Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  “You shouldn’t be so cynical,” Portland Patty says.

  “Only when I’m here,” Ronnie says. He turns to look her in the eyes. “Normally, I’m a lot of fun.” And here, ok, there’s something in the way Ronnie Altamont says this which makes Portland Patty start thinking that maybe Ronnie is really and truly different, and not the different of all these other guys hanging out and hanging around on the streets and front porches.

  “Gainesville’s meaner than you think,” Roger says. Ronnie laughs. By “mean,” Ronnie assumes Roger means all the gossip and inevitable petty horseshit indigenous to every small town.

  “I’m serious,” Roger says.

  “It’s not that bad,” Portland Patty says. Ronnie notices, really notices, her smile. It’s never triggered by anything in particular, but by everything in particular. “People are always talking, but you don’t have to listen.”

  “You’ll see,” Roger says. Ronnie and Portland Patty look to each other. They both start laughing. It’s nervous laughter, seemingly apropos of nothing.

  “Excuse me,” Portland Patty says, standing up, a little wobbly, as Ronnie notices. “My muy loco drink is making me have to use el baño, comprende?” She giggles. Ronnie giggles. She walks away.

  The moment Portland Patty is out of earshot, this is the moment when Roger leans in, whispers, “She’s a total acid casualty.”

  “Really?” Ronnie says. “She seems alright.” The food arrives, a tamales dinner for Ronnie, a taco salad for Roger, and guacamole for Portland Patty.

  “I heard she’s tripped hundreds of times, dude. Thousands.” Roger leans back in his chair, speaks louder, “So you don’t get any ideas. She’s not a, you know, punk rock nnnnugget, and I know what that means to you.”

  It is too late for Ronnie not to get ideas. Sometimes, the entire state of Florida seemed like one big acid casualty, the way people talked about spending their entire high school and early college years on daily acid trips. If Roger is trying to get Ronnie to think twice, he’s failing.

  “What about Maux?” Roger adds.

  Ronnie shrugs. When Portland Patty returns, it’s Ronnie’s turn to excuse himself. He can only imagine what Roger is about to say about him. He’ll probably bring up Maux. Asshole.

  Inside the door marked “CABALLEROS,” Ronnie washes his hands, breathes in, breathes out, tries not to look in the mirror, tries not to think about anything. He is in love again, the way he always thinks he’s in love again. He thinks he knows what is next. He isn’t worried about Roger. All he needs to do is get back to Gainesville, and it will be alright.

  “How’s the food?” Ronnie asks when he returns.

  They both shrug.

  “I need another drink,” Roger says.

  Another round for Roger and Portland Patty. Ronnie switches to water. Rather than trying to get the girl drunk, as so many other dipshits do, Ronnie wants to get his roommate drunk. He’ll talk and talk, and get increasingly surly, all of which finally culminates, as Ronnie knew it would, in him standing up and announcing over a quarter-eaten taco salad:

  “Let’s leave this dump. I need to get back. This place sucks.”

  “Alright,” Ronnie says, smiling. “Let’s go.” He picks up the bill, glad to, just once, actually take care of a bill.

  Through Orlando’s inexcusable early rush hour traffic, they eventually make it back into the countryside, in the light of a grape and honey hued sunset. Roger talks, and talks, and talks. Turning back to Portland Patty, he talks of screenplays, of films he’s seen, of films he wants to see. He goes on lengthy tangents, following every thread of his thoughts, devoid of filter between brain and mouth. Roger is going for it, using everything he has—his brains, his thoughts, his intellect. Ronnie has tuned him out; Portland Patty throws out the occasional “Really?” or “Oh,” and this encourages him. Roger is drunk. He gets drunk easily. Ronnie knows this much about his current roommate. Two cups of Fun y Spontaneity, and he’s in blotto speech, telling it like it is about film, about films, about film criticism. He goes on, and on, and on, until the halfway point of the trip—in beautiful Leesburg, Florida, while passing an orange juice processing plant, he turns and immediately falls asleep. When Ronnie sees he’s asleep, he looks up in the rearview mirror, to Portland Patty, who smiles at him. Ronnie smiles back, makes the “whew!” gesture of a right hand wiping imaginary sweat off his forehead. Portland Patty laughs at this gesture. The Meat Puppets get them home, back into the beauty of North-Central Florida.

