Badbadbad Page 3

  Cyrus may have understood. He laid a flyer on my windshield, telling me how he booked the entertainment at an underground club in Medth, a small town off the interstate, a few miles outside Gethsemane. The gig was on Saturday night when I’d be working late. “Headliner goes on at midnight,” he said.

  I gripped his hand. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Yeah Yeah Yeahs.” He left me with that music-insider funny. I could tell we were going to be friends.

  The Beginning & The End was a backroads juke joint with rockstar attitude, a dive like any other—and I’ve known plenty—floor sticky with drunk spillage, air rank with smoke, despite the county’s ban on cigarettes in buildings open to the public. Silver boas and ropes of tiny white Christmas bulbs hung on mirrors behind the bar, the only light in there besides plastic beer signs and the spots trained on a small particleboard platform, foot-high at most, carpeted with Astroturf: the stage.

  Cyrus slapped me in the kidneys. “JAG man!” he yelled over the jukebox and the crowd. He headbobbed at the bar.

  “Not tonight.” I felt bad once I’d said it.

  “Never woulda pigeoned you a straight-edge.” The Reverend’s son drained his glass, Jim Beam cut with ginger ale, his adult beverage of choice.

  I called for a water. “Hotter than hell.”

  “Ain’t a bad place to be, brotherman.”

  With his trim goatee, leather cowboy hat and thrift-store tux jacket, Cyrus looked like a barker, eyes wide, veined, mascaraed. He gripped my shoulders with his father’s strong hands, hollered like a trussed pig. The audience howled back, stomping, clapping, a ritual at Children’s Crusade shows, I would find.

  From the first cymbal crash it was on. Industrial night terror for Generation ADHD. Cosmic slop and jungle scree, eviscerated gospel, balls-out rock: sliced, diced, shred then broiled with ox tail and country sausage. This was no vegan picnic.

  The beats were blood-stained, propulsive, equal parts groove and art-house deconstruction. Possessed by the sound, half the audience flailed their bodies against one another. The guitar blazed vapor trails, more splatter than single notes or chords, colliding Blue Angels in a July Fourth sky. The keyboards were fearsome, slasher-film dramatic. I thought I was seeing things, hearing voices not there. But it was all coming from the stage.

  The wiry lead singer cooed and cawed and pranced like a bleached praying mantis on the hunt to cannibalize. Her lips and eyes were sallow, her face chalk, framed by a bonnet on her shaved pale head. She wore an infant’s baptismal gown that rarely hid her ass. Partway through the show she tossed her panties to the crowd. She was hairless like a baby.

  The synth player, another girl, passed for Pippi Longstocking: red dots on her cheeks, pigtailed wig of Halloween yarn, Little League football gear sponsored by Kat’s BBQ Surf & Turf, fins and horns etched into her helmet. The guitarist roleplayed Angus Young, snarling in his schoolboy blazer, tie and knickers. The drummer was naked, nearly so. Drummers tend to be the least clothed bandmates anyhow. His nose and nipples were pierced, chest inked with tribal patterns, bony ass diapered, bobbypinned. Front teeth blacked out, he sucked beer from a baby bottle in between songs.

  The group lit up the room with “The Minister’s Menstruation,” “I’ve Got Your Barbie Here, Dear” and “Daddy Daddy No!” Everyone knew the lyrics, but I couldn’t make them out. The performance was too loud, distorted, and video on the wall behind the band disturbing.

  A three-part sequence of still frames, supersaturated with color, played in a non-stop loop. There were blue skies, green lawns, red wagons, birthday cakes, rhinestone pillows, catcher’s mitts, dollhouses, unicorns. Each snapshot would blaze until blinding, then an amorphous shadow would swallow it whole. The branded pals of childhood suffered the same fate: Johnny Handi Wipe, Lawrence the Locomotive, Barbie, Gimme the Goo, Pimpin Homies, the Disney crew. In the video’s final segment, little boys and girls froze in carefree poses: in sandboxes, inflatable pools, on swings and ball fields, in bubbly bathtubs. This time, men were the shadows blotting them out.

  At the end of the performance, the singer invited everyone to carry the party to the band’s warehouse in the city. Cyrus tried to get me to hang, but I had church in the morning. He bowed, making the prayer sign, and said, “Go with God then, beeyatch.”

