Until the Last Dog Dies

by Robert Guffey

  I entered the club through the back door. The backstage area where I had been talking to Eddie was now empty except for a clown. The clown was crouched on the ground, flinging various objects into a black Gladstone bag. The objects were scattered across the floor, as if they had fallen out of the bag only a few moments before I’d entered. Among the objects were a pile of rubber snakes, a bottle of seltzer water, a hand buzzer, a whoopi cushion, two banana peels, a severed mannequin hand, a half-eaten cream pie, and about three dozen marbles. My first thought upon seeing the clown was something along the lines of: A fuckin’ clown? What the hell’s next, ten midgets in mime outfits?

  I walked over to the clown and said, “Would you like some help with that?”

  The clown glanced up at me. “No, I’d rather you stood around watching me with your thumb up your ass!” He seemed eager to throw out some more caustic cracks until he squinted at me, tilted his head and said, “Hey, you’re Elliot Greeley!”

  From the raspy tone of his voice I couldn’t quite tell whether this made him happy or mad. “I suppose that’s possible,” I said, reluctant to commit further than that.

  The clown rose to his feet and held out his gloved hand. His gloves might’ve been white at one time, but had turned grayish-yellow after years of accumulated dirt. “Nice to meet you,” he said, “the name’s Ogo. I’m the guy who got you the job here.”

  “Are you the bass player?” With some reluctance I shook his hand.

  “That’s right. Have you heard of us before?”

  I recalled what Eddie had told me about Ogo: “He’s a real clown. You’d probably like him.” It hadn’t occurred to me to take him literally.

  “Not until I got the call to play this gig,” I said. “I’m sorry, I don’t really keep up with the new bands.”

  “That’s okay, neither do I. Most of ’em suck. Here, I’ll give you a free CD.” Ogo lifted the bag off the ground and began rooting through the junk he’d just thrown inside it. The clown stood a little over five foot eight and was a bit chubby. Because of the make-up it was difficult to tell how old he was. Perhaps he was in his early twenties. His outfit was no run-of-the-mill clown costume. It was rather disturbing to look at. Except for his blood-red lips, the color scheme was entirely black and white. The outfit consisted of a mixture of chaotic black and white swirls that could make you dizzy if you stared at them long enough. The same chaotic swirls adorned his face, the only differences being the subtle inclusion of the twenty-two sigils of the Kabalah amongst the otherworldly streaks. If I hadn’t taken a Comparative Religion course in college I wouldn’t have recognized them as anything more than meaningless squiggles. I was about to ask him about them when I heard the back door opening behind me.

  I turned and saw a muscle-bound, middle-aged punk rocker backing through the door with an amp in each hand and a guitar case slung over his shoulder. He was short, standing a little over five foot five, but was well-built; his head was shaved, and he wore nothing more complicated than a black t-shirt, black Levis and combat boots. His arms were covered with tattoos, stunningly detailed renderings of surreal, nightmarish beings that looked like they’d been plucked out of a Max Ernst collage.

  “It’d be nice if you could carry your own god damn guitar,” the man said, lowering the equipment to the floor beside Ogo’s oversized shoes.

  “This is the opening act I was telling you about,” Ogo said, gesturing toward me.

  The man encased my hand in a grip that could’ve damaged me permanently if he’d wanted it to. Somehow, though, it was clear he wasn’t trying to impress me with his strength; he just didn’t realize how strong he really was. “Elliot something, isn’t it?”

  “Elliot Greeley,” I said.

  “This is Jesse Lazar, our drummer,” Ogo said.

  “So I hear you’re some sort of a comedian,” Jesse said.

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  “So tell me something funny.”

  I hate it when people say that. It’s like cornering a doctor in the men’s room and asking him to give you a free rectal exam. “Oh, I don’t know, I haven’t had much time to think up funny shit lately. Howzabout this one? What do you call a forty-year-old man who’s still playing drums in a garage band?”

  The brute glared at me with eyes of fire. “What?”

  “Stupid.”

  Jesse said nothing. His hands suddenly transformed into fists and he came at me. Ogo slipped in between us, just in time.

