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I interviewed with Hamster the same
day I spotted that ad on the bulletin board at Susanne’s. We got past the
business part in ten minutes, and then I got his life story. Not as bad as it
sounds; Hamster’s storytelling carries a pace than any Hollywood filmmaker
would envy.
He grew up on the Texas panhandle and
developed a profound fascination with trains. But a black man in a small town
had to take any opportunity he got, so he took a job busing tables at his
uncle’s saloon. Within a year, he was behind the bar, serving drinks.
“But
that is where I got my break,” he
said. “Bartending is a gateway job – you can do it almost anywhere, and it’s
always in demand. A couple years later, when my cousin Gerald moved to Dallas,
I went with him, with one goal in mind: to tend bar on a big cross-country
train.”
He
worked the southern line for ten years, running to one coast and then the
other. The West Coast won out. He transferred to Los Angeles so he could work
the Coast Starlight, an Amtrak line from LA to Vancouver, British Columbia.
“The
money was excellent,” he said. “But that was the least of it. Being the
bartender got me into late-night conversations with white businessmen –
conversations that your average black man was not privy to. Place a man in a
trainbound isolation, provide a steady flow of liquor, and you’d be surprised
how much financial information comes out. Privileged information. So I started
sending my tip money to Wall Street.”
Approaching
fifty, Hamster had quietly become richer than most of his customers, and began
to study alternatives to his ever-mobile occupation. This time, the battle was
between north and south – and the north was winning.
“Texas
panhandle to Los Angeles,” he said. “I had suffered enough heat for three
lifetimes. In winter, I would step off the train in Vancouver, and that cold
air would cut right through me. It was thrilling. I wanted more.”
Once
he earned his pension, Hamster packed up his things and headed for Seattle. On
his way there, however, he was sidetracked by an old curiosity.
“Almost
ten miles north of Olympia,” he said, “the track enters into a dramatic
squeeze. On the right, you’ve got these forested cliffs – a glacial cut from
the Ice Age. On the left, there’s the Puget Sound, so close you could hook a
salmon out the window. And just when you feel like you’re on the edge of a vast
wilderness, here comes the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It’s a classic two-tower
suspension, a cable draped over them like a loopy M. The tracks go directly
underneath, crossing at a perpendicular. It’s a dramatic perspective, and I
always wondered what was on the other side. It looked so dark and green and
lovely.”
On
his post-retirement drive, Hamster headed west off I-5 and finally crossed the
bridge, spotting a long freight on the tracks below. He turned off as soon as
he reached the other side and immediately got lost, following whatever bits of
water he could sight through the evergreens. This took him, eventually, to a
wide, beautiful harbor, and a sign that said Restaurant For Sale.
At
this point in the story, Hamster let out a broad grin. “It was all so perfect.
I halfway expected that sign to start talking to me.”
At
the far end of a year-long renovation that depleted most of his savings and
taught him more about building codes than he ever cared to know, Hamster paid a
visit to the local model train society and hired two of their best craftsmen.
These were Mack and Heath – both of them retirees from the Army Corps of
Engineers – and they spent the next three months building the tracks that loop
the interior, delivering drinks via HO-gauge locomotives. The trains exit the
bar through a scale model of Mt. Rainier, suspiciously similar to those
produced by the Army Corps of Engineers.
Hamster
is one of the few owners I’ve seen who insists on tending bar himself. This
might be because he’s the only one who can operate the complex track system
without causing three-martini pileups. More likely, it’s because his presence
is good for business. He exudes a lean, elegant bearing that has fueled more
than a few Nat King Cole fantasies among his older female patrons.
Walking
me to the door after that first interview, Hamster asked me for a suggestion.
“About
what?” I asked.
“About
anything. I became a successful man by knowing how to cultivate advice. So any time
I meet someone who appears to have a head on their shoulders, I ask them for a
thought. So, young lady – what do you have?”
“Well,
I don’t…” I began, and immediately interrupted myself. “No. Actually, I do. Do
your trains have names?”
“Not
really. ‘Santa Fe,’ ‘Union Pacific.’”
“Well,
since you are now going to be a karaoke bar, name them after songs. Like
‘Engine Number Nine.’”
Hamster
snapped his fingers. “Roger Miller.”
“Bingo.”
He
unleashed that smile again. Definitely
Nat King Cole. “And that,” he said, “is why I ask for advice.”
Oh,
and the name? Hamster? I have no freakin’ idea.
