I’m actually typing this on a notebook computer, with the carpal tunnel keypad. This unit has that 999 virus that changes all your file names to a string of 9’s, and it is damn rare and hard to eradicate. Thus, a glimmer of good news was enough to make my day. Out of the blue, I’ve contacted a rhythm player who actually wants to be a rhythm player and is happy just to be in a band.
I’m not canceling out on JJ, just having doubts about where I could market an auto-chord sound. I know of places that throw you out if they find a fake book on stage. There is no such thing as completely lost effort, as I now have four, maybe five, new tunes added to my song list, though a couple are on the weak side. I’ll be auditioning the guitarist as soon as Sunday because I don’t really have any choice, do I? Tourist season is around the corner and two blocks up.
I was wide-eyed upon getting the word that the VFW near Buddy’s is looking for a bingo caller. That place has a rep for fantastic tips, I said a rep. They need somebody until mid-October. I intend to hit them with both barrels. They are otherwise a volunteer bingo and I like to impress upon these outfits that I have a professional act worth paying for. I’ve lately heard of other bingo shows, but they are a different format that interrupts the bingo with other acts.
Better still, that bingo is on a nothing Monday and I need such gigs. The other caller is out of town for a couple months and I smell opportunity. Do you know anyone out there who thinks they can call bingo? Ask them to say, “Under the G, fifty-nine.” That’s fine. Now tell ‘em I want to hear it in Spanish. You just know how I love putting people to the test when they belittle my efforts.
I’m 2/3rds through “Scent of Danger”, it is an increasingly tough read after chapter 15. Now I know what the jacket meant by romance-mystery. It gets bogged down with sex encounters in which you are asked to believe the 27 year-old bombshell is a virgin. My favorite lines so far are page 68, where she “set down the glass, tracing the rim with her fingertips”, and page 345 where he “called upon his failing reserves”. One wonders if corporate sex really does involve that much negotiation over who does what.
But there is a note of reality in the book, in that the sex itself is a given. Everything else is separately negotiable. Failed marriages are usually the result of at least one party not understanding that. Do not hold out on sex, or you will be doing it alone. In this case, the author does a credible job of jazzing up the mechanics of middle-class antics. Yet, I get the same impression as when listening to the masses brag about their experiences—they have never had the real thing.
How do I know that? Allow me to explain. I’ve had the real thing. Robyn. How do I know others don’t get it? Simple, by the assumptions they make. They’ll read into my last statement such things as “infatuation”, or “obsession”, or “imagination”. Those are the first thoughts of the weak-minded who’ve never gotten out of the bush league, the type that cannot even dream of real desire. What those simpletons don’t seem to realize is they are talking about ordinary emotions that eventually wear off.
That’s right, their whole lives have been nothing but compromises because they never had what it takes to pursue the real thing. If they’d ever stood on both sides of the fence, they would know it and, hopefully, shut the front door and go away. Unlike those people, my life hasn't been a romance mystery.
