The Haters (19 page)

Then a little after sunset we found Ellie's.

Ellie's was sort of the bar equivalent of our Honda Accord. It was un-air-conditioned and older than all of us combined. There were about twenty people in there, and at any given moment at least four of them were barfing out clouds of Marlboro Red smoke. People's faces tended to have this kind of faded, sour look. Everyone was white except for two ancient-looking black dudes with cigars and a backgammon board at a table near the door. It was mostly, but not all, dudes. Two different clusters of men had a woman in them, and each woman looked like the kind of thirty-something who actually looks like fifty-something.

The closest person to us in age was probably the bartender. His hair was a big fat slicked-up dollop of wet blackness, and his stubble was intimidatingly rich and even. It made his face skin look like cheap, sturdy corkboard.

“Y'all looking for somebody,” he asked us.

His voice was higher than any of ours. It was also uncomfortably beautiful. Like Prince's but with more friction, or Robert Plant's with less. His eyes were wide and a little sad and the kind of very light brown that made you nervous. His faded pink T-shirt had entire distinct families of armpit holes.

Ash just studied him with what I thought at the time was dislike.

“Actually we're looking for somewhere to play tonight,” I said.

“We're a band,” Corey said. “We're called, uh, Campig.”

The bartender blinked.

“Y'all called what,” he said.

“Campig,” said Ash, pushing her chin out at him.

“Canned Pig?”

“Camp—
Cam
.”

“
Cayun
.”

“
Cam. Cam
pig.”

“It's like the word ‘camping' but without the
n
,” I said.

“Oh,” said the bartender, frowning suddenly. “I get it. Cam, pig.” He said it with the tone of a person who had just been told where veal comes from.

“It's a terrible fucking name,” Corey realized.

But the bartender stopped frowning as abruptly as he started and said, “No, it ain't. I like it.”

“Can we play here,” Ash asked him.

He looked us all over.

“I don't see why not,” he said, smiling like he knew a secret.

We loaded in. None of the bar patrons spoke to us. Many of them seemed determined to pretend that whatever we were doing wasn't happening. But it was.

Our setup was not optimal, but not horrible. We had enough room over in one corner to space ourselves out, and we weren't obstructing anyone's path to a tray of egg rolls or anything. So that
was good. But we had no microphones or PA system to plug into, so vocals and levels were clearly going to be a problem. Also, my part of the floor was sticky.

“Y'all don't sing,” wondered the bartender, who turned out to be named Cookie.

“We sing,” retorted Ash. “We just don't mic ourselves.”

Out in the parking lot, though, Ash was sort of freaking out about it.

ASH: what the fuck are we doing. we need mics and mic stands

COREY: we need tops one mic and one mic stand

ASH: no. you guys need to sing too

WES:

COREY:

ASH: especially tonight if we don't have any mics

COREY: i'm not singing

ASH: just double me on the choruses

COREY: no one's gonna hear me

ASH: they will if we have mics

COREY: no i mean no one's going to hear my voice over the sound of the meat grinder

ASH:

COREY: the meat grinder that i will be feeding my dick into

ASH: don't be a fucking asshole right now

COREY: i'm just saying that meat grinder is super loud

ASH: wes will you sing

WES: yeah sure

COREY: you're also not gonna hear wes's voice

WES: yeah? because of the meat grinder?

COREY: no because your mouth is full of ash's sloppy cooz

ASH: hey corey?

COREY: yeah

ASH: what the
fuck
is your problem

She kind of said it with her entire body. Like it was one of those sentences you had to step into, like a punch. It raised the overall Parking Lot Tension Level by about a thousand percent. My hand started throbbing. It might have been bleeding again. But at the time I was thinking,
my hand is bleeding because it senses that I might have to punch someone, and it's probably Corey but I'm not sure
.

I was thinking,
we are about to have an epic brawl, right here in the dirt parking lot behind Ellie's
. But because I am a hopeful idiot, I was thinking,
maybe this will be the kind of brawl that actually leads to some beautiful psychological turning point for everyone involved
. Like the fight that allows everyone to see one another for who they truly are or whatever.

