Cadillac Couches (24 page)

“Are you sure I'm not too heavy?”

“Light as a feather. This is good training for hockey season.”

Afterwards we sat together and drank cocoa from his flask until our asses were so cold we were worried about getting hemorrhoids. We went home and shared a hot bath.

This was all wrong. I was a twenty-four-year-old woman, taken down by panic attacks. It wasn't like my life sucked. I had loved ones. I had legs, arms, a brain.

Anger joined my fear.

I ordered myself to sit up.

I sat up.

It was that simple.

I could almost conjure what this dragon of smoke and fear looked like, like a heat haze on the horizon in a blobby translucent shape. It wasn't even a real hallucination, I knew that, but I needed to conjure something tangible for me to scream as loud as possible at in my head: Give me your best shot, you goddamned
FUCKING BULLY
. You're all smoke, you got
NOTHING
. What's the worst thing you can do to me?

DO YOU HEAR ME? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKK YOUUUUUU
! To my surprise I felt the dragon retreating, melting into a puddle of silent nothingness.

The adrenalin had mellowed, and I felt an endorphin surge, like you do after running. I saw some packages of Krazy Glue on the shelf right in front of me. I grabbed one and stood up.

It was easy. I was a Phoenix rising.

I smiled at the ToolMart staff guy who was walking up the aisle to check on me. His nametag said his name was Paul.

“Can I help you with anything, miss?”

“No, I just found what I needed.”

“Are you sure you're all right?”

I looked up at the ceiling to see if they had surveillance cameras. They did. I was on film being a wacko.

“I just have low blood pressure. Sometimes my heart forgets to pump at all, and then I get a little flimsy. What's it like working here?”

“Not bad, you know, I get overtime and stuff. I'd rather be skateboarding, but a guy's gotta make the rent, y'know.”

“Ya, I hear you.”

“Do you want some water or anything?”

“Nah, I'm good, I'm gonna go hook up with my friend.”

Isobel was busy at the till paying the cashier for the duct tape.

“I just need to pop through the mall to grab some music,” I told her.

“Now?”

“Yup.”

I went to the record store and found a copy of
Moondance
. Reclaiming was my new agenda. Reclaiming sex, hut, and music from the Sullivan–Annie grip.

We drove through the rest of the province in silence. Hot air blasted through the windows, but I felt a hint of autumn in the air. The colours at their full peak. Overripe and bursting with green and yellow. The fields waiting for harvest. Weeds shoulder-high. I scratched my mosquito bites and listened to the tape back to back to back to back—three hundred and fifty kilometres worth (which felt like fifty-seven times, give or take). Isobel didn't ask what it was all about. She respected my music mission.

By the third time through, I didn't think of Sullivan. Aversion therapy was working. Plus I had gone head to head with the panic dragon and I had kicked ass. I knew I'd carved new ground that day in ToolMart.

I drove on, with Isobel at my side eating white cheddar popcorn meditatively. “You know, I could be deluding myself, but I think I'm kind of missing Finn. Il me manque.” Those wondrously green eyes of hers glistened. Was it fatigue or emotion? I wondered.

“That's gotta be a new experience for you, I've never heard you express that kind of sentiment before.”

“I'm not sure what's with me, I'm eating like a maniac, I'm thinking nostalgic thoughts about Finn. Maybe I'm coming down with something.”

“Whatever you do, you can't mess with that boy's head anymore. He's our friend now. Buddies are sacred. Plus they're might be a professional element to our relationship now . . . I've had some thoughts . . .”

“What are you talking about?”

I didn't answer. I wanted to ponder more before I spilled.

We drove on in comfortable silence past towns and fields and endless highway and prairie. Old red and grey barns dotted the landscape. Grain silos and cows. The road went on and on. We drove and drove. The air cooled, the light changed. At our next pee stop by the side of the highway, something ran right past my foot as I squatted between the open door and the car. A lizard with black stripes. Was it my lucky prairie skink after all?!

