Some Truth

She continued to argue about it, but I wouldn't relent with my disapproval, realizing that she had gradually been trying to exert the same kind of "control" over me. I was thoroughly disgusted. We lasted three years. Oh, the extremism? I spent until two thousand seven, discovering and clearing up, all of the over fourteen thousand dollars that she had charged up on my credit cards buying, I assume, more fancy clothes. Let's get done with this wasted part of my life.

Chapter 20

A Vision of Desire

Her musically husky voice asked me if there was anything... she could get for me. I was setting the stage up for Dick "What Would Brando Do?" Siegel's band that was playing that September night in 'eighty-five at the bar where she was working. My ears tuned in on how much I liked that sultry voice, but my mind being busy with what I was bent over working on, I barely glimpsed her shadow out of the corner of my eye, and I gruffly replied, "Coca Cola. Lots of Ice." My young friend Eric, who often worked for me, tonight was kind of hanging out and helping me if I needed it. He told me that she thought I was hot looking. I asked him how the Hell he knew that, and he told me he heard her talking to the other barmaid. I've never really taken any notice of what, if any, effect I may have on women, I just go about my business.

Well, it had been a long while since I'd had a compliment from a woman, even one that was only hearsay. I stood up straight and took a good look at those nice legs, the rolling sway of her shapely hips, those firm, but tantalizingly undulating buttocks, which made me think I'd like to sink my teeth into those tight cheeks, and pray for lockjaw, as well as the straight back, mostly covered by a curly mass of lush, dark, tangled tresses, all of which was receding from us. I was thinking, "Very cute." I tucked that steamy little tidbit on the back burner of my mind, as I noticed also, that the jukebox was playing Springsteen singing, ", You're my heart's desire, Oh, oh, oh, I'm on fire".

I was married at the time, and had no conscious interest in cheating on my wife, even though this petite beauty possibly looked "to die for". She had an unruly mane of long brunette hair, and my impression was that she stood about five foot two, as opposed to my six foot three. She had a desirously sweet little body of what I deemed to be about thirty-six, by twenty-two, by thirty-four or five inches, and was maybe a hundred fifteen pounds. I thought she was in her twenties, but I'm bad at guessing ages, (It turned out that she was thirteen years younger than me, and thirteen inches shorter, which I had always considered my lucky number.) I'd no opportunity yet, except while busily inattentive, to acquaint myself with her face or the rest of her frontal features.

I had set up all the speakers, monitors, stands and mics, and run all the cables back to the amps and the snakes. Then I set up the mixing console and the outboard effects, EQ'd and finished a preliminary sound check on the monitors and mains. I was ready to sit down, order one of the bar's fantastic burritos, and do serious damage to it. I wasn't yet seated before she was right there ready to take my order, telling me "Hi. My name is Sue and I will be Your waitress for the night. What may I do for you?" emphasizing do by placing her hand on my forearm. Sue then bent forward, her shirt blousing open enough to watch her succulent tits sway, untethered, with large taut nipples, as she then wiped the already clean table. She continued to pay premium attention to all my needs for the rest of the night. She definitely had me noticing that I never needed anything that she wasn't ready to, or hadn't already provided in abundance. The burrito was the largest and best I'd had at the Blind Pig to date, and it came with delicious coffee, and the guacamole, sour cream, and salsa I'd asked for. I complimented her and the chef with a large tip.

Dick and his band arrived immediately after I had eaten, so I was back onstage adjusting mic placement, and helping them get their amps and drums arranged and trying to make them at home up there. I then did a full sound check, as they ran through two songs, during which many of the bar and kitchen staff, and, I suppose, some patrons, came from the café side of the club to listen to. The staff gave a warm welcoming applause after the band finished the second song, and the band, I assume, retired to their dressing room. I did a few final tweaks, knowing that the room would become more dense, and soak up the sound waves more completely as the nightclub was filled by the audiences' bodies.

