The Haters (11 page)

14.
A TURBULENT MORNING AT THE KNOXVILLE CLINTON

I woke up on the floor. My mouth tasted like a landfill and my neck felt like horses had been standing on it. Also, the fly of my boxers was open, because there was a full-on Code Red sleep boner awkwardly lunging out of there.

It was definitely my boner. So immediately I was wide awake and consumed with panic.

Fortunately, no one was awake to stare in disgust at the lurchy jailbreak of my sleep boner. Corey was asleep, fully clothed, on top of half of the bed. Ash was under the covers of the other half. So I ran into the bathroom, contorted myself over the toilet so that I could pee into it and not onto the wall or ceiling, laboriously peed, still had the boner, masturbated in a brisk businesslike manner into the sink with the hotel conditioner, rinsed out the sink, took a shower, and then put on clothes.

Everyone was still asleep. And I still did not have a phone. So I turned on the TV and flipped around until I found David Attenborough's
Blue Planet
and watched the segment about tubeworms for probably the seventy-fifth time in my life.

Corey was next to wake up. He went straight for the bathroom.

Pretty quickly he came back out again.

COREY: wes

WES: what

COREY: what's in the sink

WES: i don't know

COREY:

WES: what

COREY: well i don't know either but it looks a lot like jizz

WES:

ASH: nnnggh

COREY: wes, true or false: that's your jizz in our sink

WES:
corey stop talking so loud

COREY: wes you gotta at least clean up the sink after you've jizzed in it

WES:
shut up i thought i did clean it

ASH: both of you shut up about wes jizzing in the sink

It turns out that rinsing isn't always enough to get jizz all the way out of a sink. Anyway, I hastily cleaned up the rest of it, but the damage was done, and things were awkward at breakfast in the hotel buffet afterward.

But I figured it wasn't just awkward because I had masturbated into the hotel sink. I felt like the awkwardness had just as much to do with the disgrace we had all brought upon ourselves the day before at Perfect Taste.

How had it happened? Could it really just have been the
circumstances? The lack of stage or sound system? The super inappropriate audience?

My suspicion was that those factors were not it. They served only to conceal the deeper truth. And that truth was, perhaps we were awful.

You can talk about circumstance all you want. It was still
us
up there. It was us whose performance had constituted an atrocity against music and possibly humanity itself. Circumstance or not, we had proven ourselves capable of limitless monstrosity.

And not even the good kind of monstrosity. Not “monstrosity” in the sense of eating Roger Federer. “Monstrosity” in the sense of being so lame that it makes everyone question the very project of human life. Monstrous not like the sudden eruption of a completely ass-kicking volcano, and instead monstrous like a desert, which will also kill you, but mostly by being so monotonous and irritating that you finally decide to lie down and be eaten by a vulture. That was the kind of band that maybe we were.

And that's what I figured we were all sitting there silently thinking. Then when Ash got up to look for coffee, it became clear that I was at least part wrong.

COREY: um

WES: what

COREY: so uh

COREY:

WES: corey what

COREY: so just so you know ash and i hooked up last night

My first reaction was, I found myself doing Corey's signature Robert De Niro Face Scrunch. I did it for kind of a really long time.

I was overcome with something. But it wasn't anger. I think it was more just the question,
How
. It was just a huge existential bafflement at how someone like Ash could ever want to hook up with someone like Corey.

COREY: so yeah

WES: all right all right

COREY: yup

WES: you guys just hooked up while i was lying there in the tub?

COREY: first we moved you out of the tub and onto the floor because we were worried you would fall in and drown

WES: hmm

COREY: you were in like a coma or something

WES: and then you guys, uh

COREY: yeah

WES: well uh

COREY:

WES: well . . . good job?

COREY:

WES:

COREY: are you mad

What I was thinking was, Look. I know I'm no prize. I'm somewhat walleyed. I have dumb floppy hair and no visible muscles of any kind. In general I look like I'm twelve and probably will for the next two decades. The list goes on and on. But
Corey
?
Corey has one of those heads where the back of it extends an unnaturally long distance, like a dinosaur's. His breath always smells like a corpse. Speaking of corpses, his hands and feet are frequently cold and purple, from terrible circulation, which I guess you shouldn't hold against him, but I'm just saying. Also, if I look like I'm twelve, he basically
is
twelve, like psychologically.

WES,
lying
: no i'm not mad

COREY: okay

WES:

COREY: well thanks

WES: thanks for what

COREY: thanks for being cool about this

WES: sure

COREY:

WES:

COREY: i have to say you do seem a little bit mad

It was just, we had a ninety-ninth-percentile girl on our hands, in pretty much every respect, the smartest, sexiest, most interesting girl we were definitely ever going to meet,
and
it turned out she had a totally bizarre and crazily permissive taste in dudes and was willing to hook up with a completely subpar dude, a dude flailing around in the forties or thirties, in terms of percentile of dude, which meant
I maybe had a chance
with a girl like Ash. But because Corey had blundered in there first, now there was definitely no chance at all and an opportunity like this was never going to happen again. So actually I was suicidal with rage.

WES: yeah i'm a little bit mad

COREY: yeah i could tell

WES: i mean i'm mad because it's gonna make things weird for the band now if you keep hooking up, because this band is now gonna feel like it's a married couple on tour with this third random dude, i.e., me

COREY:

WES: but it'll also be weird if you
stop
hooking up, because then you guys will probably start fighting or getting mad at each other

COREY: oh

WES: so yeah it feels like something that'll fuck up the band no matter what and i'm a little mad about that

COREY: i figured you were mad because you wanted to hook up with her

It was like this. Have you ever suddenly realized that someone older than you, whom you've always assumed is smart, because they're in a position of authority, actually isn't very smart? Like you're getting nachos at a Pirates game with your Uncle Bill and he tries to pay with exact change and he keeps getting it wrong? Even after the cashier has explained it to him? Until finally the huge dude behind you guys has to physically take the right change out of Uncle Bill's hand? And you're standing there feeling embarrassed for Uncle Bill but even more for yourself and you just want to get out of there?

