Showing posts with label Stan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stan. Show all posts
Monday, August 1, 2011
On Cargo Shorts And Other Dangerous Weapons
The blue Paul Smith ‘Byard’ suit haunts me. The auction will not end for two more days, but the bids have already inched up within spitting distance of my personal limit on what should be spent for a beautiful-yet-unnecessary suit. I could torture myself a bit, check the bidding history, theorize about who will and who won’t be willing to go to the mat in the final seconds. I could attempt to chill with a quick trip to my closet to examine and admire the 13 suits that already hang there, several of which have been worn no more than three times. But I remain in a dream state, buoyed by a promise of faux aristocracy, of fine fabric draping my shoulders like a coronation cape.
Dream on, Levon; the day is young. Lest this all seem like an exercise in frivolity, I should mention that I buy my suits exclusively off of Ebay. I have a price ceiling of $175.00 that I generally adhere to, busting my budget only when a truly exceptional piece comes up on the block. That said, I have never paid more than $250.00 for a suit. In spite of the fact that the retail value of my current collection is somewhere in the $13,000 range, I, through careful channeling of my mother’s bargain hunting acumen, have amassed it for little more than a tenth of that figure.
But to what end? Needless to say, my wardrobe does not suit my natural habitat. Men in Nashville generally dress for comfort until held at sartorial gunpoint by the occasions of certain religious holidays, funerals or appointments with loan officers. Even at my recent nuptials, the sheer volume of open collars and denim was remarkable. The man arriving at a Nashville event in (what appears to be) an expensive suit is generally regarded with suspicion and a certain amount of contempt, as if he is attempting to upstage everyone else or is simply too consumed with his own vanity to get with the damn program and put on a pair of cargo shorts.
I own a pair of cargo shorts. They are incredibly comfortable. I wear them around the house and for work in the yard. When I walk Stan in the morning, I do it in cargo shorts. And occasionally, when the heat index has pushed all Nashvillians beyond powers of reason, I venture out to public establishments in cargo shorts. When working in Key West, I can usually be found in little else besides the cargo shorts. I am pro-cargo shorts. I advocate the ownership and proper use of cargo shorts. When worn in the appropriate context, they are a useful thing.
This does not diminish their inherent danger, however. Cargo shorts don’t destroy lives; people who use cargo shorts improperly destroy lives. Let’s make a corollary examination of a particular clothing chain called ‘Life Is Good.’ I have never actually set foot in one of their stores but, by the lay of their window displays, I gather that they specialize in every item of clothing ever designed for total comfort and minimal upkeep: faded t-shirts sporting goofy slogans and cartoons, several varieties of flip-flops, sun visors, baseball caps, mu-mu’s, rhesus monkey pelts and, of course, cargo shorts. I find ‘Life Is Good’ to be a bizarre moniker for such a place. Perhaps ‘I Give Up’ would be more appropriate.
To frame the discussion in a more suburban context, let me expound for a moment about a particular neighbor. This fellow… I’ll call him Dick, to protect his long-lost innocence… thudded onto my shit list a couple of years ago after making a particularly snide comment regarding the length of the grass in my front yard, alluding to the fact that, in case I hadn’t noticed, ‘Other people have to look at that.’
Fair enough, I reasoned; I had been out of town for two weeks and had indeed allowed the grass to flourish well beyond the length considered to be ‘Belmont Appropriate.’ But as I watched him waddle back to his property, a large sweat stain inching down the center of his ample posterior, I reflected on the multiple times I had seen him leaving his house clad in an old t-shirt, crappy flip-flops and some variety of baggy, shapeless short pants that sagged well below his donut knees. I imagined a brief admonition that might be considered less than Belmont Appropriate:
“At least put on some pants, a belt and a button-down shirt, you fat fuck. Other people have to look at that.”
Attention to wardrobe is not an exercise in vanity; it is a condition of mutual respect. If we cannot get our sartorial shit together, it not only reflects badly on us but also on our ability to take those around us into consideration. Yes, I realize it is your right to wear whatever you want, whenever you want. Now, stop picking your nose, go stand in the corner for five minutes and don’t come back until you’ve learned to play nice the other children. And work on that attitude, kid. Remember, Life Is Good.
Meanwhile, the bidding on the blue Paul Smith ‘Byard’ suit has spiraled upward and out of my reach, $272.00 and climbing. I shall humbly delete it from my watch list, make another cup of tea and head out to the back deck for a smoke and a quick examination of the hosta blooms. The late morning is burning hot, steaming up yesterday’s rain from the ground, a hot breath bathing my lily-white ankles. In the alley, Spady and his demon terrier are passing by. He cracks the gate and sticks his head in.
“Looking good back here. Hosta’s are really coming up.”
“Thanks. How’s the book coming?”
“31 chapters with a bullet. Almost there.” He gives a thumbs-up sign. The terrier growls and begins pulling violently towards the street, most likely in pursuit of a poor, defenseless animal. Spady demurs. “OK, better get moving. Have a good one, buddy.”
“You too.”
“Nice shorts.” Another thumbs up.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I thought you might like them.”
Dream on, Levon; the day is young. Lest this all seem like an exercise in frivolity, I should mention that I buy my suits exclusively off of Ebay. I have a price ceiling of $175.00 that I generally adhere to, busting my budget only when a truly exceptional piece comes up on the block. That said, I have never paid more than $250.00 for a suit. In spite of the fact that the retail value of my current collection is somewhere in the $13,000 range, I, through careful channeling of my mother’s bargain hunting acumen, have amassed it for little more than a tenth of that figure.
But to what end? Needless to say, my wardrobe does not suit my natural habitat. Men in Nashville generally dress for comfort until held at sartorial gunpoint by the occasions of certain religious holidays, funerals or appointments with loan officers. Even at my recent nuptials, the sheer volume of open collars and denim was remarkable. The man arriving at a Nashville event in (what appears to be) an expensive suit is generally regarded with suspicion and a certain amount of contempt, as if he is attempting to upstage everyone else or is simply too consumed with his own vanity to get with the damn program and put on a pair of cargo shorts.
I own a pair of cargo shorts. They are incredibly comfortable. I wear them around the house and for work in the yard. When I walk Stan in the morning, I do it in cargo shorts. And occasionally, when the heat index has pushed all Nashvillians beyond powers of reason, I venture out to public establishments in cargo shorts. When working in Key West, I can usually be found in little else besides the cargo shorts. I am pro-cargo shorts. I advocate the ownership and proper use of cargo shorts. When worn in the appropriate context, they are a useful thing.
This does not diminish their inherent danger, however. Cargo shorts don’t destroy lives; people who use cargo shorts improperly destroy lives. Let’s make a corollary examination of a particular clothing chain called ‘Life Is Good.’ I have never actually set foot in one of their stores but, by the lay of their window displays, I gather that they specialize in every item of clothing ever designed for total comfort and minimal upkeep: faded t-shirts sporting goofy slogans and cartoons, several varieties of flip-flops, sun visors, baseball caps, mu-mu’s, rhesus monkey pelts and, of course, cargo shorts. I find ‘Life Is Good’ to be a bizarre moniker for such a place. Perhaps ‘I Give Up’ would be more appropriate.
To frame the discussion in a more suburban context, let me expound for a moment about a particular neighbor. This fellow… I’ll call him Dick, to protect his long-lost innocence… thudded onto my shit list a couple of years ago after making a particularly snide comment regarding the length of the grass in my front yard, alluding to the fact that, in case I hadn’t noticed, ‘Other people have to look at that.’
Fair enough, I reasoned; I had been out of town for two weeks and had indeed allowed the grass to flourish well beyond the length considered to be ‘Belmont Appropriate.’ But as I watched him waddle back to his property, a large sweat stain inching down the center of his ample posterior, I reflected on the multiple times I had seen him leaving his house clad in an old t-shirt, crappy flip-flops and some variety of baggy, shapeless short pants that sagged well below his donut knees. I imagined a brief admonition that might be considered less than Belmont Appropriate:
“At least put on some pants, a belt and a button-down shirt, you fat fuck. Other people have to look at that.”
Attention to wardrobe is not an exercise in vanity; it is a condition of mutual respect. If we cannot get our sartorial shit together, it not only reflects badly on us but also on our ability to take those around us into consideration. Yes, I realize it is your right to wear whatever you want, whenever you want. Now, stop picking your nose, go stand in the corner for five minutes and don’t come back until you’ve learned to play nice the other children. And work on that attitude, kid. Remember, Life Is Good.
Meanwhile, the bidding on the blue Paul Smith ‘Byard’ suit has spiraled upward and out of my reach, $272.00 and climbing. I shall humbly delete it from my watch list, make another cup of tea and head out to the back deck for a smoke and a quick examination of the hosta blooms. The late morning is burning hot, steaming up yesterday’s rain from the ground, a hot breath bathing my lily-white ankles. In the alley, Spady and his demon terrier are passing by. He cracks the gate and sticks his head in.
“Looking good back here. Hosta’s are really coming up.”
“Thanks. How’s the book coming?”
“31 chapters with a bullet. Almost there.” He gives a thumbs-up sign. The terrier growls and begins pulling violently towards the street, most likely in pursuit of a poor, defenseless animal. Spady demurs. “OK, better get moving. Have a good one, buddy.”
“You too.”
“Nice shorts.” Another thumbs up.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I thought you might like them.”
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Categorization of Days
Some days just don’t fit into a category or a to-do list or a goal-accomplishment metric. No, they don’t. Some days you just wake up and wonder, hmmm, what the fuck? Time’s a wasting here, what am I doing about it? I’m 37 years old, maybe halfway done, where’s the old carpe diem? Some days it takes so much strength to not dial up more Law and Order episodes on the Netflix that there is little gusto left to accomplish anything else except, possibly, throwing down some wandering language about that very fact.
This morning I passed Spady and his killer Scottish Terrier on the Belmont Blvd. dog walking circuit. He’s apparently 25 chapters into a novel. I wonder about Spady. He kind of reminds me of the Key West dudes, the tiny Hemingways who seem to have surrendered to the pointlessness of it all and are more than content to be carried along on the whims of existence. Experiencing his presence in Nashville is akin to witnessing a dried starfish washed up at the entrance of the Whole Foods Market. Anyway, Spady told me the plot of this book when I saw him out a month ago. Not much about it sticks with me except some allegory relating to numerology and a murder… it all gets hazy in the early-Summer humidity.
Doesn’t it, though? This document can stand as a testimony to the scatteredness of it all. Some days the Universe finds it goddamn funny to pour a vat of molasses straight into your skull and watch you stumble around the house in a sorghum daze, thinking one thing whilst doing something completely different, like trying to come up with a two-letter word that begins with ‘C’ as you take what will hopefully be the first of several dumps today. There is no two-letter word that begins with ‘C,’ you remind yourself, just as there is no particular dietary regimen that will guarantee more than one dump per day at the age of 37.
Men, I tell you. Let’s ponder the endless derogatory remarks made by women about men in certain comedic entertainments these days. If they could only peer into the gooey brains of the species itself… my goodness, the thoughts that men actually have about men. Like women, we are constantly comparing, and perhaps in not too different of a manner. Take Spady vs. Me. I don’t really have any particular desire to beat or one-up Spady in any specific area, but I can’t pass the motherfucker on the street on a perfectly good Wednesday morning without wondering whether or not my life is measuring up to his by some indeterminate scale of which I have little comprehension or mastery of. 25 chapters into a novel? Really? I have nothing to compare to that, in my mind, and here’s why: I feel completely unable to focus on anything that requires the dedication and commitment a novel demands. I have been focused on things that last for three-and-a-half minutes for quite awhile now, as well as the means by which to foist them upon the world, which are probably best suited to people who with even shorter attention spans than three-and-a-half minutes.
Meanwhile, I have male friends whose marriages are falling apart. The dark hours of abandonment and disappointment these folk are currently experiencing crush my piddling piddliness with an iron fist. They are being drawn towards real man-child moments, those seething encounters with the ego that find a dude waving a fist at life one moment and curling up in a corner like a baby the next. Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Ernest… just please make it go away and I promise to either beat it so far into submission or nurture it like a lost kitten, if only to prove a point.
Years ago I was motoring around Bristol, England with my radio promotions guy. We crested a hill in the city and were greeted with the site of hundreds of students sunning themselves on a lawn that sloped down towards the city center. A lawn, that glowing, illuminated green that only occurs when the sun comes out on certain days in England, setting the grass pulsing, aglow with all the stored-up chlorophyll generated by days and days of endless moisture.
Neil (the radio guy) and I had been riding around for days at this point, hopping from station to station, plying my new single. Neil was eternally sparky and blissful, always happy to be doing his job, to be cresting another hill in another city. I was depressed, completely absorbed in the slightly confusing process of attempting to gain acceptance at radio stations and with the British public in general. Had there been a forest, I would not have been able to see it for the crab apple trees. Truly, there was nothing but grass, centuries-old buildings everywhere and young, nubile people relaxing and enjoying themselves. The moment escaped me. I imagine I was wondering how long it would be until we could stop off for our afternoon pints.
Today I have a yard that is in desperate need of cutting and flower beds that could be weeded but should probably just be completely dug up and begun again. I have what feels like an endless list of administrative tasks to do, most of which seem daunting and mindless. I am writing from the confines of the nicest house I have ever lived in, one that needs some attention here and there but is remarkably perfect. Yes, something is telling me that I am, once again, missing a great moment here, but I feel incapable of reaching out and grabbing. Recent experience has taught me that taking small steps towards the goal is the best way to proceed. I suppose that this little missive is the first one of these. However, I am still thinking of Law and Order: SVU and wondering how they will solve the next hideous crime they are faced with. I would still very much like to get through at least one computer Scrabble match. Neither of these tasks would involve engagement with the world on any level and would, I fear, only draw me a little further into a particular hole.
And thinking back on what seems to have been written so far here I am taken with how completely self-absorbed it all is, how I will never care to read it again and how it probably serves no purpose whatsoever. About how Social Media, the most tempting outlet for these labors, would actually accept this load of hooey with open arms as something worth sharing, having contemplated and commented upon. I just can’t get with the ide of airing these thoughts for consumption. We really have to rise above the idea that this crap is worthy of sharing with each other. That is the problem with art today, I believe; we have become utterly convinced that these type of musings constitute a relationship with an audience, an interaction when, in fact, these kind of musings are exactly the shit that we should keep to ourselves, the grist that will (hopefully) propel us to creating something higher, something infinitely more useful, for our compatriots in existence to chew on and to share.
Did someone mention breakfast? Since moving in with Liz three years ago, I have become infinitely more attuned to the needs and goings-on of my body. I know that part of the issue with getting this day going is merely the fact that I have given myself nothing to work with on a cellular level besides caffeine and nicotine. I need protein mixed with just the right amount of carbohydrate to achieve a roper balance that might assist in seeing things in just the right light. That solidity that sets in after a couple of eggs or even a fat dose of almond butter. Meat is a possibility but some days you just don’t feel like thinking through the reality of the death, the slaughter of innocents, the very real possibility that you could just as easily be eating the dog you were so tenderly walking only hours ago. Goddamn meat. Why are you so tasty and wrong.
