The Haters (31 page)

COREY: it would have been great to know this approximately four days ago

ASH: you're telling
me

Even when they turned on me, I was fine with it.

ASH: wes you didn't go down on me but i think you'd be even worse at it

WES: please explain

ASH: you'd just sit there completely still with your mouth
open and hope that i would start fucking your face and you wouldn't have to do anything

WES: actually yeah that sounds ideal

COREY: no no no that's not wes. here's wes

ASH: i listened to him have sex for more than an hour. he basically just lets himself be a sex prop

COREY: no no no here's wes going down on you: lick lick lick . . . “all right all right all right”

ASH: oh yeah because he wants to achieve consensus!

COREY: his finishing move is making a spaceship noise into your cooz and then asking you if he's getting an A

ASH: hahahaha

WES: i will headbutt every face in this car

I gave Ash more band names to consider. And pretty soon Corey couldn't help himself and started going along with it, too.

All of Them Knew They Were Robots:
“Okay. It sucks because this is the first good name either of you has ever come up with, but there's just no way this isn't a Mr. Bungle tribute band. Everyone in this band has given up on writing their own music and instead they just play note-for-note-faithful Mr. Bungle covers once a month at the same bar in Houston because they all work at NASA, and this is how they blow off steam on the weekends, and their spouses are all pretty sick of it, except for the lesbian girlfriend of the glockenspiel player, because she's the only cool one.”

Meow Meow Kitty:
“Pros: Regardless of how good this band actually is, it automatically gets everyone's attention. Everyone instinctively YouTubes the shit out of them. Because everyone is obsessed with cats. Cons: This band is three lip-syncing Japanese girls in miniskirts, and literally nothing would be worse than having their fans.”

Jennifer Lawrence's Armpit:
“Here's a thought experiment. What happens if this band becomes successful to the point where someday you
meet
Jennifer Lawrence? Is there even a 10 percent chance you would manage to be cool about it? No. There is a zero percent chance that neither of you would go insane and do something antisocial. Pick someone you'd be cool around and maybe I'll consider this.”

Padma Lakshmi from Top Chef's Armpit:
“That's sort of better, except, okay, then, who is this band. Answer: This band is four super pimply fifteen-year-old part-time stoners who are either trying to rip off Phish and like String Cheese Incident or instead Slayer and Gojira and like Hatebeak, and either way it's just sloppy chaos. You guys don't know Hatebeak? Hatebeak is a hardcore band whose lead singer is a parrot. Look. Wes. Corey. None of these names have anything to do with
us
. Come up with some names that are about
us
.”

Cookie's Gruesome Death:
“Okay. That's two good names you guys have come up with. But way too close to Death Cab for Cutie. But you guys are starting to get okay at this.”

Perfect Taste:
“Jesus. No. That name literally means nothing. That band plays acoustic college rock and their lyrics are the worst thing you can possibly imagine. They're what happens when three fratty hetero dudes sit in a room and try to imagine what it would be like to be a sensitive poet. Just thinking about this makes me never want to play music again.”

Charlize and the Eds:
“I do like the idea of calling myself Charlize, but I'm not gonna tell you again about Name and the Somethings.”

The Haters:
“It's too, uh.”

“. . .”

“It makes me think of, um . . .”

“. . .”

“Well, let me sit with that one.”

We weren't even halfway to New Orleans when Corey let us know that he was deciding not to leave after all.

COREY: so can we talk about our set tonight

[
ash just grins at him
]

WES: yeah what are you thinking

COREY: i dunno i had a few ideas

And after Ash putting him in a hug stranglehold from the backseat that almost made him drive off the road again, he told
us his ideas, which were mostly just the idea to maybe throw in a few covers of bands we liked. We could punk them up and dumb them down and make them our own. Because it's not the end of the world if people know what bands we listen to. Actually it's kind of good.

