25. Pants on Fire

These are not natural events; they strengthen
From strange to stranger.
——The Tempest, V.i

you don't care about true
you don't care about false
you just want everyone to agree with you, that's all
——Tonio K.

"Q. wants to talk to you and Holly," said Ken, just as I slung the last of my instruments onto the back corner of the stage. The gig was another outreach event with Elias, and the stage was set up in a public park near an outdoor café, where diners were watching the Olympic closing ceremonies on a giant TV screen. I bet they hadn't bargained on preaching and live music to go with their sports spectacle. The rest of the Loudmouth Worshippers were tuning guitars, checking mics, and getting ready to go on. We'd arrived just in time.

Naturally I thought Q.'s request for a talk showed lousy timing. A lightning-fast setup for me would still take at least 10 minutes, what with three instruments to tune and plug in. This was no time for a chat. It was my last gig with Loudmouth, the end of my sojourn. I'd just endured a nerve-wracking drive from Koropi, and all I wanted was to rejoin my bandmates for one last hurrah. So I said to Ken, "I need to get set up here."

"Q. wants to see Sarah and both of you right now," Ken repeated. Suddenly Barbie materialized and offered to take Logan while Holly and Sarah joined in the urgent talk with Q. Seeing that I had no choice, I left my gear on the stage and the three of us followed Ken.

Q. was sitting on a park bench beneath some trees, about thirty or forty yards behind the stage. Hoping for a brief conversation, Sarah and I parked ourselves on an adjoining bench. Holly sat across from us, and Ken sat next to Q.

What ensued is worth reporting in its entirety. I've forgotten some of it, hence the awkward gaps. But here in its surreal, paraphrased glory is what I can remember. A fair amount of "what I should have said" comes into play here. Perhaps I could have acquitted myself better in other circumstances.

Q.: What are you doing here?

Or words to that effect. I remember this opening question catching me completely off guard. We'd been instructed to come to Piraeus, and here we were. Why should Q. be surprised to see us?

Me: Well, we just got in and we're looking forward to playing with the band.

Q.: I understand the two of you don't want to work with me again. Is that true?

Brilliant deduction, Sherlock!

Holly: We already discussed that, Q. I've already told you I won't continue with Loudmouth after this trip.

Ah, so she'd handed in her notice. I hadn't officially done so, but did Q. really think there was a chance I'd come back for more abuse? I was starting to realize, though, that this wouldn't be just a brief pre-concert confab.
Me: I have made that decision, yes.

Q. made a dismissive motion with his arm, like a baseball umpire calling out a runner.

Q.: You're gone, both of you. I'll find you a hotel or something for tonight and then you're on your own. I don't even want you talking to anyone in this group.

Gasps and cries of shock and alarm from Holly, Martin, and Sarah. Did Q. intend to deprive of us of our shelter at Athens Christian Center, where we planned to spend the next week while the rest of the group went to Thessaloniki? It certainly sounded that way. What kind of creep throws a mother and her baby out on the street in a foreign city, just because she says she doesn't want to work with him again?
Q.: I've been on the phone all day getting cussed out in English and Greek because of you two.

Um, we weren't the ones who tried to renege on your agreements. And if it was in Greek, how would you know you were being cussed out?Q.: I've had Philemon trying to sort this out with Michalis and George, and they called me names and accused me of all sorts of stuff.

Ah, so that's what those phone calls were about back at Cosmovision Center. And Philemon was translating — even though Michalis and George both spoke perfect English. It made sense, though, given Q.'s penchant for using intermediaries (B., for instance) to talk to people he was afraid of (me, for instance). But, of course, translation increases the chance of miscommunication.

And was Q. implying that we had put George and Michalis up to it? Didn't they have their own reasons for being angry with him? I hadn't gone into any detail with Michalis or George; I'd just observed that Q. wasn't in the habit of keeping his promises.

Me: Well, you haven't exactly treated Michalis very well. Why did you book this gig with Elias on top of the one you'd already booked with Michalis?

Q.: I support Elias and he supports me, so when he wanted to do this outreach I told him yes. Elias is totally focused on ministry, and he put a lot into making this happen at the last minute. So if I have a chance to help him, you bet I'm going to tell Michalis to take a hike.

Oh, so Q. didn't care if he broke his word to Michalis, as long as it was for the sake of "ministry."

