new fiction

Girls At Their Best

Robert Cochrane — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:39:16 +0000

Girls At Their Best Robert Cochrane April 20, 2026 - 13:39

Topics

Tags

By the time of her death in November 1999, aged 87, the novelist Kathleen Farrell was pretty much forgotten, and she knew it. Despite penning five witty and elegant novels, by the mid-sixties, all of them were out of print. She was the victim of a sea-change in literary taste. First came the wave of angry young men in the late fifties, and then the dominance of pop culture in the next decade, which rendered her yesterday's news. She ruefully admitted she'd no idea why she'd bothered leaving her copyrights to anyone since her books would never be of interest again.

A handful of short stories appeared in respected anthologies where she rubbed shoulders with the likes of Graham Swift and Salman Rushdie; these kept her name in circulation into the eighties, but being of independent means, she never needed to earn money from her craft. It is no coincidence that her last novel coincided with the ending of her twenty tumultuous years in Hampstead with the mercurial writer Kay Dick, after which she largely fell silent, and Kay didn't publish a new work for over a decade. The pair had been catalysts for each other, and though no longer an item, lived nearby for the remainder of their days in Hove, phoning daily, bickering occasionally, but never quite solo entities. In a fit of pique after a particularly acrimonious row, Kathleen burned her entire correspondence from Kay, a sad loss as they'd known everyone. George Orwell, Angus Wilson, Stevie Smith, and Ivy Compton Burnett, to name but four. So many beguiling literary snippets were reduced to ash.

In 2024 after years of dropping her forgotten name, I managed to interest Faber and Faber in republishing Mistletoe Malice. Farrell's debut novel which skewered a dysfunctional family Christmas reunion. It garnered rave reviews in The Times and The Guardian, sold seven thousand copies, and remains in print. It was simultaneously translated into Italian and, last year, appeared in French as Un Noël Chez Tante Rachel. Such a luxury was never afforded her in her day, bar a few American print runs. Now Penguin has dusted down her third novel, The Cost of Living, with an astute introduction by the novelist Jane Fallon. The novel is a brittle study of two bedsit-dwelling women, a young artist, Alexandra, who spends her days doing portraits of dogs and unappealing children, and Marianne, a woman in her thirties who types dreadful novels for authors that are unlikely to ever see the light of print.

"By the time I nearly finished the novel, it seemed to get longer and longer towards the end, and sadder too, and much sillier. There was only one woman in it, and she spent most of her time retching and clinging to park railings, and when she wasn't doing that, she was leaning her forehead against the wall in some dark alleyway. Leaning her forehead against the wall was to stop her from being completely overcome by nausea. I can't remember it ever doing that. I wondered how such young men managed to make women feel so sick, so often. And I thought poor young men, how they suffer."

The ladies plan a party to meet men, but it turns out that the mixture of personalities who appear, they could likely have lived better without. There's Donald, a bus conductor with literary aspirations, a bespectacled and twitchy Bernhardt, and a ghostwriter named Marius. A few nondescript Peters add to their number as do the gatecrashers, a glamorously sexy girl called Pisa, and a middle-aged, but loud Mummy. This wasn't quite the plan, but it suggests why Farrell opted for such an apt title for her annotation of the proceedings. It is all rather a waste of the women's meager supply of cheap booze. There's meeting people, and meeting the right kind of people, and then there's the aftermath. It is a near-perfect dissection of female friendship, the listlessness of souls, and a glimpse into the lives of women prior to the pill and the liberation movement.

In Farrell's clipped, precise prose lie echoes of Muriel Spark and Barbara Pym. Her style is one of mannered elegance with an edge of arch cynicism.

She once remarked, "A happy marriage is all very well, but it can be rather boring for a whole evening." Kathleen used to play chess with Quentin Crisp and was friends with Barry Humphries, who'd attempted to assist me in getting her republished years ago, but to no avail. She'd be shocked and privately pleased to see such a positive reappraisal of her talents, and the eye-watering prices her first editions now command. At her request, I was given her sole copy of Mistletoe Malice after her death. It became the one Faber utilized for its republication. A wonderfully circuitous completion.

There are future plans for her remaining three books, and hopes that her short stories may be gathered into a single volume. They certainly deserve to be. Kathleen Farrell was a petite and perfectly attired figure, her lack of stature adequately compensated for by a steeliness of soul and her fierce intelligence. Her work retains a profound relevance because she knew what motivated people, even if she was wide of the mark about how her own novels would be remembered.

I adored getting letters and postcards from her. They were often prefaced with words like "Tuesday. I think." She belonged to a world that has now gone. To have caught her somewhere towards the end was both a pleasure and a privilege, and her return to print was a rare reward.

Add new comment

Music and Sex #10: Writing and Rachel Redux

Roman Akleff — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 07:04:01 +0000

Music and Sex #10: Writing and Rachel Redux Roman Akleff November 24, 2015 - 02:04

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

Like his bandmates, Walter was relieved that the group could lapse for a while as midterms approached. He had to write a paper for Lit.Hum. that he hadn't started yet. He decided to do it on More's Utopia, since he'd been familiar with it since high school thanks to AP English and thus had already read it all instead of just the sections on the syllabus. He like More too, as a person, though granted that was based on the play A Man for All Seasons. The stubbornness of his position in regard to Henry VIII was something Walter identified with, though he doubted he'd be willing to be executed over anything no matter how right he thought he was.

He wanted to write something good enough that Professor Starr wouldn't be disappointed with him. The prof had always seemed to enjoy Walter's contributions to class discussions, which were a big part of the grade. Unlike his experiences in his Poli.Sci. electives, Walter could hold his own in Lit.Hum. discussions, where almost everybody was a freshman just as he was. But Professor Starr had offered criticisms of the papers Walter had written the previous semester, so he wanted to be perfect this time. Picking a familiar book for his paper topic might help.

Professor Starr had said of most of what they'd read this semester that it was intended as criticism of the author's society. Probably it was safest to use that idea as an approach to writing about Utopia. There was his title: The Utopia as Social Criticism. Should he narrow the focus? He had to write at least five pages; perhaps better to not narrow yet.

Thomas More's Utopia has earned him many reputations through the years, as a Communist, among other things. In this work, he depicts an island in the New World which is governed by principles and laws that are an antithesis to those of the Old World. It is inhabited by contented people who lead happy lives because their community is ideally organized. Yet, this is fiction: More has created these laws, which contrast severely with the established laws and customs of his own civilization, in order to show that the laws of 16th century England were producing undesirable effects and desperately needed reform, not because he felt that the laws that he describes in his imaginary world are ideal. There can in fact be no Utopia (which means "Noplace") when civilization develops, as it must, in piecemeal fashion. For a society to develop so perfectly would require the evasion of both chance and the subsequent logical organization of the situations that occur haphazardly. In its formation and development, Utopia resembles an artist's clay model, shaped by the artist's design. It is a controlled, in fact very nearly a closed, environment.

This circumstance is acknowledged in the history of the foundation of the nation by Utopus. Upon conquering a peninsular nation of undeveloped savages, "he immediately had a channel cut through the fifteen-mile isthmus connecting Utopia with the mainland, so that the sea could flow all around it." (p. 70) From then on, he had a free hand in guiding the fortunes of his new territory, for Nature had provided him with every convenience. The harbor was impervious to enemy attack, the island had every natural resource needed, with the single exception of iron, and apparently was full of the most malleable, receptive savages that could be desired.

After a couple of hours, Walter had managed to go on like that for another seven pages, with about a third of that being indented quotes. His favorite was:

In fact, when I consider any social system that prevails in the modern world, I can't, so help me God, see it as anything but a conspiracy of the rich to advance their own interests under the pretext of organizing society. (p. 130)

It was time to wrap it up with a conclusion:

The Utopia's role is thus as a basis of comparison, to show us which of our errors are correctable by showing up their superfluous nature. This is the Rawlsian position which says Utopias exist to shame us into realizing how lacking our actual societies are in comparison. With More's constant juxtaposition of the Old World vs. the New, this intent is fairly obvious.

On Monday morning, he turned in his paper at Professor Starr's office. Later in the day after Music Hum., Rachel asked Walter for another tutoring session to get ready for their Music Hum midterm. He hesitated briefly, then agreed to once again go to her apartment on Tuesday. He had been so disappointed by her having a boyfriend that he'd had an impulse to turn her down. Accepting seemed potentially awkward, but it would bring him a little money. And although their first afternoon together hadn't led to the kind of relationship he wanted, it wasn't as though he hadn't enjoyed it at the time. After all, she might break up with her boyfriend someday, and then Walter could be perfectly positioned to replace him.

Just as on his first visit, she tossed her keys out the window to him. He thought she looked like she was wearing a robe. He assumed that, if that were the case, she'd be changed by the time he'd finished climbing all the stairs to her top-floor apartment. But no: when she opened her door, she was still wearing a robe. He didn't know what to think, so he just kept quiet and waited to see what would happen. Rachel smiled and asked, "Cat got your tongue?" He smiled back, but said nothing.

"Pussy wants your tongue," she whispered. He smiled again, his disappointments drowned in anticipation. This would do until a real relationship came along. She dramatically opened her robe wide, holding a campy pose; she'd been utterly naked under her robe. He dropped to his knees, slid his hands up the backs of her thighs, cupped her bare buttocks in his hands, and pushed his face into her dirty-blond bush. Rachel squatted slightly to open her thighs, and Walter's tongue flicked out into her fur, seeking her slit, soon found. Remembering his lesson from Janie, he licked up and down, found Rachel's clit, and circled around it, occasionally fluttering his tongue-tip directly on it. Rachel grabbed his hair and pressed herself against his face. His nose was now squashed into her pelvis and he had to gasp for breath through his mouth in between licks, but he kept a rhythm going and soon could feel her legs trembling. "Oh god, oh god, oh god," she chanted breathily. Her legs shook more, and her fingers pulled his hair painfully.

Relief for Walter's scalp came when she commanded, "I've gotta lie down." As she backed up the few steps to her bed, finally shrugging off her robe along the way, she added, "Jesus fucking Christ, you're good. How'd you learn to do that?"

"Practice," he joked.

Sprawling back on the bed, up on her elbows, she inquired, "How are you doing? Was that fun for you?"

"Yes." He grinned.

"Did it turn you on?"

"Hell yeah."

"Let me see!"

Walter unbuttoned, unzipped, and stepped out of his jeans and his briefs at the same time, proudly displaying his rock-hard erection. He was still wearing not only his shirt but also his jacket; he quickly shed those as well.

"Put that beautiful cock right here," she commanded while pressing her breasts together, "so I can watch it spurt."

Climbing onto her mattress, he straddled her chest and she wrapped her soft, voluminous cleavage around his throbbing flesh. Her skin was so smooth that no lubrication was needed, and within minutes he had climaxed.

"Oooo, you gave me a pearl necklace, how nice!" Rachel exclaimed.

"What?" Walter grunted, confused.

"That's what this is called," she explained, gesturing to the drops of white fluid on her neck. "A pearl necklace." Walter laughed.

Rachel excused herself to wash up, and Walter re-dressed and took out his materials for this week's lesson. When Rachel returned, he had his notes and cassette tape of examples all ready. She donned her robe again and he launched into his mini-lecture as though he were not sitting on a bed with a barely dressed woman who had just brought him to orgasm with just her chest.

"We've been comparing Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. I assume we will have to be able to identify examples of their music on the midterm. So let's try that." Walter started the tape and the first movement of a Haydn piano sonata played. After a minute, he queried, "Who wrote this?"

"Mozart?"

"Close, but no -- Haydn." He fast-forwarded the tape. "Who wrote this one?"

"Mozart."

"Right!" More fast-forwarding brought forth an early Beethoven piano sonata, and she correctly identified the composer again.

"But I was guessing. I said Mozart the second time because you'd already played Haydn so I didn't think you would play him twice in a row, and then when you confirmed it was Mozart, I guessed Beethoven next because you hadn't played him yet. Really, I can't tell those three pieces apart."

Walter realized that teaching required more than just understanding the topic. Perhaps paying closer attention to Professor Hatch's presentation would be edifying in that regard. He thought to himself to the accompaniment of the Beethoven sonata's continuation.

"Okay, do you remember what sonata-allegro form is?"

"Maybe."

"Can you describe it?

"Fast opening movement, slow middle movement, fast last movement?"

Holy shit, Walter thought, what was she thinking about during class? Did she not take notes? It wasn't as though he had heard any more about sonata form than what Professor Hatch had said to the class. Oh well, her lack of attention was getting him paid, and laid. Hey, that rhymed. Well, not really laid. Okay, focus.

"It's about the structure of the first movement, which is generally fast, as you say, though sometimes with a slow introduction, though that doesn't really count. Anyway, because the first movement is often Allegro, that's why it's called sonata-allegro form, though a composer could use this structure for any movement, and some have. Also, this form is not only used in sonatas, but also for symphonies and string quartets. Sonata-allegro form was invented in the early Classical period when music was evolving into a more strongly chordal style. There are three sections in a sonata-allegro form: the exposition, when the theme or themes are played first; the development section, when thematic or motivic material from the exposition is moved through different keys and varied, and the recapitulation, when the themes come back as a sort of book-end to the exposition. The way these three composers handle these sections can help us recognize who's who."

Rachel was staring at him with a glazed look on her face, her mouth slightly opened. He must be boring the crap out of her. God, she was sexy. He wanted to kiss her, but restrained himself.

"Maybe you should be taking notes so you remember this," Walter suggested. A frown briefly darkened Rachel's face, but she rose and went to her desk, returning with a notepad.

"Could you please write down what you just said?" Rachel requested. Walter was about to tell her no, she had to write it down, that was how it was supposed to work. But why was that how it was supposed to work? It didn't have to. Anyway, if he wrote it down, it would save time. But would she be able to read his sloppy handwriting?

"How about if I type it? My handwriting is messy."

Her face brightened. "Sure!" She stood and walked to her closet, lugging back a huge green typewriter with a chord dangling from it. Compared to his mother's little non-electric Underwood that he'd been allowed to bring to college, her typewriter was twice as large. Seeing that it seemed heavy to her, he took it from her halfway to the desk. It was easily three times as heavy as the Underwood. He set it on the desk, noticing its centered IBM logo, and plugged it in while she rummaged in her desk for typing paper.

"This paper is strange," he commented.

"It's erasable!"

"I've got to get some of this," he said, thinking of how many times Sunday night he'd had to choose between starting a page over or slathering on Wite-Out. Hell, once he had even hit the wrong letter to start a word and then sat there until he figured out a word starting with "c" that he could use there. "Where did you buy it?"

"I don't know. My father gave it to me."

Walter sat and typed what he'd said so far, then tried to lecture and type at the same time. "Haydn's expositions are often monothematic."

"What's that?"

"They only have one theme. Mozart's expositions have two themes, with the first one being masculine in character and the second one feminine. Beethoven's themes are generally shorter, more like motivic cells than melodies. That actually makes them easier to do interesting things with in the development section." When he had finished typing that, he demonstrated by replaying the taped examples and pointing out how they fit what he'd said. "But these are just generalizations. Haydn sometimes has two themes, and Beethoven's exposition themes are sometimes longer and more melodic. There are also differences between them in how they use harmony, but Professor Hatch hasn't really talked about that much, so I don't think you have to know that for the midterm."

And with that, the hour was finished and he was soon walking downstairs, ten dollars richer.

At Wednesday's Lit.Hum. class, papers were returned. Walter flipped to the last page to see his grade and was stunned by the B- circled there. Handwritten next to it was, "The fluency of your writing does not quite conceal the haphazard quality of your structure. Your paragraphs change subject in midstream. The whole paper gives the effect of having been dashed off in a couple of hours. Your intelligence deserves better!"

Well, it had been dashed off "in a couple of hours," so that was a fair cop, but Walter had thought the relatedness of everything touched on made it all one big topic. Apparently not. Maybe he should have narrowed the paper's focus after all.

Roman AkLeff says of Music and Sex, his third attempt at a novel: "Lots of the events depicted in this book happened, to varying degrees. Some should have happened but didn't until now. Though it's mostly set in the 20th century, Music and Sex aspires to be a Bildungsroman for 21st century sensibilities, in that the main character doesn't finish coming of age until he is several decades into adulthood."

Music and Sex #9: Debut

Roman Akleff — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 04:50:50 +0000

Music and Sex #9: Debut Roman Akleff November 1, 2015 - 23:50

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

Walter got a call from Tony about getting together and, while they were chatting, complained about the guitarist situation.

"Hey, I know a guy who wants to be in a band. He's been bitching about everybody here playing guitar so there aren't enough bands to go around. You should talk to him."

Walter did so within minutes of getting the guy's phone number. Albert Imperatori, or as he styled himself, Emperor Albert, listened to Walter's explanation of what the band was aiming for, and its repertoire, and said, "I'm in. Better have a rehearsal tonight if you've got a gig tomorrow, right?"

They did, everything went well enough and without drama, and with Paulie out of the way, they could play the songs he refused to play, so their set got longer. Suddenly, magically, it looked like everything had fallen into place.

Phi Ep was nice in an old, worn way -- high ceilings, lots of wood with character, old lighting fixtures. After they'd brought all their gear across the street, Gabe, who'd gotten them the gig, led them on a little tour. They would be playing in the front room on the first floor at the top of the stairs, or the second floor if you considered the floor underneath to not be the basement, which it wasn't, since there was a basement under it, but Gabe called the real first floor the basement, so whatever. People lived on the real first floor and on what was actually the third floor; the floor they'd be playing on had the living room in the front and the kitchen behind that, which made it perfect for a party.

Gabe's tour included a few introductions to residents, all of whom seemed friendly and psyched for the party. Then they went back downstairs and set up, with a rudimentary sound check -- there'd be no PA, no sound guy, so they'd have to balance everything themselves.

Walter immediately ran into a problem. Somehow, either his electric piano or his amp was picking up radio transmissions, apparently from a taxi service. He fretted over it for a while, unable to figure out why or to stop it; finally Garrick said, "I kind of like it -- very avant-garde. Stop worrying about it and go with the flow." Sure, why not?

