CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hello Gina! > mail

MAIL> send IN%”dbecker@hardknocks.gettysburg.edu”
Please type your text now. Press Ctrl-Z to send.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

O goddess of Pennsylvania

finally...

So good to hear from you. Things are looking up, hm? I know its been rough for you these past couple weeks without your account but maybe now you will learn that flame wars on small schools bbs help no one. Is it still raining?

I’m very excited that you’ll be joining me on IRC tonight. When you get there, like I said, just type ‘/join #life’ (without the quotes) at the prompt and you’ll be at our channel. To type out to the channel, don’t use the slash. The slash only goes before every command you want to enter. But you’ll learn all of this eventually :) I know you can be kind of a Luddite about these things, but I promise it will be fun.

I think reed (marcus) will be there tonight so you’ll finally get to meet him. you’ll love him, he’s great.

We have so much to talk about and I really don’t see the point of a one sided conversation so I’m just going to go and expect you there tonight at ten.

Talk to you soon. I really can’t wait for you to meet these people. They’re an odd, random lot.

Well until then, sweetie, take care and good luck on those midterms.

Kick some ass sis!!!

love ya

Gina

Your mail has been sent.

Hello Gina!> logout

****disconnect 18:33 Friday, February 26

sloegin (gb0720@cnsvax.albany.edu) has joined #life

****Users currently on #life: @Pillbot frau

****Topic on #life: There is currently no topic (Pillbot 11:29)

****18:36 Friday, February 26th

<Pillbot> Hello sloegin!

****mode change +o sloegin on #life by Pillbot

<sloegin> ...

<sloegin> ...................

<sloegin> hello

/whois frau

****frau is smorov@maillink.bu.edu (worthy of the old school)

****frau is currently on: @#life #thecure #chaos

****frau has been idle 0 seconds

/msg frau hey are you around?

<sloegin> !seen reed

<Pillbot> sloegin! I last saw reed 18:03

<sloegin> crap

/whois reed

****reed: no such nick/name

<frau> shit sorry not really gina

<sloegin> what?

<frau> busy

<sloegin> on #chaos?

<frau>

<frau> o fuck it

<frau>

<sloegin> is everything ok?

<frau> agh those speed typing games get me agitated

<sloegin> :) are you ok babe?

<frau> are you?

<sloegin> yeah trina

<sloegin> it’s just that spring is so close

<sloegin> i can _feel_ it...

<frau> it’s coming gina.

<frau> patience.

<sloegin> did reed say anything??

<frau> not really. he was kind of weird to me

<sloegin> why?

<frau> I don’t really know. Just very curt.

<frau> I was asking him about how the strip was going and he just kind of ignored me

<frau> he said he was msging with a friend but he was idle the whole time according to his /whois

<sloegin> strange

<frau> he did say ‘just lurking’ which was kind of funny

<frau> but even during chit chat he was very aloof

<sloegin> aloof?

<frau> a lufe

<sloegin> :)

<frau> :P

<sloegin> don’t worry I’ll sraighten it out later :)

<frau> you better

<frau> take care of that boy!

<sloegin> i will.

<sloegin> i actually have to go home.

<frau> ok

<sloegin> I have some reading to do and then a big night

<frau> ok

<sloegin> caitlyn’s friends are coming over

<sloegin> the band

<frau> Cast Iron? Is that it?

<sloegin> well it’s actually going to be just the Casey brothers, Ted “turk” and Marshall coming over. and they’re not cast iron anymore. They’re supposedly getting a new band together

<frau> cool

<sloegin> plus they’re supposedly bringing over the lights for the project

<frau> ahhhh i see

<frau> so will you be on at all tonight?

<sloegin> yeah actually my sister’s coming on

<frau> dawn? really?

<frau> hahhaha

<sloegin> I finally talked her into it.

<sloegin> when she got off of academic probation she rediscovered her computer account

<sloegin> and found the internet

<sloegin> so i told her about irc so we could talk without the phone

<frau> nice

<frau> just get em here

<frau> we’ll do the rest :)

<sloegin> hahaha

<sloegin> bye trina

<frau> bye gina hon *wave*

/sloegin has left #life (19:03)

The bus would be coming any minute now. Gina Becker was standing at the top of Collins Circle so she would be able to see it well before it arrived, peeking through the fence of trees that surrounded the stretch of Perimeter Drive that ran beside Colonial Quad. She knew it didn’t mean it would get there any quicker, that it wouldn’t arrive at the point of initial visual contact any quicker, but knowing that she’d spot it as soon as it did made her feel good to know that there would soon be an extended period of time where the bus would be “here”, and would satisfy her with its mammoth heating system. It was difficult still. Standing in Collins Circle, a huge, round field right at the entrance to the campus for both the wind and automotive traffic, she felt very exposed.

