Dogrun Page 7

  In every high school, each year, there is a group like this. They are the trailblazers, the first to do a variety of things that include being caught smoking in the girls’ room, having sex with the bad boys, moving to the cruddy city, and if they’re really lucky, like Sue, dropping a kid.

  “She’s the next,” Peroxide introduced me as she climbed into her seat before the drums in the rear of the tiny room. “I didn’t get a name.”

  “Shit, can’t you do anything right?” Sue flicked her aside with her eyes and asked, “So who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Mary Bellanova. Are you Sue Wott?”

  “I don’t remember a Mary Bellanova.”

  “I … I just thought if I came by—”

  “Where the hell is your bass? What did you plan on doing, humming your audition?”

  “No, it’s just—” Only at that moment did it occur to me that I actually did own a bass: it was Primo’s old instrument, still sitting in my bed room.

  “Use Marilyn’s,” Sue Wott said. A bass case was pointed out to me by the drummer. It looked small, black, and rectangular, like a child’s coffin. I took it out and pulled the leopard-spotted strap over my neck. A small teardrop-shaped pick and two wads of yellowish gum were under it. I weighed it in my hands; it was tighter and heavier than my old folk guitar, but its weight offered a glossy authority. Placing my fingers along the neck of the bass, I pressed the strings to the frets and gently twanged them. Then I plugged a cable from the guitar to the foot pedal and made sure it was in tune, all under the scrutinizing eyes of Sue Wott.

  “Ready,” I said.

  “This is Norma J.” She singled out the ostrich lady, who was barricaded behind a stainless steel fortress of drums. I smiled meekly. She extended her drumstick for me to shake.

  “Okay, this number’s in E,” Sue explained and pushed the play button on her demo cassette player. I listened to a bass guitar keeping beat with the drum, and I knew without a doubt that I could do it. I played with the pretaped tune for about three minutes.

  “Do it against the drums,” she instructed.

  I did so. Sue played the tape for about five more minutes and then stopped it.

  “All right,” she said, “let’s do it live.” She turned to the girls around her; they all played together, and I joined in. After about five minutes performing, she shouted out orders: “Jazz it up,” Then, “Keep it tighter,” Then to me, “Play against my beat.”

  I did as told.

  The music was so loud that every time we stopped, I heard a faint ringing. I realized I was the only one not wearing earplugs, and instantly figured out that those yellow wads of gum were old plugs. At the next break, I rolled them into tight little points and slipped them into my ear canals.

  “Can you sing backup?” she asked. I nodded yes. She sang, “I wondered could he … get a woody?” then said, “Sing it like that when I nod my head, capisce?” I capisced. She sang the song from the top, I accompanied on the bass, and when she nodded, I sang out the refrain with Marilyn, “Could he … get a woody …”

  “This isn’t karaoke, do it softly,” she instructed as we kept playing.

  “Okay, now go down to D.” The entire band went over this song a couple of times.

  “Okay, play a D, but do it in this octave.” Again I did as told.

  After another minute she said, “Don’t make it so poppy, punk it up a bit.” We played it amateurishly awhile until she shouted, “More together!” We strummed to the beat of Sue’s commands for about five more minutes. Looking at the blanked-out faces of those around me, I had to bite my lip to keep from smirking. All the other girls had their wills rolled, tossed, and respread into a Sue Wott’s Special pizza. It didn’t feel so much like a rock-and-roll audition as a drill for the West Point Marching Band.

  We took a break when the lead guitarist subconsciously revolted, strumming chords against her will, asserting something strangely reminiscent of creativity. When I saw Marilyn under the bright lights of the outer corridor, I noticed the series of tiny holes around the fringes of her nose, lips, and ears. It was as though she had been run through a threadless sewing machine. It wasn’t till later that I learned that she clipped enough nonstainless-steel studs and rings through her face to fill a tackle box. They had leaked into her love canal, causing toxic shock and a systemic infection. Since then she had forsworn all the hooks and barbs of piercing fashion and had decided to let her holes heal.

