posted October 11, 2005 (updated November 8, 2006)
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"Great show!" Julinda said.
"You're a star!" Andi said. "No�a super�duper�megastar!"
"You sure about that?" you asked. "I didn't see either of you clap or cheer once while I was onstage."
"Hey, we're cool, blas� artistic types," Julinda explained. "That doesn't mean we don't want to melt down our Snoopy lunchbox and build a statue out of it in your honor."
"Want proof I loved you?" Andi asked. "I could tattoo your name on my clit."
"No thanks," you replied.
"How 'bout if I tattoo your name on your clit? Help you identify it if it ever turns up at the lost and found."
"No tattooing tonight, dear."
"Hear that? She's stealing your lines, Miss Packard. Kick her ass. No, give her an ass transplant first, then kick her ass."
"You wanna stay for Hackensack?" you asked Julinda.
"Oh, might as well," she answered. "Do you?"
"Sure, just to experience them at least once. To tell the truth, I don't know anything about them."
"No problem. We hadn't even heard of you until today."
"Yes, but I wanted to conceal my ignorance, to impress you two with my cosmopolitan coolness."
"Yes, we are so much better than you, right?" Andi asked.
"Right."
"So," Julinda said, "Hackensack's this group of five white guys from Brooklyn who play elevator music on keyboards and drum machines."
"Anyone originally from Hackensack?"
"Nope, all native New Yorkers. We do love goofing on Jersey here. Anyway, the group relies heavily on tape recordings of stuff from the Fifties and early Sixties: children's records, educational film soundtracks, sitcom dialogue and so on. The whole message is that life back then was silly and inconsequential�no war, no racism, no pooping or peeing."
"Or Spandex."
"True. Anyway, their look's more interesting than their music. They all wear crewcuts with sharp corners, and Buddy Holly glasses�"
"You have heard of Buddy Holly, right?" Andi asked you.
"Of course I have," you replied. "Didn't he invent Nutty Buddies?"
"They also wear polo shirts and checked pants," Julinda continued. "And, of course, barbecue aprons. They have a vast collection of barbecue aprons that sport such hilarious sayings as KISS THE CHEF, along with that age-old question DO YOU WANT YOUR BURGER BURNT OR WELL-BURNT? My favorite apron of theirs is FOUR SCORE AND SEVEN BEERS AGO, with a drawing of Abe Lincoln, drunk, holding a can of beer. You can tell he's drunk because he has little bubbles floating around his head."
"In short, the group sucks," Andi said. She looked at you. "Which doesn't really matter 'cause you have sucky taste, right? You can't fool me. You love the daytime soaps, right? Right?"
You pantomimed holding a clipboard in your left hand and a pen in your right hand above the clipboard. "I'm conducting a survey, ma'am" you said. "Please tell me in your own words exactly what the hell is your problem."
"She's attracted to you," Julinda said. "She acts this way to every woman she's attracted to."
You ended your pantomime. "I see. Sublimating your lust or something?" You'd heard the phrase "sublimating your lust" in a lugubrious Brit-rock song on the local college radio station.
"Ask Julinda how she's sublimating her lust for you," Andi said.
You looked at Julinda. She grinned. "Well, I guess that explains the ass-praise from you two today. Not very good sublimation I guess."
"It's not as if you yourself exactly hate us," Julinda said.
"Now wait a minute. I'm straight."
"Sure you are," Andi said. "You have heard of a little something called lesbian threeways, right?"
"Shh�don't let Jerry Falwell hear you," Julinda said.
When you were 13 years old in 1978 and attending sixth grade, you performed one night at the annual spring talent show in the middle-school auditorium, your first public performance ever. You were the last act, after your best friend in the world, 12-year-old Paula Perkins. You stood backstage to her right and watched her perform a toned-down version of the dance you'd seen her perform in her backyard countless times. Just thinking about her backyard made you feel grown-up.
Wearing her majorette uniform (blue-sequined tunic, white elbow-length gloves, white knee-high boots) and more rouge than usual, she pranced, wriggled, jumped, and gyrated onstage to an eight-track recording of the Neon Knights song "Disco Heaven," a song that would show up 20 years later in that Tarantinoesque movie about the wisecracking hitmen, a movie you still haven't seen but whose soundtrack you've downloaded from the Internet onto CD-ROM. "Put on your halo / Put on your wings / Get on my cloud / And do your thing!" sang the group's squeaky-voiced, overenunciating female singer. Paula twirled a gray steel baton with bulky, colorless rubber tips, every so often tossing it above her head and grabbing the baton with a lunge and a smile. For the grand finale she tossed the baton into the air, did a split, caught the baton, and did a reverse split, all the while smiling at the audience. She bowed and kept bowing as the song faded out, the female singer repeating the chorus "Disco heaven / Ahhh-men!" over and over, each "Ahhh-men!" drenched in increasing reverb, the audience applauding with sincerity. You were robustly applauding with sincerity, too.
She walked offstage. "How can I top that?" you asked her.
"You'll do fine," she answered. "Just try not to stink too much."
Ten seconds later your 42-year-old principal, Ms. Linderman (the first woman at school to call herself Ms.), appeared at the podium to the audience's left. "Paula Perkins, everyone!" she said to scattered applause, her mouth too close to the mike as usual. Ms. Linderman wore one of her assembly cravats, the sheer pink one with the bright beige pantsuit. (She was the first woman at school to wear pantsuits.)
"And now," Ms. Linderman said at the podium, her mouth slightly farther away from the mike, "and now last, and certainly not in the very least, we present a sixth-grade girl who's already a talented singer and guitarist�.A singer-songwriter, you might say. Tonight, in fact, she'll be performing a song she herself has written just for this show. Remember, when she hits the heights of fame, you saw her here first. So, ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Thea Kirshenbaum!"
The audience clapped as Ms. Linderman disappeared from the podium, the curtains parted, and you walked onstage holding your acoustic guitar. You wore what you considered your most middle-schoolish outfit: the brown blouse with the wide collar, the orange vest with the drawstring inside the hem, the orange culottes with the brown lace trim, the maroon shoes with the ankle straps. You stopped at the microphone stand at the center of the stage. You looked at the audience and saw your mother and stepfather sitting near the front, clapping and intensely smiling. The audience stopped clapping. You strapped your acoustic guitar around your neck. You plucked a few strings at random but didn't know why. You said "Uh, hi, thanks. I'm Thea Kirshenbaum, and here's a song I wrote called 'Your Love Makes Me Sing.'�.Uh, I hope you don't think it stinks too much." You started performing your song, moving your fingers across the strings with care, singing a bit nervously. "I used to sit at home and cry / Waiting for the perfect guy / Then one fine day you came along / And now my life is one sweet song." You played more vigorously for the chorus: "Your love makes me sing / All night and all day / Your love makes me sing / In ev'ry which way." Your nervousness vanished as you sang the next verse: "Whenever I see you / I sing out loud / I can hit all the high notes / And dazzle the crowd / ...No, really." You sang the chorus again, carefully enunciating each word, including "ev'ry." You played the instrumental bridge with so much vigor your hand started hurting. The final verse made you feel exuberant: "I wanna sing to the birds / And sing to the bees / Sing to the grass / And sing to the trees / I wanna sing to the cats / And sing to the dogs / Sing to the Legos / And Lincoln Logs." Your exuberance increased as you sang the final chorus twice. You stopped playing. You sang "Your love makes�me�sing" a cappella. The audience clapped, mostly politely. Your mother and stepfather clapped and intensely smiled.
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