This Used to be My Life. I Used to be Cool
Sunday. Sometime circa 2001-2002
I'm sitting on a suspicious smelling couch on the front porch of the crash pad, nursing the morning's first beer. Actually, it's last night last beer, left within arm's reach when I passed out a few hours before. It's 9 am and I'm sipping warm Bud Ice, peeping the activity across the street.
Spook is perched on a ladder hanging a large unwieldy sign onto the second floor of his house. The sign spans the width of his house, from one side to another. It looks to be at least 5 feet in height. The sign looks old, looks like it's been recently pulled out of the trash. It reads CABARET in large red letters. There's a revival of the show on Broadway, but that doesn't go anywhere near explaining what this sign is doing in Norfolk, Virginia for Spook to find and schlep back here. I don't even begin to ask what Spook is doing. I do wonder how he got up there with such a cumbersome object. Looks like he's in trouble. He's trying to hold it up and nail it to the house. It's got him shimmying dangerously from side to side. I rush over to hold the ladder long enough for him to drive two nails in. Spook notices neither me nor his newfound stability and keeps on. I step back across the street to take it all in.
"What the fuck is that monkey doing?" Brandon asks from behind me, "This is exactly why this block has a bad rep"
The block has a bad reputation because the landlords who own all the property here lease dilapidated, out-of-code houses for outrageous rent to college students who can't afford the repairs. I look back toward Brandon standing in the doorway. Behind him, in the house over by the TV, is a small hole in the floor circled by stolen traffic cones and police tape. Brandon doesn't see the big picture.
"Look at this shit. Is he out of his mind? Stupid waste of skin motherfucker is…" Brandon goes on and on.
Brandon is the other reason why the block has a bad rep. Every night we're in port, we get too drunk on the front lawn of his house (technically, the house is his. His name is on the lease. He won't let us forget it even though we he doesn't throw in anymore rent than the rest of us). Every night we're in port, we blast music here late into the night. Just a few hours earlier, around 3, we had to stop Brandon from punching out a neighbor who complained about the noise. Again. Brandon has a convenient way of forgetting things, hence the cones and tape.
I watch Spook finish. Spook, by the way, is a dreadlocked Barbadian by way of Brooklyn who came down south a few years back to "get out of a bad situation" as he says. He's doing well for himself. He deals mostly to all the ODU kids and their recently graduated yupster cousins in Ghent.
Spook barrels down the ladder just as Hayes, the new housemate, pulls up to the curb. No one questions the method behind Spook's madness. I assume and I assume everyone else is assuming it is some sort of welcome mat for Hayes who is moving in today. There's a wordless transition from sign hanging to helping Hayes with his things. I join in on the effort. It's not much, just a couple duffel bags, a rusty battered bike and an electric guitar in even worse shape. Hayes' girlfriend, I can never remember her name, stands off to the side and watches. We lay it all in a corner in the living room. Spook disappears, leaving me alone with Hayes, a towering man with a crooked mohawk that was flaking and peeling from too much Elmer's glue. He offers coffee.
I spend the rest of the morning with Hayes. We go through his record collection while drinking coffee spiked with whiskey. He teaches me how to pogo the right way. He tries to teach me how to play the guitar but it's fucked beyond use. The remaining 4 strings are rusted and uncooperative. And with all the coffe,we're starting to get fucked beyond use. I slow it down. We talk of most things punk: The Subterraneans, The Circle Jerks, Keith Morris' hair, Jello's beatdown, the DC hardcore scene in the 80's, punk politics and ethics, etc.
Sometime around noon, Mike wakes and stumble across the street. He tries to hijack the conversation. He tries to convince Hayes of how great Bad Religion's last album is. Hayes dismisses the thought and goes off to unpack. Mike follows him, making his case as to why Bad Religion is the best punk band of all time, ever.
