Rocking the Pink

by Laura Roppé

  Lost and found, run aground, wearin’ my crown

  Looking for fun, just want a playground,

  Nothing profound, won’t check your background

  Looking for fun, wanna be a hellhound

  Let me expound, breakin’ outta Jonestown

  I’m free! Free! Free!

  Got no fear in me, not scared to be me

  Do or die, now or never

  It’s never, it’s never too late

  Shortly after my striking debut, Buzz bowed out of the band to pursue his original music. And just like that, I became the one and only lead singer of Cool Band Luke—proving once and for all that you can, indeed, shop for just about anything on the Internet.

  With each performance after that, I learned more and more. For one thing, I figured out that singing in a rock band differed from singing in a stage musical, and that singing into a microphone was different from projecting my voice toward the back of a theater. For another thing, I began to understand the nuances of my voice—when it sounded good and when it sounded bloody awful.

  Brad came to as many Cool Band Luke shows as he could. He was effusive in his praise when it was merited, and honest in his criticism, too.

  “You’re oversinging,” he’d tell me, or, “You’re making weird expressions with your face.”

  He was always right on the money. I soon realized, with Brad’s help, that I didn’t have to sell anything. If I trusted my voice, if I stayed in the moment of the song, then everything fell into place. I could stretch for notes or inflections that were outside my comfort zone; I just had to sing from my heart, instead of my head. I just had to be real. But, oh, wasn’t that the lesson I’d been struggling with my entire life? Easier said than done.

  Victor Borge, a comedian and entertainer, has famously said that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. But as I sang “I Want You to Want Me” for a room full of joyful people celebrating a wedding or a simple night out, I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that music surely gives laughter a run for its money as a person-to-person expressway. At the end of a long night of performing, I’d often receive loving hugs and words of warm affection from partygoers—strangers—who’d come to feel an inexplicable, visceral connection to me, despite the fact that we had not exchanged a single spoken word all night. And it wasn’t what I was singing that caused this reaction—God knows I wasn’t charting any new musical territory. No, it was that, through music, our souls had danced together, even if our intellects had not yet been introduced.

  My new vocation as the singer in a band made me a bit of a novelty at my day job. Several local newspapers and magazines interviewed me, and the resulting articles bore headlines like “The Verdict Is in: This Lawyer Can Sing” and “Lawyer Revels In Facing the Music.” Attorney acquaintances approached me outside the courthouse to say, “Hey, I heard you’ve been singing in a band . . . ”

  I felt glamorous. I started to dress for work with a little more pizzazz. I bought a push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret that created the illusion that my breasts (which had become woefully scrawny and misshapen from prolonged breastfeeding) were once again full and buoyant. When I walked across a crowded downtown street at lunchtime, wearing my push-up bra under my business suit, a guy in the crosswalk took a second look at me as I passed on by. I was Shelley Hack in the Charlie perfume ad from the ’70s: And they call her . . . Charlie!

  I felt like I had a secret life. I was an undercover rock star.

  When I played a bar gig with the band one night, a drunk twentysomething guy approached me to ask for my phone number, unaware that my brawny husband was standing two feet away.

  “I’m married,” I responded, “to that guy.” I motioned to my broad-shouldered, six-foot-four-inch husband.

  “Oh, sorry, man,” the guy remarked to Brad. “But your wife is hot.”

  That sentence seared my brain like an iron brand. I was hot.

  Several months later, after considerable contemplation, I told Brad that I was thinking about restoring my droopy breasts to their prebreastfeeding glory days.

  “I know this sounds crazy,” I began, “but I’ve been thinking I might go in for a consultation about a boob job—”

  Brad cut me off. “Great idea. I think you should.”

  That was a bit too enthusiastic. I paused. “I know it would be really expensive, but—”

  “Aw, it’s just money,” Brad said. “We can always make more money. I think you should do it.”

  Wow. I wasn’t expecting quite that level of immediate support. I paused again. “Well . . . I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I continued slowly, eyeing Brad suspiciously. “But I thought I’d just go learn more about it.”

