What I liked most about Gustafson is that he wasn’t even all that much to look at. I mean, if I were to describe him to you, you’d probably imagine a blond-haired Danny DeVito. He was a little fireplug of a guy, thick limbed. Thick cock too. The girth was almost pathological. But there was just something about him. He always knew what to say, and he knew when, and when not, to touch me.
Stan Alene—bass, Yahtzee Chainsaw Massacre
Gus was the glue that held together the scene. A roadie. He knew everyone. All the hot spots. He could find a vegan restaurant in Wilkes-Barre, PA, at three in the morning. I was impressed that he knew to pronounce the name of the town: “wilkes berry.”
You know, usually it’s journalists. They create a movement out of nothing. They get the blogosphere going. Then ten years later they write a book about how great everything was. Isn’t this for one of those books? One of those parasitical books?
Gus was key to it all. He got us on the road. He was more than just a roadie; he was a tour manager, a muse. He did this thing with his teeth and gums. It was like human beatboxing, but it didn’t sound human. Inhuman beatboxing.
[makes noises with his mouth]
Yeah, I can’t do it. He could do beats and bass drops with his mouth, at the same time, and chord changes.
He could do a lot of things.
Bret Rothschild—vocalist, rhythm guitar; The Inbred Rotshchilds
What I especially loved about Gustafson was his ability to engulf my member entirely, and to tickle my scrotum with the tip of his tongue. It was like a party trick. It was really something else. I would have had him along even if he couldn’t tune a guitar. He was also very good at that.
Tammy Fuentes—Tuningfork.com reporter
One time I was at DeepFend One, backstage, and I saw this huge flat ass. Like two giant beans. Pants down, and they were just flapping away while Gustafson boned the bass player of some forgotten band up the ass. Yeah, bass players are girls, that’s the cliché. I think this one was of trans* experience. Presented as a dude, scraggly beard and all. A dude, I should say. Transdudes are dudes.
Bisexuality is rock’s oldest play. Of course, when you think of Bowie and Jagger in bed together, it’s cool. Two androgynes—you can’t help but picture them hairless with flat plastic Ken Doll crotches. They didn’t have sex, they just linked their chakras somehow. But a fat little dude and whoever it was being ass-fucked and grunting like a pig, you don’t see that sort of thing. It was real. Authentic.
Charlene Downer—keyboards, Superconducting Nanomachine and Trouble in the Treble Clef
He wasn’t around for my time in TTC. But later, when I joined Superconducting Nanomachine as the live mixer and drum programmer, Gustafson was our roadie. He had breasts. By which I mean he had protruding, fatty pectorals and would occasionally lactate. He could lactate on command. You’ve likely heard the Tumblr rumors, but I’d never seen Sasha do it. She did have a lot of throat problems when I was touring with TTC though, and she would complain, by texting me from the other end of the tour bus, that she never used to go hoarse when Gus was the roadie. Make of that what you will.
Cade Ellis—guitar, Flatlander
Was there anyone this guy wouldn’t fuck? I never used him, never needed him. I’m a laptop and three-legged stool guy. But I’d seen him around, on the festival circuit, or when I was supporting a larger band.
Not better, larger. As in every member playing a single instrument. Those bands. Lots of hangers-on in those bands.
As far as I can tell the answer to my own question is, “No, with a but.”
It was like something straight out of Internet pornography. A chubby man on a couch, a too-thin too-young girl straddling him and riding him reverse-cowgirl style. Her legs were splayed open, her sex bald save for some stubble. There was no camera about, but she was on display as if the scene were being recorded. She didn’t mind at all when I walked in; her O-face betrayed no discomfort.
She squatted and lifted herself off his member. He wasn’t anything special. His balls weren’t shaved. He was all mossy and blond. The girl, who wasn’t in any of the bands, but who I think worked the festival in some capacity, was fairly dexterous. She stood on the couch, her ass to Gustafson’s face, and moved one leg behind her, then spun around and replanted herself on his cock. She rode him for maybe three seconds, then something happened. She looked into his eyes and shivered, and then he burst into tears.
