by Phil Stern
Even allowing for their age and inexperience (after all, fourth and fifth graders are supposed to look awkward), I guarantee you that, in the history of the world, a more motley, disheveled group of musicians never attempted a public performance. Clearly a memo had been put out at some point that every fat, sweaty kid in school was required to take up an instrument. Many hadn’t bothered to comb their hair. Two kids, the tuba player and the base drummer, were actually wearing shorts and tee shirts. Several sported sneakers, and one girl was attired in some kind of Goth get-up, black make-up and all.
A subtle murmur swept the audience as these sad-sack kids began dragging banged-up music stands and folding chairs all over the place. A dozen fathers checked the time, grimacing at the late hour.
“Why don’t they have these things on a Friday night?” a man behind me mumbled. “Christ, I have to be up at five o’clock.”
“Yeah,” I quietly agreed, half-turning in my chair. “But they’re probably worried no one would show up.”
“Dave, you’re embarrassing me!” Jen hissed, sinking her fingers into my arm. “Stop it!”
“But honey, I was just agreeing…”
“You’re criticizing the school!” Her claws sank deeper. “Are you trying to destroy Mandy’s future?”
At this point the conductor stumbled out on stage. The guy was about 45, and like his students, overweight and unkempt. With loosened tie and halting step he’d clearly been drinking, though I don’t think most of the audience realized it just yet. Without a word of introduction he took position before his charges, baton raised for the first note.
Unfortunately he stutter-started, half-waving the baton a few times before finally bringing it sweeping down on the podium with a loud crack. Confused, the kids all began, then stopped, then began again, creating a monstrous, off-key racket. The baton itself broke, with the delicate plastic shaft whipping off into the front row behind him.
“Damn it!” the maestro belched, angrily waving the orchestra into silence. “Shut up, all of you!” Reaching into his jacket for a brandy flask, he then took a deep drink.
“My goodness!” somebody murmured behind us. In the shocked silence, her voice reverberated around the entire hall. “The conductor is drunk!”
“EXCUSE ME!” the drunk bellowed, whipping around to face the audience. “Who said that! Report to Mr. Smith’s office for detention…Oh. Oh, my.” As if realizing where he was for the first time, the conductor stared stupidly at an auditorium full of amazed parents.
“Yes, yes. The concert!” he finally slurred, fixing us with a tired, drunk smile. “We are here to perform!” And with that he lumbered around again, now holding up his brandy flask in place of the broken baton. The children obediently raised their instruments to play again.
You know what the amazing thing is? Even at this point, the inebriated bastard might have pulled it off if he could have just properly kicked off the first song. I really think the kids would have taken over, played a few tunes while the drunk asshole idiotically waved his brandy flask, then everyone would have gone home and wondered the next morning if it had all been a dream. I really do.
But it wasn’t to be. He screwed it up again, stutter-starting no less than four times. Once more there was massive off-key, off-tempo confusion on stage, the kids stopping entirely after several seconds. I’ve heard better sounding car crashes.
“FUCK!” the maniac now screamed, flinging the flask/baton in the direction of the shorts-clad base drummer. One pretty clarinet player, possibly the only properly dressed kid on stage, was splattered with alcohol. “You stupid bastard! How many times do I have to…” Again, he spun about, arms held up in complete disgust, once more surprised by the horde of now seething parents behind him. “Oh. Oh, my,” he re-mumbled, arms dropping.
“You’re a disgrace, Nixon!” One man in the second row now stood. “You’ll never teach again!”
With what little dignity remained, Mr. Nixon took a deep breath, leaning back against the podium for support. “Disgrace, am I?” he now began, pompously putting on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. “Well, my friends, let’s talk a little bit about just what is…and what isn’t…a disgrace!”
You know, I guess the principals, or superintendents, or whoever is supposed to keep an eye on things don’t actually attend these concerts, because surely one of them would have hustled Nixon off at this point. I half-expected one of those vaudeville-style hooks to snake out from stage left, hauling him away. But nothing happened. Nixon was going to have his moment.
