by Rick Boling
As for the lowered sex drive, I knew a lot of that had to do with memories of Aurélie, who continued to dominate my fantasies, although Doris was now coming in a close second. In many ways Doris reminded me of Aurie: intelligent, clever, playfully sarcastic, not to mention sexually alluring. I also think the decades I spent hopping from one bed to another might have been enough to satisfy my formerly insatiable hunger for sex and the ego satisfaction that went along with it. In fact, I didn’t seem to have the same desperate need to feed my ego at all. I could easily have followed the old path, becoming a local rock star and enjoying the sexual benefits and accolades of that lifestyle, but I was apparently choosing to go another route.
In my time alone, I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with my life, and was surprised to find that becoming famous wasn’t high on the list. I had applied myself far better at school, and my years of living experience allowed me to master subjects I’d once hated. Consequently, college became a choice I hadn’t had before. I’d always been interested in science, but I wasn’t all that enamored with academia, so higher education took a back seat to other possibilities, one of which was trying my hand at music production. For several months now, Sam and I had been refining our equipment with more sophisticated circuitry and mechanical designs, and we really were pretty advanced when it came to recording technology.
After decades of busting my ass in my other life seeking fame and fortune, I no longer felt up to the task. For one thing, I wasn’t interested in being constantly on the road, doing drugs and drinking and screwing every female in sight. And I certainly didn’t want to have to grovel at the feet of agents and producers and record company executives while they enriched themselves using me as a human ATM machine. But if I could somehow manage to be the one in control …
I knew I could recognize talent, and I had years of experience writing, arranging and recording my own songs. I’d also become an expert at using digitized samples of my own instrumentation and vocals to remix and re-master my earlier studio albums for release on CD and as MP3s. Even though it would be decades before computers were sophisticated enough for me to make use of that expertise, I had some ideas on ways Sam and I could do something similar with analog tape. Plus, if my memory didn’t fail me, I could probably do a pretty good job of predicting trends and evaluating other artists. I was mulling this over when I realized I was already sitting on top of a potential gold mine. And I immediately decided to abandon the trio idea and start concentrating on developing Sarah as a solo artist.
The folk revolution and all the things that fueled it—Vietnam, the civil rights movement, nuclear disarmament, environmental activism—were still years in the future, which meant the trio wouldn’t have those issues to draw on. But one thing that was right around the corner was a tremendous upsurge in the popularity of R&B. Artists like Ray Charles, B.B. King, and Hank Ballard were already becoming popular mainstream stars, as were Etta James, Martha Reeves, and a few other female blues singers. And it was in that category, I thought, where I might be able to create something new and unique with Sarah; a sound not only ahead of its time, but different from anything currently on the market.
Sarah’s vocal quality and range had matured exponentially since we’d been working together, as had her stage presence and projection. And, although we were still mostly singing my folky songs in three-part harmony, whenever we took a break and started messing around with other genres, we always seemed to end up down in the music room, with me playing piano, Sam on the bull bass, and Sarah singing the blues. With a nearly four-octave range, she could do everything from crying heartbreak to soft, sexy come-hither type stuff. The really unique thing about her voice, though, was the way her deep-south country accent came through in her vocals, creating an odd fusion that might be referred to as Appalachian-blues-rock, or soul music with a twang. The only problem I could see was that she was a little ahead of her time when it came to white blues singers.
It was sometime in the mid-‘60s when I’d first seen The Righteous Brothers and was shocked by the fact that they were white. Janis Joplin wouldn’t hit her stride until later in that decade, so the only female blues stars at that time were black, and I was worried Sarah might not be accepted. Still, with our advanced recording techniques and my decades of experience in the workings of the music industry, we might be able to break her in before anyone ever saw her in person.
I remembered a conversation I’d had with Aurélie, when we were talking about things I might do in my new life. And suddenly, I heard that little phantom voice again: Maybe, with your knowledge of the industry, you could go back and … I don’t know, become a producer or something, she’d said. Sell that piece of your soul to get rich and be the benefactor of the unknown singer-songwriter. It’s not written in stone that you would automatically turn into a scumbag as Lord Acton suggested.
Of course, this wasn’t going to be a singer-songwriter thing, but I was about to convince myself that I should forgo my own career in favor of molding artists and becoming a producer-promoter. As for selling my soul in the process, there might have to be a little of that as well. I knew that in the rough-and-tumble music business some ethical compromises would have to be made in order to achieve success, but maybe I could keep the old yin and yang in balance if my goals were not fame and fortune for myself, but for the artists I decided to nurture and promote. After all, the odds were stacked against them—all of them, at least at first. So drawing on my previous experience to do a little shaving of those odds didn’t seem like a big swing toward the Dark Side.
Match Making
But I love the trio, Ricky. Without you and Sam, I’d be lost.” The three of us were sitting by the pool, and I was trying to explain my idea to them. Sarah had conquered her fear of singing in public, though she retained a hint of shyness; an undertone of timidity that contributed to her stage appeal. Rather than distracting from her performances, this peek into her soul added an element of innocence and authenticity to her on-stage persona.
