To make matters worse, it became difficult to hear anything besides the music, as the DJs were apparently catering to a contingent of nearly deaf people, who nonetheless demanded a strict diet of top-forties shit that takes different components of hip-hop (the beat), R&B (the hook), and Blues (the exclusive use of tonic, sub-dominant, and dominant chords) to create a soulless and jejune commodity to be marketed to the public by the beautiful face of the “artist” singing the song. One bartender managed to hear me above the din and assured me that Coprolalia resided in Bellevue. “Andy Bates, right?”
“That's a rumor.”
He nodded quickly before disappearing into the maelstrom of bottles and bodies that inhabited the area behind the bar. He did not come back to me.
The last place in the neighborhood on Sean's list may have been home to a Coprolalia. I am not sure; I was unable to get into one of the stalls because it was occupied by a rather famous beer mascot in the form of a beautiful woman. She was not alone. The man cohabiting the stall kept saying that he was engaging in the high life; the woman kept affirming his proclamation — one could call it blues-inspired copulation. Between their exchanges, there was panting and groaning and moaning and grunting, and when that subsided there were pronounced nasal inhalations. As I was leaving, I heard a resonate crack followed by a heavy object hitting water; this was succeeded by a barrage of profanity and laughter. The guy at the front of the line looked to me with either disgust or envy as I made my exit.
“Yo', is he nailing that bitch in there?”
“That, or there's one hell of a clog.”
I ended up down in the Village, its streets filled with various harbingers of wackiness and unexpected plot twists. It was only midnight, so just about every bar in the area was near to or (well) over capacity, the habitués mingling and, from an outside perspective, coalescing. It's like in cartoons, when the animators decide to give different cells their own personalities and volitions, dreams and ambitions — what an Analytic might call projects. One of the few bars still dedicated to the purity of rock n' roll somehow evaded the notice of those clusters of people wandering the streets looking for a bar that was neither too crowded nor too expensive. It was loud, but, then again, Blue Cheer weren't in the business of writing chamber music.
“Pint of Brooklyn, please,” I said when the bartender approached.
“What?”
“Brooklyn!”
“Brooklyn! Fucking awesome place, right!”
“Yeah!”
“So what do you want?”
“A Brooklyn!”
“Cool!”
I ended up talking with one of the bar's regulars, Leo — which was short for Leonidas, which wasn't his real name, just a title he'd been given as a consequence of a stand-off at a sit-in sometime during one of California's endless summers. Our conversation was filled with deep lapses in dialog, an excessive amount of “what?”s and “huh?”s and other linguistic tools that implore the previous interlocutor to repeat her- or, in this case, himself. His position essentially boiled down to this: The reason why everything is so expensive now isn't because of any increase in the inherent cost of commodities; and it isn't just inflation; and it wasn't even the greed of the corporations, either. No, it was far more pernicious than that.
Here's Leo's theory: The last thing the square community wants is a repeat of the Sixties. The Sixties, according to Leo, were about one thing: liberation. In Africa, Asia, France, Prague, California — it didn't matter. It was about liberation from the system. In the Third World it was about liberation from imperial control. In the First World it was about liberation from the “plastic-fantastic American Dream” that amounted to a bunch of useless shit, a deep feeling of malaise, and several forms of medication, either what you got from the doctor's office or whatever you managed to find at the liquor store or at a shady corner (the one that always seems to have a streetlight out — at least in films).
What they had in the Sixties was disposable income. It went towards things like grass, acid, vinyl, munchies, threads, beers, and so forth. Rent was cheap. Gas was cheap. Food was cheap. But the squares were too smart to just start charging more for necessities. No, it had to sneak up on people. So they (Big Government, Big Business, Big Brother, the Illuminati, the New World Order; the people who decided to build the U.N. on the very site where Nathan Hale was executed, or perhaps some group of really sinister motherfuckers no one has been able to identify yet), started keeping wages the same, which of course means that you make less now than you did back in the day. “Cost of living goes up, but the wages stay constant, dig.”
Leo elaborated: In 1968, a person making minimum wage lived at eighty-five percent of the poverty level, provided, of course, this individual was supporting a four-person family. As of 2006, this number had dropped to around fifty-five percent.
“I won't even start with credit cards. They're the contemporary equivalent of the company store.” The last three words are sung. Before I can open my mouth, he's already downed some of his beer, wiped his mouth, and started in again with, “Fucking bummer, right man. But it's worse than that. It's way worse than that. Take away disposable income from the freaks, and you take away that spirit of community. I know that sounds jaded and all, but it's fucking true. I mean, who's into sharing when you don't have enough to eat, when only your straight and narrows can afford to party and pay the rent? So what does your average freak have to do? He has to get what the squares would, like, call a real job. And then it's just sacrifices, man. Sacrifice after sacrifice, until that hippie freak is just another suit who just happens to dig the Dead, who just happens to light up a number every once in a while, who just happens to have a lot of stories about trips and babes and shows and protests even if he can't remember what he'd dropped, the name of the chick he'd boned, the band he'd seen, the president he'd denounced….”
The Nixon Shock essentially did this. I was not familiar with this term. Leo didn't have the opportunity to explain it to me, as a bookie named Scraps soon arrived, and he evidently had some very important things he and Leo had to go over. Leo told me he'd return once everything was straightened out, but five minutes turned to ten, and ten to twenty, and twenty to half an hour. I scanned the streets as I walked to the train, but, unfortunately, Leo was nowhere to be found.
Saturday was spent almost exclusively in Queens. Tomas had managed to convince his friend Randy to drive us around. Most of the time in the car was passed without dialog, as the liturgy of their friendship was drowned out by Randy's “fucking awesome” sound system. He would ask if we knew of a band before we made it through two songs of an album; we would respond in the negative; he would then put on the next album. His taste proved to be so eclectic that it almost seems inappropriate to attribute him with any taste at all. Of all the music that we heard during our time in Queens, the only two bands I can remember enjoying are the Amity Front and Exit Clov.
The bars were not crowded, nor was parking much of a problem. Still, Randy insisted on staying in the car — double-parked and hazards on — as Tomas and I ran into each place to check out the facilities. As always, the bartenders were compliant when we told them what we were up to, and some even directed us to the pieces or apologized for recent renovations. As I had come to expect, most could not provide much more than the month in which any particular piece appeared. We ran into Greg(g), whom I had met earlier in the week at the gay bar in Manhattan. He welcomed us to “the queerest place on Roosevelt Avenue,” which struck both me and Tomas as odd, as one does not typically associate “Queens” with “gay”…revise that: one does not typically associate “Elmhurst” with “gay.” Tomas and I agreed that the place did not seem all that queer. The bartender was a woman in her thirties. She was wearing an orange sundress. Two women sat near the front door. Amy Winehouse crooned “Tears Dry on Their Own,” courtesy of an iPod.