Double Dealing: A Menage Romance

I
could feel
sweat drip down my back as the hot stage lights glared down on me. I was focused, my left hand flying up and down the neck of my guitar as my right hand shredded out notes. I was trying as hard as I could, knowing the odds were stacked against me. Finally, with a last peel, I tweaked with my tremolo bar, carrying out the final note until it faded away.

"Thank you Jordan," the band manager called out, and in his voice I could hear two things. First, he was impressed by what he'd heard. Women in rock and roll are pretty rare, although those who could break through the image tended to be pretty famous. I mean, growing up, Joan Jet, Heart, and Lita Ford had been my idols, and they were all women who rocked.

But rock was in a slump, especially in the Los Angeles area, and getting a gig was damned hard. When you combined that with the fact that my original background wasn't in rock but in classical music, the difficulty doubled. Band managers and record company talent scouts didn't have a lot of room for a girl who grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis to a middle-class family and played the violin as well as piano. They wanted either rich girls who they could market as Paris Hilton wannabes, or blue collar types they could cast in the classic rock n' roll image. Hell, they wanted the next coming of the Bangles really. More style than substance, and if you looked great in a tight dress, all the better.

That led to the second thing I heard in the manager's voice, that of rejection. There was no way I was going to be on stage soon with Shadows and Dust — the name of the band. Still, he was polite about it. "That was some of the best playing I've heard all year," the band manager, a guy named Rick who looked more like a tax accountant than a band manager, said. "I'll forward the video of your performance up, but I'm going to be honest, I don't know if the company is going to go for it. Last time I said the band needed a new guitarist, they just did in-house session guys for the entire tour."

"I understand," I said, unslinging my guitar and flexing my cramped fingers. I'd been jamming nonstop for fifteen minutes, starting with GNR's "Sweet Child O' Mine" before before ending with a personal childhood favorite, Heart's "Alone" and then just a minute or two of straight jamming out. After all of that, my hands were aching, and I needed to stretch them out. There's a reason that a good band will mix up the complexity of their songs in a set. You have to give all of your members a chance to hang back once in a while and relax. Nobody can jam hard for an hour long stretch. Guitar and piano players cramp up, guys on the horns or sax will lose their breath, and even lead singers will go hoarse if you can't give everyone a chance to rise and fall with a set. A good band will make sure to script out their sets that way, or else they don't make it that long.

Sighing, I glued a hopeful expression on my face, half appreciative for his compliment while at the same time making it clear that I needed the work. "Maybe if you could, see if there is a spot for a session player at the label? I'm not really in a position to bitch about getting credit on the sleeve of the CD or not."

The manager nodded in understanding. Like I said, he looked like a decent guy, not mixed up in drugs or anything like that, and he had probably seen a dozen guitarists like me trying to make it on their skills in the city. "I'll see what I can do. Listen, if it were up to me I'd have you shredding tomorrow night, you have talent, and I started with a classical background too, so I know you know the ins and outs of music theory. But you know how the industry is right now. Unless your name's Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, you better be a lot raunchier than you come off as."

I wasn't sure if I should take his comment as a compliment or an insult. I knew I wasn't built like the girls mentioned by the manager, but I wasn't exactly making Courtney Love look like Marilyn Monroe either. Five eight, decent figure, I could still wear leather pants or tight jeans and not feel like an overinflated balloon. I've been complimented on my eyes and especially my hair, which is kind of a slightly reddish brown, darker than auburn but not quite chocolate. I decided to play the polite role and let it slide off my back. "Just trying to make it on my skills first, then tart it up later if I need to. Okay well, thanks for the audition, and I hope I can hear from you."

On the way out of the venue, I sighed miserably. It was a rare rainy day in Los Angeles, and I didn't have enough money to pay for gas for my car. Glad that I at least hadn't hawked my guitar case on Craigslist, I walked through the rain for a block and got to the bus stop. While I waited, I thought about my life, wondering if I was making the right decision still trying to make it as a professional musician. In an era where autotune and electronic backing was standard, was there still room for someone like me? It wasn't like I could wait forever for rock to have another resurgence, either. At twenty-five, I was reaching the age for female singers where either you made it, or you never did. The music industry, since the rise of MTV, was based as much on looks as it was talent, more so for female musicians. If you weren't popular by the time the high school guys stopped hitting on you in public because they thought you might be in their age range, you were pretty much out of luck.

The ride back to my apartment was bleak, and things didn't improve when I got home. My roommate, a new girl named Scottie who was supposedly a literature major at UCLA, was crashed face down on the sofa, her pants halfway down her legs and her ass poking up in the air, snoring loudly. I'd have worried about her if it wasn't that it had happened four times previously in the two months we'd lived together. She seemed to major less in the works of Steinbeck than she did in trying the entire Kama Sutra, most often when stoned out of her mind. Even still, all of that wouldn't have been a problem except that she was late with her half of the rent.

"Scottie? Yo, Scottie!" I said, shaking her shoulder. I could smell the weed and sex drifting off of her, both disgusted and jealous at the same time. I had been busting my butt for too long to have more than the occasional hookup, and it had been a long time since one of those, even. I wasn't quite sanctified yet, but occasionally nuns would pass me on the street and give me a commiserating look, like they knew what was going on for me. "Scottie, wake the fuck up!"

She rolled over to the side, mumbling incomprehensibly. I shook her shoulder again. "Scottie! Where's your half of the rent? I had to pay the office this morning, and I'm down to three bucks in change. The cupboard is empty, and I need some food."

She smacked her lips and waved with her hands. "I'ma geddit furya," I think she said before rolling over, snoring as sleep overtook her again.

