That Thing In The Wheelchair

On Friday I went to go see The Gaping Abyss over at Arlene's Grocery, a club that had foolishly turned down The Headliners when we sent them a demo tape several years ago on account of us not being popular enough. Sophie P. and her friend Connor were there, and so were a lot of lame friends of some of the non-principals in the band, all dancing pretentiously and obliviously right near the stage. It was a good show, though. The mean old lady taking money for the tickets kept pronouncing the name of the band as The Gaping Abbess, which kept making me think of the alternate name Alec and I had discussed a few weeks earlier. Anyway, after the show, I asked Razor if he wanted to eat some hamburgers in the park on Saturday, and he said they'd been invited up to Rhode Island to play a show for The Strines, who'd lost their original opening act to a break up (The Pink Slips had all given each other the pink slip). Did I want to tag along? You bet.

Got to Sarah J's house (the rectory up at St. Mary's) around 2:30 and we left for Newport in the church van at around 4:00. Sarah's dad is a dead ringer for Father Damien, FYI. On the way we stopped at a Fairway and bought a whole bunch of cold cuts and bread and sandwich-makings and made delicious and filling sandwiches in the van. It took about three and half hours to get up to Newport and another 15 just driving around to find the club, which turned out to literally be in an alley behind a fish restaurant. After dropping the shit off, we walked around Newport for a while looking for a place to eat. It turns out that Newport is a real shitty little town and you can't find goddamn food anywhere! The only stuff we found in our price range was a sushi place that proudly advertised that they'd make you sushi without any raw fish (presumably because "you" think that's icky) and a panini sandwich place that was filled with nauseating smoke.

It was around this time that I found out that the Abyss wasn't gonna go on until 10:30. Bill had originally thought they'd go on at 9:00, and since the band was planning on staying over in a hotel room, I'd planned to go back that evening on an Amtrak train so that I'd be able to feed the cats that night and the next morning, and, you know, have a day to get things done on Sunday. I'd bought the ticket and everything. Ultimately it ended up that the ticket was refundable, and I couldn't get in touch with a car service to take me to Kingston anyway, so, like I said to Bill, I decided to stop being a neurotic creep (for at least a few hours) and just hang out, kitties be damned. So I stuck around, and it was fun, even though practically no one came (despite a puff-piece about The Strines that they'd put in the local paper days before).

Near the beginning of The Strines' set, this guy in a motorized wheelchair came into the club and started 'dancing' by turning his wheelchair around on the dance floor and sort of puttering around in time to the music. I don't know what his particular affliction was, but aside from being wheelchair-bound, he also had these skinny little T-Rex arms that weren't good for too much except clicking little buttons in his chair. I think we were all glad he was enjoying himself, but his appearance was a bit off-putting. Mario correctly observed that it added a Lynchian element to the atmosphere. After The Strines finished up, everyone headed outside for a smoke and the guy in the wheelchair came out and was telling The Strines and the guys in Abyss that he liked the show, and he even ended up offering a cigarette to Billy.

Well, Billy and the wheelchair guy (whose name turned out to be Bob) got to talking, and it turned out that one thing they had in common was that they both wished they'd smoked some weed before the show. Billy said he'd called his guy but that he hadn't been able to score in time before getting in the van, and that he wished he could've rolled a joint or two. "Fuck that," said Bob. "I'd like to smoke a blunt up in that piece."

"I bet you would," said Billy, and began exhorting him to describe further scenarios, much like one would do, say, with a girl who might be persuaded to disrobe with enough coaxing.

"Next time I fly," said Bob, "I should smoke a blunt on the plane -- fill the whole cabin with smoke!"

"Yeah," continued Bill, his imagination firing on all four cylinders, "but only the passengers in first class get to smoke it. Everyone else just gets a contact high!" On that note, they went off to a little cul-de-sac and rolled and smoked a joint. Or maybe Billy just sucked him off. At any rate, after some fretting about where to stay, an Amherst guy who is now a Brown guy offered his house. On the way there, perhaps as a reaction to me and Billy making noise about wanting to get back to NYC, Chris started going off about how he didn't even care, he was goin' to the beach in Providence the next day. I took that as a hint that I wasn't going to get to call the shots, so I'd need to make my own plans. I also hit him a few times, but only because he was screaming the lyrics to Big Shot into my ear.

Yes, yes, you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to prove it to the crowd
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You're so much fun to be around
You had to have the front page, bold type
You had to be a big shot last night

Mario snored, predictably. I woke up at six (having gone to bed at three) and called a car service to get to the train station, then hopped the 7:20 to Penn Station. And the kitties. were. okay.

Finished Forever, which had a weak middle but an okay last 100 pages; also finished Leisure Suit Larry for the PS2, which was delightful -- raunchy and funny. I popped a few boners, I'm not gonna lie. M-Biddy came through with a couple of books, in addition to the t-shirt: The Pirates and The Mouse and The Collected Letters of George Orwell. Sick.