Our friend Emily Leonard is a startlingly good artist. She gave us a gorgeous print for our wedding, a gorgeous print that I have yet to have framed. A plane of happiness that currently sits furled up on a bookshelf, its joys hidden from me. It is a painting of a forest, oddly enough, one rendered impressionistically enough so that there is not really a hard option of actually seeing individual trees so well. It’s like the perfect existential rendering of woodlands. Just merge with it, don’t let the small stuff get you down. Asshole.
One of my favorite avoidance pastimes is reading The New Yorker. I don’t recall at what point in my life this magazine took hold of me, but goddamn it, it did. Its promise of weekly sophistication and high-mindedness has driven me toward of number of unrealized ambitions, such as being an eminently cool musician, a well-regarded writer, a long-time resident of New York City. All things I have touched upon at various junctures in life, none of which I would say that I have ever really achieved. But the New Yorker still comes every week, still promises and idealized frame of mind that seems achievable somehow. I don’t know why, anymore. I have finally reached a stage in life where I feel comfortable not reading every goddamn word of it; yes, I am now capable of skipping ahead after reading a few paragraphs of the 15,000 word piece on Ugandan sheep hymens without feeling as if I am cheating myself out of some seriously necessary life knowledge… or merely not getting my money’s worth. It’s a step.
I am beginning to question my newfound allegiance to the IPhone. I waited ages until my Verizon contract was up last October to jump on board but, once I did, I was shocked by how it immediately influenced my life. Everything seemed to get infinitely more organized and categorical: blobs of unintelligible ambition aligning themselves into brightly-colored squares on my ICal, legions of unforeseen needs suddenly met by the acquisition of another smartly-programmed app, badly-written emails from other IPhones instantly replied to with my own badly-written email.
But in recent weeks I have begun to wonder if all it has, ultimately, been for naught. If all these perfectly-scheduled new events (with reminders) are actually getting me anywhere or merely serving to fill up all of that undefined white space on my calendar. If these apps that get used maybe once a month are really just filler to camouflage the Scrabble and FIFA 11 games that get most of the action. If those badly-written emails are just going out into the universe attracting more half-baked thoughts and ideas.
I love to look at the IPhone. It brings me pleasure. I won’t be getting rid of it anytime soon; the transition would be way too much of a pain in the ass. Nothing is really that big of a deal, anyway. This I should know by now. All things get done eventually, just don’t get too stupid about it. Right now babies are being born, children are starving, divorce papers are being served. Life is coming to a series of very hard and immediate conclusions, whether I am paying attention or not. You can’t get an app for that shit, no way.
This morning I passed Spady and his killer Scottish Terrier on the Belmont Blvd. dog walking circuit. He’s apparently 25 chapters into a novel. I wonder about Spady. He kind of reminds me of the Key West dudes, the tiny Hemingways who seem to have surrendered to the pointlessness of it all and are more than content to be carried along on the whims of existence. Experiencing his presence in Nashville is akin to witnessing a dried starfish washed up at the entrance of the Whole Foods Market. Anyway, Spady told me the plot of this book when I saw him out a month ago. Not much about it sticks with me except some allegory relating to numerology and a murder… it all gets hazy in the early-Summer humidity.
Doesn’t it, though? This document can stand as a testimony to the scatteredness of it all. Some days the Universe finds it goddamn funny to pour a vat of molasses straight into your skull and watch you stumble around the house in a sorghum daze, thinking one thing whilst doing something completely different, like trying to come up with a two-letter word that begins with ‘C’ as you take what will hopefully be the first of several dumps today. There is no two-letter word that begins with ‘C,’ you remind yourself, just as there is no particular dietary regimen that will guarantee more than one dump per day at the age of 37.
Men, I tell you. Let’s ponder the endless derogatory remarks made by women about men in certain comedic entertainments these days. If they could only peer into the gooey brains of the species itself… my goodness, the thoughts that men actually have about men. Like women, we are constantly comparing, and perhaps in not too different of a manner. Take Spady vs. Me. I don’t really have any particular desire to beat or one-up Spady in any specific area, but I can’t pass the motherfucker on the street on a perfectly good Wednesday morning without wondering whether or not my life is measuring up to his by some indeterminate scale of which I have little comprehension or mastery of. 25 chapters into a novel? Really? I have nothing to compare to that, in my mind, and here’s why: I feel completely unable to focus on anything that requires the dedication and commitment a novel demands. I have been focused on things that last for three-and-a-half minutes for quite awhile now, as well as the means by which to foist them upon the world, which are probably best suited to people who with even shorter attention spans than three-and-a-half minutes.
Meanwhile, I have male friends whose marriages are falling apart. The dark hours of abandonment and disappointment these folk are currently experiencing crush my piddling piddliness with an iron fist. They are being drawn towards real man-child moments, those seething encounters with the ego that find a dude waving a fist at life one moment and curling up in a corner like a baby the next. Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Ernest… just please make it go away and I promise to either beat it so far into submission or nurture it like a lost kitten, if only to prove a point.
Years ago I was motoring around Bristol, England with my radio promotions guy. We crested a hill in the city and were greeted with the site of hundreds of students sunning themselves on a lawn that sloped down towards the city center. A lawn, that glowing, illuminated green that only occurs when the sun comes out on certain days in England, setting the grass pulsing, aglow with all the stored-up chlorophyll generated by days and days of endless moisture.
Neil (the radio guy) and I had been riding around for days at this point, hopping from station to station, plying my new single. Neil was eternally sparky and blissful, always happy to be doing his job, to be cresting another hill in another city. I was depressed, completely absorbed in the slightly confusing process of attempting to gain acceptance at radio stations and with the British public in general. Had there been a forest, I would not have been able to see it for the crab apple trees. Truly, there was nothing but grass, centuries-old buildings everywhere and young, nubile people relaxing and enjoying themselves. The moment escaped me. I imagine I was wondering how long it would be until we could stop off for our afternoon pints.
Today I have a yard that is in desperate need of cutting and flower beds that could be weeded but should probably just be completely dug up and begun again. I have what feels like an endless list of administrative tasks to do, most of which seem daunting and mindless. I am writing from the confines of the nicest house I have ever lived in, one that needs some attention here and there but is remarkably perfect. Yes, something is telling me that I am, once again, missing a great moment here, but I feel incapable of reaching out and grabbing. Recent experience has taught me that taking small steps towards the goal is the best way to proceed. I suppose that this little missive is the first one of these. However, I am still thinking of Law and Order: SVU and wondering how they will solve the next hideous crime they are faced with. I would still very much like to get through at least one computer Scrabble match. Neither of these tasks would involve engagement with the world on any level and would, I fear, only draw me a little further into a particular hole.
And thinking back on what seems to have been written so far here I am taken with how completely self-absorbed it all is, how I will never care to read it again and how it probably serves no purpose whatsoever. About how Social Media, the most tempting outlet for these labors, would actually accept this load of hooey with open arms as something worth sharing, having contemplated and commented upon. I just can’t get with the ide of airing these thoughts for consumption. We really have to rise above the idea that this crap is worthy of sharing with each other. That is the problem with art today, I believe; we have become utterly convinced that these type of musings constitute a relationship with an audience, an interaction when, in fact, these kind of musings are exactly the shit that we should keep to ourselves, the grist that will (hopefully) propel us to creating something higher, something infinitely more useful, for our compatriots in existence to chew on and to share.
Did someone mention breakfast? Since moving in with Liz three years ago, I have become infinitely more attuned to the needs and goings-on of my body. I know that part of the issue with getting this day going is merely the fact that I have given myself nothing to work with on a cellular level besides caffeine and nicotine. I need protein mixed with just the right amount of carbohydrate to achieve a roper balance that might assist in seeing things in just the right light. That solidity that sets in after a couple of eggs or even a fat dose of almond butter. Meat is a possibility but some days you just don’t feel like thinking through the reality of the death, the slaughter of innocents, the very real possibility that you could just as easily be eating the dog you were so tenderly walking only hours ago. Goddamn meat. Why are you so tasty and wrong.
Our friend Emily Leonard is a startlingly good artist. She gave us a gorgeous print for our wedding, a gorgeous print that I have yet to have framed. A plane of happiness that currently sits furled up on a bookshelf, its joys hidden from me. It is a painting of a forest, oddly enough, one rendered impressionistically enough so that there is not really a hard option of actually seeing individual trees so well. It’s like the perfect existential rendering of woodlands. Just merge with it, don’t let the small stuff get you down. Asshole.
One of my favorite avoidance pastimes is reading The New Yorker. I don’t recall at what point in my life this magazine took hold of me, but goddamn it, it did. Its promise of weekly sophistication and high-mindedness has driven me toward of number of unrealized ambitions, such as being an eminently cool musician, a well-regarded writer, a long-time resident of New York City. All things I have touched upon at various junctures in life, none of which I would say that I have ever really achieved. But the New Yorker still comes every week, still promises and idealized frame of mind that seems achievable somehow. I don’t know why, anymore. I have finally reached a stage in life where I feel comfortable not reading every goddamn word of it; yes, I am now capable of skipping ahead after reading a few paragraphs of the 15,000 word piece on Ugandan sheep hymens without feeling as if I am cheating myself out of some seriously necessary life knowledge… or merely not getting my money’s worth. It’s a step.
I am beginning to question my newfound allegiance to the IPhone. I waited ages until my Verizon contract was up last October to jump on board but, once I did, I was shocked by how it immediately influenced my life. Everything seemed to get infinitely more organized and categorical: blobs of unintelligible ambition aligning themselves into brightly-colored squares on my ICal, legions of unforeseen needs suddenly met by the acquisition of another smartly-programmed app, badly-written emails from other IPhones instantly replied to with my own badly-written email.
But in recent weeks I have begun to wonder if all it has, ultimately, been for naught. If all these perfectly-scheduled new events (with reminders) are actually getting me anywhere or merely serving to fill up all of that undefined white space on my calendar. If these apps that get used maybe once a month are really just filler to camouflage the Scrabble and FIFA 11 games that get most of the action. If those badly-written emails are just going out into the universe attracting more half-baked thoughts and ideas.
I love to look at the IPhone. It brings me pleasure. I won’t be getting rid of it anytime soon; the transition would be way too much of a pain in the ass. Nothing is really that big of a deal, anyway. This I should know by now. All things get done eventually, just don’t get too stupid about it. Right now babies are being born, children are starving, divorce papers are being served. Life is coming to a series of very hard and immediate conclusions, whether I am paying attention or not. You can’t get an app for that shit, no way.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VIII
I pedaled hard all the way back to Division Street. I hurried into our building and carried Stan up two flights of stairs to the apartment. I made him drink as much of a bowl of water as he could hold down, then put him on his bed with a blanket and one of my old t-shirts. I went to the bathroom to look for Epsom salts and, by the time I returned, he was fast asleep.
Our apartment was tiny, an efficiency built in the early 20th century to house students from a nearby seminary. The hardwoods in the 14X14 main room were stained and warped, the plaster on the walls cracked and falling off in places. The room had a large window on one exterior wall and a decrepit set of French doors overlooking Division Street on the other. I had managed to fit a desk, a bookshelf, a piano, a sitting chair and a bed into it without making it feel too cramped. During the day, it had a light and airy quality. At night, a strategically placed array of thrift store lamps turned the potential claustrophobia into coziness.
There was small kitchen off the main room, its best feature a large bay window into which I had built a seat. This was where Stan spent most of his time in the apartment, perched on the soft red cushions, smoking his cigarillos out the window, watching the world pass by on the street below. The bathroom was located down a small hall off the kitchen that I had converted into a walk-through closet.
I opened the French doors and let some soft night air into the apartment. From my vantage point, Midtown looked even less appealing than it did on street level, a mess of incongruous rooftops and power lines skewing angles and spreading cancer. Bordered by Music Row, Vanderbilt University, the Charlotte Avenue housing projects and I-40, the neighborhood had managed to become a bathtub drain of sorts, sucking in the worst qualities of each, respectively: middle-aged career angst, budding alcoholism, drug-related crime and traffic overflow. Despite its exceptionally centralized location, Midtown felt more like negative space than a neighborhood.
I checked on Stan again, locked up and walked over to JJ’s Market. I grabbed the last tub of soft Australian licorice from the shelf and ordered an iced coffee from the girl behind the counter. While the espresso machine began belching steam, I picked up a copy of the Nashville Scene, an ‘alternative weekly’ hold-over from the 90’s that had long ago ceased being an real alternative to anything except, perhaps, a deli menu. From the cover, a mildly homoerotic photo of two familiar faces, foreheads touching, fake sweat rolling down noses and chins, was tucked behind a giant headline that read “I Can’t Go For That: One on One Redefine the Meaning of Music in Nashville.”
“Large iced coffee!” the girl behind the counter shouted.
“Thanks.” I dropped a dollar in the tip jar and walked outside. I sat down at a wrought iron table, lit a cigarette and began reading about my new clients.
For the past sixty years, country music, Nashville’s most famous export, has remained unchallenged by any other genre of music currently written and performed in the city. Although many acts from the city's surprisingly robust rock, indie, pop and jazz scenes have signed to major and independent labels, none of them have ever come close to touching the big ‘C’ in terms of commercial success. For years, there has seemed to be no end in sight to the legendary ‘Nashville Curse’ for non-country acts. But, thanks to a new onslaught of so-called ‘tribute bands’ in the Music City, that may be about to change.
“I think that country music is tribute music,” claims Jonathan Trebing, lead singer of Nashville’s hottest tribute band, One on One. “Those dudes are, like, paying tribute to a tradition, a lifestyle. The only difference between them and us is they sign about, like, the good old days, and we sing about shit in the 80’s. I don’t know about you, but my life was way better in the 80’s.”
From a few different points in the distance I heard the bursts of sirens coming to life. Within moments, two fire trucks came barreling down Broadway, the din of their horns bouncing off the buildings like banshees in a canyon. They disappeared in the direction of downtown, soon followed by an ambulance from Vanderbilt hospital. A trace of chemical cut the air, probably from the excited truck exhaust. Once the hub-bub died down, I turned my attention back to the paper.
One on One rose from the ashes of singing/songwriting duo Fenton and Arbuckle, once a fixture on the Demonbreun Street bar scene. Comprised of Trebing and writing partner Peter Bradley Adams, the duo started off starry-eyed and optimistic but eventually grew frustrated at audience’s seeming indifference to their original compositions.
“We tried everything,” admits Adams. “Melody, melody with lyrics, spoken word, chanting, melody with lyrics in Portugese, drums, no drums, matching outfits, soprano sax player... Nothing really clicked until that night.”
"That night" was a bar mitzvah gig in Belle Meade at which the 12 year-old guest of honor had requested Hall and Oates’ “Family Man” for the traditional dance with his mother. The duo, whom had at first been hesitant to learn the song, were stunned by the crowd’s reaction. “Dude. It was magical,” says Trebing. “People of all ages responded. The dance floor came to life. And I’m looking around and I’m like, dude, it’s just me and Pete up here with a drunk djembe player. What the fuck?”
“It was the song, dude,” answers Adams. “We knew then and there that there was no way we were ever going to write anything as good as ‘Family Man,’ so why spend the rest of our lives trying? All we ever wanted was to connect with an audience, and that night we realized that the quickest way to get that connection was through the songs of Daryl Hall and John Fuckin’ Oates. End of story.”
