Lisa's Song

I had the biggest crush on Lisa Chambers. She was pure perfection. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fulsome breasts, and the most beautiful face I had ever seen. Perfectly proportioned, with all features in complete harmony, and a smile that could light up the whole world. Rosy cheeks, perfect teeth, a cute little nose, and ears that were not too big, not too small. I knew she was way out of my league, but I don't know if, or even think that, she had any idea how amazing she was. Lisa put on no airs, kind and friendly to everyone she met, including me.

But I was too shy to make any kind of move, so I worshipped her from afar. Did I dream about her? You bet. But they weren't hot wet sex dreams. They were mostly boyfriend and girlfriend dreams, hanging out, talking, holding hands. I know, not very sexy for this site. But what it was, is what it was.

And it wasn't as if I was an innocent virgin or anything. I'd been around the block a few times, and even during the time I had this huge crush, enjoyed a couple of hookups. No, it's just that Lisa Chambers was too much of an ideal for me to actually take a chance on, and risk rejection.

Which, looking back, seems pretty stupid. But in my defense, I was only 20 years old at the time. Twenty is a funny age. On one hand, the world is wide open. Anything and everything seems possible. But on the other, nothing is certain yet. Especially when one is twenty and still in school.

So my inability to approach Lisa Chambers in a romantic way rhymed with the other hand, my uncertain one. Even though that first, more sure, hand had already led me into music.

Like a lot of guys, I figured out pretty early on that playing in a band increased your chances with girls. So I got an electric guitar, learned how to play, and joined a group during my sophomore year of high school. We played the usual stuff, at parties and the occasional school dance or talent show. It did help with the chicks, and so by the time I entered college, I had some experience I probably wouldn't have had otherwise.

But I didn't take any of it seriously. I was going to be a lawyer, so the plan was to hit college and then law school, with next stop being the bar exam, and then practicing law with an eye towards eventually going into politics. Being in a rock band during high school was fun, but after we all graduated, I figured that would be that.

And so it was. Mostly. Yes, there were rock groups around campus as I entered my freshman year, but I decided to stay away from all that. Being in a band takes a lot of time, since with four or five guys, you have to practice to keep it all together. Investing that time during high school was OK, since living at home meant that things like meals and laundry were covered by the parental unit (particularly the Mom division). But I went away to college. Since I wanted to pull a good GPA so I could get into a top law school, and now had to spend time on things that had always been taken care of for me when I lived at home, it didn't make sense for me to steal time away from studying to rehearse a bunch of songs with other guys.

But I did like playing the guitar, and so got myself an acoustic, since there's a lot less maintenance that way. You don't have to worry about having an amp, for instance, and dealing with volume controls, or effects like distortion and echo. With a wooden instrument, you just take it out of the case, make sure you're in tune, grab a pick, and away you go. This also fit in better with dorm life, since no one ever asked me to turn the volume down. Which did happen to guys who were rocking out in their room.

So whenever I wanted to take a short study break, short enough that I'd want to stay in my room instead of walking down to get a coffee or something, I'd pull out the guitar and play for a few minutes. Sometimes, though, despite my best intentions, those few minutes stretched out a bit longer than I'd planned.

The main reason being that although I'd never done anything like this back in high school, I found myself writing songs on that acoustic guitar in my dorm room at college. I'm more a man of words than anything else, which would make my choice of a career in law (and later, maybe politics) a good fit. So when I played guitar in my high school rock group, I didn't even think of making anything original up. We pretty much stuck to playing the classics, and only the singer ever brought in anything of his own. What he brought in was nothing special, but I did get him to listen to my suggestions about how the lyrics could be better. It didn't occur to me that I was partially writing his song, it was just the way it was in the group. If someone had an idea about the arrangement, or a bass part, or drum lick, or anything that could spruce up the song we were working on, he'd contribute it as part of the team. Anyway, it didn't matter, since none of this original material ever went anywhere.

