The Dominant Hand

by Charles Martin

  Dave grinned and then pecked at his keyboard.

  “You might see if there really is something to this concert, the Shropshire Plaid reunion? What do you think your chances are of getting an exclusive with Jim?”

  “As far as I know, no one else in the media knows Jim’s around and might actually show up,” I said. “He doesn’t trust anyone in the media.”

  Dave’s eyebrows lifted. A smile spread across his face.

  “He trusts you though, doesn’t he?” Dave asked, but I didn’t answer. “Where is he, exactly?”

  Don’t do it, Will.

  “Will,” Dave sang slowly. “Where is he?”

  “Homeless, wandering the streets of Norman and Oklahoma City.”

  I’m so spineless.

  Dave arched his back, gave a wolf-like smile that made it look like he had an erection.

  “How soon can you have it to me?”

  2

  Into the Woods

  Shropshire Plaid front man Jim Jacobs wanders the Oklahoma countryside in search of women, wonder and the end of the world.

  By Will Weinke

  Jim Jacobs could be dead right now.

  Two hours after we were scheduled to discuss Shropshire Plaid’s new album, A Reckoning, You Reckon, Jacobs’s voice finally emerged over the phone line. He was buoyantly chipper, even as he begged for a ride. He’d gotten stranded far east of Norman, Oklahoma, and said I should be the one to fetch him since it would make for a better interview.

  It was a week after publicly hawking his Grammy Award for “Best New Artist” at a local pawn shop and three weeks after leading a minor riot at a show at The Viper Room in Los Angeles. Plaid lead guitarist Chris Nguyen even let slip in a radio interview that Jacobs’s antics “might overshadow the entire band.”

  Despite the distractions, the album was grabbing stellar reviews from critics and peer musicians alike, even picking up an unlikely endorsement from Jacobs’s idol, David Bowie. The album is a grab bag of sounds, styles and quirky genre-bending glam-meets-art rock ballads to a world tumbling toward its ultimate demise. The title track is the bounciest pop song of the band’s career, all while cataloging a laundry list of impending global calamities. The other songs are erratic and thrown together, seemingly at random. As the album progresses, form and method start to emerge in the chaos and is capped off with the final track, “Into the Woods.” It’s a riddle of a song, with references to the Pied Piper and to Moses, hinting that Jacobs isn’t sure if his own messianic complex will lead his followers to riches or ruin.

  Nguyen’s soaring guitar solos, drowned in feedback, follow faithfully behind Jacobs’s piercing falsetto playfully speak-singing like a character in a crazed radio drama from the ‘40s. They then settle into unabashedly naïve and sappy love songs to Jacobs’s longtime flame, Ashley Jones, with whom he’s shared an increasing amount of public meltdowns. The album may be a tangled mess, but like Jacobs himself, it’s a beautiful mess.

  I reached Jacobs on a remote country road and noticed the tall red, white and blue liberty spikes of his brand new mohawk. Anyone who has seen Plaid live knows that Jacobs loves showmanship, with ridiculous dime store costumes, awkwardly acted skits by roadies and a forest of pawn shop Christmas lighting. Because of Jacobs’ shorter than average stature, his new towering mohawk made him look like a diminutive warrior from a tribe of pale-skinned pygmies.

  “We need to go back to my car,” Jacobs announced as he slid into the passenger seat, taking great care not to mess his mohawk. He smelled vaguely like a festival port-a-potty. “I have my bag in the trunk. I gotta get it before the tow truck comes.”

  We backtracked for five miles down gravel roads, passing farmhouses, hibernating oil rigs and dozens of churches. Then we came upon his black Lexus hanging precariously over the edge of a bridge, the gray railing peeled back like wood shavings.

  “Jesus, Jim.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jacobs laughed. “I could’ve died, right? How funny would that be?”

  I took off my headphones, looked away from the laptop screen and rubbed my eyes. I was combing through the story I’d written on Jim five years ago. It was never printed. The editor I had at the time, a smarmy kid just out of college, had laughed at it. He thought it was a hackneyed, self-obsessed attempt at gonzo journalism and told me to rewrite it and cut out anything I couldn’t verify. I did and Jim stopped answering my phone calls, calling me a sellout to our mutual friends.

