CHAPTER 4

"ON STAGE"

I had just finished tuning up, when I heard Justin introduce me through the kitchen door. I quickly grabbed my guitar, checked my teeth in the mirror, and took a deep breath before I walked out to the stage.

“And now, ladies and gentleman, a real treat for us, coming all the way from across the Atlantic…”

Justin was giving it the old boxing ringmaster routine, which he liked to do to wind me up.

“Come on Shane, you can do this.” I said to the pale face looking back at me in the mirror.

I tried to pump myself up and stride onto the stage, like a boxer into the ring. My intense nerves, however, had grabbed hold of me. I felt more like a mutinous sailor walking the plank, the crowd a shark infested ocean waiting for me to fall.

A moderately enthusiastic applause spilled across the room. It was more polite than exuberant, more decorum than reverence. More McDonald’s Big Mac than fine lobster. It was certainly nowhere near the grandiose welcome, I had always dreamed I would get, as I walked on stage. I had pictured lingerie being flung by attractive screaming girls, men clapping at the majesty of my arrival, security guards protecting the stage from mobbing. Instead, it was just me, my guitar, and a small wooden stool that cowered alone, almost lost in the middle of the stage. This would be my island for the next twenty minutes.

“How’s it going everyone?” The microphone stank of stale beer and sweat from the countless Sunday night performances it had witnessed. The sound of my voice boomed across the room and echoed in the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm.

“Eh, my name’s Shane.” I could see people starting to look up from their conversations, with a glimmer of intrigue and focus on the stage. I knew that my Irish accent was drawing them in rather than my wonderful stage presence, as I had hoped.

“Play Riverdance!” A shout came from the back of the bar.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Justin bolt from his seat in the guy’s direction. I paused to regain my composure. The stage lights were starting to pull beads of sweat from my brow.

“Sorry. As I was saying… my name is Shane and, as our wonderful associate at the back has just cleverly pointed out, I am from Ireland. Congratulations to him! I have a big cuddly toy prize, waiting for him in the back.”

The crowd laughed as the heckler visibly sank into his seat. With the crowd’s laughter my nerves started to dampen, as my confidence grew.

“The first song I am going to sing tonight is a song I wrote for a girl I went out with a few years back. I wrote it after she cheated on me.”

I gave my best impression of the big old puppy dog eyes that I could muster. The crowd, in unison, gave a big sympathetic “Ahhhhhhhhh . . . ”.

“Yes she hurt me bad, but after a while I pulled myself out of self-pity and just got very angry. So, I wrote this song about her and left a tape of it on her doorstep. I left it with a note, saying that I would play it in her honour at every gig I ever played. She always said she wanted me to write her a song but I don’t think she had this in mind. Anyway true to my word, I am going to play it for you tonight. This is . . . ‘You shouldn’t wear white on your wedding day.’ ”

I slowly closed my eyes and began to play. I felt the metal strings tickle my fingers, as I strummed the first few chords. The sound of the bass and treble worked in complete harmony and made me drift off into the music, with the memories it brought back. When I play live, I don’t really remember the actual performing. I am so totally engrossed in the emotions and feelings behind the songs that I don’t really feel like I am singing. It is hard to explain. It is almost as if I revert into my subconscious and I only come out once the crowd starts clapping at the end.

The crowd’s applause swelled, as I opened my eyes. I looked back out towards them. I was the broken soul asking for comfort and they were thanking me for letting them in. We now had a bond. A bond built on the common understanding, that I would strip my soul bare for them and lay it all out on the stage, as long as they didn’t judge me.

“Thanks a lot, thank you. As you can probably tell, I am still not on very good terms with my ex.”

I stood to go and sit behind the piano for my next song. Through the glare of the lights, something at the back of the room caught my eye. An apologetic smile glimpsed up at me from beneath a beret hat, as she made her way through the crowd. She moved gracefully like a river through a valley, touching people’s shoulders as she went. Thick brown hair furled out from beneath her hat. I couldn’t quite see her but that didn’t matter. I was spellbound just from the way she elegantly weaved in and out of the crowd. She was confident but yet unassuming, graceful but not pretentiously so. As she sat down close to the stage, she looked up and our eyes met like colliding stars.

I nearly had a heart attack right there and then on the stage. She was absolutely beautiful. Her big dark brown eyes were framed by glowing sun-kissed skin. She looked at me with a smile and a goddamn bloody twinkle in her eye. If we had been in a movie, a great big fan would have been blowing her hair in the wind and a giant spotlight would have shone down on her from above, as the string quartet swelled into a passionate crescendo. This was real life, however. I quickly realised, that I had been staring at her a little longer than should be considered normal. I abruptly looked away. I sat down on the piano stool and focussed on the keys. I took a deep breath, began to play the intro to the song, and I explained what it was about.