And everyone wanted to see it. I mean, everyone. Even the irate guy in the second row sat down. This was superlative, a moment you know you’ll remember forever. I’ll admit, I was excited. After the last several years, all the tension with Jen, all the money problems, I could forget myself for five minutes and just let this pathetic fuck-up unravel before my very eyes. I slid forward, barely breathing.
“I graduated from the Jillian School of Music! Did you ingrates heard me?” Nixon snorted. “I say again, THE JILLIAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC! The most prestigious institution of it’s kind, in the world, 22 years ago!” Great vertical sweeps of Nixon’s head provided all the confirmation we’d need of this momentous achievement. “I was to be a concert pianist! But no! My horrible bitch of a mother implored me to go into education! The better, she said, to support my family. As if….as if I gave a shit.”
Outside of Nixon’s drunken harangue, there was utter silence in the auditorium. It was so quiet you could actually hear the odd rustle of cloth as someone shifted in their seat. Even the kids sat quietly behind him. No one wanted to miss a thing.
“Well, one has to please mother, am I right? So marry I did, only to have my blushing bride abandon me after discovering I liked to enjoy the occasional cocktail after work! As if she was perfect or something!” Once more Nixon belched, holding his paunch. “And now I’m left to tell ten-year-olds not to fart into their instruments. That’s right! Just yesterday, one of my…students, shall we call him? Yes, this little bastard actually dropped his pants, bent over, inserted the mouth piece into his own anus…”
A woman off to one side gasped.
“Oh, yes!” More corroborating head nods from Nixon. “And then passed gas into his tuba!”
The mad farter in question actually waved to the crowd. Luckily, Nixon was facing the other way and didn’t notice.
“Of course, I asked him why he would do such a thing. And do you know what this…this…this little ingrate said?” Now Nixon was shouting/slurring even more. “He said that he wanted to see what it would sound like! Can you believe that? Can you…can you fucking believe what my life has turned into?”
Nixon paused, a huge tear rolling down one cheek. The hall remained in utter, excruciating silence.
And then I laughed out loud.
Look, I wasn’t trying to attract any attention. I wasn’t trying to do anything. It was just such an absurd, tragic moment, the great would-be concert pianist, pride of Jillian, now hard-pressed to dissuade his pubescent brass section from engaging in ass-to-mouthpiece contact with their instruments.
So I laughed. Everyone, and I mean everyone in the hall turned to stare at me. I sat back, my smile dissolving beneath the withering stares of a hundred-odd sets of parents. Jen turned away, trying to hide her face.
As for Nixon, he ran off the stage, sobbing. All the parents quietly collected their kids and filed out of the hall.
That night, after we got home, Jen basically went crazy.
“Dave, YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!” She flung a vase in my direction, wet flowers flopping dully against the wall. “You’ve humiliated me for the last time, you worthless piece of shit!”
Since Mandy was upstairs, and I’d long since stopped caring what Jen thought of anything, I just tried soothing her. “Now Jen, it’s been a long day…”
“Long day?” Her face contorted in rage, Jen now hurled a picture at me. Ducking, it crashed against the television. “YOU’VE FUCKING RUINED ME,
DAVE! I can’t even show my face anymore after this fucking disaster!”
“Jen, please…”
“You know, Dave,” she seethed, advancing around the couch. “My mother was right about you all along. You’re a worthless piece of shit. A fucking insult to my family! AND I FUCKING HATE YOUR GUTS!”
“Good.” Smiling, I grandly indicated the stairway leading upstairs. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, why don’t you go to sleep, and I’ll just…”
At that point, however, it just all boiled over. “I WANT A DIVORCE!” Jen erupted, socking me square on the jaw.
For the next five minutes I tried to hold my darling wife at bay, letting her energetically beat on my arms and shoulders. Screaming like a banshee, face contorted in fury, Jen wouldn’t let up.
