I Honestly Love You.
While I spent most of my time drinking with Bonnie, I still had to contend with weekends with Larry – somehow. As long as I could drink (which I could, always, every day, constantly), I was pretty content. But drinking with Larry in a dark bar in Pitcairn wasn’t quite like college.
The one thing I loved about Larry was his ability to play guitar and sing. He was a superstar of sorts in my mind, building a band from nothing anytime he felt like singing. I watched him sit around and figure out new songs on his guitar, which he did effortlessly – although it took a long time – and then he’d practice the song a few times and play it on stage the next night.
I wanted to do that, too.
I’d taken guitar class in ninth grade, and a few private lessons in high school, so I had a small guitar and I knew a few chords. I showed Larry my Stairway to Heaven riff that I’d practiced over the years – having learned it before I ever heard the actual song – and he said, “You can play!”
He didn’t mean I could play well, but he was excited to know I had potential.
Larry showed me that every, single fifties song I ever knew is made up of four chords in a very specific rhythm (G, C, Em, D). Tears On My Pillow was the first one I learned, and I played it a hundred times. I could play other fifties songs, too, but I didn’t know the words to very many of them.
Eventually I started experimenting to see if I could figure out songs on the guitar, too.
One day, while Larry was out, I sat in that tiny apartment with my guitar and figured out how to play I Honestly Love You. I have no idea if I did it right, but whatever I figured out, I practiced until my fingers were beyond calloused and sore; they were practically bleeding.
Conveniently, I still bit my nails all the time so there was no worry about fingernails in the way of my chording.
After a few days of practice, I shyly announced: “I have something to show you.”
“What’s up, Baby?” he asked, sitting at the bottom of the bed where I’d been sitting for hours.
Convinced that I loved Larry more than life itself, and that I would create my own little form of superstardom, I played the entire song – three verses and the bridge (which was quite likely incorrect) – and sang to the 37-year-old biker that I honestly loved him.
I sang it quietly, way too quickly, and much too shyly to be a declaration of love. It was more a declaration of “maybe I can sing” in a humble, confused sort of way.
It’s the only time I ever learned a song in order to play it for Larry. I deemed the song meaningful enough, in a sense, to thank Larry for taking me in, keeping me fed and full of alcohol, and giving me a place to stay for so many months.
I got a little choked up in my anxiety.
And Larry almost – but not quite – cried. Like a proud parent, he told me the song was great, and that I sang it great; he encouraged me to keep playing.
I felt like I was 12 and he was 65. But I felt proud of myself, too.
I hadn’t planned to do any more than play that one song in that one room. But much later, I did more.