Adios, Motherfucker

by Michael Ruffino

  She pointed to a box, gestured for me to open it, yessing whoever was on the phone. Burrowed in the packing peanuts was a stainless-steel piece of equipment, an alien surgical device. Miss Management glanced into the box, approved, and mouthed to me, “Go ahead.” The game where I try to figure out what this thing is for, and she hurts herself laughing at how far off I am. As usual, this contraption—a clamp bisected by a hollow metal tube with a 45-degree bend in it, attached to oversize forceps and a padlock hasp—was a complete mystery. Clearing the box, I found a rod with a dangly bit, obviously intended to fit in somehow, to add injury to insult. A tavern puzzle by the Marquis de Sade.

  “Fucking great!” Miss Management was giddy, noting more things on her legal pad. I handed her my version of the assembled doohickey. She laughed at me, roaring silently. Then she configured it properly and demonstrated how it was used, best she could while cradling the phone to her ear and without a penis handy. I declined handling the thing further. “Per night? Is that a guarantee?” she was saying. Details were being discussed.

  I wandered into the other room. On the antique wheelie table of hand-blown butt plugs and the usual business were some new things that looked like sharpened tuning forks, and a truncheon-like tube of anal relaxant. In the center of the room was the giant crucifix I hung on for two hours–plus for a photo shoot the other day, lashed to it with rope and occasionally fed bourbon off a sponge on a stick. My wrists are still raw. Eug wore a leather banana hammock and a Lone Ranger mask and was lashed to a table; it sounded like there was fairly heavy chain involved. From my Roman (Nazarene?) orientation I could only see Matt, at the end of a dog leash with Erin’s heel in his back. He had to lap his bourbon from a dog dish. Couldn’t help noticing, hanging there on the cross, how good I had it.

  At the back of the room was a new one. A glossy black neoprene sack suspended a foot or so above the floor by a steel chain, in which a human was shrink-wrapped. A featureless cocoon except for a slit to strategically expose his tackle, a sore thumb and two aggrieved kumquats, mashed into a restrictive apparatus, from which dangled a heavy, cast-iron cannonball on a chain. The person whimpered through a proboscis of industrial tubing. A Philip Larkin line popped into my head: They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

  Miss Management hung up the phone. “That was Lenny,” she said, excitedly. “Six weeks with Motörhead sound good?”

  15

  EVERYTHING LOUDER THAN EVERYTHING ELSE

  This—no—yesterday morning I was unsteady, not yet caffeinated at the cappuccino-email dump up on Avenue A. Clicked on something and read, “The Unband is officially the new American shame.” I thought: That was quick. Then, we’re all what we are. After a sip or two of the espresso-crank the place serves I realized I was just misreading the name of the band we’re replacing on the Motörhead tour. No mention of why they dropped off. The photo was of them, not us. Conspicuous tattoos, spiky hair, eyeliner, on-the-nose rock dudes. What Matt, Eug, and I were expected to look like when we were first introduced around the TVT office, tattooless and piercing-free in suit jackets. Almost no one believed we were who we were. The “rocker” look is akin to the fat Italian chef kissing his fingers on a pizza box. Some people need to be reassured, I guess.

  Sitting at the bar now, perusing the anemic local weekly while Motörhead soundchecks, louder than everyone ever. Hold a page of the paper vertically and the bass vibrations will rip it in half.

  Of the bands considered part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal—Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Raven (“new” twenty, twenty-five years ago)—Motörhead is by far the rawest, most punk rock of the bunch. But the real difference between Motörhead and their peers, as well as any recent American metal band—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer—is very pronounced when you hear them play “Be My Baby,” which they’re doing right now, faithfully. It sounds natural, and like Ronnie Spector would sound perfectly appropriate over it (when Phil Spector said Wall of Sound he had no idea; might as well be blasting out of a jet engine twenty feet away. Lifts your balls off the barstool). There’s a genuine reverence that wouldn’t translate if there were the usual heavy metal trappings in the way. Not that a little posturing and pretention can’t go a long way—e.g. Iron Maiden—but Motörhead’s lack of it is why Lemmy Kilmister [Motörhead’s lead singer] is often referred to as “God” in heavy metal and hard rock circles, where Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson is merely a “genius.” And why we’re comfortable on the bill, not being a metal band—Motörhead aren’t either, that I can see. From where I stand we don’t sound much like Motörhead, but whenever someone says we do, which is fairly often nowadays, it’s a compliment.

