A Name When I Lose

Everyone has a signature sound, a type of music that describes and defines them. They soothe and inspire you. They’re the songs that you sing in the shower and the songs they play at your funeral.

Like most things in life, it took a while to find mine. Like most things I really love in life, I didn’t find it at all. It found me. It fell on me like cool rain in blue skies on a hot summer afternoon. It found me, then it never let me go.

when all my dime dancing is through, I run to you…

Sarah Jones Nelson had her third child fairly late in life. Oops. Eventually, she figured out what was causing it, and Rachel was the last one. Sarah and Tim Jones loved having us kids around. They built a kidney pool to facilitate this.

She let me hold baby Rachel. For a while, she was transfixed with my eyes, but once she saw my bicep, she had an idea. She latched on and began sucking for all she’s worth, hoping for a meal. Sarah and Tim are about to bepiss themselves laughing. She offers to take the baby.

“Leave her alone. She’s quiet and happy.” I said. The grownups watched with awe while this baby suckled on my arm, curling her little fingers, her tiny eyes closed. Eventually, her mother took her away, leaving a bright purple mark on my arm.

That’s the only hickey I ever had. Generally, I thought that purple marks on my neck, or on my date’s, might inspire some father to test his strength against mine. He’d lose, but I’d lose too. It was vital that fathers never gave a second thought about their daughters with me. I desperately wanted them to know that their precious child was precious to me too, although I admit, some were more precious than others. Either way, I don’t take chances with girls.

My body was changing. I was becoming very different from the other boys. I leaned into it. Already ugly, or at least convinced I was so, more seemed better. Monsters are cool. Cooler than me, anyway.

She serves the smooth retsina
She keeps me safe and warm
It’s just the calm before the storm
Call in my reservation"
So long hey thanks my friend
I guess I’ll try my luck again

“Retsina” isn’t a misspelling. It’s a Greek wine, infused with pine. It’s a reference to a girl—a girl, not from Greece, but with a French name.

The first song of theirs I heard, the song that made them famous, was about a girl. Her name was Rikki. She was going home to feel better. I was too young to understand what “wild time” really meant, but I had an idea. It’s a sad song. The singer says he’s heard she’s leaving, but that’s ok.

“Oh, Rikki? Here’s my number. You might use it, you know, if you feel better. Take it with you.”

I was in my early thirties before the internet unlocked the mystery and told me who Rikki Ducornet was. My first thought was, “Oh. My. God. She’s so beautiful.” If you read my stories, you know Boyd has a predilection for Raven women with an artist’s soul. Reading Ducornet’s poems and seeing her paintings, I don’t normally believe in a psychic or karmic connection, but sometimes I can’t explain things any other way.

Her father was Cuban. Her mother was an Asknizi Jew. Erica DeGre, an early marriage caused her to change her name to the French Ducornet. Both her father and mother were of genius quality. She was a student at Bard College with Walter Becker and Donald Fagan because her father taught there.

Her 1993 novel, “The Jade Cabinet,” reflects her father’s love of books and his infusing her with stories of fantastic subjects, like Alice in Wonderland. She insisted that her talent was not her own, but his.

When the Drug Bust that inspired “My Old School” happened, Ducornet wasn’t involved. When they sing “I can’t believe the girl could be so cruel,” they mean Bard College itself, not an actual girl.

For Rikki, home meant comfort. It meant safety, refuge, love. Home was where you went when everything went wrong. For a million reasons, home wasn’t that for me. By the time I knew this song existed, home meant madness, disruption, smashed hope, lost heroes, isolation, suffering. I lived for the woods, the movie theater, and the television.

A little blonde girl in the sun said, “Here’s my number. Use it when you get home.” Blondes spell doom for boys like me. I knew that from the movies. I called her, though. For a year, I called. I didn’t want my friends to know because I didn’t want anybody to know I had a girlfriend, even though our entire class was coupling up and “going steady,” whatever that meant. I was in love, but then there was also Katie. I called every night. She taught me about girls. Then, one day, she didn’t feel better anymore.

My body was changing. I leaned into it. If you’re gonna be a monster, then BE a monster!

The 1975 song “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies” is about sexual predation in a suburban neighborhood. There are levels of darkness in my stories that I’ll never scratch the surface of. Sorry. My body was changing. People noticed. Everyone noticed.

Katy Lied is my least favorite Steely Dan album. There is no connection between “Katy” and the fake name “Katie” that I assigned to my childhood friend. The themes of those stories are different, maybe even reflections of each other.

