The phone rang again and the sound brought death and destruction and he just by God wanted to stop it. He rolled off the futon onto the floor and grabbed the phone out from under it, mashing the talk button with too many fingers.
“Hello?” he mumbled.
“Hey, Bud!” a bright, sugary voice answered.
Jake knew who it was right away. Kimmy was the only reason he kept a phone connected. About once a month she would call and try and invite him to some shit. She considered it her civic duty to, as she called it, ungrump him.
She is making a liar out of me by doing this, because I said no one called. I tried explaining this then, but it didn’t fit, so I’m explaining it now that I have to either give Jake something to latch on to or kill him.
Kimmy always smiled. She was smiling right now, even though nobody could see it. I took this from her namesake. She had a compliment for everybody and was everybody’s friend without being a bad friend to anybody. She was perfectly nice and Jake didn’t ever know how to handle it.
“What, Kimmy?” It was a replication of their early morning work routine.
“You said you wouldn’t say no this time, and I decided to make it easy on you.”
He said that every time. His life could repeat endlessly without intervention. Jake looked across the room at his clock. It was five-thirty. He had slept all day. He didn’t need this. “Okay, what is it?”
“We’re going to a show at the Wash Room. I’ll pay for your drinks if you order mine.” Kimmy was nineteen.
“What kind of show?” Jake was staring at the ceiling, trying to organize an excuse, some plausible reason to dodge being a social animal.
“I don’t know, but my friend Tony told me one of them is a punk band, so I thought we would give it a shot. I’m picking you up at eight.” And she hung up.
Jake threw the phone at his kitchen, which sent Fernando scurrying under the fridge. He wished that Kimmy’s dad had hung himself so she might frown every once in awhile and he wouldn’t have bought her a car. Then maybe he could stay home tonight.
The historic part of town had been getting college students historically drunk for over eighty years, so it was usually off-limits to Jake between Thursday and Saturday when the throng of best friends and hangers-on and everyone in between would line up for pitchers and then line up for dancing. Jake hated Texas drunks—they wore cowboy hats and smiled too much. It was embarrassing.
But the Wash Room was different from all the other country bars and dance clubs. It used to be a laundromat on the fringe of all the bars, nestled between an abandoned building and where date rapes are still just a twinkle in the eye and a wry smile. Now it was a long, narrow bar with booths on one side and the bar running down the other. The previous owner spent a lot of time and money keeping the look of a laundromat while removing the gray desperation of a laundromat. He had the washing machines behind the bar converted into refrigerators and kept the beat up checkerboard floor and plate glass storefront. Then he had to sell it because he got cancer, and everything went to shit.
The place was now corroded and dirty in a way that suggested a new type of pride. The floors were sticky like the dollar movie theater, and on the back porch rusty nails stuck out of the railing just waiting to send people to the hospital. There was also a pool table out there, and the orange felt had turned a mottled brown from rain and spilt beers.
Jake would often come here when he wanted to drink and smell like smoke. During the week it was filled with locals, people who generally kept quiet and knew that bars are supposed to be depressing. But even the Wash Room could not repel the onslaught of fake IDs and baby tees on the weekend, so Jake usually just drank at home. He didn’t even know that the owner let bands play on Friday nights.
In order to make the evening tolerable, Jake drank four beers before Kimmy picked him up. If she had not called, he would have made it all the way through ten dollars worth of the cheapest beer he could find, watching reality television while the paperclip that he had used to fix his toilet chain slowly rusted. Instead, he was standing outside waiting when she pulled up in her spanking new car that was bright and cheerful and probably saved the Earth and suited her perfectly. He didn’t want her in his apartment because it was a little embarrassing and he didn’t want to associate the two ideas. A little sunlight could break the whole place.
Kimmy had long blond hair, those big blue eyes, and absolutely no experience in the real world. She was a psychology major because she wanted to fix people’s problems. She was in a sorority, but she said it wasn’t shallow like all the others. Jake said that everybody said that, and that was their first conversation.
Now they were talking but Jake wouldn’t remember her sentence by the time he was halfway through his, so he just finished his thoughts as best he could. It seemed to work out, or else it just didn’t matter. He wasn’t so great at talking.
Jake paid for the drinks, not out of chivalric duty or sexual desire, but because Kimmy forgot to bring money. She was always doing things like that. It’s why Jake thinks she’s dumb. Of course, it’s also why I think she’s smart. Kimmy learned a long time ago that if you believe everything a man says they’ll pay more attention to you, and that’s another reason Jake thinks she’s dumb.
He enjoyed her company at work primarily because she would come over to talk to him without an invitation. Sometimes it was aggravating, and every time he pretended it was aggravating, but on the days she worked, he thought about her when he got home. He thought over the things he had said, the things he would say tomorrow. She laughed at some of his sarcastic remarks and didn’t get the rest, so he felt witty and smart, which were the only things he tried at.
The whole scene started to blur together as three rounds went by. Kimmy started touching Jake on the shoulder and the arm, but he wouldn’t read or remember any signals, and he felt that even just being here with her was taking advantage of her, somehow.
