Loud is How I Love You

by Mercy Brown

  “Um, yeah, she’s definitely hot,” Joey says. “I can really get behind this, I think.”

  “Is that, uh, something you’ve, you know, explored, Emmy?” Cole says, trying not to laugh outright.

  “Well, Millie kissed me once in the gear alcove at the Melody,” I say, and now Cole spits his Jolt Cola out all over the windshield.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Travis mutters from the front seat as Joey and Cole laugh until they cry. Travis looks up in the rearview mirror at me, trying not to laugh. He’s biting his lip but his eyes, oh God, his eyes are so fucking full of sexual mischief that I want to die.

  “What’s so funny?” I say.

  “You were supposed to pick somebody famous, Em,” Joey says, bonking me on the head with a rolled-up set list. “Like PJ Harvey.”

  “I’d definitely have a gay experience with Polly Jean,” I say. “No question about that. Does that make me bisexual? If I like sex with guys, but would be willing to have sex with PJ Harvey? Because I’ve never actually tried gay sex, outside of that time I sort of made out with Millie. We were both really drunk, though—does that count?”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You ‘sort of made out’ with Millie?” Travis asks as I realize I just made a deposit in his spank bank that’s likely going to last him until retirement. And, well, yes I did. Once. And I was really drunk, okay? Whatever.

  “If you care to elaborate on that at all . . .” Joey says.

  “She doesn’t,” Travis answers. “You want us to make it to Baltimore alive, don’t you?”

  “Fuck me, I’m never going to be able to go bowling with the two of you again,” Cole says, shaking his head.

  “What? Why not?” I say.

  “Because men are pigs, Emmy,” Joey says. “In case you didn’t already know that.”

  “Girls are pigs too, you know,” I say. “I’ll probably be thinking about the three of you guys gangbanging Henry Rollins all night.”

  “Next subject!” Travis announces. “In descending order, the top five songs you want played at your memorial service. And, go!”

  “‘Dust in the Wind,’ ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ . . .” Cole begins to rattle off his list, but I stop paying attention because I can’t take my eyes off of Travis’s crooked smile as he looks ahead down the road. Then as I’m staring at him, he glances up into the rearview mirror and winks at me and I flush pink from head to toe.

  ***

  We make it to Josie’s Grill, the bar just off campus at Johns Hopkins where WJHU has set up for the after-party. We unload in the back and Travis goes around to the main room to talk to the sound guy and find the guys from the Corporate Secret and Vampires and Assassins. Cole, Joey, and I bring the guitars into the back room where we run into Rex, and there’s this horrific, agonized wailing coming from behind Rex’s bass cabinet and it’s Toby, their singer. He sounds like he’s giving fucking birth back there.

  “Oh, he’ll be all right,” Rex says with a worn smile. “He’s passing another kidney stone, that’s all.”

  “What the ever-loving fuck?” Cole says. “He’s passing a kidney stone? Right now?”

  “Right here?” Joey asks.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty painful,” Rex says, totally laid back, because that’s Rex for you. “I’m going to go get him a couple of shots and some Advil.”

  “Holy shit,” I say. “Shouldn’t he be in an emergency room somewhere?”

  “Nah,” Rex says. “They’ll just hop him up on pain meds and then he won’t be able to play.”

  If this sounds insane to anyone not in a band, well, that’s understandable. If you could hear Toby wailing, crying for his mama, his grandma, his teddy bear as he rolls around on the floor back there, well, it is pretty nuts. But if you also knew how tough it is to get a gig like this and how it’s likely to lead to your single getting played on WJHU and how that might help your CMJ chart position, then you might understand why a guy would suffer an agonizing thing like passing a stone on a skanky bar floor instead of on a nice, comfy emergency room cot with an IV full of pain meds. Maybe.

  “What the hell?” Travis asks when he comes into the gear room. Jimmy, the drummer for the Corporate Secret, is on the floor, karate-chopping the crap out of Toby’s back now.

  “Toby is giving birth to triplets through his penis,” Cole explains.

  “Joey, go grab the blanket out of the van,” Travis says.

