Stratocaster With Wings

I lifted the Stratocaster from my lap as I went to answer the door. Peter stepped inside and I smiled at him, but my guitar must have smiled harder. It was all he could look at.

“Will you play me something?” he asked.

My response was a sheepish no, of course. I had picked up the guitar only a month prior…I was not ready for my first performance. My G chords still sounded like mangled As. I could make a one-string song unrecognizable.

And yet, somehow, I ended up back on my couch with the Stratocaster on my lap and Peter sitting to my left. I thought briefly that Jimi Hendrix might possess me and save me from embarrassment. He didn’t. The C chord I attempted probably would have sounded better had I thrown my guitar across the room. I felt my face grow warm and my back tighten with frustration.

Peter reached over. I moved my hand away as he placed his fingers over the strings in that staircase shape I wanted so badly to perfect. He told me just to strum. And as I did, he made all the other shapes I had spent a month trying to name and remember to no avail. The teepee, the small line, the triangle.

Chords--nothing more. But my ears heard Dreams and Graceland. And my body felt like it had escaped gravity…like, suddenly, all the hard things in the world could be easy.

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Wrote this recently for my memoir class and have been sitting on it since. More school-assignment content to come :)

My Stratocaster with wings (clearly)