  Ogo patted Jesse on the chest, like an animal trainer at a circus calming down an enraged lion. “No worries, m’man. The guy’s a silly comedian, you know that. Just relax. Chill.”

  The fire in Jesse’s eyes began to die down. “Well, I dunno … if you say so, Ogo. I’ll relax, but that guy better watch himself, that’s all I’m sayin’.”

  “Now don’t you worry your pretty little head none,” I said, “I’ll just go in the dressing room and stand in front of a mirror and do my best Narcissus impersonation—I promise.”

  Jesse glared at me again, as if trying to puzzle through my words.

  Ogo leaned toward my ear and whispered, “Don’t worry about him. He’s a little slow. Believe it or not he’s a Gulf War vet. He’s lost a couple of brain cells to that (quote) non-existent (unquote) Gulf War Disease, if you know what I mean.” He twirled his index finger around his ear.

  “Hey, what’re you saying?” Jesse said, stepping forward and expanding his chest outward like a gorilla ready to attack. His t-shirt drew tightly against his body, revealing what seemed to be a shallow dip in his chest. It was as if someone had bounced a bowling ball off his sternum a few times too many. “You makin’ fun of me again?” he said, pushing Ogo against the shoulders.

  “Why, you—!” Ogo said. “I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse!” Ogo threw me a knowing glance.

  “Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff,” I said. “Horse Feathers, Paramount, 1932.” I was amazed. What were the chances of meeting two separate people—within only a few days—with esoteric, intimate knowledge of Groucho Marx?

  Jesse seemed confused by our exchange and demanded to know what Ogo had been saying about him. Ogo responded by sticking out his long, grayish tongue. The squabble might have come to blows if not for the interruption that came from the back entrance.

  “Will you two stop fighting for a second and help me with this shit?” This sentence came out rather garbled due to the drumstick lodged in the mouth of the speaker. All three of us turned toward the exit.

  Leaning against the doorway was a puckish sprite of a girl with a ballerina’s figure. Even with a complete drum set in her arms and a guitar case strapped over each shoulder, she managed to maintain the svelte movements of a natural-born dancer. This gracefulness was rather discordant compared to the saltiness of her language.

  “Both of you cocksuckers are hopeless,” she said, allowing the drumstick to fall from her mouth. “What does it take to get you retards off your lazy asses, anti-fucking-gravity?”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea,” Ogo said. “Maybe I should begin researching that in my spare time. I could develop an anti-gravity zeppelin, perhaps.”

  “The only thing you’re going to develop is a black eye if you don’t get the rest of your shit out of the van,” the girl said. “You couldn’t even alphabetize a bag of M&Ms. How’re you gonna research anti-gravity?”

  I laughed pretty hard at the M&M line. No doubt about it, she was a beautiful girl. She had long auburn hair, green eyes, and a childish face with chubby cheeks that made her look like a twelve-year-old with a stripper’s body. She wore a long trench coat, a belly-shirt that showed off a disturbing fetus tattoo on her midriff, a mini-skirt, knee-high stockings and combat boots: an all-black ensemble that caused her to blend in with the walls of the club.

  Since both Ogo and Jesse made no attempt to help the girl, I stepped forward and took the drum set from her arms, placing it down beside Ogo’s bass. The girl breathed a sigh of relief and lowered her
two guitar cases to the floor. “Jesus Christ, at least there’s one gentleman around here,” she said, shooting a nasty glance at Ogo and Jesse.

  “This is Esthra,” Ogo mumbled, waving his hand toward the girl with complete disinterest. “She fiddles around with the guitar a bit.”

  “Fiddles around!” Esthra said. “Phh! I’m the main draw of the show, you dick! You think people come to see your ugly ass dancing around on stage?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes I do,” he said.

  Esthra laughed. “In your dreams.”

  I held my hand out to Esthra. “I’m Elliot Greeley,” I said, “your opening act.”

  She shook my hand. “You’re the comedian?”

  “So everyone keeps telling me.”

  “Don’t you know that rock bands and comedians don’t mix?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’m sick or stupid or both.”

  Esthra laughed. “Then you’re in fine company.” She pulled her hand away slowly. Did she brush her fingers against my palm a bit longer than necessary? Perhaps this was just my imagination. Even so, I was growing quite thankful to Marsha for having talked me into this gig.