Gustasfon did. He burst into tears, she did not. She had a strange look on her face, an alienated smile if that makes sense. I got the sense that she was enjoying herself immensely, just like a girl in pornography, and then she saw something in his eyes that upset her, but just a little bit. Who knows? His mouth was open; perhaps she spotted a dental cavity on one of his pre-molars and that unnerved her for a moment. But whatever it was, he was more upset by it than she. He burst into tears, planted his palms onto her small breasts, and pushed her right to the floor. She shouted at him, and cursed, and when she picked herself up tried to kick him in the testicles. She missed and hit his thigh. He howled even louder, like a wolf, or like a man whose last friend had just died and last dollar had just been burnt to cinders. Then she finally saw me, snatched up the puddle of her clothes, and stormed off as she hopped into her shorts.
If there was nobody Gustafson wouldn’t fuck on the road, there’s at least one woman he wouldn’t ejaculate into.
I grabbed a bagel and a cup of yogurt from the green room fridge and took it outside. I couldn’t bear the thought of eating with that fat little freak on the couch, bawling his eyes out.
Fuentes
Chordgaze was the first real rock, as opposed to hip-hop, scene to come out of Queens in a long time. All the musicians were pushed out the Village in the 1990s, and out of Brooklyn in the 2000s. At the same time, you had these kids from Long Island heading west, into the city, to play gigs. They met in the middle—the Brooklynites with their lineage of shoegaze and house and EDM, and the Island kids with their guitars and metal and prog-rock influences.
Gustafson wasn’t from Long Island, but he was of Long Island. He’d gone to school someplace—either Hofstra or Stony Brook—and like a lot of guys in the 2010s, he couldn’t find work after graduating. Originally he was from Minnesota, which makes sense given the name and given his ability to navigate an intensely local music scene.
So he was one of those guys who hung stayed in town after school, taking advantage of relatively cheap rents and cultural opportunities. He was a smart guy, with a strong back, and he knew the schools—the college radio stations, the on-campus performance venues, the various scenesters and tummlers. So he brought the Long Island kids, a bunch of half-Italian half-Jewish kids with Zeppelin tattoos, into the city. And they met the fancy trustafarian Brooklynites whose parents weren’t quite so generous as others of their cohort, and it was love at first sight.
Jamaica has both a Long Island Rail Road hub and plenty of subways. The train to JFK runs out of there as well. And it had some fairly cheap warehouse spaces, for both practice and performance. The perfect storm for a new sound, and for gentrification.
Gus got paid in ass and pussy, I think that much is clear. His motivation, I have no idea what it was.
Kambayashi
I am pretty eager to please, I suppose. A lot of guys, before I was in the band, would use PUA tactics—“Sasha? Like Sasha Grey? I bet you can’t suck a dick like … ” And those were the guys who decided against trying some racist joke instead.
Of course it never worked! That’s why PUA guys have all the time in the world to blog about seduction strategies. If they had girlfriends, they’d be too busy. Hell, if they ever got laid, they’d be too busy.
But with Gustafson, I could, you know, do it. Total deep throat. He said he liked turning my mouth into a face-pussy. Even saying it now, it sounds gross. I shudder to see it in print. But he was all encouragement; it was like he was a coach and I was trying to run a marathon. That was one of his tr
icks. He was always smiling, always nodding and stroking my cheek when we were together, and I fell for it.
Maybe trick [makes air quotes] is the wrong word. He was authentic. And I enjoyed being the focus of his attention. There was a real trick though. When sucking him off, or really, when my head was hanging off the side of a bed or couch and he was fucking my mouth, I’d slip my thumbs between my pointer and middle fingers and squeeze. Sometimes just the left, sometimes both. Gustafson told me it was an old dentist’s trick, for patients with very sensitive gag reflexes. It really worked. I don’t bother going that deep with anyone else, so I don’t use it anymore, but if anyone out there finds it helpful, enjoy!
Rothschild
I didn’t, but I would have. I actually only had one in-depth conversation with Gustafson. Maybe I wasn’t his type. I don’t think he had any real friends. Tons of acquaintances, many many partners, but all his energy was put into the scene. Chordgaze was his friend.
