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tevotbegotnaught

Jul 11

The Key

"Ya don't have ya key?"Peter pushed open the building door, laughed, and stood back as it closed behind me."We only have one now and today my wife took it""Give ya one" He raised a hand and turned, sliding slippered feet across the lobby's tile floor, then up the landing toward his open apartment door. Inside, I could see the beaded curtains on his living room doorway. We celebrated there when he and Monica married, plates overflowing, Soca pumping from a triple stack of Klipsch horns, toasting with paint-removing Chocolate Creme liqueur from his home, Grenada.

In 1999, weeks before moving in, we handed Peter, our new Super, a repair and cleaning list. The day our truck pulled up, we could see the same cracked street-level window askew. I checked the bathtub. He'd used acid on the thick crud and plugged the drain to quicken the process, scarring the enamel down to its rusty iron core. When I told him we'd need tetanus shots after baths, he laughed but said he couldn't re-glaze the tub. Later that year, my parents visited over an Arctic December weekend. Asleep after a long, happy night, we woke to steady rain in the bathroom, the result of broken toilet float upstairs.Through his bolted door. Peter said,"It's tree-o'clock! Come back in de morning, lemme sleep."Unwilling to use the umbrella we stationed outside the bathroom, my father called the fire department, who broke the upstairs unit open and closed the toilet valve. Soon after, our landlord, an affectless Greek guy with a six-syllable last name, lost the job. The new manager installed his own Super. Peter moved to our floor and redoubled his side gig: a handyman truck he ran with a succession of young assistants.

21 years later, in a grey, unpromising March, our city locked-down under a contagious disease order. Doors inches apart, the six units on the first floor became submarines, periscopes rising intermittently, then retracting into squeaky hinges. Sirens Dopplered past and into oblivion. Across the street, the 1932 Sears building, an Art Deco slab, gathered birds and windblown trash. In its fenced parking lot, a testing site opened. A cluster of spotless white tents surrounded by snaking pink cones. Each morning around 5, Humvees and police cruisers arrived with bullhorn voices to secure the perimeter. Beeping tow trucks removed cars whose drivers foolishly ignored the official signage. At night, in and around an open garage next door, elders gathered even on the chilliest spring nights, sitting in a few widely-spaced folding chairs, rising to pour from a sack-covered bottle, drawing down their masks to sip, sometimes roaring with laughter. Peter often joined the crew.

I'd fall asleep to murmuring outside my window and wake up to the pre-dawn testing maneuvers. Sleep left me even before the cars lined up. I made elaborate breakfasts, accompanied by Newark's Jazz radio station, then took our dog for marathon walks. We stood motionless in crosswalks, traffic lights cycling infinitely overhead,watching the white lines bend east to Canarsie. Caked over with fine, urban silt, Flatbush's streets were parched riverbeds, sailed by our Flying Dutchmen: battered Sanitation trucks making shuddering halts, gorging their whining gates and roaring away.

In April, hand-lettered signs appeared on the wall and at the building's front door.

"Monica our dear neighbor has passed and Peter is in the hospital. Please pray for them and BE SAFE".Through a closed door, Lucy, their immediate neighbor, told how she listened at their silent shared wall, calling them repeatedly and knocking on their door until overcome with fear. The firemen pried the door open and found them in bed, paralyzed with sickness. Monica lasted only a few hours, Peter was in isolation and then a rehab facility. While we worried on his condition, I bought a bottle of Hennessy to toast Monica. The fancy box waited inside our front door. Every few days, I walked across the lobby and knocked on Peter's door. That ritual only added to my sadness.

Mid-July, his door hung open, braced by a dusty tool cart. Fifty years ago the whole building was sinking, the floors on the topmost units pulling away from the walls and mouldings. In the basement, a block-wide cross brace was screwed in place, secured to pillars driven into the concrete floor. Each first floor unit's flooring, subject to more moisture and temperature fluctuations, warped over the brace's steel beams. A ball dropped onto the middle of our floor wobbled erratically and rolled all the way to the wall. Now the boss' crew began replacing Peter's floors. Pulling up century old pine boards, splintered and nail-ridden, then replacing, sanding and finishing. After 20 years in the building, I knew any significant rehab jobs were the result of a court case or tenant's voluntary relocation. With Peter, I hoped it was neither.

My wife saw him first, handing off the Henny and our sympathy in his newly-floored kitchen. By the time I made contact, summer and Peter's eyesight had faded. He now showed me pieces of mail to decipher. As I read, he looked off to my right, blinking rapidly,"Yes, yes...",

hand curdling the air. Before I could finish, he reached for the paper, arm scissoring close, then turning, re-folding the sheaf as he strode to my front door."Thank you.""Peter, I didn't finish. The next.."He waved me off, but had to wait in the dark hallway until I unlocked the door, then moved quickly across the lobby, head down as if counting the tiny floor tiles. Later, I brought his November election ballot to the King's Theater, as holy an errand as I have ever done.Again, at night, he joined the guys by the garage, his popcorn laughter tumbling through our window screen.

Peter's kitchen window and new floor glowed. In the southern exposure: bright dish towels, floral curtains, hanging vines (some plastic) and windowsill succulents. He pulled a fob from a crowded hook, twisted off the key and reached it toward me.

"How'd you get this key? These are expensive""I didna get it special. It was Monica's."My hand drooped in the space between us."Peter, I'm gonna cry. I can't take this. You..."He shook the key at me."Take it, take it, take it. I don't need it."I turned it in my palm remembering how she held the lobby railing and swung her bad leg from the hip for each step."Thank you so much.""I'm having a mass for her, ya know?"A mass?""Yah, a mass. A cat-o-lick mass. She was cat-o-lick, ya know. ""Peter, this is your key, if you need it..."He leaned a fist into the door frame, laughing from his belly."If I getta new wife, ya gotta give it back"

#long form#brooklyn#flatbush#covid

tevotbegotnaught

Aug 6, 2023

Betty, Brooklyn

I opened the building door, a heavy metal-framed job with hopscotch-pattern glass.

Just inside, on the top step, an older woman, puffy coat opened wide, floral dress, hose, flat shoes, dark eyes looking past me.

“Hello?”

She turned her face.

“You ok, miss?"

“yes…but I’m not going back." Her voice, low and gritty, emphasized 'back'

“back where, miss? Do you…?”

She extended her arm, pointing across the narrow street.

“he’s there right now, been there"

The last two words seesawed down hard with a neck twist.

“where is that?”

“In my house”

Emphasis ‘my'.

“Your house?”

“Yes, in my house" her voice and gaze now absolutely level.

“Which house is it?"

“corner one"

“Do you need help, Miss? I can take you over there"

She paused, completely still, then her voice rose an octave and sweetened.

“Can I have something to drink?”

“You sure can. I'm...w-w-worried about you, miss. Should I call the police?”

Her eyes scanned through me, voice low and rough again.

“Doesn’t help. He always gets away.”

“But you know him, right?”

I repeated the question.

Deep inhale through her nose.

“Haitian. He come around. Do like this.”

She pulled both elbows back and thrust her hips forward.

“In the th' ass" her eyes tilted up and head dipped.

In a lobby clouded with stale February air, icy and dry, a hot surge spread across my cheeks and neck. Maybe 10 Haitian men lived in our building; Some young, others middle-aged and one quite elderly and infirm (my immediate neighbor).

“Miss, how can I help you?”

She inhaled, lips apart, eyes steady.

Silence.

“Come inside and get warm. I’ll make tea.”

“ok"

I walked up the steps past her, waiting to see what she’d do. She got up easily and followed to my door, her feet sliding over the lobby tiles.Inside, she kept her coat on, even as she sat in the barrel-back chair by the window. I pulled the curtain away from the window frame, letting her see her front porch and side yard across the street.

That’s enough” she said, pulling the curtain back with her hand. “he's right over there”

“He's still in your house?”

“uh-uh, In his van.”

Down the block, familiar cars angled past my sightline. The pickup truck and work van a Pakistani family used in their construction business barely visible in the slope of their driveway.

“English Breakfast tea?”

She lifted her chin, then looked back through the window.

“That’s fine"

“How do you take your tea?”

“Just the tea”

In the kitchen I put a wrapped biscuit and a spoon on the saucer, then poured sugar into a ceramic bowl. When I set them in front of her, she thanked me, drew the string on the teabag taut and let it drop.

“Honey?”

“Sure, I have honey.” I raised my voice. “You know every tub got to sit on its own bottom, don't you, miss?"

Her eyes rose from the tray.

“That’s what Black people say"

She looked back through the window. “Black people say that"

I brought her the honey.

“Miss, my name is Chris"

“I’m Betty"

I stood next to her while she stirred her tea and removed the bag, letting it drip over the cup, then rest on the saucer, adding the honey and stirring again.

"I'm going to the kitchen now. You're welcome to join me. Stay here as long as you need to. I wish I could help you today."

Betty remained quiet, fixed on the open curtain.

In the kitchen, I cooked silently, in case Betty asked for something. When I finally checked on her, she stood quickly, gathered her coat and faced me. "Thank you for the tea"

Her coat rustled as she walked past, turning down the hall. I followed.

"Let me help you with the door"

"I can do it"

In the dim, she turned an old unused lock, leaving the door stuck.

I reached around her motionless body and turned the deadbolt, pulling the door open. She glided out the door, then across the lobby to the front. I waited to see if she would sit. At the door, she placed her fingertips lightly on the frame and craned her neck right, then left. I closed my door to give her privacy. Our entire conversation remained a path of ellipses, dotted crumbs vanishing across the street.

Betty's house was a semi-detached, the last in a row of four paired homes. She shared a wall with M, each living solo in their 3 floor one-family homes. M's parents were contemporaries of Betty and M grew up with Betty's kids. A week later, my wife brought Betty tea and buttered bread, serving it to her on the steps. Their conversation revealed even less than my earlier one. Days after, I returned home to see Betty's coat sailing up the marble steps, next to Hyacinth, who lived alone on the 3rd floor. Sightings stopped soon after.

Next time I saw M, I asked about Betty. His eyes fixed on mine.

"She told you about the Hatian?"

"Yeah"

"Did her in the ass?"

"Yup"

"She's crazy"

"I figured, but I had to ask..."

"Listen, couple months back, I was chilin' here with my cousin. We were getting ready to watch a movie. Knock on the door. Didn't let up. I opened it. Like a half-dozen cop cars and all these cops. Betty's door was open. She had called them. Said I came in through the second floor into her bedroom. Raped her."

"What!!"

"See, the back of the closet in that upstairs room is her bedroom wall. She told them I came through there. I mean, I don't think they believed her, but they came up and checked that wall. They tested it out."

"Shit. Like you had a secret passage way"

"My cousin was like, dam, you sick, cuz!"

"That's crazy"

"Yeah, she called the cops about me before, a bunch, actually. They talked to her son about it. But, you can't just disconnect her phone. I mean, she's like, what, eighty years-old and shit?

She basically lives alone."

Around us, 5 or 6 story apartment buildings and many row houses like Betty's . One block over, a landmark, the art-deco Sears building, completed in 1932, rising then above the last of the Dutch settler's farm plots, a sprout of optimism for a country deep in the Depression. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke at its opening. After the longest corporate death in capitalism and a cremation in the pandemic, it rests, granitic and blindly windowless at the corner of a vast parking lot, a blacktop rhomboid functioning as giant outdoor air shaft for the neighborhood. Cars pull in for shopping along Flatbush ave and at the grocery across the street. A crew of chubby Middle-Eastern men do auto body work. Their tools in the trunk of a Mercedes sedan. One keeps his eyes on Bedford ave, jogging beside a car slowing for the traffic light to lean down to point at the offending dent or scrape, offering a fix. He startled me with his pitch more than once while I zoned out at the intersection.

Visible from the street, restaurant flyers and grocery store circulars collected between Betty's front doors, their edges ragged and discolored. I heard she had a stroke and was confined to bed. A late night SUV took our corner wide, uprooting her wrought iron fence, then hanging like a Dean Koons above M's small front yard. Her house was empty. The fence got tossed into the yard. Kids drank tea on her porch and paged through their phones, breaking the bottles before they sauntered off.

M and one of Betty's children made a deal with a development group. They'd sell their adjoining homes together and get better prices. The day before settlement, M''s lawyer told him Betty's property already sold. Developers peeled off her kid earlier by lying that M had a separate deal. At settlement, they planned to use that (fake) sale as leverage to beat M down on price. M backed out and they sued. Soon after, the house on the other side was snatched up by the same rats. A small rowhouse church behind Betty's, renovated but long unused, went to them, as well. The rats now owned an L-shaped lot encompassing 5 properties. M's place, the middle unit, blocked all their plans and he raised his price accordingly. Soon, a judge dismissed the rodent's suit, leaving M with cards to play.

