Hair of the Serpentine Trilogy

I Jazz at Turtle’s Bar When I walked into the bar, there were a few people sitting at the other end: a black girl, a white guy with the old long hair and goatee, and a black guy with one of those jazz-wanna-be berets. The girl was hot. When it comes to attractive women, I bear absolutely no prejudices. I just don’t quite care for the whole scene of trying to get somewhere with a woman who already has more than one horny dipshit glued to her like wallpaper. I walked over to the bar and there was Steve. Good ole’ Steve. Steve kept his head well shaven and had one of the longest goatees you could find. He would often segment this work of art from top to bottom with a colorful array of rubber bands, a popular fashion trend for the still relatively new alternative wave peaking in that late spring and early summer of 1995. “Give me a Düsseldorfer,” I told him. I liked supporting the local beers and this brew tasted smooth on top of it. The Jazz was soft on this particular night. There was a long-haired, bearded guy playing tenor saxophone and Charles was accompanying him on the piano. Charles is phenomenal. He is also in his late 40s or 50s and is too old to break through in the “cutting edge” of popular jazz recording artists. He doesn’t spend 30 hours a week in the gym, and he doesn’t screw the female record executives for professional gain. The saxophone player struck my interest. He was more of your true lost soul than most of the types that tried to look odd or individual. This man did not have to try – he was a natural. You could tell he was poor as sin, too. He probably didn’t have a home; maybe he hung at other musicians places or slept on the streets. You could get away with that in Indianapolis at the time. Crime there, especially back then, was more infrequent than in your bigger cities like New York, Baltimore, or Chicago. You didn’t have to worry about being mugged constantly. I didn’t think the city had much personality when I first moved there, but it grew on me.