In the Bicentennial year, Steely Dan came out with the first song I could actually dance to. I could feel the riff floating through my spine. Kid Charlemagne was about a boxer. “Did you realize you were a champion in their eyes?” “Get along, get along, Kid Charlemagne!” “This life can be very strange.”

Jackson had a “progressive rock” radio station, WZZQ. It featured heavily in my brother’s madness. When the voices came upon him, they often came from the radio. He would use the phone I talked to Katie with to call the station at three in the morning, ranting sometimes, talking fast others, screaming sometimes. This was the music of my generation, but it came with a sharp, painful edge.

Jimmy loved sixties rock. He thought John Lennon sent him messages. One of them said to hold up a gas station so his buddy would have money for drugs. I liked those songs, not the Beatles. That was ruined for me. Still is, but other songs. I loved Led Zeppelin. I loved “Kashmir” and “The Immigrant Song.” Valhalla, I am comiiiing.

Going into Junior High, the rate of change in my life accellerated. Katie died. Daddy’s career took him to zip codes far away from Mississippi. My mother, the one who taught herself the montisorri method, trying to teach me to read, went back to college to get a psychology degree.

Sometimes, I would ride my bike to BeeBob Records, pick up what I liked, then over to Creative Craft and Hobbies for a model kit, then fried oysters or fried shrimp at “Little Red Hen.” For some reason, I didn’t pick up “AJA” when it came out. I went one day, but they had sold out. BeeBop was known for its knowledge of music, not for its ease of use.

I liked the songs. They were on the radio. I didn’t know what a “Big Black Cow” was, but I’d tasted spirits. I wanted to try one. I was disappointed when Daddy told me it was a chocolate Coke float. You could put a shot in it, but it’s for kids.

Our school began a tradition of sending the Junior High (seventh and eighth grades) to Washington, D.C., for Spring break. Sarah Jones, from the earlier hickey incident, was one of our chaperones. Another was Suzanne Seargent. When I talk about how Rikki Ducornet was beautiful, Mrs. Seargent was the same sort of beauty. She had some native blood in her, giving her these delicious chocolate eyes and olive skin. Her story, well, it goes bad from here. We’ll leave it for another day.

By this time, as much as I loved him, Tim Jones was losing his mind. I never gave up on Tim, but his law partners did. One of the most brilliant lawyers in Jackson, he was left roaming the streets, muttering to himself. He had money from the cases he won, but he lost that brilliant mind. When they buried Sarah, his only wife, I sat beside him and held his hand. There’s no shame in holding a man’s hand. He was burying the only woman he ever loved.

St. Andrews was a small school. Both grades could fit in a bus. The cooler eighth graders were in the back. The far less cool seventh graders were in front. We would eventually learn that two floors of the hotel we stayed at were an operating brothel. It was affordable, I guess, and the rooms were clean. At least they were clean when we got there.

The night before we were to arrive in the Nation's Capitol, we stopped at a truly terrible steak house. Everybody who got the paper-thin T-Bone got food poisoning. As our silver greyhound bus slid through the night, a quarter of the adolescents and recent teenagers began to vomit. I vomited into an ice chest. One boy tried to vomit out the window. It was so bad that the driver radioed his boss, and at the next town, they met us with a new bus. God knows what they did with the one we had. It might not have been salvageable.

At the hotel, they reworked the room assignments so that the sick children were with the sick children and the survivors were on their own. The vomiting stopped, but they were afraid to feed us. We were supposed to go the next day and meet my Cousin Thad Cocharan. I was supposed to have my photo taken with him. That never happened. I was sick in bed. He took a photo with the survivors.

For some reason, those of us who might die were all boys.

I learn to play the Saxaphone.
I, I play just what I feel.
Drink Scotch Whiskey all night long,
Die behind the wheel.

They got a name for the winners in the world,
I, I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide—

Call me Deacon Blues.

I didn’t die. They sent someone to feed me. Maybe I wasn’t that much of a loser.

Aja,
When all my dime-dancing is through,
I run to you!

It took me a long time to understand what that meant. I suppose I had to finish my dime-dancing first.

On the ground level, all the buildings had touristy shops. One was a record store. The black cover with the red-and-white ribbon was in the window. “AJA” in red, the smallest part of a woman’s face, a raven. Was she Asian? You can’t tell.

I put the record on the counter. One of my friends puts a small red-and-yellow bottle on the counter. “What the hell is that?” I said. “You’ll see.” He says.

