The Sabotage Cafe

by Joshua Furst

  THE PAGE SHE SENT ME had been torn out of a 'zine of some sort. It was crinkled and stained and ripped in the corner where the paper had been yanked from the staple. On one side someone had drawn a crude cartoon of Uncle Sam, giddy and naked, masturbating while bouncing on top of a geyser of oil. On the other, a frame of anarchy symbols surrounded a list of what seemed to be meant as incendiary assertions:

  TRENT'S BILL OF RIGHTS

  We have a right to a Starbucks on every corner.

  We have a right to a shitty job in a tiny cubicle in a win-dowless room in a giant corporation and a right to be fired from this job if we surf the internet or make personal calls or if the boss finds out we've got a weak handshake.

  We have a right to watch crappy TV right up until the day we die.

  We have a right to believe the hype.

  We have a right to say whatever the fuck we want and have the shit we say ignored.

  We have a right to get totally shit-faced and do fucked up things in the name of boredom, then pretend the next morning we can't remember the fucked up things we did.

  We have a right to secretly feel bad about having done all those fucked up things. (I'm sorry I ripped up your stupid poster, Mike, but I'm not sorry I pissed on it. What the fuck's wrong with you, man? The Marines?!!)

  We have a right to starve for everything we don't have and never will.

  We have a right to destroy ourselves when we realize that, really, we have no rights at all.

  She'd drawn a heart pierced with an arrow around the name Trent. I would have thought it was silly if it hadn't been just so sad.

  THE GUY WHO OWNED the Sabotage Café knew they were there. Cheryl'd never met him. He was never around. But his influence was strewn across the place like stale crumbs.

  “He's a legend,” Trent told her. “You've heard of Nobody's Fool? The drummer, Cap? Rick Milton? That's him.”

  Of course she knew who he was. I'd told her about him many times, described things she shouldn't have ever had to hear. I can't justify myself. It was a mistake. But except for Sarah, and Robert sometimes, Cheryl was the only one I knew who would listen.

  Trent's awe of Cap disturbed her. This first time he mentioned him, they were at the St. Anthony Park branch of the Minneapolis Public Library, taking advantage of the free Internet to check out the web sites of anarchist groups around the country. Trent clicked out of the Black Bloc report he'd been poring over and Googled up a page about the band.

  The official story, as told by some guy named Douglas Braun and posted on his blog, Braun Candy, went like this:

  Nobody's Fool could have become the voice of their generation. They were supposed to be the voice of their generation. Of all the bands to rise out of the '80s bubble, they were the one that best melded the chaos of second-wave American punk with the catchy melodic sense of the Stones, the Beatles and the Clash. Over a prodigious four-year period from 1984-88 they recorded five albums— two and a half hours' worth of music—for the tiny local TallTales label. The first two, Who Wants to Know and Not Again, were laid down on a modular four-track in the unfinished basement of Rick “Cap” Milton's parents' house. There was a moment there in 1986, after the release of their masterpiece Would That It Were, when the A&R men couldn't get enough of them. Every label in the country was vying to sign them. But as Epic, the label that eventually succeeded, soon discovered, except for Swope Johnson, the band's front man and songwriter, Nobody's Fool was more passionate about bagging the gnarliest girls and sampling the hardest drugs than doing the hard work of building a lasting career. Their life's ambition was not to be rock stars but to be able to drink free at their favorite local bar, the CC Club, for the rest of their lives. This “slacker” attitude (a term that years later would come to characterize the sort of people Nobody's Fool most resembled—and predated), with its unfocused energy and Midwestern fatalism, was the very thing that the critics adored about them, but eventually it did the band in. They recorded one album for Epic—a spirited effort entitled Say It Ain't So, Joe—went on one nationwide tour, saw one song rise into the top ten on the college charts, and then Swope realized that if they were to sustain the grueling workload that the majors required of them, the band was going to have to sober up and get serious. When Cap, Jake Jones and Denny Preston had other ideas, Swope ditched them and took off for New York, where he hired a bunch of session musicians to help him record Nobody's Fool's last studio release—a collection of quirky up-tempo ballads called Action Figure that, though a massive commercial failure at the time, prefigured the po-mo stylings of Pavement and Beck and the Flaming Lips and the whole slew of geek bands that rose to prominence over the next decade. Cap, Jake and Denny can still be seen most nights swilling whiskey at the CC Club, or catching a new act at the Boom Boom Tick, the same grimy joint where the band performed their first gig. Swope, in the meantime, now works in advertising, writing jingles about prescription drugs and sugared cereals. Both camps are still convinced they made the right choice…

  Douglas Braun went on to assess in endless detail each of the songs on The Edge of Nowhere, the compilation of outtakes and B-sides that was released in 1994 to fulfill the third and last record the band owed Epic.