  Then, nobody else in the room, I’m sucked to the sweet spot, front and center between the speaker columns, “We Are the Road Crew,” coming at me like a gale. Yes. That’s the stuff.

  SEPTEMBER 29 / SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

  Full house here. We’ve played San Antonio a few times; I remember the first time vividly. One willowy ginger girl alone in the middle of the room smiling. No one else in the building except the grousing club owner, who kept slamming his palm against a handwritten sign: NO COVERS! Per order of the “Mangement” [sic]. We snuck in a verse or so of a Trio song, and later “Wheels of Steel” (Saxon), figuring what are the odds of a doddering, alky Chicano in a deserted dive bar recognizing those, and from our adaptations, but both times he slapped the sign and wagged his finger. We were onstage for two hours in front of the tinsel curtain there and the girl hardly moved. I don’t even think she drank anything. Afterward she hung around while we loaded out and got our fifty dollars or whatever it was, then she showed us to her favorite taco place, where she asked us a ton of questions about New York, and a few about Los Angeles, and told us about how someday she was planning to move to a big city, anywhere but Texas. The tacos were good. We went back to the hotel relatively sober, read for a while, and went to sleep.

  What might not be obvious is, that’s just the type of night that refills your sails when the party won’t.

  This time is a different San Antonio. The denim horde is also beautiful. Less oblique.

  OCTOBER 1 / AUSTIN, TEXAS

  Austin, the outer rim, in a strip mall. We hung around the load-in dock with the Nashville Pussies for a while and they seem all right. Friendly, southern, jaded. Tattooed as you please, of course.

  Bass amp is fucking off again and so again we’re off on the wrong foot. I went to one of the stage guys at the club and, for the three thousandth time in my life, introduced myself then right away asked to borrow some piece of equipment I can’t do my job without. You don’t impress a lot of people this way. This time I was met with simple acknowledgment of the stated problem, followed by immediate action. The stage guy and a Motörhead tech began pulling my amp apart, testing wires with a tester. Lights blinked or didn’t. They consulted and agreed on something—capacitor, whatever—then Nashville’s tech appeared with a new bass amp, put it onstage for me, plugged it in, tested it with my bass, clapped me on the back, and said, “All set, dude.” He jumped off the stage saying that he was sure he could have my amp up and running tomorrow. No eye-rolling, no mini-lecture, no judgment, no impending consequences. Nothing even remotely like this has ever happened, ever.

  A few minutes later I was standing outside the dressing room savoring the absence of pre-show technical panic when another guy, Motörhead laminate flapping, set down a case of beer on our table, pointed to me, and said, “Rock and fuckin’ roll, man!” and jogged off. I am a stranger in a strange land.

  OCTOBER 2 / DALLAS

  Sold out, madhouse. Matt’s uncle Rick in the crowd. Matt’s more into Nashville Pussy’s thing than I am, as with Turbo Negro, et al. But Nashville are less gimmicky than they look, and I see what Matt means about the guitarist. Most people who can solo that well are shit rhythm players; not her.

  After ours I walked offstage feeling good. Very little guff from the crowd, what there was was good-nature
d. As we packed up Eug was summoned by Lemmy, via denim footman. Eug laughed—his sarcastic laugh reserved for impending failure. “Well, it was a good tour while it lasted!” he said, and moseyed (Eug moseys generally) over to the bar, where Lemmy sat being Lemmy. He told Eugene we were a good band and handed him a shot of Jack. Like a Grammy, but real—a Lemmy.

  Dallas is “Big D,” and Denver is known as “Little D,” Matt’s uncle Rick said, distributing Silver Bullets to us at his place in the suburbs. Uncle Rick used to be from Syracuse, New York, but now he’s from Texas.

