by Adam Selzer
I ignore the band and head straight for Eddie.
“Hiya, Eddie,” I say, shaking his hand like a pro. “Thanks for the hookup tonight.”
Eddie nods and tilts his head toward a table at the back, where Sadie and I sit down.
Eddie is about fifty and owns three or four businesses in town that always seem to be hanging on by a thread. He’s always wearing a straw cowboy hat and chewing on a toothpick, and he usually seems stoned. Some nights when there’s no show booked, he plays covers of songs by bands like the Eagles and Neil Young on an acoustic guitar for the people who hang around the bar. I’ve only been there once on those nights, but seeing an old hippie guy singing “Take It Easy” surrounded by fake skulls was too much.
“What are you eating?” he asks us.
“Whatever won’t kill me, please,” I said.
“Whatever don’t kill you’ll make you stronger,” says Eddie, who is always ready with folksy wisdom.
“All right,” I say. “Then give me whatever will make me stronger.”
“One pizza, coming up,” said Eddie. He doesn’t even take the toothpick out of his mouth as he heads for the kitchen.
I pull out my laptop and get to work writing. You can write a pretty good chunk of a concert review before the concert even starts. It’s like writing an obituary. All the big newspapers have obituaries written for celebrities years in advance. When Bob Hope (my grandpa’s favorite comedian) died, his obituary in the New York Times was written by a guy who’d been dead himself for twenty years and wasn’t even a vampire or anything. He’d written up the obit and just left a few lines for them to fill in whenever Hope actually died. You can do pretty much the same thing with music reviews: just ramble on about the band and the kind of crowd they attract, then add some details about the show after it starts.
Gradually, more people begin filing in. The bulk of the crowd is made up of girls who are clearly hoping to become Will’s One True Love (or at least his prom date). They’re walking around flashing smiles that show no cavities and wearing clothes that nearly do show a couple of them. Some of them are wearing skirts that I’m pretty sure are supposed to be belts.
The guys there to pick up the girls who can’t catch Will’s eye are all dressed in goth gear—even the ones who would clearly be more at home in backwards baseball caps and Abercrombie shirts. Like the girls, they all appear to be drunk already. Every last one of them.
Eddie comes out and put a couple of slices of slimy pizza in front of us, then leans over to me.
“Take it easy on these guys, okay?” he asks. “They’re good kids.”
“I’m not here to review their behavior,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” says Eddie. “Be nice.”
“Nice doesn’t sell papers, Eddie,” says Sadie.
Eddie, who probably neither knows nor cares that we don’t have a paper, per se, anymore, just a Web site, sighs and walks back to the bar. Sadie and I force the pizza down, then likewise head over to the bar, which is out of the way of the dance floor Eddie has created by moving most of the tables against the wall. The crowd is getting bigger and more annoying around the tables.
Some guy in a fake top hat that he’s totally not pulling off comes over to us.
“Hey, cuz,” he slurs to me.
He is clearly either drunk or stoned. Probably both. Most of these guys call everyone “bro” or “cuz,” which sounds weird coming out of a guy in goth gear.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Buy you a beer, cuz?” he asks.
“You and what fake ID?” I ask back.
“Did you just hit on her by calling her your cousin?” asks Sadie. “’Cause, damn!”
Top Hat Guy (which is a lousy name for him, since there are tons of guys in top hats there) slinks away. I note that he at least has the decency to seem a bit embarrassed. Sadie and I exchange a “job well done” nod.
“You know who had the best line to use on douche-bag guys like that?” asks Sadie. “Tennessee Williams.”
Tennessee Williams, the playwright, is Sadie’s own “dead gay guy from the 1930s” obsession. Only, she would really date him if he was undead and straight; I’m happy just having Cole Porter be the kind of fantasy crush that can’t possibly hurt me or let me down.
“What was it?” I ask.
“Well, one time this drunk came up to him in a bar, whipped his thingie out, and asked him to autograph it. So Tennessee looked down, and said, ‘Well, maybe I could initial it.’”
“Nice!”
They just don’t make guys like they did back then anymore.
I order a can of Coke from the bar, and a second later I see a pale hand reach out to open it. It’s Will. The vampire.
“Um, hey,” I say.
“I thought I would give you a hand,” he says with his Eastern European accent as he hands me the open can.
Oh, crap. I’m getting hit on by a dead guy.
“I had it under control,” I say.
“I only wished to help,” he says.
“Oh, God,” says Sadie, with a chuckle. “He thinks you’re Fruit Cup Girl!”
Fruit Cup Girl sits two lunch tables away from us—we watch her every day at lunch. Every day, she pretends she can’t get her fruit cup open and asks this one guy at her table, who she clearly likes, to open it for her. Peter recorded the whole saga once in “No Siree,” changing just enough of the details that no one could be sure who it was about. A lot of girls do that kind of trick, after all. I wouldn’t dream of it myself. I mean, who wants to date a guy who thinks a girl who can’t operate a fruit cup is attractive?
Will looks uncomfortable for a second, like being around for two hundred years hasn’t taught him to recognize rejection. I guess not a lot of girls reject him. The whole reason male teenage vampires stay in school even when they’ve been teenagers for a couple hundred years is to meet girls.
