My Month with Chet Marcus

For about a month after high school, I shared a van with a dude named Chet Marcus and bounced from campground to campground in the Mississippi backwoods, publishing vanlife content to my YouTube channel and scratching out the beginnings of The Kindness of Strangers, a tell-all memoir of my youth among fundamentalist Christians and Southern homophobes which I am positive will one day become a New York Times bestseller if only I’m allowed to finish it.

Chet and I had traveled as far as Clarksdale when I first mentioned to him this memoir idea and contrasted that ambition with my Daddy’s expectation that after four years of Ag Science at Ole Miss I would return home to my family in the Delta and help out on the farm. Know what, bro? said Chet. Forget about it. Life’s too short to give a shit. Let him fuck off.   

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Chet Marcus, to explain, was this random musician I stumbled across in a bar: he was 36 years old and nursing his fourth or fifth shot of tequila, whereas I was, legally speaking, still too young to drink. A guitar virtuoso from down in Picayune — and a fan of both Chet Atkins and Greil Marcus, hence the stage-name — Chet was passing through my podunk Delta town on the way to one of his gigs, and since I enjoyed our chat and his music and wanted to escape my parents, I tagged along. Chet was a fiend with an acoustic guitar, and oftentimes when we would park the van at the end of a day’s drive and grab a couple of Schlitzes and settle down for the evening, Chet would hop up on a nearby picnic table, or else climb atop the biggest rock he could find in the vicinity of our camp, and from that vantage point pound out his tunes as if the forest itself were his muse, and me and the innocent woodland creatures his enraptured audience. 

 

For a while, with access still to my parents’ phone plan, I dutifully recorded Chet’s performances and uploaded them to YouTube. In addition, imagining myself a budding influencer or a vanlife content creator, I started my own newsletter featuring twice-daily updates from our life on the road — “Vanity of Vanities,” I called it — and included various takes on philosophical and political issues, as well as stories of my own experience as a liberal teen in the bowels of the Old Confederacy. Waste of time, bro, said Chet, as he finished his second beer and cracked open a third. The van, the music: you can’t monetize this shit. Memes and social media: it’s a dead end, man. Ain’t art for art’s sake — it’s chasing the likes — and that shit’ll break you.     

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 I guess you might say that Chet didn’t understand my drive to make a mark on the world, to stand out from the crowd and attract attention, but I did point out his hypocrisy in that he played in front of paying audiences in his barroom gigs and seemed utterly delighted at the crowd’s applause. How’s it any different? I asked him. Is that art for art’s sake? Is that a waste?  

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Aw, shit, man, said Chet. It’s just paying the bills, bro. A necessary evil. Straight bullshit. I mean, if’n it was possible, I’d live out here in the woods if I could and play to fucking nobody.      

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 He told me that with the exception of crazy-ass Christian families like mine, the most oppressive thing in the world was insatiable ambition, and the most painful, an unrealized dream.

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Tell you what, said Chet. I’ll make it so damn clear, bro, I’ll make it make sense. Listen.

 

Chet’s story began when he was 17 years old, and with only six months left of his senior year, when he dropped out of high school, ditched his part-time line cook job at a local café, and boarded a Greyhound headed south for New Orleans, where he worked for a while as a front waiter in a French Quarter restaurant and rented an apartment on Elysian Fields Avenue. At that time, Chet was already in the music business, but he scored little success in that line of work and managed to earn even less money than from his tips at the restaurant. Shit, man, them days was so bad I almost quit the scene, said Chet, but something inside me held back, and I kept hustling. 

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At Buffa’s, a middle-aged man in the audience who called himself an agent heard a couple of Chet’s songs and approached him after the set. Lars Utemeyer, said Chet. Good ole Lars. Said my act was a golden fucking goose. A strange man, bro, but he wanted me to record and shit, so what could I say? A non-practicing tax attorney and scion of old New Orleans money, Lars stayed down in this luxurious pad on Esplanade he’d inherited from his Mama — he called it his “Belle Isle” — and on weekends as an integral part of his private dinner parties, Lars paid Chet to provide the music — mostly American Songbook standards, some ‘60s folk, a lot of indie tunes — and to create the bohemian atmosphere of what Lars imagined was the equivalent of a New York or Parisian literary salon. For the first time, Chet could finally forget his restaurant job and focus primarily on his music. It was a blessing, man, a goddamned blessing, continued Chet, and yet I ain’t realized that that shit was an unstable situation and couldn’t last. Lars, it turns out, was a sad case, if not particularly atypical: having left home as a younger man in pursuit of a career as a Hollywood producer, he had returned after only a year to his Mama’s house in New Orleans and had resigned himself to law school as a sop to his thwarted ambition. Worst part, man, was ole Lars, he’s all eat up with resentment, said Chet. And when he was drinking? Aw, shit, he could get mean: shouting curses, bro, abusive as fuck. Shit, I ain’t never even knowed what set the motherfucker off: I mean, for a while we’s tight and all, but then . . . .   

