I’m down with nirvana and the occultic third eye
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I lure in hippies for a Leary-style love-in
I dope ’em all up with Ecstasy and smack
I strip off their clothes and tie ’em to a rack
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I staple open vaginas and shove a white dove in
I perform this ritual as a sign of peace
I could’ve used eagles or vultures or geese
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I castrate penises as small as a nubbin
I don’t waste time with organs like that
I require members as large as Iraq
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I cook baby flesh until it browns and toughens
I need the skin to stitch a vast fleshy robe
I can give it to Christo who will blanket the globe
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I mate with serpents smokin’ and puffin’
I hypnotize hippies in a cave near Reno
I conspire with colonels like Michael Aquino
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I hope to find a nun with whom to have a run-in
I hope to strip her of her virgin pure habit
I plan to introduce her to a destructive drug habit
I’m undercover with a psychic coven
I grow so tired of choppin’ and stuffin’
I think I’ll bloat up, become fat ‘n rolly polly
And soon I’ll be as flabby as Aleister Crowley
Ogo was right, Mike did have a strange sense of humor. The man was clearly gifted, I had to give him that much. But what was a guy like that doing living with his abusive father in Torrance? Was it just the heroin? Could very well be. Any money he made from the CDs or the live shows probably went right into his arm.
I sat in that stool listening to each and every song for almost two hours. The ultimate strangeness came when they ended the show with a hardcore punk version of the Groucho Marx song “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” from Horse Feathers. I wondered if that was Ogo’s or Mike’s idea.
When they began the song Eddie stood up and said, “Well, I’ve got to go up there and do the outro. I’ll tell them you’re still here so they can invite you along to the party.”
“No, no, you don’t have to do that,” I said, rising from the stool. “Maybe I should just head on out of here—”
Eddie pressed his meaty hands on my shoulders and pushed me back onto the stool. “Sit. I’m tellin’ you, this is going to be as easy as key lime pie.” He snapped his fingers, then headed backstage. For a moment I considered bailing through the front entrance. Only the half-full glass of beer sitting in front of me prevented that. I can’t stand to waste things, particularly not beer. I told myself I’d wait until I drained the glass. If Esthra and the others hadn’t approached me by then I’d take off.
I drank slowly.
I still had quite a lot left by the time I felt Ogo’s gloved hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Bunky,” I heard him say, “we’re headed on over to a friend’s house on Pier Avenue. They’re havin’ a little party or somethin’. You want to tag along?”
“Will there be wild music and nubile young native girls?”
“Sure. We’ll even be having animal sacrifices at midnight. That’s always a treat.”
“It’s difficult for me to pass up a good animal sacrifice, I have to admit.” I slid off the stool, ready to follow him out of the club.
“Wait a second.” Ogo pointed at my beer. “You haven’t finished your drink.”
I waved my hand. “Eh, it doesn’t matter, I didn’t pay for it.”
“Hey, whoa, hold on there.” Ogo lifted the glass to his blood-red lips, tilted his head back, and consumed the contents in one gulp. He brushed his forearm across his mouth, then smacked his rubbery lips together. “I’m sorry, I just can’t stand to see perfectly good beer go to waste. By the way, do you have a car?”
“No.”
“How did you get here then?”
“I had to take the bus.”
“The bus? Jesus, how do you stand it? All you meet on the bus are freakin’ weirdos.” This as I left The Brink side by side with a clown.
The beach air hit me like a cold glass of water on a hot day. It was such a relief compared to the stifling confinement of the smoke-filled club.
“I used to take the bus to kids’ birthday parties,” Ogo said. “Those were the only gigs I could get when I first moved to Los Angeles. It was a real bitch, let me tell you. One time I had to work all day in the pouring rain—some friggin’ outdoor birthday party. Rain or shine, the kid had to have his god damn party. Shit, I never had a birthday party when I was a kid. The best I got was a broken beer bottle in the back, but that’s a whole nother story.”
