Outbound

We came together as Electric Karma for two weeks, then we carried the tapes down to MCA and let the folks have a listen. Everyone was blown away, there were even some tears, too, and as I'd hoped they talked about weaving this new material into the old when we played the Coliseum, and this news jazzed me pretty good -- as I already knew this would be my last hurrah. Jerry and Carlos had their own things going, and Niki? Hell, who knew where she'd go after this, but it would be big. Me? I planned to do some serious sailing when Tracy got big enough to walk Troubadour's decks. We were going to see the world together, maybe learn to make our own together.

It was September by then, time to get down to choosing the old numbers we'd play, then playing them over and over until we had them in memory, and all the while I kept the recorders going, laying down tapes of our sessions.

And yeah, Terry was there. Low-key and in the background, and I had to explain to Nik what Terry meant to me -- in such a way that the deeper nature of our relationship didn't overpower her -- but Niki said she got it, that she understood, and that she wouldn't fuck it up for Jennie. I started to love Niki after that. When she came into the room I looked at her and smiled inside, and there were times -- like when she fell into the old Deni vibe -- that she'd come to me and talk. About what Deni really meant to me, the whole love heroin thing.

"I feel that with you," she said. "This thing inside the old music. The tension, almost like there was this carnal undertone playing out between her words and your music. When I sing Deni I want to reach out and hold you, then I want to fuck your brains out."

"That's what it was like, man," Jerry said, coming over and sitting with us. "We'd sit around listening to her and it was like, man, I got to get inside this chick's head, see where this power's coming from. Then one day I knew. She didn't simply project love, she was mainlining lust and when you watched the way she sang you wanted that lust too. You felt like you needed to take her because that's what she wanted you to do. Now...imagine that happening in the room at the Fillmore...with hundreds of dudes getting amped up on that vibe. She was fucking with fire, I mean literally fucking fire onstage, daring people to fall into her vibe."

It's what happens when you fall inside music. When you make it, not listen to it. The notes start playing through your synapses and as you mold the music into your being it comes through your life like a hot knife. The Feel Flows through you, if you dig Brian Wilson -- white hot glistening. When you're playing you become this other thing: you, and the music in you takes over. When you come down after, down in soft blue drifting, you snap out of it and realize you've been someplace else. A special someplace only music takes you. You're different. Changed.

And I watched Deni coming to life again inside Niki when she sang Deni's words, because Deni was truly inside her now, taking Niki to that place she used to go. I watched Niki over my keyboards, watched the change come down on her, the way her body swayed, then I'd look at Terry and feel this divine thing settle inside me, the same beast I felt when I created Lucy. Terry was the constant, the universal fuck that lived inside this place, this craving penetration that rolled through me. Feel Flows, baby. Brian got it right that time. Shadowy flows.

We went out to the Amphitheater and did a run through concert to an 'invitation only' crowd of maybe 1500 people. No nerves, no bad vibes, and we played for two hours straight then just sat on the edge of the stage and watched everyone go nuts. This was Niki's first taste of that electric adoration, the wall of love that rises up from the other side of the lights and breaks over you, and she started laughing, then crying, and she leaned into me.

"Way to go, babe," I whispered in her ear.

I knew it then. I knew she loved me now. She was Deni, she was love heroin all wrapped up inside that something new, that something she didn't quite understand yet. She was becoming music, this creature of the otherworld. She could understand what drew me to Terry now, what made Terry an imperative, and she wanted inside that part of me now.

She put her arms around me and I sighed, could feel Deni there beside me again, the spring she gave me once.

I hopped down and walked out into the surging crowd, felt the light breaking over me.

I felt immortal, if only for a moment.

+++++

I got a couple of bungalows at the BH, put Warren and Michelle in one, their daughters in the other, and Jennie and Tracy came to the house with me and Terry -- and Niki.

Jennie was astonished at the change that had come over her big sister, the way she walked barefoot around the house in undies and a t-shirt. The way she draped herself over me when we were down in the studio, when the music came. Jennie couldn't relate -- but Tracy did. I started playing notes and chords with her on my lap, and I could see it taking hold deep inside my child's mind. She'd be sitting there with her eyes open one moment, then she'd be swaying with eyes closed in a heartbeat, inside the music with me. Jennie watched that going down first in Niki, then inside Tracy, and I think she felt like she'd been on the outside for a long time -- and never had a clue what was going on inside, until now.

