by Odie Lindsey
Hoo-ah! they barked. You tha man, man!
Randall and I depart that bar, we drive on. He says zero about my deployment. We pay cover, we squeeze into an East Nashville venue, find another Brooklynesque band, another huddle of white hipsters in white V-neck t-shirts whose everything is constructed by camouflaging their incomes, by folding tattooed arms across their chests, and/or nodding and/or spying at their phones. Superb denim, everywhere. We drive off. Drop twenty bucks to park on bustling and hyper-sold Second Avenue: Hard Rock Café, Coyote Ugly, chain, chain, etc., etc. At a pseudo-upscale music hall, stuffed with pseudo-upscale music industry fakes, reclaimed wood and iron, taxidermy mounts, Randall yanks me into a hallway and flask-feeds me bourbon. Tells me he can’t get away from unknowns who want to write songs with him—Hey, man, let’s write; Hey, Randall, let’s write—everywhere he goes, because they know that their chances of landing their first album cut are stronger with his name on as cowriter. (A couple years back, Randall wrote a chestnut called “Urban Cowgirl,” a one-off departure from his nonpaying folk songs. After the song was cut by a cosmetic cowboy, it topped the Top 40, and made Randall a universe of cash. Now nobody artsy and literate and frustrated will hang out with him. He is and forever will be the “Urban Cowgirl” sellout.) Randall hates this process, this creative suck-off, yet he does the same thing to more established songwriters: calls them to cowrite, wedges into their conversations at industry gatherings, at industry bars, pumping gossip like heartbeats, desperate to book a session, to redefine himself. I do not call him out on this. We are all chasing better narratives. Besides, truth is, I only want to be called out by him. I am desperate for his protest, or his permission to deploy. Because Randall and I have been each other’s go-to forever, over a thousand nights of dive bar and misquoted verse and booze-drenched guitar pull . . . and through his mother’s distal dystrophy, and the guilt he had over avoiding her, her withered, alien forearms and brittle legs . . . and through the time we dragged his PA onto his back porch the instant the sun tickled the frozen January horizon, cranked J. J. Cale while slugging a bottle of Pappy, then woke up as two of Nashville’s Finest draped us in Mylar emergency blankets, and . . . yet he does not seem to care about my military aptitude score, or the fallout with my job, or about what happened with her, how she never even called me back to tell me goodbye, or about my need to prove to her and my dad and my boss and everyone that I am worth something. That I am a Man from the South. Every time I try to prod Randall about this he says nothing. I’d been waiting on Option 4, Airborne, and I didn’t think the recruiters would call back, and in fact had come to think of my whole visit to the recruiting office as a big, reactive joke to her having left me. A counterpunch to her giving up on us. But three months later they did call back. They said, Okay, you’ve got it, Airborne, grunt, and then barked and all, Hoo-ah, on the phone, it was so fakey this bark. It was another gray morning, a hungover Tuesday all email all phone all filing and process. Fakey bark fakey office fakey music fakey everything, and so I called her and got sent to voice mail, and I left a message telling her I what I was about to do, all but daring her to call me and talk me out of it. And the morning burned off and I heard nothing from her: no phone or text no email no nothing. So I drove to the recruiter’s office on my lunch break, and signed the six-year contract; I took his high five and then went and got drunk. And tomorrow I’m off, Forts Jackson then Benning, 11B, Option 4, No bitches allowed in Airborne, Hoo-ah! they said. So fakey, I know, but what else is there to do but follow history? Men go to war to be men worth a damn. Their statues and movies are everywhere, forever.
I can’t stop checking my phone.
