Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  “Pshaw,” Ronnie pshaws. “Wake me up when the Stones are back on. I’m liking those pink pants Bill Wyman’s wearing.” Ronnie turns away from the television, head buried in the cushions, falls asleep.

  When the semester begins, Roger spends his nights watching two to three films on TV, on VHS tapes checked out of the university library. He scribbles notes in a journal while speaking voluminous thoughts into a hand-held recorder. On off-nights from going out or spending time with Maux, Ronnie tries watching these films, increasingly convinced that they are nonsensical forays of self-indulgence, and their only real appeal for anyone is that they aren’t Hollywood blockbusters. Not a big movie guy, Ronnie. These films lull Ronnie to sleep, stretching out on the small beige couch as these invariably French characters move about scenes in the slowest of pacings. Movies affect Ronnie the way books affect many people—they make him sleepy.

  Ronnie’s snoozing and snoring irritates Roger to no end.

  “Ronnie, you gotta wake up now!” Roger would say, eyes fixated on the twenty-four-inch TV screen, hunched forward, pen in one hand, hand-held in the other, thick journal opened on the coffeetable, pages filled with frantic, coffee-fueled penmanship. “We’re coming upon a very important scene here!”

  Ronnie mumbles, does not wake up.

  Roger shrugs, heavily sighs, eyes returning to the screen, pen hand scribbling, mouth talking. Why should Ronnie understand? Roger thinks. In his current state, such artistic work is beyond his comprehension. He pauses the hand-held, grabs the journal off the coffeetable, scoots, settles, sinks into the couch. With his right fingers, he pushes his hair—some girls in town describe it as “Kurt Cobainy,” and while he would never admit to being a Nirvana fan, he considers it a compliment nonetheless—behind his ears.

  In the short time they have lived together, Ronnie has been drunk most nights of the week, and when he isn’t drunk, he’s here on the couch, using these films Roger loves to get caught up on sleep. Roger thinks on this, leaning forward to sip from the glass filled with the blueberry smoothie he blended an hour ago, the blueberry smoothie a crucial aspect to the routine of every night’s movie watching. Why is Ronnie even living here in Gainesville? There is no reason for it, as far as Roger can tell. They pass in the mornings—Roger eating his fruit-packed oatmeal, Ronnie zombie-hobbling in glazed-dumb hangover faces and postures as he enters the kitchen for a glass of water. How does Ronnie live like this? To live without any kind of purpose, to be here for no reason, floundering, goofing off over beer after beer after beer?

  He thought they would be better friends, better roommates. But Ronnie is in his own mindless world. Soon, he will roll off the couch and stumble into his bedroom and throw on Marquee Moon by Television, leaving the cassette on repeat, faint fluttery guitar solos resonating throughout the otherwise silent 3:30 a.m. house. This is how he lives, Roger thinks.

  Roger leans forward once again, resumes scribbling notes into the journal as the film “seamlessly drifts from scene to scene, challenging previously cherished conceptions of narrative and characterization.” He does not want to think about how he could be like Ronnie in a year or two, after graduation. Will they want another film critic, out there?

  Finally, inevitably, Ronnie does roll off the couch, stands. “Good night, dude,” he mumbles, and off he goes. In seconds, from Ronnie’s room, Roger hears the opening chord to “See No Evil,” the first song on Marquee Moon. Roger sips from the smoothie, leans closer, scribbles notes, unpauses the hand-held, resumes talking of every impression crossing his mind about this film, locked into the present to avoid brooding on the future.

  ON AN ISLAND

  “Look at these assholes,” Maux says, glaring and pointing at this fat drunken parade of football fans trudging down University to the big Florida Gator football game. Maux and Ronnie had made plans to meet for lunch at Gatorroni’s by the Slice, forgetting that today is a gameday.

  “Yup,” Ronnie says, trying to ignore it as he eats a Portobello pizza slice, sitting next to Maux outside on barstools at high tables facing University Avenue. These orange and blue facepainted barbaric hordes, numbly intoxicated and stumbling, assuming, quite correctly, that binged beer coupled with football gives them the right to act like howling dumb dicks.

