Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  The poster hung, their house became the Myrrh House. That poster represented, to Ronnie’s mind, something like the ultimate symbol of 1990s-youth awareness of the cultural cesspool that was the 20th century. Pop culture was the most accessible target. Ronnie saw the 1990s—and obviously he wasn’t the only one—as a final kiss-off to the stupidity and mediocrity of prior decades. The smug laughter and sneering excitement that used to possess Ronnie and Maggie when they hit the thrift stores and came across anything Myrrh-related was only a small example of this, as the Great Alternative Nation, heralded by Nirvana et. al, temporarily won the neverending battle for cultural supremacy over everything that dominated before it, and for “the kids” who cared about such things, this meant going to sleep at night secure in the knowledge that they would never be stupid and mediocre enough to buy into anything as ephemeral as the crap people valued in the ’80s, ’70s, ’60s, ’50s, even as so many others went around dressing in bell bottoms, or as mods, or as rockers, or as Bettie Page . . .

  Through the front door of the Myrrh House, a large wide rectangle of a living room, easily large enough to accommodate 100 people crammed in to watch two to three bands, under high ceilings stained with (Ronnie would come to find out) rat piss. To the right, a wobbly end table where the cordless phone charges next to the answering machine. On the other side of this, a dusty yellow loveseat left behind by the previous tenants, one of those thrift store pieces that always look like they’ve been upholstered with your grandmother’s bathroom wallpaper; this in the corner by the steps up to Ronnie’s bedroom. To the left of the front door, the drumset and amplifiers from last night huddle together, the sole remnant of last night’s mess. Six large windows line the left wall, separated by peeling white plaster. Bombastic dark trim runs along the floor, borders the windows, and with the deep reddish brown of the hardwood flooring—remarkably solid compared to the usual cracks and creaks in student ghetto flooring—the overall look of the living room is that of a shabby Rocky Mountain ski lodge from 1979.

  Along the right of the room, past Ronnie’s bedroom doorway, a large long rectangular mirror over a mantle too ornate for such a crumbling house. Assorted French New Wave film posters, Roger’s doing, hang in the gaps between the mirror, the doorway, and the ceiling-high built-in bookcase that Ronnie has ecstatically used for his many books and records, previously boxed up since graduation.

  Roger’s large beige couch—more of the no-longer-fashionable hand-me-down variety rather than the stuff of Goodwill—divides the room in half, his smaller beige couch cordoning off a square enclosure for the TV and record player, positioning all of this in the far left corner of the large room. The TV and record player lean against the far wall that rises waist-high below the opening into the kitchen.

  Maux follows Ronnie into his bedroom—a smaller, thinner version of the living room, only with powder blue tuxedo colored walls between the six windows along the front and side of the house. Each step is a wobble over pink floorboards adorned in the repeating purple and gold crest of some unknown royalty.

  “Well,” Ronnie announces, standing in the middle of his new bedroom, arms outstretched, mouth pressed into a Letterman smirk. “As you will find out soon enough, this is where it all goes down. I look forward to spending many an evening with you, here, in this very room.”

  “Shut up,” Maux says, standing in the doorway, trying not to laugh—at Ronnie, at the arrangement of the relatively spacious room.

  Ronnie’s mattresses are stacked, parallel to the two front windows. A long (“early colonial,” Ronnie thinks it’s called) wood-framed couch—another “gift” from the previous tenants—decorated with faded tan cushions depicting cowboys riding the dusty plains, is pushed into the four-windowed wall. The wall opposite the windowed outside wall will later become the Haiku Wall, where visitors tape up haiku written at parties Ronnie and Roger throw.7 This is also where Ronnie keeps a found white computer desk and the typewriter he received from Kelly. On the wall opposite the front, the closet, the “master bedroom” bathroom, and a fluorescent green loveseat where Ronnie often

  sits reading books, looking up from the pages to survey the room and NW 4th Lane beyond the front windows before thinking, “I’ve arrived.” Into the bathroom, a purple-walled, pink-tiled not-spacious area, just large enough to accommodate both a tub and a shower stall.

