The Smooth Buttery South

We pull up to Tina’s apartment in Austin, Texas. She is walking two medium-sized dogs as we pull in to her building. Tina is Jack’s friend from graduate school. She’s a bleach-blonde underdeveloped Pamela Anderson. I recently went to get a haircut and they convinced me to get highlights, but I couldn’t stand the blonde streaks and colored my hair back dark brown shortly after, claiming, “I am just not a blonde. It isn’t me.” This makes me feel more hip with more aspirations than the usual pretty girl. I don’t want to be pretty; I want to be some mix of cute and tough. Tina is so much those things that she is able to retain the tough girl image while looking anything but that. Her face is flawless. She has the most attractive countenance I’ve ever seen in person, is very fit, yet still down to earth, intelligent, and humorous. She uses Cherry Vanilla body wash and shampoo, yet unscented Seventh Generation laundry detergent. She leads a simple existence, yet the few things she does have are lavish. Her ruffling amber bedspread, her vanilla shampoo and cherry tart body wash. It makes me feel unfeminine, androgenous even, to use my bar of unscented dove while showering surrounded by her products whose aroma is intended to please or tease men. How does she pull off all of these roles? She makes me want to be blonde again. She makes me want to be her.
We go out to a street festival of sorts in Austin called First Thursdays. There are many restaurants and bars, plus a few vendors and plenty of people in the streets. We end up at The Continental Club which is known for it’s music. I’m not expecting much coming from New York City where a regular past time is to go out for live music, but do you remember the first time you tasted butter? I do. I was four years old and I found a stick on the kitchen counter in a gooey melty blob from sitting in the window. I was just tall enough to reach my eager pudgy fingers in to the glowing canary colored mold. The first taste sent my senses went in to shock. I was on overload. My body convulsed. I was crazed and smiling. I had to get more. I ate an entire bar before my mom found me, licking my fingers, deviously satisfied. I don’t know much about the aftermath. I may have vomited, I may have passed out, I may have been spanked. What happened next is not important, the butter is all that matters.
That’s what hearing Churchwood for the first time is like. The buttery, savory south. It’s music has me floored, grounded right there in the present, not thinking about past or future for once. The lead singer’s voice ranges from raspy and rough to smooth and velvety. The honkey-tonk jazziness has my bumpkin bumpin’, my feet tapping and my knees bending. Soon I am dancing so effortlessly it’s as if I am floating and someone else is in control. Usually baffled by the idea of moving my body, I would ask my dancer friend Laura how she knows what to do, how to move. She never fails to reply, “Just feel the music.” I felt it, I stroked it, I was taken over by the music in Austin.