Once I Was

“This one’s for the Guelph Girlies!” Karl yelled to the crowded Toronto bar. A table of twenty-something women in pink sashes cheered. A smooth guitar riff came through the speakers.

“Yeah,” Karl sang. The women shrieked. The men whooed. “You are my fire,” Karl pointed to the women who held their hands over their chests in feigned delight, “my one desire. Believe when I say, EVERYBODY!” He yelled. “I want it that way!” joined the bar. After his performance, Karl was greeted by a standing ovation, five “that was awesome”s and four “you were really good”s. After two cashed in “let me buy you a drink”s, he hustled to the bathroom, walked into the stall, and fished his fanny pack out of the toilet tank. A blue light shot through the ceiling transporting Karl to another location.

Karl arrived in a bathroom in New Orleans. He grabbed some fifty-dollar bills, threw his fanny pack in the toilet tank, walked to the bar, and ordered a Jagerbomb. He looked at the stage, diagnosing why the energy was off at Crescent City Karaoke. He saw the singer onstage. “Oof,” he thought, “he picked My Way. Sure, it’s popular, but he’s no Sinatra. Plus, it’s too low for his range.” He scanned the crowd. The bar was packed. Average age: 28. About half men, half women. Mostly tourists. He hadn’t talked to anyone, but he knew what everyone needed. Something popular. Something energetic. Something nostalgic. The same remedy he had prescribed in every bar. He slipped the MC fifty dollars to go on next.

“Give it up for Dylan!” the MC urged, “now, coming to the stage, Karl!” Strummed G chords rang through the speakers. “Here’s the thing, we started off friends,” Karl was blessed with a range from bass all the way to countertenor. That allowed him to nail Why Don’t We Just Dance, a country hit by Josh Turner that killed in the south, and, well, Since U Been Gone, which killed everywhere. “That’s all you’d ever hear me say,” Karl continued. The crowd was eager to hear if Karl could land the first punch of Kelly Clarkson’s explosive chorus, “SINCE YOU BEEN GONE!” The bar erupted. Karl finished the song to a sea of fistbumps. A large man grabbed him by the shoulders and yelled “that was great, brother!” Two women howled “you were amazing!” Karl returned to the bar and stared at the stage. He knew his work wasn’t over.

After a drunk blonde woman murmured through You Belong with Me, Karl got back onstage. Piano chords pounded through the speakers. “Just a smalltown g–.” The room went dark as the word “girl” melted into the sound of panic. Karl rushed to the bathroom, thinking that, despite the power outage, his mission must be over. He stood in the stall for five minutes. “There’s no way the power outage broke the beam, right?” he thought. He took his fanny pack out of the toilet tank, opened the bathroom door, and saw people flooding toward the exit.

Karl had never been outside before. Unless you count rooftop or patio karaoke bars. Nevertheless, his job was to please the people, and the people were going outside. The stench of cigarettes and sewage overwhelmed Karl’s nostrils. Then he heard a saxophone. Karl had heard the saxophone before in masterpieces like Careless Whisper and Thrift Shop, but this saxophone was different. It didn’t prompt or separate vocals. It was saxophone for saxophone’s sake. Speedy hi-hats and bass notes accompanied the sax. The song wasn’t fun or energetic. It was sad. Eerie. Yet the karaokeans rushed toward it, so Karl joined them. When he got to the bar, he saw the culprit of the strange sounds: not a speaker, but a woman in a polka-dot dress blowing into a real-life saxophone. She had curly hair, dark skin, and piercing blue eyes. Between the woman’s beauty and her saxophone skills, Karl was entranced.

After her performance, the woman sat by the bar. Karl approached her. “That was crazy!” Karl exclaimed.

“Pardon?” she asked.

“Your performance. Let me buy you a drink. What do you want?”

“Don’t worry.”

“Please. I’m Karl.” Karl stuck out his hand.

“Okay then, Karl. I’m Jackie,” Jackie shook Karl’s hand, “I’ll take an old-fashioned.”

