I don't know how long this is going to be as I had this idea in a dream last night. So this is pretty much the dream I had. I need to work out the rest of it later.
By the by, this is straight, general literature. No giant cookie jars, just people and a story that doesn't take place in outer space or like, the mind of a six year old or anything... So keep that in mind.
-
The parents were everywhere, stuffed up in their tuxedos, wandering around looking at pricey little items their children made to buy to support some charity that I had never heard of. I was standing in the back, holding my coke in one hand and a red napkin in the other, letting it dangle loosely by my side, trying to look as non-chalant as possible until it was time to make the announcement. I wondered where everyone’s kid was tonight, if they had all found sitters or if they had pooled their money to buy a communal house for them all.
I tapped my guitar case as the new parents coming in made their first round, one of them stopping to pick up an especially ugly piece of statuary that I found laughable. After thinking that, I blushed. I shouldn’t be looking down on the art work that children produce, especially if the proceeds are going to... What was it? “The Emissary Guild For Unruly Children.”
There was one woman who looked out of place, looking at the items on the table and shying away. I had been watching her for a few minutes. She had a routine down; she’d walk to a table, pick up an item, look it over, look at the price tag, look at the man behind the table, and look back at the item before putting it down. She did this at all eight tables before going back to the first and starting with the rightmost item.
And in all of this, a deadly silence filled the room. None of the husbands or wives were talking to each other; the only noise you could hear was the clinking of clay and cheap metal on the velvet table coverings. Oh, and the sound of desperation filling the air. It was a silent auction, yeah, but Jesus.
In my musings, I didn’t notice the solitary red thumb slip away from the crowd. She had made her way to the back wall near where I was standing, people watching just like I was. Her dress wasn’t ratty, but it certainly wasn’t up to snuff with the Trelise Cooper that flooded the room. It was like every wife in the room went down to the pier one night and helped the dock-men unload a shipment of dresses and were paid in very similar garments.
“Hey there.” She was speaking to me.
“Hi.” I nodded, taking a sip of my coke and wiping the condensation away from the plastic with the red napkin. I crumpled it and slid it into my pocket.
“You don’t look like you belong here,” she said, resting her shoulders against the wall and staring in the direction I was staring in. I wanted to reach out and touch her face, something Bogart, and say, “Well, kid, neither do you. Let’s get out of here.”
Of course, my Bogey wasn’t up to snuff, and who knows. It was entirely possible that she was here with someone else. Oh, and I had a job to do.
“I could say the same.”
She laughed. I couldn’t tell if she was getting n my nerves, but she was certainly better than the stuffy aristocrats in here. Hell, they could probably hear our conversation in it’s entirety, and I wouldn’t put it past them, either. What else do they have to do besides slug bourbon and have bi-monthly intercourse with their spouses?
The woman slid over, the back of her dress catching on a stud in the wall, creating a small tear. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I’m not supposed to be.”
I laughed at that. “Really? Did you know you just tore your dress?”
She nodded. “It’s a rental. I can patch it up when I get back home. I knew it was formal wear, but God, look at all of them. They look like Dominos, walking around. Knock one of them down and you could practically rob the place.”
“Is that what you’re here to do?”
“No, no. I thought this was a PTA meeting.”
“Oh, you have a kid that goes here?”
“No, I don’t have any kids.”
Enigma.
“Then why-“
”Well, I just go to the meetings in the off chance that one day I might have a kid, and I want to know that I’ve had a hand in making the educational structure at the schools around the county a little better.”
“Shouldn’t the ‘Formal Wear Only’ have given it away at one point or another that this wasn’t a PTA meeting?”
“You’d be surprised.”
We both sat in our own solitude watching the people, sharing that as a singular connection. Our conversation well had run dry; not that there had been an incredible amount to begin with. Occasionally, she would point to a particular person who would be admiring one of the items and mouth the words, “Their kid made that.” She was right. You could see it in their eyes; momentary disappointment that they were sending their children to a private school and that they could do nothing but create a malformed “Baby Jesus” to auction off, before a prouder look of quasi-accomplishment lit up in their dim bulbs that maybe it was just a start. And then they would put a bid in.
Ten minutes passed and I walked to the drink table, tapping my cup and indicating the coke bottle. The man behind the table pulled a bottle of rum out and I shook my head. Hadn’t touched liquor in over five years and wasn’t going to begin again now at a charity function.
