Roadhouse Book Chapter 3 – Getting the OK to Sing

Chapter 3

“Getting the OK to sing”

“Girls!” I yelled from the kitchen, not looking up from the counter on which I was putting the finishing touches on a bologna sandwich. “I told you five minutes ago, it was time to wake up! I don’t want to be late for work again!”

Slipping the sandwiches into an empty plastic bread bag, I walked toward their bedroom. I had turned the light on earlier and tapped them on the shoulders in an effort to wake them.

I realized 6:35 was a little early for little kids to get up in the morning. But I had to get them to the babysitter’s by 7:30, so I could make it to work by 8. Thank goodness they could walk to school from the babysitter’s house or I would have really been up a creek without a paddle, oars or other device to move one about in the water.

I had to leave the newspaper office early three days a week to take them to their tap dance classes, so I couldn’t exactly get away with showing up late, too.

Besides, if I didn’t get them up that early, they’d never finish breakfast, getting dressed, teeth brushing and whatever else it is girls need to do to get ready for a day of school.

Of the three, there was always one straggler.  

“Wendy … Maria … Trista … Get your butts out here and eat your breakfast! Why do we have to go through this same thing every stinkin’ morning?” I added, lowering the volume as I hit the end of the sentence.

My girls just would not get out of bed in the morning. I’d tried everything: bribing them with M&Ms, telling them it was a day they’d get to visit their mother; pleading, cajoling, tickling, saying silly things, yelling and screaming.

Today was about to become a yelling and screaming day. But I tried the seldom-used gross-out tactic first.

“Girls, who wants dead bugs for breakfast? How about sticks in their cereal and snot on their toast?”

At least this time, the response was a chorus of “eeuwwws” instead of the whining and moaning and complaints of “Why do you get us up so early?” and “I’m tired” and “My eyes hurt; turn off the light.”

Not to mention “I hate you” and “I want my mommy.”

However, while the gross-out tactic minimized the whining, it didn’t achieve the desired effect: getting the girls out of bed.

More drastic measures had to be taken.

I tried the tickling, which worked as well as my last attempt. Finally, I just had to drag each one out of bed, one at a time.

First, Wendy, the oldest. I pulled at her legs until her feet reached the floor.

“Come on, get up.” My voice was getting pretty stern by this point.

Shoulders slumped and whining under her breath something about not having to wake up this early at her mother’s, Wendy took her bobbed blonde hair and sour attitude, and moved as slowly as humanly possible into the kitchen.

Maria, my 7-year-old, could fall asleep at a Ted Nugent concert. And she woke up as easily as tranquilized rhino. She enjoyed burying her head under her pillow at wake-up time and pulling it tight over her head. I don’t know how she didn’t overheat under there.

I had to pull her out of bed, too.

She just stood there.

“Well, come on. Wendy’s already in the kitchen,” I said, knowing that what her older sister was doing made no difference to Maria unless it was something cool.

Wendy finally decided she’d eat breakfast if I would pick her up and take her in there.

“Thank you, Cracker,” she said as I lifted her up, long straight brown hair flowing down over her face and shoulders in somewhat of a Cousin Itt style.

I have no idea why she started calling me “Cracker.” I had asked her several times and she just giggled with a sheepish grin, her bright green eyes playing quite the imp. She’s been doing it for a few years, sometimes saying “Crackie Crackie Cracker” or various forms of these words.

By now I was used to it and had stopped asking its origin.

I could deal with some of the whining in the morning, but the screaming that my littlest one pierced my ear drums with every now and then was too much.

And this particular morning, little Trista went too far. When I went to pick the 5-year-old out of bed, she let out a scream that not only temporarily deafened me but also sent pain shooting through my temples.

“Trista Lynn Hart!” I yelled. “Stop that right now!”

Apparently, that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“Stop calling me that!” she yelled. “Leave me alone. I’m stretching.”

“You’re not stretching,” I replied, for some reason thinking that reasoning with an ornery 5-year-old would do some good.

“Come on, get up!” I yelled.

“No!” she screamed, flailing and slamming her little fists down on the bed.

That’s it. I’d had it. While I tried not to spank the girls – in fact, I only spanked Maria twice in her life and Wendy a handful of times – sometimes it seemed necessary. At the very least, the threat of a spanking needed to be laid down.

“If you don’t get into that kitchen right now, you’re going to get a spanking,” I said, hoping again to have hit the right word sequence to solve this morning’s Trista unhappiness puzzle.

“Whatever,” she deadpanned.

Whack! My right hand immediately slapped her square on the cheek … harder than I meant.

It was just a reaction. The second I did it, I wished I hadn’t. I even tried to pull back at the last second. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I didn’t know what else to do.

She crumpled to the floor, crying for a few minutes. I couldn’t tell how much of it was due to pain from the wallop or simply anger because she had received a punishment.

After a few minutes of sobbing, she finally joined us in the kitchen for cereal.

I told Trista I was sorry and gave her a hug and a kiss. She sniffled one last time, looked at me with her red eyes, said “I love you, daddy” and took a spoonful of her cinnamon squares.

I felt awful. Ever since their mother started acting erratically during our marriage, I started to lose my patience more often. At first it was just with Ginny. Later on, I let it affect my relationship with the girls.

There were still plenty of times they did things that needed correcting that were normal for their age and I was able to do what a good parent is supposed to do. But there were other times, I didn’t.

Those times usually came not too long after a spat with their mom or when I was trying to figure out how I was supposed to pay the mortgage when I hadn’t gotten a child support payment in three months.

It wasn’t the girls’ fault, but there were times I let my anger toward their mother manifest itself at home. And when I yelled or spanked for something that really didn’t deserve a spanking, I felt even worse than before.

Sometimes it happened when dingbat cancelled out of her visitation at the last minute or when I was hoping she wouldn’t do that because I had actually decided to make plans.

When I dropped them off at the babysitter’s every Friday morning, it felt like a big weight had been lifted off me. Not that I didn’t love my girls and not that I didn’t usually mind the responsibility of raising them, but when Friday came along, I was pretty sure I’d be able to do what I wanted to for a full 24 hours after I got off work that afternoon.

At least, when the Queen of Sheba actually bothered to pick them after school. Sometimes, their mother decided that it would be a better idea if she didn’t pick them up at all, even though she was supposed to according to our divorce decree.

Not only would she not show up, she wouldn’t bother calling anybody to let them know she wasn’t coming.

There’s nothing like getting a call from the babysitter at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon telling you that dingbat hasn’t shown up again and you have to come and get your kids even though you’re already on your way to a date or an evening of beer and music.

How many times did I have to tell little girls, tears streaming down their faces, that their mother wasn’t coming after all.

“Call her!” they’d beg.

“I did,” I tried to say in a calm voice. “I left her a message.”

“Call her at work!” they’d whine.

“She’s not at work,” I replied, having already tried every number I had for her and not sure she was actually working anywhere.

At least she paid her child support …. most of the time.

Fortunately, Little Miss Muffet had been sticking to her schedule in recent weeks. I guess she must have bagged another husband and didn’t need to ignore her kids to schedule dating time with him. If she was married again, I probably wouldn’t find out for another month or so and the kids would get the news for a few weeks after that.

By the time the Mark Gray Trio returned to Otto’s in early February, I was feeling pretty good the X would pick up the kids as agreed to and I’d be able to hang with my buddies.

With that positive attitude, I drove to work singing along to a few oldies on the radio.

I hadn’t even had my first cup of coffee from the machine at the office when the sports reporter sitting next to me, Brad Corbin, told me the editor was looking for me. He didn’t give any indication as to whether this was a good or bad thing.

When Bill Winter sent out word that he wanted to see somebody, it usually wasn’t good. Good stuff could wait, bad stuff couldn’t.

“Oh, man, what did I do now?” I asked quietly.

“I dunno,” Brad said. “Bill didn’t say. Maybe it’s cause you misquoted the mayor.”

“Nah, I got my butt chewed out for that last week,” I said before making sure to add, “even though that buttmunch told Bill he was just covering his own ass cause he said something he didn’t really want to say.

“I hate it when they say they were misquoted. Damn lying politicians.”

Brian laughed.

“Try dealing with high school sports parents,” he said.

