Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (39 page)

 

 

HIPPIES . . . CHEAP WINE . . . INDECISION

 

“Look at you, all dressed up,” Portland Patty says. “You almost look employable.”

“Almost,” Ronnie repeats, and then lets loose a “Pffff,” exactly like his old roommate Alvin. For once, he has combed his hair, is wearing clean clothes, has removed the gunk eating into his glasses. He's in khaki slacks, a red Oxford shirt, and a green necktie as he trudges up and down University filling out job applications. Only the dirty black low-cut Chucks—and the general air of looking like a temporary department store employee in a department store at Christmas—give him away as someone who might not be just another regular normal collegiate looking to have a regular normal job. Even if he had the money, Ronnie would not think to buy a new pair of dress shoes.

He runs into Portland Patty as he's en route to inquire about a bus boy position. She's standing in the Gatorroni's parking lot, conversing with a group of hippies. Gingham-dressed, tie-dyed, Birckenstocked, dirty-dreaded hippies. Six of them, smiling and laughing, playing with those stupid flippity sticks hippies are always playing with. Some are even barefoot. The air is poisoned with fucking patchouli.

Ronnie is happy to see her, even as she interacts with these disgusting creatures from a rival subculture. She introduces him to them. They smile and wave. Ronnie nods and glares. Ronnie looks around. It's bad enough he's dressed like this, but to be seen consorting with the enemy—well—that would be the end of Ronnie Altamont. There were too many neo-hippies in Gainesville, passing through on their way to commune with the Ocala National Forest. While they weren't as abundant in Gainesville as they were in other college towns, there were too many for Ronnie's liking. He has to leave. He has to leave now.

“Later,” Ronnie grunts, walking fast, back to the sidewalk, back to University, anticipating the ugly gossip of fellow travelers in the rock of punk, seeing him in such unsavory company.

“Hey wait!” Portland Patty calls after Ronnie. Ronnie walks, looking straight ahead.

“Friends of yours?” he asks when Portland Patty catches up, past the bookstore where Ronnie used to work, walking past the school newspaper offices. All thoughts of applying for the bus boy gig vanish. He has some money left. The financial situation is not as dire as it could be. This is so much more important. He can't/won't be involved with no hippies.

“Ronnie!” Portland Patty says, laughing. “We went to high school together. They're traveling the country, stopping off for a drum circle somewhere. We met for lunch. Now they're leaving.”

“Drum circle?” Ronnie shakes his head from side to side as he walks, brain a bubbling cauldron of 1980s hardcore rage. “What the hell. You're a hippie?”

“A hippie?” Portland Patty stops and faces Ronnie. “You're not actually joking, are you? You're trying to come across like you're joking, but you're not.”

“A hippie,” Ronnie insists, turns to walk.

Portland Patty grabs him by the arm. “This is stupid,” she says. “They're old friends, Ron. Not that this matters, but in middle school? I tried to be a hippie. Then in high school? I tried to be goth. In college? Here? I went to punk shows. Then, I grew up, and now I do whatever the hell I want. That's how it goes. Last June, I graduated. Now, I work at a daycare center.” She steps back, begins to pivot to leave. “This is so stupid. But if it makes you happy—fine—I'm punk rock. I've been going to shows at the Nardic Track since I moved here in 1990. You've seen my posters, you've seen my fliers. I'm the biggest goddamn punk rocker you've ever met. I'm sorry I didn't stab my old acquaintances who happened to be passing through right in their stupid hippie faces. Ok? Because punk fucking rock. That's the best, right Ronnie?”

Ronnie looks down, sighs, stammers, “I don't know, man.” Hands on hips. Then he gesticulates as he says, “I guess so. But jazz is good too. Some country. Glam. Hard rock, under the right circumstances. I don't even mind psychedelic music, as long as it's got an edge to it . . . ”

Portland Patty laughs. “God, you're a dork,” she says. Thinking about it later, it was one of those answers that make powerful arguments in either direction re: is Ronnie any different from the rest of these jerks circled around the bands, shaking their heads as they cross their arms and watch.

