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March 16, 2006

The Ides of March

Written by Girth McDürchstein on March 16, 2006 10:19 AM
Permalink |  Recording Girth McDürchstein's 'The Return'  | Digg It

I stared down at the concrete floor, the fingers of my left hand flailing wildly, my right hand picking with an intensity I can rarely match. Sweat poured from my long, jet-black hair as I listened to the rhythm track on the phones. Plowing myself through a universe of musical possibilities that are simultaneously limitless and constricting, I seared through the solo on a track from the middle of our new album, The Return, entitled, “You Taste Like Lighter Fluid.”

When I finally plowed the fertile solo field, hanging at the end on a slightly arrhythmic and definitely atonal E-to-Bb trill that extends into the final chorus, I looked up, breath heaving, doughy midsection rising and collapsing. I saw my face reflected in the control-booth glass: glistening wet and pink as a high school nerd’s belly. As my eyes regained their focus, I looked beyond the glass and into the booth, where Carlos sat, his sad eyes and dour brown face gazing at me. Next to him, she stood, her creamy skin glowing, her raven hair cascading over her shoulders and stopping just short of her heaving breasts, pressed up in a gravity-defying bounty by whatever unimaginably uncomfortable corset she wore under her plum-colored dress.

She looked at me hopefully, smiling, and I grinned like an idiot. He bloody lips moved, but I couldn’t hear a word she said. Carlos rolled his eyes, cut the headphones playback and turned on the talkback.

“Hello, Girth,” Margo Atwater, my beautiful wife, said to me through the microphone.

“Hey,” I said, my voice thick from the effort of the solo.

“Can we talk?” she asked, her squarish brown eyes burning a hole through the glass.

“Um, sure,” I said. I glanced back at Carl, who had been watching me solo from his drum kit. He nodded as if to say, “I gotcher back, bro.” I knew he did, so I nodded back, unstrapped my guitar, and stepped out into the cool hallway.

We walked silently outside, into the alley behind the studio. A few engineers working on a different project stood smoking and bitching, so Margo grabbed my bicep and pulled me around the corner of the building.

She slapped me in the face with her other hand. “The fuck is wrong with you?” she asked.

“What?” I asked. “You left me!”

“You were supposed to come and beg to have me back, not run back to your little Cedar Rapids trollop—”

“Carl isn’t a—”

“I’m talking about Robin Kelley and you damn well know it!” she roared, her face turning as red as mine had during the solo.

In fact, I did know it. I often attempt to play this trick on people when I have no interest in discussing the topic at hand; it usually works, but Margo can penetrate it like a strap-on. “What about her?” I asked defensively.

“Like I don’t read your blog!” she yelled. This phrase, I’m afraid, is ruining society. People should be free to write blogs without being held accountable for the content. “Last time you were afraid of commitment, you ran off to her. This time you betray our marital vows, and you go back to her yet again. What’s your problem, buddy?”

“I was confused and upset,” I said.

“You weren’t the only one!” Margo screamed. It echoed against the wall of the Paint Shaker and the warehouse next door. I suspected the smoking engineers could hear every word we were saying.

“I’m sorry,” I said feebly, trying to quiet down the conversation so we weren’t overheard.

“Did you sleep with her, too?” she spat.

“I don’t know,” I said acidly, “did you read anything about it on my blog?”

“Fuck you!” she shouted.

“No,” I said, “I obviously don’t need you for that.”

“You motherfucker!” she roared, which for a moment reminded me that Carl was, at this point, married to my own mother, whom he left to come on the road with me. I wondered what she was doing.

My rumination was cut off by another slap to the face. The slap was hard, and I heard a brittle snapping in my neck. I yelped more from surprise than pain. I twisted my head back toward Margo, whose eyes blazed with fury.

“Fuckin’ bitch!” I said, but I’m convinced it sounded more like “Nagga meet” or something equally incoherent. Her eyes stopped blazing long enough to wonder what, exactly, had just come out of my mouth, then the fire returned and she smacked me again. I was slightly hunched still from the first slap, so she essentially beat me on the back until I collapsed into a moronic heap onto the sandy, weed-choked cement.

“Never leave me!” she squealed, divebombing me, beating my leather-clad body with her fists. I could see now that tears were streaming down her face, and she repeated her scream a few times. Her breath grew heavy as she pounded on me. I didn’t fight back, because in addition to my recent policy against hitting women, she had blindsided me enough that I was still in too much of a daze to even push her away from me.

Eventually she collapsed next to me. I could hear her breath hitch as she moaned softly. I lolled my head in her direction and saw the tears streaming down her pale cheeks and dripping onto the ground.

I gathered myself, exhaled heavily, and said, slowly and methodically, “You left me.”

“Asshole,” she sighed.

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Well, you did.”

We both lay there silently for awhile, just breathing, staring at the cloudless sky. A huge palm near Highland cast a shadow over me. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, the orange-purple night sky stretched over me. I had apparently fallen asleep. I felt hands across my sunken chest and looked over to see Margo’s sleeping face about a half-inch from mine. She was smiling. I took in the night cool, took a few deep breaths, and continued to stare at my sleeping beauty before closing my eyes again.

When I awoke again, Margo’s shadow blocked the harsh morning sun as she stood over me. She looked angry again. She held a couple of heavy bags in both hands.

“Finally decided to wake up, asshole?” she asked.

“Huh?” I said groggily.

“I was just loading the hearse with my shit. I’m going down to the apartment to unpack,” Margo said. “We’ll make this work, or you’ll die trying.”

She moved past me and disappeared out of my field of vision. I lay there, smiling. She had come back to me, and things would be well once again.