When you take doing sound for bands very seriously, it requires almost all of your concentration while they are playing their music, or they aren't going to sound as good live as they do on their CDs. If the singers cannot hear themselves, they don't know whether they are singing off key or not, to what they can hear, which is mostly guitar and drums. They can't help it. You can't hear yourself think, let alone sing, when everything in your head is drowned out by the sheer volume of guitar amplifiers. If the bass player can't hear the drummer, and visa versa, they don't know if they are playing off beat with each other. If the guitar players can't hear anyone else, they don't know where they are in the structure of the song.

The usual tactic they use to combat that lost feeling is quickly to turn their amplifier up even louder, when they should be turning it down. Being extremely busy playing at the moment, they don't have the time to analyze what they need to do to rectify their predicament. Everyone on stage needs the stage monitors, which are their lifeline to synchronous sanity, to cut through, simultaneously and in real time to every note they play or sing, cleanly and completely, in the midst of the cacophony they're enshrouded in. Cacophony which is made even worse by the reflected secondary sounds coming to their ears, milliseconds too late to be helpful, from the P.A.'s house loudspeakers, through which the audience is hearing the show.

Helping all members of that team on stage to hear what they need to, is all part of the soundman's job. At a big venue, there are at least two sound engineers, one for the band's stage monitors, and one for the main speakers, broadcasting the show the audience hears. Nightclubs and bars do not have the seating capacity to provide the money to pay for those extra wages and equipment. Therefore, when I worked the smaller venues, I had to control the mains and the monitors from the main board. When you go to a live show and leave thinking that the band sucks, usually it is the soundman, (men), which sucked, as the band was washed in a sea of uncontrolled noise.

There are a great number of wannabe sound clowns out there who do not yet have a clue about what they are doing, and with them, the performers have to struggle to hear themselves and each other in an impossibly echoing audio environment throughout the whole show. It is very hard to be an entertainer when you are not given the necessities to do your job by the technical team that you have hired. On the day the show starts, it's too late to fire them. You will not find any replacements, let alone qualified ones, on that short a notice. My reputation as being eminently qualified preceded me, and I was proud of that reputation and worked hard to maintain it.

Therefore, with my attention on my job, I pretty much lost track of this gorgeous waitress for most of the show, although the few times I did see her she made a very positive visual impression, coming or going. Yet, while she may have taken care of me as her personal charge, she also had half of the tables in the full house the show drew to wait on, as well. Although I wasn't aware of it happening, being twenty inches up on the little mix platform with my attention on the band, my ashtray was always empty, while my coke was never empty, nor the ice in it below the point where I had to tip the glass very far to get a chunk to chew on.

Your mouth being between your ears, it helps your hearing to lower the temperature in your mouth, the same way you seem to hear better when you're outdoors on a cold, clear day. It does not help me anymore, because I am nearly deaf, these many years later, from too many AC/DC decibel level concerts at four watts of power to every pair of ears in the audience. I like to have the audience leave in good spirits, and with their favorite songs from the show still playing in their heads the next morning when they wake up.

At the end of the night, after I had wrapped up and packed away the last of the equipment in my truck, I came back in to do an "idiot" check on and around the stage and mix station, to make sure I wasn't leaving anything behind. Susan Lynn Daniels, which was her actual name, not my nickname for her, got me talking. Looking into those big golden brown eyes, that appeared to bore into and know, the depths of my soul, I felt very comfortable talking to her. I thought this strange, because I am usually very shy, and have a hard time figuring out what words to say, particularly around an incredibly beautiful woman like this one. Her face was a less harsh image, and looking far prettier and younger, of Adrianne Barbeau from the movie Swamp Thing. But Sue was very good at leading me into subjects that I knew something about, and not letting the atmosphere fill with embarrassing silences, even when, at the times, she didn't understand my technical jargon.

As we talked, we moved toward the door so the manager could lock up the bar for the night, with me was telling her about how Eric had overheard her and the other barmaid talking about me. As we stepped outside, She laughed and told me, "Yes, she thought you were too unrefined and rugged looking, which were exactly the qualities about you that appealed to me." I said, "So, she thought I looked like a slob?" We both laughed heartily at that. She then asked me to come home with her. I came up with every reason why I couldn't. I'm married. I have to take the equipment back to the shop and unload it. I need a shower and some sleep so I can finish repairing a parametric channel from one of my boards that I need, and that is presently hooked up to my oscilloscope because of a funny noise in it. In addition, I'm married, dammit, can't you understand? My excuses didn't matter in the least to her. She just smiled her beautiful smile, flashing perfect teeth to go with her perfect nose, and got me to promise to come to her house in the country for coffee and breakfast, saying we would just talk, because she wanted to hear everything about my life working with bands.