“One old-fashioned and one Jagerbomb please,” he told the bartender, handing him two fifty-dollar bills. “Keep the change,” he requested.

“That’s a big tip, Karl!” cheered Jackie.

“What can I say? I like to make people happy.” Jackie smiled. “But yeah, I never heard anything like the song you were playing.”

“You’re in New Orleans and never heard jazz?”

“Nope.”

“Huh. Do you wanna know what that song’s about?”

“It had no words, how can it be about anything?”

She squinted at Karl in disgust. “That might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Karl.”

Karl chuckled, nervous that Jackie already hated him.

“It’s about a man who sees a painting,” Jackie explained, “and the woman in the painting seemed to have everything. Money. Nice clothes. Everything. But she looked like the loneliest person the man had ever seen.”

Karl gulped. “Do you think that about me?”

“I just met you! I don’t even know what you do!”

“I was anointed by God to go around the world energizing karaoke bars.” Karl had revealed this before to people he had felt close to for whatever reason. Like Jackie, they all laughed.

“No, actually.”

“I sold a startup after college, and I’ve been retired ever since.” This was Karl’s default comeback after his anointment got dismissed. He heard a guy say it before at a karaoke bar, and soon after, several people approached him, laughed at his jokes, and had a great time. Though he didn’t really know what startups, college or retirement were.

“Boring,” Jackie stood up, “wanna go for a walk?”

Upon leaving, Karl noticed that the light at Crescent City Karaoke returned. “Wanna see something?” said Karl. Karl and Jackie walked inside. Karl handed the MC another fifty and got back onstage. “Is this the real life?” he sang, “Is this just fantasy?” By the end of the song, the crowd was yelling Freddie Mercury’s lyrics and picking air guitars. He returned to Jackie. “So?” he asked.

“You were pretty good. I wouldn’t say anointed by God or anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You just didn’t seem to be that into it.”

“How?”

“Just something I noticed.”

“I’ll be right back.” Karl seethed and marched to the bathroom. He stood in the stall for a minute, “please work,” he prayed. After another minute, Karl gave up and walked out of the bathroom.

“Next up, Jackie!” shouted the MC.

Jackie stood up onstage, and held the mic in its stand.

“Amateur move,” Karl thought, “to own the stage, you gotta take the mic out, and move.” The song started with a string section, which lasted half a minute before a woman whispered in Spanish as an acoustic guitar played behind her. “The intro’s too long,” Karl thought, “it’s gonna lose people’s attention before the song even starts.” Then, the strings returned with a drum rhythm, as the guitar shifted to the melody. Finally, after two minutes, Jackie began singing in falsetto about being “in really love.” Karl thought she misread the lyrics. Another rookie mistake. Then, after looking at the screen, he realized that she didn’t sing it wrong. The lyrics were wrong. After the song, Jackie walked off the stage to scattered applause.

“Why that song?” Karl asked.

“That’s what I wanted to sing.”

Karl walked Jackie home, half-annoyed, half-intrigued. She was the first person who wasn’t enchanted by him. “What are you doing in town anyway?” Jackie asked.

“No idea,” Karl responded.

“So you just teleported here from Connecticut or wherever?”

“Toronto, but yes.”

“So you’re Canadian then, eh?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, wherever you’re from, here’s my number.” Jackie handed Karl a business card. “If you need a tour guide, let me know.” As the world’s best karaoke singer, this wasn’t the first number Karl had received. Whether it be from women or bands looking for vocalists, he had seen lots of scraps of paper with ten digits on them. He just had no clue what those numbers meant, so he threw out Jackie’s card and ran back to the bar.

