The Guitar Man

[dansemajik]

OOC: I am baaack....been a long time. This is simple. My character wants to fuck a guitar player (I already am, lucky me), who wants to play for me? We can make this a bar scene, or whatever. I am open to anything......Danse

IC:
My name is Lucia. I found myself in a strange city, working for a strange company and finding my life getting stranger and stranger with each passing day. I had to shake the flavor of the day off, so I sought out a bar near my strange new apartment. I call it strange because I had bought it furnished and the furnishings are eclectic to say the least.

I push open the doors, and enter into a gloomy smoke filled room. A guy gets up and lets me have his seat at the bar. Who said chivalry wasn't dead...or is he just wanting to get a better look down the Vee of my sweater?

A guy is walking up to the small stage with a guitar in his hands. He sits on the stool that someone placed in the middle of the stage and I was mesmerized as he removes the guitar from it's battered leather case. I can't see him clearly, his head in down, and most of his face is covered by a hat. I can see his fingers though. Long strong fingers strumming the strings. I can feel myself getting wet thinking of those same fingers strumming me.

I got up and moved to the table right in front of the stage, not caring whose table I had just taken. The waitress brought my shot of tequila, and he began to play.

 

[ozme52]

the gig

"Would You Like to Play the Guitar?"
Pat Donohue - lyric
(to the tune of "Swinging on a Star")

Would you like to play the guitar
Carry money home in a jar
From a coffeehouse or a bar
Or would you rather get a job?

A job is the thing that makes you get out of bed
And work every day until you're dead
Your back is achin' and your brain is numb
And you just can't wait until the weekend comes
But if you don't want to starve or beg or rob
You're gonna have to get a job

Or would you like to play the guitar
Drive for miles and miles in your car
And pretend that you're a big star
Or would you rather book the gig?

An agent's the guy who takes his twenty percent
What he says isn't always what he meant
He'll clean you out in ways you never thought
Because he's good at business and he knows you're not
And then he'll sue if you ever make it big
'Cause he's the guy who booked the gig

Or would you like to play the guitar
For a living - har-dee-har-har
I'll admit it's kind of bizarre
Or would you rather be the wife

The wife is the one who has to rescue our butts
She's either a saint or else she's nuts
She gets impatient and she gets annoyed
'Cause she's the one who must remain employed
And, by the way, if you want to wreck your life
Become a guitar player's wife

'Cause all the monkeys aren't in the zoo
They can be trained to play guitar, too
Some do a whole lot better than you
But even if you don't go far
You could be worse off than you are
At least you're playing your guitar

 

[ozme52]

It was a typical bar gig. A small place with a small stage. Intimate actually, so I only brought an acoustic with me. The cherrywood Martin. Steel strings and plenty of volume, but capable of some mighty sweet sounds.

I had already tuned it in the back room, I like to come out and give my audience a song, right out of the gate.

Since it was a new place, new for me, I started with a humorous parody to Swinging on a Star. It gives me a chance to watch the audience and gague reactions.

As I began playing, this woman, sat down squarely in front of the stage, dead center. I could see her eyes from under my hat, an affectation I like in places like this, anyway, I could see her eyes, the whole of her attention seemed to be on me.

It was difficult to see her in the gloom, but her outline was catching my eye as well. Long hair, framing her face, slender neck, curvacious body in a snug top, long legs in tight pants. Heels.

She clapped with the rest of the small audience, but I at a different pace, out of rhythm with the others. She was definitely trying to communicate to me.

I changed the next song. Instead of the fare of folk songs I'd planned, I played a ballad next. Then a love song. And another. And I sang them all to the lady at the table.

At the first break, Marsha, the waitress, brought me a shot of Patron Silver, a bit of salt, and a lime.

I saluted the audience, left, right, then center. Looking directly into her eyes, I took my shot, set the Martin in it's stand, and stepped off the stage.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

 

[dansemajik]

I had watched him playing, the music sinking into my skin and starting a rhythm in my blood. His voice was smooth and sexy, and the music produced from his guitar was like majik and I was lost within the notes.

I looked up as someone asked me if I wanted a drink, and it was the guitar player. The man with those wonderful hands. He had longer hair than I was usually went for, and a look in his eyes that made me think he could be dangerous.

I smiled at him, and indicated that he sit down. The night was just beginning.

 

[ozme52]

Eric

I sat down, caught Marsha's attention.

"Tequila. Right?" I asked and held up two fingers. Marsha knew what to bring me.

I focused on the woman before me, drilling into her eyes with mine. I took her hand between mine, softly stroking the top of her hand as I shook hello.

"Erik."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The stage is empty and I don't give a fuck. After where I been and what I seen I don't get nervous at all playing before these kids and hip hoppers and machine music heads who don't know anything but what they know from TV, who don't feel nothing but the long emptiness of suburban lawns and long malls stuffed with crap they got to have; who got no idea why Robert Johnson would meet the Devil himself on that lonely crossroads in Mississippi at the stroke of midnight and sell his holy immortal soul just so he could learn how to make his guitar talk in a way so scary he'd make ice water freeze and so hot you know that Old Nick himself was the only one who could have tuned those strings, and died four years later, a burned husk of a man whose grave hasn't been found to this very day. Hell hound on his tail, he sang, hell hound on his tail.

I've been thrown out of better places than this and I've been thrown out of worse and I'll be thrown out of here too butthat don't matter much, not if I can just give them 15-20 seconds of real music. becuase then they'll know. Then they'll remember. And they'll never be the same again.

