by Jonathan Weisberg

“Tell me your name,” Vicky said.

He was still dazed in the penumbra of their last kiss, and the simple request confounded him. Vicky pulled away, so that the points where her skin had been against his a moment before felt wet as they adjusted to the coolness of the air.

“I told you already,” he finally said. His mind had raced ahead of his body to explore domains of pleasure far beyond self-coherence, and it had trouble backtracking to this mundane ground.

“Not that,” she said. “Please. I’m not some giddy girl who’s never gotten over her fantasy of him. I’m not playing that game. I want the real you.” She then seemed to notice the discomfort in his eyes without understanding its cause, and she added, “Do you get a lot of those girls throwing themselves at you?”

“Define ‘a lot.’”

Vicky laughed. “Ten a day.”

“Phew,” he whistled. “No. Thank god.”

“Good. I’d hate to be your eleventh tonight. A mere ten a week, then?”

“Not even close.”

Their knees touched, but she now leaned away from him. Her blouse was still on her shoulders but unbuttoned all the way and dangling, leaving her right breast bare. He could see that its shape was low slung and pointed—not the full even dome of a magazine model. Its imperfection, instead of cooling his eagerness in any way, only made her more distinctly attractive. He was beginning to want her in a way that went beyond the generic urge of a man for a woman—strong as that was. Longing unfolded and gathered mass, like the birth of a galaxy in a concentration of ultimate heat and density, and he was nearly overwhelmed in the feeling.

Vicky made no effort to cover herself. She balanced—within reach but not yet committed. She could be had for a clear price: his name.

This presented a dilemma. He’d already tried telling her the truth, and she didn’t believe it or didn’t understand it.

He’d met her after one of his shows. He usually sat at the bar for a while, half hoping not to be noticed, since people usually felt a certain disdain for him off the stage, but also hoping to capture a last pulse of admiration from someone ordering a drink or passing on the way to the door.

Vicky took the stool next to him. She’d started by complimenting his voice, earning his immediate liking. Then she said she thought it would sound good singing madrigals. This really interested him.

He asked which ones, and she named pieces by Verdelot and Monteverdi. So, she knew some obscure music. He knew one of the pieces and sang a few bars. She applauded and said, “What are you doing in a place like this?” So it went for a while.

Naturally, since everything was going so shiningly, she got around to asking, “What should I call you?”

He responded, “Troy.”

She laughed, thinking he was joking.

The name of his act was “The Better Than Life Troy Matter Cover Band.” It was meant to sound kitschy. Most people remembered Troy Matter. He’d had two hit singles in 1993. The first one reached number five and the second rose to number eight. They were both still played on light radio and easy listening stations. They were tunes people of a certain age sometimes hummed without being aware of what they were doing.

Troy had washed up quicker than most. His second album tanked. There was an unfortunate attempt to move into techno, then talk about acting. He’d had trouble with drugs and alcohol, frittered away his money, and disappeared. Most people knew this in the way they knew details about a distant cousin’s life.

The people at the shows were in their thirties and forties, and they came to laugh at some of the enthusiasms of their youth and early adulthood. The absurdity of a Troy Matter cover band. No one deserved to be covered less, which was why it was so right. They’d have forgotten his name if the flyer for the show hadn’t reminded them.

The problem was that he really was Troy Matter.

No one would pay him a cent to play as himself, but the cover band drew nice, consistent crowds. He had regular gigs around the Northeast and made a semi-annual West Coast tour.

The money was a help, but he really did it to be performing again. The act had all kinds of satirical schlock. He made fun of his b-list celebrity status. He told ridiculous anecdotes about his supposed current life in which people failed to recognize him but Troy somehow failed to realize he was no longer a celebrity. He made fun of his stereotypical mistakes and stupidity (see drugs and techno above).

It hurt a little every time. Satire was supposed to be cutting, and he was cutting himself. Everyone else seemed to love the abuse.

But when he played the songs—the songs he’d fucking written—everyone loved them, too. Outside that club on that night, they’d probably laugh or change the dial. Thank god it’s not the nineties anymore, they might say. God, do you remember this? But in his show, they heard him. They teared up. They swayed. They screamed and hooted and clapped at the end.