Epilogue

On a nearby corner, surrounded by a chain link fence, a mountain of flat-screen TVs, their matte black edges topping the fence poles. For years, rats skittered through the akimbo city. Then, in one day, their metropolis vanished. The rectangular concrete lot bare. Overnight, plywood walls encircled the entire site. From the sidewalk, curious pedestrians watched through diamond-shaped windows. Once its paving is carted off, reddish brown dirt filled the gulley. Soil ground and spit out by the retreating Wisconsin glacier, that formed Long Island and dredged its Sound. The same dirt washes down sewer grates into teeming canals under our streets. Still in motion, it peeks through garbage on subway tracks. As each parcel of Brooklyn is flayed open, echoes of the colossal ice fall ripple to the surface, colliding wave to trough with our ongoing climate disturbances.

Out of the earthen scar, a block-size construction platform that rattles upward by day. Passing the site at night, it resembles a spectral galleon: foggy lights strung fore to aft, tarps snapping at their rigging, invisible deckhands battering and clattering deep in the hold.

I understand why so many pictures of New York City sing with interior melancholy. People, buildings and even entire blocks plunge into the abyss immediately after their photographic blink. The hardest faces and most majestic facades unaware of approaching oblivion.

On Brooklyn walks, I scent-locate courtyards via staircases that tilt below the sidewalks. Each breeze lifts their humid cement, vegetable rot and dousings of household cleaners. From the windows above: chicken necks boiling in sofrito, hot grease and curry, frankincense and dust, perfumes set on stun. Every step and jaywalking tangent remixes the palette.

Astral bodies graze me as I walk through subway underpasses. Shouts or screams ricochet off the tiled walls. Untethered to time, they might be a public school field trip or the last breath of a disco queen. Colleagues confirm similar flashes: invisible crimes in progress, disembodied dancers. Solidity and reality are not the same.

Are these what Betty heard? Along with personal fantasies, a guaranteed long run in the theater of the mind. Countless Black folk have been driven mad by the heedless cruelty and ritualistic torture of their New World captors and rulers.

The Sears parking lot is approved for 650 residential units, a number that conjures Malthusian collapse. The original building, protected by historic status, must remain intact. Long before any announcement, I walked through the vast parking lot. An ancient Ford pickup idled between oil stains, its bed stacked with pipes. Standing on the running board, the operator chatted with a neighborhood guy. Behind them, a trailer housing a medieval drilling rig, long fang sunk into the blacktop. Today, dump trucks line the back fence, ready for the big dig. The lighted "Sears" sign dwindled in reverse-hangman from " ears" to " e rs" and finally, " s" . At night, through my new progressive lenses, that last letter smearing into "$".

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

tevotbegotnaught

Aug 17, 2022

I went to the Village Vanguard to hear a great alto saxophonist play trio with drums and piano. The bandleader was at least 40 or 50 years older than the sidemen. The club's legendary proprietor may have been even older. She sat near the kitchen, listening to the musicians and monitoring staff with fierce, turreted eyes. As he had for decades, the saxophonist played very familiar repertoire with near total abstraction; using his tone and supernatural sense of form and phrasing to make endless variations on the material. After about 40 intense minutes, the bandleader found a suitable endpoint, checked in with his colleagues and closed the set .

Cradling his horn, he led the musicians slowly through the audience. When he reached the kitchen doorway, the proprietor quickly swiveled in her chair.

"Where the FUCK are you going?"

The saxophonist answered, inaudibly.

"The FUCK you ARE! Get back up there and fucking play! How many fucking years have you been playing here and you don't know how long a fucking set is?"

He turned creakily and began to walk toward the stage, the other cats pivoting back with him.

She tilted her head back slightly and aimed each word.

"And this time play something we all fucking know and not that FUCKING BULLSHIT you've been playing!" Her voice caught deep in her throat between the words bull and shit; emptying two barrels of buckshot over the packed house.

On stage, before the others could settle in, the saxophonist began playing "Sweet Lorraine", his rhythm uncharacteristically stiff, elbows akimbo, eyes wide. He turned to the drummer who grinned maniacally and readied his brushes, then toward the pianist who shrugged and signalled he didn't know the tune. Before he reached the bridge, the saxophonist stopped, smiling. A few of us laughed, most were quiet, possibly unaware of the proprietor's name. I looked over at the kitchen doorway. She was leaning into her table, head down, reading.

#jazzmusician#jazzclub#funny post#ilovenewyork

tevotbegotnaught

Jan 7, 2022

"A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.” Dorothea Lange

In the late 80's I was sideman on a record date. The studio was in Englewood Cliffs, its architect and resident engineer, the builder of a sound that changed music and guided musicians for over 50 years. Meticulous and flinty, he ruled his cathedral-like structure with an autocratic bark.

The six piece band were an experienced and skilled crew, but the bassist was the literal foundation of great big bands, various star-studded small groups and countless recording sessions. On an instrument purposely strung for (his) brute strength, he played with empathetic grace and unerring groove. He also eschewed the direct amplification systems of the day, usually placing a mic in front of his instrument.

In the studio driveway, tipsy with awe, I ran a litany of artists and records, leaving out one-hundred for each one I remembered. Once inside, I whispered some words to the vast, holy dimness and unpacked. As the others arrived, the proprietor appeared in the big room, adjusting the lights and organizing equipment. He was a small man, wearing glasses, baseball cap and gardening gloves. I told him my name and he took off a glove and shook my hand, introducing himself nonchalantly, before moving back inside.

"Who's playing piano today?" He asked through the talkback speaker. One of the horn players, noodling at the piano bench answered.

"Not you? Then DON'T TOUCH THE PIANO" the speaker buzzed.

After that, I tracked him peripherally until preparations and warmups derailed me. Soon, near the front of the room, the bassist and the engineer engaged, drawing my attention again. Their voices intertwined, staying clear in the room's special acoustic. To imagine the counterpoint, the bassist had a gentle and laconic way of speaking, the engineer, the obverse.

The engineer asked the bassist where his direct input was.

"I don't use one. Can't you set up a mic?"

"What do you mean you don't use one?" He snapped.

"I don't use a pickup. I use a mic or.."

We all began to listen.

"I'm not gonna be able to get a sound without some kind of.."

"I've done this before, I can..." the bassist said helpfully

"NO.NO. It's going to take TOO MUCH TIME"

"Well, what did you do on all those records before there were pickups..." the bassist asked sarcastically.

"THAT WAS THEN, THIS IS NOW"

We were in the sanctum sanctorum of recorded jazz and the veil was torn. After a few long beats, the bassist carefully laid his instrument down.

"I'm goin' to the store for some orange juice, anybody want anything?"

He'd ridden out to Jersey with another band member who now offered to drive him the mile round trip.

"No, man, I'm gonna run there"

He opened the door. Outside, a soft rain fell. He pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and disappeared. Nobody spoke. The engineer went on with his tasks. The session was a single-day deal : record and mix, pay, walk out with a DAT. I looked at the leader, a large taciturn man. He mouthed a four-letter word and followed the engineer into the control room where they spoke animatedly behind the thick glass.

When the bassist returned, he was wet and cheerful. After consultation with the leader, he continued setting up his instrument, retrieving a ceramic pickup from mass of tangled wires and strings he carried and attaching it under the gaze of the enginneer. There was a mic already in place and we proceeded to get sounds and make a record.

On our first trek into the control room, the engineer, in his captain's chair, glanced over at the barbarians' advance.

"NO HORNS in here!" He said in scalding voice.

"Leave 'em outside. Didn't he tell you? No horns in here!"

He grimaced and watched us slink away to stash our axes.

On playback, the framework of his sound was immediately clear. It was as magic as a truly delicious meal: ingredients (quality always variable) combined in proportion, seasoned with highly refined taste, which isn't mysterious at all, of course.

Hours later, when our lunch came, he let the delivery guy in. We rushed for the food. The engineer glared at us.

"No food in the control room. Don't take it out here! Take the bags back there, to the table. Eat on that table."

The table was about four and a half feet high. Its surface a three by three square. No chairs in the studio were tall enough for us to sit there. Someone reached for a stool along the wall.

The talkback crackled, "those are just for sessions."

So we stood around the table, above the sound of deli paper tearing and drinks clinking, silently eyeing each other like schoolboys in detention. Someone grabbed and lifted a sub toward his gaping mouth. As he bit down, the pressure produced a wet, ripping sound and expelled a geyser of mayo and meat juice on a upward trajectory. The liquid dropped onto the floor as a greasy chain, glinting under the ceiling lights. We swiveled as one to look into the control room. The engineer was eating while he worked, eyes leveled down, glasses perched on the tip of his nose. We began to fight laughter, each of us losing control into a snorting, hands-covering-mouth, duck-and-cover delirium. It took many tries to reconvene at the table and finish our meal. Meanwhile, someone deftly wiped away the mess with a double-handfull of napkins.

There weren't any more disagreements or grease spills. The engineer had gotten what he needed. He was positive about the music and sweetly approving of the musicians. As the day wore on, he got looser, patiently answering our fan questions. Around the corner from his desk, a stand of file cabinets packed with CDs; a record store for the initiated, representing mostly the 50's through 70's. With permission, we poured through them, trying to fill gaps in our knowledge, while he finished his job for the day. He smiled when asked who had been his most frequent visitor through the years "I remember Herbie being here a whole lot..."

Rides arranged, product in hand, bassist rushing off for a gig, we left the shrine. The engineer was tidying up and didn't say much. He seemed content to see us go.

tevotbegotnaught

Dec 19, 2021

In college, it was easy to get blotter. A buffet of (un)controlled substances were on offer daily. Our dorm was Sodom and Gommorah with meal plans. Two guys in particular always seemed to have stuff. They were roommates, one from Oklahoma, the other, Long Island. Consistent with regional stereotypes, New York guy talked fast and aggressively. The Okie broke off mid-sentence in search of words. Or maybe that was the blotter. Those mini-refrigerators we all rented for snacks and drinks? Their's stored mostly contraband. In the corner, a (clean, dry) commode held additional stash.

The Okie was easier to deal with, but he often went home weekends. One Saturday afternoon, I walked over to buy some weed. Their room sat at the head of a long second floor corridor, one flight of steps off the lobby. After a few rounds of light knocking and furtive looks, I started hammering in short bursts. As my hand pulled back from one salvo, the door flew open. LI guy stood there in only pajama bottoms, bare arms angry hives of tiny black dots painted over with calamine whitewash.

"Yeah" he said hoarsely, eyelids swollen, face slack.

"Umm...I want to...um... do you have.. uh, any? I wanna buy.."

I was staring at his forearms and unconsciously squeezing my own.

He didn't move at all.

"Do I know you?" he said in Morse Code.

"I was here a couple times...with Jay...you know..and...and.."

The door swung. As a gust of air hit me, his voice came from inside, low and curt.

"I don't have anything."

The bang echoed down the stairwell behind me.

I was gonna need help.

My first trip, a buddy got us a couple hits from the Commode Brothers. He acted as chaperone, too. In the Army, he'd tripped continuously for weeks. The 70's military was a post-doc in hallucinogens. A tall guy, deep-voiced and preternaturally calm, he observed me for the first hour:

"You cool? I'm worried about you. You're just staring."

"Oh, You'll KNOW when it hits you. Unless it just sucks, in which case, fuck those guys, they lied."

He kept track of the potency and pedigree of our doses:

"Definitely better than the shit they had last time. Told them I wanted my money back. I was fuckin' serious, too. Said this came from California, but who knows"

He swooped his hand left to right.

"See anything?"

"Uhhhh. Kind of..."

He sounded disappointed. "No, you'll definitely know it when you see it. Tracers"

"Right. I heard about that."

Once he saw I wasn't going to crash-dive through a window, he wanted to get out and drive. From our dorm in the small college town, real country roads were a few blinking traffic lights away. I was welcome to ride along. Tripping made mundane activities and common decor fascinating and vibrant. Walking down the hall felt like stepping barefoot through an electric creek. The light in the stairwell painted a yellow bolus down to the exit door. At ground floor, its base was frayed and knotted with shadows.

My buddy drove a Volvo Station Wagon. The millions of vehicles on the road in 1970's North Texas included just 3.5 Volvo Station Wagons. Knowing the hostility of some Texans toward Yankees and their ways, I didn't want to end up in that .5 Wagon. At least this one had Florida plates.

On the road, our windshield spread the curtain of night, headlights pulling its folds around the hood. Darkness hung close against the doors and side windows.

We listened to cassettes, Blue Notes, mostly. Their sound came from everywhere at once. Billy Higgins' cymbal decayed into plashing liquid, solidifying for the next stroke, jangling rivet skipping across its surface. The beauty of every bit of that music overwhelmed me.

Back in the dorm, I saw giant insects loping across my friend's carpet. My stomach hurt, too. "Yeah. That happens. You wanna smoke a joint? That will mellow you out."

Drugs to balance out other drugs.

Once it wore off, I slept hard in my dorm room and woke up really hungry. All my (mental) parts seemed intact: a good first adventure. In conversations with classmates, we decided to pick some records, drop acid and listen together. The list included Bartok Piano Concerto no. 2, "Miles at the Fillmore", and Coltrane's "Transition". We could add others en route.

