by
Maria Santoferraro
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NO SONGS FOR MEN? Question #1: Off the top of your head, can you name a song that has a man’s name as the title? Answer: If you did, I’m impressed— because 92.2% of those surveyed did not! Question #2: Now if I ask you to name a song with a girl’s name as the title, I bet you can come up with something really quick… Answer: Veronica, Jane, Michelle, Angie, Layla, Maria—there are tons of great songs named after women, and I’m sure it was no problem for you to come up with a few! Why is this? Well, I think most women know the reason. We just never feel that inspired to write a love song about a man. Maybe at the beginning of a relationship we’ll pen a few verses, but eventually most men will break our heart, don’t put down the toilet seat, get love handles, annoy the crap out of us, and then there goes the hit song. The only songs I can think of with men’s names are really horrible like “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” or “Ben,” which by the way was about a rat. In the new web series No Songs for Men, all of the female characters have the names of popular rock songs from the 70’s and 80’s with a woman’s name as the title: Beth, Amanda, Jenny, Sara, and Beth’s sister, Christian. These talented women are all members of the indie rock band sensation Code Cherry! It’s The Runaways meets Sex and the City as we follow the music, sisterhood, and liaisons of these five incredible women as they compose the reasons why there really are no songs for men.
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**** Have you ever really thought about how important it is to have your parents’ approval? If you think it’s not important, you’re fooling yourself. I can still remember how special it felt when my dad finally made it to one of my track meets when I was in the ninth grade. Or how pissed I was when my sister recorded over the VHS tapes of my piano and voice recitals, effectively robbing my parents of watching my early musical genius. It’s like a tiny voice buried deep into our subconscious at birth; the need for parental approval speaks to us in just about every action we take. Just last night that tiny voice rang away in my ears. Can I get away with wearing a dress this low-cut? My mother is going to have a cow when she sees me. My parents are going to be blown away when they hear the new Code Cherry songs I wrote. Holy crap, I was totally smashed last night. Good thing my parents weren’t around to witness it. Our parents get 18-plus years to pound all their principles and a lot of pork down our throats, and we get the rest of our lives to process it. Or, if you’re like Amanda and me, you process it and become a vegetarian.**** I’ll never forget the flagrant look of displeasure on my parents’ faces when I came home from Vegas with the news that I had married Cris. To them he was a bad boy from my past come to plunder my love and pillage my gifted musical career. They were right but at the time, I had a thing for bad boys. I’ve been trying to win back their approval and my music ever since, and my announcement that Code Cherry had made the bill of the Rock On! Fest was the Holy Grail, a surefire way to win back their approval. I could care less that Cris didn’t show up (he wasn’t invited), but it was a huge kick in the gut when my
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parents never showed up to hear us play last night. The evening had turned into a huge celebration, with so many people there to congratulate us, and the party ensued well after we finished our sets. I was so happy to see Jenny and Christian kiss and make up that, to be honest, it didn’t hit me until late in the evening that my parents were missing in action. Why didn’t they show up? My mother called me at least three times a day for some of the most inane reasons, so it was incomprehensible that she couldn’t find the time to call and say they couldn’t make it. Thinking with a somewhat sober head this morning, I woke up in a panic, worried about what could have happened to them. I looked outside at the cloudy sky, hoping the clouds would disappear, and eventually burn off into a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I still wanted to tell my parents everything in person, to see their faces light up when they heard the news, so I got out of bed, showered, and headed over to see them. Along the way I made one quick stop to pick up bagels— my father’s favorite and something I knew would absorb the remaining liquor in
my system. I thought about calling Christian to come with, but after two straight nights of playing and partying, I knew she wouldn’t make it out of bed for hours. The stately homes on Merriman Road, with their huge lawns and impeccable landscaping, passed before me on my way to my childhood home. I used to wonder about the people who lived in these houses, how lucky the kids must be to grow up in a mansion, with maids to do the chores and a pony in the back yard. Now I just wondered how high their heating bills must be every winter. I turned down our street and traveled a few blocks to where the yards got smaller and the houses became less vulgar displays of wealth. At the kitchen table, staring blankly at a pile of bills and her checkbook, my mother, Angie, held court. Her brown hair, just starting to streak with beautiful gray highlights, was pulled back into a ponytail, and her face and arms already glowed with a summer tan. She had on a pair of old jeans, a faded, wrinkled Code Cherry T-shirt that looked like it had been slept in, and her eyes were puffy and distant. I loved the fact that my mom was still a cool, hippie rock ’n’ roller at heart, and I reached across the table and hugged her. “Good Morning, Mom. I brought some bagels. Want me to put one in the toaster for you?” I said. “Thanks, sweetie, but I don’t have much of an appetite today,” my mother said.
