Morina’s strong willed but softer inside than she’s willing to let on. I once saw her bust up a surly drunk who’d been harassing the female lead singer of that evening’s band. He lunged for the makeshift stage in the corner. I saw his hands reaching and, out of the corner of my eye, the flicker of a shadow racing across the floor. Morina was twice his distance from the stage, but she made it there first, catching the man’s hand at the wrist and twisting it around until his entire arm was bent at an odd angle behind his back. As she held him there, the biker had only enough time to cry out in pain before Morina’s other arm caught him in a choke hold that muted his cries to gasps and grunts like a clarinet with a broken reed. An instant later, he was outside, lying barely conscious on the sidewalk. Then Morina called a cab instead of the police and waited with the man, checking his pulse and making sure she hadn’t caused him permanent injury.
“Dog playing tonight?” I ask, knowing the answer.
“Sure enough, Mars. You know how it is. He and the boys play every holiday.”
“No doubt,” I agree. “How much tonight?”
“Two bucks,” she tells me, holding out her bulky hand palm up.
“That all?” I reach for the money. “A bargain. Dog’s group’d easily merit three-fifty.”
Morina laughs. Taking my two crumpled ones, she straightens them, obsessively turning them face forward and right side up. “Well, enjoy the show. Boys’ll be glad you’re here.”
“I’ll do that. If you get a chance later, stop by and I’ll buy you a drink. Tequila, right?”
“Now, Mars,” she responds with a playful tone inconsistent with her large, looming form. “You should know me better. Whiskey sour with a cherry. Haven’t changed in ten years.”
“You’re right,” I tell her. “I should know you better. But what can I do?” I’m inside the club and moving away before she can respond.
Dog Chaplinsky glides across the bar on a wave of cigarette smoke and air stained with sweat. He’s dressed as a prince of the undeadùhair slicked back, face painted pale like mine. Plastic fangs jut from his lips, dangling ice spears over his unusually clean-shaven chin. The black apparel and cloak obscure his feet, making him seem truly spectral. I don’t recognize him at first. His tenuous chin, the prominent knife and burn scars on his left cheek, the affectless expression perennially at rest on his faceùthey’re hidden by the costume and grease paint. Only his eyes, lost and weary in spite of the evening’s gaiety, give him away. The eyes can’t be masked.
“Mars,” the vampire hisses with a pseudo-sinister voice, “so good of you to come.” He extends his arms in a cordial, welcoming gesture.
I relax, accepting his embrace. “Good to see you. Got a quality show lined up, I hope.”
“Have we ever disappointed you?”
“Nothing ever disappoints me.”
He laughs evilly, reveling in the nighttime like a true spawn of earth and blood. Pulling away, he slaps me on the shoulder. “Bound to be one hell of a night. Tell you that for a fact.”
Dog’s quite a character. Owner of the Galapagos and a member of the local chamber of commerce, he’s considered a man of substance in the community despite the many sins of his past. Of course, the long-standing rumor’s that he built this club so he’d have a place to perform without the pressures and frustrations of booking gigs. His band, Narcissistic Kakapo, is one of the hippest acts in Pittsburgh, performing uncanny arrangements of cover songs in styles ranging from punk to country, along with a handful of originals. The group’s lyrics seem alternately maddening and insightful, though always entertaining. Narcissistic Kakapo performs at least twice a month at the Galapagos, and the band owns the holidays.
“Will you come up and read for us tonight?” Dog asks, his expression imploring.
“Hard to say. Ask me later. I’m just here to enjoy the music.”
“I understand. Well, we’ll try to give you a good time.”
Across the room, a woman dressed as a tennis pro, wearing a short white skirt, baggy shirt, and brand-name sweatband waves at me. I recognize her as the band’s bassist, though her name like so many others escapes me. “Hello,” I shout over the crowd, extending my arm.
