Featherless Bipeds Read online

  Zoe stops by frequently to check on me and bring me her homemade curry soup and hamburgers from Jafo’s. Each time she comes over I try to get her to kiss me like we used to kiss in high school, but she just grins that Mona Lisa grin of hers and says, “You might injure yourself if I let you get too excited.”

  Tristan, Akim, Veronica, and Sung Li all take turns dropping in between their classes. Even Lola comes over, acting uncharacteristically shy at first, but I manage to convince her that I hold no hard feelings toward her, that it was all just a big misunderstanding, and that she should keep up the good work fighting racists and misogynists and homophobes and so on. She stops by later with some of the best home-baked chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever tasted. Who would have guessed that Lola has a little Betty Crocker hiding beneath her Tank Girl exterior?

  The university has given me permission to re-enroll as a first year student next year, with no academic penalty. The health insurance policy I got with my university tuition, which I don’t even remember signing up for, pays for my rent and my physiotherapy sessions. I’ve also been doing some exercises of my own. I have re-assembled my drums so they’re taller, so I can sit up straighter to play, instead of hunching over the kit and aggravating the wound in my belly. Since I haven’t been taking classes, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. I play my drums each day until it hurts too much to continue.

  Tristan has been jamming with Akim, with Lola joining them on vocals. One day Tristan arrives home from his last class of the day and I’m still pounding away on my drums. Tristan immediately calls Akim, telling him, “Dak is ready to rock.”

  Tristan is right. I am ready.

  Now it’s Saturday, and Tristan and I show up at Akim’s place at noon, Tristan lugging his huge Trace Elliot amp in one hand while towing a wheeled road case containing six different bass guitars with the other, and me hefting my drums into the empty garage behind the house where Akim and Sung Lee rent a basement together. Their elderly landlord is mostly blind, so he doesn’t have a car, and he’s agreed to let us use the empty garage as a rehearsal space. He’s also mostly deaf, which means we can play as loud as we want to. Akim has confided that having a deaf landlord has not been bad for his and Sung Li’s sex life, either.

  Tristan surveys his bass collection and selects his Fender Jazz Bass. He only has two hands, but for some reason he needs six basses. He’s got another six sitting idle at home. Maybe he is subconsciously still sticking it to his dad for not letting him play that old Beatle bass. He also removes a small video camera, which he props up on a shelf with a bird’s-eye view of the garage.

  “For posterity,” he says.

  Sung Li helps me carry the big bass drum inside when she notices me wincing slightly. I’m trying not to be a wimp about it, but the scar across my stomach is still pretty tender. When I enter the garage, Tristan and Akim then break into a funky instrumental rendition of that old crooner standard, “Mack the Knife”, singing, “It’s Dak the Knife!” as a chorus.

  “We learned that one just for you,” Tristan says.

  “They’ve been practicing for days,” Sung Li affirms.

  “Tristan wanted to do ‘Cuts Like a Knife’, ” Akim says, “but I hate Bryan Adams!”

  “Can I see the scar?” Sung Li asks.

  I lift my shirt.

  “Oooooh,” she says, “does it hurt?”

  “Oh, excruciatingly so,” I say, “but I’m very tough.”

  “Goof!” Tristan says, putting away the Jazz Bass and pulling out his Washburn five-string with the purple metalflake finish.

  “Hey, chicks dig guys with scars,” I tell him. It’s sort of true, too. Zoe sometimes runs her finger gently over the dark pink line, but maybe more the way a nurse would than a girlfriend. Patience, Dak, patience.

  Relatively speaking, there is hardly any pain at all now, just a dull, throbbing residual ache where the knife entered me, and a sort of hot, searing feeling there when I over-exert myself. I still flinch sometimes when I pass by groups of scruffy teens on the street late at night. But, for the most part, I’m okay. I’m ready to rock.

