Bat Kol

Bat Kol

What’s that exquisite word I’m looking for? Ah yes, pococurante. I am not the least bit galled when confronted with the level of accused pretension my pilgrimage garnered. It matters very little to me what others think of my packing a small bag and setting off for Montreal, Little Portugal to be precise, in honour of an artist that filled my creative life with bourne, charging the boundless aim of my capabilities. My trip, despite being in search of an idol’s final resting place, denotes a sublimely joyful and peaceable moment in time. What’s that other delicious word? The one to perfectly ascribe to the trek. Ah yes, halcyon.

Prior to my departure, I fell bored. Begrudgingly succumbing to the monotonous humdrum of waking each morning, toiling nine to five then returning home to meticulously dust bookcases. All of which are in perfect authorial alphabetical order. Creative pursuits were devilishly evasive, my appetite nil, my heart unfulfilled. It was a deep internet dive that inspired my mission. I arrived, after hours of mindless perusing, to a link hosted by CBC. It answered an unplanned prayer. The remedy to my malaise: time away. A quiet retreat. To fill the well. Browse, on foot, by way of a detailed walking tour of the earthly place a beloved and fallen artist lovingly called home.

I arrived in Montreal on an amiable flight, early dawn, an autumn morning. The cloying sun offered the city a clandestine suppleness, just before it was fully awake, and the avenues filled with bustle. I hailed a taxi to my accommodations, a charming Air B&B, spacious and bright with a private terrace. Austere with a hint of whimsy. Perfection. It suited my needs. A place to lay my hat, and a desk for writing. First order of business, coffee. Something to go with the fig-cheddar bun I purchased from a hide-away bakery for breakfast en route. The sleek galley kitchen housed a Nespresso machine. It was good in a pinch before my adventure’s official start.

That first day, ah, magnificent. One foot in front of the other, my scarf knotted ardently around my neck. Mine eyes feasted. Mine lungs exorcised by fall’s crisp waft, taking long languid breaths to exhale lazily. All at once, I felt airy and parched. I ducked inside a little bistro for a nip.  I chose a window seat, atop a narrow yet sturdy pew, and sipped a concoction made of tequila, Cointreau, agave syrup, lime, orange, and citrus salt. One glass. Two. I drank. I mused. And, because I imbibed, hunger struck. I lingered to indulge. Fresh oysters served with mignonette, michelada, and chamoy. And then, with a warm belly, I was off.

Quincaillerie Azores’ was a frequent haunt for the fallen. I stood inside and wondered what sundry things might line a receipt deep into the silk of his jacket pocket: hand-held tools, keys, locks, fasteners, hinges, clamps, thimbles, chains, utensils, plumbing provisions, paint cans, paint brushes, housewares? The possibilities endless, and then the wonder of what he’d do with his purchase, what he fixed or created or threw in a drawer for a later date. My imagination, rampant in that moment. The walking map was correct when it boasted the corner store rife with hardware, had a generous assortment of Portuguese earthenware. To preserve my visit, I bought a small piece to carry home and place as a memento on the bookcase housing works by writers whose last names begin with C. A small ornamental bowl, I knew would eventually fill up with pocket change.

I intended to pass by his homestead at the end of my visit as an official bon voyage and a thanks for the dance nod, but I found myself unable to delay. I stopped, awed, in front of his residence, 28 Rue de Vallieres. A single tear dropped and rested on my cool cheek. I envisioned the grey limestone, that sorrowful November day, converted into a place of worship, muted candles, heaps of fresh flowers, and mournful messages mounting in commemoration. I took refuge in Parc du Portugal across the street. Found a sturdy bench to sit and reflect. It has been said he preferred comfortable slippers as shoes. How many times had he tread across these pathways, scuffing toward any given Glory? Sitting to work out the poetic mechanics of gentle soliloquies full of dark humility, glorious works he left behind. The simple brilliance of the reverie swelled an emotional lump in my throat. Still, in the shadow of his genius, a tremendous blessing. The bench was the edge of the earth. I lost track of time there. A park forged to commemorate Portuguese immigrants in search of a new life. I took several photos of the quaint summer pavilion, and of the gates and fountains comprised of glamorous glazed tiles. I had a nagging desire to stay but my physical hunger championed inactivity.

For dinner, as per the walking tour map, I sidled into Moishe’s Steakhouse. According to local lure, it’s a Montreal institution. The meal I enjoyed cost almost as much as a night’s stay at my Air B&B. Alas, it had to be part of itinerary, so I did not deviate nor dissuade myself by worrying about vacation economics. As there were so many to choose from on the extensive wine list, I asked my server to surprise me, something red. He did not disappoint. There were hints of rich chocolate and deep plum. I sat languorously, legs crossed with a crisp napkin across my lap so as not to spill the delivered hors d’oeuvre, succulent shrimp cocktail, on my wool slacks. A steakhouse it was but I am not one for red meat, so I opted for Alaskan Black Cod with grilled oyster mushrooms, spinach, and potato latkes. Sinfully delicious. While I digested both my meal and my surroundings, I nursed a hellishly fragrant cup of coffee. The scene then begged for the accompaniment of a cigar. One that would impart a creamy, buttery flavor with notes of cocoa, wood, and toasted bread. I had one such after a poetry reading with friends. The memory of its slow burn and deliberate upward smoke curl, made my mouth water.

I shuffled back to my Air B&B, feeling abundant and melancholic. Inside, I shrugged off the coldness that infiltrated the evening’s wind, hung my hat, and sat at the desk to write. Wholly inspired by the day. This is the poem that materialized before I retired for the evening:

All Possible Calm

I mulled

gazing the skylight

all hours I gathered

& steadied myself

elegant

& intent

pen poised

notebook open

page blank

in all possible calm

determined

to compose a

dust

jacket proclamation

worthy of discussing

with you over wine

in a five-star hotel bar

for first rate writers

            shy to admit I

require your sublime

assurance before I am

able to write another

                        word

I awoke with purpose. Sunrise lush and radiant with autumn’s gilded palette. The city enveloped me as one of its own the second my black patent shoes clipped the sidewalk stone. It was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch, so I acceded to the lure of decadent confections. An extravagant storefront display enticed me in with the pledge of sugar. It did not disappoint although it took far longer than it should have to choose. I, in the end, opted for a generous share of grapefruit pistachio layer cake. It towered sumptuously over the mille-feuilles and eclairs, tasted twice as good. I required something of heft in my belly before finding my way to Mt. Royal Boulevard to Shaar Hashomayim Congregation Cemetery; the final resting place of my idol, the sole intent for my excursion. I found myself stood before a handsome stone, befit for a mensch. A visitor before me placed an impeccable bushel of mini mums in esteem, a beautiful cushion of seasonal colors in shades of deep red, burnt orange, vivid yellow, pallid peach, and snow white. I knelt, in respect for the man inside of the earth, buried humbly in an unadorned pine box close to family, laid to rest in a traditional Jewish rite. From my pocket, I pulled out a prayer in the form of one of his very own poems. One, I hope, wherever in the vastness of the universe his enlightened spirit roamed, he stopped to hear. Paused to smile at my offering:

I lost my way.

I forgot to call your name.

The raw heartbeat against the world

And the tears were for my lost victory.

But, you are here.

you have always been here.

The world is all-forgetting,

and the heart is a rage of directions,

but your name unifies the heart,

and the world is lifted up into its place.

Blessed is the one who waits in the

travelers heart for his turning.

O, I wept. I guarded my inexorable tears with my chin tucked into my chest, the wide brim of my hat tugged tight enough to protect mine eyes. I could not linger; I was overcome with emotion. I did not expect to be taken over in such a deep and profound way. And so, I bid him adieu. Regretfully. I just couldn’t bear the thought of being found on bended knee, bawling like a baby. I required comfort. Food of some sort. Something of note. I took the advice of a passerby to take a late lunch at Schwartz’s, the oldest deli in Canada. I hailed a taxi to the famed Montreal landmark since 1928. The passerby alerted me that I may have to wait in line for an extended period of time to be served but I walked straight in, took a seat at the counter, and before I knew it, there was a towering smoked meat sandwich teetering in front of me complete with a gargantuan dill pickle and heaping dish of coleslaw. Between doleful sips of Coke and bites of lunch, I continued to flick rogue tears from mine eyes before they had cause to fall. He is in every atom of the city. Every breath of air. And what’s more, while I paid the kind folk for their abundance, ‘So Long Marianne’ sounded on the radio. One of my fellow white-haired counter patrons perked up at the song. His shoulders straightened, a smile formed, and between bites of his meal, he hummed along to the treasured lyrics. Proudly. A purr of honour. It wasn’t too long after, I was back at my Air B&B, equal parts full of food and flounder. I dove under the covers for a siesta. Rest was necessary to regain my composure for an evening of live music. I hoped.