This leaves me here alone Hayes' girlfriend, a cute little thing with a smaller better groomed version of Hayes' mohawk. She has on a tiny Specials t-shirt. I take the cue. I push up. I fake the funk and we talk of second wave ska (I'm a child of mid 90's Jersey punk-ska. I'm out of my element). We get closer and closer. Then I come to my senses. Hayes is just in the next room. We keep it at talking.
Twenty minutes later, Mike cuts in to ask her opinion of Bad Religion.
"I don't really listen to punk, sorry." She says.
He goes back to pestering Hayes who I guess is nearing his breaking point because two minutes later, Mike hustles back out to the porch.
"Let's get outta here, man. Get some breakfast or something."
And we're off.
A few months back, I was at this party. Gave this girl my number. I had recently taken to writing my name like this:
The next day I went to sea for a week. When I got back, I had no less than 40 messages from people wanting ecstasy. My sudden accidental customer base inspired me to try and cop a jar. But I got lazy and the deal fell through. Turns out, though, I'm a fool God loves. The next week a bunch of marines and a few sailors got busted for running a ecstasy ring. Now they're looking at 5 years in Leavenworth.
After that fiasco, I'm still friends with the connect. After breakfast we pick him up and head to Virginia Beach. He wants us to go to this daytime rave at Mt. Trashmore. I decline. I'm tired of the scene. We stop to pick up Mike's girlfriend, a girl we recently started calling Fatback McGee. She's pretty, very pretty in fact. It's just that her posture's real bad to the point where it looks like there's a hump of fat at the nape of her neck. I think she might little slow too. I'm pretty sure Mike's dating her to spite someone, maybe Brandon.
"At least this one's not a psychopath" I say to Mike.
You're always dogging my girls."
"You don't need me for that. You're the one who came up with the name Fatback, remember?"
The four of us went down to Va Beach, drove down the strip a few times, walked out onto the beach, got harassed by the cops, got back in car, and went back to Norfolk. I hate Virginia Beach.
Back at the crash pad, it appears as though Spook has set up an ad-hoc block party. Grills are fired up on Spooks's and Brandon's front porches. All the people who were earlier passed out at the various crash pads on the street have resurrected and joined in on the festivities. Spook set up a portable basket and made the width of the street between his house and Brandon's a half court. By the time we got there, they were in the middle of a two-on two tournament; winner takes challenger, with a long line of challengers looking to take the title from the Supreme Team. The Supreme Team, Brandon and Spook, were undefeated mostly because at Spook stood at 6'5" and Brandon was a shameless hack. They could also credit their wins to the fact that everyone who wasn't play was drinking with gusto. Fact is that every opponent they face is more drunk than the last. This includes me and Mike. By the time our turn came, I'm so fucked up, I smear green ketchup and mustard on my face like war paint before the game. We lose in less than 3 minutes, 7-0, after which I stumble onto the porch and pass out.
It's dark when I wake up. I somehow made my way to the couch during my slumber. I can tell the warpaints has been wiped off. Must've been Fatback-- I'm gonna stop calling her that. Her name is Kristyn. It's late. Looks like I'm the only one up at Brandon's. I peer through the window. Bodies are strewn about. I guess they made it an early night. The clamor that woke me is coming from across the street. Again. This time from inside Spook's house.
Inside, Mike and Hayes sit on the couch sharing a 40 of King Cobra. The two are bruised and ruffled. Looks like Hayes reached his breaking point while I was out. Now, he's explaining to Mike why the Sex Pistols aren't punk. He keeps referring to the copy of The Philosophy of Punk in his hand. I got Mike a copy of that book months ago back when he started professing his love for Bad Religion. You can't say I was shocked he didn't read it. It looks like he might now that Hayes has his full attention. For once, Mike is the one doing the listening.
