“Oh good,” she chirps, stacking her books on the radiator. “We can talk showbiz!”
I laugh and climb out of the tub. “Get right back on that horse! You wanna be on the guest list?”
“It’s Friday night! Of course I do.” Betty comes to every show. Probably because she doesn’t have anything else to do, but I always ask. I don’t want to be caught assuming she’s got nothing else to do.
“Okay. What should we have for lunch?” I ask her, taking my books out of the bathtub one by one. “Candy? Or candy?”
She stands up and flutters her fingers around her necklaces in an idiosyncratic gesture I always find charming. It makes her look like a queen. She does it to shift modes, it seems, or when conversations get too serious. Then, scrunched up in excitement, fists clenched, she squeals, “Candy!”
♋ call me
i’m in a deep hole
i dug myself
Dude races upstairs to the roof and begins throwing pot plants into the woods while Crane talks to the policemen at the door.
She keeps me with her so the cops can see she’s a wholesome young mother. Eventually, they leave-—false alarm.
“See, Kristin?” she says, shaking. “Another reason why being nice is important. It can keep you out of jail.”
After sound check, while I write set lists in the dressing room, our bass player tells a story about her former life in Santa Cruz that involves living in a tree house, falling out of the tree house, breaking her leg and being attacked by banana slugs. Leslie’s stories are very soothing, and I only half listen until the banana slug part. Then I stop writing and look up. “What’s a banana slug?”
“They’re big,” answers Leslie.
I hold up the magic marker I’m using, sideways. “What, like, this big?” She swings her waist-length dreads over her shoulder and puts her hands in front of my face about a foot away from each other. “No!” Cool. “And they attack you?”
“They attacked me,” she says.
“Wait a minute—” I begin.
My sister, Tea, interrupts. “But how fast are they? And what could a slug do to you even if it could catch you?” She talks to the ceiling because she’s lying on a Universal Couch, the disgusting old sofa covered in stains, gum and cigarette burns that’s common to all dressing rooms. We think this is how aliens’ll colonize earth: in the form of unassuming, filthy sofas. They’re everywhere. Everywhere we go, anyway.
“Yeah, Les,” I say, “are they poisonous or something?”
Leslie shrugs. “They’re really gross.”
“Do the one about your hair in the pool drain,” says Tea.
“Yeah.” I love that one. “When you almost drowned. And make it suspenseful.”
“How can I make it suspenseful?” asks Leslie. “You already know the ending.”
“We figured out the ending to the banana slug story, too,” says Tea.
“Yeah. You live.” I start another set list. “Do the pool one, it’s my favorite.”
“Well,” Leslie begins dramatically, when an elderly woman carrying a chafing dish bangs open the dressing room door and slams the dish down on a table next to a pitcher of warm orange soda. We thank her brightly. She ignores us and leaves.
“Bye!” we call after her, watching the door swing back and forth.
“Who was that?” asks Tea, lifting her head.
“I don’t know. Club lady, I guess.” The three of us continue to watch the door swing back and forth as if it might explain who the old lady was.
“She was like, a hundred and ten years old,” says Leslie.
“Maybe she was thirty,” I answer, still watching the door. “And just in bad shape.”
“I guess that’s what we’d look like if we lived here,” says Leslie thoughtfully.
Tea sits up. “We do live here.”
It is unfortunate that we spend so much time in rock clubs. Sticky, beer-soaked floors, stale cigarette smoke and scuz dripping off walls covered in Sharpie drawings of naked ladies . . . it can hurt your feelings after a while. Leslie walks over to the table, lifts the cover of the chafing dish and squints into it. “What is it?” I ask her.
“Looks like horse,” she says carelessly.
“Horse in gravy?” asks Tea.
“Yep. Could be goat.” Leslie’s a vegetarian, so she thinks all meat is funny. “There is no love in this food,” she murmurs. Carrying the chafing dish over to me, she shoves it under my nose and lifts the lid. “Here,” she says. “I got this for you.”
I pull my face away. “Stop that.”
