Mike Young and Petey shared a boyish ability to awaken quickly, rough house and play with enviable vitality, and within the blinking of an eye to pass back into a coma-like state mid-activity as 2 yr. old children do. Between shouting out of the windows, requesting My Chemical Romance on the stereo (a request that was denied all but once), dressing and undressing an enormous stuffed turtle, and playing games such as I Spy, they snuggled against each other and snored like a pair of puppies, content and smelly after gorging on Doritos and blocks of stolen cheese. Perhaps that analogy only came to mind because a few hours into the trip it was discovered that Mikey had stepped in dog shit; the ever-presence of which, encountered often in unexpected ways, became a running theme for the first week of tour.
"15 minutes to the wall and, oh man, the windows are up and Mike Young's just been brewing in there.... with his shirt off and dog-shitty shoes."
Not that she had any room to talk. She'd proven multiple times that she was well-suited for the traveling life, i.e. she could sleep through anything, anywhere. Band practice and a screaming speaker system that made the walls thud from DC to the Carolinas, she slumbered through beneath her coat; in the midst of a venue on a corner couch, the chaos of 3 band sets and 100 drunken carousing rednecks perturbed not one eyelash. The boys would find and set her belongings around and atop her, building a mound of objects to be collected later and she remained unmoved beneath a heap of personal items, her dreaming the watchdog of cameras and cigarettes.
Or perhaps, the sneaking thieves of the underground were simply afraid of incurring the wrath of Davey, a tag-along merch-hawking bi-sexual french-tattooed, '6 squares with the devil-a-day', philosophizing, erasure poet with a shaved head and red suspenders who could look rather imposing when he chose.
"Bro, is that a skin-head downstairs?"
No, more likely she had simply been lucky. Her stuff had not been worth stealing, etc. Street Smart Cyclists travelled with them at first but managed to have an entire mini-van's worth of equipment jacked in one fell swoop, proving there was little loyalty within the fan-base.
Indeed, it seemed her entire accumulation of experiences could be related by a litany of where and under what circumstances she had found repose. The only place she'd not slept well was in the airport her first night in Baltimore. There she'd been awakened, then befriended, by a security guard who gave her a lighter and then offered to take her home with him...a proposition made tempting only by the frigid decorum of the baggage lounge that seemed to rapidly reacquire the 31 degree temperature of the drizzly world outside with every bustling bum that passed through the automatic doors in search of a taxi. It became her M.O. by way of introduction. I slept in an airport to come on this tour...what the fuck did you do? Even the dilapidated punk house had surpassed the rigid sterility of those waiting chairs in comfort, as there she'd landed a fair piece of couch, a portable heater, and kittens that batted her on the nose adorably. By comparison, poor Fl. Mike, recently relocated to the MD scene, slept on a wooden plank instead of a mattress in a front room lacking all warmth and where he could occasionally hear the threatening whizz of gunshots. Word on the street was that a man had been plugged 8 times in the chest a week before...But the neighborhood was really not so terrible. It was full of wonderful surprises after you adjusted to the sounds, like the opening and closing of closets, made by rats in the ceiling. The morning of the first show, Ray made the awesome discovery of crack on his doorstep..."Did you smoke it?...Hell yeah, I did, son." And there was always the fact that Mikey procured for her free coffee, free pizza, and a Gnter Grass novel from a basement bookstore. Baltimore is a terrific place to not spend the money you don't have and it left upon her a very favorable impression.
"Those white kids down the street? They roll 15 deep and are always drunk."
Mike Young was the reason she'd been invited along and it was difficult to say how much of a complication she caused the rest of his band, Osceola. Admittedly, she smelled better than most of them. It was while taking a cold sponge bath in the restroom of The Spazzitorium that she felt clearly for the first time she was among individuals who did not consider her hygiene habits, forged on the country crossroads of the appalachians and further ingratiated by a mother who pissed in coffee cups and parking lots on long car rides, lacking in any feminine refinement.
"We need to find ourselves a RitaAide...why? So we jack some shit."