But that's not where the commotion's coming from. At the center of the living room, Spook and Ezekiel are engaged in lyrical battle. They pass a mike back and forth and freestyle over cheesy programmed beats pumping out of a boom box that looks an awful lot like the one that disappeared out of Brandon's a few weeks ago. Ezekiel is a character. On the surface he looks like prototypical white trash. He's always in sleeveless shirts, shorts and house shoes. Always. His hair is unstrategic permanent bedhead. Patchy beard. But the boy can spit fire. And he's crazy too. When he gets going with the freestyles, he'll wave his free hand by his head real fast and he'll shuffle his feet back and forth. This is always inserted into one of his rhymes
I'm Ezekiel
My rhymes stay ill
Fake M.C.'s I kill
Always.
This dude shows up. Bald and missing a tooth in front, he looks like he used to juice. He's brolic from the tits up, huge arms and pecs, a gut, and skinny little chicken legs. I forget his name. I call him Baldy, but not to his face. I don't think he even introduced himself. He just walked in and started talking about his day. How his girl broke up with him. How he was broke. And how he went out and sold five thousand dollars of cocaine. He was so psyched, he grabbed the mike and rapped his story.
I woke up broke up and broke, son
That's ok, I sold coke, son
Now I sit back and smoke, son
This performance inspires Mike to spit a bar. Baldy throws the mike to him on the couch.
I rather be sober
Than drink King Cobra
Good times.
Baldy and Ezekiel soon dip off to cop something out in Campostella. Mike, Spook, and me then make our way down to the next block to crash dorm parties, snaking out of one party, into another.
Every party's the same. I have to convince everyone that Mike and I aren't sailors (Everyone knows Spook). I have to convince everyone that yes, I know the person who lives here, and yes, I'm a student and yes, I go to ODU. I'm a Philosophy major (in school full of hospitality majors and nursing students, no one will call your bluff.). I have to do all the talking. Mike fucked it up the last time. Every party, an angel will slither across the room to me. She'll get so close I could taste her with every breath. Our eyes will meet and she'll whisper:
"So and so said you're holding E."
And I'll sigh and shrug and nod toward Spook in the corner.
Mike and I walk back to the crash pad in the wee hours. Spook went home with one of the girls who was trying to score. On Spooks porch, his woman, home early from the graveyard shift, stands in her nurse's uniform. She's completely unaware there's a giant CABARET sign hanging above her. She asks if we've seen Spook. She calls him Desmond. We shrug and look sheepish. Haven't seen him all day. We call her "ma'am" even though she's only a few years older than us. I feel sorry.
On Brandon's porch, we pass the last warm Bud Ice between back and forth. Then it happened. We drank ourselves sober. Party's over. I take in the events of the day, all of it. The enormity of it all. Is that the right word? In the India ink black night the only light comes from Spook's livingroom where his woman, in her nightie, dials and redials her phone, trying to reach him. Words echo in my head.
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
If I repeat them to Mike, will he understand? Is this all there is to life, this? Am I deficient for wanting more?
Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair
Would he understand if I told him? Maybe if I said it differently.
"It's like not being able to wake up even after you know you're dreaming."
Mike returns it with silence. I think he understands. We hear Spook's woman speak firmly into the phone, trying to keep her composure. We only hear her briefly. She got his voicemail.
"I'm fixin' to bed down. Get an hour's sleep" Mike says abruptly
"Here?"
"Good a place as any. Why not here?"
"We're going underway today. Sea and Anchor's at 8"
"So?"
"Don't wanna miss ship's movement, now do you?"
"That boat ain't going nowhere with half the engineering department over here" He gestured towards everyone passed out inside "Don't worry about me, little brother. It's all under control. I'll be there at 8, bells, whistles, the whole shebang"
I drank a cocktail (Hangover cocktail: 1 Motrin, 2 Dramamine, 1 bottle of Mountain Dew), took a cab back to the boat, showered, threw on my uniform, slept on the Sail Locker floor awaiting morning muster, laying my head on a life jacket like a pillow, dreaming of the future.
