A Guitar and a Pen

by Robert Hicks

  I like to think I’m their favorite.

  My golden years started prematurely here at the Happy Trails Life Center. Arriving at all of forty-five years old, I was a pretty hot young item—especially among the octogenarian widows. I remember how they ogled me as I rolled into the dining hall that first day, taking an extra hit of oxygen and catcalling, “Fresssshhhh Fish!” I had a particular fondness for several dressed in bright floral muumuus with teeth that I swear they carved themselves. But my leering made them uncomfortable and they quickly backed off. The first couple of weeks I either kept to myself or hung around a defrocked priest who played low-stakes bridge. (To this day, I don’t know the first thing about the game, but I won more times than I lost. I got in the habit of gathering the winnings before he could figure out who had played what cards.) He had former parishioners visit regularly who would sneak him small bottles of Jack Daniel’s and blather on and on about how he was wrongly accused. When I could, I sat in on these private visits offering an affirming head-nod or a well-placed “Oh yes,” biding my time until the free booze handout.

  Over time I became content with my new surroundings. Subsidized long-term care for the indigent and infirmed was, quite truthfully, a homecoming of sorts.

  My mother died the day I was born. I was her sixth child, her only son. The labor was unusually difficult and the doctors initially declared me a stillbirth. When I started breathing on my own they upgraded my prognosis to “likely blind with mild to severe retardation.” They were mostly wrong again. My mom wasn’t nearly as fortunate. On her deathbed she told the hospital minister that her new son was to be named Lucky, “after his father.” Problem with that was that her husband was named Dennis. When the new proud papa took one look at me and my birth certificate, he decided he would go back home to his five legitimate daughters and call it a life. Word has it that he didn’t go to Mom’s funeral, and I never saw him again.

  As it turned out, having the words “blind” and “retarded” on my permanent record wasn’t such a bad thing. The state bureaucrats, having never been much for details, wouldn’t let the fact that I was of sound mind and body cloud their judgment. They placed me in a host of special schools and homes that would have otherwise been off limits. And I thrived—sort of. Expectations were low, and I didn’t disappoint.

  When I was seventeen I found my father, Lucky. Like me, he was in the care of the state. But he was to remain there for two lifetimes plus fifty years. During our brief visit, he told me that he had outgrown the name Lucky and was now known by his God-given name, Lance.“Lucky,” he explained, was simply a nickname he was forced to adopt during an earlier stint in jail by his then cell mate, Matador. As I left him that day, I couldn’t help but wonder about the even more unfortunate turns my life might have taken if I’d been merely named Lance.

  During my twenties I attended every twelve-step meeting I could find. My appetite for these groups was insatiable. At one memorable gathering, a sad sack offered sobbing testimonial recalling the entirety of his life as an “uninterrupted string of failures.” I was stunned and jealous. He and I could have been carved from the same foul lump of clay, but he had already written the final sentence of his final chapter. Most impressive was that he couldn’t get off his ass to do anything worthwhile but had found the time and energy to sum up his miserable life in a very profound, pointed manner. Not to be outpaced, I started trying to imagine how my headstone might read. For a long time I clung to the phrase “Swing and a Miss.” I was never much of a baseball fan, but I liked the metaphor. And I liked that people who passed by my grave might think I was a sporty type. But as that slogan simmered over the years I realized that I had generously overstated my role in the game of life. Truthfully, a more accurate but cumbersome description was that I stood “Shaking at the Plate with My Eyes Closed.”

  To fail required some effort; an attempt made. That was further than I ever reached.

  I nearly found my stride when I turned thirty. The local chamber of commerce published a bimonthly newspaper and was looking to publicize unusual services in the area. I submitted a fuzzy picture of some unknown balloon artist with one of his elaborate twisted creations. I called it “The Excitable Pup” (because it looked like a dog with an erection), and claimed it as my own.“My life’s work has been displayed at the Louvre and I’ve entertained at the Vatican,” I lied. They printed every bit of it and ranked me third in the category behind a nun who could walk on her hands and a clown college graduate. I was never hired.

