Rock Bottom

by Michael Shilling

  “Fucking Joey,” he said to his reflection, reaching for some toilet paper.

  In the beginning, Joey and Darlo had been an unstoppable force. They’d met at Spaceland, where Joey tended bar and Darlo played with his shitty band, Big Broom. They hit it off immediately. Joey was every boy’s rock-and-roll wet dream, a foul-mouthed fox who could snort coke like an aardvark and had mastered the aesthetics of street-punk chic, stomping her little self around in motorcycle boots, short skirts, and ripped wife beater, yet coming across like the black sheep in a royal family. Darlo was a smarmy, broad-chested Adonis-in-training who made Rod Stewart look insecure. They recognized in each other kindred spirits who had only one true desire: world dominance.

  Joey had just started managing bands, but her acts, Dame Wicked and SaberTooth, were no good — “ironic” bands that wanted to make it as camp, which meant they calculated every one of their moves. To curse or not to curse, that is most definitely not the question. Joey had done everything she could with these bands: lobbied all the music journalists until they came to shows, bought them food and drink so they would write nice things, even purveyed drugs on the cheap so they could better glean the brilliance of Dame Wicked, an electroclash girl group without anyone hot enough to remember, and SaberTooth, who were after a Blue Cheer vibe but had too much of a preoccupation with hiding their faces while singing about cavemen abducted by aliens.

  Big Broom and SaberTooth had shared many bills. Joey and Darlo had got to talking.

  “Your bands suck,” Darlo told her, sipping whiskey on some forgettable night at Spaceland. “But you make the most of them. You pretend they’re the Beatles. And how the hell did you get that Peter Murphy opening slot at El Rey?”

  “The way you get any good opening slot,” Joey said, chewing on peanuts. “Mediocrity. Openers can’t be embarrassing and they also can’t present the possibility of blowing you off the stage.” She slugged her Jameson. “Basically, we’ve peaked. What about you guys? How long are you going to keep banging your head against the door of No One Cares Incorporated?”

  “Not long. And besides, I’m fucking the singer’s girlfriend.”

  Joey laughed, poured them both a shot of Cuervo. “Let’s start a joke band,” she said. “Something campy, something ridiculous and cocksure and anything goes, Poison meets AC/DC meets Kiss in a darkened alleyway.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  They threw back their tequila, sucked on their limes, and stared each other down in a predatory way.

  “So,” she said, wiping her mouth. “You have anyone in mind for this joke band of ours?”

  Memories. Stardust. Innocence.

  “Do you?”

  Brushing his teeth in Morten’s bathroom with some nasty Dutch toothpaste — Fennel? Mint? Topsoil? — Darlo shook his head. Oh yeah, I know some people. I know a bass player with leprosy, and a singer who’s up a fucking tree about God, and a guitar player who shreds and writes slamming hooks but must be the most precious tear-jerked little bitch this side of Joan of Fucking Arc. Oh yeah, I’ve got a fucking crew.

  “Idiot,” he told the reflection. “Shortsighted pussy-hound idiot.”

  Darlo had approached Adam, who was playing in an obnoxious weep-rock band named Angel’s Sweat. They had a cello player, and sometimes Adam even whipped out the flute. Sometimes he also whipped out the mellotron, the Hammond B-3, and the oboe. That was the point. He could play anything.

  At the time Adam was vegan, so Darlo suggested they meet at the Burger Master off Wilshire. Lunch and dinner had been free lately for Adam, as every New Age imprint was on to Angel’s Sweat. There’s always one doofus at every label, major or indie, who thinks 1973 was the high point of rock, who subsists on a musical diet of Hawkwind, Gentle Giant, and King Crimson, who thinks Yes are the Beatles and will go to the mat arguing that John McLaughlin is a better guitar player than Jimi Hendrix. For these losers, Angel’s Sweat was the only game in town and Adam was the new Robert Fripp.

  Prog rockers, Darlo thought. Fuck.

  Adam brought a pamphlet on veganism to the Burger Master. He wore purple crushed-velvet pants and a scarf and that Fu Manchu mustache. Darlo, standing in the parking lot, rolled his pretty brown eyes, shook his shaggy, shiny black mane, rubbed his full lips.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Why don’t you color that ’tache into a fucking rainbow while you’re at it. Do you have any idea how bad you look?”