It would take a while to assemble everything. By then, I was living in a house with two students, both trumpet players. One guy was night shift manager at the "76" truck stop outside town. While he worked, we could crank up the volume on the stereo and hang out until morning.

The night of, someone dragged my single mattress into the corner of our living room. I was going to protest, but since I couldn't remember ever washing my sheets, I didn't want to draw more attention to the bed. We were stocked with plenty of adjacent substances to enhance or moderate. While we waited for the paper to dissolve, the first record spinning was "Grand Canyon Suite", Ferde Grofé's family bucket of WASP Americana. Jacket pristine and vinyl immaculate, the side definitely spent all of its previous life on an panelled living room shelf. When things seemed affirmative, Grofé took a hike and we headed East.

The Bartok's jacket showed a studious Maurizio Pollini and Claudio Abbado, heads orbiting a score. The opening fanfare (Chicago Symphony brass, ya'll) and Pollini's electric fingers stunned us. In the slow movement, glowing fuses snaked through dense undergrowth, gathering speed, detonating in towering ferris wheels of sparks. At the finish, we stifled cheers.

Miles' record, barely ten years-old, remained audaciously fresh. The free passages tilted violently from clanking humor to amp-buzzing stasis. Trumpet notes slashed vertically across the band, conducting fierce anarchy, then arching into tender unisons with Steve Grossman. His growling soprano, barely level in the mix, played everything music school kids wanted to hear over the boiling grooves.

We started with "Wednesday Miles" and headed into the weekend, but before Saturday's set, someone made an executive decision and "Transition" catapulted across the room. Trane and Elvin vaulted scaffolds of 8-bar phrases until the sky bowed to meet them. With "Dear Lord", we knew the music must be a vessel for vistas and devotions beyond our experience, what Eugenia Collier called "the beginning of compassion" adding "and one cannot have both compassion and innocence."

After what the Quartet laid down, language was superfluous, so we did slapstick. Taking turns falling on my broken-down bed, executing spins, drops and last-minute feints. Laughing so hard our lungs emptied and faces cramped. Then, opening the front door slowly, taking giggly steps outside, where a few dawn stars dissolved in the endless Texas sky. We walked crookedly through dry, sidewalk-free streets until they converged.

The town square looked flat, a western movie set: statue gathering birds in front of a courthouse shingled with parking tickets, sunrise burnishing the scenery, blazing street lights dim under its glow. The train tracks would have been invisible, if we hadn't heard brakes squealing as a massive freight train hissed to a stop in front of us, identical brown box cars spreading out of sight. Heat radiated up from the wheels, along with smells of grain and creosote. I walked to a car and put my hand on its ladder. My friends snickered and sing-songed my name.

The first rung was a high step from the blacktop. I reached up and pulled, hands and feet alternating, moving surprisingly fast. Above, the ladder bent parallel the pitted, waterstained roof, as if a differing gravity necessitated new hand holds. On my feet now, raising arms overhead to their jeers, the guys quickly climbed up. Two started on my ladder, I watched others on cars further back. From the roof, foreshortening squeezed the rest of the train between treetops and scattered eaves.

Suddenly, metal groaned, the cars responded seismically. My feet flexed and I crouched hard against the roof and that alternate gravity. Another lurch and we were moving. Cool air cut through my loose clothes and hair. Roads and fences rose and dipped with the train's acceleration. Two guys on the ladder below yelled something and I looked over as they dropped, one at a time, bugs off a branch. I watched them stumble to their feet next to the tracks. Metallic hoots and screeches called down the length of the rattling cars. Alone on the roof, broad fields replaced buildings. I pictured where this train might go: laminated road-atlas pages, their spooling highways and quaint town names. Not high now in any lysergic sense, I backed slowly down the ladder to its lowest rung. Then turned to face a careering landscape. Knees bent, head down, I leaned out into my jump. Below me, the side of the speeding track bed peeled away and a concrete gully plunged into shadow. My stomach convulsed, hands locking on the ladder. Far behind, small figures, toddler size, rotated out of view as we rounded a wide bend. I looked ahead and down once more, then I let go.

My body quarter-turned toward the rear of the train, hands hitting first, legs split. The stones in the track bed slammed into my outstretched palms. My head snapped forward. Next to me, thousands of tons of steel hurtled past: whooshing air, clattering linkages and avian squawks. Trembling, I gathered my legs and stood up, then looked down at my two dusty hands. The left was unscathed. On the right palm, a small triangle of skin folded back, like a tent flap. Underneath, the same tissue, clean and uncreased. While I stared, the last car gusted by, opening a fissure in the back of my head that lengthened as its sound receded. I walked off the mounded stones to the flat ground beside the tracks and back toward town.

tevotbegotnaught

Feb 4, 2021

The Boys Club Pool, a strip mine of pale-blue concrete, secured on three sides by a spiked, iron fence and on the fourth, a low cinderblock building. At the bunker’s entrance, you slid money across the counter and received a basket, lock and tethered key for your street clothes. Even on the hottest days (the best days to be there), the cool interior was an ancient cistern of chlorine and wet stone. Under its vaulted ceilings, hovering dragonflies, trickling shadows, droning pumps.

I remember going there first with my parents and their friends. Still small enough that the blue-backed water demanded all my feral navigation. I fixated on the towering steel slide. A quicksilver surface glazed by a bank of water jets mounted at the apex. It spun me off its waterfall lip, arms and legs akimbo, filling my sinuses with buckshot. After decades of "up south" Jim-Crow, the 60’s management allowed Black patrons entry. Under a corrugated plastic roof, the un-ironic jukebox cranked out James Brown’s "Say it Loud" and Rare Earth’s "Get Ready". Mostly girls danced and boys watched, a strict but unenforced segregation.

T, a local Greek guy, his wife and daughters ran the facility; staffing the entry, snack bar and (in T’s case) acting as police force. It was T’s voice hurling plosives through its boot camp PA. His thighs-rubbing-together gait patrolling the deck, pneumatic forearms swinging. Always in uniform: a white t-shirt, plaid Bermuda shorts (55 waist ), white socks and sandals. If a fight started, he tugboated alongside the combatants, pushed in and grabbed each by the arm. Trying to break his grip meant losing your dignity as he easily twisted you flat, then speed-walked you out.

T attended our downtown High School and played football at USC, then 2 games at tackle with the 1942 Detroit Lions, who went 0-11, scoring 38 points while allowing 263. NFL lists his twenty-six year old stats as 6’0", 220. He joined the Marines and fought in the South Pacific, where young men dropped on swampy islands became limping newsreels of biblical suffering and cataclysmic heroism. When he bent a thumb across his palm to ask a lifeguard to buy "Four Roses" whiskey, the jungle rot gulped sunlight.

In and around the pool, I grew up and remained very much a child. My dumpy body narrowed, slumped posture lengthened. I weighed a hundred pounds, none of it soft nor secure. 7th grade meant a new school and old anxieties.

Hannah Penn Middle School sat low in our hilly town. A creek ran through a deep gully next to the athletic fields. Across the street, a cavernous bargain store, "Franklin Discount" and its conjoined parking lot. Beside the store, a factory where the famous "York Peppermint Patty" was made, packaged and shipped. In its reception area, a cardboard box with unwrapped, chipped patties, a penny each. After school, a nickel bought more tooth decay than one thin hand could hold.

School staff, mostly early Boomers, reflected their era. Mr R, an English teacher, legs withered by polio, once javelined a crutch at a recalcitrant student, then calmly asked for it back. Mr S, the "with-it" guy: turtleneck, pendant and Beatles toupee, wrote skits for us and toured our show to elementary schools. Mrs D, algebra, wore a full-length mink to work until her cop husband was convicted of taking kickbacks from towing companies. T, a generation-and-a-half older, was the health teacher, freeing him to run the pool in summer.

Leaning over battleship forearms, he read aloud from our 1950’s textbook. When provoked, he commented. In one ad-lib, he described various types of oral sex in clipped, anatomical language, concluding them all "abnormal sex acts". Eyes straight down, a roomful of teens flexed our toes deep in our shoes, Some days he asked us to read. Quickly impatient with slow or quiet readers, he’d call on his niece, a shy girl, and make her awkwardly finish a whole chapter.

One day, on my walk into his classroom, T said something in Greek to me. I sat down and slid my books into the rack under the seat. He chuckled.

"You hear that?" He said, playfully adding my name.

"What?

"I said, did you hear that?"

"No"

"I called you a rotten tomato in Greek"

"Well, you’re a fat slob in any language"

T’s mouth opened.

The class inhaled

"Apologize!"

"I’m not gonna apologize. You insulted me, I can.."

"No! Apologize now!"

He searched his desk, drawers whooshing open, then slamming shut, booms

ricocheting off the linoleum.

"Apologize!"

T stood up, empty handed. He moved quickly in front of me.

Someone in the room let out a long, provocative "oooooo"

"Are you going to apologize?"

"No" I said, smirking.

T’s right hand lifted. Up close, I saw its silver dollar-sized nails, tropical mold peppering their cuticles.

His fingers closed on my shirt front. It bunched in his grip along with some skin. The shirt pulled taut across my shoulder blades. Fabric secured, he slowly raised his straightened arm from the shoulder, lifting my torso and legs out of the chair. Tiny tears in the shirt seams audible as I rose.

My knees caught the desk, lifting and tilting it, finally dropping it to the floor with a hollow clang.

Countering my ascent, he leaned away, breathing steadily through his nostrils, left arm and leg backstopped; an Athenian lawn jockey. I rose inexorably until my back was just below the ceiling lights.

Pressure on my sternum emptied my lungs and prevented me from inhaling. Looking up, he held me suspended for an excruciating moment.

"Apologize!"

Lacking the air pressure to actually speak, I mouthed, "I’m... sorry...sorry"

Very slowly, T lowered his arm. My legs found the opening in the desk and my backside, its seat. He released my shirt, turned, walked back to his desk and wrote something. I gulped air and rubbed my chest. T held up a slip of paper. "Take this to the office"

All Principals had "paddles", often more than one and always on display in their offices. My legs reattached. I took the paper and walked out. The windows and lighting fixtures sparked haphazardly. I headed to the wall for balance. In the main office, a secretary waved me toward the principal’s office. He looked up, cradling a phone against his ear, whispering,

"have a seat"

and continuing his conversation. Behind him, a wide board with tapered grip hung from a coat hook. I slid the paper in front of him. His hand unfolded and refolded it, then pushed it aside. He hung up the phone, squared his chair to the desk and asked in an absolutely level voice,

"You know what you did?"

"Yes"

"T took care of it"

That phrase, which I answered reflexively, wasn’t a question. He told me to go to back to class. As I got up, my ears were ringing, the same way they did when I swam underwater. The lobby glowed with afternoon light. I walked unsteadily past rows of lockers. A sonar wash enveloped me, close as my breath. From the open doorways: muttering, desks rattling. I didn’t want to go back to class yet.

tevotbegotnaught

Jan 14, 2021

The One Step Down was a jazz club, not a restaurant. A glance in its tiny back kitchen, lit by a bare bulb, equipped with a decrepit fryer and scarred counter, told you that. Look behind the bar. The owner and bar keep, Joe Cohen stares back. He’s wearing a dark turtleneck, white towel on his right shoulder. His lips are fleshy, scowling. "Well, don’t you look pretty tonite? You have a gig a sumthin’?" Joe could make a musician feel deep shame just for owning a tuxedo. If I had other clothes, I’d change in the car, even if that meant missing a chorus or two. As building owner, he opened his home to us, then took liberties with the guests. Joe asks about my standing Perrier order. "You gunna have one o’ dose fag wahduhs y’drink?" He mortgaged away the historic property to pay gambling debts and suffered from agonizing back pain, but Joe always hosted an all-day Thanksgiving feast for the Georgetown street people who hung around the door.

Between the bar stools and booths opposite, a narrow walk. There’s a waiter continually in motion there. You have to turn sideways to pass. Close by the piano, Ann, the club manager leans over the bar on your right, hair thick across her shoulders, receiver pressed against her ear. She twists her neck, violet words spilling out of ruby-red lips.

" Don’t fucking jerk me around! You said..no...you said..."

She swivels back toward the rail-mounted phone,

"Yeah, fuck that. Bull! Shit"

hangs up the receiver con agitato, then smiles, knowing another booking coup is almost complete.

Their piano is permanently open, lid removed to enhance its weak tone and facilitate the frequent tunings. The brick walls and floor accentuate a thin high register and swallow up its dour bass end. The instrument gets little rest, from Monday’s Reuben Brown solo gig through Lawrence Wheatley’s weekend afternoon workshops, to the headliner sets.

When Reuben had a stroke, DC’s finest gathered to raise money and show him love. Those musicians headed to the "Step" afterwards. Shirley Horn made the trip, too. Her long New Year’s Eve run at the club, the greatest one-nighter in world history.

