FIRST PERSON

Melon, whose Voice has been Heard by A&R at Sub Pop by Jamie Stewart

Melon is a secret star at the preschool. Two hours of my five-hour work day are spent in the nap room; Melon's cot is right in front of the desk where I sit. As I am writing this, Melon has gotten off of his cot and is lying on the ground silently, crazily whirling his limbs around and twitching his head like a late-in-the-game Gregor Mendel. I am not going to tell him to get back on his cot because as soon as I speak to him it will burst open his floodgate shaped mouth and he will not stop looping on what I said for, I am not exaggerating, an hour. I also am not telling him to get back on his cot because I want to see what he is going to do.
"Melon, get back on your cot."
"I am not on my cot. I am not going on my cot. I am going to take my cot home. I am going to take my cot home with my baby. The baby will KILL the dog. My baby will KILL the dog not like that but like THIS!" Then he will get off of his cot and-somehow this happens almost everyday-he will swipe a sheet of stickers without my noticing out of the drawer from the desk where I am sitting and then cover his face with said stickers. I do not how he does this. He also does this dressed in a red cowboy hat and with a kangaroo doll taped to his chest. This is his look.
A couple of weeks ago, Melon's stealth reached new heights of performance art. Melon had-again a mystery to me as to how he pulls this off-stolen a tape dispenser off of the desk where I am sitting and completely covered his face in a 3M-sponsored mummy wrap. He covered everything but his eyes and a little breathing hole for his nose. He attached a short tether from his head to the desk and basically taped his face to the desk. He life-lined his tape-covered head to the desk two feet away from me. Now there is a little girl who sleeps next to him named The Masturbator. It is totally normal for children to masturbate during nap, especially girls because they can do it outside of their clothes. However, The Masturbator WORKS herself. She works herself into a drenched sweat everyday humping on her fist or humping on a doll. She is the queen of fervor and her cot will actually start bouncing up and down, I shit you not. None of this is that big a deal, but it is kind of funny that she is soooooo into it. It is even funnier the day I look up from the book I am reading to an eerily quiet nap room to see the flushed-faced Masturbator in full action tilt laying next to Melon, whose head is taped to the desk. It was stunning and I thank God that no parent or DSS worker or school board member walked in at that moment.
"What the Hades is going on?!"
"OH, uh... David Lynch was just here I don't know where he went..."
Melon is also a secret star because when I talk quietly on the phone to friends during nap they can hear him talking about "I WILL make a gate that you cannot pass and I WILL TAKE IT HOME!" and think that it is funny as fuck. A few people ask about him even when I am not calling from the preschool and everyone can recognize his voice. That is more notoriety than most bands will ever get.
A filmmaker named Bob Moricz asked me to do some original music for a movie he did called "Brainbox." He had used an Esquivel track for a particular scene in a rough cut but needed uncopywritten music for a film fest. During nap, I recorded Melon whispering in a loon's way about "tell me something," " I am big," "we both get to eat him," "It does make SOUND" and set it to a house/exotica beat. It was almost unnecessary to make loops out of his Melon parts. The scene that his cocktail, HI-NRG theme is set over shows the films two main characters soaked in blood and one of them dressed in medical garb. They are slow motion dancing in front of a dwindling crowd of destroyingly bewildered tourists at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco who are trying to watch a Caribbean steel drum band. The scene goes on and on and none of the tourists appear to understand what is going on and none of them think it is funny. The guys in the steel drum band just look dead ahead as if nothing is going on. All this defended by a dance track and Melon chant.
Right now Melon is unwrapping the kangaroo from his chest and looking sad. Melon freaks a lot of the other children out and spends a lot of time alone and in trouble. Other children call him bad, which he fortunately responds to with "I AM NOT BAD!" (100X). But, standing up for himself all of the time obviously wears on him because sometimes he will say, "NATHAN CALLED ME BAD!" (100X) and Nathan is not at school that day. Once I had to yell at him because he smacked another kid in the face really hard and he just put his head down on my lap and said "I am tired and upset." (100X)
I wonder if that movie "Brainbox" will become a cult hit and in ten years when Melon is an out-of-the-loop, genuine alterna-kid, probably in special ed. and probably still in trouble a lot and alone a lot, he will watch movies like that. Maybe he will subconsciously remember his little voice and in the back of his mind his secret stardom will quietly unfold and his life will, in a tiny way, feel less unrecognizable and less hard. But until then, "The man has NO legs. The man has NO legs and cannot POOP OR PEE! My brother lifted up the blanket and he saw them. He can eat and he has WHEELS!"(100x).