Another fire truck came blaring by. Although I could see my building from where I sat I knew that, in his beleaguered condition, the sirens were probably making Stan a little anxious. I folded the paper under my arm and walked back to the building.
In the vestibule, I realized I that I had forgotten to lock up the bike and trailer. Turning the lock combination numbers into place, I noticed the chemical smell again, stronger this time.
I unlocked the apartment door and immediately noticed that Stan was not on his bed. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom. He was gone. Going back into the main room a second time, I saw that the top sheet and bed spread had been stripped from my bed. I walked to the French doors and looked up and down Division Street before noticing the missing linens knotted into a rope that hung down to the front porch of the building. Even in the best of health, Stan couldn’t tie a knot.
I walked back into the kitchen and looked under the window seat cushions, as if Stan could possibly be hiding there. When I stood up again, I saw the Post-It note on the table. In perfect architectural script, tiny as liner notes on a CD, it read:
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK, STOP IT. STARTING TOMORROW, YOU WORK FOR ME. IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE DOG AGAIN, GO TO THE MUSIC CITY CENTRAL STATION AT 7:45 AM. TAKE THE #21 BUS TO THE EAST SIDE AND GET OFF AT THE CORNER OF CHAPEL AND BENJAMIN STREET. WAIT THERE. FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS PRECISELY AND I WON’T HURT THE DOG.
RIGHT NOW, GO TO THE TRAFFIC ROUNDABOUT.
I was halfway up the hill on Division before I even realized how hard I was pedaling. A policeman was diverting traffic onto 18th Ave., so I turned there and cut through an alleyway to reach the roundabout. The fire trucks lined its circumference, their hoses all pointed at the top of the multi-headed Musica sculpture. The water seemed to have little effect on the fire, occasionally blotting out a patch of it that would immediately reignite as soon as the stream was redirected. The fire had consumed the shrubbery around the sculpture but seemed safely corralled by the pavement around it. An impressive crowd of onlookers had gathered to witness the carnage. I pushed my bike away from the crowd, got a number from my notebook and dialed it on my cell phone.
"Hello?"
"It's David Mead."
"Oh, good. How's it going?"
"Deaderick," I sighed, the full weight of recent events coming to bear on me, "what the fuck have you gotten me into?"
Our apartment was tiny, an efficiency built in the early 20th century to house students from a nearby seminary. The hardwoods in the 14X14 main room were stained and warped, the plaster on the walls cracked and falling off in places. The room had a large window on one exterior wall and a decrepit set of French doors overlooking Division Street on the other. I had managed to fit a desk, a bookshelf, a piano, a sitting chair and a bed into it without making it feel too cramped. During the day, it had a light and airy quality. At night, a strategically placed array of thrift store lamps turned the potential claustrophobia into coziness.
There was small kitchen off the main room, its best feature a large bay window into which I had built a seat. This was where Stan spent most of his time in the apartment, perched on the soft red cushions, smoking his cigarillos out the window, watching the world pass by on the street below. The bathroom was located down a small hall off the kitchen that I had converted into a walk-through closet.
I opened the French doors and let some soft night air into the apartment. From my vantage point, Midtown looked even less appealing than it did on street level, a mess of incongruous rooftops and power lines skewing angles and spreading cancer. Bordered by Music Row, Vanderbilt University, the Charlotte Avenue housing projects and I-40, the neighborhood had managed to become a bathtub drain of sorts, sucking in the worst qualities of each, respectively: middle-aged career angst, budding alcoholism, drug-related crime and traffic overflow. Despite its exceptionally centralized location, Midtown felt more like negative space than a neighborhood.
I checked on Stan again, locked up and walked over to JJ’s Market. I grabbed the last tub of soft Australian licorice from the shelf and ordered an iced coffee from the girl behind the counter. While the espresso machine began belching steam, I picked up a copy of the Nashville Scene, an ‘alternative weekly’ hold-over from the 90’s that had long ago ceased being an real alternative to anything except, perhaps, a deli menu. From the cover, a mildly homoerotic photo of two familiar faces, foreheads touching, fake sweat rolling down noses and chins, was tucked behind a giant headline that read “I Can’t Go For That: One on One Redefine the Meaning of Music in Nashville.”
“Large iced coffee!” the girl behind the counter shouted.
“Thanks.” I dropped a dollar in the tip jar and walked outside. I sat down at a wrought iron table, lit a cigarette and began reading about my new clients.
For the past sixty years, country music, Nashville’s most famous export, has remained unchallenged by any other genre of music currently written and performed in the city. Although many acts from the city's surprisingly robust rock, indie, pop and jazz scenes have signed to major and independent labels, none of them have ever come close to touching the big ‘C’ in terms of commercial success. For years, there has seemed to be no end in sight to the legendary ‘Nashville Curse’ for non-country acts. But, thanks to a new onslaught of so-called ‘tribute bands’ in the Music City, that may be about to change.
“I think that country music is tribute music,” claims Jonathan Trebing, lead singer of Nashville’s hottest tribute band, One on One. “Those dudes are, like, paying tribute to a tradition, a lifestyle. The only difference between them and us is they sign about, like, the good old days, and we sing about shit in the 80’s. I don’t know about you, but my life was way better in the 80’s.”
From a few different points in the distance I heard the bursts of sirens coming to life. Within moments, two fire trucks came barreling down Broadway, the din of their horns bouncing off the buildings like banshees in a canyon. They disappeared in the direction of downtown, soon followed by an ambulance from Vanderbilt hospital. A trace of chemical cut the air, probably from the excited truck exhaust. Once the hub-bub died down, I turned my attention back to the paper.
One on One rose from the ashes of singing/songwriting duo Fenton and Arbuckle, once a fixture on the Demonbreun Street bar scene. Comprised of Trebing and writing partner Peter Bradley Adams, the duo started off starry-eyed and optimistic but eventually grew frustrated at audience’s seeming indifference to their original compositions.
“We tried everything,” admits Adams. “Melody, melody with lyrics, spoken word, chanting, melody with lyrics in Portugese, drums, no drums, matching outfits, soprano sax player... Nothing really clicked until that night.”
"That night" was a bar mitzvah gig in Belle Meade at which the 12 year-old guest of honor had requested Hall and Oates’ “Family Man” for the traditional dance with his mother. The duo, whom had at first been hesitant to learn the song, were stunned by the crowd’s reaction. “Dude. It was magical,” says Trebing. “People of all ages responded. The dance floor came to life. And I’m looking around and I’m like, dude, it’s just me and Pete up here with a drunk djembe player. What the fuck?”
“It was the song, dude,” answers Adams. “We knew then and there that there was no way we were ever going to write anything as good as ‘Family Man,’ so why spend the rest of our lives trying? All we ever wanted was to connect with an audience, and that night we realized that the quickest way to get that connection was through the songs of Daryl Hall and John Fuckin’ Oates. End of story.”
Another fire truck came blaring by. Although I could see my building from where I sat I knew that, in his beleaguered condition, the sirens were probably making Stan a little anxious. I folded the paper under my arm and walked back to the building.
In the vestibule, I realized I that I had forgotten to lock up the bike and trailer. Turning the lock combination numbers into place, I noticed the chemical smell again, stronger this time.
I unlocked the apartment door and immediately noticed that Stan was not on his bed. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom. He was gone. Going back into the main room a second time, I saw that the top sheet and bed spread had been stripped from my bed. I walked to the French doors and looked up and down Division Street before noticing the missing linens knotted into a rope that hung down to the front porch of the building. Even in the best of health, Stan couldn’t tie a knot.
I walked back into the kitchen and looked under the window seat cushions, as if Stan could possibly be hiding there. When I stood up again, I saw the Post-It note on the table. In perfect architectural script, tiny as liner notes on a CD, it read:
I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK, STOP IT. STARTING TOMORROW, YOU WORK FOR ME. IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE DOG AGAIN, GO TO THE MUSIC CITY CENTRAL STATION AT 7:45 AM. TAKE THE #21 BUS TO THE EAST SIDE AND GET OFF AT THE CORNER OF CHAPEL AND BENJAMIN STREET. WAIT THERE. FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS PRECISELY AND I WON’T HURT THE DOG.
RIGHT NOW, GO TO THE TRAFFIC ROUNDABOUT.
I was halfway up the hill on Division before I even realized how hard I was pedaling. A policeman was diverting traffic onto 18th Ave., so I turned there and cut through an alleyway to reach the roundabout. The fire trucks lined its circumference, their hoses all pointed at the top of the multi-headed Musica sculpture. The water seemed to have little effect on the fire, occasionally blotting out a patch of it that would immediately reignite as soon as the stream was redirected. The fire had consumed the shrubbery around the sculpture but seemed safely corralled by the pavement around it. An impressive crowd of onlookers had gathered to witness the carnage. I pushed my bike away from the crowd, got a number from my notebook and dialed it on my cell phone.
"Hello?"
"It's David Mead."
"Oh, good. How's it going?"
"Deaderick," I sighed, the full weight of recent events coming to bear on me, "what the fuck have you gotten me into?"
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VII
The cool night air whistled past my ears, drying the patina of perspiration on my forehead. Eighth Avenue North was nearly deserted but for a couple of cars that slowed down as we passed them. Whether they paused for the humidity or merely the sight of a man on a yellow bicycle pulling a drunken dog in a child’s trailer, I couldn’t tell. I signalled right with my arm and turned into the Bicentennial Mall.
“The trestle, the trestle. Let’s go see Wally,” Stan called out from behind me.
“No.”
“Balls,” he replied. I heard tin clanging away on the asphalt behind us.
“Goddamn it, Stan.” I leaned hard to the left and turned the bike around. A few rotations of the pedals later I stopped to pick up an empty Bud can and put it in the saddle bag under my seat.
‘Ya’ll need somethin’ tonight?” From across a manicured lawn, a skeletal figure clad in a drooping plaid cowboy shirt and a grimy Nashville Predators cap emerged from underneath the railroad trestle and approached us with an uneven gait.
“Wally!” Stan hopped out of the his trailer and loped over to the man. “Lovely evening, isn’t it? Puts a spring in your step, as I can see. Yes, indeed,” he licked his chops and looked around. “And not a park ranger in site. So...”
“White or green, son?” asked Wally.
“White, please, white as my mistress the moon...”
I crept up behind Stan and clasped the leash onto his collar.
“Motherfucker,” he said, and sat down on his haunches, deflated.
“Wally,” I said, “great to see you, as always. Sorry, but Stan’s had a long day.”
“Hell, don’t I know it,” laughed Wally, stuffing a tiny vial back into his jeans pocket. “I dun seen ‘em down at Stanky’s three days runnin’.” He crouched down and extended his hand toward Stan. “You been hittin’ it a little hard, son?”
“Away from me, cretin,” said Stan, recoiling.
“Gettin’ grumpy!” said Wally, standing back up, with a little difficulty. “All of ‘em do.” He smiled at me, revealing a lovely set of gums. “How ‘bout them fahrs? They go’n burn all them damn statues down for the damn day’s over.”
“There’s been another one?”
“Hell yeah, don cha’ll watch the tay-vay?”
“Only Law and Order,” sneered Stan.
“They dun burn ‘attun up ahr,” he shook a hand in the direction of Capitol Hill, eyes closed in thought, then snapped his finger and pointed at me. “Andrew Jackson, that’s eet. Jackson’s on fahr!”
We all three turned to look up the incline behind us, at the top of which an impressive orange glow could be seen flickering against the sky.
“Andrew Jackson,” Stan opined. “7th President of the United States. Also a racist slave owner. Sexist, too.”
“Damn sexy,” agreed Wally.
“Nathan Beford Forrest,” I pondered aloud.
“What ah lak ta know is how they settin’ a damn iron statue on fahr. Cain’t burn no metal.”
“Military grade acetone,” I informed him.
“Huh?”
“Jackson thought the world was flat,” said Stan.
“Huh? Ya’ll talkin’ ‘bout that global warmin’ bullsheet? Hell.” Wally hunched over and lit a Benson and Hedges 100.
“We gotta get going, Wally,” I countered. “Take care of yourself.”
“Dave, Stan. Go with God.” He waved and walked back towards the shadows from which he had emerged.
We rode figures-of-eight around the Court of Three Stars, a stone pavilion near the 7th Avenue entrance to the park. A thin layer of fog had settled on the mall, the cooler night air merging with the day’s heat still rising from the grass. The smoky nip of barbecue drifted down from a restaurant in Germantown, just North of us. On the granite, I watched our shadow stretch and collapse, stretch and collapse as we passed through different shades of shadow and light, the tiny rhythm of the bearings in the bicycle crankcase soothing us. In the distance, Andrew Jackson continued to burn, a tiny dot on top of the mountain like a sun about to rise.
“It’s nice to be working again, right?” I knew Stan was still sore about the leash incident. “It feels like a long time. Are you ready to start?”
Silence from behind me.
“You know,” I continued, “we don’t exactly have all night. So far, we’re nowhere on finding Heusenstamm and no one seems to have any idea why she slapped Deaderick. We have to get a gig for One on One by Friday for the plan to work. I don’t know about you, but the last gig I booked was an autograph signing for Trace Adkins at an ice rink ten years ago.”
From a passing car on 7th Avenue someone yelled ‘faggot.’
“I don’t know.” I watched the car peel out onto Jefferson St. “Do we have anything, really?”
“The scent,” said Stan.
“Right,” I agreed. “So why wasn’t it on Liz Workman? She’s Heusenstamm’s roommate. They probably swap clothes.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Stan admonished. “We’re smack in the middle of a goddamn conundrum and I’m about to come down with some serious DT’s.”
I squeezed the brakes and turned to examine him. He looked gray and tired in the wash of the street light.
“Allright, Buddy, just help me to the next step. Then we’ll go home,” I said.
Stan yawned and shivered. I walked back to the trailer, pulled the small blanket around him and zipped the mesh front panel shut. We needed to get home, and sooner than later.
“The next step is Tashian,” Stan croaked. “And his damn dog.”
“Come on, the dog seemed nice,” I said, remounting the bike and starting to pedal. “Energetic, but nice.” I clicked the derailleur up to third gear with my thumb.
“Mark my words,” Stan called, raising his voice to combat the rising volume of the passing air, “that dog is one crazy bitch.”
“And what fun would life be,” I replied, ringing my hand bell a couple of times as I turned left onto 8th Avenue, “without a few crazy bitches to spice things up?”
“The trestle, the trestle. Let’s go see Wally,” Stan called out from behind me.
“No.”
“Balls,” he replied. I heard tin clanging away on the asphalt behind us.
“Goddamn it, Stan.” I leaned hard to the left and turned the bike around. A few rotations of the pedals later I stopped to pick up an empty Bud can and put it in the saddle bag under my seat.
‘Ya’ll need somethin’ tonight?” From across a manicured lawn, a skeletal figure clad in a drooping plaid cowboy shirt and a grimy Nashville Predators cap emerged from underneath the railroad trestle and approached us with an uneven gait.
“Wally!” Stan hopped out of the his trailer and loped over to the man. “Lovely evening, isn’t it? Puts a spring in your step, as I can see. Yes, indeed,” he licked his chops and looked around. “And not a park ranger in site. So...”
