No Names, page 12
The lobster’s sweet, the steak tender—more delicious than anything I’ve ever tasted. We down the food with plenty of Black Russians and we toast a lot. “To stardommery!” (that’s his); “To camaraderie” (that’s mine). We’re getting buzzed and totally mesmerized by the grandeur of nature right smack in front of us.
We’ve missed the jitney back to Buffalo by a long shot, and luckily don’t have a show tonight, so after we count up the cash to pay the bill, we decide there’s enough to go hog wild and check into a motel. The idea of a real bed after so many nights sleeping piled like puppies in the Econoline sounds amazing. Problem is, neon no vacancy signs are lit up and down the strip. We walk and walk, happy-drunk, until at last we see a place called the Honeymoon City Motel has a vacancy. We smirk and nod to each other, then head into the office. The lady at the desk looks at us like we’re aliens who’ve just landed. I suppose to her we are, and maybe she is to us, what with her bright-yellow poodle-perm and sleeveless blouse with yellow butterflies all over it. We ask for a room, and she’s very sorry but all she has left is the honeymoon suite.
Without batting an eye, Pete responds, “I assumed they’re all honeymoon suites.”
“But there’s only the one bed.” She blinks fast before adding, “And it’s heart shaped.”
“Perfect!” Pete smirks.
I feel like I’m in a TV skit rejected from Love, American Style.
Poor lady looks like she’s about to have a nervous breakdown as she hands him the registration form. “Brothers?”
He answers no without further explanation, all the while grinning at me. I’m too freaked out to offer even a weak smile back at either him or the lady.
When we get to the door of the honeymoon suite, in one fell swoop Pete grabs hold of me and tries picking me up to carry me over the threshold. He thinks it’s a riot. I struggle loose and push him away, tell him to knock it off. The room is all satin hearts and gilded mirrors, tacky, as my mom would say, but still, nicer than any I’ve ever been in.
Before I’ve taken in the whole suite, Pete’s already over on the other side whooping, “Far out, man! Just like back in Cali!” He’s already turned the big gold knobs on what is, he informs me, a Jacuzzi. “Hust-a-ler-endo!” he shouts. “Get your ass in here.” He’s already undressing, even though the tub’s got barely an inch of water in it. Next thing I know, he’s racing across the room, stark naked, shouting, “Minibar! Minibar!” He swings the doors open. The fridge is chock-full of soda pop, juice, beer, even a bottle of champagne. The cupboard has fancy snacks, like smoked almonds, salami and cheese packets, Pringles. There’s an enormous fruit basket wrapped in yellow cellophane on the counter. With one hand, Pete grabs the champagne from the fridge, and with the other busts through the cellophane, pulling out an enormous, totally red, perfectly heart-shaped apple. He scampers like a puppy back over to the tub and climbs in. When the water gets high enough, he turns the jets on. I’ve never seen anything like it. I wait until then to drop my underwear, cross the room, and slowly lower myself into the churning water. Hot as hell but feels so good to my aching bones. Pete pops the cork on the champagne, sending it ricocheting off the popcorn ceiling. Plaster snows down. He puts his mouth over the frothing bottle, sputtering, “Mucho wackoid!” then hands it to me. I’m drunk from the Black Russians but manage to give the green bottle a good swig anyway. New taste. Not bad. With champagne still foaming from his mouth, he takes a horse-chomp out of the too-perfect apple. He then holds the fruit up in front of me, urging me to try it. Snow White, along with Adam and Eve, flicker through my brain. I pause before taking a bite then do it to humor him. I don’t swallow. I hold the bit in my mouth, just in case.
We each have a jet massaging our back. We lie there in bliss. His left arm and leg lazily bump into me; my right arm and leg lazily bump into him. Not a word between us. The timer shuts the jets off after half an hour. Three times Pete lifts himself up to reset it as I drift in and out of sleep in our cozy cauldron.
