Ronnie says nothing, only stopping the strumming long enough to sip from the whiskey bottle passed around, to sip from the beer can to his right. Between the life he had in Orlando, and the life he sorta-has in Gainesville, there’s the Crescent City life of right-now, of finding that the only way to bury all thoughts of going nowhere fast is to move, to do, to be, and even if that doing and being was playing random riffs from the first four Ramones albums all night, as the rural stars glitter overhead and the stirring sounds of the Olympics blare from the television behind, so be it. Through callouses and blisters and sweat and soreness and perceived exhaustion you work, and you work, and you work, with nothing behind and not much ahead.
•
“Ok, Mom, so, the tour’s not happening, and you were right, about all of it. Happy?”
“Of course we’re not happy! Didn’t want to burst your bubble, but—c’mon. You knew. You had to have known.”
“. . . ”
“Ronnie.”
“. . . ”
“Ronnie.”
“What, Mom.”
“Where are you.”
“Crescent City.”
“What?”
“Work.”
“You live there.”
“No. I’m going back to Gainesville now. Why, I don’t know, but it’s the best option.”
“We’ll book you a flight. For here. For home. “
“South Carolina isn’t my home.”
“Where we live. You can stay with us ’til you get back on your feet.”
“I’m on my feet. I’m packed up and headed back to Gainesville. Talk soon.”
•
No hope! / See? That’s what gives me guts! That was The Minutemen lyric bouncing around Ronnie’s head, as he leaves Crescent City, the Bass Fishing Capital of the World, for Gainesville, Money Magazine’s “Best Place to Live” for 1996.
After fourteen consecutive days of asbestos removal, it was the end of womanless summer, and there was nothing left to say to Tommy and to Bassanovich but to wish them luck with college, with soccer, and yes, with the pussy.
“And good luck with the bands and the writing,” Tommy says before they got into their vehicles to put many miles of wasabi green fields, jungles, and ferneries between them and Crescent City, Florida, through tiny towns with churches, Circle K’s, roadhouses, down two-lane lonely roads. Ronnie nods a thanks, feeling no hope nor optimism, as far as music and writing are concerned. For so many, adulthood happens when the dream dies. It’s worked away, it’s drunk away, it’s put away in the back of closets, passed on to children, posted as distant memories in photo albums and computers.
Still, Ronnie isn’t there yet. That’s what he thinks. Ahead, Gainesville, somewhere at the end of this westbound county road, below this brilliant Florida sunset dotted with pink and violet clouds and that massive orange Florida summer sun that never goes out quietly. Ahead, a temporary solution. Ahead, a place to flounder. Ahead, a place to give up these ambitions, to stop trying and to see what—if anything—emerges.
Lost and uncertain, Gainesville is all Ronnie Altamont has.
6 “Gary's Superfuzz Big Muffler, We Want to Sell You a Muffler,’ on Waldo Road, just a quarter mile north of the flea market. See ya there!ˮ
THREE: FALL (BUT NOT REALLY)
“I gave my ring to you (wahh-oooo) / with all of my har-heart /
you said that you loved me (wahhh-oooo) / said we’d never par-hart / are we really going steady? (wahh-oooo) / or was I just a foo-oo-ool from the stah-hart (wah wah wah oooo).”
—King Uszniewicz and His Uszniewicztones
GAINESVILLE GIRLS: 1996-1997
With your pocket flasks of vodka, and your shaved heads, your pink/black/green/red dyed locks, your granny glasses and your indie-rock cassettes, your dad’s burnt sienna Le Sabre, your old maroon softball t-shirts from Goodwill, your bikes you ride, your feminist theory, holding hands with each other at shows to keep the boys away, working the counters of Gatorroni’s, Floridian Bistro, Sister Chorizo, El Jalapeño del Gordo, your pills and your shitty drugs, your Doc Martens, your memorized jade tree lyrics written in long lines inside cassettes instead of broken up into verse/chorus/bridge/repeat, the stories behind the tattoos on your arms, legs, shoulders, lower back, left ass cheek, right ass cheek, chest, stomach, mons pubis, your boyfriend’s bands, your ex-boyfriend’s bands, your ex-girlfriend’s bands, your old band, the band you’re trying to start now, the languages you’re learning, your major, your minor, the films you’ve seen, the books you’ve read, your soy pot roast bubbling in the crockpot, cheat on me, cheat on you, your nude bodies in early morning showers after one-night stands, your lost Zippos, your laughter, your idealism, your pettiness, your practiced posture and your ever-watchful eye from the barstool of an outdoor patio, your Hal Hartley video collection, your phone numbers ripped from the pages of spiral notebooks, your bass guitars propped in the corners of your bedrooms, your tolerance of empty wallets and afternoon laziness, your summer roadtrips to the big cities of the north and west, that southern accent you put on the “o” in “Chicago,” your bathroom party secrets, the packets of cocaine you rummage your purse in search of, the patches safetypinned to your backpack, your back windows covered in bumperstickers, your kisses, your tongues, your hands, your rejections, your friendship, your fights, your conversations, your hopes and future plans over malt liquor on the roof, looking at the constellations while listening to the quiet sounds of the neighborhood below.
