by Joey Goebel
I said, “So you do read.”
He nodded and said, “Let me get this processed. Your creepy-ass stripping is meant as a lesson to all the horny men who watch you. You are trying to change their lustful ways. Correct?”
He nailed it. I said, “Yes! You’re the first person who gets it!”
He said, “That is pretty righteous.”
Opal said, “See. She isn’t such a dumbslut after all.”
“So Luster apologized for the way he had talked to me, and we were friends from then on. He made me admit that I was wasting my time giving lessons in morality at a strip club. A week later I was in my wheelchair. And another week later I met you and Ray. The end.”
These stories about us seem to have a soothing, peaceful effect on the beastly Ember. She’s asleep with something that may pass for a smile on her little face.
The next day my father calls me. He wants to talk to me in person but doesn’t tell me why. He sounds more pissed off than usual.
As soon as I walk in the house, he holds a calendar to my face. I’m shocked to see a picture of myself as Miss December.
“What the hell is this?” yells my father.
“Oh my God” is all I know to say.
In the picture, I’m sitting on a motorcycle on a beach in a tight black dress, looking seductive but playful. In the background Commander Ken, the fast food chain’s long dead founder recently resurrected as a cartoon mascot, walks on the ocean while fried chicken floats around him.
“What is my congregation going to think of this? I can tell them how to live their lives, but I can’t even keep my own daughter from being in a girlie chicken calendar! I mean— when Stacy got pregnant was one thing, and when you were a stripper was another, but do you know how many people go to Ken’s Fried Chicken?”
“But, Dad, this is fake. David didn’t have my permission to do that. I left him when he asked me to pose for that.”
“Then how do you explain this, Miss December?” He shakes the calendar at my face.
“He obviously used a computer to superimpose me. I swear I’ve never sat on a motorcycle on the beach, and Commander Ken can’t walk on water, either, can he?”
My father throws the calendar on the coffee table. He sits down and sighs.
“God, what have I done to deserve a daughter of such ill repute?”
“I am not of ill repute.”
“You were a stripper, for Christ’s sake!”
“I was a performance artist.”
“How did you get into all this slutty business, anyway? Was it that Luster? Has he been pimping you out?”
“I thought you liked Luster!”
“Oh, I know his kind. All that smooth talking.”
It takes an hour, but I finally convince my father that I didn’t pose for the calendar, that I’m not a slut, and that I’m still a virgin. He is especially happy to hear that last fact.
“Thank God,” he says, hugging his untainted daughter. “I was beginning to worry that I was a complete failure as a father and a reverend. You’ve restored my faith with your morality, Rory.”
I don’t bother telling him that my virginity has nothing to do with morality, that my frigidity is based on a palpable disgust for fellow man, that I’ve simply had no desire to consummate any relationship with any of the primitive idiots I’ve so far encountered in this town, and that so-called morality has been a favorable side effect. I don’t bother telling him all that stuff.
Now that he’s cooled down, I’m tempted to ask him what he, an honorable reverend, would be doing with a sexy calendar like that. But I let it go. Let him lust after two-dimensional whores. After all, he’s only human, and the older I get, the more I find that tired cliché of an excuse to be appropriate.
XII. Molding Young Minds
Ember
I’m always along for the ride. I can’t drive. I don’t have a choice. But someday I’ll be sixteen. Look out when that happens. And then I turn eighteen, and then I turn twenty-one. By that age everything becomes okay. I can do everything.
Aurora drives us to Ken’s Fried Chicken. She drives a LeBaron. She’s mad about what her ex-boyfriend did. Luster says he did it because he couldn’t accept her not being a whore. So he made her one behind her back to make it fit better. Luster says he will take care of it. That’s why we’re here.
I follow Aurora back to the kitchen of the Ken’s Fried Chicken. We see a prettyboy reading a Maxim magazine with a slut on the cover.
