Tiny’s Banjo

I bought a banjo from craigslist on the second of January. I took a train from my parents’ house in central Jersey to New York City. I met Jono in the financial district and he brought me up to his apartment there. He had a dog named Marlow, soft and mahogany colored. Jono was selling a lot of his instruments before he moved to California. I tried his accordion. It was klunky on me, I fumbled around with the keys trying to play. I wasn’t very good. Jono wrapped the banjo in plastic for me. It had no case.

I took the R train to Brooklyn. I was about to transfer. A man stopped me on the stairs and said I looked cute, he needed to take a picture of me. He had wisps of thin brown hair, and thick glasses. His sweatshirt was worn.

“Just turn around real quick and start walking up the stairs again,” he said. “I like your banjo,” he said. He took a picture with his iPhone.

“You have to come to my friend’s place,” he said. “We’re going to jam. We play some crazy shit. You know how to play banjo?”

“Not really,” I said. “I just bought it.”

“Well you have to come along. We play, like, electronic music mixed with folk stuff. Experimental. You know?”

I listened mostly. He liked talking. I agreed to go with him. I wasn’t sure I wanted to, but if I changed my mind, I could just hop off before we got there and make an excuse. We got back down to the track.

He said, “Do you know Appalachian claw-hammer style playing?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Here, let me show you.” He took my banjo. “It’s wrapped in plastic.”

“I don’t have a case for it.”

“Yeah. We’ll just do this,” he said, and ripped the plastic off. It took a while to get through the tape. The plastic was unusable after that. It fluttered down into the next track. A 3 train blew it away after a few minutes.

“Okay, everyone,” he said to the whole platform. “I’m going to show you how to play banjo Appalachian claw-hammer style. See, this is the claw.” He held up his curled fingers. “And this is the hammer.” He held up his thumb. “And you just…” He played like someone who doesn’t really know how to play banjo, but doesn’t realize that he’s not very good. So it was loud and bad. I thought he would break my strings.

“I never said I was any good,” he said. He kept playing.

“Is that our train?” I said when another R train pulled up.

“I’m just going to sell some stuff.” He pulled some things out of his duffel bag. A few DVDs, a pair of shoes–one had a tennis ball in it, and a sound mixer. “The mixer’s not going to sell. But I have to make it look like it will.”

He kept talking to me. I sipped on my coffee and nodded when it made sense to nod. Another R train came. He hopped up and hollered into the open car, asking if it went to 9th Ave. Someone must have said yes because he told me to get on. I barely made it on. He stopped the door from closing with his foot and threw his duffel bag with the sound mixer and DVDs onto the train.

“Just the shoes!” he said and ran back. I didn’t know if he would make it. I didn’t know if I should help by holding the door open. It felt rude both ways. He stuck his foot in at the last second and made it on the train. He sat down where his stuff landed.

An old man got on the train at the next stop. He saw my banjo and smiled at me. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of guitar strings to show me. I smiled and nodded.

“You play?” he said.

“I just bought it,” I said. “I’m learning.”

The man from the platform jumped up and said, “She knows how to play.” He started saying it in Spanish. I wasn’t sure the old man was Latino. The man from the platform had an awful accent. He spoke loudly and poorly.

The Mexican band that always plays on the R train got on. Two classical guitars and an accordion. They started playing Latin music. The man from the platform jumped up. “We have to play with them!” He grabbed my banjo and started playing and singing loudly in his poor Spanish. The men with the guitars looked delighted. The man with the accordion went around the car with a hat. The man with my banjo lay on his back on the floor and kept playing.

A woman sitting nearby said, “You probably don’t want to do that.”

I darted off the R and onto a D with my banjo as soon as the train stopped again.