“You are Alley Rhodes, correct?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I don’t date people I’m reviewing, so run along, okay?”
Will finally slinks away, looking kind of pissed.
“Wow, Alley!” says Sadie. “You got hit on by a vampire!”
“It was everything I dreamed it would be,” I say.
“Maybe he just wanted to sleep with you so you’ll give him a good review,” says Sadie.
“Can they do that?” I ask. “Sleep with people?”
“From what I heard, they can sleep with people, but not without killing them. He’d probably just have to stop at second base or something.”
Keeping track of what’s true and what isn’t about vampires is basically impossible. Like, some of them can read minds and some can’t, but most of that stuff about being scared of crosses and garlic and sleeping in coffins was invented by writers a hundred and fifty years ago. Garlic sales are still skyrocketing, though.
I’m just finishing my Coke when I notice a guy standing around at the back of the stage. He’s pale, with a long, angular face. His dark hair is kind of an elegant mess, and he’s wearing a moth-eaten suit. It’s a more authentic goth look than most of the guys in the place have.
“Who’s that guy?” I ask. “Is he in the band?”
“I don’t know,” says Sadie. “He’s kinda cute.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe he’s managing the band or something.”
“Would you give them a good review if he made out with you?”
“Hell no. But he’s welcome to find that out the hard way.”
And just so you know, it’s not like I’m a slut or anything. I don’t go around hooking up with every guy I meet at the Cage. But the fact that I try not to date local guys—especially considering I’m about to move—doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. Because I do. A lot, honestly. Making fun of idiots who hit on me can kind of help me keep it in check, but even I can’t fight hormones that well.
Eight-thirty rolls around and the band is still setting up. A bunch of girls who saw Will sav
e me from the perils of opening my own can of pop wander by and give me dirty looks, and I just grin. Three more months and I’ll never have to see a single one of them again. I should make one of those paper chains like kids make before Christmas and tear off one link every day until it’s time to go away to Seattle.
“They’d better get started,” Sadie says. “Trinity wanted the review by nine, right?”
“I only have a couple lines left to add,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
Finally, at a quarter till nine, the band starts up, giving me exactly fifteen minutes to write my review.
Nat is a nice guy. I have nothing against him. But his guitar skills are definitely not beyond the “advanced beginner” level. His singing isn’t too bad, but when the band joins in behind him, they don’t quite play along with him, exactly. It doesn’t seem like they’re all playing the same song. Will, especially, seems like he’s playing the wrong song.
The first song turns out to be a slow jam on “Margaritaville,” by Jimmy Buffet. The band’s goth look is totally wrong for that song. Like, hilariously wrong. And I’ve never cared much for the song, anyway. It’s like, a bar-band cliché. Not that anyone minds—no one’s paying attention to the music.
Most of them never really listen to music. Practically no one actually does. Even at concerts people pay good money for, instead of a three-dollar cover charge, they talk through the whole thing. I feel sorry for them, since none of them understand what it’s like to have a song just get into your soul and become your whole world. They don’t know what it’s like when a song changes your life. They’ve never felt the way I did the first time I heard the Ramones sing “I Don’t Want to Live This Life,” and they’ll never understand why I cry (in a good way) when I listen to Neutral Milk Hotel. The people in the crowd might recognize a Cole Porter song that’s been in a commercial or something, but they wouldn’t recognize his name unless they saw the drama department put on Kiss Me Kate and bothered to read the program. They may drive nice cars and live in big houses in gated subdivisions named after trees, but these kids are deprived.
“Margaritaville” turns into an extended, incompetent jam that drags on for ten agonizing minutes while I finish my review:
ON THE BEAT WITH ALLEY RHODES The SORRY MARIOS at the CAGE
The Sorry Marios, featuring Cornersville Trace High School’s own Nat Watson on acoustic guitar and local vampire Wilhelm Tepes on drums, played the Cage on Friday night, opening with an extended jam on “Margaritaville.” Did anyone else who was there find it odd to see a teenage band playing a song about margaritas to a room where the only person who could drink legally was Wilhelm? Not that legality mattered; half the people there were drunk when they showed up. Maybe they figured, in a rare show of wisdom, that the music would be a lot easier to sit through if they were loaded.
Seeing a vampire drummer was an exciting prospect, but those who believed vampires had some sort of otherworldly musical talent were surely disappointed. Will could play the drums, all right, but he didn’t always seem to be playing the right song. Some people are said to be marching to a different drummer. Well, Will seemed to be drumming to a different marcher. Nat does have a good voice, though, and plenty of potential—if he gets a new backing band.
For the record, my reviews aren’t always this mean. It’s like, constructive criticism. If Nat wants to make it as a musician, he needs to know what he has to work on if he wants to take things to the next level without embarrassing himself, right?
The first song isn’t even over when I hit Send.
3
Once the review is sent, I could get up and leave, but if anyone saw me leave, they’d know I didn’t stay for the whole show, which would make me look really unprofessional. I have to stick around for at least half an hour.
