Kareoke Killjoy

-- "Authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling "My Way" in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least a half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a sub category of crime dubbed the "My Way Killings."
--The New York Times (no joke)



Interior: Filthy, low-ceilinged dive bar, Anytown, USA.

Little, grubby square tables dot the room and the dry, grey rag used to wipe down the bar hasn't been rinsed out since 1972. A smattering of lowlifes drape themselves over wobbling chairs and each other and the path to the restroom and cigarette machine is sticky. A man named Rick is up at the mic. His fingernails are dirty and his T-shirt is worn thin. He sings an octave lower than the original release and has the throaty rumble of a man who has several Pall Malls for breakfast. But he is on key, committed, and to the casual listener seems to really own the song. Another man, Stu, sits in the crowd, seething. Only he understands Rick's deep, inner pathos and aching desire. He's antsy as he watches Rick grab the mic with two hands, bend at the knees and thrust his midsection towards the audience with every chorus.

Rick sings, "M-m-m-myyy Sharona! (ba-duh, nah, nah, nah, nuh) M-m-m-myyy Sharona!"

Stu can stand it no longer. He jumps to his feet as his chair slides away from him like an explosion. He thunders at Rick, chest heaving; eyes flashing, "Your Sharona? YOUR Sharona?! She was MY GODDAMN Sharona!!!"

And with that he whips out a glock and shoots Rick dead. The crowd shifts uneasily. Stu charges over to the mic, steps over Rick and finishes out the song with bravado; just in time for the last chorus; his gun clanking out time with the mic stand as the stage becomes sticky with blood. The room offers him a round of tentative applause.

Who's up?

In another part of town, at a slightly more respectable bar/cafe, Charles has finally gotten up the nads to request a song. He's spent years pouring over the bar's three ring binders and has finally settled on a song that speaks to him personally. Tonight-- he reasons with only himself-- is the night. He smooths the crease in his khaki's as he turns sideways, gingerly shuffling between patrons too lazy to scoot their chairs in for him as he makes his way to the mic. Once there, he takes his wire rimmed glasses off and tucks them into his brooks brothers shirt pocket then squints towards his audience. He feels resigned to this moment; even triumphant.

Charles sings, "Don't drink don't smoke, what do-ya-do? Ya don't drink don't smoke, what-do-ya-do?--"

Charles bops his head ever-so-slightly as he sings. He's here at last and it feels good. He feels home.

Sheila had been tailing Charles unbeknownst to him for years; ever since he snubbed her at their corporate trust-building retreat. In truth, he pined for her but thought she was a prude and would never go for his secret penchant for S&M using 17th century Japanese stealth weaponry. But what Charles didn't know about Sheila could fill volumes. And now he would never find out. Sheila stood slowly, taking a deep breath; the fulfillment of careful training and relaxation exercises was at hand and she knew she had only one shot.

Charles sang, "Little good, little good, little goody-two shoes--"

Sheila screamed as she took aim, "You'll never know, Charles, you'll NEVER KNOW!!!"

And with that she let fly the shiny metal shuriken or "throwing star" she'd been carrying in her purse in a hard, plastic tampon case for some time now. It landed squarely in his chest, embedding itself into his heart; making a smooth, clean tear along the same parallel stripes in his best shirt. Charles slumped to the floor as Sheila grabbed her purse; the dulcet tones of Adam Ant's jaunty anthem danced over his bleeding body. Before reaching the threshold of the bar, Sheila turned to the patrons, squared her shoulders and proclaimed, "And I do smoke, on occasion, after a good meal," and walked out into the night with a spring in her step; her quest fulfilled.

Next?

Marty and Loraine had been married for 38 years. Back in the seventies, Lorraine had her hair cut in the current fashion and with the help of a daily curling iron ritual, bore an uncanny resemblance to Toni Tennille-- or so she thought. Marty-- not wanting to be upstaged by his outgoing, center-stage-hogging wife-- took to wearing a ship captain's hat; but the only one he could find was a real, starched military cap at a VFW rummage sale and so he looked oddly formal at weekend cocktail parties and bar-b-ques. (The neighbors wondered if he'd really been in the military and just didn't realize it wasn't wartime, and so, feeling sorry for him, never mentioned it.)

