The Skin Above My Knee

by Marcia Butler

  You select one stalk, which is about eight inches long and a half inch in diameter. You use a razor blade to slice the tube lengthwise in three equal parts. You now have three slender stalks.

  You have a thing called a gouging machine, a precision piece of machinery that will gouge out the thickness of the dissected tube from the inside, at the pithy part, so that it is very thin, about two millimeters.

  You cut the gouged piece short, about four and a half inches in length.

  You continue to soak the newly gouged cut cane. Then you crease this piece at the center point with a very sharp reed knife and fold it over, horizontally, in half.

  You place this folded piece of cane onto a thing called a shaper tip, another precision device that allows you to shave down the sides of the cane with a razor blade at an exact contour, which makes every piece consistent.

  You have these things called tubes, which are tapered brass tubes about forty-six millimeters in length with cork wrapped around one end. That’s the end that will be inserted into the top of the oboe. The other end, which is the smaller opening, is where you place the folded cane.

  You tie a strand of nylon from a spool of thread onto a spoke on the back of a chair. This anchoring point allows you to neatly wind and wrap the folded cane onto this metal tube with the thread. You have now produced what is called a blank.

  Now comes the hard part, the artistry. You have to have a reed knife that is razor sharp. You spend a lot of time sharpening the knife on a whetstone. You carve this blank down so that the two sides, when scraped enough, just perfectly, will vibrate when air is blown into them. The top, at the opening, is feather thin and has been clipped open. This reed is what is inserted into the top of the oboe and will make the sound when you blow into it.

  You’ve scraped and scraped and tested the reed and played on it a bit. You adjust it and rescrape and clip it more and play on it. Then you decide that the cane is bad, too soft or too hard. Or you didn’t scrape it perfectly, or it just doesn’t sound the way you want. You let it dry out and pick it up the next day, hoping that it will have settled a bit, and you rework it and rescrape it.

  Then you throw it out and start over.

  A Job

  AFTER FOUR MONTHS of passing lettuce through my guts, I realized if I was going to stay alive through the next three years of music conservatory training, I needed to get serious about supporting myself.

  A gruff but kind Greek restaurant owner showed some mercy and hired me, with no experience, as a waitress four evenings a week at his Greenwich Village “English pub–style” restaurant. I was assured a meal before work, and that alone seemed sufficient pay. Dining at the beginning of each shift, I also managed to stuff more food down my gullet at the end of the night. Nick the Greek didn’t seem to resent my double-dipping on the food. It was obvious I had a lot of catching up to do. And the tips were good.

  My best buddy and fellow opera devotee extraordinaire was a bar patron named Rupert, a middle-aged Austrian businessman working in New York City. In addition to a mutual love of opera, we had that more rarefied opera gene in common: we were both Wagner freaks.

  Rupert was a jovial eccentric. Wagner aside, he could have played a perfect caricature side role in an opera buffa by Rossini. And he was rich, or so it seemed to me, as he pulled wads of hundred-dollar bills out of his solid-gold money clip. I marveled at his invariably impeccable appearance: silk shirt, woolen sweater vest, suit jacket, and a red pocket square in the left breast pocket. His hair remained perfectly coiffed with oil, well before styling gel hit the cosmetics shelves. The only items missing to complete his costume were a watch fob and pince-nez! Yet even with all this careful layering and a heavy-handed aftershave, he exuded a slightly sickening odor that could not be encapsulated beneath his layered clothing—something unhealthy. Maybe it was just a new European odor, unfamiliar to me.

  Gin martinis were Rupert’s customary early evening drinks, and as the evening wore on and his cravat loosened, he graduated to sweet Riesling wine, all served up by Tony, the redheaded Irish bartender. In the time between serving my customers their $12.95 prix fixe roast beef dinners and Rupert’s three-martini limit, we talked about Wagner and Kirsten and whoever else were the singers of the day with passionate, opinionated vehemence. He certainly had his convictions, and I’m sure that he could not have been more surprised to meet a mere waitress who had her own views and knew as much as he did on the subject of our mutually beloved Wagner.

