Moves
Karaoke? Pilot asks.
Could be fun, I say.
We’re walking through downtown, a little unsure what to do with ourselves. We’re used to baseball starting at 7, not this weird 6 p.m. Mountain time. Used to games lasting three hours, used to them not getting out until well after dark, used to a commute back home. Used to a baseball game being a whole night. Used to things always being the way they’d been when we were little.
But there’s new rules to speed everything up, the Rockies won but with minimal offense that barely took any time, and we’ve stopped here in Denver on a drive across the country so are in Mountain time where everything feels a little off, staying at a hotel downtown where everything feels nearby and anything feels possible.
So much of life has sped up, and started feeling a little off, but every now and then will feel nearby and possible.
Thirtieth anniversary of the Blue Album! Pilot reminds me.
On the way into town, a local radio station DJ had announced the anniversary. 30 years! It made us feel old and also like kids again. Driving around, looking for a hotel for the night, we’d queued up the album to celebrate, sang along to every song together, transforming ourselves into echoes of who we used to be. In the morning, we’d continue our drive toward whoever we were going to become.
The streets are crowded, everyone in good spirits. We are in good spirits. We have a whole night ahead of us. Whole lives still out there ahead of us! Karaoke waiting for us!
We loved karaoke when we were younger. When a night out meant a good chunk of the morning, too. When we didn’t have to wake up in the morning and tend to children or go to jobs or drive across another long stretch of this country.
We’re different people now, but like the idea of still being who we used to be. Even if only for a moment.
We’re wandering the town, looking for a bar hosting karaoke. Neither of us can remember the last time we did karaoke, not even the last time we were somewhere where karaoke was happening, but you can nearly always tell when a bar is hosting karaoke. A kind of know it when you see it energy pulsating in the air all around it.
We wander until we feel the air pulsating and then we see it and we know it.
The guy at the door looks at us, tells us tonight is Drunk Karaoke. I make a joke that isn’t all karaoke drunk karaoke? Instead of laughing, he holds up a breathalyzer.
I’d never heard of such a thing. Pilot hadn’t either. Have you? Is that a thing?
We turn around without blowing into the breathalyzer. No need for a test to tell us what we already know.
Later, I’ll wish I’d taken the breathalyzer, just out of curiosity. I had one beer at the ballgame. What would that register? Wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t be important, but I’d be curious. One more small mystery among the collection that makes up a life.
We wander the town some more. The idea being something of an impromptu bar crawl. The idea being to hopscotch through bars, toward the end goal of circling back to Drunk Karaoke. The idea, of course, almost never being what actually happens.
At one bar, there’s a woman singing covers of Tom Petty and Modest Mouse and Talking Heads. We clap and cheer because the covers are good and because she is cute but mostly because she has the same taste as us and so we’re kind of clapping for each other and ourselves. She takes a break and orders a drink near us at the bar and thanks us for clapping and cheering. She gives us her business card and says we should all three meet up later, after she’s done. She winks. Her card is for singing telegrams.
At another bar, we see a guy who looks exactly like one of our roommates in college. A doppelgänger! I ask Pilot if he believes in doppelgängers and he asks me what I mean, we’re looking at one, how could he not believe in something we’re looking at right in front of us? Yeah, sure, I say, but there’s more to it than just likeness, but then I can’t find the right words for what I mean. The guy comes over and tells us if we don’t stop staring at him, he’s going to kick our asses. We leave.
At another bar, we are the only two there. A ghost bar. I think about asking Pilot if he believes in ghosts, but then I don’t. Instead, I ask if he thinks the singing telegram girl was proposing a threesome. Oh yeah, Pilot says, she definitely was.
At another bar, something else happens. Probably. I forget.
At another bar, I have one beer and Pilot has a club soda with lime and we sit there waiting for something weird or special or funny or worth talking about later but nothing happens. We pay for our drinks and leave.
We never make it back to the bar with the breathalyzer for Drunk Karaoke. Nor the bar with the singing telegram girl and whatever possibilities it held.
Of course, none of this actually happened. Or, not like this anyway.
The idea of karaoke came up on the drive while listening to the Blue Album. Pilot said it would be the first time he’d ever done karaoke sober, and one or the other of us made a joke. Like, what if a place didn’t even let you do karaoke sober? Like, what if they had a breathalyzer at the door? We’d laughed and laughed, because the idea was funny, and even more than funny it was dumb, and it’s fun to laugh with your friends about ideas that are so dumb they’re funny.
We went to the baseball game and the Rockies won 4-2 and on our walk back to our hotel we stopped at a bar. I had one beer while Pilot had a club soda with lime and we talked about the baseball game and the last couple days of our road trip together and all the years of our lives together before that, and then we paid and walked the rest of the way back to our hotel, and in the morning we woke up and got coffee in the lobby and then continued our drive.