They started on time, not because they already had a crowd -- though five friends and a few residents didn't seem so bad -- but because adding the tunes Paulie had previously vetoed gave them a forty-five-minute setlist after all. While they were banging through "Just Like Me," their set opener, Paulie came in. When Albert soloed, Paulie heckled him. When Garrick sang the out chorus, he was heckled too. When the song was over and Albert -- who used light-gauge strings, and thus had to re-tune after every song -- held up the band with at least two minutes of micro-adjustments, interspersed with taxi dispatcher announcements coming through Walter's amp -- Paulie really cut loose. "What is this shit? Play already. You suck so bad, it doesn't matter whether you're in tune or not. Get it over with as fast as possible and spare us."

And then the largest human being Walter had ever seen in person walked away from the punchbowl table and moved towards the stage until he was standing right behind Paulie. "Who is this asshole?" the man-mountain inquired.

"A disgruntled ex-member," Walter replied.

"Alright then." Man-mountain put his hand, which was the size of a baseball glove, on Paulie's shoulder and said, "Let's go outside," then started walking towards the door. Paulie, slowly propelled that way in spite of his resistance, shouted, "Let go of me, you big ape!" This only got him pushed faster. When they were out the door, somebody by the punch yelled, "Big Ben strikes again!" and there were cheers. Dave counted off, the band launched into "Submission," and the cheering got louder. When the song was over and Albert started tuning again, Garrick filled the musical gap by chanting, "Big Ben! Big Ben!" over and over. Ben, who had returned without Paulie, raised his punch up in salute and there were more cheers. For the rest of their set, Garrick filled the space between songs by telling the most horribly dirty jokes Walter had ever heard, such as, "Why are women's pussies and assholes so close together? So you can carry them like a six-pack." They all got cheers from the frat guys.

When their set was over, they moved their instruments to the side, got cups of punch, and looked around for their friends. Walter's only pal present was Carlton, who said, "Nice job." "Thanks for coming!" Walter replied, briefly but silently wondering why more of his other friends -- say, Martial or Marcus -- hadn't shown up for this milestone performance, until realizing that most of his friends, and all his closest friends, were musicians who either had their own gigs on a Friday night or had perhaps felt obliged to attend a different friend's show instead.

He saw Albert standing by himself, none of his friends having made the long ride uptown from NYU, apparently. Wait, not even Tony who was also Walter's friend? "Where's Tony?"

"He said he was going home to Long Island this weekend."

"Hey, you did a great job on just one rehearsal, thanks!"

"Glad you liked it. Um, can you give me cab fare? I couldn't carry my amp and guitar on the subway and then play because it makes my hands tired and my fingers shake."

Walter had, as always on Fridays, taken enough out of his account to last the weekend. He gave Albert twenty dollars. It meant no record shopping in the Village that weekend, but he was more than grateful enough to Albert that it seemed a good trade-off. Albert thanked him and then left with his equipment. That made Walter think about his own situation. Garrick had helped him carry his keyboards and amp across the street, but he was eagerly chatting up the only woman in the room who wasn't clinging to a resident. Carlton was still hanging around, though, and agreed to help Walter. They both wanted to hear the headliner, so they rushed across the street, dumped it all back in their room, and then returned just in time to see Garrick get slapped by the woman he'd been talking to, after which, red-faced, he stalked out silently, acknowledging nobody. Easy for him; he didn't have any equipment -- even the mike he'd used was Walter's.

The rest of the evening was good music, lots of punch, and Walter's realization that of course a frat was not a good place to meet women. Then Carlton pointed out that he didn't want Walter barfing on the bedroom floor again, so they stopped drinking and, once the music finished, went back to their home away from home, lovely Carman Hall.

The next day, Walter called Albert to set up their next rehearsal, at which they planned to start working on the original material with Garrick's words and Walter's music. To his surprise, Albert quit instead, saying it was too far to travel and that Garrick wasn't a good singer and told awful jokes. Walter, stunned, just thanked him for having helped them out.

He immediately called the other band members, each in turn expressing disappointment but saying that with midterms on the horizon, they were in no rush to restart with another guitarist even if one were available. Walter was especially surprised by how unfazed Garrick was. He wondered if the slap had something to do with it, but diplomatically refrained from raising the topic. Since he'd left with his gear before it happened, he supposed that Garrick might not even know that Walter had witnessed it.

At the Marlin that night, the musician crowd was abuzz with the news of the Paulie/Big Ben incident. Even though nobody there had been present to Walter's knowledge, it figured that the Phi Eps and the musicians were sharing intelligence, and that the widely disliked Paulie's comeuppance met with approval. The buzz also served to let the music crew know that The Living Section had had a successful debut, and Walter felt he had risen in their esteem as a result. For the moment, he remained mum about the guitarist situation.

Eventually, he saw that Roland and Jessica were sitting at the back. Walter had never seen either of them in the Marlin before. There was another guy at their table who he vaguely recognized; Roland was deep in conversation with the stranger, and they were apparently not including Jessica, or she was not interested in being included; she progressed from looking bored to looking miserable. At one point she noticed Walter looking at her; he quickly averted his gaze.

Jimbo and Martial came in and greeted Walter by buying him beers; later he reciprocated. After at least an hour of beer and banter, with Walter occasionally checking the back table in his peripheral vision, he saw movement -- all three were standing, then Jessica abruptly and awkwardly sat again.

"You're drunk!" Roland hissed. "Just stay here until you can walk." He and his friend stalked out, leaving Jessica looking shocked and sad.

"What a dick!" Jimbo said.

"Do you know her?" Martial asked.

Walter nodded. "Excuse me, I'm going to see if she wants some help."

He sat down at her table. "On behalf of all other men, please accept our apology for the behavior of that one." It was the only sentence that had run through his head on the short walk over that hadn't been immediately dismissed. She smiled at him and whispered, "Thanks."

"Are you okay? Want some help walking home?"

"I...I don't know. I guess...I was bored, they weren't talking to me, so I guess I drank a little more than usual. I'm...so...embarrassed."

"It happens. I bet everybody in this bar has done that at least once. I know I have. Nothing to be embarrassed about."

"Roland is...particular. He -- can we leave?"

Walter stood and held out his arm to her. She pulled herself up and clung to him as they slowly made their way through the crowd, Walter saying "excuse me" every few feet. Once they were out on the sidewalk, going up Broadway, she began moving better.

"You don't seem too drunk," he observed.

"The fresh air's an improvement."

Walter wanted to ask why Roland treated her like that. He wanted to tell her that if he, Walter, were her boyfriend, she would be protected, not abandoned. But he didn't dare. He didn't think she wanted to discuss it, for one, and it didn't feel like the right setting for a declaration of love. Love? How could he love her when this was only the second time they had talked? Yet he did feel protective towards her. Confused, he figured his best move was to keep quiet, not taking any chances, and see whether she might be attracted to him in the future.

As they approached 114th Street, Jessica let go of his arm. Almost immediately she stumbled and grabbed him again. When they walked into Carman, she hesitated and looked around as they walked to the elevator. Once it came, Walter pushed the button for 11. "No," she blurted. He looked at her in surprise. She had a look of fear. "Can I make a phone call from your room?"

"Sure," he answered, wondering who she would call. Roland? He pushed the button for 10.

Once in his suite, she made a beeline for the Centrex phone in the inner hall, if by "beeline" one meant nudging him in the direction she wanted to go while still clinging to him for support. She dialed four digits and waited.

"Hey Angela, do me a big, big favor. Go outside and inconspicuously check whether Roland is hanging out in his doorway or in the lounge." There was a pause in which Angela was presumably talking. "Um, I guess go towards the stairs and if you don't see him, go back to the phone and tell me. But if he is, come down to 10. Uh -- Walter, what room is this?"

"1013."

"1013." Pause. "I don't know, we'll talk about it."

She stood there, leaning against the wall, with the phone to her ear. In a minute, there was a knock at the door. Walter answered it. The woman at the door walked in and said, "He's in the lounge, right in the center."

"Oh my god, what do I do?"

"Well, you could just ignore him. What the fuck happened?"

Jessica recounted the evening's events. When she was done, Angela said, "Thank you, Walter. Unlike Roland, you are a true gentleman."

Walter smiled and responded, "Happy to help," but then he saw Jessica, who looked on the verge of tears, and he stopped smiling. Angela made a motion with her head, and Walter took the hint and went into his room. Carlton wasn't there. Walter closed the door and sat on his bed, trying to hear the conversation in the hall, but couldn't. After a few minutes, there was a knock and both girls came in. Angela spoke. "Is it okay if Jessica sleeps here? We're sort of assuming once she starts sleeping, it'll be hours before she wakes up, so probably all night."

"Okay."

"Thanks. You're awesome. I can't go back upstairs for a while, so can you come keep me company in the lounge?"

"Sure."

"Which bed is yours?"

Walter pointed. Angela gave Jessica a hug and then grabbed Walter's hand, dragging him out. She continued to the lounge, which was empty until they both sat on the couch. She faced him.

"Thank you. You seem like a nice guy. Please stay a nice guy and don't take advantage of Jessica's condition."

Walter nodded.

"Say it."

"I would never do that."

"I hope not."

Walter turned on the TV. Mary Tyler Moore was on 11. They watched it wordlessly to its end.

"Okay, I think it's been long enough. If Roland isn't still there, I'll come back and get Jessica. But if he is, and I don't come back, she'll sleep in your bed tonight. What will you do?"

"I'll sleep at my desk."

"Thanks for being a good guy." She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it while smiling, then left.

Back in his room, Walter saw Jessica was sound asleep, or passed out. Was there a difference? He turned out the light and sat at his desk. By the light coming in the window -- the shade was up -- he could look over the desk and see her, lying on her side, he noted approvingly, having heard how Hendrix had died. She was near the edge; there was room for him to sleep on the wall side. His desk chair was hard and had a low back; to sleep, he would have to put his head on his arms on the desk, if he moved his piano off it, or on the piano. He had said he'd sleep at his desk, so he would. He wanted no misunderstanding. As much as he had a "type," it was "female musician." He'd been sorely disappointed that his interactions with Janie and Rachel had not led in either case to a relationship. Maybe the key was to build the relationship before going to bed. That was, after all, the way it was supposed to happen, or so he had been raised. And surely Jessica would break up with Roland, and become "available." Probably he shouldn't do anything soon; tonight might have been too traumatic for her. So, he should just be available himself, and wait, and hope that she would realize what a nice boyfriend he would be.

When the sun woke Walter in the morning, Jessica was gone. Still tired, he pulled the shade down and got into his bed. He could smell her faintly on his pillow. Carlton's bed was still empty.

The next afternoon, when Walter went up to 11 to visit Garrick, he saw Jessica in the TV lounge and waved. No response. Maybe she hadn't noticed him -- though he thought she had. He knocked on Garrick's door. Olivier, the French roommate, answered and said Garrick wasn't in.

Walter walked down the hall to the lounge and said "Hi" when he was right outside it. Jessica said nothing, and on entering two steps later, Walter saw Roland sitting to her right. "Looking for someone?" Roland sneered.

"Garrick. Seen him?"

"No."

Walter walked away, thinking, again, that he just didn't understand women. He was starting to suspect that he never would.

[next chapter]

Music and Sex #8: Rachel, Keith, and William

Roman Akleff — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 05:00:18 +0000

Music and Sex #8: Rachel, Keith, and William Roman Akleff September 8, 2015 - 01:00

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here). Warning: more highly graphic TMI.

A weekend of fruitless fretting almost led Walter to agree that Martial had the right idea and the show should go on with no guitarist, and with just Walter on keyboards, but really all he'd come up with for sure was a new band name -- The Living Section, for the Wednesday arts portion of The New York Times. The other guys all agreed that was an improvement. However, he couldn't bring himself to propose to them what, in his head, he had dubbed the Martial Plan.

The thing about the band was, it had to be fit in between all the stuff that going to college was actually about, such as attending classes. So on Monday, it was back to the usual schedule, which meant one of his favorite -- because it was both easy and about music -- classes, Music Humanities. The Spring semester was taught not by Professor Hatch, but by Ellen Harris. Fortunately she also had a sense of humor; everybody laughed when she related her story about being injured by a prop pistol onstage during an opera performance, and on being asked in the emergency room, "Where were you shot?", answering, "I was shot in the opera."

Partly because of his height, Walter tended to sit in the back row of his classes. During Music Hum, this often resulted in Rachel Lofsky sitting in front of or alongside him. Hesitant and uncertain when called on in class, perhaps she was hoping to escape notice in the back, but she often slipped in just before class started, by which point the back row had been filled. Her preference for low-cut jeans meant that Walter was often treated to a view of her ass crack. He was reminded of the evolutionary explanation that he had read about in a sociology book saying that breasts evolved to mimic buttocks when our ancestors began walking upright. However true that might be, butt cleavage didn't excite him as much as breast cleavage did. Hence, sitting alongside Rachel was better, as she had a most ample bosom, which Walter enjoyed viewing in profile. Sometimes, depending on the angle at which she sat and what she was wearing, he saw some of that cleavage as well.

After class had let out that day and he was walking down the stairs in Dodge Hall wondering what to do about the band, Rachel caught up with him, saying, "Walter, do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Go right ahead," he responded.

"You seem to know so much about music. Would you tutor me in Music Hum? I'll pay you."

"Sure, that sounds like fun." Walter would have said the same thing if she'd asked him to scrub her floors.

"Thanks! When are you available?"

"Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are good. Weekends, if I don't have something planned."

"Tuesday's good for me too. Four PM? "

"Okay."

"Can we start this week?"

"Tomorrow? Sure. I'll meet you at the listening room in Dodge."

"Oh, I don't want to do it there. It would be embarrassing. Can you just come to my apartment?"

"Have you got a cassette player?"

"Yes."

"Good. I'll bring tapes."

Rachel lived off campus. She gave Walter her address (corner of West End Avenue and 106th Street) and also her phone number, "because you have to call from the payphone on the corner in front of the liquor store and then go to the 106th Street side and I'll throw my keys down to you so you can let yourself in."

That evening, he made tapes of the repertoire that they were listening to in class. The next afternoon, a sunny and warm day, he walked down Broadway and kept going onto West End where Broadway curved and West End started. Rachel tossed her keys down to him wrapped in a sock. After he'd walked up to her fourth floor apartment, starting to sweat a bit by the end, he saw her standing barefoot in her open doorway, attired in cutoff blue-jean shorts and a button-down shirt knotted above her midriff.

He followed her down the long hall of the shotgun apartment, all the way to the back, a large and sunny corner room. "Have a seat," she offered, pulling a chair out from a small desk against which an electric bass was leaning. There were no other chairs in the room; she sat on the mattress on the floor.

He turned the chair to face the bed, sat, and got straight to the point. "Where's your cassette player?" He didn't see one in her stereo. Her big brown eyes locked with his and she answered, "It's in my desk." She leaned forward, and suddenly he was hyperaware of how her cleavage increased when she did that. Her long, dirty-blond hair swung next to him. Walter felt an erotic charge from her closeness.

Rachel opened a drawer and pulled out a portable tape recorder. Walter noticed a large rubber penis in the drawer. Rachel noticed him noticing it. "I'm so embarrassed you saw my dildo!" she exclaimed. Walter's impression, though, was that she wasn't acting embarrassed at all, and her next words seemed to confirm that: "If I'm tense, I can't concentrate, so I need to relax myself at least once a day."

Walter felt a frisson of shared naughtiness. "Me too. But I have a roommate, so I don't get to do it as much as I'd like."

"That's awful! Do you want to do it right now?"

"It seems like I always want to do it."

"I mean, will you do it for me now? I'd like to watch."

Walter was momentarily speechless. She filled the silence by saying, "I'll do it too, we can watch each other."

That was too good an offer to turn down. "Okay!"

Rachel untied and unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it off. She was wearing a plain white bra. Walter sat transfixed as she reached behind her back and unhooked the bra, shrugged her shoulders forward, and slid the straps down her arms. Her bounteous mammaries hung in front of his face at eye level, hypnotizing him. Soon her pants dropped to the floor as well. Surprisingly, she'd had nothing on under them. She reached back into the drawer and pulled out the flesh-toned dildo. She unrolled a condom onto its head as she stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" she said.

Walter unfroze from his bedazzled trance and stood, quickly donning his clothes. He dropped them on the metal chair and sat on them, facing Rachel. She smiled at him and opened her legs. She ran her fingers down through the profusely hirsute patch there, spreading the light brown hairs apart, and rubbed the dildo head up and down the revealed lips, then pushed it between them. Walter felt his erection intensify its hardness, pointing straight up. He put his hand on himself and gently stroked it.

Until he'd come to college, Walter had masturbated by grinding his crotch against a pillow. Lately he'd been experimenting with the new skill of whacking off with his hand while in the shower. It was still a novel feeling, made more so at the moment by the fact that he did not have warm water and soap to provide lubrication. Not that this lack was any impediment, not with a voluptuous naked woman in front of him stuffing a fairly large dildo into herself. Rachel started moaning, all the while staring intently at Walter's crotch. Her hand moved the artificial dick in and out at a faster pace, and her breasts jiggled. Walter could see her juices glistening on the plastic rod. He suddenly felt proud of himself, proud that, as he saw it, his cock could help inspire such a reaction. As he stroked himself, his thumb rubbed the pre-come oozing from his cock around the head.

He wanted to touch Rachel, but feared endangering this magical moment. She had only spoken of watching. Somehow that suppressed longing intensified his sensations.

The volume of Rachel's moaning increased, and one of her legs began to twitch. She lay back on the mattress and pumped harder. "I'm coming, I'm coming," she whispered hoarsely, arching her back up from the mattress, her weight on her shoulders. She squeezed her legs together and shuddered repeatedly.

After a minute she turned on her side to face him. "Come for me," she urged. "I want to see you jizz."

Walter tightened his hand around his cock and stroked faster. Usually his eyes were closed when he did this in the shower, some fantasy image held onto in his mind, but now his eyes locked with hers for a moment. Then she looked back down at his cock, and watching her watch him pushed him over the edge. A long rope of white liquid shot out towards her, splattering onto the wooden floor just short of the mattress. "Oh yeah!" she exclaimed. Then came another, travelling half as far, and then shorter spurts, then dribbles as he milked the last drops from his penis.

"That was great!" Rachel enthused. She grabbed a box of tissues from the night table and wiped up his jism. When she tossed it in her battered metal wastebacket, it made a wet thump. She stripped the condom from the dildo and dropped it in the trash as she returned the dildo to its drawer.