But I guess co-writing was what I'd been doing, and now all alone in my room, just me and my quiet guitar, I found myself finding chord patterns that sounded cool, and adding melody. Then, once I had a nice musical piece worked out, I'd write some words to sing

over it. That was always pretty easy for me, being a man of words and all.

I didn't spend a lot of time on this. It was mostly just a small diversion from what I was there for. But as I went through my first and second years, I built up a good number of original songs. So I thought maybe I ought to record them, maybe create a virtual album that I could post on one of the free hosting sites. There was software that could add standard accompaniment to a guy playing alone, so these recordings had bass, drums, and whatever. The results sounded pretty good to me. Did I take any of it seriously? Not really, but I was at least a little bit proud of what I heard when I played them back.

Once in a while, I'd find myself noodling on a piano. They were all over our campus, at least one at each dorm, and of course a whole bunch in the music department building. Although I'd only been a guitar player, I found it enjoyable to tinker around on the keyboard. With a guitar, you have to learn where things are, at least on the frets, to be able to play anything coherent. On a piano, it's all laid out in front of you. It doesn't take long to figure out how to make something up that way, or figure out how a song you like goes. I didn't write down or record the stuff I played on those keys. It was just another enjoyable way to make musical sounds.

OK. Back to my crush on Lisa Chambers. She was a freshman when I noticed her early in my junior year. I fell for her immediately, but as I already told you, couldn't find it in me to make any kind of advance. So as I said, I longed for her from a distance, although we did occasionally say hello and have brief conversations. Anyway, one day in the fall of that year, I found myself at one of those pianos, and started to put something together that was unlike anything I'd ever made up before, on any instrument. The music just flowed out of me onto the keys, and it was both beautiful and complex. So I made it a point to record what I was playing, because I knew this was something special. Also, I realized that it was all about my feelings for Lisa.

Which presented a conundrum when I started to work on writing words for that composition. Because the music was so special, I wanted words that would be equally good. But my shyness where it came to Lisa made me want to make the words about something else, anything else, other than what inspired the music. As a result, I drafted lyric after lyric, but none of them seemed equal to the task. Finally, I just said "fuck it" to myself, and let my real feelings pour onto the pages. The result was unlike anything I'd written before, or ever would again. Every word I sang was an echo of my unrequited, undeclared, and therefore untested, love for this beautiful girl.

With music and words now in hand, I had to give the song a title. Usually the song title is pretty obvious, since it's normally an oft-repeated word or phrase in the chorus. But this song had no chorus, and since the words were naked expressions of idealized feelings, there was really nothing there for me to hang a titular hat on. So I went back to that "fuck it" approach, and simply called it "Lisa's Song."

During the summer between my junior and senior years, I assembled what I considered to be the best of what I'd recorded into an album format. Although it was unlike anything else on this prospective album, I felt that "Lisa's Song" was too good to be left off. So I made it the last song, the album closer, and posted the album on a couple of those online sites.

Meanwhile, by the time I put together that album, my heart had been broken. You see, while this fellow who dabbled in music was too shy to try to woo and win her, another music guy wasn't.

Teddy Thompson played in a band, co-piloting with fellow guitarist Tom Prentice. They were a lot more dedicated to their craft than I, spending countless hours together working up songs, harmonies, and intricately interwoven guitar parts. They began playing around campus as an acoustic duo, Tom & Teddy. I wasn't too impressed with their original songs, mostly because the lyrics seemed pretty basic and stupid to me. Man of words, remember. But this duo didn't last as an acoustic coffee house act for too long. They picked up a bass player and drummer, plugged in, and changed their name from Tom & Teddy to Tutu Much. Yeah, pretty clever. A lot more so than their songs.

Anyway, Tutu Much became a fixture at the school. Whenever there was a dance or talent show, they were on it. In fact, they developed such a following among the student body that near the end of the school year, they got to do an entire concert at the auditorium. And it probably didn't hurt their cause any that Teddy had a beautiful girlfriend. Lisa Chambers.

