Rock Bottom (41 page)
Darlo lowered her to the couch.
“Maybe too much booze,” she said. “In my head and on the mike. Wet hands maybe. So fucking embarrassing.”
“Are you kidding?” Bobby said. “That was like the most badass bit of rock-and-roll theater I’ve ever seen. And you’re following in a great tradition. Bill Wyman and Keith Richards were both electrocuted onstage.”
“Sweet,” she croaked. “Keith’s hot.”
“Babe, I saw you fall,” Darlo said. “I heard that pop and I saw you fall. Jesus, are you sure you’re all right? Adam, are you sure she’s all right?”
“I’m fine,” Joey said, and threw an Altoid into her mouth. “I just have a headache and I’m still a little sick, but I’m fine.” She propped herself up. “You guys need to go play your set.” She winked. “Even though after me it’ll be one hell of an anticlimax.”
Going back up there was the last thing Shane wanted to do, but when he opened his mouth to make the case to ditch, he had a change of heart. His ears ached, his hair was disgusting, and his faith was a stretched-out carcass of belief, but this was his life. This was where the quest had led him, to the masturbatory, soulless dream of some millionaire, but he had to honor that. Maybe this band was the purgatory for the next life and he was about to pass through, but maybe Blood Orphans could be salvaged, made new, made real for once.
Either way, everything had led to this moment. He rose out of some surface that had formerly held him down in concrete clutches.
“I know a party,” he said. “Let’s play the set and get the fuck out of here.”
THEY APPROACHED THE RODIN SUITE
like a bunch of refugees. Shane stood at the front and banged on the door. Joey and Darlo flanked him like dime-store devils, broken ornaments you’d hang on Satan’s Christmas tree. Adam stood behind them, smoothing his phantom Fu Manchu, his eye ringed in black, dark but diffuse, like an espresso stain on a cheap napkin. At the back, Bobby had his arm around Sarah. He hoped for cacophony and good times, felt sentimental about this final moment of togetherness, which was not so different from the first time they had stood together in public, outside Spaceland with their amps, waiting for entry into a sacred celebration of the rock-and-roll high life. That for a time they’d been the ones on the other side of the golden equation seemed impossible.
The door opened, and the sound nearly blew them back. A guy stood there, double-fisting Stella. Shrouded in buckskin fringe and leather pants, his beard spotty and blond, he could have been in charge of rigging the lights at Woodstock.
“Ron,” Shane said. “You stoned fucker.”
“Peanut Butter Bob!” he yelled. “And the rest of the Bloody mother-fricking Orphans. Entrez, mes amis, entrez!”
Like all good rock-and-roll parties, the Rodin Suite was a living exhibit of the vapid and exultant. On the stereo, Bon Scott rang out his clarion call of beer- and tail-chasing, rang the bell that Idiot School was in session. The Young brothers riffed around his gravel-bound voice. AC/DC were the Australian Ramones. They were holy.
“If you want blood,” people sang, “you got it!”
“Did you have parties like this?” Sarah asked. “This is crazy shit.”
“Back in the day,” he said.
“You’re sad.”
“I am.”
She took his hand and kissed it gently.
“Will you come visit me?” he asked. “Will you come to Los Angeles?”
“Certainly,” she said. “As long as we go to the Getty.”
Ron stood atop a couch and yelled for attention. Bobby couldn’t believe this guy; his Gram Parsons
Electric Horseman
look, straight off the case at Nudies, was so incredibly lame. Then Bobby remembered that he was in a band that, for most of their existence, had worn enough eye shadow to sell out the MAC counter.
“Yo, bitches!” Ron shouted. “I have an announcement to make!”
The whole room applauded.
“You fuckers don’t even know what I’m going to say, man!” He laughed, and his buckskin fringe went back and forth, and then he swigged from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He had the whole routine down, and Bobby saw a pretty prominent hard-on through his two-hundred-dollar jeans, which hugged his jewels just like Keith’s on the cover of
Sticky Fingers.
“We’re in the presence of major rock infamy right now, people!” he yelled. “We’re in the presence of a group of dudes that got the most royal and criminal screwing by a major label!” He scanned the crowd and found Shane, who stood with the younger sister of Daisy Duke. Everyone here had grown up in Hazzard County.
“Peanut Butter Bob!” he yelled. “All right!”
Shane raised his beer, put his arm around the little Daisyette.
“Get to the point!” Joey yelled.
