The Next Seattle: Memoir of a Music Scene

by Neal A. Yeager

part, this debate was just a gentle background noise as I stared up at the starry sky above. I was too busy pondering my own strange feelings to be taken in by a bicycling debate. Besides, I couldn’t really make an informed decision on that topic anyway.

  Somewhere along the line in the bicycling controversy someone made some comment about nuclear war. As I said, I wasn’t really following the thread of what was being said, so I have no idea how the conversation got there.

  “Well, in case of nuclear war,” said John, “you proceed immediately to the TV station.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Samantha.

  “They’ve got a fallout shelter there.”

  “What?”

  “A fallout shelter,” John continued, “down in the basement. It’s the weirdest thing. My wife works there and she told me about it. Then one night she was working real late and when I came by to pick her up she asked me if I wanted to see it. Of course I did! So we snuck downstairs and it was like something out of a movie or something. The basement is huge, but it’s old. The floors aren’t even paved or anything. And all around they’ve got these drums of supplies all stacked up there. And I’m looking around this creepy cavelike place with these stores of supplies and I’m thinking, ‘Man, if this is where we have to live after a nuclear war, I believe I’d rather just be burned to a crisp and have it over with.’ That place gave me nightmares.”

  “Are you telling the truth?” asked Samantha.

  “As God is my witness. It’s like something out of a scary movie. Like that’s the place where the maniac stores all of the dismembered bodies. Only it’s bigger and stocked full of supplies. Creepy.”

  “So that’s where we’re supposed to go in a nuclear war?” asked Samantha. “How are we supposed to know that? I don’t remember them telling us that in school. Maybe it’s just the rich people who know about it. Maybe it’s one of those kind of deals.”

  “Hey, the rich people can have the place as far as I’m concerned,” John continued, “Like I said, I’d rather burn to a crisp.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” Gina asked.

  “Yes ma’am, we can,” said John, “We can talk about throwing our skinny friend here into the Wabash. Sort of an initiation-type deal.”

  “An initiation-type deal?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stay uninitiated.”

  “What? It ain’t like it’s the middle of winter or anything. The water’s not gonna kill you. Can you swim?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “I swim very well actually, but that isn’t the point.”

  “The point? The point?” John laughed. “I’ll decide what the point is to this particular drunken conversation.” He then stood up and trotted over to the water’s edge. He pulled off his shoes and socks and waded into the Wabash.

  “The water’s just right,” he said. He then bent down to splash water at us. After a few splashes, which failed to reach us there on the bank, he lost his balance and fell backward into the water. Naturally, we all laughed, John included.

  “That does it,” he said, “You all think this is so funny, you’re all coming in for an initiation.” He then leapt out of the water and charged us. We all tried to scatter. The first one he caught was Samantha. He easily picked her up and carried her to the water. She was alternately giggling and calling him an asshole until he dropped her on her back into two feet of water.

  “You asshole!” she shrieked through her giggles. She tried to hit him, but he was already out of the water and headed for me. I thought I could get away from him, but he proved to be the quickest fat man I have ever seen. He latched onto me and, just as he had done to Samantha, he picked me up, carried me to the water and dropped me in.

  The water was cold, but it felt good. Refreshing. As I came up for air I looked back at the bank where Gina had put herself a safe distance from John. I guess he recognized this, plus the fact that she was still sober, and gave up any attempt to chase her. Instead, he fell back in the water, creating a huge splash.

  So we splashed around in the water a bit. There in the river at night. It was fun. Samantha tried to dunk me, but I was too slippery for her. I managed to slip around behind her, grab her around the waist and dunk her.

  As she came back up from below the water, I still gripped her by the waist. And as she stood, laughing and running her hand through her wet hair, I suddenly felt... well... I suddenly felt attracted to her. Where the hell had that come from? Luckily that thought was only an instant before my rational mind realized what a very bad idea that was, and I released her.

  She immediately spun around, grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me under the water.

  After that, we all just stood there in the water, smiling at one another.

  “You know,” said Samantha finally, “they say that alcohol and the river don’t mix.”

  “Of course they do,” said John.