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I noticed that the smell of coffee, the Sunday newspaper littered across the table and the floor, my father burning the toast—all the signs of a normal Sunday morning—were absent. “Did they forget to deliver the Sunday paper? Is Dad chasing after the paper boy again?” I asked. “No, that’s not what your dad is chasing,” my mother said in a sarcastic tone, almost under her breath. “What?” “You better sit down, Beth; I’ve got some news for you.” The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I slowly slumped down into the chair across from my mother, feeling the warmth of the bagels penetrate from the brown paper bag all the way through to the sinking feeling in my chest. I didn’t know what news my mother was about to deliver, but any animosity I held about my parents missing the CD-release party instantly faded. “Mom, what is it? You’re scaring the hell out of me.” “I’m sorry we didn’t make the release party last night, but I was in no shape to come; and your father, well, he has no excuse…he’s just a total bastard.” “Mom, don’t worry about not being there; just tell me what happened. Why are you so pissed at Dad?” “Your father came home from a business trip last night, walked in the door, sat me down, and told me he’s leaving…”
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My mother was speaking to me, but I was not picking up what she was throwing down. I just sat there dumbfounded, mouth open, nonresponsive until she was forced to provide more details. “He wants a divorce. Crazy thing, though, told me he still loves me, but there’s nothing left between us anymore, says there’s nothing left for him.” I knew my father had been going through some tough times recently. He was always on the road traveling for work, burned out and struggling to pay off some debts. “But, Mom, you’ve been together for thirty-four years. He can’t be serious. This is just a temporary thing; he’ll come to his senses and come back.” “Beth, please don’t be naïve with me. You know better than me what husbands are capable of. Hiding things behind your back, lying, stealing, breaking your heart.” She started to cry and I realized why she had that sadness in her eyes— she had been crying, probably since my father had delivered this news last night. “Where’s Dad now? I want to talk to him,” I said as I dug out the tissues from my purse for my mom. Her eyes turned steely and I knew there must be more bad news, a part of the story my mother had not had the courage to deliver yet. I swallowed hard and felt my throat tighten up in the back, like it does when I’m trying to keep
from crying. “There’s another woman, Beth. Your father is trading me in for a new, younger model.” This information was going to take more than a few minutes to process. My father couldn’t possibly be capable of hurting my mother in this way. “How can you be so calm? I can’t believe he did this to you,” was all I could think to say. “Oh, believe me, I’m taking the Evelyn Woods speed course for dealing with grief. I’ve already visited denial and anger; now I’m in the bargaining stage. I’ve got to figure out if I can keep the house, whether I should burn or sell your father’s stuff for on eBay, who the best divorce lawyer is…” “I’m afraid to ask…how many more stages are there?” “Oh, just bouts of clinical depression, a brief dabble into pharmaceutical painkillers, and then either killing or coming to terms with your father someday.” My mother’s comments settled in and made me think about what stage of grief I should be visiting as a result of my failed marriage. “Mom, don’t worry; Christian and I, we’ll be here for you to help you sort things out.” “I know you’ve always idolized your father, and, believe me, I won’t ever ask you to take sides, but I appreciate the show of support for me. It means a lot.” My mother put her head down on the table and wept. All those years of marriage and, poof, all gone, like a puff of smoke in the air. Was my father having a midlife crisis? How could he be so selfish?
