Who’s crappier? Him…
...or her?
I had just spent an hour in the bank dealing with an overdraft problem that resulted from a client’s check bouncing like a superball and the fact that I didn’t pay a $1 finance charge on my last bank-affiliated credit card bill. My dog didn’t seem too thrilled lying on the floor while I shouted into the phone to the Chase credit card headquarters (or their outsource site in India), “YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! YOU SHUT MY OVERDRAFT PROTECTION OVER ONE FUCKIN’ DOLLAR??”
After this we walked down to the Verizon Store where I was going to check to see if they got in the phone to replace mine with the cracked screen. I had stopped in a few days ago and the technical person told me it would take a couple of days to arrive but after I was too far to go back I realized it wasn’t clear whether she was going to contact me regarding the matter or not.
When I called the store on the phone today, my impatience got the better of me during the rat-maze automation navigation, where I was pressing this for English and that for someone with big tits and this for…and when I finally got someone whose hick accent sounded like it was her practice to fix a stuffed toilet by shoving her hand down the shitshoot to unplug the obstruction, it seemed pretty clear to me that I was talking to someone in a different State—and by that I don’t just mean location but of reality as well.
She finally connected me to the store I had wanted to talk to but for some reason decided to play liaison, which meant constantly putting me on hold as she talked to the manager then coming back then putting me on hold again…When she told me that their computer said they replaced my phone a week ago I lost my shit. “I WASN’T EVEN IN THE STORE A WEEK AGO! WHAT THE FU—? You know, I’m just going to go down to the store and choke up the last 20-minutes of my wasted life as a karmic return for pushing that old lady into oncoming traffic last week. Just one final question: Do you shove your arm all the way up to the elbow to unstuff the crapper or just dabble around with your fingers like a little Roto-Rooter?”
So after my brilliant conversation on the phone and my good time at the bank, I walked down to the Verizon store and, needless to say, I wasn’t in the best of spirits. Once there, I talked to a manager and I didn’t bite his head off not only because I don’t eat animal products but because I had inadvertently left my dentures in a class on my bathroom sink. And he was pretty good with me.
He said none of their stores had this gay phone I got as a replacement to my $400 shit-kicker that wasn’t working properly and gave me a number to call to have it shipped to me directly from the warehouse. At least the number was an 800 number. After this drag ass day, I was expecting a 900 number to call and spend $50 before I was even got out the baby oil and box of tissues.
I left the Verizon Store, a little punch-drunk from all the afternoon’s mindless wandering and was more than ready to go home. My dog looked at me as if to say, “I thought we were walking so I could take a dump, not so you could have me sit forever while you accomplish next to nothing.” I told the little bitch that she better drop her load in mid-stride, as I wasn’t stopping until we got home. That was the plan at least, that was, until I passed New York City’s worst musician.
He was an older man with gray hair, wearing a dark blue suit and a light blue button up shirt with no tie, sitting behind a minimized drum set, beating it in an arrhythmic way that if a heart were beating that way would result in the doctor telling his patient, “Why beat around the bush—you’re gonna die.” It was terrible! There was no rhyme or reason to it. No rhythm—or blues for that matter! A 3-year old with a pot, pan and a wooden spoon could have played something more enjoyable to listen to than this guy.
I didn’t know how to feel. On one level, I had that empty, nauseous feeling inside, like when you see a stand-up comedian dying on stage and you think to yourself, “Not only do I feel terrible for him, I feel terrible that I paid $20 to see this hack!” On another level I was angry that someone was here on 42nd Street and Broadway disturbing a perfectly beautiful orchestra of car horns, random shouting and exhaust fumes. On a third level I was ready to piss myself with laughter. I mean, think about it—it was like someone who never took a tap class in his life who just happened to buy a pair of tap shoes on a whim deciding to place a bucket out and have a go at it—in one of the crowdest places in all of New York City!