“And to the point I will get, yes!” Ron said. “The point is, that they were never given a fair shake, and were royally screwed, these brilliant ironists of rock-and-roll stereotype, and” — he belched — “were terrorized by the fucking whims of fame! But they are here tonight to party with us, these hard-rocking phantoms, impart some hard-learned wisdom and easy love, and that is an honor indeed. Cue up that stereo and play me some Blood Orphans!”
The room erupted in cheers, and the first chords of “Hella-Prosthetica” rang out. Ironists my ass: it was a damn good thing no one could hear the lyrics. That the song existed at all seemed ridiculous to Bobby now, but at the time they had been storming some imagined barricade of taboo, with this paean to horny amputees as the battering ram.
Apparently the guys in Tennessee knew all the lyrics.
Darlo walked over with two cans of Heineken. “Some songs land people in jail,” he said, and handed one to Bobby. “Ain’t that a bitch?”
“ 'Tis,” Bobby said, knowing that the bringing of beer was an apology of sorts. Darlo’s face was still puffed up from tears, and Bobby let his anger go. Maybe, just for a night, he ought to cut the drummer some slack.
People sang the song out. It was cute. They sipped their beers.
“Shit is fucked up,” Darlo said. “Shit is so fucked up right now, Bobby. I ain’t got no label and I ain’t got no dad.”
“Sorry about the news.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged. “Or not whatever. Doesn’t make a difference. Fucker’s been a real dirtbag, and if I can help send him to the clink, that’s fine. Oh shit, hold on.” He took out Adam’s phone and stared at it. “Thought it was ringing,” he said. “I’m waiting to hear back from that asshole Jesse.”
“He’s an asshole, all right,” Bobby said. “Fucker sold me an eightball of powdered sugar.”
Darlo winced. “I told him to do that.”
“You’re a real piece of work, Darlo.”
“I’m gonna try to be better. Don’t look at me like that — I mean it.”
Bobby nodded, rolling his eyes, and watched Sarah talk to Adam and Shane over at the keg. They were telling her some story that involved a large object falling on their heads, laughing as they ducked for cover. Maybe it was the bird of happiness taking a big dump. Either way, he warmed to the image — his brothers, protecting her.
“That wasn’t such a bad show tonight,” Darlo said. “Though I think we lost them when we tried ‘L.A. Woman.’ ”
“For sure,” Bobby said. “Shane isn’t exactly Mr. Mojo Risin’. Though Adam nailed all those snaky guitar parts.”
“Doesn’t he always,” Darlo said. “Fucking slayer, that guy. Even without the Fu Manchu.”
Bobby grunted. Darlo picked at the tab on his Heineken.
“So,” the drummer said. “What the fuck are you gonna do when we get home? ‘Cause I want to figure this whole thing out, bro. I want us to not fuckin’ hate each other.” He lowered his eyes. “We should hang out.”
Bobby made to scoff, and then he thought, This is a peace offering. Who knows what might come of it? A certain sense of satisfaction dawned in him. Had Bobby not watched the drummer fall apart? Had he not, by all appearances, gotten the girl? His customary hatred and envy were absent; instead, he felt a vague, diffuse affection for Darlo, and the knowledge that he had no idea what was coming next.
“Fine,” he said. “Just don’t make fun of my hands. And I want a hundred bucks for that faux-caine.”
Darlo nodded in contrition. They listened to the song, bobbed their heads up and down. Bobby felt like he was on a blind date.
“I still think you and me got mixed wrong,” Darlo said. “Fucking Sheridan. Mixed us too far down, that fucking jam-band idiot. You and me. No fuckin’ thunder. What’s rock and roll without a whole lotta thunder?”
“Jazz,” Bobby said. “Ugly, despicable jazz.”
“Word,” Darlo said, and they clanked cans.
The song rose toward the crescendo. All four members of Tennessee were gathered up, arms on each other, singing about having sex with girls who were missing their legs. Bobby watched Adam and Joey bob their heads and laugh like they’d never heard the song before, like they couldn’t believe anyone could have such bad taste. Then one of the guys in Tennessee grabbed Shane and screamed for him to take it, right as the final chorus kicked in. The dreadlocked Christian Buddha seeker-fool pogoed up and down. He guzzled some beer, hugged his new boyz, then poured the rest of the can on them as they shook in rapture. He counted off the lead-in, held his arms high like a spirit risen gloriously from limbo, and threw his body into it. From the very top of his lungs, he sang the song back to heaven.
Thanks to Eileen Pollack and Laura Kasischke for helping make this book shine.
