I'll Tell You in Person by Chloe Caldwell

Author:Chloe Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2016-06-29T19:11:04+00:00

Failing Singing

    Amanda meets one of my new

friends or someone I’m dating, she loves to play the singing card.

She tells them I used to sing. She asks me to sing. She tells them I used to sing Beauty and the Beast in the car. I want to kill her when she does this. I feel guilt- tripped and defensive.

At a shitty bar in the East Village a few months ago, Amanda

started in on me.

“She used to sing! Come on, do it. Do it.”

My arms crossed over my chest.

“Can we change the subject now?” I asked.

“You don’t understand,” she defended herself. “When you’re

just ‘..’ at everything, and your friends around you are super-

stars, it’s hard.”

“Dude, I was a normal person who could sing a little,” I said.

“Anyway, who wants to hear about the worst lie Amanda and I

ever told?”

Hungover and over each other in the car driving back upstate

the next day, I said, “You really like to tell people about my singing when you’re drunk.”

“I know,” Amanda said.

“It’s very annoying for me.”

I did find it annoying and embarrassing, enraging even. But

I also appreciated that she was showing other layers of me to the people I was sleeping with, because it made me seem more interesting and complex. More talented.

“Sorry,” Amanda said, not because she wanted to say it but

because she knew I wanted to hear it. She rolled down her win-

dow. Lit a Marlboro Light. I reached for the volume knob and

turned up Taylor Swift and didn’t sing along. We changed the

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Chloe Caldwell

subject and discussed how we can’t believe we’ll be thirty in six months. “I thought there would be more,” Amanda said, kidding

but not.

. . .

When I tell people I used to sing, their eyebrows go up in a way

I despise. They look at me differently, as though they want me

to sing for them on the spot. As though I’m suddenly worthy of

their attention. This is when the shutdown begins in my body. I

used to sing, I say. Downplay. Past tense. Arms over chest. Avert the eyes. Head down.

The excuses I give when I tell people I do not sing anymore:

() I’m in the business of writing, and I got a yoga teacher

training certificate. Do I really need to add one more

“career” to my list of careers that make no money?

(People kind of see my point when I say that, or pre -

tend to.)

() I lost my muscle for it. It’s a muscle—like all skills—and

when you don’t do it, it weakens and eventually goes

away. (The reaction to this one is most annoying, because

people want to tell you you’re wrong, like when you tell

someone you’ve put on weight, and they tell you that you

didn’t, but you know you are right.)

() It’s too expensive. When I moved to New York City,

I couldn’t afford it (and didn’t care enough to ask my

parents to help me out).

An elderly man in my memoir class found out I “used to” sing

one night on our walk to the train. He was telling me about the

voice lessons he was taking down the street.

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