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Things came to a head at the conclusion of the annual Utemeyer Halloween costume party, a drug and alcohol-fueled banger, a phantasmagoric rave — deejayed by Chet — from whose ethereal heights at daybreak Lars reluctantly descended. Tell you the truth, bro, I ain’t sure what I done. He comes and squeezes me and puts a hand on my leg — it was our usual, you know, the signal and all — but I was still working, with guests dancing and shit, and happy and free in my music, and I guess I ain’t give him enough attention that time, ‘cause he flipped the fuck out. From out of nowhere, Lars accused Chet of leeching off his family’s financial resources and taking advantage of Utemeyer “generosity” to advance his music career at the expense of his patron. The job, beneficial as it had been, was a capitalistic cul-de-sac: exploitative, dispiriting.

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Shoulda expected it, too, bro, said Chet. ‘Cause it was a long way coming. Golden fucking goose, he called me, gonna record and shit: ambition, bro, it’s a goddamn curse, and it fucked Lars up.

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When he’d finished his story, Chet shared with me a flask of bourbon, and as I took a sip I observed the lines of his face and tried imagining his appearance from 15 years ago. It was a challenge. Long-haired and bearded, a vagabond of grizzled visage and melancholic bearing, Chet’s world-weary stare seemed inappropriate to a man so young, and yet like the nighttime insects haunting our campfire, I was drawn to his dim flickering light and could not look away.

But, damn it, at least I’m free, said Chet. I set myself free. It’s living alive in the fucking moment, bro. Burdenless: no home, no future, few bucks for a meal, a drink and shit, and music.   

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He pressed the flask to his lips and drank from it and then passed it to me. I thanked him. 

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Shit, said Chet. Ole Lars, bro, he was something else. An asshole, for real. But who ain’t? 

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It took a few years, but eventually Chet adjusted to his life on the road, to picking up gigs in small country towns across the South and spending his days at state park campgrounds, strumming his guitar in the back of his van and hiking woodland trails as a respite from human contact. About a decade and a half later, his range narrowed to Mississippi: this would’ve been around the turn of the millennium, and at that time I was in my early teens, in the throes of those first few years of self-discovery, when, like a child with its left foot in a right-handed shoe, I began to feel increasingly ill at ease in the world of my family and struggled to conform myself to its insistent demands. Aw, shit, man, you ain’t the only one, said Chet. Happened to me, too: they stifle your voice, bro, twist your arm — (To which my Daddy, the Church of Christ preacher, would’ve quoted Colossians at me: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.”). Thing is, continued Chet, ain’t no kinder, gentler place out there: my Mama, like your fucking family, was a fundamentalist prick — a godawful one, too, ain’t no doubt there — and yet it was this bitch-ass life down here made her into that, you hear me? and so, somehow, no matter how hard I fucking try I can’t hate her, bro: I think about her and shit: I can’t shake it.      

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Chet said that his parents had divorced when he was still relatively young, and in the chaotic aftermath he and his Mama had joined a local Pentecostal church which had instilled in them the foundational belief that to be worthy of Christ’s heavenly promise, a purity of body and mind must be maintained in opposition to the world’s corruption. Chet, however, had already experienced by this point the first stirrings of an unquenchable desire quite obviously forbidden by the congregation’s teachings, and so when he came out during senior year, his Mama threatened him with eviction from their home, alarmed as she was by the specter of her child’s Satanic impulses. Said it was hardest damn thing she’d ever have to do, Chet told me. Tough love, she said it was, but it’s all for my soul, you hear me, for my goddamned eternal salvation.

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His Mama made good on her threat, and for over a decade after leaving his hometown, Chet refused to see or speak to her, and he consoled himself with the idea that like a troubadour of old — an orphan, alone and homeless — it was his destiny to wander the earth and to cultivate his art. It’s like that quote from Matthew, I said to Chet, digging deep into my past and reflecting on my own predicament.“The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Chet smiled. That’s right, bro, he said and lifted his flask in a gesture of solidarity. It’s all of us, too, hear me? Can’t go home again. Fuck no. I mean, I did try. 