  “I’m one hundred percent on board.” There was another pause as we assessed each other for an instant. And then we both burst out laughing.

  Brad always had been a boob man.

  In addition to being a card-carrying boob man, though, Brad just wanted me to feel good about myself. A few months earlier, Brad’s idiot friend had asked him why he “let” his wife sing in a band. Clearly, this guy didn’t have a clue about Brad, or about me. Brad was ecstatic to see me performing, to see the light shining in my eyes. In fact, my newfound zest for life had made me sexier to him than ever before. And, as Brad and I both knew, Brad did not “let” me do anything, thank you very much; that wasn’t how our relationship worked. But rather than explain all of that to his caveman friend, Brad simply said, “Happy wife, happy life.”

  Little did I know then that two years later, my surgeon would say, in a gee-whiz tone of voice, “You know, you wouldn’t have felt that tiny lump if it weren’t for your breast implant pushing it out and making it palpable. That implant probably saved your life.”

  A girl never loved her saline so much.

  Thank you, boob job.

  Chapter 25

  In eleventh grade, I was sitting in my AP biology class, talking to my teacher, Miss Marrone, about what I wanted to be when I grew up.

  “I think I’m gonna sing jingles,” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘sing jingles’?” Her tone was as if I’d said, “I think I’m gonna scrape tongues.”

  “You know, like on a commercial,” I replied enthusiastically. And then, by way of explanation, I sang, “Nobody does it like . . . Sara Lee!”

  Miss Marrone didn’t hesitate. “That’s lame,” she said matter-of-factly. “Why sing jingles? Why wouldn’t you sing your own songs instead?”

  Oh. I’d never thought of that.

  And I pretty much never thought of it again . . . until twenty years later, when something inexplicable happened inside my brain.

  I had decided to train for a second marathon. Why, I did not know. My dear friend and running partner, Mike, had briefly moved to the East Coast, so I’d be running this one on my own.

  Before going out for a training run, I made a late-afternoon stop at the grocery store to pick up some produce for that night’s salad. I was wearing running clothes, no makeup, and my long hair tied up in a knot. As I picked through the tomatoes in the produce section, the store employee stocking the adjacent celery said hello.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  He looked me up and down from head to toe, and then said, “You’re lookin’ good.”

  I was speechless for a second. Was that creepy, or not? Had I done something to provoke that reaction? Not knowing what else to say, I just thanked him.

  I left the produce department, still trying to decide what to make of it. Was he . . . flirting with me? Or just being charitable to a thirtysomething-year-old woman dressed like a slob? Whatever his motivation, I decided to make believe he was reacting to my undercover-rock-star-ness. And if that wasn’t the reality, then I didn’t want to know.

  Fifteen years earlier, in my early twenties, as I’d jogged up a steep hill, a car full of teenage boys had come up from behind and had hollered at me, “You’re lookin’ fine!” But just as their car had come up
even with me, so that the boys could finally see my front side, the catcalling had ceased instantly. One of the boys, sounding genuinely remorseful, had yelled, “Sorry, ma’am!” And then they had sped away.

  I had stopped dead in my tracks, panting and sweaty, and had watched the car disappear up the hill. Ma’am?

  And now here I was all these years later, recoiling from an unsolicited catcall at the grocery store. I couldn’t have it both ways, I realized: Did I prefer to be “ma’am-ed” into humiliation or ogled into self-consciousness?

  Ogled, definitely, I thought. No question about it.

  After unloading the groceries at home, I hit the street for my run. I ran in silence, forgoing my iPod in favor of the rhythmic sounds of my feet striking the pavement. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The rhythm helped me think. Or, rather, it helped me not think. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Damn, I forgot to buy parmesan cheese at the grocery store. Boom, boom, boom, boom. What on earth should I do for Brad’s birthday? Boom, boom, boom, boom. Now my mind began to quiet down. Boom, boom, boom, boom. I was going into a runner’s trance. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, without warning, a melody began to unfurl in my head. Fly, fly, fly. The melody was crystal clear. Fly, fly, fly. That melody wouldn’t leave my head. Fly, fly, fly. Yes, I was definitely hearing a song. My wings will take me there... If I lie to myself, will you come with me? Make me believe you care. Just like that, a full-blown song started pouring into my brain.