  Ogo cleared his throat. “Aren’t we forgetting someone? Where’s our fearless leader?”

  “Where do you think?” Esthra said. “In the back of the van doing his Stephen Hawking impersonation.”

  “Before or after the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?” I asked.

  “Definitely after.” She turned to Jesse and Ogo. “Well, are one of you going to help me haul in the rest of the shit or are you going to leave it to the fucking comedian?”

  Ogo pointed at the junk on the ground and said, “I have to finish cleaning up my bag o’ tricks.”

  Esthra rolled her eyes and appeared just about ready to rip into the clown when Jesse said, “Don’t get all out of sorts, I’ll do it.”

  Esthra glared at Ogo, turned on her heels, then stormed out the door with Jesse following close behind. I realized that she reminded me of Heather.

  “She must be easy to work with,” I said.

  Ogo waved his hand and continued rooting through the bag. “And she’s not even on the rag yet,” he said. “Just wait until she’s on the rag.”

  “Pretty strong-headed, huh?”

  “That’s the diplomatic way of putting it. The only one who can tell her what to do is Mr. Aster.”

  “Who’s Aster?”

  “The singer and songwriter, the brains behind this here operation. Esthra’s his girlfriend. Well, kind of. They break up every other day. Ah! I knew you were hiding around here somewhere.” From his bag Ogo pulled out a huge magnifying glass and a CD, both of which he tossed up to me.

  A magnifying glass was necessary to make out all the details hidden within the cover’s illustration. It was a silkscreen of the infamous autopsy photo depicting the back of JFK’s head. In the circular space that should have been the gunshot wound, the artist had inserted a colorful collage made up of the most memorable images from the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first: the burning monk in Vietnam, Nixon flashing the victory sign, a peace activist in a gas mask tossing a smoke bomb, a regiment of Black Panthers armed with rifles, LBJ picking his dog up by the ears, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Bugs Bunny chomping on a carrot, the Pepsi logo, the Spruce Goose in flight, J. Edgar Hoover lying in his coffin, Charles Manson grinning, Hunter S. Thompson’s peyote-button-in-fist symbol, Roger Patterson’s Bigfoot footage, the space shuttle Challenger exploding, Oliver North testifying before Congress, Ronald Reagan kneeling before a Nazi grave in Bitburg, the flying saucer from Close Encounters, Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T’s lap while he was dressed up as Santa Claus, George Bush vomiting into the crotch of the Japanese prime minister, a C-140 Cessna crashing into the White House, Bullwinkle pulling Rocky the Flying Squirrel out of a top hat, an array of blue cellular phone towers made up to look like palm trees, the whirling tea cups at Disneyland, the smoking remains of the Twin Towers in New York, and dozens of other images that were far too small to make out. Running across the top of the cover in messy, dripping letters was the title of the album: Adventures in the Head Wound. At the very bottom, if you looked hard enough, could be found the name of the band in microscopic letters.

  “Interesting cover,” I said. What else could you say?

  “Aster did that. He’s pretty good when he puts his mind to it.”

  This Aster was multi-talented, a real renaissance man. I hated him already.

  Ogo continued to toss his junk back into his bag. “Please listen to that as soon as you can,” he said. “Don’t just toss it out or anything. Aster’s got a hell of a talent for quirky, funny lines. I think you’ll really like them.”

  I flipped over the CD and scanned the song titles on the back: “Dr. Seuss Was a Junkie,” “Queen of Conspiracies,” “How Assholes Came to Bleed,” “Suicide Boy,” “O, Petra Beter, Won’t You Marry Me?,” “The Olive Garden Fellatio Incident,” “Momma’s Got a Death Ray,” “Suicide on Sunday, Poolside on Monday,” “Don’t Fuck with the Phone Company,” and “Damned If You Do, Dead If You Don’t.”

  “Quirky is a word that applies,” I said.

  Ogo finally packed away the last of his shit and zipped up the bag. As he stood up he said, “I realize it’s nerve-wracking for a comedian to do his routines at a rock concert, but don’t worry about it. I saw Jack Varner open for Matachine and he killed. The audience loved him. You’re not going to regret taking this gig.”

