Living Monologues | Cara
Photo by Paris Lopez on Unsplash
This monologue is pure fiction and part of my ongoing Living Monologues Series that explores who we are beneath our words.
“You know it’s interesting, you asking me that.”
“Why is it interesting?”
“I thought I’d hear it less the deeper into retirement I got but no. It’s always the first or last question y’all come with.”
“Well, you’re quite literally a legend. You’ve got to know that even though you’ve moved on, your diehard fans and younger generations are still moving through life with the music you made. Many of them are reliving the first time they heard it. Others are wishing they’d been alive when you were actively recording and performing.”
“That may be true. But for me. I’m a whole ass woman. Ok? The question of whether or not I “miss it” might as well be ‘Your glory days are behind you.’ Or ‘Do you miss being a somebody?’ I’m just as whole now, finding my grandbabies’ little socks all over the house and tending my backyard herb garden and smoking reefer with my grown kids as I was when I was sliding across stages.”
There’s a stuttered pause and the interviewer taps the top right edge of her note cards. She’s caught off-guard and I know it’s because I mentioned the reefer but ask me if I care.
“Is this the life you imagined for yourself when you were… a teen, say?” She’s composed herself and is staring at me intently, elbow firmly planted on the arm of her chair. I’ve been here a million times before. Press junkets out the ass. I’ve said the wrong thing as many times as I said the right thing. Ain’t no wrong no more. Not now.
“When I was fifteen, I climbed up between my mother and daddy in their queen-sized bed at the crack of dawn and told them I hoped I died before I turned sixty. My mother asked me why. ‘Because sixty is too old,’ I told her.
Sixty was sitting near a dirty window being fed red Jello in a rest home. Sixty was moth-eaten, scratchy sweaters that only came in drab colors like gray or navy blue. Sixty was stubborn whiskers on your chin that you were too feeble to care about plucking out. Sixty was a voice too old to trill and run and send shock waves through packed arenas or nightclubs or church pews. Sixty was needing a cane when you used to move across a stage like The Holy Ghost caught you slipping. No, I wanted to die young and beautiful and moving, lean and mean. My mother and daddy looked at each other and chuckled. They knew my folly when I did not.
But to answer your question. No. I don’t miss it. I don’t miss the road. People think just because you get old you miss everything about being young. But young danced its turn with me. I remember fondly, but I don’t miss it.
The rank tour bus bathrooms - when we started livin’ that large. I don’t miss squattin’ on the side of highways - when we weren’t. Nobody’d let us use the facilities for thirty or forty miles.
I don’t miss sleepin’ sitting straight up like a shocked cat to keep my curlers in place. I don’t miss the handsy drummer that found his way to my seat twice in the middle of the night. He got a hand up under my skirt the second time and found the business end of my knife. Tore his palm all up. He had to leave the tour the next day ‘cause how could he play? And how do you explain waking up with a mangled hand to the rest of the band? I don’t know how he explained it but nobody asked me anything when he left.
By ‘78 I’d had my fill of tour life. That’s just the truth. I was 34 and an old maid by every standard that mattered. But I knew there was more life for me than singing backup. And don’t get me wrong. Standing behind the greats was one of my greatest honors in my life. Especially Sam Benet.”
The interviewer finally seemed intrigued. She was smiling a little and she leaned in.
“Why do you say ‘especially’ Sam Benet?”
“Sam plucked me from obscurity in ‘59, at a gas station. I was out gallavantin’ with some friends headed to an Elks dance but first we had to stop for cigs. I can’t call to mind who was on the radio but it was blasting and I was singing and everybody was dancing. I remember Shirl Mathis danced so hard her shoe heel came loose.
And then Sam rolled up in a Rolls Royce. Man...Liked to knock my socks off. Everybody else was stunned silent. I was stunned into singing louder. I mean I put on a show. Terrified. And I looked him right in the eye from the time he pulled up, to the time he set the gas hose in his car to the time he docked it back to the step, step, step step, step, step, step he made over to our car. I only shut up when he held up his hand for silence.
“Gal, you sing like that at the Citgo, what you got down in that throat for a 10-city tour?!” He took off his hat and pretended like he was swatting me with it. His yes men laughed a little. Shirl gasped and squealed. Heat was rising from my toes. Growing up, I hadn’t dreamed of anything really. Figured I’d just be a music teacher and call it a life. But a song on a gas station radio on a real lucky night did something to my life I could never have dreamed up. Dreams and nightmares. Sam was the catalyst for that whole journey.”
I paused remembering his face. Baby foot smooth. And his eyes were a glowing gray. It’d scare you if he was white. But he was as brown-skinned as could be and handsome. Kind-eyed. Sam made a woman out of me. In some ways I remember fondly and other ways I’d readily cut him for if he was still alive.
The interviewer cut right through the thick my thoughts with another boring question.
“Have any of your children or grandchildren every expressed wanting to go into show business like you? I mean, they see all your Grammys and photos and albums…”
I laugh.
“My little niece, Star. She’s only fourteen but she’s determined to be a singer. I don’t have much to say about it because it’s her life to live. The other day I let her take a puff or two of my cigarette and listened to her plan. She’s got it all figured out and there’s a little piece of me that’s jealous. I stumbled into a pretty good life. Road bumps here and there. She’s got a plan for a great life and the determination in every gesture, every dance move, every neck roll… she’s going to have everything she wants. I can tell.
And you’d think I’d be dying to go back to those days. The glamour is exactly what you see in the movies and magazines. At first. When you’re so green that everything is peach cake and caramel sauce. Like the first time I got myself to New York City. Oh, I loved everything down to the pigeons and traffic. Especially the pigeons and the traffic. It was exactly what I’d seen in the movies. Dirty wonderful.
I sang through Jim Crow. I sang through Vietnam. I sang up into Reganomics. I’m tired now. These young girls now got to do too much to sing backup and half of them can’t even really sing. All they got to do is breathe like a porn star and wind their po’ little hips. No, we did some good ol’ sangin’ back in the day. And we danced until we were out of breath. You wanted a show? We gave you one. With out of sight costumes to boot.
I don’t miss it, though. I just want to hold onto the memories we made while I got the chance and the good sense to remember them. And I’ll pass ‘em on to Star. She’ll do something first class with ‘em. ...Are we done here?”