Was I kicking myself for being such an idiot? Well, yeah. But there was nothing I could do about it now. And when you're the age we were, there's a lot of different things going on. So while I had big time regrets, and the aforementioned broken heart, I had to keep on keeping on. So I did.

Teddy and Lisa stayed together into, and probably throughout, my senior year (which was his junior year, and her sophomore year). The reason I say "probably throughout" is that Lisa dropped out of college during her second year. You see, although Tutu Much never hit the big time, they were all of it at our institution of higher learning. They were rock stars on campus, and played it to the hilt. I'm talking about sex and drugs and rock and roll. And although drugs is the second item on the list, I think that Teddy and Lisa hit that one even harder than the first. Smoke was a given for most of us, but they were dabbling in the harder stuff. Especially cocaine.

Now, I'll admit, I tried coke a couple times, but found it boring as fuck. Weed, like booze, loosened up my inhibitions, and were decent tools when I wanted to write something different from my usual. Problem was that most of what I wrote under the influence didn't seem so great in the sober light of day. But occasionally something good came out of it. Enough times that I chose to dabble in them from time to time. Not that often, but some. Anyway, back to cocaine. All I got out of it was a numb feeling in my nose. But in terms of lowering my guard, or different ideas, zilch. So since there was nothing there for me, cocaine quickly disappeared from my repertoire.

Not so for Teddy and Lisa. Nor, I assume, for Tom and his honies (unlike Teddy, he didn't keep steady company). I was saddened to see what I thought of as a perfect female person get sullied by all the drugs, while fucking someone who I thought was a pretty untalented pretender, despite the success his band was enjoying. So it was even sadder, but I guess not that much of a surprise, when I learned that one night during the winter term, Lisa OD'd. Probably from mixing things, and it required a trip to the hospital. She came out of it OK, but I think that was a factor in her leaving school. I'd still see her around, since she was still Teddy's squeeze, present whenever Tutu Much played. But I didn't see her as often as when she'd been a student. Which was probably a good thing, since it meant less salt rubbed in that wound. It was hard seeing her with him, knowing that maybe it could have been me.

In the meantime, I stayed on course, and graduated with honors. I had more or less my pick of law schools to go to, and chose one near my family home. And as for the music, I put such childish things away. Doing so was easy enough, since although my album had been posted online, it did little more than just sit there.

That is, until sometime during my first year at law school. Somehow or other, somebody came upon my music, and thought that one song, "Shuffled," had potential. So a friend of a friend of this particular somebody found me, and offered a one-album deal on an indie label.

Indie. What a laugh. Maybe that term meant something in the 1970's and 1980's, but by now it was just another designer brand in the corporate music business. So I wasn't naïve enough to think that this offer was anything likely to pay off in any big sort of way. I accepted it because what the fuck, I had nothing to lose. I didn't really care about the music anymore. It had been fun, but I was done with that shit. Whatever creative sparks I'd felt when I wrote those songs were gone by now. I was busy with my career path (law school) and didn't do much of anything with the guitar anymore.

But there was one thing I thought I should insist on, and that was to retain the publishing rights to the songs. I knew enough about how things work to know that the labels would screw you over on the royalties. But if you held onto the song rights, you'd actually get paid, at least through the airplay agencies. However, when it came down to brass tacks, I was informed that this request, if granted, meant the label doing little to promote my work. Since without a piece of the publishing action, their risk to reward ratio would be negatively skewed. So I decided that if I wanted to have any chance of remuneration other than the initial (and small) advance, I had little choice but to surrender the publishing rights.

That being said, though, there was one concession I did wrest from the label. I insisted on retaining all the publishing on one song, and one song only. "Lisa's Song." It was so personal and special to me, that I had to keep it mine and mine alone. Since the label didn't see any commercial prospects for it anyway, they threw me that bone to keep me happy.

