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Myladimoon — The Aching Blues- Revision
Published: 2008-11-24 15:33:29 +0000 UTC; Views: 459; Favourites: 1; Downloads: 13
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The Aching Blues"Lloyd, is this you?"
Lloyd looked up into the smiling face of yet another friendly co-worker whose name he didn’t know. Yea, that's me, he thought even though the man on the cover of the magazine looked alive and happy and absolutely nothing like he looked right then. He remembered the photo shoot well. He, Lloyd Whittaker was named Blues Guitarist of the Year for 2006 by The Blues Traveler magazine once. It was ages ago it seemed, when his life was beginning, and now two years later he found himself back in the same old town, doing the same old thing. 36 and alone.
"Good times," he mused under his breath.
"Excuse me? Lloyd, did you hear me? Is this you?" the woman’s meddling face asked again.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, that is me. If you're interested, my band is playing tonight at the Blind Lemon." His automated response rang dull even in his ears. She gave him a quizzical look and walked off, leaving the magazine in his cubicle. Lloyd stuck his hand in his pocket and ran his thumb over the hard, plastic surface of the guitar pick. He knew what it looked like without even seeing it. The image of it had burned itself into his brain over the years. As he sat there, wishing away the minutes, he vaguely wondered why that woman had been reading an old copy The Blues Traveler, but he found it hard to care. That was the norm for Lloyd. He found it rather hard to care about anything when he was at work. It was 4:16 in the afternoon and Lloyd had fourteen minutes of work left to him. Fourteen minutes of sitting in his little chair, staring at a computer screen that hadn't changed for the last three hours. Fourteen more minutes of mandatory “business casual” dress code, consisting of a baggy button-up shirt and pants that were consistently two inches too short. Fourteen minutes of having his hair in a ponytail. Fourteen more minutes of incarceration. Lloyd hated it here. Data input, what kind of shit is that anyway? Meaningless, mindless, drone work and not what he should be doing. What kind of man can sit there day after day and do an emotionless, pointless job? I guess this kind of man. A middle aged joke. I am a musician, he chided himself. He never knew why he couldn’t just let himself be what he truly was. He had the talent, but he could never pull his balls out of his back pocket and actually do it for real. His life, his music, anything. No matter how hard he had tried to break free, he never could. His hand pulled out the pick and cradled it in his palm.
Finally Lloyd was released from work and quickly he found himself back at home, stepping out of his sad little two door sedan. Fancy cars were not a luxury that Lloyd ever really wanted. He had the money for something better, but four wheels and an engine was all he really needed. Now that he was home, it was time to change, time to let his hair down and relax a little. The first thing he did when he walked inside was untangle the hair band that has been restraining his shoulder-length curly blonde hair. He could feel each muscle in his body relax as the strands of his hair loosened themselves from each other and began to float on their own accord around his heart-shaped face. A quick minute later and he was in his favorite Bluesfest 2000 t-shirt and faded jeans. The phone rang, startling him out of his hazy thoughts. He searched around the efficiency apartment, amazed how anything could be lost in a place so small. On the nightstand, underneath his abandoned work shirt, the phone buzzed angrily at him to pick it up. He answered and heard the familiar voice already talking before he’d even said hello.
“Dude! Can you hear me? Lloyd? You better be coming tonight, I am stoked and crazy nervous so you better be there. You know I can’t take the lead on Mama Mama Dance With Me. Dude, are you even there?” Jake was the new rhythm and back up guitarist for the band. He was young and full of life and it always amazed Lloyd how someone could go one thousand miles a minute all the time. The music was blaring in the background, but it was impossible to not hear Jake, he had a bad habit of screaming at people without even noticing it.
“Yea, Jake, I’m here. Don’t worry, I’ll be there tonight. I was just about to warm up a little. You hear from Madeline?”
There was a pause. “No. Man, we gots to work out a set list. I can’t believe no one else wants to play High Water Risen but you and me. I love the song! Well there’s high water everywhere…” Lloyd attempted to override Jake’s impromptu singing.
“How is she ‘posed get to the show? Usually she calls before and I pick her up. You sure you haven’t heard from her?” Jake stopped singing and the music in the background faded away.
“Man, what’s your deal with her? I know you two ain’t fuckin, so what gives? For as long as I can remember, you’ve talked about her, helped her out, been there for her, but by my life I can’t remember a time when your name has come out of her mouth. Just remember that man. See ya at the Lemon.” Click. The phone line rang monotone. Lloyd set the handset down and did his best to ignore what Jake had last said. Silly kid, what did he know anyways, he thought. Lloyd was a little worried about how Madeline was gonna get to the show. She had a habit of being flaky and tonight was something everyone had been looking forward to for a while.
