Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) (8 page)

Honestly, Ronnie doesn't get it. He never will. His band, The Laraflynnboyles, sounds nothing like this. He doesn't wax emotional about every stupid thing that has gone wrong in his life. He doesn't want to, and can't imagine what it would accomplish if he did. He isn't sure how “feeling” and “sincerity” means stretching out your vowels when you sing—or, how there is a direct correlation between the two. But that's what Gainesville seems to believe with the fervency of Eastern mystics. Because the way the band sings and the way the audience sings with them and how everyone is on the verge of tears at the minimum and mass catharsis at the maximum has the air of the fervor in a tent revival. At shows, Ronnie used to get bumped by kids dancing. Now, here, he's getting bumped by, to his left, some pork-skinned joker wearing nothing but camo cutoffs half-covering a pair of plaid boxers and at the feet the inevitable pair of black Chucks—he keeps crouching down then crouching up, hands behind his head, pulling his head into his chest—and to his right, some bleach-blonde short haired squat-bodied girl shrieking the words and punching the air at the start and end of each elongated word that's sung by the band. This band will be successful; they will hit thousands of kids all over the world in just the right place at just the right time. Ronnie drinks can after can of Brain Mangler malt liquor, leans against load-bearing poles in different parts of the tiny square room, surrounded by strangers, thinking of what he would sing about if he accepted this as valid, as something he could do without wanting to laugh.