He yanked at the front door. It didn’t budge. Looking for any stall-shaped room, he found a porta-potty a couple blocks away. He stepped inside. No luck. He reached into his fanny pack for some sort of beam troubleshooting manual. He reached until he was elbow deep. He noticed that his usual karaoke supplies, a cowboy hat, spray-on hair dye, tap shoes, were all gone. He pulled out the contents of the fanny pack. He found a phone, which he had never used before, a phone charger, and Jackie’s card. He wondered if someone had hacked the bag’s sacred security system and robbed him. Suddenly, his eyes felt heavy, and his heart rate slowed. Karl crashed on the porta-potty toilet seat.

Karl woke up to the sound of a mallet. “What the hell? You’ve been in there forever!” Karl opened his eyes and burst through the porta-potty door, darting by a man in a construction vest.

“Is God punishing me?” he thought, “Should I have stayed in the bar longer after the lights turned off?” He remembered the phone and Jackie’s card, but after 45 minutes, he still couldn’t figure out how it worked. He decided the next best thing was to run to Jackie’s house. He pounded on Jackie’s door like a construction worker pounding on a porta-potty door. “Coming!” Jackie called. She opened the door.

“You look like shit! What’s wrong?”

“I need you.”

“Sorry, Karl, I’m not like that. Especially with someone who smells the way you do.”

“I need help.”

Jackie looked concerned. “Well, come in then.” Karl looked around her place. It looked like no bar he had ever seen. She took him to her bright kitchen and sat him at a yellow round table. “So,” she said while making coffee, “what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Who does? Here.” She placed a cup in front of him. He took a sip. The scalding coffee ravaged his throat.

“Where are you staying, Karl?”

“Nowhere.”

“What do you mean? Where were you last night?”

“Outside.” Jackie looked concerned again.

“Why don’t we get you some new clothes?”

Jackie brought Karl to her bedroom where Karl noticed a picture of a bald man carrying a little girl on his shoulders. Jackie pulled out clothes from a drawer. She threw Karl a ratty black t-shirt with a gold fleur-de-lis, and grey sweatpants. Karl took off his dirty shirt. “Wait,” Jackie interrupted, “why don’t you have a belly button?”

“What’s that?”

Jackie lifted the bottom of her shirt and pointed to her belly button.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Everyone has a belly button. When you’re born, they cut your umbilical cord, and you get a belly button.”

“I wasn’t born.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you. I was anointed by God to go around the world energizing karaoke bars. But God won’t beam me to my next location, so I’m stuck here.”

“You really think I’m gonna buy that?”

“I swear,” Karl looked at his waist, “here, reach inside.”

“I told you, I’m not like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“If there’s something in your fanny pack, you can hand it to me, and I’ll look myself.”

Karl threw Jackie his fanny pack. Jackie reached inside, wondering how a fanny pack was so spacious. Eventually, she fit her entire arm inside.

“Are you fuckin’ Harry Potter?” she yelped.

“No, I’m Karl Brightside.”

“Brightside? Like Mr. Brightside?”

“Yup, like the song. I was anointed by God to…”

“Yes, you told me!”

Karl pulled the shirt over himself, which fit like plastic wrap over his broad shoulders.

“Let’s go for a walk,” said Jackie.

“So you’re trying to get back home?” asked Jackie.

“Home? No. To my next location.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have a home. I just beam from place to place, livening up any bar that needs me.”

“What type of music do you like to sing?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Yeah, anything. Ke$ha, ABBA, Luke Bryan, anything.”

Jackie laughed.

“What?”

“Oh. Like respect to those artists, but that’s all pop.”

“Luke Bryan is country.”

“Sure, but he’s no Hank Williams. Even I know the difference, and I don’t even like country.”

“Well, what do you like?”

“Come here.” Jackie grabbed his arm and dragged him to a record store a block away.

“This is my favourite album.” Jackie pulled out a record that showed a woman with big curly hair screaming from the neck up, while the rest of her body was buried in dirt. In orange, above her head, read the word “Funkadelic”. Below read “Maggot Brain”. “I have a copy at home,” Jackie said before putting it back.

“What’s an album?” Karl asked.

“I’ll show you when we get home. Now you pick one.”

