The Haters (28 page)

COREY: there was nowhere private so no

WES: right

COREY: the thing about me is i'm not a crazy taint exhibitionist who wants everyone to see his taint

WES: yup

I found Ash having breakfast alone in an abandoned corner of the house, between an elephant sculpture and an unused hookah. She, too, had seen me naked. But that was not all.

“You guys had sex like twenty feet away from me,” she said, munching the weird toast.

My heart basically stopped.

“There's no way,” I said.

“Yup,” she said, munching.

“We walked all the way to the other end of the second floor.”

“I can tell you for a fact that is not what you did.”

“No. Come on. You're fucking with me.”

“I wish I was. You got maybe ten steps out of my room, and then you stopped, and got down right in the middle of the floor, and immediately started fucking.”

“Oh my God. I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. It was clear you had no idea what was going on. Plus it was pretty dark in there.”

“Oof.”

“You were just pale shapes from where I was. But I could hear everything.”

“Yeah.”

“The first time there was about thirty seconds of foreplay, she put a condom on you, and it was pretty much over before it started.”

“Pretty much.”

“I have to say, it was impressive how long you came. You came nonstop for a really long time.”

“Yup.”

“A
really
long time. Your balls must have been like little deflated balloons after that.”

“Yyyyup.”

“Look. Don't feel bad. The first time for a guy is never good. You got it out of the way and you went right back at it. And that time it sounded like things went pretty well.”

“We didn't go right back at it.”

“Oh yes you did. You guys went
right
back at it. You weren't even done coming. You were like, fuck, sorry, I came instantaneously, and she was like, well, you won't this time, and you guys just started making out and going at it again. You didn't even change condoms, which I have to tell you is gross. And defeats the purpose.”

“That's really not how I remember it.”

“Well, your memory is fucked up, because that's what happened. I was there. In the future you need to change condoms if you're going to have gross porny multiple-male-orgasm sex.”

“Thanks.”

“Honestly, my recommendation would be, don't have that kind of sex in the first place.”

“Thank you.”

“Maximum, keep it to two orgasms. Or at least give yourself more time before the third one.”

“You mean more than an hour.”

“I mean, more than the ninety seconds you gave yourself to smoke a bowl before a third round of pain-fucking.”

“Ninety seconds?”

“Yeah.”

“There's no way. It was at least . . .
half
an hour.”

“No. You waited for exactly as long as it took you to speed-smoke a bowl and then she basically tortured your dick. For a really long time. She was flipping you around and putting you in all these positions and you were like, ow, wait wait wait, time out. And she was like,
no
timeout,
no
stopping, just shut up and don't even think about stopping because I am a psycho.”

“It wasn't that bad.”

“It sounded horrible. And it took forever. That's when I should've broken it up.”

“Well, thanks for not breaking it up, because that would have been weird.”

“Um, I did break it up the fourth time, and that's what you should be thanking me for.”

“There was no fourth time!”

“Ohhhh yes there was. You were half-asleep. You were just lying there murmuring, Please, no, and she was ordering you around in broken Spanish.”

“No. Come on.”

“Yeah. Finally I yelled, ‘He wants you to stop,' and she was like, ‘Are you sure,' and I was like, ‘Um, yeah.' And then I think you both fell asleep because I didn't hear anything.”

“Oh,” I said.

She munched the weird bread and studied me.

“Well, thanks for listening to me have sex four times,” I said.

I was a little mad and she could tell.

“Hey,” she said in a different tone of voice. And she made that weird lopsided grin again and gave me a light punch in the arm that I think she hoped would be playful. But instead it was just awkward and dumb.

It was the first truly awkward thing I had seen her do and it took me out of being mad somehow.

“Why did you stay and listen,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I should have left. But, I don't know. I guess I wanted to make sure your first experience was okay.”

“You did?”

“I guess, yeah, I did. And the main thing is, look. You just don't get that many opportunities to listen to someone you know fucking.”

“Huh.”

“It's just really interesting. I recommend it.”

At that point Corey walked in, so we stopped talking about it.

“This bread looks like a bear took a shit,” he told us, like he was a reporter for local news.

I was still in a total mental fog. But I could at least pick up that things were a little better among the three of us. We were all capable of sitting around talking and joking and stuff. It was like things had been reset a little bit.

Also, Ash made it clear that it was just gonna be the three of us opening for Deebo.

“Cookie knows I want to play my songs,” she said. “And he knows that's just you guys and not him.”

We rehearsed all afternoon. We were all pretty cracked out and achey and terrible-smelling. But the music clicked in a way that it hadn't before.

It didn't sound the way it had in the jazz camp practice room. That was electric and insane and kind of out of control. At the Pritchard studio, it had a completely different feel. We played our set and it felt like wearing a really old good T-shirt. The songs didn't cut anymore. They just
sat
in this cool, soft, comfortable way.

Ash sang quieter, Corey and I locked in about 3–5 bpm slower than usual, the amps buzzed less, and the guitar and the bass had a cleaner Meters-y vibe. It felt good and we didn't talk about it. We played all afternoon and none of us tried to overanalyze it or be some rah-rah unnecessary cheerleader. Specifically, I didn't do those things. Those were normally my specialty. But I managed to just chill out and be a third of the band, no more, no less.

I remember thinking it was working because we just didn't have any shit anymore that we were keeping from one another. It was all out there. We had all seen me naked. We had all seen Corey go insane from drugs and alcohol. And as for Ash, maybe we hadn't seen her at her worst. But we had seen her stoned, and mean, and even awkward. And both Corey and I had definitely done all the hooking up with her that we were going to do, and it was all past us somehow. All that was left was music.

