Complete the Story: 15 of 198

She believed in me in a way no one else ever has and no one else ever will, and I betrayed her. The worst part is she doesn't know. She still thinks that I chose her over the other girls.  Years ago I would have. I know the 20 year old me would've chosen Claire over the other girls.  I'm not so sure if it's because I was a better person then than I am now or if it's because then I knew I had more time.  That I had more chances.  I'm not 20 anymore. With Brittany, Dana, Elise & Faith all I have to do is walk in Monday morning, sign the contract and I'm on my way.  With Claire it continues to be a gamble and at 29, I can't roll the dice unless I know it's going to be a seven.

To make things even worse, Brittany came up with the idea to call the band, "Minus the C."  I hate the idea and hate taking such a deliberate shot at Claire.  Yes, she can be abrasive, bossy and unwilling to compromise. It's either Clarie's way or the highway.  From our songs, to our tempo, to our costuming to which bars we go to and which bars we turn down it always has to be Claire's way.  There was no vote. No one made her head of the band.  She simply appointed herself as such.  It does get old.  We can all feel like Chinese and if she feels like Italian, Olive Garden it is.  We can all feel like a quiet dive bar after a performance and if she feels like a club, play that funky music white boy.   I think the final straw that broke the camel's back was when Claire started causing problems between Brittany and Steffen.  Claire has this image that we should all date preppy types, like those you'd find in Greenwich.  Steffen despite having the name, doesn't fit the image.  Anything but clean cut, he seems to always have a three day beard.  Rides motorcycles and when asked about squash, said that once tried it but had to salt the Hell out of it in order to choke it down. 

Of course that didn't go over well with Claire.  The way the other girls saw it and to be honest the way I saw it, was why in Hell did it matter to Claire anyway?  Steffen was Brittany's boyfriend, not Claire's.  I can't tell you how many times I told Claire to stay out of it and mind her own business, but she insisted it was her business.  Brittany was a part of her band and as a a part of her band, a part of her image.  She didn't want to be associated with a guy like Steffen so she made his life miserable anytime he was around. It got to the point to where Steffen stopped showing up and supporting us. To the point to where Steffen decided that it might be best to stop seeing Brittany. 

That's when Brittany at the start of a rehearsal went up and gave Claire a piece of her mind.  Claire said that Steffen breaking things off was one of the best things to ever happen to Brittany.  Brittany didn't like that.  Next thing I knew, Brittany had a broken drum stick and Claire had a nasty slash across her left eye. 

Using the vision she had left in her right eye, Claire looked for sympathy from the other members of the band but she didn't receive it.  I stood silent as one by one as well as collaboratively the other girls let her know that she had it coming.

Elise said it best when she said, "This isn't YOUR band."

Dana backed her in saying, "We're not YOUR girls." 

Faith finished it  off by saying, "We're all a team.  We're all equals."

Brittany had already stormed out, so I guess it was left on me to say, "and we'll date who ever we want" but I didn't.

Instead I stood there quietly holding my bass. I once heard that musicians often mimic their instruments and I guess that's true.  The bassist sometimes gets lost within all the rest of the noise. It's there and you know its important but sometimes you almost forget that it's there with all of the other instruments playing in the background.

Claire our vocalist, of course vocal.

"Is that how you feel?" She said, "If so, then screw you guys.  I'm done. Good luck finding another singer."

And that's when I was brought into the conversation.

"Claire can sing." Dana even pointed her finger at me as she starred in my direction.

"Ha!!" Claire laughed. "If I leave, she leaves."

I stand at the grocery store in a panic when the cashier ask me "Paper or plastic?"   Having to choose between Claire and the rest of the girls isn't a decision I wanted to make.  In a panic I turned around and sprinted out the door as fast as I could.  I got in my car and took off. 

It wasn't five minutes later when my phone rang.

"Why didn't you back me up in there?" Claire shouted at me. "Brittany tries to take my eye out with her drum stick and all of the other girls take her side!"

