BATTLE OF THE BANDS (Edit from "STRANDED...")

study hall reading No One Here Gets Out Alive my favorite part teenage Jim Morrison kneeling on his younger brother’s shoulders spit thick and ropy from Hershey bars or orange juice dangling it right over brother’s face sucking it up just before the moment of (nauseating) contact huge study hall third biggest room in the school room to hide in Andy Warhol Velvets first album banana t-shirt black Chuck Taylor All-Stars chucks we call ((called)) them bleached the trim white (yellow) two color just like Paul Weller in the Jam (did he really) ((saw it in a picture once probly the drummer actually))

bedrooms suburban bedrooms sunshine suburban sunshine bedrooms spent so much time hiding from parents brothers sisters in each others bedroom bedrooms no wonder all we thought about was fucking

(did i say that out loud) ((hard to tell w/ headphones on always got caught singing along)) (FAGGOT)

all we ever thought about was girls all we ever got called was FAGGOT no wonder we were so confused
FUCKIN FAGGOT
PUNK ROCK FAGGOT
FAG
they were tough lived in the Proj drank beers and smoked weed in Snakeland glare mutter under your breath walk away there was always more of them than us that one was like a man he was huge how many times did he get left back anyway

((Burroughs says you must have run cowardly at one point to be able to express true courage)) (FUCK YOU FAGGOT)

did they kill Kathy Arnold we’ll never know Kenmore cops don’t care about some Proj slut killed in Snakeland she probly had it coming 2 suicides and a murder and John Jespers killed his whole family by graduation they wanted to change the school team from the Blue Devils to the Blue Angels because they thought it was SATANISM upside-down crosses and pentagrams spray painted on the walls at Snakeland

she sat in front of me in homeroom and then halfway through junior year she didn’t empty desk they moved us in together for senior year

((we didn’t even get a half day when Kathy got murdered today they’d deploy a SWAT team of social workers and psychiatrists to protect our fragile psyches did they even make an announcement when Gary killed himself all anyone did was scrawl DEAD over his face in my junior yearbook))

even though she sat in front of me i never thought about fucking her (pale and scrawny) it probly would have been weirder then if i had ((didn’t happen til years later another Kathy blonde cheerleader beat off to her a hundred times if it was once picture in the paper murdered by her husband i beat off to a girl who’s dead felt old and very lonly))

study hall never studied wrote poems somehow thought they’d impress some girl somehow some did headphones on crappy tape player knock off Walkman i taped the plate cover on when it broke why to keep the dust out nothing but dust anyway tapes and tapes and tapes some tapes (brad’s) without even any song titles goddamnit what is fucking track five called some (doug’s) just illegible dashed off scrawl some (daryle’s) pristine full color marker art and simulated Sharpie album font some (mark’s) cut out magazine picture cropped to fit tape case with newspaper head line down the spine they took up more space w/ the cases but i had to bring em felt like leaving your friends behind the ones without covers were always from girls Psychedelic Furs or Violent Femmes first album all scratchy maybe a skip or two sometimes she’d lift the needle and play a song she really liked twice fast forward through the second one so hard to find the beginning of the next song

i spent five minutes winding rewinding to find the beginning of the next song longer than the goddamn song itself i loved her

i waited hours for this i made myself so sick i wish i’d stayed asleep today meet me anyplace or anywhere or anytime now i will dare meet you tonight if you will dare i will dare it’s a wicked world there’s a million other guys i feel so lucky when i look in your green eyes green eyes green eyes tonight at noon tonight at noon tonight at noon a man in my shoes runs the light and all the papers lie tonight because falling over you is the news of the day

i made myself so sick

open window the sound of the construction finishing the stage almost ready can even hear over Meat is Murder on headphones the bottom drops out of my stomach this is really going to happen this is really happening

you could just go home

i

you could just go home

(FAGGOT)

no i we practiced we wrote those songs mark brought his amp that thing is huge on the bus dave will never forgive you stupid bass with the pickup taped on it that thing sounds like shit she will be there

i

she will be there

all of our stuff is down there my drums (what drums an overturned plastic garbage can for the tom tom and a snare i stole from the marching band) ((i played standing up i must’ve thought I was moe tucker)) dave’s shitty bass (also stolen) and mark’s strat and stack good thing he’s younger than us or he’d realize how much we suck good thing they have a p.a. for all the bands to use or else i’d be shouting over everything like in the garage

we’re a garage band we come from garageland

that Kiss cover band’s gonna win this year they always win they’ve got fire and explosions and makeup and big boots if we wore makeup and big boots we’d probly get called faggot probly will anyway who else there’s that jazz band but whatever fuck those dorks they’ll probly do a Police song and their parents will think they’re cool there’s at least two other garage bands but all they play is like Zeppelin and Sabbath covers and orginals with names like dark carnival and black light connection then there’s the fake reggae band Kaya there’s like twenty people in that band most of em from school band or orchestra and everyone thinks they’re gonna win this year all they have to do is play Legalize It and all the stoners will go crazy but reggae’s so fucking boring it makes me want to cry ((it’d be three more years before Toots and the Maytals punched a hole into my soul five before dub crawled inside it))

we don’t play covers six originals so far seven if you count that song mark wrote that totally rips off the Pixies we should win just for not playing covers (in addition to being fucking visionary post-punk mega-stars)

they were gonna give me a medal for this and i wasn’t even in their fucking army anymore

she will be there

dave just walked up to them before lunch like he knew them at all asked if they were gonna be there after school telling them how awesome we are and i said we just started we need more practice he gave me that look that he gives me when i’m blowing it but they were totally cool and like we’ll come check you guys out and dave goes awesome and we walk away says you should have talked to her i said i did he says yeah and you almost blew it with your self-deprecating bullshit i said you didn’t even know what that meant before i told you he says yeah i’ll be thinking about that later when i’m fucking your mom doggy style i said fuck you

she will be there