“Shelly was just asking about you the other day,” Dog tells me, filling in the blank spot.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, you know she’s into your words. She was wondering when your new book’s coming out. Besides, you told her once you’d written something about the band.” He pulls out a pack of Marlboros, fingering a cigarette that moves in one swift motion to his lips. It lingers a second before he accidentally pierces paper with his artificial fangs. “Damn,” he says, dislodging the impaled stick from its pike. “That was pretty dumb. I must look like a complete fool.”
“No,” I tell him earnestly. “I’d have to say you look much more like a beatnik vampire.”
“Good of you to say,” he tells me. He lights the cigarette and inhales, frowning as much of the smoke escapes through the fresh hole like air through the pores of a flute. It trails up along his lip and around his nose like rapids breaking around a rock. It’s clear he knows how absurd this looks, but he pretends it isn’t happening. When his lungs are filled, he removes the wounded cigarette and exhales. “Hey, Mars,” he says, “how come you’re not in costume?”
I grin as a calm laugh catches in my throat like a cough. I point at my white hair, milky skin, prescription sunglasses covering albino eyes he knows have a lilac or violet tint depending on how light hits the retinas. “I never need a disguise. I carry this one with me wherever I go.”
There’s a certain numbness around my eyes and in my fingertips. With a fresh drink, I maneuver through the crowd of costumed patronsùall my friends in their many faces, dancing and drinking. Ghosts and goblins, knights and ninjas, pirates and priests of unremembered sects, they swirl about me, sharing space and emotion as I pass by, heading for my niche in the corner. A shadow-stained table away from the madness, it’s rarely occupied even on a night like this.
Sitting down, I open my journal and write a short passage. I compose a few lines about alcohol. It’s taking up more of my time late at night, coming into my temple like an ill-mannered friend, uninvited but always well received. Even now I indulge a kiss, pressing the lip of the glass to mine. I note this in my journal, carrying the pen over rough texture of the book’s ChiangMai Saa paper like a fast boat skipping across volatile waters. Of course, to say I’m writing’s a misconception. I control the pen as much as one’s fingers control the planchette on a Ouija board. Subconsciously, perhaps, I guide its movements from letter to letter, forming a series of words. But it has its own energy, its passion. It knows where it wishes to go and what stories it wants to tell. I provide support, keeping it erect and active as it dances seductively on the page.
A clumsy bohemian in cumbersome armor from some vaguely familiar science fiction movie bumps into my table before moving away without a word. My pen, ambivalent in its own way, streaks across the page in a heavy line before beginning a new passage about calamity as if that were its intentions all along. Its movements, so casual and well timed, remind me of a colorful clown tumbling down stairs only to land on her feet and march on without breaking stride.
“Hello, Mars,” a voice calls out above the hum of preparatory celebration. Looking up, I see an old lover waving from across the room. She’s waiting in line at the bar. “Mars,” she cries again as if I haven’t seen her. “Over here.” She’s dressed as a witch, one of many taking refuge in the protective borders of the Galapagos. She seems a beacon despite her bleakness, and I have an impulse to go to her and take her in my arms, to trade our scents as readily as we once traded linesùI from my history, she from her many unbalanced love poems written both for and about me. But the past’s best left in shadows, those hidden on a page.
Waving back, I offer a fractured smile, tipping my pen toward her as if toasting with my drink. A moment later, she’s in the arms of her warlockùhis gaunt, wicked face bent toward her, lips pressing her bare neck just below her dyed black hair. “Have a pleasant evening,” I whisper so no one can hear, watching her disappear into the crowd.
Before I can go back to work, a burst of static from the amplifier of an electric guitar explodes in a fury. Its shockwaves silence the revelers. Heads turn, searching for the origin of this strange, overpowering sound. Dog’s standing behind a microphone, trapped amidst a jungle of creeping wires and mystical rock formations made of speakers and equipment. The lovely tennis pro’s beside him, stooped over and fondling knobs on her amp. Her skirt’s hiked up in the back, revealing more than she realizes. I wonder if she feels the weight of eyes tracing the lines of her underwear. Mohammed, the other guitarist, is nowhere to be seen. Lateness is his trademark, as are the stunning riffs that garnish every song. The fourth member, June, the band’s temporary drummer while Dog’s brother Malcolm recovers from a broken arm, sits at her drum kit, tapping each piece in turn to test its volume and tone. Disguised as a surgeon in cool blue fatigues complete with a sterile mask, only her eyes and the twin bulgeslooming on her chest allude to the woman underneath. She pounds the skins in loud reverberations and taps a cymbal making sighs.
