Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (33 page)

Ronnie laughs, repeats the word “Metrognome,” then asks, “You want a beer?”

“Of course I wanna beer,” you say, but by the time Ronnie walks across the living room and into the kitchen, you're on the floor, sitting next to the Metrognome, stroking its ceramic beard. Ronnie sets the Old Hamtramck tallboy between you and your Metrognome. You lean back, stretch out, lay on your back.

“Maux, you suck,” you yell, turning, left side of your face on the cool dirty hardwood floor. “Everybody knows it except Ronnie. You're a mean person!”

“Thanks, rummy!” Maux shouts from the couches.

“And Roger,” you continue, because you've made these connections now and you need to share them because they need to know these things about themselves because you won't say it in the morning and you may never say it or even think it again. “You want to be a film critic? If that isn't duller than dogshit, I don't know what is.”

“Hey! Thanks! Thumbs up! Two big thumbs up!” Roger says, back at the couches with Maux and Ronnie.

“And Ronnie? Well, you're ok, for now, because you took me and the metrognome in when nobody else would answer the door.”

“Yup. I am one of the good ones” Ronnie says, smirking at Roger and Maux. “Better than these dicks, anyway.”

“What? We're the dicks and Ronnie isn't?” Maux says.

“Yeah,” you slur. “That's about what I'm saying . . . right now.” You think how Ronnie better appreciate it, as the floor feels grimy and grainy and footsteps approach and a blanket falls on your curled-up nausea-twitched body. Ronnie, yeah, he is one of the good ones, you think, but that's only temporary, because, because, beeeecause, he'll like get corrupted by . . . fuckin' Gainesville . . . but the metrognome . . . oh metrognome . . . oh, metro, metro, metro, metro, metro, metro, metro, metro, gnoooome.

 

•

 

You open your eyes to a purple early morning. You are on a floor staring at the pointed red boots of a garden gnome. Disoriented. No past nor present. The images of the last few hours begin to sharpen into clarity. You recognize your surroundings—Ronnie's living room—and why you're not in your bed. Beer. Tequila. Whiskey. It was Neal's idea, at the Drunken Mick. The Metrognome.

You scoured the neighborhoods west of the university, Neal driving, your head outside the passenger seat window, scanning, in search of a gnome, any gnome, to steal, to use, for, um, performance art?

“We'll out-Mouse Mouse!” Neal ranted. “It'll be the greatest performance ever!”

“Yes! Yes!” you agreed, imagining setting the Metrognome on a barstool at the stageless performance corner in the Nardic Track with a microphone placed close, the hidden metronome inside the Metrognome. Nothing but the click click click sound, through effects pedals cranked over the cranked PA. Brilliant.

When you found the gnome, in the middle of this large front yard in front of a house that even had the audacity to look like a cottage from the British countryside, you knew you would open the door as Neal's car still coasted along at a fast-enough speed. You tried a military-style rolling out, but fell sideways then rolled into the grass from the road, and that's why your pants are stained at the knees and your shirt is filthy. You run across crunchy Augustine grass blades until you put your arms around the gnome, lift with the knees, then run. Only, it's more of a gasping gallop across the crunchy Augustine grass. It's silent except for your panting, Neal's idling sedan, and the late-night sprinklers across all those lawns. It was too funny and too ridiculous to ask why this is funny and ridiculous. You toss the metrognome in the back, return to the passenger seat, and off you go, laughing-laughing-laughing.

Hours later, you lift yourself up from Ronnie's living room hardwood floor, and you're not sure if the joke is even all that funny, or if it's anywhere near as funny as you thought it was last night.

You had gone with Neal to his house to drop it off, but then you had what you thought was a better idea. A better idea!

“Later,” you yell, at the intersection on University, where the stadium—the swamp, Oh! The Swamp!— is on your right. You open the car door, step out, reach into the back for the Metrognome, your Metrognome, hoist him, and sprint away. Neal shouts after you, “That's ours! That's our metrognome!” but you keep huffing and puffing down University before taking a left into the Student Ghetto. From there, the drunkenness increases, and how you avoided pursuit by Neal and how you ended up at Ronnie's will remain a mystery.

