What makes a man a man?



The Bard on the Boat
by FrostStrix


Philippe never stayed in one place for very long. As he liked to say, “As soon as I can walk from the stage to the dock without getting lost, I move on.”

He became famous, largely due to the pictures that laughing young women took and posted on the internet. A handsome, travelling saxophone player, who only stayed in the same place for a couple nights. Someone decided to do some investigative journalism, and figured out that he was moving along the coast. Huge crowds appeared at his next few venues, with flashing cameras and laughter and pads of paper held out for him to sign.

Most of the members of his ragtag band loved the attention, but Philippe got tired of that pretty fast- although he did meet some nice girls- so he changed his name, got back on his houseboat, and kept going. The band found a new saxophone player, he learned later, who couldn’t play quite as well but was, apparently, passable. Nobody really knew what had happened to them after that.

A few years later, people tracked him down again, calling him “The Bard on the Boat.” Buttercream tolerated this, but he started varying the places he visited. Once, he went down the river and performed at a few inland venues. When his saxophone playing began to attract larger crowds, he sailed back out to sea.

“Calliope music, cotton candy fingers, sandy clothes and the wind off the sea,” said the Bard on the Boat to a reporter, describing his ideal venue. “Small stage, small crowd, saxophone, stars. Did you know, those old wooden boardwalks absorb heat so well, they stay hot until midnight? If you’re barefoot you have to run across them, and in the daytime wet feet sizzle.” The interviewer, taken aback by this speech, politely replied that he had not been aware of that. Before he could ask another question, the Bard was gone. In another hour, someone spotted his houseboat heading out to sea, and Philippe left a quick tune hanging in the air behind him as he left.

They say the last place the Bard played was on a small boardwalk stage, on the last day of summer. There were only thirty or so people there, not counting seagulls. Most of them were college students, in twos and threes, laughing and dropping popcorn onto the hot wooden planking and the flashes from their cameras blazed like shooting stars in the dusk.

The Bard on the Boat blew a kiss into the crowd, stopped to chat with a pretty girl, grabbed a bag of cotton candy and stepped onto his boat.

The next day, his houseboat washed up on a beach a few miles down the coast. The circumstances of his disappearance were never resolved. He left his saxophone behind.