Cambodia 1975

Sophomore Slump: The Weiner-man Cometh.

Setlist:

* I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You, Elvis Presley

* Love Will Keep Us Together, Captain and Tennille

* Stand by Me, Ben E. King

We walk for a whole day to a farm that serves as a basecamp for the teenaged Army. I trudge alongside the boy who used to wear glasses. His name is Siem.

Once settled in our new home the leader of the camp— a pudgy faced man with lank hair—tells us: “Your talents are required of you, in service of the Establishment. So, we will be holding a talent competition and forming dance troops.”

This is great news, I think. Last week, when the soldiers took over the city, we had been strictly forbidden from singing, smiling and dancing. Now, they give the attractive girl soldiers red dresses and ask them to dance. I am a great singer, and I ask to be part of the talent troupe.

The leaders require me to audition. I stand up and begin to sing my favorite Elvis Presley song from the bottom of my heart.

“Wise man say, only fools rush in..”

I let my voice drop to match his pitch and warble that last bit, just like The King. I love Elvis. My thick dark hair is like his. I sing with my eyes closed.

I soon discover that is not a good idea.

Before I get to the second chorus—

“I can’t help falling in love with…”

—I hear angry murmuring and rushing feet. I open my eyes and see the butt of a gun rocketing toward my forehead.

So, I won’t be singing with the talent troupe. Instead, they send me out into the countryside with a broken nose and three other boys—Siem is one of them, I am happy about this. They command that we discover the location of lost land mines. The four of us are more than up to the task… but our superiors never tell us what the mines look like. How are we going to find them? I suppose it will be obvious.

When we are far enough away, I sing. Siem and two other boys, Meng and Koeh, love it when I sing. We spend our days walking the fields and recording all the ground we’ve covered in a small notebook. The other boys back at camp are working laboriously, planting rice or unloading trucks. We are lucky to have this job. We find crickets and eat them. Higher-ups say that all food is to be shared with the collective, but my friends and I keep it a secret. This is a big deal because many of the other kids are starving. Occasionally, we come across fruit trees. Those are the best days.

We eat, walk, and I sing.

Today I’m singing “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille. It was a huge hit and everyone was listening to it before the Khmer Rouge took over and burned the Russian Market. While I don’t understand English, the melody gives me a sense of hope.

Just then, my foot sinks into the mud. I hear a click and then feel Koeh’s shoulder ram into my side. There is a deafening explosion and I’m flung into the air, tumbling like a Chinese acrobat. I land, blind from grit and deaf because of the explosion.

Koeh is gone. Pulp. My cheeks are shredded and burning, my tears hurt.

I am forever in his debt. I swear if I am ever blessed with a son, I will name him Koeh.

I hum “Stand by Me” by Ben E. King as I wash bits of my friend off of me in the brown river. Little by little, my hearing comes back, and I notice that I’m slightly out of tune. I wasn’t sure before, but now I know that I no longer want to be a part of Pol Pot’s army.

Chicago, Late August 2025Set list:

* Fortnight, Taylor Swift feat. Post Malone

I can’t sleep. I toss and turn until two in the morning. My wife pretends to be asleep. She has to get up soon for her shift at the hospital. She rolls over to the outer edge of the bed and sighs. I can sense the passive aggression radiating from her like steam off piss.

I get up, go to the bathroom, then head down to the basement, where, years ago, I fixed up a small studio.

It was that song.

I can’t get it out of my head. I think of ways to change it, match it to the voice I’d heard. By the time the birds were chirping, I’ve made a couple of passable demo tracks and upload them to Drive.

I play them back to myself on repeat in the car. I’m wearing headphones this time. On the way to drop my kid off at school, I don’t even notice the doodle-nova crossing in front of us.

“Mr. P sings that song.” My daughter is speaking. I take off my headphones. She’s speaking to me—something about this song. “What?”“Mr. P, at school.” What is she talking about?

“Can you hear the song even with my headphones on?”

“Yeah, that and you played it all night long. Your office is right below my room.” she says, looking out the window.

I furrow my brow. “I’m surprised you know it. It’s an old one.”“Well, I wouldn’t know about it unless I’d heard him sing it.”“Yeah.” I stare blearily out the window. I got a late start. I won’t be able to make my detour to S.B.’s. Her car door slams, waking me out of my reverie.“Bye.”“Bye.”

I daydream about recording this track. What favors could I call in? I’m still tight with the touring drummer for Taylor Swift, and he owes me a favor. What about that bassist from Pittsburgh? How much of this can I simply program on my own? Could I make it work without that voice?

