Volcano Girls

NOTE – this is a continuation of this story:  http://lancemyblogcanbeatupyourblog.wordpress.com/the-ballad-of-helene-troy/

 

They played guitar til the sun rose. Helene wondered if Ramona Gallery could see her staring at after each break. Eighteen years separated them. Every time Helene moved her dirty blonde hair behind her ears, Ramona would do the same with her graying red tresses. He ended the songwriting session. Helene glared, never wanting the moment the pass. Ramona rubbed her rough right hand over Helene’s left arm.

“We both look like hell. Wanna go put it in a kitchen?”

Shocked at her offer, Helene smiled and shook her head like puppy.

Ramona and the two other guitarists walked to the elevator. She said goodbye to them. He walked over to Helene and held a 100 dollar bill.

“No, I mean thanks, but playing and writing with Ramona was like winning the lottery, dude.”

He smiled, folded the money, and placed it in her guitar case.

“You’re here because of Ramona Gallery. She saw you with your band. If you want a gig playing with us , then you need to tell her so. Ramona’s weird. She won’t ask you directly.  Consider this money an advance for future work. “

To make 100 dollars as a member of Slipper Socks Medium, she would have to play three shows a night in a place that held 100 people, and abstain from any food or drinks. She had met one of her musical heroes, wrote  song for three hours, and been invited to breakfast. Before Helene had a chance to think any harder about her future, Ramona called to her from foyer.

“If you want greasy goodness, giddy-up gorgeous!”

He shook his head at Helene.

“You think you’re ready to be a real musician. You really want to make something that matters?”

She looked at the holes in her jeans, the dirt under her ugly nails, and remembered the eviction notice in her cockroached bedroom.

“What would you know about real music? You just pay the players.”

She smirked and walked toward the elevator to join Ramona. A few steps away she turned toward him.

“Yeah, I want this more than anything. I’m just not going to tell you every five minutes how much I’m dancing inside.”

The women rode to the street and walked into the urban sunrise, guitars in hand. Ramona smiled at Helene.

“There’s a place that will think we’re pretty down the street. Let’s eat like rock stars. You’re buying.”

******blogger’s note******** This was a tough assignment. Last fall, for Nanowrimo, which I failed to complete, I wrote something about male musicians with a horror backdrop. It sucked. The challenge from http://thereddressclub.blogspot.com/ was: Go back into my archives, pick a fiction piece and rewrite. So I molded this into a new story episode about Helene Troy. You can find her story here: http://lancemyblogcanbeatupyourblog.wordpress.com/the-ballad-of-helene-troy/

Today’s song is what I imagined as a theme song for these two as they walked down the street grungy and hungry. Here’s Veruca Salt’s Volcano Girls:

Moving Like Jagger

The inside of my brain is a lot like Elaines Benes’ dancing on Seinfeld:

Sometimes it’s even worse. My internal wiring’s akin to The (original) Office’s David Brent:

As interesting and schadenfrudish as it may be for you all to read about how messed up I am, lately. I’ve more Saturday Night Fever’s Tony Manero:

In researching ideas for this Friday’s Red Dress Club writing challenge of something that’s starts with an R, ends with an M, but I can not use in my post, I realized that appreciating my lack of  ”dance skills” inside my brain is what has made me better.

My wife, the many times mentioned “Bobina”, tells me every day to slow down, appreciate what I have, and enjoy my one life. Yes, the anxiety meds help, but what has really given my hips some shake is appreciating myself.

While at a family event earlier today my cousin said to me “you seem really happy.”

No one says that to me. I’m the dude people go to for good snark, a joke or three, and something alternative to the popular opinion. Folks don’t flock to my side of the room for happiness. Until now.

On the way home from our family event (my grandfather, a local city councilman and public servant of over 30 years, had a water treatment facility dedicated to him), Maroon 5 came on the radio. It’s the one band my teenage daughter, 15 year old Tay, and I agree on. Instead of stressing over Tay rejecting my Radiohead and Clash CDs in favor of Taylor Swift, I’ve found common ground. This is anotehr example of me getting over my crappy wiring, relaxing, seeing the bigger picture. Tay, Bobina and I sang Maroon 5 at the top of our lungs in car like mental patients. I even danced, badly, in my seat.

****blogger’s note**** This is my response to http://thereddressclub.blogspot.com/ challenge of “write a post about rhythm without using the word”.

Today’s song has plenty of the R word. It’s one of the better pop tunes Ive heard in years. Here’s Maroon 5′s Moves Like Jagger. Get up and move around, you know you want to.

She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

“A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he’s in there, as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station. “
Bill Cosby

It has been said that people use prostititutes because they can pay them to go away. If this is the case, I wish I was wealthy, so I could pay my wife and three daughters to let me go to the bathroom.

There are certain realities you concede when you get married and have children.

1) I’ll never have abs. Ever. There’s always birthday cakes, anniversary dinners, quick stops at fast food joints because the kids are starving from being in the car and cookouts to celebrate something.

2) It will never be quiet in my house. If it is quiet in my house, I won’t enjoy it or get used to it. There is a 34 year old wife with a great personality, a 15 year old daughter who thinks melodrama is the new black, a 7 year old daughter who put the E in energetic, and a sweet 6 year old daughter who has two voices – loud and louder. There’s also a 98 pound boy golden retriever and two kittens. My house sounds like an airplane hanger.

3)  I will always be embarrassed. No matter what I get used to – bra shopping, monthly female issues, friends who are boys trying to push up on my girls, random nudity, burping, emotional outburts; these women know how to push my buttons and bring out the blush face.