I arose after only an hour or so, had a long shower, ironed my favorite shirt, dressed in my finest outfit and hopped into a taxi. In very broken French, asked the driver where I might find a bit of good live music. He replied in English blanketed it with a thick French strum, “I know jus’ ze place! You will need to wear your coat though.” He let me off in front of Jardin Nelson, a few days shy of closing for winter. A seasonal garden style bistro-type spot. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. I was in the mood for a hot drink and rhythmic jazz and ended up with a pitcher of melon sangria and a meal I won’t soon forget. Jackfruit Poke.  Green jackfruit, marinated in spicy sesame and soy sauce, with avocado, edamame beans, cucumber, lettuce, jasmine rice, vegetables, nori, wakame, gari, spicy vegan mayo, and peas – a direct quote from their menu. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper for blogging purposes. I first chose the brie fondue with pesto and pine nuts, then changed my mind to the duck leg confit but I have a soft spot for jackfruit. It was divine. I missed out on the jazz trio. They were late for their gig and my hands started to go numb from the cool temps and the sangria. Tipsy, I stumbled out onto the street in search anything else. A busker, a dead ringer for a young Tom Waits, with his battered guitar case open and a spray of pocket change across the fuzzy purple interior asked if I had any requests. “First We Take Manhattan”, I cooed, the scent of melon wafting from my tongue. Tom Waits grinned, “Ooo la la, Monsieur Cohen, ah?” He leaned closer, “Don’t tell anyone … but I prefer version Jennifer Warrens do.” And with that, he broke into song. I joined tentatively at first, but the liquor found its way to all of my cortexes and soon my voice was soaring with his in unison, “I’m guided by a signal in the Heavens/I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin/I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons/First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin …”

I woke the next morning with no knowledge of how I made it back to my Air B&B. My head, akin to a kick drum sufficiently rocked, threatened to roll. I accosted the Nespresso machine as if we the last thing I’d ever do. I sat out on the private terrace, overlooking the sweep of the city, mid-morning, balled up in a bulky sweater, and sipped. The fresh air slowly started to make me feel more human than human. As the cobwebs cleared, so did my memory. My recall revealed an extended performance with Tom Waits – Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, anyone’s version of ‘Stand by Me’, Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. It all came flooding back. My customary posturing did not prevail. I, uncharacteristically, let loose, as they say. That had to be remedied. It is not that I’d ever see Tom Waits again so my perfected reputation was not in peril, it’s the simple fact I allowed my very tailored and restrained self to run amok. I confess, it felt extraordinary. Alas, I feel more comfortable in my skin buttoned up and discreet. Reserve. Ostentatious. Thus, on my last day in Montreal city, I bent back into my true self, and set off for home.

My morning flight was delayed so after a quick stop for a few extra cups of coffee, and osso bucco breakfast poutine with cheddar biscuits, I spent the rest of my wait at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. I was quite taken with Edith Gluck’s story. She donated an object of note in 2010, what is titled ‘A Clandestine Cookbook’. During her imprisonment in the Lippstadt concentration camp in Germany, she compiled two hundred recipes, all written in pencil on beige and pink paper that came from the munitions factory she forced to work in 12 hours per day. From memory she recorded many of the meals she prepared before the war and called on her fellow inmates to contribute. Together, they used this act of resistance to maintain their humanity and preserve their cultural history. The booklet, written in Hungarian, bound together with orange thread also from the factory, had to be hidden under the ground. And, since it was written in Hungarian, if found by the German soldiers, it would be deemed a diary and elicit a severe beating. Her bold efforts took my breath away. I stared at the aged pages for a long time, imagining these brave women whispering ingredients and instructions to Edith who scratched them quietly into the pilfered paper. A guide called Vilma in the museum shared the most horrendous fact, music was used to admonish prisoners. Nazis consistently directed captives to sing while marching or exercising. It was done as to mock, humiliate, and discipline. Inmates who dared disobey or didn’t know the song demanded only gave the SS an excuse for severe arbitrary lashings. Vilma told me, “If you did not know song, beaten. If you sang too soft, beaten. If you sang too loud, beaten. SS, ack, savages!” Luckily, the conversation ended on a positive note. Vilma, while straightening her name tag on the lapel of her tweed coat told me, “As you well know from Edith’s book, the prisoners were resourceful. They also composed and performed songs written inside of the camps, a survival technique as a means of psychological resistance, you see. Music then, was a means of survival and an instrument of terror for the SS. Some good, but mostly bad.” In that instant, I knew the second I arrived home, I’d order everything Amazon sold about this dreadful period of history. More knowledge, necessary. I became transfixed with their very human stories in the face of such adversity. I berated myself for knowing so little. Vilma’s parting words were, “No worry, you don’t deny Holocaust happened. If you did, then we have problem.”

All the way to the airport, with courageous holocaust survivors on my mind, I could hear my idol’s voice inside, still circling me in his city, caroling, “And let the Heavens hear it/The penitential hymn/Come healing of the spirit/Come healing of the limb …” And, I didn’t mention the mural of him, or me standing street level, craning my neck at his artful greatness nine stories high on the Cooper Building. That happened somewhere between my repentant hangover and Edith Gluck. And the, in the heart of the city, another piece of public artwork in the form of a handsome mural on Crescent Street, 1,000 square meters. I saw both, photographed them, tipped my hat, and bid him farewell. I arrived in a city I’d never been to before in search of his resting place, to pay my respects, and I departed with an indescribable yen. A strange ache. As if I were leaving something or someone precious behind. And then, I suppose I was. It also occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t something being left behind but a reminder that in my years, I’ve not done anything of note, surely nothing to warrant a universe size mural to lord over an entire city or to have moved other human beings so much they’d pack a small bag and set off on a whim just to sit grave-side, to be near. The experience only rivaled that of seeing him perform live. Once. In a whole lifetime of worship. The man, aged like a fine wine, had more energy than I’ll ever have. He was sharp and witty and prolific, performed encore after encore. Jaw-dropping competence. I aspire to be so Zen, as fertile, agile. At any age.

Many friends, assorted colleagues, and select family members scoffed at my indulgent jaunt. As I mentioned, I am in no way incensed by their assessment. I can’t expect them to understand. I am an Artist. I use unscented soap. I like everything in their right place. I enjoy the elegant curve of exquisitely formed flowers. I drink bourbon before bed. I shine my shoes. I often sport a pocket square in my breast pocket. I do not wear my heart on my sleeve. But I feel. And ache. Love. Suffer. And then, it all goes on a canvas, into a song, or on blank page. While I hold most of them dear, dull accountants and soccer moms cannot comprehend the artistic temperament, the need, the appreciation of others who have come before. I need not have to explain further.

It was hell, it was swell, it was fun.

And, who am I fooling? Surely not myself. I love pretension. I am pretension personified. Proudly. Except, for those few drunken tunes with Tom Waits, I was as free as a bird, soaring high until I came face to face with Bat Kol, the divine voice that reveals the will of God. Or, as it were, the anointed voice of my hero.

***

I’ve been pecking at this for a good long time. It’s not a perfect piece of writing but I had the most delicious time creating something full of intentional affectation and heart. I would really love to set out for Montreal to visit Leonard Cohen’s resting place. So, until I am able, this little ditty will have to do.

In (intentional) propinquity,

Nic

Too Much To Contain

Too Much To Contain

‘Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.’

~ Tennessee Williams

His nefarious gaze made sycophants of us all.  His conscience, secretly as twisted as his wily grin, mislead a small devote crowd of admirers with a malevolent bombshell.  I was there.   I was one of the lucky ones who narrowly escaped, almost physically unscathed by the episode.  But, I will never be able to un-see what I saw, I will never fully recover.  The scars run too deep, they are too heartrending. 

Allow me to start at the beginning.

Rudolph Dandy rose to fame quickly in the early nineties, breaking barriers with his shock rock glam punk band, Vagrant Maniacs.  Known affectionately as Rude in those days, he was both revered and despised for his ostentatious stage antics, themed get-ups and objectionable props.  For example, one night he would regale his audience with a chainsaw wielding Geisha in a traditional Japanese kimono and a face full of deranged Kabuki make-up, another night he might walk on stage a gun-toting nun or renegade cowboy in sequined hot pants, black leather thigh high boots and a cape, then there would be the odd night where he’d appear as himself, sharp and handsome and openly vulnerable in jeans, a t-shirt, bare feet and a mess of flaxen hair pulled back exposing his cagey hazel eyes.  It was the popular opinion, those were the best shows. 

Vagrant Maniacs spoke to my teenage rampage.  They satiated my hungry heart with their raucous anthems, impressed me with their stunning rock ‘n’ roll spectacle, and sang straight into my young pliable psyche.  I was a lonely kid, frumpy, a face full of pimples and a mouth full of braces, an only child to a single mother who worked two jobs to make ends meet.  I spent a lot of time home alone after school and on weekends with stacks of books and music videos to keep me company.   Sometimes I would sneak my friends in while Mom was at work but if she caught me I was in for a world of hurt and I wasn’t a fan of her noxious wrath.  The only friend she ever allowed in the house without question when she wasn’t there was Cameron, my best friend, not a boyfriend friend but a best brother kind of friend.

I saw Vagrant Maniacs for the first time on Much Music.  Cameron, a total music nerd called me and said, “Sade!  Go turn on Much.  Quick!”

I was home alone and up to my elbows in stringent Sunlight soap suds doing dishes but I shuffled my Converse All Stars into the living-room and turned on the TV and there they were searing into my psyche, the band that altered my insides.  They appeared on my postage-stamp sized tube TV screen preposterous and hard-hitting but it was an immediate understanding.  It was like every song was for me, was me, from my guts outward.  Lyrics, saturated in rich rebelliousness, themes oozed of bravado and courage, their looks, outfits, hair, guitars and accessories oozed scandal and confident conviction.  Those songs, so infectious, some with burlesque beats and then some with contradictory treble tones and slashing guitar riffs pushed me beyond the periphery of my adolescent awkwardness, enlightened my slight wallflower carriage and unceremoniously blew my mind.  Chev was delicious with his booming bass, pink lips and shock of bleached pixie hair. Hash was haunting with his shiny olive skin, monster eyes and flying V guitar.  Stomp was massive, muscular and intimidating behind the drums and even more so when he wore a full feathered war bonnet.  And then there was Rude, front and center, strikingly androgynous, Bowie-esque but far more man than woman.   I was taken with is overt sexuality, his sidewinding and caterwauling, penetrating green eyes and magnetic charisma.  He was riveting.  They all were, misfit Svengalis; flashy, explicitly artificial, super hokey with a high moral concept.  As a band they were a contradiction at every turn and with someone so truly imperial leading the pack I couldn’t resist their power.  I was seduced and happily traded my school uniform on weekends for glittered cheeks and time spent obsessing over every little detail of their music and Rude’s superstar torso.

