Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331)

by Costello, Brian

  In the car, Ronnie thinks it’s funny to freestyle emo lyrics like he heard tonight: “I don’t know . . . anybody heeeeeeeere / I shoulda peeeeeeeeeed before I left the shoooooooooow / now I gottaaaaaa gooooooooooo / man, I gottaaaaa goooooo/my blaaaaader screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeams / to meeeeeee.” Through the small downtown, past the closed restaurants and closing bars and grills, the manic action of novice drunk kids acting like novice drunk kids. At Main and University, a flip-flop stepping brunette-with-blonde-streaks skin-covered skeleton girl in an orange and blue University of Florida t-shirt and matching pajama bottom screams “I’M SO DRUNK AND HAPPY I WANNA PUKE EVERYWHERE” while leading a pack of similarly attired friends across the intersection. Ronnie sings as he drives back to the other side of town, past a university he does not attend, down streets he does not know, as the college gives way to the residential neighborhoods. University Avenue begins its slow metamorphosis into Newberry Road, and the plazas and strip malls and apartment complexes begin.

  PAYPHONE CALL TO MR. AND MRS. ALTAMONT

  “Look, I walked out. It wasn’t a fun place to be, you know? The owner was this mustachioed Ay-rab cokehead who was always trying to grope the servers at the end of the night while everybody else who worked there had had a few drinks and I’m back there slaving away trying to wash the last of the dishes and plates so I can go home, because God forbid the lowly dishwasher gets to have a drink with the rest of the crew. I mean, sometimes they’d give me a bottle of Budweiser or something, but I mean, Budweiser gives me headaches, so I can’t even drink that. But not only that, it was like, so pretentious, how everyone just had to have their water with lemon, like the lemon makes a difference, and the customers were always calling everything ‘fabulous’ in like these haughty Newport, Rhode Island inflections, like earning five figures from commissions in the Central Florida real estate market gives you the right to act like you’ve made it into the upper echelons of the Really Rich.”

  Right View. Right Thought. Right Speech. Right Behavior. Right Livelihood. Right Effort. Right Mindfulness. Right Concentration. As her son goes through this litany of complaints, Mrs. Sally-Anne Altamont makes a list, in spite of herself, of all the ways in which Ronnie is not following the Noble Eightfold Path. Where to begin?

  “Ronnie.” Sally-Anne’s voice is firm, serious, a tone she hopes conveys how badly she wants him to stop ranting, just this once. But he’s always ranting anymore; in recent years, an anger, a caustic bitterness, sarcasm at everything and everyone. Where does it come from? They are retired now, Sally-Anne and her husband Charley, self-described “easy-going vegans, old—not ‘ex’—hippies, because we never stopped, and,” (for the past nine months, since Charley stole a book called The Teaching of Buddha out of the nightstand drawer of the luxury hotel he stayed in in Miami for a three-day academic conference devoted entirely to compound adverbs) “dilettante Buddhists.” They retired six years ago, when Ronnie went off to college, and before that lived frugally for decades, invested wisely—ethically, even—used the money to buy a beach house on Hilton Head Island, the ocean to the south, on a quiet section of the beach where they spend their late mornings reading passages from The Teaching of Buddha then meditating on their meanings.

  Charley emerges from the hallway, pink-red-tan skin, docksider shoes, navy blue shorts, white t-shirt with two oars crossed into an X across the front, that white cap with the yellow rope coiled around the black anchor, not fat but not thin, a quarter-inch short of six feet tall. He looks at his wife—in a teal one-piece swimsuit, white floppy beach hat over the gray-black ponytailed long hippie hair, sunglasses, pink-red-tan skin, not fat but not thin, a quarter inch over five feet five inches—mouths “What is it?” Sally-Anne shakes her head “No.”

  “And like everybody there was so insufferable,” Ronnie continues. “Like, I know this isn’t a big deal or nuthin’, but like people were always asking for capers on their entrees, even when the entrees didn’t need capers. Like they’d just go and ask the servers for capers to show off for their dates, like their taste in capers was gonna get them laid or something . . . ”

  “Capers?” Sally-Anne repeats.

  “Capers?” Charley Altamont says, laughs, gets shushed by Sally-Anne. He shuffles closer to her, fully immersed in the relaxed pace of beach life, no matter what is happening right now.