The air that night was thin and brittle. Gina held her body still, staring at the bend at the front of the Circle, trying to press her face against the wind. A bus came around the turn but as approached she saw that it was marked GARAGE. It dropped about twelve students off and then sped away sheepish and almost guilty. Gina blew into her hands and grimaced, shaking her head. She looked around and saw a couple of other girls complaining about it. They looked over briefly, smiling, sharing the unexpected humor of the moment.

It was still obviously winter in Albany, but there was a general contentment around the campus due to the fact that they, the students, had just had a mini-break for Presidents’ Day Weekend and midterms were a good two weeks away. It had given them some breathing room, and although it was colder than it had been almost all winter, with the wind biting harder and ears more fragile, they knew that because this break had happened, they had arrived at the tail end of winter’s influence and that if they just sucked in their collective stomachs and held their breath for a moment they could coast into spring, no problem. All day long, Gina felt like everyone was giving cloaked thumbs-ups to each other, nodding with half-closed eyes and a pardoning smirk. Get ready, their faces said. 1999’s only starting. And we still got all this warm weather coming.

Even Caitlyn, she noticed, had been in a better mood lately. The worst of it had come while the saga of Cast Iron’s breakup was actually in the process of occurring. By the time it was official, she was laughing about it, more out of shock than anything else, but it was three weeks since that and she had successfully mellowed out and oriented herself. There were even rumors of a Royal Burger promotion; Sarah Adelman, AKA Brittany Gorgeous, was rumored to be heading to New Orleans with her boyfriend’s promising meteorology career. Caitlyn, everyone in the store knew, was next in line to replace the troubled but much beloved supervisor. Gina could see the headlines of the district manager’s corporate gossip: Store 643, Stuyvesant Plaza: Bubbly, voluptuous redhead leaves. Replaced by lanky, obnoxious, cropped riot grrl. Drop by. Must be seen to be believed. As with all supervisors, male and female, Caitlyn would have to wear a store issue purple shirt and red tie. The thought of Caitlyn in a shirt and tie left Gina in stitches, questioning her ability to work with her in those circumstances.

It was around seven-thirty, and there was a small crowd gathered for the bus, but none of them seemed to be heading to the bars. Not yet, anyway, Gina figured; the bar crowd assembled at Collins Circle at about ten. But they seemed to warm with the night’s coming drunkenness when another bus showed up, this one advertising ALUMNI HALL as it crawled towards the stop. It hugged the perimeter of the enormous circle, currently empty, the floodlamps casting shadows of each other’s light beams, interrupting their influence, and spreading out different hues of shadow within the almost celestial roundness of the giant field of browning, uncut grass. The bus’ brakes lazily paused the chugging bus, an old-school cheese bus painted green and white, and waited impatiently as the shocks complained of the impending increase of cargo weight. The students huddled and followed the door as it slowed, everyone moving a few steps to the right. Gina noticed their combined breath vapors looked like cirrus clouds against the sky. They flew up, dissipating, into the night as Gina and the rest of the students got on the bus.

The doors were pulled shut, everyone had their own seat, and everything seemed quiet, even the usual churn of a machine that had simply been running too long. The bus bounced its way along the edge of campus and turned onto Washington Avenue, where piles of leftover snow still stuck around under the Thruway overpasses, just waiting for the bleak Albany sky to send reinforcements. Gina tilted her head against the window as always, excited and melancholy, just like anybody else with a premonition of rebirth.

Caitlyn took her time card out of her back pocket and placed it on top of the time clock, waiting for it to turn to eight-thirty. She had just finished for the day and could not get out of her uniform fast enough. Even though she was only wearing a bra underneath her purple and black striped polo work shirt, she was confident she could hide behind the broom closet and make the quick change to a tee shirt without anyone noticing or walking by.

