[composed entirely on the Notes application of my iPhone between Rockefeller Center and 2nd Avenue on the F subway line, and also in bed between 4-6 a.m. this morning, because I couldn’t sleep.  Presented unedited.]

I’ve never thought that being a whore would bother me. I mean, like, an actual whore. Somehow I think I could separate love and sex (God knows I’ve done it before) and not take the whole compensation element personally. And as I’ve said before, many of my friends in the arts actually make their rent by prostituting themselves. Again, I’m not being symbolic. They’re actual whores.  These people have occasionally argued the lifestyle’s merits to me, and I’ve shrugged. The issue isn’t a moral one for me, but rather about ability and pickiness. I’d be too selective a whore, I’m afraid, and not at all a good one if put in a position that seems especially awkward, or paired with someone especially horrid.

Anyway, I digress, because the real matter at hand is that I’m on a subway platform with sore hands and dress pants on, thinking to myself: So this is what a whore feels like, that oft-mentioned whore feeling! I get it!

I just spent nearly two hours playing the piano for money at a gig that came to me through a series of recommendations and odd coincidences, none of them important. But from the start I smelled trouble.

It was to take place at an exclusive New York City department store, at a private party for sales associates who have sold a million dollars or more in merchandise. At first I was elated. “Wow, I’m getting referred,” I thought. “And I don’t even DO lounge music. This is cool. I’m really making it.” Etc. Etc.

Then the red flags began. The guys in charge wanted to meet me. Then HEAR me. A couple decades’ worth of audition traumas came flooding back. I agreed to have them meet me at Soho House where, twice a week, I play two-hour marathons of ambient treatments of pop music.

They’ll love it, I thought.

So picture it. I’m deeply involved in a 10+ minute rendition of “Like a Virgin” when these two men in suits appear. Now I really start to play out. These are the guys, I figure. I start playing inside the piano, delving deep into the psycho-sexual-subterranean universe of “Like a Virgin.”. Eventually I feel a tap on my shoulder. They introduce themselves.

Did they did the place all right? I ask. “No…not really.”

So, anyway….

And as we go on introducing ourselves for a bit, they hint ever more emphatically that whatever I was just doing, was definitely NOT what they had in mind for the party. “We want, you know, show tunes, standards… for people to sing along.”

I gulped.

“Do you take requests?”

No. “Sure!”

“Good, because really we just want the party to be Fun,” one of them said. It’s a word that would haunt me for the next couple weeks and all the way to tonight. “Fun. We want Fun.”

Fun?  I wasn’t really sure I really did Fun. It was clear these two men were worried for the same.

I don’t know why I didn’t say No right then and there, why I didn’t say, “Thanks anyway but this isn’t really a match,” and send these gentlemen on their merry way to The Monster where half the guys in the room have libraries of Fun material in their heads and hands. Those were the guys for the job.  Why was I going along with this?

Money. I wanted $250 for two hours of playing. Simple.

“Can you send us a set list?”

What?  “Sure!” I chirped.

I accepted the gig, and the three weeks since have been hell. I’ve been wracking my brain over Fun, and it hasn’t helped that every couple days I’ve received some kind of reminder email from those same two guys with less-than-discreet emphasis on how Fun the event would be, or rather, was supposed to be…

Fun.

I can’t do this, I thought, going to Vermont and delving through all the cheesy sheet music I could find, borrowing show tune books from friends here in New York.

Or maybe it’ll be amazing.  This also crossed my mind.  I’ve been known to blow things like this up in my mind — you should’ve seen me getting ready for a caroling party this winter, holy shit —  and then finding out at the event that there was never anything to worry about.

Everything’s fine. Yes… it’ll all be okay.

It was mere minutes after I arrived tonight when I realized it wouldn’t.  Not by a long shot.  

“Do you have a set list?” pointedly asked one of the planners the second I sat at the piano, examining my books and a rough list of pop songs that couldn’t have been satisfying to him or anyone. Throughout the night, people would pick it up, puzzleover it, and then squawk openly about not recognizing the songs.  ”What are these — tunes or makeup colors,” one girl would shriek.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  ”I have an idea of what I’m going to do,” I lied, hoping the planners would leave.

They didn’t, and the night became less about Fun and more about Suzanne.  Yes, Suzanne, someone whose role and identity remained a mystery, but who apparently I was supposed to fear because everyone else did.  “When Suzanne comes in, really let ‘er rip.” “Suzanne will want to sing.” “Suzanne will dig through your music.” And so on.

“We want you to start with something peppy and Fun,” said the other planner, suddenly leafing through my books. “Can you do…uh, ‘The Very Thought of You,’ only more upbeat?  Peppy?  Fun?”

“Sure!” Already this was a nightmare. The piano was rented, just barely tuned, and in the middle of the room. A centerpiece. I was noodling around the keyboard when the same guy who had just prepared my opening number for me shouted across the room: “HERE THEY COME!”  Meaning, the sales associates, the partygoers.  And so, panicked — I don’t know why his cause for alarm — I started, and so the energy was set for the next two hours.