RONNIE AND MAUX
“Don’t do that,” Maux says, shoving Ronnie away. “I hate holding hands.”
Deeper into the student ghetto, weaving in forward and lateral lurches through the narrow streets and dilapidated southern houses with their warped front porches and peeling paint, the silence taking over from the party sounds—Ronnie’s housewarming party—behind them (sounds of drained kegs and gossip, uptempo drums ricocheting off the houses, Paul standing in the middle of NW 4th Lane yelling “You’re leaving?! Your own party?! Now?! But we’re going to Denny’s, ya sellout! How can you leave your own party when we’re going to Denny’s?! You’re a sellout, Altamont! A sellout!”)
Back and forth, they pass Maux’s hip flask of straight Van Veen Vodka back and forth, a cold stainless steel silver reflecting the streetlights like flashbulbs, flask’s contents a cheap burning inside their bloodstreams. In the darkness, the brittle thwack of palm fronds and the shush-shush of the sand pines through the languid Florida breezes. Ronnie loves the Florida nights most of all, and these are the nights he will miss when he finally gets it together to leave.
“So. Your boyfriend. He’s cool with this?’ Ronnie asks as she leads him onward through the parking lot of her studio apartment building.
“That’s a stupid question,” Maux says, and Ronnie laughs, because he knows it’s a stupid question, and furthermore, duh, he doesn’t care about the answer. Boyfriend or not, after a womanless summer coupled with a long night of downing cup after cup of Old Hamtramck keg beer followed by pocket flask vodka swills, Ronnie is in no condition to argue or even think this could be anything less than a brilliant turn of events.
“We broke up tonight,” Maux continues, leading him up the clangy stairs. “I just haven’t told him yet.”
“And this is why I live here,” Ronnie thinks. “And this is why I love Gainesville.” One moment, you’re in the kitchen of your new house, trying to make this girl laugh, this nnnugget with her indigo skirt and indigo blouse and indigo hair and emerald tie, because you know her scowling is all one big ridiculous act the way everybody needs to have one big ridiculous act to stand out, as she stands there around the keg talking about how she hates this and that, thinks the band playing in the living room (Ronnie’s new living room) sucks, and this sucks and that sucks, and Ronnie laughs at her, because he knows it’s an act, and she knows he knows, but he is a new face in town, and even if this Ronnie is too much of a goof to be suckered by her persona, Maux still knows
he is hers, anytime she wants, like any boy in this pathetic town is hers, and as Ronnie laughs at her snarled list of hatreds and responds by breakdancing—by backspinning and pop locking and moonwalking around the kitchen on the grimy hardwood floor as the impassioned and overwrought emo band plays in the living room, Maux knows, all she has to do, is look down at Ronnie when the backspin stops, look into his eyes through those ugly glasses and say, “This party sucks. Let’s go.” And that’s what it’s about here in Gainesville. One moment you’re doing all that, and the next, you’re led by the arm by this nnnugget with indigo everything through her dark living room, kicking bottles and stepping on paperback books before stopping and finding lips in the pitch black, kissing in some dump that smells like old cigarette ash and spilled gut-rot booze.
Maux leads Ronnie to the bed. They continue kissing, and here comes the groping, the tentative but not-that-tentative post-awkward post-collegiate movements of hands towards the good stuff, the sweet stuff, the pa pa pa oo mau mau papa ooo mau m-mau stuff as the vertical prepare to shift to horizontal . . .
“Did you hear that?” Maux whispered, turning towards the door.