It was piano night, a receiving line of the town’s best male players took turns on the battered baby grand. While they beat their ploughshares into tremolos, Shirley sat in a booth, short-waisted fur coat and oversize sunglasses. Each man threw his hands onto the keys, producing brilliant cascades. Then, she stood up, took off the coat and glasses, straightened her gown, walked to the bench and sat. Her small hands, weathered tree roots pushing up through the black-and-white planks. The piano rang warm and lush under their invisible weight, instrument completely replaced: strings, harp and box. Even the air in the room clarified. Her harmonies echoed down a corridor, swelling and breaking, before her voice entered with "But Beautiful".

Behind the drums, Billy Hart opened his brushes and lifted one above a cymbal. He tucked his chin, widened his eyes and listened. Years later, I asked him about that moment. Within swirling colors and whispered voice, how did he know where the downbeat was?

"Maan, sometimes you just have to MAKE a downbeat".

He did. Exquisitely. Shirley’s ballads often end on a sung high note above murmuring chords; a kiss built on dreams.

She got up from the bench, making way for the next pianist. They conferred as she took a microphone Ann handed across the bar. The trio started "Just in Time". Shirley leveled the mic in front of her chin. The other hand circled a napkin-draped Heineken and pincered a lit cigarette. Smoke ribbon ascending, she spoke the lyrics, pitches sounding clearly in their un-stretched vowels. Eyes fixed mid-distance, slowly panning the room, marking the pace and tone of its story. Her melody was to a lead sheet as a spreading oak to a cord of wood. The second chorus, she shook that tree.

The musicians at the bar (that night, seemed we all were) leaned hard left, toward her. On the stool to my right, a bass-playing veteran of Ahmad Jamal’s trios. I glanced back at him, "Deep". Not looking away, he said, "deeper than deep". Her out-chorus was emphatic and simple. Just two fingers could have followed the variations. We thanked her, sincerely, though inadequately.

Then she moved off, accepting hugs and chuckling with old friends.

After Shirley’s set, there’s no reason to open an instrument case or grab your stick bag.

The only sensible responses were lighting a cigarette and/or asking for your check. We waited to settle up while Joe and Ann crabbed at each other. He made change painstakingly, placing bills and coins on the bar like chess pieces. Nodding at my thanks, he turned stiffly and moved on. As I passed the still glowing piano, Ann ignored a growing queue of hungry musicians asking for gigs.

Outside, amidst the collapsing furniture of their sidewalk cafe, a panhandler waited, arms at his sides.

"Hey, man. Hey. Hey! You know Steve Novosel?"

(A master bassist regularly featured inside)

"Yeah, I know him"

"You do?

"Yeah"

"Gimme a dollar"

tevotbegotnaught

Dec 20, 2020

Busking in Prospect Park. Two women in workout clothes circle the area, gathering trash. Both carry hand-operated claws and share an ever-swelling garbage bag. One stops to ask our schedule. She tells us about a young man, a jazz listener, who is seriously disabled and home-bound. With our permission, she'd like to bring him to the park to hear us. Her request seems simple, though she implies there are many practical issues to resolve. The leader takes her number and and we continue playing.

Weeks later, we're back in our spot on a perfect late-summer day, park thick with revelers, athletes and frolicking children. Around the bandshell, a half dozen large gatherings, complete with their own DJs and self-contained banquets, waft smoke and sonic clouds. The leader tells me the woman contacted him. I'm not privy to their negotiations as the afternoon slips past. Our guitarist leaves and we're down to trio. Though we've played more than five hours with a brief lunch break, the woman arrives and asks us to stand by. I go into a crouch to save my legs. My colleagues stretch and snack.

From our spot in the shade, we see their approach. Ten to twelve people walking slowly. In their midst, a motorized wheelchair yoked by a tangle of clear plastic hoses to a rolling medical cart. They arrive and set up food and drink, surrounding the young man. We regroup, decide on a tune and I count it off. Before our first note sounds, from the party zone behind us, a rich baritone sings "Happy Birthday", his voice amplified by a stadium PA. After an acapella chorus or two, a mariachi band takes up the melody. Its trumpets, also mic'ed at starship level, are glorious: golden-toned and perfectly in sync. Though the band is more than a hundred yards away, I can barely hear my colleagues' cymbals and snare, let alone bass notes. We play on. One of the young man's party, a guy about my age, walks over. He gestures at me with his white wine, "You guys are great. Keep up the Broadway stuff. Love it!" We stay with show tunes, the Mariachis retake the Alamo.

Wheelchair and medical equipment a safe twenty-feet away, I catch glimpses of the dedicateé. The party band covers "La Bamba", "Feelings" and the "Chicken Dance" per AC/DC. With dusk nearing, our liaison beckons me in the middle of a tune. I mask up and strain to hear her.

"He said you guys are awesome. I know he only uses that word when he really, really likes something. So you must have really impressed him."

"Does he get out to hear music often?"

"Oh my goodness, no! He needs round-the-clock care and his family has been very cautious. He's twenty now. No one expected him to live so long with his condition. He's only taken a few trips in his life.This is the first time he's ever seen live music."

"Ever?"

"Yes, ever. He's got a new nurse. She wants him to do more stuff, you know..."

I swallowed hard a couple times before I could speak. "Wow...uh...anything else we can play..or.."

She looked at the entourage gathering on the path.

"No, no. Thank you all SO much. Gotta go," nodding toward the bluff overlooking the ball fields,

"He's gonna see his first sunset!"

As they roll away, the Mariachis crush "Never on Sunday".

tevotbegotnaught

Dec 10, 2020

"You know the way of the mystic and the way of the artist are very much alike except that the mystic does not have a craft." The craft holds the artist to the world and the mystic goes off through his psyche into the transcendent. You might say that's all right for the mystic but not for any body else. The artist is going to many of the same places, but he is held to the world..."

Joseph and Jean Campbell

Baltimore Left Bank Jazz Society held concerts 5pm-9, Sundays. You’d definitely miss "The Wonderful World of Disney" and the ball game, too. The Famous Ballroom was a floor above Charles Street, next to the Charles Theater, a great beaux-arts movie house, built first as a streetcar barn. The dim interior of Famous gulped photons like a Klingon Warship. Nothing inside looked remotely new, nothing was shabby, either. The faces of the organization ( I learned later about other key members)

were founders Benny Kearse and Vernon Welsh, MCs for the concerts. They always dressed and comported themselves as the Deacons they were (though Brother Vernon discreetly stepped outside for "funny" cigarettes). Each stood behind the microphone and made general announcements. Vernon: a sonorous radio host, Benny: Pentecostal, booming diphthongs.

"Next week, the Greaaaat Jimmy Smith and his quartet. Gee-knee-usss of the Jaaaazz Organ. Jimmy always brings a great band and it’s going to be a ball. Hope you all will come out for that. That’s the final concert for our fall season. Looking forward to seeing you at our Annual Christmas Party and Dance. As always, there are beer and setups at the bar." Setups meant sodas, plastic bowls of ice, and pretzels or chips dipped from large bags. The fifty-cent beer was Tuborg in cans.

"If you’re hungry, we have our own greaaaaat barbecue riiiieet here..chicken...ribs aaaand...is there brisket this week? There is? Ok, there IS brisket. With their world famous ‘Wass-diss-here’ sauce. You can bring some of that sauce home with you, too. And last but not least, Miss Ida...AND HER CAKES!"

Miss Ida was a bone-thin, brown woman, always in a collared dress and wide-brimmed, lace-trimmed hat. She sat behind a folding table covered with velveteen and her collection of frosted layer cakes on pedestal stands. The Deacons introduced her wares with an enthusiasm that made me think they were intimately familiar.

Barbecue was dished out over the stove and packed in paper bags, a piece of squishy white bread between each piece of meat. Their greens sank deep in a swamp of pot-liquor, surrounded by fat globules drawn from smoked meat.

Under streamers of tobacco smoke, showtime passed unannounced. The audience arranged itself at large round tables well-placed across the dance floor. Scratchy Jazz records poured through the PA, while folks enjoyed food and drink. The Deacons took conferences with patrons, smiling and nodding. In between, glancing from their wristwatches to the entrance. Somewhere around 6, Dexter Gordon arrived, taller than I imagined. His walk, a pair of slow-motion jack-knives. Foreshortened tenor case waggling around their hinges. At his side, Rufus Reid, pushing a wheeled bass, his unlit pipe jutting above its neck.

Dexter was a king. His US return galvanized music lovers (and kids like me). CBS signed him and recorded his Village Vanguard sets, a record I had spun endlessly. I loved him with Gene Ammons ("The Chase") and the Blue Notes I knew, but "Homecoming" excited me even more.

Chairs scraped the ancient floor, attendees rumbled and some shouted our hero’s name. A Deacon directed Dexter through a curtain. Rufus put his bass on the stage, then joined the musicians in the green room. From its doorway, suddenly a powerful smell of high-grade marijuana, which diffused through the ballroom, followed by saxophone routines (the first time I heard his sound in person!) then extended silence. A Deacon slipped through the curtain. After another long pause, he returned and the two men huddled near the stage. While they spoke, the trio walked out languidly to prepare their instruments.

The Deacons settled into their starting positions. Vernon donned grapefruit-sized headphones to adjust his reel-to-reel, stage left. Benny waited opposite, on the stage’s gangway, one hand on its railing, paper list of announcements in the other. Long Tall Dexter appeared, swinging his shoulders, getting loose.

Benny barely finished his introduction when everyone stood and roared like New Year’s Eve.

They led-off with "Fried Bananas”. As spirit moved them, folks verbally encouraged and appreciated their hero. When he finished a solo, Dexter squared his heels, tilted the saxophone left until horizontal and pressed it forward, nodding woozily. As our applause faded, he pivoted off his left foot, turned and strode back into the rhythm section. There, he bent stiffly and placed his tenor under the piano lid. Facing away from the audience, with a clean-and-jerk shrug, he raised his pants by the belt. Eddie Gladden looked up, grinning. Dex nodded at him, made a quarter turn, raising an elbow and slowly wiping his nose backhand, then pulled a handkerchief from a jacket pocket and dried his face, eyes tilting up as he folded and replaced the cloth. Then he leaned into the piano’s bow and popped his fingers.

"There comes a time in the life of every tenor player when he must play ‘Body and Soul".

George Cables started the intro, borrowed from Coltrane’s 1960 version. The saxophonist’s sound swung out from the stage, swashbuckling through the melody and into a long solo.

While Dexter played, eyes closed, a woman took measured steps toward the band, fixing on the saxophonist. She wore a long, loose dress and held a small floral bouquet with both hands. As she passed, I heard random, plaintive words, her head bowing in punctuation. In what seemed a planned act, she was proposing to Dexter. Finally stopping at the edge of the chest-high stage, lifting the bouquet and addressing her intended. Dexter’s eyes opened, pupils scanning down toward her rising voice. In shadows at opposite corners of the stage, Deacons waited. Her entreaties continued. The flowers trembled. Dexter looked on, brows spreading. Feral and lightning quick, a hand shot onto the stage towards Dexter’s ankle. He swept back his shoe, pointing its toe. Ducking horn mid-phrase, he took a breath and plunged back in. The Deacons were already at her shoulders, turning her back from the stage. Locked in their grip, she flipped the bouquet over her shoulder. It kissed the lip of the stage and tumbled to the ground. She rocked side to side as the two men ushered her back down the aisle.

Dex played on, head tilted down, horn thrust forward, eyes tracing their recessional. From the back of the room she let out a final cry. Dexter finished his solo soon after. Head lifted, scanning to be sure it was safe, before making his bowing ritual. Near the bar, our bride slumped in a folding chair, rubbing her bare shoulders. In the nimbus of smoke and fluorescent bulbs, exalted by our unreserved love, Dexter shambled on, invincible (with the Deacon’s protection) and immortal.

Now, I know he was already on the downhill side. I’d see him again, further on in that descent, crown askew, voice weakening. That day in Baltimore, he made beauty with inexhaustible strength and everyone on the stage swung their asses off.

tevotbegotnaught

Oct 31, 2020

“Thinking about the guy that put cheese in a chocolate fountain https://t.co/jZQ1krWcvI”

tevotbegotnaught

Oct 14, 2020

I grew up in a factory town:paper,turbines,cement,feed,cables and caskets. Whistles blew punctually as church bells, even in the deepest night. Plants slung their keening blades past our windows and echoing off the surrounding hills. Beneath each arc, men and women lived and worked. As a boy, I played and dreamed under my own protective warp.

Scully lived with his mom, a deputy sheriff and matron in the women’s prison. She worked long hours and lots of night shifts. When I went to his place before school, she was just getting home. She’d let me in, then shout up stairs to his third floor bedroom. A woman who wore a sidearm and regularly broke up fights between violent and sociopathic prisoners couldn’t get her sixteen year-old son out of bed most mornings. When she tired of yelling, I had to go wake him up for my ride or make the thirty-minute walk alone.