  “But, see, that's all bullshit,” Trent said. “Candy-ass crap that's supposed to fucking make you forget how fucking dangerous Nobody's Fool really was. It's ad copy. Middle-class fucking suburban bullshit. They weren't a product. They were a fucking idea.” He preferred the counterhistory, the hipper, darker, messier story of a bunch of radicals blown through with chaos.

  While they wandered through the streets of St. Anthony Main, he told Cheryl how Cap and the band had been kicked off the Midwestern leg of a Dead Kennedys tour because they were too rowdy even for Jello Biafra, how they used to do pickup shows with Hsker D, sharing top billing, until the deal with Epic threw Bob Mould into a paranoid frenzy and he began to sabotage their equipment, snipping wires in their amps and stealing the extra strings from their guitar cases. He said, “I can't believe you've never heard of them.”

  And protective of me, she lied: “The name's sort of familiar. Maybe my mother was into them once, I don't know.”

  She didn't mention the things she knew Cap had done, how, one hilarious night after his girlfriend Rose Baker passed out, he and his buddies lit her hair on fire, or the way he had of buckling with laughter while Jake and Denny smoothtalked young girls into shooting up with them. And even though it might have impressed Trent, she didn't let slip that Cap had dated me too—what a joke it had been to him, his two girlfriends sharing a single apartment. Instead, she listened. She hung on Trent's every word and let his version of Rick “Cap” Milton replace mine.

  Trent ran through the legendary anecdotes: the time Bad Brains stumbled through town and HR crashed on the floor of Cap's apartment, disappearing the next day (Cap found out later) with all the band's amps and the half gram of cocaine Cap had hidden inside his bass drum. The time GG Allin showed up at a party and pulled a knife on one of the girls there—Cap took a bottle of rye to Allin's head, split it open, knocked him unconscious and then the party continued on, people tromping over Allin's bloody body every time they wanted a beer from the fridge. How Cap had even met Iggy Pop once; they'd shared a needle and stared silently at the cracks in the wall together.

  Cheryl could infer from the timbre of Trent's voice the power these names exerted over him. She liked that he'd steeped himself in a reality with which I hadn't been able to reconcile. Here was the world that had shattered me, and hand in hand with him, she'd liberate herself from all the fears she'd inherited.

  When they arrived at the Sabotage Café, it was late afternoon and the Wreck Room was full of shadows. They found Devin sprawled on the floor, listening to something that sounded like whale calls. One forearm was thrown over his eyes and the other arm extended out above his head, palm up and pulsing, like he was worrying an invisible rosary. Instead of a hello, Trent stomped on Devin's fingers, and when he lunged up
to defend himself, slapped him quick upside his head. Exhausted, still prying himself loose from the night before, Devin sagged back to the floor and twisted at one of the loops in his bottom lip.

  “What is this shit?” Trent said, marching toward the boom box. “It's like something's fucking dying in here.” He jabbed at the buttons and killed the noise, then, prying the lid open with a flattened paper clip, flipped the CD out of its chamber and sent it sailing toward Devin's head. “Betty here wants to check out Cap's stuff.”