It was an old floor, with gaps between the wood planks. Walter was sure some of his sperm had escaped into the cracks, his genetic material thus to reside there for – how long? Was this a sort of latent immortality? Contrarily, he'd learned in the previous semester of Lit Hum that in the Middle Ages, orgasm was called "the little death." When sperm left your body, did part of your soul travel with it? Did he think these nutty thoughts only because his penis had just borrowed blood from his brain? Would he be able to talk about music intelligently?

As it turned out, he would. Walter got dressed again and Rachel put her shirt back on, but only her shirt, though it was long enough when not tied to obscure her groin when she leaned forward. Walter then spent forty minutes playing the musical examples on his tapes and giving her practical advice on recognizing the composers, following the structure of a sonata-allegro movement, etc. He kept his eyes on the tape recorder as much as possible to avoid distracting himself, though when they were quiet while listening, he was wondering what his next move should be, because he was utterly smitten.

Finally the last tape was finished (obviously he hadn't been playing them in their entirety). It was 5 PM, so he thought a dinner invitation would be natural enough. Maybe it was, but it didn't work.

"Oh no, my boyfriend will be home from work in a while. I actually have to start getting dinner ready soon. How much do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it." Walter couldn't imagine taking her money after what they had done together, even if he was feeling utterly deflated by the news that she had a boyfriend and what she and Walter had done together was not the prelude to a relationship.

"No, I insist!" She handed him a ten-dollar bill. "Is that enough?"

Well, ten dollars was ten dollars. Or, in the Village, two or three used LPs. So he took it. "Thanks."

"Thank you! See you in class."

Walter slowly walked back uptown, not quite believing what had happened. Part of him was exhilarated, part of him was crushed. Instead of dinner with Rachel, he went to the cafeteria, then back to his dorm room. After eating, and after his rollercoaster afternoon, he was feeling contemplative, and nothing would do for that mood but to listen to Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert. He put it on and lay on his bed to listen. Carlton was out, so Walter didn't need to use headphones

It starts so quietly, so tentatively, with a five-note figure in the right hand, a pause as the left hand grumbles, then the right hand repeats itself and continues, gathering courage for a heartfelt statement of yearning. As he listens, the yearning makes him think of Rachel. If not for her boyfriend, would she be the one? The density and intensity of the music builds; Jarrett has set up a groove, and the repetition of some elements along with the addition of further embellishments fills the air with more and more tension until suddenly a wild, effusive flurry of notes flies upward in an ejaculatory release. Then the process starts again, with new melodic and motivic materials.

Just as, Walter thinks, he will find somebody else. This waxing rhapsodic amidst the coming and going of grooves goes on for awhile. Jarrett eventually hits on a particularly insistent vamp on a pedal tone; the pressure builds and builds further until Jarrett unclenches it with a move downward that undams the accumulated tension in a sudden release of orgasmic proportions. That's very nearly the end of the twenty-five minute improvisation, which diminishes quickly to a relaxed glow. It has been a magnificent emotional journey.

The tonearm automatically moves back to its cradle and the turntable stops spinning, but Walter's thoughts continue to churn. If not Rachel, who? Nearly all the women he knows at Columbia/Barnard are in Music Hum or B-C Chorus. He wonders whether his liaison with Janie was noticed by anyone but Martial. Janie not having rejoined presumably means nobody's heard about it from her.

Mara Shapiro, one of the sopranos in the choir, was certainly attractive, but Walter had never had the opportunity to talk to her for a natural reason, nor the courage to just introduce himself. Eleanor Eakins, the tall redhead, also a soprano, seemed to be dating the rehearsal pianist. Okay, going down the list from most attractive didn't seem productive. What women in choir had he had some interaction with who weren't taken? To his surprise, the answer was: none. He had not had a conversation with any current sopranos or altos. He had been too nervous or shy or cautious to take that chance.

With both Janie and Rachel, he had been the passive recipient of attention. He had enjoyed the immediate results, but neither situation had lasted. Well, he wasn't sure what would happen with Rachel, but a relationship was apparently out of the question. Nonetheless, he wasn't sure he had the guts to take the initiative.

Well, if he were to approach a woman in the choir, what would he talk to her about? What was a topic they would both be interested in? Logic said the safest bet would be music. But there would have to be more of a justification. "Hi, would you like to go to a concert with me?" He couldn't imagine being that bold.

But he wrote music. He performed his music. What if he wrote some songs for soprano, and then asked a soprano to sing them? That could work. Not for the band; art songs, just him on piano and her singing. One-on-one collaboration.

He would have to find some poems to set. He knew practically nothing about poetry. He would have to do something about that. One trip to the school bookstore later, he was choosing between Six Centuries of Great Poetry, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, and Modern Poems: An Introduction to Poetry, edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair. He noticed that the former had only British poems, and therefore he opted for Ellmann's volume. He was more inclined to modern poetry anyway; he himself was, after all, aiming to be a modern composer.

Back in his room, he skipped the introductory chapters and dove into the first author collected, Walt Whitman, specifically "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Too verbose, too flowery. Next, Emily Dickinson. Certainly not verbose, but somewhat eccentric, and he wasn't at all sure of what she meant. Thomas Hardy was more on his wavelength, and Walter would perhaps look into him more at some time, but his rhythm and tone didn't match Walter's sense of a song lyric. Gerard Manley Hopkins struck him as too pretentious, and self-satisfied as well. Robert Bridges had a whiff of the self-consciously archaic. A. E. Housman was too rhymey. W. B. Yeats seemed uneven in inspiration, but a few of his poems were powerful in a brooding way: "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," "Easter 1916," "The Second Coming." Nothing made him want to put it to music, though.

Walter skipped ahead to Robert Frost. Some of his poems he had already read in high school. He liked them, sort of; they went down easy. But they were, again, too rhymey, sing-songy. Carl Sandberg's work he had also read and enjoyed before, but none of it asked him to set it to music. Edward Thomas's two inclusions didn't inspire him. Wallace Stevens seemed another wordy sort until he got to "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which was completely different from any poetry he had ever seen before, not that that was saying much given his inexperience. James Stephens had a strong voice, but not for music. Three James Joyce poems made three completely separate impressions; perhaps he was worth investigating further. E. J. Pratt, another too rhymey, and what was with all these guys with two initials?

William Carlos Williams. Walter liked Williams's rhythm, which was strong yet irregular, and Williams didn't rhyme, which he also liked. "The Red Wheelbarrow" was the most striking, but he couldn't imagine setting it to music. Still, this guy seemed promising. And Walter was starting to wonder whether the poems selected to represent each author were his best, or instead were trying to cover as many of his styles as possible in the space. D. H. Lawrence's bio was certainly interesting, but none of the poems seemed indecent, though obscenity charges had dogged him. A deliberate omission by the compiler? Anyway, though "The Ship of Death" was compelling, Walter was starting to notice that he was more attracted to the American authors than the British ones.

Ezra Pound was interesting, but the poem Walter liked the most turned out to be a translation of a Chinese poem by Li Po. Walter thought he remembered reading a Pound poem in high school that wasn't here, something about growing old and being indecisive. He'd liked it, and made another mental note to investigate Pound's work further. Two selections each by Hilda Doolittle and Siegfried Sassoon were good but not song material. Robinson Jeffers was powerful, but his topics didn't lend themselves to lyrical songs. Edwin Muir seemed a possibility. Edith Sitwell didn't speak to him. Marianne Moore was fabulous, but not song material. John Crowe Ransom seemed deliberately archaic and Old World.

T.S. Eliot, and it turned out that he wrote the poem Walter had misremembered as being by Pound: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." But there had been an Eliot-Pound connection, so he didn't feel too stupid at the mistake. Anyway, the ending of "Prufrock" was his favorite part, so mysterious and doomy. A couple more poems seemed artificial. Then, a long introduction to "The Waste Land," so it must be important. Holy shit, it's fucking brilliant, although without the footnotes he wouldn't know what the hell half of it was about -- yet somehow it had an alluring mood even when its meaning was obscure. He couldn't imagine setting it to music, but wow.

Perhaps because they were in the shadow of "The Waste Land," the next few poets made no impression. Wilfred Owen broke that jinx; writing about World War I, his mood reminded Walter of All Quiet on the Western Front, even though the latter was a novel.

He'd never liked e.e. cummings all that much, and didn't change his mind now. He skimmed through many more, finally brought up short by Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," not that it was song material. Then back to skimming. Lawrence Ferlinghetti's one poem seemed promising; somebody else to look into. He should make a list, he thought; in lieu of that, he went to the table of contents and circled the authors who had made an impression.

Then it was back to skimming, until Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew his mind. No wonder people at Columbia talked about this man as though he were a god. Not song material, but wow, again. And Walter noticed that its repetitions reminded him of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." The voice was more modern, but still, maybe Whitman had been an influence.

Forty pages later, Gary Snyder's "Four Poems for Robin" stood out. Walter flipped back to the table of contents and circled his name. Etheridge Knight, who'd been in prison, had some vivid poems, not song material, but his haiku especially made an impression. Walter remembered haiku from fourth grade and noticed that Knight did not always adhere to the 5-7-5 syllables structure, but also that that didn't make them any less vivid.

Next came a trip to the library, since he didn't want to spend a lot, based on such little evidence, on a bunch of books. There were big collections of Stevens and Williams, which he took out. He looked up Li Po and found more modern translations by Kenneth Rexroth in Chinese anthologies he'd both edited and translated. Walter couldn't find any Gary Snyder books, but he felt like he had enough to keep him busy, as his father liked to say.

Back at his room, Carlton was studying at his desk. Walter put his headphones on, picked up where he had left off with Jarrett's Köln Concert, and dove into The Collected Earlier Poems of William Carlos Williams. Pretty soon he was sure he'd be turning some of them into songs: "To a Solitary Disciple," "To a Poor Old Woman," "This Is Just to Say" (he imagined combining those two, since they both hinged on plums), maybe "At the Ballgame," the short version of "The Locust Tree in Flower." He made a list, then went to sleep.

[next chapter]

Music and Sex #7: Battles of the Band

Roman Akleff — Sun, 06 Sep 2015 16:26:00 +0000

Music and Sex #7: Battles of the Band Roman Akleff September 6, 2015 - 12:26

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

As 1980 got going, Walter was distracted from Janie’s absence by progress on the band front. Garrick had found an electric guitarist, Tom O’Reilly. Though still lacking bass and drums, they decided to try putting together some new songs and practicing some covers -- because as TomO (as he styled himself) pointed out pragmatically, a good set of rockin’ covers would get them gigs at the frats that lined the south side of 114th St. Over a round of beers at the Marlin, a brightly lit bar that had less visual flair than a high school cafeteria, but the cheapest beer near campus, they decided to take turns suggesting covers.

Walter led off: "For Your Love." He liked it because of its harpsichord riff.

"Fuck that!" blurted TomO. "I was told we'd be covering Nuggets-type songs."

"I love the Yardbirds!" Garrick responded.

"I hate Eric Clapton," TomO explained. "I don't want to have to play his part every night."

"Every night? You're quite the optimist," joked Garrick. "Anyway, Clapton hated that song so much that he left the band, so you should like it."

"Never mind," said Walter. "How about something completely different? A rock version of 'Don't Stop Till You Get Enough'?"

"How about, somebody with better taste than you picks the songs?" TomO sniped.

"How about you go find yourself another band to be a cranky jerk in?" Walter replied venomously, and walked out, leaving his half-drunk beer behind. Garrick, he noted, did not follow him. He waited outside for a minute to make sure, then walked back to Carman. Carlton wasn't around, so Walter turned on his little Carlo Robelli electric piano and tried to work out the chords of "Wuthering Heights," getting the bass first and then laying in the harmonies. After about half an hour, he'd more or less approximated it. An idea was slowly growing in his head -- to find a soprano who could sing rock, so he could go in a different direction from what he and Garrick had been planning. It put him in a better mood.

Later he went to the TV lounge and watched old sitcom re-runs. After an hour, Garrick came in, and looked at Walter sheepishly.

"He's an asshole, I know, but it's not easy to find a guitarist who isn't already in a band."

"So you're choosing him over me?" Walter said, incredulous.

"What, I can't be in two bands?"

Walter hadn't thought of that possibility. "If you've got time, I guess."

There was an awkward silence, broken by Rhoda's laugh.

"Do you want to hear what songs we're doing?"

"Okay." Walter wouldn't admit it, but he had a certain masochistic curiosity about what had happened after he'd left.

"'Just Like Me,' 'Submission,' 'Back Door Man,' '96 Tears,' 'Hang on Sloopy,' 'Grinding Halt,' and 'Heroin.'"

"I'm not sure you can pull off 'Heroin.' You look too healthy," Walter joked. Garrick laughed, maybe a bit too much, but they both smiled.

"What's 'Grinding Halt'"?

"It's on the Cure album. You don't have that? You should tape mine. And I'll do 'For Your Love' with your band," Garrick said.

"Let's get some new songs written, too," Walter responded.

"How do we do that?"

"Just give me your lyrics."

Thus it was that Walter came to set a bunch of agitprop to music. The words begged for punk-rock accompaniment and to be declaimed more than sung, so he kept the chords basic and the melodic range narrow.

When they next got together, Walter discovered that Garrick couldn't read music.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" he said, waving the handwritten sheet music Walter had just given him. "I thought you'd make a demo tape," he continued, his voice a mix of pleading and disdain.

"I can do that," Walter answered placatingly.

It required a bit of spending, though, as he had to get a microphone. Jimbo advised him to go to 52nd St., which he called "Music Store Row," and look for a used mike. At Manny's, he found a dented Shure for just $30, checked that it worked, and then could not resist wandering over to the keyboard area. He fiddled with some whoppingly expensive synthesizers; looked longingly at a used Fender Rhodes that, even at just $500, was still out of his reach financially; ignored the console organs that were both too pricey and too unportable, and then saw a very small Hammond. Its casing was dinged and its carrying handle was broken, but the price tag read $175. He checked his wallet, glad he hadn't done any record shopping since returning; the Christmas twenties from Granma Dolly, Aunt Shirley, Uncle Al, Uncle Side, Aunt Martha, Great-Aunt Phyllis, and Granpa Willie were still intact, and he had also begged $50 from his mother for "laundry and weekend meals," so he could do this. The salesman half-heartedly tried to talk him into something a little more expensive, but that Hammond -- an X1, he was told, which sounded more like an experimental aircraft -- was the only portable that was used and thus affordable. Walter halted the salesman's advances by saying, "I've only got $190."

"What about that mike, then?"

"I'll put it back."

"Come with me, sir."

It still amused Walter to hear grownups refer to him as "sir." He followed the salesman, wondering what was about to happen, but they just went to the register. Walter noticed that he seemed to be the only customer there; all the rest were in the guitar section, producing a cacophony of riffs and leads. The salesman leaned over the counter and whispered, "one-ninety cash," then looked at Walter expectantly. Hesitantly, he took his $190 out and put it on the counter."

"They're yours, kid. Get them outta here before somebody else wants them, the register guy said, "and tell your friends to come to Manny's."

Slightly mystified by his good fortune, Walter said, "Thanks," put the mike in his coat pocket, and hefted the organ under one arm. With a bit of trepidation -- after all, he had no receipt -- he exited. Nothing happened. He got on the 1 and returned uptown with his booty.

Back in his dorm room, he told Marcus of his good fortune. "Yeah, cash for used, they'll do that. The stuff isn't in inventory, so they don't have to keep a paper trail, and you paid cash and got no receipt, so they can pretend it never happened and not pay taxes on it. They clear more doing like that than if you paid full price and they put it through the register. And you also saved on sales tax. Good deal, Captain! Can I try it out?"

Walter took the cable connecting his piano to his stereo and switched it into his new organ.

"You don't have an amp?"

"I do, but it stopped working in November and I haven't gotten around to fixing it."

"You'll blow your speakers!"

"I keep the volume low."

After the Hammond was plugged in, Marcus played some bluesy chords that sounded familiar.

"What's that?"

"Just a gospel progression. This sounds great. Do you think I could borrow it if I get a gig?"

"Sure."

"Hey, I'm sorry, it's your new toy, you play it."

Walter sat at his desk and played the opening of Bach's D-minor Toccata & Fugue in the piano version, with the left hand playing the pedal parts, since this organ didn't have pedals.

"Nice, Phantom of the Opera!" Marcus said. And from then on, he sometimes called Walter "Phantom" instead of "Captain."

Walter afterwards took a closer look at his amp and found a connection that needed soldering. Because of the work he'd had to do on his Carlo Robelli electric piano, which had also been used and which was a nightmare of contacts, he'd already invested in a soldering iron and, of course, solder; for this project, though, he needed a third hand. He called Marcus back in, and though it was a little awkward coordinating three hands inside the amp, they did it, and after that Marcus spread the word that Walter could do repairs, which occasionally brought him a little money, usually just $5, but hey, that could be converted into another used LP down in the Village.

Meanwhile, he made the demo tape for Garrick, who had gotten his hands on an alto sax and, despite not being able to read music, had thrown himself into trying to learn to play it. He seemed proud of his progress, but his playing was not ready for public airing -- sometimes he struggled even to get any sounds out, much less accurate notes. He judged himself on his best results, when he managed to get a string of notes out without squeaking; even those duck-toned, out-of-tune efforts pained Walter's ears, and he judged Garrick on the average of his results, which met no standard of musical usefulness. The Portsmouth Sinfonia's cracked rendition of Also Sprach Zarathustra was virtuosic in comparison. And still he hadn't heard Garrick sing -- he was starting to get a bad feeling about this.

There was some band progress, though: Walter convinced one of the drummers in the marching band to play with them, and that guy said he could bring a bassist as well. Still no guitarist, but everything else had fallen into place.

Finally, they resorted to putting an ad in the school paper's classifieds: "Electric guitarist sought for band combining Nuggets and Punk." The first response was from a guy who, it turned out, was planning to learn guitar. On being informed that they wanted somebody who already knew how to play, he snorted, "That's not very fucking punk, then, is it?" At least there was no need to audition him. When a guitarist who said he was in the school jazz band responded, the first-ever meeting of all members of Captain Vinyl and the Disk-ciples was scheduled -- in the school band room, in fact, because they could use the amps and drum set there. Everybody had been told they would work on "For Your Love" and The Jam's "Down in the Tube Station (at Midnight)," with the instrumentalists working them out in the first hour and Garrick joining them after that. It turned out that an hour was more time than they'd needed; they spent the last fifteen minutes in an impromptu jam on Duke Ellington's "Blues in C," though only Walter knew the head -- but they all felt comfortable in a C blues, so that didn't matter.