On the tourist-littered sidewalk we banter with drunk, middle-aged couples, feeding them elaborate lies about the deaths and trysts of country music stars “on this very f-in’ spot, y’all.” I am terrified we will never do this again. And the back of every blond head in this town is hers, and love is a veggie skin scraper-offer. And flat-screen televisions deliver the sports news above us, in every bar corner, muted. And sports and death and brass and wood and pool balls crack, glasses fall to shatter. We drive, we drive, we drink, we drive, we zip past ads on coasters, ads in stalls, ads on walls on TV on streets on girls on cab roofs on radio on billboards on stadiums. We slap down the plastic for two more shots, a toast of Bud Light and American Spirit as sidekick while we post up and play Spot the Black Guy. Because rarely in this growth-industry city, in these bars of brick-and-barn-wood, and fusiony kitchens and midtown art studios and progressive, boutique, bottle-tree enclaves are there ever any real live Black Guys to know—though the majority of new urbanites spew their love of diversity. (I have no BFs but I swear I would if they were around here; my recruiter was African-American, ex-DB at UT.) Neither of us scores a point. And Randall talks to smiling belles in designer clothes; he flirts but then falters when they determine he’s not from the South, that he doesn’t have the requisite pedigree to match his requisite money. We curse this predetermination as we storm out the door, into the car, stabbing farther into the city, and do not talk about me. Cops block the arteries, so we cut through the alleys, past cats darting and tourists pissing in shadow, chain link binding the job sites beside us, massive wounds of rebar and churned mud and crane and more crane, and we’re sweat-soaked so thirsty as we hit the touristy honky-tonks of Lower Broadway, where tourists in new denim call for Top 40 Country, earning scowls from the finely tuned rockabilly yips who still pilgrim downtown for a swing on the dance floor. The den so drunken, the burgers spit on the grill. Telecaster, Telecaster, the registers rattle credit slips while two-steppers slip on beer-splattered linoleum.
Closing time, hoo-ah! I looked everywhere but did not see her. These had been our bars and our closing times and always our last dances. Our drunken public make-outs and slurred-word squabbles. I wanted so bad just to tell her that tonight was the last night. To see her face when I told her I was GONE after this, I mean GONE. Surely, that would bump the needle. Make her miss me just a little bit.
Surely, for sure I would matter to her again.
We drive on. Randall works the radio while I think through an encyclopedia of the ways I would tell her; she always begs me, No, don’t go. Last Call behind us, we race to the convenience store, get there in the nick for a battery of 40-ounce bottles. Our redneck clerk is clad in a red-white-and-blue-blaring Tennessee Titans jersey. He watches a tummy-tuck teevee show, locks the door behind us and bids us, Be careful, y’all. And on to the drive-thru, to millions of tiny, steamed sliders, to mini chili dogs, all bite-sized but with biggie fry, as served by a navy-blue-vest-wearing, middle-aged Latina. Her first-generation accent and bright blond streaks, and wonderful smile. Her front teeth edged in dull gold, she is plump and headsetted and a goddamn late-night nobody for seven-two-five an hour, and whom Randall laughs at, so pissy drunk he is, throwing his request of, “More . . . uh . . . ketchup, por fay-vor,” hee hee, before skidding off, before he and I inhale malt liquor while carving the one-way downtown streets, back, forth, back, forth, side street to side, silent save for the sound of hot wind through cracked windows, the sound of the car lighter popping, the sound of our latching like babies to gold lager bottles until, somehow, at last, amazingly, we end up atop the tallest downtown hill. Randall cuts the motor and we get out and wobble, clutching food bags and 40s at the foot of the white, ionic columns of the massive Tennessee State Capitol, Greek Revival, 1859, judging our fair southern town from on high. Who knew we had such unguarded access to this place? Where do these people get off feeling safe?
“Man, look at that,” Randall slurs.
A gasping view of nude America, asleep and dreaming. So quiet, so pure. Ad-free and lovely, sexless and serene. Our capitol is skirted by fine landscape architecture. By granite and bronze memorial. By a sweeping, grassy mall that flows downhill like an emerald gown-train, stitched at the periphery by bulbs of antique lamplight. The space honors President Polk (Congress at age twenty-nine), Sergeant
Alvin York (Medal of Honor at thirty-one), Sam Davis, Boy Hero of the Confederacy (martyred at twenty-one). All represented in statue, all soundtracked by third-shifters in beater cars whose hanger-hung mufflers reverberate up and around the massive statehouse. Every single bit of this place is a remembrance to, or declaration of, cataclysm. To wins and losses by warrior men—with a nod of course to the Women of the Confederacy Monument.
