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EROTIC SCI-FI
by
David Barringer
Copyright © 2001 All Rights
Reserved
ODGAR
Louiston was a white man. He was born in Gluxville, Michigan, conducted
his self-education somewhere in Illinois, and, in his late thirties, finally
settled in New York City, where he allowed himself to grow pudgy. He had
brown hair and the face of an ex-boxer: square but soft, large-featured but
sagging. After the ordeal that consumed him most intensely throughout his
twenties and thirties, he said to an interviewer, "From the moment I
grasped its neck, I felt the bass was a part of me. Its fears were my
fears. If my soul could sing, it would sound like the double bass."
He was lying, but one could forgive him. Near tears from the joy he had
finally willed into his existence, he admitted: "I don't play the double
bass. I am the double bass."Odgar Louiston was
only partly double bass. The rest of him was human. It was the part
of him that was the double bass that he could not, for most of his life, accept. Ingredients:
Man. Double Bass.
Odgar's mother, purse bandoliered, stands rigid beside him.
"Pick one," she says. The
instruments lean like coffins against the wall of the Galaxy Music Emporium,
three hours from Gluxville's Fetis Elementary School at which Odgar is to begin
his musical studies, scorned by his father who prefers to see in Odgar a
predilection for science. "Ordinario,"
says Odgar, shrugging toward the violins.
His mother prods the next regiment of string instruments to attention.
"Crescendo," she offers. "Poco a poco. Not too slow.
Expressive. Mysterious. Intense. Bold and confident. Suddenly
a little faster. Passionate. Dark and sensual. Very fast.
Wild! Rough!"
"Diminuendo," says Odgar, scuffing past the violini, or viole da
braccio, the arm violas. "Violent!" His mother makes a gesture of embrace toward the
violoni, or viole da gamba, the leg violas. "Rubato. Dark and
foreboding. Huge. Heroic. Attacca. Accelerando.
Ritardando. Deliberate. Quick!" "Becoming joyful," says Odgar, transformed, at the far end of the long
row, by the sudden vision of the double bass: its mass, its bestiality, its
challenge and promise. "Brighter, with renewed hope." "Sing out!" shouts his mother.
"Lyrical!" shouts Odgar. "Exultant," says his mother, steering homeward.
"Urgent," says Odgar, hugging in the backseat. "Poignant," says his mother, watching Odgar stagger up the driveway
toward the porch. "What the hell is
that?" asks his father when Odgar drags the hulk into the living room.
"A dead body?" "Resolute," says Odgar. "Broad," says his mother. "Anguished."
"Like a moan," says his father. "Like a moan," agrees Odgar, and goes up to his room.
The double bass should be loved, rejected and relinquished
by luthiers from Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Holland, Germany,
Sweden, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, Canada, the U.S., and maybe only a few other
places. The double bass, with an average
height of two meters, has three or four strings tuned in fourths or fifths.
Fat gut strings were first wound with silver in the 1660's and covered with
copper wire in 1875. Modern metal strings, synthetic core strings, and
improved-quality gut strings enable the double bass to be tuned in fifths, an
octave below the cello, as well as fourths. With a double bass of four
strings, tuned to fifths in C G d a like the rest of the string section, a
bassist can achieve low C. "shores of
sound" "bullfiddle" "doghouse" "heavy"
"deep space"
"wounded" "hunted to
extinction" "tonal
lechery" "lapsed
relevance" The man should be a full
man, large, four-limbed, mentally competent, with few outside interests.
He should get along well with his mother, although clashes of temperament are
expected and healthy, at least as judged from the removed perspective of society
at large. Arguments with his mother, throughout the man's adolescence,
should, ideally, create raw possibilities through the incineration of crusted
assumptions. The father should recede into the background of their
relationship. The father should, however, remain as symbol of sliding
meaning and ineffable import. The mother should express her wish--that her
son achieve a successful artistic life--in a variety of tones, from the
well-meaning to the sarcastic, from the insistent to the despairing, from the
cheerful to the rueful. She should be unaware that she is speaking in so
many tones, and, if pressed, she should only be able to characterize her tone as
even-tempered, generous, and singularly unappreciated. The son would not
be able to survive in the air of a single tone because it would too likely be
one of the many which young men are famously unable to hear. The son,
ungratefully, should resent being exposed to his mother's cacophony of support.
