1989 (first pages)

It begins.

A thirteen-year old guy with a peach-fuzzy mustache and a large cowboy hat plays a cheap acoustic guitar as sunlight streams in through a smoky basement window. He’s pretty good, considering he sucks . . .

It ends.

The skyline of the giant Megatropolis is laid out under a clear, bright sun . . . and from high off a great stone bridge a thick reel of recording tape is flying through the air, falling toward the blue-gray river below. And it spins and spins, then hits the water with a tiny white flash of a splash.

. . . Fuckin’ rock and roll.

CHAPTERO NUMERO UNO

On my way to the center of the universe and away from its shitty edge, I took the scenic route for a bit in the old black Ford van, roaring down a smooth, two-lane strip of rip through the Catskill mountains.

And though warmish, I still wore my black leather jacket, (ghost still says moo, I sometimes think), black t-shirt, Skull and Crossbones belt buckle, black jeans, and black Nikes. And me: quite long blond-o hair . . . though I’ve got a little braid on one side to keep it out of my eyes. In the back I had my 100 watt Marshall amp stack, my Gibson SG, an Ensoniq keyboard, a crackly PA mixer and speakers, some good Sure mics, my tunes, and a duffel bag with everything else . . . and what more could old Jake Bersonte here need in life?

Really, save for two people, I didn’t even say good-bye. I’ll send ya a post card! you cave people under a cloudy cloud of New Biggsburg, NY gloom. Anywho, what were you ever going to do with skinny, longhaired me? (Big-brown-eyed and cute, girls say about me when they’re being nice.) The Rock and Roll guitar player extraordinaire. I think, and that’s what they tell me, though sometimes I just run up and down the fret board and spew spaghetti out the crunchy Marshall . . . so, now, it was getting time for some real playing.

Some real music.

Then, cruising along, the van suddenly sounded like it was going on 7-Up of its V8 . . . that is to say, a cylinder was not firing and the whole thing began shaking around me like a plane about to crash.

Oh well. So that’s how it was going to be.

So, I cranked the Damned louder on the cheap cassette player I tapped into the dash . . . and they were pretty good, punk band turning into a kind of pop band with a Dracula guy singing like Jim Morrison and the ripping tones great Captain Sensible’s jamming washing over me, and the tree-covered hills were rolling about and, really, I’d say it was a great drive heading on into the city.

And that’s The City.

The Megatropolis. That’s what I call it. The center of the universe.

That’s where the real bands play, not the bands fighting over forty-minute spots in a bar, battling with DJs or cover-tune bands for fifty bucks a night and a PA rental that costs a hundred . . .

Megatropolis.

I came over the last hill, and just for a second the trucks and busses before me parted like Moses and his Dead Red Sea, and there it was all spread out before me like a great funhouse of lights, and a black river shining back those lights. And out there were the great, twinkling towers of hope and commerce, full of things happening, and people doing things, making decisions, creating things . . . and I was moving there, finally, to where things happened.

And I didn’t delude myself in saying “streets paved with gold” or any of that storied Bullshit.

I just wanted SOMETHING TO HAPPEN.

I slowed the van as we and my traffic brothers and sisters soon came to a stop, rounding and downing into some cave mouths set up after the tolls. You go into Megatropolis from the asshole, you see. (Well, there seemed to be three assholes.) That’s how it is done. Ten bucks, green fluorescents on the ceiling, some flashing brake lights and more exhaust, and you’re spit out into where things happen just like that.

And the damnedest thing happened. As I sat in traffic just into the city that’s an island though you wouldn’t know it, that Damned cassette shut itself off, and spit itself out onto the floor.

The player switched automatically to FM, and right on a station.

And it was this weird classical music. Though it wasn’t your old Wagner or fine fine Beethoven. It was modern classical minimalistic music, with a sad, soulful clarinet, and a synth repeating a simple, counter-tempo riff. And I just let it play as I moved with the bus taxi sea, knowing not where I was going. And I really got into this beautiful set of whispers this city was placing in my ear.

Quite soon, traffic was a sudden solid brick, and there was a slouching black man in a hooded sweatshirt jacket outside my window, knocking on it. “Ahh, city folk,” I said.

Dude was holding a plastic spray bottle. I rolled down the window.

“What, Brother?”

“Wash you window, a dolla.”

“Naa, I got those little nozzles that do that,” I said.

