The Jellyfish

by Liz Maher

This is a story about the girlfriend of a musician and how she came to understand that there is real magic in the world.

Now many of you already understand that girlfriends of musicians are often lonely and angry because they are cruelly tricked into believing that dating someone in a band means that life will be swell and intellectual, and they imagine themselves walking into dark, crowded clubs and seeing their boy/man way far up on a brightly lit stage. They can picture him scanning the audience for her presence and glowing like a firefly when he sees her, exhaling a sigh of relief like "okay, now we can start the set because my sweet baby honey girlfriend is here." And then proceed to play a set full of songs all about her. Also, girlfriends of musicians can be guilty of an unnatural love of music. But is that really a crime?



Honoring this common misconception, Pam, like all other musician's girlfriends, moved in with a bar-owning drummer to play out her dream and was devastated and confused to find herself left alone in a big stupid loft deep in Alphabet City with too many strange, snotty people coming and going at all hours, spilling ashtrays and not talking to her but rather glaring at her suspiciously out of the corners of their eyes, like she was out to hijack their mates, which made her feel just like a jellyfish--invisible but dangerous.

Every year Tal, her boy/man-dude (he was nearly 40) sponsored an elaborately cool Christmas party which was widely considered to be the best party of the entire downtown New York year. Because she was not included in any of the logistical planning (to be fair, she wasn't interested in that kind of thing) Pam put herself in charge of the decorations. She viewed the project as a form of survival, an attempt to make herself more necessary around the house and also to Tal. So deep from inside the gaping mouth of her boredom sprang an inspired love for ironic craft-making. She built holly wreaths made out of green and red duct tape, she made a tree skirt woven out of garbage bag ties to lay beneath a Christmas tree constructed out of discarded books and trimmed with bottle caps. Using her boyfriend's old porno mags she cut hundreds and hundreds of those snowflakes we all learned how to design in elementary school. She started feeling useful and funny and talented and even stopped smoking pot which she never liked doing in the first place because when she did it--because Tal did it (which was everyday)--it always felt to her like someone was pouring a bucket of snot all over her brain. She was even so inspired by her decorative resourcefulness that she considered opening up a store selling wares made entirely from recycled trash. However, as one of the loft's transient roommates pointed out, that had already been done and therefore wasn't really worth doing. Pam didn't care what that asshole said, because Tal liked the idea.

The night of the party arrived and the many orbits of Tal's universe twirled in and looped over and out and under one another like a colored laser light show. There was dancing, there were live acts and there was style and there was irony. Late into the evening Pam found herself lying stretched out on the living room sofa, gazing at her daring creations. She imagined them as having an energetic life all their own, a field of existential existence beyond her own ownership of them. The porno snowflakes spun and thrust off the currents of amusement emitted by the socially driven partygoers.

And then the inevitable happened. As though they could hear her thoughts, and deliberately wanted to hurt her feelings, a group of thirty-something girl/women/chicks viciously tore the snowflakes down. They deemed them offensive but really they just wanted to tease Tal about his pornography fetish. They ripped them down cluster by cluster and piled them laughingly on Tal in a flirtatious heap, then Tal tangled up in a delirium and carried them over and piled them on top of Pam. Next he snaked on top of her and licked her angry red face. Pam, like every musician's girlfriend, was so happy to be the recipient of Tal's momentary lavish attention that she couldn't bring herself to be angry or hurt. She could only be sad. Sadness is the only melancholic ingredient that mixes compatibly with a desire fulfilled.



Early into the morning, after Tal's affectionate moonbeam evaporated into sleep, and the social circuses have packed up their tents and spun off into separate darks, Pam sat up awake and thoughtful. She watched the real snowflakes fall out the window and land lightly on the quiet pavement. She turned to look at her massacred attempt at contribution, her decorations, all of them shit on and pissed on and desecrated. She was deeply upset and disturbingly lost. She had no useful place to store these feelings of desperation and so, as do all young women (not just musician's girlfriends) she turned her mind to realm of phenomena. She wondered if miracles happen to people with problems that aren't so bad but who are just sad and lost. She looked out the window and dreamed that a miracle might happen to her to change her life for the better even though she might not technically deserve it and there were probably many other people who needed miracles more than she did because she was only deeply unhappy and didn't understand how she had become so ridiculous. That lonely pre-Christmas night Pam drifted into her troubled unconscious and no miracle happened.

***

Gift shopping. Pam was out looking for a Christmas present for the boy/man with a gut grumbling purpose known only to musician's girlfriends. She wanted to buy him a gift that would thrill him so completely he would burst into a million pieces. She wanted to accomplish with taste and money and novelty what she cannot do just by being herself. She needed clout. She needed luster. She needed to capture his imagination. This would be the miracle she sought: if only she would be granted the perfect present.