He should leave home. Ideally, throughout his life, the man should have a
"thing" for the double bass.
Rejecting the double bass as both instrument and calling,
Odgar Louiston as a young man in the world does Something Else. Odgar does
Something Else (something involving numbers, fuel, and the psychology of money),
and he suffers for it. This suffering infects him, triggers an insidious
and interminable vibration inside of him, day after day, hour after hour, until
the vibration achieves critical pitch and oscillanimous wave, and he cracks,
emotionally. He feels the skin and muscles of his face contort over the
geography of his bones. He cannot control this. He erupts in
anguish--an anguish to which he bears witness. He is overcome by it,
ashamed of it, astonished to find himself at its mercy. The tears sing out
and the howls pour, and he does everything he can to stifle them back, to beat
them down with the palms of his hands, to arrest them and lock them away.
When they recede, he is changed, forever. No one knows of this,
thankfully, and so Odgar continues to do Something Else for another six months,
until he has socked away a prudent savings.
Like a mother, a virus visits in August, saps his maturity
and induces fever, chills, delusion, exhaustion. In the month of April,
sabotaged from within, he retreats into bed. In May, the wrung waters of
sickness rain off his rising shoulders. He is recovering. Of his
long-dormant instincts, the more primitive awaken first, as if according to
seniority. Deliriously grateful, he assigns himself what he believes is a
selflessly rehabilitative regimen in which he defers to each appetite in the
order in which it arrives. In the unexpectedly hectic process that
follows, he conjoins with a double bass, a solo model, in a corner of his
apartment. A music stand is felled. A star fruit, catapulted,
ricochets.
Defloration and moody blooms of volume. My ithyphallic
Bacchanalian bow. My ebony fingerboard, my ebony odalisque. My houri.
My houri. This lickerishness: blond melon, green fig, supple forgiving
rosetta. Violonomania. For an intimate sound, use inner strings.
Short, fast, sadistic laughter. Long, drawn, loving moans. My doxy,
my love, my houri, my death. Gently fold together. (Odgar
and his double-bass self sleep late, stare out windows, order the deliveries of
groceries, videos, and chamois leathers.) Horror may develop in the texture of
the event. (Odgar wants to believe that he has absorbed an appendage but
is afraid that he is the appendage.) Realization of the loss of what he was may
germinate into self-disgust, followed by self-abasement. (Odgar smashes a
mirror, lets himself go out of tune.) Beat. Beat briskly. Let
settle. At night he draws the snakewood bow across his
sternum.
After dinner he draws the snakewood bow across his sternum.
Neighbors applaud behind walls. Self-acceptance. For
the first time in over a month, he ventures outside his apartment. He
seats himself on the balcony overlooking the street. He draws the
snakewood bow across his sternum. A civil servant looks up, faints.
The sheet music of white envelopes fans out upon the sidewalk.
Displayed on two floors of the Paris Conservatory is the
largest double bass, the great Octobass, built in 1851 by J.B. Vuillaume.
Its three strings are fingered with levers. One person bows. One
person works the levers. The Octobass is--Odgar weeps--"a
curiosity."
While the body of Odgar Louiston sleeps, the mind of Odgar
Louiston stretches a premise, flexes a plot, pulls up lame. Odgar is
swallowed by a smallmouth bass, who dies from the engorgement. Exploded
fishy threads cling to Odgar's collar and cuffs. The lake rinses him out
of her mouth and tongues him onto the beach. Staggering, Odgar meets a
fisherman at a picnic. The fisherman's fingers move into and out of the
shade cast by the extravagant brim of his straw hat. The fisherman, who
may actually be an impressionist painter on holiday, eats bon bons with a
strikingly aquiline woman fashionably enclothed in the points of view of the
medical sciences. She eye-approves of Odgar, though not without
finger-indicating jagged seams, bruised wood, and other sites of future
self-improvement. The body of Odgar Louiston gasps for screaming air.
Self-affirmation. Odgar Louiston travels the Midwest.
He performs in parks. He meets a cellist. The cellist introduces him
around. At parties Odgar, fingering the stem of a wine glass, explains
himself well. He is happy. The cellist leaves him. Odgar travels the
Midwest. He performs in festivals. He meets another double bassist.