“White or green, son?” asked Wally.
“White, please, white as my mistress the moon...”
I crept up behind Stan and clasped the leash onto his collar.
“Motherfucker,” he said, and sat down on his haunches, deflated.
“Wally,” I said, “great to see you, as always. Sorry, but Stan’s had a long day.”
“Hell, don’t I know it,” laughed Wally, stuffing a tiny vial back into his jeans pocket. “I dun seen ‘em down at Stanky’s three days runnin’.” He crouched down and extended his hand toward Stan. “You been hittin’ it a little hard, son?”
“Away from me, cretin,” said Stan, recoiling.
“Gettin’ grumpy!” said Wally, standing back up, with a little difficulty. “All of ‘em do.” He smiled at me, revealing a lovely set of gums. “How ‘bout them fahrs? They go’n burn all them damn statues down for the damn day’s over.”
“There’s been another one?”
“Hell yeah, don cha’ll watch the tay-vay?”
“Only Law and Order,” sneered Stan.
“They dun burn ‘attun up ahr,” he shook a hand in the direction of Capitol Hill, eyes closed in thought, then snapped his finger and pointed at me. “Andrew Jackson, that’s eet. Jackson’s on fahr!”
We all three turned to look up the incline behind us, at the top of which an impressive orange glow could be seen flickering against the sky.
“Andrew Jackson,” Stan opined. “7th President of the United States. Also a racist slave owner. Sexist, too.”
“Damn sexy,” agreed Wally.
“Nathan Beford Forrest,” I pondered aloud.
“What ah lak ta know is how they settin’ a damn iron statue on fahr. Cain’t burn no metal.”
“Military grade acetone,” I informed him.
“Huh?”
“Jackson thought the world was flat,” said Stan.
“Huh? Ya’ll talkin’ ‘bout that global warmin’ bullsheet? Hell.” Wally hunched over and lit a Benson and Hedges 100.
“We gotta get going, Wally,” I countered. “Take care of yourself.”
“Dave, Stan. Go with God.” He waved and walked back towards the shadows from which he had emerged.
We rode figures-of-eight around the Court of Three Stars, a stone pavilion near the 7th Avenue entrance to the park. A thin layer of fog had settled on the mall, the cooler night air merging with the day’s heat still rising from the grass. The smoky nip of barbecue drifted down from a restaurant in Germantown, just North of us. On the granite, I watched our shadow stretch and collapse, stretch and collapse as we passed through different shades of shadow and light, the tiny rhythm of the bearings in the bicycle crankcase soothing us. In the distance, Andrew Jackson continued to burn, a tiny dot on top of the mountain like a sun about to rise.
“It’s nice to be working again, right?” I knew Stan was still sore about the leash incident. “It feels like a long time. Are you ready to start?”
Silence from behind me.
“You know,” I continued, “we don’t exactly have all night. So far, we’re nowhere on finding Heusenstamm and no one seems to have any idea why she slapped Deaderick. We have to get a gig for One on One by Friday for the plan to work. I don’t know about you, but the last gig I booked was an autograph signing for Trace Adkins at an ice rink ten years ago.”
From a passing car on 7th Avenue someone yelled ‘faggot.’
“I don’t know.” I watched the car peel out onto Jefferson St. “Do we have anything, really?”
“The scent,” said Stan.
“Right,” I agreed. “So why wasn’t it on Liz Workman? She’s Heusenstamm’s roommate. They probably swap clothes.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Stan admonished. “We’re smack in the middle of a goddamn conundrum and I’m about to come down with some serious DT’s.”
I squeezed the brakes and turned to examine him. He looked gray and tired in the wash of the street light.
“Allright, Buddy, just help me to the next step. Then we’ll go home,” I said.
Stan yawned and shivered. I walked back to the trailer, pulled the small blanket around him and zipped the mesh front panel shut. We needed to get home, and sooner than later.
“The next step is Tashian,” Stan croaked. “And his damn dog.”
“Come on, the dog seemed nice,” I said, remounting the bike and starting to pedal. “Energetic, but nice.” I clicked the derailleur up to third gear with my thumb.
“Mark my words,” Stan called, raising his voice to combat the rising volume of the passing air, “that dog is one crazy bitch.”
“And what fun would life be,” I replied, ringing my hand bell a couple of times as I turned left onto 8th Avenue, “without a few crazy bitches to spice things up?”
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VI
“Rachel hasn’t come home for a week,” said Liz. She lay on her side atop a picnic table in Sevier Park, dunking cucumber rolls in soy sauce and dropping them into her mouth like grapes at a toga party. “I mean, she’s OK and everything. Sometimes she just goes off by herself for awhile.”
“How long have you been roommates?” I asked.
“Mmmm, let’s see... she moved in after the workout party...”
“Excuse me?”
“She threw me a workout party for my 30th birthday,” she laughed, sitting up Indian style on the table top. “Everyone wore workout clothes. We had sit-up and push-up contests.”
“Sounds like a dream come true,” said Stan, supine on the grass, sweating out his hangover. A small thermos top of gray liquid sat on the grass near his nose.
“You keep drinking that coconut juice, Stanley,” warned Liz, “or I’ll make you run laps.” She threw a piece of cucumber roll at him. It bounced of his rib cage with a hollow thud and landed in the grass.
“I love you,” he groaned.
“So, she left right after the wedding?” I asked.
Liz put her plastic sushi container back into her backpack. “Pretty much. She’s been acting a little strange lately. Keeping a crazy work schedule, staying up late. If I don’t make her food, she doesn’t eat.”
“Sounds intense.” I flicked an insect away from my nose. “I heard she slapped a guy at the wedding.”
Liz laughed and and rolled her eyes. “John Deaderick! That was probably just Rachel’s way of showing affection.”
“Charming.”
“You know, like in elementary school,” she lay back down on the table. “If you liked a boy, you hit him.”
"So she likes him?"
"Oh, who knows, I can't figure that girl out anymore. You know, she once wore one-piece jump suits for an entire year."
"Why?"
"Why not?" Liz traced her finger along an old pair of initials scratched into the wood of the table. "Rachel has her own set of rules. I just try to have fun watching her."
The sun had finally sunk behind the trees, leaving the park bathed in luminescent pink afterglow of the day. A breeze was pushing the air around, breaking up the humidity a little. For the first time since that morning, I felt like I could breathe freely.
“Liz,” I said, “I didn’t know what to expect when we showed up at your studio today.”
She rolled over onto her back and examined the clouds. “I kind of thought you were more the ‘not showing up’ type.”
“Uh... I quit drinking.”
She turned her head towards me, eyebrows raised. “Really? How do you feel?”
“Better. Why aren’t you mad at me?”
“Oh, leave it alone already,” Stan grunted, picking himself up off the grass and waddling over to the table. “She’s not mad. All’s forgiven. Blah blah blah.” He indicated with his nose that he wanted a cigarillo. I handed him one and lit it for him. “Would it have hurt you to mention all this before we met her, though?”
“I figured you had enough on your mind already,” I said, “and I thought you’d understand. I kind of took you for the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ type.’”
“How touching. All this tragedy is making me thirsty.”
“OK, but no more brandy today.” I popped the top on a Budweiser from the six pack I’d bought, poured it into my empty Starbucks cup and set it in front of him. “Go easy on that.”
“Just enough to take the edge off,” he agreed before sticking his snout into the cup.
Liz shook her head. “How can you not drink but feed Stanley booze all the time?” she asked me.
“He can’t help me until I want to help myself,” Stan replied, licking his chops. his tail began wagging and he wrinkled his nose, squinting into the distance. “Cockapoo, nine o’clock.”
Down the grassy hillside three figures were now approaching the table: a stout man in a baseball cap, a bearded fellow trailing behind him and the aforementioned black Cockapoo, who was sprinting towards us for all she was worth.
“DANIEL!” Liz shouted.
“Friends of yours?” I asked.
The Cockapoo leapt from the grass onto the table top, nuzzling Liz’s neck and licking her face.
“Women,” said Stan, shaking his head at the spectacle. “Christ.”
“Well hello, Elizabeth,” said the man in the baseball cap, arriving at the table, slightly out of breath from his trek up the hill. “I see Pasha remembers you. What an intelligent animal.”
The Cockapoo suddenly bounded off the table and took up pursuit of a chipmunk that had just emerged from a hole twenty feet away.
“David, Daniel Tashian. Daniel, David. Stanley,” she looked over towards Stan, who had killed the beer and returned to his bed in the grass. “Daniel.”
“The groom has arrived,” said Stan.
“Gentlemen, Lady, it is a pleasure to meet you awl,” Tashian intoned in an approximation of a Savannah accent, throwing back his head and opening his arms as if addressing the Senate floor. “The reason I have gathuhd you here today...” He broke the pose and chuckled, then turned to the bearded man, who was standing about eight feet behind him, a pencil poised over a small notebook. “Goodman,” he said, in his normal voice, “did you get that?”
“I got it,” replied Goodman.
“So, Daniel, how was the honeymoon?” asked Liz.
“The missus and I took a week of respite in the colonies,” he switched back to the accent. “We adopted the mores of the natives as our own, dining in their primitive fashion and gallavanting about upon their lily white beaches wearing no garment or trifle. In such fashion, the marriage was consummated on numerous occasions.” He smiled into the distance and waited.
“Got it,” said Goodman.
Tashian continued, gesticulating with his hands, “Every morning, a brown man appeared with a steaming carafe of brew squeezed forth from the java bean...”
“Daniel...” Liz interrupted.
“... and a bowl of ripened figs. PASHA!” Tashian’s eyes suddenly widened and he jogged off in the direction of the Cockapoo, who was happily writhing on her back in what appeared to be the remains of a dead animal.
“Nice to meet you,” nodded Goodman, who set off behind Tashian at a leisurely pace.
“Oh boy,” I sighed, watching the procession continue across the lawn. “I guess we’re going to need to talk to him, too.”
“Why are you so interested in Rachel, anyway?” asked Liz.
“Well...” I bought some time by lighting a cigarette. “Do you know the band, One on One?”
“Of course. They’re the hottest band in Nashville.”
“Well, I’m kind of representing them now. Stan and I. We’re going to be booking their gigs.”
“Really?” smiled Liz.
“Anyway, they need a new bass player...”
“... and Rachel plays bass...”
“... Exactly. Stan thought it would be a nice touch to have some feminine presence in the band.”
“Actually, I think they’re doing fine on their own,” added Stan. “Those haircuts.”
“Totally,” said Liz.
“So I just wanted to ask around about Rachel. Make sure she’s solid.”
Liz smiled and hopped off the table. “David Mead,” she said, “you’re a terrible liar.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not a big problem in the detective business,” cracked Stan.
Liz grabbed her backpack from the table and pulled it over her shoulders. “You know, it’s really not so bad to see you,” she laughed. “I’ve had a few visions of this moment that involved a semi-automatic weapon and an enema bag...”
“I love you,” said Stan, nodding off in the grass.
“... but this was pretty pleasant.”
“Look, can I call you?” I asked. “I’m... we’re probably going to need a little more information at some point.”
She considered it for a moment, then pulled a Sharpie out of her backpack, grabbed my hand and wrote her phone number on my palm. “There. It’s permanent. You can’t forget this time.”
“How long have you been roommates?” I asked.
“Mmmm, let’s see... she moved in after the workout party...”
“Excuse me?”
“She threw me a workout party for my 30th birthday,” she laughed, sitting up Indian style on the table top. “Everyone wore workout clothes. We had sit-up and push-up contests.”
“Sounds like a dream come true,” said Stan, supine on the grass, sweating out his hangover. A small thermos top of gray liquid sat on the grass near his nose.
“You keep drinking that coconut juice, Stanley,” warned Liz, “or I’ll make you run laps.” She threw a piece of cucumber roll at him. It bounced of his rib cage with a hollow thud and landed in the grass.
“I love you,” he groaned.
“So, she left right after the wedding?” I asked.
Liz put her plastic sushi container back into her backpack. “Pretty much. She’s been acting a little strange lately. Keeping a crazy work schedule, staying up late. If I don’t make her food, she doesn’t eat.”
“Sounds intense.” I flicked an insect away from my nose. “I heard she slapped a guy at the wedding.”
Liz laughed and and rolled her eyes. “John Deaderick! That was probably just Rachel’s way of showing affection.”
“Charming.”
“You know, like in elementary school,” she lay back down on the table. “If you liked a boy, you hit him.”
"So she likes him?"
"Oh, who knows, I can't figure that girl out anymore. You know, she once wore one-piece jump suits for an entire year."
"Why?"
"Why not?" Liz traced her finger along an old pair of initials scratched into the wood of the table. "Rachel has her own set of rules. I just try to have fun watching her."
The sun had finally sunk behind the trees, leaving the park bathed in luminescent pink afterglow of the day. A breeze was pushing the air around, breaking up the humidity a little. For the first time since that morning, I felt like I could breathe freely.
“Liz,” I said, “I didn’t know what to expect when we showed up at your studio today.”
She rolled over onto her back and examined the clouds. “I kind of thought you were more the ‘not showing up’ type.”
“Uh... I quit drinking.”
She turned her head towards me, eyebrows raised. “Really? How do you feel?”
“Better. Why aren’t you mad at me?”
“Oh, leave it alone already,” Stan grunted, picking himself up off the grass and waddling over to the table. “She’s not mad. All’s forgiven. Blah blah blah.” He indicated with his nose that he wanted a cigarillo. I handed him one and lit it for him. “Would it have hurt you to mention all this before we met her, though?”
“I figured you had enough on your mind already,” I said, “and I thought you’d understand. I kind of took you for the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ type.’”
“How touching. All this tragedy is making me thirsty.”
“OK, but no more brandy today.” I popped the top on a Budweiser from the six pack I’d bought, poured it into my empty Starbucks cup and set it in front of him. “Go easy on that.”
“Just enough to take the edge off,” he agreed before sticking his snout into the cup.
Liz shook her head. “How can you not drink but feed Stanley booze all the time?” she asked me.
“He can’t help me until I want to help myself,” Stan replied, licking his chops. his tail began wagging and he wrinkled his nose, squinting into the distance. “Cockapoo, nine o’clock.”
Down the grassy hillside three figures were now approaching the table: a stout man in a baseball cap, a bearded fellow trailing behind him and the aforementioned black Cockapoo, who was sprinting towards us for all she was worth.
“DANIEL!” Liz shouted.
“Friends of yours?” I asked.
The Cockapoo leapt from the grass onto the table top, nuzzling Liz’s neck and licking her face.
“Women,” said Stan, shaking his head at the spectacle. “Christ.”
“Well hello, Elizabeth,” said the man in the baseball cap, arriving at the table, slightly out of breath from his trek up the hill. “I see Pasha remembers you. What an intelligent animal.”
The Cockapoo suddenly bounded off the table and took up pursuit of a chipmunk that had just emerged from a hole twenty feet away.
“David, Daniel Tashian. Daniel, David. Stanley,” she looked over towards Stan, who had killed the beer and returned to his bed in the grass. “Daniel.”
“The groom has arrived,” said Stan.