  I look around the garage. It’s Mecca! A musician’s wet dream! Akim has covered both the floor and walls with thick, orange shag carpet, giving the place the free-love ambiance of the interior of a mid-seventies van . . . but, of course, that isn’t the point. The carpeting provides good sound insulation to counterbalance the thump of the best garage-band PA system I’ve ever seen: a thousand-watt Peavey amplifier, a sixteen-channel Mackie mixing board, an equalizer/effects rack (of unknown factory origin — all the labeling is in Korean), two eighteen-inch Electrovoice subwoofers, four Peavey PA speakers with eight ten-inch midrange speakers and a high-frequency horn apiece.

  And Akim’s guitar gear! Not only does he possess a Fender Twin (the Cadillac of Fender guitar amps), but he also has a large TubeWorks MosValve amp (“Just as good as a Marshall, only cheaper,” according to Akim). Neatly arranged on a tall, lopsided bookshelf is a rainbow-coloured assortment of guitar effect pedals: digital delays, chorus pedals, a wah pedal, flanges, stage equalizers, compressors, at least a half-dozen different distortion pedals, and something called a “Sitar Swami”. If a guitarist really behaves himself, when he dies he’ll get to jam in Heaven’s garage, which must look pretty much like Akim’s.

  “Wow.” I say, “How did you ever afford all this stuff?”

  “I eat a lot of Kraft Dinner.”

  Sung Li rolls her eyes. “And Sung Li has a bursary,” she says. “Have a good jam, boys. I’ll be over at Veronica’s place.”

  Sung Li gets it. She understands that playing guitar, to Akim, is like breathing. It’s something that he just has to do. She understands that Akim needs to have all of this gear, that Tristan needs to own at least a dozen bass guitars, and that I need to have a drum set with nine drums, seven cymbals, a cowbell tree, and a set of wood blocks.

  Sung Li gets it. Akim had better marry her.

  I’ve got all the pieces of my kit positioned exactly the way I like them, and all the skins are tuned nicely. Akim has finally settled on a guitar set-up that doesn’t displease his ear too much. Tristan’s bass sound is deep, tight, and flawless as usual.

  “Now all we need is a singer,” I say, as I diddle lazily along the edges of the snare drum.

  Akim looks at his watch.

  “Twelve-thirty. I said we’d get together at twelve, right?”

  I nod.

  “Well, that means Lola should be here any minute. She’s always exactly a half hour late for everything. I think NASA calibrates their countdown timers by the accuracy of her lateness.”

  The words have just left Akim’s mouth when the door to the garage swings open, but it isn’t Lola. It’s some guy I’ve never seen before. He’s dressed like a mannequin in the Casual Wear Department of Harry Rosen’s, wearing about a thousand dollars worth of designer clothes. He’s got perfectly coiffed hair, like the plastic hairdo on a Malibu Ken doll. A tiny Traynor practice amplifier swings from his right hand, a guitar case in his left. He drops the guitar and amp on the floor, casually kicks off his gleaming leather shoes, but does not remove his sunglasses, or the unlit cigarette that hangs loosely from his lip. He glances conspicuously at his Rolex.

  “Right on time, as always,” he says to himself, then he turns to Tristan and rasps, “Tristan, my man! The bass-playin’ machine!”

  Then he turns towards me. “Hey, drummer dude! Wicked kit, man!”

  He extends his hand towards Akim, “And you must be the maestro of the strat-o-cast-o!”

  “Who,” Akim asks incredulously, “the hell are you?”

  “Bond,” he says, “James Bond.”

  “Guys, meet James Tanner,” Tristan says, shrugging slightly. “He’s in my Introduction to Business class. He plays rhythm guitar. I invited him to join in. When we’re ready, he can get us some gigs playing bars.”

  “I’ve got the connections, all right, dudes,” James Tanner brags. He gives a
small laugh, which triggers a fit of coughing. When his hacking gets to the point where I fear he might eject a lung, he grunts, “Uh. Need a smoke.”

  He pulls a Zippo from his front pants pocket, flips the lid open and holds the flame to the cigarette.

  “Excuse me, James Tanner,” Akim grunts, “but you can’t smoke in here!”