Garrick arrived while they were jamming; the bassist dropped out to open the door, which was locked.

"We're not a fuckin' blues band," Garrick immediately announced.

"Who's this asshole?" the guitarist asked.

"Ahem. He's our singer," Walter replied.

"Awkward!" joked the drummer.

"Let's start with "For Your Love," Walter said blithely, trying to ignore the tension.

"By the greatest of the British blues bands," interjected the guitarist, pointedly. Walter considered mock-seriously responding, "You mean Fleetwood Mac?" (which, honestly, was who he'd first heard performing it, on the album), but bit his tongue, unsure if that would really relax them.

Garrick pretended not to have heard the jibe, but after the instrumental intro, he snarled the lead vocal with feral intensity as Walter and the bassist -- who, unlike Garrick, had no mikes -- chimed in with the repetitions of the title. Walter had been worried about Garrick's singing, a topic the confrontation with the guitarist had made him painfully aware of again, but now he relaxed. Garrick clearly would never be heard at the Metropolitan Opera, but he was good enough for punk rock. He sounded just as good on the Jam tune, while the backing vocals -- "oh oh oh oh" -- added to its exuberance. The friction with the guitarist had dissipated, and they'd gotten through both songs they'd planned on with no mishaps.

The introductions finally happened at that point. Walter identified himself and Garrick, then Paulie the guitarist and Bill the drummer; Bill did the honors for the bassist, Dave. After that they repaired to the Marlin. It was amazing how often Walter ended up at that place despite not liking it. As, for the first time, Walter was able to speak as a member of a band that had actually played together and could bandy about the details of its recently concluded rehearsal, it suddenly dawned on him why he and his ilk habitually hung out there: not just because it was where musicians went, but why. It wasn't just the cheap beer. It was where one acted the part of a musician in a forum focused on musicians, with no distractions: no women (well, few, and rarely), no TV, no band playing (a bit of a paradox, that last one). There were old men who sat at the bar, and the musicians sat at tables, the two tribes not interested in interacting. Well, a diminutive guitarist dubbed Mex (for reasons unknown to Walter) sometimes sat at the end of the bar, but that seemed based on quickest access to the Rheingolds he drank so prolifically, and he faced away from the bar to interact with the table denizens.

This evening, Walter discovered that he was the sole defender of prog-rock in his band. It happened when they started debating more potential cover repertoire and he suggested "Starship Trooper."

"I knew you were a secret prog lover," said Garrick. No fucking way."

"But you like Kate Bush!" he abjured Garrick.

"She's not prog!"

"Her guitarist is David Gilmour."

"So what?"

"He's in Pink Floyd."

"They're not prog, they're psych."

"Oh, come on. That was true early on, sure, but you can't tell me that Dark Side of the Moon isn't prog."

"A little. But that's just one album."

"Wish You Were Here is prog too. So's Animals. And The Wall, although just for the record, it's crap. I just cited Dark Side because that was the point at which their progginess became undeniable."

"Well, I'm denying it."

"It's trippy, not proggy," Dave chimed in.

"'Money' is in 5/4. Odd meters are a classic prog move," Bill refuted. Then, just as Walter thought he might have an ally, Bill continued, "That's why I hate it. Pretentious bullshit."

"I always light up a fat one to listen to Dark Side," Paulie said, as though that was definitive proof of something.

Walter pounced. "I bet you spark one for your Bob Marley albums too."

"Yeah, so?"

"That doesn't constitute evidence of Bob being psychedelic."

"I think his rhythm section's pretty psychedelic."

"The term doesn't mean anything if you use it that broadly!" Walter protested.

"It's about feeling. That's why I don't like prog. No feeling."

"You're saying Peter Gabriel doesn't lay his feelings and emotions out there all through The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway?"

"I'm talkin' about musical feeling. Floyd and Marley have a loose feeling. Genesis and Yes are tight. Tight sphincters."

Walter gave up. He even announced that, loudly: "I give up," and quickly joked, "So does this mean we will be covering 'Wuthering Heights'?"

Amid the chuckles that elicited, Paulie asked, "Will we be adding a chick singer, or just castrating him?", gesturing at Garrick, who scowled briefly before half-heartedly going "ha ha."

Then they returned to kicking around cover ideas. Garrick suggested all the songs he'd said he'd be playing with TomO, so Walter inferred that that collaboration was dead. After the fourth one, Walter raised his eyebrows, and Garrick bashfully nodded.

Paulie vetoed "Heroin" as "too obvious" and "Grinding Halt" as "Brit bullshit." None of Paulie's suggestions -- all Clapton-related -- were taken seriously, but he didn't care, since he was just yanking Garrick's chain. Fortunately the rhythm section, apparently just happy to be in a band -- or in a bar, or in a band in a bar -- didn't seem to care one way or the other about any of the suggestions. Many beers later, they'd wrapped things up, including scheduling their next rehearsal.

As they were all exiting, Walter saw Martial and Jimbo at another table and paused to say hello. "Sit down, kid," said Martial, motioning to an empty chair. Walter sat, whereupon Martial then spent a few minutes making small talk about the choir, occasionally looking around until finally leaning in and quietly saying, "Okay, now that they're all gone, I can predict the future of your new band." Walter perked up.

"Yeah, you're all excited and hopeful now," Martial continued. "It's like being in love, except instead of getting laid, you're making music. That's even more exciting for people like us, so I get it. But, just like a crazy girlfriend, Paulie's going to break your heart. You can see he's an asshole, right?"

"Yeah, but --"

"There is no but. I know, he can play pretty good. It doesn't matter. He's not worth the trouble. Don't take just my word for it. Jimbo?"

"Yup. He's a prick. I don't know what his problem is. Every band he's been in, either he quit or got kicked out or it broke up. He's on some weird power trip or something, always arguing, never letting anything go. Fuck him."

"It was hard finding a good guitarist," Walter protested, or explained.

"There's always another guitarist. They're as common as toadstools after it rains," said Martial.

"Thanks for the warning. If I can find another guitarist, we'll use him instead."

No new guitarists having appeared, Paulie retained his slot in the band. Meanwhile, Dave got them a gig at Phi Epsilon, the artiest of the frats. After a hastily arranged run of rehearsals, they could get through all their chosen covers but hadn't had time to work out any originals, so unfortunately they only had a seven-song set that was not as well balanced between '60s and current material because Paulie wouldn't play most of the suggestions, instead repeatedly insisting they should cover "Wuthering Heights." Finally Garrick exploded in frustration, shouting at Paulie, "We've only got a half-hour set because of you. What are we supposed to do, play everything twice?"

"Play every twice as long by making the solos longer."

"We're not that kind of band. And what am I supposed to do while you wank your guitar, play tambourine?"

"God, no, don't bite off more than you can chew."

Walter saw Garrick tense up and realized the singer was clenching his fists. Was their infighting about to turn physical?

"And another thing," Paulie continued. "We need a new name."

"And, I guess, a throne for you, because you think you're the king of this band," Walter riposted tartly.

"Somebody's got to have common sense," Paulie deadpanned.

"Let's have a vote, then. What's your idea for a band name?"

"It's not my band -- it's not my job to name it."

"But you're somehow entitled to unname it? Sorry, if you can't come up with an alternative, it stays what it is." Walter, remembering what Martial and Jimbo had said, felt uninclined to back down to try to keep Paulie happy, figuring that if he did, Paulie would just bitch about something else. "Sorry, if you can't come up with an alternative, it stays what it is."

"It's the stupidest fucking band name ever."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not your disciple. Do you think you're Jesus?"

"You've got no sense of humor."

"You've got no guitarist if you can't think of a better name than Captain Vinyl & the Disk-ciples."

"I was warned about you."

"Yeah? By who?"

"More than one person."

"There are a lot of motherfuckers who are jealous of me."

"Why would anybody be jealous of a guy with your reputation?"

"My reputation is that I'm the best damn guitarist on campus."

"No, it's that you're the biggest troublemaker on campus. And it's true. You're the reason we've got a gig next week but we've only got half a set."

"Fuck you and your half-assed band."

"Fuck you and your bad attitude. You need therapy."

"Bye-bye, losers."

After Paulie had packed up his guitar and left, Walter addressed the remaining band members. "I know we've got a gig but no guitarist, and I admit that's a problem. But does anybody think he was going to work out?"

"You're right. He wanted to quit. It was like he was looking for an excuse," said Garrick.

"Yeah, man, he's a major fuckin' asshole. Nothing else you could do," agreed Dave.

"I'm not saying you're wrong," said Bill after a pause, "but it doesn't look like we're gonna be able to play that gig."

"I'm going to the Marlin and not leaving until I've found a replacement," Walter promised. He was so eager that he left his keyboards in the band room, which he never did. He was a little surprised nobody came with him, but figured that might streamline the decision-making.

It was a Friday night -- that's how dedicated, or desperate, they'd been: they'd sacrificed their Friday night to rehearse -- so the Marlin was packed. It was a less musician-heavy crowd, but Walter saw Martial and Mex at a table near the bar. There were no empty chairs, so he just stood next to Martial and said, "You were right about Paulie. So, so right."

"Sorry, kid. What happened?"

"He was vetoing all our suggestions for expanding our set list and saying we have to change the band name. Then he walked out after I told him to come up with a better name or shut up."

"What is your band's name?"

"Captain Vinyl & the Disk-ciples."

"Well, he's got a point."

"Really?"

"Look, it's kind of clever in a nerdy way, but it's awkward. It sounds like a bad joke."

"Okay, then I need a new guitarist and a new band name. And I need them before our first gig a week from tonight."

"Whoa, you got a gig?"

"Phi Ep."

"Nice. Paying?"

"Free beer."

"I shoulda known. Hey, Mex, wanna help the kid out?

"I'm already in three bands, man."

"So what's another one?"

"What's in your set?" Mex asked.

"'Just Like Me,' 'Submission,' 'Back Door Man,' '96 Tears,' 'Hang on Sloopy,' 'For Your Love,' and 'Down in the Tube Station (at Midnight).' And now that Paulie can't say no to them, maybe 'Grinding Halt' and 'Heroin.'"

"'Heroin'? Isn't that kinda dark for you guys?"

"I guess. The singer wants to do it."

"Tell him he's only allowed to sing it once and he has to shoot up onstage and immediately overdose," Martial joked. Everybody laughed, and then Mex asked, "Whose song is 'Grinding Halt'"?

"The Cure," Walter answered.

"Even though I don't know it, I think you should do it, because most of those are kinda obvious, except for the Pistols and Jam songs," Mex said. "And maybe I'll cut you some slack on the Yardbirds, I haven't heard anybody around here cover it, at least. Any originals?"

"Not yet. There are a few written, but, um, now that I think about it, I guess we didn't want to give Paulie anything else to whine about. But we've got to have more songs, that's a short set even if we add the two I mentioned."

"Nah, forty-five minutes is enough. Is there another band?"

"Yes. We're opening for Tot Rocket and the Twins."

"Really? You can bet your ass they're not playing for free beer. But that's good, it means your set is already long enough, because you're gonna start ten or fifteen minutes late waiting for an audience, but then stop on time. You're only costing them beer, so they won't complain."

"So would you be able to do it?"

"No, I'm just telling you that you've got enough tunes for that gig."

The disappointment on Walter's face was clear. Martial quickly asked, "Do you really need a guitarist? Try just keyboards! You're good enough."

Walter looked -- and felt -- skeptical, but responded non-commitally. He did think that, though he'd be terrified to be that much of the focus it if was just a trio, this was an excuse to ask Jessica to join, because maybe a two-keyboardist set-up could work. He thanked the guys for their help, such as it was, and headed back to Carman Hall to look for Jessica.

He wasn't sure which was her suite on 11. It was the opposite side from Roland's, one or two doors further back towards the front elevator. Luckily he got it right on the first guess, and even more luckily, she was there on a Friday night, answering the door in shorts and a vee-neck shirt. "How did you know I'd be here?" was in fact the first thing she said.

"I didn't, but if you weren't I'd just leave a message. So, my band's guitarist quit and I figure the hell with guitarists, let's do something different and use two keyboardists. Are you interested?"

"What kind of music?"

"Well, right now it's kind of garage rock and punk, but we just started, and I'd like to eventually get into something more adventurous," he said, hoping to entice her.

"I'm classically trained, I don't want to just pound on a few chords."

"I'm classically trained too," Walter answered truthfully. On a whim, though also with an eye to interesting her, he elaborated, "I want to do what nobody things can be done. I want to have a progressive punk band."

"Really? Tell me more."

"I want the energy and abrasiveness of punk, but in a complex and, uh, more harmonically interesting way." He had never actually thought about that, but as he said it, it resonated with him. That would be super cool.

"The other thing I mean when I say I'm classically trained is, I don't improvise. Can you write out what I'd play?"

"Yeah, sure, no problem." At this point, Walter would have said anything to make her happy.

There was a pause as she seemed to stare into space.

"Now I get it. This was just an excuse for you to stare at my cleavage."

"No, no! I'm serious!"

"You can't deny that you were staring. I'm not blind."

"Um, maybe unconsciously. If I did, I didn't realize I was doing it."

"Riiiiight." She slammed the door.

As Walter turned to take the stairs down to 10, he saw Roland standing inside his doorway, looking silently at Walter. When Roland saw that Walter had seen him, he smirked and closed his door.

[Next chapter here.]

Music and Sex #6: New Experiences

Roman Akleff — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 06:38:00 +0000

Music and Sex #6: New Experiences Roman Akleff June 16, 2015 - 02:38

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

[Warning: the chapter below contains "adult situations." Seriously, this one's not for the faint-hearted.]

Walter’s new home, Carman Hall, was an utterly soulless pile of cinder blocks. No effort at all had been made, during its design and construction two decades earlier, to build in anything conveying the slightest sense of warmth. No carpeting in either the halls or in the suites, no wood anywhere except the doors, no decorative touches, nothing but bare straight lines. One imagined it had been designed so it could be hosed down with minimum effort between school years to as to be literally as well as aesthetically antiseptic. There was not even any accommodation made for cooking; not only were there no kitchen nooks, even hotplates were forbidden (though, given that they were horrific fire hazards, that made sense, which was not to say that the ban was not widely flouted).

Eventually, some students had insisted on a bit of color, so murals had been painted, by students, one on each floor on the wall facing the main elevator banks. 10 Carman was blessed with the best of them, the gatefold of In the Court of the Crimson King; in a whimsical bit of naughtiness, the leering figure's outstretched hand proffered whippets to the viewer -- a high so ludicrous that no administrator had bothered to censor it, though perhaps they hadn't realized the nitrous oxide connection. Certainly Walter hadn't -- it had been explained to him, along with what King Crimson was. He’d gotten used to not knowing things in his new environment, and though he wouldn’t usually ask, if somebody inquired whether he knew something, he'd found that the embarrassment of admitting ignorance was less than the embarrassment of the mess that could result from claiming knowledge he lacked -- because in this milieu, people would call you on that shit.

The only thing Walter really disliked about dorm life was the lack of privacy inherent in sharing a room. Gone was the convenience of being able to masturbate that he'd had on Long Island, where he had a room to himself that nobody would come into without knocking; and with the creaking wooden boards of the hallway and stairs, he'd always had some early warning of potential interruption. In the dorm with its plastic tile floors, and of course with a roommate, that security was gone. He had to learn his roommate's schedule to know when he could whack off without fear of discovery: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 to 11 AM were the safest times. (He eventually conjectured that when Jimmy from the other room in the suite took forever in the bathroom in the middle of the day, that was probably what he was doing in the shower, but Walter didn't use the stand-up-and-jerk-off technique; he ground his crotch against his pillow. That was how he'd originally discovered his sexuality, in his early teens, waking up with his pillow between his legs and a little hard-on, and he'd never moved on from that.) At least his old fear of newsstand clerks telling his parents about his Playboy purchases no longer applied. Walter had bought Playboy's Women of the Ivy League issue, and while most of the Ivy Leaguers showed very little, he had immediately developed a crush on centerfold Vicki McCarty for her girl-next-door pertness.

The best part of dorm life was the camaraderie, which was entirely different from high school because one could hang out at night in a communal environment rather than occasionally at one another’s homes. One night Walter was in the TV lounge on 10 Carman with a few guys, including Rick, who worked at CU-TV, the campus television station, which had immediately gotten him dubbed Captain Video after some cartoon character Walter hadn’t ever heard of before. As they were sitting there tittering over the community access cable adventures of Ugly George, a pervert with a video camera who devoted his show to accosting women on the street and asking them to show him, and his camera, their tits, Marcus walked in and said, "Hey, it's Captain Video and Captain Vinyl!" Thus was Walter's LP collection/obsession made a matter of public record, and news of it spread outside the confines of his dorm suite.

As time went on, the music-obsessed found each other. A guy named Garrick whose parents were divorced -- and who had, as a result, grown up in the disparate locales of Georgia and England -- lived one door down from Walter. Garrick's tastes were as disparate as his homes, ranging from the Southern-eccentric bar-bandish Tav Falco and Panther Burns to the archly baroque prog-pop of elfin-voiced English singer Kate Bush. Hanging out in the TV lounge, Walter and Garrick were nerdishly drawn together to compare their treasures. Garrick's were more exotic, as many were imports -- not only the the more exquisitely decorated English pressing of Bush’s The Kick Inside, which contained the semi-hit "Wuthering Heights," on which her high vocal range was most impressively deployed, but also a seven-inch of the Hollies’ 1967 hit "Carrie Anne" on the German Hansa imprint, the domestic but long-out-of-print debut LP of ? & the Mysterians, and another import, the Yardbirds' eponymous album (also known as Roger the Engineer after the scrawl identifying the sad figure on its cover) with the dazzling "Over, Under, Sideways, Down," which was oddly askew in its headlong angularity.