  “Marcia, which recording of Tristan do you prefer? The live 1952 Furtwängler version vit Flagstad or the 1966 set vit Nilsson conducted by Karl Böhm?”

  He frequently baited this trap, his eyes sly with the setup. We were easy with each other, and Rupert loved to goad me because he knew my devotion to Kirsten could not be shaken.

  “Please, Rupert. I’m not going to grace that question with an answer. But just for the record, I will repeat: Isolde has never had a finer portrayer than Kirsten Flagstad. Period, end of opera.”

  “Ya, ya, that’s vat I thought you’d say. I vas just making sure.”

  His eyes betrayed amusement at my expense. But this subject was not a laughing matter.

  “Well, I’m saying it again because it’s true.”

  The bell rang three times from the kitchen: a signal that food was ready. Spinning on my heel, I dramatically sashayed through the dining room and into the kitchen to pick up the order.

  Nick appeared completely baffled by his bar patron Rupert—who dropped a tidy wad of money on booze several evenings a week—and his friendship with this inexperienced waitress. When Rupert and I inevitably began to caress the tender subject of my beloved Kirsten Flagstad yet again, Nick, clearly out of his league, would shrug and walk back to the kitchen to scream at the line cooks.

  Rupert had met his match, and most evenings we were happily “off to the opera,” discussing the various shadings of a tenor’s high C and a soprano’s high A.

  “Ya, Ya, Birgit. She really ees surpassing Kirsten now. I heard her in Vienna last year. That voice! That presence! Ya. Ya.”

  Rupert’s thick Austrian accent became slow and exaggerated as he downed his third martini. He was at it again and had to be corrected.

  “No, Rupert! No, no, no! How can you be disloyal to Kirsten? No one even comes close!”

  “Ya. Ya. Vell, vait until Birgit comes to the Met next season for da Ring cycle und you vill hear vat I mean. Ya. Ya.”

  I kept my mouth shut on that one. I could never afford even one ticket to the Metropolitan Opera, let alone the entire four operas in the Ring cycle.

  During the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, Kirsten had been the pinnacle soprano of Wagner heroine roles. Swedish singer Birgit Nilsson was the reigning queen in the ’70s, and Rupert had fallen head over heels daffy for Birgit. Talk about a head voice! As the evenings wore on, Rupert loved to recount to anyone who’d listen the famous story of Nilsson during an outdoor performance of Turandot in Italy. When she rendered one high C, the citizens of the town thought the fire alarm had sounded.

  That little hole-in-the-wall restaurant held a group of people utterly unlike my family or my fellow music students. Now in my second year of school, I played the role of music-student waitress who chatted with Rupert. I could control how much I revealed of my life, surely the main draw for anyone who frequents watering holes. A bar is particularly appealing because it mimics a sense of bubbled privacy and also presents the freedom to take risks, if only for a few hours. You could always walk out at the end of the shift, to be who you were or even whomever you wanted to be.

  The truth was I’d become a promiscuous young woman during my first year at Mannes—exclusively one-night stands, sometimes with students at Mannes who wondered why I never gave them eye contact again, and sometimes with pickups in the “lettuce” corner coffee shop. I was dipping my toes into brackish waters. My father had set the template.

  With Rupert the Austrian, Nick the Greek, and Irish Tony as my witnesse
s, this job became the stage where I began an unconscious search for a new Wotan. The imprint of my father, of what men wanted from me, was deeply tattooed onto my fragile skin. I’d pick that scab and let it bleed, because now I had the privacy to play it out. While I lived alone in a studio apartment I could just afford in the then-undeveloped neighborhood of Chelsea, my father would resurrect before me, now as a reconstructed opera villain with whom I would negotiate ancient yet familiar terms: unquestioning and always silent. I believed they were my desires; I did not own what my father gave me.

  Glass

  HE WALKED INTO the bar one night, a very tall—maybe six feet four—prematurely graying man dressed in jeans and a jean shirt. I noticed pockmarks on his stubbly cheeks, a full mustache, and a hooded look in his eyes. He may have been drunk; I couldn’t tell as he walked slowly, gracefully, almost, and glided onto a bar stool. He nodded to Tony.