Oh, Mikey...she'd met him years ago in Ft. Lauderdale and he'd been her official introduction to the hard-core scene; primarily by offering up her house to traveling bands. They switched off the bitch middle-seat between the three of them while Chris and Eric took turns driving. So long as they let her read her books, and Mikey had been kind enough to palm her a collection of Dostoevsky himself, she could handle being in the back seat with him and Pete, who mainly waxed lyrical on old metal bands and complained constantly of not finding any decent southern ass. It was a failure on his part as the show in NC hadn't started till 11 and provided ample stumbling drunk opportunity by 11:15. Those bleary-eyed cow-pokes, Eric confessed, had all been rather stupid and frightening and not one had given a damn about the music; though someone did throw up in the corner, a laudable display of appreciation. What had they expected, anyway, when they pulled into that deserted little town hours ahead of necessity? Chris had made it clear from the beginning that he'd blow off any show insufficiently attended in favor of drinking, and maybe he'd had the right idea. She wouldn't know, having dozed through most of it. That was the night the show manager had pulled half a dozen mattresses down from the loft and allowed them to arrange themselves about the stage and bar floor.
"Now that bean bag's the best bed in the house, just don't flip it over...somebody puked on the other side, but it's where I pick to sleep every time."
Maybe that was why Pete hadn't gotten any but it seems a poor excuse, even now.
As the home-owners recruited a neighbor to interrogate all who passed through the garage doors for possession of drugs and alcohol, she remained fully conscious for the next show, but thankfully slept through the parts of the after-party where one boy pissed in a condom and then drank it and another carved an upside down cross on his chest; Jesus, kids these days are crazy. Don't worry, Petey explains...we wrote the kid's mom a note saying her son was a psychopath and left it in her bedroom. Seriously? Yeah, we also put the toaster in the freezer and cat-food in the cereal. That's funny, Eric adds, because I pissed in all the bottles of shampoo and conditioner. What ungrateful behavior, she thought quietly. That place was the only hot shower she'd gotten all week. Then she remembered the 14 yr. old kid outside claiming to do a coke line once every 10 minutes. "Goddamn" said Scott "You must've been runnin' like a Kenyan". And that had been her last cigarette break before curling up on the living room floor. Fuck those kids.
It was immaterial really. Just one more house they'd managed to destroy in a single evening. The apartment on New Years had probably gotten it the worst, if only because it had been completely unintentional. Half the crowd went downtown, apparently intent on getting scammed out of limited tour dough for a paltry sum of coke, and the rest had conspired to drink until sunrise and get high, though first they'd had to detect the subtle aroma of grass burning from two floors below and then spend daylight hours wasted in conversation with a complete tool about modern American values. At some point they broke their poor host's sink and flooded the kitchen floor with several inches of water. Mike had been on some sort of Tea-bagging high since Gainesville and suspecting herself a victim, she and Jon colluded together on a plan to stuff her soiled and cunt-pungent panties in Mike's mouth while he slept. It had been the highlight of her evening and cemented Jon's prominence in her mental catalogue of new friends.
No one understood Mike's urgent desire to tea-bag people but there were those to be messed with and those who were not. Chris and Paul were a terrifying prospect, as was the majority of AOK, while Eric had been too ill to be taken advantage of. Sometime after crossing the Fl. State line he'd come down with a stomach virus and the car had needed to pull over so he could throw up on the corner wall of a Taco Bell. An act that caused not one patron to pause and consider the wisdom of their lunch break decision. Pum was the favored recipient. Yo, I just tea-bagged 5 people. No, you tea-bagged Pumice 5 times. You can't tea-bag the back of someone's head. I just did, son.
That probably summed up the tour perfectly. Of course, there are other bits of information floating in the recesses of her mind and still other things to be said about the rest of the boys who comprised this little trip; people to be thanked and Thai kids, etc....but one senses this diatribe has gone on long enough, jumpy though it may be... (what can I say? I read too much fucking Henry Miller.) In the end, they made a slight detour and dropped her off at Peter Pan's Diner in S. Fl., she hoped the only real concession they'd had to make for her presence as she hadn't been able to contribute much to the bands. The entire affair, though, had consisted mostly of living hand-to-mouth, off of stolen goods, and occasionally the kindness of strangers ...so she didn't feel too bad. Is there a better way to ring in the new year?