  Then Jim disappeared.

  Every time my attention wandered, I was tempted to track down the video with Misty and her “sacrifice.” I didn’t think it existed though, and if it did, it would be a lame sacrifice, like when Christians give up carbonated beverages for Lent.

  There were always so many crazy rumors surrounding Jim. The sacrifice rumors are nothing new, either. They’ve been floating around for a while. People getting high, cutting themselves, babbling about crazy shit they thought they were seeing in the forest.

  I sighed, rolled my neck around and stole a side glance at the shapely blonde who was waiting to board our plane.

  Is it weird that I can shift from pity to prurient so quickly?

  I was fortunate enough to catch her bending over to dig through her purse. She had one of those asses that looked impossibly round and firm. It’s like seeing a stealth fighter as a kid—it’s not really real until you can touch it and see what it feels like. Muscle? Fat? Maybe like the rubber bladder inside a basketball?

  I’d gotten to the gate an hour early, telling myself that I was going to get a good start on the story. Instead, I’m going to spend the rest of my time praying that the blonde sits next to me on the plane so I can want to talk to her, but never actually say anything to her. We will then leave the plane and go about the rest of our lives, and I’ll hate myself for not trying.

  Hey, who knows, maybe she’ll need to borrow my headphones and I’ll get to say “sure,” and softly touch her index finger when I hand them to her. I could always write the story at the hotel.

  “Stretch!” a voice broke in. “Stop staring at girls, ya pervert.”

  Charles Martin stood in front of me, and the busty blonde grinned knowingly.

  For a few seconds, I wondered whether if I just ignored him, if he’d go away. Not Charles, though; he can’t be ignored and that’s probably why he works at Spin.

  Fucking asshole.

  “So, how goes it, Stretch?” Charles asked. He called me “Stretch” because I am short and he is a tall yuppy with a shaved head. Sort of reminded me of a well-dressed penis with eyebrows

  Fucking asshole.

  I lowered the screen of my laptop and nodded. We’d both worked at the Oklahoma Gazette years ago. When Jim began preaching about the ogres, Norman became a weird cultural hub of the country. Charles was one of the many who profited heavily off the national attention during and after Jim’s cult. He wasn’t Jim’s friend. He had no loyalty, taking the first book deal right out of town.

  And yes, it does annoy me that he got a book deal, and that he then got a second book deal for a crappy novel about God knows what. But what really annoyed me was that he insisted he was my friend, and then sometimes I believed him just to be quickly reminded that he is no friend of mine.

  “Nice laptop, Stretch,” Charles smirked with that stupid toothy smile on his penis face. I folded the laptop closed.

  “Thanks,” I grumbled. “Where are you flying to?”

  “Oklahoma City, just like you.”

  “Going to see family?” I ventured, but guessed he’d heard about Jim.

  “I’ll go with that,” he shrugged, sitting down next to me. I sighed and then put my laptop away, knowing I wasn’t going to get any work done now, nor would I be able to eyeball the blonde.

  “Are you following me, Charles?”

  He laughed. He wasn’t going to lie to me about it. He had this weird thing with telling the truth. It wasn’t that he had integrity, but just that he liked pissing people off and tell
ing the truth indiscriminately often did that.

  “Are the wife and kids coming?” I asked.

  “Naw, they are staying home for now. Depends on how long I’m down there though. Labor Day is coming up so they might come down then if I’m still in Oklahoma so we can see the grandparents.”

  I knew I would eventually have to lose Charles if I was going to get Jim to talk to me. There was no sense trying now, since we were getting on the same plane. I could attempt to ignore him, though, so I stood up and grabbed my bag.

  “Where you off to?” Charles asked, picking up his bag so he could follow.

  “To buy a book for the plane,” I mumbled, walking away.

  “Oh, you know what?” he said, trailing after me. “I’ve actually got a copy of my new book, just came out. You can have it.”

  “Spectacular.”

