2010
1:54am |
I avoided the shiny new drum set for days after I moved in. I'm used to shitty half-broken drums. I could break the new set in if I wanted, if my body remembered how to play. I just didn't have the time or strength to find out.
But then the day was over and I was on the drum stool. I had three uncorked wine bottles on the floor. They surrounded me, a white behind and a red on each side, and I told myself the only way to leave that spot was to drink my way out. From there, I could see into the kitchen and the short line of empties on the counter, the one thing so far that made the place feel mine.
I took the sticks and tested each of the drum heads, listening to the resonance fade until there was only my own breathing.
A phone rang somewhere, but it wasn't mine.
Every once in a while, I hear part of a conversation in some foreign language or the sound of a cough through the wall of one of the nearby units, sounding like it's right next to me. Then the apartment gets quiet again. Either the walls have thin spots, or my neighbors are just totally quiet all the rest of the time. There's no way to know what they hear from me, which makes me nervous. The storage space really changed me. I used to work as hard as I could to be heard over guitar, bass and vocals.
With a cymbal crash, I launched into the beat for "Missing Inaction." My body remembered the motions, but the sound was wrong. It wasn't supposed to be this way. The magic ingredient was gone.
My earliest memory of Casimir, we were at the same school in different second grade classrooms, and I heard the rumor that some kid broke into the office and destroyed everyone's state standardized tests.
We weren't even eight years old, and Casimir was taking a stand against tests he said were "biased against minorities and the inner city poor." He was smart, even then. Or maybe he just didn't want to take them anymore. All I knew was, I never finished a single section of those tests before "pencils down."
The State was gonna fail the whole school, cut even more funding out of the place, but the teachers and principle took a stand. Casimir's B+E forced them to, and it worked. That's when we first started getting textbooks less than a decade old.
By fifth grade, a bunch of us would have followed him anywhere. We called ourselves Casimir's Gang, and that's what we would have grown up to be if he hadn't disappeared.
None of us knew if he went to juvie, some crazy boarding school or just moved away. I was ashamed of this for a long time, but I cried like a baby when I realized he wasn't coming back.
I never knew my dad. The idea of Santa Claus never worked on me, and I never had a reason to believe in god. Casimir was the only hero I ever had, and he was real.
I never did get a clear story about what happened to him, but for the next 13 years, I thought about him a lot.
My mom died. She was the only family in America I knew about. I kept doing day labor, really just waiting for death to take me too someday, until the night I saw my childhood hero getting kicked out of a bar.
Jul 18, 2006 |
Maybe he pissed someone off in the audience enough to start the fight, or he mighta just thrown that glass into the crowd because that's who he was.
There's no way I should have been able to recognize him. His hardcore band from back then was named after him, Book of Veles, but he just looked like some pale white guy, his blonde hair grown long and a big ol' beard covering half his face, but there was something about the way he laughed as the crowd surged to pull him off the stage that could only come from Casimir.
When I pushed my way forward to see the fight, I noticed a member of his band using the distraction to take people's wallets while the bouncer tried to handle Casimir. I didn't know that's where most of my income would come from for the next three years.
My hero twisted free and pushed back members of the crowd with a punch or a kick for anyone who came too close. It finally took five guys to tackle him and drag him towards the door.
Halfway there, he stopped shouting. I thought that was it, but the one true thing in the world is, Casimir never stopped fighting. Whatever he said to those guys, it fucking worked like magic.
He bought a round for the bar. It looked like an apology, but that wasn't really his style either. When he came up and cornered me, talking a mile a minute, he said he was abandoning Book of Veles. He never said he knew who I was, but I knew I couldn't let him get away again.
Three weeks later, we were Effective Disorder.
I don't know whose idea it was for me to learn the drums. A kid named Ricky who played the guitar used to hang around, and he was in. Harry wouldn't leave me alone until we let him join. Together we were loud and violent and terrible and great. We toured. People hated us or loved us, but they fucking remembered us. The next time through each town was a collection of all the right kind of people. We survived day to day. Then one of us didn't.
I didn't cry when Casimir died, but I couldn't keep up the fight without him. My girlfriend saw the change, called me a loser and threw me out. I locked myself in a box. And now I sold out for an apartment and a drum set.
Dec 6, 2010 |
I picked up the wine bottle to my right and held the cold green glass against my forehead.
This is all the Dude's fault. He's the one running the show from under that dark hood, the reason I can't drink in peace. I want to deal with him the way we handled things on tour, beat the Dude's ass and tell him to stop, make the world a better place with violence, but I don't know where he is.
I saw something about WikiLeaks threatening to leak a bunch of stuff. Someone should do that kind of thing to the Dude.
Anyway, I tilted the bottle and chugged until my eyes unfocused and my stomach squirmed. Zinfandel and I fought over my consciousness. That's what happened to my instinct to fight. It's not completely gone.
I lifted my leg, set my shoe against the rim of the bass drum and pushed. The toms caught the cymbals, and the whole set went crashing down.
I smiled. For a second, I had the old feeling that anything was possible. That was how we used to sound. I wouldn't be a sellout as long as I didn't stop fighting.
6:25am
I came to with my leg over the bass drum. There was a strange noise in my pocket, electronic beeping in an unfamiliar pattern. My company phone was going off, the piercing midi beeps of the ringtones from 2003. A name showed up on the tiny screen.
roger
I answered. "What'na fuck you call'nme for?"
A female voice answered me. "Morning, Winston."
"Tinkerbell?" I closed my eyes and pictured how her flowing blonde hair would move as she sucked my cock.
"I thought you'd want to know, they're watching you with cameras."
I looked around for some water. I wanted to be conscious for this. "I unplugged eh." I moved my leg. A wine bottle fell over on the carpet. It was empty. I scratched my face.
"They're still watching. They watch everyone who works for them."
I tried to stand up, but everything hurt. "You work f'r'em."
"As if. I told you, I go wherever I want." Her voice played with me. "With whoever I want. Right now, I'm talking to you."
I tried to play along. "You wanna'na sex with me?"
There was a second of dead air. Maybe I didn't play her game right. "I just did you a favor, Winston. Maybe you can do something for me someday." She hung up.
I weighed the odds of sex against calling back and talking to Roger. That guy is too cheerful. That girl is out of my league. I reached for the nearest bottle and hoped it wasn't as empty as me.