I pondered this a moment as I recalled all the conversations I’d heard Brian have with some of the rabid lunatic parents in town.

“OK, you win,” I said, rolling my eyes. “At least the mayor’s honest about everything out of the public eye.”

Just then I saw Winter’s belly poke around a pillar in the newsroom.

“Hart? Can I see you for a minute?” he said in his best Perry White impersonation.

“Sure, boss,” I said, getting up and heading toward his office.

After I walked in and sat down, he shut the door behind him and sat behind his desk. With his long curly blondish-red hair and long beard, he looked kind of like Santa Claus minus the red suit and hat. Most of the time, he was usually as jolly.

And he liked me, too. He’s the one who convinced me to play on the newspaper’s softball team, put me in left-centerfield and batted me No. 2. And when I belted a three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh to beat Ron’s Pub last year, he treated me like some sort of legend.

The Sentinel Slug had never beaten Ron’s, which always seemed to come up with a 6-foot-4, 250-pound shortstop every year who could hit the ball over the fence. Either they were hiring their bouncers based on their athletic ability or they were ringers.

This Slugs victory, an upset the size of the United States’ Miracle on Ice 1980 Olympic hockey win, earned me respect and adoration all through the newsroom and press room, not to mention several beers, which we made sure to consume at Ron’s the next weekend.

Nearly three years later, Bill still proudly displayed the ball I hit to win that game on a small pedestal on his desk.

But when you screwed up a story, our editor shed his Mr. Bill fun boy persona and became Mr. Winter, taskmaster and lion tamer.

He looked at me for a second. I wasn’t sure if he was expecting some sort of confession or trying to read my attitude. I was clueless.

“What’s the deal with this religion story today?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I tried to recall what might have been wrong with it.

“Come on, this guy is laying his hands on people healing them and casting our demons from their bellies! Doesn’t that sound a little weird to you?”

I had to admit, when the former evangelist told me he had put his hands on his wife and asked God to heal her, it sounded a little odd. And the part about the casting out of demons was a little out there, too. OK, way out there.

But, that’s what they guy said. His wife said he did it, too. So, as a journalist, I have to give their side of the story, right?

Mr. Winter continued.

“This guy’s own family is calling us, asking us not to talk to him again because he’s not all there,” Bill said. “Apparently, he’s on the verge of Alzheimer’s or something. Can you take a little more care in choosing the sources for your stories?”

I thought I had. But I wasn’t in the mood to state my case.

“Um, sure,” I said, hoping that would end the conversation.

“OK, good,” Winter said. “By the way, remind me to take you off those city council meetings on Tuesday nights. They’re switching our softball league to those nights and I need your bat in the lineup.”

“Sure, Bill,” I said, noting with a chuckle that softball came a very close second to the newspaper on his priority list.

On the way back to my desk, that new, really young, really well-endowed reporter who liked to wear short skirts flashed a smile.

“Hi Joe,” Nancy Clark said, eyebrows raised. “Got any demons you need me to get rid of?”

I shook my head.

“Not you, too, Nancy,” I said, rolling my eyes again as I was prone to do in such situations.

She laughed and escorted her body back to her desk, leaving me wishing I were 15 years younger, worked somewhere else and had the guts to ask her out.

Oh well, better not to even think about it, I thought. Besides, I had a few stories to finish before I had the night all to myself and I still needed to get in touch with a couple who celebrates Valentine’s Day in some interesting way for that package of love stories we always do on VD.

When I’d finally finished up for the day, I picked up my briefcase and announced t those in my general location that I’d be headed to Otto’s for a few libations and a pretty cool band.

“Anybody who wants to join me is welcome,” I said, trying to make sure Nancy was one of those in earshot. Mixing beer and cute women might produce an interesting combination. It never really had in the past, but there was always hope.

“Sorry Joe,  my wife is making me go to Indianapolis for some play or something,” Corbin said. “All I know is it’s gonna cost me.”

“I see where I rate, Brad. Well, I’m going to see if they’ll let me sing with them sometime.”

“I didn’t know you sang,” said our photographer, Scooter, as he passed by.

His real name was Mike Sarvino. But I named him “Scooter” because he was so little. He couldn’t have been any taller than 5-7 and if he weighed 100 pounds, you’d have fooled me.

“Well, I haven’t … yet. But I think these guys will let me. The guitar player is a friend of mine.”

“I’d like to see that,” Scooter said. “But I have a basketball game to shoot tonight.”

“You’re just afraid of beer and broads,” I taunted. “You don’t want to take them home in your little Scooter car and give them a taste of your little Scooter lovin’.”

“Yeah right,” was all he could muster, his little Scooter face turning bright red and walking on.

Looked like I was going to Otto’s alone again tonight. Oh well, at least I knew I’d have somebody to talk to if the chick pickin’ up thing didn’t work out again.

I made sure to get to Otto’s early this time. I wanted to have dinner done before my band started and wanted to block out some chat time with them if they were so inclined. So I got there about 6, three hours before gig time.

I brought along a couple of books on the Green Bay Packers that I figured Tom might like to borrow.

They were doing a sound check when I walked in.

Tom was entrenched in Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” guitar solo when he saw me walk in. A smile spread across his face and he yelled out to me.

“Hey Joe, where ya goin’ with that gun in your hand?” he said into the mike.

“I’m going to shoot my old lady,” I yelled back. “I caught her messin’ around with another man,” I laughed as I completed the “Hey Joe” lyric.

Tom scrapped the solo and told me he’d always wanted to say that to somebody named Joe. I said I’d heard it a few times, but it was better than having everybody ask if they could have a cup of me or if I was just an average me. Those were way old.

Of course, my best line for the ladies was usually “Come on, have a Hart.”

I was going to try “expose yourself to Hart” once, but that seemed a little crude. So, I left it on the cutting room floor.

“Hey, I bought a couple Packer books for you,” I told Joe.

“Awesome, brother!” his eyes opening up wide at the sight of the books. “I don’t know how soon I can return them, I’ve been kind of busy with the band and painting houses. Maybe I should just borrow one for now.”

“Nah, go ahead,” I said. “I’ve read them both. Take your time.”

“Wow, man, that’s really nice of you,” he said.

“Where’d Mark and Scott go?” I asked, looking into their recent disappearance.

“Oh, they went back to Mark’s hotel room to rest a while,” Tom said. “Mark always gets a hotel room wherever we go, even if we’re only 20 minutes from his house. … Don’t ask,” he added, shaking his head.

“I just feel like hanging out here and drinking. How about you?”

You didn’t have to ask me twice.

Tom and I sat down at the bar, downing beer after beer. I don’t think either of us meant to drink as much as we did, but whenever either of us were close to being done with one, Angie brought us two fresh ones. Fresh is good.

And besides, we were both going to be there all night.

“Dude, I invited some people form work out tonight but I don’t know if they’re gonna show,” I said. “I think they hate me.”

Tom shook his head.

“No way, dude! Who doesn’t like you?”

“Should I start naming them off? My ex, my boss, all attractive women, blah, blah, blah,” I droned, taking a sip of Miller Genuine Draft. “Oh OK, maybe hate is a strong word. They just don’t care for me. How’s that?”

“Well that just all kinds of wrong,” Tom said before gulping down the final swallows of his Miller Lite and motioning to Angie to get us another round. “In fact, that’s so many kinds of wrong … it’s a bunch of levels of wrong.”

“The only people in their right minds are left-handed,” I replied, not really worrying whether it followed logically from Tom’s assessment of things.

“And being right is all wrong if you’re left-handed,” Tom countered.

I have no idea why but that reminded me of a Monty Python sketch for some reason in which a guy wants some guards to keep his son in a room until he returns. But the guards just don’t get it.

“Stay in this room until I return,” I said, wondering if Tom had seen “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

“And don’t let anyone else in,” he said quickly, laughing.

“Don’t let anyone else in except him,” I said. I had no idea if we were actually saying the lines from the movie right, but we quickly moved on to other  Monty python sketches.

“Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam,” we both chanted. “Wonderful Spam, beautiful Spam.”

Angie turned toward us.

“I hope you guys aren’t thinking of playing that song tonight,” she said, hands on hips, eyebrows raised.

