Trombones Can Laugh

by Lorraine Ray

  “Uh-uh. So you’re actually gonna take his word for it? You aren't gonna have any wild times in a band, kid-o. Band is totally uncool. What rock bands use trombones? They only want guitars. And the drinking age is dropping to 19. You might be able to sneak into bars on your own without being in a band. And I promise as soon as I’m in an apartment for a few more months you can come over and spend a night and we’ll smoke marijuana if you have a day off. Christmas or Rodeo, maybe. If I can.”

  Big deal. Christmas or Rodeo were pretty far off, so this wasn’t much of a gift. I sure was a desperate jerk, because I think I said: “Hey, thanks. You’re probably right. Band in high school is really dumb. I want to drop out of band so badly.” I did realize the truth of what she was saying. Shoot, why bother joining a band when you could sneak into a bar real easily or get marijuana?

  “Do it then, James. Just do it.”

  “I’ve got the itch now. The itch to be free! Also, I’m not walking across the desert and down through an arroyo to our high school with a goddamned lead-ass trombone case hanging at my side every day. A few guys have it in for me, and they’re planning to make my life miserable in high school, and they might be smoking marijuana in the arroyo. If they were to see me coming along, they would be sure to jump me and beat me up, if they hadn't started smoking yet, that is.”

  “Right on. You won’t be able to out run them, or even get out of the arroyo very fast with a damned trombone weighing you down and you being blind.”

  “Yup. Well, blind-ish. I can see, sorta.”

  “They might even wreck Dad's trombone and then you’d really be in trouble.”

  “Oh yeah, shit. And Mom and Dad think I’m part of the in crowd. They believe I couldn’t possibly have an enemy in the world. If Dad’s trombone gets damaged they’ll think I deliberately damaged it. They live in cuckoo land, no matter what I try to tell them about what really is happening at school and how crammed full of jerks the world is.”

  “That’s an old story,” my older sister said in her best, worn-out older sister voice. “They aren’t gonna listen to that.”

  My plan after this talk with my sister was to drop band as an elective and put art or drama in its place. I liked those subjects and both of those classes had a lot cuter girls in them, too. This I had been told by Gertrude.

  My attempt to convince my parents of my desire to be out of band, however, did not succeed.

  Something else came in as an important ridiculous factor to make me fill out my high school preference card with band as an elective. My mother is what that was.

  “You know, James, your father and I have never been lucky enough to appear on television,” Mother said, like a holy martyr or something one afternoon when she was ironing my white T shirts. She thought I ought to wear ironed white T-shirts under my buttoned-down shirt. White T-shirts under buttoned-down shirts was not really the style anymore, even in Arizona, and I’d been trying unsuccessfully to tell her that nobody had white T shirts under their shirts and it was also a hot late spring when it was already one hundred degrees, and riding a bike home with two shirts on would be suicide, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept on ironing shirts and yakking about her dumb wish that I would appear on TV.

  I should explain that she is a total television nut. I mean she watches anything that is on the boob tube. And she worshipped the stars. She had our house built so a little TV den was on the other side of the kitchen, with only a low wall separating them, and she could hear the TV and stand on tip-toes at the stove and see the picture while she was cooking! Dad, as I said, had his own TV in the converted carport den.

  Anyway, my appearing on TV wasn't a matter of vanity or anything like that. She didn't think I was so damn handsome or charming, though she doesn’t hate me or anything, I guess. No, the reason she wanted me on TV was a matter of family equality.

  “Both your sisters,” she went on, “got to be on The Deputy JGUN Hour of Fun when they were little. I want you to have the same opportunity.”

