Until the Last Dog Dies

CHAPTER 11

Keep the Ravioli in Orbit

(October 3, 2014)

Eddie strolled out on stage at ten o’clock on the dot and introduced me to a giant room ﬁlled with wild teenagers. I was so nervous I thought I might stumble and fall on my face before I even reached center stage. Part of my nervousness stemmed from the fact that I had decided to follow through with my original game plan. What else could I do?

Hanging on the wall behind me were a series of American ﬂags of various colors—magenta, orange, black and blue, pink paisley, etc.—with dripping, messy stripes that merged into one another like wet paint. Set up in front of the ﬂags were the drums, the keyboards, and the upright bass. The last time I had checked, which was only a couple of minutes before, Mike was still comatose in the bathroom. I was beginning to think that I would not only have to go over the standard twenty-minute mark, I’d have to do the whole god damn show. However, Esthra had assured me she could sing the songs if Mike wasn’t able to go on, though she preferred not to. She didn’t know if her voice was strong enough to carry a whole show, but if worse came to worse she said it would have to do.

The lights above the stage were the brightest fuckin’ lights I’d ever seen. Apparently Eddie had decided to shoot a video of the band’s performance which required the most intense illumination this side of the sun itself. I couldn’t imagine how the band could play under them for more than a few minutes. I could already feel myself beginning to sweat. The lights were shining directly into my eyes. I couldn’t see a damn thing. I found myself squinting as if I was at the beach. All I could hear was the incessant shouting. Of course, I couldn’t start my act until these stupid bastards decided to calm down. I raised my hands, then lowered them slowly, trying to clue them in on the fact that it was time to begin the show. For a long time I couldn’t ﬁgure out what the hell it was they were screaming. At ﬁrst it sounded like “Extra! Extra!” but that made no sense. Then I realized they were shouting Esthra’s name.

I said, “Excuse me, I’m only going to say this once, shut the fuck up or I’m going to have to kick all your asses at once.”

Suddenly a beer bottle erupted out of the brightness and whizzed past my ear, slamming into one of the cymbals behind me, creating an interesting musical sound for a single moment. I said, “Hey, the next beer bottle better be a Heineken or I’m leaving!”

A Heineken arced over my head and smashed into something behind me, I don’t know what, sending little glass shards skittering across the stage. I was just about to abandon ship, narrowly avoiding two more bottles and a full Coca-Cola can, when Esthra came striding out onto stage. She had taken oﬀ her trench coat, showing more skin than not. The beer bottles stopped ﬂying, but the shouting grew louder. She grabbed my mike from me and said, “Greetings, you wasted little shitheads!” Just when I thought the screams couldn’t get any more ear-shattering they would rise another decibel. “Listen up,” she continued, “I want you to give my friend here the utmost respect. If you conduct yourselves like the cultured, urbane gentlemen I know you truly are, perhaps I’ll give you a special little treat later on.” She wrapped one leg around the mike stand, drew the microphone toward her, and ran her tongue slowly around the head of the mike. The crowd erupted into cheers. She wrapped her bright red lips around the mike, then shoved it deep into her mouth. Moist, intimate sounds echoed through the club. She tipped her head back and eased the mike all the way down her throat. It was the most amazing spectacle I’d ever witnessed. My gag reﬂex kicked in just by watching it. I actually had to glance away for a second for fear that I might whoop my cookies all over the stage. Meanwhile, the crowd’s animalistic grunts had reached an orgasmic high.

At last Esthra pulled the microphone out of her mouth and said, “Okay, you sloth-browed troglodytes, now just kick back and get ready to laugh your ass oﬀ for the next twenty minutes and if you don’t I ain’t comin’ back and neither is the rest of the band so as the man says, ‘Shut the fuck up!’”

She tossed the mike back to me, ﬂashed me one of her Esthra-bright smiles, then turned widdershins and marched away to the hoots and hollers of the crowd, who continued to chant her name until she disappeared backstage. To my surprise, they then calmed down like kids in a little country school house and waited politely for me to speak. The silence almost knocked me back on my feet.

“Now how the hell do I follow that up?” I said. “Uh, let me tell you a little story about how I ﬁrst met Mr. Michael Aster.” Someone cheered at the mention of his name, then I proceeded to lay out the whole scenario, beginning with the simple intent to see the Godzilla ﬂick and going straight through watching Danny shoot up for the ﬁrst time, the selling of my urine, the assault of Mike’s berserk father, my and Danny’s panicked retreat out the window, all the way up to meeting the band backstage and my indecisive turmoil over whether or not to tell the story at all. The pitiful absurdity of the story had the crowd in stitches. I think hearing about their aloof, unapproachable, badass icon being involved in a domestic dispute as violent and silly as the situations they themselves were probably involved in on a day-to-day basis made the story even funnier.

