by Brian Keene
TRUE STARMEN
Max Booth III
The line outside The Shantyman was way longer than Martin expected. A horde of weirdos stretched from the locked front entrance to the parking lot on the opposite side of the building. He’d nearly plowed into some Mormon-looking fucker while pulling his Craigslist-bargained Vespa into the reserved employee parking area next to the dumpsters. Hipsters usually attended the shows here. Thick neckbeards coated in Dorito dust. Semen-stained fedoras. Sarcastic T-shirts too small for the massive guts bulging out of them. But the people here this evening? Martin wasn’t sure what they were. Some kind of new breed of hipster, maybe. Every single one of them wore white jeans. What kind of psychopath wore white jeans? Disgusting. Martin tried not to make eye contact with any of them as he headed to the back entrance, but the utter lack of conversation commandeered his attention. Not a single soul spoke, nor did anyone have out their cell phones. They all stood single-file, waiting silently for the doors to open at six, not even acknowledging Martin as he passed them.
“What’s going on tonight again?” he asked Alice at the bar after slipping in through the back entrance. “The podcast thing, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, the podcast thing.”
“Have you gotten a load of the people waiting outside?”
“I think they’re religious.”
“With what religion?”
Alice shrugged. “Don’t think it matters.”
“Maybe they’re just weirdos.”
“Well, obviously.”
“Just standing. Not talking. Not doing anything. All patient and content to be in a line.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Alice made her told-ya-so face. “Buncha religious weirdos. Pegged them as soon as I got here.”
Martin half-grimaced, half-laughed. “Pegged them, did you?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She tapped the side of her temple, emphasizing her keen sense of vision. “Pegged them right away.”
“That’s really rather disgusting, Alice, if you ought to know the truth.”
Alice cocked her head, hand paused in mid-glass-wipe. “What are you talking about now?”
Jared, who was in the process of setting up the chairs in their proper places, shouted, “Pegged means when a woman fucks a fella in the ass. Like, with a strap-on or some such thing.”
Bob, the manager, pounded his fist against the bar counter, having been interrupted from spreading out change for the register. “Jared! Don’t say things like that.”
“Don’t say things like what?” Jared straightened his spine and stared at Bob with genuine curiosity.
“Things like ‘when a woman fucks a fella in the ass’ or ‘with a strap-on or some such thing.’”
“But that’s what pegging means, Bob. I’m just telling Alice the facts.”
Bob shook his head and waved his finger at him. “You can’t say ‘when a woman fucks a fella in the ass’ or ‘with a strap-on or some such thing’ to Alice. She’s a grandmother.”
Alice scoffed and slammed down a freshly cleaned glass. “Oh, nonsense, I’m barely a grandmother.”
Jared raised his hand, like he was back in school and desperately had to pee. “How can someone be barely a grandmother? They either are, or they aren’t, right?”
Alice started to explain but Martin cut her off. “I think what she means is, some grandmothers are proper grandmothers. Like, they’re old and have fake teeth. But Alice isn’t very old. She’s only middle-aged. And her teeth are probably real, too.” He turned back to Alice. “You don’t have fake teeth, do you?”
Alice grinned wide, revealing a big set of nicotine-stained chompers. “That proof enough?”
Martin studied the smile for a while then shrugged. “Well, yes, that definitely proves it, all right.” In all honesty, he had no qualifications to make such determinations, but he doubted anybody here was going to call him out about it. Not like they could do any better. Nobody working at the goddamn Shantyman had much going for them, which was sort of nice, in a way. It gave them all a shared quality of degeneration. Sometimes it was nice to have something to bond over, even if that something was a total lack of a desirable life.
Bob spit a wad of chewing tobacco into a glass Alice just finished cleaning and said, “Which one of you millennials plans on explaining what the hell a podcast is, anyway?”
Alice cursed under her breath and rewashed the glass.
“It’s . . . like radio.” Martin threw up his hands as if that might put things in a better perspective. “But different.”
“It’s like Serial,” Jared said.
“Season one or season two?” Bob asked.
“Uh. Either?”
“Ah.” He left the bar and headed toward the back corridor without another word.
Martin joined Alice behind the bar and helped prepare for the evening. “What is this podcast, anyway? Something like . . . Stargazers United, right?”
Jared imitated a game show buzzer going off. “Wrong! It’s Shoegazers United.”
“Shoegazers?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“It is not a podcast about shoegaze.”
“Why would I lie about this?”
Alice cleared her throat. “Maybe I’m more than barely a grandmother, after all. What the hell is shoegaze?”
Martin started to answer but Jared interrupted. “You know. It’s like My Bloody Valentine.”
“My what?”
“Dinosaur Jr.? Flying Saucer Attack? A Place to Bury Strangers?”
“Jared, I—”
He started counting off the names with his fingers. “Kitchens of Destruction? The Jesus and Mary Chain? A Sunny Day in Glasgow? Alison’s Halo? The Away Days? The Boo Radleys? The Brian Jonestown Massacre? Kill Hannah, for God’s sake?”
“Who’s Hannah? Who’s killing her?”