We’d been performing sporadically at local coffee houses and talent shows for a couple of years, and, without realizing it, she had stolen the spotlight. When you combined her looks with that incredible voice and her haunting, emotional delivery, the audience didn’t even know Sam and I were there.
“The trio is not going away,” I said. “It’s just going to change a little. Sam will be playing electric bass, and I’ll be on keyboards instead of guitar. We’ll always be the backbone of the group, but we’re going to add other instruments and voices and maybe even strings. Eventually, if we play our cards right, you’ll be singing in front of a full orchestra for thousands of fans.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sounds kind of scary to me. What do you think, Sammy?”
Sam, always a man of few words, said, “He’s right, Sarah. You’re the one.”
“Look,” I said, “it’s not like we’d be throwing you to the wolves. For one thing, it’s going to take a lot of time and practice to develop your sound. For another, you won’t be performing in public anytime soon. We’re going to start with recordings, testing the waters so to speak, before we do anything live. We both know you’d rather be singing the blues than the folky stuff we’ve been doing, and if we take our time and do this right, one day you’re going to be a superstar.”
“Yeah, well, I sure wouldn’t bet on that ever happening,” she said, though she couldn’t hide the gleam of anticipation that flashed in her eyes.
I decided the first step in the process of grooming Sarah for a solo career should be to stop pursuing her sexually. We’d engaged in some minor petting, and I knew I could probably break down her defenses if I kept working at it. But I now had a more important goal in mind and didn’t need the distraction of constantly trying to get into her pants. I was trying to think of a way to let her down easy, when something unexpected happened that promised to make the job simple.
Call it serendipity, or maybe it was fate stepping in again, bu
t in any case, my chance meeting with Jimmy seemed to coincide perfectly with my need to break things off with Sarah. Not only did Jimmy’s arrival serve as a catalyst for our transition from lovers to friends, it also added an important element to my new undertaking. Sam and I had talked about how difficult it would be to find a drummer who would go along with what promised to be a slow, non-paying process of developing our studio sound. We could handle most of the other instrumentation ourselves, but when it came to drums, neither of us was adept enough to reach the standards I wanted.
In my first life, Jimmy and I had eventually joined forces, first with The Continentals, and later with The Madisons. But those groups wouldn’t even be conceived until many years down the road, and even if they did come together in my new life, I now knew I would not be a part of them. I’d spoken to Jimmy a few times about our fledgling efforts in recording, but he hadn’t shown much interest, so I was surprised when he asked how the project was coming along. I told him we were doing things he wouldn’t believe, then invited him over to check out what we’d accomplished so far.
Jimmy was a tall, handsome, clotheshorse, with curly blond hair and a suave, humorous demeanor that made him a natural ladies’ man. He was around Sarah’s age, and when she first set eyes on him I could almost hear her heart skip a beat. Sam and I spent the afternoon showing Jimmy what we were doing and explaining where we wanted to take things, while Sarah sat quietly, trying in vain not to fidget or stare. We were about to call it a day when I suggested we all go for a swim, and the moment Jimmy saw her in a bathing suit, I knew he was hooked.
Half an hour later I said I had an idea for a song and asked Sam to join me in the music room. When we were out of sight, I told him what I was up to. He didn’t much care for the underhanded way I went about making sure Jimmy and Sarah would be alone, but he seemed to understand my reasoning. So for the rest of the afternoon, we piddled around with some music, while the two of them got better acquainted.
A couple of weeks after Jimmy’s visit, Sarah took me aside and apologized for seeing him while we were still supposed to be dating. I tried to act saddened, though not devastated, assuring her that I understood and wasn’t angry. I also told Jimmy the next time he came over that I was okay with the two of them hooking up, while at the same time petitioning him to join us in our recording efforts and help me develop Sarah as a solo artist. Whether he agreed because he felt guilty about stealing her away from me, or he was genuinely intrigued by the plan, I would never know. Whatever the reason, it turned out to be one of the best moves I’d made yet. Except, perhaps, for the fact that I suddenly found myself without a girlfriend.
To compensate for my loss, I dove headlong into the new project, hoping to smother my growing horniness with hard work. I was only partially successful in this effort, however, and seeing Jimmy and Sarah in their infatuated lovebird stage, starry-eyed and unable to keep their hands off each other, didn’t help. Meanwhile, my hands, or at least one of them, became my only refuge, and when I received an unexpected call from Doris, I couldn’t stop my mind from wandering into what I knew intellectually was forbidden territory. Adding to this potentially disastrous wishful thinking was the enormous popularity of the hula hoop and the steady rise of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes toward number one on the charts.
Back To The Future
When I answered the phone that Saturday morning, my cheerful ‘Hello’ was greeted with silence. Seconds ticked by, and I was about to hang up when Doris cleared her throat and blurted out, “Hey. It’s me.”
I thought about pretending not to recognize her voice, but I knew she would see right through that silliness, so instead I said, “Why, hello there Nurse Shelton. How’ve you been?”
“What’s with the formality, Ricky? Are you angry with me for not staying in touch?”
