Filed under: approaching citizen
I don’t know about you but I’m a little sentimental for Built to Spill. They made one like fuckin landmark album, and several that were really good. And some that were weak. So I just ran across this video of them live doing a cover of this rap song by M.I.A. ‘Paper Planes’. I was googling her, not them. And they do it Built style, trust me. The clip has one of their other songs first, and between songs there’s like a full minute of dead air during which one person cheers and Doug Martsch drops his pick a bunch of times while TUNING his guitar onstage. Indie rock for you.
Did I ever tell the story of when I almost wrecked their show at Boston’s in ‘99? My band and I were in the audience, on shrooms. I ran into my buddy Alex there which kind of sparked us hanging out and going to shows more often, and we cornered their guitarist in the bar with some stupid fan questions while the opening band was playing. Then during their show, I was tripPING, and at some point a song ends and Doug wants to change the mix but the sound guy is not at the sound board. He says into the mic all bored ‘Does anyone know how to run a mixing board’ and without even a pause I yell out ‘I do!’ and start pressing my way through the crowd. I get to the board next to the stage and look up and there’s Doug Martsch looking at me talking some kind of gibberish like ok we need mic 1 up and less treble in guitar 2 and I look down at this rolling sea of little knobs, hundreds and hundreds of knobs with no labels and there is a moment of clarity somewhere in my mind and I throw my hands up and say ‘I’m sorry I don’t know how to do this’. And I didn’t. Never did. I just figured I was in a band so I could figure it out but no, this was impending disaster ending with everyone writhing on the ground bleeding out their ears. So I back away from the board and melt back into the crowd and the sound guy runs up and starts turning knobs and Doug says into the mic still very bored ‘You just saved the sound guy’s job’.
I wanna be in a band again! I play the drums, I’m like 90-something % expert rock band drummer. I KICK ASS. It’s so fun being in a band. You get to do all sorts of drugs, drink on stage, then people are all over you like oh my god you are so cool. Chicks want to bang you……
No chicks want to bang me here. Not true. I just haven’t put together realizing it and acting on it in a timely fashion like you need to. Who wants to bang me? I don’t know, a few girls, a few guys. Fuckin married women. Everyone. Why not? I mean, is that conceited? This is how hot chicks must feel all the time. Constantly being checked out. How are you supposed to deal with that? I walk into a bar and catch the hottest girl staring me down. I get confused and avoid her, and then a minute later I figure out what I should’ve done but by then it’s too late. I have to mentally prepare, invoke some level of game. What helps is imagining I’m famous and no matter what I do or say people will love it.
I’m kidding. But I did actually get recognized in public the other day. First time up here. I was shocked, didn’t even believe it so I stumbled a little. It was at this rock show for this manufactured punk boy band Against Me! I never heard of them before, I got invited by this girl from work and her boyfriend. She wants to bang me – or maybe she’s just cool to everyone. Not believing my instinct has kept me out of a lot of vaginas, so now I try to listen. He lives a block away so they invite me out sometimes.
Against Me! is pretty gay if you’re ***no longer in the 18-35 demographic*** FUCK!
Ok, cool, cool. Good times. Viagra commercials, prostate checks, love it. What the fuck I already watch the golf channel. Do I at least get a Ferrari now?
So I’m at the show, all hiding by the bar, trying to see the band. The place reminds me a lot of Electric Ballroom in Tempe where now it’s what… Anyone? Torn down that’s what. I think there’s a charter school in its place. Sad. That place was the perfect venue. Laid out like an old style theatre, but with bars and side rooms. I played a show there once – as a drummer, in a band. Crazy huh? What’s crazy was the kit I used – my dad’s old Slingerland cocktail kit from 1976. Instead of a bass drum it has a huge floor tom with a pedal on the underside so you can play it from both ends and it’s really weird and I’ve never seen anyone else do that probably for good reason and we played this super fast song ‘Reject Rejection’ that we only played once by this local band Trunk Federation and it was fun. The sound guy and our guitarist both said that drum sounded awesome but it was bizarre to play that way. It kept bouncing away from me.
