A rottweiler perches on the roof of the Brixton Windmill like an oversized gargoyle. It snarls as we approach, a sound that seems to originate not from its throat or belly but from the Ninth Circle of Hell. Entering the club will involve crossing into his strike zone, and I can’t imagine that he would hesitate to leap off the roof and bury his thick teeth into one of our soft white necks.
Shit’s been grim enough for me in New York lately that it took less than six minutes for Jonny Rauberts, one of Freshkills’ guitar players, to convince me to join the band on bass and tour England. My full-time writing gig, which pays like subsistence farming, had ground to a halt. A steady barrage of vitriolic texts, emails and drunken, late-night diatribes (“You’re a mediocre songwriter and a bad singer/ You have the maturity and ambitions of a 13-year-old/ You’re a speck of shit”) from ex-lovers, ex-friends, ex-bandmates and more than one determined stalker finally forced me not just to change my phone number but also to get creative with the filters on my email. The last couple of weeks before tour, I had both my mother and my lawyer on speed dial. I was getting fucked so hard that it was all I could do to lie back and think of England.
Now, only a couple days into our twoweek U.K. tour, we’re already road sick and on edge.The five of us have been cooped up in single a hotel room between Heathrow and London that smells like an old boot was set on fire then extinguished in a beer-filled ashtray. One night, after many entreaties for a drunken bandmate to roll over so he would stop snoring, he finally acquiesced, only to subsequently emit a window-rattling fart that woke even those lucky enough to sleep through his snores. Our downtime has been spent wandering around London with barely enough money for pre-made sandwiches composed almost entirely of mayonnaise.
We prepare to enter the Brixton Windmill the same way we cross streets in a country where they drive on the wrong side of the road and double-decker buses and hurtling black cabs seem to attack from all angles: clustering together anxiously like a group of penguins on the tip of an iceberg, squawking and jostling. Finally, we all scurry under the jaws of the Rottweiler and into the club with only a couple of girlish shrieks.The graffiti in the bathroom is even less welcoming than the terror on the roof: HEY WRETCHED, PLODDING, RHYTHMICALLY CRIPPLED INDIE ROCK ‘MUSI- CIANS’! GIVE UP NOW BEFORE IT’S CENTURIES TOO LATE!
The tag hits close to home. I’ve described Freshkills’ music laughingly to friends as “aging cokehead rock.” Only 32, I’m the baby of the band. At an age where artists have generally found success or given up, we seem to just be hitting our stride, turning out a good record and landing an overseas tour. Our drummer, Jim Paradise, the easy favorite in the band, has starved, slept on floors, gotten ripped off and, oh yeah, rocked for nearly 20 years, touring with hardcore bands all over the world. He now has a little spud of his own, 4-month-old Leo, who Jim plainly misses more each day.
THE 9 PERCENT discount “super” cider I bought at an off-license (that’s British for bodega) with a handful of change proves too much for me on an empty stomach, and I fall asleep on the floor, feet from a bed donated by a Texan ex-pat.When drunk, she switches disconcertingly between British-accented slang (“I was quite fucked that night and right cunted my arm going over the fence”) and Texas twang. Both of her parents are long dead. She hasn’t been back to the States in five years and has no plans to return.
In my dream, I encounter a beloved ex in a bombed-out parking lot behind a crumbling Mercury Lounge. She looks older but fiercely, defiantly beautiful as if hard times have given her beauty meaning. One child straddles her hip, another stands next to her, holding her hand and peering out at me from behind her leg. Neither of them looks like me. My father is dead, she tells me, and I have been charged with seeing to his burial.
The coffin is propped up on two sawhorses and the lid doesn’t fit right. I start screaming at the funeral home director and accidentally knock the coffin over, spilling my father’s gauze-wrapped corpse on the floor.When I cradle his body to try to get it back in the coffin, I feel it twist under me. Bones grind, and I can feel his teeth in my shoulder as his skull tries to bite me. I wake already in motion and rifle through my pockets. Codeine has been my morning go-to while suffering from a Vicodin deficiency in this strange, drugless land, and I search frantically but fruitlessly: I’m out.
WE GIG ON a boat, desolate before we play, packed by the second song.We gig under a bar called The Famous Cock, and Jim gets props from the drummer of the Bad Seeds. Zack, our fearless leader, finds a strip club and loses his bank card.Tim, after buying my drinks all night, pays for our cab. I fall asleep in a hedge and wake up hours later to find, inexplicably, DVDs of both Willow and When Harry Met Sally next to me. We go to a carnival in the park, and I ring the bell with the hammer, something I’ve fucking always wanted to do.We get lost, get hungry, get drunk, run out of money, have no place to stay and no ride to the airport. We vigorously abuse Virgin Airlines in-flight hospitality and when we wake, there is Newark below us, glimmering in the dark like some grimy jewel: The New World.
anonymous