The broom closet, simply a big metal cabinet, was at the edge of the room that was tucked behind the manager offices, and around the corner from the main floor, and pretty consistently secure. She went over to the left side, opened the door to give herself some cover, and lifted her shirt above her head clumsily. She then slid it off of her arms, her back to the cabinet, eyes peeking over her shoulder. Her black tee-shirt was hanging on the knob of the door and when she reached over to get it, the tip of her shoulder touched the side of the cabinet and she felt a colder than expected chill run down her back. Pursing her lips, she finished the job and walked across the room to the time clock.

She swiped herself out for the day and threw on her denim jacket. She looked at her weak reflection off of the glare of the manager office window and ran her fingers through her hair a little, admiring her new haircut. She had cut only an inch off it, so it still looked scruffy and stuck wildly out of the bottom of her cap. But it looked glossy and healthy and she loved it to the touch. She turned her work hat around so little hairs would eventually find their way to poke out of the hole by the snaps. She smiled, winked and shot her reflection in the window. Agnes, the manager, was stewing over one of the tills and did not take notice.

She waved goodbye to Dolores and Henry and Brittany Gorgeous who all waved back and said “see ya later”. When she got outside and lit her cigarette, Turk and Marshall were already waiting for her, in Turk’s rusty ‘89 Dodge Aries, shining in all of it’s midnight blue glory under the high lamps of the Royal Burger parking lot.

“Get in, man,” said Turk, his brother nodding with a toothy smile and a thumbs up as he reached over and opened the back door. Caitlyn opened the door and tossed her bag across the back seat, her eyes widening as she saw the elongated box, propped up against the seat. She sat in the middle placed one hand on each of their heads and tussled their hair.

“What’s the good word, gentlemen?”

“Quick,” said Marshall. “It’s burning my fingers.”

Caitlyn took the roach and felt the car spin backwards and methodically circle towards the exit. Two pickups and a Ford Taurus turned in and headed straight for the drive thru at the far end of the parking lot.

“Caitlyn, darling, it’s been too long,” Turk said.

“Yeah, yeah. How’s things?”

“Not too bad,” said Turk. “How’s that shit going? All your shit. Family still flipped out?”

“Well, they’re always flipped out on one thing or another,” Caitlyn said.

“But no news or nothing? Nothing to report?”

“Not even, man,” Caitlyn said.

“Sa’ll right,” Marshall said. I don’t know what I would do without a family crisis ever couple months.”

“Anyway,” Caitlyn said, tapping the blank cardboard box next to her and smiling. “I take it you got it?”

“Two fifty,” said Turk, raising his eyes to the rearview.

Caitlyn nodded and passed the roach to him.

Gina was watching television in the common room when Caitlyn came home, a lit cigarette drooping from her mouth, and the tips of her fingers resting on a forty bottle, still wrapped in a brown bag, on the floor between her feet. She did not recognize the two guys with her but knew immediately who they were. Caitlyn had mentioned them before, the guys from the band.

“Gina!” Caitlyn exclaimed, spreading her arms wide. The two guys flanked her, the taller of the two drumming his fingers on a long cardboard box.

“Caitlyn,” Gina said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It sure is,” the one holding the box said. “Phase one of our dream come true.”

“Gina, meet Ted and Marshall Casey,” Caitlyn said, gesturing to them in turn, indicating the taller one holding the box as Ted and the other as Marshall. Marshall waved softly. Ted tapped the box louder and more intensely. For two people that, as Caitlyn has told her, came out of the same exact womb less than fifteen months apart, they could not look more different. They both had the same color hair, a rusty brown, but Ted’s was long and Marshall’s was short and spiked, similar to Caitlyn’s. In fact, Marshall and Caitlyn looked more alike than Marshall and Ted.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Ted said, extending his hand, which Gina took with a smile and shook. “And please, call me Turk.” He was taller than Marshall by about three inches, and much better looking. His face was compact and hard. His chin flowed perfectly into his jawbone, all the muscles in his face purposely rising to his blue eyes, dense and planted firmly in his face. Marshall’s face was longer and more confused. Gina saw his beautiful green eyes darting around nervously, revealing a manic self-consciousness that showed in the way he carried himself. While actually quite good looking, he had the feel of a person who clearly didn’t think so. His body was slimmer and more fluid than Turk’s. Gina could tell that they both acknowledged and laughed with their eyes.