Ken: You need to understand, Michalis is a bad guy. He's only interested in money.

Funny, prior to the trip E. said Michalis had a "genuine heart for ministry." Of course, that was before Q. decided to screw him over. I think Michalis was interested in getting back the money he'd been cheated out of, but that doesn't mean it's all he cared about.

Q.: What do you have to say for yourselves?

Sarah: Q., when you say you don't think you're a leader, you're right. Other people in this group might have leadership skills; you should let them lead. That's what a leader would do.

Me: There's only one Loudmouth in this group, and it's you.

THAT was a good line!
Me: You've lied to us the whole trip.

Q.: Give me an example. When did I lie?

This was my golden opportunity to really rip Q. apart. But I blew it.

First, I was flabbergasted that such a blatant liar would even try to make a show of innocence. But I guess that's part of what makes him such a blatant liar.

Next, I didn't want to start with things like Olympic venues, corporate sponsors, huge crowds, shared billings with Switchblade et al., Sarah's plane fare, TV interviews, or Olympic event tickets — because I didn't want Q. to think I had come to Athens for those things. To me, the simple act of breaking a promise is a far greater crime than the loss of the thing promised. But I was sure Q. wouldn't understand this.

Furthermore, loud Greek preaching from the stage was now blasting around our ears, and I was so exhausted I could barely stay awake. Many of the broken promises had gone clean out of my head at the moment. So the only lie I managed to mention was:

Me: The other day when I asked you where E., Ken, and Barbie were, you said they were running errands. That was a lie; they were watching an Olympic event.

Probably the simplest and most straightforward of Q.'s lies that I knew about, but it was all I had the capacity for at this point. To my surprise, Q. crumpled up like a discarded paper bag.

Q. (sheepishly): Yes, those were all the tickets I had, and I just didn't want to explain it, so I lied. I'm sorry.

And that was the first and last time he ever apologized to me for anything.Sarah: Q., you lied the other night when you said you hadn't been talking in the hall. We heard you out there.

We should've quit while we were ahead. Yes, Q. had been talking in the hall, but he'd stopped and gone into his room a good 20–30 minutes before my big outburst.

Q: That wasn't me, I was in my room.

At this point an argument ensued between Q., Ken, and Sarah, with Ken taking Q.'s side. Q. quickly reinflated himself and reminded Sarah that he'd stuck up for me on that night. Not wishing to dwell on an episode where my own behavior had been less than stellar, I cut in.Me: Sarah, drop it. This isn't getting us anywhere.

And now for Today's Pearl of Wisdom, although just about anything Q. said during this conversation could qualify. A minute ago the guy had asked for examples of his own lies, and now here he was, spitting out a fresh one. Maybe he'd been lying for so long he'd started to deceive even himself:

Q.: I care about the well-being of everyone on this trip —

Me (laughing maniacally): Is that why you haven't fed us for a week? That's a good one.

Naturally, Q. and Ken here held forth about the lunch supplies they'd bought. I won't bore you with further complaints about the inadequacy of said supplies, or about the total absence of dinner. Back on the stage, the preaching finished and the band began to play.

Me: Great. They've started without us.

Q.: What do you care? After what you said about me, do you really think I'm going to give you a mic? Are you crazy?Apparently it was OK for Q. to falsely insinuate that I incited Michalis to curse at him, but not OK for me to justly accuse him of lying. Whatever.

I considered reminding Q. that he'd never once given me a mic in Greece. My job was to play, not to talk, and I was plugging all my instruments in, not using a microphone. Apparently Q. still didn't know the difference. In my head, I rehearsed the line "I don't need a mic, I just want to play." It sounded pathetic. So I rolled my eyes and said nothing.
Q.: I want you to —

Me: Well, I won't say what I want you to do, Q.

Several vulgarities had occurred to me in the previous split second, but I censored myself in service of the Christian ideal of temperate speech. However, if Michalis and George really had cussed Q. out, he'd certainly given them ample provocation.

Holly: Q., wait a minute. I'm sorry if I said anything about you to Michalis I shouldn't have.

Here Holly proceeded to apologize to Q. for a couple of minutes, although she did a pretty good job of maintaining her dignity while doing so. Meanwhile I felt my brain slip a few more notches toward total exhaustion. After a while Holly reached what Q. appeared to regard as a sufficient level of supplication.
Q.: All right, then. You can get up on stage. (To me) What about you?