Finally, we both heard crying from up above. Whipping my head around, I saw my darling daughter, standing on the top of the stairs, clutching her bunny blanket. Mandy’s soft brown eyes were terrified and quivering. “Mommy! Daddy! Stop!” she yelled, dissolving into horrified sobs.
Rushing past me, Jen scooped Mandy up and ran into our bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Utterly spent, I simply stood where I was, idly rubbing at the bruises all over my arms and face.
Five minutes later the cops broke the door down. I found out later Jen had called her mother, who’d immediately informed the local constabulary that I was in the process of murdering Jen. So leaving nothing to chance they burst through the front entrance, armed in riot gear, screaming at me to get face down on the floor. I numbly complied. Five minutes after that I found myself in the back of a squad car, heading for the town clink.
You know, here’s the thing. Wouldn’t you think the police would, oh, I don’t know, put us in separate rooms or something to take our statements? But no, Jen and I sat at desks mere feet apartment, giving our versions of the night’s events to two equally bored detectives. In Jen’s account I simply accosted her, for no reason, trying to kill first her and then Mandy. She managed to escape, grab our child, and barricade herself in the bedroom, which I was too drunk to break into. Thank God the police arrived when they did!
Later on my attorney methodically ripped Jen’s statement to shreds. At the mention of alcohol the cops gave me a Breathalyzer test, which I passed with flying colors. All of my bruises were of the “defensive” variety, and even the dyke-iest, craziest feminist judge on earth wouldn’t believe that in a fair right Jen could sock me repeatedly on the jaw and her face would go untouched.
Still, I was the one ordered out of the house, all contact with Mandy forbidden. Orders of protection were now in force. A messenger from Jen’s high-powered attorney arrived at my hotel room two days later, demanding I agree to an immediate divorce.
The day after that I was fired, my contractor boss afraid of alienating Jen’s architect father. So I was forced to take a job down in New Jersey, though to move out of state at that point would have been technically “abandoning” the wife who’d driven me from our home. So I commuted two hours to work each day.
Luckily I managed to retain a good divorce attorney at a fraction of his normal cost. The guy was writing a book about men screwed over by the system, and I was going to be one of his case studies. I could fucking care less what he wrote about later on, as long as he got me out of this mess.
I never spoke to Mr. Canton again, though my attorney told me he insisted Jen agree to a fair divorce. There was no alimony, and my child support payments were reasonable. Regular visitation with Mandy was arranged. All in all, it was pretty good.
However, because Mr. Canton had really owned our home all along, there was no equity coming out of that. And the final accounting of our credit card bills was a disaster.
Unknown to me, Jen had continued running up credit card debt, right until the bitter end. There were even charges on our cards, both the cards I knew about and new ones I didn’t, from her trysts with other guys. All in all it amounted to fifty grand.
Somehow my lawyer couldn’t get me out of that, so I had to absorb half of it, and was now the proud, post-divorce owner of $25k in high interest debt. Of course, Mr. Canton simply paid off the other half, leaving Jen scot free.
After consultation with credit experts, bankruptcy was determined to be my best option. Once all that debt was wiped out I could rebuild credit on my own. I numbly agreed.
Actually, numb was the operative word for me in those days. I’d tried so hard to make my marriage work, and it had all gone for naught. Somehow, even though the situations were entirely different, I felt as big a cad as my father who’d run off when I was young. Don’t ask me to make sense of that, but that’s how I felt. And as the days and weeks went on, I grew more and more depressed.
One day, about three months after the Great Concert Fuck-Up and subsequent boxing match with Jen, I was at my lawyer’s office finalizing plans for the impending bankruptcy. We were due in court in the morning to make it all official.
Wandering out into a cold, dreary mist, my hand cramped from signing a wearying succession of imposing forms, I stared stupidly at the parking lot. For some reason I’d forgotten not only where I parked, but what my car even looked like. Panicking, I stumbled out among the cars, oblivious to the blaring horn of a driver forced to a screeching halt.