  The snarl Devin flashed at her had no fangs. Of the three boys, he was the youngest—fifteen, sixteen, maybe, the same age as her—and his nastiness made him seem even younger. He loved gross things for the grossness of them: boogers and dead birds and fat-lady porn. A few days earlier, after Trent had taken off to print up his manifesto and Mike had already left for Chipotle, he'd straddled Trent's wall of books and sullenly watched her read the “Freaks” issue of ReSearch. “What are you after?” he eventually asked. Glancing up, annoyed, she told him, “Nothing.” “Come on, I know you're after something. You all are.” “Who all?” “All you feminist bitches.” She stared at the pictures in the magazine, grainy black-and-whites of grinning pinheads and cyclops babies. “Name a woman who's not a bitch,” he said. “Um, me.” “No, you're a bitch.” “How would you know?” “Because I know. Because you're a female. Quid pro quo.” She laughed in his face. “You don't even know what that means,” she said. “What?” “Quid pro quo.” “Sure I do.” “No you don't.” He thought for a moment, and then, befuddled, said, “Okay, so tell me, what does it mean?” “I can't remember, but it doesn't mean what you're trying to make it mean.” “See, there's the proof. You're being a bitch. Type A: Feminist.” “Jesus Fucking Christ,” she'd said. Heading downstairs and into the street, she'd walked off toward the Green Tea Smoke Shop for a package of Drum, more annoyed at the way he was grinning behind her, gloating, thinking he'd won something, than at the possibility that he might actually believe the crap he'd been spewing.

  “She's never heard Cap's stuff?” he said now, sitting up to make sure she saw his sneer. “What is she, like a mental retard?”

  “No, I'm not a mental retard. What are you, like eight years old?”

  He squinted and spit her words back at her. “What are you, like eight years old?”

  “Hey, Devin,” Trent said over his shoulder as he dug through the loose CDs and broken jewel cases strewn around the boom box. “Fucking shut the fuck up.”

  Devin scratched his forehead with a stiff middle finger. “Make me.”

  Shuffling the discs around like puzzle pieces, Trent continued his search. “If I could fucking find it, you'd see,” he told Cheryl. “They were the best fucking Midwestern punk band ever.”

  Jealous and annoyed by the intensity of Trent's focus on Cheryl, Devin leapt in to refute him. “They weren't punk,” he said. “They were a garage band.”

  “Devin, didn't I tell you to shut the fuck up?”

  “I'm just saying, they weren't punk.”

  “Okay, what's punk, Devin? Why don't you tell us?” Trent stopped his searching and waited for an answer.

  A blank look, a few tugs at the ring in his lip later, Devin said, “Hardcore's punk. Fucking Agnostic Front. Henry Rollins and shit.”

  “Whatever,” Trent said. “It's a continuum.” He went back to rummaging. “Alright. Here. Check it out, Betty. This is Not Again.”

  A wobbly bass line set the tone for the first song—down tempo, almost countrified—until the drums crashed in and sped things up and a guitar, heavy on feedback, started stabbing around the melody. Swope's weedy drawl broke in, “Shit, man, hold up. I—fuck, hold up, hold up,” and the instruments collapsed into a jumble of screeches and snare rolls. Then they started again, the same as before, this time meandering into a surprisingly melodic and moody song about the desolate winter streets of Minneapolis.

  Until now, Cheryl had stayed away from the music of Nobody's Fool. She knew one of their songs was called “Julia's Drowning,” and she was scared to hear what it might contain, what previous incarnations of me might be illuminated. She didn't want to think about it. Me with black rings around my eyes, my chin and teeth covered in the charcoal I'd been fed after the band had dumped me at the hospital. But that song was on a different album. This one was okay. This one made her feel closer to Trent.

  “They used to just trash places.” His words tumbled into her. She longed to be filled up completely by his voice. “Like clubs and shit, Betty. They'd get totally blitzed and throw raw hamburgers at the audience. Or, like, they'd take a break halfway through their set and come back fucking wearing each other's clothes and playing each other's instruments. Like the clothes and instruments would stay together, but fucking the band members would have all moved. I mean, fucking brilliant, right? Fucking kick-ass. Once they played a place, they'd never be invited back.”

  Devin let loose a whooping noise from deep in his throat. He was trying to scoff, but it sounded like he was having a seizure. Trent shot him a look. He rolled a joint and held it to Cheryl's lips.

  Eyes closed, listening, she felt like she was rising out of the muck that connected her to me, hovering over it, floating away. She'd expected the music to be seething and hateful; instead it was aching, a dim flare sent up from a desolate lost place.

  “Can I have some of that, or what?” said Devin, moving over to the beanbag.

