“It’s not gonna happen.” Ronnie says.
•
“Look at me,” Ronnie says. “You’re going to do fine. Just play it like you did at practice.”
“I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Good!” Ronnie says. This was something she had said during every practice, and the practices always ended up vomit free. “Wait until you’re done, then we’ll get you to the hospital.
“Oh,” Ronnie adds. “And have fun.”
•
All these people, so easily filed under “your so-called friends,” validate Ronnie and the rest of the Sunny Afternoons with their vacant-drunk smiling faces. Should Ronnie feel too high on himself and his ego, friends in the audience are quite willing to yell stuff like “Hey look! It’s Maux!” or “Hey look! It’s Portland Patty!” or “Hey look! It’s Maux and Portland Patty together, making out in your bedroom, Ronnie!”
•
“What if I forget how to play the songs when we get shows?”
“You won’t.”
“What if I play a part from one song in a different song?”
“It won’t happen.”
“What if—”
“It’ll be fine!”
•
His favorite heckle is when William yells, “Play that one Stones song again!”
•
In Gainesville they stare at you with their arms crossed, smiling, basking in the magic. To Rae, to do anything more than offer a silent positive support would reduce her to a quivering neurotic twitch of tears. Ronnie gladly receives any and all heckles.
•
Ronnie plays and sings. He never gets nervous. Performing never scared him. Not once. Everything else in the world fills him with anxiety and apprehension, but when the guitar goes on, all that disappears. Their friends, they watch Rae, because they want her there, playing a guitar. They want this to work.
•
The view from Ronnie’s roof: The ramshackle student ghetto houses. The unstoppable Florida foliage—the live oaks, pines, palms. NW 13th street—the traffic, the giant green-squared MOTHER EARTH sign above the organic market. The stars and the moon. Ronnie spends more and more time here when the heat dies down and the roof shingles aren’t blistering.
•
There will be no stars in Chicago. Ronnie does not know this yet.
•
Tonight’s post-practice record is “The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society.”
•
Ronnie hasn’t felt this happy in months, if not years. Smiling. Singing. Strumming. An imitation of the cynical, almost-hack tone of Ray Davies:I need you / I need you more than birds in the sky / I need you / it’s true little girl / you can wipe the tear from my eye. Pure joy.
AT THE NOISE SHOW
“Shit’s gay,” Mitch repeats. He stands on the front porch with Ronnie, passing a flask of whiskey back and forth, taking a break from all that Art inside.
“Don’t be homophobic now,” Ronnie says, taking the flask, sipping, exaggerating the ol’ burn (oh! The burn!) of what you could charitably classify as “the cheap stuff” by tilting his head from side to side, twisting and twitching and convulsing.
“I ain’t homophobic,” Mitch says. “If this was gay—like as in, really actually gay—it would be interesting.” He grabs the flask from Ronnie, tips it to his mouth. “But no. Shit’s gay.”
“G.A.Y.” Ronnie says.
“If you talk, they shush you!” Mitch says. “It’s a fucking party, and they shush you.”
“Shushy shushy shushy,” Ronnie says. He sips, twists, twitches, convulses, then laughs.
“Shush, you heathen! Can’t you see we’re making very important white noise feedback from our amplifiers?”
Ronnie starts hopping around like a monkey caveman. “Me like rock. Me no get noise.” This, punctuated with armpit scratches and lots of “ooga booga” onomatopoeia.
Mitch laughs, joins in with the hopping and the monosyllabic grunting. It’s too easy, laughing at these homespun avant poseur noiseicians, or, as they insist on being called, “soundscapers.”
•
Here in 1996 AD, noise music is a one-way ticket to underground credibility. Make your guitar produce shrill feedback through various effects pedals and your amplifier, and—voila! You now work with noise the way other capital-A Artists work with clay or marble or wood.
One day back at the Myrrh House, after Ronnie cracked one too many jokes about some swooshy ethereal Morse code bleeps coming out of the living room stereo while Roger sat on the couch leaning forward in an “intent listening” posture, Roger turned to him and said, “You’re not smart enough to get it.”
“Aw, bullshit,” Ronnie muttered. “What’s to get?”
“It’s thought and expression that can’t be expressed any other way.”
“Sure, dude,” Ronnie laughed before going into his room to listen to something slightly less noisy and a lot less pretentious, and a lot more structured.
Yes, it is all quite serious; the dozen-odd geniuses who comprise the Gainesville Noise Community sit around and watch each other make twittering screeches while wearing stern expressions, thinking of highly intellectual comments to make when it is all finished.
