I leaned against the wall and thought of Iggy Pop singing to an imagined woman: “Come on. Well, come on. No fun to be alone. No fun to be alone. Hang on, don’t you let me go. No fun to be alone. Said to be alone.” I twirled my phone and looked frequently at the time. I didn’t want to go back inside until the headliners started. It was easier to hide, catch the show, then split, even though I knew it only drew my aimlessness into sharper relief.
Two members of one opening band stumbled outside to smoke. They were drunk, fumbling with a lighter. An empty beer bottle fell from the guitarist’s hand and nearly shattered on the cement. He looked down at it in shock, then up at me, his mouth a huge O. “That was close,” he said snickering.
I debated texting Chris. I wanted to at least tell him the basics, that the bands were stellar, the venue an apartment. I didn’t want to make him feel bad about missing it, but I was so excited I had to tell someone, and I wanted him here.
An airplane passed overhead, its wingtips blinking like some sort of beacon to the lost. I listened to the hum of excited chatter indoors. “Happy birthday” said the words on the board. Happy, happy, happy. After a few more minutes, I slipped my phone in my pocket and went back inside.
A crowd had gathered in the far end of the apartment. The headliners were setting up. I weaved between people to the front. The four members adjusted knobs on amps, plugged in guitar pedals, checked mics with a tap. The lead singer pulled a worn green electric guitar from a case and spun it around twice by its neck, then rapidly spun it back in the opposite direction before draping it across his tattooed chest in one swift movement. A guy next to me to whispered to his friend, “That motherfucker is bad ass and all coked up.” The singer took a long pull from a beer and set the can atop his amp. The audience watched in silence. Smoke from a joint wafted into the rafters.
In a spray of words as rapid as a hummingbird’s heart, the singer spoke into the microphone: “Hey hey, we’re The Terrierists from San Francisco. Thanks for coming out tonight, and thanks to Troy for having us.” He hit a note on his guitar, sending a wave of distortion rumbling through the building, and with the words “One, two, three, four,” the bass and drums kicked in, and the crowd flew into a frenzy.
Bodies jumped up and down. Bobbed side to side. Swung their heads and arms and hair like windmills. Sweaty skin slid against mine, soaking my clothes as the crowd jerked and swayed with the jittery volatility of kelp in a tide. There was no separation between audience and band. When the guitarist screamed, his face hung inches from ours. I stood beside the second vocalist. Her keyboard’s plastic edge poked my leg. As much as everyone tried not to, it was hard not to bump her, let alone to stay upright. Kids kept getting thrown onto the drum set. One knocked over a cymbal. Most fell atop the bass drum, barely laying there a second before another dancer picked them up.
While tearing through a bunch of my favorite songs, the singer hopped in place, spit into the air and dragged the tip of his guitar across the rug while soloing, as if to gather sound from the static. Veins bulged in his neck. He tapped pedals that sent warped echoes through the air, and he and the keyboardist sang harmonies over them. When someone knocked over his microphone, he popped the stand upright with a flick of his shoe and gripped the tip in his teeth to steer it towards him.
Seconds passed between songs. One, two, three, then the next one. One, two, three, then another fast one, all fast ones.
Beer splashed my face. Empties were crushed at my feet. At one point the crowd surged and knocked the keyboardist to the ground. Arms went out and lifted her, and when she righted her mic, she sang her lines right on time.
I kept thinking, This band is going to be huge, completely explosively huge.
Despite all our frantic tossing, one short, chubby punk girl and I kept bumping into each other. She wore a jean jacket and dark pants, red lipstick and blonde bobbed hair. When her beer got bumped from her hand, it soaked my pant leg. She smiled and mouthed “sorry,” and we waved our arms in sync for a moment until the crowd shifted and threw her sidelong. I caught her on her way down and stood her back up.
And then, as quickly as it started, the show ended. “Thank you warehouse,” the singer said. Sweat poured from his chin.
The audience stood still. People wiped their faces. Eyes darted around, filled with energy and anxious for an encore, and when the band started packing up, the crowd dispersed. I stood there and texted Chris: “I’d sleep in twenty gutters to see that again.” He didn’t text back.