  Adam went blank. “I —”

  Darlo grabbed the vegan literature out of Adam’s hand and chucked it to the ground. “Trash,” he said. “This is Burger Master. Show some respect.”

  Adam retrieved the pamphlet, astonished. “You don’t have to be so rude.”

  Darlo took the pamphlet from Adam, looked at it, tried to be thoughtful. “I’m sorry. I’m not into all that shit is all.”

  “Oh, no problem,” Adam said, and emitted a weak smile.

  A capitulator, Darlo thought. Weak of conviction. Noted.

  Over the course of a few nights of drinking in Darlo’s poolroom, the two of them wrote ten songs. That they were complete musical opposites was essential; they came up with radio-friendly riff rock with moments of prog flourish, the occasional unnecessary accents, the when-you-least-expect-it time change, five chord progressions instead of three — subtleties that would keep Adam amused, give the music journalists something to write about, and provide Joey with one more angle.

  Darlo suggested they call themselves Blood Devils.

  “Over the top,” Adam said. “How about Blood Orphans?”

  “Nice,” Darlo said, rolling the cue ball in his hands. “Done.”

  Now the drummer spit out toothpaste into Morten’s little Euro sink.

  “Fuck memories,” he said, and popped a pimple on his chin.

  His cell phone rang in the cold Dutch hallway. Fucking phone was a tri-band; he couldn’t get America from it. He went into the hallway and looked at the ID, saw it was Joey. He wondered if the manager had prevailed on Warners to get them a good opening slot for the winter tour. He wanted to open for the Shins. They were cool. A little bit of cool was all they needed to get back on track. Just one break. He smiled and watched the gray Dutch sky and turned his frown upside down. All he needed now was some pussy.

  Get back on track. Fresh turn. Recharge their energies. He didn’t want to start over. He was loyal. He didn’t need to fire Joey. He and Joey could still make it work. Loyalty was an important trait in a man. Loyalty to your beliefs, and your conviction, and the dudes who were your fellow climbers up the craggy mountain of fame, connected by the carabiner of desire.

  Where was that conniving opportunistic gimp ho staying?

  The phone beeped with a new message.

  Needed to get some action. Back on track. First things first.

  “Amsterdam,” he said. “Pussytown.”

  In curdling cotton and leather, motorcycle jacket, and aviator sunglasses, he left for the ATM.

  4

  SHANE FELT SOMETHING in his dreadlocks. He grabbed a piece dangling in his eyes and looked it over. He hoped it was peanut butter. Not too many things were this color, and the alternatives were hummus, new concrete, and baby shit.

  He lay in what was definitely a teenager’s room. There was a certain undeniable smell to a teenager’s room, a fruitiness, innocence not yet completely leached. A man’s voice called up the stairs in Dutch.

  Shane smelled his hair, bunched into shortish dreads. Definitely peanut butter.

  He heard a child running back and forth in the hallway. Then the child opened the door and peeked in. She was about five, blond and cherubic, a real slice of master race. She asked him something in Dutch.

  “Ja,” he said, unsure what language he was speaking. There had been so many beds in so many countries. “Ja,” he said again, as if to pop some balloon between them.

  She let out a peep and ran down the hall.

  Danika, the teenager in question, lay beside him. He pulled back t
he covers. She had a slamming body — martini-glass tits, a stomach you could bounce a quarter off, an ass that saluted the sky — topped off with a witchy set of black dreads. She too was strafed in peanut butter. He felt a rush of blood to his crotch.

  The walls of Danika’s room were kind of black. Like maybe she had only put one coat on before her parents caught her.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Without makeup, Danika was still in the proto-pubescent stage. He prayed to every god he had ever worshipped — Jesus, Buddha, and Yahweh — that she was seventeen, or whatever street-legal was in Dutchland. But either way the blood continued its express trip to his pieces and parts.

