We rode a very cheap, though still expensive plane to New York. We were fed only crackers. The lights in the cabin flickered on and off. A very drunk man with a mullet swerved up and down the middle aisle, illegally smoking a cigarette at which the crew could only laugh. The plane was late, both coming and going. They wasted six hours of my life, in total. And being that my life is worth a good healthy $10 an hour. I could call SPIRIT airlines and argue for compensation. But, after this weekend, I feel too good to hold a grudge.
, who opened the show in the upstairs loft/DJ booth, drowning in distorted vocals and swimming in a soupy, uneven mix. We did so much to try to save him; turned so many knobs. He is my favorite artist and it hurt watching him brave the poor conditions. I suspected that New York would not realize his genius. "Some people like it when it sounds fucked up like that." He reminded me afterwards. He's a fan of abrasive music and was satisfied with the way things turned out for him. But MY SISTER and I weren't willing to suffer those same choppy waves. We hadn't planned to blow $300 to play in a 10' by 10' loft with MY SISTER and I sharing a single microphone, taped with black electrical tape to a broken mic stand that only came up to our bellies.
"You should let us play downstairs." I told Brad, from the band HOME, who headlined the show. He's a New Yorker who lived in Tampa several years ago. He is a cute, patient, diplomatic, white indie rock boy with a mop of brown hair. He wanted to tell me 'no' but hoped I would hear in his 'ok,' that he really meant 'no,' so he wouldn't have to actually say 'no.' Instead he said: "Well, we're right on schedule…"
"You should let us play downstairs." I reiterated. "It sounds like shit up in the loft."
"Well, if you guys can play a little shorter set…than…"
"Yeah, yeah, sure sure."
I strong-armed a saint; compounding the way that that group of people already view me. But downstairs, on the proper stage, just my sister and I and electronic bleeps and beats in the big room; it was great. Worth it. The New Yorkers were much warmer than Tampa. The Floridians in attendance, of which there were many, told me they had a hunch the New Yorkers would get it. After seven songs, Brad told us to be done. He espoused the benefits of a set short and sweet, and we obeyed, and I appreciated his concession and felt guilty for being pushy. The very small audience yelled for us to play more and even if they were just drunk, it still felt very good for a moment.
I left the stage and climbed the stairs into the dark loft with it's DJ's and crammed bodies. The dirty, textured hallway walls wrapped around the stairs in a tunnel: an official New York hallway, the way I always pictured. At the top, I looked back down the steep stairs into the bright eyes of MY EX-GIRLFRIEND who smiled at me, but blankly, as if blind. Behind her came two other women; a sexy black girl and a fat, cross-eyed white girl with a short black bob. They scaled the wall of stairs slowly, up to me, and she said to them: "This is my EX BOYFRIEND."
"Nice way to introduce us." The black girl said to her while shaking my hand. I hugged my EX and there was a clear plastic force field between us. She patted the back of my sweat-wet shirt as if 'pat' were the root word of 'pat-ronize'. And I let her go. And I wasn't bothered. I had earlier shook hands with her boyfriend who had said, sincerely and sweetly, if a little warned: "It's nice to meet you." We'd met before though, in St. Petersburg; and I suspected he was trying to express something by not remembering that we'd met. Regardless, the sweetness in his voice made it easier: it's nice to think that someone is being kind with her. She needs a delicacy I cannot muster.
I followed the back of her head up the last few steps and into the loft. She veered right and I, left; straight into my friend and pen pal, Todd: a New Yorker I rarely see, who gives me worthwhile advice about writing and women, and who earlier that night on the phone, had warned that he might not be able to attend our show. It was good to see him. Todd and I walked back downstairs and out the door where I introduced him to my sister and the three of us walked a half a block away to buy three, big, 99-cent beers. While we stood in line at the counter, MY SISTER chased the store's cat (all stores in New York have a cat: I very much support that practice). When we were ready to leave, we couldn't find her. She had chased the cat outside and been absorbed back into the social mass of the show. Without her beer. Todd and I walked back and sat on the front stoop of the Pirate Radio station and drank, harmoniously conversing in the perfect New York fall. Darkly clothed beautiful women and indie rock boys with much better hair than me, straggled outside waiting for Spacious International to play. My friend, Tim (who now works at The Wall Street Journal) and two of his workmates, came by and stood in front of us, their crotches at eye level as we drank our big beers.