  “Thanks for the use of your bass,” I said as we returned to our places in the rehearsal chamber. Marilyn nodded silently and vanished somewhere.

  “I’m sorry for yelling out there,” Sue Wott announced at the conclusion of the final tune, “but I couldn’t believe it. That dyed black bitch was trying to change our number as if we were her backup!”

  “What nerve,” I said, trying to keep my sarcasm to myself.

  “What other bands were you with, hon?” The tired ostrich spoke slowly.

  “I was with the Fuck Yous, and before that I was with Spontaneous Inventions,” I spontaneously invented.

  “I knew the Fuck Yous from the Bay Area about ten years ago,” the acoustic guitarist mentioned. Aside from her seam of holes, she had a buzz cut, surrounded by a fringe of evenly longish blond hair.

  “I knew a Fuck Yous from New Orleans,” Sue added.

  “This was a local Fuck Yous” I replied.

  “You’d have to dress sexier,” Sue commented, “but you know that.”

  “Sexier how?”

  “You know, low-cut tank tops—see-thru slips are even better. Miniskirts, go-go boots, whatever.”

  “I don’t know.” I laughed, nervous.

  “You got a nice body,” Sue asked. “You shouldn’t be afraid to put it out there.”

  “Could I talk to you alone?” I asked her, hoping to talk about Primo and leave.

  “Not right now—I need to talk with the rest of my band, and then I’ll call you back. We need a few weeks. Then I’ll talk to you as long as you like.”

  “Fine,” I replied.

  As I took the elevator down and headed back home, I asked myself why I had never brought up Primo. It was the sole purpose for my being there, and I could be as assertive as the next nut. It wasn’t until I got home that I fully sorted out what had happened. A touch of it had to do with Sue Wott’s intimidating tone, and to some degree I enjoyed being with a clique of girls. The idea of winning any kind of contest was a real ego boost; but the bulk of it was the romantic spell that every fool in this neighborhood came under—to be in a successful rock band.

  Over the course of the week, I waited for her to call to see if I was in. Yet the more I thought about Sue’s call, the more I thought about Primo. All roads led back to him. Several times I lifted one of his boxes up, intending to chuck it, only to put it down again. I wanted to get on with my little life. Every night in my head I’d break up with him. And every damn morning, his cool, lifeless body was right there with me when I woke up.

  Joey was immensely supportive, as usual, but I had to limit seeing him. Over the past few years, after my breakup with Greg, he attached himself as a kind of transitional boyfriend, taking me for supportive dinners and upbeat movies. Occasionally after a dinner or walk home, I would look at him with a lingering smile; once I even kissed him just a moment longer than I should have. At the end of our dates, he would tighten his face awkwardly, wish me good night, and hasten away without even a kiss. I partially held Joey responsible for my Primo relationship. Instead of properly playing the boyfriend field, I hung out with Joey far too much. I was intent on not doing that again.

  Gung-hoed by Zoë the man-eating shark, I joined in her ongoing campaign to net a husband. Initially we did the bar scene—Flamingo East, 2A, Brownies, and Horseshoe. On those occasions when she finally got into a good one-on-one talk with a guy, I would grab a New York Press and wander off to a candlelit table. There I would fortify myself for a life of celibacy by reading the “Women Seeking
Men” ads. All of them seemed cutesy variations of “SWF—Attractive, intelligent, great attitude. Will consider anyone. Just call.”

  Even though I could never stand them, I went to every BYOB East Village party I was invited to, which came to about one per week. I would hold a bottle and stand next to Zoë, who invariably had some guy to chat and laugh with. The challenge was in not peeling back the beer label or munching down too many chips, and ultimately in drinking the booze before it got flat and hot in my sweaty hands.

  Strange fruit fell from boring trees at these weekend get-togethers. I was asked to pose nude in public by one photographer, offered a role in some off-off-Broadway play because I had “the look,” and got pitched a job to work in the most cynical of all places—a video store. Even though I never really knew anyone at those parties, every guy I’d speak to would know someone I knew, and that person would invariably be someone I couldn’t stand.

