The Haters (18 page)

Step Four. Attempt to reason with a guy with, I'm not shitting you, an honest-to-God shotgun

Ed. I'm really sorry about this. We just want to hit the road. That's all we want to do. We're super grateful to you guys, and we're sorry about the toilet, which we clogged. Which I clogged. I was the one who, in particular, clogged it. But my understanding is, that toilet was fucked up before we even—what? Wait. What. No. No no no. Ed. We didn't take anything, I promise. That's not what we do. Our point was to play music for you guys, and we got to do that, it was great, thank you, and now we're going to hit the road. The fuse thing was just, I freaked out and made a stupid decision, and if you just go down and flip the switch back, it should be fine. Okay. Ed. That's it. That's all I'm gonna say, and I know you're not gonna like this, but we're just going to get in the car and drive down the road. And I know you're not gonna shoot. So my bandmates are getting in the car, and I'm getting in the car now, and that's what we're doing. I know you're not going to shoot, because you're a good dude. And Charlize, you're a good woman, and I hope you get better. You're really good people. You have a beautiful family. Okay. Bye.

Step Five. Casually yet swiftly drive the hell out of there

Drive. Ed doesn't shoot. No one follows you. After five blocks of zigzagging, you are suddenly right in front of the police station. Jesus Jesus Jesus, everyone in the car says, and then pretends that everything's cool. The police pay your car zero attention and in fact may not even be home. And after another fifteen minutes you're on some kind of little local highway. Corey needs to repack his drums so they're in their cases and not banging around and getting all fucked up and also so there's room for someone to sit in the back. So you pull over at a gas station. You get out of the car and stare at your reflection in the window.

ASH: thanks for saying it was you who clogged the toilet

WES: that's what bandmates do

COREY: why don't you guys just fuck already and get it over with

21.
WE MAKE A RUN FOR THE BORDER

Once again, we found ourselves driving a car whose plates were being looked for by the police. But this time it seemed a little more urgent. So stopping to find another used car to buy was out of the question. Instead we figured our biggest priority was to get across state lines ASAP. We actually had no idea if that made any difference, but it seemed like the thing that was most likely to.

Somehow there was no consensus about which way we
shouldn't
go. Like which direction was not a state border but instead the ocean. Ash said east, I said south, and Corey incredibly thought there would be ocean to the north. His position was, we were probably in the sticking-out part of the South where if you go north, you hit the ocean. Ash and I both resisted the temptation to dick on him for this completely insane belief. But our embarrassed silence just made him angrier.

Anyway, we headed west. No one knew what state was in that direction. Texas? Louisiana? Florida? The ocean maybe if all three of us were wrong? It was incredible not to know. It was so stupid that it was actually kind of glorious.

We also figured we had to stay off the big highways. So instead we mostly just took weird little back roads. Ash drove, Corey rode
shotgun, and I was in the backseat. Our predominant theme of discussion was what do we do if the police show up and start chasing us.

W
HAT
D
O
W
E
D
O
I
F THE
P
OLICE
S
HOW
U
P AND
S
TART
C
HASING
U
S
A Decision Tree

1. Are they in a car or on horseback?

in a car:
Then we're not outrunning them, that's for sure.

on horseback:
We're probably still not outrunning them. Unless the horse's Check Engine light is also on and it has smoke coming out of its butt.

2. What kind of road are we on? A highway or an obscure little back road? Or some railroad tracks?

on a highway:
Get off the highway ASAP and try to find an obscure little back road.

on an obscure little back road:
Great. Actually, maybe we should find some railroad tracks.

why would we be on some railroad tracks:
Because
no
highway cop gets paid enough to follow three teenage psychos up some railroad tracks!! Wes hand me a Mike and Ikes.

3. Railroad tracks are impossible to drive on. Also if a train shows up, it is going to destroy the car and all of our instruments.

also the train might get fucked up and this is starting to sound like
something we will definitely go to jail for:
Okay. Well, maybe the tracks have like a shoulder or something where you can drive
next
to them.

but then wouldn't the police just do that, too:
Okay. Well, sorry for trying to come up with a completely fierce plan.

OW FUCK
. What.

THIS PIECE OF SHIT SEAT STABBED ME. IT'S FINE
. Okay.

4. Okay. So we're being pursued by the police. Maybe we can lose them by driving into the forest or whipping around the corner into a conveniently abandoned barn or aircraft hangar and then immediately turning off the car and sitting in the darkness while they roll past all confused and stuff.

no. none of those forest/barn/hangar options are gonna work:
Why the fuck not. Wes hand me some washcloths.

if we drive right into the forest, it's not gonna lead to anything good:
What because of all the trees and roots and stuff?

it's just not paved, which you kind of need if you're driving, especially fast, especially a shitty car:
Okay. Yeah. I get it. Fine. But if there's a barn, we should get in there.

okay but how many abandoned barns or aircraft hangars have we passed so far? have we even passed one?:
You know what? I'm gonna stop trying to come up with shit. Because what's the point.

sorry but we just need to think everything through:
No, it's fine.

Sorry. It's fine. I guess we're not losing the police or outrunning them, so we'd have to pull over.

5. Are the police going to shoot us if we run out of the car once we pull over?

probably:
Well, then I guess we kind of have no options at all.

probably not:
Then let's all run in opposite directions, lose them in the forest or wherever we are, and rendezvous in New Orleans in three days. My old guitar teacher Onnie has a restaurant there. It's called Lime Tree.

6. So the plan is, everybody scatter and just leave the car and the instruments and stuff.

yup:
I'll pay for all your shit. Don't worry. That's always the agreement. Never worry about money on this tour. I've got that covered.