We stand atop a hill of government and history, gorging on McShit and drinking our 40s. And Randall asks, What the hell, man? when I shoot snot on the historic marker, and take a piss on the presidential tomb. He curses when I smear ketchup and cow meat on the Senate door handles, then fling pickles on the fanlight windows.
“Andrew Jack-son, Indian slaughterer.” I prance about, singing in schoolyard melody about Nashville’s favorite son. Mustard and chili will slick up this cultural lineage; that state flag’s coming down now for an ass-wipe. “Thom-as Jefferson, slave-whipping hypocrite,” is my motto of centralized government. I sling trash like confetti; stacks of wadded wax paper and bags, napkins and condiment packets tumble in the breeze over the expansive green lawn. Wish to God I could spray a shit on the stars. “Jeffer-son Da-vis, captured in a dress by the Yan-kee grunts—hoo-ah!” I cry. Smash my bottle on the bronze of Jackson on mount, then slash at the fetlocks in hopes he’ll spill like Saddam.
“Enough!” Randall marches over, grabs my arm and shakes me. “Enough.”
I pull free and get in his face. “Defend this!”
“Nothing to defend. I just don’t want to go to jail, man.”
“Please,” I beg. “I’ve signed the contract, I am going to war. So tell me you need these people, this place. This memory. Tell me that you can’t live without us.”
He jiggles his keys in his pocket and turns from me. “Love you, pal,” he says. “All I am is sad. Real sad.”
We depart.
Chicks
I DRIVE BACK into the beige haze of the Valley. Waste away on the weak side of hot. “Smog Index must be ten,” I mumble to myself, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, my body longing to sweat. I don’t know for sure if indices or numbers are used to calculate smog. I believe someone told me that when the L.A. horizon starts to spoil, its tint reminiscent of a dirty aquarium, a Smog Index or Alert is issued, the authorities instructing us to seal up in residence, to breathe only conditioned air.
Smog doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is that I’ve forgotten whether this someone was a Someone I should remember to remember: man, woman, curious, queer, producer, director, dealer, what? What matters is that I shove on the wall of an industry which mandates that I not only know Everyone, but know exactly what they’ve got going on, when they’re hot, what they’re hot for, and most importantly what I can do to make them hot for me.
It is seventy-nine degrees in Southern California, again. Sunlight spears past the cream vinyl visors as I turn onto Ventura Boulevard. The silver pocket watch in the car’s center console keeps erratic time. Dry breeze through the open windows fans the script pages on the passenger’s seat.
Breeze or not, these pages aren’t going anywhere. Not today. Apparently, my writing remains stuck in bass-ackwards South Carolina. It seems I don’t have a grasp on the language or thoughts or physiology of real-world chicks. Chicks, chicks, chicks.
THIS was part of my pitch to the Producer, earlier today: “Ultimately, the story is an old-school romance in which the innocence of a kiss is infinitely more valuable and, well, more noble than sex.”
He sighed.
“If you will, follow me, here,” I continued. “People are overpumped with sex. Movies, television, commercials, ads, books, e-books, pop-ups, wherever. What they forget about, what they lack, is honesty. Sincerity. Tenderness. So they’ll devour this story. A young couple, desperate in love—only he’s shipping off to war. We follow their last night together, until they part at daybreak on the fragility of a kiss.”
“Sure, kid,” he said, his words a dollop of disinterest. “Hey? I get it. And the war thing sells like crack. But here’s the problem. You can’t base a major motion-picture budget on some sappy kiss. On a fragile whatever. Mature audiences need more—even from a chick flick. They crave more. Hey? Know what I think?”
“What’s that?” I said, I say, again and again, in meeting after meeting, in squat stucco buildings augmented by outrageous European cars, by jasmine vines that struggle up pink walls with ornamental wooden doors.
He noted something clever. His pristine teeth screamed monthly scrape; the flawless skin of his cheeks, abrasion. And as it all came together, teeth and scrape and stucco, my disappointment dragged me to yet another memory of yet another faceless L.A. Moment. To the words of yet another ghost. This Someone—whomever they were—made the observation that Los Angeles architecture is either (A) holding firm to the 1970s, or (B) represents the far evolution of sexless capitalism: Strip Mall, City of the Future. Either way, this city is a fundamental counter-aesthetic to the dignified militarism of home. Where is the memorial? The genteel remembrance of strife?