“So, what are you doing here?”
I looked over my shoulder. The woman had watched the entire exchange a few feet from behind me. Her arms were crossed over her chest, hiking the dress up just a tad revealing the slip. It was unbearably un-this-room. I couldn’t help but smile at that.
“You really want to know?”
“Sure.”
“Working.”
“You security or something?”
“What? No. If you plan on staying for another ten minutes, you’re going to find out full well what I do.”
“If I’m going to stay another ten minutes in this abomination of a room, I’m going to need a name from you.”
“Sean Miller.”
“Opal Ivory.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I just had mean parents.”
“Did you kill them?”
“What? No.”
“I would have. What kind of a name is ‘Opal Ivory’?”
“My parents used to joke that I was born between a rock and a hard tooth. I never really got the joke, if there was one.”
I got the joke, or at least the allusion. It just didn’t make sense.
“Alright, Opal, care to accompany me back to the wall and watch this charade until I have to go to work?” I held out my arm. We hooked elbows and slowly moved the five yards back to the wall.
“Your slip is showing.”
She looked down, blushed, and slid her dress down.
As she wriggled trying to free her slip, I finally had the opportunity to look over her closely. Half a foot shorter than me (I stand at six feet) with an odd sense of dress; her shoes didn’t quite match the dress. Reddish hair. Straight. Contoured her face, which was pale, even more so with the red-hair that it would normally be, I assumed. Bright, blue eyes. And last but not least, two dimples that appeared when she smiled.
Couldn’t have been a day over twenty five.
As a thirty year old, she made me feel like a grandpa.
“It’s been ten minutes, Sean, when are-“
A voice cut on over the loudspeakers in the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Sean Miller!”
There was light, scattered applause. I grabbed my guitar and made my way through the room, up the stairs to the small stage they had set (for the winners of the auction, not for me) and grabbed the microphone.
I threw on the faux-hick accent and practically kissed the mic.
“Well, hey-a-doodle-doo everyone! I hope you all are having a good evening!” They looked mortified. I didn’t think much of it. I zipped my guitar case open and removed the comically under-sized ukelele from the bag. I cradled it in my arms and played a few chords to the disdain of my audience. You get what you pay for.
“Does anyone in here know who I am?”
No one moved.
“My name is Johnny Wolfington! Does that name jog any memories?”
One poor woman in the audience raised her hand. At least someone had heard of me. I pointed to her.
“You’re the man that puts out the cassette tapes of fun songs for kids about life at astronaut camp and then plays at their schools.”
“Coooooooorrrrreeectamundo!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could Opal in the back of the room doubled over with laughter. At least someone was enjoying it.
“And I’m here to sing some songs off of my latest tape, ‘NASA Isn’t Just For Science!’ I’ll be accompanied on ukelele by Johnny Rimshot!”
I changed my voice to a cockney gangster, “Ello ‘der, Johnny.”
“Hello, Johnny!”
“Ah you ready ta’ sing ‘der, Johnny?”
“Are you ready to play Ukelele, Johnny?”
“You betcher bum Iyam.”
It was funny only to myself and Opal that I was having this conversation. It was funny to kids to see a man named Johnny talking to himself as a man named Johnny. These stuffed shirts really were more mortified than anything else. I doubt it would help me book more schools on the private establishment circuit.
And I started. My set was six songs long, starting with “There’s No Gas In NASA,” and rounding out my set with the wonderful opus titled “Brits Can Be Astronauts, Too” where I played Ukelele and Rimshot sang.
I put my ukelele back in the case and carried it down the stairs to even less scattered applause then when I had climbed them. An old man who looked very much like an old James Bond in the tuxedo he was wearing. I almost fell to the floor when he started speaking with a British accent.
Opal was by the drink table.
“Hey, that’s what I do. What uh... What do you think?”
Putting on the air of a stuffy Hepburn, she only responded with, “Simply mahvelous, dahling.”
“Well, since this isn’t a PTA meeting and I don’t have to work anymore, do you want to get out of here? It’s only ten. There’s places open that serve food and things. You do eat, don’t you?”
She turned to face me. “Like, a date?”
“What, are you in third grade or something? Do you want to get food or not?”
She chuckled. “Of course.”
With a final glance over the room and the man announcing the winners of the silent auction, I stepped out with something far more valuable than anything else in the room that night..
