Ain't Nobody Feeling No Pain - On Karaoke and Loneliness
On a Monday night, I’m here to be alone with people. It’s karaoke night at The White Horse in Oakland, California. I sit at the bar and drink my PBRs, scribbling in my notebook like an aging Harriet The Spy, listening and watching. I’m serving mysteriously aloof. I’m giving them intriguingly cold. I’m slaying the bar top with my unavailable bookish charm, honey... shit, I’m a ghost y’all. Or at least that’s the energy I’m hoping to project. A real push-pull sort of allure.
The grim howl and then giggle of a passionate amateur diva whose voice flows into a dented SM58 microphone (a microphone that we all share mind you) travels across a frayed XLR cable, and comes out something new, reverberating with life through a half busted speaker. Messy shit. That bravery bolstered by well alcohol shit.
I want someone to talk to me but then again can you imagine anything more awful than being spoken to? This might seem counter intuitive, the whole anti-social in public schtick, but for me it’s a standard state of queer being. It lives somewhere in between the desire to be by yourself and the terror of truly being alone with only the echo of your own voice. I live in this valley between mountains. Excuse me, everyone notice me being alone, please, I’m begging you.
I nearly choke on my beer as a flat yet earnest wail of Whitney Houston’s classic I Wanna Dance With Somebody conjures bent spirits into the air. I listen as a few supportive friends shout “Whooooo! Yas Bitch!” over flubbed lyrics. “I wanna feel the street- heat with somebody!” And the inevitable clarification “This song is higher than I thought.” This, I surmise, is the real shit I mentioned above.
To quote the great sonic high priestess Janet Jackson, I Get So Lonely but of course, I can’t let just anybody in. And I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Honestly, sometimes when I’m hanging out with people, people whom I like, I start to fantasize about my body disincorporating into a misty vapor to escape. But of course being alone can be painful. So, here I rest, nestled in the cleavage of two extremes like a depressed cameo necklace. Tonight at the White Horse Inn, I’ve found the perfect balance for the little rusty scales of my heart.
From the corner of my eye I see an old cowboy siddle up beside me with a lurch as if he had expected the bar to be a few steps further away then it was. He’s not a cowboy, he’s just older than me and wearing a cowboy hat. A stetson? Or is that a brand? Like with Kleenex and tissue? I honestly don’t know and I’m sure someone out there would be happy to correct me.
Before Mr. Cowboy speaks, I notice that he’s projecting the musty smell of oil, smoke, and dirt across the bar. A smell that despite my resistance reminds me of my father, who is also not a cowboy but who does work outside a lot. Which is weird because I specifically remember aiming to never think of my father while in a gay bar but here we are.
“What time is it? Is it after 10?” he slurs. Someone in another part of the bar is belting an emotionally sharp and nasaly rendition of I Dreamed A Dream through the karaoke speakers. I look at my phone and reply “It’s 9:50” and Mr. Cowboy looks back at me with that sideways head tilt that’s reserved for confused dogs and Micheal Myers. “Well damn that’s what it said 10 minutes ago.”
He wanders off with a resigned shuffle. A few moments later I hear him again, only this time singing karaoke. An old country song, checking a few more cowboy boxes, that I recognize but not fully. It’s something half remembered in the cluttered backlog of my brain. I can’t tell if I’ve heard it before or if I’m thinking of something else. The only words I can pick out from Dr Cowboy’s guttural draw are “ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.”
My old man makes his way back over to me after his song and says smugly “Now, I know it’s after 10.” A fact which I confirm. He flashes me a flint corn grin and waves a debit card in front of my face. I can’t tell if he’s offering it to me or if he’s doing some sort of a slight of hand magic trick. After he walks away I check my wallet to make sure all of my cards are in place; they are. I watch as he stumbles over to the ATM machine and I realize that he was waiting to pull out money until after 10. The cowboy needed a drink and he was under some external form of restraint. As he saunters back my way from the cash machine he winks and tips his hat.
I’m stuck thinking of the gay bar cowboys country song for a while and rather then ask the man, for fear of establishing a connection with a rogue element, I consult the karaoke DJ who unfortunately is eleven years old and seems completely disgusted that I’ve reminded him of the performance we all had just witnessed. He scrunches up his face and says he doesn’t remember the name of the song but that “it was about Texas or something” and I accept this as all I’m going to get out of him.
