Waking to Damien and Drew ringing a fucking bell over my head. My tongue has a beard. Vague recollections of eating the remaining meatballs last night, and no recollection of cradling Damien's meatballs, though the Giraffes will protest later that I did. Giraffes are sitting down eating breakfast so I walk in with my junk hanging out the fly of my boxers: "Hey guys, want some sausage?" Never accuse me of being highbrow. On the road by ten, it's become clear that it's taken me a grand total of three days to become totally reliant on Danny and his sobriety. I gotta lay off the whiskey. Danny takes the first shift and I try to sleep in the bunk in the back, but can't do it, every time I close my eyes, I think about how I won't be able to get out of the bunk if I need to while Danny's driving and then I can feel the roof closing in on me. Hopefully, this is just a by-product of my hangover and because I need to be able to sleep in the van. But if it is a by-product of my hangover, that's not much better. We stop at Burger King and my hands are so shaky I have a hard time paying the girl. After a couple of gently probing questions from Danny about the state of my health, he seems comfortable enough that I'll be able to drive that he climbs into the bunk. He immediately starts laughing, actually howling with delight at climbing into the bunk. That little fucker. I really don't know what I'm going to do without him.
The plan is to find a campsite, set up camp, swim, laze around, sleep, possibly even, wonder of wonders, jerk off. The campsite is 25 bucks, which I don't need to explain is fucking ridiculous, so we don't do it, instead just driving around for fucking hours trying to find a place to swim in Ipsi, as we have seven hours to kill before load-in. Of course, Ipsi is surrounded by water, water water everywhere, and not a single place to swim. We spend a painful hour sitting by the water (too close to the water treatment plant) watching the catfish feed, with about ten huge white herons in the trees around us. Danny throws ants in the water and watches them drown. Rock'n'fucking roll. I feel uncomfortable around him when I'm hungover, embarrassed and even ashamed, like I pissed my pants or something. Danny's never been drunk and I've never trusted sober folks, even when I was one of 'em. Somebody said to me once during my year and a half hiatus "but it doesn't feel like you're sober." But is Danny really losing patience with me, or am I just projecting that? Ah, alcohol-fueled paranoia. Finally, we go to the park and I fall asleep on my blanket; bare feet, no shirt, just my cut-offs, looking like a fucking bum.
Our directions are wrong and we kill another hour and a half searching for the venue, only to take a wrong turn and drive right up to it. The promoter/soundguy/insane Una-bomber type shows up about ten minutes before the first band. I've already finished the first of the two pitchers allotted to my band for the night. The first band is pretty awful, generic screamy Limp Bizkit bullshit. If this is their crowd, they're going to hate us. The next band's a little better, a joke hardcore band called Cobra Youth who plays twice a year, on the anniversary of JFK's assassination and on 9-11. Danny and I manage to pull out the third hot show, and everyone seems to dig it. My banter is okay, only occasionally delving into the hateful and incoherent. Giraffes are fucking great, as usual. I keep kicking myself for not jumping on the bass slot when it was offered to me, but I can't do that, I've got to just do my own shit. I just wish I had a fucking band like that and friends like that to back me up. The Witches are super nice, sarcastic old drunks and guitar nerds who've been around for fucking ever. I get wasted enough that Damien and I dance for them, and I can just feel Aaron's eyes on my back. Everyone's been a little curious veering on leery of me drinking again.
It probably doesn't help that when we're back at the first band's house--funny how the same people you make sniping comments about are always the first folks to help you out--to party and eventually fall asleep that I drink one beer then pass out in a recliner, only to wake up to Drew clicking a picture of my sleeping face inches from Damien's spread butt cheeks. In the night, I take my shirt off and move to the floor, waking up on the bare carpet, my mouth thick with fuzz. My stomach still hurts, which would make this one a twenty four hour stomach ache. Me and Drew are the first to wake up, so we go to click a picture of Damien with a little meat and potatoes on his forehead. I'm clumsy though with my bloated beer hangover, and I kick something over and Damien one-ups me by throwing the secret devil sign with both hands with my nuts on his head. He loves this shit. I try to get him back by picking up the hamburgered dead skunk that got practically liquefied in front of our van and leaving it right next to the driver's side door of the Giraffes' van. Of course, I forget who I'm dealing with, as Drew nearly steps in it then says "Oh cool. Damien, grab the camera." Revenge will still be mine. Johnny Cash is dead. John Ritter is dead. It's Allison's birthday today. I jack off in a Kinko's bathroom. Danny walks in as I'm just finishing cleaning up and says "Mishka? You're not jacking off, are you?" Not anymore…
Posted by Mishka at September 12, 2003 12:44 AM