Anyway, that didn't happen and instead Corey backed down. He might have been a crazy social-cues-ignoring confrontation-seeking hothead. But in that moment, Ash completely outcrazied him. She had that look in her eye that I remembered from out on the highway shoulder, when she was twirling the lug wrench and getting ready to lay waste to a Jeep full of cult members. Corey was not even a little bit up to it.

COREY,
unintelligibly
: sahh uhh

ASH: what?

COREY: i said it's all good. sorry.

ASH: good.

So we went back in there to play a show. I figured Corey had been defused. At least for the time being.

But that turned out not to be true.

23.
COREY ELEVATES HIS BEING-AN-UNSTABLE-MESS GAME TO A WHOLE OTHER LEVEL

We got about a minute into the first song. And then suddenly Corey started soloing.

The song didn't call for a drum solo. But he started soloing anyway.

He just took a massive loud awkward solo over everything. He bashed his toms and smashed his cymbals in an apelike frenzy, and it was clear that he was intent on doing this for a while, so Ash and I stopped what we were doing and let him do his thing.

I say “frenzy,” but the thing was, he had no facial expression at all. His body was creating total mayhem, but his face was completely still. So that was about as creepy and messed up as it could have been.

After a while he stopped. Then he counted us back in as though nothing fucked up had happened. So we started playing.

Then another minute into the song, he did it again. He started soloing insanely, and Ash and I stopped and waited it out.

This happened four or five more times, and each time, Ash and I just silently waited it out. I'm not sure why. I guess it was a battle of wills. No one wanted to give the other side what they wanted. And he clearly wanted a reaction. So Ash and I just
patiently kept trying to play songs and waiting out these drum tantrums that kept happening.

We were up there for about ten minutes. Obviously, it felt a lot longer than that. Most of the audience just grimly endured what we were doing. One or two people left. The guys playing backgammon kept playing backgammon. Cookie kept serving people drinks.

Then, ten minutes in, a dude from one of the clusters of dudes walked up and positioned himself right in front of us.

At first he just stood there, swaying a little bit and staring us down. His buddies watched him and giggled.

He was short and ridiculously jacked. Somehow he had muscles in the area between his shoulder and his neck. Those were probably his biggest muscles. Also he had a Macklemore haircut and a number of smeary, murky tattoos.

“Come on now,” he started shouting. Corey was the one he was addressing. “Play a song or don't. But don't play that shit.”

Corey, soloing violently, refused to look at him.

Uh-oh, I thought.

“People don't want to listen to that bullshit,” the guy yelled.

“Give him hell, Rudd,” one of his friends hollered.

Meanwhile, Corey stopped soloing. But he didn't look at Rudd or at us. He found a random point in space to frown at thoughtfully instead.

“This ain't your basement,” Rudd told him. “This ain't your bedroom where you can just fuck around. People didn't come here to have to listen to that shit. Now come on.”

There was kind of a gentle quality to the way he was saying it.
But the fact that he was essentially one enormous bicep made his gentleness more terrifying than rage.

Fuck, I thought.

Corey, still staring at nothing, erupted into another solo. It went on for about ten seconds. Then he stopped and carefully examined his snare drum like it had instructions for what to do next.

Rudd kept gazing at him, his mouth sort of twisting downward.

Then he said, slowly and calmly, “Am I gonna have to kick your ass.”

Oh holy shit, I thought.

Ash was just kind of watching it unfold. She actually seemed to be smiling a little bit.

Corey rhythmically bashed and muted his crash cymbal five times: PSHT, PSHT, PSHT, PSHT, PSHT.

Rudd's eyes widened.

“I ain't gonna ask you again,” he said.

Corey rumbled something on his toms.