“Gentlemen, Lady, it is a pleasure to meet you awl,” Tashian intoned in an approximation of a Savannah accent, throwing back his head and opening his arms as if addressing the Senate floor. “The reason I have gathuhd you here today...” He broke the pose and chuckled, then turned to the bearded man, who was standing about eight feet behind him, a pencil poised over a small notebook. “Goodman,” he said, in his normal voice, “did you get that?”
“I got it,” replied Goodman.
“So, Daniel, how was the honeymoon?” asked Liz.
“The missus and I took a week of respite in the colonies,” he switched back to the accent. “We adopted the mores of the natives as our own, dining in their primitive fashion and gallavanting about upon their lily white beaches wearing no garment or trifle. In such fashion, the marriage was consummated on numerous occasions.” He smiled into the distance and waited.
“Got it,” said Goodman.
Tashian continued, gesticulating with his hands, “Every morning, a brown man appeared with a steaming carafe of brew squeezed forth from the java bean...”
“Daniel...” Liz interrupted.
“... and a bowl of ripened figs. PASHA!” Tashian’s eyes suddenly widened and he jogged off in the direction of the Cockapoo, who was happily writhing on her back in what appeared to be the remains of a dead animal.
“Nice to meet you,” nodded Goodman, who set off behind Tashian at a leisurely pace.
“Oh boy,” I sighed, watching the procession continue across the lawn. “I guess we’re going to need to talk to him, too.”
“Why are you so interested in Rachel, anyway?” asked Liz.
“Well...” I bought some time by lighting a cigarette. “Do you know the band, One on One?”
“Of course. They’re the hottest band in Nashville.”
“Well, I’m kind of representing them now. Stan and I. We’re going to be booking their gigs.”
“Really?” smiled Liz.
“Anyway, they need a new bass player...”
“... and Rachel plays bass...”
“... Exactly. Stan thought it would be a nice touch to have some feminine presence in the band.”
“Actually, I think they’re doing fine on their own,” added Stan. “Those haircuts.”
“Totally,” said Liz.
“So I just wanted to ask around about Rachel. Make sure she’s solid.”
Liz smiled and hopped off the table. “David Mead,” she said, “you’re a terrible liar.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not a big problem in the detective business,” cracked Stan.
Liz grabbed her backpack from the table and pulled it over her shoulders. “You know, it’s really not so bad to see you,” she laughed. “I’ve had a few visions of this moment that involved a semi-automatic weapon and an enema bag...”
“I love you,” said Stan, nodding off in the grass.
“... but this was pretty pleasant.”
“Look, can I call you?” I asked. “I’m... we’re probably going to need a little more information at some point.”
She considered it for a moment, then pulled a Sharpie out of her backpack, grabbed my hand and wrote her phone number on my palm. “There. It’s permanent. You can’t forget this time.”
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part V
The line of cars waiting to negotiate the traffic roundabout at the end of Music Row stretched for three long blocks.
“My god, how much further,” Stan asked, trading barks with a German Shepherd in a pick-up truck beside us. “I gotta piss.”
Constructed five years earlier, the Music Row Roundabout was a valiant but vain attempt at auto vehicular cross-culturalism. Its intended purpose had been to ease the intersection of six streets at the top of the Row, the pair of avenues on which the majority of Nashville’s recording studios, record labels and music publishing houses resided. On paper, the Roundabout must have seemed like a fine plan but, in reality, its requisite winner-take-all approach to motoring, so exciting when circumventing the Arc De Triomphe or Parliament Square, did not suit the city's motorists, a particularly passive/aggressive group long accustomed to engaging in superfluous head nods and hand signals for communication with fellow drivers. The consequent brou-ha-ha during rush hour was a cacophony of car horns and obscenities blurred by the unmistakable tang of burning brake pads. Not helping matters was a sculpture entiled 'Musica,' which rose 60 feet from the island in the middle of the Roundabout, obscuring sight lines and attracting tourists with its ten naked lizard-like nymphs, their oversized genitalia swaying in the wind. In spite of its posted 15 mile per hour speed limit, the Roundabout had become the city's number one location for accidents and moving violations.
Up ahead, the traffic began giving way. I could just make out the nipples on one of the female nymphs. “Almost there,” I reassured Stan. “Maybe you should ease up on the brandy.” He was halfway through the bottle of E&J he had opened this afternoon at the barn.
“Maybe you should go suck an egg,” he grimaced.
Ten minutes later we parked in front of Cummins Station, one of the first in Nashville’s long line of former industrial manufacturing buildings now renovated into office space. After Stan noisily relieved himself in a flower bed, we made our way inside and took a freight elevator down to the first floor. We followed the scent of Nag Champa incense to the end of a massive corridor and stepped into a bright room with large windows overlooking an abandoned rail yard. The floors were cork, the walls lime and orange, and the hypnotic drone of sitars and synthesizer floated in from an adjacent room. A large shelving unit containing multiple rolled rubber mats of various colors stood to our left; in front of us, a reception desk of birch, glass and soft angles was empty and completely free of clutter save for one tall white orchid, swooning to one side as if overcome with emotion.
“I smell pussy,” whispered Stan, his nose twitching.
I stuck my head around the corner of the wall behind the bookshelf. A group of twelve women in a rainbow of form-fitting clothing was spread around the room, each of them balanced on one leg and bent over at a ninety degree angle, arms out at their sides, their free legs stuck out straight behind them, like a squadron of Lycra swans about to take flight.
A chestnut-haired Jewess walked amongst the group, correcting the angles of legs and arms, intoning in a sing-song voice, “OK ladies flat backs, flat backs now stay here, stay here, breathing into the pose, now we’re cultivating our attention, cultivating our attention to the present moment. Good. Now on the next exhale bringing the right foot back to the floor, Warrior One, arms in prayer position over your head, now arms down to your third eye, your forehead, third eye, yes, that’s good, now feet back to Mountain Pose, hands to your heart...” The canned melody of a cell phone suddenly cut the air in the room. One of the women broke position and scurried over to a corner to answer it.
The Jewess barely acknowledged the distraction. “Outside Trina, outside,” she pointed towards the door, then paused to pull gently on one of the student’s shoulders. She walked back to the front of the room. “Now inhale, lift you arms over your head, fold over your chin, your truth, yes, inhale, bending your knees, now your right foot back, left foot back, now into Downward Dog, let your knees kiss the earth, now fold back into Child’s Pose...” She spotted me. Her face registered surprise for a moment, then softened again. She held my gaze and continued speaking to the class. “OK. We’re going to stay here for awhile, we’re breathing, we’re breathing...”
Moments later she walked into the reception area and stopped in front of us, her hands on her hips. “David Mead,” she apprised, folding her hands across her chest. “Nice of you to show up. You’re about seven years late.”
“Woah,” said Stan.
Liz Workman had soft, almond-shaped eyes and the body of a dancer. We both lived in New York once. In between classes at Columbia and commuting from the Upper West Side to my apartment in the East Village, she had usually managed to burn about 4,000 calories a day. In a gym, on a bike, at the running path around the Central Park reservoir, in a yoga studio... Liz was all action.
“This is my dog, Stan.” Stan hated it when I used him as a social lubricant. I hoped he could see that I was in a bind.
She crouched down and stroked his head several times. “Stan. That sounds like a detective or something. Would you mind if I call you Stanley?”
“You can call me Doryce,” said Stan, his eyes half-closed under the pleasure of her caresses, nose twitching uncontrollably, “if you want.”
“What a big nose you have,” she said.
“Ahem. So,” I began, “I know this is kind of awkward, and I really hate to bother you.”
“It’s no bother,” she replied, standing back up. “Look, I’m not mad at you anymore. You can stop hunching.”
I straightened my back and cracked my knuckles.
“Whatever happened, it’s fine. Let’s be in the present moment. You have come here for a reason, Grasshopper” she smiled, spreading her arms, “ now talk to the fucking Goddess.”
She was radiant. “Could I still buy you that sushi I promised you seven years ago?”
“Ha.” She considered for a moment. “How about this. I will allow you to chaperon Stan and I to dinner. I get to choose the place.”
“Great.”
"And you can pay," she added.
"Fine."
“‘A woman is like a tea bag,’“ quoth Stan, “‘you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.’“
“Sylvia Plath?” asked Liz.
“Nancy Reagan,” cooed Stan.
“’Baby, you can drive my car,’” she smiled, and walked back into the studio to finish her class.
“My god, how much further,” Stan asked, trading barks with a German Shepherd in a pick-up truck beside us. “I gotta piss.”
Constructed five years earlier, the Music Row Roundabout was a valiant but vain attempt at auto vehicular cross-culturalism. Its intended purpose had been to ease the intersection of six streets at the top of the Row, the pair of avenues on which the majority of Nashville’s recording studios, record labels and music publishing houses resided. On paper, the Roundabout must have seemed like a fine plan but, in reality, its requisite winner-take-all approach to motoring, so exciting when circumventing the Arc De Triomphe or Parliament Square, did not suit the city's motorists, a particularly passive/aggressive group long accustomed to engaging in superfluous head nods and hand signals for communication with fellow drivers. The consequent brou-ha-ha during rush hour was a cacophony of car horns and obscenities blurred by the unmistakable tang of burning brake pads. Not helping matters was a sculpture entiled 'Musica,' which rose 60 feet from the island in the middle of the Roundabout, obscuring sight lines and attracting tourists with its ten naked lizard-like nymphs, their oversized genitalia swaying in the wind. In spite of its posted 15 mile per hour speed limit, the Roundabout had become the city's number one location for accidents and moving violations.
Up ahead, the traffic began giving way. I could just make out the nipples on one of the female nymphs. “Almost there,” I reassured Stan. “Maybe you should ease up on the brandy.” He was halfway through the bottle of E&J he had opened this afternoon at the barn.
“Maybe you should go suck an egg,” he grimaced.
Ten minutes later we parked in front of Cummins Station, one of the first in Nashville’s long line of former industrial manufacturing buildings now renovated into office space. After Stan noisily relieved himself in a flower bed, we made our way inside and took a freight elevator down to the first floor. We followed the scent of Nag Champa incense to the end of a massive corridor and stepped into a bright room with large windows overlooking an abandoned rail yard. The floors were cork, the walls lime and orange, and the hypnotic drone of sitars and synthesizer floated in from an adjacent room. A large shelving unit containing multiple rolled rubber mats of various colors stood to our left; in front of us, a reception desk of birch, glass and soft angles was empty and completely free of clutter save for one tall white orchid, swooning to one side as if overcome with emotion.
“I smell pussy,” whispered Stan, his nose twitching.
I stuck my head around the corner of the wall behind the bookshelf. A group of twelve women in a rainbow of form-fitting clothing was spread around the room, each of them balanced on one leg and bent over at a ninety degree angle, arms out at their sides, their free legs stuck out straight behind them, like a squadron of Lycra swans about to take flight.
A chestnut-haired Jewess walked amongst the group, correcting the angles of legs and arms, intoning in a sing-song voice, “OK ladies flat backs, flat backs now stay here, stay here, breathing into the pose, now we’re cultivating our attention, cultivating our attention to the present moment. Good. Now on the next exhale bringing the right foot back to the floor, Warrior One, arms in prayer position over your head, now arms down to your third eye, your forehead, third eye, yes, that’s good, now feet back to Mountain Pose, hands to your heart...” The canned melody of a cell phone suddenly cut the air in the room. One of the women broke position and scurried over to a corner to answer it.
The Jewess barely acknowledged the distraction. “Outside Trina, outside,” she pointed towards the door, then paused to pull gently on one of the student’s shoulders. She walked back to the front of the room. “Now inhale, lift you arms over your head, fold over your chin, your truth, yes, inhale, bending your knees, now your right foot back, left foot back, now into Downward Dog, let your knees kiss the earth, now fold back into Child’s Pose...” She spotted me. Her face registered surprise for a moment, then softened again. She held my gaze and continued speaking to the class. “OK. We’re going to stay here for awhile, we’re breathing, we’re breathing...”
Moments later she walked into the reception area and stopped in front of us, her hands on her hips. “David Mead,” she apprised, folding her hands across her chest. “Nice of you to show up. You’re about seven years late.”
“Woah,” said Stan.
Liz Workman had soft, almond-shaped eyes and the body of a dancer. We both lived in New York once. In between classes at Columbia and commuting from the Upper West Side to my apartment in the East Village, she had usually managed to burn about 4,000 calories a day. In a gym, on a bike, at the running path around the Central Park reservoir, in a yoga studio... Liz was all action.
“This is my dog, Stan.” Stan hated it when I used him as a social lubricant. I hoped he could see that I was in a bind.
She crouched down and stroked his head several times. “Stan. That sounds like a detective or something. Would you mind if I call you Stanley?”
“You can call me Doryce,” said Stan, his eyes half-closed under the pleasure of her caresses, nose twitching uncontrollably, “if you want.”
“What a big nose you have,” she said.
“Ahem. So,” I began, “I know this is kind of awkward, and I really hate to bother you.”
“It’s no bother,” she replied, standing back up. “Look, I’m not mad at you anymore. You can stop hunching.”
I straightened my back and cracked my knuckles.
“Whatever happened, it’s fine. Let’s be in the present moment. You have come here for a reason, Grasshopper” she smiled, spreading her arms, “ now talk to the fucking Goddess.”
She was radiant. “Could I still buy you that sushi I promised you seven years ago?”
“Ha.” She considered for a moment. “How about this. I will allow you to chaperon Stan and I to dinner. I get to choose the place.”
“Great.”
"And you can pay," she added.
"Fine."
“‘A woman is like a tea bag,’“ quoth Stan, “‘you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.’“
“Sylvia Plath?” asked Liz.
“Nancy Reagan,” cooed Stan.
“’Baby, you can drive my car,’” she smiled, and walked back into the studio to finish her class.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part IV
The digital clock in the Honda read 3:17 as we merged into the mess of Southbound traffic on I-65. According to WPLN, the local NPR station, someone had set the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue near the Harding Place exit on fire. The Northbound lanes of the Interstate would be closed until the blaze, flames from which were reported to be fifty feet high, could be contained. The commuters in the Southbound lanes were engaged in enough rubbernecking to slow traffic to a crawl, so Stan and I were able to get a long look at the spectacle as we approached.
The statue had long been a source of controversy, as much for the racist subtext it offered as the sheer absurdity of its execution. For the recreation of the infamous Confederate general was not a traditional rendering involving carved granite and a somber expression but rather a wildly cartoonish, forty-foot tall exaggeration featuring Forrest, the future Imperial Wizard of the KKK, madly waving a pistol while riding an oversize horse rearing up on its hind legs. The general and his steed seemed more poised to charge into straight into an animated segment of Hee-Haw than the Battle of Gettysburg.
Now completely engulfed in flames, the effigy resembled a demon sent up from the gates of Hell. Eight of the twelve Confederate flags that surrounded it were also on fire, adding a certain amount of pageantry to the slow procession of traffic now creeping by on the highway.
“It’s about time,” Stan opined from the passenger seat before cracking the seal on a fresh fifth of E&J brandy.
“But how do you set a statue on fire?” I wondered.