As I passed by, I had to glance into his big white bucket to see if there was any money in it. I was a bit nervous, for if it contained nothing, which would have been more than he deserved—his playing not even worthy of the air in the bucket—I might have felt a little bad for the old guy trying to supplement his measly Social Security check. If it contained a bunch of bills I might have lost all control of my mouth and said, “OH, GIVE ME A FUCKIN’ BREAK, MOZART! AS IF ANYONE DROPPED THEIR HARD-EARNED CASH IN YOUR BUCKET IN APPRECIATION OF YOUR INCOHERENT BANGING!” I saw it contained some, and by “some” I mean “not a lot,” change. Mostly pennies. I felt that for once in its life the Universe had been just. And I kept walking.
But about ten feet away from the King of Poop, I suddenly stopped. It wasn’t because I had stepped in gum. It wasn’t that my heart had attuned to his shitty arrhythmia and started to give me palpitations. It wasn’t even because I saw my usual $5 hooker there, although I must say she was looking good in her ripped French lace stockings, blue eye shadow and plumber’s crack. I can’t tell you if it was an act of God or maybe Satan having a good play at things, a sense of grace or a sense of humor. I was about to do something that made no sense, that fell outside of the law of Cause and Effect, like a woman getting bumped in the breast and then starting to squawk like a chicken in between belting out verses of “Yankee Doodle.” I pulled a dollar out of my wallet, turned around and dropped it into the big white bucket of the Mozart of Pots and Pans.
And the strangest thing happened. I didn’t suddenly wake up in my bed in need of changing the sheets. Angels didn’t come down and play harp music to drown out his chaotic mess. God didn’t come down and tell me that, “Maybe I’ll reconsider responding to the question of whether you would be getting into Heaven with, ‘When Hell freezes over!” The Devil didn’t come down and rip up the contract that I had signed with him in exchange for a 14” cock. Instead the Sinatra of Soot smiled heartily, said, “Thanks very much,” and banged away even more energetically, as if thinking to himself, “If my music has brought joy to just one passerby…then I’ve done my job.”
I’m reminded of a story:
There was an opera concert and the lead baritone was terribly off-pitch, sometimes sharp, sometimes flat, screwing up the words and often singing off-tempo. At the end of his singing, or what could only be assumed was an attempt at such, a man in the audience stood up and applauded. “BRAVO! BRAVO!” shouted the man.
Next to him was an opera aficionado who looked at him incredulously. “My good man, you can’t seriously be applauding that disgrace for a singer’s voice?” said the man, who looked a little like the Monopoly Guy with a monocle and big moustache.
“I’m not applauding his singing,” said the cheering man, “I’m applauding his courage.”
It takes a lot of courage to go out there and do whatever it is in our heart to do—especially when our skill level is below that of a diaper-wearing, drooling doofus—in a society that is so critical that if Beethoven played on a street corner some jackass would probably shout at him to, “GET A HAIRCUT, DEAFY!”
My Brother of Bang did have courage. Not so much regarding his music—I have a feeling he was just demented and thought he was actually good—but in the fact that he laid a huge bucket out in front of him, because “The streets of America are lined with gold!” and “New Yorkers will overpay for everything!”
God bless you, New York City’s Worst Musician, as you picked up this afternoon not just your drum sticks, that you bang with a fervor like you’re spanking the troublesome Tom Sawyer with a switch…but also my mood. And God strike me deaf if I ever come in the vicinity of your noisy nonsense again.
REFLECTION:
What would you do if you didn’t concern yourself with the judgements of others? Would you sing out loudly while walking down the sidewalk? Wear a colorful yet unmatching outfit? Eat that dessert that your “healthy” friends would never approve of?
MEDITATION:
Imagine your day walking and playing and living as if it didn’t matter what anyone thought about you. How does that feel? Rather than creating the ostrich head-in-the-sand fantasy world that “Everyone is so understanding of whatever it is I do!” imagine yourself so overloaded with SELF-CONFIDENCE that any insult or judgement doesn’t have the strength to penetrate your power.
“To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.”
—e.e. cummings