Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (30 page)

The idea to simply leave, to walk away and not look back, isn't really an idea so much as it is an instinct. Painting apartments paid the rent and the bills. At the end of the day, the life of the adjunct is minimum-wage work. It is work he loves, yes, but that's all it is, and even that, obviously, only goes so far. And it drains him of all creativity. The adjunct's life is a perpetual limbo, and if he doesn't leave now, he will never be a real writer, will never be what he believes he is put on this earth to do.

The Stooges' first album transitions into the extended creepy slow chanting of “We Will Fall.” Professor Anderson “Andy” Cartwright shifts the car into reverse, backs out of his spot, shifts to drive, smiles, sputters out of the parking lot.

Ahead is the brilliant uncertainty of a future not carved out in semester-long increments. Ahead is the great not-knowing. The fear dissipates. The anxiety and resignation are no more. Andy has rejoined the kids on the sidewalks, each second a new beginning instead of a downward spiral. To assert control again, to welcome the new, to be reborn into the image of what he wants to be, needs to be. This is all that matters. Andy pulls into the driveway of his house, immediately shuts off the wheezing Bug and the whirling pound of the Stooges' “Little Doll,” and in a succession of 1975 Carlton Fisk World Series victory hops from the car to the front door, reenters his house, back to the story in the typewriter, back to life.

 

 

DRUNK JOHN MEETS A GIRL

 

The girls coming into the store today are—“Don't make me say ‘pissa,' John. I don't talk like this to amuse you. They look fine, ok? Fine,” Boston Mike says, and I couldn't agree more.

Measuring our time in 20 minute album sides. Me and Boston Mike, together once again on a beautiful Sunday morning in late August, and it's beautiful because the kids are back in school, and by kids, I mean girls, and by girls, I mean nnnnuggets
.

We're making the best of it, stuck behind this depressing-ass counter. Mike throws on Avail, I throw on Archers of Loaf. He throws on the Wipers, I throw on Royal Trux. When that's over, I scour our used bins and pull out a not-mint copy of “Street Hassle” by Lou Reed, and goddamn if this isn't hitting me just right.

As Lou Reed talk-sing-moan-pleads, “Leave me leave me leave me leave me leave me aloooooone,” Boston Mike and I sneak sips of Old Ham-town tallboys and assess the new wave of nnnnuggety freshness taking their first awkward parentless steps off-campus into Electric Slim's to find their deplorable ska or emo or major label poppy punk, wallet chains a' dangling, so fresh-faced and uncorrupted by the drama in this scene to which they shall surely succumb
.

“Hey Mike,” I say. “See the bleach blonde in the stupid Candlebox t-shirt and the acid-washed denim shorts? In two months? She'll have a mohawk, maybe even her first tattoo. She'll be the biggest Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed A Bit fan in town.”

Boston Mike laughs. “These freshmen, it's always at the halfway point in the semester when they get their first mohawk, right?”

“Yup. Just in time for Thanksgiving. It's like ‘Take that, Mom, Dad, and Suburbia! I make my own rules now!' Oh, and see the dyed black short stuff with the December's February t-shirt flipping through The Cure CDs? It's such a minor sideways step in the ol' youth culture to go from goth to emo, right?”

“Naw. We gotta cure her of that.”

“It can't be done. Nobody takes us seriously here,” and I'm right. But suddenly man, it's like, all at once, the summer, and the feeling like the town is yours and yours alone ends. The parties pick up, old friends come back, and everything's no longer at the mercy of summer's lethargy, it's at the mercy of that giant university there across the street. Yeah, I earned my degree there, two years ago, and like all English majors, I now work retail. Sorry about my luck, right?

“What record is this?” this uber-nnnnugget asks, all punk rock and everything. Short black hair. White skin. Black t-shirt of one of those Oi bands where the lettering is all army stencil and spelling out all kinds of working class anarcho-syndicalist platitudes. She peers up at me behind the counter with these big dark eyes
.

