by Mercy Brown
Fuck Valium—all I ever needed was the road.
And I’m not the only one who’s gone a little crazy out here, either. In fact, I’d say I was still the rational one. I have no idea how no one has ended up in jail or the hospital by now. The ride from Boone to Myrtle Beach alone could have resulted in both catastrophes, with Crown the Robin firing bottle rockets at us from their van at seventy miles per hour as we followed them along Route 421. I was a little surprised when Cole swapped with Emmy to ride in the front so he could shoot flares out of the window back at them—and more surprised that Travis let him, because, well, I just assumed they’d both be better at basic physics. Luckily when we swerved to miss the blast we didn’t hit the guardrail or anything.
At the Delta station in Myrtle Beach, Anton defended the assault on Steady Beth because of evidence of tampering with their engine, which of course we didn’t do! But the Ram van had been giving them hell ever since Lexington, so they blamed us, since that’s when we showed up.
“Bullshit!” Travis said. “That’s the kind of stunt you might pull, but we’d never do that to you!”
“Big ole rock stars now,” Anton fired back. “Stealing the headline in Boone and signing autographs. Next thing you know you’ll be setting hotel suites on fire and forgetting your real friends.”
“We didn’t steal any headline slot!” Emmylou argued. “We would have happily let you guys take the headline, you know that.”
“Yeah, right,” Elliot said. “You guys can’t be this competitive out here—we have to work together or . . . whoa. Sweet, dude.”
He stopped talking to admire an old red-and-black Mustang in perfect condition that pulled up next to us. I didn’t think much of it until Alice Cooper stepped out in a pair of plaid golf pants and a bright blue polo shirt.
“Holy shit, check out that fastback,” Joey said. “Fuckin’ gorgeous. What is that, a ’65?”
“Guys, isn’t that Alice Cooper?” Emmylou asked. “In golf pants?”
“Afternoon,” Alice Cooper said as we all gawked in disbelief.
“Alice fucking Cooper! Goddamn!” Elliot went right over and shook the man’s hand, told him how he got suspended for cranking “School’s Out” over the high school loudspeaker back in ’84 when the national anthem was supposed to play, and can he please get his autograph on his . . . arm? He didn’t have anything else handy that felt worthy of Alice Cooper, aside from his own flesh. Travis handed him his Sharpie and Alice obliged. Clearly not the weirdest thing he’d ever been asked to sign. But then none of us wanted to be left out, so we asked Alice Cooper to sign us all, like a group tattoo. Elliot explained we were on tour together and it would be awesome if he could write a different line of “School’s Out” on each of us.
“We all have to get these tattooed on our arms permanently,” Emmylou declared after Alice went inside to pay for his gas. “A tribute to our first real tour, which just wouldn’t have been the same without Crown the Robin. This is our pact to stay friends forever.”
“Um, no,” Travis said, looking at his arm where it said, No more books. “We’ll have to find some other way to stay friends forever.”
At least we’d stopped arguing.
After playing Alley Cats in Myrtle Beach and another decent night at Cumberlands in Charleston, we had a day off to rest at Johnny Puke’s condo out on Kiawah Island. Cole and I desecrated the master bath in broad daylight, Cole hoisting me onto the vanity, kneeling on the bathroom rug and hooking my legs over his shoulders, tonguing me until I cried and came and begged him to fuck me, which he gladly did, multiple times in the shower.
Elliot finally let Travis fix the Ram van, and he did agree somebody had fucked with it because they had a loose spark plug wire and that probably didn’t happen all by itself. That helped solidify the peace pact, even though we still don’t know who it was. It was so nice at Johnny’s, Crown the Robin didn’t even pull any shit. No furniture rearranging or fireworks displays. But then we realized they’d all come down with some sort of virus when Anton started with a sore throat and runny nose. They were just too miserable to get into trouble. They still rocked the house party the next night in Auburn, Alabama, though. At least I think they rocked it. I’m not sure, because Cole dragged me down to the basement and nailed me on top of a washing machine during their set. Sounded pretty good through the floor, though.
