Senseless pain.
Unexpected pain.
Live for the pain and you come out on top, every time.
“You think letting someone kill you is coming out on top?”
“If you enjoy it, yeah.”
“I don’t know.”
“When I was your age I didn’t know, either.”
“How old are you, anyways?”
“Seventeen.”
34
Back upstairs Slade says worst things first he doesn’t want us Hollyweirds going back to Oki Dog tonight and telling our friends—
His voice goes all faggy.
“Who couldn’t be here—”
“OC rules!” somebody yells, and the posse boys in front take it up, “OC rules, OC rules,” chanting and stomping.
“Don’t be saying I crowned myself the big-shit king of the punk rockers, telling my little Easter story before that last song.”
He laughs.
“That Doors song.”
Boos.
Slade laughs harder.
“Well, that just makes you jack-off fuckboys, then, doesn’t it?”
Nos, yeses, then from the back of the back, slurred and drunk-sounding, “Kill the hippies!”
“You got pretty worked up over that hippie shit, didn’t you?”
“Fuck you!” the drunk yells back. “Light my fuckin fire!”
Now everybody’s laughing.
“I fuckin will. But listen up, you fucks. I’m looking out seeing new faces, old faces, I’m seeing punks, I’m seeing poseurs. But it ain’t where you’re from or how long you’ve been in the scene or how many longhairs you beat down that makes you one or the other. It’s something else. Some of you got it. Some of you don’t. Some of us. We’re all in this one together. Because the biggest fuckin punk in this room ain’t up on this stage, he’s right down there on the floor.”
It stays the noisiness dry at first, nobody knows what he’s up to, first the Doors, now what, it’s unexpected.
“And I want him to come up here.”
Like the Masque used to be. And that makes it cool. To me. Whatever happens.
“So give him a fuckin hand.”
I have no clue who he means, I just start clapping with the mass of everyone.
“A physical hand, fuckholes. Pass him up. Hand over hand.”
And I’m airborne again.
The same guys who caught me. Dumb beach jocks I autopilot-hate. Except I don’t hate their hands, not on me. I don’t hate their strong smooth arms, not around me. I don’t even know if I care they might hate me if they knew I liked it.
Just what I fuckin need, more shit I don’t know.
Like what the fuck is up with Slade. I’ve talked to him like twice in my life. And now.
Fuck.
Beside him on the lip of the stage he puts his arm around me and he’s this.
Dude.
This really big dude.
He steps me back to the vocal mic stand and goes off on me hanging with Darby and being in diapers practically at the Masque and living the street life 24/7 and he’s telling the Cuckoo’s Nest story with everybody cheering and clapping and I’m just standing here thinking of the ooze through the front of my jeans.
“Let Rockets drive!” Siouxsie yells. “Let Rockets drive!”
“I fuckin plan on it! One more minute and the stage is his. The band is his.”
They jam for like fifteen seconds, drums, bass, fuzzed-out guitar.
“If he fuckin wants it.”
This isn’t.
It isn’t just Siouxsie anymore.
Really happening.
It’s everybody.
“Let Rockets drive!”
He asks me if I’m down for it.
I haven’t said a word to him yet.
“A song?”
Not even Hey.
“One fuckin song.”
But he’s asking me questions.
“Any fuckin song.”
I have to answer back.
“No Doors songs!” somebody yells.
And I just think, No shit, it’s punk rock after all, and finally that slaps me upside to my senses out of slackjaw shock and tongue-tied wow and magic carpet flyby flutter, dee eye why or die, no experience, no talent, no practice, no ten-gallon slide rule for a thinking cap, just do the math, no excuse, sub and total. So I know what to say all right, I’ve said it before, only tonight it’s to Slade not Darby, and into a mic.
“Fuck yeah, I’ll drive this thing.”
The crowd goes off like I’m Johnny saying yes to the hot place for one more chance to jam with Sid. While Slade huggy-bears me tight and close, one long arm round my shoulders and half across my chest.