As if on cue, the news announcer on WPLN cut into Fresh Air to report that a break-in had occurred at the nearby National Guard Armory sometime the night before. Twenty gallons of military grade acetone had been stolen, birthing a theory that the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue might have been doused in the chemical before being set alight. Depending on how long the the highly-flammable solution had been allowed to soak into the porous clay of the statue before ignition, a local fire chief stated, the fire might burn unabated for quite some time.
A few miles after negotiating the log jam near the burning statue, we got off the Interstate at the Concord Road exit. After winding through several miles of pasture dotted with gated clusters of faceless suburban mansions, we turned into a dirt road hidden in a clump of poplar trees. We followed the bumpy drive for another half mile before coming to a stop in front of a plain white clapboard farm house with a barn behind it. Stan hopped out of the car and immediately vomited on the grass. I took in the surroundings and began making my way toward the barn, from which the unmistakable sounds of classic soft rock were emanating. We paused by the door to listen.
You’re a rich girl
And you’ve gone too far
But you know it won’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money
“What the hell,” said Stan.
“This is getting weirder by the minute,” I agreed.
The barn’s interior was fairly traditional, a long, dusty, rectangular space with hay lofts running along each side, its only incongruity a decidedly non-pastoral sound stage that had been built at the far end of it. PA speakers were stacked on either side of the stage and a rudimentary light scaffolding holding eight or nine gel pots was hung over it, suspended by the hay lofts on either side.
Two men, blond and brunette mirror images of each other, stood front and center in a group of four backing musicians, the brunette strumming an electric guitar and singing background vocals, the blond holding a microphone and singing lead, his hips gyrating ever so slightly to the beat of the kick drum. Both wore black shirts with military epaulets on the shoulders and striped skinny ties, loosened, I assumed, because of the heat. They were tall, both over six feet. And both sported hair styles featuring long, wispy bangs that recalled several female leads from early Burt Reynolds films.
The song they were playing suddenly halted for a beat, then kicked back into a dramatic new section, prompting the blond man to bend at the waist and wave his right hand in the air while singing:
And don’t you know! don’t you know?
That it’s wrong to take what is given you
So far gone! on your own
You can get along if you try to be strong
But you’ll never be strong
“This is terrible,” yelled Stan from the bale of hay upon which he had situated himself. He began barking uncontrollably, then broke into long, ear-shattering howls. Onstage, the blond singer opened his eyes, looked around him, then squinted out into the barn.
“Hold it,” he said into the microphone. The band kept playing, egged on by the dark-headed twin, who was now turned back towards the drummer, shaking his head back and forth as if afflicted with an unpleasant condition.
“STOP!” The blond singer shouted into his mic. The band stopped.
“Hi,” I waved towards the stage. “I’m Andrew. I spoke with you on the phone earlier?”
The entire band was squinting out into the barn now, some shielding their eyes from the stage lights as if staring into a blinding sunset.
“This is a closed rehearsal,” the blond singer said, his voice booming through the PA, dripping with reverb.
“No man, it’s cool, it’s cool,” said the dark one, waving his arms as if guiding a plane into a gate. “Come on up. We can’t see you out there.”
I approached the stage. “Sorry to interrupt. I thought we had a four o’clock appointment.”
“Yeah, totally,” said the brunette, who promptly took of his guitar, jumped off the front of the stage and extended his hand. “I’m Peter.”
“Peter Bradley Adams?”
“P-Bra, if you’re nasty.” He giggled and winked. “Did you bring your assistant?”
I pointed at Stan, still on the hay bale, sniffing the air intently.
“Oh,” Adams laughed, “the dog. Right. That’s totally cool. What’s his name?”
“Stan. And this must be Mr. Trebing?” I pointed toward the blond singer, who was still onstage, leaning on a microphone stand, eyeing us warily.
“Right. Hey Jonathan,” said Adams, “this is the guy from CAA. And his dog.”
"CAA?" asked Trebing.
"The booking agency, dude."
Trebing straightened and jumped off the stage, jogged over and shook my hand. “Jonathan Trebing,” he smiled, pumping my arm, “great to meet you.” He looked at Peter. “Dude,” he hissed, “you didn’t even tell me he was coming today.”
“Dude, I totally forgot. It was, like, totally last minute.”
Trebing relented. “That’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it. So, Andrew, you, like, want a beer?”
Stan had come up with the idea of impersonating a talent agent. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me as I had spent my first year in Nashville interning at Buddy Rich, an old school Music Row booking agency. The deception was necessary as neither Adams nor Trebing, or Deaderick, for that matter, knew our real motives for being there. The situation would require a certain amount of finesse.
“Why must you play that shitty geriatric music?” asked Stan, reclining on his elbows, halfway into his first E&J.
Trebing and Adams, seated together on a bale of hay, looked at each other and laughed nervously. “Uh, dude,” said Trebing. “No disrespect, but Hall and Oates did not make shitty music.”
“12 top ten singles in four years,” added Adams. “That’s like, our whole set.”
“I think what Stan really wants to know,” I interjected, “is why you stopped playing your own songs and formed One on One.”
“Oh, that,” said Trebing. “It was an aesthetic choice, really. I mean, like, dudes with acoustic guitars are, like, just not fashionable anymore. I mean, like, leave it alone already? Gordon Lightfoot had that shit totally wrapped up back in the 80’s.”
“70’s, dude,” Adams corrected.
“Whatever. Like, I’m not a fucking historian. The point is...” Trebing smoothed his bangs across his forehead a few times. “Um. We’ve totally found our audience now.”
“One on One is the premier Hall and Oates tribute band in the country. We’re unchallenged,” claimed Adams. “I mean, unbeatable.”
“Yeah,” agreed Trebing.
Stan let out a deep belch, then added, “I heard you guys really tore it up at the Tashian/Fish wedding.”
“Oh yeah, man, that was, like, an amazing gig,” said Adams.
“Dude, that gig was totally like, an artistic high point for me?” Trebing took a swig from his Miller Lite. “I’m a sucker for fat girls in tight dresses.” He stared off toward the horse stables.
“That reminds me, I think you guys know a friend of mine. Rachel Heusenstamm?” I lied.
“Oh yeah. She was my roommate before we bought this place. Not fat,” said Trebing.
“So hot,” said Adams.
“Yeah, Peter’s been so into her for, like, forever,” laughed Trebing.
“Really?” I prodded.
“Yeah, like, I totally thought I was, like, in there at the wedding, right? I was at her table during a set break, like, totally vibing with her? It was so intense. Then...”
Trebing broke into a monotone giggle that sounded like a short-circuiting fog horn.
“Shut up, dude,” said Adams.
“Then what?” I asked.
Adams placed his elbows on his knees before continuing. “I don’t know, man, it was so weird.”
“She went totally mental,” giggled Trebing, leaning to his left and almost falling of the hay bale.
“Like, this dude? John Deaderick... you know him?”
I shook my head.
“He comes up to the table to say something and, before he can even open his mouth, Rachel just, like, turns around and slaps him? Like, as hard as she can.”
“Really?” I feigned surprise. “That’s odd. Why?”
“No fucking idea man, no fucking clue,” Adams shook his head. “We thought it was funny but Deaderick got all red and walked off. I think he was, like, really pissed.”
“She creamed him,” said Trebing. “Had to hurt. We were totally laughing and shit.”
“ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ “ Stan added, then continued to sniff a large pile of horse excrement in the corner of the barn.
“Dude, is your dog high?” asked Adams.
“So,” I redirected, “do you think you might have said something to Miss Heusenstamm that made her hit Mr. Deaderick?”
“No way. I was, like, reciting the second verse of ‘Did It In A Minute’... which, by the way, always works with chicks, you should try it sometime.”
“Totally,” Trebing confirmed.
“Interesting. So you’re telling me that Miss Heusenstamm was totally, um, absorbed in your conversation, didn’t even see M. Deaderick approach the table?”
“Uh-uh.” Adams exchanged looks with Trebing. “Dude... Andrew... Like, no disrespect or anything, but, like, can CAA get us some corporate gigs?”
“Yeah man,” Trebing added, “that shit pays!” He and Adams high-fived and drained the rest of their beers.
The sun was just beginning to set behind the farms along Hillsboro Road. It was on this road, seven years ago, that I had driven Stan, an innocent, six-month old puppy, back to my apartment on Belmont Boulevard for the first time. The girl at the rescue shelter had described him as having a real “personality,” which he had quickly demonstrated by pooping on the passenger seat and then speaking his first words to me: “Can you do something about this?”
As I watched him staring out the passenger window, surveying the wide-open farm land, sniffing all of the scents of Summer through his adult nose, I wondered if it all might have been a mistake. Stan could have been ended up on one of those farms, running and carousing to his heart’s content, a healthy, vibrant animal untainted by the seamier aspects of urban life, herding sheep instead of chasing criminals, sleeping under a warm eiderdown with a freckled child named Jimmy instead of waking up in a dive bar with immigrant prostitutes. I could only hope that the over-socialization to which I had exposed him had not left him completely jaded, had not totally diminished his proximity to the eternal possibilities of the human race.
“What a couple of whack jobs,” he muttered, slumping back into the passenger seat. “I’ve shaken down Bull Terrier’s with more talent.”
“Well,” I reasoned, “it wasn’t a total waste of time. At least we know now that Heusenstamm wasn't reacting to something that Adams said. Unless she is habitually driven to violence by Hall and Oates lyrics.”
“Not unheard of,” said Stan.
“Did you get anything?”
“Of course,” He leaned over for me to light his fresh cigarillo, “although it was a exceptionally difficult to decipher much through the goddamn barnyard stench. However,” he continued, blowing smoke through the cracked passenger window, “I can tell you that, A, the horses have too much corn in their feed, B, the drummer has a bit of a cocaine problem, C, the wiring is faulty in the lighting rig and, D... Adams and Trebing both have traces of a very particular aromatic oil on them.”
“Well, they have the same haircut, too.”
“No, no,” he waved a paw in the air. “This was an olbilatum/lavender/sandalwood mix. A custom blend from Aveda. Distinctly feminine. There’s no way those two bought it for themselves.”
“OK, so...”
“The scent was old. I would say it had been there for a week, maybe a little over.”
"You don't think..."
“I need to get close enough to Heusenstamm to find out if it’s her scent.”
“And if it’s on both of them...”
“... this thing is darker and dirtier than I first imagined.” He flicked the cigarillo out the window and yawned. “Heusenstamm. Never trust a Kraut.”
The statue had long been a source of controversy, as much for the racist subtext it offered as the sheer absurdity of its execution. For the recreation of the infamous Confederate general was not a traditional rendering involving carved granite and a somber expression but rather a wildly cartoonish, forty-foot tall exaggeration featuring Forrest, the future Imperial Wizard of the KKK, madly waving a pistol while riding an oversize horse rearing up on its hind legs. The general and his steed seemed more poised to charge into straight into an animated segment of Hee-Haw than the Battle of Gettysburg.
Now completely engulfed in flames, the effigy resembled a demon sent up from the gates of Hell. Eight of the twelve Confederate flags that surrounded it were also on fire, adding a certain amount of pageantry to the slow procession of traffic now creeping by on the highway.
“It’s about time,” Stan opined from the passenger seat before cracking the seal on a fresh fifth of E&J brandy.
“But how do you set a statue on fire?” I wondered.
As if on cue, the news announcer on WPLN cut into Fresh Air to report that a break-in had occurred at the nearby National Guard Armory sometime the night before. Twenty gallons of military grade acetone had been stolen, birthing a theory that the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue might have been doused in the chemical before being set alight. Depending on how long the the highly-flammable solution had been allowed to soak into the porous clay of the statue before ignition, a local fire chief stated, the fire might burn unabated for quite some time.
A few miles after negotiating the log jam near the burning statue, we got off the Interstate at the Concord Road exit. After winding through several miles of pasture dotted with gated clusters of faceless suburban mansions, we turned into a dirt road hidden in a clump of poplar trees. We followed the bumpy drive for another half mile before coming to a stop in front of a plain white clapboard farm house with a barn behind it. Stan hopped out of the car and immediately vomited on the grass. I took in the surroundings and began making my way toward the barn, from which the unmistakable sounds of classic soft rock were emanating. We paused by the door to listen.
You’re a rich girl
And you’ve gone too far
But you know it won’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money
“What the hell,” said Stan.
“This is getting weirder by the minute,” I agreed.
The barn’s interior was fairly traditional, a long, dusty, rectangular space with hay lofts running along each side, its only incongruity a decidedly non-pastoral sound stage that had been built at the far end of it. PA speakers were stacked on either side of the stage and a rudimentary light scaffolding holding eight or nine gel pots was hung over it, suspended by the hay lofts on either side.
Two men, blond and brunette mirror images of each other, stood front and center in a group of four backing musicians, the brunette strumming an electric guitar and singing background vocals, the blond holding a microphone and singing lead, his hips gyrating ever so slightly to the beat of the kick drum. Both wore black shirts with military epaulets on the shoulders and striped skinny ties, loosened, I assumed, because of the heat. They were tall, both over six feet. And both sported hair styles featuring long, wispy bangs that recalled several female leads from early Burt Reynolds films.
The song they were playing suddenly halted for a beat, then kicked back into a dramatic new section, prompting the blond man to bend at the waist and wave his right hand in the air while singing:
And don’t you know! don’t you know?
That it’s wrong to take what is given you
So far gone! on your own
You can get along if you try to be strong
But you’ll never be strong
“This is terrible,” yelled Stan from the bale of hay upon which he had situated himself. He began barking uncontrollably, then broke into long, ear-shattering howls. Onstage, the blond singer opened his eyes, looked around him, then squinted out into the barn.
“Hold it,” he said into the microphone. The band kept playing, egged on by the dark-headed twin, who was now turned back towards the drummer, shaking his head back and forth as if afflicted with an unpleasant condition.
“STOP!” The blond singer shouted into his mic. The band stopped.
“Hi,” I waved towards the stage. “I’m Andrew. I spoke with you on the phone earlier?”
The entire band was squinting out into the barn now, some shielding their eyes from the stage lights as if staring into a blinding sunset.
“This is a closed rehearsal,” the blond singer said, his voice booming through the PA, dripping with reverb.
“No man, it’s cool, it’s cool,” said the dark one, waving his arms as if guiding a plane into a gate. “Come on up. We can’t see you out there.”
I approached the stage. “Sorry to interrupt. I thought we had a four o’clock appointment.”
“Yeah, totally,” said the brunette, who promptly took of his guitar, jumped off the front of the stage and extended his hand. “I’m Peter.”
“Peter Bradley Adams?”
“P-Bra, if you’re nasty.” He giggled and winked. “Did you bring your assistant?”
I pointed at Stan, still on the hay bale, sniffing the air intently.
“Oh,” Adams laughed, “the dog. Right. That’s totally cool. What’s his name?”
“Stan. And this must be Mr. Trebing?” I pointed toward the blond singer, who was still onstage, leaning on a microphone stand, eyeing us warily.
“Right. Hey Jonathan,” said Adams, “this is the guy from CAA. And his dog.”
"CAA?" asked Trebing.
"The booking agency, dude."
Trebing straightened and jumped off the stage, jogged over and shook my hand. “Jonathan Trebing,” he smiled, pumping my arm, “great to meet you.” He looked at Peter. “Dude,” he hissed, “you didn’t even tell me he was coming today.”
