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decided yet. Or, on your A side you’re a nice girl, and on your B side you’re a hooker. I don’t know. But we’ve gotta love all our grooves. They’re the only ones we get.”
    I can’t believe I said so much. My heart is racing and I’m panting from all the crazy nerves.
    “How about a little dance music? Here’s Madonna’s ‘Into the Groove,’ which was the B side to her single ‘Angel’ way back when Madonna was new. Care to dance?”
    I dance, too, because it feels good to shake out the nerves. But then I skip the CD, so I sit after that. Then more songs go on without chatting, because I need to chill.
    Finally it’s time to wind it down. “You know, life is just programmed chaos. Everybody starts out on one side—that’s the programmed part. But then chaos happens, and our album flips. We get fat or thin, or dye our hair and pierce our nose. But those are just our outsides. Our insides are still beautiful, even if we think we’re ugly children.”
    Yuck—too deep. Time to bail.
    “For our last song of the night, let’s get local with Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and ‘Erotic City,’ another A and B side, just for that sexy touch. I’m … Gabe … and you’re listening to Beautiful Music for Ugly Children, on community radio 90.3, KZUK. Back at you next week with some more programmed chaos.”
    I need to remember Prince—he’d make a good show all by himself.
    I jump around a little bit with the songs, especially “Let’s Go Crazy.” But then I skip the CD again. When the show is over and Marijane is gardening away, I get all the CDs back in the crate and get things organized. Then I step into the dark air, starting the 167-hour wait for the best sixty minutes of my week. One more groove laid down.

    My phone rings while I’m driving home.
    “Gabe, that was amazing! Flat out. But the A side/B side part was really strange.” Paige’s reaction. We chat, make plans for tomorrow, and hang up.
    My phone rings again.
    “Liz, that was fantastic—you chatted! You can do even more next time.” John’s reaction. Then there’s a pause. “Gabe. I mean Gabe.”
    “No stress.” For him, I can be patient.
    “I’ll get it right, I promise. Meantime, let’s hear it for your B side.” I can hear that he’s smiling. He always says if you smile, your listeners will hear it.
    “Thanks.”
    “Sleep well, okay?”
    “You got it.”

    I actually feel about 15 percent peaceful, which is a huge improvement over my normal 5 percent. Then there’s Elvis, very quietly, as I’m drifting away: it’s all right, Gabe. Just trust.
    We’ll see.

Jesus is the new Elvis because He Has An Enormous Fan Club, Too

    Saturday night. Because we’re bored, Paige and I decide to drive up to underage night at Happiness, a karaoke bar in Minneapolis’s Warehouse District. Ninety miles isn’t that far to drive for some entertainment, and karaoke is better than nothing. We get there and the place is crammed with people we don’t know, which is perfect.
    Paige is a brainless hoochie mama when we club—short skirt, high heels, designer handbag, and a million strands of beads. I, on the other hand, wear a button-down shirt and more dressy jeans than Levis, but that’s as far as I go. No matter what I wear, no one looks at me anyway, because the woman thing turned out all right for Paige, to put it mildly. She’s quite shapely, with serious boobs and nice hips. She’s okay if I grab her every so often so we look like we’re together, but sometimes she grabs me. And that’s okay too. It might be flirting behavior, but I’m not sure. Sometimes when I look at her while we’re dancing, I think I see MPOSSIBL on her forehead. Not quite as impossible as before, but still there.
    Paige and I dance a few—we’re good together—but then I realize I have to pee. Bad. Peeing is normal for 98 percent of the human race, but not for me.
    When I open the door to the men’s at Happiness, I breathe deep and puff