  “Hopefully he’ll pass it soon,” Rex says. “But would you guys mind going on first? I know we were going to sandwich you in the middle, but I don’t think Toby will be ready by then.”

  We look down at Toby, his face streaked with tears and dirt as he moans in agony, curled up in the fetal position, gnawing on Jimmy’s stick case. No, I don’t think he’s going to be ready to go on for a while.

  “I could pass the fucking thing on stage,” he groans. “On the Goddamned air!”

  “We’ll go on first,” I say. “Is there anything else we can do?”

  “Yeah, actually,” Rex says. “While I go get the whiskey, maybe you guys can take turns punching him in the kidney.”

  “What the fuck?” Cole says.

  “No, really, it works,” Rex says. “Helps break it up or something, and it helps with the pain, too. If Jimmy keeps going like that, he’ll wear his arms out before our set. Maybe we can all take shifts or something?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Travis says.

  “Kill me kill me kill me you ugly bastard motherfuckers,” Toby wails and grabs Jimmy by the shirt.

  “Who’s up next?” Jimmy says. “I’m out.”

  “I guess I’ll go,” Cole says, rolling up his sleeves.

  Jesus.

  I’ve been playing in bands since I was sixteen. I’ve played a lot of shows by this point, five years in, and I can tell you, I’ve never seen this. This right here is fucking surreal. Joey comes back with the blanket and we spread it out on the floor and roll Toby onto it, and it’s so fucking weird, I ask Joey to go get me a shot of whiskey, too, because the way Toby is crying, I mean sobbing, is pretty unnerving. Joey goes and gets us all shots. We all toast Toby for being a badass and then we get down to work, taking turns doing karate chops on Toby’s kidney. I’m still not convinced this method is medically sound, because after ninety minutes of this he hasn’t passed it, but we have to quit so we can get on the stage. Rex and Jimmy take over and ask us to extend our set if we need to. Then the guys from Vampires and Assassins show up in the middle of this, or the band of Johns and Brians, as we call them, since three of them are named John and the other two are named Brian. They take over kidney-punching duty for us so we can play.

  The WJHU station manager greets us, and we get a nice little reminder, or a dressing-down, maybe, about how the show is being broadcast live, so to keep it clean, ha ha ha. Sure, dude. No worries. He’s in a bow tie and nothing at all like our folks at Rutgers, who know better than to even suggest such a thing because, derp, we’re professionals, we know this and we’re not idiots or lowlifes. But whatever. We’re not here to be a pain in anyone’s ass.

  “So, I shouldn’t say, ‘Welcome all you motherfuckers’ on the air, then?” I ask.

  “‘Where’s my cocksucking drink?’” Cole says. “Is that okay?”

  “‘Any whores in the audience tonight?’” Joey says. “Is that FCC-approved?”

  “Please forgive them,” Travis says. “They were raised in New Jersey.”

  Now the guy laughs. Asshole.

  We get our equipment set up on stage, and the place is already mobbed with people we’ve never seen who’ve been drinking all day at Spring Fair, and I always love and hate this feeling because I have no idea if they’re going to love us or boo us off the stage. It’s thrilling like a potentially very awesome ride at an amusement park, you know, like “Final Death Drop” or something,
the new one that hasn’t been around long enough for you to feel confident nobody will die on it. That’s what playing a show like this, on the air, feels like. Except we probably won’t die doing it. I mean, Toby is in the back now passing a kidney stone so I guess you never know what can happen at these things.

  With new crowds, especially college crowds, loud, fast rules apply—so the set we play would fit right in with anybody on Amphetamine Reptile. No quirky, ethereal, dark moments here, we’ve got drunk college radio people in the crowd. It seems to be working, because even though we’re implementing our “no talking between songs” rule (made specially for me because I have a nervous tic of unintentionally insulting the crowd from the mic when I’m nervous), and we’re blasting through song after song, we can see they’re going nuts out there. I mean, there are a ton of frat brothers right up front dancing, jumping in the air, doing the drunk premed version of moshing (because these dudes in their pastel wifebeaters have no idea about punk rock, so when they mosh I sort of want to smack them between the eyes with my headstock). Now there’s even a sloppy-looking guy standing right in front of me on the floor mouthing “I LOVE YOU” about as subtly as a raging herpes cluster. Great.

