Rolly drifted along with Greg’s chords, then began to layer his strums with electronic sounds I never knew existed—wailing and scratching, chopping and bending, stretching and vibrating. His fingers jabbed at the strings, distorting the pitch as they flew in a melodic lead over the rhythm he drove at the same time.
Not only could he play lead and rhythm simultaneously, for a good six minutes he ripped through two concurrent solos while accompanying himself with a rhythmic hammering and a rumbling bass line.
The earth had just flipped onto a different axis. This changes everything. Closing my eyes, surprised that the world still spun, awed that it did, I plucked away at my one note.
Greg slumped on the sofa, his head back, staring at the ceiling—like he had been blown to bits and would never move again.
The three of us lugged two guitars, a bass, three small amps, and a tambourine down Bleecker Street. When Rolly had explained the other members of his group were stuck in Jersey with car problems, Greg and I had volunteered to help carry his equipment.
We passed by a couple of long-haired guys I’d never seen before. We all acknowledged each other with a nod. One of them said, “If you’re carrying, there’s a bust down at MacDougal. Fuzz all over the place.”
Rolly said, “Thanks man, we’re cool.”
The church basement was set up with folding chairs and card tables in front of a small stage and a microphone stand. Rolly was tuning his guitar when a young woman, all curves and softness, sat down at a table with Greg and me.
“Deets, what are you doing here?”
Greg snapped out of whatever reverie he was in. “Sis.”
Maureen had been my elementary school crush. She had gone off to a school in New England so hadn’t been part of the high school gang back home.
We talked about living in the city and old friends and crazy stunts from our childhood. She chuckled mischievously about some minor disruption I had caused in fourth grade.
“That? You weren’t even in my class. How do you even remember what happened?”
“We weren’t strangers. You wore your trouble-making like a badge of honor.” She laughed, and I joined her.
As we traded memories, we grew flirtatious. She reminded me of the time in sixth grade when we had straw-danced, chewing on a paper straw until our lips met, revealing I was her first kiss. I beamed, admitting she had been my first too. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and asked her if she wanted to dance a second time. She slapped me playfully, exclaiming, “Find a real straw.”
We eyed each other excitedly.
A small crowd of about thirty people had shown up for Rolly’s performance. Red-eyed stoners filled the tables. Dedicated church parishioners looked around the room with open curiosity at the beads, bandanas, and peace buttons; the flowery leggings, polka-dot shirts, and bushy sideburns. A woman wearing paint-spattered bell bottoms pulled up a chair next to a barefoot man with large hoop earrings. An elderly lady wore colorful bangles, decorating both her arms from wrist to elbow.
After a chubby, rosy-faced man with long white hair flowing halfway down his back and a beard tickling his belly read two poems, Pastor Jim adjusted his paisley ascot, fiddled with the microphone height, pointed out where everyone could get coffee, water, or soda, and then introduced Wild Bird. Clucking sympathetically, he explained that the rest of the group would be late, but Rolly was going to entertain everyone solo.
Rolly’s vocal delivery was a melodic half-talk style that rose and fell smoothly. After playing a few standard ballads, he launched into a set of arrangements no one on Earth had ever heard before. During one song, he held his guitar in front of the amplifier and blasted the room with electronic feedback, causing a woman near the stage to cover her ears with her hands. When he finished, she shyly asked him not to make that noise anymore and could he please just play music.
I was wondering how he had made that blast of racket sound like music.
Over at the drinks table, Pastor Jim removed a small flask from his pants pocket, topped off his coffee with its contents, then moved from the coffee pot to sit with the complaining woman. Leaning towards her, he whispered into her ear. She backed away from him suddenly, shaking her head, placing her fingers over the top of her paper cup. He swooped in closer to her and said something that made her laugh. She bent her head to one side thoughtfully, then held up her thumb and forefinger, indicating “Just a pinch.”