I look back at it all now as though it was someone else's life.
I'm sitting on a suspicious smelling couch on the front porch of the crash pad, nursing the morning's first beer. Actually, it's last night last beer, left within arm's reach when I passed out a few hours before. It's 9 am and I'm sipping warm Bud Ice, peeping the activity across the street.
Spook is perched on a ladder hanging a large unwieldy sign onto the second floor of his house. The sign spans the width of his house, from one side to another. It looks to be at least 5 feet in height. The sign looks old, looks like it's been recently pulled out of the trash. It reads CABARET in large red letters. There's a revival of the show on Broadway, but that doesn't go anywhere near explaining what this sign is doing in Norfolk, Virginia for Spook to find and schlep back here. I don't even begin to ask what Spook is doing. I do wonder how he got up there with such a cumbersome object. Looks like he's in trouble. He's trying to hold it up and nail it to the house. It's got him shimmying dangerously from side to side. I rush over to hold the ladder long enough for him to drive two nails in. Spook notices neither me nor his newfound stability and keeps on. I step back across the street to take it all in.
"What the fuck is that monkey doing?" Brandon asks from behind me, "This is exactly why this block has a bad rep"
The block has a bad reputation because the landlords who own all the property here lease dilapidated, out-of-code houses for outrageous rent to college students who can't afford the repairs. I look back toward Brandon standing in the doorway. Behind him, in the house over by the TV, is a small hole in the floor circled by stolen traffic cones and police tape. Brandon doesn't see the big picture.
"Look at this shit. Is he out of his mind? Stupid waste of skin motherfucker is…" Brandon goes on and on.
Brandon is the other reason why the block has a bad rep. Every night we're in port, we get too drunk on the front lawn of his house (technically, the house is his. His name is on the lease. He won't let us forget it even though we he doesn't throw in anymore rent than the rest of us). Every night we're in port, we blast music here late into the night. Just a few hours earlier, around 3, we had to stop Brandon from punching out a neighbor who complained about the noise. Again. Brandon has a convenient way of forgetting things, hence the cones and tape.
I watch Spook finish. Spook, by the way, is a dreadlocked Barbadian by way of Brooklyn who came down south a few years back to "get out of a bad situation" as he says. He's doing well for himself. He deals mostly to all the ODU kids and their recently graduated yupster cousins in Ghent.
Spook barrels down the ladder just as Hayes, the new housemate, pulls up to the curb. No one questions the method behind Spook's madness. I assume and I assume everyone else is assuming it is some sort of welcome mat for Hayes who is moving in today. There's a wordless transition from sign hanging to helping Hayes with his things. I join in on the effort. It's not much, just a couple duffel bags, a rusty battered bike and an electric guitar in even worse shape. Hayes' girlfriend, I can never remember her name, stands off to the side and watches. We lay it all in a corner in the living room. Spook disappears, leaving me alone with Hayes, a towering man with a crooked mohawk that was flaking and peeling from too much Elmer's glue. He offers coffee.
I spend the rest of the morning with Hayes. We go through his record collection while drinking coffee spiked with whiskey. He teaches me how to pogo the right way. He tries to teach me how to play the guitar but it's fucked beyond use. The remaining 4 strings are rusted and uncooperative. And with all the coffe,we're starting to get fucked beyond use. I slow it down. We talk of most things punk: The Subterraneans, The Circle Jerks, Keith Morris' hair, Jello's beatdown, the DC hardcore scene in the 80's, punk politics and ethics, etc.
Sometime around noon, Mike wakes and stumble across the street. He tries to hijack the conversation. He tries to convince Hayes of how great Bad Religion's last album is. Hayes dismisses the thought and goes off to unpack. Mike follows him, making his case as to why Bad Religion is the best punk band of all time, ever.