This is what is happening inside, as Ronnie and Mitch are on the porch cracking funnies and drinking too much whiskey. It’s a cleared-out, average-sized living room in a typical student ghetto house, filled to capacity, most dressed all in black, and/or wearing masks (papier-mache homemade, or rubber custom shop-bought).
Ronnie and Mitch were standing in the back, trying not to laugh at Roger, “performing” with a strobe light, controlling a theramin with his right hand and a box with knobs he twists and turns with his left hand. All the while, he wears a black robe and nothing else, his face painted all white, looking like some kind of surfer druid, dancing a strange kind of hop-march-jig with his right and left feet kicked up at random intervals.
“It sounds like gerbils mating,” Ronnie thought he was whispering to Mitch, before the audience turned and collectively gave a shush noticeably louder than Ronnie’s whisper.
It was an unrelenting hour of pompously smug guys (all guys) who had no problem talking about how they had “outgrown punk,” and are “far beyond rock and roll,” “fully embracing a post-music landscape,” before making sounds that, to Ronnie’s untrained ears, sounded like highpitched and beepy old telegraphs on sinking oceanliners.
•
“You’re not profoundly inspired by this?” Mitch asks.
“Let’s go,” Ronnie says. “We’ll walk to the Drunken Mick.” He inhales, exhales, smiles. “It’s a nice night.”
As they turn to step down from the front porch, the front door opens and a familiar voice yells, “Heyyyyyy Ronnnnayyyyy!!!”
Mouse steps up to Ronnie, hugs him. “I never see you anymore, Ronnnayyyyyy!” Mouse wears an off-white suit, too-tight, covered in a multitude of splotchy stains, a very wrinkled black collared shirt, faded red tie. Behind him is Icy Filet, wearing red panties, red sequined pasties, and giant white-framed glasses. “We were hiding in the back getting ready to perform,” she tells Ronnie and Mitch. “But you’re here now, Ronald, and Mouse is right. We never see you.”
“Aw, you know,” Ronnie says, stepping back from the hug, trying to take them in in the numb spin of the whiskey. “I’ve been busy.”
“Heh heh heh, you’ve been busy,” Mouse says. “I can tell.”
Ronnie shrugs. “I’m doing a lot of thinking.”
“And a lot of drinking,” Mitch has to say, since it’s out there, free for the taking. Ronnie turns and punches Mitch on the arm. Mitch hasn’t taken his eyes off of Icy Filet’s breasts.
“That too,” Mouse says. “I hear you just sit in your room all night, drinking alone.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Ronnie repeats, as if that should settle everything. “And we’re just leaving.”
“But we’re about
to play,” Icy Filet says.
“Yeah, she’s—they’re—about to play,” Mitch says.
“Heh heh heh,” Mouse says. “Ronnie just wants to drink.”
Ronnie steps off the front porch. He holds out his arms and spins like he’s in a musical, says, “I just wanna dance! And sing. And write.”
“And drink,” Mouse says.
“That too,” Ronnie says.
“You’re a mess, Ronnie,” Mouse says.
Ronnie is stomping down the street now, turns long enough to yell, “Who isn’t?,” continues trudging down the street.
Mitch still stands on the front porch steps. The interaction’s knocked him out of the male-dumb haze of gawking at the red-sequined pasties covering Icy Filet’s nipples. He looks up at Mouse, at Icy Filet, says, “I’m sorry. I’ll look out for him.”
“Heh heh heh,” Mouse laughs his laugh, as if to say, “No, you won’t,” and Mitch stumbles off in pursuit of Ronnie, who’s half a block away trying to imitate Robert Plant’s banshee wail in “Immigrant Song” and concluding each yell by either knocking over a garbage can and/or karate kicking a mailbox. Mitch catches up to him, joins in with the banshee wail, kicking and chopping and laughing before turning left onto University, whiskey-fearless, yelling their conversation:
“What does she see in him?” Mitch says.
“Who?”
“What’s her name. Icy Filet?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. What does she see in that Mouse guy?”
“No man . . . no . . . it’s like . . . they’re good for each other. Hang on a second.” Ronnie turns to the curb, bends over, throws up, keeps walking, continues talking. “No, they’re good for each other. Totally.”
“How did you do that?” Mitch says.
“What?”
“Umm . . . nothing. Never mind.” A moment later: “I just like her tits.”
“Icy Filet’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool.”
“You see those things, Rahhhhn?”
“Yeah,” Ronnie yells. “She has breasts. Women have breasts. And with the pasties? You could almost see them in their . . . fuckin’ . . . entirety.” They approach the darkened doorway of the Drunken Mick. “And now, to celebrate the only pair of tits I’ll almost see tonight, let’s drink.”
