Legendary Blues singer, BB King looked somber as I sat together in his dressing room in Las Vegas. He watched me in the mirror as he spoke. “I never actually had the Blues, you know,” he confided. He seemed to be waiting for a reaction from me, some kind of emotional micro-eruption. I gave him none.

“I know about the Blues. I know what it is, but I can’t say for sure that I ever really had it. How about you?”

I told him that I didn't think I had the Blues either. I wasn't sure how to tell anyway. I told him that, if anything, I thought I might have a little Soul, but probably not the Blues.

He admitted that he wasn't embarrassed to be one of the world’s most outspoken representatives of the Blues — the money sure was good — yet he told me that he felt a pang of guilt from the falseness of having never really experienced the Blues personally.

Ever since white musicians like Eric Clapton credited their early Blues influences to BB King back in the1960’s, King said he felt obligated to live up to peoples’ expectations.

“See, a lot of people didn’t know who I was,” King told me in the shelter of his personal backstage retreat, a 1961 Airstream Ambassador 28 trailer, somehow mysteriously wedged into the casino's green room. “I was just playing, singing… trying to pay my bills… living the quiet life. In come these guys from England with the tight pants on and the long hair. They wanted something that I had, whatever that was. Next thing you know, you’ve got The Animals, The Yardbirds, The Who, Cream, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page… Led Zeppelin, you know what I mean? Everybody starts doing the Blues. Pretty soon they’re all famous with that British music scene and when the reporters wanna know, 'Who was your greatest influence?' they say, 'BB King was.'”

“Fact of the matter is that the Blues had been around since the days of the slaves, but I happened to be the one standing there the day these guys walked in and BOOM, there you go. If I had my druthers, I’d be playing flamenco or somethin'. Now I got to pretend that I only know 3 licks on the guitar so I can make a million dollars a year. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it, but people don’t realize that I have other skills. I really enjoy classical music, for instance. I can play the trombone. That’d go over really big down in Memphis, now wouldn’t it?”

“I do know guys who said they had the Blues. Howlin’ Wolf, for instance said he did. Buddy Guy’s another one. He says he's got the Blues. Robert Johnson… now he really had the Blues. He was miserable. I on the other hand… I had a pony when I was a kid. My family had a sailboat“

King fidgeted with a gold ring on his right finger as he told his tale. Guilt was the one emotion that seemed most palpable as I watched him struggle through his mind boggling confession. A man in the corner of the room carefully polished King’s Gibson 335 semi hollow body electric guitar, lovingly known as Lucille. “That’s all bullshit too,” King said, nodding in the direction of the man. “People love that stuff about naming your guitar. I name everything now. People think it’s bluesy. It's what they want. ”

King went on to say that he now had taken up the practice of naming all the inanimate objects around him as if they were people. “It’s what the people want.” He shrugged his shoulders into a “What am I supposed to do?” pose.

I asked for an example.

"I named my tour bus… Hal." He told me. "I named the toilet Timmy after my pony. He treats me right just like my pony did.”

Considering how lonely and stressful life can be on the road, King decided, in a sort of convoluted logic, that naming everything that was inanimate would guarantee that he would always be surrounded by friends. Conversely, he told me that he decided to now regard living things as if they weren’t. "You can't count on people," he told me as he stared me down. "You can't trust 'em."

I searched the Blues legend’s face for clarification. Did he not trust me? If he was saying what I thought he was saying, it meant that King was more than just an erstwhile, committee-appointed genius nearing the last years of his life. He was more than just an innocent bystander riddled with guilt about the lie he’d been living for the last 5 decades. He was a raving lunatic who'd worn the down the convolutions on his brain to the smoothness of a zucchini from playing the same 5 notes over and over again for 50 years. Would he apologetically expose more about this secret he’d been hiding… or would he lunge at me like a wild animal and kill me here on the spot? Probably the former, not the latter. He seemed to be more in of need therapy than protein for the moment.

Still, I sat frozen as if I’d just been hit in the neck with a dart dipped in curare waiting for the next words to come from his mouth. I didn't know what he wanted or what I should say, or if I should say anything at all. He rose and began to pace around the room, constantly staring into my eyes. "He's not going to try to kiss me, is he?" I thought.

I sat as still as s mannequin thinking that maybe if I didn't move he’d forget I was there. Maybe he'd forget that I had even come that day and he'd mistake me for a piece of furniture and just ignore me until I found the opportunity to hustle myself out of the trailer.

“Horse meat is very good, actually,” he whispered as he fished for some lost object inside the front of his tuxedo trousers, never breaking eye contact. “Do you know why?” he asked.

I could feel sweat forming on my forehead. I felt my body begin to tighten up, causing me to let out a small squeak of flatulence… like the noise an oboe player makes when they test a new reed, but softer and not quite as high pitched. King accepted this as a valid response. I was about to lose complete control but I didn’t want him to know, even though I think he did know. I gripped the cushion of the couch with my buttocks.

“It’s better than beef,” he said. “You know why?”

I didn’t know why but I didn't know what to say. My buttocks answered him for me with a frail "beep."

My response seemed to satisfy him.

“Because horses only drink clean water. Cows will drink water from anywhere. They’ll drink the water they just peed in.”

I was relieved to know the answer to his question, but I didn’t know why. Meanwhile, he’d apparently found what he’d lost in his pants. His gaze remained fixed.

“I named my refrigerator Mabelline.” He paused for a moment. “You know what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t.

“Like the mascara.”

"Beep."

“That guy over there buffing Lucille?” He motioned to the far end of the trailer with his chin.

I jerked my head around to see, but kept my body still. I fought to suppress another eruption from my flesh oboe. It was almost as though I was a vaudville puppeteer, and my ass was the demonic puppet making wisecracks while I struggled to make it shut up.

Off in the corner I could see a man with a lopsided sneer. He seemed to be polishing the back of a Gibson 335 with a cloth diaper. I thought I could hear him whispering what sounded like a barely audible breathy mantra. "Yeah baby. Yeah baby. Yeah baby."

“He has no name. My dog has no name," said King. The only reason I have a name is that they write it on the marquee. I’m just an object. I'm a commodity."

“Hand me Larry over there would you? And Margaret. And Arnold.”

I was lost.

“Oh never mind.” He stepped over to the table picked up a coffee carafe. Then a cup. A small pitcher of cream sat next to it.

He leaned in closely. I could feel his breath on my face. “How do you take it?”

The trailer shifted and the door squeaked open.

“BB needs you onstage,” said a man in sunglasses. A toothpick danced in his mouth as he spoke.

"BB needs you onstage?" I thought to myself. "What the hell's going on?"

"You're not BB King?" I asked.

I assumed that the expression on my face must have must have looked pinched or somehow distorted from the intensity of my confusion, like an expired Halloween pumpkin, from the way he stood their and looked at me. He stared into my eyes studying me as if he was checking for slime in a fishbowl.

The man at the door spoke again, snapping us both out of our respective trances. The legend, or rather, "the man I'd been talking to for the last 15 minutes thinking he wsa BB King" put down the carafe and the cup. “Gotta go kid. Make yourself at home.”

The person who I was certain was BB King bounced through the dressing room door, rattling the Airstream trailer. The man with no name who’s job it was to buff Lucille with a diaper hurried behind him, grabbing a white towel in his free hand and throwing it over his shoulder. He carefully worked his hips like a hula girl to nudge through the door while protecting the guitar that I, up to that moment, was certain was named Lucille. He and Lucille disappeared and the door slammed. Then there was silence, except for the gurgling of the vintage 1961, pee-wee sized Dometic M16 refrigerator.

I helped myself to some coffee.