  I spent most of my waking hours in the public library. Nights I slept beside a Catholic church. As much as I could, I avoided other people. I wandered an upscale suburb that operated a food pantry providing me with groceries twice a week. Everything I owned—two can openers, a bottle of Listerine, and a garbage-bag poncho—I carried in a small red cooler. I tucked my hair up under a sombrero that at one time had the word Muchacho stitched across the front but now just read chachi. If anyone asked, I told them it was a gift from Scott Baio.

  On the day of my forty-fourth birthday the woman who ran the food pantry told me that they were offering a free “spa day” for the community. For families with real needs that meant kids would get back-to-school flat tops or moms might get a shampoo, a cut, and a manicure. For me, it was just time to get cleaned up.

  I sat on a folding chair in the basement of the village hall annex. A burly, cleanshaven barber with tattoos up and down both arms and visible above his collar approached. Without saying a word, he tied an apron around my neck and began cutting my hair. Gnarled ropes fell to the floor and I found myself drifting off to sleep listening to the gentle buzz of the electric trimmer. In a dream I was riding a small horse around the ledge of a skyscraper. As the horse stumbled, I jerked my head back and was awakened when the barber cut off the top of my right ear. It bled. Bad. Never apologizing and visibly annoyed, he dabbed it with some tissue and continued my spa day. I got a look at myself in the full-length mirror that was leaned against a wall. Other than the bleeding and the missing piece of ear, I actually looked pretty good. I stood up before he could shave my face, grabbed my cooler and sombrero, and walked out humming “Happy Birthday.”

  Within a few days I was feeling sick. My head hurt. I was shaking, freezing and sweating. My ear was clearly infected and too sore to touch. I had to stop wearing my brim and eventually misplaced it. Too weak to make the one-block walk to the library, I spent my days sleeping. One hot afternoon the police roused me from my spot next to the church. Paramedics arrived and I was loaded into an ambulance for a casual ride to the county hospital. They never turned on the siren, and I’m certain that on the way they stopped at a McDonald’s drive-through.

  Back in the care of the county’s finest, I was diagnosed with a severe staphylococcus infection. I imagined my updated medical records now read, “Likely blind, with mild to severe retardation, and a life-threatening staph infection brought on by a bad haircut.” They kept the lights on in the big noisy room, but I slept a lot. I couldn’t stay awake. One day I started crying and didn’t stop. I wanted to get up, find my cooler, and walk out the door, but my legs wouldn’t respond.

  Nearly eleven months after my arrival, I left the hospital the same way I came in. The paramedics paused for a cigarette before they rolled my wheelchair into the back of the ambulance and I smiled when I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the hospital door. I was quite the vision with my black terry-cloth slippers, my Adidas T-shirt, and my new gray running suit. It’d be almost forgivable to think I could pop right out of that chair and take my shiny bald head for a power walk. Exhaling one last breath of smoke, the driver crushed his cigarette and told me to hold on tight.“We’re taking you home.”

  Around here, they incorporate some not-so-subtle ways of letting us know that it’s time for bed. The lights in the hall go dark, the attendants stop responding to our calls, and the last strains of the Lynyrd Skynyrd joyride “Ooh That Smell” close out the Muzak track.

 
Klem Hayes

  A veteran bass player and songwriter who divides his time between Nashville and Chicago, Klem’s music has been performed on radio and television and in theater, music videos, and motion pictures. Over the years, Klem has also lent his talents to live performances and recordings by all types of recording artists— the superstars, the has-beens, and the wanna-bes.

  Mr. Hayes relishes his time at home with his two handsome sons, his ravishing bride, and the family’s two dogs.

  Cheeseburger Boogie

  Bob DiPiero

  Maybe it was the grill. The thousands of them that had gone before, leaving greasy footprints on the hands of time. Maybe it was the meat. Some ultimate juju concoction that defied those who would try to unlock its secrets. It’s possible it could have been the bun. That toasting on said sacred grill that put the whole deal over the top. Onions? Yes, but that was too obvious. Way too obvious. They didn’t even use Heinz ketchup. The quintessential Fuck You.