  *******

  Rumors of Jacobs’s ravenous appetite for mind-altering substances were making the rounds in the blogs, and as Nguyen had predicted, stealing ink away from the new album. I’d hoped they weren’t true, or at least that they were exaggerated. After just a few minutes of talking, I could tell he was no longer the man I’d once known, Norman’s boy genius of rock.

  I’d met him while he was still hopping from band to band, booking gigs at any venue that’d give him stage time, opening for any band that would have him.

  Back then, he was a quiet kid with a boyish smile and boundless optimism. He always remembered names, he remembered what you did and what you cared about. He didn’t have fans, he had friends. He also had Ashley, his gorgeous wife who urged him on in his quest to take over the world.

  Now he’s just another weirdo musician that’s quickly burning out and on the cusp of collapsing under the weight of his success. Just another ridiculous music cliché.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if this ends up being one of those lame profiles where the asshole musician takes the journalist to a bunch of strip clubs?”

  Jacobs pulled out the gym bag he’d salvaged from his wrecked car and changed his shirt. He then applied deodorant, which didn’t help, and asked if I had any money.

  “It’s too bad you don’t write for Rolling Stone or some rich magazine like that,” Jacobs said as we parked and strolled through Campus Corner next door to the University of Oklahoma. His T-shirt read “I’m Famous” in big block letters. His mohawk caught the stares of the football crowd filtering out of OU’s latest shellacking of Baylor. Jacobs didn’t care about football, but liked walking through crowds to see who would recognize him.

  Not many, as it turned out.

  “Seriously though,” Jacobs said, slugging me on the shoulder. “You’re a great writer. So many other people, they could be writing these stories with crayons as immature as they are. Not that I think everybody has to like my music, but even those who do, damn. Amateurs, and here you are, languishing in Oklahoma, right?”

  I shrugged as we veered into a side alley where Norman’s only strip club is located. The hole-in-the-wall club looked as weathered as the dancers onstage. I’m not sure what rap star fantasy Jacobs wanted to live out, but this wasn’t the place to do it. The seventies lounge décor, dim lighting, ‘80s crotch rock, stretch marks and cheap cigars were far from the glitz and glam, hookers and Courvoisier world of MTV, but it didn’t diminish Jacobs’s Cheshire cat grin.

  I waded through a gang of middle-aged football fans hovering over a perky blonde with fake tits and makeup so thick it could have been applied with a butter knife and an aerosol can. I glanced back to see Jacobs waving my money in the air as two strippers stalked over to his table. I turned back to grab the beers, and a large, barrel-chested man in pressed slacks bumped against me.

  “Watch it,” I grunted.

  His rich, musky cologne and gold-rimmed glasses gave him away as the kind of guy that didn’t understand why college girls didn’t screw him anymore. He leaned down over me, sniffed at me and shook his head.

  “Get in where you fit in, little man,” the man huffed. His friends laughed, the clown-faced stripper laughed. I thought about dumping the beer on his expensive slacks, but instead hung my head and retreated back to the table. Two sets of breasts were smooshing Jacobs’s face from either side. I sat on the opposite side of the table and waited for the dance to wrap up. Jacobs motioned one of the girls toward me and as she straddled my lap, I noticed a tampon string dangling out of her bottoms. Jacobs noticed too, and laughed.

  He always loved spectacle, good and bad. He also loved testing people, and more than that, he loved women. When you were with him, he wanted you to enjoy women, too. To Jacobs, sex, drugs and rock and roll were all best in group settings.

  Jacobs used up the last of my cash, so we left, and I kept my eyes averted as we passed the large man in the pressed slacks.

  “Wouldn’t it be cool if we went to a show?” Jacobs asked, as we emerged out into the night air. “Who’s playing at the Deli tonight?”

  It was a short walk through a mob of drunken OU fans. The doorman waved us in, shaking Jacobs’s hand as we passed and Jacobs smirked when he saw a cover band playing a Duran Duran song. Everyone inside knew Jacobs, and all asked about the album. I, in turn, got a boost of notoriety from just being the one tagging behind Jacobs that night.