Tonight was going be a fun night, he assured himself, and it very much needed his lucky guitar pick. To Lloyd, the show balanced on this one crucial decision. Each day, each performance needed the perfect one. He had to feel it and it had to be his lucky one for tonight. He pulled out the top drawer of his dresser and looked down at them all, carefully laid out on a grey kitchen towel. Little specks of fire and color in their grey little world. He began to sort through them, looking for the perfect one.
Since Lloyd had taken up the guitar in high school, with no other goal in mind but to get laid, he had kept every guitar pick he had ever used. Through thousands of concerts, as his band grew increasingly more popular, he kept every one, never giving them away to an adoring fan or throwing them out to a rowdy crowd. Something in him kept him from letting go. She always teased him about it. She always teased him about everything. But he loved her anyway. She, Madeline, was the lead singer of his band and what a voice she had. An angel in clothes that were a little too tight in all the wrong places and blonde hair that hung to her hips. He loved her, but couldn't seem to tell her. A look, a touch, sometimes he felt that she knew, but then he would see her leave with someone else, and he could never stop her.
He pulled out a black pick, with holes drilled through it at varying intervals and little hints of gold. This was it, this was the one, he thought, but as he looked at, ran his thumb over its edges, knew it wasn’t right. It just didn’t feel right. He placed the pick back with its comrades and pulled the one out of his pocket. It was the one Madeline had given him, 15 years ago when they had met. It was white, with a big red thumbprint right in the middle. Like she was leaving her mark. He never played with that pick, too afraid that something might happen to it, but he knew it was the one for tonight.
Then it was time to take his guitar out. Time to polish her strings and make sure she sings in the right key. This, being the first of many tunings throughout the night, was one of Lloyd's favorite moments. The time before a show, before he meets the rest of the band, when it is just him and his truest love, his guitar, alone. It grounds him, reminds him what he is doing, where he is going, and where he has been. He thinks about the music. Blues. It is an entity more than just a sound or rhythm. Blues. It is sex, much more than rock and roll. Blues makes your eyes throb and your heart sob and it makes every inch of your body burn for touch. Blues is in the hips. It’s in the fingers, in the lips. Maybe that is why he loved Madeline so much. Her voice, it touched somewhere deep inside people. Made you close your eyes and think of dark places and the feel of skin. Bodies with no faces doing all the things you want to do in the wee hours of the night. Her voice slides past your heart and into the pit of your stomach, where true lust breeds. His music, his art goes there with her. It follows her voice, melds with it, like a man and a woman are meant to bleed into one another when the sex is good. Maybe that is why he loved her. His sound and her sounds, night after night, sent lovers home to their beds with new desire in their hands. He wanted her to be all the things they promised, but for him, and not some other.
And so it would go every night, before a show. Lloyd would sit and think about the music as he played lightly on the strings. Think of Madeline and her velvet voice. Think of passion and heartache. Something about it was almost morbid in a sense. But that is the Blues. That was his calling, his gift to the world. The rest of it would float by, driving to the club, helping the boys unload the gear, the wiring, the sound checks. She would flutter in eventually, smelling of vanilla and booze. She would talk dirty into the microphone, 'give the boys a little fun' she would joke while they checked her sound quality. Not that she needed all that bravado. That woman could stand there with a grin on her face, swing that hair around in the flashing lights, and everyone in the city would know what she promised. The lines around her eyes lied of an age that she would never disclose. Those lines spoke of another woman, an older woman, who would be home with children and husband and the family pet. Those lines lied. This woman was born for the Blues. Sex came naturally to her. It clung to her like sheets to sweaty bodies, followed her through her day, underneath her movie star sunglasses and broad brimmed hat. Followed her into the night, when the hair came down and the music played. That was why he loved her.
The night proceeded like every other night and Lloyd found himself at the club. Most of the equipment was set up when he arrived and all he could think was thank god for the guys who stuck by them, who made the shows possible, even though they were not on the road anymore. Madeline sauntered in with a flourish, like always. She was wearing a black leather skirt that looked to be about a size too small for her and four inches too short for someone her age, and a black suit jacket with only a red bra underneath it. The bra just barely peeked out from under that jacket. It was the kind of top that promised all kinds of dirty deeds were you to be the one to take it off of her. A pair of soft leather boots that came up over the knee completed the outfit. Her hair hung down past her hips, long blonde and beautiful. Lloyd stood for a moment, next to the speaker they lovingly called "Big Boy" and watched her prance around on stage. He watched her like he was hungry for the first time in his life, like he knew he wanted it but had no idea of how to go about getting it. She was right there, with an aura about her that offered everything he wanted. He wished that she would offer it solely to him, instead of the open invitation she carried about her. He remembered the first time they had met, in the little bar in Addison. She had walked right up to him and said she needed to get out of there and before he knew what was happening, they were talking for hours over burnt coffee at the Village Inn. It seemed like they talked about everything that night, until that guy showed up and drug her out to his mustang by the arm. He knew he loved her in the very moment she smiled at him over her 2am French toast.