Cookie didn't even show up to listen to us. I guess Ash had
told him not to. That was the vibe I got, but I didn't ask her about it. We didn't see him until he came to tell us that dinner was ready and that after we should get going to the Crossroad.

“Y'all feelin good,” he asked us.

“Feeling great,” Ash told him.

Dinner was the same situation as before of mysteriously someone had made some food and everyone got to just walk into the kitchen and randomly take some. It was an enormous bowl of some kind of weird lemony bean salad. It was huge and vegetarian and it made me kind of sad. It felt like something my mom would have figured out how to make one weekend and then we would have to eat it for three or four days.

I knew I had to write or call my parents again. But I also knew that I could go another day and it wouldn't be that big of a deal. And that made me sad for whatever stupid reason.

I saw ShaeAnne through a window eating outside by herself, and I went and joined her.

“Yo,” I said.

“Where were you all day,” she asked me.

“Playing music,” I said.

“You left me all alone,” she said, pulling up grass in little handfuls. I felt shame. But also panic.

“Oh,” I said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know you wanted me to stick around.”

I knew as soon as I said it that it was idiotic.

She said nothing and just rolled her eyes.

“Are you gonna come see us play,” I asked.

“I don't think so,” she said.

I was relieved. But then I felt even worse.

“Well,” I said. “Hey. I had an amazing time last night.”

She ripped out some more grass and rolled her eyes even harder.

“All of yesterday,” I said, panicking. Everything I said was a mistake. “You're really cool to talk to. And funny. And obviously really pretty and sexy. So it was just a great day.”

She just hiked her eyebrows up and nodded miserably to the grass.

“It was my first time,” I said. “So.”

She looked at me.

“Sorry I'm being weird,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said, smiling finally. And she threw grass in my face.

31.
DEEBO

The Crossroad was a little like Ellie's. Except bigger and not depressing. It was set back in the woods off the two-lane highway, and it had no parking lot so there were crooked lines of parked cars on either side of the access road. The
XROAD
sign looked like it had done all the fading it was ever going to do and was now an ageless unchangeable artifact from another dimension. Inside there were enough tables for about a hundred people but almost everyone was standing around the bar. It was an even mix of black and white, and in general people were less downtrodden and more cheerful and it was kind of impossible to tell anyone's age.

The sound system was intense, and the sound guy weighed at least three hundred pounds and had a lot of questions about my mic levels that I couldn't answer. We were too late to do a sound check. We didn't even have time for Corey to set up his drums. “Just use the house set,” the sound guy told him. “House
set
,” agreed Corey in a fake-deep voice that made it clear that he was super intimidated.

All we had time to do was meet Deebo Harrison.

He was sitting with his band at a table off to one side. They were all wearing loose-fitting shirts, and their vibe was one of, they
weren't having a very important conversation, but they still didn't feel like we should be interrupting it.

Deebo didn't get up when we walked over to him. He was pretty short. The top of his head looked like no hairs had ever grown on it at any point in time. His eyes were small and it hurt to look at them. His hand when I shook it was dry and tough and briefly popped my knuckles out of place.

Cookie introduced Ash, but not us. “This is the legendary Ash Ramos,” Cookie purred. “She and her band come down all the way from Pennsylvania.”

“New York,” said Ash.

Deebo sized each of us up.

First Ash. Then Corey.

Then me. No one said anything.

Finally, he turned back to Ash.

“Go on when you're ready, then,” was all he said.

Honestly, I wasn't ready. But I told Cookie I was. And so did Corey, again in his fake-deep voice that indicated that he was fending off a crippling panic attack.

But Ash was the most freaked out of all.

I'd never seen her afraid before. Not when Rudd was getting ready to throw Corey through a window, and not when Ed stomped out of his house with a shotgun. But she was afraid now. She was twitchy and spacey. She kept sneaking glances back to Deebo's table and swallowing. All of a sudden she seemed about five years younger.

“He's the real fucking thing,” she told us.

“Yeah, but so are you, honey,” Cookie said to her.

“So are
we
,” I said.

“We are going to rock everyone to within an inch of their lives and then kill them,” said Corey.

But she just kept shaking her head and glancing over at Deebo's table.

“I don't belong here,” she said, and her voice sounded five years younger, too.

We told her she did belong here. We told her we all did. I don't know if we believed ourselves as we said it, though. I kind of tricked myself into thinking, yes, I did. Because anyone can belong anywhere. I think you have to believe that or else eventually you become a Nazi or something.

But Ash wasn't buying it.

“What the fuck are we doing,” she kept whispering.

“Boys,” said Cookie eventually. “Can I talk to Ash alone for a quick minute.”

Outside Corey and I kicked stones into the woods and had a disagreement about whether Cookie was going to screw it up for us.

COREY: looks like we're cookie's cover band again

WES: no way. ash won't let that happen

COREY: ash
will
let that happen because she is pissing her pants right now because we have to open for a dude who probably fashioned his guitar with his bare hands from a tree

WES: she just needs to remember to be the crazy highway ash with the lug wrench

COREY: cookie's not gonna let her

WES: no. i think she's over him

COREY: look, man. it's cover time. just embrace it. i'm gonna get hammered

WES: why would they ever serve alcohol to an underage dude with zero dollars

COREY: to get him to stop randomly stealing other people's drinks

WES: i see

COREY: yeah

WES: actually that's not the worst plan ever

Then Ash came outside.

The look on her face was something I hadn't seen before.

“Are we playing with that creepy fuck,” asked Corey.

Ash just shook her head.

I knew it wasn't a good head shake.

“What's gonna happen,” I said.

“I just want to do this one with Cookie,” she said.