Free Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You by Todd Hasak-Lowy Page A

her vast potential.
    Watching her from his seat near the back of the bar, Darren will be overwhelmed by the newly feverish pace of her development, which he’ll somehow realize is not so much her getting better as it is just her allowing herself to demonstrate how good she already is, as if she had been hiding huge parts of her ability until now. And this overwhelms Darren, because even from the back of the room he can’t help but see just how much Maggie there is in Maggie, how much she has effortlessly shed or gotten over all the parts of her that allowed Darren and everyone else at North High to not exactly take her all that seriously.
    Maggie, in short, is going to be ten times the adult than she was a teenager—she already is, such that people meeting her for the first time this evening could not possibly have any idea just how awkward and strange she often appeared only ten months earlier, because she’s radiant right now, maybe even literally. Because, sure, there are bright lights pointed at her, but it’s almost as if she is more than just reflecting the light; it seems like she’s luminous all on her own, because Darren can swear she’s brighter than the rest of the other lit-up musicians next to her onstage.
    And so Darren is overwhelmed, because even though she invited him to get on a plane and fly to New York (of course she’ll be in New York) to visit her (she even coordinated his visit with her roommate’s trip home so the two of them—holy crap—will have her dorm room all to themselves), he strongly doubts that he can compete with the dozens of guys who are surely lining up to date or even just talk to this amazing woman.
    But just as Darren is getting ready to go hide in the bathroom and plan his escape in order to cut his devastating losses, a song ends (“My Funny Valentine”). At which point Maggie walks up to the microphone, where she says, “We have a special guest in the audience tonight. My boyfriend, Darren, flew in today from Chicago to visit me this weekend.” Darren is so terrifically embarrassed just two short sentences into her announcement that his face feels heavy with all the blood rushing up to it. “And not only is he cute and funny”—Maggie sort of laughs here—“but he’s a kick-ass bassist.”
    Darren feels like he might now die, especially once he sees the quintet’s bassist, who is probably twenty-five and has an actual adult beard, carefully set his bass (his massive, hollow, acoustic, stand-up bass) down on the stage, which he then steps off from, smiling. Maggie has her left hand, the one not holding her trumpet, up against her brow, shielding her from the bright lights aimed at the stage. “C’mon up here, Darren, no hiding!”
    Darren is at this point saying and doing all the things a person says and does when wanting to appear intent on declining a public invitation, waving Maggie off with his hands, muttering, “No, no, no,” but of course, this is not a polite act on Darren’s part. He does not in any way want to go up on that stage. But Maggie, the rest of her quintet, and the crowd simply will not take no for an answer.
    Still, the applause and the chanting of “Dar-REN! Dar-REN! Dar-REN!” are not enough. It takes a smiling and mildly exasperated Maggie stepping off the stage, walking all the way to him, reaching down to take his hand, and, most of all, whispering warmly in his ear, “Please, Darren, for me, please,” for him to agree. And it wasn’t even the words of her request, it was feeling her breath on his skin as she spoke that somehow cured him of his fear. As if she blew a magic spell onto him. Or into him.
    So he ascends to the stage, familiarizes himself as best as he can with the instrument, this being the third time he’s so much as touched a stand-up bass, and looks over at the group’s bassist, who nods casual