Excerpt: Chapter 4

I’d always thought I was destined for success, and not a life of mediocrity. I had brushed shoulders with some greats in the music business, but I’d never achieved the top drawer. I’m not talking greatness in the sense of a dictator who stands before thousands screaming in Spanish or German, and plotting world domination. En contraire. I wanted a lesser degree of notoriety, like the boy who helps the old lady across the street, or rescues the neighbor’s cat from the clutches of a tree’s upper branches, a good Samaritan type of success. To get to the point where I lost my anonymity or my ability to even wander out to the curb with that week’s garbage without the constant hassle of the autograph seeker or the blinding flash of paparazzi seemed too remote, too Ozzy Osbourne, if-you-will, and not for me. If I was going to start blowing holes in televisions with a Magnum .45 and crapping my diaper ever hour on the hour then it would be due to senility and incontinence, and not anything I would want to achieve musically.

I had taken the job at Ultimate Produce with the best intentions, to create much needed cash flow for my stagnant music career. Then one day, like a butterfly I’d be ready to emerge from my pupa stage. I’d cast off my chrysalis, and soar into a new life of financial comfort, and many, many women without the Ozzy flamboyance.

It was tough to watch, day by day, as my dream, my vision, my slice of nirvana, slowly slipped from my grasp, with the flat-lining, stoppage of the heart that occasionally needed the paddles. Clear!

Gone were the days of playing cover material in dark, beer slogging, smoke-filled hovels. In towns with one street, on streets with no names, to people whose names I never knew, or cared to remember, if I had known them. A time in my life reduced to memories filled with what ifs, and should haves. But the more time I spent on the road the more I felt like an intruder in a domain where I had no business. A menace that was five minutes away from being lynched, and strung up to the nearest back-ho to be dragged, (albeit...very slowly), to my death.

Perhaps a head stone engraved with the words, "He was just trying to entertain . . . ya Bastards!" would be the only epitaph marking my shallow, freshly dug grave. A grave where the sunlight gently dances through the leaves of towering maples, upon the many bouquets, adorning the ground where I lay. A gentle south westerly breeze caressing their petals. My favorite music playing quietly in the background. My fellow band members, dressed in black as usual, standing around quietly sobbing and drinking, or drinking and sobbing. How, were they going to replace their friend, their fallen companion, their musical sibling, with another bass player before next week’s gig in Blind River? A vivacious blonde girl in tight jeans, with breasts heaving, throws herself on the mound of earth, wailing uncontrollably about the loss of the best lover she has ever had. Her hard perky nipples barely concealed beneath the thread she calls a top, ready to pop out of her, . . . well . . . it is, . . . after all . . my vision.


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For information on "The Limits of Respectability," go to: http://ca.geocities.com/homer3d@rogers.com/index.html