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I swore, only two or three minutes ago, that on this round of writing I would accept—nay, would embrace—at least one of the prompts. How rash I was. How important is one's swearing? If I don't use one of these, will I be perjuring myself? Will anyone notice? Of course, no one would have if I hadn't just revealed my vow to the world and all.
I've even forgotten what those prompts were. Okay. I remember one: "the waves roll in". This is the kind of phrase I loved when I was a girl. I lived in the middle of a large continent, with no access to or even view of an ocean. An ocean was, if I may put it this way, Terra Incognita. (Someone already is tweeting that I can't put it that way. Perhaps "Mare Incognito." But not Terra. I knew that, you know. You didn't have to yell at me.)
Back to the story—or what passes for one. I knew no ocean when I was little. Our body of water was Deer Creek, which ran through the town. There were also the lakes up the road in Monticello, known as the Gateway to the Lakes, such as they were, of central Indiana. But we never had much truck with Monticello except in two ways. First, a group of Delphi intelligentsia (don't ask) met monthly at a cottage on one of the lakes. The cottage was called "The Purple Privy." And second, believe it or not, big bands on tour used to show up at one of the resort's venues. We bumpkin high school students could drive fifteen miles north to see and hear Stan Kenton band, complete with Maynard Ferguson and his impossibly high trumpet. And I remember going with friends to hear the Dave Brubeck Trio. In my mind's eye I see it as a dancing venue, though why anyone ever thought to dance to Dave Brubeck's music I can't tell you.
In any case, I didn't dance that night. I stood—the whole evening—at the edge of the small bandstand, in love with Paul Desmond and his alto sax. He was a musician. He was drop-dead good-looking. And he was playing, in the sexiest possible way, the sexiest possible instrument. I didn't take my yearning eyes off him all night.
This was long before the concept of band-following groupies. But I do believe that if he had responded to my gaze and had approached me at the intermission or the end of the concert, I would have followed him wherever he wanted to lead me--like Mary's little lamb (and this would have been against the rule as well as against the law). I like to think that now. But in reality, I'm pretty sure I would have fled like the little Catholic virgin I was.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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