  Ronnie drops off Roger first. He wakes him up. “We’re home, buddyboy!” Ronnie says.

  Roger opens his eyes, makes that jolt-gasp sound people make when they wake up on travels to find they’ve arrived at their destination. “Oh! Here!”

  “Yup. Home. See you soon.” Ronnie says.

  Roger looks to the backseat. Portland Patty is still there. “Bye, Roger,” she says.

  Roger looks to Ronnie. Ronnie gives a barely perceptible nod, as if to say, “Time to go now. Time to go.”

  Without a word, Roger opens the car door, steps out, slams the door. Ronnie immediately puts the car in reverse, leaves NW 4th Lane for Portland Patty’s house, north on NW 13th Street, past the high school, the Wal-Mart. She lives in a brown duplex. Ronnie pulls in the driveway, about to ask her out, when she looks at him, in the rearview mirror and asks, “Do you want to come inside, listen to music?”

  Ronnie shuts off the car.

  Music is always the catalyst for getting the boys and girls into each other’s homes, the ostensible, weighted, lines you read between. The wine helps—in this case, a jug of unlabelled Chablis poured into Empire Strikes Back collectors’ glasses from Burger King—Ronnie sipping from a Boba Fett glass, Portland Patty from Lando Calrissian.

  Music. Drinks. It was the only diplomatic way we knew how to get to sex.

  (The blasé coldness, the self-preserving cynicism of the smug mid-20s onward hasn’t sunk in yet.)

  •

  “What’s a Volvo-driving pirate’s favorite radio station?” Portland Patty asks. She sits across from Ronnie at Long John Silver’s, cardboard pirate hat pulled down across her forehead.

  “Pirates don’t drive Volvos,” Ronnie says between bites of hushpuppy.

  “Will you just ask ‘What?’ please, Ronnie?” She looks so perfect in a pirate hat, he thinks, the long blonde-brown hair flowing out and around the brim. (Maux would never go to LJS with him: quote, “That place sucks and it’s nasty.”)

  “Ok, Ok, what?” Ronnie manages between chomps of tartar-drenched fishflanks, flakes and chunks dripping out his mouth. “I mean, I know, but I want to hear you tell me.”

  “NPArrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” She laughs and snorts at her own joke, laughter an exhaled melodious tittering hee-hee-hee followed by inhaled free-jazz saxophone goose honks.

  Ronnie laughs, more at her reaction than the joke itself. “Jesus, that was awful.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Ronnie!”

  He reaches across the greasy table, swipes the cardboard pirate hat off her head, hair trailing behind the hat and above the table. He puts it on, yarrs out an, “Avast, why aren’t ye eating any seabiscuits, ya scallywag?”

  “I told you I’m vegan. And you took me here anyway.”

  “Yawn.” Ronnie cannot explain his sudden obsession with Long John Silvers. It occurs to him that it’s one of those fast food chains that are everywhere, but it doesn’t seem like anyone actually goes there to eat. Even this afternoon, lunchtime on a Saturday, no one’s eating here except for this pink-faced flat-topped overalled farmboy-looking kid, sitting in the front, looking out the nautical windows at 8th Avenue. Thinking this way, Ronnie got it into his head that it would be hilarious to take girls here. On dates. As a litmus test. Because if they couldn’t put up with Long John Silvers, they wouldn’t be able to put up with much of anything else about Ronnie, and it would save the trouble of attempting a relationship.

  “I can’t eat anything here.”

&nbs
p; “Yawn.”

  “Shut up, Ronnie.”

  “Yawn.” Portland Patty reaches across the table, punches Ronnie in the chest, with a right arm swirling with kaleidoscopic, even hypnotic tattoos from shoulder to wrist, retakes the pirate hat.

  Ronnie laughs. “What are you going to eat then, matey?” he asks.

  “I’ll eat later.” She refits the pirate hat on her head. “I had heard you liked this place.”

  “You heard I think it’s funny to go here?”

  “Everybody knows about Ronnie Altamont.”

  Ronnie shrugs, expels a bitter pshaw. He has a first and a last name here now too. He can’t escape it. “Everybody hates me here,” he says. “I’m not emotive enough. Too weird. Too drunk. Something.”

