Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (45 page)

When the shot is choked down and Ronnie shakes it out and around his head, he says, “Can't wait to get outta here . . . ”

“Why the Midwest?” Mitch has to ask, because now, really. Cahmahn.

“Why not?”

“Why?”

“Better than here . . . ”

Mitch raises the pint glass to his lips, drinks, sets it back down on the bar. “It doesn't matter where you live.”

“Sure it does,” Ronnie says, wobbly on the barstool, slurring his speech. “Makes a huge difference.”

“Naw, not really, Rahhhhn. It's the same bullshit everywhere.” Almost as if on cue, almost as if to bolster his argument, that one Bad Company song about how the vocalist is, well, he's bad company, and he can't deny, starts to play on the jukebox.

“You're saying Chicago is the same as Gainesville?”

“Naw, of course not. You're missing the point. You can be happy anywhere, or unhappy anywhere. That's all I'm sayin'.”

Ronnie belches. Laughs. Raises his pint glass. “Ok, yeah: You can make the best of it, like here, for instance. Or Orlando. Or Chicago. Some people need more from the people and places around them. Some don't.”

“I guess, Rahhn. I'm also saying that Chicago is exactly the same as this, only there's more of it.”

“Look,” Ronnie says, “look,
scientifically,
” he burps, continues, “there are big cities, small cities, suburbs, college towns, beach towns, factory towns, and ski towns. Each has their own ratios of boredom to excitement, danger to safety, vibrancy to redundancy, despair to hope. Sure, under the right set of circumstances, you can find your own version of happiness in almost any of these . . . ” Ronnie stops, laughs. Turns to Mitch. “Look at us. Trying to solve the problems of the world.”

“I'm just tryin' to figure out why you you cheersed the Midwest, Rahhhn. That was your toast, not mine.”

“I don't know. I got my reasons.” Ronnie laughs. “Let's get another beer, another shot, hmmm?” Ronnie nudges Mitch in the arm, punctuates the gesture with added “Hmmm?! Hmmm?!”

“Naw, I'm drunk. I'm walking home.”

“Alright. I'm staying.”

“You're staying?” Mitch stands, starts to walk to the door. “Camahhhn. You're drunk already. You don't need to get drunker.”

“I'm stayin',” Ronnie says. Mitch shrugs, shakes his head, walks out the door, leaves Ronnie to his drunken drooling brooding. Dumbass. Thinks the Midwest—thinks Chicago—is any different. And now Mitch has gotta get home and sleep this off and make it to class tomorrow for an exam, and what does Ronnie have? Nothing. Not a thing.

 

 

TWO ON A FARTY
10

 

Naw, dude, he had no idea the age of the nnnugget, Julianna, but she definitely wasn't some puppy-eyed punkette younger than Ronnie, now floundering somewhere in his mid-twenties. There were some hungover mornings when he could believe his mind's jive turkey talk—that he was you know hanging out with some older Anne-Bancroft-Mrs.-Robinson-scotch-and-Virginia-Slims-panty-hose-and-blouse-type, but there were nights when the malt liquor was really kicking in, and the bands were hitting their strides three to four songs into their sets, her blue eyes were you know Bambified wonder, and she would shake that curvy-enough body up and down round and round, and Ronnie's hormones sang Beefheartian lyrics on the order of “Rather than I wanna hold your hand / I wanna swallow you whole / and lick you everywhere that's pink / and everywhere you think,” she looked younger than Ronnie, younger than the clove-smoking dorm girls in their CRASS t-shirts. As he got to know her, Ronnie no longer thought about Julianna's thirtiness (thirtiness!), and he even forgot that on the night he met her, he contemptuously regarded her as “an aging yuppie.” Natch, when Ronnie first met Julianna, she was looking notso hotso. It was at The Drunken Mick; she swiveled on the stool next to Ronnie's and she had lost a twenty dollar bill and was accusing the Irish bartender of shortchanging her on her last drink. She kept swiveling in her chair like a drunken manatee bobbing and weaving in a lagoon scanning the dark dirty bar floor for any sign of the bill, mumbling and swaying as the barstool squeaked each time she spun a 360, leaning forward, back of her blouse bunching upward and revealing the promise of two glorious asscheeks. As she spun, Ronnie was getting the feeling he was on the verge of being accused of reaching across the bar and stealing the twenty when she left it there while stumbling off to use the ladies'. Each time she spun his way he felt nausea in his stomach; he totally thought she was a stupid-ass aging yuppie. Actually she didn't think Ronnie Altamont had anything to do with it; her only suspect was the bartender, tallying her drinks with her hands—wwwwwun . . . twoooo . . . thhhhreeee . . . ffffffffour . . . fffffive . . . sssssix . . . ssssssseven . . . —repeatedly, obnoxiously asking why they don't teach subtraction in Irish schools.

