Mario and His Music

Mario was sweeping out the place when I arrived. It was before 9 a.m., and the door of Los Parados was still locked so I watched him through a window for a few moments before knocking.

He went about his work in a routine though desultory fashion, sweeping the small kitchen area first and then an adjoining storage room. He seemed buried in his thoughts, and by the somber tone of his expression, they weren’t good thoughts.

“Hey, Mario,” I called, rapping on the window.

When he saw me, he brightened some, but only for a little while. By the time he’d gone back to sweeping, he was telling me this was the worst time of his life. I began to wonder: Was the music gone?

Los Parados is a fast-food Mexican restaurant in Wilmington. Mario cooks there and sleeps in an attached back room. Sometimes he’s up until 4 in the morning taking care of business. He wishes he were up until 4 taking care of a woman. These are lonely times.

Mario sings and writes music as a hobby. He’d like to make it his life.

I met him two years ago in a Santa Monica cocktail lounge. I was working the city one evening and stopped by on the way home to listen to Doug Sprague play night music at the piano bar. Fog laced the streets.

I was enjoying the music when suddenly this fat guy in shirt sleeves stood up and began singing. His shirttail stuck out, and there were tattoos on his arm. Sprague picked up the singer’s tempo without missing a beat and said simply, “Mario.”

The guy really got into the music, closing his eyes and swaying slightly. Every once in a while he’d move his hand in a wavelike motion, the way Tony Bennett does.

Later he told me he’d been writing music and singing since he was 12. He was 32 then, and music was the dream of his life. In the daytime he schlepped tacos at a family restaurant in East L.A., but at night Sprague let him sing with him at the place in Santa Monica.

Mario had a girlfriend at the time, an English woman who seemed crazy about him. It was an up period in his life. He felt he was close to achieving something.

“All I need,” he’d tell whoever was willing to listen, “is a chance.”

Then one day Doug left Santa Monica for other places, and Mario had no place to sing. On top of that, his girl went back to London and family problems forced him to abandon his job in East L.A.

Just like that the dream shattered like crystal in a hurricane and lay in gleaming shards around him.

He telephoned me thinking maybe I could point him in the right direction, and I wish I could. I like Mario. In a town loaded with dreamers and hustlers, he stands out as someone special, working 18 hours a day to eat and making music in the tiny back room of a taco stand.

It’s the worst time of his life, Mario says, because he’s at odds with his family, his girl is gone and he’s getting nowhere trying to sell his music.

“I’d kiss a gorilla to have one shot at success,” he said. “I’ve been sending my stuff to all the music publishing companies. Nothing. I even went to A & M Records in person one day, and they wouldn’t even let me in.”

“Does that mean you’re giving up?”

He stopped sweeping. “You kidding? I’ll never stop dreaming. Music is my life!” He leaned the broom against a wall. “Come on back here.”

Mario lead me into the back room, picked up a guitar and, with one foot propped up on a stool, began singing.

All alone or hangin’ out with friends, thoughts of you just never seem to end .

Living life without you won’t be easy. . . . .

So all right, the songs don’t have the lyrics of a Mercer or the melody of a Mancini, but they evoke a kind of moody loneliness that reminds me of how it was once to be alone and to feel as though the world were passing me by.

When he’d finished the song, I asked Mario how come he didn’t have a woman in his life.

He tuned the guitar as he talked.

“I wish I could just say I’m too busy,” he said, “but that’s not the problem.” He began picking out a song again. “If I knew the problem, I wouldn’t be alone.”

Then he sang something called “I Don’t Want to Lose You Now,” about a guy who couldn’t get a woman’s face out of his head and was hurting badly. His eyes were closed. His soul was showing.

“You’re terrific, Mario,” I said, and I meant it on a lot of levels that are never very obvious. “Don’t give up the dream.”

I like to think he was feeling better by the time I left. He said to tell everyone who remembered him in Santa Monica that Mario was still singing, and if they wanted to come out to Los Parados, he’d sing for them there.

Drop by sometime. It’s on Avalon Boulevard just south of Pacific Coast Highway. Tell them a guy who admires dreamers sent you.