“Where did you go?” he asks, squinting at me and rubbing his leg.
“I was settling, picking up our no-money. It took ’em a long time to cough it up. Did y’all get everything?” He nods. I look at the sky. It’s a muted haze of slate and deep royal blue. Must be late. And it’s starting to drizzle. “We should go. Did you bring your glasses?” I ask him.
“Nope.”
“I’ll drive.”
♋ the letter
i’m turning up in circles and i’m spinning on my knuckles
By 2 A.M., we’ve crammed ourselves into the Silver Bullet. I’m on an interesting planet of pain, having just reinserted my contacts—sitting in the driver’s seat, my hands on the wheel, staring ahead. My ears ring loudly, a discordant hum—the perfect sound track to how my eyeballs feel right now. A club guy appears outside the club with an industrial-sized garbage can, sees us sitting there and yells, “G’bye, Throwing Up Mucus!”
We wave and smile. Pathetic. “It’s okay,” says Dave pleasantly. “Being nonviolent people makes us a more violent band.” We are, all four of us, sitting in the front seat; the equipment fills the back. It’s cramped, we all smell like cigarettes and sweat, but we’re finally alone. The girls sit between me and Dave, leaning on each other sleepily as I start up the Bullet and its familiar wheeze builds to a deafening scream.
“Where to, kids?” I ask over the noise of the engine.
“Santa Cruz, California!” yells Tea.
Leslie perks up. “Alright!”
“Look out for banana slugs,” warns Dave.
The poor Bullet shakes badly when she goes over fifty, and in addition to the scream, there’s a constant rattling noise I can only assume is made by something necessary which will soon fall off. Fumes fill the car at stop-lights and the brakes screech when they feel like working, though they often do nothing at all. I’ve perfected the art of slowing to a stop rather than relying on them to actually stop (not hard to do when a car doesn’t actually go). In the winter, the Bullet is basically a sled.
This past winter was really rough—long and so cold. Inexplicably warm and awake at all times, I found the cold air invigorating, but the other Muses wanted to hibernate and, of course, club hours don’t change. Musicians are still expected to stay up all night, no matter how early the sun sets, no matter how late it rises, no matter how cold it is during a predawn load-out.
It was surreal: the fluorescent light of the New England winter days became the fluorescent light of convenience stores at night, an endless cycle of icy greenish-gray that matched our skin. We didn’t think winter would ever end. After shows, we’d get coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts with the downtown drag queens and then slide home on the Bullet sled.
A few months ago, during a particularly wicked cold spell, one of the drag queens gave me a box of wigs she was no longer using, whispering conspiratorially that our shows could use a little “spiffing up.” I agreed, thanked her enthusiastically and carried the box out to the car. “Check out the schmankiness!” I yelled to a chorus of ooh’s and ahh’s.
We loved the wigs so much that we took to wearing them home after shows—the Bullet’s heater is busted and the wigs were surprisingly warm. Plus, they made our conversations much more interesting. You can’t be boring when your head looks like a burnt bomb. And if our mascara was running, so much the better.
♋ carnival wig
that looks like a carnival wig and two shiners
One night while wearing our new wigs, we discovered that listening to bad radio was so angrifying, it raised our body temperatures and really warmed up the car. Once we started slamming Top Forty, we couldn’t stop. We creamed everything anybody likes, adjusting our wigs whenever they slid down over our eyes.
Leslie, sporting a red bouffant, yelled angrily over the music, “Those smug bastards!”
“Smug jerks,” growled Tea under a white cascade of disco hair.
“Smug fuckers,” I added. My wig was pointy and black. “Listen to that crap! Goddamn Church of the Rock Star televangelists and their fashion noise.”
Dave pushed his glittery brunette afro to one side in order to see us. “They’re our royalty. In a bad way: inbred anemics. They all sleep together and think God gave ’em their money as some kinda . . . spiritual reward.”
“Ugly Barbies.”
