The History of Sound: Stories

In 1984, first-person narrator Lionel Worthing is living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he receives a series of phonograph cylinders in the mail from someone in Maine. The sender found the cylinders in their attic, and Lionel immediately knows that they are recordings from the summer he and his lover David spent in Maine together decades prior. He has written several books “on American folk music” (1), but he’s never written about his and David’s story.

Lionel lets himself remember his relationship with David for the first time in years. The men met in 1916 when Lionel was 17 years old and they were students at the New England Conservatory. One night, David was playing piano at a bar when Lionel approached him. They spent the rest of the evening playing music together—David on the piano and Lionel singing along. Afterward, they went back to David’s flat and had sex. They maintained this weekly ritual over the following months.

In 1917, David left for the war like many men they knew. Lionel didn’t go overseas because he had bad eyes; instead, he moved home to his family’s farm in Harrow. He spent his days working the farm or visiting with his grandfather.