“Let's go,” she says. “Did you drive?”

“Naw,” Ronnie says. “I've been walking around trying to get hired. I'd rather spend the money I have left on beer instead of gas.”

“I'm parked at Gatorroni's. You can lead the way, since you're so punk, so full of your punk convictions.”

“That's right,” Ronnie laughs. “I am.” Along the sidewalk, Ronnie smirks with Sid Vicious lips and yells, “I ‘ate Thatchuh!” at passersby. She laughs, but she really laughs when he yells this to a group of gutter punks stomping down the street, even flashing the two fingered “Piss off” sign with both hands before one of them answers, “Whatever, yuppie. Give me your money.” In his shirt and tie, Ronnie joins in the laughter, throws them his spare change, and Ronnie and Portland Patty walk off arm in arm, singing “Anarchy in the UK,” with the Johnny Rotten “Rrrrrright! Now!” rrrrrolls and everything.

 

•

 

On the way to her house, they stop at the liquor store. Ronnie buys a bottle of Wild Irish Rose. It's all he can afford; he counts the money in his wallet and the change in his pockets, standing in front of the XYZ Liquor Store counter as Portland Patty waits in the parking lot. The bottom shelf is where the cheap wine is. There's Night Train, Boone's Farm, Mad Dog 20/20, Thunderbird . . . 

“What did you get?” she asks when he returns.

“You don't want to know,” is all Ronnie says, and off they go.

Indeed, as Ronnie tastes it once again, and Portland Patty is given her first exposure to Wild Irish Rose, the only way they can keep from complaining about it, the only thing keeping Portland Patty from being “flus-trated,”
8
is to joke about the taste, acting like parodies of aficionados in Napa Valley.

“There's a syrupy consistency, conjoined with a high octane fuel bouquet,” Portland Patty says, as Ronnie looks through her records, finds Galaxie 500s
This Is Our Music
, and throws it on the box, still obsessing over that expression and what it means.

“Yes,” Ronnie says, joining her on the couch, sharing and sipping from the same
Empire Strikes Back
collector's glasses—Lando Calrissian and Boba Fett. “There's a bilish finish that leaves a chunky film on the roof of your mouth.”

“Ah, yes,” Portland Patty says, “with just a hint of river bottom sediment.”

Ronnie Altamont laughs, a happy kind of laughter he hasn't had since Maggie left him. From the stereo, Dean Wareham sings of the Fourth of July, and Ronnie and Portland Patty taste the cheap slime of the Wild Irish Rose on each other's tongues, and it isn't so bad, it isn't so bad at all. He kisses her and thinks, yes, I should end it with Maux, whatever it is we're doing, I should end it. This is entirely too perfect. To be here in this house, laughing and drinking wine and kissing, it's better than anything that has happened or could ever happen with Maux. He could start here and leave the past, all of it, behind. With Portland Patty, he could stay here in Gainesville. He could build a new life, forget about Orlando, forget about this directionless living masquerading as what he had called the “sweat jam,” and move forward.

Yes. He could. And he would meet with Maux tomorrow and let her know. Ronnie was a punk with conviction, and he would give it to her straight.

 

 

MAUX DRAWS RONNIE

 

At Maux's. All day before this, hiding out in his room from Roger and his films and the outside world's tendencies to simply open the unlocked front door and let itself in, Ronnie planned on not coming in, on standing in the doorway and saying “Let's just be friends . . . it's not you, it's me . . . you deserve someone better . . . I'm not ready . . . it's just not working out . . . ,” walking home, then calling Portland Patty to see what she's up to. But then Maux stood there, looking like she did—black t-shirt sorta covering black panties and clearly no bra underneath, and that's it—and he couldn't.

So. Instead, he sits on Maux's ancient sofa, kissing-gropes interspersed with silence, sipping vodka tonics as her muted television plays Fellini's
Amarcord
.

She shows him the only record she owns, a copy of
Thriller
. “I got this for my eighth birthday,” she tells Ronnie. “Look at what I drew on it.”