“No,” Ronnie lied.
“That knocking? There it is again.”
Ok, ok, Ronnie did hear the heavy throbbing pound at the front door. “Don’t answer it.” Ronnie says, knowing it’s either the friends who saw him leave with Maux who want to laugh at him for going home with her, or else it’s Maux’s ex-boyfriend who doesn’t know he’s an ex-boyfriend. “Seriously. Stay here and don’t answer it,” Ronnie says, hands on shoulders.
“Oh, I’m answering, Ronnie Altamont,” Maux says, wiggling free from Ronnie’s clutches, rolling off the bed, tromping off across the cluttered floor, kicking books and bottles along the way. “Yeah. I’m answering.”
Ronnie opens his eyes. Stares upward at the darkness. “Don’t let him in!” he yells.
“Who is it?” Maux barks, voice like a bratty almost-pubescent boy’s.
“You know who it is! Let me in!” a cracking, slurring, young male voice whines from the other side of that door.
“Don’t open it,” Ronnie whispers, pulling the covers over his face. “Don’t open it.”
“Stop pounding!”
“I’m sorry!” A tear-choked voice implores from the other side of the door.
“I don’t care!”
“Are you with someone?” A whine, a moan, a sniffle.
“Yes! I don’t want to see you anymore. Go home!”
“But I’m sorry!” Full-fledged crying.
“You didn’t do anything! Just . . . go home. Write an emo song about it . . . something. Just go.”
Maux trudges back to the bedroom. There’s one last loud pound on the door, followed by a soft slap, a hand skidding downward, one graceless kick, and that’s it. Ronnie stares into the darkness, all the keg beer and bargain bin vodka churning and swooshing in his bloodstream. The room spins clockwise for a revolution, then spins counterclockwise for another revolution. This is what it’s all supposed to be about, Ronnie thinks. I moved here to be in beds like these, with girls like these. What does all of this mean? Ronnie laughs.
“What’s so funny?” Maux says as she enters the bedroom, climbs into bed.
“It’s all very funny,” Ronnie says. “And you’re a nnnnnugget.”
“And you’re drunk,” Maux answers. She pulls him in. “Sleep with me tonight, ok? Sleep?”
Ronnie nods, realizes it’s too dark for Maux to see his nod, laughs again, says “Ok.”
“Why are you laughing?”
“Nothing, man.” Ronnie yawns. “Good night, lady.”
Ronnie turns away from Maux, broods on his life, not as a sweat jam, but as a series of ridiculous, obligatory, meaningless exploits. Growing up, you don’t think you’ll be this lost, this adrift. You think everything will follow neat patterns from school to marriage to career. It isn’t until later that it makes sense to be in strange beds in strange towns.
The booze takes that gnarly late-night stop at a crossroads where you can either pass out brooding this way, or act out through ranting, violence, and unleashed unashamed emotions that way. Like that kid—whoever that was—banging on the door. For Ronnie and Maux, the moment, the potential, is shot for tonight, and there is no getting it back.
Besides, Ronnie wants to pass out and deal with it in the morning. And so he does.
THE NEXT MORNING. A TOUR OF THE MYRRH HOUSE. THIS IS ROGER. HE IS RONNIE’S NEW ROOMMATE.
HE WILL TELL“THE TALE OF THE PORTRAIT OF OTIS”
BEFORE RONNIE AND MAUX LEAVE FOR THE BEACH.
“Let’s go to the beach,” Maux says to Ronnie first thing after coughing and hacking out of dreamless sleep, the noon sunshine bashing through the shut blinds and closed black curtains. “I need to get out of here.”
She flings the thin white holey blanket—this sad childhood relic resplendent in faded rainbows, unicorns, and pleasant elderly wizards—away from Ronnie’s aching head and sluggish body.
Ronnie grunts, moans, opens his eyes, studies Maux’s face, sideways, from the left. The morning sun’s glare off her indigo hair is beautiful, he thinks. Through the fatigue of the hangover, she is as beautiful as she was the night before, with that short-cropped hair and pale skin and dark eyes. Ronnie is profoundly relieved.
“C’mon, jerk. Wake up!” she says through vodka breath, slapping him lightly on the right side of his face. Her voice is like the voice of those weaselly kids you always find riding in the back rows of middle school busses, the kids who poke holes in the seats with their pencils and yell “Faggot!” at pedestrians waiting to walk across the intersections.