And Jennie could feel the whole Terry thing now. Terry kept her distance but I insisted she stay within sight of me now at all times. Jennie was starting to freak out but Niki hit her like a missile, took her aside and laid it out for her.

"Terry is his muse, she always will be so don't fuck with the vibe. You fuck it up and you'll lose him. Simple as that."

The thing with Jennie? She knew me, she knew my love for her was real, deeper than deep, but now she was learning my love for her existed in the world outside music, outside that springtime Deni created for me. The place Terry kept me rooted to. There were two of me, and she had one of them, but only one. She'd hated Terry before but after living with us that week she came upon the terms of her surrender. Accept what is or move on. If I lost Terry I'd lose me. I think she sensed that if she left I'd move on, but if I lost Terry I'd be wandering the ruins, lost inside a broken, melting Dali landscape.

You love a musician at your own risk. Feel Flows different here, white hot glistening.

I talked to Terry about Warren and his tongue-tied infatuation and she looked at me.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Shake up his world a little. Michelle's taking him for granted -- she needs, I think, a little jealousy in her life."

Poor man. When Terry McKay turns on the sex appeal it's devastating. I told Jennie what was going to go down and to take her mom out shopping -- Terry could tell her where to pick up some appropriate lingerie. Surely someone into quantum mechanics could come to terms with simple attraction? Cause and effect? What's been down a while still needs to come up? Sunrise, sunsets -- ya know?

We set up at the coliseum the day before, ran through a few numbers for the media and we began figuring out a real 60s-type happening was blowin' in the wind, that the event was SRO now with a hundred and thirty thousand tickets sold.

And we announced the new album at the press conference, that copies would be going on sale the day after the concert, but that a special edition would be available at the concert. Karma Kubed, with Niki Clemens handling vocals. Yes, we'll be playing a few of the new songs at the concert. Yeah, the vibe is right on, it's felt like we're channeling Deni...very cool stuff.

We made the news, anyway.

I woke up the day of the concert feeling like pure electricity. I couldn't keep still, went downstairs and sat in the dark listening to The Beach Boys, trying to focus on their vibe, their quicksilver moons.

I felt her then.

Tracy, my little girl. She stumbled through the dark and found her way to my lap, crawled up and cuddled up beside me, within me, and I held her close, let her inside for a while as I drifted in Brian's music.

Jennie came down a little later, told me she was going over to the hotel, spend some time with her parents and that she'd see me at the Coliseum.

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too, babe. Seeya there."

She left me with Terry, who'd found this outrageous jade colored lingerie down on Hollywood Boulevard. Oh...did we make some outrageous music that afternoon...and she promised to sit front row center so I'd be able to focus on her during the show.

I'd had Shelly send tickets down to Jenn and her family in Newport, and while I doubted they'd show I had my hopes. Their seats would put them next to Tracy and Jennie and my family, right behind Terry and Shelly.

I was in another place by the time we met up with Carlos and Jerry. Niki and Pete were too, but Niki was freaking out. "A hundred and thirty seven thousand people?! This is fuckin' nuts..." she cried as she circled like a cornered animal. "I can't fuckin' do this...I'm scared out of my mind..."

I could see all the classic signs, so I sat down with her, gave her the talk.

"You're not going to be able to see anything but lights," I said. "You can't tell if there are fifty people out there, or fifty million. You'll hear them, yeah, but just close your eyes, let the music in, let it take you where it always takes you. Give it five minutes and you're home free, but if it gets to you just come over to, sing to me, sing into my eyes. I'm here for you, okay?"

I held her close, then Warren came inside the tent backstage and took over. A British group, 10cc, were warming up the crowd, and their I'm Not In Love was bringing down the house, then the lights went up and they left the stage.

A stagehand came in, announced "ten minutes!"

Carlos was in the zone, Jerry was standing in a corner, his eyes closed as he played through the toughest riffs in his mind's eye. Warren left and Niki came over, melted into me, and I could feel her trembling through my own ragged heartbeat.