  This Deputy JGUN jerk was a skinny ding-a-ling who was famous locally a few years ago for inviting birthday boys and girls to his studio and sitting them on bleachers and then lining them up while he sat in a chair and spanked them over his lap on their butts right on live TV! Hell, the whole thing was pretty sick-o and he combined it with cartoons and goofy skits about the Wild West and stuff. Both my sisters, Gertrude and Ginny, got to do that, to go down to the studio and line up with the birthday kids for Deputy JGUN, with their undies and slip showing and all, but for some reason or other it never worked out that I got to go to the Deputy JGUN Show on my birthday which was a little too close to Christmas, I guess. But shoot, my mother in her brain of motherly justice, fairness and equality had cooked up, slowly and painfully, the way only a real sick-o mother could, this really weird but deeply felt nuts-o idea that I had somehow been shortchanged in the television appearance department, and that I was only hiding my deep disappointment with the fact that I hadn’t been on TV.

  “You ought to appear on television at some time in your life,” Mom said, narrowing her eyes at me. “If you’re in the band, you’re going to march in the Rodeo parade. And that’s a sure-fire way to get on TV. In the Rodeo Parade you can see everybody and with a trombone you’re gonna be in front!” She was right in part because the high school bands all marched in the annual rodeo parade in town, and the parade was always filmed and shown once live and once again that night. There was a good chance that your band member would walk right by the camera sometime during the parade.

  I saw that she was planning to make a big deal out of this. “I don’t like television,” I explained. “And,” connecting my ideas, “I don’t want to join the band in order to be on the thing that I hate, see?”

  “You don’t like TV because you never sit still and watch a whole show.”

  “The idiocy drives me away.”

  “What?”

  “It’s dumb. Television is dumb.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “I’ll challenge you!” I cried. I wanted to be bold about my opinions. I’d been working on that.

  “What?”

  “I will watch all of one of your favorite shows once to prove to you that I don’t like it!”

  “Okay.”

  “What’s your favorite show? Pick one!” I said.

  “The Merv Griffin Show, but I like tons of others.”

  “Just one. One. Yeah, I should have known that practically anything on TV is your favorite show, but you have to pick one. So, Merv Griffin it is.”

  The next day, after I watched The Merv Griffin Show with her, I had to say I didn’t know why she liked that show.

  “That was about the dumbest show besides Sea Hunt, Love, American Style and The Family Affair Show and there’s really some dumb stuff on,” I told her at the end of the show when they went to the sponsor messages.

  “All right, Mr. Smarty-Pants. I guess you’re entitled to your opinion, but don’t persecute me with it.”

  “Who’s that jerky English guy on the sofa?”

  “That jerky English guy, as you call him, is a well-known London celebrity—” and she said some name like Percival Marleybones, or something. Maybe I ought to have told my old man that she had a thing for that dumb jerk Mervin and some phony Marleybones that's sitting around with him talking to his guests like they’re in somebody’s living room.

  “You never were cocky like this before,” Mother gasped. “This is exactly what happens when someone feels deprived. Now I know you’ve got to get on television.”

  “Mom, listen, I do not need to be on television. What I need is to get some new Levis. I have to have bellbottoms when I go to high school. Everybody’s wearing them and I don’t want to be left out anymore. I want to fit in.”

  “What difference does the bottom of the pant make? You have pants, don’t you?”

  “These aren't stylish anymore.”

  “If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you follow t
hem?” Mom asked in a sing-song voice that drove me crazy. This is the stupidest question ever invented by a parent.

  “Am I wearing straight-legged pants at the edge of this cliff? Because then I might!”

  Put a long disappointed pause in there.

  And then a crazy response.

  Since I showed anger over the state of my Levi’s, she decided that I was still brooding over the fact that I hadn’t been on TV!

  “I think your problem, young man,” she said, “is that you’re disappointed. I knew I should have gotten you on TV once. It makes all the difference. The girls perked up right away when they went on TV.”

  “They were six years old! Six-year-olds perk up all the time! What I’m brooding over, Mom, is the state of my wardrobe. I need better Levi’s and when are you going to let me buy some bitchin’ looking bellbottoms and a Nehru shirt instead of the straight-legs and tight button down shirts that are turning me into a creep?”

  “You know I don’t like that word—‘bitchin.’ Your father told you to stop using it. I can see you're hiding your deep disappointment about not being on TV,” she said.