And he looked like no shit, I just need money, dummy. So I had an idea. “Say,” I said. “Do you know where I am?”

“You in the city, what you tryin’ to find, Boston?”

That was funny. I handed him a map from the side pocket in the van door. “Find us.”

And he held it one way, then another. “You here,” he pointed. “Where you goin’?”

“I’m going somewhere down there.”

“You all twisted around,” he said. “You gotta go back, make like a C on the streets, left and left and left, then you head on across town, after a bit you hit second, right there, go on downtown, taken any even east-west, like fourth, over to where the streets is named by alphabet, a b c whatever you want, and you right on where you goin’, way down there.”

And that guy said exactly what I needed. And I could use it just like that, I remember what I hear, every bit of it. I can record it and play it back, and it’s always been that way. I said, “Make a C on these streets, left and left and left, head on across town, hit second, take a right there, go on downtown, take fourth, over to alphabet streets, and I’m way down there.”

And he said, “That’s right, Brother!”

And I said, “Hey, thanks, Man.”

“What it worth to you?” he said.

What was it worth to me? I scooped the Damned cassette off the floor, slipped it into its case, and handed it out to him.

And the guy just kind of looked it over. Had to be worth at least three bucks. He nodded and walked away.

Traffic started to move, and I cranked the minimalist music and drove on, and began to do my Megatropolis driving alphabet dance.

Horatio’s apartment building was the color of grease fire smoke.

I was wondering what he was doing in such a shithole, and the building looked like something somebody would inhabit, like . . . squatter, and not pay rent to the man, and there the place was, looming ugly in the streetlights, and I thought to myself shit, it’s too bad how far old Ray has sunk.

I parked the van, hopped out, double making sure everything was locked—sliding door, passenger door, driver’s door, back doors—and then checked again. I could feel the ratty eyes eyeing blondy here, though I did not see them . . .

I felt them. And I wasn’t city man, I was bumpkin. Though they weren’t going to know it.

I moved on up to the building’s door, matching the address with my scribbled down piece of notebook paper. Double making sure of that, too.

Nobody said on this “buzzer” Welcome, it’s me, John and Jenny Smith, hey, come on in for a bite and a smoke. Nobody wrote anything, so who knew? But I had my city-smart hat on, and the piece of paper said 3C, so third floor, three up from the bottom, figured C would mean at least three “apartments” on the third floor, and sure enough the buttons were arranged in clumps, I’d say A upper left, B, upper right, C, lower left . . . and pushed it.

A long pause. Presto chango. Buzz buzz. I pushed again.

“Waaaat?” Ray’s voice came out, and it was so Ray. I smiled.

“It’s me, man.”

“Who’s me?”

“It’s Jake, man.”

“Jake, where the fuck you been!”

“I’m standing right here!”

A pause.

The door before me went ZZZZZZZZZ in the tone of a groan, and I pushed it, and was it locked before?

I shuffled up some dark stairs that smelled like cooking, beer, and cat piss. Two landings up, I stood in a dark hall, and suddenly saw the light, Jesus . . . the door at the end of the hall flew open, and there stood the silhouette of Horatio Ray Heinz.

“Jake!”

“Ray, you asshole!”

I went over to him gave ol’ Ray a hug. Probably had been about nine months since we shared a stage, with him singing, he was trashed and me too, and I hit him in the back with a mic stand when he gave me a nasty look after a shitty solo on my part. And he quit that band, and I quit that band shortly thereafter, because we way sucked, really, and he was moving to the city, anyway. But all that stink was behind us.

Ray had longish, jet-black hair, and he had a cultivated five o’clock shadow-thing going on with his chiseled TV-actor face and steely blue eyes. He had an intricate tattoo of blue flames around a skull his left arm. That was new. Impressive in a Rollins-Axle Rose-way.

“Nice ink, Ray,” I said.

“Can’t believe you actually finally left Upstate Shitpile,” he said. “If you’ve actually left.”

“Oh . . . I’ve left, let me tell you.” And we went on in his dump. A little fridge, a sleeping cot, a bathtub, and a window framing some dubious blackness beyond. He had some paperback books on a wall shelf (Ray was always reader) and wonderfully . . . an acoustic guitar against a small, rusty gas stove.

It was Nylon Willie. I had forgotten I gave it to him.

“Duuude, you still got Nylon Willie!” I said, and went over and grabbed it. I did some flamenco, something I could only do with three right hand fingers so far and that would have to be good enough.

