Rat Girl: A Memoir

by Kristin Hersh

  And they do race by at a hundred miles an hour. Whether they’re screechy or rollicking, our songs don’t meander, they run. Gary calls the rollicking ones “country punk.” I’ve never identified them as such; we just call these the “fun” songs, the ones that make audiences hoot and holler in relief after we play screechy songs at them.

  Those screechy ones’re so intense that when we play them in the studio we’re only good for about three takes. We’re used to live—when you’re allowed just one—so while we’re loving throwing ourselves into careful abandon rather than just abandon, it takes something out of us. We “identify our curve” fairly quickly when a song is soaked in nervous energy. Lately, we’ve been trying to downplay that nervous energy just to make the band sound less annoying.

  Of course, when I sing, the band only gets more annoying. I open my mouth and horrible things come out: strange words, guttural noises, squashed-bug squealing. And then screams . . . you wouldn’t wanna meet that girl. Me and the rats hang together for a reason.

  I can’t believe I can still do this, muted by medication. The songs still fly out, inflatable words, intense as ever. Even though personally I don’t seem to have a shred of intensity left in me, a vocal will still shake me apart, like a midair explosion. Then, as the song ends, the distortion fades and the dust settles, I float back down to the ground, tame again.

  “Are you okay?” Gary asks me in my headphones after a particularly yucky take.

  “Whaddya mean?” A young rat stops and looks at me. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I whisper to it.

  “You weren’t?” Gary whispers back.

  “Yes. I mean no, I was.”

  He pauses. “No, you were?”

  “What did you mean, am I okay? Did it sound bad?”

  “It sounded terrible,” he says. “In a good way.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’m okay.”

  ♋ sugar baby

  what did you mean am i okay?

  what did i do?

  It’s strange to sit on the Universal Couch at 2 A.M. with a bowl of Froot Loops and hear this crap. My Froot Loops get soggy as I stare at the speakers, wondering why they’re talking that way. I never figure anything out, just move down to the red shag carpet and keep staring. Sometimes I try lying on the floor, twisting my head around like a dog, trying to understand, but the music is still . . . baffling.

  First the walls disappear, then the Universal Couch and my friends are blotted out by colors and shapes. Long strands of blue whole notes speckled with dotted green eighth notes, like buckshot over sky: a turquoise A minor, at once staccato and an extended exhalation. A blocky, red, syncopated E major becomes moody burgundy squares when the A flat within the chord gives way to a violet G. Black swathes of snare hits cut through the lines and dots, each one fading before the next one appears.

  My bandmates listen, talk, read and sleep. Gary bobs his head, like he’s enjoying himself. When a song ends, I’m usually standing behind him, still staring at the speakers, cereal bowl sideways on the rug, forgotten. I know this sound is what I have to offer, so it shouldn’t feel foreign to me. It’s the sound of my heart or my bones or . . . I don’t know, it still sounds strange. If the song was a minute longer, I’d have my face pressed up against the speakers, as confused as ever.

  ♋ mania

  that is how i pray

  On the way home every morning, I ride shotgun, snake bag on my lap, so Gary can point out significant Boston architecture to me. Gary is restless, too; he never seems tired, refusing on principle to sleep more than four hours a night, so he’s always up for a conversation. He’s also taken it upon himself to make me stop disagreeing with buildings and he’s doing an excellent job. I went from “Those’re big and gray, alright” to being able to identify dozens of different architectural styles. Gary loves architecture even more than he loves music. We discuss various movements and their originators, buildings’ details and quirks. His enthusiasm alone is beautiful. “Architecture,” he says, “is the first art form you should try and wrap your head around. Buildings illustrate artistic concepts concretely.”

  “’Cause they’re made of concrete?”

  He smirks. “Sometimes because they’re made of concrete, as concrete is a malleable substance capable of both strength and delicacy. Sometimes because ‘structure’ is a fundamentally similar concept in any artistic venture.”

  “Comics are better. I had no idea they were so great.”

  Gary doesn’t like to change the subject when we’re talking about architecture. “Only great comics are great.”

  “Yeah, well, the form is beautiful. I used to think sound had everything.”

  “Sound has an everything; nothing has the everything.”

  I laugh. “ ‘Nothing has the everything.’ ”

  Gary looks at me sideways. “Buildings have an everything, too.”

  “Yeah. I don’t have to go inside them, though, right?”

  “Yes! Yes, you do. You have to see terrazzo floors and crown moldings and carved wood mantels and doors! Wait ’til you see doors . . .”

  “I’ve seen doors.”

  “No,” he shakes his head. “No, you haven’t.”

  While I think about doors, I notice that the leaves on the trees that’re whipping past are just beginning to turn. I love fall. “Is architecture art or science?” I ask him.

  “It’s both. Which is why you need to go inside buildings.”

  “Okay. I don’t like art a whole lot, though. I prefer science.”

  “Why?’

  “’Cause it’s pure. I get tired of art. So messy. And pretentious.”

  “People are pretentious,” he says, “not art. And pretentious people don’t make art; they merely imitate it.”

  I watch the leaves go by: green, red, orange, green, yellow, red, orange, yellow. “I’ve noticed that. They’re jerks.” That’s how people end up with assholes for heroes. “And they don’t just imitate art; they succeed by imitating art.” I stare out the window at the empty sidewalks. “But they’re still just jerks. They never do anything but fool the easily fooled.”

  “Which gives us all a bad name,” he agrees. “Then people who aren’t fooled, like you, think that all artists are pretentious.”

  “Mm-hm.” I nod. “We should quit. I’m willing.”

  “Nope. You’re not allowed.”

  “Aw, c’mon, fire me.”

  Gary stops at a stop sign and stares ahead. “Sometimes you have to crucify yourself for your work. If you accomplish what you set out to and your output is valuable, well . . . somebody thinking you’re pretentious is part of your crucifixion.”

  “Part of my crucifixion? Geez, Gary.” I think I still prefer science. “Do scientists crucify themselves for lab experiments?”

  “Of course they do. And pretentious scientists are way pretentious. And ego-driven. Money figures into the equation. You would hate that world. Purity is purity, and pretense is pretense, regardless of the sphere it’s in.” He leans forward to race through an intersection, whipping his head from side to side, looking for cars. “I don’t see how you could ever tell art and science apart,” he says. “Maybe you’re trying to differentiate between craft and inspiration.”

  I think. “Science is something you can measure, art is something you can lose yourself in. I mean literally: lose your self.”

  Gary sees a cop and slows down, then drives, saying nothing, for a good minute and a half. “That may be true. But I wouldn’t discount your ability to lose yourself. You’re very good at it.”

  We’re almost home. I turn around to look in the backseat. Tea, Dave and Leslie are all asleep again. “That is an embarrassing talent,” I say quietly.

  “I imagine it is.” Gary pulls up on the sidewalk in front of our house and turns to face me. “But it’ll keep your standards high.”

  My bandmates stumble out of the van. I wave goodbye to Gary and walk up the front steps with them. In the early morning, our neighbo
rhood smells like laundry and diner. Dave struggles sleepily to unlock the front door as Gary blows us a kiss and takes off into the pink and orange sunrise.

  I lie under the water with my friends, staring at the sky through the surface of the ocean. Both the water and the sky are perfectly clear. Bubbles escape our lips and rise to break the surface.

  Suddenly, a huge wave rises up beside us, its foam spreading in great mounds. It crashes down, churning the water up like a funnel. Up is down, sand looks like sky.

  We twist and somersault, spin and roll.

  Bleary-eyed, my bandmates fall onto their beds for a few hours of sleep. I drop my snake bag at the foot of my bed and then lie down. Christ, look at me! Not that I’m gonna sleep, but I can lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling . . . and I don’t even explode.