Back in the room, I put the album between the layers of clothes in my suitcase, hoping it’d make the trip back to Jackson. Out in the hall, boys have opened the red-and-yellow bottle and are laughing. Stumbling, then laughing again.

Amyl nitrate, also known as “poppers” provides an intense high for about twenty seconds. The effect is so strong, it’s hard to stay on your feet. Teenage boys are falling into the ancient walls of our fleabag hotel, laughing outrageously.

“Boyd!! You gotta try this!”

Well, I DON’T gotta try this, but I absolutely hated being presented with a challenge I wouldn’t take. Seriously, don’t dare me to do shit. It’s bad for me.

By this time, I was bigger than any two of my classmates. Huffing in the chemical smell, holding my breath, I saw the world melt before me. “Ohhhhh shittttttttt.” Weaving from side to side, my friends must have felt like lumberjacks, not knowing which tree would fall. It was decided by just physics, to the left and two to the back. I’m sure I bounced when I hit the carpet. It didn’t hurt, but the feeling was gone. I was on the floor. My twenty-second high was gone, and I was on the floor, and everybody was laughing at me.

When Agamemnon sent envoys to enlist Odysseus in his war with Troy, Odysseus pretended to be insane so the envoys would go home. When Agamemnon’s soldiers put his blade to the throat of Odysseus’ son, he joined the Greeks. There would have been no victory without Odysseus, but on the voyage home, he paid for his sins with his life, not by losing it, but by losing his way.

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past
Still I remain tied to the mast
Could it be that I have found my home at last
Home at last

Back in Jackson, my album survived. We were so tired as moms picked everybody up. I looked for my elementary school teacher.

My soul is split across time. Equally at home in the highlands, the poverty of central Mississippi, the first third of the twentieth century, the beginning of American Hegemony, Art Deco, Diesel trains, fighter planes, Jazz, the blues, the song of my region, the songs of slaves. I was born into the last third of the twentieth century. The Modern age. Atomic bombs, computers, color televisions, electric guitars, FM radios, every house with a stereo set.

East Coast counterculture intellectuals, Becker and Fagan, hit on a sound that fused Jazz and Rock. They created something of their own. Other bands would experiment with the form. Chicago Transit Authority. Earth Wind and Fire, but nobody sounded like the Dan. Nobody could funk like the Dan. Nobody could reach Boyd, like the Dan. The beats and the brass of the forties, with the sick guitar riffs of the seventies. That’s Jazz fusion.

My protigee, the Little Bird, tries so hard in life. I really admire her. She apologizes constantly, not feeling comfortable in the universe; she’s like a beautiful reflection of me, the beauty I never had, God poured all over her. I was never comfortable in this universe either. “Never apologize, Child. Not to me. We’re beyond that.”

Some days she gets tired. Sometimes, everything she tries to do tries not to happen. God, I know that feeling. It’s so hard to be young. She’s brilliant, and her mind is pure. The world is not pure. Sometimes she has bad days. I made her a playlist on Spotify.

I never seen you lookin’ so bad, my funky one
You tell me that your super fine mind has come undone

Any major dude with half a heart, surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart, falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning, it won’t be there no more

Any major dude will tell you
Any major dude will tell you

Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? Well, look at mine
The people on the street have all seen better times

Any major dude with half a heart, surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart, falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning, it won’t be there no more

Any major dude will tell you
Any major dude will tell you

I can tell you all I know, the where to go, the what to do
You can try to run, but you can’t hide from what’s inside of you
Any major dude with half a heart, surely will tell you, my friend

Any minor world that breaks apart, falls together again
When the demon is at your door
In the morning, it won’t be there no more

Any major dude will tell you

Little Bird reads so much. God, she reads so much. She doesn’t read all my stories, but she reads a lot of them. Sometimes she edits them. She has privileges like you wouldn’t believe.

Sometimes, I write stories just so she’ll see them.

Have you ever seen a squonk’s tears? Well,

look at mine.

The Squonk is an imaginary creature said to inhabit the pine forests of the Northeast, particularly Pennsylvania. Fantastically ugly, the Squonk leaves behind a wet trail of his own tears, hiding himself away from the world. The only way you know you’ve encountered a squonk is by the wet teardrops he leaves behind.

Look at mine, child. Look at mine. Any Major Dude would tell you, my friend. When the Deamon is at your door, in the morning, it won’t be there no more. Any Major dude would tell you.