Cameron and I spent countless Saturdays poring over music magazines geeking out about our champions.  Cameron, far more articulate than I, would carry on long conversations about how much we loved our band.

“Rude is everyone’s unspoken desire, don’t you think, Sade?”

“He’s my Chico and I am his Muchacha.”

“His phenomenology is so amazing, don’t you agree, Sade?  Like, as a creative person, he’s so passionate and intense.  He’s a visionary and I think he will always be seen as someone who has a strong impact on our culture.”

“He has a strong impact on something. I feel tingly in my girly bits when I look at him.”

 “Quelle surprise!  You’re such a girl.”

He went on to read aloud part of an interview with Rude from Rock Talk Magazine:

RD:         Brilliance can be brutal, man.  Cleverness is a permanent affliction, at least in our experience.  But, we do what we do because it moves us and we are good at what we do. 

RT:          Do you think your audience understands what you set out to accomplish?

RD:         We don’t really think about it.  There’s no point in concerning ourselves with our audience when we set out to achieve something, or someone else’s standards or limits.  We do it and those who want to come along will.  We are interested in our own ideas, not barriers and norms.  That shit is boring.  And listen, we don’t have an unintelligent audience anyway.  They aren’t pretentious or fakes, the people who buy our records and come to the shows are shooting for perfection just as much as we are.  What we do is on our own terms, the (the audience) does it on theirs.  That’s what makes rock ‘n’roll so fucking miraculous, people come together for a communal high.  It has nothing to do with zooming in on an exalted figure to follow, I’m not exalted anything, I’m just doing what comes naturally, if people believe in it, that’s great, if they don’t, there is always the Spice Girls.

Vagrant Maniacs are currently touring Japan in support of their platinum selling record, King’s Barbarians.

“See, Sade.  He proved my point exactly.  Who needs the Spice Girls when you’ve got a band with chutzpah, a band who isn’t selling you merchandise and overpriced concert tickets, Vagrant Maniacs bestow upon us an opportunity to be exactly who we are supposed to be without condition.  They don’t give us something to dance about, they are the dance.   Right, Sade?”

Precocious little bugger, my pal Cameron.  He was right, he always was.  About everything.  Not just about our band but about things in general.  In addition to being a total Vagrant fan, he loved the news.  In 1997, he predicted that fourteen year old Tara Lipinski would become the youngest women’s world figure skating champion and she did, he was adamant that after Timothy McVeigh was convicted on fifteen counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing he would be sentenced to death, he was indeed sentenced to death.  And when the funeral of Princess Diana aired on television from Westminster Abbey, he sat in my living-room glued to the screen, blowing his nose into tissue after tissue, heartbroken along with two billion people worldwide, myself included.  It’s safe to say that my friendship with Cameron really opened me up, not just because he introduced me to Vagrant Maniacs but because he was so interested in the world at large, what was happening in it and how he planned to help.  It saddens me that he didn’t get the chance to share his big heart and broad ideas, my friend died suddenly in 2003 from a bee sting.  He was eighteen years old.  What we did have though was the wildest live concert experience together in 1999, the last stop on the tour before Rude disappeared from the world. 

Yes, he disappeared, vanished.  But, more on that in a moment.

Imagine us, fourteen years old, wide-eyed, swaddled in Vagrant swag, t-shirts, bracelets, buttons and a tour program held tightly in our black lacquered fingers, front row close to the center and sandwiched between some of the most infamous Vagrant rock groupies known for their buck wild behavior when Rude customarily squealed, “SHAKE YOUR TITTIES” as Stomp ushered them into their signature bawdy cover of ZZ Top’s ‘Gimmie All Your Lovin’ with a rousing double kick drum.  When the lights went down and the crowd’s animated cries and shrills rose to an epic decibel we held hands so tight in anticipation and from the excitement my pinky sprained.  By the third song we were drenched, in a mixture of sugary water Rude abruptly distributed with an exact replica of an AR 15 assault rifle and perspiration from being scared of the weapon and happy that we were so close to them all, drinking in the stagy theatrics, the dazzling light show and pyrotechnics, Rude was slinking around, dragging himself across the stage on his hands and knees preening.  It was almost too unbearable for us to take.  The whole show was an absolute blur, full of space-age lasers, dizzying strobes video screen eye-candy and colorful confetti.  Immediately after we poured out of the arena with six thousand other crazed fans and ran all six blocks to the Sheraton.  Cameron’s older sister Becky worked on the front desk and let it slip that they were expecting Vagrant Maniacs to stay there.  Cameron and I drew out our map from our exit door to the lobby of the hotel and mused about it until the second the show started.  We ran all that way just to meet Rude for thirty seconds who was surprisingly bubbly and sociable although more with the ladies than with us runts.  He ruffled up Cameron’s hair, shook his hand and Cameron jabbered away while Rude signed his program with a sharpie that said, ‘Be a brave Rock Apostle, Rude loves you’.  While Cameron studied the signature mulling over its meaning and the fact that it actually happened, my Chico turned to me, leaned down and kissed my cheek, gave me wink and said, “Beautiful girl, Rude loves you”.  Those words were nothing short of a marriage proposal in my youthful imagination.  Before I could reply or attach myself permanently to his leg he was approached by a scantily clad peroxide blonde, she drew her long painted nail along the underside of Rude’s chin and purred, “Darling, I believe you have my pearl necklace.”  And with that he was gone.  But we didn’t know it would be for a secret self-imposed exile.  Cameron and I floated off to the side in complete and utter awe, watching him be swallowed by a gaggle of merciless hangers on.  As we were standing by the revolving door, waiting our turn to leave, Stomp came through, saw us standing there like two little hobbits, sopping wet and awe-struck, he stopped, looked down at us and without a word placed a drum stick in each of our hands, nodded and was absorbed into the voracious crowd.  When Cameron died, I placed both sticks in his casket.  That night meant everything to him; I wanted to make sure he had something special to take with him to Heaven.  My fourteen year old logic, you know.   

I saw an interview on Entertainment Today with Chev sometime after Rude’s disappearance.  Cameron and I were dumbfounded, absolutely devastated when it hit the news, especially after our amazing experience and the instant plans we made to see them again whenever they came back to town.  They talked about Rude and the band’s antics and the critics who called them hacks.  We sat down on the floor in front of the TV, snapped open a bottle of maraschino cherries and watched.

ET:          No one knows where he is?

Chev:    No one.

ET:          He didn’t even hint as to where he was going?.

Chev:    He did not.  We finished the show and went back to the hotel, had some dinner.  We all just thought he crashed.  We had no idea he had plans to vanish.  It really hurt us as a band and as his friends and brothers.  It took some time for us to figure out what to do and how to move on.

ET:          And so what are you all doing now?  You’ve all been flying under the radar too.

Chev:    Yeah well we needed some perspective and so we all just went home to our families to clear our heads and figure out the next step.

ET:          Not an easy task, I’m sure.

Chev:    Vagrant Maniacs as a band just doesn’t work without Rude, on that point we all agree.  Stomp and Hash have started doing some producing out of their studio and I’m still weighing some options.  I’ve got some things on the go.

ET:          What do you say to critics who have dismissed Vagrant Maniacs as regurgitated Alice Cooper or a bloated fey version of KISS or an unreasonably hand-drawn facsimile of Marilyn Manson.

Chev:    Alice Cooper is a great guy, I golfed with him once but we didn’t ever set out to be anything like him or KISS for that matter.  I love their music but our ideals were never the same.  As far as Manson, someone else’s work I love and I know Rude does too, our shows and songs and intentions were different.  I was at a show he did where they had this piñata hanging over the crowd.  He did this whole reverse psychology on them begging them not to smash it open and if they did there’d be consequences.  Of course the crowd went crazy and broke it open covering themselves with what was said to be festering animal guts.  Sure we had a bit of drama in our show but our message was never as dark as that.  We are not the first band to use theatrics to accompany our music and we certainly won’t be the last.  I think our music stands on its’ own without antics and playing dress up.  I think our fans do too.  People who love is have a good sense of humor and appreciate a bit of absurdity and great music.  At the end of the day, that’s what we were made of.

ET:          If Rude ever re-appears, do you think the fans will forgive him and welcome him back?

Chev:    I’m not even sure we can so I can’t speak for the fans.  Wherever he is, I wish him well.

Their posters still papered my bedroom walls but our band was broken.  Rude was off the grid, Chev eventually settled in to doing session work with Stomp and Hash and the old songs slowly stopped playing and the record store shelves filled up with other new and exciting artists but none of them spoke to me like Vagrant Maniacs, nothing moved me.  It could be that I was jaded and disappointed in my hero for bailing on all of the things he insisted we love and become and achieve.  He was our rock ‘n’ roll valedictorian and his graduation speech came up empty. And after Cameron died, I barely listened to music at all.  I felt like it was time to get serious, grow up, wear sensible shoes and focus on making something of myself.  So I became a bartender. 