  Ronnie grabs his American flag swimtrunks from the closet and drops his pants. Ronnie has long since given up on underwear, finding Florida’s humidity not conducive to that extra layer. “You don’t mind if I change in front of you?” he says to Maux, dancing the Macarena as he says this, smiling, swinging the right hand out, palm down, then the left hand out, palm down, then flipping the palms—right, then left.

  Maux tries not to stare, tries not to smile. “I’ll be in the living room. Weirdo.” Ronnie steps into the swimtrunks, singing “Dale a tu cuerpo allegria Macarena, por tu cuerpo para darle alegria cosas buenas, dale a tu cuerpo allegria Macarena, ayyy, Macarena!”

  He ties up his trunks, leaves the bedroom, follows Maux through the living room to the kitchen. He counts the steps from the bedroom to the kitchen, two steps down from his room, the step-step-step of one dirty bare foot followed by the other, and they keep going, Ronnie has never lived in a house with a living room this large (almost as large as the loft Chuck Taylor lived in by the Orange Line in the South Loop of Chicago), twenty steps from the front of the house into the kitchen. The cabinets are an old metallic green, the counters a soiled old white. The oven has the quaint curves of the 1970s. The kitchen plaster surrounding still more windows is the color of dark mustard. The sink faces the living room. Roger’s bedroom connects to the kitchen, an eternal mystery behind an always shut brown door.

  Roger sits in the kitchen at the yellow kitchen table, eating a breakfast of oatmeal, bananas, blueberries, and raisins, sipping from a glass of orange juice while flipping through the latest issue of Cinematic Pedantry. He’s dressed for work—the electronics section of the department store two miles north on 13th Street—black slacks, white Oxford shirt—talking with Maux in the inevitable post-mortems of last night’s party. Roger talks with his hands, flinging oatmeal and fruit remnants from the spoon he holds in his right fingers and thumb with each gesticulation. He has a burnt-tan surfer complexion, bleach-blond stubble scalp, glaring black eyes that stare like a remarkably gifted fish thoroughly engaged in its surroundings, a smiling mouth with glaring white teeth.

  “So I cleaned up, Ronnie. You’re welcome,” Roger says, when he sees his new roommate standing in the doorway, in American flag swimtrunks, a faded orange t-shirt with the drawing of a windsurfer navigating a difficult wave as the word “FLORIDA” scrolls below in the art deco style of the mid-1980s, registers the knowing smirk of someone trying to convey the impression that he made sweet love the night before.

  Ronnie hadn’t noticed, actually. But yes indeed—everything is as spotless as it was before the party started. The amps are neatly stacked with the drums and guitar cases in the corner by the front door.

  “Nice work,” Ronnie says.

  “I also kicked everyone out at four, broke up a fight, and kept a nice couple from consummating their love in your bed. You owe me, dude.” Roger says. Ronnie nods, promptly disregarding Roger’s words. Roger. Their mutual friends: Paul, Neal, Mouse, Icy Filet, William, Siouxsana Siouxsanne. Roger finds this place. Needs a roommate. Paul suggests Ronnie.

  “He’s weird!” Paul told Roger at some party, one of those summer parties in Gainesville where those who don’t go home between spring and fall semesters spend all their time, inseparable, ending each night llloaded on someone’s porch. “He’s like this writer. Or something. Plays in bands. You’ll like him. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But you should ask him.”

  Paul called Ronnie while Ronnie was still scraping floor tiles in Crescent City, a call to the motel room like a message from a distant paradise as Ronnie sat on a caved-in mattress covered in the day’s
sweat and dirt and asbestos.

  “Roger’s weird! He wants to be a movie critic! Or something. You’ll like him. Or maybe not. I don’t know. But you should ask him.”

  “What the hell’s this?” Maux asks, pointing to the large portrait hanging above the fake fireplace in the kitchen.

  “Otis!” Roger says, as if that alone clears everything up.

  In a large golden frame, a picture of a man who could be nothing else but a good ol’ boy nowhere else but in these southern Yew-nighted States—new jeans, giant oval belt buckle with the name “OTIS” engraved upon it behind a bulbous belly held inside the kind of western shirt the practitioners of the “Dusty Denim” musical genre of the early 1970s wish they could have found at Nudie’s. The neck ain’t the only thing that’s red—red covers every patch of skin. Short brown hair, flat-topped. A fat proud face expressing pure satisfaction with his way of life. In the background, a ranch; in the foreground, a wooden fence, where Otis has placed his thick ringed fingers. Except, on the left hand, a stump where the middle finger should be.

