2.
Tonight Sid is curled up next to Joe’s thigh. I still have not told Joe about our day in Ann Arbor and I probably never will, but there is something else on my mind which Stuart’s show-and-tell in the bathroom at the radio station has reminded me of.
We are listening to Billie Holiday. “It’s just so heartbreaking,” Joe is saying.
“Karen has a collection of trinkets and buttons and things which she has shoplifted. At the Political Silos show at Danver’s Hall, she stole a button. One time while we were at Cagney’s, she stole a little pendant thingy of a three-toed sloth. I guess she’s pretty good at it. She took me up to her bedroom a while back and revealed her collection.”
“That seems like a pretty intimate gesture.” Sid yawns and stretches.
“It was a lot of stuff. I asked her if she had ever been caught. Do you know what she said?”
“What?”
“Only by you.”
Joe grins.
I have not seen Karen since the walk at Burroughs Park. I have not called her, which is probably a huge miscalculation.
“Do you think Sid here could use a companion?” I am musing out loud. “Should we get another cat? Like maybe a kitten. So what did you think of Stuart’s band?”
It is not really wise to begin chugging beers this late at night. The worst thing is to wake up in the morning still drunk, to get up and go into work hung over. The hubbub, or conversely, the echoing silence of Windmill Place is hell on Earth when you have a splitting headache.
It occurs to me that I have not done laundry in a minute.
“They weren’t half bad,” Joe says.
“Right?”
“I mean the girls make a difference.”
“Marc and Todd are decent.”
“They are.”
“Ya gotta love Stu.”
“You do.”
I am stunned. There are several walls in the house—in the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, the bedrooms—which are devoted to flyers from shows. One of the best flyers is of course from the Black Flag show a couple of years back. There is even one Nigel designed for a poetry reading at the Rusty Nail—a collage very similar to the anonymous letter of a serial killer. I am smiling. I can already see the flyer for Haute Boys and the Sirens taking its rightful place in the house on Stone Street.
3.
The crowd at El Oasis is massive on the night after Thanksgiving. So many people are here. So perfect. I am more inconspicuous when the place is packed. The bass is brutal. Everybody on the dance floor is shoulder to shoulder. Delores and Beth are in the center of it. I am sitting at a table with Karen and her housemates. At least Karen and I are watching Stuart dance. He vacillates between these frenzied moves that could injure a person and this slow-moving gyration which he has appropriated from Ian Curtis. He can’t fool me. The music is intense. I have considered asking Karen if she would like to dance but I have not been able to pull the trigger. And it is not because I am intimidated or afraid of her. It is more like there is this weird vibe between us fueling my hesitation right now. I will ask her to dance, and it will be awkward, or she will simply veto the suggestion, which I do not need. Who does? I simply do not have time to waste on this chick. How did we get here? She seemed interested. My God, we haven’t even made out yet! What the fuck? When I catch her eye, she smiles and I ask her if she wants to dance. She points at her glass. She and her housemates are drinking Blue Motorcycles. I flag down a waitress and order a round of drinks.
“Do you see this pixie to my left?” I say. I am leaning forward. The waitress’ eyes bounce back and forth between the two of us like a sliver ball vibrating between two bumpers in a pinball machine. “She won’t dance with me, but she’ll let me buy her a drink.”
The waitress crumples up a bit, retracting her whole lithe body into her black apron in a gesture conveying sympathy.
“Maybe you and I should dance?” I say.
She laughs.
It is not me. It cannot be me.
“Whatever they want,” I shout, twirling my finger to indicate that the next round at our table is on me. I sit back. “Maybe you would like some candy?” I am shouting. I am feeling generous, desperate, flat-out stupid?
“Maybe later,” she shouts.
I take that as a No. I am not stupid. I was not born yesterday. I can recognize these games a mile away. But the waitress is hot. I shiver runs through my groin.
When Joe and I were decompressing at the house on Stone Street after the radio show, Joe had asked about the name of Stuart’s band—and this time he had not cut himself short with an Oh, who gives a fuck!
“Oh, that was all Stu.”
“Why not hot, h-o-t?”
Well, that was pretty obvious, I had thought. We were still in the living room, starting a second beer. “This is my last beer,” I had said. “Don’t you think it possesses a certain je nai se quois? Think Interview magazine as opposed to Skag.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, man.”
“What’s wrong with Skag?”
“Dude.”
“I think it’s pretentious.”
“You think Haute Boys and the Sirens is pretentious?”
“I mean who really fucking cares, but yeah, man. I do. And you can tell Stuart I said so. It might help if it was coming from me instead of you. I’m only looking out for your band’s best interest.”
In the end, he had managed to slip in another fuck.