So back to Against Me!’s gay ass stupid show. No, it was fun, just not because of the music. It’s like the whole neighborhood was there. I’m with the girl from work, her dude, her girlfriend from Yakima, their hot little Filipino friend and some big big girl, all of whom wanted to bang me and one of whom I would like to bang too please very much thank youuuuu comeagain. So there I was holdin down like 4 or 5 chicks back in the corner, when I see some girl waving wildly at me. She’s got these silly round glasses and curly dirty blonde hair and she’s with some guy it looks like. She makes her way through the crowd til they can’t get any nearer and she’s shouting about she saw me before but couldn’t get my attention. All the while I’m not really mentally catching up yet, I only know I recognize this girl but at first I think she’s my old ex-friend Tiffany who used to live up here years ago and somehow she’s up here again and oh this might get awkward but no this isn’t her anyway, who is this, from some bar recently – oh yeah from Six Arms that barfly who talks to every guy. Amanda!
So she’s like ‘yeah I have your number, I was gonna call’ – rambling – then introduces me to the guy she was with. Maybe she was drunk. But I was taken aback by being recognized here. I didn’t think it could happen yet. I don’t hardly know anyone. Fred, a few people he knows, a couple girls in the building, the girl from work, her little hottie friend, every barista on the Hill. And apparently Amanda. Something isn’t right about her. Nothing I can pin down. She’s from Baltimore, she talks to every guy, she’s a drunk because she came in to that bar where I met her and pulled out of her purse a half gallon mason jar to fill with beer and take home, saying I know this is really ghetto but-
But it takes one to know one right? I have the same jar at home, sitting up in the cupboard next to one from Sonora and 2 more that Dave and Mark brought up back in August. Drunks!
There’s nothing like finding your own kind. When you meet a girl and she likes weed and beer too… ah heaven. My old girlfriend Liz, that was a good time, except when it was a terrible time. Fighting about nothing, always when we were about to go out. We went out a lot. Lots of parties, lots of drugs. She was a stumbly little thing. I had to literally carry her to bed every night. But she was not even 100 pounds so it was a game we played. I haven’t talked to her in five years. She married the guy she started dating a month after we broke up. So they have kids now and everything probably. Hmm. She was a nightmare. But a hot little mexican nightmare – what is with me I love the brown girls!
Go Obama! Dude I was out with Fred, who is black, on election night. At Six Arms right up the street here. It’s a McMenamins brewery, the food is booty except the salads. I’ve never seen anything like the crowd that night. I was in DC on election night 2000 in a republican bar by accident and it was nothing compared to this. I mean, this is Seattle for one, and Capitol Hill for two. So we’re talking as blue as can be. It’s so refreshing to be in a place where being liberal is the norm. Politically, culturally, sexually, everything. They just had a Porn Contest here. Open competition for amateur filmmakers, and the theme is porn. It’s an annual thing. The reviewer was like, ‘I never knew the asshole is so resilient’.
Pretty much. There’s a gay bath house right up the street here. Josh told me what goes on in such places when he visited back in August. He’s like dude that’s a bath house. I’m like a what? I thought it was some 24 hour dance club. I always see fat dudes leaning on the wall outside smoking at like 7am. Yeah. Then last week I saw their ad in the back of the Stranger (Seattle’s version of New Times). It’s talking about the Glory Hole Maze. Like it’s not enough to have a glory hole, there’s gotta be a maze of them – to make it interesting. Yeah I have no idea how AIDS suddenly blew up in New York in 1980. Must’ve been a government conspiracy. Like Matthew McConaughey said in Ed TV ‘hey man I’m the gas, she’s the brakes.’ So what happens when there’s no brakes, just two gas pedals? Nasty accidents. If gay guys could get pregnant…. there’d be nothing but gay guys. Which is pretty much what I have here. If I didn’t say so before, I live in (the gay) Capitol (of the northwest) Hill. The Castro in San Fran is far more hairy and sweaty and obnoxious and in your face, and also for tourists. Here is the more polite reserved white version of that.
