Blueberry Pancakes
A Novel
Anton Lee Richards
Contents
Acknowledgments
Please Help with Reviews
I. Blueberry Pancakes
1. COUNTESS MARLENE
2. PANCAKE HEAVEN
3. DOUBLE CRISIS
4. SMOOTH AS BUTTER
II. Pumpkin Pancakes
5. SONGWRITING CIRCLE
6. THE FACTORY
III. Gingerbread Pancakes
7. SLUTS VS. WHORES
8. THRILL OF SOMETHING NEW
9. I’M THE ASSHOLE
10. THE PRETTY ONE
IV. Swedish Pancakes
11. YOUR POETRY
12. RADIATE MY WORLD
13. ALWAYS THIS PASSIVE?
V. Peach & Almond Pancakes
14. THE JERK
15. THE ASSHOLE
VI. Dutch Apple Pancakes
16. CRAZIEST GIRL
17. ARE YOU HIGH?
18. TERROR
19. BUBBLEGUM POP MODE
VII. Cajun Pancakes
20. BOTTOM
21. NEVER SEEN, NEVER HEARD
22. GROWING A PAIR
VIII. Blackberry Pancakes
23. FLAGSHIP REBELLION
24. STUCK WITH YOU
25. THE NOISE
26. SPRINGFIELD PROJECT
IX. Buckwheat Pancakes
27. THE NON-CEMENT PEOPLE
28. WHAT MORE CAN I ASK FOR?
X. Gluten-free Pancakes
29. BOHEMIAN GOLD
30. IT’S LONELY AT THE TOP
About the Author
Also by Anton Lee Richards
Copyright © 2019 by Anton Lee Richards
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
"So what does it all mean? . . . If a song moves you, that's all that's important."
- Bob Dylan
Acknowledgments
To my online readers were eager to read this book and pushed me to finish it. Thank you, Mim!
Thank you to all who have contributed to this release:
Olivia, Jeremy, Stef, Brigid, Louise, Steve, Nicole, James, Susan, Sheri, John, Ed, Paula, Debbie, Linnea, Ben, Randall, Carma and Genea.
To my friends and family, and especially Jeffrey for putting up with me during this process.
Please Help with Reviews
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Part One
Blueberry Pancakes
Chapter One
COUNTESS MARLENE
Countess Marlene was almost a diva. All she needed was for me to write a hit song. My neck cramped after spending hours writing a song on my golden blonde Takamine guitar. The strings purred as I strummed a simple A minor chord.
The whole world sees a beautiful face
And then the D seventh chord for my next line.
But I see you through your embrace
Deciding that a C chord would work better, I finished the progression for the chorus of the song.
The front door to the apartment creaked open, and Marlene, my best friend, and roommate of four years created a frenzy on her way in. Her purse fell to the floor. Even though I was on the opposite end of the apartment, I knew it was hers because it had all sorts of annoying dangly, beady, stringy things hanging from it. It embarrassed me to be around her when she carried it in public, but it didn’t faze her in the slightest. Her clunky steps toward my bedroom made me wonder what type of extravagant shoes she was wearing this time.
“Duncan,” she said, leaning against the bedroom doorway. “Hey, babe.” She pouted her lips and tugged her purple hair back like a model in a photo shoot. She laughed and pointed to the charcoal leather boots riding up her thighs, despite the temperature being in the 90s. “You like?”
“Star!”
“Yeah, I’ll be a star alright, once you write me that perfect song.” She walked toward me as I sat at my computer desk. “I heard you and Jesse getting it on again last night. These walls are paper thin.”
“Oops, sorry,” I said. I put on my pretend shy face and gulped my vodka Red Bull.
“You sure are a screamer, Duncan.”
“I hit the bull’s eye every time.”
“Gross,” she said. She came over to me and ran her fingers through my hair, mumbling under her breath about how she wished hers was as thick as mine. “So, where’s my song?” She looked over my shoulder at the laptop. “What do we have here? ‘A Beautiful Face.’ Please tell me it’s not another love song about Jesse.”
It was. Before Jesse, I wrote songs about the meaning of life, social justice, or about my love of pancakes, but my focus was on love songs since he became my muse. When he ran his fingers down my body, I could hear new melodies. When we had sex, I was torn between savoring the moment and jumping out of bed to record a new song. More than once, he had caught me singing a melody while we were getting it on and it killed the mood, at least for him anyway.
“Sweet Jesus-Allah-Buddha,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, sex with Jesse last night aroused my inner muse. He stimulated my—”
She put her palm in the air. “Stop. Point made. I don’t care if you keep me awake all night as long as it inspires you to write the song that will get people to realize I‘m the shit.” She grabbed the laptop and moved her finger around the trackpad. “Where’s play?”