Ronnie takes it from her, holds it closer, tilting it to get better light. The word “POOP,” drawn as a black-markered thought cloud next to Michael Jackson's Jheri curled brain.

“See! Even then, I had it,” Maux says, taking the cover back from Ronnie.

“You sure did,” Ronnie says. “You sure did.”

“I have something else to show you,” she says. She runs into her bedroom. Ronnie thinks, “Ok. This is it.” He has to say something. This must end.

Maux returns with a thick scrapbook. She retakes her position on the couch, flips from page to page. It's every cartoon she has ever drawn for the school paper. Dozens, if not hundreds, of drawings. He doesn't focus on any particular piece, but instead soaks in the vast output, the collection itself. For all her faults, Ronnie thinks, Maux is the only person in Gainesville he knows who actually produces something seen by thousands each week. She is always producing. Always drawing. In Gainesville, the bands come and go. Aspiring filmmakers talk more than they film. Poets don't rhyme. Dancers don't dance. And Ronnie, he isn't doing a thing. But Maux is always drawing something.

She flips to the last page. “Look at this one.”

A fresh white sheet glue-stuck to the page. It's a sketch of Ronnie, drawn from memory, of a photograph he gave her of him wearing a fake Japanese headband while making the “Hi-yah!” gesture with his hands. For once, the drawing is more realist than caricature. Surrounding the drawing are ten of Maux's favorite haiku taken from the haiku wall in Ronnie's room—haiku about Sanford and Son, Dee Dee Ramone, Emmanuel Lewis, EPCOT Center, and the wonder of large breasts, among others.

“It's going to be in the paper next week,” she tells Ronnie. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Ronnie smiles. He wants to tell her that this is the nicest thing anyone has done for him in a long time, and while it's true, the words don't formulate. “I'm speechless,” is all he can muster.

“You hate it?”

And there's so much Ronnie could say and should say but doesn't say right here, because he broods on the question, on this lowering of that hate-filled wall she's always putting in front of him, and everyone else. Ronnie understands her. He thinks he understands her. She has to defend this gift—this vulnerability, this gift of observation, this something beyond what most people have.

“Naw,” Ronnie manages. “It's awesome.” (He wishes he can say more, has forgotten why he was going to tell her that it was over.)

Maux leans in, hugs Ronnie, kisses him on the cheek. “I'm glad you don't hate it. I thought you would. Hate it, I mean. Most boys hate my renderings of them.”

Instead of dumping her, he spends the night. Not even Ronnie Altamont is obtuse enough to dump Maux—here, now. The classifications and the labels—as he opens his eyes at sunrise, as she sleeps in gentle breaths to his left—they strike Ronnie as idiotic. Some social construct designed by locust-eating Christians 2000 years ago. Why can't we be polygamists? Who gives a shit, if everyone's happy? Why can't we have harems; why can't we have, as Lou Reed sang in “I Wanna Be Black,” a “stable of foxy little whores?” Who made these rules, and why do the people who enforce them look so miserable as they sing their hymns? Why do we have to have these definitions: “friends,” “more than friends,” “boyfriend/girlfriend?” We know what we want and need, so why all the complications and lovesong hokum?

Oh, Ronnie. Is there anything you won't rationalize away?

 

 

SALTY SNACK TELEMARKETING OR PIZZA DELIVERY

 

You know the job market is bleak when your best options are between telemarketing or pizza delivery. Into the semester, as all the other positions have been filled, there is nothing in the classifieds other than these two. Ronnie thinks, often: Man! Dude! If I could only get a real gig in Gainesville, the place would be as perfect as I could ever hope for. To have a real job, like, some kind of office job with all the usual benefits, would be, with Gainesville's low cost of living, like being a millionaire! True enough. But his choice is down to the only available options: Telemarketing or Pizza Delivery.

Telemarketing. He is hired, quickly trained, given a cubicle in a large windowless room filled with hundreds of other cubicles, where he sits in front of a green computer screen as the phone calls random numbers. Ronnie is hired to survey callers about, you guessed it, salty snacks.