Then Ronnie found it as he was about to bail, irritated and depressed with his decision to waste the evening drinking when he could have been trying to write; he spotted the twenty folded in half, pressed against the bar and the floor, far below the range of the swiveling yuppie's double-sight. With the kind of self-righteous elitist snobbery one gets when knowing that the independent rock and roll music you're fond of is billions of times better than the dependent rock and roll music the masses are spoonfed, Ronnie plucked the bill from the floor, made a sarcastic production of showing her the discovered twenty, and slammed it on the bar without saying a word. Two events prevented him from leaving The Drunken Mick right then and there. Three Gainesville scene nnnnuggets entered the bar one . . . two . . . three, and they knew Ronnie from his parties, and he knew them because they were nnnnuggets and anytime he saw them—individually and collectively—he bit his fist like Lenny from “Laverne and Shirley,” and as they said their Hahhhhowareyewws in that syrupy southern way of theirs, at the same time, the woman, Julianna, wouldn't stop thanking him for finding the twenty, wanted to repay him in whatever he wanted to drink. Well? Sure. Ok. He returned to his seat, she bought him the drink, the nnnuggets seated to his right bought him drinks, the yuppie bought the nnnuggets drinks, the nnnuggets bought the yuppie drinks, and Ronnie made charming promises to repay them all when he finally found a job, and in no time it was like the beautiful bright celebration Ronnie wanted to throw when the lead singer of U2 finally up and died.

Within minutes, she was no longer an aging yuppie but someone decently attractive, who spoke knowledgeably of Belgian indie-pop and Nova Scotian hardcore, who actually knew the older members and the older bands of the scene inside and out, who had moved to Charlotte, North Carolina on a whim, and moved back to Gainesville, Florida on a whim, someone even more to Ronnie's taste than the nnnnuggets with their fake IDs could ever be. Seeing them, Ronnie and Julianna, in the long bar mirror behind all those multi-colored liquor bottles, he saw all the makings of a fellow flounderer, the perfect companion to kill these empty Gainesville afternoons, evenings and late nights. She could pass for an almost-haggard Swedish stewardess, short blonde hair, pale skin, almost statuesque save for the slight arm flab, a barely perceptible unfirm around the middle, tiny purple veins beginning to emerge in the thighs. Have you ever heard the song “Lady Midnight” by Leonard Cohen? Well, if you have, she—and it—were a lot like that. Ronnie had uneven short black hair from one-too-many friends who were amateurs with hair clippers. He had a darker inevitable Floridian tan—even though he rarely ventured outside. He wore black-rimmed glasses—handles covered in grime eating into the hinges. He kept his stained baby blue Oxford shirts untucked to camouflage the emerging beer belly. Unfortunately for Ronnie, the belly would kind of, you know, hang over the shorts he was forced to wear nine months out of the year, and by the month, it was getting harder and harder to hide, no matter how much he sucked it in. Of course, behind the bar, the nnnuggets didn't notice it, but when he stood . . . I mean, did The Ramones have beer bellies? That's how he explained it to Julianna. She said, Dude, find something else to drink besides all that stupid beer, get some exercise! Why do you care so much about it? I'm older than you; I should be the one complaining! Beyond the floundering and the drunken belligerence, Julianna was usually well-intentioned in her honesty, even if Ronnie would never argue with someone as much as he did with her. She would argue over anything—literally anything—especially when drunk—and she lived in France for two years and knew everything about pre-fusion jazz—knew more about music than even Ronnie's extensive knowledge, spoke fluent Russian, graduated Magna Cum Laude at the University of Florida. Easily, she was the smartest woman Ronnie had ever met, but there was nowhere for that energy to go, so she drank, and that would have been depressing to be around, if Ronnie hadn't matched her drink for drink, time and time again. Totally, when he stopped thinking of her as some yuppie, he thought of her as a serious drinker—not a drunk or a lush or an alcoholic—not yet, and maybe not ever—but as someone equally as bored as Ronnie by what his surroundings had to offer anymore. Her intelligence simply didn't exist with the women in the Gainesville punk scene. Some came close—Maux, for instance—but they were too young, masking their inexperience with a self-invented world-weariness.