  “Yeah. Capers. Those little salty pickled bulbous Mediterranean things? People would demand them on like honey-glazed chicken. That’s pretty nasty, right? You gotta admit . . . ”

  “Ronnie,” Charley says after gently removing the phone from Sally-Anne’s grip.

  “Dad?”

  “You moved to Gainesville, and you’re talking about capers?”

  “He’s on a payphone because the phone in the trailer was shut off,” Sally-Anne says.

  “Hi, Dad.” Ronnie says. “Hi. I was just explaining to Mom what happened and why I ended up in Gainesville.”

  “No job?”

  “It’s like this,” Ronnie says, over the sounds of screaming babies and arguing couples from the Laundromat next to the minimart where Ronnie found the payphone. “I’m living in this trailer, and there’s no rent because the dude who owns it has it all paid off, so like, there aren’t that many bills, except the phone—but whatever. The payphone’s only like a five minute walk.”

  Sigh. Right View. Right Thought. Right Speech. Right Behavior. Right Livelihood. Right Effort. Right Mindfulness. Right Concentration.

  “How are you eating?”

  “Oh, that’s fine, Dad. I found this place where you can donate plasma twice a week, and that pays like $40, so I get food money that way.”

  Sigh. Existence is suffering.

  “Plasma.” Charley repeats.

  “Yeah, see, it’s fine because now—”

  “Give me your address.”

  “OK.”

  “I’m sending you money. Get your phone turned on. Get a job, Ronnie.”

  “I’ve been looking. It’s the end of the semester though, so nobody’s hiring.”

  “And you moved to Gainesville, why? I know why you left Orlando, what with the pretentious use of capers and everything . . . ”

  “That wasn’t the only reason.”

  “Why Gainesville?”

  “Hang on . . . I need to put more change in the payphone.”

  Charley waits. Sharp shocks of indigestion he hasn’t felt since converting to veganism four years ago. Leave it to his son to give him indigestion, because it sure isn’t the quinoa.

  “OK, I’m back. I’m here to be a writer and a musician.”

  “You couldn’t do that in Orlando?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Get a job, Ronnie. Use your degree, and get a job.”

  “This degree from UCF doesn’t count for much here in Gainesville.”

  “Get a job. This is the only time I’m doing this. Write and play music in your free time.”

  “Sure.”

  “And no more plasma donating for money. For your mom’s sake. Promise.”

  “Of course. I got a plan here . . . ”

  “You don’t.” Charley says. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have moved up there. Give me your address.”

  SCENES FROM A STOP AND SHOP AND GAS AND GO

  “Thankth hon,” a haggard blonde lisps to Ronnie between missing front and bottom teeth, grabbing the pack of Newports off the cracked plastic wood counter, shakes what remains of her emaciated frame out the door, in that sloppy strut natural to run-down addicts, as her flip-flops flip, flop, flip, flop out the door.

  “That’s Crazy Annie,” Travis, Manager of the 7:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. shift, explains. Travis is one of those short guys with all his fat compressed and isolated into his belly, with salt and pepper hair in a receding pompadour, bushy black moustache centering a bloated face.

  “See, she’s crazy,” Kim, the Assistant Manager of the a.m. shift, one of those thin raspy flame-broiled looking middle-aged women indigenous to the
South with sunscarred skin and a frizzy perm circa 1982, the kind who chain smoke Merit cigarettes.

  “Hence the name,” Travis supplies.

  “I see,” Ronnie says. It’s Ronnie’s first day on the job, clerking here at the Stop and Shop and Gas and Go. He had filled out applications all over town, but it was true what Mouse had told him: There were no jobs to be had this time of year, unless you want to join the military, babysit rich kids at Club Med, or teach English in some ambitious country eager to learn the lingua franca from a card carrying native speaker. He lucked out getting hired here—if by “lucked out,” you think working the morning shift in a convenience store nestled between seedy motels on 13th Street where beat-to-hell black and white men who stumble in with bloodshot eyes and tattered flannel shirts buy all the cheap wine they can afford to guzzle down on a 72 degree Wednesday morning constitutes “lucking out.”

  “Cigarettes ain’t all she smokes,” Kim says, punctuating her comment with a wheezy, coughy laugh, her breath like the stale smoke/dirty laundry stench of the clothes Ronnie wears to shows and doesn’t wash for a month.

  “No?” Ronnie says, blue eyes widened in an attempt at Andy Kaufmanesque childlike innocence.

  “She smokes crack,” Travis says, leaning in close to Ronnie, elbowing him in the ribs and adding, sotto voce. “And dick, if you know what I mean.”