“Dumbasses.”
“Pop music is potentially an effective tool for communication on a mass yet personal level,” I insisted, tilting my head back to see through the windshield past my pointy black bangs, “cutting across classes, races, religions and genders, and it grows on trees! But this corporate crap is chemical candy. It’s bad for you.”
“Pop music could be, at the very least, intellectually stimulating,” Dave said, pushing his ’fro too far to the other side, making his head look lop-sided. “But they’ve replaced thinking with simplistic politics—”
“And passion with melodrama,” I added.
“God, yes,” he agreed, as his ’fro slid down the side of his face. He grabbed it and placed it back on top of his head. “That is so true: ‘war is mean and so is my girlfriend.’”
I laughed, blowing a sticky tendril out of my eyes. “Well, corporate product will always be removed from human experience because it’s denatured, whether you’re talking music or food or sex. It’s a profitable endeavor, not a visceral one.”
“It is now,” said Leslie, her bouffant smashed against the roof of the Bullet.
“Yeah,” agreed Tea. “There’s too much money to be made.”
“They think they can charge us for telling us what to like,” I grumbled,
“so they dumb everything down and pretty soon we’re all eating paste.”
“Smug Barbies,” said Tea, idly winding a white tendril around her finger.
“Smug idiots,” added Leslie.
“Godless scumbags,” said Dave.
Self-righteousness’ll keep you warm for hours.
♋ baseball field
talking at the radio
just one of the places to shoot off your mouth
It isn’t nearly cold enough to rant tonight, plus it’s hard to hate anything in this lovely pink and green springtime weather. We try for a while, but we’re half-assed in our hatred of a pop song that’s not quite stupid enough to be entertainingly bad—it’s just bad, which is boring. “That’s not really angrifying,” I say, reaching over and turning the radio off, “but I don’t wanna listen to it, either.” We drive in silence.
“Spanish?” suggests Leslie, fishing around in her bag for her Spanish language tape and coming up with a squished, old, linty protein bar instead. She holds it out to Dave. “Here, I got this for you.” He leans away from it, so she drops the bar back in her bag and finds the tape she makes us listen to in order to “improve ourselves,” then inserts it into the crappy old boom box we keep on the floor of the Bullet.
A soft female voice filtered through crunchy little speakers then asks us to repeat everything she says, which we all dutifully try to do. We name numbers and colors, are introduced to imaginary doctors, waiters and policemen, ask where post offices and bathrooms are, then list unrelated nouns. “La casa,” the voice says.
“La casa,” we murmur in unison.
“Zapatos.”
“Zapatos,” we mumble.
The girls’ responses grow quieter and quieter as they fall asleep, until it’s just me and Dave whispering in Spanish. “Can we turn it off yet?” he asks, poking the mound of girl between us. It doesn’t move, so he stops the cassette and drops off to sleep, too.
♋ spring
nothing like chrome when it shines no better weather to drive
Spring air even sounds nice. At this time of year, air doesn’t just feel thick, it sounds thick; you can hear the humidity in it. I like driving in this weather, breezes blowing in over the sleeping pile of band next to me. Spring weather is one more thing that keeps them asleep and keeps me awake.
When I sto
p at a gas station, Dave opens his eyes. “I’ll pump, you pay,” he says, yawning.
“Okay. You want anything?” He shakes his head and I get out, shutting the door as quietly as I can. Tea and Leslie wake up anyway, so I stick my head in the window. “Ladies?”
“Clamato and Sno Balls,” says Leslie sleepily.
Tea lifts up her head. “Mr. Pibb and a Sky Bar.”
“Nothing?” I ask.
“Slim Jims and a Moxie,” replies Leslie. I walk away, rolling my eyes, as they call after me, “Pork rinds and a Yoo-Hoo!” “Bugles and a Sanka!”
“I’ll drive, you ride,” says Dave when I return with a drink and a magazine. “What’d you get?” he asks, swatting bugs in the greenish light of the gas pump. I hold the drink and the magazine up higher for him to see. He squints. “What’d you get?” he asks again.