7. Is this even technically a decision tree?

i don't know:
I guess now that I think about it I'm not super clear on what a decision tree is.

At some point in the conversation, I fell asleep and stayed asleep for a super long time. When I woke up, it was past noon, and the police had not yet put our decision tree to the test. Instead, we were in the parking lot of a Buffalo Wild Wings.

WES: are we across state lines yet?

COREY: don't be a dick

WES: how is that question being a dick

ASH: corey was supposed to keep an eye out for a Welcome to Whatever State This Is sign, but he hasn't been

COREY: it probably says on the menu or whatever

It did. We were in Furio, Mississippi. No one knew how it had happened. But it had, and we were all filled with relief, even if that made no sense.

We did not even try to ask if we could play a show at the Buffalo Wild Wings. It was clearly not the kind of bar where bands were supposed to play. It was the kind of bar where you were supposed to watch sports on enormous TVs while experiencing the maximum amount of air-conditioning that the human body could withstand, and also eat meals of only breaded fried meats and dipping sauces. This air-conditioning was incredible, and we briefly discussed eating a breaded fried meat meal, but decided not to, to conserve the cash that we had gotten from Ash's now-probably-frozen bank account. And anyway we had more urgent matters to attend to. Also it was so cold that we were all already getting ice-cream headaches just from the air.

Instead we made another kind of horrifying food purchase at a gas station and set off on a great quest.

ASH: we gotta find a place to play that makes sense for us to play and doesn't suck

WES: yeah

COREY: nnhh

ASH: that's been our problem this whole tour so far

WES: yup

ASH: and we have to accept that it's going to take some time
to find a place like that, so let's invest some time in searching for a great place to play, like in one area

WES: yeah

COREY: wes can you stop saying “yeah” to everything because it's fucking annoying

WES:
hell yeah

ASH: haha

COREY: jesus christ

WES: you know how there's bobby, the guy who hangs out near james brown affirming everything james brown says? i think our band needs a bobby

COREY: i think our band needs a me slapping you around

WES:
yeah

22.
THE BAND CHANGES ITS NAME TO “CAMPIG” AND THEN LOCATES THE MOST HURTING BAR IN A HUNDRED-MILE RADIUS

Our first task, however, was to identify a place where we could spend the night without arousing local interest. We settled on a campground that was advertised from the road by a banner strung between two trees. The banner was 70 percent white space, 30 percent pictures of bottles of Miller Lite. In the white space someone had scrawled:

CAMPIG

12,—$

It's hard to say what intrigued us more: the idea of staying at a place for twelve dollars a night, or the word “campig.” Even Corey perked up briefly.

COREY: what if our band name was “campig”?

[
a contemplative silence
]

ASH: it's a little close to danzig, so i'm wondering does it make me think of loud angry hairy jock metal

COREY: no. no one will think that

WES: what if people think it's a kind of pig

COREY: jesus wes. listen to yourself

WES: i was just doing your thing that you were doing earlier

COREY: what thing

WES: the thing that you were like with the name air horse where you were like what if people think we're a horse, ugh, i hate that

COREY: air horse sucks as a name but i don't remember making that specific point

WES: you were like air horse makes me think of a horse singing with a human voice and then you melted down existentially

COREY: yeah because that's a nightmare hellscape thing to think about but this is completely different because it's not a horse and it's not even a pig. it's campig

WES: i see

COREY: even if it was a pig, a pig singing is awesome

ASH: we can try campig if both of you promise to stop talking about it

It turned out that in order to pay twelve dollars you had to be willing to sleep in your car, which generally people only do when their car is an RV. So we debated whether that made sense for us. But it turned out not to be a debate at all when no one was willing to argue the position of Yes, Let's Sleep in This Atrocious-Smelling Car Tonight. So instead we just paid eighty dollars for a cabin. It smelled rotty and mushroomy but also like incredibly powerful lemons that were made in a factory.

We spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening ricocheting around the entire county, looking for bars or other performance spaces, trying to keep track of the
CAMPIG
campground so we could find our way back to it, and lying to people about our dads.

That was the strategy Ash came up with. It was, one of us would walk into a store or gas station and tell whoever was running it, Excuse me, Mister, uh, I'm looking for my daddy and I don't know this area too good, so uh, can you tell me where the closest bar is, because [
breaking down to a whisper
] that's probably where I'm gonna find him.

Look. I know it was super wrong of us to do this. But it did help us find a bar a pretty high percentage of the time.

It also turned out to be a fascinating social experiment that exposed us to a whole diversity of Mississippi dude humanity. Some dudes got big-eyed and husky-throated and gave us free food. A bunch of others got stiff and weird. And two dudes actually laughed in my face. One of them said, “Well, young man, the bad news is, you're not much of a liar. The good news is, you're probably not cut out for politics.” And the other just yelled, “My daddy was the same way! We should start a club!” and then continued watching local news and ignoring me.

But for the most part we got a bunch of directions to bars, which was good. The problem was none of those bars wanted us.

It was clear that this was going to be a problem for the entire tour. If a place was an established music venue, it already had an act booked that night. And if a place wasn't, it didn't want to just randomly become one, especially not for our sake. We were clearly underage and not from around there. We looked like trouble. Or at least serious inconvenience. We were clearly something that was not going to improve anyone's life in any way.

What we needed was a place that was as weird and prone to bad decisions as we were. But the hours piled up and we didn't find that place. We didn't even seem to be close. Also, I don't want to go into the details, but when three people eat nothing but Twizzlers, Combos, and warm Dr. Pepper all day, it gives the car a new and terrible smell that should only exist in an alien penal colony.