  “I hate football,” Maux says, scowling, short indigo hair glowing in the sunshine. She wears frayed blue cutoffs, a pink t-shirt with “WHO CARES?” written in black Sharpie permanent marker.

  Ronnie grunts a second “Yup” between pizza bites. In the short time they have been together, there is simply no limit to what Maux dislikes. Maux hates Lou Reed. Maux hates old people. Maux hates kids. Maux hates babies. Maux hates teenagers. Maux hates rednecks. Punk rockers. Jocks. Frat boys. Sorority sluts. Middle-aged people. Fatsos. Bums. Religious nuts. Retards. Cops. Handicapped. Teachers. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Rabbits. Celebrities. Scenester girls. 98 percent of all scenester guys.

  Each day, some new, unexpected hate. “I hate fishermen.” “I hate crossing guards.” “I hate those kids who dress like submarine sandwiches and stand at intersections waving at cars.”

  The football fans run up and down the sidewalks, cram into the cabs of honking pick-up trucks.

  “Orange!” one side of the street yells to the other.

  “Blue!” the other side yells back, in imitation of what they do in the stadium, where opposite sides yell the team colors back and forth.

  “These people suck,” Maux says, lighting a cigarette. “People suck.”

  Ronnie yawns, wearied as much by Maux’s redundant worldview as the tableau of grown men and women in orange and blue facepaint vomiting on the curb.

  So much of their time together is little more than her waxing sardonic on the human condition. When Ronnie takes her to parties, she finds the most isolated corner, sits, and sketches in her pad while chugging straight vodka from that flask she always carries. Ronnie endures it all, glad a girl likes him. And she is beautiful, for a quasi-nihilist.

  “Let’s leave,” Ronnie suggests. Ordinarily, Gatorroni’s by the Slice is an ideal spot to enjoy the afternoon, to run into friends walking by, but on gameday, friends hide in their houses, or split town, or at least try to make some money off the invasion by working the overflowing restaurants.

  They finish their pizzas, step out of Gatorroni’s and onto the sidewalks, shoving through the orange and blue throngs. With each step away from the stadium, north on 13th Street, the crowds thin out. Passing Gator Plaza on the left, Ronnie reaches out to hold her hand. Maux pulls away. “Stop that,” she says. “You know I hate holding hands.”

  Ronnie laughs, speaks in a parodic bark of Maux’s voice. “Look at me. I’m Maux. I hate this. I hate that. I hate everything.”

  They cut through the Zesty Glaze parking lot, into the relative calm of the student ghetto, where residents sell their driveways to the highest, drunkest bidder going to the game.

  “I hate you,” Maux says, punching Ronnie in the arm, a solid thwack. Ronnie laughs harder. He pretends to shadowbox, hopping around Maux as she stomps towards the student ghetto sidestreets. “Let’s box, lady. Ooo! Ooo! I’m punching the air! Lightning! Bam!”

  Maux refuses to smile at this, even if she finds it somewhat endearing. Ronnie, she thinks, is another aimless goof, the kind who always bounce in and out of her life—smarter than he thinks, smarter than he knows. This won’t last. It never does.

  By the time they reach her apartment, the streets are desolate. Only the far off cheers from the stadium penetrate the student ghetto silence.

  “I hate making out,” Maux says, after they step inside and go straight to her bedroom. The noise and pandemonium that has overtaken the city on gameday doesn’t reach this unmade bed in this darkened room.

  Ronnie backs away from her mouth. “I know, I know, you hate everything. I get it.”

  “Yeah,” Maux says, reaching behind his head, left fingers and thumb ensnared in the disheveled knots of his brown hair, pulls him back. “I
can’t stand you,” she whispers, breath a mixture of cigarettes, beer, and greasy pizza. “But this? I guess it doesn’t . . . I don’t know, totally suck?”

  That afternoon, they create an island the size of Maux’s bedroom. Gone is the sneering, the sarcasm, the professed hatreds. On this island, they are vulnerable, affectionate, real. A fleeting moment when nothing else in Gainesville exists. Her façade is gone. His façade is gone. They no longer have to try; they’re together, and that’s all that matters.