One thing I just can’t deal with is the lack of privacy. I have written extensively about how friggin weird I am. The whole “robot-human hybrid” thing isn’t just an image or a nickname, it’s a real persona for me. One of my idiosyncracies is I don’t like to know what people are doing in the bathroom. I’m not scatalogical. I was never a little boy that thought farting and burping and grossness was funny. Whoopy cushions and flarp are funny but they’re fake. When it comes to women, I assume you are all perfect and thus the bathroom is where you get ready and take showers or baths. Unfortunately with the bunch I live with, they have no shame and they don’t care that I do.

There’s a new law in house concerning me and bathroom or as we call it, the potty. I announce when I am going in there so no one speaks to me until I’m done, regardless of function or need. Why? Well that’s because my wife and daughters only want to go into the potty when I’m in there. A couple of weeks ago, my teenage daughter, Tay, the only one with any modesty, was told by her mom, the Bobina, to go get something out of our bathroom. I didn’t announce to my wife that I had business in MY potty. The lock on that bathroom is tricky. You have to do something akin to magic to make sure the door is secure. My 15 year old bounds into the potty like she owns it and uh huh, I’m there unprotected. I’m still not over it.

My wife and kids, at the end of the day, are pretty awesome. They let me work out, play guitar, watch sports and write. I get “me” time. They also know how crazy I am. One thing they won’t do is allow ANY privacy inside our house for me when nature calls. So almost every day is my most embarrassing moment.

If you come over, knock. That’s all I’m saying.

****blogger’s note**** This is my answer to the writing challenge from http://thereddressclub.blogspot.com/ ’s prompt, “What’s You Most Embarrassing Moment?”

Today’s song is obvious. I sang Penny Lane in the car to the chagrin of my kids this morning. But this one is more appropriate. Here’s The Beatles’s She Came in Through The Bathroom Window:

Long Day

Helene’s duct tape repaired cell phone showed 3:27 a.m.  She dropped it into her sweaty blue jeans pocket and lifted the rickety elevator. Its’ creaks grew her headache. The door to her loft was open. The body of someone she didn’t know blocked her entry .  She shoved through until a guy in his early twenties wearing skinny jeans, eyeliner, and the waft of beer, got up, then fell into her ripped baby blue beanbag.

Helene stepped over empty pizza boxes and dirty clothes. The echoes of kicked liquor bottles bounced off the bare dingy walls. She went to the closest bathroom. The broken mirror over the sink revealed dark circles under her eyes and a perpetual frown. Helene looked for aspirin but found only a newly filled penicillin prescription made out to her roommate, Darcy Bridges. She peered into Darcy’s room and saw her half naked, asleep, in the arms of a man.

Her head pulsed as she walked in her room. She turned to lock the door but the lock was broken.

“Damn everything!”

Helene peeled off her boots and damp socks then fell into her dingy twin sized bed. She reached into her backpack and took out the mail she picked up downstairs. The second envelope read eviction notice. Darcy hadn’t paid rent in two months.  Helene rolled over in bed throwing closed fists into the air. A large cockroach scurried out of the boxsprings. Helene shuddered. The business card she was given in the bar rubbed against her waist.  Helene took out her broken phone and dialed. He answered on the second ring.

“Hey, it’s Helene Troy. You said you’re a night owl so is this cool?.”

He laughed and turned down some innocous background pop music.

“I’m working, Helene. I ’m in the studio til 6 in the morning with a couple of players. It’s on 12th avenue above the Kippers bakery, across from the Fire Station. The building number is 23. It’s the loft on the top floor. We’re just playing. You want to come over a make some music?”

The question seemed unsettling to a normal person. To a starving musician who soon would have no place to live,  the inquiry fit.

“Yeah, I’ll bring my acoustic and some notebooks of stuff I’ve written. I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

Helene gathered her backpack, boots and guitar case. She walked through the loft over to the tiny kitchen area. Inside the refridgerator were two Pabst Blue Ribbon quart sized beers.

“Oh good god, she brought hipsters over.”

She picked up one of the quarts, opened it with her teeth, and began guzzling. The guy in skinny jeans on the beanbag rose. He scratched his wild black hair and looked at Helene.

“Where am I?”

Helene kept drinking and stared at his unkemptness. She placed the beer on the counter and took out a small pocket knife from her backpack.

“My apartment, uninvited by me. Get out before you bleed out.”

He grumbled something vulgar and walked away from the loft. She put the knife away. Beer started filling her throat again. She felt her edginess leaving. Helene ignored another cockroach crawling across the kitchen area floor. She finished the quart and walked out. She took the stairs to avoid the unwanted houseguest in the elveator. Helene made it to the building side door and opened it to into the street.

 The coolness of the early morning relaxed her as much as the beer. She took the pocket knife out of her backpack, curled it up in her left hand, and walked, pensively into the darkness.

*blogger’s note*-  Here is my response to The Red Dress Club’s Red writing Hood challenge – write 600 words on something out of your comfort zone. This is part of something I’m working on. Right now it’s the beginning of  a short story or a novella about a female indie rock musician. You can also read it here: http://lancemyblogcanbeatupyourblog.wordpress.com/the-ballad-of-helene-troy/ I’m a music freak and just started learning electric guitar. So, there’s part of the motivation.

Today’s song was what prompted the tone of this. I play Long Day by Matchbox Twenty at least 3 times a week. Helene probably would too. Here’s Long Day-