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Chapter 21

Cutting Bait

We parted, and as I was driving to unload, I told myself I was going to break my promise to Susan and go home and crash. I unloaded the equipment and raced to my house to try to catch my wife before she headed to her newspaper job. It was twenty 'til six by the time I got in, and Constance, my wife, had already left for work. I climbed in the shower, grumbling because she didn't have to be to work that early, actually, not until eight o'clock. As I showered, I reviewed my home life with a carelessly frumpy woman who was usually drunk when she was at home.

A woman, who claimed to be a writer, yet who hadn't put a word on any of her personal "manuscripts" in the three years we had been married. Who claimed to be a romantic, and maybe she was, in her mind, but I don't know anyone who can read minds. I can't. She certainly wasn't physically romantic, making love with all the effort, warmth and personality of a dead fish. A woman who made a living with words at the local rag, and who liked to argue about anything at all, when she wasn't nagging at me about some trivial bullshit. This, I suppose, just to keep her mind warmed up, to let all that useless verboseness pour out of her into her computer, on the job. I decided I really wasn't very happily married at all, and here was a wonderful opportunity to learn about a very exciting woman. Hmm! It doesn't take any rocket science to predict my next move. I left a note saying, "Gone fishing".

Following Sue's verbal instructions to her big old farmhouse, where she rented a room, was simple. I pulled in the drive, parked my van, and knocked on the front door just as she was opening it. We were the only people there after the last male housemate left for work. We had pancakes and coffee, and lots of relaxed conversation, with Sue being very curious to know how I got started as a sound engineer. I told her that I'd played guitar since I was thirteen, and, starting in junior high school, I used to play guitar in my own bands, and due to my ability to read the manuals that came with the equipment, I was the only guy in the band who knew which outputs to hook up to which inputs. She looked at me as though she didn't know whether to believe me, or not.

I laughed, and told her that it really is almost that simple, but that actually, since I grew up out in the country with almost no one to play with, except my three sisters, with whom there was always too much friction, that my Dad started bringing home Radio Shack project kits for me to build. I had built a crystal radio by the time I was seven, and it just grew into even more intricate projects after that. By the time I started playing guitar, I knew quite a bit about electronics. I finally got tired of never making any money playing guitar. Meaning that, due to the continual changing of members who couldn't get along with each other, or weren't good enough to play with others, we were almost always in the garage practicing to bring the new guy up to performance level, instead of out playing gigs. Therefore, I finally decided, "Well, I never wanted or needed the spot light anyway, and every band needs a soundman." and, I laid my guitar down.

Shortly thereafter, all of my good intentions aside, and before I knew what to think, we were in bed. Normally I find that a little bit of a woman's body left hauntingly covered, adds greatly to her overall sexual attractiveness. This little Minx sprawled in all her glory couldn't have found any clothes, even custom tailored, that would have done her body proper justice. Any clothing would be completely paled by her nudity and the innate animal sensuality she was possessed of in addition to her physical beauty. Her's was the kind of beauty that can't be counterfeited, and should never be cloistered.

I'm so big, and I always feel so clumsy and ridiculously inappropriate around women, probably from my mom and sisters always yelling at me, "Go! Go! Just get out of the way!" that I don't know if I did anything right, but Sue made me feel like I could do no wrong. Two hours later, I was drained and as fully satiated as I had never experienced previously. I have never had, before or since, a woman who could keep me so utterly, achingly hard for so long and hold me on the edge of that chasm of my desire, until she chose to release me from it. Her slightest touch stirred me to a primal need for her, a need like my instinctive need for air, or for food and water, to quench my hunger and thirst. With a caress, she could make my blood race and my nerves scream from the heat and desire that she drew up from my previously unfathomed depths. Yes, I've had hot women before, but this one had grasped something in my soul with a stranglehold.

