If you start me up I’ll never stop.
Yeah, I know what song that comes from. And it’s kind of appropriate that my story starts this way.
I don’t remember what year it was. The world was coming apart at the seams and my family held the hem ripper. For me, rock and roll was the answer to an unposed question. I was a 14-year-old hooligan hell-raiser with a second-hand Apollo hollow-body electric guitar whose parents insisted he leave the room when playing anything but “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds.” Yeah. Like that song would ever come up on somebody’s play list.
My parents were well-to-do deep south neo-Democrats who hoped to appear liberal without actually having to make any concessions to their wealth or positions.
We lived in Little Rock, Arkansas in a house on a bluff overlooking the Arkansas River. You can see it on the south side as you drive down I-430, rising above the treeline like an A-Frame cabin with a hyperactive thyroid. Feel free to extend your middle finger as you pass. I do.
Dad was really into the whole Democratic Party experience. He and Mom were always hosting parties attended by some up-and-coming mucky-mucks. Bill Clinton once took a whiz in my toilet. I opened the door and there he was. He seemed startled, but at that time in history there were still a few people in the state who hadn’t seen his penis and I guess he was still shy about such things. I can’t remember if it was before or after he was elected Governor. I’ll have to check on that. It would be an indicator if my folks were merely stepping-stones for new candidates, or if they were really important to the political scene. I tend to believe the former.
See what I mean? Start me up and I’ll never stop.
Anyway, in order to make sure the house was always ready for the impromptu social gathering, and to show all in attendance that they really did care about minorities, my parents hired Cassandra as a live-in domestic. I know she barely made book money from the job, but she got the spare bedroom off the kitchen and they let her have Friday night to Monday morning off.
Cassandra was a college student at the time, working on a double major in history and sociology, but to my puberty-addled mind she was all woman, with beautiful dark skin that gleamed like polished mahogany. She was all about appropriateness. She never did anything to encourage me or give me hope that she had any kind of feelings for me beyond what she might have for a little brother. She didn't need to. It was all in my mind.
Her full lips and dark eyes made her all the more unapproachable and mysterious. Her hair was long and she wore it pulled back most of the time, just to keep it out of the way I guess. And since her work clothes consisted mostly of T-shirts and tight Levis, the mere sight of her was enough to give me agonizingly embarrassing hard-ons. I started hiding behind my guitar, keeping it on a neck strap everywhere I went.
My parents, of course, hated the guitar as well as most of the songs I tried to play on it. I was never allowed to plug it in to my amplifier, and had to go to the basement utility room when I wanted to play.
And that’s just where I was one warm June afternoon, sitting on the washing machine and trying to play “Brown Sugar” when Cassandra walked in with a laundry basket full of dirty clothes. I didn’t see her right off because, let’s face it, to play rock and roll you have to screw up your face and close your eyes. When I opened them, there she was.
She was wearing cut off jean shorts and a Razorbacks T-shirt. Her legs were smooth and shiny, the color of Pepsi Cola when light shines through the bottle. Her pockets extended about a half inch from the bottom of the cutoffs and the denim had begun to fray into white threads. The T-shirt was snug but not tight and I could tell she wore nothing under it. Her breasts were perfect and round and firm and I was so fucking glad I had the guitar sitting on my lap.
“Don’t stop on account of me,” she said.
I was all too aware of the song I was playing and felt self-conscious about it. “Ummm..I’m done I think.”
“You like the Stones?” she asked.
“Fuckin’ A!” I said automatically. Then I heard myself. “I mean..yeah.”
She laughed. I’d never heard her laugh before. I liked it and wanted to hear her laugh more.
“You ever heard of Muddy Waters? Elmore James? Howlin’ Wolf?”
I shook my head. At that time, if I couldn’t hear it on Top 40 radio, I’d never heard it at all.
“Well they’re the guys that the Stones listen to.”
“Cool,” I said, more to keep her talking than anything.
“Come by my room later,” she said. “I’ll let you listen to some. Right now I need to get my hands on what you’re sitting on.”
“You...huh?”
She laughed again and my hard-on pressed into the back of my guitar.
“I need the washer, honey.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right.” I slid off the washer careful to hold my guitar close and backed out of the utility room. “Later, huh?”
She gave me a womanly smile and nodded.
For the rest of the summer, Cassandra shared her collection of blues cassettes and even checked some out of the University library for me to enjoy. I was turning on to Magic Sam, Sonny Boy Williamson and B.B. King, trying to get that same sweet sound out of my guitar that B.B. could coax out of Lucille.
Cassandra was my private audience, often closing her eyes and tilting her head back as I played as if she was escaping to some faraway place inside herself. I loved watching her like that. She’d breathe in and out deeper and her nipples would strain against her shirt, regardless whether she was wearing a bra or not. Sometimes I’d ache to touch her and that feeling would be translated through my fingers, into the strings and I swear it was communicated to Cassandra sitting across the room from me.
She sighed deeply. “Boy, you need to be playing for an audience.”
“I thought I was,” I said, making her laugh. That beautiful sound.
“You know what I mean.”
I shook my head. “I’m just not black enough to sing the blues.”
Cassandra stopped smiling. “You bigot,” she said.
“I’m not a bigot,” I said, getting defensive.
“What do you think a bigot is?”
I thought a second before answering. “Someone who hates someone else because they’re different.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Hate is a whole different thing that mostly stems from fear. Bigotry comes from ignorance.”
“So now I’m ignorant?” I said. “My situation isn’t improving.”
She laughed again, all pretense of anger gone. “You’re too smart for your own good,” she said. “But you don’t have to be black to sing the blues. What the hell you think country music is?”
“Crap mostly,” I said.
“It’s just rural white blues.”