“These,” I answer.
“What are they?”
“It’s a drink and a magazine,” I say, crawling into the passenger seat. “What’re you, blind?” He’s still swatting bugs. At least he can see those.
“Maybe you shouldn’t drive.”
Dave gets in and starts the engine. “You don’t need to see in order to drive, grandma,” he says cheerfully, as we pull out of the gas station.
I look out the window. “Yeah, but now you’re a jumpy driver. That she-cop scared you so bad, you’re all flitchy.” A few weeks ago, Dave was pulled over by a big, scary police woman ’cause the Bullet had a broken taillight. This was a lady of impressive voice, size and attitude—an Amazon with a gun. We will never forget her.
“The cop-ette?” he asks. “Nah, she didn’t scare me.”
“She scared me,” I say, turning pages in the magazine.
“What drink? What magazine?” he demands, peering over Tea and Leslie, who’ve fallen asleep again.
“Well, it’s all the different kinds of soda put together in one cup,” I explain. “Figured I’d get my money’s worth.”
“But it’s just a little bit of each soda, right?” he asks. “So you didn’t get any more than you would have if you stuck to the one soda.”
“I got my money’s worth in entertainment value.” I taste it. It’s awful. Dave glances over the girls. Lights from passing cars run across their still backs. “Is it entertaining?” he asks.
I hand it to him. “Here, I got this for you.”
He takes it and tries some. “It’s not that bad. Like a Long Island iced tea.”
“Yeah, I guess . . . a pointless one.”
“Right. Like a pointless Long Island iced tea,” he says. “Where’s my Funyuns and Fresca?”
“Nobody said Funyuns to me. Want me to read to you from—” I check the name of the magazine in the light from the glove compartment, “Woman’s Day?”
He sputters into the straw. “Yes, please.”
“Okay, I’ll read, you drink. First I’ll describe the cover since you’re blind. It’s a picture of a huge pink cake with flowers and rabbits on it.”
“Edible flowers and rabbits?” he asks.
“It doesn’t say . . . maybe you have to read the article. All it says on the cover is that you can lose ten pounds.”
“You can?” he asks through his straw.
“Sure.”
“By eating the cake?”
“Maybe. Hey, there’s a quiz! Wanna take it?”
“I don’t know,” he answers. “I’m busy drinking and driving. And I don’t want to find out anything about myself that I’m trying to repress.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Don’t say that. I could blurt it out and then I’d know it forever.”
“And I’d know it, too, ’cause you said it out loud.” I look at him. “And I’d bring it up all the time.”
Dave gestures with his straw. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Okay. I’ll honor your feelings,” I say, closing the magazine and looking out the window again. The Bullet’s headlights illuminate gnats and dandelion fluff in the air and make the grass on the side of the highway glow an eerie purple, for some reason. I stare at the purple grass for a few minutes, then turn to watch Dave drive and the girls sleep. The three of them are so still, they look like photographs of themselves.
I don’t remember meeting my bandmates; I just know them. And when you really know someone, you don’t know their face, just a thousand moments you can’t freeze-frame and wouldn’t want to. I guess you could create your own static impression of someone, but it’d be inaccurate, limiting. A static being would offer no hope of bursting into a room, different. People are movement, structure built on fluidity. Which is why I never know what my loved ones look like, I guess. I stare at their faces, trying to commit them to memory, but their features are always overwhelmed by more fascinating flashbacks.
Like songs—a fake song is a static being. A real one is buzzing with potential: structure built on fluidity, body as movement. Jesus, shut up. I can’t believe I can bore my own brain just by using it to think.
“Honoring your feelings is boring, Dave. Maybe the psychological tension’ll keep you awake.” I flip through pages and find the quiz. “Okay. I’ll ask, you answer. But I won’t tell you what this quiz is delving into your psyche for, okay? You just have to answer honestly.” Dave is silent. “Question number one: your husband has a—”
“My what?”
