WORST BIRTHDAY EVER

The Joy of Resentment

Since the early seventies, since I was old enough to remove a vinyl record from its sleeve, put it on the turntable, and listen to the whole thing while reading the lyrics printed on the inside,  I have been wholly devoted, with my entire heart, body and mind, to the music that Stevie Wonder made in the seventies.  Three albums have been with me throughout all the changes of my life, since childhood:  Fulfillingness First Finale, Talking Book, and the best album ever made by a human on earth, in my opinion:  Innervisions.  (Songs in the Key of Life is a close 4th.)   Stevie gave me an enduring love and need for soul, funk and gospel chord changes.  I always caught deep feelings listening to Stevie.  He stirreth my soul.  For years there was certain songs I couldn’t hear without crying, just because they were so beautiful they made my heart flay open bright orange like an overripe persimmon. The wise lyrics also felt like they were always guiding me, in my times of despair, to be more sublime and Stevie-esque. 

Don’t mess your face up 

With bitter tears 

Cause life is gonna 

Be what it is 

It’s OK 

Please don’t delay

To smile, please 

There are brighter days ahead 

I don’t believe Stevie Wonder is completely human.  To me, he is a religious figure — a transcendental spiritual being.   I have always wanted to kiss the hem of his dashiki. Nearly all of my music tastes start and end with Steveland Morris.  He imprinted early on my soul, and kept doing it to this day.   There is nothing I would not do for Stevie Wonder.  He taught me about love, soul, empathy, beauty and magic.  I’m crying right now, just writing down the lyrics from memory. 

Anyway, when I was in my twenties, I scored an apartment which I thought was the coolest place ever.   It was a small, fairly filthy little warehouse right on the cusp of North Beach and Chinatown that had once been a Chinese fish market.  I could see Bimbo’s 365 Club at the end of the street, if I walked outside.  I lived there with my best friend, whom we’ll call Carlotta, who worked as a farmer all week in an organic garden that sold baby greens to Chez Panisse.   There was always at least one motorcycle parked outside my window.  

So my birthday was coming up, and I told Carlotta, “Dude, Bootsy Collins is playing at Bimbo’s on my birthday.  That’s all I want.  If you don’t have the money, don’t worry about it, but LET ME KNOW so I can buy the tickets for myself, if you can’t.” 

It was an easy glide from Stevie Wonder into the funk universe of Bootsy Collins, the world’s most outlandish intergalactic bass player. 

“Dude, I got you.  Totally,” said Carlotta, holding my arm.  “No problem.” 

“If there is ANY PROBLEM, let me know, OK?  Because I absolutely have to go.” 

Bimbo’s 365 was my favorite club — stumbling distance from my warehouse, and all done up like a 1950’s dance club on the inside.  Shiny naugahyde banquettes, glittery walls and space age chandeliers.  Carlotta and I had seen Tito Puento there, and we had both been gyroscoped and hurled around the dance floor by an older mustachio’ed Hispanic man, an expert at ballroom dancing, who spun us around and sweated with perfectly erect posture.  “He’s like a carnival ride!” squealed Carlotta when she handed the man off to me. 

Best of all, Bimbo’s was a pretty intimate space.  I was so looking forward to getting up close and personal with Bootsilla, whose legendary work during the Parliament Funkadelic phase of his career was still the soundtrack to my every dance party. 

The day of my birthday, I got all dressed up for the concert, percolating with anticipation.  Carlotta, however, came home from work and informed me, flatly, that she had not purchased the tickets. 

“But… but… I ASKED YOU to tell me in ADVANCE if you weren’t going to do it, so I could do it!” I cried. 

“Sorry,” she shrugged. “I fucked up.” 

I ran outside to look down the street at Bimbo’s and see if there was any chance in hell I might be able to still buy tickets.   There were throngs around the venue, at least 20 deep.   I knew I wasn’t getting in.  

So I did nothing, for that birthday.  I forgave Carlotta, because she was a habitual fuck up, and there wasn’t really a lot to say about it. 

The next day, the newspaper announced that there had been a surprise guest in the middle of the Bootsy set.   Sometime around midnight, Stevie Wonder had taken the stage and performed a 3 hour set.  THREE MOTHERFUCKING HOURS. STEVIE. IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. WITH BOOTSY. 

This has grown over the years, in my mind, to become perhaps the sharpest, most monstrous, towering regret of my life.   It was my one opportunity in life to see Stevie in an intimate setting, down the street from my house, on my birthday.  I might have stood close enough for him to sweat on me, and then never bathed again.  I surely would have cried like an overwhelmed teenager watching the Beatles disembark from their plane.  I don’t think I’d have fainted.  I’m not a fainter. But I would have been changed.

Decades have passed, and the wound still smarts deeply.  It feels so, so wrong that I wasn’t there. That was MY STEVIE WONDER CONCERT.  It would have been a genuinely religious experience for me.  I feel I was denied a birthday audience with my personal patron saint. 

I’ve worked through a lot of Buddhist thought about this, in terms of forgiveness.  Carlotta and I remained friends for another 20 or so years.  Finally, she borrowed 8 grand from me, then blocked me on every known medium of communication.  

Maybe I’m lucky I didn’t get to go.  Maybe Stevie in the flesh would have been too much for me, and I would have gone into some kind of foaming-mouth, apoplectic love seizure and had to be laid out on Columbus Avenue by the bouncers with a pencil in my teeth.  Maybe I wasn’t spiritually ready for that kind of sudden enlightenment, and my soul would have shattered into a million little shards, and I would have ended up gibbering over a shopping cart full of antlers near the Civic Center. 

Now Stevie has moved to Africa, and I will probably never see him in concert, and I am probably going to hell because I will never, ever be able to completely forgive Carlotta for depriving me of what would probably have been the zenith of my life experience, and I’ll probably end up roommates in hell with Carlotta, and she’ll be there because she didn’t get me Bootsy tickets. 

But Stevie still always has the lyrics that console me. 

We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles

Can make you wish you were born in another time and space

But you can bet your life times that and twice its double

That god knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed

So make sure when you say you're in it but not of it

You're not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called hell

Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love

And maybe our children's grandchildren

And their great-great grandchildren will tell

Cintraw@gmail.com

Theme song by Jack Black

Artwork: “Bootsy,” oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2022