Looking for the heart of Saturday night

Now that the election is over, I can finally get back to the matters that really concern me, primarily, the scandal wherein Ashlee Simpson was caught lip-synching on national television. I was so upset and startled about it that I nearly forgot to vote, and ended up blindly scribbling ASHLEE SIMPSON for all the offices, and walking my absentee ballot into the polling station minutes before the doors closed.

Lorelei, who is much more tolerant of celebrities than I am, explained to me that Ashlee has acid reflux disease, which renders her unable to sing sometimes. Am I totally heartless if I say that I understand, but I expected more from her? I mean, come on! She�s a SIMPSON. She should live up to the name, just like Jessica. And Grandpa.

I shouldn�t be so upset, but a recent experience I had in New York has shaken my faith in musical stars. I was there to see a rare cabaret performance by a singer I�ve long admired, whose name I don�t want to divulge. OK, it was Tom Waits. There were only fifty of us in the audience for this intimate, unadvertised performance. Admission was invitation-only, and I am not ashamed to say that I was there at Tom�s specific behest, owing to our passionate and sadistic seventeen-month affair back in the �90s. We�d both moved on, but it was clear from the desperate hand-written plea on the invitation that he still carried a torch. It was no big deal�I decided to go, but sit in the back. Which is where I was when it all came down.

Tom scuffled out onstage, disheveled and lovable, and sat at the piano, striking a few chords and rolling up his sleeves. He scanned the audience�looking for me, I�m certain�then launched into �Pancho�s Lament.� I nodded knowingly in the dark�that had been Our Song, and it appeared that Someone just wasn�t quite ready to let it go. No matter. He sounded good, real mellow, kinda sweet, kinda sad, and I pinched the waiter�s ass to get him to hustle with that sloe gin fizz. I suddenly needed something to dull the ache that was radiating deep in my chest, like an old bruise from a sack full of oranges. I guess Tom wasn�t the only one with a torch to carry.

Everyone applauded reverently at the end of the song, but not too loud, lest we be mistaken for fans instead of privileged invited guests, and Tom nodded in acknowledgement, striking the opening chords of �Filipino Box Spring Hog.� And that�s when it happened. The piano was silent, although his fingers still moved over the keys. His voice was suddenly a whisper, like a kitten in a windstorm, meowing to be let back in the garage. We all froze, including Tom. Suddenly, the sounds of �Pancho�s Lament� kicked back in over the PA, and he looked up, terror in his eyes. He leapt up, elbows flailing, and did a quick �jazz square,� smiling wildly, then improvised a series of high kicks, waggling one hand above his head as he exited the small stage to the eerie echo of his own phantom voice.

The music stopped abruptly, leaving the stunned audience to stare in disbelief at one another, and although a few real sycophants applauded, no one felt it was really deserved. My eyes met those of the waiter. �Go to him,� he urged me, and I jumped up and ran backstage, where Tom was slumped in a broken wicker chair, sobbing like a girl. �Baby,� I started, and hearing my voice, he crushed me in an embrace, weeping and clutching at me in a way that I found vaguely repulsive. After a good cry and several shots of well liquor, Tom was composed enough to form words.

�Why?� I asked him, and we gazed wordlessly into each other�s eyes�mine, violet, like my name; his, red and crazed with broken veins, like his name, before he changed it. He answered me in a voice as thin and wiry as a thin, thin wire, �I did it all for love.� That was almost certainly a lie�Tom is a notorious misanthrope, but eventually the story tumbled out in fits and starts, as I grilled him in the glare of a 500-watt bulb. Turns out he�d never sung a word, never played a single note�it was all smoke and mirrors. Tom had been just another pretty-boy dreaming of MTV and girls. Sure, he had charisma, but he lacked vocal range. Hoping to make him a star, an unscrupulous manager dreamed up the lip-synch scheme, an elaborate pantomime performed to the voice of some street bum he�d bribed with nickels. Before he knew it, he was famous, but the ruse had careened out of control, consuming his life. In the end, he could not stop it, so it had stopped itself.

I turned out the light bulb and put my hand to his stubbled chin. �You could have told me,� I said simply. The pain in those beautiful bloodshot eyes became too much to bear, and I bent to kiss him on his cracked and bleeding lips. I am an amazing, amazing kisser�ask anyone�but Tom is magnificent, and he kissed me as if he drew his life�s strength from deep inside my esophagus. I felt myself go weak, but managed to slap him away. "I can't go down that road," I told him, "Not again. Unless you have a lot, a LOT, of money." He shook his head No.

I said goodbye forever to Tom that night, left him crying like an orphan in the back room of that seedy club on Christopher Street. I stood outside in the shadow of a street light, smoking my last cigarette and pondering the notion that all illusions must crumble, until the bus pulled up and opened its doors to take me away.



Star of the day. . .Milli, but not Vanilli
posted @ 2:30 p.m. on November 5, 2004 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......