Track 19: Three Chords and What’s True by Wendy Chirikos
In a little town outside of Nashville
It was the summer of ’91
When a pale fair-skinned hostess met a long-haired line cook
And these two young dreamers fell in love like dear friendship she liked him but he probably only thought of her as a friend probably should she ask him? NO NO NO duh he didn’t like meHER! but what if he did and was afraid to say? because he knew she had to chase her dreams? guys are so confusing!!! because it seemed like he might and the other hostesses said he must but who knows? WHO WILL EVER KNOW???
[rhyme with next line]
Three chords and the truth. To write a country song, that’s all you need. Willie Nelson says so. So does Chris Stapleton. And Bruce Springsteen. But what if that line cook hates country music? Derivative, he says. Musically uninteresting. And what if he hates Nashville, too? And stupid rednecks and dumb cowboy hats and boots and pickup trucks?
[possible rhymes for derivative: diminutive, leitmotiv]
The hostess, on the other hand, fits a country song: a small-town girl with a head full of dreams and a heart full of longing — any girl in any song by, say, Mary-Chapin Carpenter or Nanci Griffith or Trisha Yearwood. She is all folky sentimentality and yearning and heartache sung over the soft fingerpicking of an acoustic guitar. And none of those stupid rednecks or dumb cowboy hats or boots or pickup trucks; she hates those.
So: a line cook and a hostess.
Oh, also, he’s a musician. And she dreams of being an actress.
So: a line cook and a hostess, two young dreamers. Which is a nice start to a country song. And the hostess writes this first verse again and again on her bedside notepad, scribbling and scratching out and starting over, trying to get the words just right. Scratching out and scratching out because what even are they, these two dreamers/coworkers? They’re friends. But there should be more to the story, right? Something to push to a second verse, something to move things along.
The line cook and the hostess are two young dreamers who...who...laugh a lot together? bear hug in the break room? occasionally play tennis?
What if she quits that hostess job and moves away to New York City?
Okay now. That complicates things. Adds some conflict. Small-town girl moves to the big city, follows her dreams, leaves this podunk town behind. And what if the night before, in the bar when they say goodbye, she starts crying about how scared she is? That maybe she’s making a huge mistake. And what if he stands up, reaches into his pocket and tells her to hold out her hand? You need some confidence, he says, so here’s a pocketful of mine.
And in that very moment the bar goes quiet and the background fades, and behind his echoing voice she hears the strum of an acoustic guitar, maybe a little piano trickling in, maybe even the whine of a lone violin string. And they have become in this moment, the hostess and the line cook, a country song. In her mind, anyway. And now she’s smitten and heartbroken and what has she done? Why would she break her own heart by leaving this guy behind? Maybe she should stay? But for what? He doesn’t like-like her. They’ve only ever played tennis together! You can’t make a country song of that!
She’s quite melodramatic, this hostess. Maybe she should continue on with acting school.
She does. She moves to New York. And it’s everything. It’s overwhelming and exciting and intoxicating and smells like piss and romantic and...frightening. She’s scared to walk the three blocks to school. She’s scared to ride the subway. She’s scared of the old ladies in the women’s residence where she lives, who occasionally get carted off in straight jackets. She’s scared she has no talent, and that she’ll never be anything that matters to anyone. And the Middle Eastern guy at the deli can’t understand her accent. She can’t order a roast beef sandwich! And there’s no one to hug.
What has she done? What will she do?
This is what the hostess does: she writes a long letter to her long-haired line cook. Lying on her bed, nose to notepad, she tells him all about acting classes and her cool neighbor from Oklahoma, about going to see “Late Night with David Letterman.” She tells him she’s homesick. She drops fat, hot tears on the paper. She tells him about a bus ride in the rain. She wonders if she’s made a mistake. She mails the letter, confident he’ll think she’s insane and dopey, confident he’ll never write back.
[should second verse be this wordy???]
[words that rhyme with ramble: mangle, oblique angle]
A week later he writes back. He tells her about work and his music production classes at school. He tells he wishes he could, like her, run off to someplace bigger. He tells her she’s brave and that he would do anything for her. At the end of the letter, he includes a poem, which she tapes to her mirror. And oh, p.s., he writes, he’s working on a mixtape for her.