  There it was again. Dang, she had a one-track mind. And the sure-fire way that I could appear on television was to join a high school band. What screwy thinking. Who in the heck besides my mother cared about being on TV? Shit, it was as though she thought I wasn't going to be a real person if I’d never appeared on television or something.

  “Plato and Socrates weren’t on TV. Genghis Khan wasn’t interviewed on TV. Both of them survived until they died. They never suffered without an appearance on TV!” I observed. Perhaps you’ve noticed that I was coming unglued at that point.

  “I’ve decided!” she exclaimed. “You have to join the high school band or be mixed up for life!”

  Hell, it was crazy the way she went on yakking about that TV appearance.

  “Mom, the only thing I feel deprived about is not being able to get a pair of bellbottoms and get rid of my dorky, straight-legged pants.”

  “Your cousins in Indiana would be glad to have pants as nice as the straight-legged ones I bought you. They’re grateful children.”

  “Okay, Mom,” I said furiously, “here’s what you do. Get a box. Cram it full with these straight-legged pants that I hate. Send that goddamned box off to my cousins in Indiana cause they don’t know the difference between what’s stylish and what isn’t, and let me buy myself some bellbottoms and a Nehru styled shirt!”

  I saw it coming. Sorta.

  She slapped me.

  That was a snide comment about her relatives, who shit knows, honestly, did not care what was popular to wear, but pointing out the truth was something which Mother deeply resented. It was a nasty crack about her relatives. Ladies get sensitive about nasty cracks about their nephews who spend most of their time in canoes jerking off along the goddamned muddy Salamone River.

  So, she got so mad at me about that bellbottom crack that she slapped my impudent face and said she would tell my Dad and get me punished if I didn’t agree to join high school band. So, of course, I joined the damn band. It was a bummer. My plan of getting out of Band Squaresville in high school was shot-down. Well shit, I really didn't have anything against bands, or marching, or the trombone. In fact I sort of thought it was fun to be in the band. Man, things got complicated after that, though. One thing led to another, and two springs later I ended up spending a lot of my Saturdays and Sundays playing in a Shriner Band. Yeah. For real. Shriners.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As I now slide my trombone under my bed for good, sliding it into the sunset so to speak and saying adios, amigo, hasta la vista, and so forth, as I have faithfully not learned in Spanish from Sr. O' Shaunnesey in fourth period, I can confidently proclaim to you today that a trombone is a really bitchin’ instrument for two reasons that I know. These reasons I’ve learned over the time I was taking lessons with Gluey and playing for the Shriners.

  One reason trombones are great is they’re a vocal instrument—that was the way to describe the trombone—according to the spiel, a grumbling, mumbling spiel I suffered through when I met Mr. Frank K. McGluen, on my first day of lessons. Think of the world as made up of band instruments. Some instruments—like clarinets—they squeal at you all the time. And others are like the bulging tubas: too heavy and they blow kinda dull and dark. Some instruments like flutes are too sweet for their own good. Now it takes all types to make beautiful music in this world; I know this. I can talk extemporaneously, bullshitting out loud really, for a long time about band instruments and people, if you have the time to sit down and listen to me. And what I would tell you was the real honest-to-goodness truth, which is that trombones can talk in a lot of voices. Like a person.

  And the other thing I learned is fairly simple and that is that besides percussion, the trombone section is one of the only sections in any band that can laugh while they’re playing. I didn’t just memorize that from the first lecture Mr. McGluen gave me in his pathetic little living room. I actually learned a lot about life and laughing from playing the trombone for Gluey.

  Oh, and another thing is if you have a trombone you can open your spit valve on your annoying little sister.

  Spit valves. I haven’t said anything about those.