  “You seem nice.” Portland Patty, she means this, trying to hide her amusement at the way he eats this greasy fried offal. “You’re different, I think.” She’s almost convinced, by virtue of being here at Long John Silver’s as opposed to all the more obvious spots they could have gone to eat. But then, maybe they would see Maux, so maybe he isn’t that different. Maybe he thought of the one place he knew he would run into no one.

  “I’m nice. I’m different,” Ronnie repeats, deadpan. He looks at her, bugs out his eyes, stabs one of the tartar and malt vinegar-soaked fish flanks with the plastic spork he holds in his left hand, holds the fish flank aloft and loudly proclaims, “I AM THE AYATOULLAH, OF ROCK AND ROLLAH!”

  “Put that down,” Portland Patty says. “You’re ridiculous. I’ve seen that movie.”

  “It’s who I am, and that’s what you haven’t heard about me yet,” Ronnie says, slowly lowering the fish flank. “That’s my rank, baby.”

  “Whatever.”

  Ronnie wonders how long until she discovers the truth. How will he blow it this time? With Maux around, and that other girl he spent the night with, he can definitely guess.

  Ronnie drives Portland Patty home. They exchange phone numbers. Kisses in the car, as the same Meat Puppets tape from yesterday still plays, Curt Kirkwood moaning, . . . there’s a lot out there but don’t be scared / who needs action when you’ve got words?

  This is too easy. They both think this—Ronnie driving away, Portland Patty standing in the driveway, watching him leave, tattooed right arm upraised in a brief wave, fingers up and down, up and down.

  •

  Mac Arthur’s Park is melting in the dark / all that sweet green icing / flowing dowooooon . . .

  It’s one of these typical Florida afternoon downpours, where the drops hit like thousands of water balloons. Ronnie is walking home from the used college textbook store gig, belting out the Richard Harris classic “Mac Arthur Park,” an attempt to laugh through the rain soaking his clothes and glasses, to laugh at the realization that the job is now, officially and inevitably, finished, and the money would be running out very soon. The students are settled in their classes—books purchased, books returned, books sold. The copypack orders are filled. Ronnie had hoped to stay on permanently—for once, after finally learning, through the magic of asbestos removal, that he was a hard worker, and, also for once, his bosses liked him—but it was seasonal work, and the season was over.

  Someone left a cake out in the rain / and I don’t think I can take it / because it took so long to bake it / and I’ll never have that recipe uh-gayne / oh noooooooo.

  Jobs. Oh, the jobs. And the guitar. It hasn’t been touched in months. Ronnie thinks he hid it in the closet before a party so it wouldn’t get stolen, but he’s really not too sure. The writing. Only when thoroughly drunk, home from whatever, he scribbles illegible words in ninety-nine cent notebooks on whatever drunken drama feels so terribly important at that moment.

  What now, what now? Ronnie walks down University for home. He passes the feminist bookstore. A familiar voice behind him. “Where are you going jerk? And where have you been? Jerk.”

  Maux stands in the threshold, cracking the door open and closed enough so the motion detectors continually beep.

  “Lost my job today,” Ronnie says, standing in the rain, beyond the saturation point, accepting that he is going to be drenched until he finds shelter. He shrugs, holds out his arms, points at the rain. “Stuck out here. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” With a tip of her head to the store behind her, a wicked smile spreads across her face, and she adds, “I’m just checking out what the dykes are reading these days.”

  “Wow. That’s really classy, Maux.” Maux laughs that meanspirited preteen boy laugh of hers. Ronnie would like to have a meeting between his mind, his heart, and his dick, in which the mind and the heart collectively kick the dick’s ass while saying, “Walk away. Turn around and walk away,” but the dick still—still!—trumps everything, and says, “Look at her. Look at those long white legs and that short black dress and the tight yellow t-shirt and the pale skin and the indigo hair uh humina humina humina . . . ”

  Thus conflicted, Ronnie says nothing.

  “Aw, I’m kidding, Ron,” Maux says. “Get outta the rain, dumbass.”

  Ronnie is about to step into the shelter of the feminist bookstore, when he hears the Teutonic buzz of a Volvo car horn. He turns. The passenger side window scrolls down.

  “Need a ride?” Portland Patty asks, leaned over, peeking through the half-opened window.

  Heart, mind, and dick, for a refreshing change, are in unanimous agreement.

  “Sure!” Ronnie shouts, runs to the green Volvo station wagon. “See you later,” he waves to Maux, opens the door and hops in.