“Okay, Turk,” Gina said. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Turk began fishing through his pockets. Marshall inclined his head pensively.

“Marshall is the bassist. Turk’s the guitarist.”

Gina, casting an interested eye on Turk’s impatient fidgeting with the box, perked up. “So Turk give me the scoop.”

“Two hundred and fifty watt HPS. Perfect size for the closet in Caitlyn’s room.”

“Nice,” Gina said. “Open the box.”

Turk sat down next to Gina on the couch and continued to fish through his pockets. His flop caused Caitlyn’s New York City collage fluttered briefly, causing them both to turn around casually. Turk shrugged and went about more important business. He eventually pulled out a small nub of a roach and lit it, tilting his head back and to the side, positioning his head so his eyes would be able to focus on the roach as he lit it. He pulled it off on the first click of the lighter and smiled as he inhaled. When he was done he pulled in a small puff of air and nodded, passing it to Gina. “Here,” he said, without exhaling. “Kill it. We smoked on the drive down.”

“Thanks, man,” said Gina.

“Okay now,” Turk said, tucking the tips of his fingers under the stapled cardboard. He pulled the flaps apart and removed an elongated light fixture. “Ain’t she a beaut? Only two fifty.”

Caitlyn slipped into the kitchen and Marshall advanced towards the couch. “High pressure sodium light. The most condensed, intense light available for growing,” he said. “Don’t ask the specifics, we really don’t know. We’re relying on the words of trusted friends and the internet.”

Gina held the fixture like an artifact, amazed. “How much is this going to raise the electric bill? Won’t they notice the big jump in wattage? Isn’t that what cops look for?”

Turk shook his head confidently. “No way, man. People are going to start putting their air conditioners soon. If you wait until like May first, like two months, man, no one will notice anything. Now you have time to get supplies, pots, soil, a timer, et cetera. You can set up what you can, germinate the seeds, give them time to get settled into life before you throw them under this bad boy.” He was holding the fixture out towards her like an offering. All of a sudden he was ashing a cigarette neither Gina nor Marshall had seen him lit. They looked at each other, lighting their cigarettes at the same time.

“Plant May first,” Marshall said. “You’ll have bud by September first.”

“Indeed,” Turk said. “Indeed.”

Gina nodded, impressed. Caitlyn returned from the kitchen with four beers, looked at Gina’s forty and turned to return to the kitchen. Gina stopped her, however, and chugged the remainder of her forty, gesturing to Caitlyn for the next beer, much to the delight of the applauding Casey brothers.

After a joint and about three beers each, they rolled themselves into Caitlyn’s room to listen to her stereo, which Gina could admit, sullenly, was much more impressive than hers. They were listening to the latest Cast Iron album, Protect This Shell, the one for which Caitlyn had done the cover art. Ted “Turk” and Marshall Casey, who had written all the music and lyrics for the band, were talking about their now-defunct project and how they had progressed their music on the last album.

Turk and Marshall were sitting on the floor in front of the closet, peeking over their shoulders every once in a while to eyeball the closet space for the night’s project. Gina, also sitting on the floor, but across the room from them in Caitlyn’s red beanbag, was eyeballing Marshall’s long feet tap the Price Chopper bag next to him. A roll of tinfoil was sticking out of the top of it and looked ready to fall over. Turk rubbed the back of his head against the closet door. Gina could not put her finger on what was similar about these two, besides their blood. She observed them closely, looking at face shape, eyes, nose and even their hands. Nothing. But she knew there was something.

While the album played, they sat around and bullshitted about the band. Marshall, who caught an embarrassed Gina staring at him more than once, would switch from playing air-bass to air drums in time with the music. Turk was particularly pleased with the way Marshall and Hank, their old drummer, had jelled on the last album. “You guys really came together, really peaked, on this album,” he kept saying, during almost every song. Marshall agreed. He had done two years with Cast Iron and two CDs, and had progressively gotten better each time. Having had no formal training, being basically carried into the project by his brother, he did not find the actual mechanics of the instrument difficult to learn, but his timing had not gotten really fine tuned until they hooked up with Hank around the time they were finishing up the songs for their first seven track EP, Come Together, named after the Beatles tune of which they had perfected a blistering hardcore version. By having Hank work the kit behind him, Marshall found his rhythm.

“It was so important for me, as a musician, to be able to play with a drummer consistently,” Marshall said. “I feel really fortunate that Hank was that good.”