  Rick got out his .357 and we took turns firing it into the woods. Then we climbed into his cherry-red convertible—midlife Chrysler—and sped down the interstate drinking the beer, as is a man’s legal right in Texas, with a good Waylon Jennings song on the radio, Steve belting out a harmony. (We don’t do harmonics). At the entrance to the strip club a red carpet led up to a tinted door between two plaster Chinese lions. Next to one of the lions was a stand-up ad announcing an upcoming special appearance by a woman known worldwide for being a quintuple-D. The sign said, “Everything’s bigger in Texas!” But chances are her tits are the same size when she’s in Alabama.

  Inside, Rick, proud hand on his Matt’s shoulder, introduced the maître d’ and said, “Rock-and-roll VIPs here. These boys are on tour with the Motörheads.” The maître d’ smiled. “Ah! Please tell Mr. Kilmister regards, from me. I’m Benmont.”

  Benmont showed us to a VIP area near the stage. At the next table an Asian woman in a thong was bent over in what the yoga people call “downward dog,” meaning less than it meant here, licking her thumb counting through a stack of bills near the floor (mentally give her a green visor and an adding machine with register tape curling out of it); her other business end she wagged in the face of her customer, a barrel of lard with a neck rash, close-set eyes, and pumpkin-shaped head topped with a ten-gallon hat. We’re in these places all the time; where we live now it’s the social equivalent of a coffee shop.

  Strippers in Texas are especially courteous, making the so-called reputable places seem almost not-disreputable—I don’t forget that this is a state with a legendary cheerleading squad. Eugene has an aversion to strip clubs, aka “the ballet.” Has his fill of this scene with his girl back home working in one, down in Springton, the Yankee Wankee. These places don’t do much for me, either. Mostly strip clubs needle my Irish half: my ingrained response to a watered-down drink at thrice the price, plus the generalized heartbreak equals a scrotum-tightening inability to stop myself from thinking, Where’s your kid right now?

  Matt’s got no beef, though. Shyanne (her spelling, as in shy Anne) was hired to give him a lap dance. “You have a big nose,” she said. “Are you Jewish or something?”

  “Why,” said Matt. “Are you anti-Semitic or something?”

  “No.”

  “Kind of a weird question,” Matt said. “Don’t you think?”

  She humped the air, her next move, automatic as a car wash. “I could never date someone like you.”

  “What? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Doesn’t mean anything, I just wouldn’t,” said Shyanne, circling her ass above his crotch. Then she speculated about Matt’s manhood. Negatively, in detail.

  “What the fuck!” Matt said. “You’re supposed to make me feel good! Lie like you’re supposed to!”

  “Lie! I’m a country girl, tryin to make an honest livin.”

  We all immediately emptied our pockets and made it rain. As in, a brief sun shower. Really, it was more like dew, or condensation; making it hail with toll change would have more generous, technically. Shyanne obliged with the most flatly abusive lap dance in history. Later I ran into her on my way to the restroom. “The singers are all the same,” she said, poking the air with her finger. “All the same buttons.”

  No question Shyanne was in serious breach of the unwritten, hard rock singer-stripper contract—Wimpy would no sooner expect betrayal from a hamburger; Matt griped continuously as we sped back up the highway. Few people are as funny as Matt, and when it comes to diatribes, harangues, and beating dead horses, no one is. Side-splitting. Eug, elated, shouted through the ragtop gale that that was the best thirteen dollars he’d ever spent.

  Next morning I stumbled into the kitchen in time to hear Rick say to Matt, “She thinks the moon and stars fell out of New Jersey’s ass.” I thought I’d interrupted Rick reciting Lawrence Ferlinghetti or something, revealing some new side. No, that’s just how Rick refers to Matt’s aunt’s stubborn refusal to accept Texas as the center of the universe. Part of the holiday entertainment at Matt’s house is his aunt Jean, chain-smoking her lollipop-stick Capris and prodding Rick into a Texas versus New Jersey battle royale. I always make a special effort to stop by when Jean’s around.

  We drove through Dealey Plaza on the way out of town. Staring out the vansion’s rear window suckling a Foster’s oil can the sleep deprivation took me. In a bright burst it was revealed to me how the name of the plaza itself was the key to the whole swirling plot surrounding the JFK assassination. Just like that, I once and for all connected the CIA, the Mafia, Masons, Boy Scouts of America, Castro, the Illiterati, everybody. How did we miss it? Dealey Plaza—for secret deals.

