The Haters (12 page)

Honestly, the only thing that kept me from doing that was that I still had this stupid desire to be in a band and play shows. I was beginning to realize that this desire was eventually going to destroy the rest of my life.

COREY: what's good about my password system is that it's essentially unhackable

ASH: unless you no longer have your phone

COREY: well

ASH:

COREY: well yeah

15.
HOW TO TRADE YOUR REALLY NICE BUT POLICE-SUSPICION-AROUSING CAR FOR AN INFINITELY LESS NICE AND COME TO THINK OF IT PROBABLY ALSO POLICE-SUSPICION-AROUSING CAR IN THREE EASY STEPS

Step One. Get a bunch of money from Citibank

Specifically, five thousand dollars. If you're not a minor, you can just walk in there and do this. The bank people might put up some resistance, like, sweetie, what do you need the money for, do your parents know about this, etc., but this resistance is easily overcome, especially if the kind but patronizing Citibank manager is made aware that you are part of a family that could remove a bazillion dollars from Citibank tomorrow in response to what feels like unfair, ageist, possibly sexist treatment, an awareness that will make the Citibank manager drop the kindness but also the patronizingness and get all thin-lipped and wounded as the teller silently fills your envelope with five thousand goddamned dollars while you try not to do a fist-pump so triumphant that it blows out your shoulder and then you have to play guitar left-handed.

Note: Step One requires that you already have five thousand dollars and are part of a family with a bazillion dollars
.

Step Two. Cruise around neighborhoods where cars seem to be for sale a lot and eventually buy one from a person named “Relph”

In Knoxville, it's not super hard to stumble onto a neighborhood where every block or two there's a car with one of those black-and-orange
FOR SALE
signs taped to the side window. So get in there and start cruising around. Because you don't have a phone, you're going to have to knock on some doors, which will excite some dogs and confuse some old people and irritate some strung-out jobless weirdos, and when you do finally find someone who actually does have a car to sell, you will discover that the car is not running right now, and then the next one is running but it only gets six miles per gallon because there is a puncture wound in the gas tank from a knife that will be displayed to you in a frighteningly casual way, and the one after that runs fine except there are no brakes or windshield, and after a while it is going to seem totally hopeless but that is about when you will find a suitable transaction partner. He will be a genial courtly older gentleman named Relph who corrects you with a wheezy giggle when you try to pronounce it “Ralph.” “Nope,” he says. “
RELPH
.” Okay. Relph's car makes it all the way around the block, so you agree to buy it for $2,300 cash, no questions asked. It is a boxy little 1998 Honda Accord the color of your dad's teeth, it smells like menthol cigarettes and a barbecue that happened at least five years ago, and the backseat is patterned with entire stain continents from wine or blood. It is an atlas of stains, and Atlas of Stains will strike one of you, very briefly, as a decent band name, until you say it out loud and only then do you realize your mistake, but it's too late because already one of your bandmates is shooting it down by comparing it unfavorably with a number of sweaty earnest sexually frustrated Christ-core type bands while you mutter I know I know I know I know I know and
maybe try to climb into the trunk to escape except it's already got the amps in it.

Step Three. Deposit the nice car in long-term parking at Knoxville's McGhee Tyson Airport

After transferring all of the equipment to the Honda Accord, which already has the Check Engine light on and is making a quiet but piercing hungry-dog whine at all speeds below 20 mph, you can split up and one of you can drive the brand-new SUV into the Knoxville airport's long-term parking section and park in a random indoor spot and walk away without once looking back, feeling pretty badass, like Vin Diesel walking away from something exploding, except there is no explosion and you actually do look back and the big black SUV is just kind of still there in the parking spot looking enormous and blank like someone else's dog that has already forgotten everything about you.

You walk over to Departures and stand there waiting for your bandmates to show up in the Accord, imagining the beat-up yellowish car pulling up to the curb, trying to make yourself okay with the idea that they will be furiously making out or, who knows, casually fingering each other, or even just holding hands, which would actually be worst of all, but then when they do show up they're not even sitting next to each other. Ash is in the backseat wedged in next to some drums with her guitar on her lap, just wordlessly shredding away, and Corey glances at you from behind the wheel and the look on his freckly bucktoothed face says to you, something is happening here, and he has no idea what that is.

16.
WE DRIVE INTO ALABAMA AND ALMOST GET MURDERED IMMEDIATELY

The band tour vehicle experience became dramatically different after Knoxville.

So we were all sweaty, and punchy, and kind of afraid. And yet, as the Accord rattled and whined down the highway in the muggy midafternoon heat, the air roaring through the open windows, with no phone, I found myself in a good mood. Who even knows why. It's just a good feeling to be in a band even if everything's going to shit.

The windows had to be down so that we did not all immediately die, and it was hard to hear anything over the noise, but after an hour Ash started yelling at us from the backseat anyway.