  When I came home from the run, I raced upstairs to record what I was hearing in my head onto a digital recorder. Then I careened back downstairs and dive-bombed Brad on the couch.

  “Brad!” I blurted, almost hyperventilating. “Listen to this song!” I sang him the entire thing from beginning to end: “There was a man at the grocery store today who told me I look good . . . ” It flowed out of me as if I’d heard it on the radio a thousand times. “Is that a real song, or did I just make that up?” I asked.

  “I’ve never heard that song before,” Brad answered. “I think you made it up.”

  “I thought so. It’s just that . . . I hear it so clearly in my head. Like it’s a real song.”

  Brad said he loved it. “One suggestion, though,” he offered. “A grocery store isn’t very cool. You should change the very first line to “a man in a record store.” And thus my first song was born:There was a man in the record store today who told me I look good

  I was wearing angel wings and flower charms, and he said he understood

  I told him I’d fly to the mountaintop, if my wings would take me there

  I was wearing pretty lies to make me feel good, and totally unaware

  Fly, fly, fly! My wings will take me there

  If I lie to myself, will you come with me?

  Make me believe you care

  After that, the floodgates opened. By the time I stood lacing up my shoes at the starting line of the San Diego Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon in June 2007, an entire album of songs had been bouncing around in my head for months. Songs came to me during training runs, in the shower, in the car, and in my dreams—basically all the time.

  When I crossed the finish line of the marathon, I looked down at my watch: four hours, zero minutes, and . . . eight seconds. Eight seconds?! My goal had been to finish the race in fewer than four hours! My knees gave way and I started to feel woozy. I would have collapsed on the ground were it not for a fellow runner, who had grabbed my arm.

  That night, I went to bed exhausted (and pissed I hadn’t achieved my target time in the race). But in the morning, the achievement of merely finishing a marathon had worked its inspirational magic on my brain yet again, and my frustration had been supplanted by an unrelenting thought: The songs in my head need to come to life.

  Chapter 26

  The songs in my head were beginning to bore holes in my brain, but I didn’t know how to get them out. Arranging the songs with Cool Band Luke wasn’t an option; the guys didn’t have the time or interest to launch an originals band. Brad suggested I find an existing originals band and see if they might be willing to add my songs to their repertoire. That sounded like a plausible idea.

  I went online and found a band of fortysomething guys who had advertised on Craigslist for a female lead singer. I showed up at one of their rehearsals (and was relieved to confirm that “looking for a female lead singer” wasn’t code on Craigslist for “looking for a prostitute”), sang the Pretenders song they had asked me to learn, and got the gig.

  I rehearsed weekly with them for a few months, and ultimately debuted as their new lead singer at a couple of bar gigs. Only then, after we’d gotten to know each other a bit, and after I’d proven my work ethic and willingness to be a team player, did I tell them I’d written a bunch of songs.

  “Maybe you guys would be willing to do a few of my songs along with yours?” I asked hopefully.

  Several of the guys in the band seemed receptive to the idea. But the leader—and the band’s sole songwriter—couldn’t have been more prickly.

  “Look, Laura,” he said stiffly. “I write the songs for this band. And that’s the way it’s gonna stay. You just stick with singing.”

  I was grateful for his candor.

  But if I was going to sing songs written by others, I realized, I much preferred singing the songs of Aretha Franklin, Prince, and Janis Joplin to the songs written by that guy. And, of course, though the musicians in the band were sweet guys, there was just no comparing the chemistry I shared with my Cool Band Luke brothers. I quit the band the next day, and soon learned (in an email their bass player sent to me inadvertently) that my departure had presented a golden opportunity for them to find a “younger” replacement.

  I didn’t blame them, though—my heart had never been in it.

