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No portion of this novel excerpt may be copied or reproduced, in whole or in
part, with the exception of quotes used in critical essays and reviews, without
the written permission of the publisher.
Copyright 2005, Anthony Neil Smith.
Published by Two Dollar Radio, 2006.
27
Everywhere, 1990
Standing in my living room. Bottle of ungodly expensive vodka in one hand, a Zippo lighter once owned by Desi Arnez in the other. My life to that point had been a roller coaster. Maybe like Space Mountain, one where you couldn’t see the drops until you were falling. I’d had enough.
My living room was a shrine to opulence, and I didn’t even like most of the shit in it. Plush carpet, furniture with pointless embellishments and engravings that upped the price—“craftsmanship”—just because the designer wanted to show off. Weird how rough-and-tumble metal guys wanted old-world elegance when they could finally afford it. The stuff never felt like “me”. I think one of the stripper girlfriends I had at the time talked me into it. She left three weeks after we bought it to move in with a movie producer who’d scored his first surprise hit.
The cars in the garage, I loved those. Vintage BMW racers, a fine Porsche 928, Couple of Caddys with fish tails, one fire engine red and the other a creamy yellow, and a sporty Mercedes convertible that I used to impress the chicks. I wanted more, but since I’d just been told twenty hours earlier that I couldn’t even keep these, why should I give a shit? That band meeting did one big thing for me—opened my eyes to how much of the rich-and-famous bullshit I didn’t enjoy, and how the few things I did only made me feel slightly better.
“I’d rather be rich without fame than a has-been surrounded by all his failures,” I shouted to the room. Arms wide, tears on my face. I was doing this for Doug. Alive, I’d be a poor friend watching him die, only my two ex-lovers in on the secret. Dead, I was worth a half-million easy from the insurance money, the investments I’d set up for him, all for Doug. “Not much of a choice, right? Not fucking much at all.”
As for Sylvia and Alison, blame my obsessive personality, but I couldn’t get them out of my skull. If I wasn’t me anymore, then the next love would be my first, so to speak. I wanted to feel deep warmth and peace, less drama. What was I missing? What did regular folks have that the rock stars and actors didn’t?
The answering machine was blinking like mad when I got in after the flight. From Sylvia: “You need to call me now, Mister Christopher,” and later, “I need an immediate answer. Are you or are you not in this band? If you don’t answer by midnight, I’ll answer for you.” In-between were calls from Todd (“Does it always have to be about ‘me, me, me’, Cal? What the hell’s wrong with you?”), Stefan (“Dude, I’m cool with it, but let’s try one more album. Our Abbey Road.”), lawyers, agent (“Don’t believe a word of it. You and me, we can beat this.”), and the heartbreaker from Alison.
“Please, please, please. Don’t walk out on us. It’ll kill him. It’ll kill me, too.”
The tape cut her off.
Her guilt trip was almost effective. I picked up the phone. I dialed four numbers. Then I stopped.
She had played me like ping pong, like poker, like tic-tac-toe. Her call was about money. Using a suicide threat? That was about emotional priority. All our sex was about control.
Slammed the phone down. “We’ve tangoed for the last time, baby.”
I shoved a rag into the mouth of the vodka bottle and lit it. My home was soaked in every booze and chemical I could find. I set the vodka on the tile near my front door, then lit a copy of Savage Night’s live album, a waste of time and energy if I ever saw one, and slung it Frisbee style down the hall. Then I got the hell out of there for the last time.
*
I spent the first few weeks in the desert, moving from one cheap motel to the next through Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, all over. I grabbed the newspapers, read every angle of my disappearance, and watched a little CNN when I had the chance. Went overboard with the disguise and cover story. Hair dye and a phony Texas accent. I liked bars in casinos, where no one paid attention to anyone else—only the drinks, the cocktail waitresses, and the video poker machines in front of them. But I was always looking, learning how sad sack guys kept people away. How those cocktail waitresses wanted nothing to do with those types.
Something about the desert suited me, especially as late fall turned to winter and the landscape showed its subtle side, no longer hounded by the paparazzi sun. The ranches seemed the most peaceful places on earth, but I was watching from outside the fence. Thought about buying one—the money was there—until I got spooked by the people around me.
They wanted to know more, needed a story, and I didn’t have one. I had the news of the day, the weather, simple political philosophy (preaching to the choir out West, the rich rock star in the same camp as the libertarian militia sympathizers), and women. But they kept asking questions, deeper and deeper, gauging how much they could pry from me depending on how many drinks were in me. Some nights I needed too many drinks, the only substitute for the tiny pills I used to lean on, and a couple names slipped out: Alison. Doug.
Not that they made the connection. Just another brokenhearted romantic starting over under the big sky.
