Whale Music by Paul Quarrington

gazed upwards at Danny, they twisted their bodies in concert with his, they attempted to commingle on some spiritual plane, they made no secret of the fact that immediately after the show things were going to get down and dirty. Dewey Moore grinned from ear to ear, a hound dog who knew that he could feast forever on little scraps from the dinner table.
    Among the young girls danced my mother. She didn’t stand out, particularly, her hair was as blonde as theirs, her skin as perfect. Her clothes were sedate—at least the designers had aimed for sedateness—but my mother could shake the booty.
Agh
. Her fanny would bob like helium balloons through the clouds.
Agh. Agh
. Buttons were always working themselves undone, glimpses given of lace brassieres. My mother would kick out, arms aloft, thrust her pelvis,
come and get me soldier and slap some jelly on it!
    A photograph exists of that night. It’s in a cookie jar which I deep-sixed in the mighty Pacific several years ago. It shows the dancing crowd, my mother among them, my mother frozen in a position that, whew, merely looking at it would turn you into a pillar of salt, at least throw your back out for a week. My brother Daniel is in essentially the same posture. I’m standing behind my keyboard, looking baffled and bewildered, a visitor from the Dogstar Sirius.
    And then, right before we were supposed to play “Jaguar June”, Dan announced, “Hey, everybody, we got a special guest artist tonight.” News to me, news to me. I would grow used to this, why, one night (a few years to come) Jimi Hendrix got up on stage with us and, for reasons of his own, immolatedby flame not only his own guitar but Monty Mann’s as well. “The composer of ‘Vivian in Velvet’…” (I clearly recall thinking,
what a coincidence, someone else has written a song with that same silly name
, and then the horrible truth struck home.) “Mr. Hank Howell!”
    The father came prancing on stage with the tenor guitar. Do you know the tenor guitar, the thyroidal ukulele?
Nelson Eddy played the tenor guitar!
The father began, his right hand slapped the contraption’s belly, his left grabbed ahold of the fretboard and throttled. A D-chord, worse, a D-sixth. A D-sixth sounds like a Sunday School teacher farting and then giggling with embarrassment. The chord was strummed limply. Apparently this was a ballad.
All right, all right
, thought I, disdainfully playing the whiny notes. Down to a B-minor, yes, yes, E-minor, oh no, don’t tell me,
ah!
, the A-seventh, the father has plagiarized whatever finned quadruped first emerged from the ooze with a Sears & Roebuck six-string. And then came the lyrics.
    You dream, you incredible dream
,
I dream of the following scheme
,
That one day, we will float down the stream
,
You dream, I dream, we dream
.
    The youngsters sat down. The dance floor was empty, save for my mother, who stood staring up at the stage, expressionless. The father attempted to aim a soulful gaze at her, but he ended up squinting like Popeye. And then Maurice Mantle appeared beside her and—with no exchange of word or gesture—they fell into each other’s arms. Mantle placed one of his elegant hands on the small of my mother’s back, the plateau before the valleying of her buttocks.
    You dream
, crowed the father,
you indelible dream
.
    (Had the thesaurus out again, have we?)
    I dream until I think I might scream
.
That one night, we will ride on a moonbeam
,
You dream, I dream, we dream
.
    Danny jumped off the stage and tapped Maurice Mantle on the shoulder. Mantle stepped back gallantly, Danny took his spot, the father broke out into a rancid sweat. I did what I could. I added some ninths, anything to soup up the stodgy stew of his progression, I improvised a little counter-melody, I even added some vocals, harmonizing on the snivelling
you dream, I dream, we dream
. But, as we like to say here in the War Zone, damage had been done.

I am voyaging down the gold and platinum record