  Finally, maybe it was the place. Jesus Jones had started out in the late sixties as some sort of Southern-fried hippie hangout. An oasis of insane sanity on the social desert that was Nashville, Tennessee, in the dying days of the sixties/seventies. If you had long hair back then, you couldn’t even get served at the local Pancake House. Segregation still a foregone conclusion. Hell lurking just around the corner. Church of Christ the only sure shot to Heaven. Baptist a slippery slope to damnation. Speaking in tongues, snake handling, and tithing sure to get you an inside track to the pearly gates. Jesus Jones was a loose buckle on the Bible belt. You could get cold Budweiser inside, and hot sex in the parking lot when Vanderbilt was in session and all those impossibly blond coeds were trying so hard to get back at their Type A uncaring daddies and their hopelessly alcoholic, jealous mommies.

  Unfortunately, Jesus Jones had lost its counterculture cachet through the years and had become “just another beer joint.” Owners came and went. Neon beer signs went up and came down. But one thing had remained the same. One thing could not be vanquished. One thing had a life of its own and lives on to this day: THE CHEESEBURGER.

  The beer remained reasonably cold. The parking lot sex had been mostly quashed by that nasty little party favor AIDS, but THE CHEESEBURGER ruled. Lived on and thrived. College profs, locals from the neighborhood, lawyers, losers, winners, retirees—they all came to pay their respects and receive communion at the wobbly chipped tables that adorned Jesus Jones. Another legion of pilgrims were the long motley line of singers, songwriters, musicians, wanna-bes, has-beens, never-weres, and hillbilly millionaires that lived, worked, lied, and died on and around that inbred clump of streets near downtown Nashville called Music Row.

  He’d first had one in the late seventies. An A&R intern from the label had brought him to Jesus Jones after a concert. While he was performing in town he wanted to score some blow. Maybe a blowjob, if it wasn’t too much work. While he was waiting to score he’d gotten hungry. He always got hungry after a gig. Hungry for food. Hungry for sex. Hungry for drugs. Hungry. Just hungry. It was the firs-t real-by-God rock ’n’ roll tour he’d ever been on. He had become a genuine badass electric guitar gunslinger.“The best in my price range,” he used to joke.

  Through the years he’d forgotten about what kind of drug he had scored, or the face of the English lit. major that buried herself drunkenly in his lap, but he’d never forgotten that Cheeseburger.

  2:03 P.M.: Owen Love had been up for at least two hours already. 2002 and Owen Love: those two things did not go together. A cosmic oxymoron. In Owen’s mind it was still somewhere in the late seventies/early eighties and he was still twenty-six. Learjets? Owen had been there, drinking Dom and snorting cocaine off some top-shelf titties. Big Tours? The biggest. Owen had been there making whatever flavor-of-the-month star look like he, she, “it” was actually that good.“Keep ’em laughing and wear cool clothes.” That was Owen’s mantra. Mr. Country Savior or Little Miss Diva really didn’t have a clue just how good Owen was. But that was okay. As long as he got the gig.

  That was the trouble right now. Owen didn’t have the gig. For the first time in a long time, Owen Love didn’t have a paying job as a musician. As a matter of fact, his last gig had sucked pretty hard. There was no Learjet involved. No brand-new Prevost tour bus with a bunk directly over the rear wheel to call home. Just a very late model Silver Eagle that used to belong to some over-the-hill Rock Star and was now being leased by a bipolar bulimic country chick singer who hadn’t had a hit in five years. Make that seven and counting. The honky-tonks, hat bars, and cinder-block skull orchards he had played on his way up he was now playing again. Not a good sign. Definitely not a good sign. That’s why he had come to Jesus Jones. That’s why he had taken up his sentry post at the bar.

  Owen’s shaggy black hair hung unkempt around his puffy oval face. The last ten years had put on an unwelcome twenty pounds, mostly around his middle. A rocker with a beer gut. Bad form. Bad for business. He could still get layed but no longer by the Diva and lately not even the background singer. Viagra gave him a headache and made him see everything with a blue halo around it. Lately he had pretty much lost interest anyway.

  Owen wore his trademark black jeans, blue denim work shirt, and Harley boots. He’d given up wearing shades sometime back in the nineties. If he wasn’t cool enough by now, Owen thought, he was fucked. He regarded his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Rough. Still some handsome left, but he could almost see it sweating out of his skin. One too many tequila shots backstage. One too many bumps from the A&R guy who was protecting his investment and his own ass. Like James Brown said, payback was a Mother Fucker. The time had come and Owen knew it. He needed intercession. He needed healing. He had come for most Holy Communion. Owen Love had come to Jesus Jones for THE CHEESEBURGER.