She wandered from boutique to boutique combing through racks of clothes like a fashion conscious she-wolf out for blood. She felt raw and competitive with the hoards of vulgar last-minute shoppers. She didn't exactly know why she bothered rummaging through clothes because everyone knows that Tal will only wear Hawaiian shirts and shorts and that's it. But Pam had the inspired idea to design Tal a new look and then when his group noticed the striking change of direction, her name would definitely come up. They would snarkily ask him who helped get him off the islands and then he would have to say "Pam"--with admiration. He would actually pucker his lips for the "P", widen them laterally for the "A", and then draw them luxuriously together again for the "M" like he was savoring the taste of organic honey. But all of the men's clothes she looked at were utter trash and ultimately she was smart enough to understand that any stylistic suggestions would only incite dismissive laughter from Tal. You see, unfortunately, musician's girlfriends can also be cunning. Under these circumstances such forward thinking can be detrimental because it means they know how to effectively dodge all of the embarrassment that should break them and send them packing.

On her way back home through the Lower East Side, Pam half-heartedly ducked into a guitar shop on East 4th Street. Under normal circumstances she would not have dared looking at instruments for Tal because he was such a complete know-it-all about anything and everything instrumental, but she couldn't remember having been dragged into this particular shop and assumed that it must be new. When she went inside it was very dark and once her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, she found herself in the presence of the most bizarre looking instruments she had ever seen.

***

In the shop there was a smell. It smelled like burnt sunflowers and sage and malt with curry. Pam was quite sure that the odor was from drugs--she just couldn't place the variety. When she gathered her senses together she saw a small old fat gray-haired woman sitting in the corner petting a three-legged black cat.

"This is Oscar," the woman croaked. She looked and sounded like a bull frog. Pam spaced out looking at her too long before she could casually disengage into the standard customer's safe haven of "just looking." The bullfrog caught her gaze with her bulging yellow eyeballs before Pam turned away and said, "what is it you're after my dear?" Odd choice of words, Pam thought to herself.

"Uh...I don't know," said Pam.

"Hmmmm," grumbled the old frog as she shifted positions on her stool and set Oscar on her lap though he squirmed. Pam looked closer at her surroundings. Many of the dusty instruments were jumbled together hanging in clusters and clumps that resembled rock formations and gave the storefront the feeling of a cave.

"How long have you guys been here? I don't think I've seen this shop before." Pam wasn't just making conversation or trying to unburden herself from the bullfrog's stare. The shop had an air of mystery that made her curious.

"Oh - a looooong time," gurgled the bullfrog, and Oscar meowed and escaped her clutches. "Damn cat!"

"Really? How weird. I feel like we've been in all the music shops around here but I guess we missed you." There was something of the accusatory music snob in her tone that she could only have picked up from Tal. Pam's eyes landed on a guitar with astounding and evocative carvings of mermaids and elves and satyrs intertwining and woven together to combine and create the body of the instrument. It boasted an unprecedented eighteen strings ; six of them were bass guitar strings with a twelve string set-up. It was made out of solid oak and accented with gold leaf. It had a scaled gleaming mermaid tail for a fret board and the fan of her tail held the keys. "What is this," she asked the heavily breathing frog. She was out of breath herself. This was it! This would impress Tal into a fucking admiration coma!

"That is very special. Very rare. Are you a good player?"

"Me?"

"Do you play?" She burped and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, never taking her eyes off of Pam.

"No, its for my boyfriend" Pam cooed sheepishly, "I wanted to get him something cool...and this," she brushed her fingers over the orgy of creatures "...is cool!"

"Hmmm," the bullfrog rose from her chair her body making a noise like a waterbed. "Buy it for your boyfriend, sure. (Burp! Wipe) But you play it too. You learn too. Okay?" she reached her bulbous arms out and stood on the toes of her terrycloth slippers and lifted the guitar off of its hook on the wall.

"How much?" Pam asked.

"You want it? We'll work it out. But you just promise me you play too. Hmmm. Boyfriend." She growled the last part to herself as she encased the eccentric instrument in a heavy black case. In the end they exchanged $400.00 in cash. On her way out, the bullfrog heaved her final sentiment, saying, "Music can be very powerful! Oscar agrees don't you Oscar?" Pam looked back into Oscar's yellow eyes for his assent. She could have sworn she saw him nod.

***

On Christmas Eve Pam graciously swallowed her disappointment over the impersonal gift of a Patti Smith box set that Tal had given her. She wanted nothing to spoil the revelation of the guitar--or whatever it was!