Awesome as it is, if this constant fucking keeps up, not only am I going to need corrective surgery, I’m a little worried I’m going to end up pregnant. Seriously. We’re using protection, of course we are, but let’s face it, when that boy fucks he’s like a construction worker on steroids jackhammering into a diamond patio. So far so good, but if we make it through this tour without a broken condom, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
I make Travis stop at a Kmart outside of Montevallo so I can pick up more underwear (because someone has made a sport out of stealing and/or shredding mine) and a mega-box of Trojans. Refills for all, not that Emmy and Travis need them with her on the pill. She tells me I need to get on that when we get home and I agree, but I haven’t brought that up with Cole because things are still so new and I don’t want to freak him out, like this is all because of him (even though it is) and like I expect things to continue with us being exclusive (even though I do). Because while I assume we’re an official thing now, he hasn’t said that. And neither have I.
In fact, as much as we’ve talked about everything from our favorite brand of toothpaste to our childhood nightmares (his was witches, mine, spiders crawling into my mouth while sleeping), the one thing we haven’t talked about is what happens when we get home. I want him to come out and say, “When we get home, we should . . .” anything. We should go record shopping on St. Mark’s. We should head down to the Red White & Blue in Hamilton to look for vintage T-shirts. We should fuck in my bed until the springs give out. Anything at all that indicates there will be a we after we get home to New Brunswick. I mean, I believe there will be. But I still can’t bring myself to bring it up because I don’t want to seem too needy or pushy or demanding. With Hank, I thought it was more serious than it was and that humiliated me, and I just can’t stand the thought of that with Cole. After all this, if I lost his respect I think it would kill me, send me all the way back to twelfth grade, sitting home in my mom’s vintage prom dress, waiting for Martin to pick me up and never showing. I’m not that girl anymore, and I never will be again.
I’m going to act as if for now and deal with home when we get home. What’s happening right now is so new and so good and, in some ways, so fragile, I just want to stay right here and let tomorrow take care of itself.
For once, I don’t plan ahead.
***
Wednesday, August 23, 1995
Barnstormers, Montevallo, AL
With Crown the Robin
Soft Tour—Day 14
There’s nobody at Barnstormers half an hour before Soft are supposed to play. Well, when I say nobody, I don’t exactly mean nobody. It’s a pizza place, so there are three families holding hands and saying the Lord’s Prayer before laying into southern pizza, which is just, well. Come on, I’m from Jersey and I have a lot of feelings about pizza. I’m sure people from the South have similar feelings about barbecue.
Miles insists there’s a good crew of music fans here in Montevallo. They’ve played this place before and it rocked. While Soft sets up to play, I end up following Miles down the street, ringing doorbells, and just asking people to come to the free show, with varying degrees of no success. We eventually ring the bell at a big white house where Miles says they stayed last year. A girl comes out and looks at us like we’re in Halloween costumes, and I suppose with Miles’s Mr. Potato Head T-shirt and sweater pants, we don’t exactly look like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Miles reminds her about Crown the Robin, that they were through town last fall and Shannon—he thinks that was her name—let them stay here. The
girl lets us in, and Shannon is in the living room watching Wheel of Fortune. She definitely remembers Miles and Crown the Robin and offers to call some people, and within the hour the pizza place is packed with college students coming into town to start the semester. That’s road magic, the flip side of road sickness.
Soft play a great set, but Crown crank it up a notch when Vincent decides it would be a good idea to end the set by setting his ride cymbal on fire in appreciation of the last-minute turnout. He pours rubbing alcohol on it and hits it with the lighter. Only problem is, he ends up setting his hand on fire instead, which is totally hardcore, and the fact that I’m cheering instead of calling 9-1-1 should be enough indicator that road sickness is about more than runny noses, and that I definitely have it.
“Badass,” Joey says, appreciatively. So I guess I’m not the only one.