As people streamed out the front door, others stood around talking and finishing their beers. I spotted a guy by the merch table, slipping a digital recorder into his pocket. He wore a dark jean jacket, roomy jeans and black Converse All-stars. He looked older; his hair was white. And he, like me, was alone. “Hey,” I said, “is there any chance I could get a copy of that recording?”
“Of course,” he said. I fished a pen from my pocket so I could give him my email address. Neither of us had any paper, so he tore a piece off the brown paper bag that held the many records he’d just bought. “That was amazing,” he said, “wasn’t it?”
“Seriously unreal.” I leaned the paper against the flimsy particleboard wall and scribbled my information. “I’ve seen a lot of shows, and that was no doubt one of the all-time best.” He agreed. I handed him the scrap. “I’m Aaron, by the way.”
“Mark.” We shook hands.
Upon closer inspection, his clothes revealed more about him than he probably would have liked. Where other kids wore tight Levi’s jean jackets, bright flannels, and worn Vans, Mark’s jacket had a “Nightmare Before Christmas” logo above the front pocket. It appeared to be a promotional jacket, something people gave you at a premier maybe, or you mailed away for. His Converse were too clean to be anything but brand new, or maybe he only wore them when he went out. I felt guilty scrutinizing him from his clothes, especially since he’d offered to share his recording for free. But something about his demeanor made me self-conscious and uncomfortable.
He tucked the records under his arm. “Where do you live?”
“Phoenix. I drove out just to see them play.”
“Wow,” he said. “Phoenix. That’s a long drive.” I considered mentioning Tucson but stopped short. He sensed some hesitation and smiled; then he stole the words from my mouth: “But worth it.”
“Worth every second.”
The band had only played for fifty minutes.
“You going to the show at UC Irvine tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “And the third show after that. That’s why I came.”
Mark said, “Where are you staying?” My eyes darted to the side and I paused before answering. When I car-camped in my twenties, I announced it to everyone as if it were a badge of honor.
I looked up at Mark. “At a friend’s in Santa Monica,” I said. He nodded. His expression suggested that he didn’t entirely believe me.
I did have friends in LA. The one in Santa Monica was getting ready to move to San Diego with his wife. The other two—one in the Valley, one near Venice—always insisted I call when I visited. “You always have a bed,” they said, and they meant it. But I was busy ignoring the shifting horizon of middle age, busy chasing the same fading dream, so I didn’t call.
“How about you?” I said. “You live nearby?”
“Redlands,” he said. Even though my eyes registered no judgment, once the words left his mouth, he seemed anxious to take them back. I knew Redlands. It was a landlocked town of shaggy palms and toxic smog some fifty miles east of downtown. “It’s really not so bad,” he said, “maybe fifty or sixty minutes.” He smiled dismissively, as if a fifty mile drive after 1:00 a.m. was no big deal, but I suspected the drive took longer. He had to go back tonight, he explained. He’d left his teenage daughter alone at home, and he had to work in the morning. It was Thursday night.
It wasn’t difficult to understand how he, like me, was trying to disguise the consumptive intensity of his
musical attachments, trying to look like less of a freak and avoid being typecast as the old guy who refused to grow up. And despite the differences in our clothing and the gray of his hair, there was no denying what he was: not only a kindred spirit, but precisely the person I might one day be if I kept living the way I was living.
I still couldn’t tell if that was a bad thing or not.
In the awkward silence he held up a red twelve-inch record. “Have you seen this?” A flying dragon graced the front, its sinuous body drawn in a thin, black line. “It’s a ten minute song. It takes up both sides of the record.”
It hadn’t seen it. It sounded awesome. “If I have any money left by Sunday, I’ll have to get a copy.”
We smiled again, nodded. Looked away. Then I said, “Alright, I’ll see you in Irvine.”