In Scully’s room, mostly a bed and pair of huge dressers, the only seats were a bean bag between the heavy pieces and a windowsill. I sat on the paneled sill and talked to him. Chemically, he needed nicotine to get moving. Emotionally, he was frustrated by the way she shouted at him. His mom, newly single, now a disciplinarian, his dad suddenly the good cop. Scully’s dad actually was a cop, a detective. He solved some tough cases and brought in some real evildoers. A big guy, he beat his son for any perceived weakness.

After his all his dad’s ass whippings, Scully didn’t fear fights. He stepped up. Between us, when tension built up, he just shoved me, hard. I learned to give it right back and we usually crashed to the ground. His attic bedroom had a drop ceiling, the kind with dozens of squishy panels in an aluminum grid. During a particularly exhausting grapple, our tangled arms shot up and through the supports, spilling three or four panels.

"Bitch, look what the fuck you did! Mom’s gonna fuckin’ kill me now."

The fallen panels crumpled under our weight. Thrown clear, a legal size manila envelope. Scully carefully unfolded the metal prongs and dumped it out on the bed.

"No...fuckin’...shit!"

There were nude Polaroids of a woman.

"Dam. That’s ‘Aunt Janie’! Dad always told me to call her aunt."

Under a paperclip, a sheaf of black-and-white 8x10s, his dad and a buxom woman walking on the street or dining out, all taken from oblique angles, surveillance-style.

We examined the Polaroids closely.

"That’s fuckin’ crazy. No wonder. Mom busted his ass, and good!"

Scully seemed impressed, by his father’s voyeurism and taste in women and his mother’s vituperation.

By the time I met Scully, his dad had moved out and was dating a much younger lady from the south end of town. They got a place together in a big development newly built on prime south-county farmland. Scully and his sister saw their dad weekends. He reported back about his new family and the suburban kids. It was different there-the same teen ennui and angst, but indulged with lots more money and unchecked by close-knit family or neighbors. I knew guys from that end of town, but my new neighborhood was revealing its own fascinating topography.

We usually bought weed from Mike down the street. Scully had the connection. I was third wheel. Eventually, I had to go myself. Mike lived with his grandmother in the top two floors of a big house. His bedroom, a teenage boy’s dream: top floor, skylight, tons of posters, black light, an electric guitar, and bitchin’ stereo system with tower speakers.

You entered from the alley, through their back yard and up a metal outer staircase to a landing. Just inside, a kitchen. His grandmother was usually cooking or watching TV. She was a Noman Rockwell, white folks’ gramma: hair bun, glasses on a chain, apron over full skirts. She also knew exactly what Mikey was selling to nervous teenagers lifting her snowman door knocker.

"Yesssss" she said, standing in the enveloping smell of hot skillets, grease and cabbage.

"Mike ‘ere?" I mumbled. Mike’s door behind, she breathed sharply through her nose and bared her teeth.

" Mike! Mikey!" Her voice harsh and directed into me. Jaw levering like a nutcracker on each word "Your...friend...is....here."

She blocked me. "What’s your name?"

"Chris"

"What?"

"Chris"

"You live around here?"

"Yes. I do..I"

Mike’s buddy Chauncey opened the 4th floor door and leaned out.

Gramma stepped back, turning, walking toward the stove. Back to us, she shouted into the bubbling pots "JUST GET YOUR REEFER, THEN. GO AHEAD."

and mocked my solicitude, "IS MIKE HEEEEERE?"

"MIKE AND ALL HIS FRIENDS. DAM YOU."

Chauncey blinked and nodded. I ran up the stairs behind him, closing the door. Downstairs, gramma loosed a winding, wordless scream.

"Don’t listen to her. She’s fucking crazy."

"Yeah. But, jeeez man..."

Upstairs, Mike lay under bed covers. He swiveled his head toward me, eyes sunken and rhuemy.

"Hey. Hey, man. You’re Scully’s friend. Yeah. Cool." He turned away, sighing. Chauncey looked in my eyes. "Lotta people been coming by who don’t even know Mike. It’s fucked, you know." Chauncey was a precocious 70’s teenager-openly gay, wise far beyond our geography and spoke hushed, confessionally.

"They want all different kind of shit. Mike doesn’t like it. He’s been shooting speed."

My face must have showed surprise at that non-sequitur

"I shoot him up." He said in tenderest voice.

"It’s easier and he trusts me. He just likes the airplanes, you know, when you shoot it."

Mike moaned. Bathed in the skylight, we were a Rembrandt. I just wanted to buy a bag and split.

"Chaunce, ask him what he wants." Mike shivered and the bed rattled.

Chauncey made the deal. "It’s fuckin’ killer. I took a couple hits like two hours ago. I’m still fuckin’ wasted." In gentler days, Scully and I would have hung out and partied with them. Scully calling Chauncey a "fucking faggot" and Chauncey spitting back "pizza face". We handed off and I prepared to cross the Scylla and Charbodis. Mike didn’t say goodbye.

I pushed the door until it juddered open. Gramma sat in the adjoining room, crocheted blanket over her legs, TV blaring. I thumb-wrestled with the deadbolt and let myself out, stepping fast down the stairs.

When I told Scully about it, he calculated. "She’s a fuckin’ trip. Mike’s fuckin’ stupid, too. Firing that shit? Better not fuckin’ get us busted". There were two or three police families on each block. After a year in the neighborhood, I was learning that. We needed purchases simple and low-key. Scully had law enforcement on his literal doorstep.

His step-mom had a couple sisters around our age. In a bizarre one-off, he ended up hooking up with one of them; incest minus the c’est. Through her, he found a new connect, Russ. No geriatric kneecappers or teen vampires with Russ. I can’t remember the first bag we got from him. In those days greenish Mexican was it for regular guys. Despite his "higher than median income" school district, Russ enthusiastically promoted that product as "oh-ox-ican". I looked that name up in my Funk and Wagnalls. It was oh-kay.

We got the second bag a week after Halloween. He called it "gold". It definitely looked different. Examined under the car’s dome light, the crushed leaves looked metallic bronze, possibly from an aerosol can. We went up to Scully’s room to twist one up. It was a school night and his mom was at work. Maybe "Houses of the Holy" was playing. That was always my choice at his place. Right away, the smell was funny: an overheated voltage transformer or plastic cutlery melting in a charcoal grill. We took a few hits and put it out.

The house lights went down.

First, the overture:

"tastes fuckin’ weird"

"Like plastic, right?"

"Not smoking that shit anymore"

"Fuck, no"

The show began:

I became an amoeba, gushy on the inside, cilia paddling madly outside. Sinking into the bed, through its frame and down, down. When I opened my eyes, Scully was unwrapping Hershey’s miniatures, flicking them in his mouth, digging for more. With both hands, he offered the candy bag.

"ere..."

My insides jiggled as I waved him off.

Shadows frayed and dissolved. The record played again. Dali’s clocks oozed.

Scully lifted something to his chest, mouth flared. Black lava poured out, disappearing below. Intermittent splattering. Gutteral sounds. Lips opening and closing, an aquarium fish feeding.

I bounced off the bed, high-tide stomach and pincushion eyes.

"You’re sick. Get you cleaned up."

Lava bearded Scully’s chin. Lips gobbing, he handed me the heavy, sloshing trash can. Laughter. I put it on the sill. Down steep steps. At bottom, a hairpin turn. Scully tumbles. I pick him up. Armpits and chest. Funhouse mirror walk. The bathroom. Damp air. Washcloths under the faucet. He pulls his shirt up from the waist, trapping both arms inside. I yank it off violently.

Somewhere below, a door slams. A woman’s voice:

"I’m home. Where are ya?"

Scully looks at me, eyes spilling glue.

"Mom’s home" His voice drops two octaves between words.

She calls out again.

He unfolds an index finger.

"Shhhhh"

The voice gets closer.

I lurch toward the doorway, his mom appears before I can get out.

"Scully’s sick" I say in my serious voice.

She looks at my face,

"You’re wasted"

and pushes past me.

Then she sees her son.

"HO-LEE HELL, WHAT DID YUZ DO?"

"Nothin`, mom" he says cheerfully.

I look away. She grunts, struggling to sit him down on the toilet. He speaks to her in singsong. Her windbreaker rustles. She’s alongside me. Turning my torso with her hands, pushing me down and pinning me to the paneled wall. I smell sweat, perfume and stale smoke. She’s barely five feet tall, but her mouth is level with mine.

"WHAT DID YUZ DO? WHAT’D YUZ TAKE?"

"We drank whiskey. A bottle."

"WHISKEY DOESN’T DO THAT. YUZ TOOK SOMETHING"

"No, we didn’t take..."

"YUZ TOOK SOMETHING. WHAT’D YUZ TAKE"

Her forearm grinds into my sternum. I squirm, then exhale. My body deflates and begins to slide down. She pulls me up.

"YOU KNOW YOU COULD DIE? YUZ BOTH COULD DIE. BOTH OF YUZ."

My lips open, cool air rushes inside-inverted speech.

"GO HOME. I OUGHTA TELL YOUR PARENTS. GOD…DAM…STUPID….KIDS"

She lifts her forearm off my chest and returns to bathroom. I’m very warm. My face, in particular. The steps to the first floor tilt into utter darkness. I guide myself down, palms out, shoulder height.

Outside, cold wind knifes through a deep cleft in my skull. My walk home, one block of paved alley. Each footfall jars my spine, reverberating through my aqueous body and into my gaping head. Step by step, tottering toward our back gate. From the yard, beyond a blinding porch light, I see my mother moving in the kitchen. When I open the door, my body worms away from her.

“Hi, honey. How are you?”

“I’m tired. Gonna go to bed.”

“Your voice sounds funny. You getting a cold? Come here. Let me check you for fever.”

My throat grips and I stride through the doorway.

“I’m just tired, mom. Gonna sleep. I need it"

“Ok, honey. Sleep tight.”

When I reach my room, nauseous and staggering, I fall on the bed. The ceiling light whirls while my body liquefies. As I float, wind howls, and the city calls its third shift to work.

tevotbegotnaught

Sep 29, 2020

Ira Sullivan

"The land of the living was not far removed from the land of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors." Chinua Echebe

I met and heard Ira Sullivan when I was a teenager. A local business man, Steve Patton brought him to my hometown. In 50's Chicago, Steve partnered with Joe Segal to promote shows. Ira, one of their local stars. Twenty years later, in his toasty living room, aided by his LPs, Steve educated me on Ira's precipitous Chi-town rise and permanent Florida detour.

For East Coast visits, Steve built bands from a short list of stars: Reuben Brown-piano, Joe Diorio-guitar, Rufus Reid or Michael Formanek-bass, Billy Hart or Steve Bagby-drums. When the first gig happened, Steve called my dad to make sure I'd be there. I can't recall the first tune or set I heard Ira play, but from then on he added my own tenor to his lineup of brass and woodwinds. My horn remembers that.

Ira was a stream-of-consciousness bandleader. While the other cats burned and churned, he stood stage left with an instrument, warming it with breath, testing his embouchure and shouting encouragement. Back at the mic, the next tune appeared headlong-a radically different tempo, a soulful chunk of melody or cascades of bebop elegance. With Ira's magnetic ears and catholic tastes, his choices and segues sometimes surprised and flummoxed harmonic players. Eventually someone made it work, though. His set always ended on alto flute and a long vamp surrounding "Amazing Grace". Ira's faith didn't make his playing sanctimonious or chasten his jazz musician argot. It did seem to keep him forever grateful for the life he had been given and music he shared.

I got to chauffer Ira a bit and have meals with him. I always brought a horn, in case we could play on downtime. He once asked me what I was learning. I told him, 'Infant Eyes". He gasped, "That's Wayne's tune! So beautiful. Let's play it" He tilted his alto toward my tenor. "What note do you start on?" I told him. "Go ahead, man" he said, closing his eyes. As I played, he accompanied me with counterpoint, both simple and elaborate. I found I didn't know the music well enough to keep my place and listen to him and finally stopped, defeated. "You sound great. I haven't heard you in long time. Man, you're just getting better and better."

This was his teaching: dig deep into the music together, spread love, acceptance and encouragement. Onstage, Ira always invited young folk to stand next to him. He beamed at all of us while we played, never cutting us off (even when it would have been merciful), keeping us ever-involved playing backgrounds or trading with him.

I believe I remember everything he ever said to or around me. Heros make us both truly humble and falsely confident. Our small bodies spun wide by their powerful gravity.

What I still aspire to is what I always witnessed from him: the highest standards of skill, a loving, accepting attitude, hunger for life on and off the bandstand. Mac Olsen, an old and dear friend of Ira's told me of a hang so extended they returned to diner multiple times over a weekend. When the wee-hour waitress saw Ira, she cracked, "YOU, AGAIN?"

