Earworm
by Cynthia Robinson Young
part 1
SUNDAY: Janelle
The night it started, Sandora and I were at Miss May’s Front Porch, the trendy new restaurant in Chattanooga. Upscale Southern fare was my favorite, so I took anyone who visited to taste-test the newest eateries with me.
I could have made it a night out with the new co-worker slash suitor, Wakeem, but since Sandora just arrived in town from New Jersey for business, I opted to give her a taste of the South instead. “Friends since birth” sounds extreme if not pretentious, but that’s how I describe Sandora. We stepped into a nearly empty place, like “Is it even open yet?” type of place; the wait staff leaning on walls and bar tops, waiting eagerly for customers.
“I thought you said this was the hot spot in town?” Sandora asked as we were quickly seated and handed menus.
“Welcome to Chattanooga on a Monday night!” the eavesdropping waiter laughed. I didn’t think he could hear us with the iPods he had lodged firmly in his ear. He pointed towards the small platform that served as a stage, “At least you get a front row seat for the live music.”
“I can handle that. So, what’s a good Southern meal for a Northern girl?
“You can’t go wrong with the fried chicken... I’m not a red meat guy but everyone raves about the brisket. You like brisket?”
We followed the same rules we had created back in our high school cafeteria: get two different meals so we can share: our two-for-one special. We placed our orders and nibbled on the complimentary corn muffins while the band set up on stage. The guitarist, fiddler, and upright bass player plugged into amps as our waiter stood stage left, his eyes darting as his head slowly bopped to whatever was playing on his iPods.
Fifteen minutes later, the food and the band delivered, playing a mix of familiar cover tunes. They were squeezed together on the stage like a circus elephant on a rubber ball, but they made it work. The place was a little more inhabited by then, and everyone was grooving to the music, waitstaff included. All except our waiter.
When the band finished their rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama,” the patrons joined Sandora and me in clapping our approval. We returned our attention to the real stars of the evening: smothered and fried vegetables and proteins. I’ll run an extra mile tomorrow.
Sandora scooted her chair back, “This chicken is legit, and this drink is going right through me. I’ll be back.” As she exited towards the restroom signs, our waiter hopped up to the empty stage and grabbed the unattended banjo. I gave him half of my attention as he adjusted the microphone and said, “I need to play y’all a song. I don’t know all the lyrics, and I didn’t make up the tune. It’s a famous song, that’s what I know, at least it was. I can’t get out of my head, hoping someone here can help me out. It’s driving me nuts.”
The banjo player stood up from his seat at the bar to intervene, but his bandmates tugged on his shirt to let the scene play out.
And then he played the song. Catchy, like something you’d hear on any Top 40 radio station. But I hadn’t listened to real radio for years, ever since I got a car with Bluetooth. I scanned the room and everyone had the same blank stare accompanied by a forgiving grin. He kept repeating the same line over and over:
I’ll crawl into your nightmares
I’ll squirm into your dreams
I want your heart
I want your mind
A love like mine is hard to find.
Having heard enough, we all clapped politely, mimicking an awards show orchestra cutting off a rambling speech. The waiter took the hint and stared at his uncooperative audience, frustrated and a bit angry. He pleaded, “Does anyone know what the song is? It’s on the tip of my tongue, and I need to finish it!”
Silence. The bartender dramatically cleared his throat.
Then, it happened. He started tugging and frantically swatting at his left ear, before collapsing. We collectively gasped. Did he faint? Performance art? Instinctively, I ran onto the stage to help. I knew CPR. Maybe he would need it.
As he lay on the stage floor, he began to convulse. Was he epileptic? Scratching at his ear, I leaned in to get a closer look. Like a time lapse gif of a blossoming flower, his ear opened up from the inside out. Emerging squirmed a horde of what I can best describe as brown maggoty worms, piling out in clumps and wiggling free, finally breaking their seal of bondage.