At least I have something to base my investigation on. Texas. The state where I grew up. Someone gets up on the mic and in a stunning act of brazen obliviousness begins singing Remix To Ignition by R Kelly. The audience is visibly uncomfortable as the vocalist shouts “You know the words!” I check out mentally and dive into the haven of my research. I do a google inquiry into “songs about Texas” and conveniently I find the subject of my search listed at number 3 on a “Top 25 Songs About Texas” listicle.
Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love) was recorded by Waylon Jennings and released in 1977 on his album Ol’ Waylon. I personally hope to one day release anything with the honorific “Ol’” before my name. I debated long and hard over whether or not “Ol’” qualified as an honorific and I’ve decided that it depends on tone.
The song tells the story of a well-to-do couple whose struggles all seem to be a result of their privileged and opulent lifestyle. The song's thesis suggests that they leave their life, with all of its bells and whistles, behind to move to Luckenbach, Texas (an unincorporated area in the South Eastern section of Gillespie County with a population of 3 people) where life is simpler and as previously mentioned “ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain.”
Further research into Luckenbach, Texas leads me to discover that no one involved in the creation of the song had ever been to the area. Luckenbach was more of a concept to them than an actual place. A sort of backwoods Xanadu or Oz, it’s exactly where you are when you get there. But that doesn’t work when your fantasy location is in fact a real place. Later, in his one performance in Luckenbach, Jennings was pelted with Lonestar Beer cans by the audience. Apparently, the locals, all three of them, did not appreciate that the song that made their little “off the grid” home famous had nothing to do with its namesake.
The concept of being “off the grid” in America feels absurd 2020 but then again no one really knows where I am right now. Texas is big and I imagine one could disappear, at least for a little while, if they really wanted to. But what happens on the days that you don’t want to be gone? I know I don’t really want to be that kind of alone. I want to have all the cakes and eat all of them too. The cowboy’s song isn’t really about an unincorporated swath of land in Texas. It’s a pop country tune about how we clutter our lives with things that don’t really matter. Like the copious amount of cocaine that Waylon Jennings was consuming around the time that the song came out.
I finally take my turn on the mic and sing Tiny Dancer by Elton John pushing the limits of my baritone. Specifically the line “Lay me down” is higher than I thought. I close my eyes and accept my moment in the spotlight as an audience of half a dozen strangers cheers me on. I stay for one more beer and then leave the bar to the sound of protestation from my newly discovered surrogate karaoke friends. They say “Wait! Cute Overalls! Where are you going?” And I salute them as I exit the building like the army brat that I am and shout “Have a good night! Be Safe!” Part of me wants to be friends with them, maybe they’re lonely too, but I can’t. Not tonight.
A week later I walk in on a birthday party full of folks in their 60s singing Luckenbach, Texas. This woman with a warbly soprano sings a haunting rendition of Somehow, Somewhere and dedicates it to refugees across the globe. An old man struggles to catch the melody of Joe Cocker’s version of I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends. The bar is carpeted and the ghosts of long spent cigarettes live in the fibers. The next woman to the mic sings a slightly delayed rendition of My Best Friend’s Girl and dedicates it to Ric Ocasik who died a few months ago. Why am I crying?
A youngish queer boy that looks like an updated version of Justin from Queer As Folk confidently belts his way through an uncomfortably earnest version of Fleetwood Mac’s Landside. Dancing Queen is next. We’re here together and we’re okay, the world isn't as on fire, we don’t know what’s coming. Alone, together. One of the bartenders gets on the mic to sing Who’s Gonna Drive You Home? followed by Take Me Home Tonight. Maybe it’s time to call it a night. Is he trying to tell us something? Luckily, I can walk home from here. I finish my drink, tip heavy, and get up to leave.
On my way out the door I think, how are we supposed to leave here knowing we’ll probably never see each other again? But of course, we’ve barely seen each other as it is.
My boyfriend and I often talk about leaving the city. With most of the cultural hubs shuttered and our lives turned increasingly insular, what are here for? Or for that matter where would we go? I imagine myself packing up our things and stacking them on the roof of our Prius into a cartoonishly lofty tower, starting from our wider items like furniture and bedding, and then gradually narrowing to the peak of one single lightbulb, and leaving the bay for Luckenbach, Texas. Not the real Luckenbach, but the imaginary one from the song. A sort of Valinor, an undying land, where we can cast off the weights of this life, and truly start living. In the land where all karaoke is public, a place where “ain’t nobody feelin no pain.”