The
City of New Orleans pulls in as I’m
doing my sound check, hauling a Seven-and-Seven. I don’t know how I got on this
high school booze-and-soda thing, but it’s thoughtful of Hamster to make them
extra weak so I don’t get loopy.
“Harry,
are you ready to kick us off?”
Harry
is my prize pupil. He’s a high baritone, with a ballsy lower edge that you just
can’t teach. (One night when he sang “It’s Not Unusual,” a pair of panties
somehow ended up at his feet, though no one ever confessed to the deed.) The
only item in his debit column is an absolute lack of adventure. Here we are,
three paying customers in the joint, and still he’s doing “Suspicious Minds,”
one of his twelve tried-and-trues. I’d bet he sings the same twelve in the
shower.
About
a year ago, I borrowed a recording system from a friend and we turned Thursday
into Studio Night. Slip the KJ a five, walk away with a live cut of yourself on
a CD. Harry refused to go anywhere near it. The idea of setting down something
permanent just petrified him. One night his girlfriend, a hyper, sexy number
named Sheila, slipped me a five and a wink. I thought for sure that Harry would
find us out, but I managed to fake some technical difficulty as I lined up the
levels, and four minutes later we had a note-perfect cut. When I called him
back and handed over the CD, he broke into a flop sweat – after the fact. I’ll never fully understand the effects that
singing in public can have on people.
Harry
and Sheila didn’t last. Sheila was an attention whore, and dating a guy who
gets panties thrown at him wasn’t cutting it. The breakup was ugly, and Harry
had a bad reaction, lying in wait for college girls with father issues and
snapping them up like a Mars flytrap. There’s a steady supply from across the
Narrows (University of Puget Sound, Pacific Lutheran), and Harry is pretty
powerful bait. He drives a tow truck, which has the triple effect of keeping
him fit, supplying him with interesting stories, and endowing him with a
white-knight aura. That and the manly beard, the surprisingly soft blue eyes.
Okay.
I’m giving myself away. But I’ve seen too many of Harry’s shenanigans to answer
that doorbell. And I’ll give him
credit – he hasn’t been ringin’. Karaoke is therapy for many a mid-life crisis,
and Harry knows better than to get involved with the psychiatrist. He’s happy
to tip me excessively and collect all my books at closing time. A girl could do
worse.
I
note that Kevin’s not here, which makes me nervous. I don’t want Sunday’s offer
and turndown to be an issue. I don’t want anything
to be an issue. I got enough issues for a lifetime, bruddah.
Harry
hits the big finish, receives a three-person ovation and makes way for Caroleen.
She is nearing sixty, pleasantly gray and doughy, the way women used to age
before we all got obsessed. When she first took the mic, a year ago, I thought
the poor thing would have a heart attack. She had not the least idea of rhythm
and tone, just sort of mumbled the words as they changed color on the lyric
screen. I thought I’d never see her again, but she returned the next three
nights, and each night she sang the same song: “Mama, He’s Crazy” by the Judds.
A year later, she’s still singing it.
I
know what you want to hear: that Caroleen has learned how to sing that one song
beautifully. Sadly, no. She still sounds like a rusty gate – but a rusty gate
that no longer mumbles. I think that’s all she really wanted, to tell people
that yes, I go to this karaoke bar in Gig Harbor and I stand up in front of
people and I sing.
Three
months ago, Caroleen ordered up “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar,
and I nearly fainted. Not just because it wasn’t “Mama, He’s Crazy” or because
it was so against type, but because it holds a special place in karaoke
phenomenology as the Most Frequently Butchered Female Song. The male equivalent
is “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, and in a real bass-ackwards way this is
the highest of compliments. What Benatar and Morrison managed to do was to take
difficult songs and make them seem easy – leading many a neophyte to think,
“Oh, I can sing that!” I get a deeply
guilty pleasure from this, and I work hard not to snicker as I call them to the
mic.
Perhaps
Caroleen understands this, because she insists that I sing along. Sometimes I
give her a subtle nudge, backing off from the mic a half inch at a time, but I
swear at exactly two-and-a-half inches she gets this look of vertigo panic and
I have to dive back in.
It’s
looking like a pretty routine Thursday. Shari Blues arrives to rip her way
through a Bonnie Raitt tune (Shari is so Janis
sometimes it scares me). Alex reels in with Sofia, a long-limbed Italian lady
from tango class (the boy does know how to work it). But then, about ten
o’clock, we’re interrupted by a bachelorette party, nine twentysomething
chickies who ride in on a wave of giggles. This presents a slew of
dissatisfactions for the regulars, but some serious monetary benefits for
Hamster’s till and Channy’s tip jar.