I got in line to use the bathroom and spotted a soiled-looking man pulling empty beer cans from the trash. His skin was leathery and brown. Dark swatches of dirt stained his jeans. With people all around him, he put the cans in a huge, swollen garbage bag and dragged it through the apartment and out the front door. Before I could figure out what I’d just witnessed, I heard “Oh my god!” It was the chubby punk girl.
She threw her arm around me and squealed, “My dancing partner!” I threw my arm around her and leaned in. “You totally caught me when I fell. And you totally shook your shit. You and me—” She pointed her fingers between me and herself “—friends for life. You know.” With that she bumped her big hip into my butt, so I spun her around like a country waltzer and bumped my hip back into hers. She held up her beer and went, “Ha ha ha.” Her breath reeked of booze.
I said, “How much fun was that show?”
She giggled. “Too much. And not enough.” One of the pins on her jean jacket fell off, and when she went to pick it up, her beer spilled on the ground. Her friend appeared in the entryway and waved her over. “I have to go,” she said, and gazed up at me with a disarming earnest. Strands of wet hair stuck to her temples. I felt the overwhelming need to ask her for her phone number, not to try to sleep with her, but to stay in touch and somehow be friends, maybe long distance email-buddies who occasionally met at shows. We’d shared something tonight that seemed too powerful, too personal, for us to just part ways and never see each other again.
Her green drunken eyes swam in their whites. Then she high-fived me and slipped out the door.
Ah, fuck it, I thought. I ducked into the dirty bathroom and suppressed my regrets.
Speeding up I-5 toward Burbank, I lowered all the windows and hung my arm outside. The wind cooled my face. Cars raced beside me in neighboring lanes, more cars than I expected for 2:00 in the morning. We swerved and weaved past each other as the eastern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains opened before us. A carload of teenagers darted by. All I could see were heads silhouetted in the back seat, a cigarette ember glowing inside the cabin. The sight made me wish I had someone here to share this with, but even alone, I was glad I had come. I wondered why I had ever questioned my enthusiasm, all the while knowing that I would question myself again the next time.
Muddy Waters once said that the daily life of a touring musician amounted to one hour of ecstasy and twenty-three hours of misery. Although I could play drums, I didn’t consider myself a musician, but I did understand what he meant.
The next morning I walked through the parking garage toward the hotel lobby. My hair was greasy, my armpits damp. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the concierge clerk stood behind the front desk. The sight of his clean white collared shirt made my heart race a little. Every time I did this, I hoped my technique worked as well as it used to.
The theory was simple: project confidence, look like you belong there. Don’t avoid everyone’s eyes, but don’t try to make eye contact with everyone either. Look neither eager nor guilty. Oblivious was best, so I always looked straight ahead and walked in like I’d been there a thousand times.
The glass doors slid open and I strolled in. The clerk looked up, and I nodded as I passed. From the corner of my eye I quickly assessed the layout: lobby in front, food to my right, bathroom to my left. Without missing a step, I turned left toward the men’s room and stepped to the sink to quickly rinse my oily face. I stared in the mirror for a moment: eyes still red and puffy, ringed in black. I splashed my face with water and patted it dry with paper towel. They had nice paper towels, as thick and soft as cotton. Everything here was nice: faux marble countertops, potted plants beside each sink, the wicker basket of towels. I took another towel and shoved it in my pocket for later, then followed the scent of bacon and eggs down the hall.
A large crowd filled the dining room. Business people mostly, Indian or Pakistani, in their early thirties, all chattering about some ongoing conference. The men wore dark slacks and shiny collared shirts. The women also wore dark slacks and reflective, solid-colored button ups. They carried leather attachés and canvas computer bags, shoveled waffles, toast and sausage into their mouths, and guzzled coffee, lots of coffee.
I sauntered across the cushioned carpet, past a sign warning that breakfast was reserved for guests and that no one else was “allowed past this point,” and I stepped into the small U-shaped room crowded with steam trays and tubs of cereal. Fellow diners swarmed around me as I filled a Styrofoam bowl with oatmeal and sprinkled it with crushed walnuts and cinnamon. On a plate I piled fluffy scrambled eggs, skillet potatoes, and a few strips of bacon, a greasy monument to American abundance and the ongoing feast of our good fortune. When no one was looking, I stuffed five bags of mint tea into my pants pocket, along with four packets of instant oatmeal, and I filled a cup of coffee for later.