“We’re doing the whole Monty Python soundtrack,” Tom said, sounding quite serious.

I laughed and added, “Yeh, and then they’re gonna play a whole set of surf music.”

She pointed at us.

“You have got to be the world’s biggest goofballs.”

“What do you expect from a couple of Cheeseheads?” I asked.

Tom wasn’t a Cheesehead by birth. But he had become one through his love for the greatest football team in the land. So, I allowed him to call himself one.

“Hey, Tom, I ran across Lambeau Field after a game one time.”

“No way,” he said. “When?”

“Back in 1971, my dad got tickets to a preseason game in Green Bay and took me for my birthday,” I recalled. “That was two years after he promised to take me ice fishing, which he never did. …But I digress.”

Tom put his beer down and looked intently at me as I told my story.

“The game was against the New York Giants and it ended in a 31-31 tie and we were going around the concourse toward the exit afterward. Well, we got to the end with the tunnel leading to the field and you could look down the tunnel where the players go to the field and you could see that big green grass of Lambeau stretching from goalpost to goalpost.”

You could tell Tom was enjoying this story as he inched closer to the edge of the barstool and his eyes kept getting wider and wider.

“Well, my dad looks at me and he says ‘Joe, why don’t you run down the ramp just like Paul Hornung used to?’ He meant to just go to the bottom of the ramp and come right back. I didn’t know that.

“Well, I started running down the ramp and picked up speed and when I hit the bottom of the ramp, I was going full speed and I never stopped. I ran right through the end zone, down the middle of the field, over the big ‘G’ at the 50-yard-line, right on to the opposite end zone.”

“Cool, man!” was all Tom could say.

“There were only a couple of fans left in the stands and I remember they all stood up and were clapping their hands for me and cheering me on. I ran all the way around the opposite goalpost, turned around and ran all the way back to my dad, who was kind of red faced.

“Man, did my side hurt. I had too many Pepsis. My side killed me until we got to my aunt and uncle’s house that night.”

“That’s awesome, dude!” Tom beamed. “You’re lucky you didn’t get tackled by security guards.”

“Yeh, you couldn’t do that these days,” I said. “You’d probably end up in Brown County lockup in an orange jumpsuit.”

I think I became Tom’s idol that day. Or so I figured.

Otto’s had gotten fairly filled by that point, as had our bellies with beer. No wonder we were spouting off lines from shows and movies, not caring one stinking iota whether they were right or even coherent.

Fortunately, Tom was going to have to play soon and I was going to pay more attention to the band than the beer the rest of the night. So, we’d be somewhat sobered up by the time it was time to drive home.

Angie brought Tom the half rack of ribs he had ordered and I settled into the biggest  Greek salad this side of Athens just as Mark and Scott finally came walking in the back door.

“Hey Tommy, what have you guys been talking about? The Green Bay Packers again?” Scott winced, as he came over to shake my hand.

“Yeh, we’ve been talking a little football,” Tom said. “Something you don’t know anything about.”

Scott cocked his head and smiled. He wasn’t exactly the biggest football fan in the world, but did have a real knowledge of the Doors, Rolling Stones, Beatles and other such rock bands.

“Oh, the green bean pickers, huh?”

“What?” I asked.

“You know … Green Bay Packers … green bean pickers,” he said again, slowing down this time.

“Oh, very funny,” I said waving him off with my hand. “What’s your team? The Cincinnati Bungles?”

“Nah, that’s Mark’s team,” Scott said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “The cheerleaders gave him an autographed picture once and that was it. He was all over that.”

On cue, we all looked for Mark, who was found schmoozing some 50-year-old blonde at a booth, looking to find some company for his hotel room later.

“Hey Mark!” Scott yelled at his cousin. “We better start earning that paycheck. It’s 5 after 9 already.”

Mark gave his new friend a peck on the cheek and headed toward the stage, stopping at the bar on the way only long enough to grab the Bud Light that Angie had placed there just a moment earlier.

Scott and Tom rolled their eyes, shook their heads and followed Mark to the stage.

“Welcome to Otto’s everybody,” Mark said as he sat down on his stool behind the drum set. “We’re the Mark Gray Trio and we hope you like oldies.”

“Cause we’re oldies,” Scott added immediately.

“We’re so old, we’re older than dirt,” Tom said.

It wasn’t really funny, but I smiled a bit because Tom looked over at me. I don’t think anybody else noticed.

“We’ll be here until 1 a.m.,” Mark continued. “If you have any requests, just let us know. Our play list is up here on the stage and we’ve also got CDs for sale. We recorded it right here at Otto’s a few months ago.”

CDs? I didn’t know these guys had a CD out. Cool. I made a mental note to myself to pick one up that night.

And hey, maybe that would be my excuse to write a story about these guys for the paper. I mean, how many bands record live CDs in Shelbyville, Indiana?

Mark struck his drumsticks together as he counted off the opening song.

“1, 2, 3, 4.”

The guys started in on John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good,” which kind of reminded me of my head. I wasn’t used to drinking this much anymore. Used to be I’d drink all night and not feel much of anything until the next morning.

But after the kids were born, I cut back quite a bit. After the divorce I quit drinking when I had the kids at home altogether. And since Miss Twinkletoes hardly ever had them, the only time I really drank was Friday nights. So, it didn’t take as much to make me feel a little buzzed.

I didn’t usually hang out all night at Otto’s either. Most Fridays, I’d have two beers with dinner and maybe a third afterward, talking to Angie and fantasizing about her.

I didn’t want to be one of those other “stalkers,” a term she used almost endearingly toward the guys who would hit on her all night.

So, I’d leave before it got too crazy and head to the discount stores before going home and checking my dating Web sites to see if I had any more messages from obese women who smoked three packs a day and posted 5-year-old pictures of themselves when they were much slimmer.

It also used to be that I thought I needed to have a few drinks in me to have a good time. Growing up, I didn’t have too high of an opinion of myself, thought I was dorky and didn’t speak unless spoken to.

I started out OK, but the older I got, the dorkier and more withdrawn I got. Dorky glasses, dorky braces, dorky hair, dork, dork, dork.

It took a lot of effort and a big scare to start turning things around. Thought I was just about there when I got married.

But Ginny was so messed up. Wish I’d have known. I wouldn’t have slept with her. But after being completely socially inept with women for so many years, she was the first real sexual partner I’d had. So, I made up for lost time.

The baby came and I convinced myself I loved Ginny. If only I’d have known what that woman was really like. I have to admit she put up a good façade for a few years. I swore she actually loved me there for a while.

Oh well, that was over. I just had to deal with all the crap that came with getting divorced from someone whose motives were always selfish. At times, I wondered if it was worse to be married to her or divorced from her.

It also made me wonder if I’d ever trust a woman enough again to get married again. The only reason I hung on to my marriage as long as I did was because I knew what the kids would have to go through with parents who didn’t live together.

Maybe that’s why I never asked Angie out. Maybe that’s why I never really asked anybody out and just met a few women from time to time from the dating sites. Those things never worked out for more than a date or two. It seemed pretty pointless and hopeless most of the time.

Even when I met someone who seemed nice, I’d talk for a while and let it go at that … never ask for a phone number. I gave mine out to a beautiful woman with long black hair and dark skin I saw dancing at a club in Indianapolis shortly after I got divorced.

We made eye contact and I managed to scrawl “you’re hot” on a business card and hand it to her as she and her cowboy partner got off the dance floor.

I eventually forgot about it. About a month later, I got a call from some woman speaking broken English and some sort of Latin accent.

“Thees ees Joe?”

“Yes? Who is this?”

“You give your card to my friend,” the voice said. “She not speak English. I visit from Brazil and she ask me call you.”

Turned out that the woman I was so enamored with was visiting her sister north of Indy for a few months. Claudete and I dated a while despite the language barrier as I taught her some English and she taught me some Portuguese.

A few years later, all I remembered to say in Portuguese was “beer,” “restroom” and “handcuffs.” The Spanish I learned visiting Cancun a few years before that helped a bit.

She decided she loved me like a brother, not a husband, however. I loved her like a wife. At least I thought I did. You’re never in your right mind after a divorce.