“How’re we getting to the party?” I said.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take my van.” He jerked his thumb toward the right and motioned for me to follow him. We rounded the club and began strolling toward the back parking lot. The narrow area to the side of the club was quite dark. None of the street lamps were on for some reason, causing me to imagine sinister muggers lurking behind every trash bin waiting for the best opportunity to relieve me of my cash. I had a fantasy of Ogo saving me at the last second by whipping out a submachine gun from his bag o’ tricks and blowing the vagabonds away, yet another example of my tendency to digress from the point… .
“Yep, takin’ the bus was a real bitch,” Ogo continued. “I had to take the bus home in the friggin’ rain. Even the winos were laughing at me. At one point I took off one of my shoes and held it upside down and a bunch of rainwater fell out. The driver got pissed and wanted to throw me off, so I took a gun out and kicked his fat olive-skinned ass off instead. I took the bus on a joy ride around town doing about fifty miles per hour down one-way streets. Those winos weren’t laughin’ any more—no, they were scared shitless! Ho, it was a laugh riot, let me tell you.” He raised his knee high enough to slap it, cracking himself up. “I got arrested, of course, but that was okay. I’d spent time in the slammer before, so I knew how to handle myself. It was worth it just to see the look on that asshole driver’s face as I left him choking on his own exhaust fumes.”
I was still stuck one sentence back on the slammer comment. “When you were in jail didn’t they make you take off your face paint?”
Ogo’s entire demeanor changed. He suddenly became quite somber. He paused awhile before answering, “Yes. But I’d rather not talk about that.”
I backed off from the question immediately; I didn’t want him turning a gun on me. Nonetheless I couldn’t help but think that if he’d stayed in jail sans face paint he might never have come down with cancer. I thought it might be dangerous to voice this opinion out loud, though.
Ogo led me behind the club into a parking lot reserved only for employees. A few yards away I could see Jesse, who had slipped his shirt back on, piling the instruments into the back of a brightly colored van decorated with images of happy happy clowns and hula-hoops and monkeys in bellboy outfits juggling torches.
“Yorkshire pudding wile T-man gesticulate imputable bacillary,” Ogo said.
“Excuse me?” I thought I was going nuts.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I lapsed into harlequinese for a moment.”
“What?”
“Harlequinese. It’s a language I made up in jail. What you do is, you replace every word in the English language with the third word up in the dictionary.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Isn’t it obvious? To open your mind. Break it free of the constraints imposed upon it by the unnecessary and false impediments of language. I mean, think about it. Why do we use the word ‘chair’ to describe a chair? We could easily pick the word ‘chainsaw’ and use that to describe the concept represented by chair. It’s the same thing.”
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“No … no it’s not at all. ‘Hi, welcome to my abode. Pull up a chainsaw and relax.’ That’s absurd.”
“To you. But only because you’ve grown up thinking chairs are ‘chairs’ and not ‘chainsaws.’ See what I mean?”
“You’re mad.”
“Or ‘maculate.’”
“You should be a philosopher.”
“Yeah, maybe. Or President.”
“Is ‘President’ the third word up from ‘philosopher’?”
“No, ‘Philomena’ is. I’m speaking English now. I’m serious, chum. I want to run for President someday.”
“Whatever. I wish you a lotta luck, man.”
“Wharfmaster. Hysteron proteron wisenheimer yorkshire pudding zymosthenic loss leader oestrogen luciferous, mammon.”
“What’s that … a translation?” He nodded. “Hey, wait a minute, what the hell were you gonna say before?”
“Before what?”
“Before you lapsed into … whatever the fuck you call it… .”
“Oh … yeah. I was just going to say that you’ll have to get in back,” Ogo said. “Jesse’s riding up front with me.”
Jesse tossed the last amp inside, then gestured for me to enter. I climbed into the darkness, looking forward to a few moments of peace and quiet after such a brain-warping, raucous event. I was to be disappointed. Inside the van, sitting side by side on a little red love sofa, were Mike and Esthra. Esthra’s hand was draped over Mike’s, as if his hand had just been lying there on the seat and she had been attempting to hold it. He was staring off into space, not looking at anything.