“Dude, I totally forgot. It was, like, totally last minute.”
Trebing relented. “That’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it. So, Andrew, you, like, want a beer?”
Stan had come up with the idea of impersonating a talent agent. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me as I had spent my first year in Nashville interning at Buddy Rich, an old school Music Row booking agency. The deception was necessary as neither Adams nor Trebing, or Deaderick, for that matter, knew our real motives for being there. The situation would require a certain amount of finesse.
“Why must you play that shitty geriatric music?” asked Stan, reclining on his elbows, halfway into his first E&J.
Trebing and Adams, seated together on a bale of hay, looked at each other and laughed nervously. “Uh, dude,” said Trebing. “No disrespect, but Hall and Oates did not make shitty music.”
“12 top ten singles in four years,” added Adams. “That’s like, our whole set.”
“I think what Stan really wants to know,” I interjected, “is why you stopped playing your own songs and formed One on One.”
“Oh, that,” said Trebing. “It was an aesthetic choice, really. I mean, like, dudes with acoustic guitars are, like, just not fashionable anymore. I mean, like, leave it alone already? Gordon Lightfoot had that shit totally wrapped up back in the 80’s.”
“70’s, dude,” Adams corrected.
“Whatever. Like, I’m not a fucking historian. The point is...” Trebing smoothed his bangs across his forehead a few times. “Um. We’ve totally found our audience now.”
“One on One is the premier Hall and Oates tribute band in the country. We’re unchallenged,” claimed Adams. “I mean, unbeatable.”
“Yeah,” agreed Trebing.
Stan let out a deep belch, then added, “I heard you guys really tore it up at the Tashian/Fish wedding.”
“Oh yeah, man, that was, like, an amazing gig,” said Adams.
“Dude, that gig was totally like, an artistic high point for me?” Trebing took a swig from his Miller Lite. “I’m a sucker for fat girls in tight dresses.” He stared off toward the horse stables.
“That reminds me, I think you guys know a friend of mine. Rachel Heusenstamm?” I lied.
“Oh yeah. She was my roommate before we bought this place. Not fat,” said Trebing.
“So hot,” said Adams.
“Yeah, Peter’s been so into her for, like, forever,” laughed Trebing.
“Really?” I prodded.
“Yeah, like, I totally thought I was, like, in there at the wedding, right? I was at her table during a set break, like, totally vibing with her? It was so intense. Then...”
Trebing broke into a monotone giggle that sounded like a short-circuiting fog horn.
“Shut up, dude,” said Adams.
“Then what?” I asked.
Adams placed his elbows on his knees before continuing. “I don’t know, man, it was so weird.”
“She went totally mental,” giggled Trebing, leaning to his left and almost falling of the hay bale.
“Like, this dude? John Deaderick... you know him?”
I shook my head.
“He comes up to the table to say something and, before he can even open his mouth, Rachel just, like, turns around and slaps him? Like, as hard as she can.”
“Really?” I feigned surprise. “That’s odd. Why?”
“No fucking idea man, no fucking clue,” Adams shook his head. “We thought it was funny but Deaderick got all red and walked off. I think he was, like, really pissed.”
“She creamed him,” said Trebing. “Had to hurt. We were totally laughing and shit.”
“ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ “ Stan added, then continued to sniff a large pile of horse excrement in the corner of the barn.
“Dude, is your dog high?” asked Adams.
“So,” I redirected, “do you think you might have said something to Miss Heusenstamm that made her hit Mr. Deaderick?”
“No way. I was, like, reciting the second verse of ‘Did It In A Minute’... which, by the way, always works with chicks, you should try it sometime.”
“Totally,” Trebing confirmed.
“Interesting. So you’re telling me that Miss Heusenstamm was totally, um, absorbed in your conversation, didn’t even see M. Deaderick approach the table?”
“Uh-uh.” Adams exchanged looks with Trebing. “Dude... Andrew... Like, no disrespect or anything, but, like, can CAA get us some corporate gigs?”
“Yeah man,” Trebing added, “that shit pays!” He and Adams high-fived and drained the rest of their beers.
The sun was just beginning to set behind the farms along Hillsboro Road. It was on this road, seven years ago, that I had driven Stan, an innocent, six-month old puppy, back to my apartment on Belmont Boulevard for the first time. The girl at the rescue shelter had described him as having a real “personality,” which he had quickly demonstrated by pooping on the passenger seat and then speaking his first words to me: “Can you do something about this?”
As I watched him staring out the passenger window, surveying the wide-open farm land, sniffing all of the scents of Summer through his adult nose, I wondered if it all might have been a mistake. Stan could have been ended up on one of those farms, running and carousing to his heart’s content, a healthy, vibrant animal untainted by the seamier aspects of urban life, herding sheep instead of chasing criminals, sleeping under a warm eiderdown with a freckled child named Jimmy instead of waking up in a dive bar with immigrant prostitutes. I could only hope that the over-socialization to which I had exposed him had not left him completely jaded, had not totally diminished his proximity to the eternal possibilities of the human race.
“What a couple of whack jobs,” he muttered, slumping back into the passenger seat. “I’ve shaken down Bull Terrier’s with more talent.”
“Well,” I reasoned, “it wasn’t a total waste of time. At least we know now that Heusenstamm wasn't reacting to something that Adams said. Unless she is habitually driven to violence by Hall and Oates lyrics.”
“Not unheard of,” said Stan.
“Did you get anything?”
“Of course,” He leaned over for me to light his fresh cigarillo, “although it was a exceptionally difficult to decipher much through the goddamn barnyard stench. However,” he continued, blowing smoke through the cracked passenger window, “I can tell you that, A, the horses have too much corn in their feed, B, the drummer has a bit of a cocaine problem, C, the wiring is faulty in the lighting rig and, D... Adams and Trebing both have traces of a very particular aromatic oil on them.”
“Well, they have the same haircut, too.”
“No, no,” he waved a paw in the air. “This was an olbilatum/lavender/sandalwood mix. A custom blend from Aveda. Distinctly feminine. There’s no way those two bought it for themselves.”
“OK, so...”
“The scent was old. I would say it had been there for a week, maybe a little over.”
"You don't think..."
“I need to get close enough to Heusenstamm to find out if it’s her scent.”
“And if it’s on both of them...”
“... this thing is darker and dirtier than I first imagined.” He flicked the cigarillo out the window and yawned. “Heusenstamm. Never trust a Kraut.”
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part III
The Hermitage Cafe was one of Nashville’s last surviving greasy spoon’s. Perched on a hill overlooking a power plant, an industrial dump and, almost as an afterthought, the Cumberland River, The Hermitage served up such Southern staples as biscuits n’ gravy, steak n’ eggs and, on occasion, and when the customer provided the necessary ingredients, a Vegemite omelette.
“I love this place,” said Stan, as our waitress slid a plate bearing the stinking omelette in front of him. “Thanks, Sweetie.” The waitress glared at him as she moved to the next table. He rose from his haunches, put his snout to the plate and began devouring the omelette in noisy gulps.
“OK, here’s how it breaks down,” I began. “Our principal is a Caucasian male, mid-thirties, name John Deaderick. Lives on the East Side.”
“Ah, the East Side.” Stan chewed his eggs and looked out the window towards the river. Terrified of water, he had never been able to bring himself to cross the Cumberland despite the glowing reports of debauchery to be found in the city’s perennial bohemian enclave. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.”
“Deaderick claims to have been assaulted by a woman, Rachel Heusenstamm...”
“Goddamn Kraut,” said Stan.
“... at a wedding... what did you say?”
He finished his omelette with one last slurp and nestled into the Formica bench. “I’m just saying, you should never trust a German.” He gave his ear a few tentative scratches with his hind paw. He was obviously still drunk.
“What is this, 1944? You don’t even know if she’s German.”
“Well, I think we can safely assume that she’s not Irish.” He grabbed a fresh cigarillo from the table with his teeth. “Light, please.”
I touched the flame of my lighter to the tip of his cigarillo and pressed on. “As I was saying. Deaderick claims Heusenstamm, totally unprovoked, slapped him at the wedding of,” I checked my notebook, “Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish.”
“Fish, now that’s a good Irish name.”
“She hit him hard, apparently. He’s got a sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it.”
“’A sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it’,” Stan mocked. “Someone has been hitting the Law and Order re-runs a little hard in my absence.”
Well, maybe I had. “Just trying to give you the whole picture. I went to Deaderick’s house this morning.” I gave a brief but detailed summarization of the visit. “Something’s not quite right over there.”
“I’ll say,” said Stan, dropping the butt of his cigarillo to the floor. “Anyone with that much vintage Danish porn should definitely not have a Doberman in the house. So you’re thinking that Deaderick isn’t giving you the full story?”
“He’s definitely hiding something.”
“What does he want us to do, anyway?”
I told him.
“Sweet Christ.” He stuck his snout into his coffee cup and finished the last of the crappy brew in four dunks of his tongue. “We’ll need more information, then. You have to talk to everyone that was at that table.”
“I know.”
“And the Kraut. Music Stand.”
“Heusenstamm.”
“Whatever. So who’s first?”
I checked my notes again. “Two musicians. Jonathan Trebing and Peter Bradley Adams.”
Stan farted loudly against the formica, turning the heads of several diners in our direction. “I wonder,” he mused, “if it will ever be possible to get to the bottom of any questionable circumstance in this town without having to consult,” his tone hardened, “musicians.”
“Probably not,” I surmised.
“Music City, U.S.A.” He hopped down from the bench and stretched his shoulders, then popped up, tail wagging. “Alright, then. Duty calls.” He walked toward the door.
Two guys in mesh trucker’s hats sitting at the counter clocked as we passed. “You better git that dawg outa here ‘fore I shoot it,” one of them cackled.
“We were just leaving,” I said.
“Go fuck yourself,” added Stan.
“I love this place,” said Stan, as our waitress slid a plate bearing the stinking omelette in front of him. “Thanks, Sweetie.” The waitress glared at him as she moved to the next table. He rose from his haunches, put his snout to the plate and began devouring the omelette in noisy gulps.
“OK, here’s how it breaks down,” I began. “Our principal is a Caucasian male, mid-thirties, name John Deaderick. Lives on the East Side.”
“Ah, the East Side.” Stan chewed his eggs and looked out the window towards the river. Terrified of water, he had never been able to bring himself to cross the Cumberland despite the glowing reports of debauchery to be found in the city’s perennial bohemian enclave. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.”
“Deaderick claims to have been assaulted by a woman, Rachel Heusenstamm...”
“Goddamn Kraut,” said Stan.
“... at a wedding... what did you say?”
He finished his omelette with one last slurp and nestled into the Formica bench. “I’m just saying, you should never trust a German.” He gave his ear a few tentative scratches with his hind paw. He was obviously still drunk.
“What is this, 1944? You don’t even know if she’s German.”
“Well, I think we can safely assume that she’s not Irish.” He grabbed a fresh cigarillo from the table with his teeth. “Light, please.”
I touched the flame of my lighter to the tip of his cigarillo and pressed on. “As I was saying. Deaderick claims Heusenstamm, totally unprovoked, slapped him at the wedding of,” I checked my notebook, “Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish.”
“Fish, now that’s a good Irish name.”
“She hit him hard, apparently. He’s got a sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it.”
“’A sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it’,” Stan mocked. “Someone has been hitting the Law and Order re-runs a little hard in my absence.”
Well, maybe I had. “Just trying to give you the whole picture. I went to Deaderick’s house this morning.” I gave a brief but detailed summarization of the visit. “Something’s not quite right over there.”
“I’ll say,” said Stan, dropping the butt of his cigarillo to the floor. “Anyone with that much vintage Danish porn should definitely not have a Doberman in the house. So you’re thinking that Deaderick isn’t giving you the full story?”
“He’s definitely hiding something.”
“What does he want us to do, anyway?”
I told him.
“Sweet Christ.” He stuck his snout into his coffee cup and finished the last of the crappy brew in four dunks of his tongue. “We’ll need more information, then. You have to talk to everyone that was at that table.”
“I know.”
“And the Kraut. Music Stand.”
“Heusenstamm.”
“Whatever. So who’s first?”
I checked my notes again. “Two musicians. Jonathan Trebing and Peter Bradley Adams.”
Stan farted loudly against the formica, turning the heads of several diners in our direction. “I wonder,” he mused, “if it will ever be possible to get to the bottom of any questionable circumstance in this town without having to consult,” his tone hardened, “musicians.”
“Probably not,” I surmised.
“Music City, U.S.A.” He hopped down from the bench and stretched his shoulders, then popped up, tail wagging. “Alright, then. Duty calls.” He walked toward the door.
Two guys in mesh trucker’s hats sitting at the counter clocked as we passed. “You better git that dawg outa here ‘fore I shoot it,” one of them cackled.
“We were just leaving,” I said.
“Go fuck yourself,” added Stan.
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part II
Dickerson Pike was one of the last streets in Nashville to officially qualify as ‘no man’s land.’ By 2009, you could drive into just about any beat-up neighborhood in the greater metropolitan area and find a few young upwardly mobile couples renovating an old Victorian, planting a new bed of chrysanthemums and establishing a Neighborhood Watch program. A string of surprisingly progressive mayors had extended enough corporate tax credits to free up discretionary funding for improving the decaying urban infrastructure. It was all very pretty on the surface, but the bike lanes, greenways and multiple Whole Foods locations had not yet covered up the city’s dirty underbelly. A few hidden pockets of serious deviance could still be sniffed out, most of them in the vicinity of Dickerson Pike. And my dog Stan, quite literally, could smell a fresh pile of shit from miles away.
“He’s in the back,” said Carmen, the afternoon bartender at Stinky’s. I nodded my appreciation and began picking my way through the alcoholic obstacle course of sagging chairs, wobbly Formica tables and random drunks passed out on the floor. Stinky’s was an agglomeration of three gutted mobile homes yoked together in the shape of a horse shoe, lit exclusively by decrepit beer signs and a few fluorescent black lights with flickering bulbs. The air was heavy, humid with the swell of cigarette butts floating in cheap beer.
I found Stan in his usual booth, comatose on his back, his pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. An Albanian hooker named Svetlana was tenderly stroking the length of his furry white belly.
“How long has he been here?” I asked.
“He write za zong to make za young girl cry,” Svetlana sang, blissfully out of tune, “Schtan write za zong, Schtan write za zong.”
I slid into the booth across from her, right next to Stan’s head. “That’s nice, Svetlana.” I placed my hand next to his mouth. He was still breathing. I pinched his nose between my fingers and gave his snout a firm but gentle shake.
“Stan. Stan, wake up.”
His eyes opened halfway, blood-shot and crusty. “Svetlana, Svetlana,” he murmured, “ ‘we loved with a love that was more than love.’ “
“Oh, my schveet bootiful bebbeh,” said Svetlana, moving her hand from his belly to the white folds of skin around his collar.
“OK, that’s enough,” I pushed her hand away. “Stan, get up.” I gave him a light slap on his jaw. “We got a job.”
He opened his eyes a bit wider and twitched his nose back and forth a few times. “Ah,” he yawned, the toxic fumes of his breath making my eyes water, “the drought has ended.” He rolled over and fell from the booth to the dirty carpet, landing with an impressive thud.