  FOUR

  For Sunday’s sermon, “Radical Change: Existential Crisis?” the Reverend framed his premise around the biblical example of the disciples, “average Joes,” he said, “called by Christ to carry His Sacred Word to the ends of the Earth. Did these fishermen want to be fishers of men?” He paused for a spell, miming the act of baiting the hook, casting the line, waiting, waiting, sensing the bite, the tug on the line, reeling in the score, gingerly at first, then with muscle, almost losing it, not once but three times, yet conquering the creature in the end. The congregation clucked in approval. As he held up his prize catch for imaginary photo ops, he said, “Any work we do is a struggle . . . until . . . until we partner with our Lord and Savior. Then it’s all good sweat and sweet reward.”

  Though his performance was entertaining, I couldn’t stay with him. My mind drifted to the night before and this image of insect disco on the ceiling of a space shuttle crashing through the stratosphere—an attractive prospect.

  If music’s an emotional surrogate, then what was it that Children’s Crusade did for its devoted flock? I can’t speak for them, but I felt less helpless with the CC soundtracks churning inside of me. I imagined how I could abduct my son under cover of the night, strap him into his car seat, let the Saturn shoot us to the other side of the galaxy. But I knew this was a death sentence. I had no faith in that engine.

  Maybe I could x the ex and her redneck daddy.

  After services, while uploading a podcast of the Reverend’s spiel on the laptop in my apartment, I listened to his homerun pitch. “Change is necessary sometimes. Depends on how you live your life. Radical change, though, in how you go about your day-to-day, erases who you are. Maybe you need this sorta makeover.” The Reverend relaxed his tone. “Depends on how you live your life.” Then he barreled into a crescendo. “If you radically change your be-hav-ior, the per-son you are will cease to exist!”

  He broke off here, likely stepping back from the lectern with bug eyes and slack jaw, as if gazing on the Sacred Heart, haloed and meaty, blue veins throbbing, suspended in the humid air above the congregation. The Reverend was king of the dramatic pause.

  “Is this cause for alarm? An existential crisis?” He stopped again, then resumed in a squirrelly voice. “Oh no! Who am I? Who am I?” I could hear the parishioners’ delight. “Not if you put your faith in you know Who.” His tenor natural now. “Fear not!” His words echoed in my earbuds. “Put your faith in Jesus Christ. You will be born anew.”

  I would put my faith in Good Charlotte. Her attorney would put the hurt on the ex. Or I would do so myself. Change is good. Radical change? Better.

  _________

  When not working, I would often spend time with Cyrus at my place. He’d sip his Beam and soda while I munched on processed corn. We’d talk music, pirate MP3s, rip each other’s hard drives. He was on a Dylan jag, having recently acquired those sixties bootlegs everyone was pissing themselves over. I’d never listened much to the folk hero besides what I’d heard on the radio. Cyrus liked his story, said he was an intellectual Jew who dropped out of school and didn’t identify with his cultural heritage, a next-generation Woody Guthrie who swapped his unplugged shtick for a Marshall stack at the height of his coffee-circuit fame, a self-made Beat poet who hung with the gay bards but only slept with betties like Joan Baez. Later, he was Born Again, then he wasn’t, then he was . . . something like that. Now he’s a lizard who still puts on a helluva show and his boy’s in the Wallflowers, a group both of us belched at.

  Lazing on the sofa one night, Cyrus laid into me with his personal manifesto on sobriety. He said he didn’t trust the straight-edge lifestyle choice. “Non-drinkers, they’re either a
lcoholics, in which case they’ve still got that pickled-brain mentality. Exhibit A: our Commander-in-Chief. Or they holy-rollin, rigid as my mornin salutation to great glorious man power.” I threw a handful of cheese puffs at his face. Catching one in his mouth, he spit it back at me. “See my pops: Exhibit B. What gives, brotherman? You once, twice, three tiiiiimes a beeyatch?”

  I tried to dislodge the gunk in my teeth, ignoring his tone, but taking his question for serious. Could I trust the Reverend’s son? A demo of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” whined from the speakers. Sure, we shared the same obsession. But I couldn’t risk any new or potential employers reacting unfavorably to my past. I was reinventing myself. A church-goer, humble, God-fearing, they said. What would he do, though? Narc to his father? They never saw each other. Gossip with Good Charlotte? No, I had nothing to fear. We were brothers in music.