Scarcely a week went by before Loraine could be heard nagging her husband to escort her to TGIFs for karaoke night. There were times when he tried to send her down town on her own, tired as he was of their duets and the silence that followed, but she wouldn't hear of it.

"Go," Marty said from his brown naugahyde barcalounger, "do 'Let's Get Physical' or 'Morning train,' you know you like those songs and the crowd loves you. You don't need me there." But even though Loraine didn't need him there, and tended to ignore him once she walked through the door, she always insisted he come.
"Get dressed," she'd say, holding his stiff, white captains hat, "I've laid your Hawaiian shirt out on the bed."

Loraine beamed every time she overheard a patron whisper, "There goes Captain and Tennille," as she snaked through the dark wood varnished booths. What she didn't notice were the eye rolls and muffled laughter that followed. Marty, always in her wake, saw and heard what he couldn't bear to tell her, and his inner chivalrous husband kept his humiliation bottled up for years. But tonight seemed different somehow and as they stepped up onto the carpeted dais; he felt itchy, loose, and annoyed.

Marty sang to Loraine, "Muscrat Susie, Muscrat Sam," but she wouldn't look him in the eyes. "Do the jitterbug in Muscrat Land--" she sang out to the crowd which infuriated him. Why wouldn't she look at him? He was her captain and he'd been putting up with this crap for years. She should be looking at him lovingly the way Tennille did. He marveled at how she could enunciate every word beautifully while she was singing on stage but as soon as they stepped off the platform, she was a verbal train wreck. Her scotch and soda intake had tripled over the years and the bartender-- a tall, strapping bottle-blonde lesbian named Tiffany-- had started handing doubles to her in a tall glass with not much ice.

Loraine sang, "And they whirl and they twirl and they tango," which was Marty's cue to take her hand and spin her once into him then spin her back out. But she started turning the wrong way and the mic wire got tangled up around her. Snickers were heard from the audience. Loraine snarled at Marty, "You cn do inythin righth!" But she slurred it into his mic and her sentiment bounced off the crowded restaurant's back wall with cringe-worthy clarity. Tiffany could be heard laughing loudest above the others. Marty thought to say, I'm sorry, but then figured, what's the point. He untangled her from the mic wire just in time for their encore (sung whether or not it was requested because Tiffany acted as their plant for an extra tip from Loraine.) As if on cue, Tiffany shouted, "Encore!" and "Love Will Keep Us Together" began it's bouncy intro. Loraine looked out towards the bar and said, "You know it will, Babydoll," and that's when Marty knew.

Marty sang to Loraine, "Love, love will keep us together--"
Loraine sang to the crowd, "Think of me babe whenever,
Some sweet talkin' girl comes along, singin' your so-ong,
Don't mess around you've just got to be strong, just stop--"

Marty understood. (schweee)

Loraine sang in the vague direction of the bar, "'Cause I really love you, stop. (schweee)
I've been thinking of you..."

Marty's eyes caught Tiffany's. She was mouthing the words, "Look in your heart and let love, keep us to-geh-eh-the, whatever." As he looked back at Loraine, something snapped and the room-- packed with patrons and nachos-- receded into the ether. Marty slowly wound the mic chord around Loraine's body as he twirled her toward him. She sang, "Da-da-da- whatever--" giggling at his ad-libbed choreography. Then he wrapped the chord around her neck as he sang, "I will, I will, I will. I wi-iiiillllllll..." Lorraine stopped singing and for the first time in four-- or was it five years-- looked Marty in the eyes. He stopped singing, too; better to focus all his strength on tightening the chord without dropping his mic. Loraine understood now that he understood but she didn't care; she just kept looking at him-- inches away-- as she turned shades of pink, then magenta.

