I Should Have Said No - Marc

 I SHOULD HAVE SAID NO

I have always been a sucker for a cute face, and she was damned cute.

Dark curly shoulder length hair, big brown eyes that reminded me of a doe, with a smile that screamed innocence and cunning simultaneously, with perfect pale skin to boot.

The band was in flux. We had been a solid hard rock foursome for the previous two years. Johnny D. was the best lead guitarist at 16 that I had ever heard. He could match Alvin Lee note for note playing I’m Going Home from the Woodstock Album. He could equal any performance of Eric Clapton, hence we played a lot of Cream in those days. Johhny was great but terribly shy, so while he played he would always keep his head down. The few times he did look up at an audience, his face would blossom into splotches of deep red.  Joey Statz was our lead singer, and the girls loved him with his shoulder length blond hair and crazy gyrations while he performed, like an early David Lee Roth. He was a few years older than us, which enabled him to get the band whatever it needed or wanted. Tommy was on bass, he was a fat Italian kid with dark hair which he tried to comb like Elvis. Every time there were problems with Tommy and a girl he would refuse to practice and lock himself in the bathroom, until one of us either talked him down or forced the lock and calmed him down with pharmaceuticals. He was a friend and a good bass player, so we tolerated his tantrums. I played drums, often finding it hard to believe that I might have been the most normal of the group. We played hard rock, mostly at frat parties and battle of the bands. 

The problem was that Joey was unreliable. He might show up to practice, and if he did, he was often too high to take it seriously. I’m not going to say that we didn’t all get high, but he was the only one that affected the work of the band. The first time he didn’t show up for a gig, Tommy, who had a good but subdued voice covered for him, but something was lost and we all knew it. After the second no show, Joey was dumped, which was sad to me because a good front man is hard to find. 

Soon afterwards, Johhny suffered a nasty broken wrist on his lead hand, and suddenly we were looking for a front man and a lead guitarist. 

We found am adequate lead guitarist in Carmine, a spoiled only child from a traditional Italian family. He had pale blue eyes and the girls loved him also, but his talent level was nowhere near Johnny’s. Although he rarely showed it, I saw a hidden mean side when it came to women in him, and I worried about the girls who were infatuated with his smile and beautiful eyes. For a lead singer, we recruited Cathy, I girl that I knew. Cathy had long dark curly hair to the center of her back, with a smile she rarely shared. She had ongoing problems with her mom, and the two of them spent most of their time screaming at each other. She swore that when she reached 18, she was leaving home. Cathy had a deep raspy voice, like Janis Joplin but under control. I nicknamed her Songbird. I really liked her as friend, but her choices in guys were always disastrous. 

Finally, to help cover for Carmine’s inadequacies on guitar, we recruited my best friend, Louie the Turtle, who looked more like a turtle than anyone we had ever met.

We were no longer a rock band, and started playing songs like Venus, or Something by the Beatles, which were boring as hell for me as a drummer. We practiced in an empty garage, and painted the walls dark blue with stars on them, and the floor white and red longitudinal lines. Tacky, I know, but at 17 it seemed cool. 

None of us were very happy with the way the band was headed, when Cathy said perhaps, we should consider adding a keyboard player to modify our sound. I was already mentally on my way out of this mess, and I should have said no but the rest of the band was willing to give it a try. If I had nixed it then and there, I would have had enough support to prevent it, but I went along with it. Cathy said she went to school with a girl who was a keyboardist and could she invite her to a tryout? I really should have shouted NO, knowing that Carmine would give both girls crap. But I was fed up and tired and thought;

“What the hell this can’t get any worse can it?”

Next practice, she showed up, and I was smitten. Her name was Mary Ann, and she was an average keyboard player, but when she flashed those eyes and smile, the guys would forgive her playing. When you are 17, you often make do not make decisions with the head on your shoulders. 

She went out with The Turtle for a time when I was away that summer, but I think we both know it was inevitable that we would end up the two of us. When it did come to pass, the Turtle wouldn’t speak to me, and the band broke up. A warm early autumn night found us making out under a tree, and my last chance to say no had disappeared. 

I taught her what I knew through our high school years, and we both ended up in college together. If you have ever been madly, hopelessly, completely in love with someone, you will understand how vulnerable you are. There is no logic to it, it is an out of control roller coaster, and you never know where the ride will end. But you don’t care, because you can’t, you won’t, get off the ride. 

By third year of college, we knew it was over, but neither of us would let go. If only one of us had been honest with the other, perhaps more pain could have been avoided, but neither of us had the courage. 

Fast forward to a wedding, and then a painful divorce less than two years later. In hindsight, I wonder what roads I might have taken if I had just said no that faithful day.