The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

The Tip Top Deluxe is in a westside neighborhood on the border between a blue collar neighborhood and a bit of industry. Down the street past some older houses is a sprawling iron and metal recycling facility. There’s a city maintenance yard and a Coca Cola bottling plant nearby, each two blocks in opposite directions.

The building must have once been a neighborhood store. Today, the exterior is plain; solid, but not fancy. The door faces the side street and above it hangs a jaunty sign sporting the retro Tip Top logo. Just inside is a small room that functions as a vestibule with the johns off to the right. On a music night the band’s merch table takes up most of the space. The bar is through a door on the left; past the doorman who’ll take your money and stamp your hand.

The night Deb and I went to see Sarah Borges open for The Bottle Rockets, we parked along the curb nearly under the sign. And as we arrived at the stoop, Sarah and a couple bandmates burst out the door.

“Oh, my goodness,” I said in an exaggerated way, but she didn’t recognize me yet.

I had met Sarah through my brother. I think he is practically a patron and has been a fan since he was going to M.I.T. and she was a local phenom. She has done a couple crowdfunded albums in recent years. As a poor vagabond sailor, I chipped in just enough to get the music.

The last five summers or so, when Tim and his family are back in the States for a visit, Tim has hired Sarah to perform at a garden party on Boston’s south shore where his family reunites with their Boston friends and former neighbors.

Deb, Sarah, The Bottle Rockets and I

A few years ago, Tim dragged me to a recruiting event for his company. I was visiting out east on a vacation. Though I had resisted doing anything work-related, Tim finally insisted that I go. As we set up an ice cream social in a room at M.I.T.’s student union, Sarah walked in with her guitar case! Tim, ever the patron, had hired her for the event. It was gourmet ice cream and acoustic rock and roll.

As she walked in, Sarah apologized that she hadn’t had enough change for the parking meter and the time allotted. As if by magic, Tim poured an amazing number of quarters into my cupped hands.

“Go fill Sarah’s meter,” he said, “I’ve got to go pick up the ice cream.”

Thus, I found myself walking across the quad at M.I.T. with Sarah to find her car. She was dressed for a casual afternoon acoustic jam in a mini skirt and cowboy boots. We must have been quite a sight mingling with all the future engineers and computer scientists but had a nice walk and a pleasant chat about music and family.

Back at the Tip Top, Deb and I found a booth and as Sarah passed by, Deb pointed to me and asked her: “Do you remember this guy?”

“Hey, um …  your brother is … Dawson-Townsend, in Switzerland. And you’re just Townsend” Sarah declared.

Sarah’s latest album was produced by Eric “Roscoe” Ambel. He also produced the last couple Bottle Rockets albums. Roscoe has an amazing musical pedigree; including having been Joan Jett’s original lead guitar player in the late 70s. Roscoe was playing for Sarah on this tour and the Bottle Rockets’ rhythm section, bass and drums, were the rest of her band for the night. Apparently, they had all met on an Outlaw Country Cruise, Sarah had been scheduled as a solo act, but a borrowed pick up band -- these same guys -- was organized. She and her gathered crew put on a killer set of rock and roll. They played a lot of Sarah’s new music; peppered with old favorites and the go-to songs from her back catalog. With a short break after Sarah, The Bottle Rockets took the stage and after two or three songs, I wandered out back to find Sarah.

“Do you smoke?” Sarah asked and I shook my head. “Well, if you can hang out a minute, I want to chat.”

Sarah took care of her business with the club as Roscoe sat near the merch table eating a sandwich. Soon Sarah and I went outside to the crisp air on the sidewalk. She lit a smoke and ...

“So, how’s the boat?” she asked! The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

Suddenly I was lost. Disoriented. Blood thrummed in my ears as my heart pounded. Misty stars floated in the air. Seagulls cried. Waves crashed and hissed against a beach. The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

Now, I wasn’t on the make that night. I was honored that she even recognized me. But Men are often ridiculous about inappropriately projecting our affections on any woman who is remotely nice to us. We are even worse about imagining that woman is projecting affection in our direction. But when a woman asks a sailor about his boat -- FIRST.

Well, that was almost more than I could handle appropriately.

Despite my swimming sweaty brain, we had a nice chat. It was more than surreal standing out on the sidewalk, after just watching Sarah rock the house at the Tip Top, and talking with her about her son, life in Boston, and my niece and nephew, whom she had seen more recently than I.

Anyway, I think Sarah’s been on the road since her late teens. She has heard it all and has probably had to shut down all kinds of harassers and interlopers. I’ve seen her burn hecklers into silence from the stage. Moreover, I’m in no position to offer her anything. But.The.First.Words.She.Spoke.

And besides, I can’t decide if she and Roscoe are a couple or just musical partners. She told me, nodding to the black Suburban at the curb, that they like traveling together. I also read an article where she referred to him as her “partner in crime.” Each of these could equally refer to a professional relationship or something more.

There was a couple at the Tip Top who I know are also Michigan friends of Sarah’s. Inside, she stopped by them a couple times to chat. I really don’t know, but I think I was the only one to stand outside on the sidewalk for a chilly, extended chat.

If nothing else, I like to think that I might have made Joan Jett’s guitar player a little jealous.

