Other bands: The Velveteen
Crawling melancholy was close to besting me again when we hit Denver. We were actually playing a real show this time in a real venue with a real band, but I was more or less consumed with a sad version of ennui from our slow fade back to invisibility on the highway.
The Marquis Theater was a great club with nice lights and good sound, close to downtown with an easy load in. Scored some drink tickets and used them quickly. Our set went as planned, but the audience stayed back twenty feet while we played. The lights shone in my eyes, destroying my night vision so I couldn't get a good gauge on crowd reaction. I was trying earnestly not to care, an effort which was getting easier with time but was not always successful, especially when coming off a week of playing unadvertised lunch breaks in college student centers.
I volunteered to get the van after our set to pull it into the alley for load out. It was the weekend so I lost our convenient space a block down within minutes. I drove around the block several times looking for another spot and eventually spread out into other streets looking for a spot as long as two vehicles so I could park. I was morbidly tired and I wanted to sleep. I just wanted a place I could pull in, text somebody a location, then crash out on a bench.
But I couldn't find anything. Denver's young were out in droves. So I pulled back in the alley behind the club and turned on the hazards. I laid down in the first bench and fell asleep until a hammy fist beat against the driver window.
"Hey! Move your fuckin' van."
I sat up and looked around, saw a kid with a cowboy hat, tight jeans and a giant belt buckle standing next to the van. His giant truck idled directly behind our van. His face looked stretched over a bone structure that was too big to accommodate the dermal real estate available to cover it. He was tanned, possibly from days spent out corralling cattle, but more likely from a Sunquest tanning bed, giving the illusion that he did so spend his time corralling future Angus burgers out on the plains.
"That's right. Wake the fuck up and move your fuckin' van, asshole."
I took my time. Didn't speak. Didn't look. Set the key in the ignition at my own speed.
"I will kick your fucking ass, you fucking faggot!"
At that moment he was every stereotype of alpha-male egoism that had been seared into my brain since toddlerhood. He was the rotted underbelly of white, Christian America. A territorial pisser. The embodiment of national exceptionalism and wanton assholishness parading as patriotism and rugged independence. I wanted to smash his face with the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle. Gut it until his teeth fell out like Chiclets smeared with blood. Till his face was a gurgling mess of meat and bubbling humors. So that pretty young thing sitting in the passenger seat of his dually would run screaming in horror once the ER staff had patched him up. At that moment, and for reasons not entirely related to the 200lb sack of meat at my window, my ever-internalized and vaporish unease kernelized into a fine point and I truly, truly hated someone.
I drove off. I wasn't tired anymore. I drove, even though I passed spots that were now open. I had to keep moving or I would suffocate under shaking vitriol.
A fan gave me a copy of his first book, once I found a place to park outside the club. It was called The Bible of Animal Feet, a collection of surrealist poetry. He told me he loved the record in a typewritten note and hoped that we would play Denver again. New faces each time. Where were the old ones?
...do not confuse Pangea with a hostile gold-mining town.
-A PASSAGE FROM THE BIBLE OF ANIMAL FEET
(Thanks in advance to Chris.)
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