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Authors: Emma South

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BOOK: Writing Our Song
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My mom looked around my chaotic room as if it was a summary of everything that was wrong with the only city I’d ever lived in and let out another one of her sighs.

“So, to answer your question,” she said, “I wasn’t thinking rationally when I decided to date your dad.”

“But mom… it’s dad…”

“I know, and I love him.  I guess I didn’t put that very well.  I mean love, or that other ‘L’ word that will not be spoken of, isn’t rational.”

The conversation stalled for a moment and I looked back down to my hands in my lap, still inwardly terrified that she might say no.  I’d wanted to get her thinking about the times when dating goes right, not all the things that can go wrong, and it looked like I had failed.

“So… can I go out tonight?”

She had a thoughtful kind of look on her face and instead of answering she stood up and walked towards the door.  For a few seconds I thought she was actually going to just walk out of the door without saying another word, leaving me sitting there in the middle of all my clothes, but she paused at the door and looked back.

“I know you’re your father’s daughter, Bea, but sometimes I still see myself in you and I don’t want you to get hurt by another musician with false promises.  We were meant for bigger things than this, you and I.” She gestured around the room.

“But Mom…”

“You can go out, honey, just remember that they can only hurt you if you let them.  And you’ve got school tomorrow, so be back by ten.”

I was so relieved and overjoyed at the answer that I hardly registered the time I had to be back.  It would make dinner and a movie pretty difficult to fit in but if the date was as amazing as I thought it would be then, well, excuses could be made for being late.  I stood up and rushed over to give her a hug, a move that caught us both by surprise.  After a long pause I felt her arms reach around my back and give me an unsure squeeze.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“It’s…um.  Look.” She pointed. “That top with your pink skirt, those shoes and he’ll be eating out of your hand.”

After she left I laid out the clothes she had mentioned on my bed and had to agree, that would probably work nicely.  I spent the rest of the day getting dating advice from my friends, and worrying about how much or little make-up I should wear.

Trying to think of things Blair and I could talk about was strangely agonizing considering how much time we’d already spent together, how much we had in common with music and being part of the same band and all.  Darrin gave me a knowing smile when he came over to pick up his drum kit, which brought the blood to my cheeks and turned my lips into nearly invisible thin lines as I clamped my mouth shut.  I hoped I’d be more under control by the time Blair picked me up.

I was ready maybe an hour ahead of time, sitting on the edge of my bed with sweaty hands busily texting to friends, and I didn’t even hear him pull up.  The first inkling I had that he had arrived was when I heard a knock at the door.

It was imperative that I make it to the door first, before my dad could get there with some embarrassing joke that would probably send me into a mess of shamed tears.  Mission accomplished, I called out that I was leaving and slipped out into the twilight with Blair.

Chapter 3

Things moved fast.  My date with Blair was almost picture perfect, though shorter than I would have liked.  We decided not to push the boundaries on our very first night out and face the unknown wrath of my parents by coming home late.  However, without the movie to think about, it did leave us with a lot of free time after dinner.

In one night I was kissed more than my entire life combined up to that point, and my friends practically died of jealousy when I spilled the juicy details at school on Monday.  What we wore, where we went, and more importantly, how much tongue did he use and how steamy did the windows in his Mom’s car get.  Just the right amount and pretty damn steamy for a make-out session were the answers.

We were together almost constantly, inseparable.  Every lunch time, band practice and going out on the weekends, I couldn’t get enough and it seemed like Blair couldn’t either.  Then, just a couple months later, at his house one Saturday evening when his parents were out on a date of their own, Blair and I went all the way.

I laid there afterwards in the dark silence, my head resting on his shoulder with his arm around me, a million thoughts tearing through my head and a dull ache between my legs, conflicting with this hazy warm glow that just made me want to drift off to sleep until the morning.  Of course that couldn’t happen, his parents wouldn’t be out all night after all.

When I saw my friends the next day at the mall, I didn’t know how to tell them.  I didn’t know if I
should
tell them.  It was so personal, yet it was information so desperate for release that it made for a difficult secret.

Everything everybody said suddenly seemed to be filled with innuendo.  Did they know?  Could they tell just by looking at me somehow?  Did that mean my parents could tell too?  It was crazy.

Band practice in Blair’s garage that night was a disaster, I was a distracted mess. Did Darrin and Drew know too?  Were they laughing behind my back when I sang any lyrics that happened to be about sex or coming of age?

It was so bad that we packed up early and I sat on Blair’s amp holding my face in my hands after our drummer and bassist had gone home.  We couldn’t really afford this kind of interruption, after the last gig we’d been booked by the Business Administration department of the local community college for some formal function for the students.  Kind of like a prom but where most of them were actually allowed to get exceedingly drunk.