  Trent ignored him. As he twisted back to flick the ash from the joint, he was careful not to jar Cheryl's head in his lap.

  “This music is great,” she said. “It's so sad.”

  “It's not sad,” said Devin. “It's pissed off.”

  “Well, I think it's sad.”

  That wheezing half laugh lurched out of Devin's throat again. “Hey, Trent, you gonna give me the fucking joint, or what?”

  “It's amazing how they did it,” Trent said. “They were totally smashed the whole entire fucking time. Like stumbling, lurching, lay-on-the-floor-and-spin drunk. And they—”

  “That's such bullshit. You're so full of shit, Trent. They were on acid. They weren't drunk.”

  “Devin.”

  “What?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Give me the joint.”

  “I said shut the fuck up.”

  “And I said make me!”

  Cheryl's head hit the floor with a thud, and the joint fell onto her stomach as Trent dove across the room, legs stretched behind him, arms cocked in front of him. He wrapped the waistband of Devin's underwear around his hands and stood over him, excited, his fists up near his chin. “Shut the fuck up, dickwad, cocksucker, bitch.” Suspended like a baby in a swing from two feet of thin stretch ed-out fabric, Devin squirmed and yelped between Trent's legs. “How's that? You like that, you want some more of that?” He was laughing, pulling with all his might, lifting Devin right up into the air. Then the beanbag shifted. Trent toppled onto his back. The cardboard box they'd been using as a table collapsed beneath him, but he kept pulling, inching across the floor, his fingers turning white inside the waistband as he dragged Devin behind him. He adjusted his grip, tugged until Devin howled, until the fabric tore and he had the waistband up around Devin's ears, scraps of gray-white fabric fluttering below it.

  Exhausted, the two boys flopped gasping on their backs, arms and legs twisted all over each other. They were laughing, both of them, giddy, content.

  Trent propped himself up on an elbow. “Where's that joint?” he asked, and Cheryl handed it over.

  “Fuck, man,” Devin said, “that fucking hurt.” He was rubbing his ass crack, tugging at his jeans. “That was my only pair of underwear, you ass-wipe.”

  “I got him good, didn't I?”

  “I'm serious, dick, you gonna get your girlfriend to buy me another pair, or what?”

  “You know what, Devin,” Cheryl said, leaning in to bring herself closer to their fun, “I'm gonna sew you a pair, how's that?”

  Th
is shut him up, but it seemed to secretly please him as well. Grabbing at the joint in Trent's hand, he said, “Give me that,” and once he had it, he took a deep drag and lay back down to stare at the ceiling and chuckle to himself. Eventually, he slinked out to go spanging and it was just her and Trent again, curled in the beanbag, snuggling under the coat he had given her.

  “This was their symbol, see?”

  He found a Sharpie and after sniffing its fumes, he sketched a large circle on the back of the coat. He drew three vertical lines inside the circle, then one horizontal and one diagonal. When he was done he had the letter N superimposed over the letter O, both of them caught in the sights of a rifle scope:

  “Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  They listened to the music.

  In one of the photos on the CD insert, Cap sat alone on a wooden folding chair in the middle of a vast concrete room. Ten, fifteen, twenty empty beer bottles lay strewn at his feet. Above his head, there was a sign, a cartoon sombrero. MEXICO, it said. 6B. Cap was dressed in tight black jeans and combat boots, a bandanna wrapped around his left knee. The military blazer he wore over his ripped t-shirt was cluttered with buttons. The photo was a cliché of its time, really, but something about it resonated for Cheryl. She could imagine Trent daydreaming himself into Cap's place in the photo: junkie-thin, crumpled in on himself, his arms shrouding his head, his one leg hiked up on the chair as though to protect himself from incoming shrapnel. This was a man defeated, utterly so, yet somehow also defiant, as though he knew the fight was hopeless, that the mall and the concrete and everything else would destroy him whether he submitted or not, so why not make some noise as he was going down? This was the stupor before the battle, the drunken sob of despair before he blazed back again, returning to the stage to lead the doomed insurrection. She could see, when she looked at the photo through Trent's eyes, the little boy trying to become the man. It didn't matter if the myth was a lie. It made her smile.