“I said one minute, fuckholes, now look around. Look at all the pretty people. Our scene is fuckin exploding! Out at Edison High in HB there’s three hundred punks. Fuck that stupid Ramones movie. Fuck Rock ’n’ Roll High School. We got a real one!”
So why, he wonders, do so many Hollyweirds say the scene is dying? Not me, he’s seen me at South Bay shows and OC shows since day one year one, and sees me still, everywhere, while the punk-is-dead coffin carriers are missing in action.
“Why do they blame closed clubs on you? You’re the fuckin audience! The bands are to blame! Hollywood bands! They’re the ones who got the lockouts!”
He says the first wave bands didn’t police. He says they didn’t care. But club owners do care, and they’ve got final say. You scratch mine, I’ll scratch yours. You bite mine, I’ll bite back. And he’s right about the Germs at least, oh most defiantly. Darby didn’t care at all.
“We don’t run our scene, nobody does. But you better believe we police it. You bust as much as a lightbulb belonging to these nuns here, you make them feel the slightest bit threatened in any way, shape, or form, you answer to me. And okay, so one of my best buds in the fuckin world is Pat Brown—”
Mike plays the chords to the chorus of the song, and the posse boys chant his name.
“I visit him in prison every chance I get. But he’s jack-off fuckboy, ain’t he? Hell, yeah, run the cop over, hell, yeah, back up to make sure the job’s done, but don’t get caught! And don’t fuckin do it in the Cuckoo’s Nest parking lot!”
“Kill more cops! Kill more cops! Kill more cops!”
“People say we’re violent! They’re right! Clockwork fuckin Orange County rules!”
His big hand drops to mine on top of my droogie stick and it’s like gentle and private almost, in front of all these people and after what he just said, he doesn’t just grab it, he doesn’t even touch the stick till his fingers twine through mine and we’re actually standing here holding hands for a couple seconds, it’s me who makes the move to break it off, not Slade. And he hoists the stick high and the cheering’s louder still, locomotive in a tunnel loud, whose tunnel, my tunnel, stranger fuckin things, I guess, stranger fuckin things.
“Before we were punks we were SoCal droogs! I’ve got auto theft on my record, burglary, robbery, I’m a goon! I’m a fuckhole!”
He hands me back the stick, all gentle again, it’s so opposite, it’s almost like a spell he’s casting, on me, on everybody.
“Look at me! I’m eighteen years old. Six foot two. Two hundred pounds. And I’m skinheaded! And I’m pissed off!”
Boot stomping rumbles and vibrates the stage. The air’s like electric. Like it almost was with Darby sometimes, would have been, if it wasn’t for the drugs.
“But I don’t believe in punk-on-punk violence! I believe in punk-on-everybody-else violence!”
Now it’s not just the stage vibrating, it’s the floor, the walls, the room, the building.
“Punk used to be for people who didn’t have friends! Now it’s people with friends!”
It’s that earthquake thing you hear and feel both at once, the Richter wail.
“And friends respect each other! No matter where you’re from, no matter if your dad’s a doctor like mine or—”
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Off-mic he asks what my dad does. I run it down and he’s all, Perfect, he squeezes my shoulder and keeps his hand there.
“Or a junkie like Rockets’s old man!”
Somebody yells, “Because they’re both druggies!”
“Because we’re all born fucked up! In our own different ways! Fuck these art fags saying I can’t be a punk with a bedroom at home and a pool in the yard, I can’t help where I came from, punk’s not who you’re born to be, it’s who you choose to be. Look at fuckin Rockets! He fuckin knows! He was fuckin there! And he’s fuckin here!”
He hands me the mic.
“Let Rockets drive!”
Darby said.
They called us an art school band because that’s all they knew how to say. Go back to art school, ha ha ha. They thought we were faking, that we really could play, that we were just acting like that. I was into Iggy a little, but that wasn’t why I got cut up. I didn’t know what else to do on stage. So you know, you do anything to get people to watch.
I can’t play, I can’t sing, I don’t know what to do.
Just like Darby, year one day one.