“Is everything OK?” he asked.

“Yes.  No.”

“Uh…”

“It’s just… everything’s changed now… what do Drew and Darrin think of me?  What does everybody else think of me?”

“I haven’t told them yet, it’s not really their business.  Who else are you talking about?  Like, who have you told?”

“Nobody.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“It’s like everybody already knows,” I said.

Blair knelt down beside me and put his hands on my knees.

“They don’t but so what if they did?  I’m not ashamed of being with you.  Are you ashamed of me?”

“No!”

“Then screw ‘em.  Tell whoever you want.  Or not.  Let them react however they want and move on.”

It was pretty basic advice, but I couldn’t argue with it.  The truth was that keeping it a secret was eating me up from the inside out for some reason, and fast.  I told a couple of my friends on Monday, and so in about five seconds the whole school knew anyway.  Nobody seemed to treat me any different and I felt some of the weight lift off my shoulders.

I even told my dad, in a roundabout way.  One evening, later that week, he was up in my room with his old acoustic guitar helping me on a few problems I was having with some of our songs, and the first-world problems of being in a band in general.

“We’re opening with ‘Indifference’ by Pearl Jam,” I said, “It doesn’t sound like a hard song, but Eddie Vedder just has such a different voice to me, deeper, I keep on accidentally slipping between octaves and it sounds like amateur hour.  Plus he goes a bit gravelly in this song, and I can’t seem to smoke enough cigarettes or drink enough whiskey to get there.”

“That’s not a very upbeat song, you sure you want to open with that?”

“It’s a prom kinda event, lots of couples that will want plenty of slower songs.  I know what you mean though, I’m not sold on it for this kind of event but the other three have out-voted me and it does rock in its own way, you can’t deny that.”

“Nope, can’t deny that,” he said.

“So can you help me out with the cigarettes and whiskey, or at least some advice?”

“Yeah sure.  Don’t try.”

“What?”

“Princess, it breaks my heart to say this but you just don’t have a rock voice.  You’ve got a pop voice, even if your heart is with rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Gee thanks, so should I just jump out the window now?” I asked, making a diving motion with one hand.

“See?  Rock ‘n’ roll.  I’m not saying don’t ever work on improving your… uh… range, but you always sound best when you forget who you’re trying to sound like and you just let rip with pure-Bea.”

“So…”

“So, forget the gravel for a start.  I think that’ll be a good first step to taking your mind off of Eddie Vedder and it’ll help with the octave slips.”

“OK, makes sense.  Thanks.”

“Plus he probably only sounds gravelly because of all the saltwater he drinks,”

“What, you mean the surfing?”

“Yeah.  You know he had to get rescued by lifeguards out in New Zealand?  Dunno the details, but I bet he knocked back a gallon of ocean.”

“Sounds like a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to drown there.”

“Yeah, I always wanted to go.  Haven’t made it yet.  Wanna run through the song a couple of times?”

“Yes please.”

We did so, and by the end of the second try I could already feel an improvement.  It was getting late and I was tired but stalling, trying to convince myself as to whether it was a good idea to tell my dad about Blair and I.

“What about writing songs?  Blair wrote one and we’re going to be throwing it into the mix too, but I was barely involved.  I’ve tried to write lyrics but everything just sounds stupid.  Like, all I could do was run through the alphabet when Blair asked ‘what rhymes with ethereal?’”

“Hmmm.  You’re on your own there.  There’s no one way to do it.  Some are written in a few minutes, some take a lifetime.  Some are written to formula but they mostly suck.  I think when music is part of your life and, for whatever reason, you’re feeling something really powerfully, you’ll feel this song nagging at you, trying to get out.  If you don’t get it out on to paper, make something of it, it’ll stop nagging and start clawing its way out, you won’t be able to stop it.”

“You think so?”  I asked.

“Sure.”

“The thing is… I’m feeling something pretty strong right now.”

“Oh?  What?”

“Well… Blair and I.  I think…”

The words hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t get them out.  ‘In love’, even in my own mind I thought it would sound like some ditzy giggling schoolgirl gushing over her first boyfriend without a clue about anything.  But there was something there.  Something.

“Um… we’ve got pretty serious lately.”

“Serious?  Haven’t you been… uh… ‘official’ for many a week now already?”

“Yeah… but… this weekend we got
serious
… you know…”

“Oh!  Oh.”

The silence was thick and heavy as both of us seemed to struggle with where to look, anywhere but in each other’s eyes.  I wrung my hands and my dad silently transitioned from chord to chord on the fret-board of his guitar without strumming or picking anything.  Finally he took a deep breath.