Now, you leave the Myrrh House. You walk down NW 4th Lane, turn left on 13th Street. The metrognome will stay at Ronnie's; you're too tired to lug the stupid thing back to your place. Neal will ask about it, will give you grief that you didn't bring it back to the coach house. Let him get the stupid metrognome. It was his idea anyway, the dick.

Throbbing head. Burning stomach. A head full of regrets. Unfocused eyes. How many times has this happened, and how many more times does it happen?

Walking, shuffling, stumbling, limping past all these quiet apartments and houses where people had the sense enough to at least make it home and not sleep on someone's dirty-ass hardwood floor. Home. Sleep it off. There will probably be a party later on tonight. No, there will be a party later on tonight. You can pick up the metrognome later. Or, you won't. Who cares.

 

 

THE AMBITIOUS FILM CRITIC AND THE FLOUNDERING ORLANDO EMIGRANT

 

Roger clears his throat, lifts the hand-held tape recorder to his mouth, begins speaking in his “serious academic” voice:

“What is immediately apparent in
Sympathy for the Devil
is Godard's fervent belief in art as revolution, be it the evolution of a Rolling Stones song in the studio, graffiti on the walls of a bank building, the whole love and consumption diaspora of contemporary life, art as a realm in which to critique the most fundamental elements of modern Western Civ—Ronnie! You need to wake up! I can't concentrate with you snoring.”

“Sorry, dude . . . sorry.” Ronnie abruptly jolts awake on the smaller of the beige couches pushed together to form an L. He yawns, stretches, reclines. “Why don't they cut out all that agit-prop bool-shit and show only the Stones footage. That's the only good part in this.”

“See, Ronnie? You're too ignorant to understand.” Roger would say this often to Ronnie's deliberately obnoxious questions. “These films cannot be expressed any other way.” As Ronnie would learn, Roger plays the Film Theorist Superiority Card as gratuitously as a New Yorker playing the countless variations on We Can Get a Bagel at 3:00 a.m. and You Can't.

“Pshaw,” Ronnie pshaws. “Wake me up when the Stones are back on. I'm liking those pink pants Bill Wyman's wearing.” Ronnie turns away from the television, head buried in the cushions, falls asleep.

When the semester begins, Roger spends his nights watching two to three films on TV, on VHS tapes checked out of the university library. He scribbles notes in a journal while speaking voluminous thoughts into a hand-held recorder. On off-nights from going out or spending time with Maux, Ronnie tries watching these films, increasingly convinced that they are nonsensical forays of self-indulgence, and their only real appeal for anyone is that they aren't Hollywood blockbusters. Not a big movie guy, Ronnie. These films lull Ronnie to sleep, stretching out on the small beige couch as these invariably French characters move about scenes in the slowest of pacings. Movies affect Ronnie the way books affect many people—they make him sleepy.

Ronnie's snoozing and snoring irritates Roger to no end.

“Ronnie, you gotta wake up now!” Roger would say, eyes fixated on the twenty-four-inch TV screen, hunched forward, pen in one hand, hand-held in the other, thick journal opened on the coffeetable, pages filled with frantic, coffee-fueled penmanship. “We're coming upon a very important scene here!”

Ronnie mumbles, does not wake up.

Roger shrugs, heavily sighs, eyes returning to the screen, pen hand scribbling, mouth talking. Why should Ronnie understand? Roger thinks. In his current state, such artistic work is beyond his comprehension. He pauses the hand-held, grabs the journal off the coffeetable, scoots, settles, sinks into the couch. With his right fingers, he pushes his hair—some girls in town describe it as “Kurt Cobainy,” and while he would never admit to being a Nirvana fan, he considers it a compliment nonetheless—behind his ears.

In the short time they have lived together, Ronnie has been drunk most nights of the week, and when he isn't drunk, he's here on the couch, using these films Roger loves to get caught up on sleep. Roger thinks on this, leaning forward to sip from the glass filled with the blueberry smoothie he blended an hour ago, the blueberry smoothie a crucial aspect to the routine of every night's movie watching. Why is Ronnie even living here in Gainesville? There is no reason for it, as far as Roger can tell. They pass in the mornings—Roger eating his fruit-packed oatmeal, Ronnie zombie-hobbling in glazed-dumb hangover faces and postures as he enters the kitchen for a glass of water. How does Ronnie live like this? To live without any kind of purpose, to be here for no reason, floundering, goofing off over beer after beer after beer?

