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.