-
To be continued...
By the by, this is straight, general literature. No giant cookie jars, just people and a story that doesn't take place in outer space or like, the mind of a six year old or anything... So keep that in mind.
-
The parents were everywhere, stuffed up in their tuxedos, wandering around looking at pricey little items their children made to buy to support some charity that I had never heard of. I was standing in the back, holding my coke in one hand and a red napkin in the other, letting it dangle loosely by my side, trying to look as non-chalant as possible until it was time to make the announcement. I wondered where everyone’s kid was tonight, if they had all found sitters or if they had pooled their money to buy a communal house for them all.
I tapped my guitar case as the new parents coming in made their first round, one of them stopping to pick up an especially ugly piece of statuary that I found laughable. After thinking that, I blushed. I shouldn’t be looking down on the art work that children produce, especially if the proceeds are going to... What was it? “The Emissary Guild For Unruly Children.”
There was one woman who looked out of place, looking at the items on the table and shying away. I had been watching her for a few minutes. She had a routine down; she’d walk to a table, pick up an item, look it over, look at the price tag, look at the man behind the table, and look back at the item before putting it down. She did this at all eight tables before going back to the first and starting with the rightmost item.
And in all of this, a deadly silence filled the room. None of the husbands or wives were talking to each other; the only noise you could hear was the clinking of clay and cheap metal on the velvet table coverings. Oh, and the sound of desperation filling the air. It was a silent auction, yeah, but Jesus.
In my musings, I didn’t notice the solitary red thumb slip away from the crowd. She had made her way to the back wall near where I was standing, people watching just like I was. Her dress wasn’t ratty, but it certainly wasn’t up to snuff with the Trelise Cooper that flooded the room. It was like every wife in the room went down to the pier one night and helped the dock-men unload a shipment of dresses and were paid in very similar garments.
“Hey there.” She was speaking to me.
“Hi.” I nodded, taking a sip of my coke and wiping the condensation away from the plastic with the red napkin. I crumpled it and slid it into my pocket.
“You don’t look like you belong here,” she said, resting her shoulders against the wall and staring in the direction I was staring in. I wanted to reach out and touch her face, something Bogart, and say, “Well, kid, neither do you. Let’s get out of here.”
Of course, my Bogey wasn’t up to snuff, and who knows. It was entirely possible that she was here with someone else. Oh, and I had a job to do.
“I could say the same.”
She laughed. I couldn’t tell if she was getting n my nerves, but she was certainly better than the stuffy aristocrats in here. Hell, they could probably hear our conversation in it’s entirety, and I wouldn’t put it past them, either. What else do they have to do besides slug bourbon and have bi-monthly intercourse with their spouses?
The woman slid over, the back of her dress catching on a stud in the wall, creating a small tear. She leaned close to my ear and whispered, “I’m not supposed to be.”
I laughed at that. “Really? Did you know you just tore your dress?”
She nodded. “It’s a rental. I can patch it up when I get back home. I knew it was formal wear, but God, look at all of them. They look like Dominos, walking around. Knock one of them down and you could practically rob the place.”
“Is that what you’re here to do?”
“No, no. I thought this was a PTA meeting.”
“Oh, you have a kid that goes here?”
“No, I don’t have any kids.”
Enigma.
“Then why-“
”Well, I just go to the meetings in the off chance that one day I might have a kid, and I want to know that I’ve had a hand in making the educational structure at the schools around the county a little better.”
“Shouldn’t the ‘Formal Wear Only’ have given it away at one point or another that this wasn’t a PTA meeting?”
“You’d be surprised.”
We both sat in our own solitude watching the people, sharing that as a singular connection. Our conversation well had run dry; not that there had been an incredible amount to begin with. Occasionally, she would point to a particular person who would be admiring one of the items and mouth the words, “Their kid made that.” She was right. You could see it in their eyes; momentary disappointment that they were sending their children to a private school and that they could do nothing but create a malformed “Baby Jesus” to auction off, before a prouder look of quasi-accomplishment lit up in their dim bulbs that maybe it was just a start. And then they would put a bid in.
Ten minutes passed and I walked to the drink table, tapping my cup and indicating the coke bottle. The man behind the table pulled a bottle of rum out and I shook my head. Hadn’t touched liquor in over five years and wasn’t going to begin again now at a charity function.