On that drive, I tell Pilot I have an idea for a story.
I have an idea for a story, I say.
I tell him the idea, about two guys—based on us, but not us—driving across the country and going to a baseball game and it ending early and them wanting to sing karaoke but the karaoke place they find has a guy at the door with a breathalyzer, because it is Drunk Karaoke and nobody is allowed to do karaoke sober.
Like our joke from yesterday, Pilot says.
Exactly! I say.
And then, I go on, midway through the story, the narration will pause and clarify what had and hadn’t actually happened, like that clarification and what did or didn’t happen wasn’t itself all made up, too.
Pilot is driving, and mostly paying attention to the road, but I can tell he’s trying to understand the story as I’m describing but doesn’t quite get it.
That’s one of my favorite moves in a story right now, I say.
What do you mean? Pilot asks.
Midway through a story, the narration pausing and clarifying what did and didn’t actually happen, like that clarification and what did or didn’t happen isn’t itself all made up, too.
Pilot smiles. Because he likes the idea, or maybe just because he likes when I tell him about my stories. How I write them, where I get my ideas. Even all the more so when some version of him appears in them.
What are some of your other favorite moves right now? Pilot asks.
I think about that. I think about recent stories. I think about how much I love when a narrator thinks something—as thought or just as narration itself—and then says the exact same thing again, as dialogue.
I love when a narrator thinks something—as thought or just as narration itself—and then says the exact same thing again, as dialogue, I say.
Yeah, Pilot says, and nods and smiles again. I have actually noticed that in a couple of your stories.
I’ve also been writing a lot of dialogue without quotation marks lately, I say.
I’ve noticed that, too, Pilot says. I don’t really get it, he says. Am I supposed to get it? he says.
I don’t know, I say. I don’t really think there’s anything to get.
Sometimes it makes it kind of confusing what is dialogue and what isn’t, Pilot says.
Yeah, I say. I know. It feels interesting right now though, and just fun, so I’m going with it. I’ll probably be over it soon, I say.
A semi passes us. The roads out here are mostly long-haul truckers and people like us driving across the country on road trips. You can pretty much go as fast as you want. Pilot was flying earlier, but we got caught up chatting, he probably didn’t even realize he’d slowed down enough for trucks to want to pass us. What a joy to be with friends and lose all track of speed and time and distance.
What else? Pilot says.
I’m a huge sucker for flash forwards, I say. Quick little moves into the future tense.
Like describing what will happen? Pilot says.
Exactly, I say. I love it so much. Especially at the ends of stories. I love it so much, I have to be careful not to overuse it, I say.
If you do it too much, it loses its effect, Pilot says. It sounds like a question and also not.
Exactly, I say again. I have to be sure to mix it up.
What about if you flip it? Pilot says. Like ending with a flashback?
I think about it. I’m not sure I’ve done that.
I don’t think I’ve done that, I say.
Like, the story could end with this moment about how we were fifteen or sixteen and first becoming best friends, bonding over the Blue Album, Pilot says.
The Pilot and Aaron in the story, you mean, I say.
Right, Pilot says. It’s fiction! Pilot says.
Another good way to end a story is… I’m not sure how to describe it, I say. Some kind of description or pure information, something that feels a little less narrative. It’s hard to describe, I say.
Like what would be an example? Pilot says.
I don’t even know if this is exactly what I mean, but the story could end with some straightforward description about the Blue Album. Like some trivia about them recording the album or something?
What are other kinds of endings? Pilot says.
I think about ways I’ve ended stories. Ways my favorite stories end. Ways I’ve talked about endings with my students when I teach.
Sometimes a story can end on a piece of dialogue and that can work, I say.
Like this whole discussion? Pilot says.
Sure, I guess, I say.
What else? Pilot says.
Repetition or lists can be good, I say.
What else? Pilot says.
Just ending with a question can be interesting, and sometimes really powerful, I say. Though there’s a few all-timer stories that do that, so you’re risking comparisons.
How do you think this one will end? Pilot says. When it is all done, what do you think the ending will look like?
I think about that. I look out my window and watch the landscape go by and I think about road trips and baseball and karaoke and not doing karaoke and drinking with friends and not drinking with friends and dumb jokes and inside jokes and sharing old memories and making new memories and I think about each of those being a story in this larger story that includes everything old and everything new and everything in between and and and
Aaron Burch is the author of an essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, and a novel, Year of the Buffalo, among others. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and HAD. He grew up in Tacoma, lives in metro Detroit, and his next book, TACOMA, is forthcoming from Autofocus Books. He recommends "Court of Common Pleas" by Josh Denslow from the archives, and then picking up the collection it is included in, Magic Can't Save Us, which is really wonderful.