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I know how it feels to be betrayed by the man you love, but it didn’t make it any easier to know what to say to my mother, so I just sat with her, rubbing her back, drying the tears from her eyes. I’d wait ’til later to tell her about the Rock On! Fest. Sometime when I knew it would lift her spirits and not freak her out that Christian and I would be on the road for three months, while she was left trying to pull her life back together.
I slipped out of the kitchen and went up to my bedroom. It was exactly the way I had left it before I went off to college. Pink walls were covered up with posters of The Beatles and Madonna and my childhood musical idols. Above my desk a bulletin board was covered with ticket stubs from concerts, my dried-up prom corsage, and my varsity letter for track. On one wall there was a framed sheet of music with large handwritten pencil notes and second-grade lyrics written in along with the award I won in the Scholastic Music Contest for songwriting. It was the first song I ever wrote, appropriately titled “Snow Day!” It captured the utter joy an elementary kid felt when she heard the announcement that school was canceled due to snow. I still was proud that my song had captured first place in the state competition, a milestone that was a turning point in my childhood. Winning that award and my elementary school music teacher Mrs. Wright had both boosted my self-esteem and made me believe I could be a songwriter someday. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, a flimsy processed-wood model Sears sold that inhabited nearly every teenage girl’s room in the ’80s. The bottom draw had a lock and key so little girls could lock away their love letters, diaries, and cigarettes. The lock was a joke, because any nosy parent could easily pick the lock to discover what their little girls were up to. But I had outsmarted my parents, and my desk still had the emergency joints I taped to the top of the drawer. Slipping
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table smoking a doob with my mom. Christian would shit if she could see us now, and I felt kind of bad for not calling her to share in the fun, but I was going to savor every minute of this illicit experience with my mother.**** “Mom, did you know that I smoked pot in high school?” I asked. “Of course, honey,” she said, not missing a beat, like smoking pot with your daughter on Sunday morning was as natural as making her pancakes for breakfast. “Why didn’t you call me out on it?” “How could I stop you from doing something I did when I was your age? We would have intervened if you were getting out of control, but you had a good head on your shoulders. Hell, your father and I were always worried Christian and you would find our stash and smoke it.” “Get out! I know you two smoked pot back in the day, but you still did it even when I was older?” I asked as I passed the joint back to my mother. She took her time taking her drag and let the air slowly blow out of her lungs as she exhaled. Clearly, she was a seasoned pot smoker, with not even the slightest bit of a cough from this dried-out, old joint. “Don’t you remember those late nights when your dad ran down to the corner to get Doritos and chocolate? You girls thought it was such a special treat when, really, it was just your father having a bad case of the munchies. Just because you’re a parent doesn’t mean you lose all interest in having fun.” My mother reached for a bagel; the pot must be working. The radio was playing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” by The Beatles, and I thought to myself, What
my keychain out of my pocket, I took the small toy key and opened the lock. Inside were close to 30 sealed yellow bubble-pack envelopes addressed to Beth Stanley, c/o Angie Carter, at this address, all unopened with their original postmarks. These 30 envelopes were priceless to me, and my mother’s news this morning had provoked me to finally put them to use. I deposited the envelopes into a bag I took from the kitchen and carefully detached a joint from the desk, hoping it would still light. Mom was waiting for me in the kitchen. “Did you get everything you needed out of your room?” she asked. “Yeah, plus I found a little something I thought might make you feel better. It’s too early to start drinking, but you wanna get high?” I asked as I held up the joint. “Hell yeah,” she said with a grin, and it made me happy to make her smile. “If I knew you had pot in your room, I would have cleaned up there more often.” My mother had turned on the radio, and the classic rock station was playing the songs my mother and father had probably listened to when they were dating. I lit up the joint and let it burn for a while, took a drag, and handed it to my mother. How hilarious, I thought, all those years I hid pot from my parents, and now I was sitting at the Be t Sen h St Br ior anl ya Co ey 22 py 8 nt Be 22 C & D wri ac a h hw ag ne ter oo rin Adv e d, B Oh lvd rtis in io . g 44 12 2
