Talk Talk
Bart left us off at a pizza joint near Berklee and Ziggy’s apartment. I got myself a spinach pie that was too hot to eat without burning my fingers and Ziggy got a couple of slices of pizza that were too cold to let sit around for very long. When he was done inhaling them, though, he said “You know, for two guys who spend so much time together, I don’t think I know you very well.”
I was going to say ‘likewise’ but didn’t want to draw attention to any secretiveness there might have been on my own part, so I didn’t want to imply it on his. “What do you want to know?”
“I dunno, where you’re from, shit like that. You aren’t originally from Providence, are you?”
“Fuck no. It’s much worse. I’m from New Jersey.”
“Get out!” He laughed.
“No, really. Home of Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi.” And Nomad. “You?”
He shrugged. “Traveled around a lot, lived everywhere from Baltimore to here. Your parents split?”
“Yeah.”
“Mine, too.” He stated it like a common fact of life, which I suppose it was. I didn’t bother to explain the exact circumstances of the two-bit con artist Digger and his estranged wife Claire, who by now was probably raising her daughters “in the proper manner” in some convent for all I knew. He didn’t ask anything more about them, told me he had a lot of brothers he didn’t see, either. “So you and Bart went to music school together.” He was eyeing some of the Berklee regulars in the place.
“Yeah. And quit together, too.”
“Why?”
“See, we wanted to start this band…” I smiled. “Actually, there was kind of a scandal with Bart and some high muckety-muck’s daughter, so they made him leave. And I went along. It was getting dull.”
“Bart? In a scandal?” His eyes were ablaze. “That is unbelievable.”
“He’s got very proper, stuffy, New England parents.”
“The summer house on Nantucket kind of people.”
“Martha’s Vineyard.” By now I knew where that was.
“Same thing.” He pointed at my spinach pie. “You better eat that before it congeals.”
I picked it open. Inside it was still steaming, but I started cutting it apart with a plastic knife and fork.
“So, tell me more about music school.”
“What’s to tell?” The pie was doughy and mushy, but as I swallowed it I realized how empty my stomach was.
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Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vols 1-3
General FictionDaron’s Guitar Chronicles tells the story of Daron Marks, a young gay guitar player, from about the time he is eighteen onward. He arrives at RIMCon (Rhode Island Musical Conservatory) in the mid-1980s, desperate to leave behind a dysfunctional fami...