  “Sorry, dude,” our overdressed interloper says, turning back to the door. “I’ll go outside. By the way, when I’m playing in a rock band, the name’s Jimmy T, not James Tanner.”

  He coughs a few more dry, death-rattle coughs, then strides out of the garage, wearing a smug expression like he knows something the rest of us don’t. As he walks out, Lola walks in.

  Lola summarizes what Akim and I are thinking: “Who’s the pretty boy?”

  “Okay, okay,” Tristan says, “I didn’t exactly plan to bring him along, but I told him about the band in class yesterday, and well, he’s a hard guy to say no to.”

  As if reading our collective mind, he continues. “So he’s a bit of a frat boy, but he says he can play guitar, and his dad is the CEO of a big conglomerate that owns Sanderson Breweries, among other things, so he can get the band pretty much any bar gig we want.”

  “So Daddy’s rich, eh?” Akim scoffs. “Gee, you’d never know it.”

  “Big Swinging Dick,” Lola says evenly. “I’ll fix him if he gets out of line. Did you see his car, though? Silver Mercedes convertible. Sweet. He must be doing something right do have a car like that.”

  “More like his daddy is doing something right,” Akim says, then adds, “or something wrong.”

  Lola, I must say, looks good. I mean really good. I haven’t seen her for a while, and the change is dramatic. Her hair is back to what I assume is her natural colour of soft red. Her nose rings are gone, and she’s let go of the vampire cloak/military-fatigue outfit in favour of the sort of clingy, figure-hugging things Zoe or Sung Li would wear.

  She catches me staring.

  “Uh, wow, Lola,” I struggle, “I like the new look.”

  “Thought I’d try to look the part,” she says, with a sort of bashfulness I never, ever would have expected from her. She snaps out of it immediately, though. “Besides, why the hell should I hide away my breasts and hips? I’m female! I’ve got breasts and hips!”

  Phew. No argument here.

  “So,” I say, desperate to change the subject, “how about we play a tune while we’re waiting for James to finish his smoke out there.”

  “Hey, Lola, how ’bout that Hendrix tune,” Akim says, all business. “Dak, you’ve gotta hear this woman sing!”

  Akim gives the volume knob on the Twin a healthy clockwise twist. “The three of us have been working on this one,” he says to me. “Go nuts, Dak!”

  And, with that, Akim lets fly that howling lead from Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower”. All those years of practicing arpeggios and rundowns on his classical guitar have given Akim Herculean fretboard fingers.

  Tristan and I pound along underneath Akim’s wailing, all of those nights of jamming away in our dorm room making us play like we’re sharing the same brain. The metallic-purple body of Tristan’s Washburn has a yellow and red warning sticker on it, which reads: “DANGER! Only Authorized Personnel should access this equipment!” and Tristan wastes no time in proving that he is, indeed, Authorized Personnel when it comes to handling a bass guitar. He looks like a cross-breeding experiment between a Death Valley buzzard and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, but he plays the bass like Jack Bruce from Cream, Geddy Lee from Rush, and Flea from The Red Hot Chili Peppers incarnated in one body. I toss in a couple of syncopations at one point, just to see if I can throw him off, but he follows along as if he can smell the changes coming. A lot of bass players are simply frustrated guitar players, but Tristan is the real thing.

  And Lola, oh Lola . . . damn, the girl can sing! She’s got a powerful, raspy, sexy blues-on-the-Bayou kind of voice, the grit of Janis Joplin with the control and volume of Aretha Franklin. Any sore feelings I had left towards her temporarily melt away as we sizzle and rumble and slash and bang our way into the second chorus.

  We finish the song with a crash-n-smash, thank-you-very-much-goodnight roar.

  “Whoa!” rasps James Tanner, or Jimmy T, or whatever the hell his name is, as he reappears from outside, “That was hot, baby. You rock!”

  “Don’t call me baby,” Lola warns. “I’m a woman, not an infant.”

  “You sure as hell are!” he says, “You sing as hot as you look!

  Jimmy T’s band is gonna kick ass!”