Odgar is vulnerable. He does not accept the first invitations. The
double bassist introduces him around. Odgar tunes in fourths. He
experiments with an intimate quartet exploring the diversity of sounds in the
world. Mixtures. Hybrids. Gallimaufries. The members of
the intimate quartet are hired away. Odgar disappears from view. These are the
hardest times. "husky" "damaged" "bullfrog"
"blue niche" "sore throat" "whale" "the
bellows of memory" "rage" "visceral burdens" His
twenties diminuendo, poco a poco. The years of a life. Good-bye. Odgar
goes to his luthier in New York. "One day," muses the luthier,
"grafting." "One day that is not today?" The luthier picks
at the transitional violonorganic seams. "No neck grafting
today." "No grafting?" "No cracks in the neck."
"That's good." "Of course." "No worm holes?"
"No worm holes. Straight neck. Straight fingerboard."
"Center seam?" "Center seam's okay." "No separations?"
"It's okay.
We'll keep an eye on it." "Your
back is bowing out. It's lack of humidity in winter." "My back
is naturally rounded." "You got
sag near the tailpiece." "Sag?" The luthier inserts a long
scope into Odgar's f-hole to assess the bass bar and the blocks at the end
pin. "Everything in its place,
right?" Odgar has been running through
his savings, and, while work has been steady, he suffers a tendency to
underestimate his own value and so accepts low offers. New blocks cost a
grand. New bass bars, another grand. "No cracks." "Thank
goodness." Odgar thuds the heart of his big mellow chest, and the
ensuing echo is reassuringly resonant. The
luthier continues his examination of Odgar Louiston. The luthier has had
to invent, for Odgar, several new tools, for which the luthier has submitted
patent applications. The luthier is hopeful. "Bad wolf tone."
"Bad wolf
tone?" "Bad wolf tone. We
have to eliminate your bad wolf tone."
"With what?" "A bad-wolf-tone
eliminator." "Did you invent me my
own special probably-patentable bad-wolf-tone eliminator?" "No, of course not."
"I
didn't know." "Of course
not." "You could."
"Why?" "There's still
time." Self-love. Italian masters massage the
seasoned wood. Backs flat. Backs arched. Double purfling. A
spirit varnish. A velvety dermabond. Ancient tradition.
Advanced technologies. Backs flat. Backs arched. Rhythmic
double purfling. Again. Again. A spirit clenched. Sing
out! Wild! Exultant! A velvety emission. Poco a poco.
Pure tonal color. My doxy, my love, my houri, my sleep. Like a moan.
No more. My sleep. International Society of Bassists
Convention Geneva
International Competition Isle
of Man Double Bass Workshop and Competition
Odgar flirts with an Italian, a Golia Double Bass.
Dare he countenance a trio? Or would it be a duet? A one-man band?
A mistake? A mistake! Humility depends on a certain
will to arrogance. Odgar must believe in his own superiority in order to
tolerate the rest of humanity. He must believe himself beyond the reach of
insult, slight, pettiness, ignorance, inadvertence. The world is a
playground, and Odgar cannot blame people for behaving like children. He
can only forgive them for being what they are. They cannot change; he does not
expect them to. He does not pity them; he accepts them as one does
Chihuahuas and the chance of rain. They are incapable, by their natures,
of becoming his equals. Behavior unpardonable by the weak is pardonable by
Odgar. What mental facility and imagination this requires only Odgar can
know. He is therefore humbled before . . . himself For
his mother's pain of childbirth, Odgar Louiston plays Studies in Springtime. For
her laundering, he wails plaintive hymns. To atone for setting the house
afire, he plays The Trickster. For their long estrangement, he airs
nervous staccato notes. To commemorate their reunion, he takes her
shopping. To some he is a role model. Here are children
who have inserted woodwinds into themselves. To do so is to misunderstand
the achievement of Odgar Louiston, master of his instrument.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Barringer is a writer living in Michigan. He has published a book
of short fiction, The Leap and Other Mistakes: 35 Stories. He has
written for Details, Mademoiselle, Playboy, Men's Journal, The American
Prospect, and others. His stories are appearing in Nerve.com, Sweet
Fancy Moses, Opium Magazine, Dezmin, Flak Magazine, The Styles, New Graffiti,
Deeply Shallow, and Blue Moon. He maintains a web site of fiction,
satire, and parody at :
davidbarringer.com
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