Jon says "this shit is over-rated".... but I'd recommend it.
"15 minutes to the wall and, oh man, the windows are up and Mike Young's just been brewing in there.... with his shirt off and dog-shitty shoes."
Not that she had any room to talk. She'd proven multiple times that she was well-suited for the traveling life, i.e. she could sleep through anything, anywhere. Band practice and a screaming speaker system that made the walls thud from DC to the Carolinas, she slumbered through beneath her coat; in the midst of a venue on a corner couch, the chaos of 3 band sets and 100 drunken carousing rednecks perturbed not one eyelash. The boys would find and set her belongings around and atop her, building a mound of objects to be collected later and she remained unmoved beneath a heap of personal items, her dreaming the watchdog of cameras and cigarettes.
Or perhaps, the sneaking thieves of the underground were simply afraid of incurring the wrath of Davey, a tag-along merch-hawking bi-sexual french-tattooed, '6 squares with the devil-a-day', philosophizing, erasure poet with a shaved head and red suspenders who could look rather imposing when he chose.
"Bro, is that a skin-head downstairs?"
No, more likely she had simply been lucky. Her stuff had not been worth stealing, etc. Street Smart Cyclists travelled with them at first but managed to have an entire mini-van's worth of equipment jacked in one fell swoop, proving there was little loyalty within the fan-base.
Indeed, it seemed her entire accumulation of experiences could be related by a litany of where and under what circumstances she had found repose. The only place she'd not slept well was in the airport her first night in Baltimore. There she'd been awakened, then befriended, by a security guard who gave her a lighter and then offered to take her home with him...a proposition made tempting only by the frigid decorum of the baggage lounge that seemed to rapidly reacquire the 31 degree temperature of the drizzly world outside with every bustling bum that passed through the automatic doors in search of a taxi. It became her M.O. by way of introduction. I slept in an airport to come on this tour...what the fuck did you do? Even the dilapidated punk house had surpassed the rigid sterility of those waiting chairs in comfort, as there she'd landed a fair piece of couch, a portable heater, and kittens that batted her on the nose adorably. By comparison, poor Fl. Mike, recently relocated to the MD scene, slept on a wooden plank instead of a mattress in a front room lacking all warmth and where he could occasionally hear the threatening whizz of gunshots. Word on the street was that a man had been plugged 8 times in the chest a week before...But the neighborhood was really not so terrible. It was full of wonderful surprises after you adjusted to the sounds, like the opening and closing of closets, made by rats in the ceiling. The morning of the first show, Ray made the awesome discovery of crack on his doorstep..."Did you smoke it?...Hell yeah, I did, son." And there was always the fact that Mikey procured for her free coffee, free pizza, and a Gnter Grass novel from a basement bookstore. Baltimore is a terrific place to not spend the money you don't have and it left upon her a very favorable impression.
"Those white kids down the street? They roll 15 deep and are always drunk."
Mike Young was the reason she'd been invited along and it was difficult to say how much of a complication she caused the rest of his band, Osceola. Admittedly, she smelled better than most of them. It was while taking a cold sponge bath in the restroom of The Spazzitorium that she felt clearly for the first time she was among individuals who did not consider her hygiene habits, forged on the country crossroads of the appalachians and further ingratiated by a mother who pissed in coffee cups and parking lots on long car rides, lacking in any feminine refinement.
"We need to find ourselves a RitaAide...why? So we jack some shit."
