Anything Other Than This

The warmer days of spring gathered around us bright and beautiful. We were bathed in sunlight so that even the worst of us was better, happier. School seemed nothing but laughter and hilarity and the recognition of fragile relationships we now adored. There was old Carnie. "Remember the time. . . ." And so it went.

Who doesn't hold onto their lives with clinging fingers even at the same moment wishing to vanquish it? The highway is always stretching out before us with its promise, but it seems most often better left for another day. And so the rhythms and routines, the same minor victories, the same hopeless failures.

Steve and Wayne came over. We were going to see the Young Rascals at the Civic Center. We knew how to get backstage. We'd done it before. But tonight would be something different. Wayne had a bottle of diet pills he had stolen from his mother, West Coast Turn Arounds, so named because it was said you could take one and drive to California, then turn around and drive right back. They looked ominous to me, those little black pills, but they were the same ones all the mother's took in the morning before they took their sleeping pills at night with their tranquilizers lodged somewhere in between.

We had no trouble getting into the auditorium and getting seats after entering through the backstage door. We had already shaped our plans for getting backstage after the concert, but this show we wanted to see from the seats. And we weren't disappointed. Felix Cavalier was a flurry of action on the big B3 Hammond organ, his two hands slipping over the double keyboards, his frenetic right foot hitting the floor keys that provided the bass, the cords in his neck straining as he stretched toward the microphone. He did everything. He was a genius. And there was Little Eddie, more go-go dancer than musician, a heart throb and a singer with tambourines and shakers. And Dino, playing drums with the same energy that Felix played the organ. Man, they were good, though I was bugged by Gene Cornish, the lead guitarist. He was big and heavy and looked oafish to me, and I never thought he really belonged.

After the concert, we made our way to the stage where we slipped through a side door while the watchman wasn't looking. If you wanted to, it seemed to me, you could get into anything. You just made yourself small and invisible and slid in. That is what it felt like, anyway, so long as you kept your eyes from moving, from looking around, that part of the world would cease to exist for a moment.

And there we were again at the same table where the Hollies had stood, with the same crowd of people as if they had never left. And the Rascals, it turned out, were staying at the same hotel and again, we would go. This time it would be different, though, for Wayne was passing out the Black Bennies. With hesitation, I put one in my mouth, and for a second, I thought I might find the courage to spit it out, but the second passed and it slid down my gullet and into my stomach palpably. I swear, I could feel its blackness.

At the hotel, a crowd was hanging out in Felix's room. The door was open and we simply walked in. The party was already well under way. The room was crowded with people, Felix sitting center stage, legs crossed like some Eastern guru, on the bed above the others gathered around on the floor. Everyone was smoking marijuana in a mystical way, not the way my friends had smoked it, but differently, with a visible reverence that was a little unnerving. Nervous, I stepped outside.

Dino had taken a groupie into his room, Steve said. Outside the door, you could hear her laughing. Gene Cornish was chatting up a girl in a paisley mini-dress like an older uncle, big and loutish, I thought, but she was enamored of his attention and soon he was guiding her down the hallway to his room. Wayne was standing with Little Eddie on the breezeway when I walked up. He was giving Eddie a record, a demo he had just made with another, older band, asking him if he would listen to it. I was astounded by Wayne sometimes, but Little Eddie took it into his room and put it on top of a mess of things he had already unpacked. Then he walked out with a guitar.

The speed had kicked in and everything seemed a little unreal, and I couldn't tell you how long we stood there, the four of us, Steve, Wayne, Eddie, and me, while Eddie played guitar and sang, not his songs but others, renditions of songs I had heard by other bands and songs I 'd never heard before, playing through a few riffs before stopping and talking. And somewhere in there, Wayne broke out a little camera and Eddie posed for photos with each of us. I had mine for years, me standing with Eddie, taller than he, both of us smiling. I wish I could find it now and post it, for I think I was the more handsome of the two.

That done, Wayne picked up the guitar where Little Eddie had left it and began to strum, each chord sending shock waves through my body. What was he doing? Shit oh shit no, I thought, but Wayne, apparently, thought that Eddie was going to ask him to form a band. First Wayne played a song he wrote as Eddie looked on. Then he started to play "Groovin'" at which point Eddie had had enough. Reaching out, he put his hand upon the fret board muting the strings and said, "Don't. I hear that all the time." And with that, Eddie took the guitar from Wayne and drifted off to his room alone. He hadn't smoked, he didn't have a girl. He just went to his room and closed the door. And that was it for the night. Wayne, beginning to fidget, reached into his pocket and pulled out another handful of Bennies. It was a mistake for which I wasn't ready. We washed them down with sodas we got from a hallway machine.

It had been an incredible night, but I was starting to twitch. I didn't like this, the way I felt, and somehow it had ruined rather than enhanced my experience. Things were rushing by, distorted, compressed, Steve and Wayne now full of some crazy meanness with which I would have to contend. In the parking lot, Steve looked into an open car. There was some money sitting near the shifter. He opened the door, reached in, and got it.

"Let's go to the Big Boy," he said. And with that, we left, Felix holding court in his drug den, Dino and Gene in their rooms with their new girls, and Eddie. . . who knows? Watching TV? Getting ready for bed? Perhaps strumming sad songs on his guitar, listening, thinking. I'd rather have been doing that, I thought. Anything other than this.