Vignette City 48.

*** ‘Vignette City’ is an ongoing project of daily writing and urban photography ***

We were out busking in the riverfront park. It was a bright, hot day. Lots of joggers and people on bikes and kids playing in the big fountain, but their parents were sitting in the benches in the shade and so I smacked Gino on the arm and said, “We should play more adult contemporary stuff.”

Gino rolled his eyes because we have been having an ongoing fight about whether people want to hear buskers play GWAR and I keeping telling him that they don’t. He started strumming the opening chords of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Only living Boy in New York” and right away I could see the parents looking over at us because Gino is too young and beardy to know that song and he sings like Justin Vernon, which is probably who all of them do it to on their monthly date nights. I’m not bitter, I just know how marriage is.

One of the mothers got up of her bench and came over and dropped a five into our guitar case. She had big black sunglasses on, but I could tell how she was looking at us, us two young guys with guitars and no cares in the world and reminding her of the dudes she used to sleep with back when she was young. This happens a lot. We move around a lot and so we’ve gotten used to people looking at us, hoping to recognize us, hoping that we might be their old friends who will remind them of youth. They want us to be a conduit connecting them to, at least, the possibility of freedom. They don’t want to be us, they don’t look at us like they’re envious of us (because they’re not, we are below their life stations, their tight blank smiles make that clear), they look at us like they want something from us. They want us to give them back what they choose to give up when they decided not to be free.

The mother went back to her bench. Her kid ran out of the fountain, sopping wet. He ran up to her and gave her a big soggy hug before going a little dance and then rushing back into the fountain while shrieking just because he had so much energy inside his little body.

Gino was singing, “I get all the news I need from the weather report.”

The mother sat there, damp and scowling. She glared at us through her glasses.

Gino sang, “Half of the time we’re gone …”

Some of the other parents came over and dropped some bills in our case, which was great, because it meant we’d be able to eat later.

“But we don’t know where …” Gino sang.

Then they all sat on their benches and tried to decide if they loved us or if they hated us.

“And we don’t know where …” Gino sang.

But it wasn’t really us they were deciding about, because it never is. It was their own lives they were deciding about.

Gino sang, “I know you’ve been eager to fly now. Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine now. Do-n-do-d-do-n-do.”

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