I sat at a small window table behind a young woman with a baby in a highchair. The baby smacked its hands on her table. The woman took bites of a muffin then spooned applesauce into her child’s mouth. Its mouth was ringed with food. Muffin littered the floor.
A teenage boy with obtrusive bangs walked by drinking orange juice. He sat down, brushed his bangs from his eyes, then tilted his head so the bangs flopped back in place. When I’d had long hair, I used to do the same thing. Now my head was colonized by the wispy sort of fuzz that ended up all over your bathroom sink rather than blocking your vision.
Maybe it wasn’t parenting that bothered me so much as the mundane. Too much of life was just so earthly. If you broke down the activities that composed our daily existence, it didn’t amount to much: which size garbage bag should I get? What’s the difference between spearmint and wintermint? Did the cashier actually give me my 10 percent discount? Always scrub the counter so food particles don’t stick. I needed something transcendent to counteract the blandness, even if it only lasted a few minutes. Which was the problem: it only lasted a few minutes. Then it was back to, Is fluoride healthier than fluoride-free? Back to this.
A flatscreen TV hung on the wall, playing CNN. The President was in Afghanistan, making a surprise visit to Karzai. Below the screen sat five older men, conducting some sort of meeting. They spoke in low solemn tones, and when they spoke, they often looked at the ceiling, as if there were important bits of information to gather there, or maybe looking for release. One had a yellow legal pad that he never wrote on. He just rubbed his palm across it, slowly moving it side-to-side.
Without warning, adrenalinee surged through me. I didn’t understand why. I’d done this exact thing countless times before. I’d even stolen hotels’ newspapers and read them by their pools. When I was younger I was so cocky that I would spend twenty minutes showering in a gas station bathroom. Paying customers would knock on the door, rattling the doorknob and getting impatient, and I’d wipe the water off the floor, put my toothbrush away and eventually strut out past them, carrying a small towel and toiletries bag, unaffected by their stares. But as I looked at my oatmeal, my heart raced and I thought, At market value, this stuff costs nothing, but if I get caught, it will be the most expensive starch I have ever eaten. If the clerk came over and asked what room I was in, would
I just make up a number? What if I did and he said, “There is no 237 here, sir,” and called the cops? I could bolt. I could get to my truck and onto the freeway before police arrived. But what if he summoned them without first confronting me? What would I say? “Oh, I’m just traveling on a budget, officer. Sorry.” “You know better,” police would say, “you’re old enough to have kids. Act your age.” And I would tell them: “Yes, I am.”
Silverware clanked against plates. The din of adjacent conversations rose above the chatter in my mind. Slowly, I looked up. The businessman conducted their meeting. The teenager flicked his bangs. No one paid me any attention. On TV, the President stepped out of a helicopter and waved, and somewhere near Redlands, Mark was doing whatever it was he did for a living, and likely passing his day thinking about tonight’s show in Irvine. Maybe he was wondering whether I would make it as I’d promised. Maybe he was wondering whether to leave his daughter at home alone again or to bring her along. If I was him, I’d bring my daughter along. He was probably thinking about the distance, too, calculating mileage, the drive time, and plotting the best route to take to avoid peak traffic, all the while comparing the real story to the fake story he would tell to anyone who asked where he lived. I had already done my calculation.
It was seventy-five miles from here to Irvine, a short drive if I went right now, a two hour drive during Friday rush hour traffic, which is what I would contend with because I wasn’t going right now. I was going to walk out that door with my cup of coffee, and after I stored my stolen provisions in the cardboard box in the backseat of my truck, I was going to find a gas station bathroom to shower in, spend a few relaxing hours in a bookstore, maybe go to the beach or find a sunny park bench to lounge on and eat a decadent slice of coconut cream from Los Feliz’s famous House Of Pies, then I would drive those seventy-five miles, traffic, high gas prices, and appearances be damned.
Everything We Don't Know Page 29