No.

I need to find out who this mysterious singer is.

I spend the first half of work in a daze. I finish the workload, of course. Anyone could do this job. Give a chimp some adderall and it would get done. But every fifteen minutes, I get up from my desk to stretch, then pop through the exit, down the stairwell just in case. By lunch, I’m completely drained, sleep-deprived, and my calves burn.

The last part of my day I stare at my screen, depressed, deflated. Knuckle-dragger comes up and raps “shave and a haircut” on my cubicle. He’s asking me some benign questions about fantasy football. I just look at him. His mouth hangs open, then forms a thin line. His eyebrows, clinging to that ugly Stone Age ape-drape, let me know he’s offended. He walks away. I lay my head down. I’m so tired I don’t even notice when I fall asleep at my desk.

I wake up to the sound of jingling keys, and then the hum of a vacuum. As I lift my head a string of drool connects my chin to the bottom of my keyboard. I look at my watch—7 p.m.! No one even thought to wake me up? What was my boss doing? Shouldn’t I get chewed out? F**k. My wife is going to be pissed.

I grab my keys and my briefcase and stand up. As I turn, I almost run right over a small brown man. He is old and startled. He steadies himself on a cleaning cart. The janitor. His initial look of shock melts into a placating smile.

“Damn, I’m sorry.” He nods and bows. “I didn’t keep you from leaving, did I? I mean, no, you don’t clean the cubicles, do you?”

He nods and bows again, leading me to believe the only thing he’s understood is that I finished my sentence.

“Sorry again.” I head for the door, but something crinkles my eyes together in subconscious concentration. I turn. The gravitational pull, the inertia of fate, causes my eyes to zoom in on his name tag. Pannah, it says. Like Hannah but with a P.

Mr. P? Where had I heard that? I shake my head and walk to the exit. As the door closes behind me, I stop at the foot of the stairs. But what if it is? I’m already late. I crouch low against the painted cinderblock wall. I wait, and wait some more. After twenty minutes, I can hear a radio, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter. I peek out the small rectangular window in the metal door. Mr. P is cleaning, and he has a small portable radio attached to his cart. He is emptying trash—not singing.

This is stupid. This is a waste of time. What am I doing here? I should just go. I curse myself with every deep, interpersonal curse word I can think of. Dirtbag is still the one that stings the most.

I make it down the first flight of stairs before I hear it again. There is no mistake. It’s the same voice, but this time he sings a different song. A female pop icon, on her sixth album, decided to bring in a rowdy R&B singer in on the track. The lyrics are familiar to me:

“And for a fortnight there, we were forever

Run into you sometimes…”

The song is fine—not her best—the album is fine. This man, this little foreign man, has re-created it. He sings both parts as if it were written that way. The song means something totally different now.

Am I crying?

He is old. He is slow. He is singing with the voice of an angel. His eyes are closed. He belts out the final chorus as it reaches its climactic key change.

I barge open the door. “I got you, motherfucker!” I exclaim. The poor old man falls backward. I can’t see him now as he scurries away between cubicles.

“F**k! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!” I call out.

I can’t see him, but I can hear his keys jingling and muffled shuffling. I give chase.

“Hey! Come back!”

I hear whimpering, and I follow the pathetic sound. Rounding a corner, I see his reflection in the glass of a conference room. He darts into the employee break room on all fours. There is no escape from there. I slowly walk towards the door, hands outstretched in a gesture of surrender. I keep my voice calm and measured. If he doesn’t know what I’m saying, at least he can understand that I mean him no harm.

He’s in the corner, shaking, hands over his face. He speaks a language I don’t recognize. I crouch and pull out my phone. Man, it’s weird to see old people cry. I feel bad thinking it, but it’s almost cute. I get that same nasty thrill when I see dogs whimper.

I pull up the demo track. I tap play and slide my phone towards him. He stops shivering and peeks out from behind his small brown hands.

“Do you know this song?”

He nods. I think he might understand what I said this time.

“Do you work at the school? The middle school on Broadview?”He nods.

I found him.

“Mr. P, I’m going to make you a star,” I whisper under my breath.

He wipes away tears from his cheeks and smiles at me. I stand up, walk towards him and extend a hand. He takes my hand. I lift him up.

He smiles his silly smile up at me. Then, without warning, his eyes flutter, and he falls. His face brushes my knee on the way down and then lands with a thud on the linoleum floor.

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