Vomit-breathed and dizzy, Ronnie enters the Drunken Mick, sits at the bar. Mitch follows, sits to his right. A shot and a beer, a shot and a beer.
“To the Midwest,” Ronnie proposes, raising his shotglass to toast.
“. . .Ok,” Mitch says, clinks his shotglass to Ronnie’s, drinks.
When the shot is choked down and Ronnie shakes it out and around his head, he says, “Can’t wait to get outta here . . . ”
“Why the Midwest?” Mitch has to ask, because now, really. Cahmahn.
“Why not?”
“Why?”
“Better than here . . . ”
Mitch raises the pint glass to his lips, drinks, sets it back down on the bar. “It doesn’t matter where you live.”
“Sure it does,” Ronnie says, wobbly on the barstool, slurring his speech. “Makes a huge difference.”
“Naw, not really, Rahhhhn. It’s the same bullshit everywhere.” Almost as if on cue, almost as if to bolster his argument, that one Bad Company song about how the vocalist is, well, he’s bad company, and he can’t deny, starts to play on the jukebox.
“You’re saying Chicago is the same as Gainesville?”
“Naw, of course not. You’re missing the point. You can be happy anywhere, or unhappy anywhere. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
Ronnie belches. Laughs. Raises his pint glass. “Ok, yeah: You can make the best of it, like here, for instance. Or Orlando. Or Chicago. Some people need more from the people and places around them. Some don’t.”
“I guess, Rahhn. I’m also saying that Chicago is exactly the same as this, only there’s more of it.”
“Look,” Ronnie says, “look, scientifically,” he burps, continues, “there are big cities, small cities, suburbs, college towns, beach towns, factory towns, and ski towns. Each has their own ratios of boredom to excitement, danger to safety, vibrancy to redundancy, despair to hope. Sure, under the right set of circumstances, you can find your own version of happiness in almost any of these . . . ” Ronnie stops, laughs. Turns to Mitch. “Look at us. Trying to solve the problems of the world.”
“I’m just tryin’ to figure out why you you cheersed the Midwest, Rahhhn. That was your toast, not mine.”
“I don’t know. I got my reasons.” Ronnie laughs. “Let’s get another beer, another shot, hmmm?” Ronnie nudges Mitch in the arm, punctuates the gesture with added “Hmmm?! Hmmm?!”
“Naw, I’m drunk. I’m walking home.”
“Alright. I’m staying.”
“You’re staying?” Mitch stands, starts to walk to the door. “Camahhhn. You’re drunk already. You don’t need to get drunker.”
“I’m stayin’,” Ronnie says. Mitch shrugs, shakes his head, walks out the door, leaves Ronnie to his drunken drooling brooding. Dumbass. Thinks the Midwest—thinks Chicago—is any different. And now Mitch has gotta get home and sleep this off and make it to class tomorrow for an exam, and what does Ronnie have? Nothing. Not a thing.
TWO ON A FARTY10
Naw, dude, he had no idea the age of the nnnugget, Julianna, but she definitely wasn’t some puppy-eyed punkette younger than Ronnie, now floundering somewhere in his mid-twenties. There were some hungover mornings when he could believe his mind’s jive turkey talk—that he was you know hanging out with some older Anne-Bancroft-Mrs.-Robinson-scotch-and-Virginia-Slims-panty-hose-and-blouse-type, but there were nights when the malt liquor was really kicking in, and the bands were hitting their strides three to four songs into their sets, her blue eyes were you know Bambified wonder, and she would shake that curvy-enough body up and down round and round, and Ronnie’s hormones sang Beefheartian lyrics on the order of “Rather than I wanna hold your hand / I wanna swallow you whole / and lick you everywhere that’s pink / and everywhere you think,” she looked younger than Ronnie, younger than the clove-smoking dorm girls in their CRASS t-shirts. As he got to know her, Ronnie no longer thought about Julianna’s thirtiness (thirtiness!), and he even forgot that on the night he met her, he contemptuously regarded her as “an aging yuppie.” Natch, when Ronnie first met Julianna, she was looking notso hotso. It was at The Drunken Mick; she swiveled on the stool next to Ronnie’s and she had lost a twenty dollar bill and was accusing the Irish bartender of shortchanging her on her last drink. She kept swiveling in her chair like a drunken manatee bobbing and weaving in a lagoon scanning the dark dirty bar floor for any sign of the bill, mumbling and swaying as the barstool squeaked each time she spun a 360, leaning forward, back of her blouse bunching upward and revealing the promise of two glorious asscheeks. As she spun, Ronnie was getting the feeling he was on the verge of being accused of reaching across the bar and stealing the twenty when she left it there while stumbling off to use the ladies’. Each time she spun his way he felt nausea in his stomach; he totally thought she was a stupid-ass aging yuppie. Actually she didn’t think Ronnie Altamont had anything to do with it; her only suspect was the bartender, tallying her drinks with her hands—wwwwwun . . . twoooo . . . thhhhreeee . . . ffffffffour . . . fffffive . . . sssssix . . . ssssssseven . . . —repeatedly, obnoxiously asking why they don’t teach subtraction in Irish schools.