  I snapped out of it, into an intellectual shame spiral that slowed—no sign of stopping—only when I reassured myself that at least I hadn’t said all of that nonsense out loud. Eugene looked up from his book and said, “Actually, you did.”

  OCTOBER 3 / MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

  Motörhead’s added “Orgasmatron” to their set. Lights go down except for Lemmy underlit like he’s telling a ghost story. I revel in this.

  In the small bar attached to the venue, an old, hippyish guy led a band in the corner through some unusually respectable blues rock. He was good, the old guy. We watched the rest of his set and closed the place out with him and the band. In the morning I woke in a hotel room I’d never seen before, looking out on a parking lot I didn’t feel good about and a clip of skyline I couldn’t place. Vaguely remembered the bar at the club. I couldn’t quite fit drinking with Harry (Matt’s dad) into the picture, though I was sure he’d been with us, until I drank some water and remembered it had been Country Joe, of Country Joe and the Fish playing in the little bar, and Harry is a big fan. The Gideon’s was open on the nightstand, certain passages notated. Didn’t look like my writing. Took a shower, for punctuation, unrumpled a couple dollars for the maid, and went out. I had no sunglasses. Luckily Milwaukee has no sun.

  OCTOBER 4 / KANSAS CITY

  Motörhead named the tour “Everything Louder Than Everyone Else.” Until today I thought it was “everything louder than everything else,” which sounds like a production guideline. Either way something we can get behind.

  If there isn’t a video poker machine at the venue you don’t see Lemmy until just before showtime; I assume he is at the nearest place that does have a video poker machine. Normally when you walk in for soundcheck he’s already on a barstool poking graphics on the little swivel television with a Jack-and-Coke next to it. Starting to suspect he doesn’t actually travel on the bus with the rest of the band at all, but somehow knows video poker machines well enough to use them to access wormholes between venues. Some combo of solitaire moves that sucks him in and pops him out five hundred miles away at another little swivel television with a Jack-and-Coke next to it. I have a habit for the trivia games on those things, but I’m just chipping; I abstain unless there’s two machines.

  Party in the burbs here, courtesy of our new friend Cody, at his place. He went all out. The house was shaking, people hanging off everything, massive drinks activity. I do a thing now where I fall asleep standing up. Not the split-second-catch-yourself thing. Asleep. Woke up standing in the kitchen at the party, tattooed kid looking at me. I said, “How long was I out?”

  “A fuckin’ while, dude. We kept thinking you were gonna drop that drink.”

  I told him, “I was asleep, not dea
d.”

  Sacked out in the van.

  OCTOBER 5 / DENVER, COLORADO.

  “Food is great. . . .”

  —Eugene Ferrari, “Food is Great,” from Food Is Great, 1990 (cassette only)

  Motel is a Bates job on the edge of town on a hill overlooking an amusement park, and downtown. Only one room—the budget’s shrinking fast. Raced into town to get some food before everything closed, got in under the wire to a place claiming “the Best Tapas in Colorado!” Imagining the best hot wings in Andalusia.

  Every so often you do find yourself free from any pressing crisis and in an area where, thanks to regional history, a university, or a fixed ethnic population, you can spend your buyout of seven dollars on interesting food that your body might not reject four miles down the road. When you are in a position to do so, you do well to spend your several buyouts in advance on a serious meal of people food. Chew slowly, savor every bite—the sense memory has more nutritional value than the gas-station taco you would have otherwise been forced to eat. Every once in a while, thanks to a flat tire or bad directions, you happen to come across, for example, mind-blowing Ethiopian food in a strip mall in bumfuck Nebraska. Orgasmic kibee or whatever at a hole-in-the-wall in Dearborn. But there’s almost never time to drive around secondary roads on a hunch or a tip. The schedule rarely permits more than vending machine lesser-evils, learning to accept colors as flavors and to appreciate certain subtleties thereof. Also, the difference between a buffet or other self-serve trough and a bioweapon: none. (Consider the “sneeze guard.”) In the future the fully evolved rock band will feed by means of a nutrient-absorbing secretion. Until then, just as the early natives learned their hunting and foraging skills from the eagle and the bear, we must become like the maggot that digs into whichever turd it finds itself squirming upon. The tube worm that blindly snatches whatever floats close enough.