When it was finally time, she giggled scurrying to her hiding place in the spare bathroom closet and dragged out the heavy case and placed it directly in front of Tal.

This presentation--the moment she had placed mountains of hope and value and importance on --was over in what seemed like an instant, just like every other exchange with those ADD plague-ridden motherfuckers! (Pam liked designing insulting phrases like these. She usually only said them to herself, inside her own head. But she would be ready should she ever need to say them out loud to anyone.)

Tal said he thought it was a great relic and impossible to play and he passed it around and went down with his friends to his recording studio leaving Pam alone with her box set and with her hate for them.

Her goal was to not cry too loud, to not be heard so she walked over to the guitar which sat in the corner of the loft. She wept and stroked its eighteen strings and then picked it up. She set it in her lap and pressed her fingers to the strings and found she couldn't press even one of them down. It hurt too much and bruised her tender finger.

While holding the guitar she received a vision of herself standing before an arena-sized crowd playing the beautiful guitar, the only one in the world who could ever play it. Tal stood in the wings admiring her awestruck. He had been lucky enough to discover her and produced her first critically acclaimed album. She was considered a savant, her latent virtuosity now unleashed was a miracle, no one understood how it happened or where she came from, how had she appeared out of nowhere with this astounding musicianship and her uncanny sense for melody and restrained yet potent lyrics. Only she knew the truth; the guitar was a magic guitar and from the moment she picked it up that Christmas she could play it with startling accuracy. The songs and lyrics poured into her heart from another realm and the guitar was the portal.

***

"I want to talk to you," she says. They go into Tal's bedroom. "I think I'm leaving," she says like a baby chick would say it if a baby chick could say things, all fuzzy and shaky. She is sitting on the bed and he lowers to his knees exasperated expressionless and puts his head in her lap, his arms around her waist and he breathes a heavy breath in and out. "Why?" he asks as though he's assumed this position (like Jesus in the Pieta) many, many times before.

"I don't know. I can't find where I fit in. I want things that... I love you, and...I want more and I want more from you because I love you and you're so fun and I love you. And I know you like me but I don't really know that and I don't know why you even want me here Tal! And I know I don't really know what I want to do exactly or where I'll go but... I'll get another waitressing job and you know what? That isn't really the issue,,, you just don't . . . I feel like a pet or something here. You know all I wanted was a decent Christmas! And all your stupid inconsiderate friends just tear everything down at the party!-"

"Okay," he says lifting his round curly head out of her lap. "What is this really about? Are you really talking about Christmas decorations?"

"Yeah. You know I put like, so much effort into all of that and to just have them torn down with no respect--" It was the only thing, the only tangible point on the map she could trace her hurt feelings back to.

"Are you kidding me? You don't want to leave. Because of decorations?"

"Fuck you! Don't tell me what... you're an asshole!"

"Yeah well...Pam, I asked you to move in here because you acted like you wanted to figure some things out, and I care for you, and I wanted to see you more so you moved in. But I don't know where you got the idea that it was an invitation for you to go and commit domesticide." He was the dean of combining words like that.

"Where the FUCK is that coming from? I never once.."

"Look, I really don't think you have to leave. Just chill out, this is way more drama than what is called for. I think you should maybe stop worrying about things like the fucking stupid Christmas decorations and learn how to be what you want to be or learn what ever it is you want to learn. You don't pay rent here, but that doesn't give you the excuse to act like my wife."

"Where is all of this coming from? I could hardly get away with acting like your wife when you have barely looked sideways at me in an entire month and now you are spewing all of this bullshit about me learning and my being what I want to be? When did you turn into my fucking mentor?"

"You do need a mentor but that's beside the point. I think you are great, really great seriously. But give me a break. Give yourself a break for that matter."

"Well if I were to choose a mentor it sure as fuck wouldn't be you, you fucking haircut on stilts," she said not sure if that was a good dig or not.

"Fuck you Pam! You know who I am. You know where I come from!"

She did. He was what they sometimes refer to a self-made man. He had worked himself out of hopeless poverty and a broken home and every single thing he had achieved was because he had earned it by himself. He knew it too and was proud of himself and in truth Pam was jealous of his determination. They both sulked for a moment and then Tal said:

"Stop acting like a brat. I want you to stay," he said, reaching for her snot-stained hand. She soften to him and then, grabbing her pinky with his pinky, he said, "I want you to stay for awhile. And even though I will never put a diamond ring on your finger, I love making love with you, I might want kids someday but who the fuck knows and I am not here to reassure you, I don't consider that my job other than letting you stay here. I want you here in my life and I am trying to make that possible but as far as 'paying attention to you as you say' it isn't going to happen like that. I'm sorry."