Gay guys, God bless em. Ok now I can talk shit right? Yeah they start to get on my nerves sometimes, but other times you just laugh at them, and then sometimes they’re just a nicer more thoughtful version of a straight guy or a more annoying version of a girl. Given long enough without sex from females, I fear I would turn to men. Hasn’t happened yet, never been tempted, and I hope I never am but I worry if things just really really don’t go well for me here. But that doesn’t mean I’m gay. I mean, your boyfriend goes to prison, gets his ass fucked for however long, and then when he gets out does that make him gay? No! He still wants to fuck you. Maybe he just wants to do it with a knife to your throat, and only up the butt. His butt. But he ain’t gay.
Gay is the guy who told me straight up in the bar he wanted to have sex with me so bad. See, I’m a nice guy, I didn’t kick his ass the way lots and lots of guys would have done. I’m a humanist, I love people, I don’t hate anyone. This motherfucker though. Again at Six Arms – I gotta stop going there. I was talking with Steve from Ireland who I watched pick up Amanda without meaning to one time. Oh shit it was the same night. He and I are talking and this little gay guy sits down at the only open seat next to Steve, with his little soft white hoodie with the gold script, all tan and I hate to observe this but one of the most model-esque good looking guys I’ve ever seen. He sits there for a half hour all coy before talking to us and jeez just add alcohol. A couple hours later he’s telling first me and then later Steve that he wants so bad to sleep with me/him. The hour was getting late (‘winning time’ is what Dave calls it) and he probably just needed somewhere to sleep. And some new cock. Poor beautiful rich boy has not had a lot of rejection in his life I’m afraid. He almost cried. But like seemingly every gay guy he has banged a lot of girls too. Far more than me. I guess it’s part of that whole figuring out you’re gay thing. I know I should be banging girls even though I don’t want to, so I’ll just force myself to until it’s really really super obvious that this isn’t what I want. He had the whole dad was an ambassador from Italy story, the lost his virginity to his maid at 13 story. The had an affair with his dad’s best friend when he was a teenager story. And the I travel the world and don’t work story. I would’ve liked to spend more time with him just to learn what that kind of life is like. But of course sometimes you have to pass because intellectual interest gets mistaken for sexual interest. Is that why hot girls are always complaining about ‘It sucks being pretty. No one takes me seriously.’ Yeah. I feel for you. Wanna trade? Didn’t think so.
Is it just me or is Sarah Silverman really hot? I mean I get it, for real. I really get it. She’s Jewish, retarded, gangly, but I don’t know she’s just really cute and funny. She reminds me a lot of that stupid person Keren the bellydancer from last winter. She was pretty and funny in the same way. The look is Russian Jew, that’s what I learned from her. Apparently that’s a big thing.
Here’s the ultimate in not caring: the way I feel toward the people fucking on my screen as soon as I come. That’s why I strive for simultaneous orgasm with the guy. Everybody’s happy, she’s got jizz all over her face, then they quietly go away. I hate those like 30 minute clips where I’m done but they’re not. I’ll come back to reality and hear all this moaning and groaning and be like oh shut up – click! I can’t believe I ever loved you. You’re a filthy whore with pussy lips like chewed up bubble gum and you suck cocks that were just in your butt.
I tried to think of what else could be the ultimate in not caring – you know, for people who do other things than watch porn – and the closest I can come up with is wiping someone else’s ass. I don’t have kids but those few times when I’ve seen someone wipe their kid’s ass I’ve thought to myself ‘I don’t blame you at all, but that really was not thorough.’ It’s like doing dishes and cleaning house – why bother? It’s only gonna get dirty again.
So I’m still in this 14th floor apartment that I was gonna stay in for a month. I’m gonna stay here two more months til the end of my contract and then we’ll see if I get hired on or move to Portland or back to Phoenix or do something completely different like open that beachside bbq hut. Petunia is doing fine with the 23 hours of confinement each day. But I don’t like it for her. She needs stimuli. She has become such a smart dog. She only needed the opportunity. She knows the neighborhood better than me, and everywhere we go people are like ‘what a beautiful dog, what’s his name?’ ‘Petunia.’ ‘Ah ha ha that’s great.’