He thought they would be better friends, better roommates. But Ronnie is in his own mindless world. Soon, he will roll off the couch and stumble into his bedroom and throw on
Marquee Moon
by Television, leaving the cassette on repeat, faint fluttery guitar solos resonating throughout the otherwise silent 3:30 a.m. house. This is how he lives, Roger thinks.

Roger leans forward once again, resumes scribbling notes into the journal as the film “seamlessly drifts from scene to scene, challenging previously cherished conceptions of narrative and characterization.” He does not want to think about how he could be like Ronnie in a year or two, after graduation. Will they want another film critic, out there?

Finally, inevitably, Ronnie does roll off the couch, stands. “Good night, dude,” he mumbles, and off he goes. In seconds, from Ronnie's room, Roger hears the opening chord to “See No Evil,” the first song on
Marquee Moon
. Roger sips from the smoothie, leans closer, scribbles notes, unpauses the hand-held, resumes talking of every impression crossing his mind about this film, locked into the present to avoid brooding on the future.

 

 

ON AN ISLAND

 

“Look at these assholes,” Maux says, glaring and pointing at this fat drunken parade of football fans trudging down University to the big Florida Gator football game. Maux and Ronnie had made plans to meet for lunch at Gatorroni's by the Slice, forgetting that today is a gameday.

“Yup,” Ronnie says, trying to ignore it as he eats a Portobello pizza slice, sitting next to Maux outside on barstools at high tables facing University Avenue. These orange and blue facepainted barbaric hordes, numbly intoxicated and stumbling, assuming, quite correctly, that binged beer coupled with football gives them the right to act like howling dumb dicks.

“I hate football,” Maux says, scowling, short indigo hair glowing in the sunshine. She wears frayed blue cutoffs, a pink t-shirt with “WHO CARES?” written in black Sharpie permanent marker.

Ronnie grunts a second “Yup” between pizza bites. In the short time they have been together, there is simply no limit to what Maux dislikes. Maux hates Lou Reed. Maux hates old people. Maux hates kids. Maux hates babies. Maux hates teenagers. Maux hates rednecks. Punk rockers. Jocks. Frat boys. Sorority sluts. Middle-aged people. Fatsos. Bums. Religious nuts. Retards. Cops. Handicapped. Teachers. Dogs. Cats. Birds. Rabbits. Celebrities. Scenester girls. 98 percent of all scenester guys.

Each day, some new, unexpected hate. “I hate fishermen.” “I hate crossing guards.” “I hate those kids who dress like submarine sandwiches and stand at intersections waving at cars.”

The football fans run up and down the sidewalks, cram into the cabs of honking pick-up trucks.

“Orange!” one side of the street yells to the other.

“Blue!” the other side yells back, in imitation of what they do in the stadium, where opposite sides yell the team colors back and forth.

“These people suck,” Maux says, lighting a cigarette. “People suck.”

Ronnie yawns, wearied as much by Maux's redundant worldview as the tableau of grown men and women in orange and blue facepaint vomiting on the curb.

So much of their time together is little more than her waxing sardonic on the human condition. When Ronnie takes her to parties, she finds the most isolated corner, sits, and sketches in her pad while chugging straight vodka from that flask she always carries. Ronnie endures it all, glad a girl likes him. And she is beautiful, for a quasi-nihilist.

“Let's leave,” Ronnie suggests. Ordinarily, Gatorroni's by the Slice is an ideal spot to enjoy the afternoon, to run into friends walking by, but on gameday, friends hide in their houses, or split town, or at least try to make some money off the invasion by working the overflowing restaurants.

They finish their pizzas, step out of Gatorroni's and onto the sidewalks, shoving through the orange and blue throngs. With each step away from the stadium, north on 13th Street, the crowds thin out. Passing Gator Plaza on the left, Ronnie reaches out to hold her hand. Maux pulls away. “Stop that,” she says. “You know I hate holding hands.”