| |
“DO YOU REMEMBER THE computer program Davison was talking about at dinner?” Donnie asked. “The one that recognizes faces?”
“Maybe,” I answered, cautiously.
“Davison showed it to me after we got back from watching the manta rays. It was quite interesting, to say the least. Technology is amazing, isn’t it?”
I set my fork down. The gnocchi sat on my plate as plump and chewy as ever. But I had lost my appetite.
“I didn’t think you’d brought a computer with you,” I said. Donnie still uses a flip phone. He’s not exactly someone who buys himself all the latest gadgets.
“Davison had his tablet with him.”
“I see.” I tried to appear calm. “Davison showed you the website?”
“He did,” Donnie said.
“Has Davison thought of majoring in information technology? He’d probably enjoy working with computers. Maybe you should suggest it to him. It’s a very practical major.”
I hoped it wasn’t obvious I was trying to change the subject. Or maybe I should have tried being more obvious. Either way, no success.
“Who is ‘Alterity Jameson?’ ” Donnie asked.
“Who?” I heard myself squeak.
“Tell me about it.” Donnie leaned back in his chair and waited.
“Why didn’t you ask me about this on the drive back?”
At least that way we could have ended things cleanly, instead of ruining a perfectly nice lunch.
“I didn’t want to wake you up,” he said.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. “Fine. Alright. I was in grad school. I was writing my dissertation, Reproducing and Resisting: Hegemonic Masculinities and Transgressive—anyway, you don’t need to hear the whole title. It had to do with punk rock, basically.”
“You wrote your dissertation on punk rock? I thought you said your degree was in English.”
“It was in the English department. So I was immersed in the scene, doing a lot of my field work in Orange County.”
“Orange County? You mean Newport Coast? Laguna Beach? Tough job, Molly.”
“More like Huntington Beach. And don’t laugh. Those G.G. Allin fans could be pretty scary. Anyway, some of my grad school friends and I thought, well, that looks like fun, and how hard could it be? So we put together our own punk band.”
“And now you’re in charge of the management department in the College of Commerce. Quite a life change.”
“I think ‘in charge’ might be overstating things a little. You know something? I thought it was the greatest day of my life when we got our picture in the music section of the weekly paper.”
I had cause to reconsider that “greatest day of my life” thing a few years later when someone put all of the archives of the now-defunct alternative weekly online. Our photo is now On the Internet, Forever. Fortunately, our real names weren’t used in the story. My embarrassing little secret was safe, or so I thought. And then this facial recognition technology came along.
“Does the name mean anything?” Donnie asked. “Alterity Jameson?”
“Alterity has to do with being ‘other’, the out-group, coming from a different perspective,” I said. “When you’re young and earnest and reading about postmodernism in grad school, it’s a word you end up using a lot. It sounded much more hip and subversive ten years ago, believe me.”
“And Jameson? Davison thought it had something to do with Irish whiskey.”
“No. Davison is completely wrong about that. It’s a nod to Fredric Jameson. You know Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism?”
“Of course,” Donnie said.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Anyway, there it is. Now you know my embarrassing secret. I was in a no-hit-wonder postmodern punk band.”
“Phallus in Wonderland. Right?”
I winced. So much for my ladylike image.
“For the record, the name was not my idea. I wanted ‘Pacmanistan’. You know, sort of referring back to the Eighties. It would have been a nice reference to the fragmented recycling of trends that goes along with a civilization’s transition from modernism to postmodernism.”
“Sure,” Donnie said.
If I didn’t know better, I would swear Donnie was trying to stifle a laugh.
“Unfortunately,” I continued, “the other band members were afraid the name ‘Pacmanistan’ could get us sued. Also, Melanie Polewski was very much into Lacan, and she lobbied hard for her idea of having an all-female band with ‘phallus’ in the name. Obviously, Melanie won that one. It’s more, um, intellectual than it sounds.”
“Were you the lead singer?” Donnie asked. “In the picture, you were front and center.”
“No, I actually played bass. I think the photographer put me in front because he liked what my hair was doing. Melanie never forgave me. She thought she should’ve been the one—no, wait, I did sing one time. Melanie, her stage name was ‘Shock Derrida’, because, you know, Derrida and Lacan, right?”
“If you say so.”
“She’d wrecked her voice from all the shouting. I guess there are tricks you can use to save your vocal cords, but we didn’t know anything about that. So one time I did the vocals for ‘(Judy) Butler Did It.’”
“Could you sing it for me? Do you remember how it goes?”
Donnie was grinning now. He seemed to be taking this a lot better than I had expected.
“No. It was hard to memorize the words because they weren’t intended to make any kind of linear sense. That was the whole point. It’s a reference to the performative act as distinct from the content, right? Anyway, I was a disaster as a lead singer. I mean, it’s punk rock, so it’s not like the bar is terribly high, but I didn’t even rise to loud, fast and—and awful. In my defense, I was trying to sing and play bass at the same time. Melanie didn’t play an instrument, so all she ever had to do was sing.”
“It sounds like you had fun. In spite of Melanie.”
“You know what? We did have fun. We all thought we were being super transgressive.”
“Do you still do anything musical?” Donnie asked.
“No. I lost interest when I realized how hard it is to write anything original. There are only so many chord progressions, so many bass lines, and so many melodies. It’s impossible to be completely original and still be listenable.”
Donnie got up. “Coffee?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks!”
Do you stay in touch with your bandmates?” he asked.
“No. I’m not even sure what they’re up to anymore. The last I heard of Melanie, she was freelancing for an essay-writing company. Term-papers-for-sale-dot-com or something.”
At the doorway to the kitchen, he turned back and grinned. “When does your Behind the Music episode come out?”
I let out a long, relieved breath and followed him into the kitchen.
“Donnie, I’m so glad you’re not upset.”
“Upset about what?”
“Well, you know, the band, the whole thing. It’s undignified. I thought you’d disapprove.”
The conversation paused for the whirring of the coffee grinder.
“Disapprove?” Donnie said. “I think it’s kind of cute.”
“Did you say cute?”
“Sure. You’re usually so...you have such high expectations. For yourself, and for everyone else. I don’t mean it in a bad way. You have very high standards”
“Are you calling me uptight, Donnie?”
“Not uptight. More like...persnickety.”
“What?”
“I take it as a compliment. After all, you chose me, didn’t you?”