  At one party a guy who immediately struck me as another Primo approached. He wasn’t too ugly, or old, but inasmuch as he was neither upbeat, nor ever really depressed, he was on the bland side. His real strength lay in his inexplicable interest in me. We talked for the sake of talking for about twenty minutes before he finally got around to asking for my number. I asked him for his number instead.

  As he scribbled it down, he blurted, “If you’re not interested in me, you can just reject me now. You don’t have to beat around the bush.”

  “Frankly,” I said, speaking from under the slightly emboldening parasol of two gin-and-tonics, “I’m still in the rigor mortised stages of a relationship.”

  Smiling, he held out the torn top of a matchbook that held his lonely seven digits.

  “So.” I felt buzzingly courageous and decided to test him. “What exactly do you see in me?”

  “Is this a riddle?”

  “I know it’s a ridiculous question, but do you just want to get laid or what?”

  He looked at me honestly and said, “It’s one-thirty in the morning, you’re good-looking, you seem bright, and circumstance has put you here. I hope that’s the answer you were looking for.” In other words—get laid.

  I drank down two more G&Ts, three more than I should have. When I finally stumbled home at about five in the morning, feeling more than slightly loaded, I reviewed the “Impressions” poem Primo had written for me. He never used the word love, and never disclosed any of himself. It was a typical male concoction—smoke-and-mirrors flattery, three-card-monte emotions, and sleight-of-heart trickery—all designed to score. I lay in bed feeling like a supreme idiot.

  I was either bingeing or purging on Primo. I had a Primo disorder. I angrily curled up in bed around my new pillow. It was the first purchase I had granted myself after he died. Drunkenly I meditated that although the cushion never gave me a Valentine’s Day card, it hadn’t slept with another girl, nor was it hiding some dark, mysterious history. This pillow had no veiled exes, no covert kids. I fell asleep and gave birth to bitter and forgettable dreams.

  chapter 7

  I woke up the next afternoon with a hangover spinning me like I was tied to an overhead fan. I brushed, showered, made a cup of decaf—I had read somewhere that caffeine was related to breast cancer and hypertension—and braced myself before my phone. I went through my phone book and called Primo’s mother back. I was on a strange ride, believing if I tossed him to the wind, I’d be free of him forever.

  “Mrs. Schultz,” I began when she picked up. “I was wondering if I could pick up Primo today?”

  “What time?”

  “In the next hour or so,” I said.

  “Do you need directions to get here?” Yes. She gave me overelaborate subway instructions: Take this train to that stop, get in the second car, don’t use that exit, go up these stairs, don’t talk to the newsstand guy …

  I left the house and made the mistake of walking down St. Mark’s Place, the overbelly of the seedy East Village. I passed immigrants selling stupidly emblazoned T-shirts, white teenage beggars better dressed than I, tourist bars, and fast-food stands. I crossed Cooper Square to Broadway, where I almost got broadsided by one of those red double-decker tourist buses. Who let those things out of England?

  While waiting on the subway platform for the train, I began noticing red spots on my skirt—someone else’s bloodstains from a punkfest I attended a while ago. Even if my shirt was clean, it was way too downtown, far too trashy and revealing for where I was going. While trying to get my mind off my poor fashion choices, I realized some cute guy was circling and seriously checking me out. I looked away in perfect contempt: I’d rather never meet him and always have his love than the other way around. The distant lights of a train were visible at the end of the tunnel. A moment later its doors slid open.

  The subway wasn’t too crowded, but it smelled woozily of perfume and vomit. At the Prince Street stop I dashed into another car, and resentfully counted off the stops as the train slowly made its way into the middle of bulbous Brooklyn. Why did I have to come out to see this mother? I never even saw her while I dated her cheating son.

  I followed the directions and finally spotted the house. It was surrounded by a brown little lawn and earless driveway. A thorny tree jutted over the bug-squished screen door. I couldn’t see Primo growing up here. I checked my face in the front-door glass. I was transparent and unwashed. I rang the incredibly loud bell, fixed my lipstick, and finger-combed my lifeless hair. Soon I heard thudding sounds coming from deep inside the house, reminiscent of a B horror flick.