  I really thought it was a bad idea to live somewhere, to be trapped, to belong in only one place. But the other Muses have made the word “home” safe. And someday we’ll get to live on the road in a van: the Silver Bullet Two. Then I can be home and moving at the same time.

  For now, when the band is allowed to play every night, music absorbs all the heat and energy my body can create. I don’t feel trapped because I’m truly spent. This is due in part to the brain-fuzzing drugs I take, but they’re clumsier than music. Plain old sound rides over and through medication to do its own biochemical revamping. It’s an elegant, enchanting process—I’m wiped out but right-minded under music’s spell.

  I know drugs keep my soul from expanding and contracting unecessarily. I know they slow down the body monster and the clanging static, but they seem to keep me from thinking what my brain wants me to think. And my brain still refuses to die.

  We live on the first floor of a house near Harvard Square with a bunch of other people. The neighborhood’s adorable: blue collar plus old people. We get flyers asking us to attend block parties and town meetings where they discuss issues like litter and barking dogs. The house itself is crappy, just like the houses around it. Colorless on the outside, chalk-white inside, it’s been painted so many times the windows won’t open, and the mantels over fireplaces that no longer exist are soft and squishy.

  The apartment is actually a long hallway with vastly different rooms shooting off of it, culminating in a dingy kitchen. Open one door and Vicky the painter’s colors leap out at you. We brought a painter to Boston with us for good luck. Like all painters, she makes sense of chaos but she also makes chaos. Old movie posters and records hang crooked on her walls, toys and paintings are strewn around the floor, brightly colored dresses hang from lamps. She has no window and has made up for it tenfold with Day-Glo psychedelia. Vicky’s room makes you squint. Fun fact: Vicky is the person who painted “The Doghouse” on the Doghouse door.

  The next room is Leslie’s Zen Den. This room has the opposite effect: dimly lit and empty, nothing but a futon and a sewing machine. I helped her pick up this sewing machine from an elderly aunt who told her to “Use it!” and Leslie does. She kneels like a monk and sews for hours, a cup of bark tea at her side. I don’t know what she sews, exactly; I’ve never seen her finish anything. It seems to be the act of sewing that’s important to her. Her den is that Zen.

  Dave’s room is right off the kitchen. It’s dark and squeaky ’cause I gave him a mattress with mice in it by accident. I mean, I gave him the mattress on purpose—I just didn’t know there were mice living in it. I avoid Dave’s room because of the mice. Mice aren’t rats; mice’re uneasy, and they like to be left alone.

  My bed is jammed into the corner of what was originally a living room; my sister’s bed is against the opposite wall. We use the mantel of our busted fireplace to display Vicky’s cartoons and paintings (the paintings are funny and the cartoons sad, for some reason). We also have a bunch of dusty plastic fruit up there. It was probably there when we moved in. I don’t remember buying plastic fruit.

  Every morning, Tea and I make a fist as soon as we wake up. That’s the first thing we say when our eyes open; we yell it, trying to catch the other one out. “Make a fist!” Try it; it feels awful. Though, if you can do it, it’s probably a good, proactive way to start the day.

  At night we lie in the dark, talking. Tea talks and then sleeps. I talk and then wait for sleep, which occasionally comes. A streetlight and a tree cast cool shadows on the wall then. We wanted to trace these shadows, but were afraid of losing our damage deposit, so we traced them in pencil to be on the safe side. Every night, our pencil drawing is filled in with light and shadow that matches it perfectly. Its beauty actually lulls me to sleep.

  Trying to sleep in the bright morning, though, even after playing all night, is all but impossible. Tea says from across the room, “If you lie really still and pay attention to each part of your body, you realize that you’re always in pain.”

  Geez. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” she answers, “part of you is always hurting.”

  “Why do I want to know that?”

  “Just do it; it’s cool.” I try it: forehead, arms, knees, ribs . . . she’s right. Everything aches. “Did you try it?” she asks. “I’m right, right?”