“Play Dueling Banjos,” someone shouts.
Dog hisses into the microphone more like a serpent than a bat, his fangs scraping the steel mesh as he closes his lips. Nonetheless, he obliges with a quick run that incites the crowd to laughter. “We’ll be ready to get going in just a minute,” he explains to the audience, his voice made ethereal by special effects. “Get yourself a couple drinks and get loose.” He pauses and starts to turn away before coming back to add one last aside. “Don’t forget to tip your bartender and waitresses. They didn’t want to work tonight. You know they’d rather be out there enjoying themselves with you.”
Retreating into a drink, I return to my thoughts. My head feels woozy, back stiff from the hard chair. For a moment, I’m outside myself, uncertain what to write, where to look, or who I am. I lean my head over the edge, staring at the dark descent below. And the band begins to play.
June runs through a short, frantic lead-in on the drums. Mohammed joins her with a shrill riff heavy from tremolo that pierces the body at countless other angles, exciting the ache and pleasure of pain. I watch him making fun of his own humble culture with a belly dancer’s disguise revealing his hairy, extended gut. He raises his candy-apple red stratocaster over his head to entice the crowd with gyrating skin surrounded by lavender fineries. When Dog and the tennis pro merge their instruments into the song, Mohammed lowers his guitar, pressing cold wood against his flesh. Power chords and bass notes bounce from walls and ceiling, running like tremors through my body, the physical sensations making love to nerves already taken by alcohol. Eyes half closed, the corners of my mouth arcing up from euphoria in the caress of sound wavesùI feel my head rock back, the hairs on my neck rising, a queer sort of numbness in my teeth and chin. Intoxicated twice over from the sweet liquor of loud music, I lose myself within myself, floating on every vibration through a void of semiconsciousness.
I know this journey well. Music’s my beautiful ambivalence broken down to its principal parts, its delirious essence in messy liquid form. Rock, rap, country, folk, reggae, blues, orchestral, or otherwise improvisedùthe cup matters little to the taste of the wine. It’s just a vessel containing the honeydew that leads one into a fugue. I hold that chalice to my lips and drink until each note possesses me cell by cell. I doubt my own substance, but only for an instant. Then I become real, if only in the dynamic reality of song. I hardly notice as, after a lengthy pause, Dog moves closer to the microphone and begins to sing a familiar verse.
How long passes after that? An hour? A lifetime? Or only an instant in the infinite smallness of my perception unbalanced by the blink of an eye? The music holds me aloft like a feather, uncertain whether to drift along or spiral down in a flutter toward the ground.
I’ve lost all interest in the room just now. I’m making love to the ceiling with my eyes. I can’t seem to hold my head up. Every cell in my body has a new life filled with energy, with sweet sensitivity. But I have no control. I feel my hair dripping like thick soup from my scalp, oozing over the back of the chair like a giant, woolly caterpillar, one leg at a time. The rest of my senses have taken on butterfly wings. The skin around my eyes tingles like erectile tissue, soft and eager to be touched, to be kissed. I rub them gently to bring about the climax or at least to clear away the sting of smoke and tension of waiting, but my arms resist me. Too heavy to lift at first, they prefer to fly away once they’ve been forced into motion. They have a will of their own, inspired to a small rebellion by the soma racing through my blood. One drops and dangles straight down, almost dragging the floor. The other soon regains its comfortable spot folded over my lap. I’m overcome by my own senses. My body controls itself without any input from my brain. I can’t break free from this fugue. Nor, just now, do I want to.