I was on the road by sundown, drove my cheap Olds bucket straight to North Dakota. More isolation. More quiet. And I stayed the winter there to wean myself from the Need. Days and days in bed, letting the snow pile window-high against my small house, the owners nice and warm in Florida, no interference as long as the rent check arrived on time. I curled in front of cable TV. My only mail was Bulk Rate Circulars. I grew a beard, let the hair get a bit wooly, and talked to myself. Talked through the life ahead of me, made sense of the life behind.
By spring thaw I was ready to see the country and accept my choice—call it early retirement. St. Louis for a couple of years, then Nashville, where I fell in love with a sound more raw than metal. Atlanta, a nice place to lose yourself but not find yourself. Raleigh, then D.C., Niagara Falls, where I could spend hours, days, weeks, staring into the rush, the abyss, never losing the fascination. From there, I drove the long three-day run to Tampa. I skirted the Gulf Coast, falling in love the way one does with a third wife—cautiously, making sure she lacks all the trouble spots of the last two. I liked the psychology as I lazed through the panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi—100% Southern, but far from the stereotypes I expected.
As I kept going down the boulevard along the beach winding past Bay St. Louis, I was surprised to see the road sign telling me how close I was to New Orleans. Change of plans: French Quarter or bust.
The first thing I did in town was to find Bourbon Street and hit as many bars along the way as I could manage in a few hours. My first Hurricane—a sweet drink full of rum—hit me harder than those drunks in England. Tried the tourist drinks at the frat bars, the vampire bars, the jazz clubs, the strip clubs. Washed them down with watery beer. The music was killing me with goodness, the bar bands more talented playing cover sets than most of the high profile L.A. people I’d worked with back in the day. Fusion guitarists with gritty blues in their veins, bleeding on the strings. The singers straining through a cloud of cigarette smoke and touching my frozen kernel of a soul. I cried. Couldn’t help it.
When I asked for the finest restaurant in the city, a sax player pointed me towards the streetcar, told me not to get off until I reached Commander’s Palace, smack dab in the middle of the Garden District. So I did. Stumbled past an ancient cemetery until I found the front door of an elegant turquoise house, the name of the restaurant hanging above me. The captain asked if I had a reservation. I pulled a wad of hundred-dollar bills from my pocket and said, “What I don’t spend on food will get passed around as tips, comprende?”
Seven courses. My first creole dishes—oh Jesus the sauces, the crawfish, the shrimp, the rich spicy aroma. Three bottles of wine. Bananas Foster for dessert. I had never been happier at the dinner table. I wanted to puke.
After doing just that in the men’s room, I asked the captain to point me towards a great hotel. He told me to climb back on the streetcar and get off at The Columns. So I did, finding an antebellum mansion between fast food joints, a porch full of the most relaxed drinkers I’d seen in ages. At the front desk, I flashed the cash again. They weren’t as impressed, but they happened to have an open room, a very rare thing indeed.
They wanted my name. I thought of how I felt. Thought of Merle Haggard, my face probably just as lined and hard by that point. Tacked on Johnson, and there I was, created anew.
I slept away a cloudy head and identity confusion. Slept away nearly a decade of running, always thinking I heard footsteps over my shoulder. In that room in the Garden District, lying in a four-post bed surrounded by antique furniture that looked and felt like each piece had a story to tell—so many rooms, so many situations—that’s when I finally looked back and saw no one behind me.
It made me sad. My best friends and ex-lovers getting on with things while I lived in a way that kept them in the forefront of my mind. Not that it was the worst existence. Bittersweet memories tempered by new faces, landscapes, and sounds. If you scratched the surface, the local music all across the country expressed the same feelings a thousand different ways. Northeastern club jazz more contemplative and harsh than New Orleans’ melodrama. Western music so much more spare and lonely than Country in the foothills of the Appalachians, the Pine Belt of Tennessee and Alabama. Gospel-hope down South, whereas the Western singers sounded like forsaken prophets. Hip-hop in Detroit more thoughtful and naturalistic than West Coast bling-bling ego puffing.
Through it all, I wanted to collect the pieces like a loner Alan Lomax, skulking in the shadows of the juke joints, rock clubs, piano bars, raves, honky tonks, throwdowns, stadiums, arenas, churches, and symphony halls, taking mental notes for the music I needed to make but couldn’t express. It was maddening.
Like I said, it took New Orleans to provide the recipe for the ingredients: “Whatever ya got, throw it in da pot.”
In the moments before I fell asleep my first night in the Big Easy, when my subconscious mind was brave enough to say what it really thought of me, I thought, Stupid weak man. You think it’s over? You can finally start a new life with a new name and put the past behind you? Are you delusional?
I answered: “Yes, yes, and yes.”
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