  “Ouzo, beer back.” Zipping that down his throat in a single swallow, he pushed the shot glass toward Tony.

  “Another, please.”

  “Sure, Steve. We haven’t seen you in a while. How are things?”

  “Busy. Very busy.”

  Throughout that evening, as I wandered back and forth from the service bar to the dining room, I was aware of this man. The potent shots of ouzo didn’t appear to faze him. Tony kept shoving more ouzo toward him, topping off the beer as needed. Other bar patrons, including Rupert, seemed to keep their distance, giving him a wide drinking berth. He was a big man with a dangerous aura. I kept my intrigued, reckless eyes on him.

  Just before closing time, as I was cashing in my singles and change in tips for bigger bills, I heard a commotion at the end of the bar where Ouzo Steve, as people were calling him, was seated. He had gathered a few late-night drinkers as an audience. Everyone cheered and clapped at what Steve had just demonstrated. I looked up, curious.

  “What happened?”

  “Ya. Ya. He just ate a vineglass! Ya, ya, Marcia, come quick to see dis thing vat he did.”

  If Rupert was impressed, I wanted to see. I trotted over from the service bar and saw the stem of a broken wineglass lying on the bar.

  “Do it again,” I said, not knowing what, exactly, had been done.

  Steve obliged. Carefully placing a fresh and intact wineglass to his lips, he gathered his teeth on the top and bottom of the rim and in a swift motion snapped the glass downward. The broken pieces remained inside his mouth. He began to chew. I could hear the disturbing crunch of the glass shards against his back molars. He chewed carefully for at least sixty seconds. The bar was silent, rapt. Then in one big, dramatic gulp, he swallowed the pulverized glass.

  “Do it again.”

  Steve looked at me and nodded. Another glass bit the dust.

  “Do it again.”

  A sly smile crept across Steve’s mouth. He aimed to please me. The bar crowd quickly dissipated, and Tony turned his back to busy himself, wiping wineglasses.

  Three times he’d had his fill. I was charmed.

  It was well past midnight, and everyone was preparing to leave, patrons and employees alike. Nick wanted to lock up. Steve nodded my way. He had steel-blue eyes: real beauties, like marbles. With an imperceptible nod of my head, we silently agreed. As I reached for my purse and coat, Tony stepped out from behind the bar to block my exit. He pressed his face close to mine, his hands on either cheek.

  “I saw that. Marcia, no. Not this one. Think about this. Please.”

  Tony knew me. He was playing Rigoletto, protecting his virginal daughter, Gilda. But I was no virgin. I was leading a double sort of life: disciplined second-year music student at the Mannes College of Music by day, one-night-stand girl by night. Rupert was not interested in me in that way. We loved each other from across a Wagnerian stage. I’d tried Tony only once. He was much too nice: I sensed his need to protect me, and I would gently rebuff him after that one night together. Newly emboldened by the privacy my studio apartment afforded me, I was drawn only to dubious, unknowable, and possibly dangerous men. Tony, Nick, Rupert, and surely others had witnessed my sly, slithering exits at the end of my shifts. I called my conquests my yes men.

  Tony’s green Irish eyes were now boring into mine, trying to get my attention and slapping me awake. I said nothing, dragging my eyes away from his face, trying to look at the floor. He grabbed my face more roughly and pinched my cheek flesh hard.

  “Ouch!”

  Rupert’s head snapped in our direction, and he quickly grabbed his coat and left. Nick had shepherded out all the patrons, leaving just the staff. I could see Steve waiting outside for me, smoking.

  “Marcia. Wake the fook up. This is yer life here. I said no.”

  “Why not? And who the hell are you, anyway?”

  “I’m yer guardian angel tonight. You can’t figure this one out? The man carries a gun around, fer fook’s sake. Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph and all the fooking holy martyrs.”

  Hearing it clearly, I took two quick breaths.

  “I’m fine. Now kindly fuck off.”

