Needle (18 page)

After what seemed like years of drifting helplessly in a sea of imperfect pejoratives it felt like I’d finally come home. Ever since our first nasty exchange, I’d been scouring my vocabulary in an effort to help define Danny’s role in the band. Indeed, he
was
an ornament. An ornament that we continually tried to reposition more to its liking, but one that would never be completely satisfied with the branch from which it hung.

By now, Danny may well have been confused about what he could reasonably expect from his relationship with Sections, especially given the live dynamic that permitted him to step to the fore during performances. I allowed him that luxury because it was convenient to do so, and though it pandered to his most cherished desires—the whole thing was a bit of a ruse. Inadvertently, we were taunting him with a status he could never truly achieve, and though on stage he was given the freedom to do what he wanted, there was a very clear limit to the extent in which he could influence things. Of course, Danny seemed to have a breaking point with regard to imposed limitations, and perhaps the altercation with Kurt was evidence of that.

33

The day after the CBGB’s performance I received a call from Kurt, who said that we needed to “have a talk.” Of course, by this point in my life I already knew that any discussion alluded to in that particular way could mean only one thing: My ass was getting dumped.

We agreed to meet at a coffee shop near Lincoln Center that afternoon, and when I arrived I found Kurt sitting alone at a table in the corner of the restaurant. The moment I sat down across from him he let me have it.

“I think I’m gonna leave the band,” he said to me.

“Oh come on, Kurt—please don’t quit on me,” I pleaded.

“Sorry, but I suddenly realized I don’t like bald saxophone players. Oh, and that reminds me: I don’t much care for singers with curly red hair either, so you and Perry can have these,” he said with a smile as he handed me two tickets to see Simply Red at Summer Stage in Central Park that evening. “A friend of mine had a bit of an emergency to deal with and he didn’t want them to go to waste.”

“Kurt, Danny is
so
not worth quitting over,” I told him while ignoring the tickets. “He’s probably not even gonna be with us much longer! Why don’t you just stick around for another month or so and see what happens?”

“Fuck that,” he said. “I don’t even wanna look at him anymore and besides, I have so much work coming up this semester that I really shouldn’t be getting involved with anything other than school.”

After confirming that there were no hard feelings, we wished each other luck before he left and then I called Perry from a payphone in the restaurant.

“Kurt quit the band,” I told him.

“Why?!?”

“Danny pissed him off last night.”

“That fucking sucks.”

“No shit,” I agreed.

“Was he a dick about it?”

“No,” I told him. “He’s just furious with Danny. Oh, and he gave us tickets to see Simply Red tonight at the park.

“Awesome!”

“So I guess you wanna go?”

“Definitely!” Perry replied. “I’ve still got some of Katrina’s acid!”

“OK, but then afterwards we have to pay Alice a visit in Wonderland.”

“You’re still hung up on that?”

“More so than ever,” I said. “I’ll meet you by the park at around 7:30.”

About an hour before show time Perry and I met on the corner of 72
^nd
Street and Central Park West, right by Rumsey Field which is the Summer Stage venue. We then entered the park while simultaneously swallowing our hits of acid, and officially began the journey toward Wonderland. Of course, there was still the small matter of Simply Red to attend to beforehand, but by the time that wrapped up the acid should have me flying down the rabbit hole at warp speed. And now, THANK GOD, there would be no one to stand in my way. Perry was a big boy and as such, in the event that any gun-toting Mexican should stroll by—
he’d be on his own
.

We silently roamed around the park in a northeasterly direction, killing time and saying nothing until I began to feel the acid introducing itself to the heroin I snorted earlier in the day.

“Hey,” I said breaking the silence of a multi-drug euphoria. “Let’s go see Simply Red.”

We made our way back to Rumsey Field and before we knew it, show time was upon us and we were both feeling the brunt of the acid.