  I explained how I would sometimes get out of hand, like when you drink with your buddies and get to that point where you’re just not gonna take shit from anyone, and how that would lead to the sort of trouble I can’t get into anymore. Not with my son and this mess with the ex.

  “Good father,” he said. “I can respect that.” His response caught me off guard. “Anyhow, you’ll wipe the floor with that bitch’s ass soon enough.” He cockeyed grinned. “Faith, my brother.” I squirmed in my seat. “Faith.”

  _________

  During my last week in the custodial line, Good Charlotte stopped by First Church along her exercise route to wish me well. I was out by the dumpster, heaving bags of soggy paper towels and rank leftovers from a fundraiser into the bin.

  “You act like I’ll never see you again,” I said, forgetting the trash, giving her my full attention.

  She hung her head low. “It’s not the same at worships.”

  Up close, I could smell her. Flowers and raindrops and sunshine. I peeked at the zipper of her damp sweatsuit top, the shadow between her thighs, her pink lips. I returned to my work, asked her why she had never mentioned Cyrus. She didn’t answer right off, so I told her how we’d recently met. She seemed glad to hear this.

  “He’s a good boy,” she said. “But willful like his father. They’re in a rough patch right now.” We walked toward a bench around the corner as she explained the falling out: how Cyrus betrayed his old man, forsaking a football scholarship for art school, which the Reverend only supported after Good Charlotte’s lobbying. “He’s sensitive,” she said as we sat down, our bodies close but not touching, not much. “A beautiful sculptor of images. Mixed media, installations, video. Not the same old. Rather edgy. That’s the problem.”

  She told me how her husband blew up at the senior exhibition. Cyrus was proud of his work, but the Reverend was not impressed, even when a gallery in Athens offered to represent some pieces and they sold in less than a month. Good Charlotte thrilled in retelling this event. I leaned into her shoulder. Raindrops and sunshine. “Do you know how rare that is?” she said, patting my thigh with each syllable.

  The Reverend didn’t share her enthusiasm. He called the gallery a smut shop, the curator a pervert, the work a vulgar affront to Christian values. “It wasn’t so,” she said. “The ideas were just . . . provocative.” I knew she’d be a loud lover. I hated myself for thinking such a thing. When I pressed her for a description, she blushed. “I couldn’t. I don’t have the words.” She was playing the bunny. I wanted her to hop up on my lap. But she was the wife of the First Church pastor, my employer, a Crusader for Christ.

  “Cyrus is a good boy,” she said, standing up, brushing the seat of her soft white sweatpants. “He has a good heart.”

  Mine was thumping through my chest. But I stayed true, little brother. I didn’t try to kiss her where I knew she wanted me to.

  I didn’t mention this conversation when I next saw Cyrus. I’d given in to his post-concert demands and we were on our way to the Children’s Crusade warehouse, me behind the wheel, him cracking on my car. Coughing, doubling up, he said it had TB. At this point I was still socking away the cash for repairs. “I can pull over right now,” I said, “right here on the highway. You can walk your ass home.” (Remember, bro, how your dad he used to threaten us like this when we’d dork out on those hauls to the beach, Great America, Disney World? Remember when I called his bluff?)

  Apologizing, Cyrus rattled an envelope, tapped a handful of tablets on the dash. Lee Scratch Perry slowburned on the stereo. “It’s not Saturday niiiiight. Who wants a pick-me-up?”

  Earlier that evening I’d wrung my last rag as the caretaker of church filth. Still amped from the show, I didn’t want to go home. If Cyrus’ tales were to be believed, even halfway, the afterparty promised high times through dawn. Did I need a chemical boost? Did I want one? “What is it?” I asked.

  “Somethin right, somethin white,” he sang.

  “Should I cue the Toby Keith?”

  “Joshin, JAG. You know I can’t abide that good ole boy bunk.” He stomped his gator boots on the floor. “What’s it gonna be, straight-edge machine? This ain’t no street fightin man, it’s loooooove loooooove love.” He played like he was the brass section of the Beatles tune.

  “What would Jeeeeesus do?” I said. “Half. Gimme a half.”

  “You’re in high cotton now.”

