Beautiful Music for Ugly Children

by Kirstin Cronn-Mills

  “Don’t know. Lately I’ve been stuck on the idea of A sides with successful B sides.”

  He rubs his hands together like a mad scientist. “Oooh, that’s a good one. Let me think.” He starts taking things from various crates and boxes, leaving the room and coming back with more. “Let’s be sure you do Rod Stewart, and probably you should do Hank Williams … ” We’re in our music world again, just like always.

  We sort and pick for a while, flipping through boxes and crates, but I have to ask again because I really want to know. “How can you just … accept it like that?”

  “I’ve seen a lotta things, done a lotta things, and known a lotta people.” His accent is back. “The strangest person I ever met was a sword-swallower. A guy with a coochie snorcher is nothing compared to a dude who puts sharp metal in his guts. Who’d want to do that?” His face tells me that he’s utterly, utterly serious. “You are you. That’s all there is to it.”

  Nobody’s ever said it like that. Not my family, not even Paige. But John is right.

  I am me.

  It’s midnight. Between my collection and John’s, I’m set.

  I’m so freaked I could puke.

  “Welcome, ladies and germs, to Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. I’m—uh … ”

  It’s all right, Gabe. Now or never. It’s Elvis, in my head. You are you, remember?

  “ … Well, I’m Gabe, and this week’s theme is A sides and B sides. Here’s a requested A side—actually a one-hit wonder—for Mara’s listening pleasure: ‘In The Summertime’

  by Mungo Jerry, right here on 90.3, community radio KZUK.”

  There may be three people out there, but you want each one to cheer when you put on their favorite song. “In the Summertime” is a little too midday sunshine for the midnight hour, in my opinion, but it’s all about the listeners. And even bad music is good. Mostly.

  The phone rings about halfway through the song.

  I concentrate. My voice is stuffed. “KZUK, the Z that sucks.”

  “You brought me my song! What about ‘You Know My Name’?”

  “Coming up. It fits with the show, so I would have played it anyway.”

  “You’re the best! Nobody ever plays my requests, not even when they’re easy.”

  “I oblige loyal listeners.”

  The smile in her voice is obvious. “Can I ask for another request?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ by the Ramones?”

  “For that one I’ve got live recordings, studio recordings, and recordings by about ten other artists. Any preference?”

  “Live. You are sooooo cool! Bye!”

  I miss my cue again, because I’m hanging up, but “Let it Be” solemnly proceeds into the air, followed by “You Know My Name,” one of the coolest, funniest B sides ever. Then two more—Hank Williams and U2—and then I think about what John said. Tell a story with the music. It’s now or never.

  When the song’s finished, I take a deep breath.

  “So tell me, listeners … are you an A side or a B side? Are you a Top Forty hit, or an equally good yet potentially undiscovered gem?” I can’t believe I’m saying this. “Some of you might be right up there in the top ten, but if you’re listening to this show, I’d bet you’re more on the funky side.” Dorky. “Then again, I think all of us have our A and B sides, even though digital music has kind of wrecked that idea.”

  Another deep breath.

  “Personally, I like my B side, which is tough, because everybody else likes my A side. But I’m sticking to it.” I feel and hear my voice shake, but hopefully it’s not noticeable on the air. “And I played my B side for someone yesterday, and he was okay with it. No complaints, nothing. Can you imagine? Along the lines of loving on the B sides, here’s ‘Don’t Worry Baby,’ the B side of the hit single ‘I Get Around’ by the Beach Boys.”

  It’s in the goofy CD player, so it stalls. When I almost put my finger through the on button, it finally obeys.

  Then, when the Beach Boys are over, I risk some patter again. “I’m tired of being someone else’s idea of a hit record. How about you? I know this is a radical idea, but people should get to be who they want to be. If you’re going for the top of the charts, all right. A side all the way, go for it. But if I want to play my B side, I should get to play my B side. And only the cool kids listen to B sides.”

  I am sure Paige is whooping it up about the coolness part. If she’s listening, that is.

  “What about you—more A side or B side? Write it down somewhere, chalk it on the street. ‘I’m Ed, and I’m a B side!’ or ‘I’m Martha, and I’m an A side’! Maybe you haven’t decided yet. Or, on your A side you’re a nice girl, and on your B side you’re a hooker. I don’t know. But we’ve gotta love all our grooves. They’re the only ones we get.”

  I can’t believe I said so much. My heart is racing and I’m panting from all the crazy nerves.

  “How about a little dance music? Here’s Madonna’s ‘Into the Groove,’ which was the B side to her single ‘Angel’ way back when Madonna was new. Care to dance?”

  I dance, too, because it feels good to shake out the nerves. But then I skip the CD, so I sit after that. Then more songs go on without chatting, because I need to chill.

  Finally it’s time to wind it down. “You know, life is just programmed chaos. Everybody starts out on one side—that’s the programmed part. But then chaos happens, and our album flips. We get fat or thin, or dye our hair and pierce our nose. But those are just our outsides. Our insides are still beautiful, even if we think we’re ugly children.”

  Yuck—too deep. Time to bail.

