Annie’s Song

Of course his renditions of “Love on the Rocks,” “Big Bad John,” “Suspicious Minds” were top drawer. What would you expect from a three-hundred-pound, karaoke-DJ bear wearing a flannel shirt and elastic-waist jeans? But when his baritone boom rose like foam into “Annie’s Song,” I was so surprised I cried. It had been another very long day—another day I hadn’t downloaded QuickBooks, another day I’d skipped my posture exercises.

I’d performed a balance-beam routine to it in junior high school. The other girls had all picked harder songs like “My Sharona” and “We Will Rock You.” I thought choosing John Denver meant I was different—more genteel. And I was different: I looked like the fat kid in Bad Santa. I must’ve looked especially dumb in my sagging white tube socks, mouth open, looking down the entire time but still about to fall.

Later that night, the karaoke DJ and I did a shot of Fireball together. “I’ve never drank Fireball before,” I said. “Oh, you’ll like it,” he assured me, “it’s very popular.”

I went home and fell asleep and dreamed I moved to a cabin in the woods with no electricity. As a poet, it was the only environmentally responsible thing to do even though, I knew, I would have to kill myself when I got too old to work. “What a bummer,” I thought, and suddenly I was wrapping my mouth around a shotgun barrel so real I could taste it—like pencil lead. “How is that possible?” I wondered, then my friend, M, dream-texted me:

“Help! Trapped at a remote finishing school! Come get me!”

“They still have finishing schools?” I texted back.

“Questionable ideas have answers,” she replied.