I ushered into adulthood quickly.  I finished high school, worked nights at the local Laundromat to help make ends meet at home.  It was dingy, smelled musty and wreaked havoc on my allergies but it helped keep a roof over our heads.  I kept myself busy so I wouldn’t think of meeting life’s milestones without Cameron.  After graduation, I took my life savings and backpacked around Europe with every intention of coming home and applying to college.   I started bartending instead and acquired a more suitable and practical education.  I also learned how to ride a bicycle and bought a 1960s purple and white Hiawatha with a charming headlight, a basket, a cheesy bell and its original stickers, adopted a cranky cat named Mogwai after several failed attempts at romance, read the Joy of Cooking for fun and became affectionately known as a professional worrywart.  I always need to know where the emergency exits are, the location of the fire extinguishers, first aid kits and I carry mace in the side pocket of my handbag at all times.  When you work until wee hours of the morning it is necessary to be safe and prepared for anything.  That’s part of the education I took most seriously from working at Squeezebox and from being a latch key kid.  Thanks, Mom.  Thanks, Squeezebox.

Fast forward to 2009, I was nursing a Guinness and tackling a crossword puzzle after a long shift at the bar, the house band was tearing their gear down and my boss Jeff spilled his girth into the empty barstool beside me, sliding next month’s music calendar toward me.  Smiling like a Cheshire cat he says, “Check out who I got next month.”

Agitated by his presence and the interruption of my concentration I reluctantly scanned the page barely reading and slid it back toward him, “Nice.”

He persisted, “You didn’t even read it!  October 13^th, look at the date, see who it is.”

I sighed and followed the dates down the page to October 13^th and gasped, “Is this a joke?”

“No!  It’s one hundred percent true.”

“You booked Rudolph Dandy, thee Rudolph Dandy from Vagrant Maniacs?!”

  “I did.  Solo show.  A comeback I guess you could call it, from the dead.  He’s doing a small tour and he’s starting it here next month.”

“I don’t believe you.  Even if your tongue was notarized I wouldn’t.  Don’t mess with me.”

“I swear I’m not messing with you.  I have the press kit in my office; his publicist is a close friend of mine so we get him first.  This is HUGE.  The guy has been missing for ten years. It’ll be sold out in seconds, how much do you want to bet?”

“I still don’t believe you.”

“Don’t believe me, read it for yourself. Page 87,” Jeff threw the latest issue of Rock Talk at me.

Vagrant Maniac’s Lost Prophet

By Christian Collins

A self-described ‘lovable misfit loser’ vanished at the height of his fame baffling his band, fans and critics.  Will we ever fully understand why?  Will his bold antics make for a bittersweet comeback?

When Rudolph Dandy took the stage in Toronto at Massey Hall in 1999 with Vagrant Maniacs, the world was oblivious to the fact it would be his last show with the band that ripped through much of the nineties with outrageous gallantry, underlying angst and songs that inspired a rebellions generation to be bold and brave and poised.  On the first night of the seven week tour that kicked off at the Hollywood Bowl, Rude, decked out in ripped jeans, heavy combat boots, a faded Live Aid t-shirt, heavy uneven eyeliner and matted hair, told me between spoonfuls of Fruit Loops and swigs of imported beer that he was looking forward to getting back into the studio to record, “This time,” he said, “expect lots of go-go beats, spooky synth sounds, with a bit of stylish, amped up dance rock.  You’ll be pissing yourself with amazement before the first track fades out.  It’ll be the stairway to Heaven for shoe-gazers on acid.”  He appeared hair-brained, almost icy and full of willful ignorance.  He also ended the interview by throwing an almost melted bucket of ice all over me before taking the stage.  Dandy ushered out of the show that February night, the last of a sold-out run, threw himself into a taxi cab and literally disappeared.  For ten years.  He was a ghost, his whereabouts were a mystery, even those closest to him were in the dark, baffled and bewildered.  All these years later Rudolph Dandy emerges from the shadows with a new look, a new record and a new lease on life.  There are no visible signs of Rude’s flamboyant personae, the length of his dirty blonde hair is only rivaled by his mountain man beard and seventies rock attire.   With a miraculous comeback album and an explanation of sorts as to why he went off the grid, Dandy finally breaks his silence in his first interview.

These days even though Dandy has rejoined the world he is sequestered in a non-descript recording studio on the outskirts of Nashville, with ample amounts of Kopi Luwak coffee, Old Crow bourbon, garlic laced vegetarian fare and Cuban cigars.  I sat down with him for a quick chat, his first since returning, which I consider a small declaration of peace after our encounter in the nineties.

RT:          Where have you been all these years?

RD:         Writing songs, studying the world.

RT:          Where?

RD:         Away.

RT:          For ten years?

RD:         Has it been that long?  I don’t know, man.  I didn’t keep track.

RT:          You disappeared from the public eye completely.  Without warning, why?

RD:         I wanted to be alone.  Elvis faked his death for a little bit of peace, same thing I guess.

RT:          Did you want people to think you were dead?

RD:         I didn’t want anyone to think about me at all.

RT:          But why not just say you’re taking a break or retiring, why just vanish?

RD:         I was tired.  It seems extreme to some but man, I was lost.  Lost in a fog of strangers, constantly pawed at by aggressive fans who would rip my clothes and come away with a handful of threads just to have a piece of me, touring with a bunch of guys who resented me and who were incessantly at each other’s throats made me feel suicidal.  I was so exhausted and jaded, from doors slamming, the infighting about money and what not to say.  At that time, I was looking at the world through a fractured mirror, all I could see after a while was a blur of hopelessness, despair, and darkness.  Bowie retired Ziggy Stardust.  I put Rude away, Bowie did the same thing. 

RT:          Is that how you regard your absence?  Shedding your impervious guise to reveal your true self?

RD:         I regard it as a very long nap, hibernation, to escape cold winter of my discontent.

RT:          Are you well rested now?  Feeling better?

RD:         Listen to the record and see.

RT:          Your record, ‘The Passionate & The Confused’, as a redemptive, ethereal theme, intentional?

RD:         In my studies, I came across wise timeworn story.  It was about an old Cherokee native who taught his young grandson that inside of us all there is a battle being waged between two wolves.  One wolf is Evil, decorated in anger, envy, jealously, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, false-pride, superiority and ego.  The second wolf is Good, representing joy, peace, hope, love, kindness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.  He shares this information with his grandson and the child counters with, “Which wolf wins?”  The old Cherokee replied simply that it is the one you feed that wins.

RT:          Salt of the earth learning right there.

RD:         Yeah, it was a profound find.  A simple truth that came at a time when I was scrambled.

RT:          Essentially, the wolves inside of us running around are fed by the choices we make so that what you think of and act on appear in your life and influence your behavior.

RD:         Feed the Good wolf and good things will manifest, feed the Evil wolf and the poisons of your choices will slowly eat away at your soul.  My first single is based on the story.

RT:          Are you feeding the right wolf?

RD:         That remains to be seen.

‘The Passionate &The Confused’ is available in record stores and on iTunes today.

Disbelief.

Rudolph Dandy.  Playing at my bar, coming to employ old liberations for new exploits all these years later.  I felt a twinge of teenage delight, deep curiosity, the unmistakable accents of nostalgia and an extreme sense of sadness.  My former hero’s re-emergence made me miss Cameron and made me wonder who he would be if he hadn’t died.  I imagine Cameron would have grown into a man with unshakable convictions, rallying for human rights, disgusted by reality TV, and I am sure that 9/11 would have driven him over the edge and I just know he would have spent endless hours dissecting every conspiracy theory. He’d have hated Facebook for its superficial qualities, as an avid reader he would have continued to read every single book from Oprah’s book club, and he would have promoted random acts of kindness to contribute to the effort for positive change.  Cameron would have been an even better human as an adult, perhaps a little more cynical in his world view but still with a heart the size of Texas with every intention to save the world. This, seeing Rudy live again would be something he would love; we love to experience together, like the first time at Massey Hall.

There was a full moon and a gentle breeze as I made my way to Squeezebox.  The city seemed to twinkle the closer I got to the front door, where people were already lined up to get in.  I was careful dressing myself for the show, dark skinny jeans, black flats and to be deliberately ironic, a Clash t-shirt and my hair down for a change.  Jeff knew how much I loved Vagrant Maniacs as a kid gave me the night off to enjoy the show as a member of the audience instead of an over-extended barkeep.  And he was right, once news of the show hit, it sold out immediately.  I arrived early enough to sneak up front and squeeze in close to the center of the stage where his microphone stand stood.  My heart was pounding, palms a touch sweaty in anticipation, the last time I was so close to Rudolph Dandy, Cameron was crushing my fingers and we felt like someone dropped us down in the middle of glam rock paradise.  That night it felt like an ordinary rock show that any singer/songwriter might play.  No staging, no theatrics, just a small stage full of instruments, a large wooden chest with beers sitting on top of it and a large Persian rug covering the floor.

When he took the stage he was nothing like I remembered him.  His chiseled cheekbones were no longer rouged and his concentrated eyes weren’t alive and heavily lined in shimmering kohl. Instead he bore a thick beard, his hair sat on his shoulders with a heavy uneven bang hiding the rest of his face.  He appeared shy and insular dressed in a well-worn flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow, jeans and a distressed leather bracelet wound around his right wrist.  Even with the altered appearance I was struck by how beautiful he was.  As he slung a white falcon around his litheness I couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made him recede from the world for so long and without warning.  I hoped that his new music, songs no one had heard yet save his new single ‘Two Wolves’, would provide some answers to questions we all were longing to ask.