Oh wait I did get recognized once before on the street. This MILF in the building, Kimber. She has a big dog and one morning all un-toothbrushed and bed-headed I was down in the doggy pee area and so was she and we kind of hit it off I thought. And afterward I thought, she hits it off with every guy. She’s this slutty looking blonde with cigarette purr and a killer body. And she’s talkative so there’s the deadly combo. She could singlehandedly make AIDS blow up in Seattle in 2008. Anyway I kept hoping to run into her again cuz she obviously wanted to bone, but a few weeks went by and I didn’t. Then one afternoon I’m hustling to get to the bank before close and out on Pike under the convention center overhang where everyone waits for the bus I sense someone coming toward me like they know me. I think she said my name and I look up but my vision gets arrested by these big big boobies almost completely bared by her plunging neckline. I kind of get hung up there for a second and when I look up to see the face it’s her and I was utterly caught. I pieced together that she had just come out of the gym right there, freshly showered, and I couldn’t tell if the guy near her was with her or just getting on the bus. I didn’t even stop I was so flustered. I squeezed out a hi – bye or something and kept on cuz that bank was closing. I’m not usually so awkward in public or about staring at tits. The next time I saw her, last week, it was about midnight and I was letting Petunia out to pee. She was in the parking lot with some guy but kind of waiting for me and Petunia to walk by them. I get there and she’s like ‘this is my son Ronald’. This kid is like 16 or 17. She told me before she had a kid in Spokane but I pictured a 5 year old. She might be my age, so she got knocked up in high school basically. Hell, why not? Get it out of the way. But I’d hate to be him cause all his friends would have hard ons for her.
Anyway, election night at Six Arms with Fred and his not-girlfriend who is also black. It was a trip. The crowd was super hyped up and all focused on the TVs. It was like a rally but with alcohol, so people were loud. It got called early, so McCain is up there giving his concession speech and girls are yelling like ‘Go home you fascist son of a bitch!’ Really mean shit. How is that gracious or liberal or anything but ugly? I don’t like crowd dynamics. And while they’re yelling this shit I’m thinking how the election went the way I hoped but I feel for him cause my family actually knows him. My dad’s brother went to the naval academy with him, and flew with him in Vietnam, and McCain was his best man. My dad was hoping to be on a first name basis with a president. That, I would vote for. I had first thought well as republicans go he’s about the best you could ask for. But then I understood he was just too old for the job. But he gave a wonderful speech, and they mentioned it was in Phoenix, at the Biltmore. I’m like ‘that’s a couple miles from my house!’ but no further than to Fred and… Wilma let’s call her. During Obama’s speech I got it for the first time how monumental a moment this was. Really, truly, a turning point in our culture. Something had changed just in that bar. People from adjacent tables were coming up to Fred and Wilma and congratulating them. And then coming back five minutes later and apologizing for it. I’m like dude first of all it WAS a little awkward that you did that, but now it’s really uncomfortable. On some level, that must be happening all over the country. White people understanding what just happened was more than an election, and feeling all kinds of ways about it. It’s a good thing, an awakening of consciousness. But is it racist? Maybe it’s realizing you’ve always been a little racist cause that’s human nature, but you didn’t think you were. Fred and Wilma were laughing it off. Oddly, I felt priveleged to be the white person in their company. That’s never happened before. I’ve been the only white guy in a group of black people before, many times, and it’s fun and cool but you really get that you’re an outsider. The rest of that night though, Fred and Wilma were celebrities. A few minutes after Obama’s speech, the street outside filled up with people from curb to curb, waving flags, hooting, crying, drum troupes, all moving en masse down the hill. Fred said it was like our team just won the superbowl. That was the exact feeling, but more… more deep and far reaching like as a species we just made a step in evolution. We went outside and people were coming up to them and high-fiving going WOOOOOOOO. Wilma went home and Fred and I walked down the hill until the river of people was no longer going that way but reversing direction – overrun by people coming uphill from the downtown bars. These two short tiny little girls were weaving along in front of us, leaning on each other and stumbling pathetically. We’re like ‘Ladies! How’s it going?’ They turn to us with these crooked drunken grins and throw themselves into our arms. No embarassment or apology, just celebration. Then they went away. Good times.