I really hate that cliché about love, you know, the one some knowing authority who's inevitably like a fuckin' sassy urban single lady in her mid-30s spouts off between sips of boxed wine and handfuls of Hershey's Kisses, all like “Honey, you'll find love when you least expect it.” Because, you're at a bar, you're at a party, you're out buying groceries or walking around, it's always on your mind. It's like when you're talking about blinking and you can't stop paying attention to when you blink, you know? Shit, it's why I go out at night. You think I go out and drink this much so I can talk to my dumbass friends? No. I keep hoping to meet somebody, but I've met everybody here and I know everybody here that's worth knowing, except for this tiny-tiny window when there are new, heretofore uncorrupted girls like this nnnnnugget looking up at me—here at work when, I can tell you, love really is the last thing on my mind—standing here at work—sipping beers and flipping records—head and mind in a hungover daze and mindlessly checking out the new girls in town like it matters.

“It's ‘Street Hassle,' ” I try to smile, as the backing vocal ladies on the record harmonize “Hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny.” These nonsense words convey it so much better than I ever could, and the beer's no help. “Lou Reed,” I mumble, reaching over and down to hand her the record cover.

“Cool,” she says, turning it from front to back, smiling a giant, hundred-tooth smile. “Can I buy it?” So pure, so unmired in the maelstrom of Gainesville's bullshit.

“On CD or vinyl?” You're no doubt expecting, since I'm a record store clerk and all, that this is some kind of coolness quiz on my part—like, if she says
“
vinyl,
”
I'll know she's perfect, and if she says “CD,” I'll forever look down on her for wanting the medium preferred by the stupid masses, but honestly, I don't give a shit if she wants the thing on a fuckin' CD, LP, betamax, 8-track, 12th generation cassette dub. But it does my heart good when she does say “Vinyl,” after all.

I remove the needle from
Street Hassle
, place the record back into its unwieldy cheap plastic sleeve, and it's me staring at her staring at Lou Reed staring at her through aviators and holding a cigarette.

“He looks serious,” she says, and she laughs this laugh, a soft girlish giggle, and I have to laugh, a soft drunken heh-heh, because she's laughing, and the beery bravado—why do I even bother drinking?—isn't needed, and I'm as vulnerable as I've been in a long, long time.

“He is serious,” I laugh, taking the record cover back from her and inserting the sleeve. “Serious dude,” I add—sounding as inarticulate as ever. Fuck.

I feel like I need to do something to make her laugh, and all I can think to do is hold the cover of
Street Hassle
to my head—I'm one of those idiots who gets a kick out of sticking album covers where there's a life-size headshot of the performer up to my head—and saying in a goofy voice, “Hey, look at me, I'm Lou Reed! I'm crazy! I'm taking a walk on the wild side!”

I can't hear any laughter; I hate myself. This constitutes a “good idea” in my dumbass head. I lower the record, and Boston Mike is giving me one of those looks he gives when he's amused at my failed attempts at interacting with the world at large. I can't even lower the album enough to face the nnnnugget, assuming she hasn't walked out, freaked out over whatever it is I'm trying to do here.

But then I do set the record on the counter, and she's still smiling, looking at me, grabs the record and says, “I wanna do that.”

She holds
Street Hassle
up to her head, and it's the head of Lou Reed, glaring at the camera, over the body of this young punkette in her oi band outfit, who's laughing out, “Heyyyy, I'm Lou Reed. I smoke cigarettes and wear sunglasses. Look at me, guys.”

We're laughing at this, and when she lowers the album, all eyes turn to Boston Mike, who shakes his head at both of us all like, “I'm not doin' that. No way.”

She extends her hand. “My name's Sicily,” she says.

“Sicily?”

“I'm Sicilian.”

“Ok.” I feel stupid and awkward and as you can probably tell, I wouldn't know how to talk to girls if you stood behind them with cue cards and gave me an ear piece through which you could tell me the perfect Casanovan expressions. I think that's why I earned the “Drunk” in my name. Drunk John. After a few beers, I stop caring about how I don't know how to talk to anyone.