There are hazy memories of banging on car windows and crying at the leaden sky. To this day I have a slight scar on my chin from a hard tumble to the pavement. But the essence of it all was that I’d simply lost it. The last five years all came to a head, and my brain simply imploded.
So, the cops duly came and took me away. Following a night in the local jail, I found myself transported to an area mental hospital.
So there I was, freshly divorced, dangerously depressed, legally crazy, newly bankrupt, and all alone. And though I couldn’t realize it at the time, on the brink of my rebirth in this world.
SOPHIA DANTON
At this point I know I’m going to have to talk about the night we were all blown apart. Brooke’s death (actually, she’s been dead for five years, but that still doesn’t seem real) has brought back so much. I need to get it down somewhere, somehow, and Steve’s writing project seems as good a place as any.
But before I get to that, in order for it all to make sense, I want to talk about the direct aftermath of our collective implosion, when I ran off to Las Vegas.
My first gig was playing a dominatrix in a cheesy show near the end of the Strip. All these other girls were on stage, dancing around topless, and I came strutting out in black latex, high heels and dark sunglasses, my blonde hair jammed underneath this weird cap. Whip in hand, all the girls cowered before me, ready to do my will.
Then the cap came off, the hair came down, my sunglasses tossed out into the crowd with abandon. A beautiful brunette named Nadine then unzipped my dominatrix suit, leaving me standing there in high heels and a blazing white bikini. We all then danced around together, pantomiming all kinds of naughty things. Finally all the other girls, still topless, kneeled before me to do my bidding. Then they all pretended to lick my boots as the lights went down.
On more than one occasion, fights broke out over who would keep my sunglasses. I loved it when these men would try and get my attention afterwards, or sometimes even send flowers to my dressing room. But it never went any farther.
But I got tired of that gig within three weeks, soon becoming a magician’s assistant. However, the “Great Jellicoe” soon made it clear I’d have to make his magic wand disappear between my legs if I wanted to keep the gig, so I told him to fuck off and took a job as a go-go dancer in a major club.
That was fun. Being a go-go dancer is wonderful exercise and very erotic, feeling a thousand pairs of eyes on your body as you grind away underneath a spotlight. There was even this huge cage in the middle of the floor, where the dancers would crawl around, whipping everyone into a frenzy.
I can still remember working all night and then going out with the other dancers and bouncers for b
reakfast in the morning. That was something, dressed in old shorts and a tee shirt in a cheap Vegas diner, watching the sun shoot up over the arid sand. Everyone was from somewhere else, escaping something from their past. That was okay. We were all in the same place now, our life paths converging for a short span of time. Someday I may go back out there and write a book about all the strange people and stories in the fantasy city in the desert.
Soon I was sharing a house on the edge of town with several other dancers, along with a few croupiers and a tiger trainer. He took me to see the great cat one day. We made sweet love in the stall next to the magnificent animal, its rumbling purr coursing throughout my body.
Then there was a short affair with a casino boss, but after a fortnight of sex, wine, and other substances I knew it was enough. So I sneaked out in the middle of the night, catching a flight to Houston. There I took a bus to Jackson, Mississippi, where I took two connecting flights back to Buffalo. Thankfully, I’d had the presence of mind to tell my casino boyfriend I was from Iowa.
Then there was another year of school, followed by graduation and the summer I met Justin, the mayor’s married chief of staff, which I’ve already told you about.
So listen. Let me make something very clear. Like I said, I’m going to talk about what happened right before Vegas, that awful night with the old gang back in Buffalo. Brooke’s memory deserves nothing less.
Soon, I promise.
HAYLEY SYKES
I believe in the death penalty for one crime, and one crime alone. Dumping out an ash tray onto a sidewalk or right in the middle of a parking lot.
That, my friends, is monstrously anti-social behavior! Leaving a pile of butts on the pavement is stupid and thoughtless. And dirty! My God, it looks like some carcinogenic demon just squatted down and took a dump! I mean, how can you tell an entire planet to fuck off like that? I can’t think of anything worse. It’s highly offensive, both to me and many other people.