A mixtape?
A mixtape?!
What is the third verse even supposed to do? Or would this be the bridge? Pre-chorus? Because the mixtape feels like something unto itself. It’s a major step in their relationship. It’s supposed to say something. It is supposed to share. It is like borrowing poetry. Or setting your diary to music. It is carefully curated, each selection of song and the order in which is to be played is completely and irrationally lovingly overthought. It’s a soundtrack of your heart. This is who I am, it says, hear me.
Well...what was he trying to say?
Actually, no, this — this is a key change. Because this part changes the song. The introduction of the mixtape carries the song to something else, and not only does it add new chords, but chords with progressions. Three chords won’t cover it anymore. Because for the next many months, until summer vacation, there is not only an endless exchange of these mixtapes (complete with obsessively filled out j-cards (the paper card insert in a cassette tape)), but envelopes that get fatter with each mailing, and phone calls that go later and later into the night. He sends Primus, Rush, Led Zeppelin, and writes about wanting to live somewhere bigger, more interesting than Nashville. I She sends back Springsteen, Shawn Colvin, Bonnie Raitt, and tells him about visiting the top of the World Trade Center and how she’d give anything to see a patch of grass. He sends Jimi Hendrix and Living Colour and Jethro Tull, calls to tell her that June got fired at work. She tells him she gave herself whiplash trying to head bang like Corey Glover, he writes back detailed instructions on proper head-banging technique. They talk about the genius of the Chuck Jones era of Bugs Bunny. They debate the merit of the word, “y’all.” They talk about how much they want out of life, how restless they feel, and she can hear him strumming guitar as they talk. She even gets brave and sends Garth Brooks — just this one song, and she swears it won’t make him vomit! — and then this other one by Kathy Mattea that just kills her every time she hears it. It’s not exactly country, it’s kind of folky, kinda Celtic, even. She doesn’t tell him this, but out of all the songs she’ll send him, this is the soundtrack of her heart. This is the one she wants him to hear. And no idea why, because it seems to be about an old married couple re-connecting — but there’s this line: and all the things on earth worth having are things that we’ve already got that breaks her heart open every single time. She doesn’t tell him this. She can’t.
He writes back that he drove around until 3am listening to that tape. To one particular song. It doesn’t sound like country, he writes, it’s more of a folky ballad. Those are jazz chords. Think of it as a poem — it doesn’t need the music. It stands on its own!
Heaven and earth are meeting upon this very spot
And all the things on earth worth having
Are things that we’ve already got
This is not a country song. And maybe this is the bridge. What does she know? She’s an actress, not a songwriter. Well, for now she’s an actress, but who knows?
And what’s the truth?
The truth is, there’s really nothing after this. She stops writing the song. Summer comes, they work in different restaurants, hang out but not as much, then they both go back to school. There are no more letters or mixtapes, way fewer phone calls. Their friendship continues – they’ll even take a road trip to Vegas years from now — and they go on with their lives, marry other people and have kids. So, y’know, it’s not really a love story so it doesn’t make for much of a song.
Except it is a love story — to the hostess, anyway. Of being seen. Of being accepted and adored at a time in her life when she felt her most lost. Of making a giant leap out into the world while being lucky enough to have a tether pulling her back down to solid ground.
It’s funny, he would tell me her me sometimes, because of my melodramatic hyper-sensitivities, that I changed the way he viewed the world. But he changed the way I felt in the world. I felt seen. I felt loved. What a gift. What a lucky hostess. I hope he knew how lucky I felt. I hope he could hear in that one song, in that one line, in that one truth.
And what if you add three chords: C, F & G?
You have a pretty perfect country song, after all.
[possible rhymes for cheesiness: sleaziness, chilomeniscus]
[am overthinking this — that rhymes!]
[how does one end a song?]
Wendy Chirikos lives in Boulder, CO, with her husband and two children. Her writing has appeared in Invisible City, Emerge Literary Journal, Bending Genres, and Parhelion Lit, among others. She is a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, and a past recipient of a James Kirkwood Prize in Creative Writing from UCLA. Truthfully, she was a terrible hostess.