Minutes later, Suzanne arrived to much aplomb.  One of the planners whizzed by.  ”This is the moment!  Suzanne’s here!  Give it all you got!” he instructed in fearful tones. I just banged out “The Very Thought of You” again, only louder.

For the rest of the evening, any moment of the slightest comfort was quickly shattered by some administrator whispering a demand in my ear, or rather, a vague suggestion. I can’t tell you how many times this happened, nor could I necessary tell you why. The guests all seemed to be having Fun.  It was just these administrators who were losing their minds.  It had to be Suzanne.

“Can you do doo wop?” one minion asked.  I looked at her blankfaced.  ”Like, what?  A barbershop quartet on the piano?” I asked.  At another point, this same person came over while I played and shivered, as if afraid, “Okay so we need to spruce it up! Is this ’Celebration’ song you have on your list song like—” and then she began singing, “…‘celebrate good times, come on!!” I don’t have the heart to tell her no (in fact, it’s a Madonna song) and so I began to play the disco song she hoped for.  

This was when I really started to feel disgusting.

Then Suzanne appears. A hulking, bird like figure, she’s holding a mic. “I’m about to speak,” she says to me. “Can you play ‘New York, New York’?” I try, and get through no more than ten notes before she cuts me off. “That’s good.”  She addresses the crowd of million dollar money makers, though I’m not sure she thanks a single one of them for anything, and passes the mic to yet another man who tells these people why they’ve proved the recession wrong.  No sooner does this pomp come to end than Suzanne is at my side demanding to sing, but she’s not sure what song. All my suggestions are flops.  “TOO SLOW,” she announces.  Then she decides, for some reason, on “Making’ Whoopee” and sings, mic and everything, swaying back and forth behind me (a menacing presence) as everyone in the room watches, smiles frozen to their faces. Then she sings “Misty.” A circle forms. People are cheering (for her). The whole thing is sort of like watching the North Korean mourners for Kim Jong Il, weeping theatrically in the town squares for all the cameras to see.

Then Suzanne disappears, but not before urging everyone who catches her eye to come ask me to play a song. “He’ll play anything you want,” she says — “No I won’t,” I actually manage to reply — and my only interactions with her from that point on come via shrouded complaints from her associates about what I’m doing. And make no mistake, these come every couple minutes.

Imagine if you threw a party and every someone came up to you and said they didn’t like the lighting — no other information, but perhaps the lighting could be more… Fun — and then they vanish, only to reappear thirty seconds later to say the same thing. Then imagine this going on for two hours. That’s sort of what this was like for me.  Except lights are lights. And music is —

“How about ‘Hey Big Spender’? Can you play that?”

“Huh?”

Yes, now others are following Suzanne’s suggestion, girls in cocktail dresses requesting mostly Frank Sinatra songs — go figure — which I either don’t have or, in many cases, have never heard of. A dehumanizing exchange ensues before they slink away moaning.

Meanwhile, I’m still pounding away, trying to be Fun, head delved into the keyboard like a mechanic under the hood. No one says a word of encouragement.  No one offers a drink.  All I’m getting are rapid-fire suggestions, demands, complaints, and then — like a tornado passing, everyone more-or-less gives up.  They leave.

All is quiet, and the last remaining party stragglers — Suzanne left without saying goodbye — sit in small huddled groups about the room.  Then, even they disappear.  A new event manager, a kind of dapper bear in a pink plaid shirt, appears and signals for me to stop with that kind of self-throat-slitting gesture — I’m mid-song, after all — because he wants to move the piano and clean up the room. The original planners come forward with the contracts and I sign some dotted lines.  It’s over.

“I think it went well,” one of them says.

“You do?” I ask.  

“I think everyone had a great time.”

“Really?”

Well, I’m not one to argue.  I nearly ran out of the room.

Which brings me to this subway platform, feeling like a whore. My entire facility is spent, but I don’t feel an ounce of fulfillment.  I’m only upset with myself.  I’ve exploited my craft. There was nothing, I repeat, nothing validating about the last two hours of my life; I was a trick pony, everyone hopping on.  $250?  It’s a small price for this weird sense of shame I feel, my dignity shredded.  And it’s a feeling that perhaps the million dollar earners who I just played for wouldn’t understand, or Suzanne, their queen.  They might look at it with the same baffled glare with which they stared at my set list.  And perhaps it’s something I never fully understood until tonight either.  I, who always thought I could be a whore, no problem, but who just moments ago scrambled about the piano for my copy of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo.”

“That’s good,” whispered one of the planners in my right ear, gazing all the while at Suzanne as I oom-chump-chumped away.  ”Yes, ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’”  I sank inside, felt sick, and my eyes darted about the room.  Who’s next, and what will they ask me to do?  “That’s what we want,” he cooed.  ”Just something fun.”