#irasullivan#jazzmusician#mentor#gratitude

tevotbegotnaught

May 9, 2020

My parents bought their first home in 1975. I was 14. For years before, when we visited friends or family, I found the piano (if there was one) and camped out with it, showing up only for meals and goodbyes. Once they painted and furnished the house, my parents told me they wanted a piano for the family (really for me). In consultation with one of my teachers, a fine woodwind player and piano technician, they chose a Yamaha Spinet. A local music store arranged delivery and I was home that day to let the movers in. A shiny box truck arrived. I went out to the sidewalk to meet the crew. The cab doors opened and a cloud of weed poured out. Two movers, white dudes in their early twenties, climbed down and one handed me a clipboard with papers to sign. It was summer, the guys wore sleeveless shirts, jeans and work boots. First thing I noticed was their appearance, both were medium height, scrawny and pale. They were stoned, too, but I didn't necessarily see that as a problem. Though it was weird they made no effort to hide it from me, a stranger.

I watched from the sidewalk as they moved the piano back to the gate/lift and lowered it to the curb. From the sidewalk, there were three cement steps, a short, level concrete walk, then four wide cement steps to the front porch. One guy stayed in front to navigate, check clearance and steady. The other handled the piano. The instrument was canvas-strapped to a machine with parallel motorized treads underneath. When the case tilted vertically, the mover started a motor and those treads lifted the piano up the front of each step. A mover only need adjust the weight with his arms, making the angle slightly forward kept most of the weight off him. The instrument moved upward with the inexorable pace of an ice sheet. Piano man wore a fabric back support, similar to those weightlifters used (this WAS York, PA, home of York Barbell Co and "Strength and Health" magazine). He easily got the instrument up the first three steps and walk.

Front man, now on the porch, checked in with his partner and gave him the ok. The next four steps weren't any steeper. Its motor whined and the piano slowly rose up the first step, then seemed to freeze. The mover cursed.

"M'back!"

The mover was in agony.

"M'back! M'back!!"

"I can't hold it!"

His partner stepped closer, but didn't move to help. I stepped up level with the walk, still far back from the porch. The mover cursed and shifted his feet. The weight came level and he shifted again. The two men yelled unintelligiblely at each other until the mover stepped away, turning sideways and letting his arms flap. The piano slowly tipped from vertical, accelerated and landed upside down. All the strings on its harp, dampers fully disengaged, sounded at once; a murky wave rotated in the splintered wooden case. Tiny glittering plinks bobbed to the surface as it receded completely. Then front man, still on the porch, looked at me. "Hey, man. Can we use your phone?"

tevotbegotnaught

May 4, 2020

Dubov's Last Jump-off pt 3

Saturday afternoon, we found out the club couldn’t (or wouldn’t) accommodate our third night. Dubov had to pay us, of course. Mo was looking at other venues, possibly for tonite, realistically for the coming week. He asked our availability. Once we all responded, possibilities quickly evaporated. That weekend passed and more days after.

After waiting a week, I texted Mo about money. Hours later, he replied:

“High paint he otter eyes or sue didn’t cut anything”

At the gigs, I watched Mo use his phone; its screen at his nose, glasses mid way between forehead and hairline. He looked down precipitously, grumbled, grumbled again, then pressed send. What usually came through was a ransom note clipped from Beckett. He never corrected these puzzles until one of us asked. Here, a fully translated version of our exchange:

“I paid the other guys, you sure you didn’t get anything.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Did you send your invoice to Julie.”

“Yes”

“I’ll call them”

“is there anything I can do to expedite this?”

“Chris, I’m not your employer”

“Right”(!)

“There’s a rehearsal tonite, will you be there”

“I didn’t know about a rehearsal. Where and when?”

“Still working on a place. Maybe 7?” (3 hours from now)

“Tough for me”

“No worries. If you go, you’ll be paid of course”

“Ok”

“No worries. I’ll get back to you”

Now, I was enrolled in the Godot payment plan. Dubov was looking at spending four lifetimes in more chains than Issac Hayes ever wore. I just wanted to get my money.

Weeks later, Mo Bedbug went live.

“Bears ash oh Friday”

Mo called in a favor with some Long Islanders. We had a show Friday. I lobbied for travel money.

Any evening rush hour on the LIE (a highway, not an enormous falsehood) was a parking lot. Friday rush was tailgating minus libations. I pressed him for my other money in the bargain.

“I paid Pianist with Venmo. Do you have Venmo.”

(I send my Venmo)

“This is will be easy, I didn’t know you had Venmo.”

“Ok”(I offered twice before)

“I’ll see you Friday my place"

Mo balked at travel money, though. Arranging an Uber from his place and promising we'd miss rush hour. To get to Mo's, I took the bus, two of them. It cost me way more than the fare. Flushing Avenue, Shabbat imminent, was a sightseeing tour: high school kids, restaurant workers, construction crews. So many people boarding, I couldn’t see nor hear my stop and had to walk an extra half-mile.

Turning onto Mo’s street, a familiar Bushwick tableau appeared. A massive pit, surrounded on three sides by green plywood. Graffiti tags and band decals fading under the shrouds of old posters. At the curb, a ziggurat of garbage-strewn ten-foot pipes and a marooned RV, black spray paint scrawled over its siding and vents, windows cracked and stuffed with wads of insulation, front seats piled to the ceiling with bundled magazines and crumpled newsprint.

On the next block, I found Mo's address stenciled on the brick wall of a old factory. Drummer stood away from its entrance smoking and scrolling his phone. He looked up.

"Man, I texted him like 10 minutes ago."

"No answer?"

"He said he’s coming right down"

"I’ve been giving him progress reports. F***ing bus was crawling."

The building’s entrance, a glass and brushed steel module, sat cheek by jowl with a battered freight elevator. After a text reminder and more waiting, the freight elevator doors parted vertically. Mo let the canvas strap swing overhead.

"This way" he said, glancing over his shoulder at the gleaming foyer before pulling the strap down. The elevator enclosure, a hypoxic chamber of fuel vapors and sawdust, led darkly to a huge steel door. Mo punched a code and pulled the handle. Inside, a newly carpeted hallway, filled with tarps, drywall, paint cans and the potent smell of sandalwood.

"They’re still doing work....as you can see. My place is cool, though.”

"Where’s Keys (the new pianist)?"

"He’s here. Been here a while. Working on the music."

"You have a piano?"

"Uh, I have kind of a studio. Not for recording, but you know, instruments and stuff."

Mo had room for those instruments and plenty more. His walls sprouted art in every medium and material: paintings on wood, metal, plastic jugs, shards of glass; sculptures of bottle caps, cardboard, styrofoam; violent, erotic black and white photos fetishizing punk style and concert posters from Downtown’s acme.

I stooped to gawk at an undulating video in a KFC bucket.

“That’s from my gallery. I used to have a gallery. When it closed I moved everything here. Well, not everything, but…you know.”

Keys sat on a leather couch. He was a kid, maybe twenty-five. I was his grandfather. That messed me up. Before excusing himself, Mo pulled me an espresso from a fancy Italian machine. I packed sandwiches and coffee, but the extra shot was welcome. From a closed door, medicinal-grade weed wafted. We were a full hour behind schedule.

Out on the street, waiting for the Uber, Mo nodded at the construction site and listing RV, saying in his mumblecore voice,

"That’s my girlfriend’s art project.... I mean, ex-girlfriend. "

"The RV? She did THAT?"

"Yeah....Well, her friends... they did it together. I don’t know who did which part"

(There were ‘parts’?)

"How long has it been there?"

"Uh....nine months. Wait...yeah. We broke up six months ago. She was living in it for a while."

"Living in it? You’re kidding. Was that part of the project?"

He chuckled. "Yeah...I don’t know."

"We’re still friends" he said, mostly to tumbling litter in the street.

Inside the Uber, Mo continued: “the realtor told me this was east Williamsburg, but it’s not, it's Bushwick. I don’t care what they call it, of course. I don’t mind living in Bushwick. It’s easier to have a car here.”

“You have a car?”

“Not now. Had to get rid of it. Wasn’t right for this neighborhood”

“Wasn’t right?”

“it was an Audi R8. Midlife crisis car. These streets are so bad, I kept having to get it fixed.”

Driving due east, the winter sun behind us pooled on the shiny road. We careened through four lane traffic. Ahead, break lights fanned out, ruby droplets cascading off a humpback’s tail.

Drummer and Keys talked through the set, then volleyed gossip about mutual friends.

When the radio spun an artist he knew personally, Mo turned around and apropos-ed a story, interrupting the other guys. In the 80s, he produced videos for many fledgling stars. It was a new medium for him and Pop music. A few of his clients soared from Downtown digs to world domination. Mo didn’t stay on for their ascent, though. He also worked on an early Dubov-produced movie until the boss’s relentless cost-cutting and hostility wore him down. While he rambled, a vape pen did plenty of its own talking.

Tonight’s venue, a redux of a famous Long Island rock room, now tucked in the basement of a new boutique North Shore Inn. That building, a block-size Cape Cod, dropped like Dorothy’s whirling farmhouse at an angle to the tony commercial strip.

We had a seriously low pressure slot, opening for a veteran blues band. Ten white guys from three generations; a solid outfit with a long history playing sincere, tasty covers. Always simpatico, Karolina added "Stormy Monday" to our set list. Due to the short notice, we lost Pianist, our stellar MD, and Trumpet wasn’t available. Pruned to prototypical stripper band: saxophone, piano and drums. Not without some irony..

When the ladies hit “Uptown Funk", shimmying and signifying, the audience, almost all sixty year-old white dudes with the occasional spouse, started hooting and whistling. T and A wasn’t on the bill, but it still satisfied. Margherita did her canned steps for ”Too Darn Hot". Karolina was confident and sold her songs. Keys somehow kept the basslines and harmonies together. I completely missed the famous trumpet intro to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". The ladies jumped in undaunted. The Male Gaze kept the show alight until we exited, dodging the headliner's B3, Leslie and vintage amps.

The ladies were pros now and we repaired to the underground parking lot to celebrate. The girls in jeans and hoodies, band in our "gangster suits". While she waited for Keys to blaze up. Margherita asked me,

“Did you have fun?”

"Sure, I always have fun" I told her. What counts as honesty when the entire premise of an act is fakery?

"Great" she said, tracking down the joint.

A couple hits and we went back inside, sitting down near the jacked-open exit door. The blues band’s horn section looked on wearily as the front man sang verses fashioned by tougher men for harsher times. From our seats, we saw Mo sweep through the green room doorway, his long canvas coat and scarf swinging. He pivoted at the closest table and exchanged with the owner, a grizzled man with a barely legal date. Their conversation rearranged chairs and sent the men striding out of the club, proving there actually were blues to be had everyday.

When Mo and dance partner failed to return, we headed upstairs and onto the porch, where patio furniture gleamed under blinding lights. At the foot of the wooden steps, livery cars glided in and out of the glare. After a flurry of texts, the ladies gathered their garment bags and kissed us goodbye. A black SUV, indistinguishable from the others, stopped and a rear window opened. Inside, Dubov’s face, like crumpled paper, if paper were milled from lipids and dusted with ash. "Good job guys" he said, voice level and hoarse. We thanked him. The ladies got in on the far side, Dubov’s window closed and the car drove off.

************************************************************************************

After dropping him at the factory, Mo left the meter running on our Uber so the band could get home. On the way, we speculated about Dubov’s eventual prison sentence, Mo’s fee and when "the New Yorkers" might book their first Bar Mitzvah.

The driver, a Bengali, navigated without commenting on our post-mortems, confirming and re-confirming each address for his app. I was last on the circuit. Once we were alone, I asked the driver about his night. His answers were brief and courteous. As we waited at a light, he turned his head toward me. "Excuse me, one question. Have you ever been to Las Vegas?"

tevotbegotnaught

Apr 16, 2020

Dubov's Last Jump-off pt 2

During the second rehearsal, Dubov made a pitch. He sent Mo Bedbug, still ambulatory, out to meet the manager of the club. Mo returned with an unshaven young white dude in a skinny black suit. Sitting next to Dubov, the guy crossed his legs, knit his brow and listened amiably. Dubov giddily introduced our Italian medley, emphasizing a tie-in with the restaurant's cuisine and making labored gangster allusions. It was incomprehensible he needed to sell this guy on a twenty-minute cover band set. Dubov, an early investor in the club and its parent business, for years treated the room as his semi-private, gentleman's lounge. After a fifteen minute pitch, skinny suit shook everyone’s hand and left. Our brain trust never mentioned him again. The gig was on.

Start time begat a long text chain from Mo, who never included Dubov in band communications. Mo planned on 11, a typical agent strategy to cover client indecision and get the talent in early. The musicians fought back. Dubov, who planned to wait for a packed house, asked for 12:30. The club needed every available inch for patrons and countered with 12. Mo just wanted to get back to Bushwick and relax with a cannabis nitecap. The negotiations whipsawed me, so I deleted everything, waited, then asked Mo to set a time, any time. Eventually, he confirmed midnight.