Garrick didn't care about much of Walter's collection; there was certainly nothing exotic about his many Billy Joel, Bread, Eagles, and Springsteen albums, nor did Garrick care about jazz or classical. He did, however, appreciate Walter's Warren Zevon LPs, was obsessed by his original edition of the first Buffalo Springfield album with "Baby Don't Scold Me" before it had been replaced with the hit "For What It's Worth" (Walter had only recently acquired it, for the exorbitant sum of $20, at a shop in the Village), and borrowed Johnny Cash's Greatest Hits for a month before finally returning it. Walter's new pal also fancied himself a singer, and had scribbled some lyrics in search of a song that led to him theorizing a band with Walter that would be a mix of garage rock and punk. After much banter, Walter dubbed the theoretical band Captain Vinyl & the Disk-ciples, and even furtively graffitied a stairwell wall in Hamilton Hall with the name. As the prominence of Walter’s nickname showed, he considered himself the leader, even though Garrick was the lead vocalist. But then, he'd never actually heard Garrick sing, since they hadn't succeeded in recruiting any other band members.

There was a musician with whom Walter dearly hoped to collaborate, a quite buxom redhead named Jessica who lived on the eleventh floor (one of the few co-ed floors in Carmen Hall), but she, like Walter, played keyboards, so being in a band with her probably wouldn't work. Anyway, she was already dating another eleventh-floor dweller, the annoyingly hip Roland. Not that Walter hadn't availed himself of the opportunity to check out Roland's small but extremely eccentric, hence interesting, LP collection. It included stuff Walter was only confused by -- a Luigi Nono set that seemed like random sound, but which, Roland explained seriously, had been composed to uplift Italian factory workers.

More rewarding to Walter's ears was Harry Partch's And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma, a 36-minute instrumental piece on a CRI LP. Fascinated, he learned that Partch had constructed a unique musical style with a just intonation scale that had a whopping 43 tones per octave, and then invented and built instruments that could play this music. Many of Partch's instruments were either percussive or plucked string instruments. The combination of plinks and plunks, the disconcerting effect of the unusual tunings (not always the 43-tone scale), and Partch's fascination with archaic cultures, especially ancient Greece, make the purely musical aspects of his work strikingly unlike anything Walter had ever heard before in his life. The sheer sonic colorfulness of the sounds of the Partch instruments makes the music immediately attractive, but it was also considerably more complex rhythmically and sonically than what he was used to, piling musical material up in interweaving layers to achieve a dizzying interplay of rhythms, textures, and colors. He taped it.

On the other side of the tape -- not that it matched, but he didn't worry about that -- he put a recent Cecil Taylor album. Cecil Taylor Unit was the title of the album, but the music was far more imaginative than that. The other members (no pun intended) of the Unit were alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, trumpeter Raphé Malik, violinist Ramsey Ameen, bassist Sirone, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. Taylor played piano like a wild man, but Walter sensed some intuitive logic at work; it might be cacophonic, but it wasn't chaotic. The musicians responded avidly to each other, weaving complex lines together in a free-flowing fashion that was so obviously built on classic jazz procedures that it was hard to imagine them existing or developing separately, though apparently lots of jazz fans considered it not to be jazz. Walter felt that it was impossible to clearly distinguish between what might be composition and improvised on the album. The textures mutated freely, from spare passages of lyrical beauty to energetic, passionate outbursts -- and that was just Taylor's playing on his instrument of choice, a Bösendorfer with an extended keyboard (96 keys rather than the standard 88), giving him a bass-rich sound. The contrasting timbres of alto sax, trumpet, violin, and bowed or plucked bass were deployed to maximum effect around Taylor's piano, sometimes in roiling passages of all players at once, or frequently in ever-shifting combinations of instruments. Walter couldn’t care less whether it was considered jazz or not; what it was, was an organic celebration of the dense complexity and emotionality of life.

Most of Walter's taping was of LPs he'd borrowed from the library. Not the dinky one he worked at, which only had assigned listening for Music Humanities; rather, the main music library in Dodge Hall. He would listen to them at the library first; if he liked them, he would take them home and tape them. He would try out things he'd read about, or that friends had recommended, or that just looked cool or were on labels he trusted. He filled many gaps in his class schedule making musical discoveries that life on Long Island and listening to WNCN had not previously revealed to him. Merely because it was on Columbia and included the Gregg Smith singers, he played Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel one afternoon and was knocked out by its unusual combinations of timbre (chorus, viola, and percussion), the amount of space in its construction, and the way it seems to be organized in a way he had never encountered and couldn’t figure out, but was drawn to. Short motifs were repeated, mutated, and abandoned in a sort of free-associative process that seemingly owed nothing to sonata form. Clouds of sound hovered and dissolved as the choir sang wordlessly; the viola occasionally waxing lyrical in their midst. If the other side of the LP, the chamber instrumental For Frank O'Hara, was not as entrancing, it was still fascinating to listen to and to try to follow the logic of. Though the album was only three years old, obviously other people had also been strongly attracted to it: side one was full of ticks and skips, and even with a penny on the headshell, he couldn’t eliminate all of the latter when he taped it.

He also investigated Arnold Schoenberg by checking out Maurizio Pollini's Deutsche Grammophon LP of the seminal Serialist's solo piano music. Serialism was reputedly dry and academic music, but Walter found this music (much of it pre-Serial, admittedly) quite unforbidding. The cool clarity of Pollini's performance couldn’t hide the Romantic heart beating in this music's piquant harmonies. Yes, even though the Serial pieces were technically not using harmonic language, since Serialism was deliberately atonal, to Walter’s ears it felt like a new kind of non-repeating harmony in starkly focused miniatures. Then, down in the Village browsing the used-LP bins, he found that Glenn Gould, whose Bach playing he adored, had also recorded these pieces, and Schoenberg's songs as well. Gould's Bach was pointedly anti-Romantic, and Gould made clear that it was Schoenberg’s polyphonic approach that attracted him, but the Canadian pianist inflected these iconically modern works emotively, with generally greater breadth than Pollini allowed (notably in Op. 23, especially Nos. 3 and 4) but just as much clarity and even greater attention to inner voices. Gould lovingly sculpted phrases and frequently lingered, or indulged in passionate surges that imbued his readings with vastly more heart-on-sleeve emotion than Pollini did. Then Walter found the Dodge library included another set of these pieces by Paul Jacobs, who in a sense found the mid-point between Pollini and Gould in terms of emotionality, but played with a softer, more rounded tone than either. It had never occurred to Walter that one could fruitfully compare varied interpretations and enjoy them all for their different effects without having to declare one correct and the others inferior. Part of him found the inability to declare a winner frustrating, but another part he hadn’t known was inside him was exhilarated by the implications this realization offered him as a listener.

Other notable recordings included the CBS Masterworks box set of Webern's complete works in all their pointillist glory (he liked that one so much he went to J&R and bought a new copy), and an abundance of choral polyphony, with Josquin being particularly revelatory (no way his church choir on Long Island could have handled any of it, not that Congregationalists sang Latin masses anyway). The Dodge library had many useful books as well, of course, notably the Liber Usualis with its complete Latin liturgical texts, along with translations (learning that it was out of print, he was tempted to steal it, because Dodge had so many copies, he rationalized, that what difference would one less make? -- but, fearful of not the [unknown] penalty of being caught, but rather the potential shame, he turned that rationalization around and thought, no need to steal one when there’s always access here). It was also in Dodge that he found Walter Frisch’s Schenkerian analysis of Brahms's symphonies, which was his introduction to the work of Schenker.

Meanwhile, Professor Hatch was skimming through the peaks of the Western Classical tradition in Music Hum., with the most emphasis on Haydn’s symphonies and string quartets, simple but witty; Mozart’s late symphonies and operas, sublimely perfect within their own world (the trombones in Don Giovanni making almost as much impression as the Symphony No. 40's minor-key tugs of the heartstrings), and especially Beethoven: symphonies, piano sonatas, and string quartets. The late piano sonatas were a world away from the "Moonlight" (a piece he'd had in his lessons, though Walter had never managed to get the final movement up to speed). As played by Artur Schnabel, they seemed to make time stand still (finale of No. 32) or move with thrilling, seemingly impossible impetus (much of the "Hammerklavier"), and Schnabel's wrong notes mattered less than his strength of gesture.

Speaking of piano, Walter was taking lessons again. After he'd broken his left wrist playing football on the playground in the Autumn of his senior year of high school, he’d stopped his private lessons, so he was rusty -- and had never been that great before that. Fortunately he was allowed to choose what he wanted to study, so he was devoting himself to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, not that that didn't challenge his meager digital technique. But he persevered, partly because if he were to become a music major -- not that he'd had to declare a major yet -- he would have to pass a piano proficiency test, and that thought filled him with dread. But mostly, he did it because playing Bach inspired a feeling of ecstasy in him, as though through it he touched a better universe in a sort of sacred rite.

One weekend he saw a poster for a movie series at International house, a few blocks west of the campus, and decided to go. As always there was his vague hope that it would be an opportunity to get away from Columbia's (nearly) all-male environment and thus increase his chances of interacting with women, but of course he soon saw that sitting in the dark with all attention on the screen was completely unproductive for that purpose. But it was quite a movie: The Night Visitor, starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman. He couldn't read all the subtitles, because he had stopped wearing his glasses, and it seemed a bit vague even beyond that, but it was certainly suspenseful, especially a scene where von Sydow's character was hiding in a dark room with a parrot in his pocket, hoping it wouldn't make noise and reveal him. And Walter was immediately smitten with the cool blonde beauty of Ullman, who reminded him of his German professor (well, not actually a professor; he couldn't remember her official title), Fraulein Rilke, who was also tall, slim, blond, and beautiful. She was casual and friendly, and Walter had a huge crush on her. She seemed only a few years older than her students, and in fact was visiting from Germany because she was researching Yiddish for her dissertation and New York, she said, had the highest population of Yiddish speakers outside Israel.

German I was at 9 AM three days a week. Two of those days, Walter had Phys Ed at 8 AM and would dash from the gym pool back to his room and then to Hamilton Hall. (There was a swimming requirement, because long ago an alum’s son had drowned and he’d donated some presumably huge amount of money to have Columbia make sure that every able-bodied student had to show a minimum proficiency at swimming. Walter knew how to swim, but had failed to place out because he'd underestimated the endurance required to make it from one end of the pool -- much bigger than the one in his backyard -- and had essayed a speedy crawl, exhausted himself halfway, swallowed some water, and grabbed onto a lane divider, disqualifying himself.) He was sometimes late to German, but Fraulein Rilke wasn't all that punctual herself. She was young and living in New York City, so doubtless she was staying up late some nights. Though perhaps he was making unfair assumptions; for all he knew, she was late to class after late nights researching and writing. But she did invite the class to the West End the night after the midterm. Walter had taken German in high school, and that helped him do okay. In the simple conversations that were part of the class, he one morning impressed her by guessing her astrological sign, Taurus (some of her traits had reminded him of his Taurus father).

Not long after the midterm, though, the class materials had passed what Walter remembered from his three years of high-school German, perhaps because what he had found most memorable about those earlier classes had been staring at Frau Schmidt's voluminous breasts, especially standing at her desk looking into the deep valley of her cleavage, which might have had something to do with his mediocre grades -- though she had certainly called him to her desk often enough and never remonstrated with him about his visual attentions. He had harbored fantasies about her. As he did about Fraulein Rilke, until the time late one evening when he observed her entering the faculty dorm on 113th St. hand in hand with another woman; he had found that although something being highly unlikely to happen on a conceptual level did not dampen his ardor, personally witnessed contrary evidence made too big an impression to be ignored.

Near the end of the semester, his attention perhaps should have been focused on studying for finals, but instead he was consumed with excitement for the Barnard-Columbia Chorus’s concert early in December. The music was mostly holiday-themed, but all high-brow classical, the centerpiece being Bach’s Magnificat. On Long Island, singing either in his church's volunteer choir or in the mediocre high school choir (the conductor had taught him to resolve sevenths upward!), there had rarely been the opportunity to sign such relatively long masterpieces, and Bach had long been Walter’s favorite composer, so he was thrilled by the feeling of singing the Magnificat, complete with chamber orchestra.

Even though it was not a church service, the choir wore robes and processed in. After the concert, there was a reception in the basement, with mulled wine, another new experience for Walter, along with fancy cookies. Word went around among the choir members that there would be further events later that evening: a rock show on the Barnard campus (including the band Martial played in, Needle Dik, followed by the band Jimbo played in, the Maliboo Dolphins) and slightly earlier but overlapping, after-party in the lounge of the Barnard dorm at 616 West 116th Street. Walter volunteered to bring some LPs to the party, so he had to swing by his dorm room between the concert and the party. He pulled a bunch of popular albums that were relatively upbeat off his shelf: The Eagles' On the Border, Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove, Hall & Oates's recently released X-Static, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, and the eponymous Pat Metheny Group LP because it made him happy.

At the party, each one stayed on until somebody requested a change. He started with Off the Wall, which of course was so massively popular that nobody complained and all of side one played. He didn’t flip it over because the really slow ballad in the middle of side two would have killed the momentum. Side one of One Nation lasted until the weird spoken track. He started X-Static on side two and nobody interrupted it. Metheny didn’t fare as well. When he put the Eagles on, Janie Diaz dragged him into the middle of the room to dance, her pulchritude rippling as they gyrated to the uptempo “Already Gone.”

Jason Layt, one of the first tenors, cut in for the bluegrassy "Midnight Flyer." It wasn’t a great party album, Walter realized too late, because next came two slow tunes in a row, but the party was winding down anyway. Jason clung to Janie for "My Man," but Walter reclaimed Janie's attentions for "Best of My Love" as many people started leaving and others cleaned up. "Do you want to go over to MacIntosh to hear Martial’s band?" Janie whispered in his ear as they slow-danced. "Sure," Walter replied, then began to wonder how to deal with the LPs, which he didn't want to lug around all night. At the end of the song, he stopped the music and got Peter Fell to agree to take them in return for a future beer.

Walter wasn't sure what was going to happen, but he figured if he just went with the flow and managed not to alienate Janie, he might get lucky, even though he hardly knew her. She was older -- a General Studies student, he'd heard. Walking across 116th Street, she held his hand. Walter hoped that he wouldn't sweat. True, it was December, but as nervous as he felt, he still worried. Once they got to MacIntosh and went down its spiral stairs to the lower level, he bought two beers and they danced for a couple of songs, including the band's eccentric take on "Brown-Eyed Girl," which switched in and out of reggae. When it was over, Janie leaned against him. "Do you want to come home with me?"

Walter, who appreciated her directness since it surprisingly spared him having to think of a come-on, smiled and said, "Yes." Janie tilted her head back a bit and moved her hand up to Walter’s neck. He sensed a hint, and bent to kiss her. It went better than the previous time a girl had tried to kiss him, when he'd been over at his friend Mark's place on Walter's birthday and Mark's sister Lauren decided to give him a birthday kiss. He'd assumed it would be a kiss on the cheek, she'd aimed for his lips, he'd turned his head, and her kiss had ended up between his lips and his cheek. Lauren had laughed, said "do-over," and lip-to-lip contact had been achieved, but he'd felt embarrassed and disappointed. Not this time, though. There was no doubt where Janie's kiss was aimed. Her lips were large and soft, and they parted quickly; her tongue slid into his mouth. Walter had never done this before, but went on instinct, sliding his tongue against hers, then went farther and entered her mouth. She sighed, and her hands grabbed his butt and pulled him closer. The anticipation of possibly losing his virginity had him excited already; when she crushed herself against his erection, he thought he might burst.

Janie pulled away, took his hand, and they walked out of the little auditorium. "I have to go to the ladies'," she whispered, "wait for me?" Walter nodded yes and leaned against the wall, finishing his beer. A little while later, she re-emerged, smiled at him, and said, "You’re still here! I was afraid you’d get bored and leave." Walter had no idea why she would say such a thing. Could she be as nervous as him? He doubted that. Confused, he guessed it was a joke, so he just smiled, afraid of saying something stupid and blowing his chance.

Out on Broadway, Janie hailed a cab. "Ninety-first and West End," she told the driver, then snuggled against Walter. "Do you do this much?" she asked.

"Never."

"Like, never never?"

"That’s right," he admitted, blushing and mentally cursing himself.

"Oh, you’re a freshman. Well, you’re not in high school anymore."

They were quickly at her apartment. She held his hand as she walked up the stairs. To reassure him, or to keep him from running away? She didn't have to worry; as nervous as he was, he had been anticipating this moment, this event, this milestone, this achievement -- hell, this affirmation of his manhood -- for years, more eagerly since escaping from Long Island, and nothing would deter him from going through with it now.

Once in her apartment -- just a bedroom, tiny kitchen, and tinier bathroom off the short hallway -- they sat on the bed and she turned on her TV. Saturday Night Live was on. After just a minute or so, she excused herself and went into the bathroom. Walter immediately stripped off all his clothes and got into bed, covered below his waist by her bedclothes. While he waited for her to come back, he noticed that the head of the bed was littered with pillows -- big practical ones, medium-sized ones with frilly cases, tiny ones with colorful designs.

"Oh, is that how it is?" Janie expostulated on her return. But she had changed into a sheer nightgown and was already turning down the dimmer switch on the lights. She didn’t seem the least bit offended by his presumption. She turned off the TV, turned on the radio, which was tuned to WBLS, and crawled into bed next to Walter.

"You’ll be happy to know that while I was gone, I put in my diaphragm," she announced. Under the covers, she reached toward him and unerringly found his erection. She lightly trailed a finger along it. "Is this for me?" she inquired mock-ingenuously. Walter hesitated for a second, trying to think of a clever reply; couldn’t; wondered if the blood normally allotted to his brain had been diverted to his penis; and settled for answering, "All for you."

"That’s what I like to hear," Janie answered, and shifted closer to him. Her fingers fluttered butterfly-like against his manhood as she leaned against him and brought her mouth to his. This time she kissed him more hungrily, and he responded in kind.

Walter found himself fascinated by her wobbling breasts, her nipples dark and puckered against her off-white skin in the low light. Adopted, he felt -- though of course he couldn’t really remember -- that he had not been nursed in infancy, just given a bottle in the orphanage or wherever he'd been until age two. He looked forward to sex, of course, but he’d given himself plenty of orgasms. It was breasts he longed for most deeply -- to hold, to suck. And now he could finally give himself over to this desire, which he did with unfettered enthusiasm. Never having done it before, he worried whether he was doing it right, but assumed from Janie’s soft moans that she enjoyed his attentions well enough.

