· 4 min read
Real Love is About Constant Communication: A Sweetwater Fan Fiction
Written by Adam Schatz
The following is a work of fiction, please do not sue us. Though we will happily accept your sponsorship $$$ be a good sport.
I feel the vibration in my pocket and a knot in my stomach. I pull out my phone and look down and it’s ringing again. Area code: Indiana, name: unlisted. They just can’t get enough of me. I secretly like that. I pick up on the fourth ring to not seem too desperate and the voice on the end sings its salutation.
"Hey there”
Hey back, I think.
“I just wanted to see how those 45 headphone adapters were working out for you.”
He remembered. Do you know how hard it is to find someone who remembers? Of course you do, we’re all sharing a one way ticket on the one-direction spin of this planet we’ve taken for granted. The best we can do is distract ourselves. And in the short term, buying music gear online fills the void well enough. But voids have a way of…gobbling. And eventually you just want to share this chasm with someone else. Someone who cares. Someone who sends candy every single time.
“Are you still there?” He asked playfully. But I knew better than to give it away so quickly. If this was meant to be, he’d know too. He’d feel that this magnetism goes both ways…that there was something more here. After all, we’ve been through so much. He knows me better than my family knows me. What could be more exposing than one's receipts? Only he knows what’s in my lightless jam room. But he can never know who I think about whilst I jam. Or can he…
“Well I can hear you breathing heavily so I suppose that means you’re satisfied with the purchase. I just want you to know that I'm here for you and all of your needs. We actually have a pretty great Father’s Day promotion coming up...”
This is all too much to bear. My palms are sweaty. Knees weak…arms are heavy. I listen doe-eyed as Keith Richardson from Sweetwater describes their upcoming sale, where if you can submit your phone records to prove that you haven’t spoken to your dad in 12 or more months, you can get a free Behringer coaster with every purchase. He says that there is a misprint on the coasters, which were supposed to be blank, save for the Behringer logo. But instead the coaster prominently displays the phrase “three reichs don’t make a wrong” in comic sans. Keith continues on about how Behringer CEO Uli Behringer swears this is an internal joke gone wrong and is deeply sorry for it, and that there is absolutely no validity to the rumors that his company is operated on the notion of distracting the single Jewish male consumer with options for affordable synthesizer purchases while feeding income into the white supremacy message board meme machine.
Anyway, they don’t want to see all these coasters go to waste, so.
I love when Keith from Sweetwater rambles on like this…it’s so nice that he can be vulnerable with me. And I really feel like myself. It's rare to find someone who just lets you be yourself, I think. We are always putting on masks just to be accepted. I remember as a kid on the playground, I’d be digging in the sandbox, testing out signal flow concepts for my lightness jam room. I’d be almost done when a gang of marching band jerks would kick sand in my face and totally erase my work. They said nobody cared about the music I made alone. They taunted that harmony should be made together, with acoustic instruments, preferably on a football field. Then they told me they’d give me a knuckle sandwich today, which I could then cover with equal interest-free payments over the next three months if I signed up for their credit card, which was too good of a deal to pass up.
These are memories I’d be happy enough to forget…but I hoped to one day tell Keith just how comfortable I felt with him on the other end of the phone…
“Keith, I feel really comfortable with you on the other end of the phone.” I nervously said.
“I…oh…thank you. My supervisor is going to be absolutely thrilled to hear that. We really appreciate your business."
Oh Keith from Sweetwater. I bet you do. I…bet…you…do. I don’t say anything more, just a bit more heavy breathing until I hear an adorable click at the end of the line. I’m fine taking it slow, I know I don’t say much…not yet. But maybe I will one day. As long as he keeps calling. But he’ll keep calling. He always does.
Adam Schatz is a musician and writer and is founder of the band Landlady.