And Ray went “Umph,” which was his way, really, of saying Wow.

“That guitar sucks,” Ray said. “You can have it back.”

“Thanks, man!” And it was called Nylon Willie because it looked like Willie Nelson’s guitar that had a hole in it that he played all the time, and it had nylon strings.

Ray sat on a fold-out wooden catering chair and popped open his fridge. Then he got a couple of 40 ouncers and passed one to me. It was semi-cold, of swill brand. I unscrewed the top and slugged away. No use getting dehydrated.

“Did you bring some ideas?” he said.

“Oh, I got ‘em.” I sat on the edge of his cot. And it felt like plywood. Poor old Ray. What did the girls think of the coffin lid? I smiled at him.

“Like what?” he said.

“Four piece. Wall of drums, you know? Monster sound. Big . . . wooden sound, like big ass sailing ships out to heavy sea . . . graaaaaaaaa. Zeppelinish.”

“Could be time to stage that comeback sound,” Ray said, eyebrows narrowing in a squint.

“It’s not a comeback sound, man,” I said. “It’s an always sound.”

“Maybe. It’s more subtle than you’re pitching here,” he said.

Pitching? Did he mean chucking? Ditching? Whatthefuck? “I’m not pitching, I’m making, man,” I said.

Ray just looked at me, sipped his beer.

“You know, Ray? No more whining,” I said. “Rock and roll, where you gotta hear the heavenly bodies move, gotta feel the earth breathing beneath you, you know, the way the ocean moves . . . Real . . . Big . . . Heavy . . .” I held my arms out wide.

“I’m sold, man,” he said, grinning. And then he had that look of Ray Planning on his face. “Just one thing, though, Jake,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t sing.”

And that was fine by me. I have a good, tenorish voice, and I sing on key. But I’m not a singer, anyway. “That’s fine,” I said. “I don’t sing. Not even backup.”

“Right,” he said. “You cut your corner of the carpet in this band. I don’t play guitar because I suck, you don’t sing.”

“Ray, you can play guitar if you want, man.” And he wasn’t that bad back in ol’ New Biggsburg. Not good, not bad.

“I’ll hold it for video shoots. I won’t plug it in. Okay?” he said.

I said “Hold it for video shoots, ffffffffffpppppppt.” I noticed half the 40 ouncer was gone within me. And I’d had nothing to eat since New Biggsburg. “Anyway . . . keyboards,” I said.

“What about them?”

“I got one. It can play itself. I’ll set if off to the side for atmosphere if we need it. Orchestral samples and shit.” And I read him. Seemed like some more wheels were turning.

“Yeah, I guess there’s no place for that. But atmosphere can be bullshit, too.”

“Depends on what you’re breathing,” I said.

Ray just shook his head. And then he looked at me like “you’re a fucking genius, Jake, did I ever tell you that,” but he never told me that, and he didn’t have to. “Oh, Jake,” was all he said, and smiled wryly.

“Anywho, Ray, where we going to practice, like here?” I joked.

“No fucking way.”

“Rent space?”

“There’s studios uptown to rent, but that’s by the hour. Lame . . . we have to live where we play.”

“Oh. In a warehouse?” I always wanted to live in a warehouse. I don’t know why. I’d lived in a crummy old Victorian house rock-walled basement, in a suburban kind-of-ranch-house basement, in a basement apartment, and another basement apartment. It was a sure thing that if you lived in a warehouse, you wouldn’t be in the basement. It sounded light, airy, inspiring. I looked about Ray’s dump again. He’d want to live in a warehouse, too.

“Yeah, something like that,” Ray said.

“Hey . . . you bring girls here?” I said.

“Of course.”

“They ever come back?”

“Jesus, Jake!” He took a long swig from the 40 ouncer and chuckled. “You got me on that one.”

“Raaaay.” My beer was gone-o.

I decided right there it really was time for us musicians not to live like worms, or beetles, or bees, or mice stacked on top of each other, is the word warren? Ideas didn’t hatch in warrens, Edison didn’t cook up light bulbs in tenement apartments, Oppenheimer and his bomb dudes didn’t cook up Fat Man and Little Boy in a basement. Mozart didn’t pen his work in a ten floor-walkup. (Did they build ten floors up back then? Just where the hell did Mozart actually live . . . anyway . . . ?)