  “Our band,” Lola corrects, who seems to be blushing from something other than anger. “Our band will kick ass.”

  I look at Tristan and Akim. They both shrug.

  “I get the sense that this is going to be one bad jam session, dudes,” Jimmy T says, while removing an entry-level Fender Squire from the gig bag. He looks at Akim and says, “and by bad, of course, I mean wicked! Like, wicked good!”

  “Thanks for the explanation,” Akim says, annoyed. “I was about to go get my Dictionary of Slang.”

  “How long have you been playing guitar, James?” I ask.

  “Jimmy T, bro,” he says, “call me Jimmy T when I’m playin’ rock ‘n’ roll. And I’ve been wailin’ on the guitar for almost a whole year now, bro.”

  He begins strumming a four-chord blues progression, his undersized Traynor bleating harshly like an old AM radio with the treble knob turned all the way up. The sound causes Akim’s face to contort.

  “Um, you wanna play through my MosValve, Jimmy, bro?” he suggests.

  “Nah,” Jimmy T says, still strumming the blues progression, “I like to use my own equipment. Looks more professional, eh?”

  “Are you going to take off your sunglasses, Jimmy T, or is that supposed to look more professional also?” Akim says, rolling his eyes.

  He looks around at the rest of us.

  “I’m keepin’ my shades on so we can play some bluuuuuuuues,” he croaks. “You guys wanna play some bluuuuuuuues?”

  It’s like asking a bunch of five-year-old kids if they would like to eat some candy. We all join in, our volume overwhelming the whine of his puny Traynor.

  Tristan plunks out a deep, propulsive blues bass line. I jump in with a simple mid-tempo blues shuffle beat, leaving lots of space for Akim to stretch out into a make-you-want-to-cry guitar solo. When Akim’s lead guitar appetite is finally satisfied (for the moment, anyway), I lean into my mike and begin singing the lyrics to a song I wrote while playing in a sloppy, alcohol-oriented band in high school. It had originally been a punk-rock song, but the lyrics lend themselves really well to the rhythm of blues. Both Tristan and Akim nod their heads along as I growl, with my best blues snarl:

  It was Saturday

  I washed my car

  Drove up and down the dock past the ice cream bar

  See and Be Seen

  It was the Summertime Law

  Billy called shotgun

  Ray back with Dean

  Cranked down the windows

  Turned up The Max Machine

  One-arm-suntan-poses

  Were critical

  Amazed that I can remember the whole first verse, I plunge right into the chorus, which also translates extremely well to blues:

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Lola quickly catches on to the melody of the chorus (which is the beauty of a blues jam), and joins in with a sweet, raspy harmony vocal the second time through:

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Akim turns in another tight, colourful solo, then I continue singing, still amazed I can remember all the words:

  Beach and ocean

  Through a rose-coloured windshield

  Sun-bronzed bodies

  Like wheat in a sand field

  If I dare to touch one

  Will she die in my hands? />
  Every day like a pop song

  All backbeat, no danger

  I steer the car with my knees

  and dream safely of strangers

  Speakers thump out bravado

  It’s critical

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Jimmy T joins in with a third, even higher harmony line, way up above Lola’s voice. Maybe this guy will be useful after all. For the first time in my life, I am playing in a band that can successfully sing three-part harmonies. And I know that Tristan is a passable singer, too. The possibilities are endless!

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  The last night of August

  When Summertime ends

  She leans through my window

  It’s half-past ten

  No longer pretending

  It’s critical

  She says “Let’s go to the boardwalk”

  I say “okay”

  The buzz of the Radio

  And seagulls and waves

  I ‘ve got beers in the trunk in a cooler

  Also critical

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law

  I nod to Tristan, who breaks into a surprisingly melodic bass solo. When he’s finished, I began to howl the final verse, and I throw in a wicked drum fill, just because I can.

  My heartbeat thunders

  Deep in my ears

  It may be passion

  It may be fear

  The boys will wonder why I was late

  Don’t know what to say

  Ooh ooh ooh ooh, Summer time Law