“And you are?” her expression like she'd expected me to volunteer this information earlier. I tell her.

“Nice meeting you, John.” She sets
Street Hassle
on the counter. “I think I wanna buy this.”

“Yeah?” I mumble.

“Yeah. You sold me.”

“I am a professional.” Ha ha ha. But she giggles at my stupid joke anyway.

I hit the cash register, give her the ten-percent-off friend discount, rounding down and knocking two dollars off on top of that. “Two dollars,” I say.

Our hands touch as she hands me the two singles. In a record store, like all used retail, you touch a lot of nasty people, with a lot of nasty possessions. Everything's dusty, grimy, germ-ridden. This little touch—as fleeting as it is—is a welcome respite.

Put the record in the plastic bag. Hand her the plastic bag. “Thank you for choosing Electric Slim's,” I announce, trying to sound corporate or something.

Sicily still laughs at my lame attempts at humor. “And thanks for the Lou Reed,” she says. “See you soon.”

“Yup.” I shrug. Hem. Haw. Twitch. Tick. Sicily leaves the store. And that, my friends, is how I talk to girls. Smooth, right?

“She likes you,” Boston Mike says.

“Ya think so?”

“No shit I do.” Boston Mike looks away, towards the front window, then mutters “Dumbass . . . ”

I take the price gun, fully intending to return to what I was doing before, pricing stacks of used records, but with a head awash in Old Hamtramck, and a body awash in adrenaline from what just happened . . . 

“I should go talk to her, right? Like, right now?” I ask Boston Mike.

Boston Mike, I can tell, is building up to a flurry of furious Masshole cursings, but before he gets started, we're rudely interrupted by one of our regular wino-ass garbage trawlers entering the store with a large stack of damp torn moldy jazz fusion records to sell. And it ain't the good jazz fusion either, but like, the shit you hear at Kinko's. Just awful. And this guy likes to chat us up while we go through his found shit, like he struck gold out in the crik and can't wait to reap the rewards. “That's Spy-row-gy-ra,” he informs us. “That's a popular band from back before you were born probably. And that copy looks like mint condition, you ask me.”

Oh Lord. It's like: How many stacks of limp-dicked, weak-grooved noodly records with ridiculously dated 1983 silver sequined, piano-scarved, kee-tar playing mew-zish-ee-ans must a record clerk thumb through, before you call him a man? The answer, my friend, is blowing out Kenny G's tasty sax. But I digress, because, while I'm about to help sort through this latest delivery of slimy, smelly mold-vinyl, Boston Mike grunts, “Yeah. Go. Now. Do it.”

I hop down from the register and run out to the sunny-muggy outside of this tiny plaza parking lot.

She's almost to University when I yell, “Sicily! Hey!”

She turns and smiles, and it's all so easy and so not cool, so totally corny having to put yourself out like this.

I jog to her. (Yeah. “Jog.” Awesome.) “So you're new here, right?”

“Basically. I transferred from a community college in Orlando.”

“Orlando?”

“Yeah. You know.” She shrugs and I nod. We all have complicated, ambivalent relationships with this state and her people and her cities. Love, hate, frustration, joy, bitterness, splendor, despair. There's no place like it, but every place is like it.

“Well let me show you around. Let me call you.”

Sicily laughs. “So you do this to all the new girls who come into your store? Swoop right in?”

“Nooo!” I say this a little too forcefully, like the dork I am.

“I'm kidding,” she says, opening her black purse (The purse, it's covered in a bunch of buttons of bands I can't stand, but I can fix that, right? Of course!), taking a scrap of paper and writing down her number.

Of course, a couple jerkoff friends of mine on bikes have to ride by in the parking lot, cutting through from University to the student ghetto and yelling, “Drunk John! What's up, man! You drunk? You gonna be drunk at the party later?” and I feel my whole being deflate into some like shriveled forsaken pool toy.