  “Well, I sure hope not.” At that moment I remembered something Marsha had told me. “Do you mind if I ask you a question? I hope it’s not too personal.”

  “Nothing’s too personal.” He reached into his ear and pulled out a pair of polka-dotted underwear.

  I tried not to seem too surprised. “I hear everyone in your band is dying of a different terminal illness. Is that just a gimmick or … ?”

  “No, it’s true. I’m suffering from a rare skin disease, a cancer that’s slowly eating me alive.”

  “Jesus, that’s horrible.”

  Ogo shrugged. “It could be worse.”

  “How could it be worse?”

  “I could be dead already.” (I experienced a sudden sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t Heather told me something similar only a couple of weeks before?) The clown added, “I contracted the disease from the face paint I’m wearing.”

  “Then why don’t you take it off?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I’ve been wearing it nonstop since I was thirteen.”

  “Doesn’t that get uncomfortable?”

  “Not as uncomfortable as it would be if I took it off. I couldn’t even talk to people without it. It’s my father’s make-up and his father’s father’s make-up. It’s as much a part of me as my DNA. I have to stand or fall with it, just like my father did.”

  “Did your father die of the same disease?”

  “No.” For the first time I detected a defensive, hardened edge to his voice. He didn’t want to talk about how his father had died. “He passed away when I was thirteen. Afterwards I took his name and his make-up, everything that made him who he was, then ran away from the circus I’d been with all my life.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Most kids want to run away from home to join the circus, not the other way around.”

  “I’ve always done everything ass-backwards. Anyway, I hopped a freight train just outside San Francisco. You meet a lot of strange characters on freight trains. That’s where I met Jesse.”

  “What was he doing hopping freight trains?”

  Ogo shook his head. “Oh, it’s a long story. When he came down with the Gulf War illness he lost everything. The VA wouldn’t help him, the Pentagon told him he was crazy, his wife abandoned him. He was suffering from a whole laundry list of horrible symptoms: stiff joints, chronic fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, partial loss of eyesight. He even developed a
large circular hole in the middle of his chest.”

  I wrinkled my nose in disgust. “A hole? What do you mean?”

  “He can pass his hand right through it. It doesn’t bleed, and the insides are as smooth as glass. In fact, they are glass. You can even see his organs through the inner walls of the hole; the glass is perfect and neat, as if a laser bored a hole right through him.”

  “Oh, c’mon. You’re pulling my leg.”

  “No, really! He might even show it to you if you’re nice to him. He only shows it to people he’s really comfortable with.”

  “So what happened to all his other symptoms? He seems as healthy as a horse—however healthy that is.”

  “Once his wife left him he decided to leave everything behind him and began riding the rails up north. He was surprised to meet a lot of other Gulf vets doing the same exact thing. Some of these guys had experimented with a whole panoply of drugs, trying to cure themselves since the government refused to help them. Without the freight train riders Jesse would be dead by now. They turned him onto an obscure drug called doxycycline that dampens the pain of the disease and at least renders life bearable from time to time. He’s still in a lot of pain, but he refuses to show it. He has too much pride for that. I’ve known him for six years and I’ve never heard him complain once.”

  “What about Aster?”

  “What does he have to complain about? He’s just dying of AIDS. Lucky bastard! I’d trade with him any day of the week. He gets a steady stream of government subsidy checks every month. Without those checks we wouldn’t have been able to buy any of this equipment or practice as much as we have. Hell, thank God for AIDS, that’s what I say.”

  “You know, it’s funny. Just the other day I met another guy who was HIV positive.” I think that’s when it hit me. “Say, what’s this guy’s first name?”

  Jesse appeared in the doorway carrying a keyboard and an electric six-string bass. Staggering behind him came Esthra with her arm around an emaciated, pale fellow who was wearing nothing but a black t-shirt and black shorts, the same clothes he’d been wearing when I’d seen him in his bedroom the day before. Esthra was doing everything she could to help Mike into the room. He had a purplish-black eye and fresh cuts all over his face; he appeared to be half-asleep.