“You’ll get better,” Turk said, resting his hand on Marshall’s shoulder. “Hank was good but I can’t wait until I get a really sick drummer behind you. Someone more versatile. Someone a bit experimental.”

“Experimental?” Gina asked. “I thought you guys were hardcore purists.”

“Uh-oh,” Caitlyn chimed in from on her back, rocking back and forth on her bed. “Here we go.”

“Gina,” Turk said. “Music is about power. Its effectiveness, its worth as music is measured by what it makes the audience, and the musicians themselves, experience. It’s about being able to express a coherent emotion. The lyrics give a message or a mood or a feeling, but it’s about the music at the bare bones of the thing. I’m a purist, musically, because I demand that my music express all its potential power.”

“Ability to get a reaction, a strong reaction, equals worth?” Gina asked.

“Isn’t that what we demand of our music? That it move us? That it force us to listen to it again? Being able to get the message across, being able to affect in that way, by being able to make someone understand what it is you’re about.”

“What are you about?”

“Look,” Turk said, “My instinct is to play hardcore music, lots of full chords, downstrokes, minor chords, because it’s the most in-your-face thing out there. It’s the most powerful. It’s the most expressive. Not anything like it.”

“Not since back in the day, when rock was first getting off its feet,” Marshall said. “Guys like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, man, they were all about in-your-face rocking and fucking shit up.”

“Exactly,” Turk said. He smirked as if he had just been given the words on the tip of his tongue. “That hippie shit, Grateful Dead, crap, ruined the potential of rock music. It became about chilling out instead of getting off your feet and fucking shit up, fucking the bad shit up, getting off your ass and doing something with your life. Because when you get right down to it music is power and power is adaptability and awareness and cognizance. One does not sacrifice one’s creation to the trend, local or national and one can never evolve if standing still.”

Marshall chimed in. “The last thing anybody needs to be doing these days is tuning out.”

He said this and it inadvertently became a period on the whole discussion. Everyone agreed without showing it. Caitlyn got the three foot glass Graffix off of her top shelf and packed a bowl with Turk’s weed. The last song on the album was coming up, an instrumental called “The Great Divide”. Caitlyn let out a small laugh and made a crack about how the band deserved to be broken up for pulling out such a blatant Metallica move. Turk and Marshall shrugged at the same time (Their mannerisms are eerily similar, Gina thought), and laughed and laughed. Caitlyn was still in bed on her back, now making bicycle circles with her legs.

“So what are you guys going to do now?” Gina asked. “Now what?”

“Start a new band,” Marshall said.

“Got a drummer lined up?”

“Not yet, but we do have the keys,” Marshall said.

Caitlyn shot upright. “The what?”

“The keys, man,” Turk said. “Keyboards.”

Gina looked at Caitlyn’s reaction and decided that she had never quite seen an expression like that on anyone’s face before.

Marshall held an open-mouth smile in the air. “Did we forget to tell you that?”

“Keyboards?” asked Caitlyn, exasperated.

“Caitlyn,” Turk said.

“Keyboards?”

“Keyboards. This guy John we met. Surprised?”

“Not at all.”

“Are you seriously against this?” asked Turk.

“No,” said Caitlyn. “I’m actually intrigued.”

“That’s good,” said Turk, straightening his back against the closet door. “That’s what we hoped for.”

Marshall cracked his knuckles and smiled, gesturing towards Turk. “Wait until you hear the new songs, man. The keyboard thing, it’s not this shit you see with some grindcore or metal where it’s just a guy laying seventh chords over the riffs. And not poppy organ shit that punks use sometime. This guy won’t be playing over us, he’ll be playing with us.”

Caitlyn looked quickly over to Gina for support but found her biting a smile down. She furrowed her brow and turned back to Turk. “So are you guys really going to continue to do DIY shows with keyboards?”

“Sure,” said Turk. “Why not?”

“DIY?” asked Gina.

Caitlyn spread her arms towards Turk. “Because you’ll get booed off the stage, that’s why! Hardcore bands don’t have keyboards. Hardcore bands don’t experiment, not like that. You won’t be a hardcore band anymore.”
Marshall ducked under the invisible line of Turk and Caitlyn’s conversation and nodded at Gina. “Do it yourself. A bunch of local bands will get a bar for, like, a Sunday afternoon. They can play but they have to bring all of their own gear.”