I snatched the laptop back from her and pressed play. Three versions of the chorus melody played one after the other. “The second one,” she said after they finished.
Marlene’s quick reaction gave me hope for this song. I hadn’t any luck breaking into the industry on my own. Writing songs on the guitar for a would-be pop star was painful, because I wasn’t an experienced player. I wanted more than anything for a song of mine to go to the top, and Marlene was my best chance to make it. She was using me to reach her goal of pop stardom, and I was using her to achieve my goal of hearing a song of mine on the radio. We also split rent on the apartment, so that was nice too, I guess.
“Second one it is,” I said. I picked up the guitar from the bed. She grabbed it out of my hands and slung the strap over her shoulder. Marlene could play anything from Bach to Elton John on the piano but only knew a few chords on the guitar. She clumsily strummed A minor and then D seventh as she sang.
“It works,” she said. “Can you get this done by Friday? I need something new for the Countess Marlene show coming up. And it needs to be up-tempo. No ballads.”
“Why not?”
“The crowd wants energy. They want to dance. A bunch of drunks in a bar need to feel the beat, not ballads.” She strummed a dissonant chord while she put on her most earnest face. “And simplify it. Memorable hooks.”
She was right. Crowds reacted differently to different types of songs, and this depended on how drunk they were. The most poetic words could get lost in the sound of badly mixed guitars and clinking bottles. People went to bars to get sauced, not hear about how I long for my boyfriend’s tender affection. Repeat one line four times, and the crowd can sing along by the end of the song. It didn’t hurt that Marlene knew how to shake her ass. The rhythm of her hips in a painted-on dress mesmerized every straight guy around. She was even more successful at the gay clubs. They couldn’t get enough of her either.
<
br /> “But that’s not who I am as a songwriter. I want to write poetic lyrics like Bob Dylan.” I set the laptop down on the desk and sulked in my chair.
She stopped strumming. “You’re not a sell-out. Just mix it up a little. A few pop songs and a few where you get to, you know, express your longing, or whatev.” She ran her fingers over the mini keyboard on my desk, but it wasn’t plugged in.
“I keep forgetting I’m writing songs for your career, not mine.” I was too shy to sing on stage while she was too hyperactive to sit down and write words on a piece of paper. That worked out perfectly. Countess Marlene was the singer on the stage, and I was Cyrano behind the bush.
She reached out and grabbed my chin. “Bingo, but don’t feel left out.”
“I won’t. I’m sure you’ll thank me when they do a Behind the Music on you.”
She clutched the air next to her face. “For this Grammy, I want to thank God, my parents, and of course Duncan, that homo over there next to Beyoncé.”
My phone dinged, and I leaned over the laptop to pick it up. It was a text from Jesse that read: I’m coming over. We need to talk. I fumbled with the phone and dropped it on the floor. Whenever he said that, my stomach knotted. And he’d said it plenty of times before.
After picking it up, I held the phone up to Marlene so she could read it.
“Dunno, dude,” she said. “It can’t be about you. You were fucking like Mormon boys last night.” She set the guitar back down and walked to her bedroom. My eyes followed her boots like a straight guys’ would. Those boots? Really? A moment later, she played the same A minor to D seventh progression on the keyboard in her room. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I would not keep that progression for “A Beautiful Face.”
Putting the guitar away, I closed out my Pro Tools file, and walked to the kitchen. It was a galley kitchen with barely enough room for Marlene and me to prepare our microwave meals. I wiped down the counters, put away some dishes, and told myself not to worry about Jesse’s text, even though it engulfed my thoughts. Then I rechecked my texts and wiped down the counters, hitting areas I’d previously passed over near the stove. Before wiping them down a third time, I stood in front of the refrigerator, opening and closing it.
“Stop it,” Marlene said. “You’ve already cleaned that counter. You’re not helping things.” She stood at the entrance to the kitchen and grabbed the towel out of my hand. “I still want that song by Friday, no matter what.”
It took Jesse an hour by bus to get to my place from the Puerto Rican neighborhood. I buzzed him in and ran to the bathroom to clean myself up before he walked through the courtyard and up the stairs. He always assured me he thought I was attractive, but I always wondered whether I was good enough for him. He would hold my face in his hands and say, “You make me feel alive like nobody else can.” The gentle timbre of his voice echoed in my heart and secured me to this earth. There was a particular vulnerability in his articulation as if he was afraid of losing me too. He’d give me all his attention, make me the center of his world. I’d be his queen… er… king.
He had masculine facial features and exuded confidence with toned muscles while I had more feminine mannerisms and he was always on my case for slouching. I wasn’t a queen or a stud—I occupied the gay area in between, and it didn’t matter how much time I spent at the gym. Jesse always told me he loved his little songwriter. He always encouraged me, even when I felt like giving up.