The only women I was meeting in real life were at work, at my daughters’ dance lessons or Girl Scout meetings and discount store checkout ladies. All of them were either married, unappealing or off limits.

I never met anybody at Otto’s I really wanted to date seriously. OK, there was Angie. Something told me that that wouldn’t work out. But I thought about it a lot.

The band wasn’t too far into its first set when I started heard my name sung over the mike. I couldn’t quite tell what context “Joe Hart” had been used in, but I turned toward the stage to see if I could pick up any clues.

Tom was just smiling and singing the Stones’ “Wild Horses” like he always did. Scotty wasn’t paying attention to hardly anything but his keyboards and Mark was keeping time like always, cigarette ashes falling between his thighs to the floor as he drummed.

One couple and a few single females on the dance floor. Nothing unusual.

I started paying a little more attention to the guys to see if this phenomenon would repeat itself.

All of a sudden, there it was again. This time, I caught the line.

Tom looked right at me, raised his eyebrows under that black bandana covering his bald head, and sang, “wild horses couldn’t drag Joe away from you.”

I shook my head and laughed. Cool.

After the first break, Tom told me to come over and sit at a table near the dance floor.

“Come on. Hang us, dude,” he said, motioning me over.

He sat down at a table with two pretty ladies, one with long blonde hair and glasses and the other with long dark hair and big brown eyes. They had come in during the first set.

Tom introduced me to the blonde, his wife, Tracy Jo, and the brunette, her mostly deaf friend, Linda. I later found out Linda could hear just a little. She could read lips pretty well, but Tracy Jo used sign language with Linda because she liked the practice. She signed for deaf people at church, too.

Mark and Scott came over and stood behind Tom.

 “Joe’s a newspaper reporter,” Tom told the ladies.

“Oh, really? Here in Shelbyville?” Tracy Jo asked.

“Yeh, I was thinking about writing a story about the guys for the paper here since they recorded the CD here,” I said.

“Oh, cool, man,” Tom said.

“That would be great,” Mark said, with Scotty nodding his approval. “We could use some publicity. We’ve been together 2½ years, have a CD and a Web site and play almost every weekend. But nobody writes about us.”

“Well, I will,” I told Mark. “I can’t guarantee the editor will run the story. But at least I can write it. I don’t know why they wouldn’t run it.”

“Hey, that would be awesome, brother,” Tom beamed.

He went on to tell the girls my life story.

“Joe’s raising three little girls by himself and he likes the Packers,” were the main points he had to make.

During the second set, the girls got up to dance a few times. I just sat and tapped my foot, sang along and drank. There were a few times I felt like getting up to dance but I held back.

I guess I finally had enough to drink by the final set because I got up to dance without even being asked. I felt kind of odd, but the dance floor was crammed with all sorts of folks by that time.

MGT was pumping out all the dance songs – “Gimme Three Steps,” “Twist and Shout,” “Mony, Mony” – and all the drunks were eating it up. Unfortunately, I could include myself in that category that night.

I didn’t like it really. It just happened.

When Angie called out last call, the guys slowed it down with Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” a mushy love song if ever I heard one. But I liked the guitar.

Tracy Jo and Linda sat down, too.

Linda leaned over to me, touched me gently on the forearm and said something.

“Oh, no, I don’t dance much.”

I shook my head, thinking she asked me if I liked dancing.

Tracy Jo came over to me a second later and told me that Linda was actually asking me to dance.

“Oops.”

So I turned back to Linda and asked her if she wanted to dance. I figured the chances were pretty good of her saying yes.

I held her closely as we moved slowly on the dance floor, a few other couples to stumble around. I wasn’t sure if I was interested in her or not. Too early to tell. Hard to really talk to anyone much in Otto’s, especially when you’re paying most of your attention to the music.

The girls left when the guys were done. I hung around to tear down, as would become a routine.

“Hey Tom,” I said when we were trying to fit everything into the bed of his truck.

“What is it, brother?”

“Do you think I could sing ‘Roadhouse’ sometime when you guys set up? I did it once in karaoke and always wanted to sing it with a band sometime.”

I figured he’d say something like they were professionals and they had this contract and they couldn’t let anyone else up on stage without waivers and forms signed in triplicate and proof that I was a member of the singers union.

I was completely shocked when he said “sure, any time.”

“Cool. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

Roadhouse Book Chapter 1 – Meeting the Band

Chapter 1

“Meeting the band”

I pried the curtains apart with my index finger to take a peek outside. The window fogged up as I got close and breathed too close to it. I wiped away the fog with my shirt sleeve to see a typical central Indiana snowstorm: plenty of huge snowflakes falling gently.

With the moon just a sliver and the sky cloudy, it would have been a black night sky if not for the flakes, which became shockingly bright when they plunged through the yellowish glow of the only streetlight in front of the house.

“Damn snow,” I mumbled to myself as rolled my eyes and removed my finger from the curtains, allowing them to close again.

I turned and quickly surveyed the living room. Piles of clean laundry sat on a couch, separated into three haystacks for each of my daughters. My clothes — jeans, dress slacks, white cotton socks, the whole array separated but not yet folded either — were draped over the back of the couch.

Several papers were strewn on the coffee table: a half-colored-in peacock that had been ripped out of a coloring book, someone’s homework assignment on the letter ‘R’ and others. Interspersed candy wrappers made it quite a colorful mess, I must admit.

A semicircle of open DVD cases, some with discs still in them, was haphazardly arranged in front of the television. A few videotapes had managed to make their way down from the shelves to join them.

The toy box up against the wall was overflowing like a volcano that had been spewing lava for quite some time. Stuffed animals and a yo-yo oozed over the sides and onto the floor.

I stooped to pick up the small stuffed monkey, rescuing him from certain third-degree burns from whatever might spill out next. I tossed him on the couch next to “Operation” and “Life,” which for some unknown reason hadn’t made it back to the game closet.

At least the Brett Favre autographed poster and the Green Bay Packer stock certificate that flanked the mirror above the fireplace were unscathed. Don’t know what this Cheesehead would do if anything happened to my mementos from my home state.

“Damn kids.”

I’d seen worse rooms … at the fraternity the morning after a night of a big party. But why couldn’t I get these girls to start picking up after themselves?

You’d think by the time a girl was 9, as my oldest was, they’d kind of pick that up. Don’t girls have some sort of innate ability in that area? Aren’t they natural cleaner-uppers?

If little girls have to have that behavior modeled for them by a responsible, adult female in the house, I was in trouble. Their mother split five years before and I was as far from getting married again as a devout Hindu is from eating beef.

I mean, come on, who wants to date a 42-year-old single father of three girls between 5 and 9? Nobody!

Not that I really had time for romance anyway. Tonight is the first night in the past two weeks that the Tattooed Bike Chick from Hell has found time to see her kids. She probably let her ink dude have a night to himself finally. I’m sure he needed a break.

In any event, I was determined to take advantage of the situation. It had been a while since I’d had a few beers and checked out the band at the local watering tough.

So, I left the debacle that was my living room and headed to the bedroom to get rid of my work clothes and put on something a little more appropriate. Besides, maybe I’ll meet the next Mrs. Hart there.

You can’t dress too flashy for a small town bar like Otto’s. This ain’t no Studio 54. Heck, it’s not even downtown Milwaukee during disco and new wave. Usually, there’s plenty of gun racks in the back of the 4×4s and Harleys in the parking lot.

Considering the weather, some of the bikers may have stayed home. Then again, they may have just borrowed their friend’s pickup.

I still felt a little overdressed in my blue jeans, black work boots, and black-collared shirt with a gray Green Bay Packers T-shirt underneath.

“Damn Colts fans,” I thought to myself.

Squinting through the windshield of my white minivan, I pulled onto the pot-holed gravel of Otto’s parking lot.

Otto’s two neon beer signs were lit up in each of the windows to the side of the double door. But the main sign’s second “O” had been out at least a month, so most of the locals had started calling the place “Ott’s.”

Otto, a 6-foot-3, 280-pound man whose restaurant/bar combo was the joy of his life, was not mused. His face would turn red any time he heard “Ott’s,” but he didn’t want to drive any customers away, so he’d usually just go sulk back in the kitchen or take a short walk in the parking lot.