  A spit valve is a really nifty thing on a trombone and it’s located on the bottom of the slide. When you play the trombone, spit builds up inside the instrument as you play, sorta condensing out of your breath. If you don't do anything about this condensation, you will hear the notes bubbling and gurgling through a damn ocean of your own sputum eventually. It’s pretty funny and gross. You can keep on playing and make this interesting gurgling noise. Very grody so far, right? That is the point at which you need to open the spit valve and watch your warm oozy spit come dripping out, splat, splat, and splat. Shit, what a blast. That part’s bitchin’, amazingly so. I also liked to chase my little sister Ginny around the house with the trombone in my hands when my mom isn’t home, threatening to open the spit valve on her. The first time I opened it on Ginny’s neck from behind and she howled for a long time and took a shower, something she hates to do because she’s heard about this movie where a lady gets stabbed to death in the shower. It was a goddamned blast listening to her complain. Heavenly.

  Talking about spit valves and other grody things, for your education, I knew a kid in my junior high band who liked to play trombone with candy in his mouth. Every day he brought in a different candy which he ate, and Mr. Gomez never caught him eating the stuff when he was playing because he was so sneaky about it. The kid thought he was really cool. But over time the little bits of candy that he chewed blew out of his mouth and that candy built up in his spit in the trombone slide. Until one day.

  Blowing and blowing, playing some song we were going to perform for the spring concert, but not a peep or a bleat was coming from that horn, man. He kept on blowing all the same. Shit, he was an optimist, I guess. Just imagine this bright red face of this kid struggling away as he tried to get some air to go through his trombone, but he couldn’t make a pathetic little toot come out. Finally, Mr. Gomez noticed what was happening and he came charging over like the invasion of Normandy or the goddamned charge up San Juan Hill or something like that.

  “We need to clean that instrument,” he said angrily, smashing his way through the folding chairs and instrument cases toward the red-faced trombonist.

  “Okay, okay,” said the kid, yanking the slide out before Mr. Gomez got to him.

  “Where’s your cleaning tool?” Mr. Gomez demanded when he reached the candy kid.

  “I haven’t got one of those,” the boy said, handing over his slide.

  “Well, borrow one, now!” thundered Mr. Gomez.

  I fumbled around for mine, being a goddamned Good Samaritan (too much Congregational church, I suppose) and all that, but a boy who was nearer gave up his cleaning tool.

  Mr. Gomez snatched the slide away from the boy and held it up. He looked in the s
lide hole. “I can see a blockage!” he yelled. “There is definitely a blockage in this instrument!”

  Most band teachers go ape over blockages. They all have hang-ups about gunk in valuable instruments.

  Then he stuck the cleaning snake in the trombone slide. All the time he was grumbling and growling. Of course, he couldn’t get the snake to move through at the point at the bottom of the slide where the spit valve was. He pushed and pushed and even cursed, mildly in Spanish, the old carumba and Chihuahua deal, because he was actually surrounded by junior high school students. Finally when he got whatever it was all the way around, and it came out the end, what squirted out was a plug of candy spit that was all the colors of the rainbow, or all the colors of the candies, the boy had sucked. The plug was a real pastel nightmare, which was very interesting. I was close enough to see the disgusting thing because I was in the trombone section, but a higher chair than that boob. It was fascinating to look at what came out, sorta like the rocks in the Grand Canyon or something, as it laid in the band leader’s trash can. Striated, that’s the word, and he let all his students take a long look at this striated gunk as we left the band room so that he could make a big deal out of how a stupid jerk like that guy could really ruin a perfectly good instrument by playing while chewing candy. After that, the kid’s job was to clean instruments for a whole month and his parents had to pick him up at 4:30 instead of 3:30 and ball him out a whole bunch over and over again. I don’t know if he was spanked by the Vice Principal or not, but they were still doing that when I was in junior high. I hear they quit that last year.

  Junior high school had only just ended, I had finished my eighth grade year, when I began private trombone lessons with Frank McGluen. The reason I took private lessons was I couldn’t get in the high school band unless I showed that I had taken some outside private lessons. You see how the ramifications of this thing are expanding like the plot of a goddamned Russian novel or something? But did I want to be in the goddamned high school band? Hell no! As I said, my father and mother were the ones who wanted me to be in the band so that I could march in the rodeo parade and they could see me on TV. Talk about a jerky chain of reasoning.