  The year was drawing to a close, and I still had not formulated a plan to produce the songs in my head, which I feared would drive me mad. I couldn’t turn them off, and I couldn’t get them out.

  On Christmas Eve 2007, I attended a family party Sharon hosted. The whole extended family was there in full force—aunts, uncles, cousins, parents—including my beloved cousin Matthew, who is ten years my junior. Matthew is a brilliant musician, composer, singer, and songwriter, as well as a free-spirited, sensitive soul who cares deeply about the people in his life and of the planet at large. He is humble, sensitive, generous, and authentic. And a bit of an iconoclast.

  Since age eighteen, Matthew has been recording albums and touring the world with his rock band, Rx Bandits, amassing high praise from critics and diehard fans all over the world. He’s worked his butt off to achieve the worldwide success that has come to him. Yeah, what I’m saying is, my cousin’s a rock star. And not an undercover one, either.

  Although Matthew is a decade younger than me, I look up to him as somewhat of a role model. I distinctly remember a family dinner when Matt was eighteen (which he did not attend) right after he had dropped out of college to go on tour with his then-budding band. Our grandfather (Grandpa Wayne-o), a John Wayne sort of man, stated at the dinner, with patriarchal authority, that Matthew was making the biggest mistake of his life, that he should stay in school.

  “Music is a fine thing to pursue as a hobby,” Grandpa Wayne-o declared, “but it’s not something to pursue as a career.”

  At the time, I was a twenty-eight-year-old top-billing attorney at a respected law firm, and I kept my mouth shut. I did not say, “Grandpa Wayne-o, I disagree. I think it’s a great opportunity; isn’t now the perfect time in Matt’s life to follow his dreams?” No, I didn’t say any such thing. Instead, I quietly sipped my club soda with a twist of lime, and looked out the window of the fine-dining restaurant, feeling relieved that no one could ever say that I was making the worst mistake of my life. I would never run off to the circus—no sirree, not me.

  But Matthew, quite unlike me, didn’t care what anyone else thought. He knew exactly who he was and what he wanted to do with his life. He knew his calling, and wild horses couldn’t have kept him from it
. (By the way, a decade later, Grandpa Wayne-o was prouder of Matt’s success than anyone and made a point of telling me, “Laura Jill, the most important thing in life is to enjoy what you do.”)

  On that night at my sister’s Christmas party in 2007, I sat next to Matt, who by then had become a successful musician and rock star, and I told him enthusiastically about my newfound passion for songwriting.

  “I can’t get the songs out of my head,” I lamented. “They’re driving me insane.”

  “I can relate,” Matthew laughed. He suggested I come up to his studio in Seal Beach (about an hour and a half north of San Diego) to record a demo of a song or two. I thought my head might explode from sheer excitement, just like that bald guy’s head in Scanners.

  About two weeks later, I found myself in Matt’s garage studio, gazing into Matt’s reassuring brown eyes and timidly singing, “Fly, fly, fly, my wings will take me there . . . ” as Brad looked on, nodding his encouragement. It was contemporaneously exhilarating and nerve-wracking to sing my songs out loud for other people. I felt exposed.

  I had expected support and encouragement, of course—this was not a tough crowd—but I had not anticipated the explosion of excitement and praise that came my way.

  “Wow, Cuz, I had no idea,” Matt enthused, surprised to see a whole new side of his tightly wound attorney cousin.

  “Neither did I” was my honest reply.

  Later that night, we recorded a demo of the song. Matt, musical genius that he is, played guitar, bass, and drums on the track, and then added harmonies to my lead vocals, just for good measure. It was a Herculean effort for one session. And yet when we finished up the song a few hours later, Matt took a deep breath and said, “Okay, Cuz, you want to do another one?”

  And so it was that, on one of the most joyous nights of my entire life, two songs that had previously existed only in my head—“Fly, Fly, Fly” and “Girl Like This”—became audible in the real world. In a flash, I realized I’d been living in Dorothy’s black-and-white Kansas for the past decade. But thanks to Matt, I waltzed right through the front door and into Technicolor Oz.