  “Nope. It’s exactly the kind of story you see on the news.”

  “Exactly!” exclaimed John, “Why do you think you see it on the news? Because everybody knows that it’s fun to drink and get in the river. Okay, so about half the people drown, but that doesn’t mean that it ain’t fun.”

  Eventually, we got out of the river and walked back to the parking lot of Seattle. I’m sure that to anyone who saw us, we were a comical sight. At least three of us were: soaked from head to toe, walking down the street in the middle of the night. Only John had dry shoes. Mine and Samantha’s left incriminating wet tracks wherever we went.

  That had been a good evening.

  The longest band name...

  The late-afternoon daylight once again streamed through the window of my hotel room. I sat upon the bed in my boxer shorts, my hair wet from a recent shower, and read a flyer for tonight’s show at Seattle. First up was a performance art duo called ‘Pliable Concrete.’ The accompanying photograph featured a young man and woman carrying elephant tusks and cans of spray paint. Next, was a band of apparently hygienically handicapped young men with greasy hair named ‘Watermelon.’ And the headliners of the evening were a band named ‘We-Are-Endeavoring-To-Make-The-Name-Of-This-Band-The-Longest-Name-Of-Any-Band-That-Has-Yet-Given-Voice-To-A-Tune-On-The-Face-Of-This-Earth-So-Help-Me-God-Amen.’

  It was looking to be a fine evening at the club.

  I laid the flyer down on the bed and thought again about just why I was bothering to go to the club. I had put in enough time to give the proper appearance to my assignment. I could hop on one of those commuter planes at any minute, sail out of Terre Haute, and never have to think about the place again for the rest of my miserable life.

  “Why don’t you?” I asked myself aloud. There was no response from the empty room, but I thought that I had a fairly good idea as to what that response would be if it should come. The simple fact of the matter was that I kind of wanted to stay here. In fact, for some strange reason, I could picture myself sticking around here for quite a while. I was beginning to make some friends, which is something that hasn’t happened in years. And, for some reason that I couldn’t quite comprehend, I liked Terre Haute, Indiana.

  I looked up at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser. “Are you on drugs?” I asked my reflection. My reflection did not answer, but it was fairly obvious by the clarity of the reflected eyes that drugs had nothing to do with my current condition. Nothing to do with it whatsoever. Instead, after a life of detachment, I was discovering that there was just something about these people and this place.

  And in my situation, that was a dangerous thing.

  And there it is...

  The first two acts of the evening turned out to be not to my liking at all. The performance artists had been downright boring—in New York I had once seen a performance artist stab himself through the thigh as part of a performance, so after that nothing anyone else had ever done seemed even remotely daring—and the band afterward had been rather poor imitators of one of my least favori
te groups. Wait. If they were poor imitators of a group that I didn’t like, then that means that they didn’t sound like the group that I didn’t like and I should like them. Right? No, that doesn’t work. I really didn’t like them.

  However, the final act of the evening, ‘We-Are-Endeavoring-To-Make-The-Name-Of-This-Band-The-Longest-Name-Of-Any-Band-That-Has-Yet-Given-Voice-To-A-Tune-On-The-Face-Of-This-Earth-So-Help-Me-God-Amen,’ turned out to be pretty solid. From the flippant moniker I had expected a group of lightweights, a party-time band. Yet what I encountered was a trio of serious and passionate performers.

  “So, you’re gonna put them in the article then?” asked Samantha as we sat at a table waiting for Mr. Ketchum to show up for his 2:30 a.m. chauffeur duties. Steve the non- bartender had already vacated the premises and the place was empty. The odd quietness reminded me that it was slipping out of that mystical dimension of ‘nightclub’ and morphing back into simply a dingy, black-walled room. “They would be perfect for the article,” Samantha continued, “of course, their name would take up half of the article right there—which is another reason to write a book, to fit in more stuff like that. And Ian, the lead singer, is a really nice guy. He’s a delivery guy over at Hunter John’s pizza, and he’s always so sweet when he brings those pizzas around that the dormitory girls are all in love with him. But I hear that he’s one hundred percent