People filtered in to the dimly lit club, slowly at first, and then, bit by bit, faster as the sun went down. The bar was the perfect place for live music. The bar stood opposite the stage, all dark cherry and glass. The few tables and barstools left in the place were moved around so the big space in the middle was open and ready for the swaying of hips and the stomping of feet. The lighting had never been good, so dim in the back you could barely see the scuffed wood of the floor or the drunken graffiti on the walls, but the one light that was kept on pointed right where it mattered, at the stage. Nothing fancy, the stage ran almost from one wall to the other, with the door to the spare rooms and bathroom at one end. It creaked when you walked across and the boards were old and starting to gap in between each other, but it was beautiful none the less. It was home. The time drew near for them to begin and the buzz from their waiting audience grew thick. Madeline caught Lloyd as he was walking by and led him over between two of the speakers. Her hand on his chest, she pushed him deeper between the speakers and tucked herself in next to him. It was as intimate as they you could ever hope to get. Madeline had a knack for finding the perfect situation to make a man squirm and she most definitely had Lloyd feeling that way.
"You ready baby? Momma's gotta a good feeling about tonight." She crooned in his ear, her hand drifting below his belt. She stood there for a moment with her hand caressing him, and then with a wink she was gone. It took a bit for Lloyd to breathe normally again. He wanted her so badly. Throughout all the years, through countless tours and after their career had settled down a bit, Madeline and he had never slept together. The promise had always been there, but he could never bring himself to take what she so lovingly dangled in front of him. Hell, she had slept with everyone else in the band, including their road crew and most of their devoted fans. Madeline knew how to please her audience, no matter the venue, but not for him. Even that night. The night he drove back to Dallas from New Orleans, away from an honest to god career in music, back to her. Her sobbing voice on the telephone asked for him to save her, and he had rushed home. And now he didn’t know how to leave again. Lloyd pulled himself from between the speakers and ran right smack into Jake.
“Dude! I was about to be so pissed, I thought you weren’t gonna show. Did you look out there? Its gonna be crazy tonight. That sassy girl Jolene is here. Man, if I can get her to come back here in between sets, I’m good as gold for later.” Jake was the kinda kid who could’ve gotten any girl he wanted. He could walk right out into the crowd and ask an unknown woman to fuck him and she would. Green eyes, black hair, tall, built, the kid had it all. Next to him, Lloyd looked like an awkward teenager in clothes that were too big for him and hair he couldn’t tame, no matter that he was the older one.
“I thought it was her sister you would sneak backstage. Right? The one with the red hair.” Lloyd couldn’t count the number of times he’d seen the two of them in the bathroom in the back of the bar. Ahh, youth.
“Yea, but she went to Washington for college. I want to see if its runs in the family DNA. You talk to Madeline?”
“Mmhmm, it’s all good. You ready to do this?” Jake didn’t answer, just flung back his long hair and barked out a laugh.
Finally, the lights went down and it was time to start. Lloyd strapped on his guitar and took one final deep breath, his last before the show would end. From here on out it would be balls to the walls playing, with very little time to breathe, but that was how he liked it. The adrenaline rush of playing in front of a crowd was nothing like that of anything else in the world to him. He had dabbled in drugs before, but found he always felt like he was missing something. That thing must have been what made them so addictive to others. No, performance was Lloyd's drug. He lived for it.
The first string was plucked and after that, a cascade of sound tumbled from his fingertips and the show was on. Hazy faces stared up through the cigarette smoke, enthralled, swaying and swirling through the sound. He couldn’t make out any of them really, but it didn’t matter. All there was in the world was each moment, each note, each string, each slide of his hand on the neck of the guitar. Moving at lightning speed, the band flew through their first set. Lloyd's fingers almost bleeding all over the strings and Madeline’s voice blazing through the hearts and loins of their fans. Her voice had the quality of a roaring engine; deep, sturdy, and full of power. It made you stop and listen, even if you couldn’t really appreciate it. She sang. He sang, in his way. She danced. He played. The night was perfect. When Lloyd felt that nothing could possibly go wrong for the rest of his night, Madeline danced right over to him and gave him a little hip bump while he was playing. She'd done it a thousand times before, as much as he hated it, but this time was different. Something this time made his fingers falter and right before he was about to recover, the pick slipped from between his fingers, falling in almost slow motion to the hungry stage floor. Lloyd watched as it flew spinning through the lights. Watched as it slipped between the floor boards, down to where he would never be able to reach it.