  “Otis?” Ronnie asks.

  “Yeah! You know, as in Otis from Otis’s Barbelicous Barbeque?’ Roger stands, clearly excited to actually converse about this conversation piece.

  Ronnie laughs, recalling Alvin’s endless work tales of buttering bread, stirring the beans, washing the dishes—pffff!—at the Archer Road Otis’s. “Ah,” Ronnie says. “I know it well.”

  ROGER TELLS THE TALE

  Ronnie pours a cup of coffee, joins Maux at the table, as Roger wolfs down two spoonfuls of oatmeal and fruit, before the pacing, the nervous rubbing of his hands, the rapid gesticulations, the rapid-fire spieling, begins.

  “Ok, so this is last year, and we got finished with this completely useless class in Azorean Cinema of the 1970s, right? So we celebrate, get lllloaded, then decide to get dinner over at Otis’s Barbelicious Barbeque. We need to eat enough to sober up because we still had another final exam or two before the semester really ended, and the all-you-can-eat buffet seemed like just a fine idea, Ronnie, a fine, fine idea, and we were so happy that stupid class was done, we had to celebrate somehow. Now if you go to enough Otis’s, you see these portraits inside every restaurant, right there in the entryway on the wall behind the cash register and the spinning pies and cakes under glass . . .

  “Anyway, we’re sitting there at the table, and I’m drunker than I thought, even as I’m sipping sweet tea, eating from the buffet, and I can’t stop thinking—can’t stop obsessing—on this portrait. Can’t stop picturing how perfect it would look where I was living at the time. It gets to the point to where I know I’m going to have to steal it. Not like I’m a klepto or anything—I’m not—but it was just one of those things. I mean, look at this guy smiling down at us . . .

  “So I whisper to the dude who drove us to Otis’s that I wanna take it, and I ask him if he’ll help me out and pull up his minivan right to the front door of the restaurant, so I can rip Otis off the wall, run out the entrance, and dive through the open side door of the van. He won’t stop laughing about it, and nobody else thinks I’ll do it, and of course, there’s this girl from the class who I want to impress, so there’s no backing out now.

  “We finish eating, and I’m starting to sober up, starting to get second thoughts, but as Gibby Haynes says in Locust Abortion Technician, ‘It’s better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven’t done,’ right? I’m even in the men’s room while they take care of the bill and walk out the door, looking at myself in the mirror all like, ‘You gotta do this. You wanna be a film critic, you gotta be daring!’ I look down at the sink, back to the mirror, and say, ‘Let’s do this.’ And I’m off.

  “I’m standing there in the front of the restaurant, waiting for the hostess to lead the next group to their seat, and the restaurant’s busy, and I’m like casing the area, you know? Like, what jewel thieves do before a heist? Outside, they’re hitting the minivan horn, but inside, I’m trying to play it cool, standing there skimming through one of the complimentary copies of Auto Trader, like I’m doing nothing but looking for a nice used car as I stand by the front door.

  “Finally, this group of six old ladies walks in. The hostess smiles, counts out six menus, leads them to the dining room. Here’s my big chance. I saunter up, sneak and weave behind the counter, yank the portrait off the wall with both hands, and bolt for the door.

  “Somebody behind me screams ‘Hey!’ but I’m already leaping into the minivan sidedoor and my classmate floors it and we’re speeding away. I look behind, and there’s the hostess, the manager, and behind them three guys from the kitchen crew who sprint after us, but we’re already turning right onto Archer Road. I’m laughing, the class is laughing, and the girl I want looks impressed, like I’m brave or something. And so the unintended consequence of it is that I hooked up with one of the only film studies nnnnuggets in the whole class, if not the department.

  “And then, like two weeks later? We did something else with the portrait. The semester ends, and our financial aid runs dry and I don’t have a job yet for the summer. I’m with another broke friend, and we’re hungry, so I get this idea.

  “I called that same Otis’s and ask to speak to someone from the kitchen. They put me on.