“Aurora! I know why you’re here,” says Prettyboy. “You’re probably pissed about me putting your picture in the calendar, aren’t you? But, hey—you had clothes on in it, so I figured you wouldn’t care. So are we cool?”
“Yeah, David. We’re cool. That’s not why I’m here.”
Aurora’s ex-boyfriend is a cool guy. A trashy cool guy. Aurora should have known about him. After he looks all over her body, he finally notices me.
“This is my friend Ember,” says Aurora.
“Hey, Ember,” he says. He offers me a high five. Adults always do that to me. I do not give him one. He doesn’t care. He’s already looking at Aurora’s body again.
“Damn, Aurora. You are lookin tight. You should stand more often. Do you want your wheelchair back?”
“No. Keep it.”
“What was that all about anyway?”
“Just another phase I was going through. Anyhow, I came to ask you something.”
“Cool.”
“I was just wondering, are you more like a floppy disk or a hard drive?”
Aurora keeps David occupied with her questions. Luster makes his move. I’m supposed to keep watch. He’s out there talking to the cashier girl. She comes back to the kitchen.
“Duuude. David, that black guy out there wants to buy, like, every calendar we have, man,” says the dumbslut.
“Cool.” His face bunches up. “Hey—wait a minute. Aurora, do you happen to know anything about this?”
“No!” says Aurora. She looks out front. Luster is playing with his big hair. “Like I’d have anything to do with that guy.”
“True,” says the dumb-ass. “That’s cool. Christy, go ahead and sell all of ’em. Might as well. Better yet, let me sell ’em.”
The dick stands up. Then Aurora says, “But, David, I’m not through with you yet.”
He sits back down and sends the slut off. He only looks at Aurora.
“Are you more like pancakes or waffles?”
A couple minutes later I see Luster leaving. I give my signal.
“Aurora, I want to go home and listen to the Debby Boone record.”
“Wait just a minute, Ember. She loves ‘You Light Up My Life,’” says Aurora.
“Shit, no! I want to listen to the Debby Boone record, now! Now or die! Take me!” I throw pans on the floor and scream. It’s not as fun since I’m supposed to.
“Okay, okay, okay. Settle down,” says Aurora. “Sorry, David. We gotta go.”
“Wait, uh, maybe we could go to a club later and do some body shots or something?” says Fuckhead.
“Take me!” I scream.
“Sorry. I gotta go,” says Aurora.
“Aight. Call me!” he yells when we are leaving.
A box full of calendars sits next to me in the backseat. Aurora said it would be easy to steal them from that dumb cashier girl. She is a crackhead and always comes to work messed up. Luster paid her in dog-betting vouchers.
Our next stop is the Pandemonium. It is the only rock club in town. It is actually a bar. Many people go there. My parents go there a lot.
I follow Luster in. The club is big and empty since it’s daytime. A rock ’n’ roll man is sitting at the bar. He reads a Maxim. He is young and has a nose ring, a little goatee, tattoos, purple hair, and leather pants.
“Can I help you?” asks the dork. He also has a tongue ring.
“Maybe,” answers Luster. “I have a power-pop new wave heavy metal punk rock band named the Anomalies. We want to
rock it here like a Randy Savage elbow drop a.s.a.f.p.”
“That’s cool. You can just give me your name and number, and I’ll put you on the list.”
“What list?!”
“Dude, there’s like, twenty bands from the tri-state area who are waiting to play at my club. This is the place to be on the weekends. So just chill. I’ll put your name on the list, and you can wait six months like everyone else.”
“But we are not like everyone else, and I have to get the rock rolling to get out of this nightmare of the nine to five. We are ready to play. We are ready to rock this town once and for all, put it behind us, and then embark on a rock odyssey of Biblical proportions. We cannot wait that long. We have a lot of work to do and must get started. We have an eighty-year-old guitarist. We have a bass player whose parents might not let her play here once they return from vacation. It has to be next weekend.”
“Man, I’m sorry, but I don’t care, dude. Do you want your name on the list or not?”