ASH: I'M CALLING A BAND MEETING

WES: SOUNDS GOOD LET'S DO IT

COREY: WHAT

WES: ASH SAID SHE WANTS TO HAVE A BAND MEETING

COREY: OH

COREY: AREN'T WE ALWAYS KIND OF HAVING A BAND MEETING

ASH: WHAT

WES: COREY SAYS AREN'T WE ALWAYS KIND OF HAVING A BAND MEETING

ASH: WHAT IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN

COREY: WHAT

WES: SHE WANTS TO KNOW WHAT DO YOU MEAN

COREY: WE'RE JUST ALWAYS TOGETHER AND TALKING AND STUFF SO ISN'T THAT ONE NONSTOP BAND MEETING THAT'S HAPPENING ALL THE TIME

ASH: I CAN'T HEAR WHAT HE'S SAYING

WES: CAN WE DRIVE SLOWER OR CLOSE THE WINDOWS BECAUSE THIS IS GETTING ANNOYING

Corey didn't want to get off the highway. So instead we closed the windows. Immediately everyone's Sweat Levels shot up about 20,000 percent.

COREY: what i'm saying is right now our entire life is a band meeting so when you're like let's call a band meeting, how is that diff

ASH: item one: band philosophy

WES:

COREY:

ASH: i think it's going to help us if everything we do comes from a central unifying philosophy

COREY: you mean like buddhism

ASH: no

COREY:

ASH: i mean what would that mean? that we're all suddenly buddhists?

COREY: wes's parents are buddhists so maybe we c

WES: OW FUCK

COREY: JESUS WHAT

WES: THIS SEAT STABBED THE SHIT OUT OF ME

COREY: oh

WES: it literally feels like this seat is full of angry scorpions

ASH: i mean more just like a philosophy about the music itself, like something really simple like an attitude or a mantra or something

COREY: you mean like “work hard play hard”

ASH: well definitely not that

COREY:

ASH: “work hard play hard” is the philosophy of being a relatively high-functioning alcoholic

COREY: i mean i'm not saying, uhh, but i guess yeah that is what that essentially means

I was starting to realize that one reason I was feeling good was, Ash was not behaving like Corey was the love of her life. She was behaving like he was a lab partner who was spilling acid all over her stuff.

Meanwhile, we were stuck behind a semi that had more than thirty bumper stickers on it:

Driver Carries No Cash (He's Married)

This Truck Is Responsible for “Global Warming”

Made with Wrenches, Not Chopsticks

WES: what about “if it sounds good, it is good”

ASH: if it sounds good, it is good

COREY: nope that's terrible

ASH: no actually that's not bad. did you just come up with it?

WES: uh yup

COREY: what? no he didn't. duke ellington said that

WES: mmmm corey i don't think duke ellington said it

COREY: wes it's like the most famous duke ellington quote of all time

WES,
falsetto
: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

COREY:

WES: mmmmmmmmmmmmmyou're thinking of “it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing”

ASH,
rustily
: heh

COREY: okay if the rest of the band meeting is just gonna be wes being a herb i propose we adjourn

We were still stuck in the right lane behind the heavily bumper-stickered 18-wheeler. In the left lane, a Jeep with tinted windows was blocking us from getting over.

COREY: ugh come on

ASH: i like “if it sounds good, it is good”

WES: sure just an idea

ASH: but it sort of means don't make anything that's going to be an acquired taste

WES: hmmm

COREY,
gesturing
: come on! let me over

ASH: like anything difficult that doesn't sound good right away that you have to give a chance, this philosophy is like don't make that thing. instead make the shiny easy-to-like thing

WES: right

ASH: i'm not sold either way but I'm glad we're thinking about this shit

COREY,
rhythmically honking the horn
:
stu
pid
tin
ted
win
dow
moth
er
fuck
er

WES: i had a teacher who used to say “the best artist is the best thief”

ASH: mmmmm

WES: like you take ideas from everywhere and you do cool like unexpected things with them and aaaeeeeeeeeehhhhhh.

COREY: UM

WES: this is not good

ASH: huh

COREY: WHAT IS HAPPENING

What was happening was, suddenly there was a laser show in our car. It was big, and it was everywhere. It consisted of all these green sci-fi-type characters and glyphs and designs rapidly blinking and rotating on the steering wheel and the dashboard and our laps and bodies and everything. The vibe of it was, basically, Evil Alien Spaceship Control Panel, like from Halo or something.

It didn't take long to figure out that the laser show was being projected from the Jeep next to us. We could see the projection in miniature on the Jeep's tinted passenger-side window. But we could not see anything else. So, for example, we could not see if they had a bunch of guns. But you would have to assume that maybe they did.

The Jeep's creepy opaque windows, combined with the fact that they were not letting us over, and just aggressively keeping pace with us and trapping us behind a semi, caused two of us to lose our shit.

COREY: NO NO NO. NO NO NO NO NO

WES: COREY STOP FREAKING OUT

COREY:
YOU'RE
FREAKING OUT

ASH: guys

WES: I GET TO FREAK OUT BUT YOU DON'T BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SHOW THEM ANY FEAR

COREY: ASH IF YOU STICK SOME MONEY OUT OF THE WINDOW MAYBE THEY'LL TAKE IT AND LEAVE US ALONE

We probably wouldn't have been as freaked out if it were possible to look into the Jeep. But it wasn't. It was just this big, black, faceless object, gliding alongside us, broadcasting this nerve-racking thing onto us like a tractor beam.

ASH: guys they're just fucking with us

WES: yeah but fucking with us is not good

COREY: no no no i would say it is not good at all

WES: should we pull over maybe

COREY: yup. yup yup yup

And so Corey hit the brakes, swerved into the shoulder, and we came to a loud, rattly, shuddery halt.