Miles douses Vincent and his drum kit with a pitcher of water, but not before the stupid fire alarm and sprinklers go off. Luckily, he’s not injured too badly, but it does mean Elliot has to run him to the ER and the rest of us get kicked out of the restaurant, all before Crown can even play their encore. Oh, well.
That’s okay, because Shannon decides Wednesday night is a perfect night for a house party, so we all head over there and proceed to get drunk with about thirty people we’ve never met and a keg that shows up out of nowhere.
Cole, Anton, Miles, Emmy, Travis, and I are all sitting on the floor playing drunk Monopoly in the garage, which has been turned into an un-air-conditioned game room with a pool table and a couple of sofas, and it hasn’t been cleaned properly in probably a couple of seasons. Or decades. We’re watching a strange game of strip pool where one girl is down to her Bongos, flip-flops, camo hat, and bra, and a rail of a pasty-white guy with a goatee is in nothing but his work boots and tighty-whities, which I hate to report have holes and are stained in all the wrong places. I get pissed because everyone loses interest in Monopoly just as I’m about to fucking take Boardwalk, even though they’re only watching the pool game out of some sort of morbid curiosity. Travis, Anton, and Miles have placed bets, though, so that helps keep it interesting.
“I think he’s losing on purpose,” I say.
“Ya think?” Cole asks.
“You’re throwing the game, dipshit,” Anton jeers. “I got five hundred bucks riding on you.” He waves a crisp, orange five-hundred-dollar bill of Monopoly money.
“Ride on this,” says the Stain, sticking the cue where his dick is. Or should be, anyway. Then he points the cue right at me, and then at Emmylou. “You two want to play? Wouldn’t mind watching either one of you lose,” he says.
“Lose?” Stupid fucking dudes who assume girls can’t shoot pool. “I’d wipe the floor with you, pal.”
“As much as I’d enjoy that,” he says, and I can practically feel Cole snarling behind me, “I meant the two of you should play each other.”
“Wouldn’t be any contest,” Emmy says. “I’d have her down to her undies in ten minutes.”
“What!” I guffaw. I grew up playing pool against my father—we have a table in our basement because he likes to unwind old school with gin and Eightball. This girl has no idea what she’s in for. “You’re so drunk you couldn’t hit your own ego with a cue stick if it was nailed to the end of it.”
“Oh shit,” Anton says. “This game just got very interesting.”
“Is that so?” Emmy jumps to her feet, grabs the cue stick out of the Stain’s hands, and starts chalking up the tip. “Girl, I’ve been cleaning house at the Ale ’n ’Wich since you were still going to Delta Chi parties. Bring it.”
“Five hundred bucks on Sunny,” Miles says, throwing down five hundred dollars of Monopoly money. I grin and give him a high five.
“Oh, fuck me,” Travis says.
“Right?” Cole says. “I mean, what do we do here?”
“Nothing to do,” I say. “Just sit back and watch me win the Boss Hog T-shirt right off Emmylou’s back.”
“As if,” she says. “Dreamer.”
“Yeah, but I can’t decide who to bet on,” Cole complains.
“I know, I’m so conflicted right now,” Travis says.
“You bet on me,” Emmy says. “Because I’m going to win.”
“But is that what I want?” Travis says.
“No, no, no, you guys don’t get to bet in this game, are you kidding?” Miles says. “That would just be wrong.”
“That would be wrong?” Cole says. “Like this entire situation isn’t already very, very wrong?”
“Completely wrong,” Travis agrees. “But also, maybe a little bit very right.”
Miles explains that Travis and Cole have to tag team with us, and he pulls a bottle of Absolut off the bar and pours way, way too much into two plastic cups, tops with some Sprite, and hands one each to Travis and Cole, who have to drink whenever we miss a shot. If I make the shot, Emmy takes something off. But if I miss the shot, Cole drinks. Same for Emmy—if she makes the shot, I take something off, and if she misses, Travis drinks.
“Raises the stakes, right?” Miles says. “Girls get naked while the boys get drunk.”