He watches this band, the third of three (the first some pop punk band who sang only about girls around town they had crushes on, with titles like “She's the Publix Cashier Girl,” “She's the Zesty Glaze Girl,” “She's the DMV Eye Test Girl”; the second some ska band who sang about whatever it is ska bands sing about), thinks about what kinds of songs he would sing if he could indulge in this level of self-pity onstage. Thoughts of Kelly, who left the trailer three days ago, the bandages around the forehead gone with no traces except for a jaundiced peeled look to the covered skin, standing by his truck in front of the trailer in the eerie Jonestown silence of the late afternoon heat and humidity, his parting words: “Good luck, and try not to starve to death.” Ronnie laughed at this, in the doorway of the trailer. “Hey, thanks! You too! And the next time you dumpster dive, look out for ants.” Kelly winced, still feeling the receding welts across his tongue. “You can always come back,” he offered, like an exasperated father, before sighing, looking up to the trees, muttering a final exasperated “Jesus Christ, dude,” and stepping into the truck. Ronnie watched as he drove away, back to the lonely house, to another dead-end job, to a comfortable nothing, with one less friend. He deserved a song in the style, subject matter, and presentation of Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit. If anyone did, it was Kelly. Or in the trailer, Alvin deserves a song. Alvin—who Ronnie imagines sitting there in his moldy barrel living room chair, holding a dandruffy gerbil in his pudgy hands. “This here is Squeaky,” he had said the first time Ronnie met Alvin's furry little pet. Alvin extended Squeaky outward with his stubby arms. “Wanna pet it?” “Uh, no. Thank you,” Ronnie huffed, haughty, uncomfortable. Stevie was in the middle of the room, sweat marks expanding across his black t-shirt, trying to copy the moves in some Jackie Chan film, bending over to pick up the VCR remote and rewind the movie and show the scene again and again—Jackie Chan hi-yahing a bank safe—a sharp pop that instantly craters the safe at the point of impact—Stevie, who, Ronnie thinks, probably deserves an emo song too, was swinging his fists and karate kicking the air in uneven flailings. Meanwhile Squeaky slipped out of Alvin's hands, landing in the dirty shag carpeting, running—ratlike—straight towards Ronnie. “Eeeeeeeeee!” Ronnie squealed, high and girlish, as the gerbil beelined towards his feet. Stevie's hand dropped, fat ninja-like, to the rug, plucked Squeaky by the tail with a hearty “Hi-yah!” and lifted him off the ground. The poor gerbil dangled as Stevie held it between index finger and thumb. Ronnie watched, heart racing, as Stevie walked Squeaky to Alvin, placed him back into his hands, announcing to one and all in that redneck-who-doesn't-know-he's-a-redneck timbre and cadence Ronnie had grown to fear and despise, “Ya see that shit, hoooweeee! I am a badass muth-ur-fuck-er! Ooooo!” Alvin held Squeaky in his hands, pulled him close to his face, scolded, “Pffff. You shouldn't do that, Squeaky. You'll scare Ronnie. Bad gerbil. Bad! Gerbil! Pffff!” The tableau was too bizarre for anything more than a mumbled “I'm going to my room now” from Ronnie. There could be emo songs for Kelly, for Alvin, for Stevie. As the scene in the Nardic Track transforms more and more into something like those cathartic masculine reclamation camps in some desolate part of the Rocky Mountains where men dress in pelts and yell to the heavens until they feel the testosterone again, Ronnie Altamont thinks of himself as a good subject for an emo song, brooding on what happened after the strange incident with Squeaky, when, before going into his room and locking the door, he stopped in the bathroom, giving in to the compulsive need to wash his hands and face several times a day in the brief time he had lived with Alvin and Stevie. He wiped the water off on his navy blue Docker slacks (Ronnie never really tried very hard to incorporate punk fashion into his daily routine, especially in Florida), sized up the Ronnie in the mirror—that faded vermillion dye job (one of the few concessions to looking like the kind of person who listened to the kind of music that obsessed him throughout his late teens and into his mid-twenties . . . and he paid the price for looking so ridiculous, thanks to black hair peeking out where the dye didn't take, neck and scalp stained vermillion where the dye did take), black-framed glasses rusty and corroded at the hinges with binocular lenses caked with gunk along the edges, the unavoidable Florida tan, the scruffy face of an incompetent shaver, nose average in every way miraculously unbroken in light of all the provocative words he'd ranted back at UCF, flabby chin (despite the depression-fueled weight loss), broad slouched shoulders, a fraying old blue t-shirt ready to give up and dethread with the rest of his shirts, bony arms, small hands pressed against the nasty crusty bathroom counter, slacks stanky from freeballing, unfashionable hiking boots given out of pity and charity by Kelly. He too could be a walking talking emo song . . . Hell, even to get into these shows he's had to donate plasma, take the money, buy one twenty-five cent Little Lady Snack Cake for lunch and one twenty-five cent bag of Cheese Canoodles for dinner—so yeah, he could write emo album after emo album . . . if only he could take any of this seriously. Always, always, the desire to laugh in the face of futile despair like this—emo bands like Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit are indicative of the times—these self-loathing 1990s where people have no compunction about walking around in shirts with the word LOSER or ZERO in big letters . . . where all these “alternative” bands tepidly whine about their lives . . . Ronnie, as the “new kid” in the tiny little punk club where the bands play like this and moments are shared that Ronnie can't understand . . . the only salvation is how they actually laugh with each other between the songs and at the end of the set . . . the way the space between performer and audience is nonexistent . . . the one thing they all agree on is knowing that in the end all of this is nothing more than moments between friends, many of whom could just as easily (and had before, and will again) plug in and play. These were friends—hugging, arms around each other, singing, screaming, sweating, palzee walzee friends, and Ronnie doesn't know where to begin with anyone, has yet to see any of his old friends who grew up with him in Orlando then went off to college here and started bands. Everyone in the room is a potential friend, but Ronnie doesn't know how to go about it, and this is also funny to Ronnie. Not only the lyrics, but the music was like nothing The Laraflynnboyles played . . . how all the bands in Gainesville played the octaves of the chords rather than the Ramones chords and/or the Minutemen 9th chord syncopation he loved.

No, Ronnie doesn't think he will suffer all that much in Gainesville. He figures he will be broke a lot, be hungry a lot, lonely, depressed, but he won't mope about it and scream it out at some show. He will laugh. These bands work in limited spectrums, and after you've heard and processed, say, Captain Beefheart or Albert Ayler, it's hard to go back.

Ronnie leaves the Nardic Track, and stepping out of the muggy show and into the relative cool of the Gainesville spring is in itself a glorious moment. He walks past groups of sweaty punk kids standing around in gossipy packs or sitting on the steps of the Hippodrome Theatre (a beautiful olden Greco-Roman column-heavy building) across the street, staring at Ronnie, not quite in a “Who the fuck is this guy and what the fuck is he doing here?” but more of a “Who let you in here?” kind of vibe you get anywhere anyplace the crowd is tight-knit and everyone in that circle knows everyone else's story. He attempts a smile and a “What's up?” to a couple dudes with skateboards sitting on either side of a girl with shaved green hair and cat-eye glasses. They say nothing.