“Naw, babe,” Ronnie moans in a manner he thinks of as “Dylanesque.” “I wanna stay heeeere. With yewwwww.”
Maux rolls onto her back. “Don’t call me ‘babe.’ I hate that word.”
Ronnie heaves forward, sits up, arms wrapped around legs. “That doesn’t surprise me.” He looks around, thinking how you can’t beat waking up in a girl’s bedroom when you’re marginally hungover on a weekend afternoon, even when her floor is covered in inside-out t-shirts, crumpled jeans, sparkled skirts, discarded paperbacks, colored pencils, overturned tampon boxes, spare change, the walls tacked with dozens of pencil drawings on pages ripped from sketchbooks—angry, belligerent scribbles, caricatures of the old and the young of Gainesville.
“I’ve seen your stuff,” Ronnie says, looking around. “In the school paper.”
“My stuff?”
“Yeah, you know, your drawings.”
“Oh,” she says, sitting up. “Those.” She swivels left, plants her feet on the floor, stands, pulls her slept-in indigo skirt downward. “I’m not happy with any of that.”
“I liked what I saw,” Ronnie says. “I mean, it’s funny and—”
“And I don’t wanna talk about it,” Maux interrupts. “I just wanna go to the beach. Is that too much to ask?”
Ronnie laughs, yawns, drawls, “Naw. It isn’t.”
“Then get up and get out of here so I can change, then we’ll go to your house, get your shit, and go already.”
“Yup,” Ronnie says, terribly amused by all of this.
Maux now wears a white t-shirt over a pink one-piece swimsuit, cutoff shorts, sockless low-cut green Chucks. It’s a quick walk to Ronnie’s from Maux’s dreary motelish apartment building—across two parking lots, a trodden grass trail between apartment complexes, NW 12th Street, and then NW 4th Lane, a small block of four old houses. Ronnie’s is the biggest on the block, in the middle, on the right. A patch of dirt separates the gravelly road from the front door.
The front windows are bordered with chipped blue paint on the rotting sills. The exterior of the house is white vinyl with fake vertical grain. Two locks open with a rusty twisting. The door creaks in that way particular to old warped wooden doors painted in sloppy gloopy dark red stain.
The upper half of the front door is a large window framed
by the red. Covering this dirt-smudged, spider-cracked window is a poster of Myrrh, a quartet from the exurbs of Detroit, Michigan who played a militant left-wing prog rock in the late-1960s (their first record, eponymously titled, spelled out “Myrrh” with bongs; their second, “Myrrh II,” was a close-up painting of a woman’s tongue on which the members of Myrrh posed, standing on a square tab of acid), a clean-living yet still wild and spontaneous group of hard rockers in the 1970s, a commercially viable band of hair balladeers in the 1980s, and militant right-wing militiamen slash children’s hunting-camp counselors in the 1990s—“The Myrrh Militiamen,” to be exact—who relocated to Montana and advocated the imprisonment, for treason, of (to quote one of their manifestoes) “President Clinton, and her husband!,” occasionally resurfacing these days to cut albums of bland anthems about the sanctity of the Second Amendment and other far-right verities. Ronnie had long been fascinated by this band—more for their epic journey from one end of the political spectrum to the other than for their music—and had sent away years ago for a series of brochures they’d published, featuring lots of pictures of kids “Ages 7-17!” pointing and shooting rifles at painted targets ranging from hippies, to Muslims, to butch lesbians. “Fun for the whole wang-dang-sweet-blood-thang family!” the brochures promised, referencing one of Myrrh’s most famous hits that is still a staple of classic rock radio. But his poster—a joke birthday present from Maggie two years ago—was from Myrrh’s 1960s acid rock heyday: In stark black and white, four stone heavy late-era clearly nonpacifist hippies standing in front of an American flag, right fists upraised in the Black Power salute, left fists clutching burning draft cards, shirtless in tight jeans, button flies unbuttoned enough to show there’s no underwear where underwear should be, long unkempt hair, guitars at their feet covered in paintings of Mao and Marx and Lenin, and in the uneven black block lettering of the 1960s hippie press mimeograph, the words, “MYRRH WANTS NIXON’S CORPSE.”
Losing in Gainesville (9781940430331) Page 21