“Hi,” Esthra said. She seemed a bit drained. “I’m glad you decided to tag along.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the Seventh Coming,” I said. In contrast to the bright colors of the van’s exterior, the interior was entirely black and had a pentagram painted in blood on the ceiling. The horns of Baphomet’s goat-like head filled the two upward points of the pentagram, but the ominous nature of the sigil was off-set somewhat by the googly eyes someone had painted beneath the goat’s bushy brow. “Mighty nice place you have here,” I said, stepping over the musical equipment and plopping down in a gold-colored love sofa opposite Mike and Esthra. I pointed up at the pentagram. “Is that, uh … ?”
“Don’t worry,” Esthra said with a smile. “It’s just goat’s blood.”
“Oh, is that all.” I settled back into the sofa, slipping my hands behind my head. “Now I can rest easy.” I flashed back to Ogo’s comment about animal sacrifices at midnight. Of course, I’d assumed he was being sarcastic, but now I was beginning to wonder.
Mike continued to stare at a space on the wall somewhere just to the left of me as I said, “That was a great show. Better than I expected.”
“Were you expecting us to suck or something?” Esthra asked.
“Oh, no no no … well, yeah.”
Esthra shrugged. “S’okay. Most bands do suck. I’d probably expect the same thing.”
I turned to Mike and said, “Your lyrics are, like, really great. Even Leonard Cohen and Tom Lehrer would be proud.”
Mike said nothing. I figured I might as well do the same.
Staring downwards, I couldn’t help but notice a pile of old flyers covering the floor like a carpet. Most of them advertised Doktor Delgado performances long out of date. One of them stood out from the mess. It was a sophisticated drawing of two immense crows perched upon a full moon. The moon was so detailed, deep craters could be seen pitting its ivory surface like scars. Both of the crows seemed to be staring directly at the viewer, as if daring you not to believe in their existence. There was something powerful and mysterious about the look in those deep set, onyx eyes. Woven into the craters were these words: DON’T FIGHT DESTINY—HAVE SEX WITH IT! The artwork reminded me of those weird murals I had seen around town, the one with the talking dog and the other one with the sparkling purple mouse. Was this illustration created by the same artist? I wondered if Mike knew who the hell had painted those murals. But I could tell he was definitely not in a mood to answer such trivial questions. He remained silent during the entire ride.
The party was at a house near The Lighthouse Café on Pier Avenue, only a few blocks away from the ocean. Sounds of music and laughter grew louder and louder as we approached the house. I would’ve hated to be the people living on either side of that place. Ogo parked at a crazy angle, one of the front wheels resting on the curb; anyone who’s ever been to a circus knows that clowns aren’t the best drivers. We piled out of the van and followed Mike up the pathway. Mike walked on ahead of us, not talking to Esthra, not even looking at her. Esthra and I walked side by side behind Ogo and Jesse.
“Is there a problem?” I whispered to Esthra.
“He just gets jealous easily, that’s all. Now he’s going to punish me by not talking to me for awhile. It has nothing to do with you. He gets jealous of everyone, even Ogo sometimes, which is flat-out bizarre. We don’t know what the hell Ogo’s into. We’ve never seen him with a girl, or anything else for that matter.”
Mike opened the front door of the house without even knocking. He was immediately greeted with a series of cheers and Heys and How’s it goin’ and Great show, Mike and You blow everyone else away, man and other variations of these same salutations. Ogo whipped out his bag o’ tricks and began performing magic for the crowd. Someone handed Jesse an acoustic guitar, on which he started improvising strange new riffs. Someone tried to hand Esthra a guitar, but she just waved them away. She grabbed a beer instead, pulled away from the crowd, motioning for me to follow her. We stood in the corner of the room, watching the commotion swirl around us.
“I hate crowds,” she said. “I like playing in front of people, but I’m a lot more uncomfortable with them when I have to be face to face.”
“I know exactly what you mean. It’s difficult for me to talk to people.” I laughed. “For some reason I push people away, even when they’re going out of their way to be kind to me. I don’t know why that is. I guess I don’t trust them.”