I turn to Slade and say, “ ‘Forming’?”
The first song, the simplest, and plus plus besides.
Darby said.
You’ll only know them when you need them.
I thought he meant with Blitzer. But he must have meant with Slade. He must have meant now.
Slade says it again, “Perfect.”
But what the fuck, break a bottle, carve a circle?
Been fuckin done, and I’m so sketch on arteries and shit.
Though Darby was too. Once he came running down the stairs to the stage at the Whisky wearing Converse and jumped right on this glass the first beat of the vocal, on “Manimal.” And he thought he was barely touched, it might take a couple of Band-Aids, then next thing he knew his shoe filled with blood and he sat on the lip of the stage and looked again. And he said “Aw, shit” into the mic and finished the song and went off to Cedars and that was the summer of forty-two stitches.
I tell Slade I need a bottle or something and he’s all, You want some alk?
“For like, you know, a prop. To do something with my hands.”
Rewind-repeat. “Perfect.”
A gun, Slade says. For “Forming.”
I’ve never even touched a gun. I say, “Yeah. Not loaded, though.”
He gets on the PA and says he knows there’s alcohol in the house, he knows there’s tobacco in the house, so how about firearms?
This dark brown voice yells, “It’s East LA! We carry blades!”
Behind the drum kit Todd says, “Here’s a gun for you.”
And next thing you know it’s heavy in my hand.
A staple gun.
Industrial strength, the kind with those chisel-point staples that bite into wood.
The gun, heavy, my hand, sticky, and now.
Yeah.
All at once I know exactly, what and how.
Am I ready?
Hell fuckin na I’m ready.
Chords in, drums in, drop to my knees, sit back on my heels, bass in, beat.
Compass check, belly button, little finger, fixed, chords in, drums in, bass in, beat.
Compass check, six o’clock, ring finger, free. Chords in, drums in, bass in, beat.
Pinch and mark, bass in, beat, mic to lips, bass in, beat.
Hmm hmm down.
(Raise the gun.)
Mmm mmm up.
(Find the mark.)
Hmm hmm that.
(Hold it flat.)
Mmm mmm gun.
(Clench and squeeze.)
Hmm hmm trigger.
(We must bleed.)
Mmm mmm bigger.
And I just rock around the clock, stapling my stomach and mumbling the verse words like Darby, except for the rhymes, they’re all anyone knows anyways, and besides I’ve got my hands full, plotting the circle, stapling to the beat.
Five o’clock, staple on.
Infiltration.
Staple at seven on.
Concentration.
Second time through the chorus I staple at nine and the gun head slips on my too-slack skin and it goes in sideways so there’s mass more blood and if it wasn’t for the wasn’t-fors I won’t lie, eight more repeats would stay me shy.
If it wasn’t for the watchers.
If it wasn’t for Slade.
If it wasn’t for my bed that no one else made.
Because Darby never cut himself all through a song, it’s the waiting for the next and it’s waiting too long, at least no one notices my singing but me, my shaking hand though, they all must see.
Chords in, drums in, bass in, beat.
Four o’clock staple on.
Saturation.
Staple at eight on.
Flagellation.
They sing this chorus for me, trigger on three, more veins to bleed, that’s what it must be.
And that’s the idea, at least I guess, not just any circle but a vicious one yes, for Slade, for Darby, for the stomping feet, chords in, drums in, bass in, beat.
Two o’clock staple on.
Alteration.
Staple at ten on.
Observation.
Trickle, tickle, twelve on trigger, feeling all this feeling bigger, feeling all this Siouxsie’s right, dizzy, dizzier, past midnight, try to stand, on my feet, clotting chords, beat-down beat.
Drums in, pain.
Bass in, pleasure.
Knowing more about Darby than ever.
One o’clock staple on.
Inclination.
Staple at eleven on.
Deprivation.
No more staples, one more breath, two arms behind me, three words left. He pulls me up standing and together we, together lean, together sway, my knees buckle, my blood runs, together we sing them, We are sons.
35
Afterwards we.
I mean afterwards Slade.