Then Ronnie found it as he was about to bail, irritated and depressed with his decision to waste the evening drinking when he could have been trying to write; he spotted the twenty folded in half, pressed against the bar and the floor, far below the range of the swiveling yuppie’s double-sight. With the kind of self-righteous elitist snobbery one gets when knowing that the independent rock and roll music you’re fond of is billions of times better than the dependent rock and roll music the masses are spoonfed, Ronnie plucked the bill from the floor, made a sarcastic produ
ction of showing her the discovered twenty, and slammed it on the bar without saying a word. Two events prevented him from leaving The Drunken Mick right then and there. Three Gainesville scene nnnnuggets entered the bar one . . . two . . . three, and they knew Ronnie from his parties, and he knew them because they were nnnnuggets and anytime he saw them—individually and collectively—he bit his fist like Lenny from “Laverne and Shirley,” and as they said their Hahhhhowareyewws in that syrupy southern way of theirs, at the same time, the woman, Julianna, wouldn’t stop thanking him for finding the twenty, wanted to repay him in whatever he wanted to drink. Well? Sure. Ok. He returned to his seat, she bought him the drink, the nnnuggets seated to his right bought him drinks, the yuppie bought the nnnuggets drinks, the nnnuggets bought the yuppie drinks, and Ronnie made charming promises to repay them all when he finally found a job, and in no time it was like the beautiful bright celebration Ronnie wanted to throw when the lead singer of U2 finally up and died.
Within minutes, she was no longer an aging yuppie but someone decently attractive, who spoke knowledgeably of Belgian indie-pop and Nova Scotian hardcore, who actually knew the older members and the older bands of the scene inside and out, who had moved to Charlotte, North Carolina on a whim, and moved back to Gainesville, Florida on a whim, someone even more to Ronnie’s taste than the nnnnuggets with their fake IDs could ever be. Seeing them, Ronnie and Julianna, in the long bar mirror behind all those multi-colored liquor bottles, he saw all the makings of a fellow flounderer, the perfect companion to kill these empty Gainesville afternoons, evenings and late nights. She could pass for an almost-haggard Swedish stewardess, short blonde hair, pale skin, almost statuesque save for the slight arm flab, a barely perceptible unfirm around the middle, tiny purple veins beginning to emerge in the thighs. Have you ever heard the song “Lady Midnight” by Leonard Cohen? Well, if you have, she—and it—were a lot like that. Ronnie had uneven short black hair from one-too-many friends who were amateurs with hair clippers. He had a darker inevitable Floridian tan—even though he rarely ventured outside. He wore black-rimmed glasses—handles covered in grime eating into the hinges. He kept his stained baby blue Oxford shirts untucked to camouflage the emerging beer belly. Unfortunately for Ronnie, the belly would kind of, you know, hang over the shorts he was forced to wear nine months out of the year, and by the month, it was getting harder and harder to hide, no matter how much he sucked it in. Of course, behind the bar, the nnnuggets didn’t notice it, but when he stood . . . I mean, did The Ramones have beer bellies? That’s how he explained it to Julianna. She said, Dude, find something else to drink besides all that stupid beer, get some exercise! Why do you care so much about it? I’m older than you; I should be the one complaining! Beyond the floundering and the drunken belligerence, Julianna was usually well-intentioned in her honesty, even if Ronnie would never argue with someone as much as he did with her. She would argue over anything—literally anything—especially when drunk—and she lived in France for two years and knew everything about pre-fusion jazz—knew more about music than even Ronnie’s extensive knowledge, spoke fluent Russian, graduated Magna Cum Laude at the University of Florida. Easily, she was the smartest woman Ronnie had ever met, but there was nowhere for that energy to go, so she drank, and that would have been depressing to be around, if Ronnie hadn’t matched her drink for drink, time and time again. Totally, when he stopped thinking of her as some yuppie, he thought of her as a serious drinker—not a drunk or a lush or an alcoholic—not yet, and maybe not ever—but as someone equally as bored as Ronnie by what his surroundings had to offer anymore. Her intelligence simply didn’t exist with the women in the Gainesville punk scene. Some came close—Maux, for instance—but they were too young, masking their inexperience with a self-invented world-weariness.
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