So I climb up on that stage with my rig which these days is a 1966 Sear Silvertone solidody electric with a little amp built right into the case that runs off two flashlight batteries. The whole thing is a piece of shit but it doesn't matter when you got the touch and Lucian Smokehouse has the touch.

I unpack and adjuct their stage mike so it points down to that cheap silvertone amp and pull out the the Plank with the strings curled all about the peghead and the cord held in the loose jack with a strip of duck tape and the place where Muddy signed it for me where no one can see.

"Hey you! Hey Ass hole!" the bouncer's yelling at me, coming towards the stage, "what the fuck you think you're doing?"

But I'm set now and I ignore him and I just start that steady thumb base on the low E muffling the higher strings with the side my hand: "Keys to the Highway"

They tell me I have nice hands but I don't know. All I know if I keep them clean and they work all right and I do like watching them sometimes when I play because they're so pretty the way each finger knows what to do without asking me. I swear I could play in my sleep but what fun would that be if I didn't hear it?
But i don't have to make them do anything anymore or even think about it. I just know what I want to hear and they do it, and once you get to that point you can spend your time concentrating on what it is you want to hear and not worry about your damn fingers. That's called mastering your axe. It goes from your heart to your ear and you don't worry about what happens in between.

I run through the chords to Keys and keep up that chugging bass because the song may be about cars but its really about trains, just like all blues is about trains. The bouncer he stops but is looking at me like I'm something he just stepped in and that makes me mad and so my song gets mad and it's not about fun anymore it's about the man he's mad, and he's got the keys to the car and he's going to show his bitch the back of his ass and fuck you too.
Somy heart says that and my fingers right away grind off a shreiking double bend up on the high strings that raises the hairs on the backs of some necks in that place, and then let that squeal relax and fall down to a delicate little tiptoe like an axe-murderer leaving the scene of the crime and ends with a turnaround that asks everyone is they know where they are now?
Huh? Do you?
You don't, do you? Because you're riding with Lucian Smokehouse now, laughing and crying as we bid that woman goodbyem and my guitar tells you things you never knew about what happens in a man's heart when he has to leave it behind.

And you know what that cheap-ass guitar feels like in my hands when I get into that song and we start working together? It's sweeter beneath my fingers than a woman's body, it sings sweeter than your honey when you lay in the cradle of her thighs beneath the moon. It's closer to me sometimes than my own dick, and a lot more interesting too.
I know every millimeter of that fingerboard and every fret on every string has a name in my mind. That one's my Home, that one's Too Much Whiskey, that one's Losing My Mind, and that one's Fat Thighs. I don't play music on that fingerboard, I paint pictures, make patterns. I know every string from the knobby low E up through that trecherous G that sticks in the nut to the good old B & that slimey E that slides off the finger board when I reverse bend up past the 15th fret.

And that funky silvertone and me we go places where no one else ain't never been, and sometimes I can take some people with me too, but they'll never feel that thing, that instrument, like I do, poor fucks.
I rest my jaw on the wood so I can feel the vibration in my head, my eyes, my teeth, and I marvel at how good it fucking sounds, my fingers making the chords, making fills that surprise me and make me smile: "Yes, that's right!" "Tell me about it!"
I give another chorus to the guitar and the solo comes out so simple and so profound that I think that mothers all over the land might start to weep as they think of their sons becoming men and leaving home, leaving their women. Leaving, man, always leaving.

And then I stop.
No one says a fucking word
Because they've heard some music. Some real, human made, beautiful true music, that came out of human hearts and not machines, and they're fucking floored.

I unplug and the bouncer starts over again, starts getting rough.
"Fuck off man, I'm going. My work's done here. Get your fucking hands off me man!"
And I put my baby back in her case all warm and happy, snap it shut and get ready to leave when the bartender calls me over.

"Hey you!" he shouts. "Someone wants to buy you a drink."

 

[dansemajik]

I shake his hand and smile at him. "Lucia. Nice to meet you Eric" You play well." The feel of his string caloused fingertips against my skin brings tiny little chills in the nerves of my skin.

I am nervous all of a sudden. My lips dry, so I keep licking them, my mind running into mental images of his tongue providing moisture of my own.

I push my hair back behind my ear. Another nervous habit I have. His eyes don't hold anything back, its like he is looking right into me. I hope he can read my thoughts. I hope he is willing to play me the way he plays his guirtar.

The Juke box is playing some slow song, and I ask him if he dances.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I finish my beer and pick up my case.

"I got the keys
to the highway,
And darling, I've got to go
I'm gonna leave this town a-runnin'
Walking's much too slow

"So I'm gonna sing
this verse
Then I ain't gonna sing no more
And when the sun comes up,
Down the road I go"

 

[ozme52]

"Lucia" I said, turning the syllables into a melodic trio of notes. I felt small tremors in her hand, as if she would pull away and then not. I continued to stroke her hand, sensing the softness through my fingertips, a sense of pressure more than touch.

Lucia is like a gazelle, nervous before the gaze of a leopard. Her very being vibrates as if she were a string waiting for my fingers. I imagined the songs I could play on her.

We danced, speaking almost not at all. I held her tightly, my leg between hers, a slow grinding dance. I felt her breathe raggedly, her skin flushed, her notrils flaring.

The crowd is small and the gig unimportant.

"Lucia? Let's blow!" She agreed and followed me to the stage, and watched with rapt attention as I packed up my axe.

We stepped outside and the night air was invigorating. Lucia's nipples poked at the front of her Vee neck sweater. My hand slipped around her waist and I pulled her towards me.

I let my breath warm the shell of her earlobe as I whispered.

"My place, yours, or right here?"