As the lights slowly came up, we could see the band and a silhouette of what appeared to be a bald man with a big head standing motionless in front of the stage. Then suddenly, a spotlight shone brightly. An eight-member band was then completely illuminated and I could see that the bald man was none other than Mick Hucknall himself, wearing a tightly-wrapped, brown, knit hat. Then out of nowhere the band erupted into
Money’s Too Tight
and he tore off the hat, unleashing his famous mane of curly crimson as the crowd went wild. Fan or not I have to admit, it was one of the most electrifying starts to a concert that I’ve ever witnessed.

The first few songs were performed without incident. Then suddenly, during a musical interlude of sorts, I briefly heard what sounded like a tape skipping. In 1987 I attended a Dead or Alive concert, and from the onset it was clear that the band was lip-syncing. However, in this particular instance, though I detected a glitch in the music I was only mildly suspicious because Mick was obviously
singing, and I was obviously fucked up. But then Perry weighed in.

“This is fucking bullshit!” he yelled in my ear over the blaring amplifiers. “We’re listening to a recording!”

The possibility that we’d experienced the same acid-fueled hallucination was unlikely, and though it seemed something was afoot, I assumed only a small portion of the music
may
have been pre-recorded. However, even with this concession I still wasn’t willing to rule out acid as the culprit.

A minute or two had passed and the spotlights were turned on the crowd. For just a moment it seemed as though the audience was largely and oddly made up of guidos from New Jersey and the surrounding boroughs. Then, as soon as the lights again settled on the band, Perry grabbed my shirtsleeve and directed me to an area where the noise was less intense.

“Dude, this show is fixed,” he said plainly.

“Huh?”

“They’re not really playing. Didn’t you hear the tape skip? And just look at all the fuckin’ mobsters!”

Perry, not native to the city, had less experience with the variety of New Yorkers that I’d encountered for most of my life, and though there seemed to be a surprising number of Italians in attendance—they hardly seemed Mafioso.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked as he now actually had me looking around.

“Open your eyes, stupid,” he told me. “They’re not really playing. This is a
mob
concert and Simply Red is a
mob
band.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Oh, really? Then why are there so many gangsters here? Do you think that’s just a coincidence?”

“What coincidence?! Besides, those aren’t gangsters—those are bridge and tunnel guineas. Calm down,” I told him but he was insistent.

“Listen to me,” he said. “They aren’t really playing because the show’s fixed, so let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

“Fixed for what exactly?” I asked. “You can’t
fix
a concert. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. The mob can fix anything! They fixed the fucking World Series, for God’s sake.”

“That’s baseball.”

“Baseball, football, boxing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. The mob
can fix anything they want.”

“BUT PERRY!!! WHO THE FUCK IS BETTING ON SIMPLY RED?!?!”

I couldn’t reason with him as the acid was obviously having its way with his brain. He was absolutely convinced that Simply Red was up to no good and became increasingly rattled by it. I, however, was determined to ignore him as well as the imaginary gangsters he felt threatened by. That is, until the imaginary gangsters started firing imaginary bullets with deadly precision.

“Get down!!!” he screamed as he tried to pull me to the floor.

“Perry, relax!!” I screamed back as he crouched on the floor with one hand covering his head and the other pulling on my shirt.

“Duck!!! They’re shooting at us!”

“Dude, nobody’s shooting at anybody,” I told him. “Get up off the floor. You’re embarrassing me.”

“Just get down here before you get shot!” he pleaded.

“Perry! If they’re shooting at us, how come nobody else seems to notice?”

“Because it’s loud, and they’re only shooting at us.”

“Why would anybody want to shoot us, Perry?”

“Because they know I’m on to them.”

“On to what!?! I swear, Perry—this is the acid.”

A moment later, a Jersey guido bent down and put his hand on Perry’s shoulder.

“Yo, buddy,” said the guido. “You need some help or somethin’?”

With fear in his eyes, Perry sprang to his feet and bolted from the crime scene, dragging me down a hill and out of the park along with him.

Great hair, really, but it was a poor substitute for Wonderland.