  Shot after shot raced down our throats. Some we ordered, some were ordered for us. Jacobs pretended to be embarrassed when the band played one of his songs. He refused to go onstage. After the fifth shot, Jacobs hit his stride. I found him in the men’s bathroom feeling up an older woman, only to emerge and fall right into a brief, yet sincere conversation with a college girl whose friend had just committed suicide. He shared beers with a few members of a struggling roots rock band, promising to drop by the studio the next day. He then climbed onstage and led a rollicking sing-a-long of Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.”

  Jacobs got antsy and staggered to the door without me. Two coeds fell in line behind him, giggling and skipping. I brought up the rear.

  Jacobs took one girl in each arm and they sang the “Lavern and Shirley” theme as we made our way back to the car. Both girls were fine catches, even by Jacobs’s standard. One was an improbably tall brunette with glasses and a short, camo skirt that revealed all when she bent over to take off her high heels. The other was a dollish black girl that looked a bit like Jacobs’ soon-to-be ex-wife, but younger and dimmer. She had fake tits, a cute laugh and kept confusing Shropshire Plaid with the Flaming Lips.

  Jacobs was so used to it that it didn’t even phase him anymore.

  “Where’s your girlfriend, what’s her name?” Jacobs asked as he glanced back at me.

  “Sue? She’s not really my girlfriend. Why?”

  “Let’s get her. Do you have any more money?”

  “When are we going to talk about the album, Jim?”

  Jacobs smiled. “Soon, soon.” He shrugged off the women and staggered down the street in the general direction of my car. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “We really need to talk, Jim.”

  Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in close. The boyish smile emerged.

  “I’ll show you something, then you’ll understand everything.”

  I stole a glance at the dark abyss of the woman’s cosmetically enhanced cleavage while she leaned over my seat on the plane. I got my wish—the exquisite blonde sat right next to me. But Charles sat on the other side. So, now I got to stare at her tits as she bent over my seat to gawk at pictures of Charles’s kids on his laptop. At least I didn’t have to talk to Charles anymore.

  “They are so cute,” the woman beamed. “Oh, look, he’s wearing a Spider-man outfit.”

  “Yeah, they’re both pretty imaginative,” Charles replied, with a smooth, plastic laugh. “We actually recorded a movie the other weekend, Star Wars 7, you know, the next movie after Return of the Jedi? They had a blast.”

  “Ooh, that’s so cute!” the woman gasped.

  Her face contorted as her jaw hung
limp. I had a theory that the face that women make when they see a kid do something precious is the same face they make when they orgasm. My research is still ongoing.

  “Do you have that movie on your laptop?” the woman asked.

  “Yeah, but it’s still a work in progress,” Charles replied.

  “That’s so great that you do all those things with your kids,” she purred, leaning over more and forcing me to pull my laptop closer to my chest. I now had a scenic view of her tits, and was pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t wearing a bra. I was staring, I knew I was staring and wondered if she knew I was staring. If she did, it didn’t show. She was too preoccupied with Charles.

  Maybe she did know, maybe she was the kind of woman that got off on it. The thought made me uncomfortable, so I forced my eyes up and to the right, just like I stuck in my boss’s family portrait.

  “Well, I get to stay home with them because I’m a writer,” Charles started.

  This is pretty typical for Charles. Back when we wrote for the Gazette, he’d pester me to go out with him and then when he found someone more interesting to talk to, he’d discard me like a cigarette butt. The problem with Charles is he’s interesting for 2.5 hours. Most people get that in one setting, so he seems charming. Spread that out over a couple years, and you realize how quickly that façade gets annoying.

  Oh, and then he tries to steal a story right out from underneath you. That’s number three on the reasons Charles annoys the piss out of me.

  “That’s nice, what do you write?” the woman asked.

  “We’re actually both writers,” Charles said. “Will is doing a story right now for Timbre magazine and I’m doing one (he paused, smiled, shrugged) for Spin.”

  “You write for Spin, I’ve read that!”

  “Good for you,” Charles said. “We’re going to Oklahoma to do a story on Jim Jacobs.”

  “Jim Jacobs?” she grimaced, as if someone had just belched in her face. “So what happened to him? That whole thing was just so trippy.”