“No,” his whispered word was immediately lost in the roar of the music. He stood there, frozen. Jake, bless him, took a step forward and started in on Lloyd's part, throwing him a worried glance, while Lloyd just stood there in utter shock. Madeline danced away like she always did, not a care in the world, none the wiser to what had happened. Lloyd felt as if his world had shattered. He couldn't lose a pick. In twenty something years of playing the guitar, he had never lost one. Of all the things that had come and gone in his life, those were the few things he could hold on to. He couldn't hold on to a woman, a steady job, a band. Everything around him changed, whether he liked it or not, but that was the one thing he could control. And now, that had fallen between the floorboards. His fingertips tingled with the absence of it.
The band finished the song and Madeline rasped into the microphone that they were going to take a quick break. Lloyd practically threw his guitar at the crew man to his left and was on his knees in a second, scouring the floor to see if he could find his pick. He peered between the boards where it had fallen, but there was no way he could get his fingers into the crack. Madeline came over to him and tried to joke about it, but all he could do was shoot her a desperate glance.
“Please, I need to find my pick. Can ya help me?”
“Oh honey, that damn things long gone now. Just leave it, come on, come talk to me in the alley while I grab a smoke.” She leaned down and touched his shoulder. He picked up her hand and tossed it away.
“That’s all you want isn’t it? You just want to talk, like you always do.”
“Now come on, don’t be like that baby.”
“You are incredible. All this time and you can’t bend an inch. I need you. I’ve always needed you and all you do it take what you need and leave. Call Lloyd up and he’ll come running, right?”
“Lloyd, please…” she ran a hand through her hair, pulling it forward to cover the side of her body facing him.
“No. What about that time I came home for you? You called me crying, said you needed me. What about then? I just ran right back to you and for what? Nothing. That’s all I’ve ever gotten from you. Nothing. You need me to make you sound good, but I don’t need you anymore. You can just go, I will find this myself.”
“Are you kidding me? Well, fine then, you just go ahead and do whatever the hell you want.” It broke his heart to hear the hurt and then dismissive tone in her voice, but he didn’t want to admit it. Why couldn’t she just see that he needed her?
After a few more desperate attempts to retrieve his pick, Lloyd slammed both fists into the floor. He lay there, with his forehead against the battered boards and everything seemed to slow. His world seemed to blur a little as he got up, dusted himself off, and walked towards the back exit. He passed Jake and a woman he assumed to be the infamous Jolene, walking toward the bathroom door. Jake looked at Lloyd over the top of the girls head and raised one eyebrow inquisitively. Lloyd just shook his head and popped open the door to the alley.
Lloyd walked out of the Blind Lemon and into the alleyway behind it, hoping for a little fresh air to soothe his burning soul. He leaned against the pocked wall of the neighboring Chinese restaurant and only then did he notice what was going on about twenty feet down the alley. Madeline had found her male attention all right. There she was, in all her glory, leather skirt hiked up to her hips and bent over an empty trash can. There was some Johnny behind her, moaning his gratitude while she looked a little bored with a lit cigarette in her hand. All that beautiful hair, the hair that Lloyd had loved so much, now looked filthy in the street lamp light.
Lloyd took one last look at the woman of his dreams, smiled to himself at the thought of her, and then walked down the alleyway to where his car was parked. He numbly pulled his keys out of his pocket and drove himself back to his low rent apartment. A shower and a big sigh later he was back in his tired old Bluesfest t-shirt and sweats. Before he collapsed into his bed, exhausted from the night’s events, Lloyd opened the top drawer of his dresser. He looked down at that sad, ragged grey towel, at all the picks worn in exactly the same spot on every single one of them. The colors blazed just as brightly as they always had, but Lloyd reached in and folded up that towel, all the picks inside, and lifted it out of the drawer. He stuffed the whole thing into an old show box and up it went, to the back of the top shelf in his closet. Lloyd crawled into bed and for the first time in his life, was happy that he would be going to his 9 to 5 job the next morning. And even though he lay there, pleased with his resolve, he knew deep down inside that he would go back again. Go right back to her, right back to where he came from. That night he dreamt of it, the music, the blues. In his dream it was an ache, plain and simple. The aching blues. An ache that started at his edges, his fingers his toes, and it spread through his body ‘til it felt like his heart couldn’t stretch any larger to let the ache in. The aching blues. He woke up choking, gasping for air. Lloyd rose, turned on the closet light and pulled down the shoebox. He opened the top drawer and unfolded the grey towel, laying it neatly back in the drawer.