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum of my second postgraduate year. "Shuffled" actually became a small hit, making it onto the charts. It didn't get all that high, but just being on there at all was amazing to me. It was a cute little song, with lyrics about a guy who was one of many in the harem of a sexy girl. The singer being just one of the male cards being shuffled. This lyric was paired with a catchy chorus. The result was a minor "indie" hit that played off of, and exploited, a feminist-lite theme.

So I got me a hit. And that was it. The album did not follow "Shuffled" onto any of the listings, and when the label I'd signed with was bought out by a larger one, I was one of many who were dropped. Which was fine by me. I wouldn't have to spend time writing a bunch of new songs for a follow-up. And at least I did get a little money out of the deal, since I pocketed most of the original advance, and did get some airplay money (the writer's share, though not the publisher's) out of "Shuffled."

All in all then, it was a decent experience. And I must admit that it was cool being a minor celebrity among my fellow legal scholars. But none of this distracted me from my core business, which was to graduate and pass the bar. I had no problem with the former, and as for the latter, I spent some of that music money on a top of the line bar exam prep course, and it paid off. Passed the bar on my first try.

Now the next step was to find work. Though I'd stuck with the original career path I'd laid out for myself starting back when I was in high school, there were a couple adjustments that happened along the way.

The first pillar to fall was politics. The more I learned about how the political process actually worked, the more I came to realize that it wasn't for me. The actual office holders appeared to be little more than mouthpieces for the interests that funded them. Also, most of them seemed a bit dull (as in dull-witted). I had too much self-regard to want to be someone else's tool. So I let that dream die.

The second change was that I came to realize that I really didn't care for the constant argumentativeness that characterizes so many attorneys. Especially those involved in criminal law, or business and personal litigation. So by the time I got my diploma and passed the bar, I had decided that the kind of law I was going to practice was the stable, and relatively peaceable, field of drafting wills and trusts.

With a good academic record behind me, I had no problem getting with a nice firm that could use an estates specialist like me. I stayed there for a couple years before deciding that not only would I get a bigger piece of the pie working for myself, but also wouldn't have to deal with the inevitable office politics.

I still had some of that music money, and had also saved enough out of my two years of salary, to feel adequately capitalized to go out on my own, rent office space, and hire a secretary. So that's what I did.

***

It was a thrill having my own office, with my name on the door. Jeff Fox, Attorney-at-Law. I'd lucked out, getting a ground floor office in a six-story office building, mostly leased out to law firms. A good location for public walk-in's, and for cross-specialty referrals. Things looked promising for my new, independent, practice.

Having found the space, job two was hiring an assistant. I got a decent response, and culled the thirty to forty resumes I received down to 6 or 7 that I felt merited in-person interviews. And after that process, my decision more or less came down to a choice between two.

One of the finalists was a woman in her forties, Mary Woods, who had a lot of experience working in law offices. She clearly knew her stuff, and could get me up and running in no time. Her personality was pleasant and upbeat, another plus. She seemed bright enough, but would probably lean on me for direction regarding anything she didn't already know.

The other finalist was a young girl, fresh out of school, 22 years old. Her name was Bobbi Stanton, and she was smart as a whip, but had zero work experience. Despite that lack, I believed that once she got the hang of everything, she'd be a dynamo who could run with the ball. But how long her orientation would have to take was the big question.

In the final analysis, I had little choice but to go with my gut. I chose Bobbi, and not just because I thought she could grow along with my practice. In fact, what decided it for me wasn't anything like that. It was my dick. Which got hard during the interview. I hoped it wasn't obvious. Probably wasn't, since my desk presumably obscured the view.

I don't know what it is, but Bobbi just did it for me. She had a pretty face, though nothing extraordinary. Dark hair, brown eyes, a toothy smile. Body-wise, she didn't have a lot on top, and overall she was pretty thin. So not much booty, either. What she did have was decently long legs. So it wasn't anything specific about her looks or her body. No, it's just that somehow she exuded sex to me.

Although I knew damn well that I'd have to watch myself around her, there was no way I could let her get away. My libido insisted on hiring her.