Pony League Football

I was a sorrowful, ridiculous sight standing on the football field with uncomfortable shoulder pads and an oversized jersey soured from years of too much sweat and too little washing.  And pants two sizes too big.  A coach had tried to tape the pads and pants around my thighs to hold them up, but the tape couldn't hold once I actually moved.  So the pant legs hung around lazily.  The dirty white adhesive tape hinting of some vague injury.  One leg caught somehow on my calf and hung jauntily at my knee.  The other leg was loose, hanging open toward my foot.  A scrawny ankle disappeared into the gaping hole like a fragile clapper in a big bell.  Luckily, my mouthguard was the one piece of pristine equipment I had been issued.

Pony League Football was one of my very few forays into sports.  It had all sounded cool, but I didn't burn for the game like the other guys.  The ill fitting, used and abused, league supplied equipment did not make me feel like Spartacus.  I felt like the Tin Man and moved with all his pre-oil-can grace.  Dad and I had watched a lot of football but I didn't grow up in a sports family.  Thankfully so actually, my life has been rich in other things.  I quit even watching sports on purpose long ago.

In the practices and bull sessions, the ill equipped, volunteer dad coaches talked strategy and tried to build a team with what they had.  Finding that I matched a lack of grace with a stunning lack of speed, the coach assigned me as Defensive Tackle.  Whatever deficit I had in grace and speed, I hid it in a stature not quite as big as most of the other lineman.  I was pushed and shoved, jostled and punched.  But it was football; it would make me cooler.

From the coaches, I had gotten an embryonic idea of what me role was.  I was to penetrate the Offensive Line.  The Quarterback and the ball, however briefly, were back there somewhere.  I would lunge and roll, fake and push, and shove trying to get past whatever meathead they had put in front of me.  Unbeknown to me at the time, the Quarterback, and especially the ball, were never back there for long.  And the Offensive Line was supposed to tie up the Defense as long as possible to help the ball get from behind the line down the field.

When the ball was snapped, I would lunge and roll and push and shove and . . . then the whistle would blow.  Turning around usually, I would walk down the field to wherever the Offense had got and we would line up again.  Ball snap, jostle, whistle, walk.  If the other team scored, or somehow used up their downs, I would walk off the field and our Offense would give it a go.  Sooner or later, the Defense and I would go back on the field.

It never occurred to me, until years later, and nor did any of the dad coaches mention, that I should have kept my head up to watch the overall action.  I never knew what was going on or where the ball was going.  I was just trying to break across the line.  Rarely, my Offensive opponent would drop his guard, or if he knew the real action was long gone, save his energy, and I would make one last triumphant shove and roll and . . . get by him!!!  I was actually standing in enemy territory!

. . . and looking around, no one else was still back there.

I think many of us live out lives like I played Defensive Tackle.  We keep our heads down.  We push and shove and blindly work only on the problem right in front of us.  If you keep your head up and watch the ball, you can adjust; stay in the game.  You can do something productive and contribute, rather than just wasting your energy on some smaller problem that doesn't affect the overall game.   Of course, we could also quit pushing and shoving and play a different game, but that is a topic for another day.

The Warthog Princess

Self righteousness wafted about her like the musk of a warthog. Her nose, more like a snout with each step, inclined as she lumbered toward me.  She smiled conspiratorially and I half expected tusks to spring from under her ample cheeks.  I shook my head in an effort to lose the vision of wallow mud caked under her chin.  Clip earrings and a bauble necklace hung on her haphazardly.  A light scarf hung around her neck over a nondescript sweatshirt.  She wore a fashionable warm-up-like suit that reeked overly expensive.  The warm-up suit, once exclusive to athletes, now de rigueur for older woman who'd decided they looked better in loose clothing. The effect was that of sow who'd found an old steamer trunk in the barn.  After rifling the trunk, she had emerged dragging jewelry and silken clothes.
Her wattle, spilling over an invisible collar, trembled as she laid a hand on the edge of a bin of bubble gum.  Struggling to strike a royal pose, the warthog princess cast a significant glance into the bin.

"If someone just took one of these to chew," she grunted, "would that be stealing?" I understood the words but all I really heard were snorts and the slop of mud.

Her question fell to the floor, like a pork carcass that slipped off a meat hook, and slapped the damp slaughterhouse floor.  Her eyes  widened flashing the international-gossip-whore-signal for "right behind me." I looked over her shoulder to see a family walking the other direction.  Mom, Dad and a little girl ... chewing gum.

I shrugged and smiled in the noncommittal way of polite society.  The family was different.  Even in my head, the warthog whispered "different;" one of those words, like "cancer" or "unwed," that grandmothers would rather not say out loud.  The warthog's clothes, and the gaudy jewelry, probably cost more than the happy family spent on food for the month.

A weary sadness welled up in my gut.  It had flashed as anger but faded just as quickly to a jaded fatigue.  In the 21st Century, are we still divvying up us's and them's?   I turned and walked away.  I couldn't decide whether to bitch slap the old hag, or just sit down and cry.  Maybe I'd give the family an unexplained apology. The maliferous, odiferous, nasty bitch would think nothing of popping a cherry or a green grape through her tusks without paying.  Yet somehow, she feels superior to someone else primarily because of her lack of epidermal melanin.  She probably dyes her hair too.