  “Yeah,” I groan. “How’d you figure that out?”

  “You know how, on the island, when a party ends, the whole party walks everybody home?”

  “I love that.”

  “Well, once, me and this girl were the last two people walking home and she told me that we’re always in pain; we just don’t sit still long enough to notice.” Maybe sitting still isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. “I bet it’s what old people do. They sit around feeling all that.”

  “And then whine about it. I would. This is a bitch.”

  “Mm-hm.” We lie there, sun slanting into the windows, lighting dust particles in the air. Tea turns over and goes to sleep.

  We have a gaggle of roommates. None of us knows how many; we can’t tell them apart. They’re nice enough, but they all seem interchangeable and, I suspect, actually do change—subletting their beds to friends who look and act just like them. We call them “the aliens.”

  I guess we could learn their names, but they think we already know their names and we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Once I went to the grocery store with a few aliens out of politeness—thought I could learn something about them. They all bought cereal, then took it home and ate it.

  The pantry shelves might’ve helped us understand the aliens, but they only ever buy cereal. I find the Muses’ food more interesting, and proof that none of us will ever grow up. Tea buys party food for very small parties: miniature boxes of petit fours, little jars of Vienna sausages, tiny pieces of toast. Dave eats only spaghetti and chocolate-chip cookies. I see him wandering the aisles of the grocery store with a cart full of normal food, but by the time he gets to the checkout, it’s all morphed into spaghetti and cookies. Leslie says he’s gonna die.

  I eat the hippie food I was raised on, as if I’m still a toddler on a commune. And Leslie somehow subsists on ziplock bags filled with leaves, roots and sticks. This might be grown-up; I have no idea. Grown-up in the woods maybe, like a grown-up gnome or something. She says these plants have medicinal properties. “Why do you need medicine?” I asked her once. “Are you sick?”

  “It’s a Santa Cruz thing,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  The aliens don’t bitch when I play guitar, which is good. Unfortunately, they also play guitar and they do it badly. And in the kitchen. I know now that playing guitar isn’t the same thing for everyone. Like yawning during sex, they sit with their feet up on the table, strumming boring chords and playing pointless covers. It’s fascinating to me.

  I bring them coffee in the morning and beer at night so I can grill them on keys and such, just to get them talking about music. “What song is that?” I ask them. “Why are you playing it? How warm are you right now?”

  The aliens are friendly and they like to talk, though we don’t really have conversations as much as I interview
them and they pontificate. I offer up no personal information; these talks are purely for my own research and they’re truly fascinating. The aliens’ eyes scan our dismal, gray backyard through the paint-spattered window, the shelves of records we keep in the kitchen, the penciled messages on the wall by the phone. I keep my feet on the linoleum and my eyes never leave their faces. I’m not making fun of them—I’m jealous.

  Their feet are invariably on the table when they play. “Why do you put your feet up when you play guitar?” I ask.

  “I’m just kickin’ back.” Wow!

  Dave says the aliens’re “normal” people, but I like them anyway. They’re so . . . easygoing. Here’s a basic outline of my research findings: (A) No change occurs in an alien’s electrical charge when he plays guitar. (B) Ditto for his body temperature. (C) Double ditto for his emotional state. In fact, nothing changes at all. He might as well be sitting there doodling.

  Like all apartment buildings in Boston, this one’s infested with roaches and snotty Harvard students. The Harvard guys’re half preps, half drunken louts and they treat us like shit. They seem to be under the impression that we’re retarded whores, which is actually an intriguing idea. I’m just not sure where they got it. Is it because we aren’t rich? Lots of people aren’t rich. It doesn’t mean we’re so dumb that we forgot to be rich. And it doesn’t mean that rich boys can have us.

  The week we moved in, a thug in a Harvard sweatshirt leaned out the second-floor window as I stood on the sidewalk, fishing around in my pockets for my key. “Hey, group homie!” he yelled. “Wanna get it on?”