The club was two stories above the restaurant, a ridiculously over-priced Italian joint. First, I passed a velvet rope, manned by two pro-wrestler types: a white guy with a clipboard and black guy with folded arms. Then a metal staircase wrapped in bird crap-splattered canvas. Violent winds compressed that sheath, its seams popping and wheezing. Designed by Escher, the whole construction ended in a tiny doorway. Inside: goldleaf, massive chandeliers, potted palms and huge paintings of Ché and Vieja Havana. Cubanismo for cool kids. In lieu of a bandstand, we’d play just inside the entrance. The club’s heating system was set to neutralize the constant temperature flux of a swinging door and accommodate scantily clad faux club-kids. It felt like standing in front of a burning building with wind whipping off a glacier just behind.

In a stairwell above the club, the singers were doing dance warmups and gabbing. At the top of the stairs, a narrow hall and off it, an open room. A typical multi-use restaurant space, it combined security camera bank, liquor/wine storage, and business office. While I changed, inches away a stone-faced manager clicked a mouse and slipped Hennessy. Straightening my tie as I walked down the steps, the girls stopped their preparations to hug me and wish me luck. I’d been onstage with legends and countless gifted, dynamic professionals, but they clearly knew my good fortune had run out.

Downstairs, a half-dozen tall beautiful young women provided table service. Their uniform: short tuxedo jacket, ruffled white shirt and hot pants. Our waitress towered six feet without her skyscraper heels. She told us we could order one free alcoholic drink only after our set, then brought a tray crammed with liter bottles of sparkling water. The drink menu priced them at 20 bucks each. Before we played a note, Dubov handed her a three-hundred dollar tip, not necessarily for professional competence.

Pianist schlepped a small keyboard from home, rigged it on a shaky rack, then piled music on our stands; 13 pages for the horns, double that for him. He leaned over and said gravely, "play the parts, I know they’re correct, but no matter what, follow the singers"

Stage left, in the corner of a long, plush couch, Margherita sat on Dubov’s lap. He fingered his phone while she giggled and tapped her heels on the tile floor. A drum kit squeezed into the corner. Above the drums, on a chalk board, Mo had written “THE NEW YORKERS", the name Dubov chose for his new act. When the ladies introduced themselves, their repartee descended to self-parody as neither was from anywhere near New York.

Off icy slopes, night lifers entered in twos and threes. The clientele wasn’t so hip; tourist families with matching college hoodies, brittle couples on awkward dates, girls’ night cliques chugging twenty-five dollar Cosmos. As the room filled up, our show, 15 minutes of music fluffed with patter and mugging, attracted scant attention. Singers lost the form in "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy". The concept of instrumental solos never made sense to them, anyway. Pianist gave a sweeping gesture which they made a two bar rest. Then we returned to "Uptown Funk", their theme, and took our bows. The singers were sweaty and happy, replaying their foibles and firsts. Mlle Unitard made the trip to watch her student perform. Mo was pleased, mainly because Dubov was satisfied. When I said goodnight, Mo asked if I sent my invoice to Dubov’s people. Did I cc him, as well? They were doing PayPal to him. Then, he would PayPal us.

After the first night, a tabloid picked up our story. Photos of Dubov, a sexy young girl in his lap, rock-skipped across the world. A major US daily quoted one ‘Margherita Slice’ about Dubov: "I feel sad. Really sad. So many lies out there about a good guy. He just really helps people". The article also mentioned Karolina as "former girlfriend". The other musicians sent me links to more stories.

Night two was even colder, freight train winds slammed the car as I drove across the Brooklyn Bridge. When I gave the palooka at the door my name, he ran a bare fingertip down his clipboard list.

"Nope. Don’t see it"

I told him Dubov’s name, he didn’t speak nor look up, unlatching the rope just enough for me to get through. Upstairs, on a couch, the girls sipped wine with Mo. He wore Chucks and an ankle-length black denim coat hand-painted with spray-can graffiti.” The New Yorkers” rocked stilettos and sparkly gowns, showing plenty of cleavage. No Dubov. Mo took me aside. Despite excellent English, Mo’s voice hummed and burbled unintelligibly, a weedhead’s inheritance.

Last night's show was great, he said. Pianist would update me on set changes for tonite . Management asked Dubov to stay away. They didn’t want more attention. He shook his head. “About payment…PayPal fees are outrageous!” He was scandalized.” I think Harry's people don’t have to pay them. So, can I just send you a check? I’ll need your address. Email me everything, ok?”

I fired off the email from my phone and waited near the door, dressed, instrument packed. A young woman in business attire approached me and asked what i was doing. I told her. She was a manager, concerned about our start time. I referred her to Mo. “I already talked to him" she said, annoyed. With supreme elegance and efficiency, she turned quarter-profile away and lit a cigarette, an indoor action so provocative (and potentially expensive), my mouth gaped. The cigarette burned at arm length while she listed all the problems created by our little three-night clambake. Her woes made sense, though I couldn’t offer concrete help.

While the singers primped, Mo introduced me to Julie, Dubov's assistant, recipient of my payroll emails. A solid, small-town gal in a dark pantsuit, she seemed pained when we discussed her duties. Possibly, she saw her job disappearing soon beneath a judge’s gavel.

We went on shortly after. The Friday night room packed quickly. Frat boys took pictures using the singers as foils: Karolina, busy singing her heart out; Margherita, a good sport with plenty of downtime. An undertow of high-pitched shrieks, bro-signifying and cackling swamped the music. Absent a PA with a dedicated set of monitors, we had to deal with it.

Our set worked a bit better and a bit worse than the first night. After, the ladies told us we sounded great and thanked us. We said the same to them. Mo was sleepily effusive and told us: I gave Dubov a good report; there's food waiting for you; one more night to go!

Trumpet player and I took the indoor stairs down. A gigantic man stood watch at the first floor. He heard us coming and stepped aside. At the window, our meals sat ready, packed for a Himalayan trek. We grabbed them and headed through the restaurant. Even at one am, diners lingered over remnants of their meals. On the sidewalk, street signs bombilated in the wind and trash scuttled under parked cars. By the velvet rope and its snaking supplicants, an idling black SUV. In the passenger seat, Dubov hunched over a phone screen, its blue nimbus around his puffy brow and eyes, mouth lost in shadow.

tevotbegotnaught

Apr 10, 2020

Dubov's Last Jump-off

**********************************************************************

I pressed the phone against my cheek.

“I can do those dates. The downtown one? Near Wall Street?"

"No" he said, "it’s in Soho. I’ll give you the address later." For an agent, Mo Bedbug was pretty relaxed.

"They’re having a rehearsal at seven. Could you do that?"

"Tonite at seven?"

"Yes. Tonite. Can you make that?"

I walked Fulton street to Chinatown while he slalomed through the details so far: money, dates, times and now, rehearsal.

"Seven tonite is good."

"Great. That’s great. Uh, listen, one of the girls…. there’s two girls… singers. I told you that. Uh, one of the singers I told you about..."

Relaxed and a bit spacey, too.

“Right?"

"She’s Harry Dubov’s girlfriend"

Dubov, a powerful, wealthy man, accused by dozens of women of violent sexual assaults, rapes and subsequent intimidation, was free on bond, pending trial.

"You gonna have problem with that?"

I didn’t hesitate.

"Who’s paying me, him or you?"

"Well, he’s paying me and I’ll pay the musicians. I worked with him before. He’s a real asshole, but he pays. You’ll definitely get your money.”

Now, Mo Bedbug really sounded like an agent.

On my right, the Manhattan Bridge tilted into view.

"I’m good for the gig. I can make the rehearsal. Is there a book or something? Specific instruments?"

"No book. Bring saxophone, of course. If you play flute, you do play flute? I thought so. I think flute would sound good on some of the songs."

Definitely an agent…

**********************************************************************

The rehearsal space was just off Times Square. Not quite an undisclosed location. Three flights of steps, steep and narrow, led to reception. There were often so many familiar faces, you automatically asked folks who they were rehearsing with. I used Mo’s name and quickly found my colleagues. We laughed about the absurdity of the gig and agreed Dubov wasn’t going to come to a crowded midtown rehearsal space. Just before 7, Mo came in, paid the rent and bought bottled water for us. He waited at the desk while we went to the room.

While we were setting up, two women pushed past the racked music stands to introduce themselves, enthusiastically shaking our hands. Margherita was short and lean. I figured she was mid-twenties, Karolina, maybe mid-thirties, more solid.

"Did you get the set list?"

"No"

"Mo said he was sending it to everyone."

"He mentioned..."

"We’ve been rehearsing a set."

"You have arrangements?"

They handed out sheaves of paper copied from fakebooks.

"No. You guys can just follow us. You know all the songs, right?"

"We didn’t get that list, so.."

The door opened. Harry Dubov leaned into the room, poking a shiny black cane in front. The women rushed to him. They took positions at his sides and he shuffled past, walking as if led invisibly by the nose, offering a hand to us in turn.

"Harry, nice to meet you."

"Harry"

"I’m Harry."

Singers spotting him, he used the cane to carefully leverage his backside into a chair. Behind Dubov, a woman in a black unitard carried his folded-up walker and a couple of water bottles. She was older than the singers and very muscular. Taking a seat to his right, posture immaculate, she scanned the room with a mannequin face. I definitely hadn’t expected Dubov. The tableau was pure Fellini. We waited for him to speak. He searched his jacket and retrieved a phone, holding it at eye level to stroke the screen. Not looking up, he asked,

"Where’s Mo?"

Both singers answered.

"He’s coming" "He’s downstairs"

Dubov snorted, "Tell him to hurry up"

Before they moved, Mo arrived and handed around the set list. It started with "Uptown Funk" , then "Billy Jean", "Natural Woman" "Too Darn Hot" and "Bad". Further down on the paper: “ Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", “That's Amore", “Mambo Italiano". We were functionally a wedding band. Dubov, who regularly worked with the most accomplished people in entertainment and collected piles of money and honors was apparently booking Leonard’s of Great Neck.

Karolina was an actual singer with repertoire and poise. Margherita didn’t sing anything on her own, but sometimes added unisons with Karolina. While we wrote out the complex cuts in their arrangements, Unitard lady conferred with Dubov. Mo swiveled toward us and motioned me in. "Margherita is dancing on ‘Too Darn Hot’."

Unitard lady was a dancer. Immediately, she took command in her French accent.

"Zere’s spee-see-fic parts for zee horns. Eets by Eh-la Feetz-gerald . (She emphasized the first syllable of both names)."

"You know zees?"

Margherita played the arrangement on her phone: great call and response saxophone lines and sassy brass shouts played by an ace studio band.

"Where should we start?" Karolina asked.

"Horns gotta learn those parts first." I said.

Mo chortled "I’m not worried about that. Lets not waste everyone’s time now. You’ll have it next time"

Dubov looked up from his phone.

"Zey need time to lairn it." Mlle told him.

"Ok. Then let’s move on. What’s next?"

We went through "Bad". I played the parts I could remember, paying attention to the trumpet, but there were plenty of gaps. Dubov complimented the drummer (he was super crisp throughout). He addressed the horns, italicizing each word:

"You guys, it’s the craziest thing. Here I am listening to Michael Jackson and..." his voice suddenly loud and high "..all of a sudden JAZZ BREAKS OUT! Where the HELL did that come from?"

My trumpet colleague, exceptionally knowledgeable, argued that we played only original parts.

"I’ve listened to that song probably a million times. Never heard any of that. But what do I know?’

Dubov shrugged and laughed.

Then, Dubov spoke to the singers, cadence slow and uninflected.

"You’re doing the song the way Michael Jackson did it. You’re not gonna do it better than him. Do it YOUR way. Own the song. Blow it out. Totally make it yours."

He rotated his head above the cane and grimaced. The girls fidgeted in place, bobbing their heads, tugging mic wires away from their sides.

"Where should we start?" Karolina said.

The pianist sang a line and gave them a note. They scanned their lyric sheets and started singing. We stumbled in behind them. The women gyrating in front of him, Duboff leaned out over his cane, eyes rolling up. After a minute of singing, the ladies turned around and looked at us while we flailed away. Pianist cut us off.

"We’ll work on the ending tomorrow. You’re gonna rehearse tomorrow?" Dubov’s voice was crisp now.

Margherita looked at Dubov. "Yeeeeah. We haven’t set a time but were gonna do it for sure"

By “That’s Amore", we were four hours on the clock. The singers were elbow-deep in their lyric sheets, figuring out the cuts for the Italian medley. I started out playing pads under their vocal. It seemed pointless, so I stopped and didn’t play a note for more than a half-hour. Eventually I looked up. Four feet away, Dubov, face porcine, eyes dim, fixed on me. He tapped Mo's shoulder. The two men spoke mouth to ear like lovers. Next time the music stopped, Mo leaned toward me, shielding his mouth with the back of his hand. “Harry wants to know why you’re just sitting there. I told him you guys don’t have parts because you didn’t know which songs we were working on, right? Can you just make something up that works for now. He’s wondering what he's paying you for.”