The
thing about this randy nonet – or for that matter, any sizable group of karaoke
turista chicas – is that they’re here
strictly for each other. They will sing horribly. They will giggle
uncontrollably at the phallic possibilities of the microphone. They will sing
four at a time, and no one will be close enough to the mic to be heard. When
the girl who did high school musicals crawls her way through “Hopelessly
Devoted to You,” they will scream and hoot as if they have just witnessed the
second coming of Patti Lupone. Directly after, as Shari Blues is snaking her
way through “White Rabbit” like the second coming of Grace Slick, they will
chatter amongst themselves like mad raucous chipmunks until they work up to
those awful Girls Gone Wild glissandos. Lastly, after they have consumed mass
quantities of Hamster’s liquid assets, they will declare eminent domain on the
stage and rub their bodily parts along each male performer until they have
reduced his singing to mere accompaniment.
Not
that the guys seem to mind – like Harry, who finds himself at the center of a
five-woman Bob Fosse choreography during “Delilah.” Kevin shows up soon after,
and you can just imagine the Carnaval reception afforded his “Suavamente.” (The
KJ offers secret thanks, but suffers a surge of irrational jealousy when the
bride-to-be flashes her impressive breasts.)
Once
the hubbub dies down (the flasher gone to the women’s room to puke her guts
out), I’m on to my next song slip, which reads Amber. The song is “Little Girl Blue,” Rodgers and Hart, a tricky
arrangement purloined from Nina Simone. Nina would play a spare, flowing “Good
King Wenceslas” on the piano, then gather it into chords and reveal the way
they matched up to the old jazz tune by singing the words on long, slow lines.
I don’t even know what it’s doing on a karaoke disc. Karaoke’s supposed to be
easy.
It’s
hard to believe I didn’t spot Amber before. She’s a pageboy redhead, like
something from the forties, wearing slinky silk pants of mustard yellow. The
top is white cashmere, flecked with threads of gold and copper, a neckline just
low enough for intrigue. Her name is in her jewelry, a chunky necklace of
amber, dangly oval earrings of same. The face is a little hard to catch through
all the glitz, but certain features stand out: plump cheeks, cushioned lips in
a natural vee over perfect, showy teeth – she could kill you if she smiled. The
eyes are round – liquid turquoise – the nose wide, with a playful lift at the
tip. She has a stage face, and apparently she’s here to use it.
She
slides a stool to the lyric screen and pulls the corded mic from the stand. (I
can read these details like a gypsy reads tea leaves: freehand means you’re a
performer; corded means you’re old-fashioned, a traditionalist.) She looks my
way, expecting the music. I take a step to tell her but she waves me off.
“Wenceslas,”
she says, flatly. “I know. Thanks.”
So
I press play, and here’s another clue. To the average singer, I would say,
You’ve got a long intro with no clear point of entry. Your best bet is to wait
till the first lyric turns color, then swing a late entry (hell, Sinatra made a
whole career swinging late entries).
But Amber’s got her eyes closed, and she comes in perfectly.
The
song is about torment, and crushing loneliness. The singer is talking about
Little Girl Blue, but really about herself. And then, the neatest trick of all
– to reveal searing anguish in quiet, half-whispered lines of music, and to do
so in a bar filled with horny, drunk bachelorettes and the middle-aged men who
lust after them. It’s a tremendous act of faith, and it’s working. The flashy
outfit has the boys’ attentions, anyway, but now the girls are listening, too.
A bridesmaid shushes her friend: “Listen! She’s really good.”
By
the ending verse, the bar is a wall of anxious silence. Amber is inhabiting the
song, eyes still shut, and, you would swear, on the verge of crying. She lets
her last note die of its own accord, leaving a fragile void of sound hanging in
the air. Harry breaks it with a throaty “Yeah!” and opens the door for everyone
else. One of the bachelorettes is weeping.
“That’s
Amber!” I say. Amber unleashes half of that smile, and replaces the mic on the
stand. The next song is “Drift Away,” so I duck under the soundboard to dig out
microphones. When I look up, the front door is clicking shut, a mustard cloud
drifting up the stairs.
Harry
leans over during the intro, one eye on the parking lot, and says, “What the
hell was that?”
Photo by MJV
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