Tea gets up slowly. “Beer for dinner,” she says, and walks out of the room. Tea and I are stepsisters—we introduced my mother to her father and they got married, of all things—but even though there’s no blood between us, we look very much alike: puny little dishwater blonds. When people ask us if we’re twins, she tells them we’re “step-twins” and they always nod, like they know what she’s talking about. Tea also says this about us: “It’s good that we’re ugly—it makes us funny.” Of course, we think ugly is beautiful.
Leslie yawns and stretches. “Where’s Dave?”
I look around the empty dressing room. “Lost?”
“You lost him?”
“I didn’t lose him, he just got lost. I’m not my drummer’s keeper.”
She studies the chafing dish. “I wanna show him the horse-goat.”
When I finish the set lists, I stack them on the table, then notice that the bottom one’s stuck to a wad of bright green gum. Peeling it away from the gum, I look at Leslie. “She shouldn’t eat beer for dinner, it’s too sad. Let’s grab her and go out.” Leslie nods, puts on her jacket, then leaves, calling Tea.
Dropping the set lists back down on the gum, I grab my hat and follow her out to the bar where Tea’s talking to the soundman. The soundman’s laughing, but Tea looks annoyed. “That doesn’t make sense,” she’s saying as we walk up. He turns his back on us and walks away before she can finish. “What a dick,” she says, shaking her head.
“What’s the matter?” Leslie asks.
“He said our equipment sucks.”
I look back at him, then at Tea. “Our equipment does suck.”
“Yeah, but he called us ‘rich kids from Newport.’”
“But if we were rich, we’d have good equipment.”
“That’s what I told him. He just laughed. He thinks we’re too dumb to have good equipment.”
“Dick,” mutters Leslie.
“He wouldn’t put kick and snare in my monitors, either,” I bitch. “He just kept saying he was doing it. Too lazy to push a fader.”
“He thinks you can’t tell the difference,” says Leslie. “C’mon, let’s go find food.” The three of us walk slowly toward the open doors of the club. “What the hell makes people think bad shit doesn’t happen in Newport?” she grumbles. “Bad shit happens in every city.”
“Well, to be fair,” I say, “the only bad shit we have in Newport is tourists.”
“Yeah, but I’ll take a mugger over a tourist any day.”
I nod. “Muggers are at work, tourists are insane.”
Tea sighs. “We can’t win. It’s ’cause we look like little kids. Nobody listens when we talk.”
“Did he say you can’t play guitar ’cause you don’t have a penis?” asks Leslie.
“No.”
I look at her. “That’s something, anyway.”
“Some-thing,” corrects Tea. “Not some-thang.”
“Some-theeng,” I repeat. Tea’s been helping me kill the vestiges of my Southern accent for years.
When we reach the entrance, Leslie looks at me. “Think we can get back in?” We’ve been playing shows since we were fourteen, but won’t legally be allowed in clubs for three more years. And we all look much younger than we are, so if we leave after sound check, door guys don’t let us back in. Even though we always leave very carefully. “I’ll do the talking,” says Leslie, as we approach the door man. “
I look the most like a grown-up.” She looks at me. “And you make up words.”
“I don’t make up any more words than y’all do.” Leslie rolls her eyes at Tea, who looks at me like I should know better. I look from one to the other. “But you can still do the talking,” I add. “You’re the tallest. Just don’t get flitchy. Be cool.”
The door guy is an oily, tattooed man in leather with many piercings—door guys always dress the part. He’s sitting on a stool by the entrance with his back to us, writing on a clipboard, so we stand a respectful distance and stare at him, waiting for him to notice us. “If you don’t want people to know you’re Southern,” Leslie says to me, “maybe you should stop saying y’all.”
“Well, I didn’t make up that word. You yankees don’t have a second person plural.”
“You could try vous instead,” suggests Tea. “It sounds more cultured, less Gomer.”
“Okay. Vous don’t have a second person plural. Hey, that is better!”
