King Dork Approximately (6 page)

Now, you couldn’t ask for a more amiable guy than Shinefield. Sometimes he seems almost like a young, tall Little Big Tom in his relentless good humor and easygoing-ness. He hadn’t minded I Hate This Jar at all, after the initial disbelief had worn off, and he hadn’t even been all that stoned, either.

“I Hate This Jar, man,” he said with a lackadaisical chuckle. “Where do you guys come up with this stuff?”

And then throughout the day, he started referring to us as “the Jar” and saying things like “Man, that’s so Jar.…” There was an element of mockery, to be sure, but it was good-natured.

So Shinefield was as cooperative a bandmate as you could ask for. But his drumming was another story. It was … what’s the word I’m looking for? Atrocious? Loathsome? I almost have it. Ah, abhorrent, that’s it. His drumming was
abhorrent
.

The way Shinefield saw it, there was no kick drum hit that couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be doubled, or even tripled, or even quadrupled; he was a skilled craftsman when it came to slowing down and speeding up, and he sometimes even managed to do both in the same measure. He took the term “fills” quite literally, assuming that the object of the game was to “fill” every available moment with arbitrary, arrhythmic tom-hitting.
He was completely innocent of any awareness of the concept of the “rest.” Songs would usually finish at a tempo at least twice as fast as the one at which they had started. It was heartbreaking.

“Live Wire” showed that Shinefield was capable of playing a steady beat, with a relatively even tempo. It’s only that when it came to our own songs, he just didn’t feel like it.

As to how real bands manage to avoid this relentless song degeneration, I’ve got a theory. And if it’s correct, let’s just say I’ve always felt sorry for Phil Rudd, because it was pretty mean of the Young brothers to kidnap his family, tie them all up, and hold them hostage in a basement somewhere on the edge of town in a “play a steady beat or the kid gets it” kind of spirit. But the tragic human toll aside, the results speak for themselves. Go put on SD 36-142 and tell me that the Rudd Family Kidnapping of ’75 wasn’t worth doing.

The more you work on it, the worse it gets: I think I may have stumbled onto something like a profound principle there. I should try to integrate it into my General Theory of the Universe, or at least write it on the bathroom wall.

As for that Celeste Fletcher, man, what a girl, but she could sure drive you crazy. I am always impressed at how females seem to know what’s going on and act like nothing is confusing and what is happening is exactly the way they expected it to be. In a way, they’re like the Sam Hellerman of the sexes. They look at everything with this nodding smirk, as though saying to themselves, “Uh, yeah, go ahead and play out your pitiful little script, we’re ten steps ahead of you at all times and we all know that in the end you’ll wind up doing precisely what we want.”

At least, that’s how Celeste Fletcher was, sitting against the basement wall at the practice doing homework, or something,
and pausing now and then to look up and beam “knowing glance” rays at random targets throughout the room. I was sad that Celeste Fletcher didn’t seem to like me anywhere near as much as I liked her but comforted by the fact that she didn’t seem to like anyone all that much.

When the practice was over and we were all doing the hug-goodbye thing, she subtly nestled herself into me, a bit more, it seemed, than was required. I was covered in rock and roll practice sweat and my centipede was pulsing, and my all-over body bruise was slightly painful, which only made it that much more awkward.

“Sorry this is so weird,” she whispered directly in my ear.

So, there was something—a “this,” that was enough of a thing that it warranted the designation “weird.” And not just weird, but “so weird.” Or not. She was just rubbing herself on people’s bruises and saying words. How could anyone know what they actually meant?

At the risk of sounding a little corny, Celeste Fletcher was like a song. That is, the project of trying to figure out what she could possibly be up to was like rehearsing a song: “The more you work on it, the less you get it.” Man, that is, unfortunately, maybe the most generally applicable aphorism I have ever come up with. God, I hate being so insightful.

The thing is, we had a lot in common, which I’m not very used to, and I guess it’s hard not to get a little carried away with sentimentality when presented with the one person you’ve ever met in your life who thinks, for instance, that deliberately mispronouncing vocabulary words is funny, especially when she has a pretty nice body.