  I give Travis a look during a break between songs and he gives me the nod. He moves closer to me, steps right to the edge of the stage and levels a pretty menacing “fuck off” stare at the guy. Travis, as nice a guy as he is, has a fairly convincing “fuck off” stare, so the guy cools it, steps off to the side. But within two songs, he’s back. Now Cole has picked up on it and he’s eyeing the guy, too, but this guy is obviously toasted and not giving much of a fuck, and unless we want to make a big deal out of it (and I don’t), there’s not much more to do about it now.

  Travis’s behavior isn’t possessiveness or jealousy, by the way, so don’t read that into it. This is a matter of respect and safety. I’m a female, I’m fairly young, and I’m singing in a club away from home. Some guys are assholes. This is a fact of being in a band, or a fact of being born with a vagina. While the vast majority of guys are totally respectful at shows, it’s still not uncommon enough to run into somebody who just isn’t. Who doesn’t get it. Who tells himself that if you have tits and you’re on a stage, you’re obviously there so he can try to fuck you. I know some folks think, hey, if you don’t want the attention, why do you do it? Because fuck them, that’s why. Nobody in the world gets up on a stage who doesn’t like attention. I’m up here because I wrote some music and I want to share it with you, and that is not the same at all as wanting to share my body or anything else I have, you dumb motherfuckers.

  So this is why Cole, Travis, and Joey are fairly quick to intervene if somebody is getting too much in my face. They’re my pepper spray. And tonight when Vampires and Assassins are in the crowd and they see this going on, all three Johns and the two Brians move up and not so subtly crowd the dude right out of the front row so I can stop thinking about his ugly flapping lips in my face and worry about stomping on my Big Muff at the precise moment I need to bring the heavy riff out. I look up and Original Brian (the singer) gives me a nod that the douchebag has been flushed.

  It’s all going great now, and I’m back into it. But just before the end of our set, to my and everyone’s great surprise, Toby comes wandering out into the crowd in nothing but his boxers and combat boots, holding a pint glass full of piss in the air.

  “I FUCKING PASSED IT!” he yells to us right after we finish “My Yes My No.” He is so hopped up on natural endorphins, he jumps up on stage next to me, half naked, sweating, but grinning maniacally as he holds the glass up in the air and shows everyone the shards of the stone he just passed.

  And I have never seen anything more badass in all of my rock career as that.

  “You’re a hero, Toby Secret,” I say.

  “Let’s rock, motherfuckers!” he cries (Live! On WJHU!), and we all pump our fists in the air and cheer, totally ignoring the meltdown the station manager is having at the bar.

  “He’s not even from Jersey,” I point out.

  ***

  The rest of this show is unreal. I can’t even tell you how hard the Corporate Secret rock tonight. They are off the fucking charts. If they’re not signed in a week, I will eat my Tube Screamer. Toby has stripped naked and is playing in nothing but his guitar and combat boots, and he’s covered with stickers (with a Stars on the Floor sticker prominently displayed across his ass, and if a photo of that isn’t our next single cover, then fuck, we’re doing it all wrong). Everybody is dancing, everybody is jumping up and down to every song. They are on fire. The endorphins must be fueling Toby’s playing, his singing, because he is a monster on stage tonight.

  The show keeps this unrelenting pace of awesome when Vampires and Assassins take the stage. It’s like they just feed right off of the crazy energy from Toby’s kidney stone ordeal and I think, shit, we should just move to Baltimore after we graduate. Fuck New York, fuck Philadelphia. I know that the Baltimore scene has the same problem we have—they’re too close to DC for anyone else in the country to give much of a shit about what’s happening here—but there are so many good bands. It’s a treasure trove of heavy guitar angst down here.