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**** a perfect song to listen to while you get stoned with your mother. My appropriateness filter had shut down, and I was finally able to ask some of the questions I knew I couldn’t ask earlier. “You and Dad. You were so in love. All the dreams. So many great times. How could he do this to you?” She listened to the music for a while and took her time answering me, but when she did it wasn’t an answer, but another question. “Why do you think there are no songs for men?” “What?” “Think about it. How many love songs do you know that are named after a man?” I thought about it for a moment, and maybe it was the pot, but nothing came to mind. “I can only think of funny ones like ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’ but nada on the love songs.” “That’s because there are no love songs written for men. You should know. You’re a songwriter. I don’t recall you ever writing one.” Mom had touched on something, and we both sat and pondered the idea for a while, listening to the music on the radio. “You’re right. The bastards always end up breaking our hearts before we can even finish the lyrics. That’s why so few women have ever had the nerve to write one.”**** “They take the best years of our lives, do whatever the hell they want to get where they want, when they want, with no regard for the women who loved them,” my mother said, obviously getting back her angry voice. “You know what’s funny, Mom? Well, funny in a sick way. They say you marry a man just like your father, and that is exactly what I did. Dad and Cris are exactly alike…selfish, heartless, and neither one gives a damn about what they did to us.” “I just hope what your father did to me will wake you up to the fact that you need to finally leave Cris.” Another kick to the gut, and it was true, but still hard to hear from your mother. “Mom, I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but I think some good may come from this. I used to be petrified, but now I’m ready to fight Cris.” “I’ll be here to support you, honey. We’ll get through this together. We’re survivors.” “Hey, do you think we could find a woman divorce lawyer that will give us a mother-daughter discount?” I asked. “We can try but until then, do you have any more pot hidden upstairs? That stuff is good!”
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**** Here’s a Few Great Songs for Men Goodbye Earl Tyrone
Long John Blues 7
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“Bring Me To Life “ Aren’t you dying to hear “Pick Me”?! Code Cherry’s music deserves to be heard, and you can make it happen! Help bring the music to life by making a donation to the Code Cherry Recording Fund. Every cent of the donations will go straight to the kitty to pay the musicians and recording studio in order to bring the downloadable song links right here to No Songs for Men.
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“Rockin’ in the Free World” We hope you enjoyed reading this episode of No Songs for Men! We plan to keep them coming every few weeks, jammed full of Code Cherry escapades and a few little fun extras for your reading enjoyment. Help us Rock On! by making a donation—and don’t worry, no amount is too small. Every dollar sent goes to pay for production and maybe a cup of organic tea for the production team.
band members needed Do you know a woman rocker who would be great for Code Cherry? E-mail us at info@mariamedia.net.
Want to help but don’t want to make a donation? That’s cool—you can do your part by telling a friend and spreading the word about No Songs for Men or checking out one of our awesome advertisers.
Thanks and Rock On!
You don’t have to stand in line to get tickets for the first show, just sign up for Fan Mail at www.mariamedia.net to receive alerts on upcoming episodes. Stay tuned, the Code Cherry girls will be back soon to play you the very first episode of No Songs for Men.
Maria Santoferraro was born and raised in Northeast, Ohio. After graduating from Marietta College with a degree in advertising, and her entrepreneurial debut of CareerGear, she went on to pursue a glamorous career in the field of advertising, managing major soft drink, condom, fast food and diaper brands until she decided to shuck it all and create No Songs For Men. She loves living in Ohio with her husband, but is working out a plan to split her time and work and play remotely from either a tropical island, a ski slope, Paris or wherever they want. Hey, a girl can dream! This is her first web series. Visit the author’s website at: www.mariamedia.net Book design by JAS Graphics jasgraphics.biz Character illustrations by Renee Lethbridge Design Services www.reneelethbridge.com Published by MariaMedia, LLC Copyright © 2010 by Maria Santoferraro Live, Laugh, Rock and Return to MariaMedia
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