Tiffany was the first person to cry out but it was too late. With Loraine's last breath, she knocked Marty's microphone into the scotch and soda she was still grasping and instantly, currents of electricity-- only slightly stronger than the heart-pumping electricity that they felt for one another when they first met-- wound through their bodies and stopped their hearts flat in a final rousing crescendo of shaken tongues and singed flesh. They fell to the floor together like Romeo and Juliet, bound together forever now as one. Tiffany arrived at the tangled mass just in time to see Marty and Loraine's fingers and toes seemingly twitching in time to the song's catchy beat as it faded out. And they faded out along with it.

It was love, as it turned out, that kept them together after all.

Bought the Farm

The good news about ant farms is that they haven't changed an iota since they were conceived and designed as a child's learning toy sometime around the Inquisition. There's still that John Steinbeck farmhouse in molded plastic, sitting high up on a fertile hill next to a proud silo. We know it's summer because the trees are full, giving the entire scene that smack of ideal bucolic optimism that will surely help me rationalize confining them to their enclosed, plastic fallout shelter for the rest of their leetle ant lives. Or until divine intervention intercedes and my ant farm gets knocked over by a raccoon, inciting a jailhouse patio break that would make Steve McQueen proud. But this is not that story.

The ants had to be ordered from the great ant warehouse that also supplies sea monkeys and live bait to all manner of iguana, lizard and snake. Once they arrived in a padded envelope, all twenty of them entangled in a single ant scrum, laying lifeless in a small cylindrical tube like failed astronauts on a doomed mission, I called the company.

"Don't worry," they said. "They'll wake up. They're just sleeping. Put them in the fridge and when you're ready to dispense them, pour them in to the ant farm and they'll wake up once they warm."

Like Ophelia. Or Walt Disney. Kind of a DIY home cryogenics lesson for kids. I get it, I thought, and dutifully put them in the fridge.

It was around this time that I got the bright idea of offering to bring in the ant farm to my son, Jimmy's, 4 year old pre-school class, to stay and live To donate forever. I thought I was pret-ty crafty, offering to donate our ant farm in the name of science and higher learning. My true m.o. was not wanting to have the ants anywhere on our property when the inevitable freedom break happened. Let the pre-school deal with an exterminator, was my line of thinking. I was surely on my way to hell in a hand-made, hand-painted, play-doh and popsicle stick fashioned hand-basket.

The big day arrived. I had read the instructions like I always do a new toy. I poured in the special life-time supply of magic sand and checked the plugs on the sides for damage control. I understood how often they should be fed, what optimum light they needed for superior existence, and went over my presentation to the students in my head. Finally, the moment was at hand. I was on.

"Does anyone know what this is, children?" I said smugly to the class as I pulled out the ant farm and rested it with a flourish on the low rhombus shaped table. Nine or so grubby little kids gathered around; my son among them. A few others were setting up shop or home or surgery elsewhere in the room, but I didn't take it personally.
"It's an ant farm," I answered myself in hyper-enthusiastic Chanel Thirteen-speak. Even Jimmy looked unimpressed. Thankfully, his teacher had left the room to handle some administrative business. Or have a smoke.

I continued, "You kids are going to get to see ants live and work and make a home for themselves over time. It's going to be really cool, you'll see."
They just looked at me with their big eyes and chubby wrists. Tough crowd.
"And these," I said, reaching into the bag and feeling around for the small, cylindrical vile, "are the ants." I pulled out the vile and held it up to the class.

Much to my delight, all twenty of them were writhing and crawling over each other like an over-caffeinated bacchanalian orgy. I slowly waved the vile over the crowd like a seasoned spokesperson on the Price is Right. I managed to garner a few ooohs and ahhs which boosted my ego and fueled my game. I looked at the vile then over at the leetle hole that I was supposed to shake the ants into once I removed the stopper. "Ready kids?" I said, and placed the vial right up against the ant farm's entrance, exhaled, and removed the stopper. Two, three, four, ants immediately crawled out of the vial's mouth and up along the vial and onto my hand and up my wrist before I could close the stopper again. I immediately, reflexively, swatted and flicked them off my wrist and and forearm with precision and force. I don't get it, I thought, not a single one of them went down into the hole were they were supposed to go. Didn't they know what utopia waited for them? Stupid ants.

