Meet Me in New Brunswick

by christopher taylor

My friend Blind Larry once told me about a film he had seen when he was younger in which a post-Oz Judy Garland sang a beautiful rendition of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" to a teary-eyed younger sibling. Needless to say, the scene upset him. The child, he claimed, didn't deserve such a soothing treasure after having thrown a life-sized doll in front of an oncoming trolley and flour into a crotchety dog owner's eyes.

I wondered how Larry, blind from birth, had so accurately described Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis, and why he had insisted upon calling it Air Force. I also wondered why he thought a prankster to be undeserving of a comforting song, and how he mistook a cum-guzzling heroin addict like Judy Garland for being a musician capable of rendering anything beautiful. Mostly I wondered about why Larry kept donning dresses and calling me "John Truett". I suppose it must have had something to do with the way I would constantly mispronounce "Larry" as "Esther." Or perhaps the way I would ask him to the Hub City Ball, knowing full well that his tuxedo was locked up in the chronically closed tailor shop, before ditching him for my grandfather. Or perhaps it was just because he was a slave to the musical, a sociopath with song and dance on the brain. Sing, Larry, sing.