“Are you OK?”

“Yes,” I squeaked, still hardly believing I had actually told him but feeling better for it already.

“Are you happy?”

“Yes,” I said, with more strength.

“OK.  Good.”

My dad looked away again but I could see the conflicts racing around behind his eyes.  I wondered if he was more or less confused than I had been a couple of nights previous.  When he turned back to me, he had a slightly strained-looking smile on his face.

“Thanks, Bea.  Thanks for trusting me with that, I know it can’t have been easy.  I don’t think we need to make this any more awkward than necessary, I just hope you know that I’ve got your back.  You’re a smart, clever, beautiful girl.  Young woman.  You’ll make the right decisions but if you get into a situation with Blair, or anybody else, where you’re not ‘OK’, you’re not ‘happy’, then you can tell me that too.”

“OK.”

“Now come in for the real thing.”

“What?”

My dad was leaning his guitar against my desk and standing up, coming in my direction.  The instant he let go it began sliding sideways and landed in a twanging clatter on the floor.

“Graceful,” I said, standing up.

Without any more words, he wrapped his arms around me and after a brief charade of reluctance, I put my arms around him too.  He’d said we didn’t need to make this any more awkward than necessary, but awkward it was.

Awkward but perfect.  I closed my eyes and let myself bask in that protective embrace.  He was the goofiest person I knew, would make a joke out of anything, but behind the jokes was this unwavering support that was at the forefront now.

My world had changed that weekend but if my dad, who possessed a moral compass I would bet my life on, was fine then I was fine too. 

*****

The night of our gig arrived as quickly as everything else had since Blair and I became a couple.  Looking out of my window I could see that it was a depressing and drizzly day, the clouds and misty rain making everything the color of dirty concrete.

Typical mid-June weather for Seattle.  I hoped it wouldn’t really start to come down, I didn’t want to end up looking like a drowned rat when I stepped out on stage.

Pacing back and forth in my room, running through our set list in my head, I could feel some shadow of the same nerves I had before our big show but nowhere near as intense.  At the Seattle Days Festival, we were the center of attention.  Tonight we’d be playing away in the background while drunken college students danced with their dates.

My dad knocked on my door and came in when I called him, guitar in hand and a hopeful look on his face.

“Hey, how’re the nerves?”

“Not too bad,” I said.

“Wanna run through anything else before Blair picks you up?”

“No thanks, I think I’ve got it all down now,”

“Oh.  OK… well, could I get you to listen to something I’ve been working on?  It’s been a long time since I wrote anything myself, wondered if you could tell me whether it sucks or not.”

“Could we do it tomorrow after school?  I’ve really just got to get my mind right for this gig.”

“Sure, yeah.  Why are they doing this on a Sunday night anyway?”

“I think they left booking a venue too late and all the Fridays and Saturdays were taken.”

My dad laughed, “You said it was the Business Administration department, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds about right.  Hey, you got my ticket?”

“Sure do,” I grabbed an envelope off my desk and passed it to him.  “One there for Mom too if she changes her mind.”

“Thanks.  We’ll see.”

The people who had booked us had been happy to provide access to a support person or two for each of the band members, probably also thanks to how much money they saved by not hiring a more well-established group of musicians.  Drew had his mom coming, Darrin had both parents, and Blair’s parents were both busy.  For me, it looked like just my dad would show up.

“We go on stage at around eight thirty, it’s just somebody’s laptop hooked up to the sound system until then.  Not sure how early you want to arrive.”

“Oh, really early.  I’m sure I’ll fit right in mingling with the college students in my blue tux, polka dot bow tie and huge frilly shirt.”

I laughed for a moment and then paused, because you really never could tell with my dad.

“Please don’t… just anything smart-casual will be fine.  Don’t overdo it, you’re not there to find a mistress or anything.”

“Hmmmm.”

A horn honked outside and when I looked out the window I could make out the car that belonged to Blair’s mom, which he usually drove, through the rain.  I turned back and picked my bag up off my bed.

“He’s here!”

“Drive safe, princess.”

“See you after the show!  Love you!”

*****

Even though this gig was smaller than our previous one, in this case we actually had our own backstage room to prepare in.  Of course, with three guys and a girl in the band, we didn’t all get dressed in there at the same time but once we were decent we sat back and talked shop just like usual.

A knock at the door cut our conversation short as somebody told us that the playlist on the laptop only had a couple more songs left on it, so if it was OK with us we’d be going on about five minutes earlier than we’d been told.  We were far from prissy artistes so of course it was no problem.

BOOK: Writing Our Song
13.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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