It’s like the me of we is money spent I never had, how trendy is that, maybe I’m losing my punk rock religion, maybe I’m turning Reagan Republican. And isn’t it him in that football flick on Darby’s desert island list, where the dude comes to with both legs chopped and he’s all, Where’s the rest of me?
Because that’s how I feel with the music over. It’s not a body-part thing obviously but still like there’s less of me than I remember, less of me and more of Slade, like this is the stage, step aside.
Only not at the Vex. More like that planet aquarium in Griffith Park and we’re moons not suns and mine’s the side you never see, the sideout side that turns turns turns but only away, cold as Mickey’s deep-freeze daddy, double dip dark as a repo man’s heart. While Slade’s so sunny side up and Luna Park bright you need your shades to let’s pretend it’s really night.
So anyways, afterwards, Slade.
To stand-up cheers that last for years raises Rocky-like my hands above my head and down down down his sweat drips drop to sing their sting to the sultan of.
Swingline.
Then he says to me and me alone, off-mic, secret, “Perfect.”
I just shake my head. Because you can’t let anything be perfect, it’s worse bad luck than walking under a ladder with a black cat on your shoulder and a broken mirror in your hand on Friday the thirteenth in a year that ends in 666. Like at the group home on Vermont we listened to a tape of some Indian ceremony out in the butt-ass back of beyond, this medicine man talking up these sacred pictures they make out of different-colored sand to keep the local demons in line, and to do the job every picture has to be posi-fucking-lutely P-word down to the very last grain in the very last place, I mean they’re not using sandbox shovels on these things, they’re using tweezers.
So it takes like three weeks and enough braves in feathers and G-strings to go headdress-to-headdress with a chorus line at Circus Circus to get the pictures right. But the split-Chiquita second they’re rocking Russian on the far side of t
he Finnish line they bark out a double-quick “Hail Hiawatha” and sweep them all to Mr.-Smith-goes-to-thithereens. Because when it comes to competition in the perfect racket the Indian God’s as jealous as the testy old Christian one, get him riled child and hell comes to whose hogan, don’t bet on Ben’s, bet on boatloads of white folks with muskets and smallpox.
So they’ve been schooled, and I mean hard as Big John Holmes in Homo on the Range, they’re really strict about it. No point-and-shoots of the finished sand paintings, period. And when the squaws weave tapestries with the same designs they mess them up on purpose in some small way, a wrong stitch here, a missed stitch there, so when God’s daily planet planner calls for a ride on his rival-check high horse He scopes it out and just thinks, Those dumb Indians, they’ll never get it right.
Not that I had to take like infirmative action to stay “Forming” on the dry side of perfect. Just me being up here instead of Darby was the life-during-wartime guarantee on that. Though the mass of spitboys tonight never even once saw Darby, not in person, probably most of them weren’t even punks six months ago, he’s just someone in a movie.
But now they’ve seen me.
All these stomping, spitting rebels, with applause.
“Let Rockets drive!”
I mean I didn’t plan it or anything but now I’m known down there, just like that, Idaho’s this big inflatable question mark but curse comes to cursed I got OC wired, what better place to kick it with my droogie stick than Clockwork Orange County. And true it’s Slade’s posse, keeping it going, enforcing the minimum rage law. And true it’s thanks to Slade in the first place, the being seen part. But it’s the remembering that matters. And they’ll remember me all right. And why they’ll remember was my idea, Napoleon Solo, mine all mine.
So why then Slade, near and now? Tall behind me, hands in my armpits, holding me up, walking me backwards, why is he the we of me?
And where is the fuckin rest of me, anyways?
I feel so light. Not light-headed. Not drugged at all. Not a trace. The staples must have canceled out the drugs.
Like acupuncture.
Darby said.
It’s the only way to kick, acupuncture, that’s the punk way.
My fingers move over my belly and up my chest, blood-sticky, spit-sticky, sperm-sticky, Ouija-board fingers, moving, on their own, there’s this lightness, like I’ve lost something, besides blood I mean.
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