Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  FIVE: NICE WINTERS

  “You are a lost generation.”

  —Deputy Dawg, to Patti Smith

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  If you’ve ever dropped acid at a party where most people are sticking to beer as their drug of choice, you know there is a point when you branch off and eventually move away from the ’faced behaviors and sloshed actions of those around you. Ronnie recognizes this fork in the road early in the last hour of 1996, as he sits on the upraised platform of the abandoned train depot where this New Year’s Eve so-called “sex party” was supposed to be happening behind him, inside. “Sex acts” would be filmed. So the rumors went. It sounded incredibly stupid to Ronnie, as Mitch told him about it earlier in the day at a barbeque, but the early afternoon beer buzz convinced him enough to shrug and say “Why not?” and the added beers and the flasks passed around at this so-called “sex party” from strangers and near strangers, to say nothing of what Ronnie thought was a bit of a dogshit year, convinced him that the best way of putting this year to bed and starting 1997 with a squeaky clean slate was to, as Bill Hicks put it, “squeegee his third eye” and accept the tab of acid given to him, gratis, from some Orlando girl he used to like way back in high school before she dreadlocked her hair and took to wearing giant candy-striped Cat in the Hat hats and shooting black tar heroin.

  But as the Fork in the Road begins, Ronnie regrets this spontaneous act. Oh, Christ. This is going to be a long commitment, and it won’t be pretty and it won’t be fun. But the drinking lessens the fear inherent in seeing the lines in the denim of his jeans expand and contract, to say nothing of the splintered wood of the platform he sits upon. What are we doing here? The five foot drop from the platform to the rocky dirt darkness below is beginning to look like a perilous fall. He can’t look down anymore, so he opts instead to try and observe the crowds—dozens of stumbling young sloppy-loud revelers spending their last moments of 1996 milling about and trying to pack into the long-abandoned depot to see . . . what? A boob or two? Intercourse through strobe lights?

  Over the oontz—oontz—oontz of the techno behind him, Ronnie hears Mitch’s “HAW HAW HAW” as he approaches Ronnie, leans in close to Ronnie’s face, makes sci-fi theremin laser noises, wiggles his fingers, and yells, “YA TRIPPIN’ BUDDY?! YA FREAKIN’ OUT YET?!”

  Ronnie smells the booze sweat, the cheap beer breath, calmly turns to Mitch, looks up at him and smiles. Mitch sees Ronnie’s half-dollar pupils, the paranoid vacancy on his face, and steps back when he speaks in an unRonnie soft-spoken eerie drone, “That’s not what’s freaking me out here, Mitch. It’s everything else you’re doing but that.”

  Mitch bursts out into another round of “HAW HAW HAW.” He puts his tallboy of Old Hamtramck to his lips, chugs . . . chugs . . . chugs . . . and when it’s drained he throws it as hard as he can into the black of the ground below, the street beyond it, and as Ronnie follows the end over end trail (dude . . . ) of the can, Mitch burps long and loud, then says, “Looks like these weirdos are about to go do it. Ya wanna check it out, Rahn?”

  If he can stick close to Mitch, everything will be fine. Because: Mitch will remind him that everyone around him is drunk, and therefore, everything is ridiculous and absurd and therefore ok.

  “Sure,” Ronnie says, feeling the perfect kind of distance from everything and everyone, in spite of the sheer aggressiveness of the hallucinations. “This will be hilarious.”

  Ronnie follows the path cleared by Mitch through the crowd and into the depot. Through Promethean will and focus, Ronnie ignores the grotesque visuals of the white stabbing strobe lights and the horrifying patterns in the shadows on the ceiling, the demonic voices shrieking.

  They stand as close as they can before the audience is too thick. Ronnie stands on tippy-toes. What is, in actuality, two women in Bettie Page wigs, matching black pasties with red tassels on their breasts, matching black lace panties covering their hindquarters, and fishnets, looks to Ronnie like a flabby-cellulitic overly tattooed multi-limbed monster twitching on an old stained mattress as giant insects stand on their back legs, hold cameras, and circle the beast.

  “Kill it!” Ronnie screams over the techno. Mitch laughs, and before Ronnie has time to register the amused/bemused expressions of the drunks around him, he turns around, tries to figure out how he can get back to where was sitting before, outside, on the depot platform. Home, The Myrrh House, trying to get back there, that would be impossible.

