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I lean down to the girls on the lawn and tell them we’re going to sing and cut the birthday cake now, and they excitedly follow me back to the patio area. When we reach the patio, Ryan appears with Charlotte. My wife greets me and starts to say something about how much fun she’s having, but she’s interrupted by Tessa emerging from the house with a large, blazing cake. When Tessa and I lock eyes, she nods to signal me, so I start dutifully singing the ritualistic birthday song at the top of my lungs, and, in short order, the entire party follows suit and begins converging on the patio.
Tessa carefully places the cake onto a table and everyone, including Charlotte, Thea, and me, crowds around it. When Charlotte sees the top of the cake, and the elaborate unicorn painted in icing on it, she hoots with laughter.
As Charlotte listens to the birthday song, she’s got her tiny doppelganger at her side, a huge smile on her face, and a palm resting on her growing baby bump. And for the millionth time since my beautiful wife showed me that positive pregnancy test six months ago, I feel my heart surge with excitement and love for her and our family.We did it.Everything we’ve ever dreamed about, individually and together, we’ve made it happen. We’re living the dream, Charlotte and me. A real-life happily ever after.
Charlotte’s fans havelovedseeing her pregnant, by the way. Both times. In fact, when Charlotte announced this second pregnancy to her fans, she had her best month, ever, thanks to all the congratulatory tips that poured in. Charlotte made so much money that month, as a matter of fact, she bought me a cherry-red Ferrari as a birthday gift. Paid in full.
It was an outrageously extravagant gift, and I told her so. But, secretly, I was beyond thrilled she did it. Years ago, I told Charlotte the story of my brother, Max, andhisFerrari. Sorry, hisPortofino M. Max always used to correct anyone who referred to it as a paltryFerrari. But when I told Charlotte the story back then, I was making fun of my brother and his obsession with his stupid sports car. I never in a million years thought she’d file that nugget of information away and one day buymethe same wildly expensivecar. Apparently, my face while telling the story gave me away. Charlotte could tell it was my dream car. And now, it’s sitting in our garage, courtesy of my amazing wife and her online band of loyal sickos.
When the birthday song ends, Charlotte and Thea blow out the birthday candles and everyone claps.
“Thank you so much for being here to celebrate with me!” Charlotte shouts above the cheers and applause. “This is the best birthday, ever!”
Tessa hugs Charlotte, so I head over there and hug Charlotte, too.
“Happy birthday, baby,” I say, after kissing her soft cheek. “I’ve got one more present for you. The best one yet.”
“Another one? Oh my gosh, Auggie.” I showered her with gifts this morning. Jewelry. Flowers. A pair of highly specific sneakers she wanted for some reason. But this is her 40th, baby. A big one. So, as nice as all those gifts were, I had to gobigwith this final one. “I’m sure it’s amazing, love,” Charlotte says. “But best one yet?” She holds up her hand to reveal the sparkling diamond ring I gave her this morning. “I don’t think anything is going to beat this.”
“Just you wait.” I find my brother in the crowd, and thankfully, he performed his duties and marshalled the troops. Or rather, our makeshift boy band. Max, Ryan, Fish, and Henn are all standing together in a clump, awaiting my signal to take the stage.
I give the group a thumbs up and they collectively flash me one in return. I lock eyes with Tessa nearby and give her a signal, since she’s going to be our emcee and song-button-pusher, and she winks and climbs onto a nearby chair.
“Can I have everyone’s attention, please?” Tessa bellows. “Hello? Attention, please.”
It takes a minute, but eventually everyone is quiet and looking at Tessa.
“Happy birthday, Charlotte! Let’s hear it for the birthday girl!”
Everyone applauds and cheers.
“Charlotte, you’re a very lucky birthday girl, because tonight, just for you, for the first and only time, the world-famousboy band, Auggie Loves Charlotte, is here to perform their global smash hit, ‘All Strings Attached!’” As the crowd titters in confusion, Tessa flings her arm toward me and the rest of my boy band on the other side of the patio, where we’re already standing in formation with me in the front. She bellows, “Enjoy the show, Charlotte! This one’s for you!” She pushes a button, and two second later, the song begins blaring through overhead speakers.
“What?” Charlotte gasps out, her green eyes wide.