Leslie chuckles. The door guy hears her, turns around and looks at us, bored, then goes back to his clipboard. “He’s so grody,” she whispers.
“If you don’t want people to know you’re from California,” I say to her, “maybe you should stop saying grody.”
“I do want people to know I’m from California! It’s better than here.” The guy keeps writing, showing no sign of paying any attention to us, ever. I look at Leslie. “I think both our accents drop our IQ’s a bunch of points, though.”
“Try ‘gross’ instead,” suggests Tea.
“He’s so gross,” Leslie whispers, then clears her throat and steps up to him. We stand behind her. The door guy looks at Leslie like he hates her. “Hi! We’re Throwing Muses, the band that’s headlining tonight,” she says sweetly in bouncy Californian. “That was us onstage, sound checking. There’s our poster on the wall next to you with a picture of us on it.” Silence. They never talk. “So anyway, nice to meet you,” she continues. “Apparently, we sort of don’t look like a band, but . . . that’s who we are.” Laughing weakly, she pauses to let this sink in. “And we’re underage, but we’re still: Throwing Muses. The band that’s headlining tonight.” He stares over our heads. We look at each other.
It’s painfully obvious that the three of us are sandy, salty little islanders—beach kids who don’t belong here in Providence, the Big City. We’re clean and healthy, which is very uncool. And we don’t hide it by trying to look like junkies, which is what you’re supposed to do. Our clothes might be dirty, but our bodies are clean, inside and out. We practically smell like sunshine.
We know this is dumb, but it’s dumber to lie about it. Also, for some reason, we dress like old people, or refugees, which makes us look . . . I don’t know, easy to beat up? Club guys love to hate us, anyway; they bully us with silence. As if they could scare us, for christ sake.
“So, listen,” I tell him, “we’re going out for a while, but we’ll come back in time to play the show, okay?” I study his face for evidence of comprehension. “Tonight. In your club.” He looks away. “Hello?”
Jumping into his line of vision, Tea tries to annoy him into paying attention. “We just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t have any trouble getting back in, ’cause we don’t have ID’s, but we’re still, you know, that band.” She points at our poster. “That band that wouldn’t shut up, right? Heh heh . . . so you’ll remember us?” she asks. The guy finally nods reluctantly.
Later, though, he displays marked symptoms of short-term memory loss. He squints as we pose in front of our poster, trying to look like ourselves, pointing out our equipment sitting on the stage and the fact that we’re supposed to be on in ten minutes.
“Please remember us,” we beg. “We’re the people that asked you to remember us, remember?”
Tea vibes him under her breath. “Let . . . us . . . in!”
“It was just a little while ago, remember a little while ago?” I say. “It was right before now!” Throwing up my hands in frustration, I try once more. “Is there someone else back there we could talk to? Somebody who actually talks?” He stares blankly and gestures toward the “Must Be 21 Years of Age or Over” sign. “Yeah, we’ve seen that,” I tell him.
“Why’s live music associated with alcohol at all?” mutters Leslie, who doesn’t drink. “It’s insane that we can’t get in to our own show because of drinking laws. We should refuse to play.”
“Like anybody’d care,” I grumble.
“Why don’t we have fake ID’s?” asks Tea.
Leslie stares at the door guy, looking thoughtful. “Maybe he doesn’t speak English.”
Eventually, we have to pool our money and buy tickets to our own show. For four years, we’ve been buying tickets to our own shows. Apparently, it’s okay to be underage if you spend money, which is also how it works with drinking. The other bands get pitchers of beer in the dressing room and we get pitchers of orange soda, but nobody’s ever tried to stop us from buying beers at the bar, which is where I’m headed.
While I wait for my drink, I realize I can’t move—I’m stuck between two drunk frat guys who are squeezing me so hard I can barely breathe. They’re the rich kind of frat guys: brand-new baseball caps and expensive clothes, trying unsuccessfully to focus their eyes, shattered by the alcohol in their bloodstreams.