“Ringo Deathstarr? Pale Saints? Pity Sex? Cigarettes After Sex? Any of this ringing a bell, Alice?”
“I have no idea what you’re saying right now.”
Martin sighed. “He’s naming bands. Shoegaze is a music genre.”
“Oh.” She contemplated the thought, then shook her head. “No, the folks performing tonight, they aren’t a band.”
Jared straighten a crooked line of chairs and said, “Maybe they just talk about famous shoegaze bands.”
Martin refused to believe this. “The podcast is not called Shoegazers United.”
“Then what is it called, smart guy?”
An idea occurred to him. He looked up at the banner above the stage. “Starmen Unified.”
“Haha. Now who’s making shit up?”
“No, seriously.” Martin pointed at the banner. “Starmen Unified.”
Jared followed the direction of Martin’s finger and laughed again. “Well, I’ll be pegged by Alice. You’re right.”
Alice gasped. “I’ll be doing no such thing to you.”
He turned and winked at her. “Oh, the night is young, dear Alice. The night is young!”
***
The trouble started almost as soon as Martin stepped outside. Holding a stamp pad, he shouted for everybody to have their IDs out and ready to be checked, and literally the first goddamn guy in line protested.
“You don’t need my identification. You don’t need any of our identification.” He crossed his arms over his chest like an actual child.
This wasn’t the first time some idiot gave him shit at the front door. “Nobody under eighteen is getting in here. Get your license out or go home. I honestly don’t care, either way.” He didn’t have to be nice to these weirdos. The Shantyman did not offer refunds on tickets. The only person they might possibly complain to would be Bob, and he was a way bigger asshole than Martin could ever aspire to become.
Martin and the guy at the front of the line held a staring contest for a while, then he sighed and started digging around for his wallet. Martin grinned. He always won this game.
He squinted at his driver’s license and wondered if the guy h
ad actually traveled all the way from Baltimore to see a live podcast performance in San Francisco. Judging by his peculiar clothing, it wasn’t entirely out of the question. He shrugged and returned the license.
“Let me see your hand.” He lifted the stamp, desperate to move on to the next person in line.
The guy shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
“If you plan on drinking alcohol, I gotta stamp your hand.”
He grimaced. “I would never subject myself to such poisons.”
“Whatever, dude.” He had already wasted enough time on him. Martin moved on to the next guy in line, who took one look at the stamp and also shook his head.
“Bylines state we are not to alter our flesh in any shape or form.”
“Uh. What?”
He pointed at the stamp. “Ink is considered an illegal amendment of the body. I must refuse.”
“It’s only temporary. It . . . it washes off.”
“Every sin is permanent, no matter how long its visibility lasts.”
“You won’t be able to drink without the stamp.”
“True Starmen refuse all temptations of intoxication.”
“Right.”
Martin stepped away and shouted, “Okay, show of hands. Who here actually plans on purchasing alcohol tonight?”
Everybody’s arms stayed down.
“That’s what I thought.”
Martin unhooked a walkie-talkie from his side-holster and thumbed it on. “Hey, uh, Bob? Nobody here will let me stamp their hands.”
Static feedback on the other end. “Uh, why not?”
“Says it’s a sin.”
“A sin?”
“Yeah.” Martin glared at the line of people, all of them watching him with intensity. “They’re a bunch of weirdos.”
“Well, they won’t be able to drink if they don’t got the stamp.”
“That’s what I told them.”
“And?”
“They don’t drink, either.”
“They don’t drink?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Jesus fucking Christ. We’re ruined.”
“Should I make them all go home?”
Long pause on the other end, like Bob was seriously considering the idea. “Nah. Let them come in, I guess.”
Martin thought about continuing to check IDs but decided he didn’t really give a shit if someone under eighteen slipped in tonight. The less he had to talk to these assholes, the better. The whole point of checking IDs wasn’t to make sure kids didn’t get in, anyway. It had more to do with being able to stamp someone’s hand. If someone’s hand was stamped, then they were much more likely to purchase an alcoholic beverage, having figured there would be no point in letting a perfectly good hand-stamp go to waste.
He lit up a cigarette and gestured at the front door. “Well. Go on inside then, I guess. Someone to the left will scan your tickets as you walk in.”
Every single one of them cast a murderous glare at the cigarette in his mouth.
Evidently True Starmen also didn’t condone nicotine addiction.
Like he could give a shit.
***
“Hello, San Francisco! How in the heck are you fellas tonight? Oh yes. That’s what I like to hear! As you almost undoubtedly already know, I am your host, Daniel Ray Burnside, and these are my faithful co-hosts, Lee Anderson and Paul Gauge, and we are the True Starmen! Yes, yes, thank you so much, thank you for coming out here to this great city, to this wonderful establishment. We’ve had tonight planned for . . . well, since the very first episode of our show, haven’t we? It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? All those years ago, and the time has finally arrived. I hope you are ready, my fellow Starmen. I hope you’re ready to embrace your destinies. Because tonight? Tonight is going to change all of our lives. Tonight is going to change everything.”
