Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

926 I ADVANCE MASKED

I ADVANCE MASKED

We ended up staying in New York until Monday night (or maybe it was Tuesday, doesn't matter). We stopped by the office before heading out of town so Ziggy could sign something (or meet someone or whatever, doesn't matter).

Carynne was there and I sat down next to her desk and played with the Wonder Woman Barbie doll she had sitting on the tissue box. I asked Carynne about the "skinny white chicks with attitude" thing and she laughed. "Sarah has me so pegged," she said. "Even if I'm not remotely skinny anymore."

"You're..." I hesitated, remembering that there's some kind of etiquette around talking to women about their weight.

"Getting chunky," Carynne said. "Eating on the road is hell on my waistline. I should join a gym. There's one on the corner by my building but it's all gay guys in there and I don't think I'll fit in."

"You can't seriously be telling me that being in an all-male environment bothers you." The tissue box was gray with a geometric pattern on it like a modernist skyscraper.

"Oh, you mean like the music business?"

"And tour buses and–"

"It's not that they're guys, or even gay–heck, that'a a plus because then they won't all be hitting on me when I'm trying to just jog on the treadmill–it's that they're all so perfectly well-groomed. If I go to the gym it'll be at the crack of dawn and I'll have no makeup on and my grungiest sweatpants." She blew her overlong bangs out of her eyes as she poked at her computer keyboard.

"Why would they care what you look like? If they're gay, they're not looking to date you."

"But they clearly care a lot about appearances. God. You look in the window and it's like a Herb Ritts photo spread in there. I don't want to be judged for my appearance when I'm sweaty and crying from doing too many sit-ups." She gave up whatever she was trying to do at the computer and looked at me. "And, you know, maybe most of them are gay and not interested in me, but probably not all of them? And I don't have to look good to everyone, just to Mr. Right, right?"

I suddenly felt I was in rocky territory as I remembered Carynne once lamenting that I wasn't straight or at least a little bi. "You'll find him." And it won't be because you're skinny or chunky or whatever, I thought, but didn't say. "Or he'll find you, or whatever. It'll just happen."

"You really believe that?"

"You can't write love songs without believing it, I think." I shrugged. "That song I wrote about Jonathan, 'Blue Sky,' that's what the song doesn't come out and say but is implying. That it comes out of the blue."

Her mouth hung open slightly. "I never realized that. I've heard that song a million times."

"Well, it's supposed to be kind of subtle. You know I don't like to come right out and say things in songs."

"Yeah, but I felt like that one was about as close to being direct in a song as you get, and that's why people liked it."

I was pretty sure the reason people liked it was the peppy melody and also that Sarah recorded a charming, winsome, palatable performance of it, but what do I know. "Sometimes I don't realize the second or third layer of meaning until later." Sometimes I knew it was there, and I wrote and built the lyrics specifically to give clues to that underlayer without revealing it completely. But other times, even when I thought I was writing something simple, it always turned out to have depths underneath. It's Daron all the way down, I guess.

The sound of Ziggy's laughter from Barrett's office nearby turned my head.

"You guys must be doing okay," she said.