“Rack ’em,” I say, blowing chalk dust off the cue. “Let’s watch Travis get drunk and Emmylou get naked.”
“I’m pretty okay with this plan,” Travis says. “However it works out.”
“Emmy, you have to give Sonia your sweater,” Cole says.
“Cheater!” Emmy cries.
“Come on, she’s in a dress! She’ll be in her underwear by the third ball in.” Then he looks down. “Shit, where are your boots?”
“She’s not going to get me in my underwear. She can hardly hold the cue straight.”
“Who breaks?” Travis says. “Let’s do this.”
Miles flips a coin. It lands heads up, so I break, and of course I get two balls in on the break, the seven and the fourteen, so it’s my choice. I look at the table and see another easy shot I can get with the twelve, so I call stripes. As it turns out, my excellent break aside, shooting pool with several beers in you is not the same as shooting pool sober in your own basement. I miss my shot and Cole takes a large gulp of Spriteka.
“See? This won’t take long at all,” Emmy jeers.
I don’t let her see my confidence wane when she drops the four ball right into the side pocket like it was pulled by a magnet. I look down and all I have on is my dress, not even my shoes. I pull my earrings off and hand them to Emmylou, who puts them in her pocket.
“She gets a safety of three shots,” Cole declares. “You’ve got shorts, a T-shirt, Converse, a cardigan. Totally uneven.”
“See? You should have bet on me, Cole,” Emmy says, tossing her cardigan at me. God, she really knows how to grind my gears. She misses the next shot, though, and now Travis drinks.
“Come on, Sunny,” Travis says. “Go for the ten, it’s a clear shot.”
“Whose side are you on?” Emmy asks.
“Mine,” he says.
By now a crowd has gathered, but Joey is nowhere to be seen.
“What happened to beefcake?” Miles asks. “That boy misses everything.”
“He asked me for the yellow bag when we got here, so I’m sure he’s not missing a thing,” I reassure him.
Now there are several calls for the loser of this match to re-create Cristina Martinez’s pose on the front of the Drinkin’, Lechin’ & Lyin’ album, which is just a photo of her totally naked except for an ass-high pair of vinyl boots and elbow-length vinyl gloves.
“We don’t have the right props,” Emmy says.
“We’ll improvise,” the Stain promises. “We’ve got some Hefty bags around somewhere.”
Cole and Travis are now looking more concerned, but that fades as they’re both coerced into drinking a lot more because Emmy and I are playing the shittiest game of pool in the history of
drunk pool. It’s absolutely painful. We’re both still fully clothed and both Travis and Cole are on Spriteka round three and the crowd is getting antsy. Then with a stroke of luck, I manage to drop three balls in a row on my turn, the ten, eleven, and fifteen. Emmy loses both shoes, but she won’t take off her ring and she refuses to part with the Boss Hog T-shirt, so she shimmies out of her shorts and tosses them to me.
“What the hell is on your ass?” I ask her, because there’s what looks like a black Sharpie snake on her left butt cheek, peeking out from her underwear. She starts to blush and covers her butt with both hands as we all look at Travis, who is so drunk now all he can do is eye Emmy’s ass appreciatively through half-shuttered eyes.
“You guys are into some interesting shit,” Cole mutters. The slowness of his speech tells me I’d better not miss any more shots if I want to get laid tonight.
Emmy’s luck improves, unfortunately, and I’m out of safety shots when she sinks the one and the five. “The dress is mine, next shot,” she says as she misses a shot and Travis drinks again.
“Ha, ha, ha,” I say, and by the grace of God I sink the nine, and Emmy growls and hands me her T-shirt and stands there in her underwear and bra in front of a packed house, and I just have to stare at her along with everyone else, because, fuck—Emmy is hot. That’s the kind of thing you may not notice about your best friend until you’re buzzed playing strip pool in front of a crowd of twenty people in Alabama, but I take a moment to notice it now. She turns around to take her shot and I see the snake on her ass cheek is part of a larger work of art, and is the root of a tree that goes all the way up her back and actually looks pretty cool.
