by Walter Agnew Moore II
30 March 2002, Amiens, France

So can anybody help me peel this Rainbow sticker off my forehead? I can't find it, but one must be there. Not once, not twice, but five times this last week I have been cornered by different women who want to have detailed discussions, with me, about other guys that they like instead of me.

At first I would listen. Then I started gritting my teeth and walking off. Last night, I came unhinged and blew up at one of them: "Do I *LOOK* like your girlfriend?"

Damn, they do not get it. "But Walter, we love to have a sensitive man we can talk to!" Yeah. I can understand that. Maybe one day you'll meet him. Meanwhile, that dart game is looking pretty interesting to me.

I should probably take a more T-Model Ford approach to everything. T-Model came here and played in Amiens. I just went to the show, didn't invite anybody to go with me.

Paul Jones opened the act. Good Blues, people rocking in the Lune des Pirates club. T-Model followed up, old guy sitting on a box.

"My name is T-Model Ford.
Some people say I'm 78, some say I'm 80.
I come from Greenville, Mississippi.
I am the BOSS of the Blues,
And that ain't no damn lie.
I am the BOSS of the Blues,
And you KNOW, that ain't no damn lie."

My Barons Tony and Guillaume were there too. Tony understands English, but he couldn't catch a word of T-Model's accent. Most Americans from farther north than Memphis couldn't either. I leaned over and tried to translate as he spoke: "Moi, je suis le paTRON des Blues... et ça, c'est pas de la merde, ça."

Then T-Model made good on his claim with his Peavey Razer guitar, hypnotic kicking rhythm. The big-leg girl to my right was off in dream-land. Heel-stamping music. Me, I was in my mama's car going down the hill on a dirt road down in the south part of the county, summertime, she's taking me along on one of her social-worker calls. The last real share-croppers. Shack. One room. One bed, one chair, one bushel-basket of purple-hull peas. And the old lady is trying to give the peas to my mother.

"Mama, why do people come out on the porch when we drive by?"

"They must think we're coming to see them today ... Hello!"

The next day, I am back in France in the present, walking around campus disguised with a tie on. I see the Paul Jones/ T-Model Ford poster, they are both standing in a plowed field raising their arms up. Man, that would be a nice poster in my place, good way to remember the music...

"Take it down, Walter!"

"T-Model?"

"Take the poster down, Walter, keep it!"

"But I might get in trouble, T-Model."

"Hell, boy, they just gonna throw it away! Now get your head out your ass and get me and Paul down off this damn metal wall-rack!"

I get out my office keys and saw through the layers of tape, remembering the Basic Rule of Stealing: Look like you are supposed to be doing this. The Security guard walks by while I'm rolling it up. We nod.

30 minutes later, I am talking to my class about music, and one of them brings up the fact that she hates Brittney Speares. Well, a wiser man than I used to say "strike while the iron is hot", so, since my job is to get them speaking English, I start quizzing them about how they feel about Brittney. They perk up. Ms. Speares is not loved in room A-4 of the Université de Picardie. I rise to her defense:

"But Brittney is a genius! Before she went into music, she invented a cure for cancer, and then she built the Eiffel Tower! You've SEEN the Eiffel Tower, right? She invented calculus!"

They are not buying it. I accuse them all of being crypto-Brittney-fans, and I describe their bedroom walls from when they were 12 years old, the Brittney poster, the stereo cranked up, the little girl alone in her room rocking out "oh Bay-Buh Bay-Buh..."

That tears it for one student, who cries out: "I had a Jean-Jacques GOLDMAN poster on MY wall when I was 12!"

"Who?"

"Jean-Jacques Goldman. The singer."

"Oh—THAT Jean-Jacques Goldman. Well listen, suppose you are in a row-boat on the Somme, down by Quai Bélu, and Jean-Jacques and Brittney are with you in the boat. Suddenly, the boat capsizes, you are all three in the water, you can swim, but Jean-Jacques cannot! So as you are trying to save him, you notice Brittney is swimming away, in a minute she will be on shore.

"SO: Do you save Jean-Jacques, or do you go drown Brittney now that you have the perfect chance to make it look like an accident? Let's go around the room and do a survey..."

"Jean-Jacques."

"I go to 'elp Jean-Jacques."

"Keel Brittney" (class titters)

"I save Jean-Jacques"

As we tally up the results, Jean-Jacques is odds-on to get saved, with about 20 per cent opting to improve pop-music instead. Then it is the turn of a tall dark girl with a Russian name, who glowers at me and says:

"I kill them BOTH."

-----------------

Later on, Reno and Laurent and Marie have me do a few songs with them at their gig at the bar up the hill from the train station called "Le Nautilus". I pop out a couple of old French folk songs that Americans aren't supposed to know, the crowd likes to sing. Then Laurent and I do Robert Johnson's "Come on in my kitchen", and my voice starts to go, damn cold.

I back off the singing a little, save the vocal chords. We have about four lines left, and then--

"Walter, you gonna sing that song?"

"T-Model?"

"I say, are you gonna sing that song? People are waiting."

"I'm gonna sing it, T-Model."

"You gonna sing it?"

"I'm gonna SING it!"

"Well sing it then!"

And I hit the next line so hard the people jump up and turn around. I don't know if it was music, but it was a performance.

Maybe some woman who was there in the crowd is annoying some guy right now by talking about me.