Mark's Pages

March 6, 2003:

There's nowhere to play between Phoenix and Austin. We drive the whole way in 22 hours with one stop, Van Horn Texas, for gas and hamburgers. There and back on Highway 10, six or ten or fourteen times a year.

Afternoonlight through windowslats, Austin Texas. Scraggle-haired musicians red-eyed from road-sleep. Sleeping bags on couches and floors, travel kits with toothbrushes on the coffee table. Everybody wants a nap before sound check.

Students' house. Books on board-and-brick shelves; stereo speakers on stacked-up plastic milk cartons. On the walls, posters for the Replacements, the Butthole Surfers, and the Jesus and Mary Chain. Someone with a red felt pen has extended the Jesus and Mary Chain to read, "Jesus and Mary Chainsaw Massacre", a permanent addition to the wall plaster. Might have been you, on an earlier trip. There might have been alcohol involved.

You: tall, razor-thin, twenty-something. Black hair in a shag cut, tiny gold hoop earring. Blue jeans, blue jeans jacket with political campaign buttons: "FSLN", "Free Nelson Mandela!", a skull and crossbones above a nuclear warning icon. Wired, friendly, happy to be alive. All smiles and nervous energy and bony elbows. At the kitchen table chatting with lovely Patrice.

Patrice: friend of your friend who rents this house. Long auburn-red hair, tight dress with flowers, playful smile. Yawns and stretches like a cat, smiles. The others are all snoring in the living room.

She says, looking you dead in the eye, "I think I'll take a nice, long nap in Liz's big, warm, empty bed," smiling. Yawns and stretches, smiles.

You're confused. "Why's she telling me about Liz's bed?", you think to yourself, "when she knows I have to sleep on the floor?"

You think this for several reasons: you're not convinced you're that super good-looking, you're thinking about your on-again-off-again-maybe-but-probably-not-girlfriend, you're not super bright, and it doesn't occur to you that the meaning of Patrice's gesture could be anything other than the literal surface of the words she uses.

"Oh," you say. "Cool. See you at sound check." You scrounge a place between the sleeping bags, unsure why lovely Patrice's face has fallen.

About ten years later you figure it out, suddenly, like the lightbulb over the head in comic books.

"Major urban environment!", says the singer with mock enthusiasm. "Everybody buy condoms." It's our standard joke. This band are as far from living the rock and roll lifestyle as could be imagined. We all have girlfriends at home; we all behave well on the road. We're on the Highway to Heck. That's our other standard joke.