I didn't know what to say so I just listened.

"Never mind" she said as her tone calmed. "I wasn't expecting all of that either.  How childish can someone get.  Really.  Brittany can do so much better than Steffen. I've been trying to set her up with Toby for months now."

At that point I stopped listening to Claire.  I could hear her talking but I wasn't paying any attention to what she was saying.  Instead I found myself day dreaming about how I had wanted to be a musician ever since I was a little girl.

I remembered going out for band in the fifth grade and being discouraged by my band director because I was having difficulty reading music.  That old hag. She thought if you couldn't read notes within the same day of being taught that you weren't cut out to be a musician. It discouraged me so much that I fell out of love with music for a while.   I can remember going home and taking all of my music and deleting it off of my computer.  I vowed to never listen to another song as long as I lived.

Of course that was the irrational, illogical conclusions of an 11 year old girl.  I came around again and before long had a larger collection of music in my personal library than I had before.  I never allowed anyone to hear me sing but behind closed doors I belted out every chance I got.

On my blog that I swore no one read other than myself and my mother, I wrote about ole Mrs. Isley that old bat of a band teacher I had in the fifth grade one day.  Somehow or another a Claire Richardson stumbled across it, read it and encouraged me to give an instrument another shot.  My immediate response was that I appreciated her kind words but I felt that it was too late.

That's when I got my first sense of Claire's personality and her refusal to have anyone do anything other than what she wants them to do.  She began to message me every day.  She she insisted that I go to an instructor that she recommended.  When I told her that I couldn't afford lessons, she shot back at me that she already paid for the first six. If I didn't show up, I had just wasted her money.

So I went.  The guy was an absolute babe and of course seeing how good looking he was and how attracted I was to him, I had to learn five minutes into it that he was gay.  Nevertheless I knew it was either going to be that or that he was married to a woman far better looking than me and the father of 15 children.

He held my left hand in his hands and studied my fingers.

"Have you ever thought of playing the bass?"

I said no and he smiled at me.

"You have a bass player's hands."

I saw no point in arguing with him and by the end of the day he had me playing the riff from THE JOKER by the Steve Miller Band.

I'm not sure if its because he was such a good teacher or if its because it came naturally to me or what but I took to that old bass guitar of his like a fish to water. 

On my sixth lesson, that's when Claire showed up.  This girl whom had stumbled upon my blog, who didn't even know me, who had paid for my first six lessons.

"She's my best student." He said to Claire when she asked how I was doing.

"I knew she would be." Claire responded with absolute assurance. "You can always tell the types that will be."

She explained to me that she was a vocalist and that she knew a group of girls that had a drummer, a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist and a keyboardist.  They needed a bass player and a vocalist. 

On the car ride to go and meet the girls Claire turned on a song that I was very familiar with and began to sing along with it.  She got so into it and was so comfortable singing around me that I for the first time in my life felt as if I could sing around someone. 

"Holy shit girlfriend!" She said to me. "You gotta set of lungs on you too!  Looks like I got a bassist and a backup vocalist!" 

- - - -

"Amy....Amy? Hello! Earth to AMY!" 

I was now back in my car having the conversation with Claire about leaving the band. 

"yeah, sorry.  Heavy traffic."   That couldn't have been further from the truth.  I was out on an old county road, 25 miles from the city. No one was on it but me.

"Yeah, so you are quitting with me right?" Claire asked. "We gotta take a stand. I am not going to be treated like that by the other girls and you're not going to allow them to treat me like that."

I didn't mean it when I said it and I didn't want to say it but it was all that would come out.

"Yeah."

An hour later I received a call from Dana.  It was more of a conference call,  Brittany, Elise, and Faith were on the call too, but it came from Dana's phone.  We discussed what happened, how Brittany was sorry that she hit Claire but on the same hand felt Claire deserved it.  How things couldn't go on as they were.