“So, what are you doing here?”
I looked over my shoulder. The woman had watched the entire exchange a few feet from behind me. Her arms were crossed over her chest, hiking the dress up just a tad revealing the slip. It was unbearably un-this-room. I couldn’t help but smile at that.
“You really want to know?”
“Sure.”
“Working.”
“You security or something?”
“What? No. If you plan on staying for another ten minutes, you’re going to find out full well what I do.”
“If I’m going to stay another ten minutes in this abomination of a room, I’m going to need a name from you.”
“Sean Miller.”
“Opal Ivory.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I just had mean parents.”
“Did you kill them?”
“What? No.”
“I would have. What kind of a name is ‘Opal Ivory’?”
“My parents used to joke that I was born between a rock and a hard tooth. I never really got the joke, if there was one.”
I got the joke, or at least the allusion. It just didn’t make sense.
“Alright, Opal, care to accompany me back to the wall and watch this charade until I have to go to work?” I held out my arm. We hooked elbows and slowly moved the five yards back to the wall.
“Your slip is showing.”
She looked down, blushed, and slid her dress down.
As she wriggled trying to free her slip, I finally had the opportunity to look over her closely. Half a foot shorter than me (I stand at six feet) with an odd sense of dress; her shoes didn’t quite match the dress. Reddish hair. Straight. Contoured her face, which was pale, even more so with the red-hair that it would normally be, I assumed. Bright, blue eyes. And last but not least, two dimples that appeared when she smiled.
Couldn’t have been a day over twenty five.
As a thirty year old, she made me feel like a grandpa.
“It’s been ten minutes, Sean, when are-“
A voice cut on over the loudspeakers in the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Sean Miller!”
There was light, scattered applause. I grabbed my guitar and made my way through the room, up the stairs to the small stage they had set (for the winners of the auction, not for me) and grabbed the microphone.
I threw on the faux-hick accent and practically kissed the mic.
“Well, hey-a-doodle-doo everyone! I hope you all are having a good evening!” They looked mortified. I didn’t think much of it. I zipped my guitar case open and removed the comically under-sized ukelele from the bag. I cradled it in my arms and played a few chords to the disdain of my audience. You get what you pay for.
“Does anyone in here know who I am?”
No one moved.
“My name is Johnny Wolfington! Does that name jog any memories?”
One poor woman in the audience raised her hand. At least someone had heard of me. I pointed to her.
“You’re the man that puts out the cassette tapes of fun songs for kids about life at astronaut camp and then plays at their schools.”
“Coooooooorrrrreeectamundo!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could Opal in the back of the room doubled over with laughter. At least someone was enjoying it.
“And I’m here to sing some songs off of my latest tape, ‘NASA Isn’t Just For Science!’ I’ll be accompanied on ukelele by Johnny Rimshot!”
I changed my voice to a cockney gangster, “Ello ‘der, Johnny.”
“Hello, Johnny!”
“Ah you ready ta’ sing ‘der, Johnny?”
“Are you ready to play Ukelele, Johnny?”
“You betcher bum Iyam.”
It was funny only to myself and Opal that I was having this conversation. It was funny to kids to see a man named Johnny talking to himself as a man named Johnny. These stuffed shirts really were more mortified than anything else. I doubt it would help me book more schools on the private establishment circuit.
And I started. My set was six songs long, starting with “There’s No Gas In NASA,” and rounding out my set with the wonderful opus titled “Brits Can Be Astronauts, Too” where I played Ukelele and Rimshot sang.
I put my ukelele back in the case and carried it down the stairs to even less scattered applause then when I had climbed them. An old man who looked very much like an old James Bond in the tuxedo he was wearing. I almost fell to the floor when he started speaking with a British accent.
Opal was by the drink table.
“Hey, that’s what I do. What uh... What do you think?”
Putting on the air of a stuffy Hepburn, she only responded with, “Simply mahvelous, dahling.”
“Well, since this isn’t a PTA meeting and I don’t have to work anymore, do you want to get out of here? It’s only ten. There’s places open that serve food and things. You do eat, don’t you?”
She turned to face me. “Like, a date?”
“What, are you in third grade or something? Do you want to get food or not?”
She chuckled. “Of course.”
With a final glance over the room and the man announcing the winners of the silent auction, I stepped out with something far more valuable than anything else in the room that night..
-
To be continued...
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