They all knew each other; Todd and the Wall Street Journal boys (who looked as much like 'the guys in the band,' as any of the other young New Yorkers standing outside the Pirate Radio Station). I talked with them about writing and women and our jobs and music I fit in. I thought, 'This is what it'd be like if I lived here.' Comfortable and even slightly wonderful. But at the same time I felt a very faint loss of identity, being so used to Tampa, where I seem unique and bright. In New York I would fit in, but it would be for better and worse.
We sat on the stoop talking and my MY EX strolled past and I was invisible. I saw the thin string of her pale yellow panties hooking the bone of her hip above the belt line of her jeans and it didn't even stir me. That lack of stir had been my best case scenario in the ponderous week before in which I wondered how hard it would be to see her. I'd come around the corner to find her in kind positions with her sweet other, and it felt like a mere pebble in my shoe, when I had projected shackles. And the pebble was surprisingly round and smooth; hardly uncomfortable at all. I still walked briskly, despite said pebble. And in a very understated way, I realized I finally had my life back.
Todd and I went upstairs. A gold, bumblebee piniata hung from the ceiling. The room was blackout, but the bumblebee was slightly illuminated from the bottom by THE JOINT (see illustration below).
THE JOINT was (and I have witnesses from both Tampa and New York to back me up) AS LONG AND WIDE AS MY FOREARM. The giant rolling paper used for THE JOINT, was culled from an old Cheech and Chong record, and the hundreds of dollars worth of dirt weed inside the joke paper was bought from a weed delivery service that brought it to the building on a bicycle. The giant orange cherry of the joint was as big and round of the mouth of a pint glass. As the concert carried on downstairs, dozens of people crowded into the upstairs dark loft with the sweat and the loud DJs and THE JOINT, which was slightly bent and had to be tipped upward so that the smoker looked to be blowing into a curved trumpet; a cowhorn calling the tribe to its purpose. Twenty young people encircled THE JOINT waiting to play a part in the ritual as the music blasted. Someone remarked that it, "Looks like a scene out of National Geographic."
The cherry balanced precariously atop THE JOINT, shedding dime-bags-worth of marijuana onto the ground. As others smoked, I held my hand under THE JOINT, catching weed in my hand, which I tried, through breathless laughter, to sprinkle back on top of the cherry. The thick white smoke cut the small dark room and the boom of the band downstairs came up through our feet, over the upstairs DJ, as we all laughed at the absurdity of the giant, cartoon JOINT, praising Jah with the cherry aimed skward, dancing atop the loose weed covering the cement floor.
Next to me in THE JOINT circle, was a heroin-thin woman with short, stylish hair. She looked sedated and unhealthily skinny and absolutely perfect. When her friend, who stood next to her, got under the joint and sucked, the cherry tipped over and fell to the floor like an ice cream cone. As the $30 of cheap, Mexican pot fell to the floor in a splash of sparks, it illuminated the perfect heroin girl's face and her inviting, swollen mouth, and she made the best 'sad face' I have ever fallen for.
"You looked genuinely sad there for a second," I told her in her ear. "That was very sincere."
She smiled. "I practice."
Todd was laughing so hard at the joint, that he never partook. "We have a joint like that at every Tampa party." I told him as we walked back down to the main stage. I tumbled down the last few stairs out into the night and noticed MY EX, sans boyfriend, hanging outside with the cross-eyed girl. Todd went inside and I.came behind MY EX and kneed her lightly in the ass, expecting to talk to her, face-to-face, for the first time in almost two years. "Hi." She said, still smiling blank like a politician.
"What's up?" I asked. A perfectly logical question when one doesn't know where to begin.
She introduced her friend to me for the second time. "This is my friend, CROSS-EYED GIRL." As I turned to say hello to CROSS EYED GIRL, I noticed an X-acto knife (see illustration) in her hand, extended, razor out toward my face.
"Hey, EEEEEEEAAASY." I put my weaponless hands in the air and turned around and began walking briskly in a straight line to somewhere. Before I walked off, I may have said, 'fuck that shit, that's fucked up,' but I don't remember. I walked shaken and startled, down the block, wondering if the girl had been kidding, or if she had felt the need to protect her friend, MY EX, from me, with a knife. Walk walk walk. But the air blew hard in my face and I felt more alert with every cold step. Walk walk walk. Did I just have a knife pulled on me? Walk walk walk, no stopping. I can't believe that just happened? Did that just happen? Walk walk. My momentum took me around the block opposite the party, by myself with Caterpillar tractors and a chunk of New York construction and the cold, which I'm not used to, but enjoy, very much. I rounded the corner to the left, back to the Pirate Radio Station, my blood was back down and MY EX and her ugly, knife-wielding friend had gone inside and I walked in to watch Dumbwaiters.
|
|