At least with the way she turned I didn't have to look at her ass any longer. I pondered going into the kitchen and getting a glass of water to pour over her, but realized I'd just be left with a wet couch and no money still. Sighing, I went back into my bedroom and pulled up my computer. It wasn't top of the line, hell it barely kept up with modern websites, but I could do e-mail and try and make contacts. Besides, it kept me out of the kitchen, where we truly were down to a box of cheap macaroni and cheese and half a carton of milk. I'd been hoping to save that for when times were tough, but that time was looking more and more likely.

It was, in fact, my e-mail that gave me the first good news of the day. In desperation two days before, I had gone onto a job hunting website and signed up, putting in applications for anything that might let me still make auditions or studio sessions. If that hadn't worked out, I'd have been playing guitar or violin on the street corner, busking for my food. I heard that you could get good hauls at the LA Zoo, and outside some of the busier train stations, or at a decently trendy Starbucks.

Instead of worrying about how I would sweet talk a coffee shop manager into letting me cadge off his electricity, I had a reply to one of the jobs I’d applied for. I clicked the link, double checking which job it was, and grinned. It wasn't the worst job I'd applied to, and it was a decent wage, just over twelve bucks an hour. If I wanted an interview, I could have one the next morning. Of course, I didn’t have much of a choice.

The Japanese American National Museum was in downtown Los Angles, in the Little Tokyo area of the city. I'd applied simply because as a child I loved museums, especially the kind where you could go around and actually touch the exhibits. Science museums were a ton of fun for me, and if it hadn't been that I loved music so much, I would have gone into engineering. I'd been in science museums all over the country, from Portland to New York to Houston, and really loved the entire idea behind them. The JANM wasn't the branch of the air and space museum, but a job was a job.

I smoothed my hands over the only decent set of interview clothes I had, a skirt and blouse set that I thought matched well with my hair and went inside. I was surprised to find that the person who interviewed me wasn't Japanese at all, but I guess when you look at hiring a girl like me for a tour guide position, ethnicity isn't all that important. Then again, California was unique in that race was both totally unimportant and a constant factor in relations between people all the time. I don't think in any other place did you have to be simultaneously hypersensitive and relaxed about it to the degree a person in Los Angeles had to.

"Miss Banks?" the man, who was probably in his mid-forties, asked me when I was escorted into the back offices. "Hi, I'm Harry Takahashi."

The name took me aback, I guess the guy did have some Japanese blood in his family tree somewhere. In looking closer, I guess I could see it in his facial features, but it had to be a couple of generations back. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Takahashi. I'm actually surprised you'd take the time to interview someone for a position like this. It's just a tour guide, not a curator or anything."

"Not at all Miss Banks," Harry replied, gesturing towards a chair. I sat across his desk from him, separated by what could only be described as a fortress of stuff. Papers, books, and folders were stacked so high I couldn't even see the man's keyboard, all of these mini towers topped with coffee cups, little figurines, balls, and other knick-knacks. I felt like I was interviewing inside a kid's play fort. Maybe Harry Takahashi was insecure, and liked the physical separation, or perhaps he was just chronically behind on his office work — I had no idea. Either way, he cleared his throat, picked up my resume to glance over it again, and asked his first question. "So what made you apply for a position here at JANM?"

I swallowed my immediate answer, which was that I needed the damn money, and launched into my best interview speak. All in all, I felt things went pretty well.

"Your background. I saw on your resume that you’re also a trained musician in piano, guitar, and violin. In fact, you were trained in the Suzuki Method, yes?"

I nodded, surprised for once that my mother's insistence at classical training was paying off in a rather unique way. "Yes, my violin and later piano teacher were Suzuki trained. In fact, my violin teacher actually studied under Dr. Suzuki himself, at least that what she said."

"I see. Well, while I'm not looking for otaku, we do have a high number of people who have some connection to Japanese culture, as you'd expect. Being Suzuki trained will give you some, what's the term, street cred? Yes, street cred with the visitors. Are you still actively playing?"

I shrugged, rolling my shoulder. "I am an active electric guitar player, but I haven't played piano or violin in a long time. Personal reasons."

Harry nodded, not probing deeper, which I appreciated. While I wasn't going through anything like PTSD symptoms any longer, I still wasn’t comfortable talking about what happened to me eight years prior. "Okay, Miss Banks. Well then, I think you can tell, I'd love to have you come on board as part of JANM. I do have one more question, and this has no bearing on the offer for tour guide."

I was so happy I couldn't even think straight, my smile spreading across my face until I was sure it stretched earlobe to earlobe. I could actually buy food soon, and not scout out dumpster diving locations. “Go ahead, whatever you have to ask."

"Well, I can assume from your work history and what you just said, you're trying to make it in the music business?"

I nodded carefully. "I am, but the going's tough right now. Not a lot of demand for female rock guitarists."

"I can bet. My own daughter listens to nothing but One Direction and Nikki Minaj, which I personally can't stand. I guess my father said the same thing about my listening to Bruce Springsteen back in my days. In any case, the custodial staff also needs help. I know it's a dirtier job, but it's late nights, something a musician might be used to. If you’re interested, do you think I could interest you in that say, three nights a week in the mid-week? You'd still have Fridays through Mondays to do gigs and such if you want. That would bring you up to full time, and you'd be covered under the JANM's insurance and other policies."

I didn't care at all about health insurance, I'd skipped my sign up more than once. It wasn't like I had the money to afford it either way. But, being full time was a great bonus. "Mr. Takahashi, that sounds fantastic. On one condition, though. I have to be allowed to wear separate outfits for custodial work and tour guides. There is no way I'm scrubbing toilets in a nylon skirt."