There’s a lull in the music. Must be between sets. I hear conversations resuming around me, slow at first but building into an army of loud voices trying to shout above the others shouting above them. I can’t understand a word, not from any direction. All I hear’s a massive hum like the swarming of bees, growing louder and louder. Lulled by this honeying sound, I consider silently that now I might sleep, if only I can remember how.
A hand touches my chin, moving to my cheek as if checking for a fever, the knuckles making contact rather than the palm. It wouldn’t surprise me if I’m so exposed just now that I’ve been overcome by illness. The hand on my cheek’s as cold as a moment of fear, its looming image haunting the corner of my eye like a demon I can neither run from nor turn and face. “Mars,” a soft female voice says. “Are you okay? You look really out of it.”
I have to concentrate with all my energy just to focus on the timbre and pitch. After a long silence, the voice again calls my name. Softly, compassionately, it says, “You in there? Do I need to call an ambulance?” It’s Frannie the bartender, dressed as a soldier, come out of her foxhole to check on a friend.
I strain to force a smile. Another thousand tiny orgasms explode on my skin, this time at the corners of my mouth. I know I’ve succeeded in shifting the direction of my lips, though I can’t estimate how deranged the expression looks. It doesn’t matter, neither to me nor her.
“Mars,” she says again. “Talk to me, Mars.”
“I’m okay,” I say, or at least I think I say. I feel my lips and tongue forming the words, though I can’t hear the sound of my voice.
“Are you drunk or just tired? You know, when you hang out with the zombies, sometimes they urge you to join the club.”
“I’m fine,” I reply, and this time I hear a slight mutter at the back of my throat. “Just enjoying the moment as it passes. That’s all I can do. All I ever do.”
“All right,” she says. “As long as you’re okay.”
“Wonderful,” I tell her. “Couldn’t be better.”
“Do you want another drink, Mars? I’ll bring it over to you.”
“That’s good of you. Sometimes I think I love you.”
“Let’s not go quite that far,” she says. Then, after a long pause, she tells me, “You know, I think maybe you’ve had enough for now. Why don’t I bring you a cup of coffee instead?”
As beautifully ambivalent as ever, I agree. “Whatever you think’s best.”
I think I hear her laugh, though I can’t be sure. “You’re a good guy, Mars,” she says. Then I feel her lips on my forehead in a motherly kiss and see her blurry image through my glasses. I want to return the kiss with one more passionate and fiery, but I can’t seem to raise my head.
Sipping a fresh cup of coffee, I relax and slowly drift into another fugue, allowing the music to caress my skin like chilly fingers of woman. The musicians have returned to the stage. As they play, I feel each note, each chord, each song. I’m free, content. I’m so taken with the pleasures of the moment that nothing can distract me.
Each moment has its perfection. The sensations nullifying form and function help define this instant as one meant for real freedom. There’s plenty of that in my lazy smile, my eyes dripping from my face as if astral projections of a tear. Every nerve’s alive to passionate renderings of guitars and screaming, repetitive chants from Dog in his belligerent, often toneless voice. I absorb the music rather than hear it. The lyrics to the song translate as pure feeling. That’s what it means to be alive. Not the alcohol or the music. No, those are milestones guiding the body over one of so many roads. They’re a means the same as a well-paying job, a marriage, or a ritual trip to the dentist. They’re outward expressions of the inner manifestation, the awareness that accompanies each experience. Awareness means living each moment twice: once in the body, once in the mind. It’s in that duality that one’s made whole, that I’m made whole.
The band breaks away from its cacophonous concerto, moving toward something melodic. The four musicians work their instruments with caresses, creating an interlude more akin to the free spirit of jazz than discordant, laboring rock’n’roll. Effortlessly they charm the attention of the crowd, seducing silence during solos and asides. Dog’s guitar softens, and for a moment, it could hold company with flutes and clarinets. He indulges it, playing classical runs.
I feel each note at the back of my neck, licks like fingers tickling, brushing, and scratching. The pulse extends through my groin, inviting me back to life in the Galapagos Club, the one place in this entire crowded but finite city I’ve ever felt at home.
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