Gator Gil

There he was, in the middle of the stage in an empty club, a cigarette trailing uncomfortably fragile ash hanging from his lip and filling the circle of spotlight with lingering, diaphanous smoke, making a golden bell jar around him that vibrated with his spare guitar. Gator Gil looked exactly like she expected, a burgundy leather sport coat and dirty silk shirt opened wide at the neck, showing a chain necklace adorned with disused wedding bands. His slacks showed plenty of his namesake boots which made up the only percussion in his song, and a wide brimmed pimp hat pulled low and secretive over his spent yellow eyes. He sucked on the cigarette imperceptibly and blew it through his nose in dramatic puffs when he hammered the fret board. The song ended and he leveled his yolky stare on her, emphasizing the last chord with a snort of brimstone like a hellish bull.

The show ended with very little fanfare, the bar patrons entropically drifting back to disinterested drinks. "My name is Shan Tamarindo," she said. "I'm a musician," she added sounding more intimidated than she wanted to.

Gil took the last drag and flicked the butt away before exhaling, looking all around, like he was laying down obscuring cover. "Yeah, you want the song?" The froggy gravel of his voice was impatient, dismissing her. She felt small in her cowboy boots and sparkling skirt, a child who was clopping around in her momma's heels. Gator Gil was famous for his blown out voice, as raw as a man who had been manically screaming all night, with a clipped delivery you could only picture was from the molten agony in his throat. The expressive sound coupled with defeated, heartbroken lyrics and the lone mournful guitar was the reason he was now a hot item among emerging electronic musicians. It was easy to pair with foreign robotic melodies, and hammer into other time signatures. The voice could add realness to the sound she was struggling with, trying to wrestle it away from the clinical. The juxtaposition of blues and electronica, one of the oldest American music forms with such a futuristic one, spoke to the post modernism Shan cultivated.

"You must be excited," she said. Gil's hands were gnarled, twisted like the knots on a dead tree. He had been contorting them so long, squeezing the sound out of his guitar through poor amps, bad PA's, over drunk shouting matches, they no longer had a human shape. He was famous for saying "music don't have to hurt, it just do." "Your music can reach so many people this way." Kids had started coming around, kids younger than his grand children, to pay him for his voice. They turned it into other songs that he was told were very popular. He listened to it once and shook his head. Very few of these young people came to see him, when they did they usually looked bored, eventually started playing with their phones and slipped out in the middle of songs. Gator Gil was used to people not caring for him too much, they called his sound challenging and unsympathetic, but the older people didn't sneak around about not liking you. They didn't look disappointed in themselves, like they weren't smart enough to get it. Like you were some thing to behold, a pilgrimage that left them unsatisfied.

He made a sly motion with one finger to her bag, as cool as if he were ordering her a drink. He got into music so he wouldn't have to talk, he hated talking and every woman that ever left him invariably said his face would crack in half if he had to say more than two sentences together. When he was angry he didn't say he was angry, he'd just strangle the life out of his guitar and make his ugly, jangling point, but they never got the picture. She took the cue and handed him a blank envelope. He took hold of his pay but she didn't let go, pulling him forward slightly so she could look in his face, made blue by the neon signs. Gil knew what she was doing, they all did it and never thought him smart enough to suspect. "Look,' he said, letting go of the paper so she took a jerking step backwards, "you want to make more money off me than I ever could, like I'm some dancing moron? Fine, I took that lot in life. You want me to be some kind of guide, on whatever cultural field trip you hopin' to have by puttin' out music with some old blues man no one cares about? You can just go ahead and burn that fuckin' check."