“Oh,” said Gina, not sure whether to follow Caitlyn and Turk’s conversation or her own.

“That’s for other people to say,” Turk said, shaking his head softly, looking slightly disappointed. “And I don’t give a fuck. This shit is going to blow them away with its power.”
“This shit is hard core,” Marshall said to Gina, emphasizing each word. “Whether it’s ‘hardcore’ or not is for others to decide, for the scene to decide.”

“Marshall’s right, Cait,” Turk said. “I don’t have to ask the scene’s permission before taking my music in a more aware, more potent, more textured direction.”

“Turk,” Caitlyn said wistfully, “Of course not. But the scene is afraid right now. If you’re doing ‘different’, something with keyboards, especially with your history, they’ll shun you. If you cross them, they’ll bury you.”

“Bury me?” Turk asked. “And what do you mean, ‘my history’?”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Caitlyn said. “You’re well respected in the scene. But you do things like, for instance, covering Beatles songs. You dabble in three-chord punk. And it’s not often hardcore has vocals with the keen melodic sense you have.”

Turk let out a bellowing laugh that seemed to shake the stale, smoky air of the room. Gina, in the middle of taking a bong hit, looked up, startled.

“Turk?” Caitlyn asked.

“I know the risks, Cait,” Turk said. Marshall was giving Gina a ‘gimme’ hand signal, pointing to the bong. “But you forget I know these people. I have faith that they’ll respond to powerful, aggressive, honest music no matter what instruments are used. I have to assume that good people will like good music and a good city will support a good band, I have to assume it, until I know for sure otherwise.”

All three looked at him, waiting for his breath to settle. Caitlyn rolled back on the bed and lit a cigarette. Gina handed the bong off to Marshall. Turk stood up as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Gina watched him looking at everyone’s face, looking for any questions. When he came to hers he gave her a bemused smile and revelled in the calm for a moment before asking, “Does anyone want another beer?”

Gina and Marshall raised their hands. Turk made guns out of his hands and shot them both, winking at Gina before leaving the room.

“Wow,” said Caitlyn, laughing. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

“They’re not going to be for every song,” said Marshall. “He plays guitar, too.”

“Who, John?”

“Mmhmm. We’re not turning into a keyboards band, though, don’t worry. But the sound is changing. It’s getting thicker and lumpier and more brutal. Some of these new songs, they need it.”

“I gotta hear these new songs,” Gina said.

Caitlyn muffled a snorted laugh in her blue plaid comforter.

“Soon, soon,” Marshall said. “Things are happening.”

****dbecker (dbecker@hardknocks.gettsyburg.edu) has joined #life

****Users currently on #life: @Pillbot @Pillbox @crydydian frau reed @sloegin ChAiNsAw

****Topic on #life: Welcome DAWN!!!!! (sloegin 22:34)

****22:56 Friday, February 26

<sloegin> sis!!!

<dbecker> hello?

<crydydian> hello dawn

<crydydian> pleasure to meet you

<reed> hello dawn!

<dbecker> wow I’m popular

<dbecker> hello everyone

<dbecker> sloegin? that’s your name here?

<sloegin> :-)

*sloegin hugs dawn

<dbecker> um dawn hugs back

<reed> how was your trip?

<dbecker> here? disturbing

<reed> how so?

<dbecker> it took me so long to get on this damn thing and I don’t even know if I’m doing it right

<reed> you seem to be doing it fine

<sloegin> if you want to change your name just type /nick and then the name

<dbecker> nah sis I like this better... more raw. makes me look like a newborn

<crydydian> a newbie

<sloegin> newbie

<dbecker> nope. you’re both wrong. :)

<sloegin> :)

<dbecker> does anyone else find this twisted?

<frau> hello dawn!!!

<dbecker> frau

<frau> nice to meet you!

<frau> find the place all right?

<frau> hello

<frau> hello???

<dbecker>hello frau

<sloegin> she’s still lagged

<crydydian> I told her to get on my server

<debecker> you’re all twisted.

<sloegin> us? twisted?

<dbecker> though I feel I haven’t seen anything yet

<Pillbot> dbecker: I haven’t seen anything

<dbecker> what the hell was that

<sloegin> dawn i want you to meet reed

<dbecker> we’ve met

<dbecker> he just gave me a crash course in msg

<sloegin> *gasp*

<reed> now gina relax ;)

<reed> i’m just trying to get aquainted

<dbecker> he’s a gentleman gene

<dbecker> gina i have news

<dbecker> my transfer went through

<sloegin> it did?