Somewhere between the second and third beer the Wash Room filled up with drunken college students, but by that point they were an impressionistic blur and a dull roar. The first band started playing some awful frat rock, borne from the pseudo-intellectual, market crossover bullshit that college kids think is so deep and poignant. This is much worse than the pseudo-intellectual, anti-market independent bullshit that Jake thinks is so deep and poignant. I promise.
Kimmy groaned and motioned toward the back porch. She did have some good taste in music, or at least she knew terrible when she heard it, which made Jake not mind her even more. She grabbed his hand and tugged him along through the crowd to the rear exit.
The back porch was crowded and small, and there was only about five feet of usable space away from the pool table. The space was taken up by college kids that Kimmy could have fit in with easily. Like every other student in town, they were white, upper-middle class, and extremely visible everywhere. They said they were forward thinking but clung tirelessly to traditions and didn’t know anybody outside of their study groups. Jake looked down on them from beneath them.
Instead of joining them, Kimmy chose an open spot on the railing. She and Jake leaned against it, smoking cigarettes. She put her head on his shoulder and he didn’t stop her. He didn’t know how, and he was too drunk to be nervous or to think about why he wasn’t nervous. Was it because she would talk to him without an invitation? Wasn’t he supposed to get nervous?
They were at the point of drunkenness when sleep comes easy, when ideas come and go, when one moment is spent throwing beer bottles into the community pool and the next is spent crying about a ruined kiss. He was momentarily caught up in thinking about school shootings and how one could happen here right now, a reinterpretation of a classic. The kid would come up these back stairs and start shooting people in the head one by one with a semi-automatic weapon that he saw in a movie or videogame and the little platinum blonde over there in the halter top and the orange tanned skin would be splattered with blood and run screaming into the bar to be shot in the back, paralyzing her forever. The media would swarm and swoon over the pretty little victims—they can be understood because they were torn down in their prime, successes on the rise. The ones who were beaten down for years would be monsters, but they would finally get that attention! Blame would be handed out to everyone but anyone involved. Mothers would be outraged and picket a local videogame store. Fathers would agree with their wives but still say their favorite movie is Die Hard. And a new generation of book burning would begin. We’re almost there and it’s such a shame that it’s taking so long, that instead of getting this new culture war underway we’re lost in a state of limbo where Jake’s resistance culture has run out of things worth resisting, even though right now as I’m rewriting this there’s a war on. Where did he get these ideas?
The owner came out and turned on the PA system, so that the awful shitrock inside was sprawled out into the night. Kimmy looked up and yelled something in Jake’s ear.
“I’m glad I came.” It was sincere and honest, and if Jake could have seen through all the bullshit he was thinking about the offensive people on the porch and how they might all die he would have said something back. But it would have been sarcastic and snide and everything she didn’t need—he couldn’t give her anything else.
Before he was given the opportunity to give an awkward response, a group of people on the other side of the porch started yelling. Jake couldn’t really make out what was going on, but at the center he kept catching glimpses of a scrawny redhead. He was shorter than everyone else there, so Jake hadn’t seen him until now. He looked totally out of place and totally underage, but he was holding a beer so he must at least have friends close by. He was wearing a plain white undershirt with writing in magic marker on it and a pair of dirty, grass-stained jeans. He just stood there, staring down a group of fraternity boys who were easily a head taller than him, taking deliberate swigs from his beer. One of them was screaming about a spilt pitcher and three dollars.
Jake watched the whole thing unfold through the haze of smoke and a drunken crowd. The kid started laughing softly, but no one heard it. Jake just saw his face twist into a sarcastic smile as his shoulders shook. Jake also saw the first blow to the face, and it was odd how the wet smack of the punch cut through all the crowd noise and bar bands. The kid just smiled bigger with a drop of blood running from his nose. Kimmy pressed close to Jake and looked away, and Jake turned a little to shield her because he had seen it done on TV. The next one was in the stomach and the kid doubled over and caught an elbow to the head. He crumpled to the ground and his beer poured out over the wood planks. The frat boys grabbed their friend and pulled him away after the second kick. They hurried down the back steps, brushing up against Jake, and ran to another bar down the street. The people who had bothered to stop talking started up again.
Jake stared as the kid got up, wiped his nose on his shirt front, and went inside. He came back out a moment later with another beer. Jake tried to read the kid’s t-shirt, but it was like he never stayed still. Kimmy had said something.
“What?”
“Those guys are such pricks.”
“Yeah.”
Jake kept watching this kid. He was obviously older than he looked, or maybe that was just in the way he held a beer. He stood there with his back turned, laughing with two or three friends. Somehow his physical suffering was profoundly funny. The joke hadn’t been on him. Jake couldn’t hear what was going on, but it was better than his stupid, small life. Kimmy gave him another cigarette and he mumbled an unheard thanks.
Suddenly the music stopped and everyone was talking loud for no reason. Kimmy looked up at Jake and smiled. “I think they’re done. You want to go back in?”
“Sure.”