  The warehouse was situated in roughly a three-block area bordered by retired railroad tracks, a highway overpass and an elementary school. It was the first gritty neighborhood I’d seen since moving here. Cyrus explained how this was once an industrial hub, but the out-of-town developers, who descended in the past twenty years to invest in the mayor’s “Whole Hog Revitalization” scheme, pretended the district didn’t exist. The feds designated much of the land a Superfund site. The corporates deemed it too toxic to profit from cleanup. Preachers dubbed it the Devil’s Triangle. Cyrus called it home.

  “Welcome to the Playpen,” he said.

  The building was concrete, wide open, a hangar for fighter jets. Many of its small square windows, which I had to crane my neck to see, were painted over with what appeared to be smeared portraits of children’s faces. They reminded me of pissed-on yearbook pages. Concert posters and tie-dyed fabric covered the other windows, blocking the moon at night and, I imagined, the sun in the day. The only lights were black fluorescents and dim red bulbs on shadeless lamps. Instead of music, a drone hummed continuously, varying in tonal color at a volume that could be listened to with slight effort or easily talked over.

  Cyrus introduced me to the CC band members, whose names I can’t recall except for the lead singer’s. I didn’t recognize them without their stage gear and was surprised to find Shea was a light-skinned black girl. Most everyone at the Playpen was pasty-faced, inked, pierced: typical alternatypes. Cyrus said Jim Crow still ruled, though less in the law as written than by individual choice. Hip-hop spawned pimple-faced white kids with grills. “Wiggas with hella identity issues.”

  Shea fit in as an outsider. Model-thin, nearly as tall as Cyrus, who bested my six feet, she was living art. Wicked-smart, fearless, dangerous when crossed. That’s how he described her to me later in the night. She seemed friendly enough, a bit feely, as she took my hands in hers, traced the lines of my palms and said, “Welcome to the fold. Anythin ya need, holler. We’re all family here.”

  For an instant I was afraid this might be some kind of cult. Lured by the Reverend’s son, entranced by the dynamic leader. But I dismissed this thought as paranoia, suspicions of the stranger.

  When Cyrus ran off to chase down a girl, I tried to mingle but didn’t know what to say. There were awkward hellos, howz-it-goin’s, but no connects to speak of. I’d been off the social grid for some time. While I may have looked the same age as most folks in this scene, at twenty-nine, I was older, out of place, a father for Christ’s sake. At least I used to be. And I would be again if I had any say. Yet as I moved around the space in slow motion—the light and soundscape made everything molasses—I could feel a blossoming begin to stream through me
.

  Many guys had stripped off their shirts. Most of the girls wore halters or tanktops. Nearly everyone was in shorts, short skirts or tight jeans. I remember this ghost girl in a sheer sundress—no bra, no panty lines—another with a tiara who was otherwise clothes-free. Cyrus told me about a playroom in the basement called the Petting Zoo, where folks indulged in public spanking, roleplay, oral services, mostly meant for couples and small groups, invitation-only for solos. He said he’d take me down there next time.

  “Can ya feel the love, brotherman?” Cyrus had snuck up behind me, roped his arms around my shoulders, swung to the front. He was bare-chested, lean-muscled, with an arrowhead tattoo just below his navel. He touched my face with rough fingertips. It somehow felt right.

  “A special friend,” he said. “JAG, Bebe. I used to roll in the sandbox with this here chickpea.”

  “You’d throw sand down my pants, douche.” She shoved him away like a tumbleweed. “Hiya, JAG. Welcome to the Playpen.”

  Her voice was roasted marshmallow, her breath fresh with skunk. I declined her offer of the pipe but thanked her for the hospitality.

  “Too little uh that goin round,” she said. “I, on the other hand, am a true-blood Southern belle.”

  I wanted to kiss her lips as they sucked down the smoke. I knew they’d feel soft.

  It was all around me then: softness like puppies or kittens or babies. No Wrath of God, no sermons. No war or fear. No ex. I wanted to sink into the softness, to be a child again, this time with no worries.

  Bebe locked into my eyes. I could tell we felt the same. Then I felt confused.

  She didn’t look like a girl. She didn’t not look like a girl either. It could have been her bobbed hair or Army camouflage T-shirt, form-fitted, tattered sleeves. Fascinated by the curling threads, I kneaded them with my fingers. Maybe it was her build: strong, stocky, flat-chested. Though she was a head smaller than me, her biceps were nearly my size. I traced the contours of her ink. She smiled at me, her teeth nuke-bright bones in the black light.