In the car, Ronnie thinks it's funny to freestyle emo lyrics like he heard tonight: “I don't know . . . anybody heeeeeeeere / I shoulda peeeeeeeeeed before I left the shoooooooooow / now I gottaaaaaa gooooooooooo / man, I gottaaaaa goooooo/my blaaaaader screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeams / to meeeeeee.” Through the small downtown, past the closed restaurants and closing bars and grills, the manic action of novice drunk kids acting like novice drunk kids. At Main and University, a flip-flop stepping brunette-with-blonde-streaks skin-covered skeleton girl in an orange and blue University of Florida t-shirt and matching pajama bottom screams “I'M SO DRUNK AND HAPPY I WANNA PUKE EVERYWHERE” while leading a pack of similarly attired friends across the intersection. Ronnie sings as he drives back to the other side of town, past a university he does not attend, down streets he does not know, as the college gives way to the residential neighborhoods. University Avenue begins its slow metamorphosis into Newberry Road, and the plazas and strip malls and apartment complexes begin.

 

 

PAYPHONE CALL TO MR. AND MRS. ALTAMONT

 

“Look, I walked out. It wasn't a fun place to be, you know? The owner was this mustachioed Ay-rab cokehead who was always trying to grope the servers at the end of the night while everybody else who worked there had had a few drinks and I'm back there slaving away trying to wash the last of the dishes and plates so I can go home, because God forbid the lowly dishwasher gets to have a drink with the rest of the crew. I mean, sometimes they'd give me a bottle of Budweiser or something, but I mean, Budweiser gives me headaches, so I can't even drink that. But not only that, it was like, so pretentious, how everyone just had to have their water with lemon, like the lemon makes a difference, and the customers were always calling everything ‘fabulous' in like these haughty Newport, Rhode Island inflections, like earning five figures from commissions in the Central Florida real estate market gives you the right to act like you've made it into the upper echelons of the Really Rich.”

Right View. Right Thought. Right Speech. Right Behavior. Right Livelihood. Right Effort. Right Mindfulness. Right Concentration. As her son goes through this litany of complaints, Mrs. Sally-Anne Altamont makes a list, in spite of herself, of all the ways in which Ronnie is not following the Noble Eightfold Path. Where to begin?

“Ronnie.” Sally-Anne's voice is firm, serious, a tone she hopes conveys how badly she wants him to stop ranting, just this once. But he's always ranting anymore; in recent years, an anger, a caustic bitterness, sarcasm at everything and everyone. Where does it come from? They are retired now, Sally-Anne and her husband Charley, self-described “easy-going vegans, old—not ‘ex'—hippies, because we never stopped, and,” (for the past nine months, since Charley stole a book called
The Teaching of Buddha
out of the nightstand drawer of the luxury hotel he stayed in in Miami for a three-day academic conference devoted entirely to compound adverbs) “dilettante Buddhists.” They retired six years ago, when Ronnie went off to college, and before that lived frugally for decades, invested wisely—ethically, even—used the money to buy a beach house on Hilton Head Island, the ocean to the south, on a quiet section of the beach where they spend their late mornings reading passages from
The Teaching of Buddha
then meditating on their meanings.

Charley emerges from the hallway, pink-red-tan skin, docksider shoes, navy blue shorts, white t-shirt with two oars crossed into an X across the front, that white cap with the yellow rope coiled around the black anchor, not fat but not thin, a quarter-inch short of six feet tall. He looks at his wife—in a teal one-piece swimsuit, white floppy beach hat over the gray-black ponytailed long hippie hair, sunglasses, pink-red-tan skin, not fat but not thin, a quarter inch over five feet five inches—mouths “What is it?” Sally-Anne shakes her head “No.”

“And like everybody there was so insufferable,” Ronnie continues. “Like, I know this isn't a big deal or nuthin', but like people were always asking for capers on their entrees, even when the entrees didn't need capers. Like they'd just go and ask the servers for capers to show off for their dates, like their taste in capers was gonna get them laid or something . . . ”

“Capers?” Sally-Anne repeats.