  Ronnie stares, from Travis, to Kim, and back, trying to look befuddled. “Crack? Dick? Jeez, Travis, this is a lot to figure out for my first day.”

  “She’s a prostitute!” Kim laughs, then coughs. “Smokes dick! Get it?”

  “Ohhhhhhh,” Ronnie says, in exaggerated epiphany.

  The store’s walls are covered in fake wood paneling. The floors are a pee-stained white tile. The wet turdish mint smell of chewing tobacco. The eye-watering tinge of cheap bleach. The counter area is an overcrowded island in the middle of the store. Inches above Ronnie’s head are hanging trucker’s caps extolling the virtues of fishing over working, of the inherent stupidity of women, of cartoon criminals shooting off sparks from an electric chair with the caption, “JUSTICE COMES DEEP-FRIED OR EXTRA KRISPY.” Ronnie’s first morning behind the counter is a steady hum of American retail commerce; the alcoholics and prostitutes are replaced by the morning rush of the gainfully employed purchasing coffee, cigarettes, gasoline. The rush of the morning passes into the quiet of mid-day.

  “Well, here comes Retard Gary,” Travis announces as a short bald man wearing an oversized black t-shirt with a silkscreen on the front of a silhouette of a coyote howling at a full moon as lightning and F-15 fighter planes fill in the background, baggy acid-washed jeans, dirty white sneakers and thick nerd-framed glasses parks his adult tricycle in front of the store and limps in from the bright muggy morning.

  “Retard Gary?” Ronnie asks, standing in front of the register, Travis to his left, Kim to his right, both managers standing over to make sure Ronnie pushes the right buttons for the corresponding purchases.

  “He’s a retard,” Kim says.

  “We was just talkin’ about you, Gary,” Travis says, wicked yellow smile from his fat face. “Your girlfriend Crazy Annie was here asking about you.”

  “No way!” Retard Gary says, hobbling to the Coke dispensers. “Nuh-uh. I don’t like Crazy Annie.”

  “So you’re a fag then,” Travis hollers. Kim snorts, laughs, coughs. “You probably got AIDS all over you.” Ronnie laughs—not at the joke, but the quietly desperate laugh you laugh when your boss says something so horrible that you don’t know what to do because you need the job because you need the money.

  “Shut up, Travis!” Retard Gary says as the ice machine rumbles and delivers a mini-avalanche into his orange and blue extra-extra large (“Thirst Annhilator”) 64-oz cup. “I don’t got AIDS on me! I like girls!”

  “I’m from Missouri, Gary,” Travis says, leaning forward to follow Retard Gary’s path from the coke station to the register, belly pressed into the counter. “Show me a girlfriend.”

  “And not one of them crackwhores out here on 13th Street neither,” Kim says. Travis laughs like a boorish dog from a 1970s Saturday morning cartoon. Ronnie does not laugh.

  •

  Ronnie Altamont sits on the closed toilet seat, staring at the racist graffiti, body in the pose of “The Thinker” statue and everything. It’s like: How far out of your element can you feel in 98 percent of your waking hours? Florida. Fucking Florida. Ronnie. Fucking Ronnie. It’s why they call it “work,” right? Life must be sustained by doing stressful seemingly pointless tasks like clerking convenience stores because somebody somewhere needs this job done and is willing to pay somebody else something for it.

  Ronnie leaves the men’s room, returns to the register. Two fishermen—a father and son—son a smaller, less round version of the father—both in matching teal Miami Dolphins sleeveless shirts and two white fishermen caps with hooks encircling the brim—set two 12-packs of Old Hamtramck on the counter.

  “It’s all you, chief,” Kim says, pointing to the register’s rows and columns of buttons.

  Ronnie punches in the prices, adds the sales tax. The fisherfather and fisherson stare at the trucker’s hats dangling inches over Ronnie’s faded vermillion hair.

  “Hey man,” the fisherfather says. “Raise that flap!”

  The hat directly above Ronnie’s is light blue with white mesh and a velcroed flap reading, in the girlish bubble cursive of hearted I’s, “IF GIRLS ARE MADE OF SUGAR AND SPICE . . . ”

  Ronnie turns, raises his arms, unvelcroes the flap. Underneath the raised flap, the question, “WHY DO THEY TASTE LIKE ANCHOVIES?” above a picture of a dead green fish with white stink squiggles.