At some point Pete taps my shoulder to wake me. He’s all lazy smiley. The water’s perfectly still now, lukewarm. He drags himself out of the tub and from a shelf grabs the biggest, whitest, fluffiest towels ever. He pats himself quick all over with one, then holds another out for me to step into. He pats me front and back a few times before giving my head a brisk rubbing. Like a dad with their kid. This should embarrass me but somehow doesn’t. He then floats toward the bed, me trailing behind. We’re both freezing from the AC so huddle our naked selves together in the middle of the enormous heart, shivering on top of the red satin because he never sleeps with covers. “I’m freezy yumming!” he says like that’s the normal way of saying he’s cold. Instead of a blanket, he decides to pull me right on top of him, naked front to naked front, holding onto me so tight I can hardly breathe. He’s kind of squirming and chuckling and nuzzling into my neck. Eventually, we both stop shaking. I try to roll off of him, but he grips onto me, murmuring, “Not yet, not yet.”
God knows how—maybe it was the alcohol—but I somehow managed to sleep till morning, splayed on top of Pete like that. How he could have slept under me I haven’t a clue. When I woke up, I lifted my head to see him bright-eyed, looking up into my face. He pats me on the cheek, and I roll off him. I try not to meet his eyes again and also try not to look at his body or, for that matter, my own.
On a tour like this, life becomes what Mrs. Homer calls some novels: episodic. Like Tom Jones, for instance. It’s when one thing happens after another without any of the events seeming to be connected. The important stuff gets mixed in with the trivial on the conveyor belt of time. Even dramatic things, such as fights—I mean fistfights—are simply one more thing. For instance, on a super muggy afternoon in Kansas City before a show I was feeling anguished (it was probably the first time I ever really understood what that word could mean) about having left my family in the mess they’re in, so I scrounged up all the coins from the glove compartment and floor of the van to call home. Amid burnt-out storefronts I found a battered phone booth. I plugged the machine, studying the world outside through a web of graffiti as the phone rang and rang. On the ninth ring, just when I was about to hang up, came Mom’s voice, “Hello?” faint, quavering. None of the usual harshness in her tone. We did the small talk thing, then I asked after Dad. She told me his lawyer had him plead guilty and that he’s going to spend the rest of his days in prison. She said it just like that. No sobbing, nothing. The news comes like a fist shoved down my throat. Dad, poor Dad. And his poor friend Leonard Dodge. How did it come to this? The drama of the courtroom, where we might have at least found out something more about what happened, wasn’t going to happen. We’re all left with nothing, nothing but grief and agony. The coins quit in the middle of the silence between us. I left the booth, crazy with anger. I wound up taking it out on some guy who’d nudged his LeSabre into the crosswalk. It seemed so right to kick the driver’s side headlight in. Next, I jumped on the hood, scuffing the Almond Mist Metallic paint job good and scaring the hell out of him. I gave the windshield a couple of good stomps, but it didn’t bust.
In St. Louis, me and the guys were on our way into a dive next to the one we were playing later that night, and there were these two jerks standing next to the jukebox staring at us. They kept their eyes on us as we moved to the bar to order. The one with Bee Gees hair and Dingo boots said something. I don’t even know for sure what it was and didn’t bother finding out either. Without giving it a second thought, or, for that matter a first, I delivered a series of rapid-fire blows to his face that sent him rag doll-ing across the tattered linoleum. His friend jumped in and tried taking me, but I decked him too. By this time, Pete was holding me by the shoulders while Matt and Bobby stood over the two, fists clenched, as they tried to get up.
Pete yelled right up in my face, “Don’t give assholes the time a day,” as he led me out the door fast because the bartender was shouting that he was calling the cops.
I’m not proud of what I did, going crazy like that. I don’t have any real reason. You’d think I’d be more philosophical about this violence thing. I didn’t even hate those guys. Sure, they were assholes, but then so was I. And that wasn’t even my first fight on tour or the last. Later on, Pete said he didn’t get the shit I did. I reminded him of all his stuff he’d done, like back in high school beating up rich kids, burning down condos, etc. He argues that what he does is different. It’s planned or political. Not out of control, like me.