I look over at Sadie, who cringes. I cringe back. But then I turn away and force my attention onto the pale goth guy in the moth-eaten suit who’s been hanging around the back of the stage. He’s actually not bad-looking at all. Maybe he’s the kind of guy I could have some fun with while Dad is at the scrapbooking store. Just looking at him makes me realize it’s been a while. Not that hookups make me less lonely in the long run, but they make me less lonely for the afternoon, at least.
Nat steps to the microphone. “All right, everybody,” he says. “Thanks for, uh, coming out and supporting us. We’d like to bring up a guy who’s sort of a part-time member. This is Doug, from West Des Moines. We used to be in plays together down at the Playhouse. And now he’s gonna come sing a couple of songs.”
Nat steps away and the pale guy who’s been hanging out behind the stage walks up to the mike.
“Thanks,” Doug says. He has an interesting voice, low and breathy, kind of like Leonard Cohen, a really great poet/songwriter who, I’m sure, he’s never heard of. No one around here has heard of him, though they at least know his song “Hallelujah” because it was in Shrek and on American Idol and every TV drama known to man.
They start playing a basic punk beat (badly, I might add), and Doug the Goth mutters, “My story’s much too sad to be told, but nearly everything leaves me totally cold,” into the mike, then starts singing.
“I get no kick from champagne …”
There are certain words we can’t use in the school paper, so we made up ridiculous substitutes, like “shlabotnik.”
All I can think right now is “Holy shlabotnik.”
He’s singing “I Get a Kick out of You.” By Cole Porter.
And I can tell from the first line that Doug actually understands the song. He understands that it isn’t a happy song, like most people think: it’s a miserable song about how your only chance at not being miserable is this one person you have a crush on—even though that person doesn’t like you back. The way Doug is singing (well, not singing so much as whispering and muttering, like he’s in pain) makes it clear that he knows the song really well. His voice isn’t a Broadway voice; it’s that Tom Waits or Bob Dylan type of voice that may be kind of rough but makes it sound like every word he’s singing is real.
Yes. I definitely need to take this guy to my room sometime. Soon.
Then, in the second verse, he actually sings the line about cocaine. When Porter first wrote the song for the show Anything Goes, the first line of verse two was “Some get a kick from cocaine.” But people usually water it down by changing it to “Some like that perfume from Spain” (lame). But he sings the real line.
I look over at Sadie with my eyes wide, and she just grins.
After the bridge, he changes one line in the third verse—the line about “I get no kick on a plane.” Normally, I’d be against rewriting Porter under any circumstance, but I suppose this is fair enough, since no one gets a kick on a plane anymore. I can’t quite make out what he sings instead; it sounds like “I get no kick eating brains,” but that can’t be right.
Whatever it is, I suddenly feel like my heart is beating to the rhythm of the song. That feeling that probably no one else in the room ever gets from music? I’ve got it. It’s like everything in the world except me, the singer and the song has just turned into the static between stations on a cheap car radio. I have never felt this way about a singer at the Cage. Not even close.
The song winds to a close and I’m so surprised by what I’ve just seen that I can’t even move. Not until I see a hand waving in front of my face.
“Gonk?” asks Sadie. “You okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’m fine.”
“That song wasn’t half bad, honestly,” said Sadie. “Cole Porter, right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “It was fine.”
“Oh my God!” says Sadie. “Let me see your eyes!”
She steps around and looks into my eyes, then starts laughing. “You’re totally smitten!” she sings, teasing me like we’re both in kindergarten.
“I am not!” I insist. “I just really like that song. And he did it right, too. Almost nobody does that. I have, like, fiftee
n versions of it on my iPod, and maybe two of them get it right.”
The band starts up, but it sounds like they aren’t all playing the same song again. Doug is motioning to them, trying to give them directions. Then he sort of gives up, steps back to the microphone and sings the first line:
“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel …”
Oh. My. God.
Holy shlabotnik again.
He does know who Leonard Cohen is. He’s singing one of his songs. And even though the band seems to be playing three different songs, none of which is the right one, he’s doing a pretty good job.
He gets to a line of the song about getting a certain … favor from a girl in a hotel room and all the douche-bag guys in black cheer. They don’t know that he’s singing about a girl who had been dead for a while when the song was written. They don’t care.
But as much as I’m almost ashamed to admit it, I’m imagining myself as the girl in the song. Not dead or anything, but, you know. In the hotel room with the singer.
I shake my head and try to get ahold of myself. This is not the way I think! I do not fall for guys like this!
I wander away from our seat over to a spot by the window, which is all fogged up, and draw a picture of the Seattle skyline in the fog with my finger. It’s an easy skyline—just a bunch of normal buildings, plus the Space Needle. Back in the 1960s Jim Morrison described it as “a 1930 version of twenty years in the future.” It still looks like that now. Drawing on the window distracts me for a second, but I can’t keep my attention away from Doug the Goth.
Who knew a singer like this could come out of West Des Moines? About the only famous singers from around here are Andy Williams and the guy from Slipknot.
And what in the heck is Doug doing playing in the Sorry Marios? He’s working way below his grade level here.