He now became aware of his cock feeling harder than he could ever remember. So hard that it seemed about to overstretch its own skin. The sensation distracted him from Janie's breasts. Perhaps it was time to lose his virginity. He stood on his knees and moved to go between her legs, the bedcovers pushed up and back. Janie, however, got to her knees as well, commanding, "You just lie down and let me show you."

Walter wasn't going to argue. He laid on his back, his erection pointing up at an angle, and Janie straddled him, adjusted his angle with one hand, nestled his cock head against her furry pussy, rubbed it up and down her slit to clear a path through the hair, then slowly lowered herself onto his straining rod. It was the greatest sensation he had ever felt. No, the sensation now, as she rocked against him, grinding back and forth, was the greatest. And then that was surpassed by the feeling of his first orgasm inside a woman.

"Really?" she said, and sighed. "I guess I should have expected that. Well, now I will teach you what to do when that happens."

Walter was torn between two strong urges: to do whatever she asked of him to make her happy and repay her for the highlight of his life to this point, and to fall asleep. He resisted the latter impulse. "Sorry! Please show me," he said, trying to keep his embarrassment from his voice.

"Oh, you’re so sweet. Don’t worry about it, honey, I’m sure you’ll get better. Just stay where you are." Janie crawled up him until her crotch was resting on his mouth. She pulled herself up a bit, grabbing her bed’s headboard. Holding onto that with one hand, she reached down with the other and spread her lips open. "Lick right here. This thing between my fingers" -- she wiggled her index and middle fingers against herself -- "and once in a while under it."

Walter followed her instructions. After a minute, her muscles clenched, and suddenly his chin was wet. He adjusted his head so he could see better, and saw his own cum oozing back out of her and onto him. It seemed like a good time for the alternative she'd suggested, so he pushed the tip of his tongue against her slit and licked his cream out of her. Then he returned to gently flicking her clit.

"You’ve got some natural talent," Janie whispered. She now had both hands on the headboard, and her thighs were twitching. "A little harder now," she urged, so he put the flat of his tongue against her and flexed it up and down. "Yeah, baby, that’s good," she responded and started grunting "uh, uh, uh." Her legs pressed against the side of his head, and she trembled as if she were shivering. She was moving around spasmodically, so Walter instinctively clutched her buttocks to hold her in place. Perhaps because of that, or maybe just because it was bound to happen at that time, her thighs shook and she moaned more continuously. Walter's own orgasm had been magnificent, but the satisfaction he felt at having given her pleasure was nearly as profound. He felt powerful in a way he never had in any other situation. He clenched her to his mouth, but she broke away and slid down next to him. "No more," she gasped, "not now, at least." She pulled the sheet and blanket over them and rolled onto her side with her back to him, silently answering his unspoken question of what would come next. Sleep, no cuddling or talking required. Both of them were quickly unconscious.

Walter woke before Janie. The sun was shining in her window, and he was in an unfamiliar bed, and he had to pee. Once he was done with that, he couldn't think of anything else to do but get back in bed; that woke up Janie. She immediately went to do what he'd just done, then returned to the bed but on his side, snuggling up to him and French kissing him. He thought of all the times he’d woken up alone with a hard-on. Where was it now that he needed it? He put the hand that wasn’t pinned under her onto her voluptuous side, then slid it down to her hip and around to her ripe right buttock. Meanwhile, he felt himself becoming aroused, and she saw it and moved the process along a little faster by gently juggling his balls with her fingers. He quickly finished hardening, and she grabbed his arm, rolled onto her back, and said, "Ready for more, tiger?" while pulling him onto her. Apparently he was allowed to drive this time. He entered her immediately and easily, though slowly, hoping to hang in there longer this time.

"Hang on, let me adjust my diaphragm," she said, pushing him away. She reached into herself for a few seconds and then said, "Okay, this ride is safe now," guiding him back into her. He looked at her clock. 7:21. He tried to move in and out as slowly as possible. The sensation was even more exquisite than the night before. Also, the sunlight gave him a much better view of her than he’d had the previous night.

Each time he had gone as far in as possible, he held himself there, pushing against her, straining to hold back, but her insides squeezed him. How the hell was he supposed to last? Not that it didn’t feel amazing when she did that. He looked at her clock again. 7:23. As he slowly pulled back, she tightened ever more; pushing back in, he felt her do something he couldn’t even describe, or conceptualize, and as he paused, pushing against her depths, suddenly he couldn’t hold back anymore. He felt himself turn inside out and explode inside her, spasming uncontrollably. A thought came to him: he finally knew, truly, the meaning of "tension and release," not as a mere concept but as a fully felt experience. His orgasm the night before had been a brief burst; this morning's was a more drawn-out sensation of deeply felt agony and ecstasy combined in such a way that it seemed to suspend time. But it didn't really; he looked at her clock again: 7:25.

"Don’t stop," she urged. There was nothing he wanted more than to stop, to collapse utterly, but he resumed moving in and out. He wanted to scream; it was a lesson in a new kind of pain that instead of hurting was instead an overload of pleasure that threatened him with an unbearable degree of sensation, but he felt, after last night's failure, an obligation to persevere until she too had climaxed, until he had somehow raised her, via sheer willpower, to the same plateau on which he was suspended. He kept moving, mechanically, the liquid he had released squishing around him, vastly reducing friction, making it more difficult to stay hard, and yet even though he was less hard, he could still push in and out. Until he couldn’t. But, "just keep pushing," she urged, so he did what he could and ground against her. His legs were jelly and his arms were exhausted, which was absurd after just -- 7:26 -- five minutes of exercise.

"Nice try, that was better than the first time," Janie said, "but you’re just pushing rope now. I think it’s time to switch to your tongue again." Walter crawled back until his face was down at her crotch. He easily recalled her instructions of the previous night. Today she had a new one to add: "Put some fingers inside. No, not all the way back. Rub around the top. Lick too. Oh yeah." With his fingers in her, Walter had to confine his oral attentions to her clit. He kept his touch light for a while, then applied more pressure. Finally he took her clit between his lips and sucked it. Janie seemed to enjoy that, and soon her thighs were clamped around his ears and she was bucking against him.

Then she relaxed. "You can stop now. Did you think of that yourself?"

"Yes. It seemed like the logical progression."

"Thank you, Spock." She smiled. "It was. Do you want some breakfast?"

"Thanks, but I have to go study."

A minute later, when he had donned his clothes, she said, "Hey, I’m not going to make it to rehearsal on Tuesday. Can you return my music for me?"

Of course he would. Still naked, she let him out. As he walked north on West End, though, he thought, "If I were on Long Island, I’d be going to church now." Suddenly he felt guilty. Judged against the standards by which he had been raised, he had sinned. Sinned and enjoyed it. Enjoyed it so much that he’d sinned again.

On Tuesday, the last time the choir would meet that semester, they didn't rehearse, just had snacks and returned music to get back their $5 deposits. Martial was handing out the deposit returns, and when Walter explained that he was also returning Janie’s music, Martial grinned. "How was she?"

Walter, feeling himself blushing and not knowing what would be an acceptable answer, especially with other people around, found himself reflexively responding, "Drunk," stone-faced. Damn it, he thought, there had to be a better answer than that. Why did he even say that? To shut down the conversation, obviously, but she hadn't been drunk. The question of sin still disturbed him as well, so he wasn't in the mood to admit anything. And he supposed there was also some shame, because he had not lasted a manly amount of time. Though at least now he knew what to do after that happened.

Martial was still grinning as he handed Walter two fives.

Finals demanded Walter’s attention for the next ten days. Occasionally he found himself tempted to go down to 91st and West End to return Janie’s $5 and see what might happen, so instead he put it in an envelope and mailed it.

Somehow he managed a B in German, and Fraulein Rilke met the class at the West End that evening again. He did better in his other classes, even the Poli Sci elective where he’d felt so outclassed at the beginning of the semester. Professor Hatch, on giving him his A+ in Music Hum, asked, "Have you considered majoring in music?" He had; it seemed more attractive than Poli Sci followed by law school, or at least more fun, though he didn't think his parents would be happy about it. And he passed the swim test.

Then it was time to return to Long Island for the holidays, and two weeks of not having to pay for any meals. That part was great, but soon it was Sunday. Even though he hadn’t attended rehearsal on Thursday because he hadn’t returned in time, he knew he would be welcomed in the choir. However, he felt an existential unease about going to church after committing the biggest sin of his life, not once but twice. But he couldn't not go; that would seem unfathomable to his parents, to whom he certainly did not wish to have to explain himself. So he went.

The whole family went early, as usual, for the choir warm-up. The anthem was a Mennonite piece, the hymns familiar advent fare. He sat with the basses, but afterward the director approached him. "If Stewart doesn’t show up today, can you take his place?"

"Sure." Stewart was the best tenor, and the loudest. Sandy, the director's son, didn't project his voice all that well, and Bernie, the other tenor, didn't read music much and relied on Stew to feed him the notes. Walter and the director both knew that with Walter's father anchoring the bass section, even if the director's other son was the only other bass, it would be fine.

Walter sight-read his way through the anthem just fine, and was not struck by the lightning of a vengeful God at any point during the service. With that weight off his mind, he could relax and enjoy the rest of his vacation, including Christmas, with, if not a clear conscience, at least an undisturbed one.

When Walter returned to school in January, Janie was not at the first choir rehearsal. Nor at the second one. Nor did he get any mail from her thanking him for returning her deposit. Frankly, it was kind of a relief.

[Next chapter here.]

Music and Sex #5: Marching, Stealing, Singing, Puking, Spinning

Roman Akleff — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 05:52:09 +0000

Music and Sex #5: Marching, Stealing, Singing, Puking, Spinning Roman Akleff April 22, 2015 - 01:52

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

Other opportunities to interact with women included the marching band. It wasn't much of a band, but that didn't bother Walter; it meant it didn't take up much of his time. With the occasional exception, the same songs were played at every football game, so one rehearsal per week sufficed. In high school he'd been the third or fourth best trombonist, but here there was just one other trombonist, and they were on par with each other. If Walter felt like skipping rehearsal one week, nobody cared, since the music was easy and he could sight-read it adequately.

Nor did he have to practice marching formations, because they really didn't bother with that. Their formations were a sort of rebellion, illustrations synced to the smart-ass script read by the announcer, and they merely ran around between formations instead of marching. The announcer helpfully said in advance what the formation depicted -- "The band now forms a door and plays 'I Hear You Knocking'" -- serving to remind the band members what came next while also explaining to the bemused audience what the sloppy rectangle on the field represented and what the cacophony was supposed to sound like.

When they played a new song, maybe there would be an arrangement written out in advance, but more often a couple of trumpeters would play the melody in a comfortable key, the two tuba players would play chord roots, and everybody else would fake the harmony -- not only was intending complexity bound to not come out right, there was more than enough accidental complexity under normal circumstances. Sometimes the announcer would declare, "The band will now form an amorphous blob," a bit of snarky irony, but the music was often amorphous as well, though never announced as such. (Now that would have been funny.) In other words, precision was not prized beyond generally keeping together.

However, eventually some of the more senior members realized that Walter had some musical knowledge beyond reading notes, and he was tasked with writing the occasional arrangement -- the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" for a joke about midterms, the Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for My Man" for a joke paralleling marriage-minded Barnard students and the supposed effeminacy of Princeton men. The scriptwriters were not paragons of taste and sensitivity, to say the least; the band's strange harmonies were unintentional, but its offensiveness was fully aimed at and regularly achieved, one result being that it was no longer allowed at games at West Point because the Army had banned it, which the band flaunted as a point of pride.

The away trips that the band was allowed to make were booze-infused journeys of low-brow humor, can-you-top-this story-telling, and raucous sing-alongs to mostly scatological adaptations of school songs, whether Columbia's own or those of Harvard and Yale -- either their other Ivy League rivals didn't have such a strong song tradition, or nobody cared. What could one say about Brown other than chant "Brown is the color of shit" when their cheerleaders came to the Columbia sideline? Also severely lacking in character was Dartmouth, whose teams were called Big Green. Crimson was a color to inspire fervor, but green? Walter gained kudos when, in response to Dartmouth's cheerleaders chanting "Green is the color of ivy," he bellowed, "Green is the color of snot." Amazingly, nobody seemed to have thought of this before, but it was quickly taken up by the rest of the band and Dartmouth's cheerleaders retreated in dismay.

The only thing that rivaled clever insults of their opponents in band esteem was theft of their property during away trips, and Walter had distinguished himself in that even earlier during the first road trip, to Princeton. As they walked through its campus from where the bus let them off to where the stadium was, he saw a building with a Princeton flag flying on the roof. He walked through the unlocked and unguarded front door, went to the top floor, found stairs to the roof equally unlocked and unguarded, and lowered the flag. Nervous and in a hurry, when he couldn't immediately figure out how to remove the flag neatly, he just pulled out his utility knife and cut the rope. Stashing the flag in his trombone case, he made a hasty exit and caught up with the band before they'd made it into the stadium. When he displayed his prize on the bus on the way home, he was instantly proclaimed a hero and awarded a chug from the bottle of Jack Daniels that the seniors were passing around. He'd never drunk hard liquor before, and gasped after taking his swig, but the band elders slapped him on the back and declared that he was now a man.

Sam, the other trombonist and by far the heaviest imbiber, followed up by asking, "Well, are you a 100% man? Have you lost your virginity?" "I'm working on it," Walter mumbled, blushing even redder than his face had flushed from the whiskey. "If you go after the girls like you went after that flag, you'll get there soon enough," Sam assured him in an avuncular tone, and everybody laughed, including the cheerleaders.

Yes, the cheerleaders. Sometimes they rode the bus with the band. They seemed unattainable at first, not least because there was more competition for their attention. There was more of a sense of familiarity with the female band members, and camaraderie. But Walter felt less comfortable with them, at least in terms of coming on to them, than with strangers in bars, because if he was rejected by a bandie, he'd still see them every week, which would be awkward. Also, he reasoned, if they talked among themselves about it, that would make it even more awkward by, he assumed, giving him a reputation, leading the ones he hadn't hit on to prejudge him and thus diminish the likelihood of success. It seemed wiser, or safer, to learn which ones already had boyfriends. True, some might acquire boyfriends in the interim. It was a complicated business. Finally, neither rehearsals nor the band bus offered much in the way of privacy. When could he even have the opportunity to make a move.

Anyway, the odds were better in the Barnard-Columbia Chorus -- if one went by male-to-female ratio, they were even in his favor, though he never felt that way. And though on the surface the chorus was a more sophisticated group, it too was a hard-partying aggregation, albeit not every week. One Friday in October there was a BCC party in the first-floor lounge of Walter's dorm (a cinderblock monstrosity that at least had the distinction of supposedly having housed Art Garfunkel in the early '60s). Not only was there beer, there was punch, and everybody's inhibitions were soon relaxed. Walter found himself being talked up by a pair of sopranos. Unfortunately he had no idea how to handle the situation so as to split one off from the other; they seemed strongly committed to sticking together as a strategy, in fact. So he just practiced witty repartee and slugged down the punch, along with numerous snacks. Eventually the sopranos left together when the party started winding down.

"Hey, Faber!" Walter turned and saw Martial, an upperclassman bass, standing at the drinks table. "You wanna finish this punch so it doesn't go to waste? You seem to like it."

"Sure." Walter walked over and looked at the punch bowl. There was only about an inch left. He picked up the big, round plastic bowl and raised it to his lips.

"Damn," exclaimed Jimbo, Martial's buddy, "this kid doesn't fuck around!"

However, Walter was discovering that an inch of punch in a bowl with a flat bottom of large circumference was more than he'd guessed. Stubbornly he continued drinking, unwilling to surrender, but finally had to give up.

"Nice try," Martial said with a slightly sinister grin, "you put a good dent in it." Walter smiled, glowing with pride and inebriation.

Then it was time to go back upstairs to his dorm room. He wasn't walking in straight lines, but at least he didn't have far to go. Once he reached the tenth floor, he saw some guys in the TV lounge and heard music. He kept walking, past his room and carefully lowered himself onto the lounge sofa. The Midnight Special was on, with Gary Wright playing “Love Is Alive,” so it was probably a rerun.

Walter was so drunk that he was finding it difficult to focus his vision -- it seemed as though the screen was on a rotating belt, cycling up to the ceiling until he pulled his focus back down; then it would slip back up. Sometimes he closed his eyes, because he was tired, and the image of the looping TV screen repeated in a sort of black-and-white -- more like light and dark -- on his eyelids. Still, he was fascinated and kept watching; Wright had a whole freakin’ keyboard strapped around his neck. That had to be hell on his neck. “Somebody could probably make money with a smaller, lighter keyboard for that kind of thing,” Walter observed. “Yeah, what does he think he is, a keytarist?” joked one of the jocks who lived across the hall.

The weird scrolling effect was nauseating after a while, so Walter gave up and went to his room. Carlton was there, reading in his bed. Walter got in his own bed and, as soon as he was lying down, felt far more nauseated. He hung his head over the edge of the bed. He must have made a retching noise, because Carlton yelled, “No, Walter, no!” But it couldn’t be stopped. “Fucking hell!” Carlton blurted, and then left the room. Soon thereafter, Walter passed out.

When he regained consciousness, sun was streaming in the window and a foul odor was assaulting him. His head was still hanging over the puddle of vomit. Carlton was nowhere to be seen. Walter went to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and felt a little more human.

He attacked the vomit problem with wads of toilet paper, dumping it in the toilet, but that didn’t work very well, so he grabbed his bath towel and used that, then washed it off in the shower, wiped the floor with the wet towel to get the dried bits up, rinsed it again, and finally hung it out the window to dry.

Carlton returned later that morning. “Hey, I’m really, really sorry about the mess last night,” Walter said. “Where’d you go?”

“I went next door and slept in Jimmy’s bed -- he went home to Long Island for the weekend.”

“It won’t happen again. I learned my lesson.”

“So what happened? Big night?”

Walter recounted the post-concert party and Martial’s offer. “Ha! Rookie mistake,” joked Carlton.

