A Song for Ezra (ONC 2021)(manxman)✅

Another Saturday Night

The weekend's playlist was something different, with the exception of Lithium and When You Wish Upon a Star. Without Lithium, I was sure to skip a dose and that would be BAD. There was no point in keeping Beyond the Sea since I didn't work on the weekend. It made sense that my weekend playlist focused on weekend songs. Some people would say I lived in the past, judging by my selected songs. When I say past, I mean way way past, to the time before I was born. Many songs were before my parents' time. They were born in 1962; dead at 40.

If you were to ask me which bands or music were popular today, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I liked the Black Keys, Bon Ivers, and a little Twenty-One Pilots, maybe some others, but that's about it. Oh well. I didn't care. I never cared.

As part of the Beat Generation in the 1950s, my grandfather became a political activist in the sixties. Both grandparents would take my dad and his brothers to protests and sing all the classic folk songs. As a result, my father became obsessed with these songs, teaching me how to play the acoustic guitar at five years old. I learned how to play just about every Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Peter, Paul and Mary song. He later taught me how to play others such as Kris Kristofferson, Van Morrison and Cat Stevens' greatest hits. Every time I listened to Cat Stevens' song, Father and Son, tears came to my eyes because my dad always played it for me, and then we played it together as a duet. Nowadays, whenever I felt nostalgic, I'd sit alone and play it on my guitar.

This morning, I felt weird, and I couldn't explain why. I couldn't even explain what "weird" felt like, but there was something different about today. Maybe it was because I was meeting Levi for a drink after Shabbat service. I hadn't been on a date in a long time. I assumed it was a date. Maybe my assumption was incorrect.

Despite Aunt Ruth standing in the doorway, dressed and ready to go, I sang Father and Son, sitting on my bed in my bathrobe. I had to get the song out of my system. Listening to me play, Aunt Ruth didn't speak until I finished.

"You haven't played that in a long time," she said as I leaned my guitar against the bed. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said quietly, walking past her and down the hall to the bathroom. The tears would come once I was in the shower.

"You'll tell me if you aren't okay, right?"

"Yep," I said, closing the bathroom door. I rarely ever told anybody when I wasn't okay. Rather, I kept everything bottled up inside until I exploded, landing in the hospital.

While my father preferred the Cat Stevens' version of Another Saturday Night, Sam Cooke deserved the honor of making it to my playlist. After all, he sang it first. Sam Cooke had been a staple on my playlist for years.

After service, I went to the local pub where I was supposed to meet Levi... only Levi wasn't there. At first, I waited outside, but my ears were about to fall off from the cold, so I decided to wait inside and look like a loser, sitting alone with a beer in one of the only open booths. Tapping my foot impatiently, I stared at the clock on my phone as if that would make Levi appear. I'd kill him if he stood me up. Maybe I wouldn't kill him, but I'd certainly never speak to him again. As far as I was concerned, he'd just be another tenant.

Fifteen minutes later, Levi entered the pub, wearing the same peacoat and scarf he wore yesterday. Smiling, he walked directly to my booth. I noticed he had one dimple instead of two.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, unraveling his scarf before sitting across from me. "My last lesson went longer than expected. First off, the kid is always late, and he has ADHD, so it takes him another ten minutes to focus. He's the last kid on my schedule for a reason. So, how are you? It's busy here, huh?" he said, fidgeting with the silverware wrapped in the napkin. He rolled it and unrolled it over and over.