Karl reached into a row and pulled out a record. It showed a man with different big curly hair grinning with a monocle in his eye in front of a glowing yellow background. The top right corner of the record read “Goodbye and.” Below his face read “Tim Buckley.”

“Good choice,” Jackie approved.

Jackie and Karl returned to Jackie’s house. Jackie put Maggot Brain on the turntable, “so basically,” she began, “albums are a bunch of songs put together by artists to tell a story or create a vibe.” She dropped the needle onto the spinning record.

A deep-voiced man spoke about the Earth being pregnant, eating maggots, and drowning in shit. Karl had no idea what he was talking about. He then heard the sound of a beautiful guitar playing a repetitive series of notes. Another guitar came screeching in. For ten minutes, the second guitar squealed in pain.

“Wow,” Karl exclaimed.

“Now, your album,” said Jackie. She grabbed the yellow record, flipped it over and put it on the turntable. A guitar began to strum. A higher-voiced man sang about how he once was a soldier, a hunter, a lover. In the chorus, the man asked “will you ever remember me?” Water fell from Karl’s eyes.

“Is that how it feels?” Jackie asked.

“Kind of. I’m the most important guy in the world for an hour, but then, I leave, and those people move on, and I need to prove myself all over again.”

“I get that. Maybe that’s why you haven’t been teleported yet. Maybe God is giving you a chance to settle down.”

“Settle where?”

“You can stay here for now if you want.”

“Why?”

“You remind me of my dad.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. When I first met you, you had a look like you were somewhere else in your head. He had that look all the time.”

“Is he the man in your room?”

“I have a picture of him, yes. He used to play saxophone too. Then he stopped because we had no money, so he became a powerline technician. And we moved to a bigger apartment, and I went to a better school. He was very proud of himself for providing me a better life, but I could always tell he wanted to go back to how things were.”

“Where is he now?”

“He died. He was electrocuted on the powerline.” Karl hadn’t heard of a powerline, but he knew about death.

“I’m sorry.” This was the first time Karl needed to say this.

“Yeah, well, it happens. But because of him, I decided that I’d rather play now than regret it later.”

Jackie got Karl a job working at a jazz bar she played at. Every night, Karl heard music he had never heard before. Sultry saxophones, twining trumpets, disordered drums. He smiled as he wiped down the bar for $7.25 an hour. Jackie also taught Karl how to use his phone, lent him cheap purple earbuds, and added him to her Spotify account. “If you like a song, put a heart beside it,” Jackie instructed. Karl spent his days roaming New Orleans, either with Jackie or by himself, listening to genres he didn’t know existed. Blues, bossa nova, bluegrass. He left hearts beside almost every song he heard.

“What are you doing tonight?” Jackie asked Karl on one of their walks.

“It’s my night off,” Karl responded, with a newfound appreciation for what that meant, “why?”

“Let’s do something.”

“What?”

“It’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“For you to make your grand return to the stage.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I think I’ve done enough karaoke.”

“Right, but you’ve only done it once for me.”

“So?”

“Come on, Karl. You were anointed by God to go around the world energizing karaoke bars,”

Karl chuckled and conceded.

Karl arrived at Crescent City Karaoke with Jackie. He had no fifties, no Jagerbombs. Just his fanny pack. He ran to the bathroom. This time, he didn’t throw his fanny pack in the toilet tank. He looked in the mirror, nervous for the first time in his karaoke singing career. After five minutes, he walked back toward Jackie who was standing at a tall table.

“Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Karl!” yelled the MC.

“Wait, you picked my song?” he asked Jackie.

“Don’t worry, I know you like it,” she responded. Karl walked onstage. A guitar began to strum.

“Once I was a soldier

And I fought on foreign sands for you

Once I was a hunter

And I brought home fresh meat for you

Once I was a lover

And I searched behind your eyes for you

And soon there'll be another

To tell you I was just a lie

And sometimes I wonder

Just for a while

Will you ever remember me?”

Karl walked off the stage to scattered applause.