This last speech made Pam quietly furious and then she broke the tether of the musician's girlfriend. At last she found she couldn't live this way with this boy/man and his subversive control over her feelings. Finally, she could no longer talk herself into staying when he had the ability to make her feel so good, but he was in charge of doling out all the goodness. He had revealed too much of his inner monologue and she was too exposed and raw to continue. She took out a bag and began packing her stuff.

"Boy...you really are scared aren't you?"

"What? How can I live here now? How can you expect me to stay here one more second when you have basically accused me of being a prostitute and a loafer and a coward right to my face?"

"Alright Pam, leave. Go. But why don't you go do something for Christ's sake. You are a lazy little girl and you're scared, and don't try to tell me that Christmas decorations count for effort."

"You're a murderer and I'll kill myself before I take this kind of abuse another minute!"

"Oh spare me your Lifetime channel Cosmo-derived paperback wisdom for ONE second will you?"

"Get away from me!" she says and he does. She sits on the bed and cries and cries and cries and cries. She hits the pillow, she kicks the wall, she throws a wine glass at the headboard. She is vamping like only a musician's girlfriend can, waiting for Tal's re-entry. But he doesn't come back and he doesn't apologize. Now Pam has no other choice but on Christmas Eve to pack her soiled dignity into what bags she can carry and awkwardly make her way up the stairs with her two suitcases.

The now ex-boyfriend is in the dining room grouping with a group of groupies who all look like a gang of cats who have just consumed flocks of canaries which really makes Pam wish that she had a twelve gauge shot gun in her suitcase.

Rather than spit in their faces she says to Tal, "I'll send someone for the rest of my stuff."

"I know you think you need to do this," he calls from his chair, "you think you are doing the brave thing, but you aren't. I think this is a really cowardly move."

She remembers the guitar. Defiantly she marches past them and into the living room and shoves the guitar into its case. "I'm taking this with me." She hears laughter jiggle out of the cats, or maybe from the canaries.

"Why? You can't play it and you'll have nowhere to put it," more laughter.

"Oh you'll see you Frucks!" She wants to kill herself for saying fucks wrong!! Her mispronunciation makes her face burn and she stumbles out onto the street with her two suitcases and the guitar case and the door slams behind her concealing their hateful laughter once and for all. She has no clear idea of where to go or what to do. Musician's girlfriends are not often practical in these ways but it doesn't matter. She is ready now. She sits on the curb, the snow falling heavy like sheets of wedding rice raining all around her and it is so cold that her tears freeze onto her face as they roll. Now she is finally ready, ready for her miracle. This has to be the right time. It has to be the moment! It has to be! It is! She is clear that she will get what she has been asking for because now she has been mistreated enough, she feels, to deserve it. Clear as crystal.

With bare frozen fingers she fumbles with the metal latches on the heavy guitar case and removes the beautifully carved oak instrument from its coffin. A street lamp shines down on her casting a dramatic spotlight putting her in the center.

"Please..." she whispers clutching the instrument to her breast.

Pam held her breath as her fingers hovered quivering over the daunting eighteen strings that were themselves quivering. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, going deep inside herself her every muscle tightening in anticipation of her boiling potential. Her mouth opens her eyelids pucker together like two mouths sucking on lemons.

And then, at the moment of truth, at the moment when her life as a follower is hovering on the verge of being generative, at the moment when she needed it the most, more than any other moment so far...absolutely nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. Pam cannot play that instrument. No way no how, and she more than likely never ever will play it. However once the nothingness penetrates, something great happens. She drops the guitar in the snow and opens her eyes and they are as full and as purposeful as two targets. Her jaw drops, she expels a laugh and cough and a gasp of heroic breath exhaling with the whole ocean of herself from inside. Then comes another laugh--and then another! She laughs for five, maybe ten whole minutes; big vomitous voluminous roars exploding with self recognition, vibrating every cell, every molecule, every girlish rainbow leaving her skull and shining out in her toothy smile. Still howling she returns the guitar to its case and abandons it like an aborted baby on the ex-boyfriend's doorstep. She leans it against the mailbox in a pose resembling, in that moment, the ghost of James Dean. She bids James Dean the guitar version fairwell with a kick in the snow and in so doing says goodbye to that kind of fantasizing for good. "THERE IS NO FUCKING SANTA CLAUS." It is Christmas Eve, Pam has lightened her load considerably, and now she understands everything about miracles. She floats courageously away on the river of her own volition, carried into the sea of her future--invisible and dangerous.

Artwork by David Sticher