“Not at all,” I said, still in formal mode. “I was just being respectful of my elders. So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure there’s anything you can do for me, but I’m also not sure anymore that I actually am one of your elders. So I thought we might get together and have another one of our little chats. That is, unless you’d rather leave things as they stand.”
“And where do you think things stand right now?” I asked.
“Well, for me, they aren’t doing a very good job of standing at all, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to see if we can bring them to an upright position again.”
“You sure you don’t mean horizontal?” I said, realizing too late that I might be treading on thin ice. “Sorry about that. I used to be a rather ribald fellow and sometimes it’s hard to let loose of my old persona, especially when I’m talking to a beautiful young lady.”
“My, what a nice compliment. Thank you. Now, do you want to see me or not?”
“Can’t think of anything I’d like better at the moment. Should I come over, or would you prefer neutral territory?”
“Why don’t you meet me down at the bayou, and at least we can start off someplace neutral.”
By ‘the bayou’ she meant a long stretch of seawall about seven blocks from my house surrounding an expanse of water called Coffee Pot Bayou. It was a pretty public place, bordered by a red-brick road lined with mansions. There were, however, a few small wooded parks that jutted out into the water, and I assumed she wanted to meet at one of these. “Okay,” I said. “Where, exactly?”
“You know that little park with the wall and the big oak trees?”
“I do,” I said. “See you there in fifteen.”
I decided to walk to the park, and when I arrived I located a bench sheltered by a copse of trees that hid it from the street. A yellowish morning fog strained to rise from the surface of the water, and couple of seagulls dived toward me, hoping for breadcrumbs. I didn’t offer any, so they flew off in search of another morning snack. A sickly smell of dead fish drifted from the sand exposed by low tide, and I was about to look for a less malodorous spot, when I felt something touch my shoulder and turned to find Doris standing there in the same red sundress she’d worn to the pool party.
“Ugh,” she said, “This place stinks. Maybe we should go somewhere else.”
“It’s up to you,” I said. “Exactly what did you have in mind?”
“I don’t have anything in mind, Ricky, so get those thoughts out of your head. I want to talk, is all? Just talk.”
“Hey,” I said, trying to sound hurt, “I didn’t mean that the way it came out” (although I did). “I only wanted to know if you had an idea of where we might go.”
“Sorry,” she said, “I guess I’m a little jumpy. Frankly, I don’t know what to make of all this … this weirdness. I mean, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is number one on the charts, and the hula hoop is everywhere, so I have to think something out of the ordinary is going on with you. Either you’re some kind of seer or you really are from the future. In any case, this is not normal, and I’m having a hard time figuring out how to deal with that.”
“Listen,” I said, “let’s forget the smell for a moment. The fog is lifting and the tide is rising, so things should be tolerable before long. Come on, sit down. I promise not to do anything indecent.”
She hesitated, but when I turned back and looked out over the water, she came around and sat beside me. We watched the fog swirl and tear apart in fragments while we both tried to think of how to begin. Finally, I reached over and she let me take her hand.
“First off,” I said, “I’m no seer, nor am I from the future, at least not in this dimension. Where I am from and why I’m here would be difficult to explain to anyone with a smattering of common sense. Frankly, I don’t even understand it myself, at least not how it worked. All I do know is that I came from something physicists call a parallel universe—a universe identical to this one—with a chance to live my life over again and make any changes I choose to make. In one sense, I did come from the future, but that future was in the other universe. In this one, the future won’t be exactly the same because I’m b
ack here with the ability to alter things in my own life and in the lives of people who are affected by my new choices.
“For example, the reason I knew about Dad and Charlotte is that in my other life he divorced Mom and married her. Then he went a little crazy and killed himself because what he’d done conflicted with his religious beliefs and he couldn’t handle the guilt—that’s why I went out on a limb and tried to stop the affair before it became unstoppable. I lied to Carol and to you, and took a real chance, because something bad could have happened that I didn’t foresee. Fortunately, things seem to have worked out, though I can’t know for sure if that will end up being the case. Anything I do or don’t do will have ripple effects that could go on for years before they cause other problems, so there’s no way I can predict the overall impact of any action I take.”
I stopped then, realizing I’d already said too much for her to digest, let alone accept as anything more than the ravings of a lunatic. But when I looked at her, she didn’t appear to be unnerved. Instead she seemed to be trying to work something out in her mind. Finally, she squeezed my hand.
“I don’t understand,” she said, staring at our entwined fingers. “But for some reason, I want to believe you. Maybe if you told me the whole story, all the details and scientific stuff, I could get a better grasp on things.”
So I did. From the beginning when I met Heyoka at the club, to a description of the Villa and the early demonstrations that convinced me something extraordinary was going on. I embellished nothing, nor did I try to simplify Heyoka’s explanations, though most of those had been so complicated I couldn’t remember all the specifics. I didn’t go into detail about the flashbacks and my early life, but I did tell her that part of the process had been for me to relive certain episodes in order to choose the age at which I wanted to start over. I briefly described my failing health and the heart attack, and I gave a pretty comprehensive overview of the lab complex and its fantastic equipment and capabilities.