I shuffled quickly through the snow trying to figure out what song the band was playing as I neared the entrance.

It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it … if you get drunk enough or some woman asks you, I thought. I tended to amuse myself at every opportunity.

I pulled at the handle of the left door. As usual, it failed to produce the desired result. Why can’t  I remember that the left door doesn’t open from the outside? I’ve been here often enough by now.

“Damn door,” I said as I pulled at the right handle, immediately smelling the cigarette smoke I so loathed.

“Cancer City,” as I called it when the smoke got to me, which was just about every time I showed up there, was a place you had to put up with if you’re going to hear any good music in this town. Otto’s may not have been the only bar in Shelbyville, but it’s the only one that booked real bands on weekends, not just any old knob with a guitar and enough guts to get heckled in front of a bunch of rednecks.

Being that the good bands came to Otto’s, that where I went. The beer wasn’t any cheaper or colder, the urinals no cleaner, the clientele no better behaved or better looking and the ventilation just as horrid. But the food was decent and the live music on Friday nights was usually good.

Like this particular night.

I recognized the sound when I was still outside. The Mark Gray Trio had a pretty full sound for just three old farts. And they rocked!

The guitar player was excellent. Tom Johnson was as good a blues and rock guitar man as I’d seen in some time. I bet he could have held his own in some of those Chicago blues joints I’d frequented when I lived there.

Tom did most of the singing, too, and liked to inject a few shouts, “cha cha chas” and other things to liven up the room.

But more than that, he just looked like he was always having fun. Sometimes, guys made playing music look like such an arduous task, like it’s a real job or something. If Tom Johnson saw these gigs as a job, you would never have known it by the way he acted. You could see he wanted to do a good job, but he was never was so serious about himself that he forgot why he was there … for the entertainment of us poor slobs.

Between sets, he always said hi to everyone with a genuine smile on his face.

And this from a 45-year-old guy who looked like he’d been through his share of wild times. You’d expect more of a scowl or bad attitude from a big dude dressed all in black with dragon tattoos on the inside of his forearms, a face that hadn’t been shaven in at least three or four days, white stubble threatening to turn into a beard at any moment.

The band’s namesake and gig acquirer was a 50-year-old drummer with a scraggly white beard, a voice that emanated from the depths of a gravel pit, a fairly decent size belly and a weakness for old blondes and Bud Light. For that matter, Mark Gray also had a weakness for young blondes, middle age brunettes and redheads of any age, too.

He also occasionally mistook himself for Willie Nelson. Or at least a Willie Nelson in denim shorts, a muscle shirt and moccasin slippers.

“Willie’s in the house,” he’d say into the microphone before launching into his crackly version of “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.”

OK, so it wasn’t my favorite song they did. But it went over well with this crowd.

No, my favorite tune these guys did was “Roadhouse Blues,” and old Doors tune.

Mark’s cousin, Scott, who probably contributed to half the smoke in Otto’s by himself, did double duty on his keyboards, adding the bass that was missing by not having a bass player. Whenever he started the thumping bass line to “Roadhouse,” with a cigarette naturally perched between his first two fingers, my heart began to race.

I’d considered myself the second coming of Joe Morrison more than once, immersing myself in his poetry and his band’s music to the point where I had signed all of my high school friends’ yearbooks with a lyric from a Doors song and started writing (bad) poetry and lyrics.

And hearing this band do live the only song I ever had the nerve to sing karaoke gave me hopes that maybe someday I could live out that Morrison fantasy.

The Mark Gray Trio, MGT for short, was in the midst of a medley of ’60’s rock ‘n’ roll standards when strode past the restaurant portion of the joint and squeezed my way to the bar. Luckily, there was a stool available with a good view of a TV behind the bar and the stage and dance floor when I turned around.

I sat down, nodding to the guys occupying the seats next to mine. I’d seen them here many times before, along with the usual cast of nameless regulars.

To my left was T.J., the biggest Doors fan, other than myself, that I’d met. Unfortunately, that’s all he ever talked about. And since he had that stroke a few years ago and the left side of his body went limp, you could hardly understand what he was saying.

Combine that was what had to be a history of psychedelic drug use in the ’60s and current alcohol use, talking to T.J. was pretty much impossible.

He had his black Doors T-shirt on again — wonder if he ever washed it – and his denim shirt was unbuttoned. The dark blue parka that had gone out of style when I was in junior high was draped over the back of his chair.

He nodded back at me.

“Hey,” he said, pulling his cigarette away form his lips and letting out a little puff of smoke.

“Hey,” I nodded back, hoping he wouldn’t try to engage me in any discussions until I had a translator handy.

He didn’t. Was off in his own little world again.

I turned to my right and there was the big ol’ biker boy, Billy, himself. His back was turned to me as he pawed at some 50-year-old chick in a very revealing pink Harley top with spaghetti straps. By the looks of it, she had never been very fond of bras.

All I saw of Billy was the black leather vest that covered his massive upper body with graying dirty blonde hair falling out from under the back of the blue handkerchief he had tied over his head.

He believed in showing off his tattooed biceps. Tonight was no exception. The Charlie Brown tattoo, complete with a one-finger salute of the vulgar kind and a bubble over his head saying “There Ain’t No Rules!” was always a vivid reminder that Billy was in fact in the house.

Lock your doors. Hide the women and children.

“Hey Joe,” I heard a familiar voice shout from behind the U-shaped bar. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Corona, right?”

Well, well, well … now here was a rose among thorns.

Other than the band, this was the only other reason I’d found to come to Otto’s.

Angie was the prettiest, friendliest bartender I’d ever met. Heck, she was just about the prettiest, friendliest woman I’d ever met.

I turned away from Billy and checked her out quickly. She had her long black hair tied up in a pony tail tonight. A very good look for her. She had the most honest big brown eyes I’d ever seen.

Eyes are the doorway to the soul. That’s how I read people. And Angie’s eyes told me she ranked right up there near the top in integrity and honesty. Unlike a few people I’d met in here since Otto bought the place a few years ago.

The red Otto’s T-shirt was pulled tight across her chest and tied in a knot behind her, leaving just the slightest sliver of flat stomach exposed. When she bent over to get the beer out of the cooler, you could see just a glimpse of the small of her back above her tight-fitting faded blue jeans.

I never saw her outside the bar, so I have no idea whether she dressed like this just to get guys to spend more or if she liked to tease us 24/7.

She wasn’t giggly like some of the waitresses in the place. There was kind of a maturity about Angie that you didn’t see in most people who weren’t even born when I graduated from high school.

She was still playful, though. She liked to flirt and smile and laugh whenever any of us told one of our stupid, sometimes off-color jokes.

Oh, to be 15 years younger. Oh well, flirting will have to do. No way she’d be interested in me.

“Yes, maam,” I replied with a soft smile, hoping she’d get all flittery inside but not expecting it in the least.

“You’ve got it, darlin’,” she said in that Southern accent that creeps into central Indiana speech quite often.

She turned around and bent over, slowly pulling the clear bottle up out of the icy water. Did she know what she was doing to me? Hey, I didn’t need any more incentive to buy a beer or make sure she got a decent tip.

She was nice enough and worked hard enough that she’d already earned that. This, however, was pure torture.

I think I managed to compose myself before she took a quick look over her shoulder back in my direction before turning her whole self around and walking over with my beer.

“Now, how come you’ve been such a stranger?” she asked as she put the beer down on a napkin on front of me and plugged the top with a small slice of lime.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head slightly.

“Dufushead hasn’t been taking her visitation. She finally took the kids tonight.”

“Well, will miracles ever cease?! Hallelujah!” she shouted with a big grin.

Angie reach across the bar and patted me solidly on the shoulder.

“Good for you, Joe,” she added.

“Well, you’ve got my favorite band here, too,” I told her. “I like just about every song these guys do. But I never know when they’re going to be here unless I drive by and Otto feels like putting the bands on the sign.

“It took me two times seeing them just to figure out there name wasn’t ‘Gray’”

Angie chuckled softly.

“Otto likes to abbreviate, honey,” she explained. “That way, he doesn’t have to pay somebody for two hours each week to change the sign. It only takes 15 minutes.”