The intro to the song is blasting, but my vocals—the ones I’m going to lip-synch while muddling through the choreography—haven’t started yet, so it’s understandable Charlotte’s feeling deeply confused about this ridiculousness. Thanks to Fish—the bass player of 22 Goats who’s now a good friend of mine, thanks to Ryan—the song blasting the party sounds like an actual hit song—one you’d hear on the radio in the 90s. It sounds totally professional. Familiar somehow, too, simply because it’s such a great parody. But as Charlotte and the rest of the party is about to find out, this song was created especially and only for one incredible boy-band fan: the one and only Charlotte McDougal.
At a small get-together at Ryan’s about four months ago, I wound up chatting with Fish and eventually drunkenly telling him my big idea to give my wife a personalized boy-band song as her 40thbirthday gift. I only told Fish about my big idea to ask him if he knew anyone I could hire to help me bring the idea to life. But to my surprise, Fish immediately said he’d do it. For free. For the fun of it. When I protested, Fish insisted. He handed me his phone, right then and there, and ordered me to sing all my song ideas into it. I didn’t have the whole song fleshed out at that point, but I had lots of ideas and snippets. Stuff I’d been singing to Charlotte for years, here and there. So, I sang them into Fish’s phone and handed it back to him.
Two months later, while Fish was here in Seattle for his mom’s birthday, he called me and told me to come over to her house,pronto. When I got there, I was blown away. He had a full-on music studio set up in her garage, and from those silly little snippets of vocals I’d made for him months before, he’d created an entire song, except for vocals—one with music that sounded as good as any real song you’d hear on the radio.
We fleshed out the lyrics together. And when that was done, Fish set up a microphone for me, and patiently led me through the process of laying down vocals on the track. Seriously, it was one of the best days of my life. I felt like a Make-A-Wish kid.
After that task was done, Fish got to work. He bathed my amateurish vocals in autotune and other production magic until they sounded legit professional. He added his own vocals to mine to fill them out and make them pop and he also added some background harmonies for good measure. Seriously, by the time Fish was finished producing the track, I almost believed "Auggie Loves Charlotte” was an actual boy band from the 90s.
Originally, my big idea was to awaken Charlotte on her 40thbirthday by pressing play on whatever boy band song I managed to come up with. But once I heard the finished song, I scrapped that boring plan and came up with a bigger, better one: wrangling my very own boy band toperformthe song at Charlotte’s birthday party. And now, here we are. Auggie Loves Charlotte, comprised of me, Max, Ryan, Fish, and a friend of Ryan’s named Henn.
I became friendly with Henn last year during Ryan’s birthday boy’s trip, so I knew he’d be a great addition to the boy band. He’s the kind of guy who’s always up for anything, especially if it would involve him making a fool of himself on a dance floor. So, that was that. I asked each of the guys to help me, and they all enthusiastically said yes. Well, okay, Max had to be cajoled a bit. But in the end, his wife, Marnie, convinced him for me. And justlike that, about six weeks ago, all five members of my boy band were finally in place.
Finding the right choreography for our boy band to perform, and then figuring out a way for everyone to learn the dance in time for the party was a bit of a challenge. For one thing, the band is physically scattered. Only Ryan and I live in Seattle. For another thing, none of us are professional dancers, so we had to find something simple and easy to do thatalsofit the song andalsocould be learned by a bunch of amateurs from watching a video.
Luckily, Ryan’s friend, Henn, is pretty good with computers. He’s in IT. So, once I found a YouTube dance tutorial that looked like a pretty easy routine that was also at the right tempo, Henn kindly overlayed “All Strings Attached” with the dance video and sent it around to the group. From that point forward, I’d done all I could do, other than my part in privately rehearsing. I had to let go of my stress about us probably crashing and burning at the party, and just accept the performance would be what it would be.
The first dance cue comes up in the song. There are still no vocals on the track, but some hard-hitting, staccato chords require some herky-jerky, over-the-top hand motions and poses. I perform them all, on cue—I think?—and the entire crowd, including Charlotte, goes apeshit—which suggests the boy banders just behind me and on either side of me havealsohit their cues.
The beat just dropped. Time for those step-together-steps and finger snaps. So far, so good.Phew.
Okay, the vocals are starting now. As the lead singer of Auggie Loves Charlotte, it’s now time for me to start lip-synching, with dramatic flair, while launching into the heart of the dance moves. Here we go.