So that was the game. The jerk expected me to get down on my knees and beg. Well, forget it. I wanted to play with the band, but not at the expense of my self-respect. Brown-nosing Q. was simply too high a price to pay. Furthermore, my introverted side had assumed control of my mind, as it does when I'm tired and stressed. I was completely shut down.

Me: I got nothing more to say.

Q.: Fine. (To Holly) You're in. (To me) You're out. You're not ministry-minded.

Me: And whose fault is that?

I took Q.'s statement to mean that I'd rather confront him about his deficiencies than participate in the outreach, and I could hardly deny that. But if I was distracted from ministry, it was Q. who had created the distractions.

One could justifiably accuse Q. himself of lacking a ministry mindset. Exhibit A would be the present discussion, which was all about Q.'s own reputation. (Witness his paranoid fear that I would try to denounce him from the stage.) But he didn't stick around long enough for me to point this out. He and Ken got up and walked away, leaving me and Sarah by ourselves on the bench.

Me: I'm sorry, honey. I was too tired to argue any more.

We moved to another bench closer to the stage and listened to the band for a few minutes. Justin, who for some reason wasn't playing, approached us. I didn't want him to get in trouble with Q., so I said, "Don't talk to me, man. I'm poison. Q. just gave me the heave-ho." Justin gave a knowing smile. Like B. and Holly, he was a veteran of these trips. He knew the score.

While pondering my next move, I decided to retrieve my instruments. As I approached the stage, Ken suddenly materialized beside me. "What are you doing?" he said.

"I'm getting my stuff off your precious stage," I snapped.

At this he backed off. I walked to the sidewalk, put down my gear, and stood there beside Sarah. She was weeping; I was in a daze, not sure what to do next. Philemon approached me and asked why I wasn't playing. He was shocked at my explanation. "Let me know if I can help you," he said, and went to talk to Elias.

Q. was nowhere to be seen, and he probably wasn't concerning himself with what might happen to us next. If he really was looking for a hotel to dump us in, he'd certainly set himself an arduous task on the last night of the Olympics. Nonetheless, we decided not to stick around long enough for him to succeed. We still had our suitcases and my dead rack gear back at Athens Christian Center, and we certainly weren't going to entrust them to Q.'s care while we languished in Piraeus. The thing to do was to find a way up to Athens immediately. Maybe Philemon could help us.

The next person to approach me was Elias, who patted me on the back and whispered in my ear, "Give me your card" — which was more English than I was accustomed to hearing him use. Good to know that he didn't need Q. to tell him what to think of me. So I got a card out of my violin case and gave it to him.

At my next opportunity I accosted Philemon and asked him how I could get back to Athens. It turned out that we were mere blocks away from the Piraeus Metro station, and the trains were still running (it must have been around 10 p.m. by this time). So I picked up my bags for the last time and squared my shoulders. And, like Orpheus and Eurydice departing the underworld, Sarah and I left Loudmouth Worshippers behind.

Today's Pearl of Wisdom comes from years after these events, but it does serve to illustrate something about Q. One fine day I was Googling myself (an entertaining way to spend an afternoon if you're bored or curious about what the Internet thinks of you) and received a bit of a shock: my name is mentioned on a page at the Web site for Q's Bible software. Turns out that around the time of the Athens trip, Q. compiled an address book: members of Loudmouth and the other bands coming to Athens, managers of the pro bands he wanted to bring, ministry contacts in Greece, journalists, business contacts, etc.—with e-mail, phone numbers, and/or mailing addresses. Then—in order, I guess, to keep this information within reach—he published it to his Web site.

Mind you, this was before the advent of Dropboxes and Google Drives and other private cloud storage. And he published it on what's called an "orphaned" page—not linked to anything else on the site, and not reachable from a menu or navigation. But evidently he failed to include code that would conceal the page from search engines, and there it sits today: private contact information for well over a hundred people, who might not have wanted that information hanging out there on the Web for anyone to see. (One of Q's PR/press contacts, it turns out, was a guy I knew from the mid-1980s, when we were DJs at the same radio station. Another is a magazine publisher for whom I write a mandolin column.) As for myself, at least the street address is an old one. As for the others, who can say? One thing is clear: evidence indicates that when it comes to people's privacy, Q doesn't care, doesn't know, or doesn't care to know.