Styrofoam Throne (15 page)

“What about buying it with metal power?”

“Huh?”

“You were talking about selling your soul to shred and the band and shit.”

“What? Fuck, man. I must have been high as hell. I’m no organ donor to the Devil, man. Fuck that shit. Dude, Lotto.”

“What would you do if you won?” I asked.

“Oh, bro. Everything. I’d get a giant mansion where porn star chicks would live with me. Anything they want for anything I want. I’d buy the Arena Dome up north and make it a metal-only venue, where all the tickets are free. And I’d sell beer for high fives. I’d scour the Amazon with a team of scientists looking for the world’s most killer weed. Then I’d drop the seeds from a plane flying all over America so forests of it grow everywhere. I’d have a charity where fucked-up metal kids, like retards or dying dudes, could have their number one metal wish happen. I’d buy the world’s biggest record store as my own record collection. I’d buy a mountain and carve my face into it. Fuck, man. Everything. How ’bout you?”

“Castle Dunes.”

“Dude, the Castle? I mean, it’s cool. But dude, porn stars don’t want to live in that.”

“I’d live there with Melody,” I said. She was already pretty much living there anyways.
 

“Dude, the Castle and Melody? Pick something that lasts, man. Dream big.”

I thought I was dreaming big.

When the Tion show came, I was off. Renaldo had a big pre-game plan for us to get wasted. I wanted to make it like a date with Melody and told him I’d have to meet him there and then hang. He got all pissed.

“Dude, what’s the difference if we just cruise together? I sell that chick weed all the time man, we’re cool.”

“I want it to be like something more official than what we’ve been doing.”

“Dude, metal shows aren’t about going with chicks. They’re about going with bros to rage with and listening to pro-bros sing about chicks.”

“Dude, what?”

“But then if you meet a chick at the show, that’s cool.”

Renaldo was being serious but I laughed.

“Man, whatever,” I said. “We’re going to hang. I just need a little pre-hang.”

“Fine, dude, then I’ll see you in the pit! I’ll be the motherfucker tearing it up!”

It turned out that it didn’t matter. I ended up going solo because I couldn’t get hold of Melody. I didn’t know if I was being paranoid, but she seemed pretty elusive for a person I recently had sex with in public.

The Ditch wasn’t a club. It was a ditch. A hollowed out piece of land on the edge of town that was an abandoned site originally planned for a supermarket. The cops had no reason to go that far on patrol, so it was perfect for people to do whatever in. The band set up against one of the dirt walls and made a stage of plywood scattered on the dirt floor. It looked like a suburban archeological dig or a mass grave. Or just a local metal show, I guess. There were already about a hundred people there crowded around three kegs.

I spotted Melody’s hair quickly and walked up behind her. She was being really talkative with one of the dudes in the band. I wasn’t sure how to interrupt. I wasn’t drunk enough to act as cool as I needed to, so I retreated toward the kegs. I made it a few paces when she called me out.

“Hey, weirdo!”

I turned around and Melody was smiling and opening her arms. She gave me a big, wasted hug. It was pretty early in the evening to be that sauced, but I was stoked she was in the party zone.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she said.

“Yeah, where’ve you been?” I asked. I should have gone with a more casual “What’ve you been up to?” but my concern leaped out.

“Just cruisin’,” she said.

“You wanna get some brews?” I said, nodding to the keg line. I had to cop some of her vibe, or I’d blow it and have to fart my way out of it again.

“Shit, line’s too long. I need to be drunker faster,” I said.

“Hold on.” She walked past the line of almost twenty people and went right to the front. She flirted with some guy who let her pour two beers. As she was walking back, unhazed by the crowd, I decided I would allow that flirt for the good of the beer.

Renaldo walked by us pushing a guitar cabinet.

“What up, dudes? How many times have you guys fucked tonight?”

“Dude,” I said.

“A million,” Melody answered.

It made me relieved and impressed that she could still handle being crudely creeped out and not miss a beat. I could tell Renaldo felt like I was ditching him. He was always talking about scoring chicks but spending time with them was illogical. Before meeting Melody, that would have made more sense to me.