I wondered to myself if it was possible to have someone bewitch you here in this modern century. We cuddled and talked, then got up and made more coffee, and talked some more, about fantasies. My God! This was the most provocative and arousing woman I had ever met, and I had lived my life in a rock and roll fantasy world, with all the available treats. I studied her face as she talked; noticing her eyes, and her perfect nose, again, and the way the corners of her mouth turned up and made me think of kissing them once more. I took in how the loosely wrapped robe she was wearing partly exposed the cleft and inner swell of her breasts, and remembered the natural spicy sweet perfume of her soft skin that her robe now covered, and I felt an impossible stirring in my groin again. I knew I had to see a lot more of her, marriage be damned. I am bewitched, and life is just too short to pass up an opportunity like this.

Think about it. Success isn't Happiness. Happiness is Success. If she was game for it, I had to get me some of that, whether I was confronted with Hell or high water.

A month more of me avoiding Con, avoiding physical contact with Con, and avoiding arguments with Con, all the while putting twenty or more hours a day into my sound company, and I'd had enough. I suppose, as well, the guilt of cheating on her this once, but yet wanting to keep my body sacrosanct, in my mind, for Susan, if she would have me, had been weighing heavily on me. She was sloshed, and started bitching at me about going to Huntington, Indiana to do an outdoor show on the college campus there for Leon Redbone, and being gone for a couple of days to set up and do the contracted show.

I snapped and told her, "Look! It's a contracted gig. I'm under a contract for it, which means I have to do it. There is no way around it. Listen, I am DONE with your constant complaints about crap I have no control over. I can't stand anymore bullshit at home, with all the shit I have to deal with away from home. Don't be here when I get back. Spend today finding an apartment. You can have anything you want out of the house", there went my Tiffany lamp, "but just be gone, Period!" I didn't think she would have any difficulty finding an apartment, since, with her working for the Ann Arbor "Snooze", she could scan the advanced ad copy before subscribers could read the ads, and thereby have first dibs.

Her crying, as I climbed into the big U-Haul truck I leased for trips like this, made me feel like a horrible monster, but I just couldn't stand any more of her constant self-pity and carping, and her using me as her whipping-post in an attempt to relieve her own inner demons. Even while, at the same time, she was looking down her nose and acting as if she was so superior to everyone and everything else in the world.

Stress is a major player in the course of making mistakes in the sound business, or life in general. In a big P.A. system, you might have twenty-one or more miles of cable to connect both ends of, in thirty, fifty and hundred foot lengths. Each end has to be solidly connected to the proper piece of equipment or you blow up the components of some very expensive gear, and end up ruining a show, losing any future income from the folks who hired you, hurting the "by word of mouth" reputation you have earned, and going in the hole to pay for repairs instead of making money.

Constance knew nothing about my work, and didn't care to. As long as the bills were paid and she could step out dressed like a fashion plate, (with a face which looked like it had caught fire sometime, and been put out with an ice pick, she somehow didn't care so much about deftly applied makeup any longer), from a business women's periodical, and the wine cellar and gin 'n tonic didn't run out. Therefore, she never understood why I didn't like to debate, as she called it, petty little points to no end, at the last minute before heading to a job. If nothing else, I needed to check every piece of gear I needed with me to do the show off of my mental checklist, before I rolled out of that driveway. You don't come back several hundred miles to get that necessary, but forgotten item when the show starts in a couple of hours.

Hell, her debates didn't go by any rules, and I couldn't rebut even the first issue before she interrupted and was on to three more. I was a professional listener, not a talker, and I would rather shut up and leave, than participate in a shouting match. I don't need the trauma, or the drama. In the end, it seemed as if knowing that the relationship couldn't work should have been easy to see in the beginning. Except that I was living in my own little world as a, business at hand, self occupied workaholic living on at least a gallon of coffee a day, supplemented by two to four hours of sleep per twenty-four. I was running an amplifier and speaker repair shop out of my basement, and building big speaker cabinets and equipment cases in my garage while I had to be around to answer the phone calls from prospective customers during the daylight hours, before the invention of cell phones.