At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream by Wade Rouse

Author:Wade Rouse [Rouse, Wade]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-45192-7
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2009-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

As we pull into the gravel parking lot of a ramshackle country bar featuring a giant sign that says hunters always welcome!, I rub my brand-new mood ring for good luck. For once in its history, a mood ring is accurately reflecting my emotional truth: My stone is black, even though I am hot and sweating profusely.

“Ready for your debut, Shania?” one of our friends asks.

A group of friends Gary and I have met recently very much want to be involved with Life Lesson Five. They want to watch me karaoke for the first time in my life. And one of the few places that karaokes is a bar renowned for its rowdy rednecks.

I know karaoke started in Japan and later became a fun, hip thing to do in the city, but I knew karaoke—before Chris Tucker did it or High School Musical—when it was performed in seedy country bars by lonely, drunken rednecks pretending to be Hank Williams Jr. Many of our new friends—both gay and straight—are younger and loved to karaoke at bars in the city. But I—and they—have never done it in a bar that looks exactly like the one where Jodie Foster got raped in The Accused.

“It’s either this or bowling,” Gary says. “And you like the bowling shoes too much for that to be a challenge.”

A friend shuts off his SUV headlights, which had been illuminating a parking lot filled with Harleys sitting alongside a half-wooden, half-aluminum pole barn–esque structure covered in NASCAR flags and stickers. I can hear George Strait or George Jones or some other country George pumping from the jukebox, the tin roof of the bar shimmying.

I take stock of the outfit I have worn in which to make my singing debut: Banana Republic hip-huggers, a retro long-sleeve waffle T-shirt that says bewitched on the front, and leather shoes featuring stripes of electroshock blue.

I open the door, and the smell of old beer, whiskey, cigarette smoke, vomit, Old Spice, and Jovan Musk hits me. Followed by a man who looks like Billy Ray Cyrus.

“Ouch,” I say, rubbing my shoulder.

“Gotcher ID?”

“Umm, yeah, sure. Wow. I haven’t been carded in years.”

I smile broadly. Billy Ray doesn’t.

“You’re a model?”

Oh, my God, I think. Is everyone around here gay? I smile and blush, looking apologetically at Gary.

“Me? Oh, God, no. But how very flattering and kind of you.”

Gary and the man are staring at me. And then I remember my friend who had the same thing happen to her when she was getting her car fixed in a rural repair shop. She had mistakenly thought—just like I did—that the man had asked “You’re a model?” instead of “Year and model?”

“You’re an idiot,” Gary says. “He wants to know the year and model of the SUV. He likes it. It’s not our car, sir. It’s our friends’ car.”

“And I’m forty-one and, yes, I have modeled. I was a Sears Winnie the Pooh children’s clothing model, thank you very much,” I mumble.

This is going to be a long night.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.