Onstage, a different kind of violence comes. It’s like I’m busting out of the prison of myself and giving to the world whatever part of me that’s worth anything. I get in this weird trance and wind up leaving some shows battered and bruised all over. Most times I don’t remember how it all played out. But I do recall how, somewhere in Michigan, some guy in a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt (the one with the skull design) got too enthusiastic leaping up toward me and nearly fractured my jaw with his skull. At the same show, another freak thought he was a vampire or something. He made it up onto the stage and was all over me, trying to bite me on the neck, until Matt dropped his bass, grabbed hold of the guy by his jean jacket, and tossed him off the stage.
In Houston, I woke up in the hospital. No idea how I got there. My head hurt like hell. Pete was at my bedside. He started in with this weird police-speak, “You’ve been a victim of assault.” I didn’t like that, I told him—the being a victim part—but he insisted. Apparently, some guy drop-kicked my head. “Maybe things have gotten out of control,” he added in a calm voice I could tell was forced. “Do you really need to get so out of control?” That was a good question, it really was. He continued—now almost urgent—like he’d prepared a speech and was afraid he wasn’t going to get to finish: “Look, guy, I’m right there next to you and even I don’t know, but I have got to ask, do you somehow encourage it?” Again, good question.
Should I have told him, “Yeah, sure, I like having the shit kicked out of me”? I’d never thought about it that way. Maybe it’s true. I do know one thing’s for sure, though: I don’t decide to do any of it. It just happens. Maybe there’s something in me that brings it out in people? That is, when I’m onstage. On the street, I think I frighten people, or at least that’s what I’ve been told by Bobby and even Lisa. Strangers steer clear of me. I wanted to explain to Pete that it’s not an act, but maybe he wouldn’t understand, and maybe I don’t either. Probably to try and scare me straight, Pete told me exactly what happened. It wasn’t pretty. He has an eye for detail, as they say. “The blood was pooling under your skin, then started leaking out, man! There wasn’t a cut or anything, it just seeped out of like your pores and eyes.” He winced, shaking his head. There was more: “The weird thing is, when you were lying there in this puddle of beer and blood and puke, the guy who’d done the damage threw himself on top of you. He was yelling for everyone to keep back, that you’d been hurt. I had to fucking pull him off you. He kept blubbering how sorry he was, and how he loved you so much.”
Crazy as it sounds, I found some beauty in the picture Pete painted.
We’re in the middle of walking our way across the Golden Gate Bridge, me and Pete. The phalanx of fog, as he calls it, has retreated out to sea. He stops to look toward Alcatraz. Without turning to me, he says, right out of the blue, “This is getting to me.” I look at him, puzzled. “I mean life on the road—not sleeping, eating shit, drinking too much, getting high all the time. Crazy crowds.”
I deploy a nod, my usual tactic to absorb bad news I sense coming my way.
He goes on, “It’s too much. Hate to break it to you, my Mike, but I’ve got to leave the band. Need to head home.” He’s shaking his head real slow.
Before he started telling me this, I was having a rush of completely different thoughts, like how beautiful the world is, and how we’re going to be rock stars, and how I can’t believe I’m on the Golden Gate Bridge, exactly where John and I had dreamed of coming, and how I’m seeing the ocean for the first time in my life, with my best buddy in the world, and how the bridge stands for so much in our lives. I was only starting to figure out what the bridge might really mean when he started in with the bad news. I can hear it in his voice, though, that he’s dead serious.
I put my arm around him and whisper, “Touring’s a grind, for sure.” He hangs his head. “Everyone says so. Matt, Bobby, other bands. But it’ll be worth it, I promise. We can cut the booze and weed. I’m fine with that. Look, we’re almost done. We can go home then, get some rest.”
“It’s not just that,” he says, finally turning to face me, “it’s the whole scene. Sure, there’s good stuff, like when the music soars and we get ovations, and like when you and I have some time to ourselves. But there’s too much of the other stuff. I can’t take any more of you getting in fights with random guys and guys from the audience pounding the shit out of you. I need something else. The Army won’t have me, so I don’t know what, but something else.”
He dwells on the Army thing a lot. I feel shitty about what I did, I really do, but swear the deception was for the best. Knowing him, if there was another war, he’d try something heroic and die. I of course don’t say anything about that, only remind him I’m trying to be better and haven’t gotten in any kind of mess since the hospital in Houston.