  The door mysteriously opened, and out wafted the odor of dead pigeons—a smell I knew well from my airshaft. From out of that swampy darkness, Mrs. Schultz edged forward in her high-backed, wicker wheelchair. I was on the set of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? An elderly lady, drunk on cosmetics, extended a pale gloved hand. She wore a colorful floral sundress that extended down over her knees. A white bandanna was knotted around her loose chicken neck. Her silver hair was bunned up. The woman had no real resemblance to Primo, or to anyone else I had ever met.

  “You must be Primo’s little pal,” she said, as if to dissolve any sexual involvement, which was fine with me.

  “And you must be his mother.” I tried to act like a soap opera character.

  “Come on then,” she said, backing up her chair.

  When I entered, she closed the door behind me and pointed me down a narrowing hallway. Several dusty oil paintings were squared along the faded floral wallpaper. They depicted empty gray cement sidewalks that looked like the streets I had just passed to get there. I didn’t compliment them; false flattery was my last line of defense. I wondered if Primo had painted them.

  Creaking behind me in that scary chair, she herded me into a large living room. Upon the shining oak table, which smelled freshly of Pledge, sat only one stark item, a perfectly sealed package. Its dimensions were roughly six inches square. Printed on a computer label under the logo for the Malio Funeral Home (which was twined around a calla lily) was the phrase, “The Remains of Primo Schultz.”

  “Did you have any problem finding the house?” she asked. All I could think was, Poor Primo.

  “No.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No, thanks.” She motioned me forward into another room. I rose and walked to a closed door. “This was his room. Open it.”

  I did as told and found a bruised and lonely little space, dominated by a large bed surrounded by drawn curtains. On top of the made bed and small desk were the same kind of yellow-and-blue banana boxes that Primo had left behind in my house. There was a stack of obscure magazines that included Howard the Duck comics and old National Lampoons. In the corner was a decal-covered guitar case, also electric. Between the desk and the wall were assorted cellophane-wrapped canvases, presumably his paintings. The one noticeable omission for a Primo Schultz room was a TV.

  “This is my little museum to Hal.” I heard the wheelchair squeaking across the wooden floor behind me.

  “Hal?”


  “That was his given name.” I guess I should have figured that one out. I picked up an old journal called Trouser magazine and flipped through it.

  “I don’t know what half of this stuff is,” his mother said, shaking her head. “I never really went through it. I don’t know if it’s garbage or valuable.”

  “I guess it was valuable to him,” I muttered without thinking.

  “I mean, it really was kind of selfish for him to just die. I mean, I’m seventy-two years old, but I can’t afford to die yet.”

  She kept talking, as if trying to make Primo’s ghost feel guilty. I turned her off and scanned the room. There was evidence of a hectic, youthful life. A collection of ticket stubs on a bulletin board, tacked there hastily twenty years ago and fated to remain there for what would probably be the next fifty years. They were from various hip concerts he’d attended during the late sixties and early seventies: Television, Captain Beef heat, and Rush were among them. There was a ripped ticket to the Bangladesh Concert. None of them had admission prices above four dollars.

  I flipped through what looked like the first edition of The Whole Earth Catalogue. Under it was a yellowing rubber-banded stack of brochures announcing:

  END THE WAR IN VIETNAM RALLY

  12 Noon

  Saturday October 12th, 1971

  Washington Square Park

  It was clear that he was supposed to hand them out but didn’t—probably why the war dragged on. Yellowing pages gave mini-reviews of the band he was in during the late eighties, Infant Mortality. I found a stack of cassettes, presumably a demo the band put together. The name of the tape, “DO OR DI,” was printed in generic white address labels. There were cards with gilded lettering announcing a group show where his artwork was scheduled to appear, and a stack of multicolored pages entitled “THE NATIONAL POETRY MAGAZINE OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE,” dated from the early eighties. Mrs. Schultz rambled on as I kept flipping until I made a real find, a poem: