It was quite a while ago. I had fallen in love with my idea of a sophisticated, worldly gentleman who knew so much about something I knew nothing. He was suave. He was mature. He was an authority on jazz.
I met this gentleman through my college best friend. She was his secretary. I met them in a bar on a Friday night after a long day of classes, teaching a noon aerobics class, more classes, then taking my grandmother to 4:00 mass.
My friend, Sandy, was in my 8:00 class-I can’t even remember what it was, I just knew I was looking at a long day of things I HAD to do, with nothing that I really WANTED to do anywhere on the horizon. At the end of the class, Sandy casually mentioned that she would be at The Bumble Bee after she got out of work.
The Bumble Bee was a jazz club. Dark, smokey, kind of forbidden and foreboding. It was a place I’d only been to after I’d danced and drunk my fill at neon-lit night clubs filled with neon-clad twenty-somethings. It was the only bar I knew that stayed open until 4 a.m., and it was usually a final destination for me and my friends when we weren’t ready to call 1 a.m. a night.
I knew no one who went to the Bumble Bee before midnight.
After mass with my Nana, I felt exhausted, but knew I shouldn’t wave the white flag and surrender to my bed, pajamas and a book on a Friday night. I had no plans. In fact, I was so busy with my day and running late from one thing to the next, that Sandy’s plans were the only ones of which I was aware. I knew I could meander into the Metro or Bill’s in a few hours, but I didn’t think I had the stamina to wait out a few hours before trying to make a casual entrance. So I headed out to the Bumble Bee jazz club at around 6:00 that evening.
When I think back, I recall walking up to the door while it was golden light outside, a beautiful ealy fall evening. Inside the Bumble Bee, I was plunged into a thick darkness. I now laugh to think of how I must of looked, trying to adjust to the change in atmosphere: edging my foot along the floor with my arms outstretched, my mouth opened wide to somehow make my eyes adjust to the gloom.
“Good evening, welcome to the Bumble Bee,” breathed a voice right beside my ear.
I gasped and managed to make out a spectral shadow of high hair and a bit of glitter glinting off a silhouette of a woman.
It was Elyanna, the ageless, gorgeous Bumble Bee hostess. She wore fitted, strapless glitter gowns and teased her neon red hair up about a foot above her scalp, then shellaced down to a helmet flip-do. Her eyes were heavily lined in black khole that swooped out to her mid-temple. It was a retro 1950’s style that NO ONE was imitating in the 1980’s. And Elyanna owned it. She was stunning.
Before I could yammer out anything that made sense, my friend Sandy called out, “E—! We’re over here!”
Elyanna cupped my elbow with a warm hand and gracefully maneuvered me through the maze of tables to Sandy and her boss. She deftly pulled out a chair and sat me down by pushing on both of my shoulders from behind. That woman could manage a rioting mob.
Sandy was a happy person. Everyone was a friend and she naturally brought people together. I don’t think I’d have known three people in college if I hadn’t met Sandy, and there we were sitting with her boss. She was half-lit, smiling even more happily than she usually did.
“Henry, this is my best friend in college, E—,” she reached and grabbed my hand.
“Nice to meet you, E—”
Henry had a deep, smooth voice but as my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I saw he was much younger than I expected. He couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than Sandy and me, although it looked like he was trying to pass for thirty in his wide-shouldered pinstripe suit and paisly tie. He was very thin, with a large adam’s apple. He wore a pencil moustache and his hair was cut in a very short 1950’s side-part Dick Tracy. He studied me, while I smiled and nodded, then reached out a thin hand to offer his fingertips for a very strange handshake.
Sandy ordered me a gimlet martini, something I’d never had in my life. It arrived in a huge glass and hit me hard after the second sip. Sandy was making the small talk while Henry sat back and looked around the room, then back at me every minute or so. I can’t remember what topics she gushed about (Sandy gushed about everything), I just remember thinking I’d probably have that one martini. and call it a night.
Suddenly Sandy stood up and looked at her plastic watch.
“Oh shit! I’m supposed to meet Frannie at 6:00!”
She gave me a quick kiss on my cheek, told Henry she’d see him on Monday, then ran out. And there I was, alone at the Bumble Bee with a total stranger.
Henry looked like he wanted to bail as well. In fact, he looked like he wished he’d acted on disappearing before Sandy bolted, but he surprised me by leaning in, and said,
“Let’s have the calamari. It’s the best.”
We got calimari and more martinis. A saxaphone-snare drum duo took the stage and played wending, winding background music while I just leaned back in my leather chair and relaxed.
Henry began talking. He was interesting but I can’t remember much of what he said-mostly it was about his work, which I feigned interest but couldn’t actually give a shit. I answered questions about myself with brief but truthful answers. Sometimes I lied, either for my enterainment or to avoid future encounters.
Henry began talking about jazz. He had an authority and mentioned names, labels, clubs and songs I’d never heard of. We were on our third martini, and I was mesmerized.
By ten o’clock, I was sure I had met the two loves of my life: jazz and Henry. We left as a six piece combo was taking the stage, and the place was getting packed.
Henry’s apartment was a studio with a murphy bed on the seventh floor of what should have been a condemned building. I don’t remember much except the record he put on kept playing over and over all night but I was too disoriented to get up and pull if off, and the sex was really good.
My martini hangover was probably the worst I’d ever had. Over thirty years later, I still can’t drink gin. It was the kind of hang over that I was praying I would puke in order to feel better. Henry didn’t move when I clumped out the door. I didn’t care if he did or didn’t, I remember wishing I was dead instead of having to teach an early aerobics class to overweight lesbians at the YWCA that morning.
Sandy was all smiles when she saw me at class the following Monday morning. I was still feeling the remnants of the hangover, so I faked a smile and told her we had a great time after she left because I couldn’t bear to think of anything that had to do with martinis. On Wednesday morning, she told me she’d given Henry my phone number so I smiled again, and said, “Great!”
Henry called me on Thursday. We made plans to meet at the Bumble Bee on Friday after work-exactly one week after we met. I was still nauseous if you can believe it, but I wasn’t ashamed, and aside from the wretched aftermath of acohol, I was intrigued by Henry. I wanted to see him again. I remembered the sex was actually quite good.
He was nursing a soda water and lime when Elyanna plunked me down at the same table. I ordered a pepsi. We looked at each other a bit warily then drank in awkward silence. Then he slid a cassette mix tape across the table.
“This is some of the best intro jazz for novices. These songs will help you learn to appreciate jazz and move on to a deeper level if you’re into it. I think the most important thing you’ll learn about jazz is, it’s not just the notes that are played, it’s the notes that aren’t played that make it great.”
He left after he finished his drink. We never met again. Sandy got all awkward when she talked about work and only referred to Henry as, “my boss”. I can’t tell you what actually happened or what didn’t happen to make it feel like it went all wrong. There’s a message in there about too much booze I’m sure, but that’s not what bothered me.
Years later, I heard the phrase “it’s the notes that aren’t played” on the radio when a station was eulogizing the death of a notable jazz musician. It brought back all sorts of memories, an event that was far too significant, stylistic, artistic in it’s brevity.
A couple of months ago, my husband’s younger cousin, a darling girl who wears her heart on her sleeve, was struggling with her feelings for a young man (she liked him waaaaaaay more than he’d ever deserve), and was, in reality, just a booty call for this undeserving man. To make up for his wretched behavior, he texted her a string of jazz songs and a long, self-aggrandizing ramble of his expert knowledge on jazz with the phrase “it’s the notes that aren’t played…”
Can end that now with, “…it’s the women who are.”
Can I Tell You a Secret? 