He looks me right in the eye, determined. “Sorry to ditch you like this, man. I know I’m the one who talked about fame and fortune, about making history and stuff, but now I think it’s just love I want.” His eyes start tearing up. He grabs hold of me, nearly crushing me.
I’m desperate for only the second time in my life, and both times it’s Pete who’s made me this way. Is it that I took the lame adolescent vow we made to each other so long ago down by the river seriously, whereas he took it as just that, lame and adolescent? I guess what he means by love—this love that he says he wants—means having a real girlfriend. Because he’s got my love. And he’s got his mom’s. Maybe he’s just homesick? If I had a mom like his, I guess I’d be homesick too.
I have an idea. When we pulled into San Francisco yesterday, Matt wondered what the huge, aerodynamic, white wedge of architecture dominating the hillside in the distance was. Pete told him it was the cathedral, and that it was at the very center of Japantown. I didn’t know cathedrals could be modern or that there was another Asian town here besides Chinatown. He told us he has relatives in Japantown. So, in his moment of agony and doubt—and mine of desperation—I suggest we get ourselves over to Japantown and visit his family. This might help, I think, might give him some relief.
His face does in fact brighten. “Sounds good!” He stretches toward the sky. “But first, I want to swim to Alcatraz.” He says this like he’s just going to take a snapshot of it or something.
“No way. That’s crazy.” My eyes blink out of control. “It’s too far, too cold.” But he’s smiling at me like I’m the crazy one. “Besides, there are sharks—Great Whites, like in Jaws.”
“Trust me,” he snickers, “people make the swim all the time. But to make you happy, I’ll just swim the length of the Bridge instead.”
I tell him this is also a monumentally bad idea. I know I sound uncool, but he brings it out in me, he does.
He claims a seven-year-old girl has swum it, that some guy has done it in under seventeen minutes, that he’s used to the Pacific’s cold from his childhood out here, and besides, the only confirmed killing by a shark in San Francisco this century was in 1959, at Baker Beach, which is outside the Bay.
“Do what you want,” I say, not able to help coughing my nervous cough into my fist. His leaving the band suddenly seems insignificant.
He tells me he’ll go from the Presidio side, where we just came from, and that I should meet him with his clothes on the other side, the Marin Headlands. He points across the water: “That’s the cliff I’ll be aiming for.” Right offshore from his destination a fleet of tiny sailboats drift and dart like butterflies. We retrace our steps.
I don’t know why I descend to the base of the bridge’s tower with him, but I do. It makes me an accomplice of sorts. There, he strips down to his underwear. I’m a little surprised he doesn’t go full-on naked. In any case, he rests a hand on my shoulder and tells me in this unnerving manic voice he sometimes gets, “See you in less than forty-five, my philos!”
I look away. This pseudo-heroic prank is absurd.
“Come on,” he says with that foolish grin of his, “cheer up! If Leander swam from Europe to Asia every night to meet his Hero, this is the least I can do for you.”
I sort of remember him telling me this myth, and how I thought it seemed weird that someone named Hero was a girl. But now that he’s making an analogy to us it’s beyond weird. Besides, Leander swims to Hero. He smirks, and before I know it, he’s taking a dive into water that feels cold as iron to even the one hand I stick in. Cheer up? He was the one all gloom and doom just a minute ago.
With Pete’s clothes under my arm, I jog across the bridge, keeping an eye on him moving like a torpedo through the water way below. Tourists are pointing down at him, some snapping pictures. I hate to admit it but watching him propel himself through the waves is beautiful. That is, until it starts to look like the current’s pulling him off course, at which point everything turns ugly in my head. He goes with the current for a zig, then zags back, making as much progress as not. It soon becomes clear that not only is he being pulled off course, he’s being swept away. He’ll be taken out of the bay and into the ocean, and that’ll be the end. I break into a full run to find help. By the time I reach the Headlands, my lungs are about to burst. I scramble down the embankment, looking for a lifeguard or anyone. I’m in terrible shape from too much smoking and drinking. I’m about to collapse.
