29. Pronoun Trouble

His own opinion was his law: i' the presence
He would say untruths; and be ever double
Both in his words and meaning.
——Henry VIII, IV.ii

yes we're just one big happy family 'neath the sun
all full of you and me and he and she and it and everyone
oh it's a wacky zany place that we come from
we call it heaven
please take your shoes off;
don't ask no questions
are you having fun?
——Tonio K.

By Thursday morning our merry band of castoffs had dwindled to the the two troublemakers (me and Holly) and our sidekicks (Sarah and Logan). Before Q. returned that evening, we had an important appointment to keep. We again hopped the Metro, this time to the Faliro station for a rendezvous with Michalis.

We weren't content, you see, for the situation to remain hanging the way we had left it Sunday night. Q.'s treatment of us was bad enough, but his attempt to create strife between Michalis and Elias, his two major Greek concert promoters, was even worse. The last thing Greek evangelicals need is some outsider coming in and sowing dissension. So we wanted to accomplish two things: ensure that there was peace between Michalis and Elias, and get Michalis' account of Sunday's telephone conversations with Q.

Michalis met us at the station, took us out for lunch, and then drove us to the office of his employer, AMG International. He assured us that he and Elias would be all right, and that he didn't blame either us or Elias for the difficulties.

We asked Michalis about the professional bands Q. had talked about bringing to Athens. Switchblade had pulled out, and Mob Barley had vanished into thin air, but Feveri$h and Jimmy & the Pullet Pluckers had shown up to play. You may also recall that Q. took me through Omonoia Square on my first night in Athens and said, "We had Feveri$h here the other night."

Today's Pearl of Wisdom: When I mentioned this to Michalis, he seemed shocked. "Wait a minute," he said. "Q. told you he booked Feveri$h? That's a lie. I booked them — and Jimmy & the Pullet Pluckers too. They played the same night. In fact, Q. came up to me while the Pullet Pluckers were playing and said, 'How did you get these guys?'"

Whoa.

Back when I first met Q., he told me the Pullet Pluckers were "one of our bands." At the time I got the mistaken impression that he managed the group or had manufactured it, the same way he was manufacturing Loudmouth. I hadn't thought lately about how unlikely that seemed. Now, however, it appeared that he wasn't even able to book them.

Furthermore, I now realized what Q. meant by "We had Feveri$h here the other night." Suppose the Seattle Mariners swept a series from the Kansas City Royals, and I called my brother in Kansas City and said, "Dude, we really kicked your butt." My brother would understand that I was using my pronouns figuratively. Well, so was Q. "We had Feveri$h here" apparently did not mean that Q. played any direct role in booking Feveri$h, even though he had fostered that impression via his Web site. He'd used the word "we" to take credit for someone else's achievements.

In how many other instances had Q. used a similar trick to artificially enhance his reputation? I've lost count.

(When I got home I did a lot of digging, to answer two questions: (1) What happened to the bands who didn't come? (2) Regarding the bands who did come, under whose auspices did they perform? I learned that the Pullet Pluckers have indeed worked with Q. in the past, and put his Bible software on some of their CDs, which must be what he meant by "one of our bands." But it's abundantly clear that their sponsor in Greece was not Q.'s company but FLAME/More than Gold (the umbrella organization that included Michalis' Logos Music) — despite Q.'s attempts to claim otherwise via press releases and Web copy.

I contacted representatives from three of the four bands in question. Although I have promised not to disclose what they said, it became clear that Q. had treated them more or less the way he treated Loudmouth and Qedem in matters such as schedules, backline, compensation, and plane tickets. So they either didn't come or found a different sponsor. One can hypothesize, then, that the big-time bookings Q. claimed to have had depended on these professional bands, and that when he lost the bands, he lost the bookings. And evidently, one difference between professional and amateur bands is that professionals can tell when they're being jerked around. But I digress.)

Next I told Michalis about Sunday night.

Me: Q. thinks I told you I didn't want to work with him any more. I don't remember telling you that. So where do you think he got the idea?

Michalis: I said to Philemon, "Q.'s own bands don't want to work with him any more." But I didn't mean you, I meant groups like the Pullet Pluckers. People he's worked with in the past don't want to keep working with him.

Ah. Suddenly it all made sense (well, almost). It was easy to see how, in the process of a bilingual game of telephone, the attribution for that remark might shift from Jimmy & the Pullet Pluckers to me. It was equally easy to see how someone as volatile as Q. would see fit to dismiss me from the band for committing such an indiscretion. Except that I didn't commit it.

I had, of course, defied Q. by fulfilling a contract that he had instructed me to break — namely, playing a set at Cosmovision Center for Michalis. The situation can be presented as a nice little ethical dilemma: If B is a subordinate of A, and A instructs B to help him cheat C, is B obligated to obey? Or should B use whatever means he has to try to prevent C from being cheated?

Well, what do you think? All I can say is that even soldiers don't have to follow immoral orders.