Close encounter of the naked kind

I'd just arrived in the city from church in Jersey this afternoon, guitar case in hand. As I crossed Seventh Avenue, who should I see but the Naked Cowboy. He was walking down Seventh headed in my direction, bare muscles rippling, strumming his white guitar and singing at the top of his substantial lungs. For one terrifying moment, our eyes met, and I thought I'd find myself in some bizarre guitar duel a la Crossroads, my soul on the line. And then he sang his next verse, I kept walking up 32nd Street, and it was over.

Saturday night ride

The best time to ride the NYC subway is on a Saturday night. That's when you run across the most compelling cross-section of New Yorkers and bridge and tunnel people.
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Tonight, I stepped into the uptown E train with my guitar case and sat across from two guys who eyed me suspiciously. One of them literally eyed me with one eye -- he had a big black eyepatch over his left eye. Both men were dressed in black from head to booted toe, looking like a pair of Eastern European assassins. Perhaps they wondered if my guitar case contained a couple of automatic weapons. I, on the other hand, have no doubt that their leather attache cases contained Makarov pistols.
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At the Port Authority station, a man walked past me wearing a cowboy hat. You don't see many of those in this part of the world.
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Three or four Saturdays ago, I was carrying my guitar case toward the uptown F train platform. A gaggle of teenage girls stopped me and asked if I was carrying a keyboard. "It's a guitar," I said. "Ooh, I love the guitar," one of the said through a mouthful of braces. Later, they met me again on the platform and one of them came right up to me and pretended to take my guitar case, as if we were buddies waiting for the bus at school.
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I've blogged about my guitar case before, and nothing much has changed. I'm still getting approached by all kinds of people who would normally never give me a second glance, like the massive dude at Port Authority who looked like he could play center for the Knicks. "Is that a Fender Strat in there, man?" he yelled. I told him no it's a Parker, and expected him to say, "A what?" but he surprised me by saying, "Oh, you got a Fly in there." I wanted to shake his hand.

Judging a guitarist by his guitar case

Do you wear or carry anything that constantly draws conversation? You know what I'm talking about -- I'm talking about that skinny Jack Spade necktie that has all your co-workers asking where you got it every time you wear it. I'm talking about hearing random strangers say "I love your dress!" every time you wear your favorite muumuu. [I actually don't really know what a muumuu is, so I kind of made that one up.] This sort of thing happens to my wife all the time. She gets compliments about her clothes, her bags, her sunglasses and her jewelry, but because she has superb taste and works in fashion, this is not surprising. She gets compliments about her husband too, but really, would you say anything bad about a woman's husband to her face?

Me, I get more compliments on my occasionally spiky hair than anything I wear, though this doesn't happen often. But almost every time I carry my guitar case around, someone will ask me about it.

A guy on the subway asked me if I had a keyboard in there. [It's a hardshell case in the shape of a long rectangle, so I forgave the error, even though it has "Parker Guitars" embossed on the side.] Another guy asked me if I was Jimi Hendrix -- I told him I wasn't but that people mistake me for him all the time. Last month, a record producer ran to catch up with me and asked what kind of Parker was in the case -- he was a big fan of Parker and owned one himself.

This morning, I was getting off the train on the way to church, my guitar case in hand. I walked past a guy eating his breakfast at the door of the train station, and he yelled out, "Whatchoo got in there? Fender?" I told him it was a Parker, and he gave me a slightly confused look which I've come to expect, since even seasoned guitarists have never played a Parker. We quickly traded vital statistics: how many years we've played, who with played with, what countries we'd been to, and so on. When he heard that I'd played for 17 years, he said, "Oh, so you're good," which was a premature and erroneous evaluation, given he hadn't seen my unstudied technique and inability to play anything outside of the pop-rock genre. Ironically, he seemed unimpressed when I told him I couldn't read music and play only by ear. But he gave me some friendly advice ("never stop practicing") and wished me good luck.

I have these sorts of conversations all the time, but it's the guitar case that does it. It's big and black, with chrome latches and a sober heft to it. Anyone carrying it would look like a serious musician. And musicians automatically share a camaraderie, because, as every musician knows, it's hard to make it out there, and you need friends. When I carry that guitar case, I feel as if I have a friend on every corner.