“Here are ten Ken’s Fried Chicken calendars with your name on them. Let us play.”
Luster hands the prick the calendars. The prick looks through one of them and laughs.
“Dude, I’ve boned half of these skanks. Hey, why is December missing?”
“Can we play here this weekend or not?” asks Luster.
“No, dude.”
“It seems like you would be more sympathetic,” says Luster. “Look at you. You have your piercings and your vinyl pants and your Gen X facial hair. You are what they use to sell Mountain Dew. Your image has been co-opted by corporate America to use in commercials for everything from Starbursts to Volkswagens. They hire models to pose as quirky slackers to sell their stuff, and yet here you are, the genuine article, not seeing a dime. You are being used.”
“Fuck you, dude.”
“The other day I saw a fifteen-year-old cheerleader with that same tattoo on the small of her back,” says Luster.
“All right, man. Now you’re never playing here, plus I’m gonna have to kick your ass.”
“I knew you would say that, you Dave Navarro mother fletcher,” says Luster. “Plan B, Ember. I did not want to resort to this. Please excuse our bass player for one moment.”
As I’m leaving, I hear the dork say, “Man, I can’t have a fuckin little kid playing here, anyway.”
I return with Aurora walking behind me.
“Do we have a gig or not, Luster?” she says. “I’m getting tired of waiting in the car.”
“This pecker says we have to wait six months to play here like everyone else.”
He’s already looking at her all over.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” he says. “She’s in your band?”
We have a gig next Friday. I hope I grow up to be pretty. It will make my hell-raising much easier.
Monday I get in trouble again at school. The lesbo teacher couldn’t get my parents to come in for another conference. They are bungee-jumping in Cancun.
The teacher says it’s important. She calls my emergency contact, Opal. Opal comes in after school to talk to her. Ray is with her. I sit on the floor.
“First, I guess I should show you Ember’s latest stunt,” says Ms. Watson.
She shows Opal and Ray the flyer I made. It shows a naked demon licking another naked demon. It says “Live @ The Pandemonium, Friday—The Anomalies.” I got caught passing it out to the other kids.
“That’s us!” says Ray. “We’re the Annohmaylees.”
“It’s the AnnAHmullies, dipshit,” says Opal.
Luster came up with our name the other day. I looked it up. It’s perfect for us. Nobody knows what it means.
“Yeah. Ember’s in that band with us. She’s publicizing our show with a punk rock flyer. What of it?” asks Opal.
“Ms. Oglesby, the picture on the flyer is entirely inappropriate. Furthermore, do you really think Ember should be allowed to play with you adults at this establishment? I’ve heard it gets pretty wild there.”
“Well, furthermore even more, it’s an all-ages show,” says Opal. “We wanted it that way. And take it from me, fellow. You’re only young once. I wish I had been rocking out at her age.”
Opal has taught me to rock out every chance I get.
“You should come see us,” says Ray. “We rock it—oh we rock so goodly, it is like—can I say ‘orgasmic’ as a word?”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” asks my teacher.
“I’m friends with Ember and Opal. I am here for supporting morals.”
“I see. Well, since I last met with Ember’s parents, I’ve seen no improvements in her behavior. In fact, in the last three weeks, it’s gotten worse. It’s almost like she’s trying to get sent home.”
“No shit,” I say. They don’t hear me or act like they don’t.
“We know all about her behavior,” says Ray. “We can’t get her to go to bed until little hours like two or three. We have to tell her bedtime stories to get her to wake down. But she’s not hurting anything or anyone. She is being Ember. We think it is okay.”
“So are you living with Ember?” asks the teacher.
“The whole band lives with her, just until her parents return,” says Ray. “The band has practice at Ember’s every night, and then we all just sleep over for slumber partying.”
“Shut up, Ray,” says Opal. “She doesn’t need to hear about all of that.”