Crossing back over into rat-free Alberta, we were ready to get home. The road was deforming my back. The vinyl upholstery was burning my skin. I was out of the funk, ready to get going on something, a project, a grail, something not romance-focused. Meanwhile, I romanticized my new take on life. Imagined myself as endlessly fulfilled, feisty like Ani DiFranco. An independent heroine, with no need ever for a boyfriend. Of course, in my scenario, countless men tried to woo me, but to no avail. Until the One. It was going to take some effort to recondition my fantasy life.

Restless energy in a car was no good. I needed to be out walking the streets, panic-free. Living, making the most of my life. I was going to be disciplined, only watch a maximum of three videos a week. And sit-ups, I would do five hundred a day. I was going to build up my core strength. And sun salutations too, ten every hour.

As Isobel drove past the small towns leading us back to our northern town, I had the urge to write something down, to put it all to rest. I brainstormed drivel for miles. How did they do it, songwriters?

You were a great lover

To not just me

But I love you

See you, so long

I left you in a field somewhere in the middle

Of Al-berrrrrrrrrr-ta

See you, so long

Time to keep on truckin'

I groaned. I had no sense of poetry, no musicality. For all my music-lyric education, I was goddamned hopeless. Maybe Finn could help. It could be a genre problem. I needed to choose between an angry punk song or something sweet and commemorative. I picked up Finn's guitar and for the first time tried to play something. My fingers didn't want to contort properly. I soon gave up. I needed serious training.

“Let's go straight to Finn's,” I said.

On the last leg to E-town, I lay back and made plans, plans for our reform. Discipline, hard work, less movie-watching, and lots of training. Surely enthusiasm could override lack of talent. Isobel had the obvious makings of a diva: she'd been sustaining her own fan club since she was a teenager.

The Cadillac Couches. It was the name I had secretly always thought would be perfect for a band. Everyone spends all this time with their butts happily planted on their sumptuous couches dreaming their dreams. Couches can be vehicles for transcendental visions. Mostly though, in reality, dreamers drive trusty bangers, not Cadillacs.

I thought Finn would like it too. We could go on tour and one day open for Ani. We could get a Boogie van. We would cross the country all the way to the Maritimes and back. I could break guitar strings, I could restring my guitar. I could cover my fingers in duct tape and look really tough. I could tune my guitar and tell jokes. I could rock out for real, instead of just air-guitaring. We'd have groupies, party with other musicians, write meaningful songs. We would get to Florence at last and busk! We could . . . 

Maybe we'd never get out of the basement or the garage, but dreaming is free like we rock chicks like to say.

“Now, Isobel, I've got something serious to discuss with you. Picture this: you in a houndstooth mini-skirt, go-go boots, a leather bustier, and a plum-coloured boa, standing at the microphone . . .”

Isobel's eyes twinkled as I filled her head with a vision of chick-rock-stardom and Edwardian corsetry with a post-modern twist.

Home

8,207 kms total!

We pulled into town at 4:00
AM
, too late and too tired to go to Finn's. I dropped off Isobel at her place and drove the few blocks to mine. I walked in to a quiet house; my roommates were asleep or out. I dragged myself into my bedroom and fell on the bed. There was something crinkly beneath my head. A pile of official-looking letters from the credit card companies and a mysterious purple envelope. Of course, Hawksley's letter!

I turned on the light. I allowed myself a little surge of excitement, one last throwback to my former mission.

It was a form letter on Hawksley Workman official stationary.

Thank you for your missive,

dear fellow Love Adventurer.

May you travel well on your magic carpet.

May the music be your soundtrack with the angels.

XOXO
H

I read it a few times. In the past I might have smelled it, or tried to eat it even, but my turtle shell had finally hardened. I was an evolved young woman, no longer an hysterical tragedian. Panic had lost its hold on me. I was going to face life again, in a new incarnation: intergalactic rock star.

demo cd track 1

“ooo wah ooo”

The Cadillac Couches

One Year Later

Tilt Magazine
Vol. 25, Autumn

Shell Shocked by Ama-Rock on Stage 9

Edmonton Folk Festival

Review by Ursula V

Rating: ???*!