This leaves me here alone Hayes' girlfriend, a cute little thing with a smaller better groomed version of Hayes' mohawk. She has on a tiny Specials t-shirt. I take the cue. I push up. I fake the funk and we talk of second wave ska (I'm a child of mid 90's Jersey punk-ska. I'm out of my element). We get closer and closer. Then I come to my senses. Hayes is just in the next room. We keep it at talking.
Twenty minutes later, Mike cuts in to ask her opinion of Bad Religion.
"I don't really listen to punk, sorry." She says.
He goes back to pestering Hayes who I guess is nearing his breaking point because two minutes later, Mike hustles back out to the porch.
"Let's get outta here, man. Get some breakfast or something."
And we're off.
A few months back, I was at this party. Gave this girl my number. I had recently taken to writing my name like this:
The next day I went to sea for a week. When I got back, I had no less than 40 messages from people wanting ecstasy. My sudden accidental customer base inspired me to try and cop a jar. But I got lazy and the deal fell through. Turns out, though, I'm a fool God loves. The next week a bunch of marines and a few sailors got busted for running a ecstasy ring. Now they're looking at 5 years in Leavenworth.
After that fiasco, I'm still friends with the connect. After breakfast we pick him up and head to Virginia Beach. He wants us to go to this daytime rave at Mt. Trashmore. I decline. I'm tired of the scene. We stop to pick up Mike's girlfriend, a girl we recently started calling Fatback McGee. She's pretty, very pretty in fact. It's just that her posture's real bad to the point where it looks like there's a hump of fat at the nape of her neck. I think she might little slow too. I'm pretty sure Mike's dating her to spite someone, maybe Brandon.
"At least this one's not a psychopath" I say to Mike.
You're always dogging my girls."
"You don't need me for that. You're the one who came up with the name Fatback, remember?"
The four of us went down to Va Beach, drove down the strip a few times, walked out onto the beach, got harassed by the cops, got back in car, and went back to Norfolk. I hate Virginia Beach.
Back at the crash pad, it appears as though Spook has set up an ad-hoc block party. Grills are fired up on Spooks's and Brandon's front porches. All the people who were earlier passed out at the various crash pads on the street have resurrected and joined in on the festivities. Spook set up a portable basket and made the width of the street between his house and Brandon's a half court. By the time we got there, they were in the middle of a two-on two tournament; winner takes challenger, with a long line of challengers looking to take the title from the Supreme Team. The Supreme Team, Brandon and Spook, were undefeated mostly because at Spook stood at 6'5" and Brandon was a shameless hack. They could also credit their wins to the fact that everyone who wasn't play was drinking with gusto. Fact is that every opponent they face is more drunk than the last. This includes me and Mike. By the time our turn came, I'm so fucked up, I smear green ketchup and mustard on my face like war paint before the game. We lose in less than 3 minutes, 7-0, after which I stumble onto the porch and pass out.
It's dark when I wake up. I somehow made my way to the couch during my slumber. I can tell the warpaints has been wiped off. Must've been Fatback-- I'm gonna stop calling her that. Her name is Kristyn. It's late. Looks like I'm the only one up at Brandon's. I peer through the window. Bodies are strewn about. I guess they made it an early night. The clamor that woke me is coming from across the street. Again. This time from inside Spook's house.
Inside, Mike and Hayes sit on the couch sharing a 40 of King Cobra. The two are bruised and ruffled. Looks like Hayes reached his breaking point while I was out. Now, he's explaining to Mike why the Sex Pistols aren't punk. He keeps referring to the copy of The Philosophy of Punk in his hand. I got Mike a copy of that book months ago back when he started professing his love for Bad Religion. You can't say I was shocked he didn't read it. It looks like he might now that Hayes has his full attention. For once, Mike is the one doing the listening.