Oh, Mikey...she'd met him years ago in Ft. Lauderdale and he'd been her official introduction to the hard-core scene; primarily by offering up her house to traveling bands. They switched off the bitch middle-seat between the three of them while Chris and Eric took turns driving. So long as they let her read her books, and Mikey had been kind enough to palm her a collection of Dostoevsky himself, she could handle being in the back seat with him and Pete, who mainly waxed lyrical on old metal bands and complained constantly of not finding any decent southern ass. It was a failure on his part as the show in NC hadn't started till 11 and provided ample stumbling drunk opportunity by 11:15. Those bleary-eyed cow-pokes, Eric confessed, had all been rather stupid and frightening and not one had given a damn about the music; though someone did throw up in the corner, a laudable display of appreciation. What had they expected, anyway, when they pulled into that deserted little town hours ahead of necessity? Chris had made it clear from the beginning that he'd blow off any show insufficiently attended in favor of drinking, and maybe he'd had the right idea. She wouldn't know, having dozed through most of it. That was the night the show manager had pulled half a dozen mattresses down from the loft and allowed them to arrange themselves about the stage and bar floor.
"Now that bean bag's the best bed in the house, just don't flip it over...somebody puked on the other side, but it's where I pick to sleep every time."
Maybe that was why Pete hadn't gotten any but it seems a poor excuse, even now.
As the home-owners recruited a neighbor to interrogate all who passed through the garage doors for possession of drugs and alcohol, she remained fully conscious for the next show, but thankfully slept through the parts of the after-party where one boy pissed in a condom and then drank it and another carved an upside down cross on his chest; Jesus, kids these days are crazy. Don't worry, Petey explains...we wrote the kid's mom a note saying her son was a psychopath and left it in her bedroom. Seriously? Yeah, we also put the toaster in the freezer and cat-food in the cereal. That's funny, Eric adds, because I pissed in all the bottles of shampoo and conditioner. What ungrateful behavior, she thought quietly. That place was the only hot shower she'd gotten all week. Then she remembered the 14 yr. old kid outside claiming to do a coke line once every 10 minutes. "Goddamn" said Scott "You must've been runnin' like a Kenyan". And that had been her last cigarette break before curling up on the living room floor. Fuck those kids.
It was immaterial really. Just one more house they'd managed to destroy in a single evening. The apartment on New Years had probably gotten it the worst, if only because it had been completely unintentional. Half the crowd went downtown, apparently intent on getting scammed out of limited tour dough for a paltry sum of coke, and the rest had conspired to drink until sunrise and get high, though first they'd had to detect the subtle aroma of grass burning from two floors below and then spend daylight hours wasted in conversation with a complete tool about modern American values. At some point they broke their poor host's sink and flooded the kitchen floor with several inches of water. Mike had been on some sort of Tea-bagging high since Gainesville and suspecting herself a victim, she and Jon colluded together on a plan to stuff her soiled and cunt-pungent panties in Mike's mouth while he slept. It had been the highlight of her evening and cemented Jon's prominence in her mental catalogue of new friends.
No one understood Mike's urgent desire to tea-bag people but there were those to be messed with and those who were not. Chris and Paul were a terrifying prospect, as was the majority of AOK, while Eric had been too ill to be taken advantage of. Sometime after crossing the Fl. State line he'd come down with a stomach virus and the car had needed to pull over so he could throw up on the corner wall of a Taco Bell. An act that caused not one patron to pause and consider the wisdom of their lunch break decision. Pum was the favored recipient. Yo, I just tea-bagged 5 people. No, you tea-bagged Pumice 5 times. You can't tea-bag the back of someone's head. I just did, son.
That probably summed up the tour perfectly. Of course, there are other bits of information floating in the recesses of her mind and still other things to be said about the rest of the boys who comprised this little trip; people to be thanked and Thai kids, etc....but one senses this diatribe has gone on long enough, jumpy though it may be... (what can I say? I read too much fucking Henry Miller.) In the end, they made a slight detour and dropped her off at Peter Pan's Diner in S. Fl., she hoped the only real concession they'd had to make for her presence as she hadn't been able to contribute much to the bands. The entire affair, though, had consisted mostly of living hand-to-mouth, off of stolen goods, and occasionally the kindness of strangers ...so she didn't feel too bad. Is there a better way to ring in the new year?
Jon says "this shit is over-rated".... but I'd recommend it.
gayballs:
I'm glad you're back. you're pretty goddamn cool.
froggin:
great.... always a pleasure... sounds like,,, a time...