She leaned over the bar and said quietly, “Have to save the big bucks for the bartenders, darlin’.” She winked and laughed and started to move on to another customer.

“Hey, Angie,” I called to her. “Can I get some Mozzerella sticks?”

“Anything for you, Mr. Cheese-head,” she laughed.

If anyone could have sighed any deeper than I did right then, it would have been listed in Guinness Book of World Records.

I pushed the lime wedge down into the beer, plugged the top with my thumb and turned the bottle slowly upside down. Somebody told me once that doing that will get the lime flavor evenly distributed throughout the entire 12 ounces. It’s amazing the scientific discoveries made in a bar.

I grabbed my beer, took a sip and turned my chair around toward the stage and small dance floor, where I saw a few pretty good looking women shaking their bodies to a raucous rendition of “Mony, Mony.”

“Wake it shake it, Mony, Mony,” Tom shouted as the women flung their arms into the air. They also displayed their ability to follow directions as they shook every bit of body they had. In some case, that was a very good thing, making for some very good eye candy.

In other cases, it was just plain wrong. A woman whose body continues to perform the wiggling Jell-O dance well after the impetus for such quivering has ended should find alternate dances. I hear ballroom dancing is making quite a comeback.

Fortunately, the ones with shapes most pleasing to my own particular tastes caught my eye most of the time.

Suddenly, I caught sharp pain in the side. Recoiling slightly, I jerked around to see Billy’s red bulbous nose staring me right in the face and his elbow leaving my ribcage.

Now, a lot of folks who came into Otto’s drove motorcycles, and as far as I could tell, most of them were decent folks. Even if some of them did have some piercings in some strange places and tattoos that I wouldn’t have shown off in public.

Billy was not one of them. Billy was what you think of when you start thinking of Altamont. Billy wasn’t quite a Hells Angel, but he wasn’t the most polite person in Shelbyville either.

He was drunk and/or angry most of the time anybody saw him, disowned by his father, who had been Shelbyville’s most successful banker.

His way of telling you he could tolerate you was by punching you in the arm, calling you “chief” and suggesting that you were less than a man if you couldn’t drink as much as he could. Of course, nobody could do that, nor wanted to, so Billy was always the manliest man in the place.

At least, the way he figured it, he was.

“Hey, dude, these bastards are pretty damn good!” he yelled, slurring the words and spraying some recently imbibed whiskey into my face. The rest dribbled down his chin.

I took off my glasses, wiped them off with a napkin and replaced them upon my nose. Billy had no clue he was the cause of that.

I was going to choose my words carefully, then decided not to say anything about Billy’s social faux paus whatsoever. Best not to take any chances, I thought.

It didn’t take much to rile him up, especially if he thought you were trying to show how you were better than he was. You wanted to tell him to grow up. But I guess after 45 or 50 years, if someone has decided they didn’t want to grow up there was nothing anybody could do about it.

“Yeh, this is the only band that comes in here I can stomach,” I said, trying as hard as I could to avoid eye contact, which was difficult since his face was still way too close to mine for comfort.

I would have much preferred he turn his attention back to the floozy he was getting cozy with earlier. But I think she has led the most recent invasion of the women’s restroom by allied troops.

I looked over to the restrooms and saw her lead the retreat back to her seat.

“Thank goodness,” I thought to myself, doing some quick thinking.

“Nice girl.” I raised my eyebrows and sent my eyes in her direction hoping Billy’s eyes would follow.

“She don’t suck too much,” Billy laughed heartily and slapped my back rather strongly as the short blonde .

But once she caught his eye, he forgot all about me and started hanging all over her again, the best thing to happen to me since Angie left went to the kitchen to order my deep friend artery cloggers with marinara sauce.

It was about time for Angie to return with my muchies, and right on cue, she tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey, hon. Your food’s up. And here’s a fresh Corona for ya.”

There was something so pure and good about her touch. I got that deep down satisfying feeling from it. Not like the lustful thoughts that always dominated my mind when I saw other attractive women. All I could think about when I saw the women on the dance floor was sex.

With Angie, it was different. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure making love to Angie would have been awesome. But that’s what it would have had to be … making love, not having sex. There’s a big difference.

The band was finishing up Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and Tom was in top form. A “cha cha cha” here or there. A request that “somebody scream!” that was always obliged by a few folks. He’d throw in the name of one of the waitresses in appropriate places just to personalize things.

Mark also liked to goof, introducing the other guys as being from Los Angeles, Calif., or Muscle Shoals, Ala., or Nashville or some other supposed hotbed of musical talent even though they all hailed from parts south and east of Indianapolis in the Hoosier State.

I don’t know that anyone really paid attention to that crap anyway.

“Thank you very much,” Mark’s gravely voice said. “We’re gonna take a short break and be back in about 20 minutes.”

He pointed a drum stick out into the hazy air.

“Don’t forget to tip your waitresses – Brandi and … um, it’s …Danielle, right?”

Scott leaned toward Mark from behind his keyboards. “Yeh, Mark, that’s it, Danielle. And don’t forget Angie.”

“Oh, and Angie behind the bar, too. Thanks, we’re the Mark Gray Trio.”

The girls on the dance floor whopped it up and gave the band a big applause while most at the bar either ordered another drink or took off for the restroom.

I got into my cheese sticks as the guys stepped off the stage.

A few minutes later, when I was finishing off the last morsel of marinara-covered cheese, I noticed the guys in the band had taken over the area that Billy and his latest lust interest had vacated.

Angie was taking their orders.

“I’ve never had the cheese sticks,” Tom said. “How are they?”

Angie motioned to me with her head.

“Ask him, hon. He’s a real live Cheesehead. He knows about stuff like that. I’m just a corn-fed Hoosier gal. Don’t know nothin’ ’bout any cheese.”

She laughed.

“A real live Cheesehead, huh?” Tom asked. “My grandparents used to take us up to Wisconsin when I was a kid.”

“Oh yeh? I grew up there,” I replied.

“I got to be a big Packer fan cause we used to stop in Green Bay every year and watch training camp. But I’ve never actually been inside the stadium.”

“Cool,” I said as I undid a few buttons on my shirt to reveal the big Packer logo underneath. “I own stock.”

Tom’s face lit up.

“No way, dude! That’s awesome!”

He ordered the cheese sticks and introduced me to Mark and Scott before engaging me in a discussion of our favorite football team.

Meanwhile, Scott and Mark alternated puffing on cigarettes, dipping tenderloin chunks in a white substance known at Otto’s as tiger sauce (don’t even go there) and sucking down light beer.

After finishing their food, the guys started back to the stage for the second of three sets.

“You sticking around for a while?” Tom asked me.

“I’m here all night unless some chick picks me up, which has never happened before,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“Cool, I’ll talk to you after the next set.”

The guys hit the stage again and launched into some blues with Tom doing a great Jimi Hendrix impersonation on “Red House,” including playing with his teeth. OK, there was no guitars lit on fire or playing between his legs – he was a little big for that – but the tone and timing and everything else was quite impressive.

The more I sat there listening, the more I found myself singing along. The more I kept drinking the more I thought that this was something I could do on stage someday. Maybe they’d let me sing “Roadhouse” after they set up or something, before the crowds got in there.

Wouldn’t want to scare the paying customers away later on, you know.

Maybe Princess Patricia would actually take the kids early one Friday so I could try it out. Something to keep in the back of my mind anyway. I mean, I’d just met these guys. I couldn’t ask to do a song with them yet.

When they took their second break, Scott and Tom came over and we started talking about football and music, two of my passions.

“Hey, I love the way you guys do ‘Roadhouse Blues,’” I told Scott. “You play bass on the keyboard just like Ray Manzarek did with the Doors.”

“You know Lonnie Mack played on that didn’t you?” Scott said.

“He did?”

I had no idea the famed Indiana guitar wizard had ever played with the Doors.

Scott took a drag of his cigarette and nodded. “He’s the guy that Morrison’s talking about when he goes ‘Do it Lonnie, do it’ on the record.”

“No way,” I shook my head. “He says ‘Do it, Robbie,’” cause Robbie Krieger was the guitar player.”

“That’s what a lot of people think,” Scott replied. “But it was Lonnie Mack. Next time you listen to it, really listen. You’ll hear it.”