My hands felt dirty, and I washed them thinking I needed to get them dry before the door opened. I yanked the towel out of Marlene’s hand and wiped the counter one more time for good luck while she rolled her eyes. He walked into the foyer without taking his shoes off, which he normally would do, and recoiled when I tried to kiss him.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. He crumpled his face.
He stood with a rigid posture, gave a half shrug, and sweat covered his brow. My eyes wandered from the bronze skin of his face to his black curls. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to run my fingers through them, so I gestured with a sweeping arch to sit down.
The living room was my space to chill with Marlene, with its crazy knick-knacks, odd-shaped IKEA mirrors, and a four-foot Hello Kitty I painted on the wall. With an emptiness in the pit of my stomach, I nodded my head for Marlene to skedaddle while Jesse and I talked. She gave Jesse a cold stare and didn’t even say hello.
I sat down on the edge of the chair, staring at Hello Kitty. Although she had no mouth, Jesse’s words came through her: “I’m breaking up with you.” His pouty lips were still when I turned to him. He stood up and paced back and forth.
“Why this time?” My eyes scrutinized the crease near his mouth as it trembled.
He picked up a decorative ball doohickey from the shelf above the TV. “You don’t want me that way, anymore.” He winced, and his eyes closed for a moment.
“I beg to differ, and so does Marlene. We kept her up last night.” I pointed to the wall and tapped on it. I thought a joke would help him come to his senses. “Is this about religion? Is this the whole gay Christian thing again?” I immediately wished I could take it back.
Jesse gave me a dirty look. “You always claim you support me going to seminary and becoming a pastor one day, but then you say things like that. So does Marlene.”
“I admit Marlene thinks it’s silly, but it’s not up to her. It’s your life. Our life. I support you doing whatever it takes to make you happy. We both need to chase after our dreams, together.”
“I’m not perfect. I want to be a better person.” Jesse dropped his head into his hands, and the veins in his neck stood out. “It’s just that…”
“And you will be,” I said. “We both will.” I cleared my throat and did my best to sound comforting. Every once in a while, he’d felt guilty about something, a symptom of a strict Catholic upbringing and a father who still didn’t accept him as gay, and it was my job to remind him of how good of a person he was. “Think of all that work you do at the homeless center. Those people depend on you.”
“It’s not that.” He cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think you’re attracted to me anymore,” he said. “I see you looking at other guys.”
“So do you. That’s not it. What is it?”
“Then why didn’t you fight him off?” Jesse stepped back.
“Who?” I raised my palms in the air.
“That guy from the party on Saturday.”
“Alan? He was a drunk asshole.” I waved my hand to dismiss the idea.
“You didn’t stop him. I bet you like him.”
“I do not!” My hands clenched into fists.
Jesse turned around. “Right.”
I took a deep breath. “I brushed him off and kept turning away from him. He was just a stupid drunk.” I walked to him and rested my hands on his to calm him down. “Slow down and think this through.” He quivered so hard that it didn’t work. “Why does looking, but not touching, other guys make you think I’ll be unfaithful to you?”
Jesse stopped pacing and scowled at me. “You know my last boyfriend cheated on me. It took me a whole year to figure out he was screwing my best friend behind my back,” he said. “That’s how gay men are.” He disparaged gay people the same way his father did, but I let it slide in the heat of the argument.
“I’m not him. I only want you.”
“And then you moved in with Marlene after six months of talking about us moving in together,” Jesse said. He faced the wall and crossed his arms.
“You kept saying you weren’t ready. My previous roommate was leaving. What was I supposed to do, be homeless until you felt ready?”
“You didn’t ask me to move in with you,” Jesse said, nonchalantly.
“What the fuck? We talked about it, and you kept hemming and hawing.” He always tried to make me sound like the bad guy.
He wheezed and looked away. “But you never formally asked.”
“Two years together, and you n
eed a formal invitation?”
He looked down at me to assess my expression and whispered something in Spanish before walking to the door. He paused, waiting for me to say something. I refused to plead with him this time. He sobbed. I had never seen him cry before, even during the other times he had broken up with me. “Goodbye, Duncan.”
I sat frozen on the chair as he walked out the door. When the apartment door closed, I looked at Hello Kitty and said, “This is all your fault.”
Chapter Two
PANCAKE HEAVEN
“Didn’t like the song, huh?” Marlene asked, appearing in the hallway. “He’ll be back. He always comes back.” She walked over and lifted my chin. “And I still want that song by Friday.”
“Not now!” I crossed my arms.
She folded me in her famous bear hug. She held me for a minute while I broke down and wiped more than a few tears off my face. “We need comfort food, Duncan. We need Pancake Heaven. Let me get dressed.”
Blueberry Pancakes: The Novel Page 1