Bleat Jazz and Other Poolside Distractions
by The Brown Monk of Sedona
I’m at Poco Diablo Resort being lulled by the aftermath of warm pool water, listening to the strains of music being piped out of poolside speakers. The music bubbles up like a feng shui fountain in the spaces between the words of guests and the sounds of splashing water.
I have a habit of naming the innocuous strains of elevator music played there to keep track of tanning time. When “Variegated Vapid Air” followed by “Mexi-Sexy Melody” had finished, that was my cue to turn over.
Friday afternoons in the summer are busy time for the Poco pool and I was ensconced between four visiting blonde women in the hot tub and a table full of pale-faced umbrella huggers having what seemed to be a serious political discussion.
The blondes were verbally comparing the results of their newly taken aura photos and, as their frenetic chatter began to intensify, so did my regret at finding my tanning cot so closely positioned to Platinum, Sandy, Sunstreaked and Ashe.
“Mine was all PINK!” the mid-forties blonde gurgled. “All pink with pretty yellow bubbles!”
I was trying to place the garish accent.
“WHAT are you doing?” the mid-sixties blonde yelled poolside toward the water. “WHAT are you DOING?”
There was giggling in the pool and my head turned involuntarily.
Two younger blondes in the pool were fussing and giggling over a wayward bikini top.
Simultaneously, in my other ear, a conspiratorial but grossly more articulate conversation about how to move our nation past the pathetic abyss of “the best politicians money can buy” while “maintaining integrity in the midst of scheming lobbyists and a bought system” was heating up.
“STOP that! There’s a man here! Stop that!” the grandmotherly blonde whisper-yelled—if there even is such a thing as whisper yelling.
The blonde grande dame was urgently pointing in my direction and waving her hands like a conductor at a runaway orchestra.
I wanted to assure her that there was no remote threat of arousing me from my sun-stroked comfort with the sound of her voice screeching in my ear–no matter how many multi-generational bikini blondes were present.
Instead of the usual captivation a properly filled bikini can bestow on me, I found myself tacitly annoyed with the blonde brouhaha, wanting only to get back to my sun-stupored state and gin and tonic. All the while, the sounds continued to float up around us.
I adjusted my position again and the chattering blonde cacophony in an unknown American dialect suddenly stopped and there was a moment’s reprieve on both sides of me.
The music had changed again, this time to strains of soft jazz, it seemed, but with a twist.
She wop be doo wop, she bop be doo wop. She wop be doo wop. Then…
Baaa baaa baaa.
What? Sheep jazz, are you kidding me?
She bee de doo wop. Baaa baaa baaa. What a novelty. The chaos resumed around me, but I didn’t notice. I couldn’t think about anything else. I was too busy wondering just what kind of mind and what strange creative urge would result in something like sheep jazz.
Someone must really be missing Montana, I thought.
I wondered if the music would morph from sheep into other barnyard animals.
And the song wasn’t ending. It just kept on going in the background while the certain demise of our country was being discussed in serious tones and young women were being scolded for exposing their breasts publicly. Baaa baaa baaa.
The sight and sounds of bubbling bikini blondeness and the forging of a New America were replaced by the vision of throngs of mesmerized sheep moving in from the hillsides, called by the music at the Poco Diablo pool from outlying rural areas like rats descending on Hamlin.
The weird thing was: no one else seemed to notice.
I mean, Baaaa. Baaa. Baaaa. How could you miss it?
I nicknamed the tune “Bleat Jazz” and gathered my things when it ended. I mean, it wasn’t going to get any better than this.