“Oh, Schtanny,” cooed Svetlana, peering under the table.
“He’s alright,” I assured her.
“Oh what a beautiful morning,” sang Stan, padding out from beneath the table, “oh what a beautiful day.”
“OK, buddy,” I encouraged, “let’s go to the Hermitage and get some coffee in you. This one is important.”
“Aye Aye, Cap’n,” he said, raising his leg to urinate on a wall of fake pine paneling. “One more for the road, then we’re off. Svetlana? Another chardonnay?”
“Ooooh, you dirta dawg.”
“Stan.” I pulled a red leather leash out of my jacket pocket and held it out towards him. “You’re leaving me no choice.”
He lowered his head and stared at the floor. “You bastard. How dare you,” he whispered.
“Svetlana,” I said, reaching for my wallet, “how much does he owe you?”
“Oh, eetz OK,” she smiled. “Ee buy za drinks. Dee rest eez eazy,” she confided, blowing a kiss toward Stan as he waddled towards the back door. “Eee ash no ballz.”
“He’s in the back,” said Carmen, the afternoon bartender at Stinky’s. I nodded my appreciation and began picking my way through the alcoholic obstacle course of sagging chairs, wobbly Formica tables and random drunks passed out on the floor. Stinky’s was an agglomeration of three gutted mobile homes yoked together in the shape of a horse shoe, lit exclusively by decrepit beer signs and a few fluorescent black lights with flickering bulbs. The air was heavy, humid with the swell of cigarette butts floating in cheap beer.
I found Stan in his usual booth, comatose on his back, his pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. An Albanian hooker named Svetlana was tenderly stroking the length of his furry white belly.
“How long has he been here?” I asked.
“He write za zong to make za young girl cry,” Svetlana sang, blissfully out of tune, “Schtan write za zong, Schtan write za zong.”
I slid into the booth across from her, right next to Stan’s head. “That’s nice, Svetlana.” I placed my hand next to his mouth. He was still breathing. I pinched his nose between my fingers and gave his snout a firm but gentle shake.
“Stan. Stan, wake up.”
His eyes opened halfway, blood-shot and crusty. “Svetlana, Svetlana,” he murmured, “ ‘we loved with a love that was more than love.’ “
“Oh, my schveet bootiful bebbeh,” said Svetlana, moving her hand from his belly to the white folds of skin around his collar.
“OK, that’s enough,” I pushed her hand away. “Stan, get up.” I gave him a light slap on his jaw. “We got a job.”
He opened his eyes a bit wider and twitched his nose back and forth a few times. “Ah,” he yawned, the toxic fumes of his breath making my eyes water, “the drought has ended.” He rolled over and fell from the booth to the dirty carpet, landing with an impressive thud.
“Oh, Schtanny,” cooed Svetlana, peering under the table.
“He’s alright,” I assured her.
“Oh what a beautiful morning,” sang Stan, padding out from beneath the table, “oh what a beautiful day.”
“OK, buddy,” I encouraged, “let’s go to the Hermitage and get some coffee in you. This one is important.”
“Aye Aye, Cap’n,” he said, raising his leg to urinate on a wall of fake pine paneling. “One more for the road, then we’re off. Svetlana? Another chardonnay?”
“Ooooh, you dirta dawg.”
“Stan.” I pulled a red leather leash out of my jacket pocket and held it out towards him. “You’re leaving me no choice.”
He lowered his head and stared at the floor. “You bastard. How dare you,” he whispered.
“Svetlana,” I said, reaching for my wallet, “how much does he owe you?”
“Oh, eetz OK,” she smiled. “Ee buy za drinks. Dee rest eez eazy,” she confided, blowing a kiss toward Stan as he waddled towards the back door. “Eee ash no ballz.”
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part I
By the droop of the dogwood tree in the front yard and the beads of sweat on the foreheads of passing housewives, I could tell that another steamy Nashville Summer was officially upon us. I had been staring out the front window for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, thinking of nothing in particular, wishing for a storm front to blow in from Wisconsin. There hadn’t been any action in the office for weeks. The outbox was piling up with unpaid bills and Stan had been on a bender for the last three days. Something had to give.
My cell phone began pumping out a popular European dance remix. Blocked caller. I assumed it was a collection agency but, feeling the need to explain something about something to someone, I hit the little green button and hoped for the best.
“Lifechangers. This is David speaking.”
“Uh, hello. May I speak with Stan?” A male voice, over thirty, Caucasian.
“Stan’s indisposed,” I lied, knowing full well that he was most likely holding court at Stinky’s, a fresh shot of E&J brandy by his left paw and two lines of Bolivian Marching Powder on the bar in front of him. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, I see. Um. Well, I have an issue.”
“OK. What seems to be the trouble, uh...”
“Marty,” he said, a little too quickly.
“Right. Marty. So what’s on your mind?”
He sighed. “I’ve been assaulted. By a woman. At a wedding.”
Two hours later I was pulling into the gravel driveway of a house in East Nashville, a gray vinyl-sided rancher with a bright red door. Before knocking I checked the name on a fresh copy of Dog Fancy that was poking out of the mailbox on the patio. John Deaderick. John Marty Deaderick? Doubtful.
The door opened to reveal a tall, thin man with broad shoulders and an intelligent forehead. He thanked me for coming, extended a firm handshake and led me back to a medium-sized kitchen. The dishes were neatly filed in a draining rack, the counter tops were spotless. A picture of a Doberman Pinscher was pinned to the refigerator with a John Deere magnet. Behind the scent of citrus Fabreze, the slightest tang of burnt coffee and recently-emptied ashtrays hung in the air like a bad memory.
“Do you like dogs, Marty?” I asked.
He looked confused for a moment, then remembered. “Oh yeah,” he replied. He pulled a glass bottle from the refrigerator and poured two glasses of pineapple juice. “That’s Latetitia, right outside.” From behind sliding glass doors that opened onto a back deck, the Doberman from the fridge was peering at me. Deaderick walked to the door and did a quick little jig in front of it. “She’s my sweetie, my honey-pie, my rag time gal,” he sang. The dog began pawing the glass with considerable force, long strands of saliva dripping from its jaws to the decking.
“So, Marty, got a wife, girlfriend?”
“Nope. Here, try some of this pineapple juice.” He grabbed the glasses from the counter. “It really wakes you up. It’s good for toothaches.” He sat down at the dining table across from me.
I pulled out my pad and pen.“Your teeth are bothering you?”
”My teeth are killing me.” He tapped a finger on the left side of his jaw. “This is where she popped me.”
The ‘she’ in question, he had explained to me on the phone that morning, was Rachel Heusenstamm, a 29 year-old graphic designer from Laguna Beach. The previous Saturday, at the wedding of Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish, Deaderick, after consuming two Pina Coladas and taking several turns around the dance floor, had approached a table at which several of his friends were seated, ostensibly to make a humorous comment.
“I’m a real wise-ass, a funny guy. People expect me to be funny,” he explained.
He was on his feet in the kitchen now, demonstrating for me how he had leaned on the table, palms down, taking a moment to establish eye contact with everyone at the table, who were, he assumed, waiting for him to say something funny. By this point, all of the guests were looking at him except one, the woman seated to his immediate right, exactly where I was now.
“... and then, out of nowhere, she turns around, barely even looking, and slaps me as hard as she can. Roundhouses me! I mean, it was crazy. Crazy!”
“And you had ever met her before?”
“Never!”
“So she had no obvious reason for hitting you.”
“Not unless you call crazy obvious. Crazy. Obvious. Nah.” He shook his head and considered he two empty juice glasses. “That shit was crazy, man. That’s obvious.”
“You said on the phone that you’re not interested in pressing charges.”
He put the glasses in the sink and turned, waving his finger in the air. “Hell no. I just want her to know what it feels like to get popped and not be able to do anything about it. Goddamn. If I’d hit someone that hard at the wedding they would have arrested me. But what’s gonna happen to her? Fuck all.” He finished washing the glasses, put them on the dish rack. “Assault! It’s not fair.”
“OK. So where does Lifechangers come in?”
“Who?”
“Lifechangers. It’s the name of our company.”
It took him five minutes of pacing and fingernail chewing to tell me what he wanted Stan and I to do. It would take a lifetime to forget doing it. But our cash flow had trickled to nothing. And I knew that Stan’s liver wouldn’t hold up under much more inactivity.
“Marty. What you’re asking me to do is not a task that will bring me any pleasure.” The pineapple juice had gone straight to my gums. I was edgy. “Our fee is non-negotiable. I require half up front, the rest to be paid upon third party confirmation that the deed has been done.”
“Fine with me.” He pulled a velcro Dixie Chicks wallet out of his back pocket and put five one hundred dollar bills on the table. I folded them into my money clip and settled back in my chair.
“First, we have get a few things straight. This kind of thing is going to require total honesty from you. We don’t need any bullshit clogging up the communication pipeline.”
“I know. I know.” He was back gnawing his fingernails again.
“Say, you wouldn’t have any coffee, would you... John?”
He stopped chewing a fingernail and raised his eyebrows at me.
“Look, Mr. Deaderick,” I began. “You don’t run this racket for 12 years without picking up a trick or two along the way.” I pulled a cigarette from my pack and lit up. “I’m a patient man, John. I eat black liquorice for breakfast. I ride a yellow bicycle.” I paused to exhale and ash on his floor. “Please don’t test my patience again.”
“I had to know if I could trust you.” He pulled a marble ash tray from behind a discreet stack of vintage Danish pornography and placed it in front of me. “I use Prell shampoo. I’m a Capricorn.” He looked out the glass doors, where Latetia was quietly pulling the head off of a dead squirrel. “My grandfather’s name was Marty.”
My cell phone began pumping out a popular European dance remix. Blocked caller. I assumed it was a collection agency but, feeling the need to explain something about something to someone, I hit the little green button and hoped for the best.
“Lifechangers. This is David speaking.”
“Uh, hello. May I speak with Stan?” A male voice, over thirty, Caucasian.
“Stan’s indisposed,” I lied, knowing full well that he was most likely holding court at Stinky’s, a fresh shot of E&J brandy by his left paw and two lines of Bolivian Marching Powder on the bar in front of him. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, I see. Um. Well, I have an issue.”
“OK. What seems to be the trouble, uh...”
“Marty,” he said, a little too quickly.
“Right. Marty. So what’s on your mind?”
He sighed. “I’ve been assaulted. By a woman. At a wedding.”
Two hours later I was pulling into the gravel driveway of a house in East Nashville, a gray vinyl-sided rancher with a bright red door. Before knocking I checked the name on a fresh copy of Dog Fancy that was poking out of the mailbox on the patio. John Deaderick. John Marty Deaderick? Doubtful.
The door opened to reveal a tall, thin man with broad shoulders and an intelligent forehead. He thanked me for coming, extended a firm handshake and led me back to a medium-sized kitchen. The dishes were neatly filed in a draining rack, the counter tops were spotless. A picture of a Doberman Pinscher was pinned to the refigerator with a John Deere magnet. Behind the scent of citrus Fabreze, the slightest tang of burnt coffee and recently-emptied ashtrays hung in the air like a bad memory.
“Do you like dogs, Marty?” I asked.
He looked confused for a moment, then remembered. “Oh yeah,” he replied. He pulled a glass bottle from the refrigerator and poured two glasses of pineapple juice. “That’s Latetitia, right outside.” From behind sliding glass doors that opened onto a back deck, the Doberman from the fridge was peering at me. Deaderick walked to the door and did a quick little jig in front of it. “She’s my sweetie, my honey-pie, my rag time gal,” he sang. The dog began pawing the glass with considerable force, long strands of saliva dripping from its jaws to the decking.
“So, Marty, got a wife, girlfriend?”
“Nope. Here, try some of this pineapple juice.” He grabbed the glasses from the counter. “It really wakes you up. It’s good for toothaches.” He sat down at the dining table across from me.
I pulled out my pad and pen.“Your teeth are bothering you?”
”My teeth are killing me.” He tapped a finger on the left side of his jaw. “This is where she popped me.”
The ‘she’ in question, he had explained to me on the phone that morning, was Rachel Heusenstamm, a 29 year-old graphic designer from Laguna Beach. The previous Saturday, at the wedding of Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish, Deaderick, after consuming two Pina Coladas and taking several turns around the dance floor, had approached a table at which several of his friends were seated, ostensibly to make a humorous comment.
“I’m a real wise-ass, a funny guy. People expect me to be funny,” he explained.
He was on his feet in the kitchen now, demonstrating for me how he had leaned on the table, palms down, taking a moment to establish eye contact with everyone at the table, who were, he assumed, waiting for him to say something funny. By this point, all of the guests were looking at him except one, the woman seated to his immediate right, exactly where I was now.
“... and then, out of nowhere, she turns around, barely even looking, and slaps me as hard as she can. Roundhouses me! I mean, it was crazy. Crazy!”
“And you had ever met her before?”
“Never!”
“So she had no obvious reason for hitting you.”
“Not unless you call crazy obvious. Crazy. Obvious. Nah.” He shook his head and considered he two empty juice glasses. “That shit was crazy, man. That’s obvious.”
“You said on the phone that you’re not interested in pressing charges.”
He put the glasses in the sink and turned, waving his finger in the air. “Hell no. I just want her to know what it feels like to get popped and not be able to do anything about it. Goddamn. If I’d hit someone that hard at the wedding they would have arrested me. But what’s gonna happen to her? Fuck all.” He finished washing the glasses, put them on the dish rack. “Assault! It’s not fair.”
“OK. So where does Lifechangers come in?”
“Who?”
“Lifechangers. It’s the name of our company.”
It took him five minutes of pacing and fingernail chewing to tell me what he wanted Stan and I to do. It would take a lifetime to forget doing it. But our cash flow had trickled to nothing. And I knew that Stan’s liver wouldn’t hold up under much more inactivity.
“Marty. What you’re asking me to do is not a task that will bring me any pleasure.” The pineapple juice had gone straight to my gums. I was edgy. “Our fee is non-negotiable. I require half up front, the rest to be paid upon third party confirmation that the deed has been done.”
“Fine with me.” He pulled a velcro Dixie Chicks wallet out of his back pocket and put five one hundred dollar bills on the table. I folded them into my money clip and settled back in my chair.
“First, we have get a few things straight. This kind of thing is going to require total honesty from you. We don’t need any bullshit clogging up the communication pipeline.”
“I know. I know.” He was back gnawing his fingernails again.
“Say, you wouldn’t have any coffee, would you... John?”
He stopped chewing a fingernail and raised his eyebrows at me.
“Look, Mr. Deaderick,” I began. “You don’t run this racket for 12 years without picking up a trick or two along the way.” I pulled a cigarette from my pack and lit up. “I’m a patient man, John. I eat black liquorice for breakfast. I ride a yellow bicycle.” I paused to exhale and ash on his floor. “Please don’t test my patience again.”
“I had to know if I could trust you.” He pulled a marble ash tray from behind a discreet stack of vintage Danish pornography and placed it in front of me. “I use Prell shampoo. I’m a Capricorn.” He looked out the glass doors, where Latetia was quietly pulling the head off of a dead squirrel. “My grandfather’s name was Marty.”
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