The missing band members finally arrived, joining Rolly onstage. The audience melted into their music. I noticed Miss Prim sipping from her spiked cup, swaying her head, and tapping her feet. For their final song, Rolly conferred with his musicians, then began strumming the first few chords of the tune Greg and I had played earlier, back at the apartment. Wild Bird caught on quickly after Rolly led them through the first few measures.
The song had a throbbing, repetitive quality, with Rolly weaving a hypnotic melody.
The room glowed a soft pink and blue. Unexpected, unheard-of sounds pulsed from the guitars, thumping at our chests, carrying our thoughts, sculpting our emotions—soaring with joy, running in fear, crying from heartache. Miss Prim, her head bowed, hair hanging over her eyes, tapped a wild rhythm on her lap. Pastor Jim had moved to a dark corner, surreptitiously dry humping some woman he pretended to dance with. Maureen huddled close to me, her hand on my leg, the pressure of her palm pulsing in time with the beat. With the taste of her heat, the spell of her aroma, and a relaxed hum buzzing through my head, the night felt almost holy.
When Wild Bird finished and people were milling around or leaving, I heard some skinny, curly-haired guy say to no one in particular, as if awakening from a dream, “Man, something just happened.”
Rolly handed Greg the keys to his place. “You guys can crash at my pad.” He nodded his head in the direction of the curly-haired guy who was talking with the rotund, white-haired poet. “Look, I’m splitting with those dudes.”
Greg glanced across the room. “Hey, wow, that’s Bob Dylan. Who’s Santa Claus?”
Rolly smiled, wiggled his fingers like a mock magician. “I think that really may be Santa Claus. They mentioned getting a regular gig for me. Hey, catch you later. Deets, man, bring over some of your artwork next time. I want to see where it’s at.”
“Yeah, sure. Cool.”
Chapter 3
Greg and I walked Maureen back to her place, northeast of Washington Square, where she lived with two other women. Sensing we wanted a few moments to ourselves, Greg waited downstairs as Maureen and I went up to her floor. Her apartment door, at the end of a hallway, was tucked into a small alcove. After letting me know her roommates were home, she put her arms around me, pressed herself against my chest, and gave me a long kiss. After a few minutes of passion, my hand was rubbing and kneading one of her tits. The rhythm of her body movement urged me to explore. All night long her mini skirt had been driving me into fits of wild fantasy, and now it rode up even higher on her thighs. We thumped against the door as I slid my hand between her legs. Her cunt was soft and slippery, her juices pouring, her underwear soaked. She was breathing heavily, moaning and clinging to me as I caressed and fingered her. After a few minutes, she gasped frantically, “We have to stop. No, Deets. Not here.”
I whispered, “Come back to my place.”
“No, no, I can’t.” She let me stroke and swirl in her for another minute as she rubbed my hard-on through my jeans. “Come by here at five tomorrow.”
“Morning?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, you crazy man. Now stop.” She removed her hand, then mine, and adjusted herself. I dropped to my knees and watched her fidget with her sky-blue underwear and mini skirt.
I pretended to cry, boohooing with a sad face.
Letting herself into the apartment, she giggled when I pawed a farewell on her soft ass. I stayed on, still kneeling for a few more minutes, sniveling comically, hop
ing she’d hear and change her mind, then sneak me past her roommates. The door opened slightly. A young woman with curlers in her hair peeked out, eyes harsh with annoyance.
She hissed, “What are you doing?”
“Crying.”
“I’m going to call the cops. Leave.”
I nodded my head in glum affirmation. “Okay.”
But despite the ache in my groin, life felt like it could get no better as I flew down the stairs. I was eighteen years old, living on my own, getting high every day, and selling my art. And now, a beautiful woman had come on to me like it was as commonplace as saying hello.
Man, dude was right. I don’t know what’s happening, but something is.
As Greg and I walked towards 6th Avenue, we talked about Rolly. Greg had known him at Fort Campbell before being shipped out to Vietnam. Although he wasn’t sure, he believed Rolly had been discharged for being a lousy marksman and a lazy soldier. We stopped to have a smoke, leaning against a stone wall that encircled a small park. I offered him a Kool.