Fortunately for Ronnie, he had broad shoulders. If he could hold his shoulders back and try not to slouch, the beer belly practically disappeared, but unfortunately, years of playing and seeing loud music had dulled his hearing. To listen to what the nnnuggets were saying, he needed to slouch inward, towards them. He had no money—living a hand-to-mouth existence from plasma donations—so joining a gym or even buying running shoes was completely out of the question. To be in shape meant not playing music, not writing, not going out each night, because it meant finding a full-time job, and Ronnie Altamont, in case you didn't know it, was destined to be a great writer and all that shit. Yes, all that shit!

Being a little fat and a little deaf, and more so by the month, it seemed, Ronnie would lean into conversations, shoulders slouched, belly poked out, if he wanted to hear what the nnnuggets were yapping about. It isn't nice and it isn't cool to not listen to the nnnuggets, because the way they talk and what they talk about is almost as important as how they look in determining whether or not they're really and truly a nnnugget, or some run-of-the-mill cute girl with the grave misfortune of being a fan of Alice in Chains, and Ronnie hated making that mistake. So he leaned inward a little bit, and the gut popped out enough to make Ronnie inwardly cringe, ashamed at what the floundering was doing to his body, making him age ungracefully, someone who could no longer hang with nnnuggets, with anyone younger than he. But, as he often said to Julianna, it's important to know if they're, you know, punk, or not.

Julianna disagreed, and they had many arguments about it. But Ronnie was obsessed with this, and would go on and on about it, like some Maximumrockandroll columnist delineating what is and isn't punk and why and why not and Julianna would surrender the argument out of outright boredom, simply not caring one way or the other, as Julianna had slowly moved away from younger punk rock obsessions in ways Ronnie had not.

About her own looks, Julianna was equally depressed.

You know, Julianna would say, I used to be a nnnugget myself. Before I thought I had grown up. I can hide years, and sometimes, when they're drunk enough, I think the boys actually think I'll be off to take my core classes the next morning. Assuming they even care about it, and many of them don't. How can they not see this fatty ass and this fatty face and this sagging everything else, Ronnie?

Bull. Shit. Ronnie would counter. You're beautiful and I know it, and they know it, and if you don't know it, I'm gonna keep telling you! Kee-rist, lady! Get over here!

And Ronnie would stand, extend his arms into a hug the way he would when he thought he was being charming, and he'd put his arms around her and embrace, hands touching her back where the Carolina pale was darkening into Floridian permatan, and it was always around closing time, when the bars or shows or parties were ending and this youthful life they had lived for far too long felt exhausted and they didn't know where to go or what to do next, that tasty guitar lead to the Dan's “Reelin' in the Years” came on like it always does, somewhere, on a jukebox. Another night where you go out with so much hope and come back feeling older than you actually are. The world is against you, and so are the nnnuggets, who are as coy as you are drunk and the teasing is the worst, the unconscious coy teasing that inspired so many of those emo songs from the emo bands of that emo town. These temporary early twentied sorceresses of the nanosecond, the boys and girls at the height of their beauty, and after this, it would be over for them the way it would be over for Ronnie and Julianna, and only Ronnie and Julianna knew this secret, and it killed their hurt along with the booze—the bottle and the wisdom a futile solace wherever they ended up. This brought out the “Reelin' in the Years” talk, the regrets of wasted lives with wasted lovers, forgetting they were still young and not unattractive.

Really, they batted about .300. Usually once a week one of them succeeded in what Ronnie called “prospecting for nnnuggets.” On the awesome nights, they were both successful. The awesome nights weren't as rare as snow, but they weren't as frequent as frat boys, but it was obvious they were a good pair, setting off the latent charms inside each other that nnnuggets picked up on immediately and responded accordingly. The nights were bright brilliant parties of bands and booze and pizza and singing and the ol' awoooooga! Julianna's arrival into Gainesville led Ronnie to reserves of vast energy, to places Ronnie never knew existed. It was the best of times, papa papa papa ooo mow mow papa ooo mow m-mow, even when it was notso hotso. Even if the worst happened, if there were no nnnnuggets around and it was only Ronnie and Julianna sitting on Ronnie's roof—bored, drunk, and arguing—hey, it beat sitting at home watching television, waiting for work the next day. Good or bad, it was living.