“Ammo or AOC?” the Producer asked, his finger poised to press on this black desktop orb.
“Sorry?”
“Never apologize, kid. What do you think? Ammo or AOC? I’m meeting a client later.”
“Trick answer,” I answered. “The patio at AOC—only, before it was AOC. When it was still Orso. Anyway, I’ll never understand why anyone goes beyond the Chateau. Cliché or Q-score be damned. You just can’t kill the hang.”
The amount of time I spend memorizing industry blogs is nauseating.
“Good,” he said. He put his fingertip on the orb and instructed, “Set up drinks at Bar Marmont. And put a hold on Room 64, in case things turn fun.”
IF you frame the narrative correctly, the $10 bill in my wallet is exponentially powerful. A potential game-changer. Ten bucks equals three gallons of unleaded gas. Therefore, worst-case scenario, in stop-and-go traffic, it equals sixty-six miles. Sixty-six miles equals four round trips over Laurel Canyon. Four trips over Laurel Canyon are potentially four pitch meetings, out of which I only need one to pop. Statistically speaking, this could be the last time I have to worry about . . .
Who am I kidding? Make that one gallon and a $7 pack of Winstons. Make it twenty-two miles and sixteen waking hours of nicotine, alongside the heartbreak of having to list another Bolex lens on eBay, in order to make rent and buy Variety. As complement, go ahead and make it be the scream of a failed CV axle joint, or the driver’s-side window whose crank handle snapped off, meaning that you must roll the thing up using pliers, every time you park in this city of thieves.
The white plastic bag on the passenger’s seat floor contains Ralph’s eponymous organic spinach, Ralph’s eponymous frozen pizzas, and a six-pack of cold, cheap American pilsner. (Ralph’s grocery does not yet offer generic beer.) Got $10 cash back, which I had to ask for special, since the lowest option on the checkout screen was $20.
YOU know those glass electricity globes? Those electricity-filled glass globes in kids’ museums that generate multi-colored lightning? She was like that. Her spark was wit and literariness and sentimentality, and a tiny white dog-bite scar that curled off her upper lip like a bass clef. She had a penchant for spouting high-minded conspiracy theory, e.g., Kafka Predicted the Holocaust. A disdain for the paper-white lily, for banana nut bread from a package, e.g., Martha White (though if one must buy premixed banana nut bread, she figured one might as well go with Martha White). All sorts of details. And, point being, if she was that globe, and if you touched the globe softly, the lightning softly struck back. If you placed hands fully on it, it crackled and thrust in kind. Leave it alone and it, she, did her thing in beautiful solitude.
I left South Carolina six weeks after our first date, having already quit my job and sold my everything to move west and sell a story.
“Superb timing,” she said, then gave me the antique pocket watch as a parting gift.
I sit out he
re and hock my narrative and make her be the balance. At a stoplight, under the smog-fed palms, she is always the balance I’m missing.
SUBPLOT: I can’t believe there aren’t automatic car washes at the filling stations in this town. In the seven months separating the South from Southern California I haven’t seen one. Not one, among the endless pimples of gas pumps. And everyone here loves cars like money and breathing smog and driving slowly, stuttering through the near-dead breeze, primping in the Prozacian semi-heat, banging their monotonous remixes at you. And the cars are always beautiful, and certainly more important than the squat buildings that define the majority of Southern California. And despite the whole “green” thing, most of the cars still run on fuel. And they do make gas stations with attached car washes, elsewhere in the United States. My father owned one, and growing up I worked there every summer, and by worked there I mean I learned how to work. Yet here in Los Angeles, no.
“POINT being, you’ve gotta think like a modern chick,” the Producer said, his lips launching a fleck of spittle. He then fumbled with a crystal paperweight worth more than my car. “Hey? The war thing is money right now. And your dialogue, themes and stakes are good. But they’re dated, kid. This is yesteryear shit—only not in the period-piece sense.” He checked his watch.