Esthra shrugged. “Everyone mistrusts each other. Everyone hates each other for things they haven’t even done yet.”
“The problem is other people. I once toyed with the idea of declaring myself my own separate nation, that way if someone attacked me it would be an international event and the UN would have to get involved.”
“Well, that’s the ultimate way to cut yourself off from the world, isn’t it?”
“There are better ways. More permanent ways.”
“What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Have you ever tried to … you know … ?”
I furrowed my brow. “What?”
“You know … damage yourself? Permanently?”
I took a deep breath. I nodded. “When I was eighteen.” “Really? May I ask why?”
I sighed. “Same reasons anyone else does. I was feeling lonely and confused. God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than at that time in my life. I had isolated myself from everyone in the world. I was too ashamed to talk to anyone. Ashamed of my looks, ashamed of my clothes, ashamed of my personality, ashamed of everything. I almost went through my entire four years in high school without talking to a single person. I don’t think anyone even knew I was there. I was Peripheral Boy. You could only see me out of the corner of your eye as I zipped past in the hall. But it’s not like people didn’t come up and talk to me. Sometimes they would, but I would just find some excuse to push them away. I think that’s why I do what I do today. I can interact with people through my humor, and at the same time keep a safe distance from the rest of the world.” While saying all this I had been staring at the crowds of people wandering past, all of them laughing and talking. I was reeling off this monologue more to myself than to Esthra. Then I suddenly glanced to my left and saw Esthra staring at me with a blank expression. I wondered if I’d become too morose. “Sorry,” I said. “I must sound like a wingn
ut.”
“Nah, I don’t think so. I act the same exact way. I think everyone in the band does to some extent or another. The only difference is we’re hiding behind music instead of humor.” She chugged back a gulp of beer then belched.
“But you get to release a whole bunch of different emotions on stage. I wish I had your job. I mean, sometimes I feel like screaming for hours at a time, but I’m sure the neighbors would probably arrest me if I did that. Now if I was on a stage with a guitar in my hand… .”
“What frustrations do you have?”
“Plenty. More than you can know.”
“Really? Are you dying of a terminal illness too? If so maybe you can join the band. You can be our go-go girl.”
I remembered what Ogo had told me about the various illnesses of which the band members were dying. He hadn’t mentioned Esthra’s condition. For some reason this didn’t occur to me until that moment. Perhaps I hadn’t wanted to think about it. What if she was dying of AIDS?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Esthra said.
“Is that so?”
“You’re wondering what I’m dying of.”
“No, of course … well, yeah, I guess I am.”
Esthra opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, but then she glanced around the room and said, “I can’t stand all this smoke, can you?”
Cigarette smoke mixed with acrid clouds of marijuana fumes wafted throughout the room. There was more smoke in here than in your average night club, pre-Orwell. My eyes were already beginning to water, but I had been reluctant to say anything. I just pointed to my eyes as an answer.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, leading me through the crowd and back toward the front door. In my peripheral vision I could see Mike playing acoustic versions of his songs for the crowd. He spotted us walking through the door, but continued playing his song anyway.
It was nice to get outside. We strolled down the path until we reached the sidewalk, then headed west. It’d been so long since I’d taken a walk at night. It’s not wise to take such walks alone in Hollywood after, oh … sundown, I’d say. In Hermosa Beach it’s a bit different.
“It’s hard to have a private conversation with a hundred people listening,” Esthra said. “So what were we talking about? Terminal illnesses, right?” I nodded. “The doctors say I’m suffering from a completely unique degenerative disease, a variation of a C type RNA tumor virus. You know what that is?” I shook my head. “It causes life to remain in stasis, actually freezes the human body in whatever state of development it was in when it became susceptible to the virus. Some people would think of that as a godsend, but there’s a major drawback. I’ll remain twenty-two for five, ten, even fifteen years—but then all those accumulated minutes, hours and months will converge on me all at one time, in a single second, and then cause my life to reel backwards at an incredibly fast pace until there’ll be nothing left of me but a human cell undetectable to the eye.”
Until the Last Dog Dies Page 15