“I’ve listened to that song hundreds of times,” I said. “I always hear ‘Robbie’”

Tom just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know, but if Scotty says it’s true, it probably is,” he said.

“Well OK. I’ll Google it online tomorrow,” I said. “I’m sure it’s on the Internet somewhere.

“Can you guys play that tonight?”

“Sure, anything, buddy,” Scott said.

“We’ll do the extended dance club mix party version for ya, brother,” Tom said with a laugh. “We never know how that song is gonna turn out.”

“Cool,” I said, trying to determine if anyone other than my biological brothers had ever really called me “brother” before.

The crowd continued to fill Otto’s with smoke and its stomachs with liquor. I probably had a beer too many. But I was having fun and I didn’t want to leave.

The final set roared with dance tunes as the women convinced some of the men to join them on the dance floor. The guys had either lost their inhibitions through alcohol or figured that if they didn’t hook up with someone now, they’d be going home alone again.

The women weren’t aiming to find someone to sleep with that night, just someone to dance with. Well, that’s what most of them were looking for anyway.

I had quit dancing 10 years ago. Last dance I had was at my wedding reception. After the way my marriage and subsequent divorce went, I didn’t really want to expose my heart again. Believe it or not, it was less scary to expose my questionable singing ability.

The guys finally got around to “Roadhouse Blues,” inserting a long instrumental in the middle that made the song last forever.

“If you’d have been walking on Venice Beach back in 1967, you might have heard the sounds of the Doors,” Scott said during the song.

I really got into it. I could picture myself with the black leather pants and black leather jacket and long black hair flowing down past my shoulders as I pouted and shouted just the way I’d seen Val Kilmer do as Joe Morrison do in the Doors movie.

I was singing and writhing in my seat. I’m glad it was late and the only people left didn’t really care.

The guys finally capped off the night with “ Purple Rain,” a song I hadn’t heard them do before. It surprised me a little to hear them do a Prince song, but they branded it with their own style.

By the time they got to it, the place had begun to empty and most of the folks had left the dance floor.

Shortly after the song started, a short brunette walked up to me.

“You look like you want to dance,” she said.

She was kind of plain. Not really very attractive in my way of thinking. But she didn’t appear whacked out of her gourd or drunk and I was kind of in the mood to dance.

“Yeh, I am,” I said as I got up.

I put my arms around her and we danced slowly. It seemed like we were the only ones out there. I wasn’t remotely interested in her as a girlfriend type. But it felt good just to have some sort of nonsexual contact with a member of the opposite sex.

The song ended and I thanked her asking me to dance.

I don’t know if she was expecting me to ask for her phone number or to go to Denny’s for coffee or what. But I was happy with things just the way they were and left her kind of looking at me like there was supposed to be something more.

The guys came down and I thanked them for “Roadhouse” and an opportunity to dance.

“Do you guys have a schedule or something so I know when you’re coming back?” I asked.

Mark took a sheet with all their gigs for the year from the stage and handed one to me. “There ya go, Joe. Maybe you can make a road trip down to Versailles or Bedford sometime.”

“If my ex takes the kids, I can do that sometime,” I said.

“Well, we have to start tearing down and loading up the truck,” Tom said. “You can hang out with us while we do it if you don’t have anywhere to go.

“Or maybe you have someone to go home with, huh?”

He raised his eyebrows up and down and smiled.

“Oh her? Nah, not my type,” I said. “Sure, I’ll hang out. I’ve got nothing else to do until I get the kids back at 5 tomorrow night.

“You want some help? I’ve never torn down music equipment before, but if you want to show me, I can help. I may as well make myself useful. No sense just watching you guys work.”

Tom showed me his own special way of wrapping up cords. Then, I carried monitors, speakers, mic stands, lights and stools through an inch of snow to Tom’s old dark blue Ford truck as Mark sat at the bar splitting the band’s pay for the night into three piles. Luckily, the snow had stopped falling.

When the gear was loaded, I shook their hands and told them I had a great time hanging out with them.

“God bless you,” Tom said as I headed toward my snow-covered minivan.

This had to be one of the coolest nights of my life. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to have Angie ask me to marry her. Ha!

I got so pumped up, I went home and started a Tom Cruise “Risky Business” scene in the living room. Except I kept my pants on when I took the broom in my hands and sang along to every song I ever had dreamed of singing in front of an audience.

I pulled out the 1960s garage band snarly sound of The Standells’ “Try It” and The Sonics’ raw, uninhibited rant, “Strychnine.” You’ve got to present folks with some songs they’ve most likely never heard before. Gotta open their minds, you know.

From there, I delved into Texas power guitar rocker Charlie Sexton’s love song, “Hold Me.”

I made sure to give the audience a reason to watch, too. I always hated it when bands just stood there and played. Boring! Why don’t I just go home and listen to the album?

You’ve got to move, child. You’ve got to show them that this music is doing something to you inside. OK, so I got a little crazy. I blamed it on the beer.

But it was my living room and nobody was there. So, who cares?

I threw in a little Weird Al Yankovic for the comedic effect and Muddy Waters’ seminal blues classic “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and I’d not only covered the vast majority of musical styles I adored, but also managed to stay up most of the rest of the night with my set.

Of course, “Roadhouse” closed the show.

But the crowd wanted one more. They were cheering as I left stage to use the bathroom and get a sip of water. They lit their Bics and I could see the flames flickering in the darkness of my house while the smell of butane wafted all about.

Give ’em what they want, I figured, so I suggested a Doors twin spin to send them home. “Soul Kitchen” was a big hit and I always got a kick out of singing lyrics like “Your fingers weave quick minarettes, speakin’ secret alphabet, I light another cigarette, learn to forget, learn to forget.”

Oh, and “The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes.” That is just such a cool image.

When it was over, I made sure to thank everybody and tell them they could but T-shirts and CDs on their way out.

“Don’t forget to tip your waitress, Brandi,” I said, falling onto the couch exhausted.

I hadn’t done that in a while. I thought my rock star wannabe days were over years ago.

It reminded me of the first time I decided I liked singing.

Roadhouse Book Chapter 2 – Butt Baby

Chapter 2

“Butt Baby”

Mrs. Benedetto was standing at the board, her dark brown eyes staring at her second grade class. Her chubby cheeks cradled pursed lips and her head scanned the room slowly.

The skirt she had on was just a tad short for the size of thigh she owned. One leg was in front of the other with the knee bent  slightly. She rested a fist on her hip.

In her other hand was a small piece of yellow chalk, held with the intent of writing something on the board as soon as one of us was brave enough to venture a guess at this incredibly difficult math problem.

Adding two-digit numbers together? Most of my classmates were thinking “You’ve got to be crazy lady.”

But not Eric Flagler. He was the brain of this operation. A regular know-it-all brown-noser if ever there was one. It would have been easy to be jealous had he not been so cool, too.

I mean, what other kid would show you a hacked off bloody finger in a box that wiggled when he opened the lid? Never mind that he had cut a hole in the bottom of the box and stuck his own index finger in from underneath used red marker to make it look bloody. It looked so real.

Eric Flagler had been my best friend for at least three weeks when he put on a magic show for me and my brother Steve, who was 1½ years younger.

Steve and I were pretty impressed with Eric Flagler’s ability to make a cake in his tall black magician’s hat. We never did figure out what happened to those raw eggs he cracked and plopped into the hat.

One time, when Eric and I were playing in his backyard, he told me to tilt my head back and balance a marble on my nose. When he gave the signal, I was to bring my head slowly forward and let the marble roll off the tip of my nose into the big opening of a funnel, which was inserted into the top of my corduroys.

When I started tilting my head forward, he poured a glass of water into the funnel, making it look like I’d wet myself.

I didn’t much like that really, but he had a cute sister in fourth grade who saw the whole thing from the window. And she came out shortly after the wetting incident, told Eric he was mean and put her arm around me, asking me if I was OK.

So, I gave Eric another chance. Ended up spending a lot of time over at that old brick house on Woodland Avenue the next few years.

But Eric Flagler’s biggest gift wasn’t introducing his friends to Katie. Or grossing out his friends.