“That would explain why she’s been falling asleep so much lately,” says Ms. Watson. “She’s also been breaking the dress code, dressing like Tina Turner from Mad Max nearly every day.”
“We thought that was cute,” says Opal.
“I’ll give you the bottom line. Ember’s stretched this school’s rules and regulations to their limit. The principal has decided to expel her. And considering her parents aren’t even in this country and that she is living with a rock band, I will have to recommend that she be put in the East Home.”
“Actually, expelling her would work out nice for us,” says Opal. “We were thinking about going on tour soon, so that would free her bum-bum up.”
“But a child needs an education, and—”
“I know that. Let me finish, boy! Could we homeschool her on the road?”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’re sure not gonna let you put her arse in some home. Her parents may not be worth a crud, but she’s got family in us.”
Opal strokes my hair. Ray pats me on the shoulder. Being expelled sounds okay. I hate school and the people in it. I am happy with this situation. I like being expelled.
We had a good three weeks together. But this week is not all that great. We don’t know what’s going to happen to me. We’ve been avoiding the people from the girls’ home. Opal and I mostly stay in the basement and don’t answer the door.
Also, Aurora’s ex-boyfriend won’t leave her alone. He found out she was here. But we have caller ID. We finally took the phone off the hook. Aurora also stays in the basement.
Luster and Ray miss the meals sometimes this week. They go out to pass out flyers and tell people about the show. They come home to practice and sleep.
We are tense about the show. We wonder if we’re good enough. Many times this week, Ray has vomited. I stand by him in the bathroom sometimes as he pukes.
Luster says everything should work out if we do well Friday. (I doubt this.) He says if we’re a hit, and maybe even if we’re not, he’ll set up a tour. We can play all over this country. Maybe someday the world. I want to kick ass in a good way if I can.
XIII. All Together Now
Luster
Tonight is as crucial to our lives as our mothers’ vaginas. Shoulder demons whisper to me, though I cannot differentiate their voices. I cannot distinguish between the timbres of the ideal realist Richard Dreyfuss or the real idealist Albert Camus. None the nevertheless, tonight could tell us everything we need to know about our future as rock music road warriors on the seven chunk ball Earth. Tonight is a micro
cosm. If they hate us at the biggest club in a small town, they’ll hate us at the smallest club in the biggest town. If the small reptile minds out there can accept us, then I will have faith in all the rest.
We are backstage, already in costume but about to tear our diversified flesh off. My bandmates sit on a couch before me. I talk to myself as I so often do to ease my mind and to get to know me better, though my dramatic monologue is intended for them as well.
If you are not nervous, you should be. Cowardly are the cool. Coolness comes from lies that people give themselves—that they are in control, that everything is going to be all right, that they belong wherever they are. The truth is that every second of every day, there are a thousand things that could go wrong, from the tiny animals infecting our bloodstream to the biggest VIPs making horrendous mistakes that will make our great-grandchildren want to sleep all day. The same applies to our show tonight.
“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?” asks Aurora.
No. I am no coach. I am not that big of an asshole. I am just talking so that my thoughts make sounds. The same principle makes me love rock music. But even rock goes wrong sometimes. I have the highest of hopes for us, hopes that hop on pogo sticks atop the Olympus Mons. But remember who we will be playing for tonight: humanoids, monkeys with wardrobes. Just by looking at us, they might not like us, but it is only fair as I do not like them. Our only chance of getting through is our sound, so you had better play well. Play like you are going to die. This is my dream, so do not botch it. I do not ever want to start hating you. You are four people I never want to add to my two-century-long shit list.
Club Owner
Dude. This crowd is fucked up. We usually get, like, twenty-something white dudes and their girlfriends. Tonight we’re getting everything from old people to little kids. Now I know why that hot chick’s band wanted it to be all-ages, since it must be their crowd. But it’s not just their ages. I’m seeing everything from big black dudes to rednecks to teenagers to well-dressed adults to strippers I’ve boned to preps and even a lesbian.