The conversation with Joe has me thinking deep thoughts tonight about guys like Stuart and Nigel and Five-O’clock-Shadow Brian. Nigel, for all appearances, was mostly a loner. He apparently dated some girl from Detroit, and hung out with Stuart, and the two of them took sanctuary at Karen’s place, but that is where it seems to have ended. Everyone wanted to know him or be his friend, and he was a favorite at the readings. He would brood in a booth, or at a cocktail table, while at the club or Thoma’s or a hall show, but would snap out of it with this apoplectic laughter. He stuck out but did not care to stick out. He was one of the coolest guys who was a part of the downtown scene, and it all seemed effortless. Never bought any candy. Brian, on the other hand, has tons of friends and acquaintances. What drummer doesn’t? He literally knows everybody. An activist, a vegan, a skateboarder, a chess player, a drummer in a punk rock band—he is widely admired or envied. But nobody dislikes him. He is firmly embedded in the rock of the Flint punk scene, like Joe. Joe has published a few of his political pieces in Skag. But where does this leave Stuart? Despite hanging out in the rarified air of Nigel’s house on Beechwood, playing music and typing up poetry in Nigel’s bedroom, as well as arriving at El Oasis, the Nail, shows, et cetera, with Nigel more often than not, he is an unknown quantity. It is as if he is—as he has often opined—invisible. More than once, someone has asked me, “Hey, man, who is that guy with Nigel? Who is that guy Nigel is always hanging around with?” And you would think that being Nigel’s best friend would have gotten him laid at least once, if only by accident. Some girl longing to hang out with Nigel uses Stuart as camouflage to get within striking distance, but winds up coming to on the floor of somebody’s bedroom next to Stuart. According to Stu, it has never happened. Lame. So lame. I do not know whether to shake his hand or slap him across the face, shouting, “En garde!”
“We used to get drunk and shoot hoops at Pierce Elementary,” Stuart once said. They would play horse or pig. It was the only game in which Stuart owned Nigel. So I am studying Stuart. I can see Joe’s point. For a guy who is quick to label the poseurs, passing judgment on a bar packed with people, he does not practice what he preaches. Sometimes he goes too far. I have been watching him dance. Sometimes he tries too hard. Tonight, he is wearing blue coveralls from the shop which he got from his uncle who works at the GM proving grounds. The coveralls have a patch on the breast pocket bearing his uncle’s name. A white patch with thick red embroidery. Any moment now, he will take his birth certificate out of his wallet and wave it above his head before ripping it into pieces and dramatically stuffing the shreds into his mouth. He is such a drama queen. Any moment now, he will knock some girl’s drink from her hand and square off with an angry boyfriend and get his ass beat right in front of us. Any moment now, he will pogo up and down like he’s in the mosh pit at a hall show, repeatedly giving himself high fives in the mirror. He can be a pathetic spectacle. But nobody would really see any of this because we are talking about Stuart here. Not Nigel, not Brian, not Joe, not Delores, not Beth and not me, or anybody else. He is forgettable, despite the cool hair. Of course, the band could change all that.
Haute Boys and the Sirens, good Lord.
Out of candy by midnight, I know longer need to circulate. Brian and Stuart are at one end of the bar, analyzing a game of chess on a portable, miniature chess set.
The dance floor is like a flying saucer. Purple lights. Red lights. Swirling white orbs. Mirrors. Colored, glowing floor panels. Fog. “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Now is the time.
I slip and shoulder my way between the sweaty bodies until I reach the girls. There is a beautiful sheen of perspiration on Delores’ upper lip. “Hey,” I shout. “Come on.”
“No!”
“Yes! Come on.” Joe is sitting at a cocktail table behind the dance floor with Karen and her hot roommates. “Now is a good time.”
I am beginning to understand why some bands are unmanageable. Why some bands fail to flourish. Bands with mediocre talent. Bands with lame managers. Bands which cannot get along. When I consider Stuart’s band, I have to admit that we are making progress. But it is a hell of a lot like herding cats, no offense to cats. I position the girls at each one of Joe’s elbows before tapping him on the shoulder. “Joe,” I say, leaning in to be heard. He bows his head and turns his ear in my direction. “We want to do a show at Danver’s Hall with Silos and Wasted Reagan Youth.” He is smiling, now, a little too much. He is concentrating on the floor. “I think we’re ready.” I nod at the girls and make a face. The girls put their hands on Joe’s arms and press into him a bit. We are cozy. Joe looks from one to the other. Karen has a smirk on her face. I catch her eye and wink. Maybe we will dance before last call, before the lights come on.
I shrug. Why has the shrug become so pervasive? We are, if nothing else, a generation of shruggers. We do it well. I would liken it to an automatic response. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Stuart stumbling toward us just before he crashes into the four of us. The jackass! “I can’t believe Nigel is playin’ postal chess with Five-O’clock-Shadow Brian!” He fumbles around Beth to stand beside Karen, bends at the waist and presses his cheek to the table while Karen pats his face and smiles at everybody, her eyes wide open. “Poor goon boy,” she says. Please, dear Lord, do not let him vomit, I think. The girls compose themselves, remember to become indignant and storm off toward the ladies’ room.
One Blue Motorcycle later, I am recounting the episode to Five-O’clock-Shadow Brian. “I’m an idiot. I should have seen it coming. Only Stuart would sabotage the band’s big pitch.”
Brian shrugs.
Joe joins us. “Hey, Brian, we’re going skateboarding at the Hyatt. What would you say to doing a show at Danver’s Hall with Stuart’s band and Wasted Reagan Youth?”
I will order another Blue Motorcycle. No, I will order two. I will move through the crowd like a panther. I am not really sure where that thought came from. I will hand one of these neon blue atomic drinks to Karen, and I will ask her to dance. No, I will tell her we are dancing, that we are going out into the middle of the dance floor, going to shoulder and body our way to the center, where Delores and Beth are dancing, and commence to dance. And after a moment of preliminary whopping heart beats and the onset of perspiration, I am going to kiss her like Richard Gere kisses Debra Winter in An Officer and a Gentleman. She won’t know what’s hit her.
I turn to Joe. “What did you just say?”
“Yeah, why not?” he says. “What the hell, man.” He shrugs.
I laugh out loud—a laugh very similar to Nigel’s apoplectic laughter. Hot damn! We are a generation of shruggers, and Haute Boys and the Sirens are going to play a show at Danver’s Hall.
