High Tide in Tucson_ Essays From Now or Never - Barbara Kingsolver [55]
I’ve seen those books on multigenre genius: paintings by Henry James, poetry by Picasso. But I’m not talking about them, I mean the rest of us. I’d like to think it’s okay to do a lot of different kinds of things, even if we’re not operating at the genius level in every case. I’d like to think we’re allowed to have particolored days and renaissance lives, without a constant worry over quality control. If the Rock Bottom Remainders were a role model of any kind, I think that was our department: we went on record as half-bad musicians having wholehearted lives.
Thursday night, before our opening show at Shooters Waterfront Café, I bore well in mind the Richard Nelson scenario of What Is the Worst That Could Happen. But that doesn’t begin to cover it. You have to picture the whole thing: in our jitters, the men have turned to alcohol and the women to makeup. We have regressed to Girls in the Bathroom mode—sharing hair stuff, asking if this looks okay, relying heavily on each other for fashion advice and kind oversight. This, I imagine, is what other girls did in high school before a big date. I didn’t. I skipped the Junior Prom and read Flannery O’Connor. In 1972 I was into blue jeans and defiance, having found that the best defense, where an uninspiring social life was concerned, was a good offense.
My position in this band is ideal: I’m not a Remainder-ette, so I don’t do gold lamé and I don’t have to be called upon by Al, in rehearsal, as “Girls!” At sound check I always tune up with the guys. But on the bus and in the hotel and right now in the dressing room I am definitely girls. Lorraine Battle (wardrobe roadie) is giving me a lesson in remedial makeup. I look in the mirror, blink twice as my glamorous big sister smiles back at me. Finally we leave this war-torn dressing room and crowd out onto the backstage bridge, and the guys all hoot at us. I find out what I was missing, in 1972, while I had my nose in a book.
We line up and wait for Roy to introduce us, so that one by one we can run out on the blinding-bright stage and be socked with a roar of cheers. I am invulnerable and supremely transformed: I take the stairs by twos, land onstage in my black lace leggings and long black no-finger gloves, and blow a kiss to the audience. I can’t wait to sing “Dock of the Bay.” I could dance on a table tonight, or roll the Big Boy down the street with impunity. I feel overtly beloved. I lean into my piano and lead out on “Money,” and when the bass and guitar kick in I am moving dead center with the In Crowd. I am a river in spring flood season. I may not stop this, ever.
Listen, I could have stayed home and read a book, or plugged earphones into my synthesizer and played “Nadine” to myself, after I put my kid to bed. I almost did. But how many times in your life do you get to be audacious? And really, if you were a kid, would you mind so much if your Girl Scout of a Mom just once ran off to be a rock star for two weeks, as long as you got to see the pictures? Think of the ammunition you’d have against her, when your time came.
My daughter thinks it’s way cool that I did it. And now that it’s over, so do I. The thrill of the Rock Bottom Remainders, for me, was that a crew of mild-mannered writers were audacious together. We loved each other for the risks we took, and liked ourselves all right too. I must have sought it out in the middle of my winter, like a seedling straining for sun, because somewhere in my heart’s damp basement I knew it’s what I needed: Tad’s enormous eyes, wide and starry with mascara, smiling at mine in the dressing-room mirror as we prayed we’d hit our notes. Amy in her leather, chin tipped up, glancing over at me for her cue. Steve’s little wink when he takes over the whistle reprise on “Dock of the Bay.” Dave’s grin and Ridley’s smiling nod as we look at each other and move, smooth as silk, from A major