That was just another example of Carlton being a pretty great roommate. Marcus, in the other suite, was not quite as great, but on the other hand had a better LP collection and didn’t mind sharing it. While smaller than Walter's, its inclusion of several Funkadelic albums was key. Walter hadn't heard of that band before, but its combination of deeply funky grooves, wild rock guitar, and lyrics by turns hilarious and socio-politically trenchant, and sometimes downright weird, was a revelation, and soon he had acquired his own copies -- they were too heavily played to be worth taping, as Marcus didn't tend to take good care of his LPs, nor anyone else's -- he left Walter's only recently purchased copy of Dylan's Royal Albert Hall bootleg in the sun and returned it warped, promised to buy a replacement, but then said he hadn't been able to find a copy. He also said he'd pay for Walter's copy, but didn't have money then. After a few weeks, Walter gave up asking for his money.

Marcus was from Berkeley, and wore his Bay Area pride on his sleeve, which meant that Walter was also introduced to the music of Tower of Power – "the horniest funk band," Marcus joked, alluding to their top-notch horn section, which Walter soon noticed moonlighting on other people's albums. Walter liked horns as much as the next guy, maybe more being a horn player himself, but for him there were stronger points. For one, vocalist Lenny Williams, who featured on their mid-'70s run of the eponymous LP that featured "What Is Hip," the even funkier Back to Oakland, and his favorite, Urban Renewal, with its sardonic cover photo of a demolished building. Marcus added the tidbit that Williams had to be recruited because the band's previous singer had gone to prison for murder.

There was also ToP's amazing rhythm section, especially keyboardist Chester Thompson. Bassist Rocco Prestia and drummer David Garibaldi were a tight team, and CT locked in perfectly while being looser and more prolix, and Urban Renewal was definitely where they were at their best, especially on "Only So Much Oil in the Ground," the funkiest protest song he'd ever heard; "It Ain't the Crime," which stood out for the meshing of the horn parts with the groove, driven by baritone sax; the even funkier "Maybe It'll Rub Off," and the closing instrumental "Walkin' Up Hip Street," which was written by Thompson and very much featured him, really cookin' during a rousing buildup. For variety, Williams excelled as usual on ballads, his lusciously rich tone making even the mawkiest sentiments soulful.

Marcus was also a big Van Morrison fan, and while Walter already had four of Van's LPs, it was thanks to Marcus that he first heard the double live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, which Marcus proudly pointed out was recorded I the Bay Area and featured audience clap-alongs that, atypically, were not behind the beat. More notably, it had a killer version of "Caravan," even better than in The Last Waltz, and a great selection of blues and R&B covers that found Van the Man able to figuratively stand alongside his idols without embarrassment.

Walter deeply wished to be able to sing like that, with such fluid phrasing and colorful timbre, but he had more of a choirboy voice, careful not to stand out.

[Following chapter here.]

Music and Sex #4: West End Follies

Roman Akleff — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 09:53:34 +0000

Music and Sex #4: West End Follies Roman Akleff March 16, 2015 - 05:53

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress (first chapter here).

The bar across Broadway between 113th and 114th Streets, the West End, was supposedly famous. Or at least the orientation materials had seemed to consider it an important part of Columbia history because it had been a hangout for literary figures, some of them Columbia men, though he had not yet read anything by any of them. Of more interest to Walter, there was jazz there. In passing by one Saturday afternoon on the way to Citibank, he'd seen a sign boasting that the Louis Armstrong All Stars were playing.

That night, he walked the half block south from his dorm to the West End. Inside there was a huge semi-oval bar in the center of the room. Following the sound of music, he found another room off to the left, paid the man sitting at the door $10, and took a seat near the back of the half-empty room.

There was a tenor saxophonist soloing on a ballad. A waitress came over to Walter and handed him a menu. "Would you like to order dinner?" she asked.

"No thank you, just a beer," he said.

She turned the menu over, and he saw it listed more beer brands than he even knew existed. He looked for something cheap. "I'll have a Tuborg, please."

The waitress scribbled on her pad and walked away.

A woman walked up to Walter, smiled at him, and pertly inquired, "May I sit here?" She didn't look student-age. Before Walter could answer her, she was already pulling out the chair next to him. She was about 5'8", wearing a thin floral-print dress and white high heels. Curly black hair stopped slightly short of her broad shoulders. As she sat, the dress tightened around her buttocks. Walter hadn't seen an ass that big on a non-fat woman before. It didn't look bad, just…new to him.

The saxophone solo had ended. Now it was the piano player's turn. He sounded like a cross between Earl Hines and Teddy Wilson. Or, at least, those were the only two reference points Walter had heard by that time that seemed applicable. His parents' record collection was only about 2% jazz.

The waitress returned, holding Walter's Tuborg, already open. "Two-fifty," she said flatly. Walter pulled three ones from his wallet and handed them to her. "Thanks," she said, sticking the bills in a little apron and pulling two quarters from another pocket. Walter waved it away. She smiled at him and asked, "And for the lady?"

Tonight was apparently his night to be smiled at by women. His new tablemate was looking at him again. Walter guessed that the look was an inquiry as to whether he'd be paying. Simultaneously thrilled and nervous as hell, he nodded. She turned to the waitress and said, "I'll have a Grolsch, please."

Once the waitress had left, Walter introduced himself and learned that her name was Martha. When the Grolsch arrived, it was poured into a glass from a bottle which was bigger, green, and had a cap hanging from its neck on a metal contraption.

"Cheers," she pronounced, raising her glass. Walter clicked his bottle against her glass and took a sip. Having gotten out from under the disapproving gaze of his mother, he had been free to drink on a more regular basis, but still hadn't acquired a taste for the flavor of beer. At least this Tuborg wasn't nauseating like the Genesee Cream Ale he'd choked down when the high school debate team partied in Albany the night before the state finals.

Walter had no idea what to say to Martha, so he just smiled dumbly across the table while the bassist droned and thrummed through a solo. Martha broke the ice. "Which one is Louis Armstrong?"

"He died eight years ago."

"But the sign outside says Louis Armstrong All Stars."

"I think these guys were his band."

"I don't think it's fair that they use his name if he's not actually in the band," the woman insisted in a loud whisper. "It's deceptive."

"How can it be deceptive when everybody knows he's dead?"

"Well, I didn't know. Am I nobody?" she huffed. And with that, Martha removed herself and her beer from the table and walked into the other room.

Walter gamely stuck it out for the rest of the set, hoping another woman would sit at his table, but no such luck. His disappointment impeded his enjoyment of the music. On his way out, he saw Martha sitting at the bar talking to another man.

Though her rejection -- for that was how he classified her leaving his table -- rankled within him, he also found it hard to care about being rejected by her specifically. She was ignorant and obviously not his type, and with luck he would never see her again anyway.

Walter returned to the West End the next Friday, not to hear music, just to see if another woman would accost him. He was feeling confident. He had no acne that day, his hair was behaving, and if last weekend had been any indication, at least some women found him attractive. He remembered that on the campus tour during orientation, the guide had stopped at the statue of Athena (who somehow was also Alma Mater) in the middle of the steps leading up to Low Library and informed them that there was an owl hidden in the statue and legend had it that if a freshman could find the owl, he would score before the end of the year. Was that calendar year or school year? Walter had found the owl, so he had hopes, regardless of the chronology. So he would go back to the West End, and he would wait.

He ordered a Tuborg and sat at the bar, sipping and waiting. After about an hour, just having started on his second beer, his patience was rewarded when a tall, thin blonde sat next to him and said hello. He immediately offered to buy her a drink. She asked for a rum and Coke and introduced herself as Charisma. Her skin was so pale that it seemed almost alien. He also noticed that she had an odd hairdo -- and she noticed him noticing.

"You like my hair?" she asked, flipping her head so that her hair all moved to the right. The left side of her head was shaved.

"Cool," he responded. "Do you like punk?"

"No, I just wanted to freak out my friends in Oklahoma." She smiled, and Walter was instantly smitten. "I mean, yeah, I like some punk, but that's not why my hair's like this. Are you a musician?"

"Yes."

"What band are you in?"

"Well, I just got here, so I'm not in a band yet, but I'm talking about it with some friends," he half-lied, mentally deciding that he'd make the vague intentions he and a few of his friends had into something more concrete the next day so that it would be true.

"What do you play?"

"Keyboards, mostly." He saw her look less interested. "A little guitar. And I sing." Her face brightened again.

"So you're at Columbia?"

"Yup. Are you at Barnard?"

"No, I'm at FIT." She saw his questioning expression. "Fashion Institute, it's downtown. What does your music sound like?"

Walter intuited that describing his classical compositions wouldn't interest her. So if he had a band, what would it sound like?

"Like a funky but punky Captain Beefheart," he proclaimed.

"Who's that?"

"He's this weird, wild guy who makes off-kilter psych-rock, sort of. He's woked with Frank Zappa, who's another influence on me."

Charisma seemed satisfied by the mention of Zappa, and responded, "Far out."

He noticed the music the bar's jukebox was playing: Sly and the Family Stone's "You Can Make It If You Try." "This music now, Sly Stone, this is how I think about music. All the parts are simple, but" -- he interlocked his fingers -- "the way those parts fit together is complex."

"Do you ever just listen to music and just enjoy it without analyzing it?"

"All the time."

"How can you say that? You were just analyzing it."

"Yeah, but the way our brains work is that one side is analytic and the other side is, um, sensual. So one side of my brain is always just enjoying it without analyzing."

"Who says that? That doesn't make sense!"

"I saw an article somewhere. Maybe Scientific American."

Look, either you're doing something or you're not doing something. You can't be doing it and not doing it at the same time."

"I don't trust dichotomous thinking."

"What?"

"Not everything is divided up into opposites. There's this thing called false dichotomy, when you divide things like that whether it's true or not." Walter felt incredibly smart and impressive explaining these things.

"So you're Mister Logical. I don't think like that. I trust my intuition."

"Intuitive people don't like dichotomy either. Do you know about Zen?"

"You mean Buddhism? Yeah, my roommate last year chanted. It was pretty annoying."

"Zen is a kind of Buddhism, yes. The chanting kind is a different style of Buddhism. Zen focuses on getting people to not think how they've been taught to think. So Zen has these things called koans to make you think differently. One of them goes, 'A student came to a master and said, "I have a question, Master. I have raised a goose inside a jug since it was little. Now it is almost too big for the jug, so I want to let it out, but the jug is useful, so I don't want to waste it by breaking it. Please tell me, Master, how can I remove the goose from the jug without harming either the jug or the goose?" The master clapped his hands together and said, "Now the goose is out of the jug."'"

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"I think it means that false dichotomy creates unnecessary complications. But it could mean other things as well. Zen is really simple, but kind of complicated too."

"Talking to you makes my head hurt!" Charisma stood up and walked away.

That had not gone well. Walter stayed to finish his beer, though it had gotten warm. From all his hot air, he thought. Maybe he shouldn't talk so much. Maybe he should be less of a nerd. There wasn't much he could do about the latter, though. So talk less it was. But not there and then. He blushed from embarrassment just thinking about whether any other women had witnessed the exchange with its final, crushing blow: "Talking to you makes my head hurt." Ouch.

While slowly sipping the no-longer-attractive beer he nonetheless couldn't bring himself to let go to waste, he pondered the interaction in detail. Band. Yes, he absolutely had to start a band. Zen. Maybe he should investigate it in greater depth than the couple of days expended on it in the Comparative Religion class Mrs. Ponzi had taught in high school, which he had mostly taken because she was his favorite teacher. He was unsure that he'd interpreted that koan correctly in the context in which he forced it.

More painful to contemplate was why, when she'd asked whether he ever listed to music without analyzing it, he hadn't just said, "Yes." Where did "all the time" come from? And why, when called on it, had he argued? He'd made what he thought had been a fairly entertaining defense of an off-the-cuff remark, but first of all, she clearly had not been entertained, and secondly, was that really a time to be stubborn, or a point worth being stubborn on? Obviously not, to both points. Sigh. He remembered being told in high school that his insistence on restarting arguments -- so he could, a day later, present a new permutation of his case -- was annoying. This was a character trait he needed to work on.

Next installment here.

Roman AkLeff says of Music and Sex, his third attempt at a novel: "Lots of the events to be depicted in this book happened, to varying degrees. Some of it should have happened but didn't until now. Though it's mostly set in the 20th century, Music and Sex aspires to be a Bildungsroman for 21st century sensibilities, in that the main character doesn't finish coming of age until he is several decades into adulthood."

Music and Sex #3 - in which our hero's long musical weekend continues, etc.

Roman Akleff — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 03:20:38 +0000

Music and Sex #3 - in which our hero's long musical weekend continues, etc. Roman Akleff January 25, 2015 - 22:20

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress by Roman AkLeff (first installment can be read here; second here (the last paragraph of which was moved into this part).

After the show, Walter took Norman to the West End, where Norman marveled at the broad beer selection. As they slowly worked their way through a small percentage of the fifty-plus on offer, Walter lamented how inferior college was making him feel.

"Screw that," rejoined Norman. "Just have fun and keep learning and next year's freshmen will feel inferior to you. If you already knew everything, you wouldn't have to go to college in the first place. Don't tell me about that, tell me about all the cool stuff you've been doing."

"Well, during orientation there was a great band playing outside for free called So What. I know you're not that into fusion, but they were hot. The guitarist, Steve Bargonetti, graduated last year, but some of them are still going here. The drummer, at least, Steve Shebar, is."

"Yeah, yeah. Meet any chicks?"

"Are you kidding? It's an all-male school."

"Barnard is right across the street. Don't the girls attend Columbia classes?"

"Not most of the freshman courses, they don't. I see so few women, I bought a subscription to the Spartacus Youth League's newspaper because they snuck a woman into the dorm to go door-to-door selling it. She's the only woman who's been in my room since I got here."

"What's the Spartacus Youth League?"

"A Marxist group."

"Don't become the cliché of the bourgeois kid who turns into a Communist at an Ivy League school."

Then one of the guys from the other room of Walter's dorm suite, Marcus, came in and sat down. He eagerly related that had worked at the Reed show, and said the producers had turned up the lights and told Reed not to go back out because he'd broken too many microphones. Marcus also had prevented a catastrophe; working in front of the stage, he had alertly caught a steel mike stand Reed had flung into the audience. Afterward, Reed gave him a bottle of Dom Perignon, implicit acknowledgement that Marcus had saved Reed from the potential embarrassment of injuring someone in the audience. Said bottle, Marcus related, was back in the dorm. "I don't know if I'll ever drink that. What a souvenir, right?"

Many beers later, they staggered back across Broadway. Norman had brought a sleeping bag so he could crash in Walter's room.

The following night, Walter and Norman went downtown to visit their friend Tony, who was at NYU. Over lunch at the cafeteria, Norman and Tony compared notes about working at their college radio stations. After that, Tony guided them up to an abandoned section of the West Side Highway. Having quickly gotten used to the hectic city traffic, Walter felt weird walking down the middle of a four-lane highway. There was even grass growing in the cracks in the concrete, and people were roller skating.

Norman once again raised the topic of success, or lack thereof, with women. "We're all smart guys. We're going to figure this out," Tony proclaimed. "And then we'll write a book explaining what women want, and we'll be rich, and before you know it, we'll be getting more pussy than the animal shelter."

Then it was time to head up to Madison Square Garden, where they discovered that their tickets had them sitting high up on the left side. They were mostly there to see Bruce Springsteen, but it was a big show to benefit the anti-nuclear reactor group Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE), with lots of bands playing before Bruce. Walter knew Gil Scott-Heron from one song, the anti-drug "Angel Dust." He mildly enjoyed Heron and his Midnight Band, and found "We Almost Lost Detroit" chilling. Not a reggae fan – it all sounded alike, he thought, rhythmically repetitious – he suffered through Peter Tosh's set; Norman enjoyed it much more, being more familiar with both the artist and the genre. Conversely, Walter dug Bonnie Raitt's set more than Norman did, especially her covers of John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery" and Del Shannon's "Runaway." Both friends were thrilled by Tom Petty's rockin' set. And then Bruce took them even higher, including new songs "The River" and "Sherry Darling." Most of his set was much more familiar, so much so that on "Thunder Road" Bruce had the audience sing for him for a stretch. Steve and Norman exuberantly belted out "show a little faith, there's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty, but hey, you're alright." Walter's favorite Bruce song, "Jungleland," came right before the rousing finish of "Rosalita," "Born to Run," "Stay" in duet with Jackson Browne, a medley of songs that Norman explained were associated with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, and "Quarter to Three," which Norman further said was a song from the Fifties by somebody named Gary "U.S." Bonds. In Walter's Lit Hum class, Dionysus and his followers had been a recent topic, and the phrase "Dionysian frenzy" came to mind as the band's performance and the audience's adulation reached a fever pitch. There was a troubling moment in "Quarter to Three," right after Bruce was at his most animated, when he collapsed and, after having a towel waved over him, was helped up by Clarence Clemons and the bass player, but after saying something they couldn't understand up in the heights of the Garden's cheap seats, Bruce rallied to finish, including jumping up behind the drum riser to play for the audience seated behind the stage.

It was announced that there were still tickets available for the Sunday night show, starring Crosby, Stills & Nash, so Walter bought a pair before leaving. $18.50 each was a lot, but after a night of barely being able to tell what was happening far down below, it seemed worth the extra $3 apiece for orchestra seats. Norman, who wasn't a CSN fan, said he had to go back to New Haven before that, since he had classes Monday morning, but Walter assumed that with James Taylor and Poco also on the program, he'd be able to find somebody interested in going with him. Maybe, he thought, he would even be able to use that extra ticket to entice a woman to go with him.

Sunday morning he was less confident on that point. He'd hardly seen anybody since getting back the night before, and a look in the mirror that morning had revealed a zit on his forehead. But there was also a free outdoor show Sunday afternoon that MUSE had put together. Worried about getting in, he went early, still not having found someone interested in going with him to that evening's concert. Not knowing how late the free show would run and whether he'd have time between that and the Garden show to go up to Columbia and back, he brought the tickets with him.

His confidence took a further hit when, before the music had started, he saw Rachel Ackerman, a high school classmate, walk past with another woman. He shouted, "Hi, Rachel," and she waved, but kept on going instead of sitting with him.

After he'd thought about it, he realized it would have been awkward to offer her his extra ticket without also having one for her friend, but that didn't lessen the hurt of her choosing not to sit with him. Having arrived an hour early, he had gotten a seat – albeit on sand with sparse tufts of beach grass – fairly close to the stage. He also had plenty of time to think. Maybe Rachel hadn't sat near him because getting out of Bay Shore and going to college was a fresh start and she didn't want to look back. Certainly he himself was enjoying the clean slate of being surrounded by people who'd never seen him get bullied, never seen him do stupid shit.

