Gino shot me a warning as my drunken hand drifted over his lighting table. I loved winding up the 60 year old in his 28 year old body.
“This is the wunderkindt?” I asked, glancing at the floppy-haired teen on stage. His body was Justin Bieber pre-Selena but his voice was (black artist) pre-80’s. Impressive fingering…his lyrics, not so much.
Three black girl backup singers? Really!?
Including me, that made four black people in the entire hall. His people need to work on those optics.
Is that Terry?!!
Leaning over the booth, it was unquestionably my ex’s brother-in-law a dozen rows back from the front. Lizzy, his daughter, 12, was next to him with six of her tween girlfriends. He was easy to spot, the only motionless human within fifty feet. His eyes were dead staring at some empty spot on the stage while he mouth breathed.
“Doesn’t it get tiring partying at thirty?” The sound of his condescending voice from last summer vomited its way into my head. It was one of a multitude of unrequested commentaries he decided to gift to me that afternoon about things he obviously regretted not being able to do anymore.
Look at you now.
His hands were in his pockets and he watched this next generation Joe Cocker with the defeated expression of someone at the DMV who pulls ticket #124 while the sign says Serving #6.
Gino handed me my Patron and soda and I took a celebratory sip.
“When we were your age little Lizzy was just turning one…” he’d said, a mouthful of grilled corn, then followed with twenty minutes of how much he loved the bonding experience of changing a dirty diaper.
Now your bonding with Lizzy pulling on your arm in frenzied teen glee that has you checking your iPhone’s time every two minutes.
“Thank you. You’ve been a great audience.” Justin Bieber-lite said heading into his finale, “This last song you might know. I wrote it when someone I loved, left. It’s called Heartbreak, Me.”
I rolled my eyes as he let the moment sit for affect. The angsty crowd missed the crack in his smile but I caught it with ease. His pick hit the strings and the girls erupted! Terry looked suicidal. The high-impact, close-proximity concussion wave of the hundreds strong shrillness hit him and he grimaced, hard. I couldn’t help but let out an audible laugh.
“Lizzy loves to sing,” he’d told me tossing his paper plate into the trash.
Yes, she does! And another sip of Patron.
The songster let out his final strum and headed off, sending half the audience into shirt-soaking-tears of blissful anguish that would continue their entire drive home. Terry walked towards the exit below us, zombie-eyed, with his daughter and her exquisitely tormented friends in tow.
I want this to never end.
“Hey Terry! You looked like you loved the show!!!”
He searched with deers’ headlight eyes until he found me then raced to change his expression to believably happy. But eighty minutes of torture had dulled his suburban superiority reflexes to the nub. His utter exhaustion and boredom were a dead giveaway a second long enough for us both to know it. I raised my glass and let him soak in one more displeasurable experience as he passed underneath us and away.
I turned to Gino, “I gotta come see you do these more often!”