“All righty then,” said Rudd, and that was the moment I decided to help, so I said, “Hey, man, look,” trying to sound calm, and as the words were leaving my mouth, Rudd turned to me and clamped his hand onto my chest, and I shut up, and we looked at each other, and one of his eyelids was pink and inflamed and rubbery looking, and I have no idea what would have happened next if Cookie hadn't called us back to the bar.

“Band,” he yelled. “Campig. Come on back here take a break and I'll get you some waters, and Rudd, I got a cold
one with your name on it, so why don't all y'all come on back here.”

Rudd looked at me for a beat or two longer. Then he coughed, or burped. It was some complicated alcoholic bodily reflex. He went
hurmp
, and something gross happened in his mouth.

Then he shrugged, took his hand off my chest, and headed over to the bar.

I immediately unplugged my bass and got the fuck out of there and was sitting at the extreme other end of the bar before I really knew what was happening, and after a moment or two Ash was there, too, and Corey.

Cookie set down three waters in front of us, and then he brought three whiskeys, too, and winked. Ash sipped hers. I picked up mine but couldn't get myself to drink any of it. Actually, I didn't want to use my hands for anything because they wouldn't stop trembling. Corey picked up his whiskey and drank it like he was washing down an Advil.

Cookie grinned and brought Corey another, and he slammed that one, too, and we just kind of sat there.

Was it lost on me that the reason for all of this—the Corey-Ash hookup that made everything weird—was the exact thing that, way back when, I had pretended to be upset about? Back when Corey had told me they had hooked up, and I was like, I'm upset, because now it's gonna get weird, because what if you stop hooking up and start hating each other, or something? But in fact the unspoken but obvious reason that I was upset was actually just simple jealousy? But then it did get weird in exactly the way that
I predicted? So I was right after all when I said that thing that I didn't even mean?

I don't have an answer for you. Because at this point I sort of forget why all those sentences are questions in the first place. And I'm not gonna reread them to try to figure it out. Because that seems exhausting, but the main thing is, just writing about this is making me kind of light-headed. So, my bad.

Anyway, sitting there at the bar, we were all totally silent. None of us knew what to say to one another.

But pretty soon we didn't have to say anything because Cookie came back over and wanted to talk.

I was only then just noticing he was super tall and also kind of jacked. He was probably six foot three, and he had giant hands. Each hand was the kind that looked like it could grip your entire head and lift you off the ground.

“You kids,” he said, grinning. “Shoot. Where y'all from?”

“Pennsylvania,” I said.

“Well, I dug it,” he said. “Dug all y'all.”

We probably looked at him like he was being a dick.

“No, I mean it,” he said. “I ain't just being nice. Y'all was up there, taking chances, and it was real cool. Real cool, y'all. Just a little experimental for this crowd, I guess.”

Somehow no one told him that the drum solos were not part of our artistic vision as a band.

“Are y'all just going around looking for places to play,” Cookie asked.

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” said Corey.

We gazed at him. But he didn't finish the word. He just looked
down at his hands and started doing flams on the bar with his thumbs. Flams are when you do a soft hit and a loud hit as close together as you can.

“Yes,” said Ash.

Corey continued flamming.

“Well then can I ask y'all something?” asked Cookie, refilling our waters. “Do y'all want to play a real blues bar?”

He had that smile again of knowing a secret, or at least thinking that he did.

“Yeah,” said Ash.

“Course y'all do,” Cookie told us. “Listen. I'ma tell you what y'all need to do. Listen. Y'all need to head down to Clarksdale and play the Crossroad. I'm serious. That's where kids like y'all, a band like y'all, needs to be playing. Crossroad Bar and Grill's a legendary blues venue and that's the kind of show y'all need.”

“Yeah?” said Ash.

“
Oh
yeah,” said Cookie in his weird sweet high voice. “All of them big names come through there and play when they just wanna play for ordinary people. Not for big crowds or no rich folk. You just wanna play a room of some real people who like real music, you come to the Crossroad and play, and ain't nothing about it in the paper, on the Internet, on the radio, because people just know. All of them big names. Bobby Bellflower, Sonny Wallis Jr., Cricket Petway, man, you name it.”