So I leaned into her and kissed her. Not a brotherly kiss, if you know what I mean. A curl your toes kiss, and she responded in kind, looked at me after like I'd just lit a fuse inside her guts -- and she slipped into the zone after that and never once looked back. I'd just become her muse, for better or worse, but that's the way these things go. We knew the score, didn't we?

I walked out first and the roar was literally deafening. I felt it through the stage as I walked within the spotlight, as I walked up to my keyboards, then Carlos and Jerry came out and the crowd turned into sustained thunder. When Pete and Niki came out I had to slip on my headphones, then I looked down at Terry, looked at her jade dress and jade stockings and I smiled, then I looked at Tracy and Jennie and blew them a kiss, ignoring the empty seats where Jenn and her pops ought to be. The I raised my fist -- and stepped into the light.

+++++

The next morning's papers said we were flawless, and I don't know, maybe we were. What I'll carry with me was Deni, the song, the music. The way Niki came to me then, singing my life, singing her way into my soul. I looked at Jennie and Terry, saw their tears, then I saw almost everyone was crying, even a few of the cops standing by the stage. Whatever it was, that song took all of us back to 1968 -- and made us reexamine our lives in the shattered light of her death. I played an extended interval, took the music ever downward, fluttering down to deepest octaves as Deni's jet might have, as Deni might have while she watched her death unfolding, and Niki came up from behind, put her arms around me while I played, and I felt her leaning against me, crying, and when she stepped back into the light everyone saw what had happened to her and I felt this huge outpouring of love, pure love, the love only music conveys as it washed over our shores.

The rest was, literally, all a blur. One long blur of memory. One of Deni's first anthems, Tiger's Eye, pulled me in so deeply...I was in the purple paisley house adrift in a sea of patchouli again, watching her watch my hands as I played the first version of the entry. How she changed the phrasing of her words to reinforce my rolling chords, and I watched Niki watching my hands, forcing rhythm changes of her own -- and it was like the three of us were out there, together, creating something new out of the past.

And I'd look from Jennie to Terry, my two touchstones, each representing polar extremes so far apart it was funny, each so intimately tied to my soul it was unnerving. Terry in her stockings, Jennie with my daughter, already showing as our first composition took form in her womb. Then I was in a limo headed for an after-concert bash at The Bistro, Jerry and Carlos still in the zone as the Lincoln fought through traffic -- Niki leaning into me, biting my neck, almost purring with Deni's lust now coursing through her veins. Drinks and dinner, family and friends, big-wigs from the studio -- along with their wives and kids, teenaged girls who told me they wanted to suck something and I'm like really? Get a life, and get away from me, you might be contagious.

The Fillmore was real. You could smell us up there onstage because we were in a room smaller than a basketball court. The Coliseum wasn't real, it was spectacle. We weren't musicians, we were being pawned off as demigods while venues like the Fillmore were disappearing into commercial oblivion. Politics in music was being reordered to fit into the marketplace, so political messaging was on it's way out at the big studios, which only meant emerging groups would flock to small, local studios and politics in music would become regional, local, and maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. But what would happen if 'main street' music became a commercial avenue?

That's what I watched taking form that night. San Francisco nights giving way to LA glitz. What had been real was going to be trivialized, and I knew I had to get away from it or I'd die a slow, meaningless death.

Jennie and Tracy came by, took one look at the scene and disappeared. Niki remained glued to me, started holding my hand, then wrapping her arms in mine, becoming more possessive by the minute -- Terry and Shelly looked on with wry smiles, while Carlos shook his head. Warren finally rescued me, took her back to the hotel and I left with Terry a few minutes later, but we drove out to Malibu and I parked down by the beach, carried her out to the sand and set her down gently while I laid out a blanket. I ate my way into her for hours, until her trembling became too much, then she finished me off and we lay there, listening to the surf while the light faded and my world returned.

She'd watched me at The Bistro, she knew the score. If she was my muse, if she made the music real, what happened when I turned away from music?

"Are we over?" she asked.

"We'll never be over, Terry. We'll never stop making music."

"What comes next?"

"Tracy. The next part of the symphony is all her."

"What about me?"

"You know, Terry, sometimes I can go a few months without you, but I start to fall apart if we're apart much longer than that. We'll work around that."

"What about Jennie?"

"I won't sacrifice you for her. She either accepts what is, or..."

"No. That's not right, Aaron. You can't push that on her."