As you might expect, the room filled with of two hundred of his biggest fans was booming with applause and approval for our phantom hero who was finally back, flesh and bone in front of us, aged ten years, seemingly introspective and subservient.  He caught my eye, nodded at my t-shirt, curled his lips into a half smile and spoke into his mic but directly at me, “Rudie can’t fail.”  Some meathead behind me thwacked me on the back because of the rapport as if it made some kind of front row celebrity or something.  I blushed, sucked in a deep breath and smiled up at him.  Cameron would have loved it.  Something in his stare unnerved me, just for a split second, a cold iniquitous posture framed his burly face.  When the applause reduced to a hush, he finally addressed the audience properly.

“I took a really long nap.  I wrote some new songs and we’re gonna play them for you.”

Someone in the pulsing throng yelled, “Vagrant Maniacs rule!  We want Rude.”

Rudy lowered his eyes adjusting his guitar pedal and replied, “Oh, don’t worry you’ll get Rude so stick around.”

His homogenous guitar player whispered into his mic, “Let’s play some music, shall we?”

Rudy started to strum his guitar, “So if Neil Young, The Stray Cats and John Lee Hooker had a threesome, it would sound an awful lot like us.  At least, that’s what they tell me.  I hope you dig it.”

When Rudy started to sing, the sounds that came out of him were almost bluesy, somewhat sultry, a little sad and terribly urgent.  It was hard to believe that someone prone to a high pitched howl could sound so pensive, preoccupied and throaty.  When I met him in the hotel lobby as a kid, he smelled of crisp cucumber, Aqua-Net hairspray and a slight hint of sweat.  Being so close to the stage this time, the scents that wafted off of him were a mixture of heavy smoke and a boozy balm, the combination offended my nostrils and made my eyes water a little bit.

Rude’s long awaited return was loud and electrifying.  They botched the intro to the first song but once they got it right, an eerie synergy filled the stage.  I was surprised that the first song had a southern country feel with simple lyrics that could have been stolen from the lost notebooks of Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings.  The audience started to shout Vagrant song titles at him but he shrugged them off and instead treated us to a surprising foot stomping rockabilly hoedown number before slowing it down for a hair-raising hushed cover of ‘Lullaby’ by The Cure, “On candy stripe legs the spiderman comes softly through the shadow of the evening sun...”  He hissed, romped, rocked and crooned like a wounded animal for the better part of two hours without stopping before giving us we’d been begging for, a little old school nostalgia.

Rude teased pointing to the large wooden chest on stage, “What do you say we up the ante?  Get a little creepy?  Get a little Rude?”

The sweaty temperatures of his good-hearted tolerant fans elevated in the room as we collectively roared in approval.  We prepared ourselves for a bit of craven behavior when he lifted the lid on the box and extracted his signature AR 15.  The place went berserk.  He fiddled around a bit hunched over the box costuming up.  When he straightened and confronted us we were greeted with a pervasive oddity, a grotesque sight, even for him.  Rude had his face covered in a deranged clown mask, white scalp with a tuft of harsh orange fuzz jutting up, the clown face was anything but jovial, the eyes were outlined in ghoulish black, the face was bloody and gave the impression it had been sliced open and gouged and crudely sewn back together by a shaky hand.

The deep hum of droll bass led him into his new single, ‘Two Wolves’.  It was an instant chart topper and the crowd swelled with the earthy drums and the chant that opens the song.  With his eyes closed moaned, ‘Fortune’s tale from a Cherokee brave, two wolves wage a war inside of me, feed the one who fits you most, one will exalt you, the other … turns you ghost.’  It was eerie and the further he got into the song, the higher he raised the AR 15, the quicker the drums pounded the more excited we got, waiting to be sprayed, waiting for the climax.

And it came.

His disturbed gawk disarmed us in the split second where he snapped back the grotesque mask; his eyes cracked open wide, aimed the replica of the AR 15 at the crowd and engaged the weapon.  Only it wasn’t a replica at all, it was real.  Rather than dosing our blissed out faces with the anticipated sugary water he planted his heavily booted feet to the stage floor, leaned back to brace himself and felt the full throttle of the ammunition spraying destructively from the cold firearm blistering into soft warm human flesh.  The stuttering metallic clamor was more of a jolt than a warning because of the close proximity to the ferocious malefactor whose adrenaline kicked in so quickly it starved his peripheral nervous system and deterred his fine motor skills enabling him to conduct a mass murder with euphoric force, devoid of humanity. 

A single bottle of beer saved my life. I noticed that Rudy knocked over a pint with his foot and I bent down to retrieve it before the amber ale spilled enough to soak his petal board.  The reality of what was happening was a delayed reaction for me; it took a few seconds to understand we were under siege, the subjects of a deranged gunman and that the murderous hands belonged to Rudy.  The hail of bullets gutted chests and torsos, the hydrostatic shock wave pushed blood forcefully out of the entry wounds flooding organs, saturating the dance floor.  All I could here was the deafening sounds of the gunfire and Rudy belting out a battering wail of fury.  I snapped into an upright position in mind-numbing panic and raised my left arm up to instinctively defend my face, a hot searing sensation moved across my fevered skin, as if a tiger was shredding it into large meaty pieces.  A spatter of bullets grazed me leaving a scrawl of claw-like marks long after I healed.

It was utter chaos.  My life flashed before my eyes as I watched bodies fall and pile unconsciously on top of one another.  Screams curdled blood in my ears, fear feasted on concertgoers who were frantically running for their lives, the band was paralyzed and terrified, trapped behind the violence. I am sure they wondered when they’d fall victim to Rudy’s vicious insanity.  Everything moved in slow looming motion, why did I throw caution to the wind and usher to the front of the stage instead of staying in the back like I always did?  Why I didn’t I become a cabaret dancer or a brain surgeon?  I couldn’t remember if I turned off my hair straightener, did I feed Mogwai before I left?  Am I going to Heaven and if so will Cameron be waiting for me?  I don’t know if it was some kind of grace or some kind of luck that I made it out with a flesh wound.  And then, in an odious and gruesome turn of events, Rudy somehow turned the gun on himself.  I hit the floor.  Everything went dark.

Violence is ubiquitous, everyone knows that.  We are inundated by it on our TV screens in our news and our entertainment but you never expect the bad stuff to happen to you, especially when you’re in the throes of relishing an event that you’ve looked so forward to. A mass murder at a concert?  Preposterous.  That could never happen.  But it did.  We think we are invincible, that we are immune, that human sabotage only exists for those unfortunates we read about in the newspaper.  It’s a surreal concept we are unable to fully understand until it happens to you.  No one expects the trepidation, the terror, yet it has the ability to manifest right in front of us, like an evil genie slithering out of a temptingly rich lantern.

The incident filled me with alarming dread.  Rudy’s hateful disdain hurt parts of me, of us all, we didn’t even know existed.  The grim series of events that took place, the atrocity, was nothing no one could have ever predicted, one no one could have stopped.  We will never know why he did what he did, what hurled him into such a fit of hate to slay his fans in such a grisly fashion.  The act of killing human beings is impactful, witnessing it even more-so.  It’s like being on a freight train that hurtles into the brick wall of oblivion and the breaks are gone.  I keep thinking of a Helen Keller quote I kept tacked up behind the bar that said, ‘Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them.  Do not let them master you.’  It seems Rudy may have met and accredited his but he allowed them to dominant him and in that so many others suffered senselessly.

The only member of Vagrant Maniacs to make an official statement after the shooting was Stomp:

“The bleeding edges of his reclusive behavior are disturbing enough on its own but to execute his fans like that, point blank and in cold blood, doesn’t make him evil, it makes him the Antichrist.  This disturbing act, by someone I once called brother far exceeds the well-worn clichés of celebrity and its limitations of power.  It is simply unfathomable, abhorrent.  Our thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by this terrible tragedy.”

Speculation about Rudy’s heinous act of terror instantly surfaced in the media, revelations that range from the obvious to the absurd.  Drug addiction, multiple personality disorder, satanic studies, one madcap newsperson reported he was aligned with the Westboro Baptist Church and was helping them rid the world of more fags.  They hailed him the Prophet of Doom and in turning the gun on himself after the massacre it seemed an inexplicable admission of some kind of inner revolt that destroyed his humanity. The gloom of his life adding up to nothing but failure, the scenario he concocted in his head, the epic struggle that consumed him, the breakdown of his mental state.  It is true that what we saw was the decline of man and the rise of a monster.

I have to re-learn how to have courage again in a world that feels so much more dangerous to me now.  After the extraordinarily stressful events, I needed help trying to make sense of the senseless.  My therapist told me that my reactions are normal to abnormal circumstances and advised me to talk often to the people I trust the most but the truth is, I have no one.  Jeff is dead.  My co-workers are no better off than I am and we can barely look at each other in the eye.  My therapist, in her Ann Klein attire and tapping an expensive pen importantly on her notepad encouraged me to create feelings of safety and tranquility in my immediate environment.  You know, sleeping with the lights on to ease fear of falling asleep which is hilarious since I can’t even close my eyes without seeing his lascivious twisted expression as he stood there blowing everyone away.  She suggested listening to soft soothing music but music, even just elevator music has become a belligerent offense.  I prefer the sounds of silence so that nothing can startle me or trigger the memories.  I almost jump out of my skin from backfired tires, slamming doors and any kind of raised voice.  Even the first pop of microwave popcorn jars me, I’ve become exceptionally skittish.  My neatly manicured therapist tells me the key to healing is to resume the routine of my daily life.  I’d love nothing more than to do so but I no longer have a job, my nerves are frayed and I am afraid of everything.  She assures me that in time I will be able to see a light at the end of the tunnel and that healing is a process and I need to be patient with myself.  I know that she’s right but it’s tough to swallow when you’re so broken.

