Quiet Street (Neighborhood Watch Meeting #131)
There are drummers in the front yard whaling on the trash tote. Drummers stomp the sidewalk. Drummers rock the mailbox. Drummers rustle leaves for the love of chaos. Swollen is the drummer’s hammer, our very world its roundhead nail. Drummers don daddy’s ratty jerseys, or rather, no, mommy’s ugly tights — they must be hugged at all times. Drummers get it young, from mother’s heartbeat knocking through the womb, to the NICU machines beeping with the beat of breath, to the every-morning idle of father’s curbside Bronco seeping through the carpet into baby’s bassinet. Drummers don’t morph. Drummers grow dreads. Drummers never end. They parade our street with coffee breath, Oreo teeth, open-carrying their insanity. Find them at dusk, man-handling our doorknobs, fingers thick with Cheeto dust. Pantyhose over faces, drummers want more, kicking at their triggers, pounding down our doors. It’s not about money — drummers just rob the neighborhood for fun. They’re too dumb to be smug. One trick is to place a drumstick or snare key in a bear trap. Another is to hum.
Bassists wait in the cleavage of trees. Look for them in canopies, bodies repurposed for bird’s nests. Quiet the home and listen with the torso, promise, this is where bass is felt. Bass itself roams the streets like blown snow, snaking low in wisps, ghosts, but remember too that bass alone can make the siding of your home come unglued. It is not to be fucked with. Bassists won’t own up. They sit in windows and glower. Bassists hide behind their hair. Black is all the bassist wears. The bass will reach our kids long before it sneaks into our weak, tin ears. To smell the deep, low sound of a baritone is to seed an addiction. Don’t do it. Now, get this: Bassist as ancient curse. Bassist as tombstone blown over. Bassist as wraith. It’s a breed that when it dies, is simply zombified. Humid bass. Tasteless bass. Bass is a bomb the bassist throws. Bass never really hits the ground but still explodes hard and slow. Do not walk out and block it, though. Just watch as the sound wafts —windswept or breeze-borne — down the street like exhaust, dark green and warm.
Pianists do dumb stunts at the bus stop. Beware the eye-lid flip, the inverted elbow, the crooked grip of the double-jointed. Pianists may seem buttoned-down and classy, but don’t be fooled — they’re hiding a rash, a whole-body birthmark, baby teeth in awkward spots. Armpits, nostrils, a tiny canine by the navel. Pianists are brittle. They eat windchimes, tune doorbells, reject anything improvised. Pianists leave nothing up to God. Pianists, real pianists, burn dad’s jazz records in a backyard bonfire. That’s exactly what we smell as we’re hosing down the stubborn sod. Pianists are arsonists, our houses unsound. Mob-like, pianists lob Molotov Cocktails at our Dodge Caravans, car alarms blaring. They wear gel in their hair, so much gel in their hair. They have kitsch sex in our Jayco campers. You can take your foot off the damper pedal, pianists, that note is now over.
Singers are the soft song coming from garages. Singers, secrets, we keep them off the premises. They’re abundant, earnest, and dime-a-dozen redundant. We are all singers, if you can bear the insult. But the problem comes when a young singer is not taught to control the impulse, if parents are adrift and can’t nip their kid’s crooning in the bud. All it takes is a quick snip with kitchen scissors to remove the uvula. Alert: these singers, captive in our neighborhood’s many sheds, might learn to harmonize. If they all hit their stride at the exact same time, the collective carol can break a metal deadbolt, and the singers will careen down the street in search of middle C. Be sure to cover every ear as their trills peel paint from shutters, wither the summer flowers, and cause sudden combustion of our washer-dryer’s drum. It is the basest of desires, being loud in order to be seen. Let us lose our need for dopamine. Lock the door and swallow the key, because singers must be barred from congregating. A song sung alone finds no agent. Wait. Cultivating local silence requires total patience.
After all, singers only want to be rappers, but their necks get red from the chain’s cheap sheen. On our front stoops they rhyme I feel so alone with is anybody home? and our eyes roll even as they’re squeezing in, hogging our laptop, pirating Fruit Loops, mumbling to trap grooves, booking a tour of grungy VFWs, tangling our headphone cords into to a giant rubber knot. If anyone feels tempted to offer an MC a hot meal, a guest bed, or lend an ear for feedback, remember they took bolt cutters to our garage lock. Let there be no doubt. Remember: they broke into everyone’s house. Hold tight to our lifelong dream of owning an impermeable home. Remember? We yearned for this. Each of us. Safety, peace, a full fridge, kids off to college, the lawn all green forever. We never wanted anything else. No, we never dreamt a crowd of gleeful strangers. Never a ravenous hoard of adorers echoing back our words. But if we see the band, if we hear the roar, if in the silent twilight our fingers grip the pillow in the shape of power chords, if we somehow remember what it takes to play, admit it, what would that mean?
Wait, don’t answer that, don’t speak — this is a quiet street.