of the Nite Cats began a stretch of time during which I did nothing but hone my skills on the guitar. When I emerged six months later from my self-imposed musical exile, I was ten times the guitarist I’d been when I started. And it was only then that the advice Pat had tried to drum into my head hit home and my real career began.

  Rest In Peace

  What happens to this me after the transfer?” I asked Heyoka. Aurélie had ordered me to take some time off after that first session, and Heyoka had jumped at the chance to pick my brain about guitar technique.

  “Damn!” he said, as he struggled to imitate one of my Travis picks.

  “It’s those big hands of yours,” I said. “Why don’t you try it on a classical? The wider string separation will help.”

  “Good idea. I’ve got an old Pimentel around here someplace.” He returned the D28 to its stand and glanced around the music room. “Now, if I can only remember where it is.”

  “About my question?”

  “Question? Oh, right. Well, your being, your actual self, will no longer be here. It will be in the time you have chosen, residing in your younger body. As for the body you presently occupy, it will die.”

  “That’s a rather unpleasant thought.”

  “It shouldn’t be, Rix,” he said, rising and walking across the room. “We both know your current body is pretty well shot. And, as I said, you will be elsewhere. What’s left here will be nothing but a human-shaped slab of dead meat with no consciousness or spirit.”

  The mental image of my dead body gave me chills. “So,” I said, “What do you plan to do with this slab of meat after I’m out of it?”

  “That’s entirely up to you,” he yelled over his shoulder as he rummaged around in a closet. “Ah, here she is.” He came back to the stool carrying a molded fiberglass case. “You’re familiar with Pimentel, I assume,” he said, lifting out a timeworn classical guitar.

  “Lorenzo?” I said. “Spent an afternoon at his shop once when I was out in Albuquerque. Heard he passed away a while back.”

  “Yes, after a long battle with prostate cancer. This is an early one built by the old man himself before he moved to the States. I have a later model, done with the Native American rosettes and purflings the family became famous for. But when it comes to classicals, I prefer the traditional over the modern. There’s something about the tone and projection that seems to get lost in all the fancy decoration and supposed innovative design.” He plucked a rapid series of arpeggios and the bright sound filled the room.”

  “Not bad,” I said, surprised at his proficiency, which hadn’t been evident on the steel-string. “Speaking of dying, I think I’d like to be buried back home.”

  “Where, St. Pete?”

  “If it’s not too much of a problem. How do you plan to explain my death, anyway?”

  “Natural causes. We can cremate the body here and send the ashes back. Unless you’d rather it be embalmed and sent back whole. Either way, you’ll have to let us know who to send it to.”

  “Man, this is creepy.” I had several old friends living in the Suncoast area, but most were aging musicians; not exactly the type of folks who would be interested in seeing to the disposition of my corpse. “Why don’t you talk to my agent? I’m sure he’d like to play it up in the press and take advantage of the inevitable spike in sales death always seems to generate.”

  “I’ll have Fred arrange everything. We’ll pay for a fancy funeral and make sure the obit gets lots of international coverage. Maybe you’d like to write it?”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “And you can forget about a funeral or a formal memorial service, because no one would show up. A musician’s wake, on the other
hand, might draw a couple of dozen, especially if there’s lots of free booze and food.”

  “Musician’s wake?”

  “It’s a tradition. At least among the musicians in my circle. It’s basically an excuse to get drunk and have a jam session. We usually record the whole thing and anyone who wants will say something nice about the deceased. Then we give the recording to the family so they’ll have something to remember him or her by.”

  “Ah, I see. A musician’s wake it shall be then.”

  Lost And Found

  After we finished Heyoka’s guitar lesson, I retired to my room. I had planned to take a nap, but every time I dozed off I was awakened by dreams of Pat and those final few days before she disappeared. I’d heard a rumor that she’d enrolled at Florida State University, but in those days—before personal computers and the Internet—the only way to confirm the rumor would have been to call her parents, and I wasn’t about to suck up my pride and make that call. Ever since my trip back in time, however, I’d been wondering how her life had evolved post-Rix, and it occurred to me that I could probably find at least some of the details on the Web.

  Abandoning the nap, I went to the desk and cranked up my laptop. A Google search for “Pat Williams” resulted in over nine million hits, so I started adding terms to hone things down. I tried “St. Petersburg” to no avail, then “St. Pete High,” which led me to an alumni site, but she wasn’t listed as a member. I was about to give up, when my newly rejuvenated brain clicked into gear and I remembered her mother’s name was Glenda. A search of obituaries in St. Pete brought up a “Glenda Williams,” who had passed away in 1983 and was survived by “daughter Patricia” and “husband Alfonse.” Next, I tried “Alfonse Williams,” and hit pay dirt.