At the practice, when we had just finished a particularly disastrous run-through of “You Know You Want It,” she had looked up from her notebook and said: “Well, that certainly
was harminomious and mellifluicious.” And then she did this little half smile, directed solely at me. It was what you call a “nice moment.” The combination of conspiratorial mispronunciation, sarcasm, and ass was too much for me. I mean, how could you not be in love with that, at least a little?

But I wasn’t in love with her, not literally, despite the fact that I once thought I was and even told her so in one of my most embarrassing of moments. If I was in love with anyone, it was this imaginary girl she had portrayed for about two hours one night earlier in the year, basically just Celeste Fletcher in a costume. Fiona: her lack of reality did nothing to diminish her appeal, and possibly enhanced it. Or maybe it was the glasses and the too-small Who T-shirt that did it. I just couldn’t get those out of my stupid head.

I was thinking how nice it might be to share Sam Hellerman’s faith in the end of the world. At least it’s faith in something. And the idea is appealing: there will be this big explosion, or flood, or computer glitch, after which everything just stops and you no longer know about anything and nothing knows about you; or maybe life would be simply so changed that nothing that went before is worth caring about. It seems like that would be a tremendous relief, and if I believed in it, I’d look forward to it rather than worry about it.

Little Big Tom’s head poked through the door at what seemed like nearly a ninety-degree angle.

“And the weight of the world on his shoulders,” he said, with a little mustache twitch. “You doing okay there, sport?”

I guess I’d been looking pensive, if pensive is the one where
you’re thoughtful about something and you want to sound important.

“Yes … chief,” I said. “It’s nothing. I was just thinking about Y2K.”

Little Big Tom had been squabbling with my mom all morning, according to Amanda’s breathless report, and he was off his game. He had no jaunty commentary to offer concerning Y2K, though I could see on his face evidence that his brain was trying as hard as it could to come up with something. Finally, he gave up and pursed his lips in defeat, dematerializing mournfully. Now I really felt bad, like, seriously, I felt this ridiculous impulse to run after him and hug him, tell him everything would be okay. Not that my strict codes of personal conduct would have permitted anything like such a display. But I resolved to lob him a softball of some kind at the next opportunity. It’s just not fair to spring something weird like Y2K on a guy like Little Big Tom. I’d never seen him give up before, and the spectacle made me conscious of a melancholy void in an area of my chest I hadn’t previously known about. Pretty amazing how many of those there are.

I had just returned from another strange session outside of Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway, sitting on the bus stop bench next to Sam Hellerman, who was once again listening to his tape, making notes, and remaining intensely aloof from Jeans Skirt Girl, except this time she had been wearing actual jeans. Which looked pretty nice, in the way that jeans look nice when worn by females.

She evidently had a daily appointment in the area that ended around one p.m., after which the arrangement seemed to be that she’d wait in front of the 7-Eleven for her mom to pick her up. It was raining, so she had her hood on and the drawstring pulled tight so that there was a little ring of fur almost
completely encircling her face. That, I had to admit, was pretty fucking cute. Sam Hellerman, on the other hand, was not too smooth-looking, huddled under a big black umbrella with his notepad and headphones and the inscrutable eyes behind his thick, half-fogged glasses.

I had asked Sam Hellerman point-blank why on earth he was stalking this poor girl.

“Not stalking,” he said. “Fieldwork.”

“You do realize, don’t you, Hellerman,” I said, “that if she ever does notice you spying on her she’ll run away screaming and probably call the cops?” I added that he didn’t seem to have fully grasped the meaning of the word “aloof.” It’s not logically possible to remain aloof in any meaningful sense from a person who is unaware that you’re there doing it. “And if she does become aware,” I concluded, with my eyes, “it can only end in your own humiliation and a possible jail term.”

Sam Hellerman didn’t answer. While I was dispensing this sensible advice, he was otherwise engaged, snapping a rapid-fire series of photos of Jeans Skirt Girl with his dad’s little digital camera.