Thanks to Peter Ho Davies, Ray McDaniel, Patsy Yaeger, Michael Byers, and Nicholas Delbanco for advice on matters critical, creative, and theoretical, and the University of Michigan, Helen Zell, and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies for essential and generous support.
Thanks to Ayesha Pande, dedicated agent of tireless energy and natural grace.
Thanks to Reagan Arthur, Michael Pietsch, and all at Little, Brown, for taking a chance on me and being so excited about it.
Thanks to Scott Michael for providing suggestions from the real world, as well as reminders on laws of physics and probability.
Thanks to the fellows with whom I have shared vans, stages, hotel rooms, and sunsets: Bo Gilliland, John Roderick, Jeramy Koepping, Cody Burns, Eric Corson, Chris Caniglia, and Sean Nelson. Well played, sirs, well played.
Final, profuse, and endless thanks to Anna Barker, for your love.
MICHAEL SHILLING
is a lecturer at the University of Michigan, where he received his MFA in Creative Writing. His stories have appeared in
The Sun, Fugue,
and
Other Voices
. A recovering rock musician, he played the drums in The Long Winters, as well as in numerous other bands in Seattle. He is currently working on a novel set in Victorian England.
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Rock Bottom
A NOVEL
Michael Shilling
A conversation with Michael Shilling
You spent several years as a touring rock musician. What elements of your experience informed the writing of
Rock Bottom?
There are two kinds of rock bands. The first is the young and skinny people in their twenties, drug Aardvarks with no nutritional needs except beer, cigarettes, and two hours of sleep who, day after day, wolf a bag of Doritos for dinner, blast through an hour-long set, and then abuse themselves all night with the help of total strangers. The other variety is usually older and always weaker of constitution. They need the occasional home-cooked meal and as much sleep as the next accountant or dentist, and like to argue for hours about what Gore would have done as president. That was the band I was in. You want to read that novel?
There are five different points of view in
Rock Bottom.
Why did you choose this structure, and how did you go about finding the balance between these different vantages?
After politicians, rock bands are the ultimate unreliable narrators. Though the comedy in
Rock Bottom
is what gets the reader’s attention, at its heart I wanted the story to be about people coming to tough terms with the choices they had made, and how those choices affected others around them. By having such a varied set of viewpoints, I could accomplish this thematic objective and provide a sense of solidity to the narrative, so that any epiphany or understanding that a character arrived at could be emotionally cross-checked by another. To mangle the words of Joan Didion, people in vans have to construct stories in order to live, and those stories are often ridiculously self-serving. Nobody in Blood Orphans passes even the lowest bar of objectivity, so this way the reader is the final judge, which is not something I strive for, but in this case is what served the story.
Is this “emotional cross-checking” part of the motivation to have the manager play such an important role
and
be a woman?
Very much so, but it cuts both ways. Joey’s carrying around her black-magic bag of delusions too, and having the four members of the band around to grab that bag and throw it into the nearest Dutch canal sends her on her own compelling journey of reckoning. Of course, having a woman’s touch — even that of the coked-up, gimp-legged, bitter-as-horseradish variety — was essential to facilitate emotions from the dudes that they would never have experienced if left to their own, all-male devices.
Speaking of which, why did you choose to set the book in Amsterdam?
Originally, I thought that Amsterdam was a good setting because it mirrored the dynamics of rock band life — known for its sinful, libertine ways, but in its heart very buttoned up and, in terms of manners and social graces, surprisingly conservative. But by the time I realized what a dumb simplification that was, I was already knee-deep in the draft, so it never changed. In the end, I think I set it there because Amsterdam is very pretty, and if I’m going to spend two years in the same creative place, I’d prefer it to be pretty.
What were the challenges you faced by setting the novel over the course of a single day?
When you have less than twenty-four hours, a story line can easily become contrived and full of expedient moments. I didn’t want the changes the characters went through to come cheap; so, certainly, creating an organic plot was difficult. Also, with such a tight time frame, the structure of the story seemed to either completely work or fall flat on its narrative ass. When you’re telling a story that has weeks, or even days, of present action, you can move stuff around. With only one day, if you change the time that one character gets to one place, everything else has to shift. So revising was a bit scary. But when I was in Amsterdam I walked the routes of all the characters to make sure I wasn’t creating any physical or temporal impossibilities, so that matter was pretty nailed down. That said, it took a while to get the sequence of events to work in a believable manner, but when I did I had one very tight story.