The story took a little over twenty minutes to tell. I ﬁlled up the rest of the time with a lot of my standard jokes, though I mixed in some brand new ones too. Near the end of the set I realized I was actually enjoying myself. In front of these twisted punks I could get away with some of my favorite, sickest, least appreciated jokes, jokes I could never hope to get away with even at the most underground of alternative comedy clubs. For example, I told them about my idea for a game show I planned to pitch to Fox Television. It was called Celebrity Date Rape. You could pick a normal, everyday shlub out of the studio audience to go out on a date with Bono or Sean Penn or Kylie Jenner or some other quasi-star like that. At some point during the date the contestant could rape the celebrity, in full view of the television audience, and as a reward the celebrity could have money sent to his or her favorite charity. The sick fuckers ate that one up like candy. Hell, I tried pulling that crap at The Land of Laughs in Oakland one night and almost got tossed oﬀ the stage.

All in all my act was a rousing success, if I may say so myself. After telling a joke about a male hooker with twelve assholes, I glanced to my right and saw Eddie giving me the wrap-up sign at last. I reeled oﬀ a short routine about being married to a severed head, then said, “Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between! Keep the Ravioli in orbit, for God’s sakes!” Then I got the hell oﬀ stage.

Backstage I saw Eddie and the band standing there waiting for me. Eddie was jubilant, but that was to be expected. As long as the crowd was happy so was he. Esthra and Ogo were both laughing uproariously. Even Jesse was grinning. In distinct counterpoint to these reactions was Mike himself, who loomed over Jesse’s shoulder like a demonic wraith waiting to bite him and everyone else on the neck. The guitar I’d seen in his bedroom, the one with red rectangular “WARNING: FLAMMABLE” stickers plastered on almost every inch of it, hung from his shoulder by a black strap. Plastered on his face was a scowl far more ﬂammable than the guitar; it seemed to me as if the scowl might at any moment ignite into berserk rage worthy of his father. Worst of all, his bloodshot eyes were ﬁxed onto me and me alone.

Between guﬀaws Ogo said, “Man, that was great, the best I’ve ever seen you! That was unbelievable! I had no idea you knew Mike already.”

“Neither did I,” I said.

As Eddie walked out on stage to introduce the band, Esthra slipped her hand into mine and said, “Thank you. That was perfect. You were hilarious.”

“Well, it’s good I took your advice instead of Eddie’s.”

She laughed and squeezed my hand gently, then followed Ogo and Jesse out onto stage. Mike brushed past me, glaring at me as if he might kill me right then and there. The coldness emerging from him was tangible enough to chill my very insides. I couldn’t even maintain eye contact. I had to stare down at my shoes after a couple of seconds. When I knew he had passed I glanced over my shoulder and watched the band ﬁle out onto stage to the roars of the crowd. I had a strong urge to stick around and watch them perform, if only to see Esthra jumping up and down with her guitar, but I had an equally strong urge to get the hell out of there before Mike decided to do an impersonation of his father on my skull.

Before I could make a decision either way Eddie returned from his on-stage introduction, slapped me on the back and told me to stick around for awhile. He wanted to buy me a drink at the bar and discuss booking further engagements.

“Marsha knows my schedule better than I do,” I said, “but I’ll take you up on that drink.”

“Perfect,” Eddie said. “Do you mind hanging out here for a moment while I visit the bathroom? I have to clean up after Aster. We were in such a rush to get him out on stage I think we might’ve left some incriminating evidence behind if you know what I mean. I don’t want anyone getting to it before I do. Shit as pure as that is hard to come by these days unless you live in New York. And who would want to move all the way there just for some china white?”

I told him I understood perfectly, though I didn’t. “I’ll be right here,” I said as the opening feedback of the band’s ﬁrst song screeched out of the amps.

“That’s ‘Suicide Boy,’” Eddie said, backing away down the hall. “I hear it’s in the top ﬁve of the college radio charts. If they manage to break out into the mainstream we’ll have a hot little item on our hands with that video we’re shooting tonight, yes sir.” He held up his stubby ﬁngers and crossed them, then sprinted away down the hall.

“We”? I thought. Who the hell’s “we”? I probably wouldn’t see a dime from the damn video, even though I sweated like a pig in a fucking steam room just so it could be produced. While in the ﬂow of my act I had been able to put the heat out of my mind, but now that the adrenalin rush was tapering oﬀ I suddenly realized that my face was soaked with sweat. Streams of perspiration were trickling out of my armpits and down past my ribs. I felt like a bug who’d almost burned to death beneath a child’s magnifying glass.

I pulled my t-shirt up to my face and wiped the sweat away as the instrumental opening to “Suicide Boy” came to an abrupt end. Without warning Mike launched into the heart of the song, thrashing away on his guitar while screaming into the mike with the rhythm of an AK-47. Whatever Ogo had given him had certainly taken eﬀect big time. The clown knew his medicine, you had to give him that.