No, Eric Flagler’s best attribute was his ability to save the class from Mrs. Benedetto’s wrath. She would get so upset when we didn’t quite catch her drift that she would tap her foot on the floor over and over. Man, we thought she was going to do a tap dance right on our wretched little bodies sometimes.

Eric always had the answer, though. I don’t know why he waited so long before finally raising his hand sometimes. I think he wanted to see how worked up he could get the teacher. Or maybe he just liked scaring us to the point we’d be begging him with our eyes to answer the question.

Once saving our butts, he’d be in a position to request anybody’s dessert at lunch. Man, what power that boy wielded at an early age.

This time, Eric slowly put his right hand into the air when Mrs. Benedetto was looking in his direction.

“Mr. Flagler, do you know the answer?” she said, knowing darn well he did.

“Yes, Mrs. Benedetto. It’s 45,” he said smugly, looking around to bathe in the chorus of sighs he knew he’d get from us.

“Correct, Mr. Flagler,” Mrs. Benedetto said. “Now, the rest of you all will need to work on this at home tonight.”

Homework? Well, that stunk. But it was better than having that old teacher hiss at us like she did the one time Eric Flagler got sick and wasn’t at school during a particularly difficult lesson.

That time, she called us a name that none of us knew what it was. But I think it had something to do with a swear word or sex or something because the teacher next door, Mrs. Dodds, came over and asked Mrs. Benedetto to come out into the hall for a moment.

Before long, she came back in and was the nicest teacher we’d ever known for the next couple days.

Eric asked me about it at our weekly touch football game at the high school the next Sunday. Our family’s Sunday ritual included services at St. James Catholic Church, the highlight of which for me was when they let Bobby McGuire play his guitar. He was no Pete Townsend, and never was going to be at church, but at least it was better than the old lady playing that pipe organ and the choir droning on and on.

After church, Steve and I were force-fed a steady diet of black-and-white TV reruns of “Superman” and the “Bowery Boys.” An episode of “All-Star Wrestling” or roller derby usually set the stage for lunch and then suffering through another loss by our beloved Packers.

Then it was off to the back yard or the high school’s athletic field for our pick-up football game.

Eric Flagler was usually one of the better kids on the football field. But it’s not like he was head and shoulders obviously above everyone. He was in school, though, and I tried not to let it irritate me.

I was always second best in class to him. He’d get 100s on his tests. I’d get 98s and 99s. I knew that Russia wasn’t the name of the country; it was the Soviet Union. Eric Flagler knew that as well as the names of seven of the Soviet Union’s republics. I didn’t even know their states were called republics.

I had glasses and was kind of scrawny with somewhat rounded shoulders even though I was pretty good at sports. Eric didn’t wear glasses and while he was no Charles Atlas, he was pretty strong.

But if Eric Flagler thought you were cool, then you were like a made man. Nobody could badmouth you … at least none of the second-graders. Even the one bully we had kind of liked him (as much as a bully could like somebody I guess) and wouldn’t mess with Eric’s friends as a favor to him.

Eric Flagler liked me because I could make him laugh. We were walking home together after school one time when we started talking about those stupid girlie songs we had to sing in music class. There was the one about some girl named Mary who skipped and danced on her tiptoes and then went in a meadow and frolicked, whatever that meant.

So, I decided to come up with my own stupid songs for boys. My first one was “Butt Baby.” It only had two words in it …. “butt” and “baby.” Not exactly my best work as a lyricist.

The melody wasn’t exactly original either. I ripped off the “Batman” show theme song and just sang “Butt Baby” instead of “Batman.”

And I can’t really say that my singing was very good. I did like to sing, and did a mean David Cassidy impersonation when my cousins and brothers got together. We’d break out a section of Hot Wheels car track and use those orange plastic strips as guitars while we  performed to The Partridge Family Greatest Hits spinning around at 33 rpm on our old mono record player.

No, what made “Butt Baby” such a popular song with the second-grade class at Franklin Elementary in Wauwatosa, Wis., and especially with Eric Flagler, was the dance that went along with it.

When I invented “Butt Baby,” I knew it needed a signature move. So I stood on the sidewalk with my knees bent and my butt sticking out.

“Watch this,” I said to Eric with a glint of youthful tom foolery in my eyes.

I started humming the tune, kind of rocking from side to side, my little posterior wiggling in the cool fall air. Finally, when I go to the “Butt Baby” part, I quickly leaped into the air, turning halfway around so I was now facing away from Eric.

When I landed, I made sure to yell “Butt Baby!” as loud as I could while also making sure I shook my butt hard, protruding it as far toward him as I could.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone cry from laughing so hard before. I thought Eric Flagler was going to puke his bologna sandwich and my Ho Ho’s all over Woodland Avenue he was laughing so hard. He grabbed his stomach and started crying out in pain that his belly hurt.

Jerry Hawley’s mom even slowed her car down and rolled down the window as she passed to make sure Eric wasn’t dying.

From then on, “Butt Baby” was a hit.

Well, until that fateful day that I decided that Eric Flagler wasn’t going to be better than me in everything at school.

Eric and I had a crush on the same girl for almost a whole week. Sue Greene was one of the tallest girls in class. She had long black hair and bright green eyes. She had a pretty smile and always wore dresses and black shoes. She wasn’t one of those girls that everybody was interested in. But there wasn’t anybody that hated her either. If she was a guy, she’d be a friend of yours. But in second grade, you either had a crush on her or you hated her (she was a girl after all).

During art class one day, Eric and I took turns boasting about how each of us was going to be the first one to tell her we liked her.

“She gave me the best Valentine,” Eric said. “My babysitter says that means she  thinks I’m groovy.”

“Oh yeh? She gave me one of her Space Food Sticks at lunch yesterday,” I volleyed back at him.

“Those things the astronauts eat?” Eric said. “Those things taste like chalk! She gave it to you cause it makes her puke. That means you’re puke.”

“Am not.”

“Are, too!”

“Oh yeh?” I ended that exchange because I knew we could go on like that for minutes. “I’m gonna tell her I like her,” I predicted somewhat boldly.

Eric gave me one of those I-don’t-believe-you looks.

“When?” he asked.

Um. I hesitated as I hadn’t thought about that. You couldn’t just blurt it out in the middle of art class … or math or reading or social studies for that matter.

“Ha!” he said, thinking he had one-upped me again. “I’m going to tell her after art.”

Oh no. That’s in 10 minutes. If I was going to get the upper hand on Eric Flagler ever, I had to do it now and I only had a short time to figure something out.

I went back to molding the clay head that would become my mom’s Christmas present in a few weeks. My mind raced like Richard Petty with thoughts of what to do.

Let’s see. After art we go to the cloak room and put away our smocks. Then we head back to our seats. If Eric’s going to follow through on his plan, he’ll get to Sue between the cloak room and their seats. I’ll need to intercept her.

I’d never told a girl I’d liked her before. My heart was pounding hard in my chest and my breathing was quickening. But I was more nervous about letting Eric Flagler beat me yet again.

So, when Mrs. Kinney announced the end of art class with a “OK, students, time to turn in your heads,” I raced to put my smock away first. Then I exited the other end of the cloak room and waited.

Kids filed out one by one until Sue came by.

“Hey,” I said, stepping in front of her.

“Hi, Joe,” she said, stopping. I have no idea what was going on in her head. But she looked at me knowing I had something else to say.

“I have a secret to tell you,” I said softly.

“OK,” she said, looking a little puzzled since I hadn’t really talked to her much before.

As the last kid walked out of the cloak room, I motioned Sue back in there.

Once we were safely out of eyesight from the rest of the class, I leaned over toward her ear and mumbled some nonsense softly for a second or two.

Then I quickly puckered up and planted a fast peck on her cheek. I didn’t wait around to see what kind of a reaction I was going to get. This little 7-year-old boy skedaddled right out of that cloak room and never looked back.

In fact, I don’t think I looked at Sue Greene for the next day and a half and was too scared to talk to her until we were in science class together as sophomores.

But I made sure to tell Eric Flagler every detail.

That day on the way home from school, he told me I lied about kissing Sue Greene and he didn’t even like “that stupid ‘Butt Baby’ song” anymore.

But he still snickered when I did it. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help it.