The day after the impromptu guerrilla acoustic experimental music demonstrations in Downtown San Diego, another event had been planned for the afternoon. Hird knew this guy who owned a bar in Lemon Grove. He'd had his liquor license temporarily suspended, but would allow the place to hold private gatherings and serve alcohol. (And I'm not completely certain this was 100% legal.) Hird invited all the participants of the demonstrations to come down, drink alcohol and play music for ourselves. Abed, Ferd, Marrad and Leaz all got to take part. I was going to bring my keyboard and play as well.
During the demonstrations the night before, a woman started observing the musicians. I don't remember her name, but I'll call her Trid. Trid took part in the demonstrations, banging on some of the percussion instruments that weren't being utilized at any given moment. Abed and Trid began talking and found they had a few things in common. They started liking each other.
Abed invited Trid to join us at the bar the next day. He told her to come by our apartment before we left. She showed up an hour before we had planned to leave. Before I loaded my keyboard in the car, she played it a little. I was surprised. She could actually play. Abed mentioned that Trid could sing as well. However, she wasn't very impressed with my Casio CZ5000.
We went to pick up Leaz. She brought her guitar. On the way over, Leaz complained that none of the other musicians wanted to join her in doing chants that she had made up. They all just wanted to play the instruments. She felt like she had been an unwanted presence and no one was taking her seriously as a contributing artist.
We found the bar and were able to go inside. Most of the other musicians were already there setting up their instruments. I set up my keyboard. There was no schedule for playing. Everyone just got up and played when they felt like it. I was still angry at everyone from the night before for blatantly disrespecting my work, so I didn't really feel like playing much. If Abed hadn't needed me to drive him there, I wouldn't have gone. I mostly stood around and drank soda. Abed would ask me to get up on stage every once in awhile. I joined in the improvisation, but I didn't feel like anyone actually cared if I played or not.
The real problem was that I had a deadline for getting out of there. I had to show up at work and load the videotapes to be recorded. I would have to be gone for an hour. However, we were supposed to be out of the bar in 30 minutes. This was just after Leaz had taken the stage to perform without the other musicians improvising. After she'd done a couple of songs, Abed told her that I was going to have to go and I was the only person driving them home. Leaz got upset. "Oh, that's just great, Abed! All the men get to play around and do what they want for four hours, but when a woman takes the stage, you have to shut her down!" Yeah, I knew how that felt without being a woman.
Leaz was all huffy on the drive back to her house. Abed, Trid and I drove to my workplace, where I changed the tapes, and then drove back to the apartment. We spent some time at the apartment before Trid had us drive her back to the place where she was staying.
Around 3am, the phone rang. I figured it was Trid wanting to talking to Abed "because I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice." I got mad because this happened about an hour and a half before I needed to wake up for work and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep.
After I got to work, I called the voicemail, which Abed had already listened to. It turned out the call was from Abed's sister. Their father, who had been in hospice for the past week, passed away during the night. I immediately felt bad for getting angry.
After all the details and arrangement for his father got sorted out a few days later, Abed realized he hadn't heard anything from Trid. He asked me to drive by the place where we dropped her off that night. We didn't see her anywhere around there. Abed didn't try to get out and knock on the door. We just figured she'd disappeared, like several other women Abed had been involved with.
A couple of months later, I came home and found Trid talking with Abed in our living room. I didn't recognize her at first because she'd changed her hair color. I guess the reason why she vanished was that she'd gotten arrested on a prior warrant or something like that. I couldn't say I was surprised.
After a couple of minutes, I invited her to come into my room to check something out. It was my new keyboard and she was very excited by it. She started playing it and obviously enjoyed it more than the Casio.
But we never saw or heard from her again after that. Maybe that was a good thing.
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