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Thursday, January 08, 2004

ANDY, SO FAR

Things I Have Experienced, Heard, Read, Or Garnered About Andy (Ex Letter Carrier, Rogue DJ, Drummer/Singer, Sex Offender, Mother’s Boy), Over The Last Twenty Some Odd Years


They told me he was a DJ who played good music, (a novelty where we came
from, especially in that time).

I was prevailed on to go see him. I prevailed on FW to accompany me.

"They say he plays good music," I said.

FW didn't care. "Who goes out to see a DJ?" she asked. (It seemed like an odd notion at that time.)

"We've heard a lot of bad music when we've been out," I said. "Could good music be any worse?"
We went.

"He did play good music," I said on the way home.

"Music's not everything," FW said. "With that white skin and that red hair and that big blotchy head, he looked parboiled."

"I'm not sure I would have used that term," I said. "And anyway, looks aren't everything."

"I'm not going there anymore," FW said. "I don't need it. If you want to hear good music you'll have to go without me."

And I did, sporadically, over the next couple of months. Then I lost interest myself and stopped going. But I still got reports.

Andy's gotten a big head, they told me. He's going to quit his job as a mailman and be a full-time DJ. He’s going to change his name from Andy Thomas to Andy Tomorrow, because he thinks it's cool.

I could have made a joke about the preexisting size of Andy's head, but I didn't.

Then he quit his job and became a full-time DJ and as it often does, it soured.

The club scene cooled down a bit. Andy's been having to take DJ jobs where he has to play what they tell him, instead of good music, I heard. He's even working weddings, they told me. He's a little bitter.

I saw him at a club. He was stuffed into a black suit, white shirt, and had a porkpie hat perched on his head. "I thought there'd be more rude boys here," he said, gesturing out at a sea of blue jeans and black t-shirts. He seemed puzzled and a bit angry.

Then in an attempt to cash in on his local DJ popularity, Andy formed a band. He was the drummer and the lead singer.

"Don't even ask me," FW said.

I didn't.

It didn't go too well for The Andy Band. Apparently, actually playing good music was harder than playing good music. After the novelty wore off, The Andy Band stopped drawing crowds, and appropriately, they disbanded.

I ran into Andy at a party. "Have you heard the latest by The Dead Milkmen?" he asked me. "How about The Meat Puppets?"

I hadn't.

”You don't keep up at all, do you?" he asked, in a disgusted tone.

Later someone told me that Andy had said he had no use for me, or for FW.

I was a little surprised, but tried not to react.

Andy's getting real bitter, they told me. He's jealous of his brothers, for one thing.

"I didn't even know there were brothers,” I said.

Oh yes, they told me, two. His older brother is a successful lounge singer. And his younger brother is in a good band.

"Where?" I asked. "Around here?"

The older brother, he's gay. He moved to New York. This was told to me as if it were the natural order of things, the way that someone is said to have retired and moved to Florida, or gone to Arizona for the dry air.

The younger brother, he joined a band and now they're in Austin. They'll be signed by early next year at the latest. Andy can't take it.

Then, Andy turned from bitter to mean. He snarled at people. He abused his old friends. He stopped playing requests. I heard he beat his girlfriend one too many times and she finally left
him.

She had elephant man's disease, but only a mild case.

She then married a man with an uncommon resemblance to Andy.

He eventually divorced her over her internet addictions.

He now rents out two rooms in his house to illegal Irish immigrants.

He met them while playing darts in an Irish bar.

They are rumored to be on the run because of their IRA connections.

She hasn't been heard of in a while.

But that's another story, or two.

Some time thereafter, I found myself single again, eating pizza in a neighborhood bar, when Andy, accompanied by an entourage of a half-dozenor so young people, mostly female, walked in.

"What's with that?” I asked.

It's Andy and his people, my friends said.

"How does someone like Andy get people?" I asked.

They shrugged their shoulders. It was just a fact.

On the way to the bathroom, I gave Andy a nod. He waved me over to his
table. "What's new?" he asked.

"My car just died," I said. "I have to buy another."

"I had a Civic," Andy said, "but I hated it. I traded it in for a Neon. The Neon I love."

"I wouldn't have thought," I said.

Andy looked to his group. Six eager young heads bobbed in agreement. The Neon they loved.

Andy had made quite a comeback, albeit with a new cohort.

But the love was not all around. One of the female entouragees parent's had taken exception to Andy's interest in his young daughter. Escorting her, underage, into bars and clubs, was apparently the least of Andy's offenses. His prurient interest in her, and activities with her, were
brought to the attention of the authorities. There was an investigation, and eventually, a prosecution.

LW was holding up the local tabloid and pointing to a lurid headline: DJ NAILED FOR TEENY BOPPING. “Don’t you know this guy?” she asked.

"Vaguely," I said. "He used to play good music, a long time ago."

The image of Andy, parboiled in prison stripes, sequestered in the sex offender's wing of some forbidding prison, was one that I found oddly satisfying.

If this were a story, I’d end with that image.

But I left it like that for too long and the narrative lurched forward again.

Last year, at a banquet in a banquet hall, honoring a milestone of a friend of a friend, I saw someone I recognized as an old friend of Andy's. I couldn't remember his name, if I ever knew it. I could only remember him as The Hamburger Man.

"My buddy," I said. "How's it going?"

"Just saw Andy," he said. "He's doing well. He's out of the halfway house and back home with his mother. He has a paper route now, actually two. The kind where you drive around. He’s making pretty good money."

"That is good news," I said. "Give him my regards."

"I was talking to that guy about Andy. Says he has a paper route now," I told LW.

"Maybe from being a mailman he remembers all the addresses," she said.

"Could be."

And then, just the other night, I spoke with Andy himself. He was leaving the local grocery store, leading a very old woman by the arm. I stopped short, unable to get by unobserved.

"It's you," he said to me.

"It is," I said.

Then, "Mother, you know who this is. He lives in the old place right in the middle of the old town."

"I know the place," she said. "Seen the children playing in the yard. Knew you were living there. We drive by there every Sunday."

Andy gave her a sharp look. "We've got to go now," he said. And he half hustled, half dragged her into the darkening parking lot.




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