"And I can't live without you. Simple as that."

"No, it's not that simple. Tracy has Jennie now, they've bonded."

"I won't give you up, Terry. And don't make me do that, either."

"Reading my mind?"

"Look, all I know is we'll end up together, you and I, at the end. But between now and then? I won't live without you in my life."

"You know, in a couple of years I'll be getting 'old lady' roles, if I get any at all, and all my leading men will have white hair. It happens to all of us, I guess."

"And won't I have white hair too."

"Yes."

"And I'll still love you, won't I?"

"You will?"

"I'll always love you. I'll always need you. And I'll always want you."

"Unless I get fat."

"Don't get fat."

"Oh, alright," she sighed. "God, you're so high maintenance!"

"And you're the most beautiful woman in the world. You've got to take care of that."

"What about Niki? You started something last night, you know?"

"I did, on purpose. She had to grow beyond herself last night, see the next part of her career. I helped that along. And I'll have to help her the next few steps along the road, get her up and on her own two feet. Then she'll be okay."

"What if she falls in love with you?"

"She already has," I sighed.

"Oh?"

"Complicated, isn't it? I have a theory, though. Those deep mid-west roots will kick in, she'll run home and get married to an old beau soon, settle down and have some kids."

"You think? I don't know, not after last night."

"How much you wanna bet?"

"I win, you have to eat me for five hours."

"And if I win?"

"You have to eat me for five hours."

"I'll take that bet."

"And do you know what I want you to do now?"

"Sun's coming up in an hour."

"Then you better get to work..."

+++++

So, a few weeks later Tracy and I are on Troubadour, in the marina on St Mary's Bay, Auckland, and I'm letting her walk along the deck -- roped up in a safety harness, mind you -- getting her used to the whole boat thing, and Niki is sitting in the cockpit, watching us. Watching me, really, 'cause she's got it bad. It wasn't a week after I got back she flew in, and it wasn't two hours after she got to our house that Jennie had become annoyed. So...I told Jennie to just chill out, that I'd take care of it. And I did.

I took Niki sailing, again.

She'd been of a mind that sailing was for her, so I just took her out for a nice four day sail, out to the Cape Reinga lighthouse and back. We talked music, we talked babies. We talked about Jennie and Tracy, Jennie and the new baby. About what it meant to be a parent. She wanted kids, too, she told me.

"Have a father in mind?" I asked.

"Yeah. You."

"Oh? And what about Jennie?"

"Nothing. She doesn't have to know. We fuck until I'm pregnant, then I leave."

"Why?"

"I'm not all that into guys, Aaron, but I want a baby. And you've got the music genes I want."

"So? What, no love? Just sex, babies and bye-bye?"

"Oh, I love you, Aaron. Maybe not as much as Terry, but I love you."

"And what about me? If I'm the father, what happens to the kid? Does he know who I am?"

"Yup. And Aaron, that's kids. Not kid. As in plural, not singular."

"And what's that do to Jennie?"

"Well, for one thing, all these kids will be related -- to you. We'll all be, in a way, your wives, and they'll be brothers and sisters, not cousins."

"You do know I'm not a Mormon? And that this whole conversation is getting weird?"

"Yeah? So? This is what I came down here for."

"To get pregnant? For me to get you pregnant?"

"Yup."

"You know, I've never had sex with someone I didn't love."

"So? Fall in love with me -- again."

"Again?"

"Yeah, when we did Deni the first time I could feel you falling in love with me. It was real then, it'll be real tomorrow. And I'll have your kids, so you'll love me all that much more."

"You've got this figured out, don't you?"

"Yup."

"And this is what you want?"

"Yes."

"And you love me?"

"More than you'll ever know."

"Why?"

"You know why. Everything you've done for me. Before you, the only thing a guy ever gave me was a Dilly Bar at a Dairy Queen. You gave me a life, and so much more. You're my husband, whether you want to be, or not. And I'm all you've got left of Deni."

She wasn't a colossal fuck, but then again, neither was Jennie. Neither got anywhere near Terry on the Lust-o-meter, but Niki could hold her own and I enjoyed being inside her, the feeling of reproductive urges being met, and satisfied. By the time we made it back to St Mary's I'd pumped about two quarts into her motor, and if that didn't do the job I didn't know what would.