I limped out of the agony Rudy inflicted, a harsh show of greed, hatred, intolerance and his unquenchable need for some kind of barbaric revenge, but for what?  What was it about his life that was so terrible it triggered an obscene and cringe inducing bloodbath?  To even ponder, to try and rationalize it repulses me.  The sad reality is we’ll never know.  There were no clues left behind, no letters, no blogs, posts, tweet, text messages to indicate he intended obliterate a room full of innocent people and kill himself.  The irony is, I now live in self-imposed, fear induced exile.  I spend my days drinking coffee, nibbling honey mustard pretzels, playing solitaire with a deck of cards, and praying that at some point I’ll summon up the courage to life large again. To ride my bicycle and ring the bell, to pour the perfect pint of Guinness; actually the Guinness analogy works perfectly to sum up the dream for the future:  to settle, breathe in a moment, and break on through to a distinctly sustaining reward.  I am referring to that reward, you know, to live again, to go easy, and to be unafraid; I long to find the audacity to laugh again, to exhale without consternation, and move around in the world without fear of falling flat on my face.   My therapist says I’m making progress, whatever that means. 

If I feed the right wolf …

Nicole D. Myers

September 30, 2013

**

Large-Hearted

Large-hearted

Someone in my bland, uniform office is a delightful storyteller.  In the vast sea of cubicles, desks lined up as far as the eye can see, equal workspaces complete with overhead bins and shelves, myriad pen holders and bored bodies crunching numbers, in one of these chairs sits someone literary and large-hearted.  Perhaps if I was socially attuned and predisposed to be a better colleague I’d know who our in-house scribe is.  Alas, I am neither of those things.  But, I am dying to solve the mystery.

I like to think of it as a happy accident, my staying late to work on month end billing only to discover a modest mound of paper unclaimed on the central printer.  I scan the floor, looking for any sign of life or a desk still alight.  Aside from the maintenance crew emptying trash cans and meagerly vacuuming the worn carpeted floors, it is just me.  When I peel my reports away I notice sheets that look nothing like the thousands of copies printed in our office daily.  It has a tidy cover page, printed and centered in lively play-bill font. Two words:  LOVE’S DIFFIDENCE, with no name accredited.

Curious.  Upon further inspection I discover I am possession of an anonymously written short story.  I thought about writing a story once but I didn’t really know how or where to start.  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to write about an acrobat with nervous habits, a naïve airline pilot turned agoraphobic, an unusually athletic fortune teller or a philandering sailor in a foreign port who encounters a world-wise heir with a dark secret.  My efforts were fruitless.  I tried scribbling a tiny tale about an aloof sales associate in a chocolaterie at odds with a regular customer whose tension eventually blossoms into an unlikely alliance but on my first attempt it read more like a palliative letter.  The second try was pithy.  I am completely unqualified to write how people talk or how to make characters speak to spur on the story or reveal things about them.  It served as more of an angry mish-mashy dispute alternating lines without any action or breaks.  I had all of this emotional intensity strung together, a repartee of terse and contentious often biting lines bandying between the two obtuse one dimensional characters.  I had no idea how to flesh them out or make them real; it isn’t a talent of mine but if you want something sewn or baked, I’m your girl.  I am educated, articulate, I read a lot and understand the basics of storytelling and admire those who can craft them but I am not one of those people.  One thing is for certain, my name, Zelda T. Grandy, will not be gracing the shelves of your favorite bookstore anytime soon. 

I set the pages aside and hunker down to try and get my work done that I was being paid handsome overtime to complete. But, out of the corner of my eye I could see them, taunting me and so I was forced to abandon the task at hand to read.  Guilt washes over me but I gently placed the cover page on the bottom of the manuscript, it occurred to me then that maybe someone wants the story to be found.  At least that’s what I tell myself when I begin to read.

PROLOGUE

Love’s diffidence is a compassionate confusion that leaves lovers bewildered beyond the rational precincts of the soul.  While love is meant to relish beauty, consume mistrust, dissolve boundaries, flush cheeks and conquer sharp edges, reservation sometimes upends its generosity and enlightenment.  In love, knowing our very existence offers no greater gift; we vow to retain the impassioned qualities, vie to solve all of the intimate mysteries ensconced and strive to be our best selves. In love we are unabridged and it comes as a distressing turn of events when it splinters. 

Love is an anomaly, a risk of which the lessons directly reflect the outcome.   Love isn’t always patient or kind, it can be annihilating and revoked without warning or justification, such as it plays out here.

THE SORROW

Chelsea

James Riley was everything.  I would like to believe that we didn’t just meet but we were with one another all along.  In an instant, he dissolved into my heart, served as my loveliest compliment and suddenly, without warning, fled.

Philosophers would have calculated our music.  With him, my whole heart was home.  All of those nights, showered in moonlight, peppered with kisses, meals accented in basil, the table strewn with peonies, the warm quality of the wind, the sweet attributes of new love; filled my paper with poetry, eased my weary mind.  Our days together were peaceful, our nights audacious.  With him gone, all that is left is longing.  Longing for the way things were.

Our life abandoned, his leaving, has broken all of my confident shapes and stirred my pleasing colours into a murky pool of doleful sadness.  When we first met, he said he was a man akin to a serious novel searching for a woman who was likened to a soft poem to introduce him to unalloyed happiness, infinite goodness.  My heart beat rapturous when he told me that any poet to look upon me would fall in love exorbitantly, submissively, insatiably, deeply, as he had in one look.

One evening while he slept I eased myself up out of the blankets to write something sweet about the magnificent regions of the human heart.  But, the shape of his handsome face in the midnight sun arrested me and I could only write his essence.  In every word, I inscribed his name.  And therefore, my whole body of work is based on his likeness.

The most mournful sound in the world is the cry culled from those who have known love and lost it.  In defeat, there are no more infinite measures of laughter, flowering plentitude of one’s innermost desires, the ground underfoot quiets, time stands still and all that can be heard are the sorrow-filled sobs of fractured lovers, lost.  It is the polar opposite of love’s beginnings.  The outpouring of tenderness and strength, trembling of hands, involuntary sighs, weakened knees.  Opposites drawn to each other while the pain of a thousand half loves are forgotten, a fresh start, a clean slate lighted by tiny stars, glowing candles and a tending touch.

It is difficult to explain but on our first meeting, it seemed as though I had always known him.  He was temperate and familiar, safe.  The essence was easy to translate into feelings but no words were ever sufficient to articulate the probability that we loved each other, somehow, in another life.  Hoping for grace, it takes tremendous courage to forfeit the order of friendship for ecstatic romance; to boldly surmise that a human bond will sustain the sacrifice.  In the flurry of trying to salvage my singular beauties, I have become disgraceful and absent-minded in the wake of this sad, voluptuous farewell.

James

Chelsea MacPherson was the richness, the resonance, the generosity, the scintillating commotion I needed to escape the sudden frost of my masculine landscape.  Her supple limbs, her sweet ivory skin served me, her nearness propelled tiny marvels, and her laughter caused me to forget my personal atrocities to the point where I no longer even understood the simplest things.  All I wanted was to spend my days placing kisses in the folds of her soft dress with her pressed into me, just south of my wildest dreams. My gratitude for her is immense; I was perpetually dazed by her forgiving embrace on lazy afternoons.  Truthfully, I have never stopped dreaming about the curve of her mouth nor has the fire in my heart extinguished, but, as an honourable man, I could no longer accept her praise when she was blind to the knowledge of my wrongs, of that I was inarticulate. My intentions were not to break her heart but to set her free, for after careful calculation I concluded my offerings were not sufficient to sustain her happiness.  Through the tears, spilling from her fraught eyes, she will not see my parting was for her but in time perhaps she will understand.  There was a small part of me that desperately wanted someone to recognize a hole or a weakness of some kind, a small fraction of wrongness in this quarrel for leaving after watching the woman who trusted me with her with her heart, crumble.  In the end, it was the right thing to do, for each of us. 

THE COURTSHIP

Chelsea

I came to him, alone in felicity, content to pass off his eager utterances for a flirtatious encounter and little else.  He persisted.  He arrived at my door, hands full of pink cabbage roses, eyes of a willful suitor, an enthralled animal.  Waiting for love was an impatient endeavor.  And then he appeared, tempted me with noble passions, pleasures we could commit our innocence to.  Falling into true love is akin to delicate handwritten letters sent to Heaven, like fruitful bushels of ripe berries dropping over a lazy back yard fence, beckoning.  A delectable treat, inviting hunger.  A beautiful stranger became my companion.  I was blessed.

James

I set out to conquer her fawning face, burn her mouth with kisses, perfume her perfect skin with a tempting touch.  She resisted.  I replied to her mopes and sighs with fragrant flowers, cottons and silks, delights she could not oppose.  I won her affections slowly until she permitted me to crash my vessel into her mainland, shipwrecked, stranded, with only her supple sensations to ease me.  Love was a wound in my weathered body and her, undoubtedly, the immediate antidote for my ills.  Two people, afraid of each other, afraid of the promise, surrendered.  I allowed myself to lean into her, declare stubborn defeat and embrace intimacy.  A wretched boy nestled into her peaceful valley and emerged a temperate man.

THE PERSUASION

Chelsea

Together, we personified seductive affirmations, erotic quotients of poetic sexual renderings, one stanza by slow stanza, in salted sheets.  The slow sweep of his qualified hand revealed he was as perverse as he is gentle.

