Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs - Dave Holmes Page 0,5

thing,” she said, and then disappeared into her bedroom, emerging moments later with a silver-sequined pantsuit and its own matching beret. “I never wear it anymore. It’s yours. You can cut it up however you like.” I thought: Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I walked that pantsuit back home, snuck it up to my room, used my safety scissors to alter the arms and legs to my size, and chose the perfect dangerous angle at which to wear the beret. After dinner the next night, I gathered my parents and brothers in the living room to model my creation.

Have you ever confused a Jack Russell terrier, to the point where it looks concerned and cocks its head at a 45-degree angle? Then you have seen what each member of my family looked like when I walked into our living room.

My oldest brother, Dan, could not find words. My middle brother, Steve, a senior in high school, said, “You know, Dave,” and after a moment or two of searching for the right thing to tell me, “that’s not really what punk rock is,” as though strict costume interpretation were the primary concern when your eight-year-old brother stands before you in a silver-sequined ladies’ pantsuit and matching beret.

My reply—I swear to God—was this: “But I can do the splits, like Mick Jagger. Watch!”

Okay. Here are a few of the flaws in this argument:

1. Mick Jagger could not do the splits.

2. The splits are not generally considered a punk-rock move.

3. Mick Jagger is not generally considered a punk rocker.

4. I also could not do the splits.

I rose from the ground, having attempted the splits and succeeded at nothing more than testing the tensile strength of the pantsuit’s base fabric, but I was triumphant. I was agile and dangerous. I was a punk rocker. It was immediately clear to my family that I would not be deterred, and I guess everyone agreed that there were some lessons I should learn the hard way.

A solid 70 percent of houses guessed that I was dressed as a fancy pimp. Whatever—I still got candy. Molly went as a calculator.

So, anyway, that was the Halloween I dressed as A Source of Concern to My Family.

They need not have worried, really. I come by my exuberance for music and popular culture naturally; it’s the primary thing I inherited from my family. There is nothing that you can say to either of my parents that won’t remind them of a song, and they will never fail to sing it. My point is not that they’ll break into “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” when you tell them it’s sunny outside, or “The Way We Were” when you mention something that has happened in the past, although these are absolutely things that will happen. What I’m saying is that literally everything—airplane tickets, Styrofoam, the flu—is a cue for a song, and it is always time to be singing. They’re like improv performers, just waiting for a suggestion so they can launch into their act. We’re Irish; it can’t be helped.

My father worked as a financial consultant of some sort; throughout my youth, he put on a tie and managed money and didn’t talk much about it when he got home. But he made a point of taking us to New York once a year, and when we were there he made sure to get Broadway tickets for at least three nights. He’d slip the concierge a few bucks for the really good seats, so we’d be always right up in front. (Except at Cats, whose good seats are in the first row of the balcony, where the cat chorus crawls right up next to you and rubs their heads on your chest and purrs and you silently wish you had slightly worse seats.) Dad would get lost in the show. I could see the whites of his eyes in the dark of the theater. And after the final number, he would stand. He would whoop. There would be tears in his eyes sometimes, even if it wasn’t a very good show. He’d been transported. He and my mother have been married since the early 1950s, when every suburban home had the Original Cast Recordings of West Side Story, The King And I, The Sound of Music. My dad had a secret identity as a theater buff.

My mother grew up in North St. Louis, a Sinatra-worshipping bobby-soxer from way back who wrote letters to Frank offering her