Pieces of You

Upon reading Swiss Cheese, a colleague of Stacia's asked if I was going to frump the violators. (I later learned that to "frump" someone is to "friend dump" them.)

Of course I didn't frump my mischievous friends. I would much prefer to strike back. And anyone who would frump someone over placing a Swiss flag in your front yard is, well, overreacting. It's more like I "frush" these women. Meaning, I openly have a friend crush on them and earnestly want them to like me.

Last week, Caity asked if I would learn a particular Jewel song to play at an open mic. She wanted to sign along (she's fluent in ASL) and have another friend sing the lyrics. It would be completely satirical and playful, to the soundtrack of a very serious song. I thought this sounded like heaps of fun and immediately agreed to what sounded to me like an excellent friendship-building activity.

When the time came around to actually learn the song, I was horrified to discover that the lyrics of this particular song are not only serious but quite provocative. Perhaps offensive. I text messaged Caity and told her I would accompany her on the guitar but refused to sing the lyrics.

When it came down to it, I backed out altogether. We arrived at a local cafe open mic, me in the lead with my bulky guitar on my back. I took one look at the serious, middle-aged folk musicians lined up to perform and spun around on my heels and walked back out the door.

"I will not do it," I announced, theatrically. It all came together for me at that point--why on earth would I agree to accompany a song for which I wouldn't speak the lyrics? Why would I risk offending someone, especially someone in this folk music crowd, which could potentially be a very lucrative networking scene for me?

Caity was horrified and, I think, very disappointed. I shoved my guitar into Megan's hands and said, "You play it."

She stammered something about not being able to play that song, and I said I would teach her, it's not hard. But I won't play it. End of story.

I felt awful for flaking out at the last minute.

You would have changed your mind when you saw that crowd too! Or perhaps you would have said no from the very beginning. You wouldn't have even considered the possibility of performing a song that would make everyone in the room uncomfortable. But you have clearer boundaries than I do, you with your healthy resistance to peer pressure, and I am learning.

So, in classic Liz style, I didn't make the decision until the very last possible moment, standing at the entrance the open mic room, with gray-haired men and women singing cheeky songs about animals and lovers staring at me, wide-eyed and frightened with a guitar on my back. And, in classic Liz style, I dramatically whirled my body around and marched back out of the cafe and purged an ocean of justifications for why I couldn't do this, not here, not now.

Megan agreed to learn the song, immediately. It was starting to rain, and she couldn't learn the song in the cafe, since the folk scene was rendezvousing over swiss water decaf lattes and cookies, so we took over the nearby bus stop shelter. After making the obvious busking jokes about how we could just sing the song here and hope for some change, I handed my guitar to Megan and showed her the opening d minor finger-picking pattern.

She learned the song quickly (I secretly suspect she knew it all along and just wanted to see if I would actually go through with it), and as we were rehearsing, it suddenly began to downpour. Sheets of water smashed against the roof of the bus stop shelter, and thunder exploded everywhere. I protectively whisked my guitar away from Megan and packed it up safely in its case, away from any blowing rain. "We can't leave until it lets up," I said. "I'm not taking my guitar out there in this rain."

And poor Megan, shoved into playing this ridiculous song, and now trapped in a bus shelter with a neurotic flaking accompanist, just began to laugh. We both realized what a ridiculous situation this was.

How many bizarre events must transpire in order for one to find herself stranded in a bus shelter in the rain with a guitar, a friend new enough to still feel slightly awkward but old enough to have impersonal collective memories of a former activist group, and an offensive folk song?

However we got there, we escaped relatively unscathed, as the rain outburst was short and Caity pulled around in her car.

Plan B was to go to the local lesbian bar and just ask if we could perform one song.

So we drove to Pi, parked in front and waltzed into Happy Hour. Caity fearlessly approached the bartender, and moments later she was buzzing back to us with excitement that they would turn down the music so we could play one song.

I still refused to participate in any way except for videotaping the performance. Caity, her friend Howie, and Megan all went outside to practice, and shortly they returned.

The music was quieted. All eyes were on them.

Megan began to play the opening d minor finger-picking pattern, and Howie began to sing. Caity faux-emotionally began signing the words with broad, delicate hand motions.

All in all, did people think it was funny? Did they get the humor of singing a Jewel song with an entourage of interpretation? Did they find irony in the fact that they were singing a song that is supposed to be about tolerance and love but kind of comes off sounding offensive?

I was looking through the viewfinder of the camera, so I can't attest to the stunned looks on people's faces or the laughter from those who got it. I can't tell you whether our friend Sarah's eyes were huge and round with horror or if she wore a smile. I can't tell you whether that bartender was tapping along to the ambiguous duple/triple meter or whether she was considering calling off the performance.

What I can tell you is that I was laughing. It looked pretty funny to me. Maybe the funniest part was realizing how ridiculous I would have been up there, with my serious guitar playing and inability to act.

When it was all over, people clapped. One person came up to us and said she loooooooved the performance. Most people just went back to what they were doing before, like enjoying their first-date dinner or appetizers.

Considering this from the next-day perspective, I am glad I chose not to perform the song. And I am glad I got to experience the performance as an audience member.

It turns out that I'm just not as brave as my deviant friends. It's not that I am scared to make people uncomfortable with things like international flags decorated with permanent marker cartoons tied to their front stoops or well-intended badly written songs, it's just that it makes me uncomfortable. And maybe that's okay. Maybe I can just be the one who laughs at the outlandish and hilarious things my braver, social-norm-challenging friends do as I shake my head and say, "I could never do that." Not that I am a social-norm-follower, either. But I am okay being exactly who I am, without stepping too far outside my comfort zone. On the other hand, pointing a toe over the comfort line is probably good for me now and then. And I am convinced I had a whole leg out there last night, before I dramatically flung myself back into my cozy shell.

And that open mic with the folkies? I'm going back there next week, to sing my own, safely inoffensive, predictable, solidly in one-meter-or-the-other folk songs.