But that's not where the commotion's coming from. At the center of the living room, Spook and Ezekiel are engaged in lyrical battle. They pass a mike back and forth and freestyle over cheesy programmed beats pumping out of a boom box that looks an awful lot like the one that disappeared out of Brandon's a few weeks ago. Ezekiel is a character. On the surface he looks like prototypical white trash. He's always in sleeveless shirts, shorts and house shoes. Always. His hair is unstrategic permanent bedhead. Patchy beard. But the boy can spit fire. And he's crazy too. When he gets going with the freestyles, he'll wave his free hand by his head real fast and he'll shuffle his feet back and forth. This is always inserted into one of his rhymes
I'm Ezekiel
My rhymes stay ill
Fake M.C.'s I kill
Always.
This dude shows up. Bald and missing a tooth in front, he looks like he used to juice. He's brolic from the tits up, huge arms and pecs, a gut, and skinny little chicken legs. I forget his name. I call him Baldy, but not to his face. I don't think he even introduced himself. He just walked in and started talking about his day. How his girl broke up with him. How he was broke. And how he went out and sold five thousand dollars of cocaine. He was so psyched, he grabbed the mike and rapped his story.
I woke up broke up and broke, son
That's ok, I sold coke, son
Now I sit back and smoke, son
This performance inspires Mike to spit a bar. Baldy throws the mike to him on the couch.
I rather be sober
Than drink King Cobra
Good times.
Baldy and Ezekiel soon dip off to cop something out in Campostella. Mike, Spook, and me then make our way down to the next block to crash dorm parties, snaking out of one party, into another.
Every party's the same. I have to convince everyone that Mike and I aren't sailors (Everyone knows Spook). I have to convince everyone that yes, I know the person who lives here, and yes, I'm a student and yes, I go to ODU. I'm a Philosophy major (in school full of hospitality majors and nursing students, no one will call your bluff.). I have to do all the talking. Mike fucked it up the last time. Every party, an angel will slither across the room to me. She'll get so close I could taste her with every breath. Our eyes will meet and she'll whisper:
"So and so said you're holding E."
And I'll sigh and shrug and nod toward Spook in the corner.
Mike and I walk back to the crash pad in the wee hours. Spook went home with one of the girls who was trying to score. On Spooks porch, his woman, home early from the graveyard shift, stands in her nurse's uniform. She's completely unaware there's a giant CABARET sign hanging above her. She asks if we've seen Spook. She calls him Desmond. We shrug and look sheepish. Haven't seen him all day. We call her "ma'am" even though she's only a few years older than us. I feel sorry.
On Brandon's porch, we pass the last warm Bud Ice between back and forth. Then it happened. We drank ourselves sober. Party's over. I take in the events of the day, all of it. The enormity of it all. Is that the right word? In the India ink black night the only light comes from Spook's livingroom where his woman, in her nightie, dials and redials her phone, trying to reach him. Words echo in my head.
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings
If I repeat them to Mike, will he understand? Is this all there is to life, this? Am I deficient for wanting more?
Look on my work, ye mighty, and despair
Would he understand if I told him? Maybe if I said it differently.
"It's like not being able to wake up even after you know you're dreaming."
Mike returns it with silence. I think he understands. We hear Spook's woman speak firmly into the phone, trying to keep her composure. We only hear her briefly. She got his voicemail.
"I'm fixin' to bed down. Get an hour's sleep" Mike says abruptly
"Here?"
"Good a place as any. Why not here?"
"We're going underway today. Sea and Anchor's at 8"
"So?"
"Don't wanna miss ship's movement, now do you?"
"That boat ain't going nowhere with half the engineering department over here" He gestured towards everyone passed out inside "Don't worry about me, little brother. It's all under control. I'll be there at 8, bells, whistles, the whole shebang"
I drank a cocktail (Hangover cocktail: 1 Motrin, 2 Dramamine, 1 bottle of Mountain Dew), took a cab back to the boat, showered, threw on my uniform, slept on the Sail Locker floor awaiting morning muster, laying my head on a life jacket like a pillow, dreaming of the future.
I look back at it all now as though it was someone else's life.