Shaving the Band

I’d always spend Thanksgiving in Massachusetts with the family, but one year I stayed in RI. I was playing keys in a rock-punk band on the verge of “making it.” The band was rehearsing non-stop and had a chance to move to L.A. so it seemed worth taking a shot. The front dude was a charismatic, eccentric genius with a Mick Jagger type voice. The drummer was steady, and our bass player was a beautiful woman, who didn’t always show up. Part of my job was to cover her bass lines if she was missing. The head songwriter dude was a handsome, total misfit. He came from a rich family, but his brain was divided. He was a trust fund Marxist. He and the drummer invited me to sneak a free Thanksgiving dinner at the local soup kitchen. It sounded kinda sketchy, so I was dodged him when the bass player called. She had an emergency, and said to come to her apartment right now.. When I arrived there were about a dozen of her drunk friends, mostly attractive women, and a party going on. She told me she had quit the band, because the singer constantly tried to date her, and she was off to NYC to be a model. This was a farewell pot luck Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, there was only booze, no food. Wild Turkey is a funny gift, but no ACTUAL turkey on Thanksgiving is a drag. Her fridge was empty except for shaved steak, a lot of it, so we began frying it up. Through the steam, she smiled with sad eyes. We all crowded around her red vintage kitchen table set, a giant plate of shaved steak in the middle, holding hands and saying grace. Everyone tried not to laugh.. but once the first person did, we all broke up. Seeing us laugh, she grabbed handfuls of steak and started pelting us. Soon everyone was throwing greasy warm beef, scattering it on the floor, until our hostess collapsed on the floor laughing. She told me to visit her in NYC.. At the next rehearsal, the songwriter was pacing madly. He’d been photographed eating the free meal at the soup kitchen, his big face on the front page of the Journal, called the new face of the homeless. His wealthy family were enraged and suspended his trust fund. When he heard the bass player had quit, he got drunk and climbed to the top of the Braga Bridge, stood there, arms outstretched, thinking, until they talked him down. The band never played again, so the next weekend I took the train to NYC. I had to find out why she had all that shaved steak in the fridge.