“Hmmm . . . okay, question number two: a work associate (I guess that could be me) is—”
“It could be one of them,” interrupts Dave, pointing his straw at the girls. Tea turns over in her sleep.
“Okay, it’s one of them. Leslie, okay?” I whisper. “You with me?”
“Leslie,” he repeats.
“Right. Leslie is having an affair—”
“A saucy quiz.”
“—with another coworker.”
“Who, Tea?” he asks.
“Well, it isn’t me.”
“Leslie and Tea are having an affair.” He thinks. “True or false?”
“No, it’s not a true-or-false question. It’s a psychological one.”
“Okay.”
“This affair makes you uncomfortable,” I continue.
“I’ll say.”
“Do you: (A) avoid both parties—”
“Parties?” he asks.
“Not literally parties, they mean people. (B) have a heart-to-heart with your coworkers, or (C) . . .” I squint at the magazine.
“What’s C?” he asks.
“C is . . .” It’s hard to see the page. I move it around the car, trying to catch some light. “C is ‘attempt to end the affair by telling your boss.’”
Dave laughs. “Really? Break up Tea and Leslie? What is this quiz? Find out if you’re an asshole?”
“You win!” I yell. “You’re an asshole!” The girls jump.
“I knew it!” says Dave quietly, whapping the steering wheel with both hands.
We’ve been driving for days through summer heat, going back home to the South to visit relatives. Zoë’s head is on my lap; my little brother plays with her tail. It’s so hot we can barely keep our eyes open.
Crane and Dude have run out of activities for us except for the occasional Slurpee at a gas station. The Slurpees melt into gross syrup instantly. There is nothing to do but watch fields out the window and hope for a thunderstorm.
To entertain ourselves, my brother and I decide to make up stories about a sister and brother riding in a car.
We can’t think of anything for them to do.
A few minutes later, we’re on the island, we can smell the ocean and everything slows down. It’s so quiet and sleepy that Dave and I stop talking and just watch the dark houses go by. The Bullet creeps along. I guess ’cause Dave doesn’t wanna wake anybody up.
We practice in the attic of the giant, haunted-looking Victorian where Dave grew up. During rehearsals, his parents open the attic door and place comfy chairs at the bottom of the stairs so they can hear us play. We kno
w this because we’ve peered down the stairs at them. His mom knits and his dad reads the paper; they nod their heads, tap their feet and discuss each song, even if we play it six times in a row. Either they’re very, very nice or they have brain damage.
Pulling up outside the house, Dave sings gently, “Ki-i-ids . . . we’re at Grandma’s.” Poor Tea and Leslie are so tired. They stumble out of the Bullet, hair all messed up. I don’t remember tired, so I try to do more than my share of carrying gear and crap up three flights of stairs, but they won’t let me; they grab shit outta my hands. Then, tiptoeing past bedroom doors, we bump guitars into walls and amps into doorways. The girls’re punchy. “We’re so bad at this,” Leslie giggles.
On the way up the stairs, one of the mannequin’s high heels gets stuck on a picture frame, threatening to send either the frame or the mannequin’s TV head crashing to the floor. It takes three of us to extricate it in the dark. “Geez, we are bad at this,” I whisper.
When the equipment is safely home, we hug, then scatter. My bandmates are so tired their hugs are like dance marathon rests. They get heavy on my shoulders for a second, then shake themselves awake. When they leave, I look at my watch. Technically, it’s tomorrow and I need to swim.
♋ crabtown
underwater
i swim sound
Swimming’s the only thing that makes me really, truly tired. It’s not a nervous energy I carry around; it would never allow itself to dissipate in movements like fidgeting or smoking a cigarette. It’s weighted, focused. People describe me as “calm.” I am often very still, trying to keep the energy in check, but that’s outer peace.
Rat Girl: A Memoir Page 7