  When Owen had gotten divorced from his first wife, Nikki, he holed up in Jesus Jones for three straight days and nights. Living on cigarettes, Stolichnaya lemon-flavored vodka, and the occasional C.B. Up until Katie, he had been batting a thousand. If a girl was dysfunctional, delusional, damaged, or any combination thereof, she would end up in Owen’s bed and entangled in his showbiz life. Sometimes she would even end up married to Owen Love. Nikki was one of those girls. One of a kind of a kind. Thank God He didn’t make any more of those. One day Rachel Agnes Felder woke up and became Nikki. Just Nikki. She claimed that her style was somewhere between Sheryl Crow and Dolly Parton, whatever the hell that meant. Owen knew better than to argue taste or style with Rachel/Nikki. A year into their marriage, she’d developed this mysterious Euro Trash accent. It freaked Owen out because Rachel/Nikki had been born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia. She’d also developed a taste for a German Chemicals rep named Claus she had met while Owen had been out on the road for a six-week tour of the West Coast and Canada. Owen had come directly to Jesus Jones from divorce court. Even though that was years ago, give or take a few thousand brain cells, Owen remembered exactly what he had ordered.

  “Hey man, gimme two cheeseburgers and some burnt fries. Oh yeah. And lemme have a Fresca and a Darvon.”

  Owen used laughter like a shield. He always found it amazing that Charlie Chaplin had written the song “Smile.” The ultimate armor. When Owen had been a theory and harmony student at Juilliard he had analyzed Chaplin’s song three ways: harmonically, lyrically, and spiritually. It was that last part that had really fucked up his theory and harmony prof.

  “Ya know what I think, Professor Brite? I think you gave me a C-minus because you’re threatened by me.”

  “Mr. Love, certainly you don’t—”

  “You just couldn’t give me an F. But you found something worse, didn’t you? You gave me a C-minus, you pretentious little—”

  “Now, Owen, I can certainly understand your—”

  “It never entered your mind that just because Chaplin, or for that matter Mozart or Hank Williams, were geniuses they could also be totally spiritually bankrupt. You don’t wanna believe it and you are envious
of the fact that you can’t go there and I can. I know the truth! You don’t and you can’t deal with it!”

  That was the day Owen quit Juilliard, quit studying theory and harmony. That was the day Owen stopped playing classical piano, traded his Martin 0018 for a ’56 Tele and a Vox AC-30, kept his mouth shut, and went on the road.

  2:53 P.M.: In L.A. there’s a place that claims to have the world’s best cheeseburger. Actually, there are dozens of them there. First of all, show-biz people in L.A. don’t eat cheeseburgers. They eat each other. At least that was Owen’s truth at the moment. The charismatic savants will pose by a burger, but they definitely don’t swallow. Point number two: The claim is utter bullshit. Courtney Love being seen on E! News Weekend riding her Harley to the best cheeseburger in the world is Antichrist advertisement. He might have to work with them, but enough is enough. Anyway, Owen thought, the last meat she had in her mouth definitely wasn’t a cheeseburger.

  What sat in front of Owen was the genuine article. The Holy Grail. Sitting there on a virginal white mini platter, nestled among a perfect nest of overdone fries. Super-sour pickle chips anointing the top. There sat THE CHEESEBURGER. Owen had found through the years of coming to Jesus Jones that it almost didn’t matter how he dressed his burger. If he was in a ketchup mood he was known to go through half a bottle per burger-and-fry unit. Sometimes a white trash burger was in order. Major mayonnaise followed by ketchup, mustard, and a goodly shot of Texas Pete hot sauce. Sometimes the way they did it in certain parts of Texas was the way to go. Double mustard. And not that bullshit fancy kind. Plain bright yellow mustard. The color yellow not found in nature.

  Ultimately Owen found it was all about the burger. Kinda like God’s word. It wasn’t about speaking in tongues, not eating meat on Friday, fasting, going to church on Wednesday, crawling on your knees to some plaster saint, sitting shiva, or any hundreds of the forms of baptism that existed. No. It was all about communing directly with your higher power. And right now God and Owen were sharing a cheeseburger.