<sloegin> great!!!!

<reed> what transfer?

<sloegin> she’s finishing her masters at nyu this fall!!!

<dbecker> I’m finishing my masters this fall in new york

<dbecker> what she said

<dbecker> so how long have ya’ll been on this thing

<crydydian> you mean today?

<dbecker> no i mean how long have ya’ll known each other

<crydydian> well me camille and pillbox have been here the longest

<crydydian> frau gina and reed are new

<crydydian> a while back we had an influx of new people

<crydydian> chainsaw among them and he’s the only one that stuck around

<sloegin> that’s cause he likes frau

<frau> !

<sloegin> :)

<dbecker> strange

<dbecker> think about it

<sloegin> why whatever do you mean

<dbecker> the only reason you guys are here is because you have issues with real-life contact

<dbecker> agreed?

<sloegin> i dont know

<crydydian> well

<sloegin> eric!

<crydydian> she has a point gina

<sloegin> gasp!

<dbecker> so basically what we have is a circle of friends that have never seen each other face to face, that are brought together only by the fact that they are hiding from people

<crydydian> it’s the lie we live dawn

<dbecker> hey man, it was just an observation. nothing personal

<crydydian> of course not

<sloegin> don’t you find it strange that emotions come across even though it’s just words?

<dbecker> not really. I mean, novels do the same thing. this is like a spontaneous novel

<reed> kinda like life

<dbecker> *shrug*

<dbecker> gina hon i have to go to sleep

<dbecker> email me tomorrow

<crydydian> leaving so soon?

<dbecker> well i was planning on being here much sooner

<dbecker> i just wanted to meet my sis’ new cyber-man

<reed> a pleasure, dawn

<dbecker> *nod*

/msg dbecker so what did you think?

*dbecker* well, the first thing he said to me was “maybe YOU’LL send me a photo”

/msg dbecker *sigh* he said he sent me one

*dbecker* don’t you have a good one to send?

/msg dbecker i do

*dbecker* gina hon, relax. he just wants to see you

*dbecker* listen, i don’t want to harp. Just, I dunno. Just keep the forward progress.

/msg dbecker sure will, sis. love you

*dbecker* love you too

****dbecker has left #life (23:32)

He’d decided to give himself a little leeway here; he just got to the point where it was no longer necessary to deny what the essence of the thing was.

That girl that Johnson Trevor had over, almost every night now, was driving him crazy. It brought back all kinds of fucked up memories. He was telling Greg and Chuck stories in the waning hours of the bar’s operation, slow blues radiating from the jukebox, the echo of pool balls, stories, he would have guessed, that he never would have told a living soul. Stories about Kit. He had to try. It was reminding him of all the times they would lie in bed together and whisper, softly, in each other’s tired ears: Me and you against the world.

It was all that was sacred to him in this world. That kind of bold statement for his life. Every time he peeked behind his curtain and saw her there, it triggered something in him. Made something in him wake up, give him an inspiration, a purpose, an intent. He would verbalize it to Greg because he could trust Greg and because he had to verbalize it if he were to write it. He had to practice articulating. He needed to get some kind of organization to what he wanted to say. It needed a flow. And talking about it warmed those particular cerebral muscles up.

He didn’t want it to be an autobiography but of course it had to be. He was writing it. It could be nothing but him, because he was the only one putting words on the page. It had to be him, because it was his story.

Check this out. That girl, the one that guy’s been seeing? The one me and George staked out the other night? I gotta tell this because its really gotten a lot more involved since I last wrote. George has gotten too afraid to help me out on anything further. And the more I think about it the more I’m glad, because I think whatever it is that’s going on, is for me and me alone. It’s not about anything other than what I can see outside my window.

Maybe I’m bringing it too close to me. But it’s gotten all so personal so quick. I wrote it down through him, and I feel justified, seeing a part of him not even he sees, commenting. Reporting. I can safely say the story parallels, and this is how it happened, more or less:

Johnson Trevor swung into the bar for what was most likely to be the last time. So strange, he thought, passing through the flapping front door of the bar. So strange that it would end here, after so many beginnings here. It was where they first knew, it was where they were going constantly while they were first smitten. The long nights, the drunken rants, the endless cigarettes and inconsistent crowds and, therefore, jukebox selections.