Not one for bugs or anything that slithers, and especially ones that present themselves in this manner, I scooted back quickly and found my legs. Leave the CPR to the professionals. I looked up and it was as if time had stood still, the entire restaurant suspended in a cocktail of confusion, fear, and shock.
“Did anybody call 911? Call ‘em!” I yelled at the bartender.
I looked back at the now motionless waiter on the stage, a gaping hole where his ear used to be, but the worms were nowhere in sight. What the...
SUNDAY NIGHT: Sandora
I hate using public restrooms. It’s not the hovering, the issue is what you have to step through to get to that point. The price paid for two amaretto sours and the accompanying waters.
Walking back to Janelle and the rest of my brisket, I sensed something was off. I saw my friend on the stage, with a look I hadn’t seen since we went through that haunted house in 10th grade. I hope my hotel has a microwave.
Janelle drove me back to her apartment downtown. I needed answers: “That was crazy! I go to the bathroom and all hell breaks loose?”
“Sandora, I’m telling you. Little worms. Oozing out of the guy’s ear. I mean, what could it have been? And he was serving our food!”
“Don’t get me thinking about that, it’s gross enough as it is. How many of those cocktails did you have?”
“You’re saying you don’t believe me?”
I gave Janelle that look, the shut it down look. She took the hint and changed the subject. “I wish you would’ve heard that song he played. You talk about a classic, that song was everywhere.”
“What song?”
Janelle turned to answer, but stopped before she could start. “Wow, I hate when that happens,” she finally said. “I can’t remember the name or who sings it, but it was literally our middle school song! You would know it if you heard it. We sang it all the time!”
“Well? Lemme hear it, Whitney Houston.”
I sang the song, exactly like the waiter:
I’ll crawl into your nightmares
I’ll squirm into your dreams
I want your heart
I want your mind
A love like mine is hard to find.
I had to cut her off. “Girl, you are more tone deaf than I remember. Let’s leave the singing to the professionals, but I can safely say I never heard that song in my life. You said middle school?”
“Ugh!” Janelle said. “You are messin’ with me! This is going to make me crazy, trying to remember. I mean, it was THE song back then. I don’t know why I can’t think of the name or who sang it. It’s right at the tip of my tongue. What is it??”
I looked at Janelle like she was unfamiliar. “Don’t worry about it,” I assured her, “it’ll come to you. But I never heard it before, so I can’t help you on this one, girlfriend. Speaking of, tell me more about this Wakeem ‘the dream’ co-worker.”
TUESDAY: Janelle
Sandora’s conference lasted a couple days, but instead of planning fun after-work outings and touring the city I had just moved to a month before, I was sidelined with a migraine headache that nothing could cure. Except music. For some reason, the throbbing subsided whenever I turned on Spotify, a cure I stumbled onto while trying to find the mysterious yet familiar song played by the waiter earlier in the week.
The tune and lyrics were always lurking somewhere in the back of my mind. I kept humming it, in the shower, during my morning run across the Walnut Street Bridge, or while listening to my best friend update me on all the drama back home. The song was always in the back of my mind, even while listening to other songs to ease the headaches.
At first Sandora tried to help me, first with simple Google searches, then posting on Facebook groups and family chats, even humming into Shazam. This was the extent of our interactions during her visit, completely unproductive and if anything, made things worse.
“And you don’t think all this noise playing day and night isn’t actually GIVING you the headaches?” Sandora yelled over my living room speakers during her visit last night, “How can you stand it? Alexa, turn off this noise!”
The music stopped. A sharp pain hit the back of my head like a blow from a hammer. “Alexa, turn on Nirvana on Spotify!” I yelled as I collapsed to the floor.
Sandora ran over to help. She fell to her knees next me in surrender, seeing the cure take effect instantly. All she could do was laugh. “Nirvana?”
“Hey, they liked to repeat the same line over and over in their songs, right? Maybe that song is one of theirs,” I explained, forehead still planted on the carpet.
Copyright © 2021 by Cynthia Robinson Young