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Apparently, sometime in the last six or seven years, a couple of old acquaintances from Picayune had reached out to Chet and informed him that his Mama had been diagnosed with lung cancer as a result of her daily cigarette habit and a lifetime of intermittent drinking. Doctors say she ain’t long for this world, they told him, but she would sure love to see you while she still can. Chet grimaced as he recounted the rest of his story, laughed bitterly and spat in the bushes. Going back, you hear me, was a bad call, he said. A mistake, for sure. Disturbing as fuck. 

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In the agony of her disease, she was practically a corpse, so different from the Mama Chet had known in his youth, and from long absence and the depths of her fading vision, perhaps he, too, appeared to her as but a shadow of the child she had raised, a body and soul warped by time as we all are into an uncanny simulacrum of our younger selves, into a ghost. He tried to comfort her, to make small talk, to find the positive in the past, and to bridge their differences. But then came the fucking coup, he said. A knife in the gut. Her last one. She could barely speak, but she drew him close. Missed you, son, she said. I love you. Forgive you. But I can’t approve it.  

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Chet shrugged. That there was my fucking Mama, he said to me. Bigot she was, was the bigot she went out as, too, and I shouldn’t’ve expected no better, shit naw. Trust me on this, man: ain’t no turning back; but to be clear, ain’t no way forward neither. That’s all there is to it. Fuck. 

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Oh, but there’s gotta be more to it. There’s gotta be another way, I said as Chet stumbled off and climbed back into the van and bedded down for the evening. Alone in the woods, I spoke to the night, to the stars and the glowing spiders’ eyes, and to the dying campfire. It just doesn’t jive with my plan, I whispered. It’s not what I wanted, and I refuse to accommodate it. It’s like what Faulkner said: the past is not the past — hell, it’s not even past yet — it’s still with us and lingering on, but I can’t give into that sentiment or submit to defeat. I just can’t. I’ll go crazy.    

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And so, for the rest of the month, when we weren’t driving, I worked frantically on my memoir, reveling in the romance of an American road trip and savoring for the first time that freedom which Chet had so thoroughly embraced. My parents called off and on, and we argued, until, understanding at last that there would be no quick and easy separation from them, I apologized for leaving home so abruptly and insisted I would see them again soon. I appreciated that Chet didn’t laugh or roll his eyes at this appeasement, and that he didn’t ask questions. Fuck, bro, say what you gotta say, he told me. It’s making the best of bad shit, so what else can you do?

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I need to have a clean break, I said. Nashville, New York: somewhere so far away they can’t reach me. I’ll write the book, I’ll finish it and confess my life to the world, and then I’ll . . . . 

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We were in Tupelo, not far from Elvis’s birthplace, and only a couple of miles from the Natchez Trace Parkway. I can’t go home, I said. I have to get out while I can. I have to move on.

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And when the book’s out and shit? Chet asked. Will it solve your problems? Well, will it?

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I told him I thought it would, although saying that aloud left a certain doubt in my mind.

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Sure, sure, said Chet. It all makes sense. But then what happens, bro? What then? He polished off his fifth Schlitz and fingered his guitar absent-mindedly, a low, unsatisfying hum.

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Well, I don’t know, I said. I haven’t got that far. I’m taking it day by day. I guess I have to.

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Chet grinned. Advice to you, bro, he said. Go as far and as fast and for as long as you can, goddamn it. Keep on keeping on, my brother. But then when it happens, when it all comes crashing and shit, when your dreams, you know, when they seem all busted and fucked up, well then, bro, you just gotta forgive yourself and leave it all there in the wreckage, in the fucking pit.

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After all, that book could be the shit, my man, that book could be the shit. Or else it could be nothing, bro. A fucking waste. It could be as insignificant as this fucking song I’m toodling now. 

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Oh, no, don’t worry, I said. It’s got a future, I just gotta finish it. 100%. It’s a sure thing.  

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Chet laughed and set aside his guitar, crushed his beer can, and rubbed his tired eyes. He wrapped himself in his sleeping bag and sat with me amidst the nighttime noises and said nothing for several minutes. Finally, he spoke to me: his voice hoarse, an instrument out of tune.

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That’s a good one, bro, he said. Real good. 100%. Sure thing. You’ve figured it out. Fuck.