This year's annual Edmonton Folk Festival showcased some sounds never heard before. Stage 9's two o'clock Sunday slot was filled by interloping balladeers who call themselves The Cadillac Couches, their gospel—a celebration of cacophony.

The sweaty sweet smell of ganja emanated from a small, unsuspecting crowd sprawled out on tarps, talking, cloud-sculpting, and waiting for the next band to hit Stage 9. Traditionally a stage for the lesser known artists, people gravitate to Stage 9 for that reason, to hear the next big thing.

Ten minutes late The Cadillac Couches
stumbled
on to the stage. Guitarist Annie Jones wore a forest green T-shirt with the slogan
Anyone Can Make Art
in block letters printed across her chest. Her skin colour almost matched her T-shirt; she had the look of someone who was deeply seasick. Wearing a zebra-strapped Gibson, she headed for stage left, as near the edge as possible—like she was plotting her escape route through the river valley. The lead singer and front woman, Isobella Sparks, strutted up to centrestage wearing a fuchsia-coloured boa over a leather bustier and pink hot pants. She sported '50s cat-eye sunglasses and black Puss-in-Boots stilettos. With a permanent pout and her jet-black Cleopatra hairdo, she was a study in rock sirendom. A drummer completed this oddball trio. Wearing a black vinyl suit with a tomato in his lapel, Finn Hingley obscured himself behind an over-the-top drum kit that looked like a futuristic Lego space station with a galaxy of noise-making percussive components.

Jones started off their first song by tapping her foot on a wa-wa pedal, making a '70s-style funky intro. Away they blasted with “Tumbleweeds,” one of their two original numbers. The rest of their set list was made up of barely recognizable cover versions of love angst songs. They massacred their way through Patsy Cline's “Crazy,” blasphemingly tortured the crowd with Nina Simone's “To Love Somebody,” and peaked in badness, butchering The Police's “Every Breath You Take” by fusing it with Roberta Flack's “The First Time.” They managed to shred Van Morrison's “Someone Like You” both times they played it. It was almost as appallingly bad as their version of “Wild Is the Wind.”

The Cadillac Couches jumbled lyrics, fused melodies, harmonized inappropriately, had no chordal riffs, did too many acrobatic leaps, high-fived way too much, and seemed wholly unapologetic. Initially, the crowd couldn't believe what they were being subjected to. Some of the more rabid people spoke out:

“
HEY—LEARN
some chords!” heckled a guy wearing a Calgary Flames hockey shirt.

“Why don't you take some
MUSIC LESSONS
! You guys suuuuck!” yelled a disgruntled muso.

“Gee whiz. C'mon, guys they're just learning,” cried a middle-aged, good-citizen family man wearing a Tilley hat.

The heckling petered out as half the audience left. The tide turned and the remaining audience got on the Couches' wavelength, feeling the strange noises in their hips and groins. They threw themselves into the anarchy, participating by screaming in nonsensical call and response. A lone pair of stripy boxer shorts hit the stage and triggered an infectious general underwear evacuation, during which Hingley managed to do a rain-stick solo for over three minutes. It was a moment topped by Sparks, who in a misguided flash tried to wrap her lips around a didgeridoo, mock fellating it. She emoted pure dominatrix—whenever she shimmied near the drummer, he percussed himself in the head.

Jones, clearly exhilarated, did a series of Pete Townsend leaps in the air. The Cadillac Couches couldn't have looked any happier. Their frenzy was infectious—the crowd pogoed deliriously.

One fan jumped on stage right and did a series of perfect cartwheels before exiting stage left, uninjured. The crowed roared. A thin guy with a pencil moustache and lime green pants hoisted himself on stage and stood there ready to do something, but tragically lost his nerve, ran to the other side of the stage and jumped off, running into the distance.