34

By the end of August, Matt and Cynthia were married and Perry and I were forced to bear witness to the ridiculous spectacle. Besides the clandestine affair with Melody, the absurdity of it all was
heightened by the fact that Cynthia knew nothing about the man she was marrying, or the double life he led in a powder keg of lies. Incidentally, two days before the wedding Melody suddenly decided to return home to visit her family in Michigan, and Rachel went along for the ride.

Regarding the pets that influenced my life, in early September Becky and the Humane Society were finally featured in
New York Magazine
, while Bridget was privately acknowledged for a streak of 21 consecutive days during which she successfully managed to spill my blood. I had picked up a copy of the magazine just prior to returning home from work and getting loaded, and as it was resting on the coffee table I sat there for a moment and reflected on Becky. I thought about how gigantic she’d be by now with those enormous paws, and how wonderful it would be to see her stroll into the apartment, lick my face, and eat the fucking cat.

As I sat there with my musings, I noticed Bridget staring at me as if she was finally beginning to realize just how much I hated her. She then cautiously approached the couch. At some point after I nodded off, she quietly climbed up beside me and rested her head against my right hand. When the little bitch began to purr, I knew it was already too late in the game to prevent bloodshed. Of course, I’d been through this shit before. I knew that if I were to tear my hand away from her head, she’d try to tear that hand away from my wrist. My only option was to remain alert and wait until she was distracted enough by something to put some distance between us. Then, for just a moment I accidentally slipped into a nod. During that brief instant Bridget must have sensed the loss of focus so heavily relied upon by the handlers of other vicious beasts, and launched a bloody assault that resulted in a very deep wound to one of my fingers.

“FUCKING BITCH!!!”
I cried with real tears.

God, I hated that cat.

I went to the bathroom to try to get the seeping wound to clot but without much success. I then returned to the living room with a piece of toilet paper wrapped around my finger.

The sight of my flowing blood was simply too much of a banquet for Bridget to resist, and as I again somehow nodded off with the wounded hand lying lifeless beside me she pounced on it once more. The pain from this second attack was so sudden and severe that my heart almost stopped, which would’ve been difficult to detect because at that point it was only clocking-in at about a beat-and-a-half per
minute.

As she sunk her teeth into the fresh wound, I instinctively reacted without thinking. Unfortunately, the gut response came in the form of a fist meeting kitty’s face.

At first, I was unaware of any damage inflicted as the cat ran away and I was still too consumed by my throbbing finger to care. Somehow though, I managed to nod off yet again without thinking about the attack, or the potential backlash that could result from my retaliation.

Seven hours later at around 1 a.m., my nod was interrupted by a strange, slurping sound coming from the kitchen. From where I was lying, I could see Bridget at her water bowl making the odd noise. Without giving it much concern, I quickly slipped back into my nod, and at some point became aware of an even
more
bizarre, gulping sound. Once again it was Bridget, only this time she was eating—or at least attempting to. Though I am certainly not a cat expert, my layman’s diagnosis suggested that I’d damaged Bridget’s mouth in some way. Of course, I couldn’t be sure because each time I approached her to get a better look at the injury she would run away howling. Finally, at some point she fell asleep on the bed and I thought I had her cornered. Unfortunately, just as I got close enough to execute a more thorough examination, she squirted a gigantic turd and hit the road. Evidently, Bridget was now not only fucked up in the mouth, but even more fucked up in the head than she was previously.

But at least she was finally leaving me alone
.

I decided that if the cat was, in fact, damaged there was little I could do about it, so I went back to my nod while Bridget came to terms with life in the physically challenged lane.

On the following day the girls returned to New York and the shit really hit the fan, as Melody almost immediately detected the injury.

“What’d you do to my cat, Craig?!?!”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a fucking liar.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, trying desperately to sound confused
and
victimized at the same time.

“I wanna know what you did to my cat!!!”

“What could I have possibly done to your cat?”

“I don’t know—but you did something! Her face is swollen and she hisses at you whenever you walk by!”

“Oh,
really?
I haven’t noticed.”