Once again, I had been so distracted by Sam Hellerman’s antics that I’d forgotten to ask about the mysterious letter till I was already halfway home. This was getting out of hand. It was probably nothing at all of consequence, like so many of the other little puzzles that always surround Sam Hellerman like a halo of question marks. But it would remain an ever more irritating irritant till such time as I was finally able to cross it off the list. I got out my Sharpie and wrote LETTER on my hand. Then, just to make sure, I wrote HAND on my shoe. And
then
, just to be absolutely completely certain beyond any conceivable mishap, I wrote SHOE on my other hand
(though that was a bit hard to read because I had to write it with my left hand.) That ought to do it, I thought.

It was soggy and muddy outside, and similarly grim in the house. Or maybe it was just my mind that was soggy and muddy and grim.

I was agitated and irritated at no one in particular for no particular reason. Sam Hellerman was off collating the data from his “fieldwork,” an embarrassment to himself and everyone associated with him. Celeste Fletcher was sorry it was so weird, but not so sorry about it that she wanted to spend any time with me. Deanna Schumacher was remaining aloof to the degree that she had dropped off the face of the earth. I had inadvertently wounded Little Big Tom by presenting him with a therapy issue to which he had no response. My band sucked. My dad was dead. There was never going to be a lawsuit. I was dreading going back to school at the end of vacation, to face whatever horrors the normal people had in store for me: after all, they tried to kill me, and I just wouldn’t get dead like they’d planned, and I could only imagine how mad that would have made them. I was all alone with no one to keep me company but my centipede. I guess there were reasons.

Also, it was Christmas Eve. Maybe you think it’s a little strange to mention Christmas only as an afterthought. I guess it is strange. Christmas is a big deal for most people, and probably for you. But not around here. In my house there hasn’t really been Christmas to speak of since my dad died. It was put on hold completely for a couple of years after his actual death. Then it gradually seeped back in. But when it did, it was muted, a shadow of its former self compared to how I remember it. I guess my dad had been a pretty Christmassy guy. There used to be a Christmas party every year at my house that lots of neighborhood people and his police friends would
come to. One year they even had a band playing jazz or something like that. My parents danced and people clapped, and I watched from the stairs when I was supposed to be in bed: that’s one nice memory I have.

Anyhow, nowadays, we all associate Christmas with him, so Christmas just became sad after he was gone, and everyone feels like avoiding it.

Little Big Tom tries. He always sets up a Christmas tree, gets everyone presents, and puts up lights and such, though he doesn’t like to use the word “Christmas” for it: he calls it Yule and says things like “Did you know that Christmas was originally a pagan winter festival that the Christians took over and it has nothing to do with Jesus? It’s a very cool historical fact.” Well, yes, in fact, I did know that, chief, based on the last three hundred thousand times you’ve mentioned it, the most recent being just fifteen minutes ago. “Okay, then,” Little Big Tom’s knowing smile seems to say. “I just wanted to make sure you’re aware that putting up these lights doesn’t mean I’m into the baby Jesus and organized religion and Western medicine and the corporations.” Then, when the lights inevitably fall down, Little Big Tom’s knowing lowered eyebrow seems to ask the eternal question “Why do these damn things keep falling down?” But that’s what it’s like living with a hippie. There’s just no cheering up the Hendersons on Christmas, is what I’m saying. Don’t even try.

I tried to spend some time reading, but I couldn’t concentrate. I had finished most of my dad’s old books a ways back, and reading anything else now seemed kind of pointless. Those books of his, the books he’d read as a kid, were, in my mind, all about him under the surface, as though reading between the lines allowed me to see him in the books. That had become the main point of reading for me. I wondered if I’d ever be able to
enjoy or understand a book he hadn’t read. On the other hand, the one of his that I was currently still trying to work through,
The Crying of Lot 49
, was pretty hard going, and I definitely didn’t understand it, despite the fact that it was one of his most written-in books. I have no idea what it’s about: some conspiracy of competing post offices and crazy drug people who think garbage cans are mailboxes. It was written by a guy named Pynchon, who also wrote this other nine-million-page book about physics or something, which might be good for hitting someone over the head with sometime.

I had too much respect for my dad’s teenage library to throw any of it across the room, so I set
The Crying of Lot 49
down reverently and picked up
Dune
, which I had started re-reading to pass the time.