It ended up being a lonely afternoon. At first it was full of time for such musings to a soundtrack of mediocre music by local musicians he'd never heard of Joy Ryder and Avis. After a while, the performers mostly got more famous, interrupted by speeches by Bella Abzug, Ralph Nader, Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, and some other people he'd also never heard of. Bonnie Raitt was back, so he got to hear "Angel from Montgomery" again, but she and everybody else -- the Doobie Brothers, only played a few songs. Gil Scott-Heron was also back, reprising "Johannesburg"; Walter paid a little more attention this time and found "Winter in America" beautiful but disturbing. John Hall, formerly of Orleans, played completely unfamiliar songs; Jesse Colin Young played a set that seemed to exist only so there could be a climactic sing-along on his old Youngbloods hit "Get Together." That was cool, but while singing, Walter noticed that he was getting seriously sunburned on this hazy day, was losing his voice from cheering, and losing all sense of connection with the crowd even as he obediently followed all the cues for singing, chanting slogans, applauding the speakers' slogans, clapping along with the beat, and the like. Yet he nonetheless felt oddly compelled to stay for fear of missing something historic, or at least good. His patience paid off when, to his surprise, Crosby, Stills & Nash sang four songs even though they'd be performing again at MSG that night. Alas, no Crosby songs -- two each by Stills and Nash -- but he assumed that wouldn't be the case at the Garden. Later on, Jackson Browne played a short set, after which Walter left, more afraid of missing the beginning of the 7:30 concert at MSG, especially since the first band might be Poco, one of his favorites.

It turned out that Raydio was the first band on. Walter had enjoyed their hits on the radio, but tonight, exhausted and wanting only to hear Poco and CSN, he paid little attention. Poco's set, once they appeared, was under a half hour, not nearly as long as Walter would have liked, but not only did they play their current hits "Heart of the Night" and "Crazy Love" (plus the title track of the album they were on, Legend), but also some of their more country songs, including his favorite, "Good Feelin' to Know," an aptly feel-good set-closer. Various combinations of other artists popped up after that, most notably James Taylor being joined by Carly Simon, who at some points was nearly humping Taylor onstage as they dueted on "Mockingbird."

The climax, of course, was CSN's set, which lasted an hour and twenty-five minutes (he actually checked his watch when they started) and included fifteen songs. After a while he was slightly bothered by the relative lack of Crosby, but eventually a trio of his songs were played --though not Walter's favorite, "Anything at All," though on reflection he realized that a quiet piano-and-vocals song perhaps wasn't arena material. After an encore where Walter heard "Chicago" and "Teach Your Children for the second time, he checked his watch again, assuming the set was done, but John Hall, Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Jesse Colin Young, Jackson Browne, and a bunch of people he didn't recognize -- wait, was that the singer of Aerosmith? Wasn't that platinum blonde woman one of Browne's back-up singers? -- joined the band for the warm-and-fuzzy anti-nuke song "Power" that Hall had featured that afternoon. It was like the theme song of the MUSE concerts. Had it also been played Saturday night? He was so exhausted, he couldn't even remember. When he got back to the dorm, he fell asleep within seconds of lying down.

When he wasn't spending all his money on concert tickets, Walter spend it on record shopping sprees, mostly at used shops in Greenwich Village, though he also got a few new records across Broadway at Record Discount. But with subway tokens just fifty cents each, trips downtown were economical enough.

At first he got into a weekend rhythm of subsisting on French fries from Cosmo Burger for two meals per day (skipping breakfast). One weekend he even managed to last until Sunday evening before giving in to his rumbling stomach and crossing Broadway for fries. This exhibition of self-denial helped fund the acquisition of a spectacular brace of old albums: Zalman Yanovsky's Alive and Well in Argentina; John Mayall's Blues from Laurel Canyon, Crusade, and The Turning Point; one new LP, released in August: Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door; and the real prize and the most expensive item, a fascinating two-LP Beatles bootleg entitled Hahst Az Sön that compiled Let It Be outtakes. Hearing McCartney teaching them "Let It Be" was entrancing, while getting to listen to Lennon sing such unexpected fare as "Suzy Parker," "House of the Rising Sun," "Tennessee," and "Commonwealth" more than justified the set's $25 cost.

Back in his dorm room, contentedly munching his fries and listening to The Turning Point, which was a concert album, Walter finally got to hear the tracks leading up to the FM radio hit, "Room to Move." But it was the latter that brought an exclamation from his roommate, Carlton, after it ended: "I love that song! Can you play it again?"

Walter had to explain then how a record shouldn't be played more than once a day because the friction of the needle moving through the grooves heated and thus softened them, and replaying would degrade the grooves' sonic data. "But I'll tape it tomorrow and you can listen to that as often as you want," Walter promised.

As the weather got cooler and Walter began wearing a coat, another food option presented itself: he began sneaking food out of the cafeteria in his coat pockets, saving it for the weekend in Carlton's little refrigerator. At first he just took pints of milk, and cookies wrapped in napkins. Then one of his pockets developed a hole, and he found that things that went through the hole didn't fall out; rather, they stayed in the space between the lining and the outer layer. Walter started bringing sandwich bags on Fridays and going back for seconds, stockpiling more substantial fare for the weekend. He didn't have to cross Broadway for fries anymore. He was able to buy a number of brand new October releases: The Eagles' The Long Run, The Police's Regatta de Blanc, The Boomtown Rats' eponymous debut with the compelling hit "I Don't Like Mondays," and glory of glories, Fleetwood Mac's double LP Tusk.

The last of these he got in the Village while visiting Tony, after which they went to McSorley's, a bar so ancient it didn't even have a women's restroom. Walter ended up playing a makeshift game of chess with a friendly stranger, the board and pieces drawn on a sheet of paper, pieces erased and redrawn with each move. After the game, which the stranger won – Walter had never played chess while drinking beer before – the man put his hand on Walter's and said, " Let's go back to my place and play some more games."

"No thanks, I'm with my friend," Walter replied, gesturing towards Tony.

"Oh, he can come too, the stranger invited. Walter suddenly realized the man seemed a little too eager. Wait – he knew that tone from his own awkward slips into it: would-be seduction trying to sound casual. He'd heard that the Village was supposed to be a hotbed of gays. Well, if this was what an attempted gay pickup was like, it was nothing to be afraid of. What had he thought it would be like? The vague fears seemed insubstantial, vaporous; he didn't understand the fuss. You just said "no" and the world went on turning. Then he noticed that the cover of Tusk now had lots of lines impressed on it from having been under the paper the chess board had been drawn on. Goddamnit!

The only shopping expedition that went seriously awry was not only atypical for being during the day, but for the fact that he didn't even buy anything. It arose from Walter's obsession with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Young in particular, which had led to a quixotic fashion urge: he wanted a Confederate cavalry hat like the one Neil wore in old photos. Walter thought this through far enough to figure out that maybe the gray Confederate hat might send the wrong message, so he switched to wanting a blue Union hat instead. Nor would he be too fussy about whether it was a wide-brimmed cavalry hat or the smaller infantry hat with its slight bill.

Now that he was no longer stuck on Long Island, but instead living in Manhattan, the center of the world, he assumed his chances of finding one of these options had gotten exponentially better. Checking the Yellow Pages under hats, he learned of a shop near Times Square. Hey, he hadn't seen Times Square yet anyway, so that seemed like a good trip to make.

On Tuesdays, he had no classes between when German ended at 10 AM and Music Humanities started at 1 PM, which seemed like enough time to make it down and back. So next Tuesday, he went directly from the charms of Fraulein Kiefer's class to the 116th Street subway stop, descended the stairs, forked over a dollar for two tokens, and eventually got a 1 train going downtown.

On detraining at the 42nd Street stop, he exited and conveniently found himself actually on 43rd Street, which was the street the hat store was on. He didn't have that much luck in his quest, though; the old guy behind the counter looked at him like he had two heads when Walter explained what he was searching for, then flatly said, "We don't carry that."

"Well, is it something you could order?"

"No."

"Do you know if anybody makes them?"

"No."

Walter didn't bother asking whether that "No" meant that they guy had no knowledge on the topic, or that such hats were not made. He did mentally note for the future that he had to phrase things more precisely; he'd felt somehow that the way he'd asked was a little more polite, but that hadn't made any impression anyway, so next time, aim for precision.

At least he had plenty of time to get back uptown for Music Hum. He returned to the exit he'd come from, went down the stairs, and discovered that the turning thing didn't turn to go in, only out.

A short black man approached and asked the time. Walter fished his wristwatch with the broken band out of his pocket and said, "11:13." In reply, the man, who seemed intoxicated, said something Walter couldn't decipher.

"Excuse me?

"Gimme yuh watch 'n' yuh wallet," the man repeated.

Well, that was unexpected. Still, he fixated not on the request, but how odd the man's voice sounded, talking so fast that the words blurred together, yet somehow drawling too, which Walter associated with slow talkers.

Anyway, Walter's reflexes being what they were, which is to say primarily verbal, he proceeded to debate the man's request in what seemed like a logical fashion.

"If you do this all the time, you have more watches and wallets than I do."

"What?"

Now it was Walter's turn to have to repeat himself. Then the guy flapped his right elbow and said something drawled sloppily that Walter again couldn't understand.

"What?"

"I got somethin' in muh pocket, so do what Ah say."

Right then, a train pulled in and discharged its passengers. When they began coming out, Walter pushed past what he had finally figure out was his mugger and walked up the stairs along with the exiting passengers. By the time he reached street level, his adrenaline had started pumping, too late to be useful.

Only now did he realize that he'd attempted to enter on the downtown side. Not that that had been relevant to the attempted mugging. He walked down to 42nd and entered there, still quivering from the adrenaline.

Later, when he related the morning's events to his roommates, it seemed hilarious -- his utter naïveté, the mugger's confusion when confronted by Walter's unusual response. But he decided not to tell his parents. There was no point to making his mother worry any more than she probably already did.

Next installment here.

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - first installment

Roman Akleff — Sun, 14 Dec 2014 05:01:01 +0000

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - first installment Roman Akleff December 14, 2014 - 00:01

Topics

Literary Review

Tags

new fiction

[Editor's note: CultureCatch is going to be supplementing our usual critical fare with more new, previously unpublished creative pieces such as this. We've done a bit of this in the past, most notably with Ken Krimstein's cartoons and Dusty Wright's music; now we plan to increase our publication of this type of content. Please contact us if you would like to contribute original work.

Warning: the chapter below contains "adult situations." But our readers are adults, right?]

Music and Sex: Scenes from a life - A novel in progress by Roman AkLeff

"We only walk by continually beginning to fall forward." - William Gibson, Zero History

August 1979

Walter Faber packed his sales case for his last weekly exercise in futility. He was looking forward to college, but for this summer, at least, it had been a giant liability. Nobody would hire him knowing that by the end of August, he'd be gone.

Then again, he hadn't been in demand even before that. He'd quit his job at the Friendly's in the mall after his hours per week had dropped into the single digits, opting for Arthur Treacher's instead. That had been an improvement for a while, hours-wise and in terms of camaraderie – the holiday party, and the night when he'd won a bet by eating a whole cup of horseradish (after secretly sucking on ice cubes in advance) – had been fun. But then, after the holidays, had come the layoff, followed by a series of store managers sadly shaking their heads at his polite, even bashful, requests for employment.

Then he'd seen the ad for a salesman, gone for the interview, which had been in a woman's apartment, and been immediately accepted as a Fuller Brush salesman.

"They're still in business? I thought they went out when the Depression ended," had said his mother, who knew about the Depression first-hand, having been born (like his father) near its beginning.

Yes, they were still in business, but at this point it seemed more like a pyramid scheme than anything else, though while in the company of the attractive woman interviewer/manager who sold him his product, he had been too distracted to figure it out.

The first day on the job had been a rude awakening. Five hours walking around in the summer sun, carrying the sample case and the carpet cleaner, with no sales and nobody even home at most houses on the route. He had quickly put in for a route change and been granted a sales area in a more genteel (and shadier, thanks to the trees) neighborhood where nice middle-aged women answered their doorbells and invited him in and even, occasionally, bought something. It was neck and neck whether his small share of the small profits would cover his gas expenses. But he been told it was character building.

Truth be told, the characters were the customers. He knew a few of them from before this job, and knew the children of a few more. One of them was even a big part of why he'd kept plugging away at this thankless job.

Before he left, Walter grabbed a few more of the potato brushes. They were the most popular item; too bad they sold for just two dollars. He wasn't going to get his money back for unsold merch, so he might as well celebrate his last day how he wanted.

He could have turned a profit, however pathetically miniscule, by walking to his route, especially since he'd given up lugging the carpet cleaner. Nobody had ever let him demo it with the little bag of dirt he'd been told to carry with him. Or especially not with the dirt. Who had honestly thought suburban housewives would let a stranger, no matter how young, earnest, clean-cut, and polite – and Walter was nothing if not all of those – throw dirt on their carpets? Anyway, even without the carpet cleaner, it was too darn hot to walk his route, unless he wanted to be all sweaty before he rang his first doorbell.

He drove to the rundown house with the old lady. Today he was only going to call on customers who had already bought from him. And the old lady had certainly bought most regularly. Not much, just one thing a week. It was a subtle exchange: he sat with her on her front porch, petting her smelly dog, drinking the lemonade she offered, and chatting with her for ten minutes or so, and she bought something so he'd return the next week. Walter didn't look forward to telling her that this would be his last week (though he definitely did eagerly anticipate never smelling her dog's hot, fetid breath again!), but he also knew he had to so she would understand why he didn't come back.

She took it well, enthusiastically wishing him luck at college. When he offered her – beyond the hair brush she had bought – a free potato brush, she had even tried to insist on paying for it. He had disarmed her by declaring it was because she was his favorite customer – very nearly true in a way – at which point, beaming with a look of joy he would long remember, she had acceded to his wish, thanking him with a soft squeeze of her flabby hand on his hand. He'd walked to his Ford Maverick with a warm glow that was due to more than just the mid-August humidity.

The next few stops were emotionally more low-key, but he still ended each one with a free potato brush, regardless of whether the lady of the house bought anything today. He sidetracked to Lisa's house, remembering picking her up there in the same car for Norman's graduation party. Afterwards he'd had to break into his own car -- using a table knife to force up the triangle-window's pathetic little latch -- because he'd been so excited by escorting her to the party that he'd forgotten to take his key out of the ignition. He also recalled the return drive, drunk on Schmidt's, with Lisa probably either scared out of her wits by his driving or else inwardly laughing at him. Anyway, as usual nobody came to the door. But it had been worth a try, even though it was slightly outside his approved sales area.

And then, backtracking, he made his way to Maria's house. She would not be home, or at least she never had been any of the other times he'd made his rounds – but Mrs. Garcia would be. And as much as Walter lusted after Maria and her abundant cleavage (so much so that he'd even volunteered to conduct her church's choir, though he'd quit after the rehearsal, in which he'd been dismayed to find that, far from the finely machined unit of his own church's choir, its members couldn't even sing in tune on a unison line, never mind harmonies), Mrs. Garcia was somehow even better fantasy material. For one thing, she wasn't a virginal born-again Christian. Oh, she was Catholic, purportedly, but from some of the complaints Maria had voiced, apparently not entirely averse to carnal sin since her divorce. And one look at her revealed from whence the genetic material for Maria's humongous breasts had come. Furthermore, Mrs. Garcia dressed casually in a way that did not entirely conceal her ripe physique.

Despite a summer spent jerking off to fantasies of Mrs. Garcia taking him upstairs and relieving him of his virginity, Walter dared not risk embarrassing himself by overtly making a move. But there was no harm, not even any risk as far as he could see, in just being available and seeing what came of it.

After he rang the doorbell, he heard a window open above him. Mrs. Garcia's head, wrapped in a white towel, poked outside and she said, "Hello Walter, the door's open. I'll be down in a minute."

"Thank you, Mrs. Garcia," he shouted up at her.

He walked inside. As usual, the living room was spotless. He could hear the whine of a hairdryer from upstairs. The grand piano sat in the corner, open and inviting. Maybe she would like to hear his music. He pulled out the bench, sat, and began improvising in his best yearning-to-be-Keith-Jarrett style. He knew full well that he was no match for Jarrett in terms of virtuosity, but he tried to compensate with interesting harmonies. Maybe the magic of music would inspire Mrs. Garcia to fulfill his fantasies.

"Why Walter, how lovely! Thank you for sharing your talent with me." He turned, smiling, to see her standing behind him, dressed in a white bathrobe. Her dark black hair framed her lightly tanned face and contrasted with the robe. In lieu of a belt, her crossed arms held the robe closed, and also pushed her breasts together, their tops peeking over the terrycloth.

"Have you got any other talents to share with me today?" As she spoke, she uncrossed her arms, and her robe parted. She wore nothing underneath. She moved closer, and he buried his face in her bosom.

"Walter! You don't just walk into someone's house and play their piano without permission!" The real Mrs. Garcia, dressed in tight Jordache jeans and a yellow halter top, stood at the foot of the stairs, her cross expression banishing the fantasy Mrs. Garcia instantly.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Garcia!" He hurriedly stood and scurried across the room to where he had left his sample case, extracted a potato brush, and extended it towards her. "Today is my last day, I'm going to college next week. Thank you for being my customer."

"Why, thank you, Walter. You're such a good boy. I'm sorry I yelled at you. Where are you going to college?"

"Columbia."

"That's nice, you can come home on the weekends."

"Yes, my parents had me sign up for the five-day meal plan because of that."

"Maybe you can help Maria prepare for her auditions when she applies to schools next year. She says she wants to go to that damn Bible college her little church has upstate, but I want her to go to Juilliard. She should share her beautiful voice with the world, don't you agree? She sounded better singing with you on piano last month than I've ever heard her sound before."

"Thank you, Mrs. Garcia, I'll be happy to accompany her any time."

"Great! I'll tell her you dropped by. Have a nice day."

"You too, Mrs. Garcia."

Later, in the privacy of his room, Walter dwelled frantically on his last view of Mrs. Garcia, her shower-hardened nipples poking towards him through both her bra and halter top, her long cleavage warm and inviting. The physical manifestation of his longing required four tissues to mop up.

[following installment here]