ASH: what bands were you thinking

COREY: well

WES:

ASH:

COREY: i was thinking the shins

ASH: why the shins

COREY: because they're what i listen to when i just don't give a fuck anymore

ASH:

COREY:

ASH: well that's a great reason to listen to shit

WES: corey knows
i'm
into it

COREY: yeah wes and i can't get enough of that delicate sensitive ass shit

ASH: then let's do the fucking shins. i think a shins cover could be really good

COREY: YEAH BITCH

WES: ash who are
you
into when you've run out of fucks to give

ASH:

COREY:

ASH: ok. you guys want to know? for real?

WES: yes

COREY: YES

ASH: when i no longer give a fuck, sometimes i listen to . . . the sad ass stylings of . . .

WES AND COREY:

ASH: mariah carey

COREY: OH MY GOD

WES: MIMI

ASH: shut up shut up shut up

WES: i think what you're
trying
to say is shoo doo doop

COREY: WE BELONG TOGETHERRRRR

WES: you'll always be my ba-a-a-abyyyy

ASH: SHUT UP WES'S TURN

WES: oh that's easy. my go-to is the original triple threat: singer, bandleader,
and
one hell of a bassist

COREY: oh no

WES: a living legend out of jersey city named robert bell . . . but you might know him better as . . .
kool

ASH: oof

COREY:
no

WES: I'M TALKING ABOUT KOOL AND ALLLLLL HIS FRIENDS A.K.A.

ASH: stop with this shit

COREY:
wes what are you doing

WES: “THE GANG” LET ME HEAR YOU SAY KOOL & THE GANG

COREY: i will never say it

Just in case you are thinking everyone was pissed: No one was pissed. Everyone was amped. The sun was about to come up. We were three hours outside of New Orleans, we smelled like a horror movie, and we were a band. We were the Haters.

WES: ash it's pretty cool that this whole time you were secretly the girliest girl in america

ASH: you're a dork and corey's a pussy

COREY: each time you say the word “pussy” i know it should give me a boner but somehow it doesn't

ASH: pussy

COREY: yeah all that's happening is my dick is achieving inhuman levels of floppiness

WES: i'm rock hard but it's for kool & the gang

35.
WE AWOKE TO A MONKLIKE, SHAVEN-HEADED MAN TAPPING THE DRIVER'S-SIDE WINDOW

We got to Lime Tree a little before nine, and no one was there, so we parked in a shady corner of the employee parking lot and opened the windows halfway and we all fell asleep in the car, and the guy who woke us up was Onnie himself.

It was around noon. He was a small older dude in a tight-fitting black T-shirt that said
GEAUX SHORTY
on it. His eyes were black and crinkly and he carried himself kind of like a ballet dancer and kind of like a pigeon.

“Oh my God,” said Ash, “ONNIE,” and she jumped out of the car and wrapped him in a hug, and Corey and I stumbled out of the car and blinked and squinted and tried to be respectful of what was clearly a high-level sacred teacher-student bond.

“It gives me a lot of joy to see you,” Onnie told her, gripping her shoulders. His voice was round and precise.

She kind of hung her head bashfully.

“You've come a long way and you've followed your heart and it gives me tremendous joy.”

“Well, don't say that until you hear me play something.”

“You'll always be my favorite student and I'm prouder of you than you can know.”

“Well, I just hope we don't suck tonight.”

“You won't,” he said. “You won't suck.” He looked at us. “Nice band,” he said. “Golly. Look at the three of you.”

“Were you for real in Slayer,” Corey asked him.

“Ah,” he said. “For the briefest of moments. Just filling in as a favor to Tom.”

“Oh damn,” said Corey. “That must have been, uh.”

We waited for Corey to find an adjective.

“I just hope one day I'm in a band even half as sick as that,” said Corey finally.

Onnie did the slowest blink I have ever seen, and smiled.

“Do me a kindness,” he said. “Cherish this part. Before the triumph and the failure. Now, when you're too young to win or lose. Before you know what winning or losing would even mean. Try to be here, now, and cherish it. All right?”