Remembering what Ogo had said about Mike’s lyrics, I tried to pay extra special attention to the words.

Suicide Boy

Thinks he’s a greater artist than Goya

But plays little jingles on his Casio toy

Suicide Boy

Wraps a broken rope ‘round his throat

Puts an empty gun to his head and writes a blank note

He thinks he’s clever but he’ll never die

He’s a damn coward and his suicide’s a lie

Suicide Boy

His mommy gives him a Christmas present almost every day He makes his grandparents pay and pay

He’s great at acting oh-so-depressed

The boy who cried wolf was in greater distress

Suicide Boy

Pushes the envelope right off the table

Likes to suck cock whenever he’s able

Like his dead father he’s a closet faggot

His brain’s as soft as a pale white maggot

Suicide Boy

His girlfriend Shannon’s a psycho-whore

His videos and music are a big fat bore

He sits in his room and records TV shows

His brain’s a sieve and his poetry blows

Suicide Boy

Checks into AA like a hotel stay

His mommy’s payin’ but ask and he’ll say

“I’m on my own tomorrow and today”

He’s independent and he wants to get laid

With the stripper whose face was hit by a truck

Or Fred the heroin addict who he loves to fuck

For a swift needle prick or a tummy tuck

Either way he’s stupid and shit outta luck

Cause he’s a Suicide Boy

He’s a Suicide Boy

He used to work at Citicable 22

Now he’s got a website and he’s surﬁn’ for you

Lookin’ for a date with a girl or a boy

He’ll take either cause he’s a Suicide Boy

Suicide Boy

He thinks he’s good at saying goodbye

Over and over he tries and tries

He thinks he’s good at his little lies

I wish he’d just fuckin’ up and die

Suicide Boy

Why don’t you die die die die die

Why won’t you die die die die die

Why don’t you die die die die die

Why won’t you die die die die die!

The kids were going nuts, and I could understand why. It was one of the most intense songs I’d ever heard. Mike delivered the lyrics with such anger I almost expected him to excrete pure hatred through the pores of his skin as a big ﬁnale. It was obvious to me that the song had been written about a speciﬁc person, someone who Mike despised more than his father, Nixon, Hitler, and Henry Kissinger all combined. Was it about himself? At the same time, however, I got the funny feeling that some of that anger was directed toward me.

Before the echoes of the last chord had faded away, the band dived right into another hardcore jingle called “Queen of Conspiracies,” which Mike dedicated to someone named Mae Brussell. I wondered if that was a friend of his. If so, he must have cared for her a great deal. For this song Ogo had set aside his bass guitar and now stood behind the upright bass, sawing a bow across its six strings to create a weird ﬂapping sound like the beating of vast, leathery bat wings. Esthra, meanwhile, had thrown down her guitar and was now pounding away on the keyboard. During the chorus Jesse peeled oﬀ his t-shirt, revealing the impossibility that Ogo had told me about before: a glass-lined hole the size of a bowling ball right in the middle of his chest. Through the hole I could see the stripes of the American ﬂag behind him. Whatever the anomaly was, it was no hallucination on my part. Everyone else in the audience saw it too. The mere act of revealing the hole elicited a wave of swoons from the females in the audience as if Jesse were a Chippendales dancer stripping away a skimpy loincloth.

I felt Eddie’s hand on my shoulder. “Hey,” he said, “Earth to Greeley! They haven’t blown out your eardrums yet, have they?”

I guess he’d been babbling about something, but I hadn’t heard him; I’d been too engrossed by the band’s performance. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” I asked, pointing at Jesse’s hole.

Eddie shrugged. “Aw, I’ve seen all kinds come through here. What’s a glass-lined hole compared to a naked eighteen-year-old albino chick who belts out old Tom Jones tunes while letting a Doberman lick her cunt?”

“You’ve had acts like that here?”

“Well, no, not exactly, but you do get some weird auditions in the back oﬃce from time to time.”

“They couldn’t possibly think you’d book such a thing. You’d get shut down in two seconds.”

“Hey, it’s hard to know what anyone’s thinking, particularly when they’ve got a dog’s schnoz stuﬀed up their fuckin’ muﬀ. I was forced to turn the act down, of course, just out of general principle. Boy, it was sure fun while it lasted, though.” He had a joyous gleam in his eyes, as if he were remembering the high point of a distant, perfect day.

I snapped my ﬁngers in his face. “Hey, Earth to Eddie!” Lucidity returned to his eyes. “Didn’t you say something about a drink?”

“Oh, of course,” he said, just now remembering the oﬀer, obviously still dazed from the Doberman memory. “We have business to discuss, don’t we?”

I said nothing (which, of course, people always take as a yes) and let him lead the way to the bar.