On the outskirts of the crowd, I spotted a burly metalhead with his hands on his knees, puking intensely.

“Check it out, Code Green,” I told Melody.

“Nice,” Melody said.

“What’s a Code Green?” Renaldo asked.

“Oh, it’s a Castle thing,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, it’s just this thing we do,” I said, trying to move on.

“Whatever, dude. I’m gonna go Code Rock. If you’re not too Code Choad, you should double down on coldies and get up front with the real motherfuckers.”

“Cool,” I said, not caring. I glanced back at Melody. The puking man was still going at it.

“Hey, TJ!” she yelled to the puker. “Can we hitch a ride back tonight?”

She definitely said “we.” I hoped that meant something good later on.

TJ threw up the devil horns sign without veering his gaze from the dirt.

“You know that guy?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s cool.”

“He’s gonna drive us?”

“Beats walking, right?”

“Fuck, I dunno,” I said, watching him stagger back and forth and now pissing. But whatever. Right now, I was a “we.”

I ran into Rex, the guitarist of Tion from the Castle. He was walking around trying to sell demos out of a shoebox.

“When do you guys play?” I said.

“When the kegs run out, Wolfman.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause if we play before that, only, like, ten people will be up front.”

When they went on, it sounded like a giant boom box version of the demo. Their PA was weak and the vocals were all distorted. It somehow sounded more lo-fi than their tape. Half the crowd was in front of the band while the other half stuck by the empty kegs. Four songs in, they stopped and put their instruments down. Apparently the band only had four songs. The people up front wanted more, so they played the whole set over again as an encore. And then did the entire thing again. When they looked like they were gonna keep doing it, Melody and I took off.

TJ was thankfully nowhere in sight, so we were on foot. The road back had a bunch of vegetation on the side of it and we had to be careful not to get hit by cars. I played off being concerned about the traffic so I could hold Melody’s hand. She didn’t seem to care and bent down in front of some weird plant. It was kind of like a bush but with paper globes hanging from it. She ripped one off and stood up.

“Are you gonna eat that thing?” I said, grossed out that it wasn’t bought from a store.

Melody peeled off the rough, papery layer and held up what was underneath to my face. A perfectly shiny, green, tomato-looking thing. She sank her teeth into it as I waited for something horrible to happen.

“What is it?” I asked, not hiding that I still thought road fruit was gross.

“Tomatillo. Salsa.” She didn’t offer me one or appear to even think it. She finished most of it and threw the rest over her shoulder. Large or small, it seemed like Melody took more chances in one day than I had in my entire life.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“It’s ten p.m., do you know where your children are?” she said in a newscaster voice like the popular PSA.

“It’s ten p.m., do you know where your weed is?” I said in my own newscaster voice.

“Right here,” Melody said, tapping her pocket. I suggested we go to the tract of homes Renaldo and I tore up a few times.

When we arrived, Melody was mesmerized by the peaceful street. All the Porta Potties were upright and you couldn’t see the smashed windows because the street lights hadn’t been activated yet.

I tried to find an undemolished house, but I accidentally led her into one that Renaldo and I had been in. Renaldo had spray painted “fuck you” all over the place. And it bummed Melody out.

“You did this?” she asked.

“Oh, no. That’s Renaldo.”

“Did you smash this place up? That’s pretty fucked up. Why would you do that?”

“It’s totally Renaldo,” I said, inching toward the door. I should have listened to him. He knew Melody wouldn’t like what we’d been doing. I just wanted to play “house.”

Melody walked around the first floor and pointed out a different piece of graffiti. “So, you didn’t write ‘Wolfman Rules’ on here?”

Oops. I didn’t know how to get out of this. She was clearly disturbed. It’s like, no shit, I did it. But what good was gonna come from the truth? I wanted to sweep it under the rug and fuck on top of it.

“Oh shit, I don’t even remember that. I was totally drunk.”

“Usually that’s a decent excuse but something like this is different. . . .
 
I didn’t know you were this angry.”

“I’m not, I swear, let’s just get out of here.” Maybe JJ Doobie was this angry. I couldn’t blame it on him though.

“Yeah.”