  “Who’s the hippie, Ron?!” Maux yells behind him. Ronnie doesn’t answer. Portland Patty pulls back into University’s traffic.

  •

  In Portland Patty’s, her tiny duplex that smells of soy sauce and incense sticks, there are posters and fliers on the wall, of Jawbreaker, Husker Du, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Rites of Spring, dozens upon dozens of local bands. Ronnie, drenched, sits on Portland Patty’s couch and studies the names, the images, the Sharpie writing, the fonts, the faces.

  She hands Ronnie a Mickey Mouse beach towel. As he dries off, she warms up leftover soup, some vegan concoction Ronnie will find impossibly flavorful.

  “Feeling better?” Portland Patty asks, setting the soup bowl on the coffeetable, sitting next to Ronnie on the couch.

  “Feeling good!” Ronnie says, leaning forward, towel wrapped around his shoulders, slurping up the soup. On the record player, some overly distorted, overly whiny modern punk song, a lament offered up to the Bitch Goddess responsible for all this unrequited love plaguing our world.

  He finishes the soup in no time. Ronnie Altamont turns to Portland Patty, smiles. He places his damp head in her lap, and falls asleep.

  For the second time in three days, Portland Patty watches Ronnie sleep. Inhale. Exhale. He’s so disheveled. Dirt eating into the hinges of his glasses. Broth crusted along the edge of his mouth. Crumpled, unwashed, undry clothing.

  What will she do with a boy like this? There is Maux, and there is Roger telling her he’s sleazy. What she knows for sure is, is that he’s some kind of goof. Will he leave Maux? Is he worth the trouble? The time?

  She removes his glasses, sets them on the coffee table, places her hands on his not-clean hair as he sleeps. “Are you different, Ronnie?” she whispers. “Are you really different?”

  MAUX CALLS RONNIE

  “Hey! What’re ya doin’? Fucker.” Maux sounds drunk. Vodka-drunk.

  “Sleeping,” Ronnie yawns into the blue corded phone plugged in by his mattresses. “It’s 4:30.”

  “So did you call or somethin’?”

  “No.” Ronnie turns, pulls himself upward, wakes up, realizes why she’s calling. Yes, of course. “But come over.”

  “You’re weird.” Ronnie yawns a second time, almost hangs up. “I’m just callin’ ya back. Fucker.”

  “I told you I didn’t call.”

  “Oh. Well.” Darkness. The every-night looped cassette of Television and Flipper
is on the guitar solo to the Television song “Elevation,” a fierce electric bounce before the song quietly implodes, puts itself back together. “Why can’t we talk? Who’s the hippie?”

  “The hippie?”

  “Yeah, that twat I saw you with who had the long hair and the Volvo. In the rain. Fucker.”

  Silence.

  “Guess what?” Maux says, every word a sloppy slurred groan.

  “What?”

  “I hate hippies.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, man. Are you coming over or what?” Ronnie turns onto his back, phone pressed to his left ear, reaching the pinnacle of his 4:30 a.m. alertness, returning to weaving in and out of sleep.

  “No, Ronnie.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  ‘What about that hippie?”

  “Then I’m going over there.”

  “No, Ronnie, but please tell me about that hippie—”

  Ronnie yawns. “She’s a friend. You’re a friend. We’re all friends.”

  “Friends.”

  “I don’t know. What do you want from me, Maux?”

  “I haven’t seen you in a while. We’re hanging out, right?”

  “Hanging out? Sure.”

  “So what are you doing with that hippie?”

  “I’ll call later,” Ronnie says, hanging up before Maux’s drunk ass can respond.

  What’s funny about it is that even if Ronnie had told her everything, she wouldn’t remember what they talked about in the morning. He closes his eyes. Out of the speakers, Tom Verlaine sings, This case is cloooosed. Ronnie cannot sleep. What does Maux want? What does Ronnie want? And Portland Patty. He needs to say something, do something. Make a stand. Make a choice. The last definitive choice Ronnie has made was moving to Gainesville. Everything else has been reaction, chance, a passive going with the flow Ronnie is almost foolish enough to believe is “Zen.” What is it really? Ronnie is afraid of the answer. It’s easier to let it happen. It’s easier to spend time with both, to avoid classifications, to not think and to ride it out and let the events take care of themselves. So why worry? Go to sleep.