  Afterwards, Ronnie watches her sleep. He likes it when Maux sleeps. It’s the only time she seems happy, when the smile on her face isn’t a mean grin. Ronnie, wide awake, sweaty and inspired, wants to go home and write. He hasn’t felt this way in months. When not binding copypacks at the temp gig in the used college bookstore, when not with Maux or at some party, Ronnie has taken to sitting in his room and listening to the Television album Marquee Moon on repeat all night. He stares at the ceiling and basks in the bittersweet ache of the music. It is the soundtrack to this uncertain time. Delving and lost inside the sounds of the album, it never occurs to Ronnie to try and write.

  Football is underway now; tens of thousands of screaming tools are off the streets, compressed into the stadium. There is a rare stillness to the student ghetto on gamedays, once the game actually starts. Ronnie needs to be out there on those streets, needs to get home to the pen and paper. He needs to breathe in the emptiness and the silence before floating into the Myrrh House to daydream, to find his journal, to sit on the front steps, and write for hours, as Marquee Moon fills the air.

  He kisses Maux on two strands of indigo hair across her cheek, steps back, continues watching her sleep. She would hate being kissed like this, would hate being stared at like this. Ronnie steps out of her bedroom, tiptoes through her crummy apartment and carefully walks out the front door.

  Outside, out of the island, walking the Student Ghetto streets. It’s the no-surprise heat of 85 degrees, tempered by subtle breezes shaking the sand pines, the palms, even the live oaks. The skies are a cloudless Florida blue. No one is walking nor driving these streets. In the distance, marching bands, cheering, whistles, air horns, but here, it’s Ronnie Altamont and only Ronnie Altamont. This moment, as fleeting as his time with Maux, he feels the Student Ghetto is his. He is post-coital, triumphant and invulnerable.

  The Myrrh House is empty. Roger is at work. Ronnie opens the doors and the windows, turns on Marquee Moon, grabs his journal and his pen, sits on the front steps, and writes, an ecstatic counterpoint to the stillness of NW 4th Lane.

  MOE GREEN’S FUCKING EYESOCKET’S LAST SHOW

  Tonight at the Righteous Freedom House, Moe Green’s Fucking Eyesocket will play their last show. This evening, Ronnie hurries through the copypack binding so he can punch out earlier than usual. He buys a twelver of Old Ham Town at the XYZ, lugs it back to the Myrrh House, unlocks his front door, steps in, opens the first can, sips, calls Maux, asks if—

  “I can’t,” she cries. No really—she is blubbering into the phone between sobs. “It’s my birthday.”

  “Oh! Happy birthday! I had no idea.”

  “Oh! Happy birthday!” Maux mimics. “Fuck off, Ronnie. I’ll call you later, when it’s not my birthday.”

  Stark silence, then the fast shrill-toned eighth notes of an off-the-hook phone. These are the last years—very brief, in the overarching course of human history—in which human beings will know what it’s like to stand with a large cordless telephone in one’s hand after the person on the other end violently and abruptly ends the conversation by throwing their large cordless telephone against their living room wall. Ronnie, of course, does not know that Maux does this with her phone, but he stands by the still open front door of the Myrrh House, twelver at his feet, holding that stupid phone to his ear, this dense-enough/weighty-enough antennaed beige plastic wonder of late 20th century technology, looks out the front windows at NW 4th Lane, mutters your basic frickin’ frackin’ frickin frack, can’t decide if he should laugh or be angry. He chooses to laugh, chooses to drink away any lingering concerns, drinks the first six in quick succession while slouched on the cowboy couch in his bedroom while listening to Marquee Moon, carries the other six on the fifteen minute stumble-and-weave to the Righteous Freedom House.

  Three to four times a year, a band will break up, inevitable when one of the members graduates college and/or finds a real job in another city. (Or, in the case of MGFE, when the strains of touring end close friendships, everyone drifts apart, moves on, grows up.) On the front windows of the smaller businesses that can get away with it are handwritten signs reading, “Closing early tonight. Go to Righteous Freedom House for MOE GREEN’S FUCKING EYESOCKET’S last show!” In the Gainesville music scene, the last show of a highly-regarded local band is something akin to an Irish wake, minus the Catholic overtones and, naturally, with a bit more punk rock sentiment. Some will tear up, many will sing/scream along with the band, a few will set off fireworks to siss-boom-bah between songs and band members. And, for those nonstraightedge in attendance, there’s lots of drinking.