  “For our last song of the night, let’s get local with Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and ‘Erotic City,’ another A and B side, just for that sexy touch. I’m … Gabe … and you’re listening to Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, on community radio 90.3, KZUK. Back at you next week with some more programmed chaos.”

  I need to remember Prince—he’d make a good show all by himself.

  I jump around a little bit with the songs, especially “Let’s Go Crazy.” But then I skip the CD again. When the show is over and Marijane is gardening away, I get all the CDs back in the crate and get things organized. Then I step into the dark air, starting the 167-hour wait for the best sixty minutes of my week. One more groove laid down.

  My phone rings while I’m driving home.

  “Gabe, that was amazing! Flat out. But the A side/B side part was really strange.” Paige’s reaction. We chat, make plans for tomorrow, and hang up.

  My phone rings again.

  “Liz, that was fantastic—you chatted! You can do even more next time.” John’s reaction. Then there’s a pause. “Gabe. I mean Gabe.”

  “No stress.” For him, I can be patient.

  “I’ll get it right, I promise. Meantime, let’s hear it for your B side.” I can hear that he’s smiling. He always says if you smile, your listeners will hear it.

  “Thanks.”

  “Sleep well, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  I actually feel about 15 percent peaceful, which is a huge improvement over my normal 5 percent. Then there’s Elvis, very quietly, as I’m drifting away: it’s all right, Gabe. Just trust.

  We’ll see.

  Jesus is the new Elvis because He Has An Enormous Fan Club, Too

  Saturday night. Because we’re bored, Paige and I decide to drive up to underage night at Happiness, a karaoke bar in Minneapolis’s Warehouse District. Ninety miles isn’t that far to drive for some entertainment, and karaoke is better than nothing. We get there and the place is crammed with people we don’t know, which is perfect.

  Paige is a brainless hoochie mama when we club—short skirt, high heels, designer handbag, and a millio
n strands of beads. I, on the other hand, wear a button-down shirt and more dressy jeans than Levis, but that’s as far as I go. No matter what I wear, no one looks at me anyway, because the woman thing turned out all right for Paige, to put it mildly. She’s quite shapely, with serious boobs and nice hips. She’s okay if I grab her every so often so we look like we’re together, but sometimes she grabs me. And that’s okay too. It might be flirting behavior, but I’m not sure. Sometimes when I look at her while we’re dancing, I think I see MPOSSIBL on her forehead. Not quite as impossible as before, but still there.

  Paige and I dance a few—we’re good together—but then I realize I have to pee. Bad. Peeing is normal for 98 percent of the human race, but not for me.

  When I open the door to the men’s at Happiness, I breathe deep and puff up my chest. Men’s rooms stink way worse than women’s rooms. I try to swagger, but no one looks up from the urinals. Thank god no one is in the stall—men take forever in there, so sometimes I have to go out and come in again. I pee as quickly as possible, come out, wash my hands, keep my head down, and get the hell out.

  Paige laughs when she sees me. “You look like someone bit you on the ass!”

  “I was in the men’s.”

  “Brave guy! Now be my boyfriend and dance with me.” Paige bats her eyes.

  “I’m your boyfriend?” I don’t let my voice give away the perfectness of that idea.

  “Just tonight.”

  “What about Bobby X?”

  She snaps her gum at me. “What about him?”

  We head out onto the dance floor as some dude does a horrid rendition of Journey’s “Open Arms,” looking dreamily into the face of a guy sitting close to the little stage. I gather Paige up and we sway around the room. She flips the edge of her skirt and smiles at other couples as we go by. I know she likes Gabe better than Bobby X. Compared to him, I’m a much cheerier guy.

  On our way home, I keep thinking about bathrooms because I have to pee again. Paige wants to stop at Perkins “just to see who’s there, come on Gabe, it’ll be fun!” I say okay, so that I can go.

  Of course, when I walk into the women’s, a girl jumps back and says, “Oh!” when she sees me. Then she looks again, and her face clears. “Hi, uh, Liz.” It’s Stacey Nelson from my government class.

  “Hey.” I go into the stall and do my business. I would never try a men’s room anywhere in Maxfield.

  By the time I get back to Paige, she’s parked herself at a table of students from her AP classes and she’s laughing and chatting away. I point at the door, to let her know I’m going out to the car. After being Gabe all night, I’m not interested in being Liz. As I’m walking through the door, Paul Willard and Kyle Marshall are coming in. We look at each other, we look down. Nobody’s an asshole.

  While Paige casts her social spell, I think about urinals. Maybe there’s a way.

  The next day we surf the web at her house. I love the World Wide Wonderfulness, because there are answers out there. I just have to know the right words to pull them from the ether. In this case, I settle for “trans man” and “pee” and hope for the best. I found my chest binders on the web, too—it’s a trans man’s shopping mall.

  There are more options than I expected, and Paige is astounded. “Different shades, even!”

  “You think all men’s dicks are the same color?” We’ve never talked about dicks before. Awkward.

  “Well, no, but … who knew? And they’re called prosthetics, like if you lose an arm.”

  “What do you think they should be called? Accessories?” I click around some more.