"Why did you do that?" one of the kids asked.
I had to buy time. I needed to think.
"This is boring," another one said. Okay, okay, I thought, I had to think fast.
"Let's look at the directions kids. How many of your mommy's and daddy's read the directions when you get a new toy?" A few hands went up. "Good," I said, "well, they all should, and sometimes it's a good idea to read them again. So let's do that, shall we?" I quickly scanned the fold-out for guidance because I was losing my audience to the costume box.

"Here, kids. Right here is says, 'When you're ready to dispense the ants, cool them in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes then pour them in.'" Right! Their comas! I'd completely forgotten. Like sixteen little sleeping beauties in the back of a moving truck, I would just pour them in and they'd tumble down like good sports. They may wake up a bit dazed and bruised, but they'd shake it off and be jest fine.

But I didn't have fifteen minutes. Jimmy's teacher had popped in and tapped her watch. "I know," I reasoned out loud to the kids, "fifteen minutes in the refrigerator must work out to about two minutes in the freezer. It's called con-ver-sion. I'll be right back."

I slipped out of the room and over to the kitchen where the big fridge held a lifetime's supply of apple juice, popsicles and boo-boo ice. Into the frozen tundra I tossed the tiny vial and it landed without a sound on a hunk of frosted over ice cream drip. The minutes ticked by like hours as I counted to only ninety seconds before reaching in; god only knew knew how hard it would be to get my audience back.

"Here we go, kids, gather around, gather around," I sang brightly as I cursorily inspected the ants. Yup, they were asleep alright. Balled up into tiny knots, they didn't even flinch. I passed the vial once again in front of the five or six die hards who's golden attention spans had brought them back for the grand finale.

"They look dead," my son's best friend, Marvin, said.
"Oh, no," I trilled like Glinda the Good Witch, "the ants are sleeping very soundly." And as I unstopped the vial and tipped it toward the hole, they tumbled and rolled dutifully into their sandy shangri-la. For a full half a minute, we all watched in stony silence. The anticipation was so thick you could cut it with a dull, plastic, Fisher Price knife.
"When are they gonna wake up?" one girl asked through a fireman's mask.
"Oh, soon, very soon," I said. But I was starting to wonder.

"Did you kill them?" a round-faced boy asked.
I stammered, "Well, I wouldn't say that I killed them, per se..."
"What's per se?" my son asked.
"I'll explain later," I said; my lilting voice was deflating fast but I held on.
"Why don't we do this, kids," I said, "Let's put the ant farm on top of the piano in the sun, and give them a good, long chance to wake up in their own time."
"But what if they don't wake up?" the round-faced boy asked. His Kean-painting eyes seemed to grow bigger and rounder with each word he spoke.
"What if they don't wake up? Well, then, we'll know that they're in a happy place; in their very own ant heaven."
"Did you kill them on purpose?" my son asked.
"No Sweetie, no," I said and I reached across the table and cupped his chin in my sweaty hand. Could it be that he knew me this well, already? It's not liked we kept them on the patio and I came in one morning and made up the raccoon story. I could have just as easily done that, but no! We donated the ant farm to the school! Here I was, trying to parlay this into teaching moment to prove that I'm precisely not the mom he thinks I'm capable of being. But, it was too late. He knew me already.


"Oh, kids," I said with calm resignation, in my own voice; deciding to drop the lilt and the dulcet tones. My voice now carried the weight and timbre of the cold, hard truth. "If the ants did die, and they're not waking up, then it means that they died by accident. And I'm truly sorry. I read the directions, but I may have made a mistake. And people make mistakes all the time. Even grown-ups. Do you forgive me?"
There was a pause while I perused the stricken crowd.
"Yes," I heard a muffled voice say from behind the fireman's mask.
I didn't cry. I could have. But I didn't.
"Thank you. Now let's give these little guys a chance to wake up."

After explaining to my son's teacher that I'd killed off all the ants in front of the class, she decided that it would be best if I brought the ant farm home. I did, and set it on the patio table, in the sun, for a week. I wanted to give those ants every chance that the kids had given me. And that I hoped my son would give me in the future. Because a week in ant years is like a lifetime for us. And you don't have to read the directions to know that.