  She’d been standing at the front of the stage of the Star Club with her friends, wearing a black push-up corset, upside-down crosses for earrings, and a blouse that resembled a spider’s web. Her eyeliner ran down her face in what appeared to be a strategic, symmetric drip. She smiled at him and did funny hand movements in the air like a clumsy Shiva. Her bottom lip had rings pierced through both corners, and she wore a black bindi. Bindis on pale white girls killed Shane. He sang to her, trying, as in every other show he had ever played as a member of Blood Orphans, to transcend the lyrics. Through Darlo’s disgusting, loveless words, he tried to affect a tone of kindness and grace and the most organic types of desire, so that his speeches in between songs about Tantra and Buddha would seem natural. He did all of this, crooning and emoting, while keeping his gaze on her fashionably tearstained face.

  Danika, he said later, as they stood at the bar. That sounds like the most delicious seeded fruit. That sounds like the wind through the palm trees. That sounds like a glorious, sacred mantra.

  “Fuck me,” she said, and pulled him into a closet.

  Now a tall man stood in the doorway, sporting a billowing head of salt-and-pepper hair and a bushy mustache. All the blood left Shane’s crotch, and his balls retreated into his pelvis.

  “Hello,” Shane said. “I was just —”

  The man yelled at Danika, spewed Dutch words.

  She jumped up as if a prod had been put to her. Gasping, she gathered up her sheet, covering those martini-glass titties.

  “Marcus, get out!” she said in English. “Gett owd!”

  They stared at each other for a minute. She started to lower her sheet. Marcus retreated.

  “Danika,” he warned, eyes unable to settle on a latitude.

  She looked at Shane, smiling, then giggled. “He’s not really my dad,” she said. “Are you, Marcus?”

  Shane felt a little bit sick.

  Marcus cursed crazily and stomped off.

  She looked at Shane, touched his face. He jumped back, almost fell off the bed. His balls were caught in the undertow of his retreating body, and he let out a cry.

  “You’re silly,” was her response. “Silly rock star.”

  Marcus was back in the doorway. He marched over, grabbed her by the arm, and shook her little frame. “Slut!” he yelled. “Dirty slut!”

  “Fuck you!” she said, sheet barely hanging on her. “Pervert! Like to look at Danika’s titties! Like to spy on me in the bathroom! Pervert!”

  For Shane, the scene was a new and improved version of the morality movies he had watched in church when he was growing up.

  Marcus pulled at Danika the wrong way and her sheet fell off. The peanut butter, combined with the smell of sex and sweat, created a Dutch BO tsunami that made Shane quiver. Marcus looked away like a vampire staring at the sun.

  “Pervert!” she yelled.

  He shrieked some quality Dutch horror-words and ran from the room.

  She smiled at Shane, tousled her mane, and moved to him, crawling on the bed, a ragamuffin prowler. The lamp on the black night table shone on her sparse ebony pubic hair.

  “Come here,” she said. “I have ten minutes before school. Come here.”

  He was going to do the right thing and leave this twisted scene, but then the stench hit him. The stench, sweet and yeasty, sucker-punched his best intentions. How helpless he really was, after all this time.

  “Come here,” she repeated, her bindi still in place. “Come here.”

  Being a Christian rocker didn’t mean you didn’t have a sense of humor. Shane hated that. Of course he had a sense of humor. Jesus had a sense of humor, for Christ’s sake.

  Back when he was starting out, singing in The Dragon Slayed and trying to get shows in Silver Lake and Hollywood, Christian was a dirtier word than pedophile. When he stated his faith, other musicians stared at him as if he’d stopped halfway through a joke. When he said he was guided by God’s love, bartenders smiled at him as if he’d lost his mind. When he mentioned the importance of meditating on Christ, booking agents hung up on him.

  Even then he had wanted to branch out. The three other members of The Dragon Slayed expected all his lyrics to speak of the King of Kings, but he didn’t care if every song was about Him. He mentioned the Beatles to his girlfriend and she said, How could you like the Beatles? They wrote all that music on drugs!

  Then Darlo, the vulgar guy in Big Broom, had asked him to be in his new band, which he described as “over the top, incredibly stupid, morally bankrupt, and full of killer hooks.” Well, why not? He had a sense of humor. He could hang. Darlo was an atheist and his dad exploited women, but all right. Shane wasn’t a fool. He could roll with the dirty dawgs. He could have some fun and still believe. His faith wasn’t everything. Of course he took issue with the way that Darlo and Joey chose to live their lives, but he could, you know, bro down.