We walked back down the new street. I could see Melody looking at the other houses more closely. It was house after house of broken windows and she shook her head.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“Go to the Castle.”

“Whoa, yeah! Can I come?”

“Yeah, if you promise not to smash it to pieces.”

“Tsss, it’s totally Renaldo, I swear.” I had to keep throwing him under the bus and hope she would buy it. He wouldn’t care anyways.

Getting in was easy. Melody had stolen a key from Jack. The whole place was pitch black, so we grabbed flashlights from the makeup room and walked around the Castle like it was ours. We went to the roof of the Castle to smoke.

We lit a joint and looked out in the direction of the ocean. A thick fog bank had rolled in that stopped just below our lookout. The moon lit up the top of the fog and it was like being above the clouds.

“I really like you,” I said.

“Oh, now I’m downgraded to ‘like’ now that you’re not super wasted,” she said, laughing.

“No, no. I mean, like . . . you’re different. Like me.”

“How are you different?”

“You don’t think I am?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“I don’t know. You know other guys, like Colin and shit. They aren’t into stuff the same way I am. I get really into shit.”

“The Castle?”

“And you.”

Melody smiled.
 

“I don’t know,” I continued. “Everyone’s always just been like, ‘you’re weird,’ and I kinda retreated into that more and more.”

“Who gives a fuck what people think?”

“Yeah, no, totally.”

I was supposed to have learned this already but whenever I started thinking about the past, it was like pressing the reset button on any lesson. I pretended what she was saying was a “no duh” but every time she said it, it hit me like a brand-new battle cry.

“I mean, you are weird, Donovan.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she said and got closer. “But you’re not the only stranger in town.”

That kicked off an intense makeout session. Just when it was starting to get hotter, Melody jumped up and ran off back into the Castle like I should chase her. I followed her flashlight beam with mine and caught up to her in the Throne of the Living Dead room. It had two thrones raised on a platform with zombified king and queen mannequins. We made out some more until I got the idea to jump up on the platform and sit on the throne like I was ready to be blown on it. I took the king off his seat, sat down, and had just claimed it as my own when the throne immediately collapsed and broke apart. It wasn’t real, just some spray-painted Styrofoam with plastic jewels. I hit the ground with a thud. Melody’s hysterical laughing made the pain a little better.

“You better put that back together before Jack sees it.”

“Who gives a fuck what Jack thinks?” I said, trying out some of that earlier advice. I didn’t believe it but wanted to see if she did. I also didn’t think the throne could actually be put back together.

Melody shrugged and said, “Let’s go to the storage room.”

The storage room had all sorts of random props and scraps from old sets in it. Melody threw a portion of the Madhouse’s padded walls down on the ground and we immediately screwed on it. The Madhouse walls were a much better platform for sex than the ocean. I lasted about four times longer than that first time but that wasn’t saying much. Melody fell asleep before I did. I was too busy tripping out on how the better things went, the more I thought they could go wrong. Now I had something more to lose than just my virginity. I coached myself to sleep, telling myself to not break windows in new houses.

9

Jack assigned me to my first two-actor room, The Funeral Parlor. After the solitary confinement of the boo rooms, I looked forward to hanging with someone. A dude named Pete would be the undertaker and I’d be the zombie that pops out of a coffin. Pete was a pretty cool guy. He always had a lopsided, I’ve-got-a-secret grin on his face. He could have been a poker champion if he wanted to. His looks made him a born ladies’ man. And his friendly-yet-detached attitude toward dudes made them admire his cool.

My zombie makeup was more complicated than a grease paint ghost face or a mask. I had to lay on the wounds and make sure it looked like bits of flesh were peeling off. It was a lot of shit to have on your face for ten hours.

I showed up to the room after Pete did and he looked like he was keeping an even bigger secret than usual.

“Dono, tonight’s gonna be one of those nights and I need to know if you’re cool,” Pete said, taking his sweet time getting the words out.

“Hell, yeah, man. I got this zombie shit down.”

“No, man. I’m not talking about this crap. I’ve got some friends coming through tonight and I need you to get my back.”

“We’ll scare the shit out of them.”