  “This party is a batch of bullshit,” Mitch yells in Ronnie’s ear. “Ya wanna get . . . ”

  “Yes!” Ronnie yells. “Let’s go!” As he starts to step away though the crowd gathered around watching this, Ronnie screams, once more, “Kill it!”, in case those around him were unsure of what to do with that . . . thing they were watching.

  As Mitch stomps off past him, drunk and surly, and Ronnie knows it’s because he was hoping to you know find some girl to . . . fuckin’, take home or whatever, Ronnie formulates a “To Do” list in his head:

  • get out of here (somehow)

  • get home (somehow, and hopefully not run into anyone)

  • do some serious thinking

  • listen to Side 2 of High Time by MC5

  • do some more serious thinking. About everything.

  • wait it out/make it to the morning

  “Camahn, Rahn!” Mitch yells from somewhere out there away from the depot, in the dark. To get to him requires getting off of this platform somehow. For who-knows how long, Ronnie stands there, dreading the free fall, dreading the hard landing, doubting he can even land on both feet.

  “Jump, Rahn!” Mitch yells. “Look, I know you’re on acid , but quit acting like a pussy!”

  Others behind him chant, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

  It takes the countdown, the “5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . HAPPY NEW YEAR!” for Ronnie to close his eyes and leap off the platform, the freefall of it, even in those nanoseconds, like the time he skydove while on assignment for the school paper, the vast stretches of green squares bisected by Interstate 4 as the wind blew through his face and the hard Wile E. Coyote death of the land between Lakeland and Orlando awaited him if this parachute didn’t work—or like the plunges off high dives as a child, trying not to bellyflop, trying to cannonball all the adults past the yellow line on the concrete that kept the kids out of the pool during adult swims, or like stage diving in those flashes when you worry whether your friends will actually catch you this time.

  But unlike those other flirtations with vertigo, this time Ronnie is actually stunned to land, stunned to make contact with the grassy gravelly dirt so much sooner than he anticipated, and on both his feet, without injury.

  Adrenaline cuts in through everything else currently circulating his bloodstream. He feels a tremendous sense of accomplishment, getting off that horrible abandoned train depot where mutants made love for the entertainment of cretins—but before he can get too far, Mitch yells, “Alright champ. You landed. Let’s bail already.”

  SATURN’S RINGS

  “Ya wanna stop in here, Altamont?” Mitch asks as they pass Tweakies, the rave club, as excessively sweaty large-pupiled jaw-grinding adults with pacifiers and baby tees run in and out. “Grind on some nnnnuggets lllloaded on ecstasy? Start the year off right?”

  Ronnie forces out a laugh, smiles a smile borne out of paranoia and sensory overload as the inescapable oontz-oontz-oontz-oontz fascist lockstep jackboot beat marches ever onward, spilling out Tweakies’ front doors. Don’t look at anybody as you pass. Stay focused on Mitch—drunk Mitch—who’s drunken belligerence reminds you—hey, it’s going to be fine because everybody out on the streets right now is as far gone as you are, dude.

  Yes: Follow Mitch. He led you away from the depot and its scenes of cheesy quasi-debauchery. Follow the breathing street lights and noise along Main Street—the loud bars and restaurants screaming tepid alternative rock.

  “Alright, Wavy Gravy,” Mitch yells over the din. “Where
we headed?”

  “Um . . . ” Ronnie, trying to choose his words, because every spoken word has ramifications.

  “I’m not gonna lie,” Mitch says. “I wanna go kick some ass.”

  “What?” The very thought of fighting sends bolts of fear flashing from his brain and heart and out to his extremities.

  “I wanna have some fun tonight. Find a party. Drink some beers. You know: Kick some ass.”

  Kick some ass. At the intersection of University and Main, the demon dogs in the sirens of the roadblocks. Amber death heads peeking out of the streetlights. The frenzied amorous ravers, the howling agitated rednecks, the shrieking dramatic college students. “I’M SOOOOOOOOOOO FUCKING DRUNK!!!!” Every college girl within a ten mile radius seems to be yelling. Ronnie wants to tell Mitch how close to insanity he feels right now, but if he can make it to his room and get the MC5 on the stereo, and if he can keep his eyes straight ahead, manage the slightest of nods when people shriek HAPPY NEW YEAR DUDE! at him, Ronnie might survive.