  “Don’t be a dork. And I can’t say this ’do is working for you.” She starts fingering my hair, pushing it around, though it’s not going anywhere because it’s pretty short. “Why not grow it a little longer? Remember, James Franco. That’s what we’re going for.”

  I wish she wouldn’t touch me like that. All the nerves in my body light up and my heart flutters, which sounds great and romantic, but it’s kind of scary. “Keep your hands off my freaking head.”

  She stares at the screen as I scroll through the choices. “ ‘Prosthetic’ is such a … ”

  “Medical word? Regular word?” I keep looking.

  “Well, yeah.”

  I consider what’s on the screen, and think about what I have in my bank account. “The fact that I trust you is the only reason I’m letting you sit here.”

  “Except that it’s my house. And of course you can trust me. And John.” When I told her about John’s reaction, she said, “I told you so.”

  “Four to six weeks to get here. That sucks.”

  “So? That’s not long.”

  “In my heart, I have a penis. In my pants, I have a vagina. I want my heart and my pants to match.”

  She just stares at me.

  “Got it?”

  “What a line.” Paige frowns at the monitor. “Why is it called a Mango?”

  “Think about it, dork. Man-go. A man goes. He goes pee. It’s a pun.”

  “Oh. Duh.” She looks slightly embarrassed. “But won’t your parents ask you why you had a Mango shipped to your house when you can go down to the store and get one?”

  “Shut up!”

  After everything’s ordered, we go to the mall so Paige can look for an outfit for graduation. She makes me hold her purse while she tries on thing after thing at store after store. My brain starts to hurt from all her questions: “Does this color go with that one?” and “Should I get a skirt or a dress?” And, of course, “Does this make my butt look big?”

  While we’re walking around, I see Heather Graves with a bunch of people. She gives me a big smile and wave, so I give her the same in return. Then a random guy grabs her arm and pulls her down the walkway. It’s a different guy than the one she was with after class. She forgets all about me, laughing and smiling at him.

  Paige sees me wave at Heather. “You’re friends with Heather?” She doesn’t seem to approve. Heather and Paige run in two separate crowds.

  “We have the same geography class, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” But I see Paige looking out of the sides of her eyes at me.

  After I get home, I park myself in my back yard and close my eyes. It’s a nice place, all landscaped and fancy. There’s even a pond with a fountain that my dad built. The pond is maybe a foot deep, with built-up brick sides and various sizes of rocks sticking out of it, so the fountain will splash and make noise. It even has underwater lights.

  The sound of water flinging itself over the rocks soothes me, so I pull up a lawn chair and dangle my feet in the pond while I chuck landscape gravel into it, plink plink.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  I jump about a foot. “Geez! Don’t sneak up on people!”

  Before my announcement, my mom was a regular mom with an amazing capacity for patience, even when I grew my hair into a six-inch Mohawk that I sculpted with Elmer’s glue and/or gelatin, whichever we had. That was in my Sid Vicious phase a few years ago. After my announcement, she put every single school photo, from kindergarten to my senior picture, on the refrigerator. The night after I told them, she called her best friend and cried at least five minutes for each picture. She thought I was gone, but I was upstairs. I wanted to run down and rip up every single one, then tell her how sorry I was. I just stayed upstairs.

  “Did you and Paige have fun last night?” She’s standing next to me, staring into the fountain.

  “It was fine. We danced. Watched people sing karaoke.”

  Big pause. “Did you … go as Gabe?”

  “There wasn’t anybody there we know, if that helps.”

  She’s flustered. “You know that’s not what I meant.” Now she’s staring at the grass.

  “Forget it.” No use getting uptight.

/>   “Could you please come help me with supper? John might come over too.”

  “Be right there.”

  She heads back inside, Birkenstocks making flip-flip sounds as they slap her feet. I know summer’s coming when my mom wears her Birks the right way: no socks. I want to run after her and hug her like I did when I was six, when I needed her because I was scared of the thing under my bed. But I can’t bring myself to do it.

  Then my dad comes by and studies the pond but not me. “Did your mother tell you not to throw the gravel in the pond?”

  “She did.” I stand up to go inside.

  “Okay.” He goes back to his shop.

  Then Pete comes by. “Can I use your car? I need to go to Target and check my schedule.”

  “Keys are on the table. Hey, Pete … ”

  “Cool. Thanks, Liz.” And he’s gone.

  They’ve perfected the art of making me useful but invisible.

  I go inside and make salad for my mom.

  I hope nobody’s home when the Mango gets here.

  I bought a dick today. Holy shit.

  This week, John and I come up with a show about sports—who knew? Before I go to the station, we throw a crate together with some pep band music, some songs about sports, and a few songs from sports movies. Nothing like the theme song from Rocky to get the blood pumping—gonna fly noooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

  Chatting sucks, and I sound like a complete dumbass. Nothing’s flowing. I’m sure John’s cringing in his living room.

  I save “The Horse,” a very obscure funk & soul B side from the sixties, for next to last. Maxfield West’s pep band adores it for its brass parts, so I tell them I brought it for their pleasure. Then I let it slide into a version of “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the University of Nebraska Cornhusker Marching Band. We’ll see if Mara hears it.