He had a charisma about him. If he reminded me of anyone, it was Stephen King. I know that sounds strange, but King is very good at putting a hand on your shoulder, as a reader, mind you, and whispering in your ear, “This is going to be very frightening, but also exciting.”
Ben Davidson—vocalist, keys; Occupy Davidson
Gus used to hum and scat as he worked. I remember that my drummer once said to Gus, “Wow, you must really be into Tetris.” [laughs] It wasn’t the Tetris song, of course, but I did know it. I owned it, on vinyl, thanks to my grandfather’s record collection. It was a dance record. It wasn’t very old, it wasn’t a 78 or anything, but old enough and obscure. I sold it and bought a Wandre guitar with the proceeds, so that should tell you how obscure the record was.
The song Gustafson kept scatting to himself is called “The Return of Mister Hotsy-Totsy.” It was by a quintet, the Muller Fast Five. It was an integrated band, which I believe was unusual at the time. The biggest stars could get away with having a guest black player, or white player, on a record, and naturally the guys all jammed together after hours, but this was a touring ensemble. Benny Goodman had an integrated swing band in the 1930s, but he was a huge name, and swing music was very popular. Muller wasn’t white, he was black, and the white players followed his lead. It was his band, and they did weird little dance numbers, not in the swing idiom. I guess they did sound a little like eight-bit videogame music. So they went nowhere. As far as I can tell, and I looked, “The Return of Mister Hotsy-Totsy” is the only record they ever put out, and except for Gustafson I’ve never met anyone who knew the song.
Downer
No, he didn’t fuck me. I didn’t fuck him. We fucked. A few times. He used to say, “We’re in this together, baby, like the seventies.” He was just a funny guy. I guess he did proposition everyone he met, and he met a lot of people when chordgaze was happening, of course.
Most roadies get laid a lot on the road. Or they get free blowjobs at least. If some kid wants backstage to fuck the lead singer or to do a line of coke with a reallive rock star, they have to suck some sweaty roadie dick first. Roadies are like trolls under the bridge, collecting tolls from the billy goats gruff.
Gus was different. He just fucked the bands. Or we all fucked together, and he was a conduit. Scenes can be incestuous, literally. [laughs] It’s easy to end up in bed with your bandmates, or your scenemates. It tends to ruin bands and ruin scenes too. We’re all potential Yoko Onos, in our way. So Gus was a way to get close to other people without actually having sex with them. It was like we passed him around, while he put each of us on his lap in turn for a few seconds. A little like Santa Claus, I suppose.
Fuentes
Supposedly, he was born in 1968, but he was born overseas and so I’ve not been able to find official birth records. Just like Obama! [laughs]
Alene
No. We did have threesomes together, but our swords never crossed. It wasn’t a homophobic thing; we had all-dude threesomes at least twice. I just didn’t want to fuck him is all. And he didn’t want to fuck me. That’s how he was. He never got turned down, because he somehow knew only to ask people who’d say yes.
I didn’t want to fuck him because I used to have dreams about him a lot. I’d have an anxiety dream, like the one about the math final for the calculus class you forgot you were ever enrolled in, and he’d walk in next to me and let me crib off his test. Or the dream when you’re on a suspension bridge and the cables are snapping, and then a light flares and you look down at a tugboat, and there’s Gus, bidding you to jump. And I jump, and then wake up.
He was comforting in my dreams. Honestly, the dreams were half the reason I quit my day job. I wanted to tour, and I wanted him there with me. I couldn’t imagine inviting him to my apartment for a beer or anything; it’s like inviting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade into your apartment. That’s why I launched the Chordgasm Tour with Team Socket, The Book of Exalted Deeds, and Humdinger. Thirty dates in thirty-two days. It was a total Get in the Van sort of thing. Nineteen people in two vans.