  “I got beer at my house,” Ronnie manages to squeak out. “Help me get home, dude, and you can have it. It’s all really . . . um . . . crazy, right now.”

  “Yeah, these people are idiots,” Mitch says, forcing his big lug body through the crowds. Ronnie follows in his wake. “Amateurs. We gotta find our friends. The professionals.”

  Ronnie, relieved that Mitch doesn’t realize he’s freaking the fuck out, but maybe he should tell him, because he has to explain what’s going on:

  Saturn’s Rings. That was the name of the acid the Orlando junkie gave him two hours ago. And sure enough, the tab had a circle with a ring around the tab. Ronnie finds a comfortable headspace where he can watch the visuals from the streetlights, focus enough on Mitch so he knows it’s all one big joke of and on the desperately festive, and turn inward and recall the beach at Christmas. As his parents jogged or swam or meditated, Ronnie walked the beach, trying to think of ways to apologize to his parents. For everything. For everything that went wrong this year. For following vague and under-defined ambitions. For fleeing Orlando like some immature, irresponsible coward. For really having no reason to be in Gainesville. Low tide, high tide.

  The crowds have picked up again; the waves of yelling, honking cars, fireworks, sloppy stumbling. Younger, more monolithic packs of dorm kids with fake IDs, drunk on Jell-O shots and their own youth. Some combination of Mitch’s yelling and the intense trails from the street lights rattles Ronnie’s equilibrium. He doesn’t/can’t answer Mitch, he reaches out, grabs the nearest solid object he can lean against—a streetlight post—feels himself wrapped up in the coolness of the concrete, his eyes move over the textures of the chipped marks and the black splotches, stickers of bands, show fliers taped at eye level, and Ronnie laughs, because everyone around him right now, and all the time, they take their roles so seriously, as if they’re unaware of the futility of existence, and who knows, maybe they are unaware of this—Mitch has never tripped so what does he know about it?—and they never-ever ask “Can you see the real me?” because they’re not above hiding it and faking it and being inauthentic to get by. They’re fellow Americans and they only care about being number one.

  “Rahnnie? Rahnnie?!” Mitch leans in. “You alright, buddy?”

  Ronnie doesn’t/can’t turn away from the lightpost, nods, slowly, nods again.

  Mitch takes him by the arm, says, “Good. We gotta keep going. C’mon, we’re almost there . . . ”

  Angry loner dudes stomp home drunkenly swearing at the world because they didn’t pick up any women, lonely women sloppy in heels, the usual catalog-clothed, ballcapped collegiate packs you see in any college town from Cambridge, Mass to Eugene, Oregon. It’s not just that they’re drunk, Ronnie thinks. It’s their futures. They know they have futures. They are here to get degrees, passports to good jobs and the bounteous Floridian future of palm trees in the yards, tanned children, Baptist church on Sundays, trips to the beach. What would 1997, 1998, and on and on, hold? Nothing will change. He can’t conceive of a way to leave Gainesville.

  Maybe this is the best I can hope for, Ronnie thinks, walking while staring up into the dark, into the least visual, least textured scenery he can find, the patch of black sky overhead. It is an exciting-enough trap, surrounded by people who know you and will always know you. Gainesville is the kind of place where, when you return, you feel the painful pull of the routine, the comfort, the security. If he did manage to leave, it would take every fiber of his being to keep driving when he got on the exit ramp, to not turn around and stay. He could imagine returning, many years later, looking down any of these empty streets on Sunday afternoons, there, see the nineteen year old lesbian on her bike—DYKE POWER in big black letters on the book bag strapped across her back, peddling in an unrushed zig-zag below the canopy of trees, and he will know how much the passage of time hurts, because Gainesville has moved on to the next batch of eager Florida kids trying to figure themselves and their world out. What was once the only world Ronnie knows will be no longer that world, and the 1996 into 1997 nice winter will no longer exist. The blizzards and hurricanes and the spinning planet in spinning galaxies have their own way of making you realize how insignificant you are. Here and now, Ronnie can’t fathom this being any different, except for the very real possibility that this acid will leave him insane, and he will be like any other casualty you see on weekday afternoons sitting on bus benches, muttering and laughing about some gibberish concerning Saturn’s Rings.