“Who the fuck smokes Kools? You a homo, Deets?”
I just took a drag—tasting Maureen on my fingers—and didn’t answer, still sailing on the feel of her.
“Rolly’s going to make it, man. He only got here to New York about three months ago, and he’s already hanging with Dylan. Not too shabby.”
“Where’s he from?”
“Don’t know, man. Somewhere out west, like Nebraska or Texas. Dude played with some big acts. Shit, man, he toured with The Belmonts for awhile.”
“He blew the place apart tonight.”
“Yeah, he can wail, but he’s a rebel. A fucking disciplinary problem.”
“Ha, you are a sergeant, aren’t you, man?” I flicked my cigarette a short distance away, then stepped over and ground it out with my shoe.
Greg’s voice had a tinge of anger. “You’re damn right. Without discipline, people end up dead.”
I was quiet, on edge from the tension in his voice. A nearby streetlamp spilled a dull, dirty light onto the sidewalk. The darkness of the tall, bushy trees we stood under and the turn of the conversation suddenly unnerved me.
“Let’s go, man.” I glanced down the block.
“You go. I’m going to hang here for awhile.”
The lamp illuminated his face momentarily. The whites of his eyes were gone. Two black sockets sat skull-like in place of them.
I took an instinctive step away from him. “Sure, man.”
Frightened, I walked until I reached the nearest corner, then turned to look back. I couldn’t see him but sensed he was still there, part of the shadows.
I moved on quickly through the late-night streets, anxiously eyeing every possible place someone might ambush me from. Checking over my shoulder for Greg, I terrified myself further, wondering if he would be a comfort or a threat. What had I seen in his face? Someone haunted or transformed by death? By evil?
Spooked by thoughts of muggers and demons, I tried to rationalize what I had just witnessed. A trick of light. An hallucination.
No, I knew I had peered into a damaged part of his soul.
Dodging shadows, maneuvering the inky maze, I was nearly paralyzed with dread when I found my path had led me to what seemed the darkest cavern of an alley in the entire city. Knowing I had no time to deliberate another route, I cut slightly out into the street and plunged blindly forward to get past the stygian opening.
But my steps faltered at the appearance of a single red glow set deep in the black, walled passage. The burning end of a cigarette moved slowly in a downwards arc, then paused. I could make out the shape of a man, knew he was watching me. The pinpoint of scarlet light moved upwards and flared.
Suddenly the space between us felt thick and perilous. I had the sensation of coils enclosing the area, trapping me. My mind was screaming for me to run, but I felt entangled, helpless to whatever the apparition in the alley had in mind.
I heard a grinding of gears, harsh and threatening. It took me a moment to realize the menacing sound was the stranger’s laughter, deep in his throat.
He spoke. His voice shredded the air. I felt it peel away my skin—knocking at my heart, splintering bones, rupturing my brain.
“So, you’ve come out to play with us, after all. We’re going to have a lot of fun in the years to come, you and I.”
Somehow, deep inside of me, I understood him as if this meeting had been promised me. Yet I had no idea why, or what lay ahead if I lived beyond the next few moments.
“Your move.” The words felt as if I’d been snake-bit, immediately festering into a fear that I would disintegrate into nothing if he spoke again.
Move. My move.
I took a stumbling step. Another. Then I ran.
God, how I ran, fleeing to salvage whatever was left of my life. I could hear the metallic sound of his laughter echoing over and over as I sensed I was moving, not away from him, but towards him.
I sprinted breathlessly until voices and bodies and music surrounded me—gleeful girls, guys yapping, the hum of people trying to be heard above the blast of The Blues Project’s guitars. I had escaped into a crowded cafe. Safe.
At the bathroom mirror, I checked to see if I actually had been physically injured. No, but my heart kept pounding too hard, and sweat beaded and trickled across my face. I had never been so unnerved. Shakily, I nursed a beer to calm my body and mind down. Reiterating to myself about tricks of light and being stoned, I attempted to put the incident with the creep in the alley and Greg’s spookiness into perspective. I almost convinced myself the guy in the alley’s words were him inviting me to have sex. Yet there was a constant nagging voice in my head telling me I was denying the menace and force emanating from that dark passageway.