  I go to the bar for a drink and look at the clock. It’s midnight now, and Vampires and Assassins are near the tail end of their set and it’s so good I don’t want the night to end. But then I remember that I’ve got an exam in the morning, and I break out into a cold sweat. But hey, it’s only midnight. We’ll be packed up and on the road by one a.m. at the latest. I’ll be home by three thirty a.m., and if I sleep in the van, I’ll be able to do fine on the exam. No big deal.

  I’ve forgotten all about the asshole from the audience until he spots me at the bar and stumbles over while I’m waiting to get change from the bartender. (Because this is a college bar that has no idea how to treat bands so they give us each only one drink ticket. One. And then they make us use it for bottled water. What even the fuck is that?) I haven’t had anything to drink since the one shot I had before massaging Toby’s kidney, I’m just ordering myself ginger ales. When the douchebag asks me what I’m drinking, I tell him I’m fine, thanks. Then he asks me my name and I tell him, reluctantly: Anaïs Nin. He tells me his and then proceeds to tell me that I’m really “hawt” and do I have a boyfriend? For fuck’s sake.

  “I actually have three boyfriends,” I tell him as I see Travis making his way through the crowd to us. “Here comes one now.”

  “You’re . . . are you, you know, banging all those guys in your band?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I am. All at the same time, sometimes.”

  “No way.” His face lights up in admiration.

  “Get lost, asshole,” Travis says as he comes and drapes his arm around my shoulders. “I don’t like the way you were eyeing my girl up there.”

  “We were just talking,” he says. “I swear, I didn’t realize.”

  “Yeah, well now you know,” he says. “Don’t be such a creep with the ladies, they don’t like it. It makes them uncomfortable.”

  “That’s crazy that she’s, you know, with all of you guys at the same time,” he says. “Is that even legal?”

  “It is in Jersey,” I say.

  “Emmylou, you’re not supposed to go around telling anyone and everyone about our polygamous love,” he says, wagging his finger in my face. “You’ll end up in Rolling Stone again and we’ll have to move back to Utah.”

  “You were in Rolling Stone?” the guy asks. “Can I have your autograph?”

  Why are guys so fucking dumb? I don’t know. It’s more proof of how public education is failing in this country.

  I sign a bar napkin Anaïs Nin and the guy leaves, obviously impressed, and I notice that as he does, Travis doesn’t take his arm away from my shoulders. He keeps it there and twirls a strand of my hair around his finger and I don’t want to move because I don’t want him to stop doing th
at. It makes me feel safe. I didn’t really feel unsafe before, not with all my friends around here and hell, tonight’s asshole was just one more in the train of shitheads with bad boundaries that I have to deal with doing what I do. No real threat.

  But there’s no denying my big relieved sigh when he’s gone and Travis is still there, holding on to me.

  Chapter Eight

  “Does dialing it back include kissing or not?” I ask Travis when we’re loading up the van.

  It’s one a.m. now and the beat brothers are still inside the club, goofing off with Vampires and Assassins as John the Third has taken over the DJ booth and is spinning dance hits only from 1982. They’re going nuts rapping to “The Message,” and if you want to see something that defines awkward, go watch nine pasty white boys in rock bands try to rap. They think because the Beastie Boys made the jump from hardcore to hip-hop it’s easy, but it’s a relief when Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France” comes on and they start doing the robot instead, trust me.

  Travis climbs out of the back of the van after arranging the cabinets in the cargo space. He stands there staring at me, hands on his hips as he thinks over his answer, which I thought would be much easier than this. Honestly? I expected him to give me a sexy little smile and to clandestinely make out in the back of the van for a few before everyone waltzes out here. But he doesn’t do that. You know that cringing, embarrassed feeling you get when you say something totally flirty like this and the guy just stares at you like you asked him for a loan? No? Well, you’re lucky because it’s awful. In the gaping maw of his non-reply, I turn red, then turn to escape back into the club when he catches me by the arm.

  “Wait a minute,” he says.

  “What.” I try to sound all business, like no big deal, but this isn’t easy when you’re in the middle of a full-body cringe. “I’m sorry. I’m being stupid and contradictory. As usual.”

  “I’m still trying to figure it out, that’s all,” he says. “I do want to kiss you, you know. All the fucking time.”