He took us across town to a narrow airy little house with flood damage still visible on the outside, and he gave us some towels and robes, and we each put our clothes in the washing machine and showered up. The shower felt unbelievable. It felt like I was molting my skin like a snake.

Onnie made super basic sandwiches for us on incredible bread, and he told us we could practice in the basement if we needed, or go out into the city, just be sure to lock up behind ourselves, and come to the restaurant for dinner at six, and then we'd play afterward. We nodded and said goodbye, and he left. We sat there with clean skin and hair in his coarse plaid robes
eating the sandwiches, and it was hard not to feel like in some way the tour was already over.

We spent about an hour running through covers. We did “Gone for Good” (the Shins) and we did “Vision of Love” (Mariah), and we did “Funky Stuff” (Kool & the Gang). We pared them down and roughed them up and flattened them out and slowed them down and sped them up, and each one was definitely a Haters song by the end.

Then we spent another hour writing a little song of our own called “Love Is a Hate Crime” that began just like the first thing we played together, back in practice space G, with Corey thumping slow quarter notes and me ringing out half-note E's. We all sang on the chorus. In my case and Corey's maybe you wouldn't call it singing so much as yelling. But it felt pretty cool to use your voice and your instrument at the same time. It felt like the next step for us, and we were just starting to take it.

It was still a few hours to go until dinner, and even though the sky was dark and violent looking, we went out into Onnie's neighborhood with a couple of acoustic guitars and a cajon for Corey, and we just walked the streets playing and singing, and a bunch of kids started following us around and laughing and yelling, and we ended up at some basketball courts and set up shop there and ran through all our songs under the intense cloudy sky that was refusing to rain.

We got a few dozen fans that way. I mean, some kids hated it. But some kids loved it. And those were the only kids we gave a shit about.

I felt a stupid combination of feelings. Like my heart was hot with happiness, but I was mad at myself for being so happy, because I knew it was just going to hurt that much worse when it was all taken away. So I couldn't really enjoy it, except I was almost shaking from enjoying it so much. I almost couldn't walk home.

Someone offered us weed, and for a moment it seemed like one of us might have broken down and said yes. But we all ended up saying no.

“We're just too mentally unstable for that shit,” apologized Corey.

“Good to know,” said the dude, nodding slowly. “Good to know about yourself.”

Driving back to Lime Tree, it felt like the part of waking up from a dream where you're pretending you don't know yet that it was a dream. Even though you do. Like you know you're not really flying, but you're pretending you don't know, just to have a few more moments of it. And you're pretending the world around you is that same beautiful insane shifting dream place you would never get tired or bored of, and you still have that stupid perfect dream understanding of yourself and everyone and everything. You still have that feeling of you'll never feel confused or disappointed again.

We parked in the employee lot. There was a police cruiser out front but we didn't make anything of it. The whites of the leaves on the trees were showing in the hot heavy wind. We each grabbed a couple of things from the car and walked into the restaurant, and standing there waiting for us were a couple of police officers, and Corey's parents, and mine.

36.
THE HATERS

Corey panicked and ran. He didn't even put down his cymbals. He just hugged them to his chest and whirled and ran out the door, and his parents ran after him, and so did the cops, and the cops ran him down in less than a block, because these were highly athletic, professional cops, and Corey is not an athlete in any way. So he got handcuffed facedown on the sidewalk and then screamed at by his mom while his dad paced around irritably waiting for his turn, and in other circumstances it would have been hilarious.

Ash asked Onnie if we were going to get to play, and he shook his head sadly, and she got angrier than I had seen her get, and she said some things to him that definitely she felt shitty about later. But he probably didn't mind because he is a monk from another untouchable dimension of human experience.

My parents were the angriest ones there. My mom kept starting to say something and then just pursing her lips and shaking her head. And all my dad could say was, “God
damn
it, Wesley. God
fucking
damn it.”

Onnie was the one who had told them. You couldn't really blame him for that. Ash's mom was on his case nonstop as soon
as the jazz camp called her. She felt like the entire thing was Onnie's fault somehow.