I ask them politely to shift, but instead, they move in closer and one of them pulls off my hat. “Blue hair! Is all your hair blue?” He laughs, surrounding the three of us in a beery cloud, then shoves me into his dumb-ass buddy, who’s concentrating hard on trying to wind an arm around my waist. The guy’s arm slips and he falls off his stool, pushing me back into the first guy, who takes off his baseball cap and carefully balances my hat on his head.
I always want guys like this to fall in love with each other—they have so much in common! And it would solve so many problems.
♋ portia
like frat boys who sleep together
we party better
we know what it means to be a brother
I grab my hat, duck under the other guy’s arm as he tries to steady himself on the bar stool and leave without my drink. I don’t need it. If I go onstage without a beer, somebody in the audience’ll buy me one. They’re mystifyingly kind. But I still stare at the stage like I always do before we play, terrified, thinking What the hell am I doing here? I’m not the type.
I get really bad stage fright, ’cause I’m so shy and ’cause I really don’t understand what happens up there—I can’t prepare for it, it’s too freaky. So I picture the audience as an amorphous horde, waving clubs and torches and yelling at me. But look at ’em: they’re happy as clams and sweet as pie and they buy us beer. I’m just a sissy.
And this is interesting: they aren’t the unruly mob they appear to be at first glance. They’ve neatly organized themselves into little factions. The front row is the most overtly enthusiastic. They’re often drunk, but they’re never drunks—they can think thoughts and string sentences together, and then jump around like psychos. I wonder if they do this in real life, too: in the middle of conversations suddenly jump up into the air screaming, pounding on the guy next to them and running around in circles.
The goth chicks who knit in the back of the room are lovely, soft-spoken and graceful, and they appear to be music appreciators, chatting during shows and then thanking the band politely afterward. They’re nice to look at, with their knitting needles flashing, their black lips and white lips.
Directly in front of the knitters are the hippies. Well, neohippies. The kids of either real hippies or CPAs, they’re friendly, harmless, a little soft around the edges. It’s hard to tell hippie chicks from hippie guys; they all have the same hair, the same voice and the same clothes, none of them wear makeup, and they all dance like goofballs. When they aren’t dancing, they’re sitting on the floor like they’re at a sing-along.
Musicians gather in front of the hippies. There are two different kinds of musicians here in Providence
: one kind’s lost in a scene, the other kind’s lost in space. The ones lost in scenes are easy to pick out ’cause they look like they sound—their outfits match their musical styles. I find this bizarre. I like the confused, spacey musicians better. Non-competitive and sweetly scared, their carriage implies a question: what happens next? Both male and female musicians wear eyeliner.
Then come the junkies, precious to me. A ghostly group but livelier than you’d think, they don’t really have a “look.” They don’t look anything like the people who try to look like junkies—they’re just sort of unwashed. I put them on the guest list because they’re dear to my heart and ’cause they really don’t have shit.
The junkies are shy, but they’re shy as a group. They hang together, whispering to each other, like a tiny cult. The little girl who dyed my hair blue waves when I walk by. She’s probably my age, but, god, she looks eleven. Don’t know how that little body handles heroin.
She and her half-dozen or so friends move around the city in a herd. You see them sitting on the sidewalk or at parties in ragged apartments. In warm weather, they sleep in Dead Girl Park near Wayland Square or on the hill, piled up like puppies near a statue of Roger Williams we call “Jiving Man” ’cause he looks like he’s truckin’ off the edge of a cliff. Which is, coincidentally, what this little girl and her friends appear to be doing.
One day, she noticed that the blue in my hair was disappearing and told me to bring some Manic Panic and a scarf to the park. “Blue is where it’s at,” she said. “Don’t let it fade.” I did this ’cause I thought that was good advice. While she mixed the dye, her friends talked about heroin, their favorite subject. I was interested, because I had imagined all sorts of cold childhoods for them: desperate, dark life tunnels and at the end, a numb light. These kids didn’t seem to be “user-posers” with the disenfranchised affect; they looked fragile and real to me.
Rat Girl: A Memoir Page 4