“I was born to scream your name,” he’d moan against my naked neck.

I blossomed under his fingers, he exceeded all expectations.  Ours were two bodies whose needs and vulnerabilities synchronized one blissful encounter after another.  In warm, navy blue air, lazily exhaling, flesh soaked of sweat, irises floating dreamily, we coupled.  As one.  I think I might die if I can’t touch him.

James

The play of light on the contours of her inner thigh defied the Heavens.  She willingly gave her breast to my eager mouth, her palm pressed into the back of my neck.  She was a wildfire, opening her body freely, losing consciousness to the uncontrolled abandon of want beyond all sensibilities.

She would whisper, the same time as her breath would shudder, “I want you beached deep inside of me, lover.”

It was exhilarating to see her so exposed, willing to be so defenseless and submitting, so filthy rich in desire.  To taste all the soft places of her body, dominated my Eros force, coerced my wholeness to come apart.  Over and over from the dark triangle of her femininity to the flush of her cheeks, she moved me, over mountains and wild carnal terrain.

The first line makes me feel as if I am about to endure a saccharine Hallmark romance but the intensity of emotion in the carefully chosen words prove otherwise.  This is no light-hearted venture; the story brims with devastating disappointment, enthralling twists and intense natures.  Whoever wrote this did so with thoughtful consideration to navigate the complexities of a broken heart underscored with the most crucial element of love, passion.  Having a meaningful relationship end myself, I feel the tale tug at my heart-strings.  Although I was the one to end it, I still identify with the emptiness, the desolation when you part ways with a person with whom you were intimate.  These characters, their doleful disposition for which my charity and sympathy pines for, astounds.  Our phantom wordsmith is a slow careful writer with a penchant for poetic sentiment.  I am moved by the story’s majestic pace, the power and urgency of the words, exceptional.   If Rumi wrote a modern day love story, this would be it.  Yet, the question still burns, who is this Rumi?

THE MISFORTUNE

They were never meant to be in the car together.  But, it was raining.  James drove slowly along Main Street toward his new apartment, he saw a familiar umbrella, a bright bloom of a painted nature inspired motif, a gift he had given her himself, ushering hastily along the sidewalk. She hated the rain, the woman he loved but could no longer be with.  He put the passenger window down a crack and called for her to get in.  She pretended to ignore him and scurried on.  He continued, “Chelsea, please get in the car.  Your feet are soaked.  You’ll catch a death of a cold, love.”

She stubbornly stomped her feet through the puddles and muttered, “Why are you so worried about me now, when you so clearly never worried before?  I’m fine.”

James sighed, still slowly following her while his windshield wipers declared defeat against the forceful rain, “Home is still six blocks away for you.  Please, just get in.  I’ll drop you off, I won’t breathe a word.”

A crack of thunder clapped and her umbrella blew inside out from a potent gust of wind causing Chelsea to almost lose her footing.  She gave in and flung herself in the car, stuffing her over-sized bag in at James and wrestled the mangled umbrella in with her before slamming the door shut.  “Just drive.  Don’t talk.”

James examined his water-logged car companion but she denied eye contact.  The rain thrashed down, James struggled to see through the windshield as he inched forward to take Chelsea home.  James reached for her hand watching her face turn into a perfect scowl on contact, “I’ll have you home soon …”

“No talking.  Please.  Just drive,” she spat pushing him away.

“I know things between us are strained but can we at least be civil?  Please?”

“You have no right to ask me for anything.  Do not speak to me,” her voice cracked, “just DRIVE.”

James inhaled a sharp breath from her tone, nodded and concentrated on the road.  It happened suddenly.  A flash of bright lights, the loud blaring of horn and the offensive crunch of metal, the impact lurching Chelsea forward and James toward her, a wasted effort to shield her. The force of the crash

What the fudge!?  An unfinished sentence mid-way down the page?! Is that it?!  I run to the copier to see if I missed a few pages, carefully rifling through my own to make sure they aren’t mixed together.  Nothing.  For whatever reason it is that I came into this rotting pear of a writer’s orbit, there is no excuse to print off and abandon pages of a story that is unfinished, it had barely begun.  It’s a strange complaint, but at least be considerate enough to not leave a reader hanging.  The writer rises beautifully to the occasion and then just stops in the most absurd place.  I understand the genuine heart of this writer, lyrical without being apologetic, someone who has built rich and beautiful characters, from what I can tell, with a very real struggle but it isn’t even a small act of charity to read a completed story, it’s necessary.  The end of a story is supposed to be transformative with the presence of keen insight or a realization, an epiphany even.  What starts out as a tragic and romantic read ended so abruptly, I feel cheated.  A storyteller’s primary responsibility is to entertain, so that the reader may derive small pleasures from the words, intellectual stimulation, emotional resonance, linguistic flare and aesthetic aptitude.  I was well on my way, experiencing all of those things and then with the sudden stop, I feel like I am under a thick canopy of heavy fog. I need to know what happened to Chelsea and James.  I need to know why he left her.  I need to know what happens in the crash.  I must.  My immediate mission, to delve into the superficial lives of office drones to try and determine who wrote this incomplete story.

I start at Janet Garrison’s desk.  I recall her telling me once that she wishes she owned a house and could live in the Palm Springs desert at the foot of the Santa Rosa Mountains where Ray Bradbury and the Rat Pack once lived.  That’s a literary reference, some kind of extended metaphor maybe so it seemed as good a place as any to start.  It’s safe to say that if you were to try and judge by her cubicle if she is the scribe there’s very little to go on.  While some don’t know how to keep their workspaces tasteful, Janet lacks the ability to decorate at all.  The dull white modular panels of her cubicle glare at me.  Her desk is generic, stapler, a neat pile of file folders, a pen, an empty blue bin for recycling and a 22’x17’ Blueline monthly desk pad calendar with not a thing written on it unless you count tiny red stars in the bottom corners of the squares every three days.  Only Janet knows what those are for.  In terms of clues, Janet’s desk is fruitless. 

I’m one hundred and fifty percent sure that it’s not Deezy.  I don’t even know the kid’s real or full name.  Just Deezy.   He’s our resident rocker, rife with youthful impatience, long scraggily hair that our boss insists he wear back in a ponytail.  He has a mini-fridge under his desk full of energy drinks and chocolate bars.  By day he’s an accounts rep, by night he’s a drummer for a heavy metal band called Scourge.  There is nothing remotely romantic about a cubicle decked out in Metallica paraphernalia.  Deezy is judged harshly by some of the folks on our floor for his unkempt appearance, often referring to him, behind his back mind you, as a hardened longhair with lesser intelligence, a guy who traded his moral compass for the Devil’s music.  In truth, Deezy is a decent human being.  He adores every piercing in his girlfriend’s face and he watches out for his Gramps.  Deezy is good at his job and has never called in sick in five years, even when he’s gigging.  He just likes loud, fast music and banging on drums.  No flies on that guy.  He’s no Rumi.

Patsy Simpson, could my Rumi be Patsy Simpson?  Her marbles are as loose as her morals and her décor is a direct reflection.  She has a red feather boa wound around her floor model halogen lamp, a phallic shaped shot glass strung on a pair of metallic gold beads dangles from the on/off switch, both items look well used, relics really, souvenirs I’m sure.  All of this to compliment her long painted blatantly fake nails, box bleached hair she wears in a loose shoulder length perm, her tights-are-pants policy, too tight sweaters, passé  pumps and a penchant for every crass shade of frosted lipstick.  Patsy enjoys Chippendale strippers, the occasional nude modeling job at the Art Institute, mechanical bulls, and Jager bombs.  The articles on her desk tell that very story.  Patsy’s bulletin board is full of pictures of her and like-minded friends and young shirtless men in various stages of shenanigans and undress.  It is improbable that the woman secretly known around our office as the village slut wrote a deep love story.  I think it is safe to say she is far too busy to find time for highbrow and heartfelt creative writing.  Is she Rumi?  Negative.

I doubt very much Arthur King is the man I’m looking for although stranger things have happened.  Arthur is what you would call a man’s man.  Around the water cooler, he often talks about his Chevrolet Silverado full size pick-up with boyish jubilation.  He comes to work wearing un-tucked button down shirts and jeans with the faint trail of Old Spice wafting behind him.  Arthur’s cubicle is decked out in guy stuff.  He took it upon himself to get creative and cover his white walls with camouflage fabric with a 2013 Duck Dynasty calendar full of chicken scratch hanging in the middle.  An avid fisherman, he has several photos of himself proudly displaying his catch.  There are ones of him holding up a bass and a trout, and an 8x10 of him with a catfish and a white perch in each hand, proud as punch.  In between he has a photo of a girl tucked in but you can only see her blonde bangs and her eyes.  You can tell she’s smiling.  I stealthily situate it so her whole face is showing.  Pretty girl.  It’s too bad she can’t influence him to be a bit tidier.  His desk is strewn with pens, paperclips, candy wrappers and half eaten things.  There’s also a sticky dark ring under his coffee cup that says:  A REEL EXPERT CAN TACKLE ANYTHING.  I don’t think Arthur is the creative culprit.

