December 27, 2020

Ain't No Sunshine

Whenever I say “Did I ever tell you the story about the time I got punched in the face,” some smart aleck will invariably say something like “I can’t believe it only happened once,” or “You must have a lot of stories to choose from”. This usually gets a big laugh and I often have to wait for the laughter to subside before I can launch into the story. It’s ok, I can give as good as I get.

I used to tell the story almost every time I heard the Bill Withers song Ain’t No Sunshine. The song would start and I would say “Did I ever tell you the story about the time I got punched in the face?” Then someone would say - well, you get the picture.

It is a pretty good story and I have told it quite often because it turns out Ain’t No Sunshine gets played a lot more than you would think. Especially if, like me, you have your car radio set to the Sirius station The Bridge, which plays acoustic rock all the time. Anyway, my friends and family have heard the story more times than they would care to and have sort of sucked the life out of it. Which, I guess, is fair enough but it has gotten to the point that when the song comes on my sister-in-law will, without looking up from her book, say “And then blah blah blah, I got punched in the face.” Which also usually gets a good laugh.

So I don’t tell it that much anymore and, if I do, I resort to the very condensed version which leaves out a lot of context and also, and this is the part I am not that crazy about, makes me look like a bit of a dick who deserved to get punched in the face.
Claire and I were on a double date with her friend Margaret and this guy Max she knew from the office. It was a set up. Claire had told me not to talk about stamps, coins, or birdwatching. She had told me to just try to get along. We were at a booth at the Rex, waiting for the band, a jazz trio, to come on. Music was blaring from the speakers. Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine came on. I didn’t launch into my story about the time I got punched in the face because at that point I had not yet been punched in the face. But I was about to.

Max turned to Margaret and said “Little known fact. Bill Withers says ‘I know’ 22 times in the song. One of the all-time great trivia questions.”
Margaret said “‘Really?”
Max said “Yeah really.”
And I thought to myself. Not so much.

Now I don’t know if Claire tells this story. She has a new boyfriend and I am sure she has better things to talk about than the time her ex-boyfriend got punched in the face. Things didn’t end up great with us so there is a chance that when she hears the song a smile might unfurl on her face. I’m not saying that makes her a bad person. I mean, it is probably just Pavlovian. But, if you ask her she will probably tell you that what happened next happened because I was a bit jealous. Which might be true. I should probably have mentioned that Max was Claire’s ex-boyfriend. Just before me. He didn’t collect stamps. He collected vintage Corvettes.

Now Max was right about the fact that the number of times Bill Withers says ‘I know’ in Ain’t No Sunshine was a good trivia question. Not one of the all-time great trivia questions. But a good one.
What he wasn’t right about was the number of ‘I knows’.
It was not 22.
It was 26.
So I said “It isn’t 22. It’s 26.”
And he said “No, it’s 22.”
And I said “26.”
And he said “22.”
And I said “Let’s go ask the bartender to play the song again. Then we can count.”
So together we got up and went to the bar in order to ask the bartender to play the song again.

If I write this story up, all good and proper-like, there is a chance I will scan up and read what I have just written and maybe think to myself exactly what you might be thinking to yourself right now.
22 or 26. What difference does it make? I was being petty and picayune. I was the type of guy who said picayune. Maybe you’re thinking the kind of guy who says picayune probably deserves to get punched in the face.

In our rush to get to the bar, Max bumped into a guy carrying a pitcher of beer. The guy spilled half the beer. Words were exchanged. I won’t mention the words. My friend Brian’s father Irv says I say fuck too much. But you can probably guess. The guy then calmly put the pitcher down and then took a swing at Max.
Max ducked.
And I got hit square in the face.

Like I said, this is the short version. I’m leaving out a lot of details. If I write it up all proper-like I will mention the fight Claire and I had in the car on the way to the bar. I will add a little color to illustrate the tension at the table. I’ll explain that my friend Dani’s husband Avi owns The Rex and he was working the bar that night which is why I knew I could get him to play the song again. Avi even gives me the backstory about the guy who hit me. Believe me, I can stretch it out. On the other hand, this isn’t even close to being the shortest version. The next day, on my way to pick up my morning bagel, I walked by my neighbour who asked me how I got that shiner. That’s what he said. “How’d you get that shiner?” He was old school. I didn’t really want to chat so I said “Got hit by an errant fist”. That’s it. Six words. No mention of Bill Withers. This version is The Odyssey in comparison.

Of the three other people in this story, the only person I still speak to is Max. He lives down the street and I will run in to him at Starbucks from time to time. He’s a pretty nice guy. He once even loaned me his Corvette. I finally had to tell him to stop apologizing for me getting punched in the face. I saw Margaret at United Bakers once and I waved to her. She didn’t wave back.

Bill Withers died in March, 2020. He was 81. He wrote and recorded Ain’t No Sunshine at the age of 31 for his debut album. Before becoming a musician, he was making toilets for airplanes. He was a working-class man who went on to write one of the greatest ballads of all time. When I listen to the song now I am always shocked to be reminded the song is only 2 minutes long. It seems so much bigger. He said the ‘I knows’ were originally going to be placeholders - that his intention was to write more lyrics, but the experienced musicians in the room, Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, and Booker T and the MGs, told him to keep them in. So he did. They became iconic. When I tell the story, I assume everyone knows the song. If you don’t, stop reading and go listen to it. It is great. It is worth getting punched in the face for.

On the way home from The Rex, a bag of ice pressed on my face, Claire said “I should have said ‘no stamps, no coins, no birdwatching and no Bill Withers.’” Which was pretty funny. Claire had a good sense of humor.
Then she said:
“You know it wouldn’t have happened if you had just left it alone right?”
And I said “I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.”

Count ‘em. 26.

The end.