  Everybody haw haw haws, including Ronnie, who actually finds it funny. He might even buy it if he had the money. But he doesn’t, and it would be bad form to steal on the first day of the job.

  “Y’all, that’s gross!” Kim says, eliciting further laughs from the fishermen.

  “Yeah, I’d buy it,” the fisherfather says, starting to walk away with the two Old Hamtramck 12-packs. “But I have a feeling his mother,” and here, he turns his head to his fisherson, “wouldn’t take too kindly to it.”

  Ronnie does not share these concerns. The hat should be his. It is already so close to his head, hanging there. He was never a thief, never had klepto tendencies growing up the way some kids were always stealing gum etc. from stores. It’s only one white trash hat out of dozens that never get sold in these kinds of stores. They’re practically decorations anyway. Travis is on his lunch break. If Ronnie is to make the hat his, he will have to do it now, with Travis gone, and when Kim goes off to take one of countless smoke breaks.

  The temptation is too great. While Kim stands on the minimart’s front sidewalk puffing a Merit, Ronnie removes the hat, bundles it up, stuffs it down his “professionally attired” khaki slacks. His blue Oxford shirt is large enough to cover the obvious bulge, and no one can see over the counter anyway.

  Ronnie rings up Lunchables and Cokes for the workaday construction or landscaping crews on their breaks. Kim watches his fingers for any slight mis-hit of the register’s buttons from Ronnie as she sings along with the Young Country Music from the store’s speakers—off-key renditions of tunes tackling topics like memories of the fun had near rivers as a randy teenager, of overly confident rural men with tremendous pride in their country and background, of rowdy bars full of questionable characters who, despite all outward appearances and behaviors, are a swell bunch of folks. And so on. And so forth.

  “What kind of music do you like?” Kim asks. “I seen your hair.”

  Ronnie hates this question. “I don’t know, man . . . ” he says, unable to hide his annoyance. “A lot of things. Punk? Jazz?”

  “That ain’t music,” Kim says, matter-of-factly. She points to the ceiling, where the Young Country never stops. “Now this—this—is music.”

  Ronnie doesn’t speak to her again.

  Travis returns from
his lunch break, waddling through the front door, proclaiming, “Hooeee, those were some mighty fine ribs. My-tee fine!” Ronnie immediately steps away from the register, announces “Going on my break now!” He leaves the register island, circling away to the main walkway out the door. “Be back in half an hour,” Travis says, and Ronnie blurts out a “Yup!” and pushes open the doors, steps out, hears the sleigh bells taped to shing-shing when anyone enters or leaves the Stop and Shop and Gas and Go.

  “He ain’t comin’ back, is he?” Travis says, rib sauce drying around his mouth and on his fingers, still standing three steps in from the doors.

  “Doubt it,” Kim says, taking one step to the register, humming along to the Young Country music. “You seen his hair?”

  Ronnie’s blandy apple green domestic sedan squeals into reverse. He shifts to drive, zooms out of the parking lot, cuts off a dirty white lunchwagon whose driver almost honks her horn. At the next light, Ronne reaches down, pulls out the “IF GIRLS ARE MADE OF SUGAR AND SPICE . . . ” hat. He smiles at his reflection in the rear view mirror. He drives towards the University, to the saffron and purple gowned Krishnas doling out free food. He will eat, then drive across town to donate plasma, then buy a real dinner at Publix with the money, try to write something, fall asleep.

  WILLIAM RETURNS FROM THE TOUR

  Fourteen states, twelve days, three narrowly averted inter-band fistfights, one unaverted inter-band fistfight, one cancelled show, one set cut short because no one showed up and the barstaff wanted to close early, one guitar amp dying a smoky death mid-way through another set, one instance of the drummer waking up naked with a missing suitcase and no idea where in Columbus he might be, and the final three days and nights spent subsisting on nothing but wonder bread and bologna stolen from a corner store near the Fireside Bowl in Chicago later, you’re back in the walk-in cooler behind the restaurant getting high with your equally tattooed and pierced dinner-shift manager, who asks you “So how was the tour, bro?” after exhaling the skunkweedy joint and passing it to you, and you’re either not sure or not willing to answer the question, even if your manager asks this because he plays bass in Salo’s Children—another band in the hardcore scene—and wants the vicarious thrill of actually playing outside Florida, because you figure your bass playing manager must know, deep down, that Salo’s Children suck and will never get the chance to leave F.L.A.