***
“I was just reading about these starfish fellas,” Bob said, urging Martin to close the door behind him. He’d urgently radioed him up to his office on the second floor about a half hour ago, just as the podcasters walked out on stage. Not a single person in the crowd applauded their arrival. They had all just sort of . . . nodded approvingly, to which the podcasters nodded in return. Weirdos, the whole lot of them. Martin had taken his sweet time going up to the office, figuring he’d linger downstairs awhile and check out what was so great about the podcast. Thirty minutes later, he still had no idea what the fuck they were talking about.
Martin sat across from Bob. “Starmen. Not starfish.”
Bob brushed the correction aside. “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”
“I really need to get back down there.”
“Did someone decide to buy a drink?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see how you can be useful.”
“Gee. Thanks, Bob.”
“I was reading about them. About these . . . these Starmen.”
“You googled them?”
“I googled them.”
Martin waited for more but was offered nothing further. “Okay. And?”
“And . . . ” he gestured at his computer monitor, which faced the opposite direction of Martin, “ . . . these are some weird individuals.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”
“Yeah.” Bob couldn’t argue with facts. “That’s what you’ve been saying.”
“Well, what did you find out, then?”
“Huh?”
Martin slapped the back of Bob’s monitor. “On the computer. What did you find out?”
“I didn’t call you up so you could slap my computer, Martin.”
“I barely slapped it.”
“I just sat and watched you do it. Full contact. Palm, fingers, everything. It even made a slapping sound.”
“What is a slapping sound?”
Bob clapped his hands together. “Kind of like that.”
“It was barely a slap.” Martin sighed, looking at where he’d left a dent on the back of the monitor. “How much did this heap of junk cost you, anyway? Twenty bucks?”
“Try three hundred, mister.”
“When did this cost you three hundred?” He laughed and wiped spit from his mouth. “Surely not recently.”
“Just last month! What are you trying to say? I got a heck of a deal.”
“Are we talking just the monitor or was the computer included too?”
“What do you mean?”
“This.” He slapped the monitor again and smiled at how quickly Bob winced. “This is the monitor. And the tall skinny thing below your desk, that’s the computer.”
“Oh. No. Just the monitor.” He folded his hands in his lap and admired the brightly lit contraption. “Heck of a deal, I’m telling you. You wouldn’t believe what I talked him down from. Originally, I mean.”
Martin rolled his eyes and checked his wristwatch. He did not actually own a watch, so he just glanced at his bare wrist for a couple of seconds. Same thing, basically. “Bob. I should really get back down there.”
“Do you know what an incel is?”
Martin nearly spat out his drink, then remembered he wasn’t drinking anything. “Uh. Kind of.”
“It means someone who is involuntary celibate.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know if this is an appropriate workplace conversation, Bob.”
Bob pointed at the floor. “These podcasters, that’s what they identify as. Incels. And their fans—them, too. What do you know about these kinds of people?”
Martin shrugged. “They’re kind of a joke, right?”
“A joke?”
“Yeah. Like. They go on Reddit and talk trash about women. Blame them for all of their troubles. Claim they can’t get laid because girls hate nice guys. That kind of dumb shit.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“The reason I ask is,” he pointed at the monitor again, still not realizing Martin cou
ldn’t see it from across the desk, “I found a couple articles about this podcast. The Starmen people. And a few of them—of the articles—they talk about these Starmen being involved in some kind of a cult.”
“A cult?”
“Mmm-hmm. Like those Scientologists and Waco whackjobs.”
“What are you talking about?”
Bob strained his brow. “There were reports I read. People leaving their families, moving in together at . . . what do you call them? Communes. Like with hippies and whatnot. A few women also complained about receiving disturbing packages in the mail, too. All from followers of this podcast. Lots of harassment lawsuits, stuff like that.”
“Have they hurt anyone?”
“I didn’t see anything about people getting hurt. But I did see one article speculating that they might . . . uh, you know, eventually lead into hurting someone. That they’re building some kind of . . . incel army.”
“A horde of neckbeards, wielding fedoras and Vampire Weekend vinyls.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“What do you want me to do about any of this, Bob?”
“Well, nothing. We can’t kick everybody out because they’re a cult. Wait. Can we?”
“At this point, they’re almost finished.”
“Mmm.” Bob nodded and leaned back in his chair. “I hope they don’t give us some reputation as a bar that welcomes cults. Just my luck, every single week, another cult at The Shantyman.”
Martin cracked his neck and stood. “I feel like people exaggerate when it comes to cults, anyway. Like, what’s so bad about them? Isn’t everybody these days in some kind of cult?”
Bob paused, seriously contemplating the question, then shook his head. “No. That sounds like bullshit to me.”
Martin nodded. “Yeah. It sounded like bullshit as the words were leaving my mouth, but it was too late.”
“Sometimes, maybe think before talking, Martin. Haven’t I told you that before?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, I meant to.”
Martin turned to leave but Bob called his name again. “Yeah?”
Bob opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Repeated the action a couple more times. Trying to figure out his wording. “Do you think it’s silly for me to be worried?”