Oh, but the soul of the place! One of the last true Irish Pubs in Manhattan, one of the holes that make one proud to be a drunk. He walked in and saw her at the back table, facing away from him, a stern line of smoke over her left shoulder. Black leather, as always. He loved it more than almost anything.

He sat down at the table not expecting much, not even expecting harshness. He expected questions he doubted he could answer, he expected coldness. But there was none. She was smiling and shaking her head when he sat down. He got eye contact after a few seconds and placed his pack of cigarettes on the table. He noticed her pint glass was almost empty.

She picked it up and finished the small amount of remaining liquid. “Are you going to get a drink?” She asked, wide-eyed.

“Harp?”

“Harp,” she said.

“I’ll be right back.”

He went to the bar to order the drinks, feeling slightly confused and all of a sudden intimidated. His hands were actually tremoring slightly as he picked up the two pints but could not understand why. His heart was beating normally, he wasn’t flushed or chilled. But his mind was going a thousand miles an hour, sharpening the edges of the objects of the bar, heightening his senses. He was paying attention to the curved layout of the bar area, the shiny, reddish finish on the wood, the low lights, the acoustics for “Sultans of Swing”. And he turned down the hall by the bathrooms and he saw her, staring back at him, pretty much, her arm propped against the back of the booth, smiling.

God, her eyes were gorgeous. And nothing, nothing but the light on her cheek, not ever. And he didn’t know how he could leave it, ever. And he doubted it, for a second, even though it was already done. They had been broken up officially for about two months now. But she was all over him. She was still there.

“When does your bus leave?” She asked, almost nonchalant.

“One thirty in the afternoon,” Johnson said. “Tomorrow.”

She bowed her head gently towards the table, lifting her eyes to his. “I’m going to miss you like hell, Jon,” she said. “God, I am.”

“And we both know, we both know.”

“But we do.”

He could not even think of anything to say to her. Nothing at all would have sufficed. And she sat across from him, every once in a while lighting a cigarette and saying little things, small talk, nothing of consequence. And he could think of nothing to say to her at all. He could only talk at her, as she was talking to him. It was their fault as always. Their fault, because they could do nothing to stop it.

Nick had curled his lips at the screen some time ago. It was close to five in the morning, and he had not written a sentence in about fifteen minutes. He had gotten jammed at the conversation. Lost the train, so to speak. He liked the idea of having the narrator write these stories, and writing in general. He began to wonder if he should write the narration as if it were dictated to him, Nick. And have these stories in there, things the narrator had written, in times away from the dictation.

The memories of Kit had swollen. He now watched Johnson Trevor’s woman with a kind of fatherly sadness. They had been together almost every night for about a month now. He wondered if she had moved in. He checked the mailbox once in a while, once he knew she was staying, but there was no name added. When they were not having sex, they were smoking pot, doing coke, and, strangely enough, playing hours of poker with penny ante. They had an incredible amount of sex. Nick, even when he and Kit were at their apex, never had as much sex as JT had with this woman.

The nostalgia eventually wore off, and left him feeling purged and generally upbeat. He had started to write again, and was beginning to really experiment with this project (he no longer felt he could refer to it as a novel until he got a plot figured out). But the days were getting subtly longer and he felt like he was ready to shift to a higher mental gear. The way he looked at it, he had gone through his mourning for the city, all he needed to do was mourn for Kit. And this woman being suddenly thrown into his life and, therefore, his project, had initiated a sort of cleansing for him.

Nick lit a cigarette. Yeah, he had gotten stuck at the conversation. He read it over about four times and thought that the writing leading up to it was powerful, but the conversation, especially highlighted by the dialogue after it, turned out to be anticlimactic.

Or maybe the buildup was too melodramatic, Nick, he told himself.

“Ah, shit,” he said, leering at the screen with a cigarette dangling off of a half-smile. He saved it to the novel

(project)

disk and shut his computer down. He finished his cigarette on the windowsill, watching Johnson Trevor’s and his woman’s pairs of feet lie next to each other, toes poking out from under a green comforter. He sat and watched for a while after his cigarette, but decided eventually not to have another and to go to bed. He lay down and was out a short while later.