  Tony’s fingers entwined with mine, and he pulled sharply down on my hands to get my body closer to his, for an emphasis I would not acknowledge.

  “Jaysus, Marcia. You just don’t know. I’m warning you. Not. This. One.”

  “Christ, Tony. Just let go of me!”

  Startled, he pulled his hands away quickly and stepped back, as if realizing for the first time that he didn’t really know me at all. We’d finished spitting our whispered screams at each other. I pushed past Tony out the door and into a cab with Steve. After years on my father’s lap, my male object of desire was pure and simple: I had to fear him; I needed the danger. And I said yes to it all. Steve was my man, at least for that night, and who knew what would come of it? Tony’s protective warning simply inspired me. New stage. New opera.

  Elliott

  As an oboist specializing in contemporary music, you accept prestigious invitations from living composers—but the next one humbles you. You’re asked to play in a celebratory birthday concert for Elliott Carter, but further, you’ll be the first American to perform his oboe concerto. This work, written for the venerable Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger in 1986, is considered one of the most difficult pieces ever written for the oboe. The prospect is invigorating but also daunting. After two days of thought, you take a deep breath and agree.

  Upon receiving the score, you can’t play the piece or even do a cursory read-through. This is an understatement. You can’t play a single bar at tempo or, in most cases, even three consecutive notes. You have to figure out how to cut into this massive behemoth. First, learn the notes. Forget about making music at this point. Just learn the damned notes. Your practice sessions consist of setting the metronome at an unspeakably slow tempo and then playing one bar over and over until you can go one notch faster. You make sure that you can play the bar correctly before you increase the speed. Many times, pushing that notch up can take several days. You have six months to prepare the piece, but after three months, you’re in a full-out panic. You’re not even halfway through where you think you need to be in order to perform the work.

  As this reality sets in, you consider backing out. Certainly there is not sufficient time for another oboist to prepare. Not many oboists in the world would accept an invitation to perform this piece in the first place, because this is in such a specialty niche of difficulty. You anticipate the humiliation that would overcome you if you give up. You would have to admit to yourself that you’re just not good enough; you don’t have the talent or the goods. You’re mediocre…average. You see yourself as a contemporary music specialist, yet in reality maybe you are just a fraud.

  The grinding rub chafes at you day after day. There are of course many moments when you are able to nudge that metronome up one notch, and you allow yourself to be secretly gleeful. Oh, goody! Some progress. But you try not to get too happy because there are so many more notches to go. Thousands upon thousands of notches. It all feels so endless.
Yet you are aware on a very subtle level that the work is finding its way into your bones and muscles and blood and guts.

  You remember the exact passage when the cogs lock together. It is not even the hardest section, technically, but what you begin to hear is music. There’s music in there, and it is actually you making that music. Your stomach rolls over, a love swoon. The physical sensation is visceral and distinct. It is a very private knowing; a merging with something divine, precious, and rare. As a musician, you covet those moments. You live and play for them. It is a truly deep connection with the composer, as if you channel his inner life. A tender synergy is present, and you fear that to even speak about it will dissipate it immediately. Don’t talk. Just be aware.

  From that moment on, things start to roll. You continue to plod away, but the carrot—Elliott Carter’s music—is now in plain sight, right in front of you. You still must conquer technical aspects, but that technique is now truly in service to the voice of a composer. The hierarchy has reversed, and the process is properly aligned. The music eventually shows you the way and becomes the solution. You feel like you’ve come back from the dead.

  You’re ready to start rehearsals with the orchestra. You’ve already played the thing through for Carter, and he seems to be impressed. His wife has taken a liking to you for some reason and sends you postcards from their house in Connecticut, writing stuff like “I hope life is treating you well.” She must know, somehow, that the only thing you are doing these days is practicing and making reeds for her husband’s concerto.

  The day of the concert, your life is about to crack wide open. Elliott Carter ambles onstage and accepts the good wishes from the audience for his eighty-fifth birthday. (He will live to the age of 103, composing all the way.) You’re standing backstage, pacing around. You want the concert to be pure and perfect and reflect all your unimaginably hard work. How will anyone really know what you’ve done?