Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #49: "Judy in Disguise"

 I am a musician. I play guitar and perform locally, doing blues and Celtic. I am also a writer who writes stories about music. But there are often misconceptions and misunderstandings of songs. Urban legends build up about them. Most everyone has heard that Peter, Paul and Mary's hit song, "Puff, the Magic Dragon," is about smoking marijuana. I mean, after all, the Dragon's name is Puff, and the little boy in the song is "Jackie Paper." I remember a friend telling me the group was "stoned on marijuana," when they wrote it. Turns out, they did not write the lyrics at all. They were written by a Cornell University student named Leonard Lipton and based on a poem by Ogden Nash titled "Custard the Dragon." It had nothing to do with marijuana.

The number that inspired my story "Judy in Disguise" had a similar history of misinterpretation. I had read that it was a song about college students being recruited by the FBI to spy on radical campus organizations. The lyrics seemed to suggest as much:

Judy in disguise, well, that's what you are
                                                Lemonade pie with a brand new car
                                                Cantaloupe eyes, come to me tonight
                                                Judy in disguise with glasses

The girl in the song is "in disguise," she has a brand new car. She is working for the FBI and they are paying her so she's bought a new car. The only trouble, this is not what the song is about. It was written as a sort of non-sense song. John Fred, the main author, said he was in the shower, heard the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and thought it was "Judy in disguise with diamonds." When he learned the right lyrics, he wrote a song based on his misinterpretation. It was a hit—but, alas, what are called "novelty songs" usually make groups into one-hit wonders (e.g., "What the Fox Said") and so it was with John Fred and the Playboy Band, which was too bad because they were good musicians. But the bogus interpretation persisted and led me to write a story about the song.

Samuel Blachoviac, the main character, has been on the run ever since he became involved in radical politics during his student days in the 1960s. In the course of his adventures, he comes across Julissa Mason. In their students days they had dated, done drugs together, practiced "free love," and argued politics. She was conservative and did not buy his radical mindset; from a poor home, she did not romanticise the poor or poverty and wanted to get free of it by graduating to a high-paying job. She did not believe in revolution.

When Fiona, one of Samuel's radical friends, tells Julissa of their plot to burn down the ROTC building, she tells the police. Fiona, Tom (another radical friend) and Samuel move the date up and are able to burn the building, but Samuel's two friends are apprehended and he becomes a fugitive. When two cops corner him in Texas, he throws a hand grenade an SDS radical gave him to scare them away and ends up killing them both.

Julissa

He spends the next forty years of his life running and hiding, moving from place to place and from job to job. When he lands a job in Indiana, he sees a picture of Julissa in the newspaper. She runs a business in a near-by city. He resolves to kill her for ruining his life and the lives of Fiona and Tom, both of whom had come to bad ends and died young as a result of being arrested and imprisoned. 

He locates Julissa, tells her why he is going to kill her, and points a gun at her but never gets to fire it. With a lightning move, she knocks him out. He wakes up handcuffed. The police are present to take him away. It turns out Julissa liked working for the FBI so much she eventually became an agent. Finding him had been a lifelong project and, after all these years, she had got a tip on him, set up the business as a trap to make him come after her, and finally got her man. In the last scene, he is hauled off in a police car. The radio is not playing "Judy in Disguise," but he knows that soon, somewhere, he will eventually hear it.

The story was published in Issue #2 of Bête Noire, a journal which is still being published. An editor from another journal who rejected it said it was too predictable. Obviously, not everyone thought so, but I would agree it is not one of my very best stories. Still, it appealed enough to get in print. You can read it and decide on its quality for yourself. It is only available in print, no online copies, but you can still buy the journal for some excellent reading, "Judy in Disguise"

Songs, even if they are misinterpreted, and sometimes because they are, make for great narrative tales.

I would love to hear your comments and receive your feedback. Have you ever misinterpreted a song and gone for years and years thinking the lyrics said this when actually they said that? I had a friend who thought "Strawberry Fields Forever" was "Strawberry Beatles Florescent." 

This month I am promoting my novella Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to Die for served up by the Angel of Death. But even Angels get in trouble. When they do, who will rescue them? It will take an Orpheus to get one out of hell, but if you love her enough, you're willing to undertake the journey.

Happy Reading!