For the first week, Gus drove our van. He could drive eighteen hours straight without blinking. He’d hum that strange song while scrubbing away all the splattered bugs from the windshields during pit stops. A week in, he put himself in the back of the van, nestled himself on top of all the McDonald’s wrappers and plastic water bottles, nudged his hips out of his pants and said that it was someone else’s turn to drive. I don’t know how to drive, so I got to see a lot of Gus, and a lot of Bob and Emily and Ahmed. Emily drove a lot during the day, though she didn’t have very good night vision so she’d take the post-gig shift with Gus in the back. We’d just fuck and fuck, all of us except for whoever was driving. I hadn’t come twice, three times a day, since I was twelve and had just discovered jerking off. My penis ended up chafed. I had specks of blood in my boxers.
The gigs themselves … well. Chordgaze, as a genre, isn’t known for technical virtuosity or live playing, and we couldn’t afford an Amon Tobin-style spectacular video-projection show, or even laser lights. And it’s not like chordgaze had much hold on, you know, the red states. We even went to Alabama, to a Holiday Inn. They had a band night!
But the kids liked us. They liked the Chordgasm tour. One time they surrounded the vans and started rocking them after a gig. They weren’t violent or crazy; they weren’t slamming their fists on the doors and throwing themselves at the windows to get a look in, it was like they were working together to rock a pair of giant cradles. We sat in the van, gently swaying, and kissing. All of us, trading kisses from lips to lips. It was very nice, sweet.
Ellis
I did a summer at the Mercury Lounge last year. Every Wednesday night, from May Day till Labor Day. Chordgaze is already nostalgia—Say, remember the twenty-teens? says the interstitial ad whenever I try to read the Times online—but a gig’s a gig and I live around the corner, so.
Gus came to the show once. Honestly, the August gigs were not well attended. I had a guarantee, so honestly I didn’t care so much, and the Mercury is so tiny and the summers so hot I wouldn’t have shown up if I didn’t need the money to eat.
There were a dozen people there for the gig, and the bartenders. Or maybe that included the bartenders. It’s not like they had much else to do. The ice was melting in people’s glasses between sips. About halfway through the set Gus walks in. He wasn’t untoward or anything, but he did just stand and stare at me. He didn’t sway, he didn’t get a drink, he just watched.
I’m not even sure he was listening. He was just looking at me.
Yeah, he looked the same. He was still big, but hadn’t gotten any fatter. No more gray in his hair than usual. Like I said, the Lounge is a small venue. It had been six years and the guy was still a roadie as far as I’d heard. He’d hooked up with some J-metal bands.
Gus didn’t say a thing to me afterwards, but he did keep standing there as I packed up my gear. It was a bit embarrassing, to have to deal with my own backline, small as it is. I felt as though he had just co
me to judge me, rather than to listen to my music.
No, I don’t think he created, or midwifed, or whatever you want to call it, chordgaze. He was just a guy who was always DTF and who could plug in a few guitars without getting everyone on stage electrocuted. How is that different than any other roadie? Don’t believe for a second that he only had sex with musicians in the scene. I saw otherwise with my own eyes. I didn’t see if he went home with anyone that night. After rolling some cables, I looked up and he was gone.
Davidson
I recorded a version of “The Return of Mister Hotsy-Totsy” and made it a B-side on this retro forty-five I did. We pressed about three hundred copies, and wouldn’t you know, as if by magic, we got a letter from Muller’s granddaughter. Granddaughter and lawyer. The guy was still alive, and somehow, from an old-age home in Oklahoma City, he caught wind of our cover version, and he wanted money. We went through all the usual stuff with a mechanical reproduction license, so we didn’t owe him very much, but apparently there’s no talking to him. Literally, we weren’t allowed to. Kat Muller was in full-on lawyer-beast mode.
Usually, lawyers go away very quickly once they realize that there’s no money in the project. Not this one. She didn’t even care about the money. She wanted to know where I’d heard of the song, if I had a copy of the original—I didn’t anymore as I mentioned earlier—and then she wanted the name and address of the person I sold it to. Which struck me as creepy and unethical. She was desperate enough to start offering me money for the information.
Of course I gave it to her. I mean, I contacted the buyer first, told him the story, and then split the money with him. He was happy to be harassed by her for a few weeks for five thousand bucks, and I was pleased to be rid of her. So all in all “The Return of Mister Hotsy-Totsy” was the most remunerative record Occupy Davidson ever released.
Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction Page 18