Jazz Once Again Eludes Me

It was a weird way to delay a drag show

In the corner of a basement bar and lounge there is a four-piece band playing what I’m pretty sure is jazz, and I am watching them. Each band member seems to have shown up dressed for a different event. The drummer is in head-to-toe black, featuring a turtleneck sweater and boots. The saxophonist has on chinos with what looks to me to be an expensive bowling shirt. The seated guitarist is in jeans with a loud christmas sweater over a white button down. The bassist is in overalls with a little lacy mesh number for a shirt, and is also ten times more animated than the rest of them put together. He leaps up and down as he plays, pausing only to hold apparently-meaningful eye contact with the drummer as they execute some jazz maneuver. Sometimes the bassist closes his eyes and makes a face that suggests he is moments away from soiling his overalls. Other times he shrieks with excitement at something a bandmate did, things that I’m not attuned enough to notice. To me the complex music glides on by, each moment about the same as the next, then out of nowhere I’ll hear “OOOOH SHITT!!!! OOOOHHHH SHITTTT!!!!” as the bassist roars with approval. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE COMING IN ON THE EIGHT BUT YOU CAME IN ON THE SIX!!! FUCK!!!!” 

I realize that I don’t understand jazz. 

Towards the end of the set the bassist stomps on his own amp chord and it flies from his instrument and he has to fumble around on the ground to fix it. The guitarist tries and completely fails to disguise his actions as he hunches down to hit a hidden vape pen in his pocket. There are maybe eight of us in the audience, and everything is seen. When the bassist is plugged back in and he’s returned to his groove his musical mania begins spraying everywhere and I see him trying to make horribly hungry eye contact with me, which given the small audience size is rather hard for me to avoid. His eyes say “Yeah you feel it too don’t you!? This is the best shit in the world, yeah???” and I stare at the floor, trying to politely decline. 

I’m there with my partner and my sister for a drag show, one that was supposed to start over an hour ago. We’d been sitting there slowly slumping deeper into our seats as we lost hope that the 9pm show would begin when it was advertised, conversation rendered difficult with the volume of the ongoing performance. My connection with and appreciation of the music was unfairly strained, given that this band turned out to be an obstacle to the show we actually wanted to see. 

When they ended their set half of the audience shuffled out with them, apparently there just to support their jazz pals. The drag show started with the MC themselves performing a burlesque number which involved their pasties unintentionally flying off, leaving apparently-illegal nipples flying around until they realized why their titties felt extra breezy and shamefully donned an over-sized sport coat taken from the DJ. They handled it in stride, and I felt blessed to see a performer handle such a blow until they started their MC duties with “Heyyy, so who’se drinkingggg tonight???” and got silence from those of us in the audience with crossed arms and committed sobriety. 

The rest of the show, though, was a delight, featuring delicious celebrations of having a human body and playing with gender. I love the extravagant presence of drag, the amplifications and transformations of human features, the embodied power they create and share. I was happy to have a front row seat and hold happy eye contact as I tipped them mid-dance in cash. I was delighted when one queen accidentally shattered a shoe and made it work anyway, ever-impressed with live performers handling things going wrong with joyous grace. 

It was a wonderful show, weird in all the right ways - even the frustrating parts were intriguing and fun. All the same at the end of the first hour we more or less sprinted into the night, eager to reclaim control of our time and of our lives, to no longer feel stuck waiting an unknown amount of time, up and out into the world of the relatively orderly and predictable, all the same certain to return.