  “ ‘Hello,’ I say, and I’m talking through my hand to try and disguise my voice to make it sound like, you know, someone who might take hostages? ‘We have your portrait of Otis. Here’s our list of demands. Write this down.’ And the dude who’s on the phone is laughing, like he’s in the spirit of the thing, because, I don’t know, if you work in a kitchen like that, I imagine you need to take the laughs where you can get them, right? So he’s like, ‘Ok, shoot.’

  “I tell him we want—sealed—four plastic plates each of beef brisket, barbeque pork, barbeque chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, and fried okra—inside four to-go bags placed on the blue curb in the handicapped parking spot. Me and my friend figure we can park there long enough to check the food, make sure it hasn’t been turded on, or whatever, and there’s enough open space and traffic between the parking lot and the front door to prevent us from getting jumped by the kitchen crew or whatever. We tell them we’ll be there in forty-five minutes. No funny business. When the demands are met, we will leave Otis in the spot where the food is. We have him read back our order. He does it, laughing the whole time, and I’m thinking, you know, they’re cool, they’re in the spirit of the thing. He could have hung up on us, could have told us they have a replacement portrait of Otis already hanging up anyway, but they’re playing along. So that’s cool. They’re cool.

  “We get there, pull into the handicapped spot, and sure enough, there are four to-go bags, greasy with barbeque right there on the blue curb. I open the door, carrying the portrait, and slowly approach the bags of food, looking around for any funny business.

  “I lift up the first two bags, but I’m sensing something isn’t quite right, and sure enough, I look up and see, hiding behind the bushes and shrubs and hedges all along the Otis’s Barbelicious Barbeque building, the kitchen crew, and they start yelling, ‘Ambush!’ and I wanna laugh, but I gotta book it because who knows what they’ll pull if they catch me. So I keep one bag, drop the other so I can continue holding the portrait as I hop into the open passenger side door of the car, and yell ‘Go!’ at my friend, and he backs out and speeds away a second before the kitchen crew stops us.

  “I was bummed we only got one bag for all that trouble, but hey: Still got this portrait, right?”

  •

  “Your roommate is weird,” Maux says, later, at the beach.

  “Yeah, well, you should have seen my last roommate,” Ronnie says.

  “He never shuts up!” Maux continues. “His stories are weird and pointless and he doesn’t care if you’re listening or not!”

  Ronnie yawns, stretches across an old red blanket he brought along. He sips from an Old Hamtramck poured into a blue plastic cup, suppli
es purchased in a backwoods Circle K, at Maux’s behest. After last night, Ronnie has no interest in drinking, but downs two beers anyway and watches the usual action at the beach: Paunchy old men with metal detectors. Bronzed surfer teens in groups of three. Floppy-hatted ladies reading best sellers. Families splashing along the water’s edge. Boogie boards. Frisbees. Pro-Am Kadima.

  “I hate the beach,” Maux says, scowling at the Atlantic Ocean like it’s everything in the world that has ever caused her grief. “It’s boring.”

  Ronnie shrugs. “It’s the beach. Whatever.” Ronnie had quit going years ago. It wasn’t, you know, punk enough.

  Ronnie watches Maux, sitting next to him with her short-cropped indigo hair, pink swimsuit, sun on white freckled skin, her sinewy frame, her hatred for the world. How did he get so lucky? A new house, new girl, new life.

  Maux points to the ocean and starts laughing like a weaselly twelve-year-old boy. A morbidly overweight nine-year-old in a red speedo, running into the water, had just been knocked over by a wave. He emerges from the water crying, wailing, “Mommy! The water burns my nose!” The boy’s mother, also morbidly obese in a teal monochrome one-piece suit, yells—to Ronnie and Maux’s left, ten feet away, sitting under an orange and blue beach umbrella—“Christopher! It’s salt water! It’s supposed to burn! Get out!”

  “Poor kid,” Ronnie says, sipping the beer, suds already warm from the heat. “I feel bad for him.”

  “Well I don’t,” Maux says. She grunts two final heh-hehs. “Fat people are funny. That’s all they’re good for. I hate everything else about them.”

  Ronnie has only known Maux for twelve hours, but he has already noticed how “I hate” starts off an incredible number of her sentences. It is quite the achievement. But Ronnie ignores this, distracted by her beauty, her eccentric beauty that trumps everything else, her hair and her glare, a contrast with all this gentle seaside normalcy.