  “Whatever, Bono,” Joey said at the first band meeting. “Spare us the theology.”

  He didn’t like being in a box. He was more than the sum of his beliefs.

  “What are you, deaf?” Darlo said. “We don’t care. And don’t be late for practice again.”

  Shane’s girlfriend, Donna, hadn’t approved of his new band. She came from a strict Anaheim fundamentalist flock and had recently agonized deeply over her belly-button piercing. Was it an adornment? Did it make of her a false idol?

  Shane thought, I’m sorry, Jesus, but her belly-button ring gives me a violent, worldly erection. He stared at it when they sat on her porch swing, across the street from a lemon grove.

  “You’re going to start doing drugs, Shane,” she said. “You won’t be pure in body.”

  He touched her hand. “Christ taught us to understand ourselves,” he said. “And I’m sure that in the desert, there were strange roots and berries.”

  “Strange roots and berries? What strange roots and berries?”

  “All cultures,” he continued, “have used substances native to them to explore their relationship with their god. It’s completely —”

  “Their god?” She shook her head. “There’s only one true God, Shane.”

  Her promise ring shone in the sun.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said. “Drugs are for losers, for people who don’t wish to be pure of mind and spirit, for fools who represent the moral antiforce of the mob.”

  The fish on the back of her Subaru Impreza glimmered. She’d been reading C. S. Lewis.

  “Don’t make me feel bad about personal discovery,” he said. “Be a fellow seeker with me.”

  She let go of his hand. “Come on, now, Shane. Stop it. You’re starting to freak me out. My parents already would prefer I date someone who wasn’t in a rock band, no matter how righteous the cause. Don’t make me have to justify your living a life that isn’t right.”

  Why did she have to wear such tight tops, showing her shallow cleavage, the sweat running over her silver cross, into her valley of the shadow of good times? Why did she have to be such a hypocrite?

  He wanted to roll his tongue through that valley. He wanted to gather her up in his mouth. How could that be wrong?

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked.

  No, he wasn’t.

  “Shane? Hello?”

  No, he could exist in his own place. He could love
Jesus and still play in a band with those of weak spirituality. He could ride the line.

  Wet dreams of fame came nightly.

  Blood Orphans was a test of Shane’s beliefs. Here was an opportunity to walk among the sick and lame and do good, even if he was singing about sex with girls who had no legs, going back in time and assassinating President Nixon, and dropping a neutron bomb on the state of Mississippi. Shane had a sense of humor. He could keep it balanced.

  What unbalanced Shane James Warner was popularity, for Blood Orphans, with their raucous, who-gives-a-fuck shows, were an instant hit among the jaded masses of Silver Lake. Onstage, the four wielded a strange magic, and the hipper-than-thou dropped their blank game faces and submitted to the spell. Joey emceed the shows, evangelizing the new gospel like a late-night Sunbelt preacher.

  “Behold the very example of rock-and-roll miz-ajesty!” she’d scream into the microphone, favoring her right leg. “Behold the merrymaking, God-dust-tasting, pleasure and pain shaking and baking Blood Orphans!”

  Within a month, Blood Orphans became the band to see. Stupidity abhorred a vacuum and they were there to fill it, having successfully — or successfully enough — blurred the intersecting lines between tragedy and farce. All they had to do was lay down a steady diet of decent boogie, rampant chest-puffing, and crotch-thrusting hullabaloo, and the crowds came. The crowds, teeming with unfettered female lust and abandon, shredded the perfect pages of Shane’s Christian playbook; all these girls saw him as an idol at the altar of the rock-and-roll stage, at which they wished to receive the most blessed postadolescent communion.

  Good Book this, Good Book that. None of it made sense anymore.

  “Christ teaches us to be seekers!” he told his girlfriend, Saint Donna of the Subaru Impreza, when they broke up. “Does not Paul say that without wisdom, all is lost? His teachings cannot be real without —”

  “What the heck are you talking about?” she said as they sat on her porch together one last time. “How could you possibly twist his words to justify playing music that dishonors everything good? All these songs are about —”