I've been making it a habit of going outside to play guitar and work on new songs a few nights a week in order to get re-acquainted with my strumming and writing muscles. There has been a severe lack in my output of work I can be proud of lately, and as much as I like simply bitching about it, I know it's just going to keep wasting my time. By now I've been at it long enough to re-establish my calluses. So, encouraged by the evidence of discipline, I went out tonight to be true to my routine. Usually I am uninterrupted during my rehabilitation, meaning the few people who walk by don't even break stride to glance over at me. Tonight, however, I was the ear of choice for a terribly depressing monologue.
I had seen the man walk by earlier in the evening, dragging a black garbage bag the size of a small parachute beside him. I glanced up after he was far enough away and saw him looking back in my direction between every few strides. After a while, he came back and approached me timidly, finally stopping about six feet away. He proceeded to lean forward, as if he were peering in through some invisible doorway. At this point, I stopped playing my guitar to acknowledge his gesture. The man was terribly thin and stood a modest five foot six at most. He had tanned, dry skin, grew a magnificent silver mane and had more fingers than teeth.
He asked me if I was in a band. I said I was. He proceeded to stumble through a few sentences in an attept to tell a story about a time in his life when he, too, was in a band. The sound of his voice started to change. It sounded youthful and jaunty as he was storytelling. Apparently, his drummer had crippling stagefright at the big show and the band fell apart. It all went downhill from there. He told me he had lived in LA for over 20 years, and had been homeless for 14 of them. He had a cousin in town who was still unaware of his situation. According to his monologue, the man had been building a good life for himself: cars, a house, steady job and a good woman. He elaborated on his wife, Lisa, quite a bit. She operated the phones at 1-800-DENTIST. He would call her and disguise his voice to describe some imaginary oral ailment, only to cheerfully reveal himself as her beau and profess his love to her. According to him, she absolutely ate it up.
The man himself was a truck driver, which I found hard to believe based on his appearance. I've seen my fair share of truck drivers while shuttling all over America in the Green Machine with the boys, and this guy just didn't have the gut, ass, and caffeinated eyes for the job. I took his word for it as he regaled himself with an abridged version of one of his big hauls. Mostly he talked about how hard it was to be away from his wife. I wasn't sure where exaclty all of this was going, but the man was clearly not finished. I figured he would've asked me for a quarter or a cigarette by now, but he continued on. I was beginning to get bored until the man changed his tune slightly. He went on a quick tangent about thai food, then came back to his wife.
Up to this point, I had probably muttered 'uh-huh' or 'right' or 'sure' where it seemed appropriate in an attempt to hurry this man to his point, but he was far from done. With all the joy and nostalgia coming out of this man, I never saw the next ramble coming.
Next time: The Death of Lisa
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2 comments:
Wow that's an awesome story. It used to happen to me, at least some times When I would bring my keyboard to Java Aroma to write some songs for my band. Some people would stop by and others would just scoff and walked off...I hated the scoffing part and then the some that would just talk on and on got a little on my nerves because I wanted to play. But hey, you get to know people better that way and some just might have an interesting story to tell, and you can even make a song out of some. I can relate to the guy about the drummer part. The band I was in had a flaky drummer and our band went down the tubes too, sadly. Anyways, sorry for going on so long, lovely story and ttyl.
oh and you did wonderfully at The Empire in stockton :)
message me if you have anymore stories or I can check here too,
Myspace.com/arlyboy
Damn your blogs are so interesting...it seriously seems like an actual short story that exists in some book, lol. Anyways- wow. I feel sympathy towards both the man and you. I feel sympathy for the man because he turned out to be a homeless after being in a band for a short term, and for you too since you had to listen to his long never ending lecture, haha. Well, that was a cool experiencefor sure. Wasn't it?
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