Maybe our writer is Maude Patch.  Maude is the matriarch of our office and a proud grandmother.  Her desk is plastered with photos of and artwork from all of her babies as she refers to them.  Her photos and their creations are displayed delightfully among her potted plants; heartleaf philodendrons, peace lilies and an impressive cactus, a knobby coat sweater rests on the back of her chair.  For a wide robust woman, Maude eats like a bird and prays a lot.  She has a rosary hanging off the corner of her computer monitor to compliment her other religious relics including a small army of Virgin Mary statuettes.  Could her cozy nanny image be a façade, a ruse to cover up burgeoning affections by way of Chelsea and James?  If so, I wonder how many times she would have to recite the Hail Mary after typing out erotic imaginings.  I did overhear a discussion she had once with our boss about whether or not Orson Wells re-invented cinema with ‘Citizen Kane’.  Her staunch argument was that he had.  My boss firmly disagreed saying the film was highly over-rated and dull.  Maude bit her tongue and took the high road.  Bless her heart.

Could someone who idolizes a golf-pro be a stunning romantic writer?  Braeden Thomas’s workspace is a shrine to Eldrick Tont Woods, better known as Tiger Woods.  His walls are outlined in golf green and everything is in its right place.  He has a strategically placed copy of How I Play Golf on his desktop and swears the autograph on the inside is from Tiger himself.  He can often be seen posing with a putter, checking his stance in a full length mirror hung alongside the end of his cubicle.  If I have to hear about Tiger’s perfect shot one more time I might clock him with his own driver.  The last time we spoke, it was a standoffish encounter in the lunch room while I was eating vanilla ice-cream and he was moaning on about the infamous moment, “It was a perfect shot I tell you, a 3-wood on No. 14 at Saint Andrews.  Man, I wish I could have been there.”  I rolled my eyes but he didn’t notice because he was too busy checking out what his behind looked like in his new golf pants in the reflection of the fridge.  I’m not sure a golf-obsessed narcissist with a self-imposing presence is capable of creating the formal elegance I discovered on those pieces of paper.

Alice Vogel is a potential suspect.  Alice, with her mellifluous voice is always leaving me tidy notes in her slanted handwriting to commend me on a job well done or to encourage me when I’m having a bad day or simply just because.  She is a former teacher so it is in her nature to be encouraging and root for her pupils, in this case her peers.  Bright-faced and tidy, Alice is a woman who seldom veers away from primary colors and loves her loafers.  She could potentially have the hutzpah to pen delicate love story.  A stickler for grammar and a lover of history, Alice can often be seen with a book in her hand a pot of tea hiding under a crocheted tea cozy on her desk.  She plays her cards very close to her chest, private and doesn’t share a lot about her life outside of the office.  The very fact that she is so guarded  allows me to visualize her stashed away with a laptop typing faster than she can think, careful no one is watching.  Alice wears slacks and wears her hair short, no jewelry, no sign of sentimentality.  Vanilla.  Sweet.  Mysterious.  Probable scribe?  Very probable.

Maybe it’s someone younger, like Caitlin Caldwell.  In my opinion, she’s the prettiest girl in the office.  Helpful and generous with her time, she has long luxurious copper penny red hair, big brown eyes and a faint spray of freckles across the bridge of her button nose.  Everything in her workspace celebrates every shade of pink; pink heart-shaped post-its, a bejeweled photo frame holding her wedding photo to a high ranking navy official, pens, elastics, a calculator, all pink.  Her daily desk calendar for this year is of glamorous designer shoes.  Our mailman, Kent, who likes to stop and soak up some of her pleasant personality, habitually comes by first thing in the morning to flip the calendar and reveal the daily shoe.   Certainly a girl smitten with Audrey Hepburn whose face adorns her mouse pad and whose quotes appear on her cork board, quotes like, “The best thing to hold onto in life is each other,” would be prime to outline the focus of unconditional affection, amorous pleas and the throes of human heartbreak in prose form.  Caitlin Caldwell is the top contender so far.  Also, the fact that her book shelf includes novels by Nicholas Sparks alongside her accounting journals and a Michael Buble concert ticket to commemorate the day her husband proposed seem like firm romantic clues.

I know for sure it isn’t our resident Star Wars nerd, Alvin Winston.  His desk is lined with action figures, Yoda, Boba Fet, Darth Vader, Hans Solo and a slew of white storm troopers.  You can often hear him say, “Into the garbage chute, flyboy!” when he sends something to the trash on his computer.  The interesting thing about Alvin is that he’s an anti-bullying advocate.  He has designed and implemented a support and advocacy group for bullied youth called Heads Up High.  He saves his vacation time and tours local schools with a clear message of fairness and equality.   Our receptionist, Kitty Lewis was permitted entrance to his lair one afternoon, frantic about her eight year old son’s encounter with a bully and asked for advice.  I overheard the conversation.  He said, “The first thing you need to do is model confident behaviors at home.  Kids are like little sponges, they look to us for guidance.  So, if for example you were having a hard time standing up to someone at work, don’t voice it at home.  They listen and they learn every single thing we do.  Spend some time talking about empathy.  If your kid understands that maybe the dude bullying him lacks self-confidence or is having a tough time at home, it could help.  Also, the way people treat us is a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves so teaching kids to not take things so personally is vital and then their self-confidence isn’t compromised.  Happiness is empowering, man.  Be positive at home and encourage an open dialogue so that your kid will feel safe confiding in you.  If he comes home and says, ‘So and so is really mean,’ don’t freak out.  Instead, mirror their statements and be calm.  Telling your kiddies you understand they are hurting and why they are feeling crappy means a lot.”  For a scrawny mathematician who spends his time quoting Star Wars, he certainly has his ducks in a row, it doesn’t make him my Rumi though.  I wonder if he said, “May the force be with you,” at the end of their conversation? 

The more I think about it, the longer I investigate my co-worker’s cubicles; Alma Watkins seems a likely culprit to have penned Love’s Diffidence.  She is a young olive skinned girl, a single mother who lives with her only living relative.  Gran Heddy watches over three year old Quinn while Alma works two jobs, sometimes three in the summer months to carry them through.  Alma’s story is sad.  She married a gorgeous firefighter, her high school sweetheart, bought a lovely house in the suburbs and then soon had their only child.  When Quinn was two weeks old, Adam Watkins perished in a violent blaze at a local nursing home while trying to get the residents to safety.  He was able to rescue all but one, the building collapsed before they were able to get out.  Alma is a suspect because while her work-space is semi-generic, she transformed her cork board into a vision board.  It is full of feel-good affirmations, positive life quotes, and magazine cut-outs of all the things she wishes for her life.  She explained to me once that her therapist suggested the idea as a way to focus on an optimistic future after such tremendous loss.  There in plain view is a glossy photo of a large farm house complete with a wide front porch and two cozy chairs, a pair of floral rubber boots, an antique sewing machine, a Vera Wang wedding dress, the Eiffel Tower, a smiling photo of Nora Ephron and a snow white dove I imagine to be a symbol of peace for her.  If I am to interpret her visions, she’s done well to set small attainable goals while looking ahead to achievements to flesh out the bigger picture which is obviously to someday marry again.  It is the Nora Ephron photo that causes me to wonder, to suspect.  Is she symbolic for her future desires or to be able to emulate the work Nora has created, writing romance for public consumption?  My suspicions are high.  Alma is eloquent and smart, it is indeed possible.

In theory, it could be anyone in this office.  Just because a person has a penchant for fast cars or wears crocs and knits doesn’t mean we should assume they are incapable of writing something beautiful and profound.  I can’t be sure someone who is full of themselves didn’t write it or accept that someone did write it because she owns heart-shaped post-its.  What a conundrum.

Imagine my royal surprise when I am ready to pack it in and moveto power down my computer when the resident rocker pops his head around the corner of my cubicle.  Deezy is decked out in his gig attire, tight jeans ripped and faded, Black Label Society t-shirt; his hair was as big as his goofy grin.

“Hi Deez, what are you doing here so late?  On your way to a gig?”

“Oh, ya.”  Deezy pats a pair of drumsticks in his back jeans pocket,  “Say Zelda, so I printed some stuff and I just wondered if you might have picked it up outta that there printer? “

Shut the front door.  No way. 

“Uh … well, there are these.”  I casually flash the pages.

“Wicked, thanks!”  He plucks them from my reluctant fingers, “I was noodling around this morning and was totally in the zone.  There was more but remember we had that freak flash power outage?  Well, I didn’t hit save for a really long time cuz like I was just bashing and bashing it out.  Lost almost the whole story.   Crazy what!?” 

“Oh no, that is terribly unfortunate.  I didn’t know you wrote.” 

Agog.  Mystery solved.

“Working on a little something for my creative writing class.”

“What a bummer that you lost some of it today, that’s unfortunate.”

Unfortunate for me.

“Ya, I know eh, wild.  Geez.  I hope I can remember all the stuff I keyed in.”  He rolls up the story in his hand and drums it on his thigh.  “Anyways, Zelda.  Thanks for holding on to my stuff.  Actually um I’m glad you had it.  Someone else probably might of tossed it out.”

“No problem, Deezy.  Happy to help.” 

Sweet lord above, how can a heavy metal drummer with such a poor grasp of verbal communication write such tender prose? 

“Have a good show!”

“Ya!  Rock on!”

“Hey, Deezy?”

“Yo!”

“Any chance you might let me read your story when it’s finished? “

“Oh man, ya, for sure!  Totally.  Be really awesome cool to get some feedback from ya.”

“I look forward to reading it.”

Write fast. 

“Cheers!  I  gotta get going or I’ll be late.”

Moral of the story, obviously, never ever make assumptions.

** 

I still see things that need to be fixed but I'm allowing myself to share this with you because I need to let go of it so I can breathe and move on with the other two stories that are nagging at me.  Well, three.  Lord knows when they'll all be finished but I need some space away from this one.  I loved writing it though and I had fun constructing the cubicles.  I think that was my favorite part.

I hope you at least enjoy it a little bit.

In propinquity,

Nic