Sticking with groups of people as I made my way home, an Asian woman whose breath was almost solid beer stumbled, ricocheted, and bumped alongside me. Talking incessantly about the World’s Fair, her grades at school, and a blue parrot over at the zoo, she blended each subject right into the other as if they were connected. After crossing 6th, the crowd thinned, and soon just the two of us were moving along a deserted back street. A few blocks further on, she touched my arm tenderly.
“This is where I live. Thank you for seeing me safely home. Cities in America can be so dangerous. I am glad I depended on you. Good night.” I watched her make her way up the front steps with renewed apprehension as I still had to backtrack four blocks alone to reach my place.
Chapter 4
I was drawing a picture, absorbed in simulating the iridescence of a pigeon’s feathers when someone knocked on my door. Greg stood on my floor’s landing. He had eyes in his sockets, the sun shone through my windows. It was a new day. I let him in.
“Hey, man, you shouldn’t have bugged out on me so soon last night. Some heads came by with some fine stuff. Obliterated me. What happened with you?”
“Went and had a beer. Listened to a really good band.”
Greg handed me a paper bag. “Check this out.”
I pulled out a record album with a photograph of Bob Dylan in an unbuttoned purple and blue silk shirt on the cover.
“This is the new one, isn’t it? With “Like a Rolling Stone” on it, right?”
“Yeah. Wonder how things went with Rolly last night.”
“Why’d you get so ticked off talking about him?”
Greg looked puzzled, then laughed bitterly. “You mean the discipline of soldiers. Yeah, hell, I know. I got pissed, not at you though.” He paused. “Hey, man, we’ve known each other a long time.” He hesitated again. “I lose it sometimes. I mean, the war gets stuck in my head. All of a sudden I can’t tell if I’m walking down a New York City street or if I’m scrambling through some snake-infested jungle trying to find a safe place in a goddamn firefight. Fucking Cong.”
“You spooke
d me, man.”
I stared at the album cover, not really taking in the details, as I thought how my fears the previous night couldn’t have been as real or as terrifying as Greg’s must have been in a life or death battle.
“Had some rough times in Nam. Saw and did crap nobody should ever have to live through.”
“I guess some don’t.”
“Aw, Christ. Yeah, I know. Believe me. Hell.”
Greg hunched forward, his head hanging, eyes riveted on the floor. I put the new Dylan album on the turntable and slid the arm over to the first song, then carefully guided the needle down.
We sat silently, listening to the music, Dylan asking in his nasal singsong style how it felt to be unknown and on our own.
I couldn’t relate to what Greg must have experienced. Back in school together, we had sauntered off football fields, stars of the game, beat up and grinning after a victory. But the last few years I had been goofing around in high school, practicing with colored pencils to improve my craft, getting up the nerve to try for third base with my girlfriend while he had been getting shot at, living in some muddy, wet jungle. Killing.
I couldn’t ask him to take his misery and craziness elsewhere. Damn, I just wanted to work on my drawing and listen to music.
Reaching out in a way I could, I shook his shoulders and with a maniacal grin, waggled a joint in front of him. “What you need, General, is a smoke. A visit to wonderland.”
Dylan’s voice rose and hung, sounded as if he was singing just for us, dragging our troubles into the open, telling us we were invisible, nobodies, same as everybody else. Our secrets didn’t matter.
I lit up and handed the smoke to Greg. He took a hit, and as he passed it back, asked me, “Hey, man, ever do LSD?”
“Nope.”
“When I shipped out of Nam, I spent a few weeks in California. What a scene out there. People tripping out on it in herds. I mean, there’s these dudes just handing it out to anyone. There must have been twenty of us the first time I tried it, all blasted out of our skulls. What a wild-ass party going on out there.”
Mayhem (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 1) Page 2