Okay. Now imagine having that feeling about the entire universe. Like God and everything. That is what I felt like when
I found out that Ash had decided to hook up with my idiot best friend. There was a God who was in charge, and He was just way dumber than you had ever even suspected.

COREY: i mean i'm just saying

WES: fucking drop it

COREY: okay

WES: jesus

COREY: i knew you weren't gonna be cool about this

WES:
i'm
not being cool?!

COREY: yeah you're freaking out

WES: you're the one insisting on talking about it right now like a big freckly tampon

COREY: i'm just being honest with you

WES: i'm also being honest when i tell you that you're being a gummy wad of used horse condoms at this time so please shut up

COREY: i knew you'd be mad

WES: yeah i'm fucking mad because you did some typical selfish impulsive destructive bullshit because you're the dinosaur-headed goat foreskin that you are somehow always incapable of not being, so just shut the hell up

The small part of me that was able to have some perspective and not just selfishly feel horrible about Corey and Ash was feeling horrible about what I was saying to Corey. Because this was different from the ambient low-level bickering that we often do. That stuff is just riffing and no one's out to make anyone feel bad. This was clearly something else. This was not playful
dogs-romping-around behavior. This was shitty spiteful human behavior, but I couldn't help it.

COREY: just tell me this and i will shut up

WES: tell you what, ass

COREY: would you have hooked up with her?

WES: what?

COREY: just would you have hooked up with her if she was like, wes, let's hook up

WES:

COREY: that's all i'm asking

WES: the answer is no

COREY: what? bullshit

WES: the answer is no so choke to death on sasquatch's dick

That was the point at which Ash returned. So we shut up about it and resumed our awkward wordless consumption of low-quality sausage.

We tried doing Internet in the hotel's business center, a dank, windowless, fluorescent-lit closet of ancient computers that kept asking us to update their versions of Windows. But when we tried updating one computer, it had a panic attack. So we ignored the other ones' software update pleas, which was difficult, because they kept popping up every thirty seconds or so in front of everything you were trying to do, and also because you did feel pretty bad for these poor dinosaur computers.

ASH,
reading email
: fuck

WES: what

ASH: we can't use my car anymore

WES,
alarmed
: what?!

COREY: hey i'm getting the software update message again

ASH: yeah we're all getting it so just ignore it

WES: ash what's wrong with your car?

ASH: my mom emailed me. she's pissed off because the jazz camp people keep bothering her. she says the police are looking for my license plate and are going to pull us off the road

WES: fuck

ASH: so we should stop using my car

COREY: how do you get this message to go away

WES: click “cancel”

COREY: it won't let me

ASH: uncheck the little box and click “cancel”

COREY: it says don't uncheck the box

WES: uncheck it anyway

COREY: ok

WES: christ

COREY: in my defense i didn't know you could do that

WES: so what are we going to do?

ASH: we need another car

WES: oh

ASH: with its own plates

WES: how much does a new car cost?

ASH: we don't want a new car. we want a used one that already has a plate

COREY: the box came back

WES: corey jesus christ

ASH: get rid of the box every time, don't update the software, and hurry up because we need to get moving

WES: how much cash do we have?

ASH: i'll take some out today. it shouldn't cost more than a couple thousand to get a car that works

WES: whoa

COREY: uh wes

WES: what

COREY,
typing
: uhhhhhh

WES: corey what

COREY: wes do you remember any of my passwords

WES: oh my god of course not

COREY: i don't remember them either but i know they're all super complicated

ASH: wes what have you heard from your parents

I had heard nothing. They hadn't emailed me, or Facebooked me, or chatted me, or left me any voice messages. They had made no effort to get in touch with me at all.

Honestly, it was just embarrassing. If they had sent me something about how angry they were, or worried, or disappointed, or whatever, that would have made me feel pretty terrible. But this made me feel worse. I was sitting there thinking,
Come on, guys. Even Ash's delinquent mom is making you look bad right now
.

WES: they seem very upset and worried

ASH: what did they say specifically

WES:

ASH:

WES: well i'm assuming they're upset and worried

ASH: oh

WES: they haven't contacted me in any way

ASH: huh

WES: but uhhhh

ASH: that sucks. fuck them

WES: no they're pretty busy. it's not a big deal

ASH: no fuck them

WES: i mean i guess a little but they don't usuall

ASH: your parents need to get it the fuck together

WES: well

ASH:

WES: i guess yeah

COREY: uh guys

ASH: what

COREY: i think i just tried to update the software

WES: you
think
you tried to update the software

COREY: well i did try to update it

WES: corey why the fuck would you do such a thing

ASH: we've been saying this whole time not to

COREY: just to get it to shut up but now it's all fucked

WES: how are you even still alive

ASH: let's get the fuck out of here

We did, but there was a part of me that did not want to leave that room. For one thing, it had Internet. I was really starting to feel like I was going insane without my phone. I was reaching my hand into my pocket like every thirty seconds and then realizing yet again that there was no phone in there, and every single time that realization was unbearable. I was dead to the world minus two people, and it felt like all around me terrible things were probably happening, and I didn't even get to know about them.

Basically going through your life with no phone is like driving a car from inside a chicken suit.

But for another thing, I sort of just didn't want to be on the run anymore, with my nitwit best friend and the girl who was choosing to hook up with him and not me. I really just wanted to sit on the floor of the business center like a four-year-old until someone came to pick me up.