"I'd apologize to Claire." Brittany said. "But that isn't going to change things."

"And she'd want an apology from the rest of us too for saying she deserved it."  Faith added.

"Truth is." Dana hit it on the head. "We've tried time and time again to work things out with Claire.  She isn't changing."

"I know."

After I spoke the there was an awkward silence that lasted for about thirty seconds before Dana finally spoke up again.

"Look." She said. "You know that we have an agent coming in Friday morning who wants to work with us.  He thinks he can get us signed to a label.  We want you to be a part of this Amy.....We need you."

I sat in silence unable to speak.

"But." Faith spoke. "We understand if you decide to take Claire's side in all of this.  We won't hold it against you."

I still wasn't able to say anything and I wonder if they might have thought I had already left. I guess they knew I hadn't hung up yet as the call was still going.

"We hope to see you Monday morning."

And with Dana's final words the call ended.

Claire asked me to meet her at her apartment this morning as she wanted to discuss some new plans that she had.  She said that she was foolish to ever think that we needed our own band.  We'd make it just fine as a duet group and studio musicians were so much easier to deal with than band mates.

"They actually listen and do as they're told." She laughed to me last night.

Only I know something Claire doesn't.  I know in 20 minutes, when the clock strikes 9:00 a.m. I'll be in a meeting with Brittany, Dana, Elise and Faith speaking with our agent.  I know that I'll be signing the contract.  Claire will be in her apartment looking at her phone checking the time wondering where I'm at.  She'll give me 15 minutes as it's natural for a musician to show up late and then she'll begin to worry.  I know my phone will blow up with a few texts and one or two times of it ringing all the way to voice mail.   Then she'll realize what's going on.  I'm sure she'll have some choice words for me. Some of them I'll refrain from using.  Traitor and backstabber I won't.

She's right I am.  I'm so excited and happy about this opportunity that I can't turn it down. I've waited my whole life for this.  An opportunity to be a musician.  A real musician.  A professional musician.  Being on the radio.  Seeing my face on a CD.  Playing at an actual auditorium instead of a local bar or a high school.  Traveling from city to city, maybe even to other countries.

I feel a sick juxtaposition in my stomach.  Claire's the only reason any of this is happening for me.  Without her, none of this would be possible.  Yet on the same hand the only way it continues and it gets to go on, be something other than a dream, is if I stab her in the back.

I never knew it was possible to feel like a million bucks and a pile of shit at the exact same time.

I guess it is.

COMPLETE THE STORY: 14 of 198

The music drifted out of the club like a vibrating pulse.  I could feel it in my bones. The night was alive with possibility. I could even imagine myself having the women coming up to me. Asking me to dance. Asking me for my number. Asking me, "hey you want to get out of here?"  Meeting Guido, was the best thing to happen to my love life. He made me realize that it wasn't so much that I was doing things wrong, as much as it was that I was looking at things wrong.

I was never popular with the girls throughout junior high and high school. It was even worse during college. I couldn't figure out if it was physical or mental or what the Hell it was. I knew I wasn't Brad Pitt but I didn't exactly think I looked like Sloth from the GOONIES either.  When I looked in the mirror I saw an average guy, with an average smile.  A little shorter than the "Tall" & a little lighter than the "dark" women often described in their ideal man.  I never expected to end up with the prom queen or the girl who turned heads in every room she entered.  I knew I wasn't the type of guy that would end up with that type of girl, but I did think I had it in me to get what it was that I wanted.  A nice girl, beautiful on the inside and what others would call, "pretty" on the outside.

Yet it wasn't happening for me.  Throughout my late teens and my early twenties I couldn't get a girl to like me to save my life.  Sure there were a few desperate women who looked like a cross between Jabba the Hut and Grizzly Adams whose only interest in me was purely physical, but that was it.  No one was truly interested in me.  Getting to know me.  Being with me.  That wasn't happening and I was driving myself mad trying to figure out why.

Then I met Guido....