  And there really is something special about it, Ronnie thinks, as he squeezes into the front door, maneuvers around those already packed into this living room to see the end of another band. It has been like this for the six years Ronnie has been making the drive up to see shows in Gainesville. Because, they are your friends up there, even if they are not your friends—not yet—making music they created to express their lives. These are your friends, even if they are your enemies, surrounding you in these muggy house shows; even if they are your enemies, you share this bond over the love of music. Another era ends. Life moves on, and in Gainesville, it moves in an endless five-year cycle, because MOE GREEN’S FUCKING EYESOCKET will be replaced by some younger band. Always younger.

  The music howls in amplified barbaric yawps, as Ronnie joins, sweats on, bounces into the throng. He opens one beer, gives away the rest. Through the gaps between bodies—friends standing in a semi-circle around the band, transfixed by the spectacle—Ronnie sees William, ten feet away, screaming into the microphone, face the color of a ripe tomato. The band jabs at rhythm like furious underdog boxers pounding punching bags. Friends grab the microphones, scream along.

  Where do we go after this, when the set is over, when the months and years pass? And where do you go after this, William? When your life has been, up to now, entirely focused on the immediate? You scream to all these friends who know the words to these songs like you know the words to their songs, and the only coherent thought in your mind is how fleeting this is. You run out of breath, you roll on the floor, writhing as others grab the microphone and sing your lyrics. In the midst of this entropic cataclysm, you ask yourself if you could ever put your entire being into something or someone the way you did with playing in this band. You’ll never sing these songs again. This meant something, even as the law of diminishing returns exacts its slow painful cost. Even as you’re now hardly on speaking terms with the others in the band, and you were once the best of friends.

  What happens to these memories? Ten, twenty years down the line? This song’s about to end. This set. This band. This life. You leap in the air and fall to the filthy hardwood floor, look up at your friends, standing in knowing half-smiles like they’re in on the secret, watching this life—this part of your life—end.

  You won’t talk about any of this when it’s over. There will be overlong caught-up-in-the moment sweat-stained embraces with those who have been there all along. Still winded, you will briefly nod to the rest of the band as they start to unplug and break down their gear. They will return the nod, and that’s as deep as it will be. You will get drunk, and eventually everything will be a goofy joke again. Nobody takes themselves or their “art” all that seriously, at least not on the surface.

  But this moment. You know, and Ronnie knows, and just about everybody else that’s here knows. There really is something special about it.

  MEH

&n
bsp; Kelly: So pleased with himself on this next mid-afternoon’s post-mortem of last night’s shenanigans.

  (Yeah: Shenanigans.)

  In hungover shame: Ronnie half-listens to Kelly’s rehashing of last night’s sexcapades.

  (Yeah: Sexcapades.)

  No: Ronnie really really really really really does not want to hear about the blow job on the Myrrh House roof, about how Kelly, in the peak of whatever drugs he saw fit to bring up with him from Orlando, couldn’t stop with the rolling steady stream of pointing out and naming planets, stars, constellations, even as he’s you know feeling her mouth, tongue, hands, up/down, ’round and ’round his engorged peninsula. They’re on the front patio at Gatorroni’s, and Ronnie is trying—trying—to eat a Portobello slice, and trying not to listen to Kelly, and trying not to piece together what happened, because really now, who cares?

  Yes: it’s one of those torturous hangovers where the head throbs, the forehead is clammy, perceptions are hazy, dizzy, out of focus, and if all of that isn’t bad enough, Ronnie also has the song “Take It to the Limit” by The Eagles on repeat droning on and on in his skull, but not even the whole song, just the chorus, and not even just the chorus, but the one chorus at the end with the high harmonies. And slowly, slowly, brief flashes of moments from last night pop up, things Ronnie said/did, shame flooding his nervous system in the form of nauseous dread with each flash.

  Take it to the limit: One more time.

  Well: What does he remember so far?

  There was the loveseat by the answering machine: Ronnie slouched there, laughing, as the girl—whatshername—falls onto his lap, puts her arm around him, points at the answering machine and asks, “Is this anyone?”