Inside the bar, people were leaving. Apparently, the awful band had drawn most of the crowd, and now everyone was either going to the after party or to karaoke down the street. About twenty people were still inside the bar as the tiny stage in the corner was being cleared for the next band. They were more Jake’s type: punks, drunks, junkies.
Jake wondered where they came from in a town full of pseudo-successful, materialistic, country music lovin’, normal, future executive vice presidents. Did they come here to be oppressed too? Or were they here before all this? Did they come up from the primordial mud?
“What are you looking at?” Kimmy asked.
They were all talking and drinking and smoking and dirty and wonderful. There was a girl with spiderweb tattoos on her elbows who never washed her hair who I always wanted to date. There was a guy with jet black hair who later in the week would pack his things into garbage bags and disappear forever. There was a kid no older than fifteen with a bottle of Oxycontin in his pocket who felt like throwing up but wouldn’t admit it. I was there, in the corner, wearing a post office shirt that I’d bought from a resale shop in Houston, drinking can soda, hoping no one noticed I was just pretending to be straight edge so I wouldn’t get drunk enough to try hard drugs. The girl who dragged me there never shaved her legs and had a nose ring, liked to go rock-climbing and liked to drink wine, wore a shirt she’d cut apart and safety-pinned back together again. Two guys in spiked leather jackets with back patches on them holding hands. A burgeoning anorexic in a plaid mini on heroin. Maybe Walt Whitman in the back having a beer with Kerouac and Nelson Algren. Kurt Vonnegut drawing idly on a napkin. Every interesting person I’ve ever met was there in the space of that narrow bar. Some were going to have a good time, others would be disappointed, but the whole crowd of my life was there to judge the scene.
“Thrift store Gestapo.” Jake replied, trying to be nonchalant, quoting a song to hide the fact that he wanted to be them too.
The next band started to set up. Their equipment was laughable. Everything that was brought on stage wasn’t worth one decent guitar. Tiny, shitty amps turned all the way up and instruments bought at toy stores. To Jake’s surprise, the scrawny redhead kid came in from outside and started hooking up a guitar. Jake finally got a chance to read his shirt. It said, “Hit me, you Neanderthal fuck,” which was more a let down than anything, because it made everything from outside snap into place too cleanly. Confusion was revealed to be artifice.
Jake didn’t notice. He started laughing, and Kimmy clung to his shoulder and tried to see what he was laughing at. She was drunker than he was and had settled into being a slurred girlfriend, hanging all over him. Jake didn’t know how to react, so he didn’t notice.
The other members of the band were waiting, ready, as the little redhead kid tuned his guitar and finished his beer. He held his empty bottle up for the bartender to get him another, but the bartender just gave him the finger. Jake liked the bartender, but they didn’t really speak. The kid smiled and nodded, then suddenly threw the beer bottle to the floor and launched into a dirty, raw, explosive song all in one motion.
The shitty amps struggled and bottomed out as chords were missed and the bass player nearly fell over from being drunk, and the whole thing held together by a fine thread and a straight-up drum beat. Then the kid let out a guttural scream that filled up the whole room.
Jake had never felt so much energy. This little kid was God of a six-by-six stage, and the crowd didn’t know how to take it. They all just stared.
When the song was over the kid turned around and nobody moved. He whispered something to the drummer and then turned back to the mic. “We’re Beat Up Book Club. Start enjoying this or get the fuck out of my bar.” Then it was on to the next song.
A few people left and some came in from outside, but whoever was still there started dancing and yelling and drinking right along with them, like some kind of twisted revival. For thirty minutes, it was his bar, and he owned every soul in it. It was like God answering you when you prayed. Nobody understood the lyrics, but when he said to sing along they did as they were fucking told. They tapped into the subconsciousness of shared experience, and their mouths sprang forth in a modern, disjointed glossolallia. People pushed, punched, fell over, were helped back up. Jake watched the whole thing unfold from the back of the room, wanting to be a part of it, wanting to own it, wanting to destroy it. At the same time, some small voice in the back of his mind cried out, wondering what would happen to him when it was all over.
At the end of the set the kid was drenched, his nose was bleeding again, and his eye had started to swell shut. His red hair was matted to his scalp and had turned a dark brown from sweat. He took off his guitar and let it fall to the floor, then walked over to the bar and got the beer he was owed. Feedback started to build up, and soon there was a loud wail coming from his amp. No matter how it cried, none of the other band members stopped it as they packed up their gear, not saying a word. Finally, the bartender flipped a switch behind the counter and the stage’s power went out.
Jake just stood there, floored. He was still alive, but at the same time everything around him had lost a little bit of something, like the time when God stops answering your prayers. Kimmy was leaning against him, but he didn’t feel her. He felt like he wasn’t even in control of his own body. Maybe it was alcohol. Maybe he was born again. Maybe I am making him do this. He tapped Kimmy on the shoulder and she stood under her own weight. He hesitated for one second, then walked over to the bar to talk to the kid.
1 comment:
This is absolutely fantastic.
Also, putting it up for free is an incredible idea.
I just pre-ordered my copy.
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