  PEAKING, BRAH

  “The fuck you doin’, dude?”

  Normally, this is an easy enough question to answer—for Ronnie, or anyone else. But as the acid peaks, the question fills with peril, with nuance. What does he mean, and what do I say?

  Roger kicks open the cracked door to Ronnie’s bedroom, starts laughing; there’s Ronnie, sprawled, studying the fractals in the purple and pink floor and how the purple and pink crests decorating the floor expand and contract and break apart from each other—how the floor wobbles like the ocean—then suddenly, terrifyingly interrupted.

  “Uhhh . . . uh . . . tripping?” Ronnie manages to say, sits up. “Where’s Mitch?”

  “Tripping?” Roger yells, in a tone filled with mockery, anger, belligerence. Roger’s hair moves in blond Medusa hisses, the frays at the ends of his jeans writhing like white worms, and everything in between is too horrible to comprehend. “Not here, but the front door was wide open when I got here, so thanks for locking up, guys.” Roger steps closer, leans in and over Ronnie, asks, “Have any extra for your roomie?” Roger turns down Ronnie’s stereo, snickers at the drawn lines and circles on the ripped pages scattered around Ronnie.

  “No!” Ronnie gasps, like someone accused of a crime, because that’s what questions—any questions—sound like to Ronnie right now. “I got it from some girl, at some party.”

  “That stupid sex party?” Roger yells, standing in the middle of the room below the ceiling fan and the light, fan fluttering like dreadful insect wings, the light heightening the opening and closing pores on Roger’s face. “I was there, didn’t see you.” Unnecessarily, he adds, “I’m drunk.”

  Ronnie cowers against the couch, knees pulled up to his chin, hugging the legs of his jeans, tries not to look at the throbbing cracks in the walls, the spider webs on the ceiling, the wavy flowers on the floor tiles.

  “Well,” Roger says. “You’re obviously no fun right now. Good night, Ronnie. Happy new year.” He steps out of the room, Medusa hair and wavy frayed jeans trailing behind him.

  Ronnie leans against the cowboy couch, moans “Oh God oh God,” while suffering through throbbing undulating hallucinations at every turn. At his side is his journal, where he’s tried to write what he had been thinking on the walk home, how he has to leave Gainesville before the law of diminishing returns exacts its ugly costs, but it was more entertaining to draw curvy lines in the journal’s pages, to follow their shapes as the patterns emerged. He forgot to put on Side 2 of t
he MC5’s High Time and instead plays the Flipper song “Life” on repeat—over and over, finding a surprising tranquility in the music’s plodding cacophony as Will Shatter yell-pleads “LIFE! LIFE! LIFE IS THE ONLY THING WORTH LIVING FOR!” over the glorious din. It is almost cold in the Myrrh House. Ronnie could wear a long-sleeved shirt and not sweat. Ronnie tries imagining Chicago cold, a January in Chicago cold, a frozen gray lake facing thousands of buildings gushing smoke. He does this in spite of where the acid wants to take him—bleak eyelid visions of melty-faced Julianas and Mauxs and Portland Pattys and Maggies. The cracked case of the MC5 CD, opened, and the back cover, yellow with red lettering, the song title “Future/Now” hovers over the rest of the text. Two words, separated with a slash, and the meaning is obvious and requires no thought, no brooding, no reflecting. No more of that. He has to go. Just go. Leave. Where? Anywhere. Future/Now. Future/Now. Future/Now. Future/Now. It is time to make this potential energy kinetic.

  If only Saturn’s Rings would leave. As the hours pass, Ronnie finds fewer and fewer vantage points in which to view his room, fewer objects he can look at without feeling profoundly disturbed by what he’s seeing. The lamp on the desk. The Lara Flynn Boyle poster on the wall. The cracked plaster. The guitar. The typewriter. All the little pieces of paper taped to the Haiku Wall. He crawls to his mattresses, falls back, eyes looking upward at the tiny square of window above the horrifyingly jade green curtains; as the sky changes from black to purple to blue, Ronnie can finally close his eyes without seeing ex-girlfriends and all the corny trails and throbs that go with your standard trip, can go back to imagining the beach at Christmas, walking along the shore, feeling quadrophenic, always and forever.11