The crowds sounded like his sweetest memories.

As long as everyone understood that they were all there to make fun of how schmaltzy, how unsophisticated, how low-brow Troy Matter had been, then they could really experience his songs.

Of course, there had been a time when people had enjoyed his songs without the prophylaxis of debasing their creator. That had been ecstasy. But he accepted that that time was irrecoverable. What he longed for instead when he lay down at night and his thoughts revolved within themselves was the time when he’d written all those songs. He’d been barely out of high school. He’d worked shit jobs. He’d walked around all night at times, composing these songs, enflamed with their significance, touching the quick of his person against the mystery of the universe.

That kind of creation had been dead a long time for him, but he could feel its afterglow in the middle of one of his songs, when the audience gave him the energy that no longer seemed to be in him. It was a better relief than drugs—and he’d tried those enough to know.

His life outside music had always been unsightly. Before he’d started playing this new type of gig, it had withered to something brown and soggy. He still owned his loft in SoHo. He managed to cover the taxes and maintenance fees. He had enough left over to pay for take out food and cable tv. But he’d been slowly rotting.

The career in self-mockery came about by accident. He’d been playing at a little club a few blocks from his apartment. They let him take the stage on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, as he didn’t seem to drive off any of the really devoted drinkers who showed up midweek. One time an inebriated, sweaty man came up to him to say that a Troy Matter cover act was the funniest thing he’d ever heard of. Troy had nodded, feeling for the first time the anguish of seeing his life as the joke other people took it for. But the man hung around, tried to buy him a drink, tried to shake his hand.

The next time he played, he billed himself as “The Better Than Life Troy Matter Cover Band.” People cared like they hadn’t in a long time. He got applause. They brought friends the next time. He moved to a bigger venue. And so on.

Now he was in a trap. He could only feel good when he was pretending not to be himself. In fact, he had to pretend to be someone ridiculing himself. So, the more he felt good (from performing, from having a little extra cash), the more he had to hate who he was.

He always closed with one of his two big hits. That left the audience on a high note and, while the applause lasted, he tried to forget everything that had come before.

Vicky wasn’t the only woman who’d come up to him because she liked being in on the joke. A certain sort of woman liked having the dumb groupie experience while believing she was really mocking the dumb groupie experience with someone mocking a dumb rock star.

But Vicky was also a little different. While they’d chatted at the bar, he’d learned that she was an English professor. He read 19^th century poetry. They swapped ideas about Browning and the power of voice. She’d held her head in such a way that he felt like she was trying to peer through to the real him rather than stay in illusion. He imagined the way she must hold a book when reading and looking for the meaning at its core.

Similarly, the physical passion, once they’d built to that, was more urgent. He kept feeling he was on the verge of touching some deeper vein of connection than he’d known before. Something powerful, something meant just for him, was on the other side of the thinnest wall. She could help him to it. He could sense that in a glint in her eyes, in a warmth when she touched his hand.

Now she waited for his real name. Her jeans were unzipped, so that the fly split open like the gap between lily petals. Telling her the whole story would either disgust her or make her pity him (certainly a turn off). And he wanted her.

He looked in her eyes. He looked down to her bare abdomen rising out of her loosened jeans. The thin white waistband of her panties showed there.

She wanted a name. That was the price. He was in another trap.

The sex would be an illusion—acting a role—no matter what he did now. It wouldn’t be the real Troy. She could touch him, she could pull him into her, and there would be a blocking layer of illusion between them.

But still he wanted that touch. For a moment it would feel like nothing else mattered. The need filled him like the noise and vibration standing near a jet engine.

“My name’s Jack,” he said. His head fell in defeat.

“That’s so much hotter than Troy,” Vicky replied immediately, her hands grabbing at him. He leaned close and kissed her below the ear. “Oh, Jack,” she added in a whisper. She squirmed to bring her warm body back against his.

“Oh, Jack… Oh, Jack… Oh, Jack.”