The singers looked at us, unsure if they should start.

“Go ahead. We're done talking.” I said.

Mo interrupted. “We all think the band needs time to make real arrangements with the correct parts, especially for the horns. Not their fault, of course"

Pianist was the guy for this. He’d produced or MD'ed many high-level gigs. Sondheim himself was moved to tears by one of his arrangements. Out of earshot, Pianist negotiated a price and promised parts for the whole show by the next day, a feat since it was already 11:30 PM.

Musically we made little progress that first night, agreeing to meet the next evening. When we wrapped up, Dubov and Mo were optimistic . Getting Dubov out of his chair took a minute.

“A piece of advice for you guys" he said, wincing, “don’t ever get three back surgeries in row. It's no f***king fun"

When we finally left the studio, everyone talked at once. I always fear the axe in these situations. Rich folks just don’t get us and explaining usually sounds like excuses or incompetence. My trumpet colleague had experience with Dubov. “He doesn’t know music, but he knows right away when someone is bulls**ing.”

The next night, the singers greeted us with hugs. Margherita reported “I took four voice lessons today and did yoga, then we rehearsed”

“Sounds like a good day. Where'd you go for those lessons?”

“The teachers came to me"

I added up the cost of those in-house lessons. Nice work if you can get it…

Dubov and Mademoiselle came late. The walker idled outside and Mlle ceremoniously ferried his cane.

With written parts, the patchwork medleys were easier to follow. We didn’t need to stay late. After a couple run-throughs we started packing up.

“Harry, what should we wear?”

“Black. Black suits. All black. I mean, you’re all gangsters, right?” Dubov laughed, mostly to himself. “Hey” he called to Pianist “ you’re Israeli, right?”

Pianist answered quietly.

“You guys are f***kin gangsters, right? Israelis? C'mon! All Israelis are f**kin gangsters.” He got a big kick out of saying this to the two gentle Israelis in the band. Some of us knowing he’d paid former Mossad agents to surveil journalists and his victims.

On the way out, I asked Mo about payment. Had I sent my info to Dubov’s people? Did I have a PayPal? They were doing PayPal. Invoice them all your info. I reminded him that he was paying me directly. “I don’t think I said that. He has an accounting department. They take care of that stuff.”

*********************************************************************

Next “Two for the Show" or “Don’t Rain on My Charade”

tevotbegotnaught

Apr 16, 2019

“The conductor…in the power he has over others…it is in his interest as a human being, as well as that of his musical achievements, to resist the temptation to misuse it. Tyranny can never bring to fruition artistic-or for that matter human- gifts; subordination under a despot does not make for joy in one’s music-making. Intimidation deprives the musician of the full enjoyment of his talent and proficiency. Yet I should certainly not want to impugn the employment of earnest severity or even the occasional borrowing of the Bolt of Zeus; the latter if the hand knows how to wield it, can in exceptional situations bring surprisingly good results. Severity is a legitimate even indispensable means of dealing with people...”

Bruno Walter

In my Summer of 42 (years), I was a college freshman…again. With neither Mexican weed nor dormitory hijinks to distract me, I worked through the full Brooklyn College Core Curriculum and a handful of music courses. My degree plan also required an ensemble each semester. When the Assistant Dean interviewed me, he looked over my CV and immediately suggested their Jazz Band. After hearing them, I chose a contemporary music ensemble founded by a composition professor. Fall semester, she was on sabbatical and a trumpet prof, Juilliard guy and veteran freelancer, ran the class. To begin, he sat everyone in a circle and asked us to play “Happy Birthday" in hocket. Most of the class was unsure of the melody and some also thought it a stupid idea. With our nonstandard instrumentation, we massacred Second Viennese School composers for the rest of the term.

Spring term, the founder returned. She was just over five feet tall, brown-skinned, with narrow shoulders and mineshaft dark eyes. When she listened, her head nodded while bottomless eyes fixed on you. Raised in a distressed country, her life moved from prodigy to conservatory-trained professional with impeccable musicianship: piano, score reading, solfege, conducting, improvising, composing. Then, she came to the US, with zero money and English and rebuilt her career from scratch. At BC, she conducted the orchestra until politics pushed her out. Now, she gave composition lessons and led this ensemble.

Our roster still read as spare parts: three singers, three pianists, two flutes, violin, saxophone, clarinet, guitar; some highly skilled, others not. For most, English was a second or even third language. Our professor's first assignment: list your colleagues’ instruments, find pieces for a subset of our forces, select only pieces written after 1960, bring scores/parts for audition.

The following week, we presented our finds. First, someone showed her a John Cage duet. As she turned pages, Maestra’s face went blank .

“Why did you get this?”

A mumbled answer.

Maestra closed the score. “You got eet because eet looks easy. Didn't you? First of all, it’s a short duet. Three, maybe four minutes of music. Nothing to do on a real pro-GRAM. Not serious. Not serious at all.”

More mumbling.

“Get something else. Thank you.”

She jabbed the score into their hands, then addressed the class.

“Nothing about John Cage. John is extraordinary. When you choose music, don’t just take a name you theenk you know. Read the score. You are musicians …supposed to be….”

Next, one of the singers produced a folio. Its font, ornate and oversized. I winced. Maestra saw it was a Puccini aria with piano accompaniment and recoiled.

“After nineteen-sixty? Thees? You are kidding me!”

Again, she faced us.

“Thees is NOT opera work-SHOP. I know some of you did not make it there. I'm very sorry about that. Please find some other music to sing. There are so many good theengs. I hope you will find out. Music does not end with Verdi, Puccini.”

So it went. Gratefully, she anticipated our poor choices and suggested some pieces.

Meastra spoke Spanish to some students, aware of the terrain they navigated and supportive. Jorge, a Mexican pianist, was one of her projects. He was a skilled player, an enthusiastic and warm colleague. His giggle often broke up the class. In our third meeting, we rolled the piano front, Jorge sat on the bench. While he longed for mama's home cooking, he wasn’t missing any meals in Brooklyn. His midsection expanded well beyond his tight-waisted pants, straining shirt buttons. Maestra questioned him on preparation: “you’re playing the second movement, what about the third?”

Unaffected by the prodding, he began to play. A minute in, she said, “stop”.

He continued, eyes closed.

She shouted, “Stop! I’m telling you, STOP"

He looked over.

“JORGE….WHAT…ARE…YOU….DOING?”

It wasn’t meant as a question. Jorge smiled and gently shook his head.

“Why are you smiling? Look at you!”

Her voice leveled.

“This is not ready. It’s better, but it's not ready.”

She shifted.

“I am very worried about you. Look..at…your…STOMACH. You need to take better care of yourself. You know, pianists perform in pro-FILE. Theenk what you show to the audience.”

Jorge wasn't smiling. He put his hand on his belly.

“Everyone should con-see-der an exer-CISE pro-GRAM. I am forty years, Dio mio! Almost FEEFTY years older than some of you. Take care of yourselves.”

She dismissed him with a sweeping gesture.

“Ok, who is next? Anna, where is the list? Geeve it to me!”

Her assistant, a brilliant, tiny, Yankee grad student, always cleaned up.

Maestra partnered Jorge with another pianist for a Gyorgy Ligeti duo. Its ingenious architecture, a complex cycle revealed one beat at a time. In Yogi Berra's construction, half the score was ninety-nine percent rests. The players needed infallible inner time. While they played, Maestra leaned over the piano, right hand supporting her, left turning pages. She nodded her head slightly in tempo. The pianist's hits charged toward and away from each other like Pacman's gobbling goblins.

“You are late!” she slammed her left hand down. They went back. Another hammer blow. Back again. The piece never made it to the program.

At the end of the initial class, she approached me about Milhaud's “Le Creation du Monde", a chamber work for winds, including alto saxophone. We didn’t have the other winds, of course, but a young woodwind quintet, in residence for the year, would help out.

“Le Creation" story moves from brooding chorale to a raggy bolero where the winds pass around jumpy tunes, then strut them all, polyphonically, in a joyous finale.

At the first of four rehearsals, we were less than half personnel. Maestra had been enthusiastic about the quintet, encouraging us to meet, hear and study with them. But they were collaborating with major artists and appearing all over the world. Their residency, now in name only. No one in the group even bothered to return her emails. Our conductor was livid. (Later, the assistant assured us that Maestra never returned emails, either.) In rehearsal, the music just marked time. In long stretches with no tune and no landmarks, I fell into a hole and missed my entrance.

“What are you DOING! Counting! Count-ting! I can’t do everytheeng for you.”

Concert day was the first we all sat down to play. In the midst of my disciplined colleagues, I was a bellowing hippo. During the chorale, my slow descending notes were either out-of-tune, out-of-time, the wrong dynamic, or all three.

The baton came down hard “NO..NO..NO. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

“How can you be late. It's jazz. Jazz! You play jazz? Right? You know who is John Col-TRANE? Play it like Col-TRANE! Why should I have to tell YOU this. Come on!”

I wore other hats that night: soprano, clarinet. Still, my mind remained fogged through the Milhaud finale.

The quintet players all demolished their solos. With a huge smile, Maestra gave each well-deserved bows. When they were done, she flashed her eyes at me, scowling. Then, jerked both her hands upwards, like she was flipping a pool toy. I stood up and stared straight down.

Next semester, a composition student brought a score. It was mostly squiggles and arrows, notation designed to move the music forward without defining functional harmony or conventional melody. She conducted a circle for each “bar”. We could gauge the length of each gesture and respond in time. Simultaneously, she sang the gestures using their pitched start/end points, conducted, turned pages and offered substantive commentary. If one of us was even a second late, her glance immolated them.

I became friends with some of her students. Waiting outside her office, they often heard shouting. When the door opened, students walked out in tears. Some planned to work closely with Maestra toward their Master's or DMA. Those plans would change...

An alumni couple created an endowed chair for Maestra, protecting her from political games. To celebrate, students accompanied her to the donors’ Connecticut home for a musicale. We loaded two vans with the usual music school suspects: waifish Asian virtuoso string players, an Eastern European sturm und drang pianist, a diffident “difficult” composer, and bit players like me.

Both donors were in their eighties and fabulously rich, earnest, lefty intellectuals. The wife wore a gas mask-like apparatus, its hoses attached to a whirring box on her back. I strained to understand her speech, but her eyes shone with love and curiosity. The couple warmly welcomed us to a large room packed with guests.

I was part of a quartet: oboe, flute, clarinet and piano, playing a student work. The composer, a young Dominican guy, rising star in the program. A Caribbean undergraduate writing skilled takes on contemporary European music. His piece used the difference-tone clusters of Gyorgy Ligeti: loud, high notes, staggered and longheld, producing acoustic anomalies: window-fan undertones and piercing oscillations. Bathing in timbral waves and madly counting beats, I couldn’t find the piano part, though we made it to the end without requiring oxygen or a conductor. The composer took a awkward bow and disappeared.

With Maestra as Maitre’d we served up a baroque cello sonata, Beethoven piano music and some Sondheim. Then, our little foursome loudly dropped a turd on the buffet table.

The donor husband was one of those ruddy-faced white guys who wear baggy corduroys and turtle necks over their barrel physiques. He sought me out, towering above me as I packed up my clarinet.

“What did he mean with that piece?"

“Sir, I…I wouldn’t want to represent the composer, he never said anything about..”

“Now, you must know something.”

He was an important man accustomed to getting answers, fast and in full.

“I know my part and how it fits with the others. The woodwinds are playing difference tones, Stravinsky used...”

“Why didn’t HE explain that to us? We go to concerts all the time. Conductors explain new music. They give examples, give context. You can’t just write something like that and expect people to automatically understand it.”

Gulp....“Of course.”

“It’s his responsibility to help the audience understand the music”

I looked over. By the buffet, the composer was holding a plate, one of the string players laughing next to him. Mrs Donor approached me, extending her hand. The box on her back hissed and clicked. Above the mask, searching eyes, below, a voice from a radio in another room. Was she talking about the quartet? It was too uncomfortable. I interrupted.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality and the opportunity to play for you. You and your husband are so generous.”

She squeezed my hand and leaned in, radio transmission drowning in static. Her husband came to her side.

“My wife is saying we've been to many, many concerts of new music. Starting way back, with Lenny Bernstein. He taught us there’s always something to learn. He introduced us to many extraordinary artists”

He put his hand lightly on her back. Over her shoulder, Maestra was listening to a guest, head level with their sternum, eyes searchlights in reverse. The radio faded and its whirring submerged in the din.

We got back very late. Our vans parked by the gatehouse and turnstile on the east side of campus. A few yellow lights glowed in the music building. Maestra thanked us. We said goodnight.

Drifting on an acoustic sea, our ancestors explored sound, harnessing the waves. Between foaming peaks and psychic undertow, they found power. From our African beginnings, to the stars, every lineage counted on those who navigated, who mastered instruments, who carried in them songs and stories. They became the music, while it lasted.

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